Sid watched them awhile, a feeling of melancholy growing on him. These people were happy, free, and independent. Under Honanta’s leadership they were living life simply and nobly, as the early Indians did. To match it, you had to go back two hundred years to the time when religion was everything in an Indian’s life, when warfare was an incentive to chivalry similar to our own warfare of the middle ages; when there were no white men to set one tribe against another, to teach them to scalp one another by offering a bounty for the hair of a fellow red man, or to sell them whisky and weapons far more deadly than any they naturally used.
Sid felt himself playing traitor to his best instincts when he thought of what the coming of Scotty and Big John would mean to these people. Scotty had come to the Pinacate region to find the Red Mesa mine. Well he, Sid, had found it for him! But he had not dreamed to find it also the home of a happy and peaceful band of red men—that race with which Sid was becoming more and more in sympathy.
But now look what would happen! Scotty would claim the mine, stake it out, ask him and Big John to sign as witnesses, and then file the claim with the government. And then, with the publishing of that claim, would come the inevitable stampede to this region. White men, hundreds of them; ships, rails, ore cars, burros, rough and sweating white miners—a rabble that would sweep Honanta and his people away like chaff. It did Sid little good to tell himself that he had sent Hano to bring his friends so that they could defend Red Mesa against the Mexicans. That would be a mere incident in the march of progress. Vasquez and his guerrillas would surely come here, riding along the border from Nogales. They would find the pony tracks, climb the mountain and discover Red Mesa. After that, no doubt Vasquez would fight for it. But even if defeated and driven off, there was Scotty to be reckoned with, for his heart was set on this mine, his whole future depended on it. That he would insist on providing for these Indians, of course, would be his natural instincts for right and justice. But he would insist, too, on the mine being developed. Sid doubted whether it could be done, in the nature of his race, without first bringing about the destruction of these Apaches. Honanta would never give this place up without a fight for it against all comers.
Sid wished that his father could be here to counsel him. He had almost a conviction that he was really that officer who had saved Honanta’s life in Apache Cave so long ago. It would be just like him. That deed would give his father vast influence over the chief, and some way out of this tangle of perplexities would be found by the good old Colonel. Sid wished now that he had sent Hano direct to bring his father. The Colvin ranch was up in the Gila Cañon on the railroad not a hundred miles away. The name was already well known in Arizona, their station near the ranch being named “Colvin’s” on the main line. Hano could have reached the rails by a fast push out to Tacna, and then have taken the train to Colvin’s. That would bring the Colonel here in two days at most, for there was a railroad to Ajo Mines only fifty miles away from Pinacate.
But it was too late now. After-thought is mere aggravation! What would Hano really do, now that he was free? Sid asked himself. He confessed he didn’t know. We know nothing of the Indian mind and its workings. We really know nothing of the race nor where they came from. Not Semitic, surely, for, Phœnician Jew or Arab, the accumulation of vast stores of wealth is the dominant Semitic trait, and the Indian scorns wealth and miserliness alike.
Sid was convinced that they are of the same Aryan stock as ourselves. If so, his theory was that they must have migrated east from Asia at a far earlier period than our own ancestors’ westward migration, for we still have the Aryan word roots, while in America there are no less than three great Indian languages—Algonquin, Athapascan, Siouan—totally different, the peoples also as different in physical and moral characteristics as are our own Teutonic and Latin branches of the same Aryan stock.
We developed individualism as we migrated westward. The Indian developed it, too, in this great new land, but he retained one distinctive Asiatic trait—the impersonal ego—the sinking of self in the clan whose interests are always paramount to everything else.
Reasoning from that, Sid tried to conjecture what Hano’s motives would be. To keep all these whites, Mexicans and his own friends alike, away from Red Mesa, the home of his clan; to kill Ruler, the tracking dog, so that Sid could not be traced here, seemed to Sid what Hano would really do. He would act on that basis, Sid was sure. His own chance of rescue, then, was really very slight. His life was safe for twenty-four hours, no matter what the old men might decide in council. After that his fate really depended solely on the identity of his name with that Colvin of Apache Cave! But how to prove to Honanta that that man was Colonel Colvin himself? To claim it without proof would be taken by the Indians as a mere forlorn hope to save his own life. Hano could have brought that proof for him, given time enough; now it was too late. Sid gave it all up; there was really nothing to do but wait events.
The sun was setting as Sid finished his ruminations. The water pool already lay in shadow, the black bottom of its lava basin turning the deep blue-green of its waters to a mirror of shining black. A sharp shadow line was creeping in horizontal masses of dark maroon far up on the face of the east wall, every broken fissure and pinnacle of the west wall shadow etched on its high face. Sid kept one eye nervously on the door of the medicine lodge, wondering how it was all going to turn out. No one had visited it yet, but discovery of Hano’s escape was sure and would come soon.
As Sid waited and watched, Honanta came out of a sweat lodge near the borders of the tank. He was naked save for breech cloth and moccasins, and slowly he walked to the brink of the lava basin where it tumbled out between the high walls of Red Mesa. Like some magnificent bronze statue he stood for a time on the brink, facing the setting sun, his arms outstretched in silent prayer. Then an old man tottered out from the council lodge bearing a ceremonial pipe. Honanta took it from him and, after a few whiffs, held its bowl toward the setting sun. Again he dipped it reverently toward Mother Earth and the sunset ceremony was ended. Sid noted that he did not add the modern symbolism of offering the pipe to the four winds.