Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

"So, then, with that rag over your eyes you had no sort of idea where you were being taken to?" he said interrogatively.

"No," she answered; "how could I? Except, indeed, for the sun on my neck sometimes; that made me think we were going north or west a good deal,—at least it seemed as if we were."

"Exactly so; you were quite right," he said encouragingly; thinking to himself as he said so that she must have been a real plucky girl to have kept her head cool enough to allow her to observe things with so much accuracy. "Yes," he repeated, "that was exactly your course at first, between north and west. And about your food? What did you do? Had you anything to eat?"

"Nothing but raw dried meat," she answered, her pretty upper lip curving with disgust, "and it was so hard. My mouth aches with the pain of eating it. These savages don't know how to cook it properly; they chew it raw as they go along, generally; or if they stop and camp and make a fire, they have nothing to cook it in; they don't boil it or fry it; they don't always even pound it with a stone to make it soften, but just throw it on the coals till it is scorched, and then eat it so, all blackened and burned. Savages!" and again she made a face to express her contempt for their very rudimentary ideas of cookery. Once more their eyes met, and they both laughed again.

"I am afraid," said he with grave apology, "that I have been careless, too. I haven't brought along anything nice for you to eat. In fact, I have nothing but dried meat myself, not even a scrap of tortilla left, to say nothing of candy; I wish I'd only thought of it when I was starting, but the fact is, I came off in a hurry."

"Yes," she cried in a repentant voice, "and I've been talking about myself the whole time. Did you come with my father? Do you know where he is? How did you find us?"

"The Pueblo Indians knew of this place," he answered; "they led me here." He looked cautiously over his shoulder as he spoke, to see if there was any Navajo near trying to play the eavesdropper on them. "Your father and Don Andrés had set out with a strong party of Mexicans before me. They started within an hour after it was known that you were gone. But your father sent word of it all to me up at the pueblo, and I got some of the Indians to join me and started out, too. But we didn't come the same way as Don Andrés's party; we picked up the trail off towards the Ojo Escondido. You see, my Indians believed that the Navajos certainly were making for this place, and, in short, they led me straight here, and that's how we seem to have got in ahead of Don Andrés."

"How clever of them to guess the hiding-place!" said she. "And now, shall we go home quite quick? Perhaps we might meet my father and my brother on the way."

"I've no doubt that'll be all right now," he said confidently; "I must just fix up things with Mahletonkwa first." He paused; there was a question he could not put to her direct, and yet before treating further with the Indian he wished to feel absolutely certain whether he should deal with him as one guilty of unpardonable wrong or not. He tapped the butt of his revolver significantly with his right hand, looked her full in the face for a moment, and then with an abrupt movement he rose to his feet and turned away from her; his right hand half drew the revolver from its holster, and made a gesture as if to offer it to her behind his back, but his eyes were fixed on the group outside the cave. "Now, señorita," he said, "before I go to speak with him, tell me one thing: are you content to live? Are you content to go back in peace to your people? Or else—I guess you can understand me—here's my revolver for you; you can make an end with that, and I'll go out to those savages, and then, I swear by the wrath of God, you shall be revenged on some of them, anyhow, before I drop."

"But why?" cried she with a little shudder of surprise at him, so unexpected to her was this suggestion. "They haven't done anything bad to me. I don't want anyone to be killed. They are very ignorant, uncivilised folk, but they treated me as well as they knew. I'm sorry if I complained about the dried meat they gave me. Don't begin fighting with them, please,—not on my account. I thought you had made peace. I want to go home."