The Talking Leaves: An Indian Story, William O. Stoddard [best novels for beginners TXT] 📗

up my mind to stay white."

Steve spoke with a good deal of energy, and his robust form seemed to stand up straighter.

"You're right, Steve; don't you do a thing that isn't fit for your color. I won't say anything more about myself just now."

If anybody had been listening to those two that morning, or indeed at any other time, he might have noticed something curious about the way Steve Harrison talked. It was not to be wondered at that a veteran like Murray should be slow of speech, and it suited well with his white hair and his wrinkles.

There was a good reason for it. Except when talking with Murray, Steve had not heard a word of English for three years.

Yes, there had been one other exception. When, ever he had found himself all alone he had talked to himself, asking and answering questions, and listening to his own pronunciation of the words.

"I shall get among white men some day," he thought, "and it would be a dreadful thing to be white myself and not talk white. Anyhow, I've learned Mexican Spanish since I've been out here, and I'll be glad enough to forget all I know of Indian talk."

He did not know it, but some things he said sounded ten years older and wiser just for his manner of saying them. Besides, he had had to think a great deal, and to keep most of his thoughts to himself. Not a great many boys do that.

"Come on, Steve. That ledge isn't badly broken. Horses can follow it, and it heads away right into the pine-forest. We must try it."

"We can get almost down into the valley without being seen."

"Yes, and we can find out if any good gap opens out of the valley to the northward."

CHAPTER X

Captain Skinner and his miners were quickly at the head of that ravine again, but the gold ledge stopped them all as if it had been a high fence.

"Cap," said the man called Bill, "of course them two fellers lit onto this mine. They couldn't ha' helped it. But they haven't done a stroke of work on it. Reckon we kin set up marks of our own."

"'Twont pay."

"We can't leave a claim like this."

Every man of the party was of the same opinion, and Captain Skinner said,

"Go ahead, boys. Only I can tell you one thing. We're going to move out of this, through that western gap, before daylight to-morrow morning. We're too near those red-skins down there to suit me. There's no telling how many there may be of them."

The men sprung to their work with a will. The first thing they did was to set up a "discovery monument" right in the middle of the ledge, at the head of the chasm.

Large flat stones were laid down, others carefully set upon them, and so up and up, till a pretty well shaped, four-sided pyramid had been made, six feet square and as many high.

Then two more, nearly as large, were set up at the ends of the ledge, where the gold vein disappeared in the high cliffs.

Seven strong men can do a great deal in a short time when they are in a hurry and all understand exactly what to do.

"Now we'll go for supper, and send out the rest."

"Must have a shaft begun and a blast fired."

The miners have a law of their own among themselves that a man who finds a mine must do some work on it and set up "marks," or else his claim to it is of no value.

These miners only paid no attention to another "law," that a man like Steve Harrison, for instance, is entitled to all the time required to do his work and set up his monuments. One part of the law is just as good as another.

The return to camp was quickly made, and there was news to tell all around, for the hunters not only brought in game but also the information that they "reckoned an army train could be hauled down that gap to the westward. It's almost as good as a road."

"We'll try it to-morrow," said the Captain.

He went out with all the men he could spare from camp as soon as supper was eaten, and they carried with them pickaxes, crow-bars, mining drills, and shovels. All the tools were pretty well worn, but they would answer for the work in hand.

It was getting dark when they reached the ledge; but that was of less consequence after two huge bonfires had been built near the central monument, and heaped with fragments of fallen pine-trees. Then the work began.

"Gangs of three," said Captain Skinner—"one on each side. We'll have two shafts started. Bill, drill your blast right there."

The shafts would not have been needed for a long time in actually working out ore from a ledge like that, but two such holes would make a very deep mark that could not be wiped out, and the "blast" would make another.

It was hard work, but as fast as the men who were prying and picking loosened a piece of quartz, it was lifted away by their comrades, and it was a wonder how those two shafts did go down.

All the while Bill was tapping away with his hammer and drill on the spot pointed out to him, and was making a hole in the rock about the size of a gun-barrel.

"Two feet, Cap," he shouted at last. "That's as far as I can go with this drill, and it's the longest there is in camp."

"That'll do. Charge it. Our job's 'most done."

The night was cool, but the miners had kept themselves warm enough. They were not sorry to quit when their hard-faced little Captain ordered them out of the two holes; but it was odd to see such great, brawny fellows obeying in that way a man who looked almost like a dwarf beside them.

"Got her charged, Bill?"

"All right, Cap."

"Stand back, boys. Touch yer fuse, Bill."

That was a slow-match that stuck out of the hole he had drilled in the rock, and it led down to the charge of powder he had skilfully rammed in at the bottom.

"We can hardly afford to waste so much powder," the Captain had muttered, "but it won't do for me to cross 'em too much on such a thing."

