Leaving the Indian village, we started with all speed on our return. I did not anticipate pursuit, and we made no attempt to conceal our trail.
Indeed, my mind was so occupied with the grand fact that I had recovered my long-lost darling, that I thought of nothing else. As we rode along, each recounted to the other the story of their toils, trials, and sufferings; a thousand question were asked and answered; and in the joy of the present and hope for the future, we were for a time happy.
About the middle of the forenoon we approached a thick chaparral, and were just entering it, when a party of about sixty Apaches suddenly rushed out from its leafy coverts, and with the rapidity of thought we were surrounded and captured. My wife was able, by her influence with the leader of the party, to save us from indignity, and a lengthy parley followed. I made known to the chief my desire to recover my wife, and endeavored to arrange some terms of purchase or barter. In this I was, after a time, successful, and, after an interminable siege of pipe smoking and discussion, relative to the price, we came to terms, and in a few minutes I had purchased my wife at the cost of all my worldly possessions. But I cared not for this; on the contrary, I was only too glad to recover my wife at any cost, and felt no regret at parting from the accumulations of two years of toil and hardship.
Resuming our journey, we reached Santa Fé in safety, in a few days, and commenced making preparations for our return to the East. The kind-hearted Mexican women overwhelmed my wife with attentions, and she was soon provided with apparel more suitable than the barbaric, although beautiful, Indian costume. My principal difficulty was the want of money, and I was much perplexed to know how to secure a sufficient sum to enable us to return to our friends. It is probable that had I freely stated our circumstances and narrated our sad story, generous hearts might have been found among the many American miners and trappers sojourning in the town; for many a noble heart beats beneath a rough and unpromising exterior; but my pride shrank from appearing in the character of a mendicant, and I finally came to the conclusion that we must remain at Santa Fé for a time, until I could find some employment by which to earn sufficient means to enable us to return to our former home. I had forgotten the fact that I possessed a warm friend in Ned Harding, or, if I had thought of him in this connection, it was not with any idea that he could aid me.
In this I was mistaken, as the sequel will show. On the third morning after my return, Ned called me out under pretence of taking a walk, and after strolling about for a time in silence, he opened his mind as follows: "Well lad, what are ye goin' to do next? I suppose you don't intend to stay here in this 'ere God forsaken hole, that these yaller-bellies calls a city; the Lord forgive their ignorance; if they could only see Lunnon, once—well, as I was a sayin', you can't stay here, and you can't take your little girl back into the mining kentry, very well; so what do you mean to do? let old Ned know, and don't go round, keepin' as close as an ister, and never sayin' nothin' to nobody." Thus admonished, I forgot my reserve, and fully explained to him my dilemma. He listened in silence until I had finished, and then broke forth with—"Why, Lord bless ye, lad, yer gettin' foolish, certain, ho! ho! yer little woman has turned yer head, sure; why, you forgot all about the mine, and I reckon there's vally enough to that to send ye home like a nabob, if you like to travel that way."
"The mine!" I exclaimed in surprise, "why Ned, I thought we had abandoned it altogether, you don't mean to tell me that I can realize anything from the claim?"
"You bet, I mean just that;" said Harding, his features expanding into a broad grin as he marked my look of utter astonishment. "Why lad, if we were all agreed on the thing, I've got a party here that'll give us five thousand apiece for our claim—I ain't such a fool as I look, and it wa'nt for nothin' that I left Pete there a holdin' possession, and there he'll stay till he hears from me—so now if you're willin' to take five thousand for your sher, just say the word, and we'll have it settled in no time."
Further inquiry elicited the information that during the two days previous, while I had spent my time in unprofitable cogitation, Ned had been "kinder prospectin' round among the speckilaters," as he termed it, and had found parties willing and anxious to buy the claim held jointly by Ned, Pete Jackson, and myself, for fifteen thousand dollars in cash. Ned had brought with him some specimens of the quartz which he had shown to the intending purchasers, and some of which they had subjected to assay, and the result of this had determined them to buy the claim if everything could be satisfactorily arranged.
It did not take me long to decide, in fact, I fairly jumped at the offer. The sum mentioned seemed a princely fortune at the time, and, in fact, to one in my situation it really was so, for wealth is but comparative, after all. The following morning the trade was arranged, the necessary papers drawn up, and Ned left the same afternoon for the mine in company with the buyers, to deliver the property and complete the transaction. In a few days he returned, and I soon found myself in possession of five thousand dollars in gold coin, the largest amount of money I ever owned.
I now hurried the preparations for our departure, and a few days later we joined an eastward bound train, and journeyed with it towards the rising sun! With the details of our journey I will not weary the reader, suffice it to say that we made the trip without trouble or molestation of any sort, and reached St. Louis in safety. How strange it all seemed, to walk about the streets of the great city of the West, and as the residents fondly term it "the future great city of the world;" everything seemed so unreal, after the long years of my captivity and wild life among the mountains, that I used sometimes to fancy that it was all but a dream and I would presently awake to find myself again in the temple with Wakometkla, in that strange and far off land hidden among the mighty mountains of the Sierra Madre.