"Come round with me to the corral, Don Estevan," said Sanchez as he dismounted; "let me put the mare up for you. Pedro, the peon, is keeping the house door. My unlucky boy Andrés is inside. Ah, what a foolish boy to go and gamble with an Indian! The storekeeper will have told you of our trouble."
"Yes," said Stephens, "he told me that the Navajos were demanding your whole flock of sheep."
"Oh, not really," replied the Mexican; "that is, they only threaten to take them if I don't pay. But they positively and actually have the impudence to demand that I should pay them a thousand dollars, silver dollars, for one scrub Indian," he groaned.
"It sounds a good lot," said Stephens reflectively.
"Oh, it's ridiculous," said the disconsolate Mexican. "A thousand dollars for one miserable, low-down Indian. I've offered them a hundred and twenty-five, and that's more than he was worth to them twice over. But they say he belonged to Ankitona's family." He busied himself undoing the latigo strap of the hair cinch.
"But, look here," rejoined the American, to whom this exact appraisement of the value of one "low-down Indian" was a novelty; "according to the way Mr. Backus gave me the story as we rode down, I can't see why you should have to pay anything to them at all. If Don Andrés killed the Indian in self-defence, any court in this country would clear him. Do they deny it? Do they say that he attacked the Indian first?"
"Oh, no," said the Mexican, "you don't understand; his acting in self-defence doesn't make any difference." He spread the saddle blanket over the mare, tying it on with a cord surcingle. "She's hot," he observed, "she'd best have it on till she's cool. No," he repeated, as they turned back to the scene of the palaver, "it isn't a matter where law courts count for anything. Our courts don't ever bind the Navajos. The one thing that does count in our dealings with them is whether we are at peace or at war. Now, if we were at war with them at present they wouldn't come here to ask for pay. No, they'd go straight off and just kill or carry away captive any Mexicans they could catch in revenge. But, you see, we're at peace; so the rule is, if any Mexican kills a Navajo he must pay. They think that if his family don't make the Mexicans pay up for the dead man his ghost will haunt them. Their religion, you see, binds them, if I don't pay, to kill my son, or else maybe me, or some other member of my family; and very likely they'll cut my sheep herd some night and run off a lot of the sheep besides. Oh, I've got to pay." He groaned again.
"Well, Don Nepomuceno," said the American, "I'm real sorry to hear of your ill-luck. I call it a very hard case. If there's anything I can do to help you, you can count on me. All the same, if that Indian came at Don Andrés with a knife I don't myself see what else he could do except shoot, and I ain't the man to blame him for defending himself. Say, now, before we go back to where the Navajos are, you just tell me what you think I can do to be of assistance."
The strictly business footing, so to speak, on which Don Nepomuceno dealt with the subject puzzled the prospector not a little, and he was afraid lest by interfering ignorantly he might only make things worse.