Tales from silver lands

by Charles Joseph Finger

We were gold digging on the upper Santa Maria and there came without warning a fierce blizzard, the snow falling for the best part of two days and two nights, and in the morning we could not move from our tent, though we had pitched it in a quiet nook of the hills. We had little to eat, nothing to read, and no light but the fire-glow, and the world seemed to narrow about us, the mountains to close in and the leaden sky to drop. And all the while Pedro talked of his gentler land, telling me the glory of hills all purple and green, of sunlit waters and flower-crowned children. So, soon we forgot the black south wind and the destroying cold. Pedro half forgot, I think, that hope which led him to the Far South; it was a hope long cherished, that he might find gold enough to enable him to live in quiet in his own land among the books that he loved.

However, you may think this wearisome talk, judging it better that I tell the tale told by Pedro. But I have felt it best to set it down as I have, because Pedro never saw his own land again; so the writing of the story is in some measure done in affection for my friend. As soon as the snow ceased to fall he went away on foot, our horses having wandered before the storm, and his intention was to win his way to a shack some eight miles away where he might get some food which we needed sorely enough. I in the meantime, we agreed, would take my rifle and try to shoot a huanaco or some other thing. But another storm came on and it was not until five days had passed in search that I found Pedro. And he was frozen.

As I write I see the scene again—the snow-swept hills, the gray sky, the white-laden bushes, and Pedro. I made what haste I could to bury him in the ice-bound earth and put up a rough cross to mark the place, and I had barely finished when a white storm swept up and hid both mound and cross.

Here is the tale he told, one of many, and he said that he had heard it often and often when he was a child.

The Tale

Of all things, nothing pleased Rairu more than to watch the ways of the living things of the forest, to bend over a flower and drink in its beauty, to lie by the side of a leaf-hidden pool and follow some shaft of sunshine as it shot to the depth, or to stand breathless when a wild bird broke into song. His father, very bitter against what he deemed idleness, often said harsh things, telling Rairu that he would do well to attend to matters more enduring. Still, Rairu was what he was. Before the sunlight came over the world he would seek the forest deeps and there, hidden in green thickets, would lose himself in the music of the birds. And as time passed and Rairu grew into young manhood another joy came to him, and the glory of the star-sprinkled sky filled him with wonder. Night after night he would wait in a favourite place by a little cascade, a place bare of trees, eagerly impatient for the soft light of the first star in the violet sky.

Watching thus Rairu found a thought rise in his mind, a thought that the world would be well only when that order was among men which was in the skies. More, it seemed to him that of all living creatures that walked the earth man was the most destructive, the most wasteful, and the most untrustful. Then one night as he lay at the foot of a palm tree, his heart was full of gladness because of the song of a night-bird, and it came to him somehow to believe that the stars sang to the bird as the bird sang to the stars, so he looked up to find, if possible, which star heard that bird, and he saw one that hung low, one far more beautiful than her fellows. Thereafter, when the sky grew soft and dark, his eyes sought the Silver One and he waited until the night-bird sang. Like jewels, like living sparks of sound, the music went up, and like a maiden the Silver One listened. When the star dropped in the west and the song-bird ceased, then Rairu was sad and alone, alone as one in a seagirt land whom none may visit.

One day, it was a day of cloud-flecked sky and humming life, Rairu met an old man, thin-haired and bearded, and the stranger hailed him, calling him by name. After some talk, much of which seemed riddlesome to the lad, the old man asked him what of all things, had he his wish, would he choose.

After thinking awhile, Rairu said:

“If the Silver One would come from her place in the sky and go with me so that I might admire her beauty both day and night, I would be the happiest man on earth.”