"Now," said Jessamy, as they remounted, "we'll ride away and be at the reservation by the time Old Adam arrives here. What do you think of your mystery by now, Mr. Drew?"
"It grows deeper and deeper," Oliver mused.
CHAPTER X
JESSAMY'S HUMMINGBIRD
A steep, tall mountain, heavily wooded, reared itself above the Indian reservation. A creek tumbled over the boulders in the mountainside and raced through the village of huts; and the combined millions of all the irrigation and power companies in the West could not have bought a drop of its water until Uncle Sam's charges had finished with it and set it free again.
It was a picturesque spot. Huge liveoaks, centuries old, sprawled over the cabins. Tiny gardens dotted the sunny land. Horses and dogs were anything but scarce, and up the mountainside goats and burros browsed off the chaparral. Wrinkled old squaws washed clothes at the creekside, or pounded last season's acorns into bellota—the native dish—in mortars hollowed in solid stone. Some made earthen ollas of red clay; some weaved baskets. Over all hung that weird, indescribable odour which only Indians or their much-handled belongings can produce.
"This is peace," smiled Oliver to Jessamy, as their horses leaped the stream side by side and cantered toward the cluster of dark, squat huts. "What do they call this reservation?"
"It is named after an age-old dweller in our midst whom, since you are a Westerner, you must have often met."
"Who is that?"