Scotty looked surprised. “By George, that’s so!” he exclaimed at length, nervously.
He fell silent, and Sid could see that his engineer’s mind was already at work planning some scheme to build a way out in case Vasquez should succeed. They both went over to where Big John lay with Blaze beside him. The big cowman’s eyes were bright, and he greeted them cheerily.
“You-all give this old bird plenty of corn pone and Montana chicken (bacon), an’ he’ll surprise ye, boys!” he chirped. “Ain’t no one goin’ to pull no Enchanted Mesa stuff on us while the old meat gun’s handy!” He reached down his hand to where the .35 lay on the rock beside him. “This-yer’s a good job! Pretty soft! Hed a swell time persuadin’ them Injuns to fix me up hyar, though.”
“We’ll stay here to-night, too, John,” said Sid. “A few extra rifles on watch won’t hurt.”
Far below the location of the cave mouth showed as a mere black crease in the lava as seen from their vantage point. Apache scouts were on guard there, Sid knew, but a stealthy creep, a sudden rush in the dark, the hurling of a bundle of dynamite sticks they could not prevent. Only keen eyesight and the alert senses of a dog could give warning.
He suggested to Scotty to take Ruler down there, which the other was not slow to do, for Scotty acted nervous and constrained as if his conscience troubled him. He, too, was fighting a battle with himself—and apparently he dreaded the recommencement of any argument over the Red Mesa mine, for the meaning of this place was slowly growing on him. Yet it was hard to give up wealth, a career, success as a mining engineer—for an ideal!
The Apaches went through their usual sunset worship that evening. It filled Sid with a mournful regret. If only this life of theirs could go on unmolested! But it would be impossible, unless some great change were to come over Scotty. You could not change people! They were what they were. Scotty meant well; his point of view was the usual thing. The mine belonged to him and to Sid; the Indians they could provide for elsewhere, buy a reservation for them in a far better locality than this—nothing to it!
But Sid knew that the problem went deeper than that. Its isolation was the real value of this place, its real importance to the Indians. Nowhere else would they be free from contact with the whites; nowhere else be free from the inevitable temptations of civilization. Honanta would look at it that way, Sid knew, if all the ins and outs of this situation were to be explained to him, and he would never consent to his band leaving Red Mesa for any exchange whatever.
Later the girl Nahla came to Sid and he was able to comfort her with news of Hano. That he had not broken his honor but instead had risked his life for the tribe and made a splendid coup thereby, Sid could see filled her with a rapture that only he could appreciate. She left him, singing softly a prayer of thanksgiving to the Great Mystery, and Sid went on with his watch.
All the desert lay silent and grand and mysterious under the slow-moving stars as he kept his vigil, ruminating over it all. He wished that his father, Colonel Colvin, could be brought here. Honanta would do whatever those wise old gray hairs thought best. Honanta owed to Colonel Colvin his life, and to an Indian that debt is never paid. There must be a good way out of all this. Colonel Colvin, with his wide knowledge of Indian affairs and his broad sympathies, was the man to point it out.