Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

"It's very unlucky," returned the young Mexican; "I didn't want to kill him, but he would have it. I had to do something to defend my life."

"That's just what I say," assented Stephens; "I was putting it to Mahletonkwa like that just now, only he wouldn't see it. He jumped the track entirely, and went off into a rigmarole about ghosts and such like stuff, where I couldn't follow him, nohow."

"You were an exasperating, foolish boy!" exclaimed Don Nepomuceno testily to his son, as the door-beam was finally wedged into its place. "It's all your fault," he broke out, with vexation and almost despair in his voice. "What I shall do I don't know. You've gone and acted like an idiot. I've told you to stop your gambling a thousand times, and then you must go and gamble with an Indian, a scrub Indian! Yes, an idiot, that's what you are. Come in, Don Estevan, come into the house," and he led the way to the big living-room, Don Andrés following rather sheepishly. Not a word did he venture to say in reply to his angry father's tirade. "Honour thy father" is a commandment that is far from being obsolete in New Mexico. If his father had taken a rod in his wrath and beaten him, this tall young man would have dutifully submitted himself.

"Sit down," said the master of the house hospitably, pointing to the divan; "take a seat here, Don Estevan. Will you have something to eat?"

"Well, thank you, Don Nepomuceno," answered Stephens, "since you are so kind, I think I will, if it isn't too much trouble. The fact is, I came down without my breakfast."

"Ho, there, Juana!" cried the Mexican, running to the door, "and you, my sister! Make haste, set breakfast for the señor. He is hungry. Be quick now." A scurrying of feet was heard in the kitchen at the sound of his commanding voice. "And make him tortillas of wheat flour," his loud tones went on, "hot tortillas with fat, and coffee; see that you make coffee."

He came back and seated himself beside Stephens. "What do you think about it, señor?" he inquired. "What is the best thing to be done?"

"Well, if you ask me my deliberate opinion," said Stephens, leaning back and crossing his left leg over the other with his hands clasped round the knee, "I should say this: It seems to be perfectly clear that these Indians are outside the law; it's no use to appeal to it with them. Now the mail goes by here to-day, noon, towards Santa Fé. I say, write to the governor of the Territory at Santa Fé, and to the general commanding the United States troops there, and tell them about it, and ask their protection. They're bound to give it you. And write to the Navajo Agency at Fort Defiance, and tell the agent there, and ask him to have Mahletonkwa and his band brought back on to the reservation. And I should tell the Indians exactly what I was doing, and warn them once more that they'll certainly have the United States cavalry after them if they don't behave. If that makes them any more inclined to accept your offer of a hundred and twenty-five dollars, why, of course you'll count them out the money and settle it out of hand. I should call a settlement cheap at a hundred and twenty-five dollars cash down. More than that, if I was you, I'd raise my offer a trifle, if I thought I could afford it, so as to meet them. You heard Mahletonkwa say he wanted gifts, some sheep and a pony, to sacrifice for the dead man's ghost. I gather by what you tell me about their religion, that he thinks that if he kills them for him specially, the dear departed can go and corral the ghosts of the pony and sheep in the happy hunting-grounds, and have the full benefit of them there. Now, you must have in your flock some old six-tooth ewes, that likely will never breed another lamb; give him a dozen or two to butcher. And then, couldn't you trade for, or borrow, some old stove-up pony, very cheap, and let him have that, too? That won't ruin you. I take it the Navajos mean to keep your good hard silver dollars for themselves, and they'll religiously send the foundered old sheep and pony ghosts to keep their defunct relative company in the sweet by-and-by." The notion of this ghostly herd tickled his cynical humour mightily.

"Yes, perhaps I might do that," said Sanchez in a saddened voice. To part with any of his cherished flock is like drawing eye-teeth for a Mexican. "I might let them have a few of my oldest ewes; they come in very useful for mutton, but if I must, I must. And my brother-in-law has a handsome pony who is inyerbado; he ate poison-weed over on the Rio Grande a year ago, and has never been any use since. That dead Navajo was a very poor scrub, and it would be more than good enough for him; he ought to be uncommonly grateful for it."