Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

After supper the cacique and the chiefs went in a body to call upon Stephens. They entered the room and seated themselves against the wall on the ground, sitting on sheepskins or on mats which they had brought with them. Stephens passed round the tobacco-bag and some corn husks cut square for cigarette papers. Presently old Tostado began to speak.

"We are very grateful, and we give you thanks, Sooshiuamo," said he, "for the work that you have done for us to-day. Ever since the year of the great eclipse of the sun, which is the most ancient thing the oldest man of us can remember, the point of rocks has been that which has given trouble to us all, and our fathers told us it was so when they were little boys. We have had to be always mending it, and then just when we had most need of water it always broke. Then you came among us to stay. You know that we like to live apart from the rest of the world. We do not like to have strangers come here to live. Our fathers never allowed it, and they have handed down to us as sacred the command that we should never allow it either. We have obeyed their command until now, and never till this day have we proposed to make an exception to our rule in favour of anybody. The Mexicans, and others who wish, may live at San Remo, and they may live at Rio Feliz, and at other places in the world, where they belong, but here, No. It is not our custom. We do not want it, and we have the right to prevent it. When our fathers made peace with the old kings of Spain, many generations ago, they had the right given them for ever to keep all strangers away. It is written in our grant, and it is a very good law to have. See how in Abiquiu the Indians let the Mexicans come in, and now they are a sort of mixed people, and not proper Indians at all. But we are the Indians of Santiago, and we wish to remain the same. But you came among us, and we gave you a name, and you lived quietly and did not interfere with anyone, and we saw that you were good. Then we gave you leave to stop on and to go and hunt in the mountain the wild cattle, which are the children of the cattle of the Indians. And you stayed with us all this winter past, and you have been happy here among us; but now you say that you must go far away again, following your business. Now we say this: you have done a thing to-day that we are glad of, and our children will be glad of, and their children, too, for ever. Now we say this: you live alone, and life alone is very lonesome. It is good that you should give up the life of wandering so far and being so lonesome. It is good that you should live here with us, and we will build you a house, and we will give you a wife, a young one and a good one, whichever one you please among the girls, and we will assign you pieces of land of the village, and you shall have it to cultivate the same as we do. If you do not want to work with the plough and the hoe yourself, you have money and you can hire others to work. And you shall live here safe and at ease, and if we want to do more to the ditch, or to keep the smallpox away, you shall do it, because you are wise and know the arts of the Americans. We have talked it over, and that is what we think." And he closed his oration and folded his blanket about him, not without dignity.

Stephens was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning forward and looking down, with his pipe in his mouth, when Tostado began his speech. As it proceeded, he stopped smoking, and still sat looking thoughtfully on the ground, holding his pipe in his hand, and a curious smile came over his features.

"People seem determined to make a squawman out of me somehow," he meditated. "First a lying stage-driver goes and swears to Sam Argles that I'm one already, and now here comes this worthy Tostado with an extremely public offer of the pick of the bunch. Well, how am I going to decline? Shall I say, 'Thanks very much, my good friend, but I'm not taking any, this time'? Pretend to blush and be embarrassed, and play the funny man generally? Not much, I guess. My jokes with these people don't seem to come off. They're not their style. No, I'll just refuse civilly; but, seeing that they're making themselves so particularly sweet to me at this moment, I believe I'll trot out my best card and ask for the mine."

He waited till the applause that followed Tostado's peroration had quite died away, but instead of rising to make a formal speech in reply, he remained sitting on the side of the bed.

"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Tostado," he began conversationally, looking at the friendly face of the Turquoise headman, "and to all of you chiefs here present,"—he cast a comprehensive glance round the circle,—"for the good opinion you say you have of me, and for your proposal that I should settle down among you. I take it very kind of you that you offer me a wife and a home here. But I'm not quite prepared to settle at present. You said, Tostado, that I had money; so I have, but only a little, not enough, not as much as I want. Now, I've got this to say to you. There's just one thing that would induce me to remain here, and not go away. Don't be startled, it's a very simple matter; you know that I'm a miner, and live by finding and working mines. Well, I want you to give me leave to open and work your silver mine, the silver mine that you have up in the mountains, and that you keep so carefully hidden. If you'll make a contract with me to do that, I'll stay on here and work the mine for you. What do you say?"

Never was the admirable facial self-control of the red man better exemplified than in the reception of this speech. To the Indians the very name of mines in connection with themselves was a horror. They had awful traditions of ancient Spanish cruelties, of whole villages stripped of their young men, who were forcibly carried off to work in a slavery which was degradation and death. Spanish enterprise in that line had ceased with the exhaustion of the labour supply, and the accumulation of water in the shafts which they had no steam-pumps to remove. But the terror of those evil days lay upon the souls of the red men. They had hidden those ancient shafts where their forefathers laboured in the damp, unwholesome darkness, till sickness and misery found their only respite in death. They guarded the secret of them jealously, and never with their goodwill should they be reopened.

At the words of the American, the chiefs turned one to another with looks of astonishment, and acted their little play admirably.

Tostado remained silent, and the cacique was the first to speak.