Niltci turned from his guard of the place and approached the chief. “He came to us, Apache. He led us to these mountains. Then came the Mexicanos. We were to run them a race away into the desert with our fast horses. But they saw sheep on the mountain. They started killing them—ugh, but it was a slaughter sickening to see! More than many, many white men could eat, they shot! Then rose up your son, Hano, out of ambush and cursed them, as I too would have done. He fired my rifle at them, killing many horses. When the shells were all gone he left us. That is all I know.”
“Who does know what became of Hano, then, Niltci?” inquired Sid eagerly.
The Navaho pointed to the silent figure of Big John.
“Hai!” breathed Honanta’s deep voice. “He must live! I must know what has happened to my son! If he died, it was as a great chief should die, for his people. If he lives, this white man shall tell us and my best trackers shall seek for him. Come!”
They all picked up the inanimate form of Big John and carried him slowly along the lava apron brink. From afar came the occasional crack of a rifle. The chase had gone a long distance to the westward. Once they heard the bellow of Scotty’s .405 from far down beyond the knoll. The peculiar volume of it was unmistakable, easily told from the sharper whip of the Mausers. Sid would have liked to join him, but his duty now was to see Big John under competent care. He had great faith in those Apache medicine bundles. There were healing herbs in them that the Indians alone knew; not all their “medicine” was sorcery and meaningless medicine dances, for in the treatment of wounds they were wonderful.
Up the steep ascent and through the sulphur-fumed reaches of the cave tunnel they bore Big John. When he had been laid on a couch in the medicine lodge and the old men had set to work at his wounds, Sid called Niltci to him.
“I want to show you this Red Mesa, Niltci,” he said, “for my heart is heavy within me. We can do no further good here.”
Together they went out into the little valley, Niltci’s cries of pleasure over its isolation and peace as detail after detail of it was grasped by his keen Indian mind singing in Sid’s ears. It made him even more depressed. What would Scotty’s reaction to all this be? Scotty, the practical, hard-headed engineer, who would no doubt hop on this mine with a howl of delight and pooh-pooh any suggestion of abandoning it to the Apaches as their home. The first white man who staked out a claim here owned it. These Indians had no rights. How could he reconcile Gold with Nature in Scotty’s mind—dissuade him from taking his civic rights, for the sake of this people?
Sid wanted to have his mind made up before they set out to join Scotty. He watched Niltci as they came opposite the mine fissure. The Navaho boy stopped with another exclamation of pleasure. He was an expert silversmith himself, and he recognized the metal instantly amid the dull copper. But in Niltci’s eyes there showed no hint of possessing it, of taking this whole mine for himself. This metal was for all, the gift of Mother Earth to the whole tribe, according to his training. He would be just as welcome to set up his forge here and smelt all the silver he wanted as the Apaches were to make arrow tips of the copper. He told Sid this artless viewpoint as the latter questioned him, seeking light in his perplexity.
Sid shook his head. How different from Scotty’s idea! A claim that gave exclusive ownership; vast engineering works; ships; an organization that would take all this metal for one man’s enrichment—that was the white man’s way!