Back they went for a hundred yards, while the fuse burnt its slow, sputtering way down through the "tamping" Bill had rammed around it.

They had not long to wait. The blazing fires lit up the whole ledge and the bordering cliffs, and the miners could see distinctly everything that happened on it. Suddenly there came a puff of smoke from the drill-hole. Then the rock outside of it, toward the chasm, rose a little, and a great fragment of it tumbled over down the ledge, while a dull, thunderous burst of sound startled the silence of the night, and awaked all the echoes of the cliffs and the ca�on.

No such sound had ever before been heard there, by night or by day, since the world was made; but Captain Skinner and his miners were not thinking of things like that.

"That'll do, boys," he said. "There'll be powder-marks on that rock for twenty years. Our claim's good now, if any of us ever come back to make it."

The men thought of how rich a mine it was, and each one promised himself that he would come back, whether the rest did or not.

It is not easy to tire out fellows as tough as they were, but Captain Skinner was a "fair boss," as they all knew, and the men who stood sentinel around his camp that night were not the men who toiled so hard on the mine.

"He doesn't seem to need any sleep himself," remarked one of them to Bill, as they were routed out of their blankets an hour before daylight the next morning.

"You'll have to eat your breakfast on horseback, you three," he said to them. "Strike right for the gap, and if you come across anything that doesn't look right, you can send one of you back to let me know. Sharp, now! We won't be long in following."

Their horses were quickly saddled, and away they rode, each man doing his best, as he went, with a huge piece of cold roast venison. The Captain had remarked to them, "That'll do ye. Your coffee'll be just as hot as ours."

That meant that the cold water of one mountain stream was just about as pleasant to drink as that of another.

Bill and his two comrades were not the men to grumble over a piece of necessary duty like that, and they knew it was "their turn."

The sun was well up before they reached the head of the gap, and a glance showed them that it was all the hunters had prophesied of it. It was, in fact, a sort of natural highway from that table-land down to the valleys and plains of Arizona.

"This'll do first-rate," said Bill: "only I'd like to know what thar is at the lower eend of it."

"That's what we're gwine to look for. If ever we come back to work that mine, Bill, what ranches we can lay out on that level beyond the ruins!"

"Best kind. Raise 'most anything up thar."

No doubt of it; but now for some hours their minds and eyes were busier with the pass before them than with either mines or farming.

"Not a sign yet, Bill, and we're getting well down. See them pines?"

"Off to the left? Hullo! Put for the pines, boys! We'll nab those two! See 'em?"

"Coming right along up. All we've got to do is to 'bush our horses, and let 'em git past us."

"Only two squaws."

The three miners dashed on a minute or so till they could turn aside among the thick-growing cover of the forest.

They rode in a little distance, till they were sure they could not be seen from the pass; then they dismounted, tethered their horses, and slipped cautiously back to crouch among some dense bushes among the rocks within a few yards of the path by which any one coming up the gap must needs ride.

"We'll get 'em."

"Learn all we want to."

"Hullo, Bill, I can see 'em. That ain't all; thar's some kind of a brave not fur behind 'em."

"I see. Only one. Well, we kin take him too."

"Take him! Bah! knock him on the head. I don't exactly like to fire a gun just here."

"Old Skinner'd kill ye if ye gave that kind of warnin' to a crowd of redskins."

"Mebbe there isn't any."

"You don't know. Safe not to make too much noise, anyhow."

They might have fired every cartridge they had and not been heard by the Apaches in the valley; but there was no one to tell them so. At the same time they felt perfectly safe to talk, for they were sure there were no human ears near enough to hear them—so sure that they talked aloud and recklessly.

Perhaps it would have been as well for them to have imitated Captain Skinner, who hardly ever talked at all.

As it was, they had nothing to do but to wait, for their intended captives were evidently in no sort of hurry, and were laughing merrily as they loitered along the ravine below, picking berries here and a flower there, and making a capital frolic of their morning ride.

Laughing, talking, thoughtless of all danger, and yet they were riding on into the most terrible kind of a "trap."

How could any help reach them, if once they should go beyond those treacherous rocks and bushes?

CHAPTER XI

In such a country as that, full of sudden changes from mountain and table-land to valleys and plains, pretty large bodies of men might have been quite near each other without knowing it. Unless, indeed, they should send out sharp-eyed scouts to find out about their neighbors, as did the miners under Captain Skinner, and the Lipans of To-la-go-to-de.

Neither of these "main bodies" remained in camp an hour longer than was necessary, but even after they left their respective camps they moved onward with some caution, half expecting at any moment to see one of their scouts come riding back with important news.

The white men had heavy wagons to prevent them from moving rapidly, but their road toward the "western gap," and even through it, would be almost a straight line compared