Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

CHAPTER XV THE ROD DESCENDS

The cacique made straight for the pueblo, driving his wretched prisoner before him. The poor girl, sick at heart and stupefied with grief and fatigue, picturing to herself Felipe dead of his wounds or drowning himself in his despair, submitted unresistingly to the blows and the reproaches of her father. He was the stronger; how could she resist? She let herself be driven back like a strayed beast of burden over the same leagues of burning mesa and sandy ravine that she had traversed in the coolness of the night under the silence of the stars. Then she had her lover's arms round her and his voice whispering words of love in her ear; now she shrank before bitter curses and the stinging lash. Yet never did she open her lips to utter a word in self-defence or a plea for pardon. Only she kept saying over and over to herself in time to the hoof-beats of the horse, "He may beat me, he may kill me, but Ignacio I won't have." Even sunk in misery as she was, she found a surprising comfort in steeling herself to endure, and swearing to be true to herself and to Felipe.

There is a limit to the staying powers of even the toughest of Indian ponies, and by the time the cacique and his captive had covered half the distance back to Santiago, the horse of the storekeeper which he was mounted upon, and his own which carried his daughter, were both showing painful signs of exhaustion. The cacique, unwilling to run the risk of injuring his own animal, left the trail and made for a spring that he knew of a few miles off to one side, near the foot of the mountains, where they found both water and grass. Here, in a sullen silence, they remained, till long after the sun had set and the weary day ended. The cacique was nursing his wrath till he should have got her safely home again, when he would make an example of her. Not till the Great Bear had sunk well below the pole did they remount their now rested steeds and set out once more for the pueblo; it was grey dawn when they came in sight of it at last, and presently the well-known step-like outline of the terraced roofs of Santiago showed sharp and clear among the peach orchards ahead of them. As they entered its precincts they passed through quite a crowd of onlookers; they had been observed descending from the mesas, and natural curiosity had brought numbers to see the excitement. Poor Josefa dropped her head in shame to escape the hard, inquisitive looks.

They stopped at her father's door. He pulled her roughly from the saddle, pushed her inside, and giving the horses to two of the boys, he entered after her, shut the door, and bolted it. He advanced towards her with glowing eyes. The blows he had given her on the road had only whetted his passion. "Now, you she-devil," said he, "I'll teach you to run away from me."

He flung her to the ground and stood over her. The cruel rawhide descended again and again. The eager crowd outside was squeezing up against the door and the little close-barred lattice window, anxious to see as much as possible of the exciting scene inside. They had no notion of interfering. On the contrary, it seemed to them entirely natural that a father should chastise his disobedient daughter. "If he didn't, who was to?"—that was the way they would have put it.

Among the crowd was Tito. Tito was a friend of Felipe's, and what was a source of curiosity to others was maddening to him. There came into his mind the thought of the American, and he resolved to call him to the rescue.

Stephens, after despatching his letters, as he believed, on the previous day, had returned to the house of Don Nepomuceno. He had done all he could to set the proper authorities in motion, and now, finding that the Navajos had taken themselves off and not returned, so that it was impossible to go on with the negotiations, he took his leave of the Sanchez family and hastened back to the pueblo. The more he thought of the fury the cacique had displayed in the morning, the more uneasy he felt as to what might happen when he should overtake Felipe and Josefa. But when he learnt, on his arrival, that nothing further was known since the cacique had galloped away on their tracks, he settled in his mind that no news was good news, and waited quietly for matters to develop themselves. He rose before dawn the following morning, only to be told once more that nothing had been heard of the fugitives or of the cacique, and he was now busy wiping out his rifle, when there came a hasty knock at the door, and, forgetful of the bulldog, Tito burst headlong into the room. "Oh, Don Estevan!" he exclaimed breathlessly, "Salvador is back, and he is beating his daughter like fury. Perhaps he will kill her."

"The dickens you say!" said the American, dropping his work abruptly and making for the door. "Where's Felipe?"

"I don't know," answered Tito. "He's not there. Perhaps the cacique has killed him."

Tito knew nothing of the sort, but the temptation to deepen the shadows of a harrowing tale is quite irresistible.