Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

"Did I not tell you, Sooshiuamo, that the Navajos would throw the Mexicans off the scent on the Mesa del Verendo. You may be very sure that is what has happened. They all scattered out there on the hard ground, and then they turned their course from west to north, and then met again by agreement miles away, and not on the mesa at all, but down below here. The Mexicans will have wasted half the day yesterday in trying to follow their tracks on the Mesa del Verendo, and I expect they are at it yet; while we, you see, who started hours after them, have cut the trail far ahead. Did I not tell you we were great trailers, Sooshiuamo?"

Sooshiuamo could not help thinking that the success of which the cacique was so proud was a good deal due to the information that had been given them, but he wisely did not say so. And at any rate the cacique was entitled to the credit of having guessed rightly the route Mahletonkwa would take, and having steered on his own authority a judicious course to intercept it. They had left the high upland pastures now, and the sierra lay behind them; they were heading into a rolling country of dry grama grass and cedar- and piñon-trees, a warmer country than the mountains, but not so well watered. Away to the south-west was visible a lofty conical peak standing by itself; it was an extinct volcano. Presently the trail of the eleven ponies turned towards the conical peak.

"I knew it," cried the cacique triumphantly again, "I knew how it would be. The Lava Beds are yonder, and the Navajos are going for them; they have been making a big circuit to throw the Mexicans off the track, but now they have turned for the Beds again. They meant to go there all along. Oh, didn't I know it? Eh, Sooshiuamo?"

Sooshiuamo readily admitted the accuracy with which the Pueblo had grasped the intentions of the Navajos, and praised his skill. Presently they came to a place where the party they were pursuing had halted for a rest and a meal, and here the question as to who they were was decided beyond all doubt. Among the many moccasin-tracks which ran all about the little fire they had made, the keen eyes of the Indians detected the print of a shoe with a heel, the small, dainty shoe of a civilised woman.

"Look," said Miguel, who found it first, pointing it out to Stephens, who, keen-sighted though he was, barely distinguished it in the dry, sandy soil, "there is the foot of the señorita. Look how she is tired and stiff with riding, and walks with little steps. And here is where she lay down on a blanket to rest. Oh, she will be very tired."

Literally, these Indians seemed able to tell every single thing she had done in that camp during the half-hour or hour that had probably been spent there. It was a camp made late in the afternoon of the day before, so they settled. "Just when we were at the horse herd in the Valle Lindito," said the cacique, who seemed to read the signs left by the different members of the band and by their horses with as much ease and confidence as Stephens would have shown in gathering the meaning of a page of a printed book by glancing his eyes over the hundreds of little black crooked marks on the page, known to civilised beings as letters. But in the art of reading signs the cacique was a past master, where Stephens, to follow up the simile, had but just mastered the alphabet and was struggling with words of one syllable.

Forward once more on the trail, with the increased ardour given by the certainty that now there could be no mistake. As they drew near the Lava Beds, and the shades of evening began to fall, the cacique grew anxious.

"The Tinné,"—Tinné was the Navajos' own name for themselves, and the cacique now began to use it regularly in speaking of them, feeling himself, as it were, on their ground,—"the Tinné," he said, "are sure to keep a close watch on the edge of the Beds where their trail goes in, so as to see who is following them. Let us turn off their trail here and go aside; there is a spring at the edge of the Beds a little north of here; we will camp there for the night, we can do nothing in the Beds in the dark; also if the Mexicans have found the trail again, as they ought to have done by this time, they may follow it part of the night by moonlight and be able to overtake us here. It would be well to have them here before we go into the Beds. Don't you think so, Sooshiuamo?"

Stephens had to agree. It grated on him terribly to leave Manuelita for a second night in the hands of Mahletonkwa and his band, but it was more than doubtful whether they could possibly find where they had her concealed in the gathering darkness, and there was a good chance of being in a better position to deal with the matter in the morning.

It was already night when the cacique skilfully and cautiously led them to the little spring he knew of near the Beds; they watered their horses here, and drank, too, themselves, and camped under a cedar bush not far away, without a fire lest the light should betray them. They chewed their tough, dried meat, and ate a little parched corn, and kept watch by turns in the moonlight over their horses during the first half of the night. But nothing disturbed them, and Faro gave no sign of suspecting an enemy at hand when Stephens scouted round with him before moonset, and after that they slept securely.