Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

Stephens turned to the old squaw and took the eggs, thanking her as well as he knew how. "And I'm going now to cook them for breakfast," said he, as he went back to his room.

"Well, who'd have thought that?" he said to himself, as he began to whittle shavings from a piece of fat pine to light his fire with. "They're a queer lot, Indians are, but I suppose it takes all sorts of people to make a world." His thoughts wandered back to Salvador and the fugitives. "Wonder what Salvador'll do," he said half aloud. "He's mad enough to kill the boy, if he gets close enough. Blamed if I don't think he was about mad enough to kill me! He's real ugly when he's mad, and it's no foolin' when it comes to six-shooters." He went over the scene of the early dawn again in his mind. "It does beat cock-fightin'," he continued to himself, "how folks like these Indians, that's as quiet and decent and orderly as can be, should flare up all in a moment and glare at you like a lot of wildcats, and all for nothing. Why, if I'd gone and killed somebody, or run off with somebody's wife, there'd be some sense in it, but to burst out just because I wouldn't lend my mare to be rode plumb to death! It does beat all."

The fire now burned up brightly, and after setting the coffee-pot on to boil he filled the nose-bags himself, and went out to feed his stock. "Confound that boy, running off like this," he grumbled, "and leaving me this job! Told his little brother Tomas, indeed! I don't see him around yet; not much; don't expect to neither."

He leaned up against the fence waiting while the stock ate their feed. Someone must keep watch in order to drive off the hungry Indian pigs, who prowled around and would have disputed their corn with the horses. The sun had just risen, and his level rays lit up like a flame the red cliffs crowned with dark pines, which formed the western side of the valley. But Stephens did not see them. He was facing east, with the sunlight full in his face, and his eyes fixed on the bare, flat-topped table-lands which divided the Santiago valley from the Rio Grande. "Confound him!" he growled again. "What a fool trick for him to play! I'm mighty glad it isn't my mare he's playing it on. He'll find himself in a muss, too, if he don't mind out, sure. I don't more than half like the notion of that ugly savage of a cacique getting after him with a six-shooter."

He waited till the stock had finished feeding, and then went back to his rooms. But he decided not to start for the sierra till the next day. "Confound the boy!" said he the third time. "I can't take that little fool, Tomas, and I want somebody to help me dry the meat and pack it down. Why the dickens couldn't he run off some other time! He want a wife! He wants a nurse and a birch rod, I should say."

Thoroughly vexed, he prepared to put in the rest of his morning, or at least as much of it as he could spare from swearing at Felipe's escapade, in fixing up pack-saddles, mending his tent, cleaning his beloved repeating rifle, and generally getting ready for the trip he so unwillingly postponed.

But his plans for the day were destined to be interfered with for the second time. The inquisitive face of Mr. Backus appeared suddenly in the open door.

"Mornin', Mr. Stephens," he began; "can I come in? So this is where you live when you're at home." He dragged a heavy saddle across the threshold and took a seat. "I told you I wouldn't be long before comin' up to take a squint at your white squaw."

"She's no squaw of mine, Mr. Backus," said Stephens with rising anger. "I think I told you so already. And if you want to see her you can't, for it so happens that she has just eloped." He turned his back on the storekeeper, kneeling down to arrange his pack-cinches with a preoccupied air.

"Oh," returned the other, "is that it? I didn't tumble to it that she was the one who had bolted." His eye wandered around Stephens's modest abode, taking in every detail, as he tried to gratify his curiosity concerning the prospector's domestic arrangements. It seemed to him an incredible thing that a man should settle down like this among the Indians and not provide himself with at least a temporary wife. But in these bachelor's quarters there was no sign of feminine occupation, temporary or permanent. The one novelty that puzzled him was the neatly built assaying furnace, which he at first took for a new sort of bread oven, until he detected the parcels of ore beside it and its true nature dawned upon him. But postponing the idea of asking questions about it for the present, he went babbling on: "And here I've been and loaned my horse to a chief to go chasing after her upon, and left myself afoot. Guess I'll have to try and borrow that mule of yourn to get back to San Remo on." Stephens's face at this suggestion became the picture of disgust. "Say, though," he went on, "I was forgetting. You're badly wanted down there. I come up partly just to tell you that. Don Nepomuceno is in a mighty awkward fix. What do you think that son of his, Andrés, has been up to? You'll never guess in a month of Sundays. He's bin and had a fuss with a Navajo up yonder in the mountains over a game of cards, and killed him, and half burned the body in the camp-fire to try and get rid of the thing. And the Navajos have got right up on their ear about it and there's a whole band of 'em now down at San Remo wanting old Sanchez to turn 'em over his whole sheep herd to pay for it. How's that for high, eh?"