And this was what he told them. He, with three partners and a few Indians from the Pampas, had set out on a gold-prospecting expedition on the head waters of the Gallegos River. They were disappointed in their search until they crossed the Cordillera, and sighted the gloomy shores of Last Hope Inlet, leading into Smyth Channel. They there found alluvial sand and gold-bearing quartz, yielding but poor results. Unfortunately, some natives assured them that the metal they sought abounded in Hanover Island. They obtained canoes, voyaged down the long inlet, crossed the straits, and struck inland towards the unknown mountains beyond the swamps of Ellen Bay.
After enduring all the hardships entailed by life in such a wild country, they blundered into a gully where a brief analysis of the detritus gave a result per ton which was not to be measured by ounces but by pounds.
“Virgin! What a place that was!” exclaimed Suarez, his dark eyes sparkling even yet with the recollection of it. “In one day we secured more gold than we could carry. We threw away food to make room for it, and then threw away gold to secure the food again. We called it the Golden Valley. When weary of digging, we would spin coins to see who drew corner lots in the town we had mapped out on a level piece of land.”
White men and Indians alike caught the fever. They accumulated a useless hoard, having no means of transport other than their own backs, and then, all precautions being relaxed, the nomad Indians, whom they despised, rushed the camp when they were sleeping. They were nearly all killed by stones shot from slings. Suarez was only stunned, and he and a Spaniard, with two Indians, were reserved for future slaughter.
“The others were eaten,” he said, “and their bones were used for making fires. I saw my friend, Giacomo, felled like a bullock, and the Indians as well. By chance, I was the last. I had no hope of escape. I was too downcast even to make a fight of it, when, at the eleventh hour, the mad idea seized me that I might please and astonish my captors by performing a few sleight-of-hand tricks. I began by throwing stones in the air, pretending to swallow them and causing them to disappear otherwise, but finding them again in the heel of my boot or hidden beneath any object which happened to be near. When the Indians saw what I was doing, they gathered in a circle. I ate some fire, and took a small toad out of a woman’s ear. Dios! How they gaped. They had never seen the like. All the tribe was summoned to watch me.”
Then the poor fellow began to cry.
“Holy Mother! Think of me playing the fool before those brutes! I became their medicine man. I fought and killed my only rival, and, since then, I have doctored a few of the chief men among them, so they took me into the tribe, and always managed to procure me such food as I could eat. They gave me roots and dried meat when they themselves were living on putrid blubber, or worse, because they kill all the old women as soon as famine threatens. The women are devoured long before the dogs; dogs catch otters, but old women cannot. In winter, when a long storm renders it impossible to obtain shell-fish, any woman who is feeble will steal off and hide in the mountains. But the men track her and bring her back. They hold her over the smoke of a fire until she is choked. Ah! God in heaven! I have seen such sights during those five years!”
Elsie, of course, understood all of this. When Christobal put it into literal English, Courtenay looked at her. She smiled at his unspoken thought.
“I am already aware of most of what he is telling us,” she said. “It is very dreadful that such people should exist, but one does not fall in a faint merely because they cumber the earth. Perhaps you will not send me away next time, if they try to board the ship again. I can use a revolver quite well enough to count as one for the defense.”
“You are henceforth enrolled as maid-at-arms, Miss Maxwell,” said the captain, lightly. He was by no means surprised at the coolness she displayed in the face of the new terror. She had given so many proofs of her natural courage that it must be equal to even so affrighting a test as the near presence of the Alaculof Indians. But he broke in on the Spaniard’s recital with a question of direct interest.