Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

"You got leave from the agent to be off the reservation?" asked Stephens sharply.

The Indian parried this question. "I come from my mother's brother, Ankitona," he said. "He mucho bravo—very angry about this thing." He indicated the killing by Don Andrés.

"Likely enough," said Stephens, "but that's no answer to my question. What I want to know is if you've got leave."

"I don't ask anybody's leave," said Mahletonkwa defiantly. "I'm not the slave of the Americans. I never went to Bosque Redondo." Bosque Redondo was the scene of their captivity over on the Pecos River.

"Indeed!" retorted Stephens; "but, if you hear me talk, it might have been better for you if you had. You might have had a chance to learn how to behave yourself." If this audacious redskin was going to put on any frills with him he proposed to check him up short right at the start.

Mahletonkwa chose to look very surly at this rebuff. Then he repeated his previous assertion. "Ankitona very angry indeed about this."

"And quite right of him too," said Stephens. "He ought to be very angry with your man who went and got himself killed. You've got no right to say it's Don Andrés's fault, if he had to defend himself. The man who drew the knife is to blame."

The Indian dissented by a gesture, but made no verbal reply. Disregarding Sanchez's warning of the futility of this argument, Stephens laboured to prove that killing done in self-defence was nothing more than justifiable homicide. But his words seemed to take no effect on the Indian, who smoked on stolidly till it was evident that all this talk was to no purpose. In an undertone Don Nepomuceno hinted as much.

When at last the Navajo condescended to answer, his view of the affair proved to be very much as the Mexican had prophesied. To him it did not matter three straws, he explained, who struck the first blow or who was to blame for the quarrel. His point was that the family had lost a valuable asset in the shape of a warrior, for which they required a good round sum in compensation, and not only that, but enough to enable them to give their lost relative a number of gifts that would make him comfortable in the next world. He would require a good deal to make him comfortable, too, for not only had he been killed, but he had been sadly disfigured; an undeniable fact, for of course the charred object that had been partly destroyed with fire was a horrid sight. The dead warrior's spirit was exceedingly angry, said Mahletonkwa, and required to be appeased with liberal offerings, and if he wasn't properly mollified he would take it out of his neglectful family by haunting them. Under this spiritual compulsion it was clear that all the family were bound to rise to the situation, he argued. There was no choice left them; they were absolutely bound, by some means or other, to extract satisfaction from the family of the slayer. He was very much in earnest. It wasn't war by any means; no, it was a mere family affair, so to speak. But there it was, and it would have to be arranged.