Again came a silence. Sid felt strangely moved. He was torn between his duty to Scotty, his friend, and his new sympathies for this hunted band of a once free people in this their last refuge. For those copper arrowheads had told him that there was metal here; that Red Mesa really had a mine, as was reported by the Papagoes. His friendship for Scotty prompted him to find this mine and tell him its location once he should escape. Yet, to destroy the peace of this last band of the original red children of our country, to give over their last stronghold to the lust and greed of the white miners who would surely come here—could he do it, even for Scotty’s sake?
“And here my mother died, full of years and honor,” went on the chief. “Come; I will show you!” He led the way out of the lodge. Along the borders of the deep, blue-green waters of the tank a path led to the substantial brush shelter built up in the interior juncture of the two high red walls. Every pole and stick of it had evidently been brought up from the surrounding desert, for no trees grew here, all the available soil having been given over to cultivation. Inside the house Sid saw all the ceremonial objects of the old-time Indian mystery dances, marriage basket trays in intricate designs of black, white, and red on the willow, baptismal bottle baskets made watertight by piñon gum, medicine bundles filled with healing herbs. And, in one particularly sacred shrine, the chief showed him a row of small bundles which Sid knew at once were mortuary relics. They contained the hair and perhaps a few mystic possessions of the dead of the tribe. The first bundle of these was heavily decorated, as if all the women of the band had lavished their art and symbolism in bead work upon it in loving memory.
“My mother’s!” boomed the chief’s deep voice, laying his hand on it.
Sid removed his sombrero and looked reverently. After a time he let his eyes wander around the dim recesses of the room. The chief remained standing, lost in reverie before the reliquary bundle of his mother, but Sid’s eyes searched for and finally found Hano, seated bound against a post in a dim corner under the rocky walls between whose fork the medicine lodge had been built. That there was a concealed opening in this rock somewhere near which led to the cave tunnel up which he had come the youth was sure. He examined the place keenly for an instant, and then turned and stood awaiting the chief’s further pleasure.
“My white son is interested in the ethnology of our poor people? Why, then, does he come down here, around Pinacate, where there are no Indians?” asked the chief as they went out the door.
That was a knock-down poser for Sid to answer without time to think it over! How could he disclose the real object of their trip—mining, the seeking of this very Red Mesa mine? Yet he could not plead ethnology as the purpose of this trip! To lie, to evade, would be impossible before those keen eyes that read truth unerringly. To lie and be caught in his own trap by the wily chief would mean death, under the ancient Indian customs under which this band lived. A murderer, with them, might be pardoned, if he could show sufficient cause, but a liar was always summarily dealt with, for no one in the tribe felt safe with him who spoke with a forked tongue.
“I have a friend,” answered Sid, after a pause in which Honanta stood with his eyes searching his to their depths, “I came with him. His reason for visiting Pinacate is not mine to tell you.”
The chief smiled slightly. “It is good. Friendship of man for man is our highest test of character. He who betrays a friend, even under torture, is unworthy. How many of you are there?”
“Four,” said Sid. “One cowman guide, the white boy who is my friend, a Navaho youth and myself.”
The chief looked relieved. Evidently he did not consider those three out there somewhere in the desert particularly formidable, nor that they could easily find Sid.