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

desolate enough with its scattered enclosures of rough stone, not one of them with any roof on, or any sign that people had lived in them for a hundred years at least. The windows in the tumbling walls had probably never had either sash or glass in them, and the furniture, whatever it may have been, used by the people who built the village had long since disappeared.

It could never have been a very large or populous town, but it could hardly at any time have had a wilder-looking set of inhabitants than were the party of men who drew near it at about the time when Steve and Murray were killing their cougar.

Two tilted wagons, a good deal the worse for wear, apparently pretty heavily laden, and drawn by six mules each, were accompanied by about two dozen men on horseback. Their portraits would have made the fortune of any picture-gallery in the world. Everybody would have gone to look at such a collection of bearded desperadoes.

They were not Indians, nor were they dressed as such. They were dressed in every way that could be thought of, except well and cleanly.

If the odds and ends of several clothing-stores had been picked up after a fire, and then about worn out, and patched and mended with bits of blankets and greasy buckskin, something like those twenty odd suits of clothes might have been produced; that is, if the man who tried to do it could have had these for a pattern. If not, he would have failed.

The men themselves were as much out of the common way as were the clothes they wore, but they had somehow managed to keep their horses and mules in pretty good condition.

Horses and mules are of more importance than clothing to men who are far away from tailors and civilization as were these new-comers in the neighborhood of Steve's mine.

If Steve had seen them he would probably have trembled for the "Buckhorn," for Murray would at once have told him that these men were miners.

That was nothing against them, certainly, and they must have been daring fellows to push their hunt for gold so far beyond any region known to such hunters.

One look at their hard, reckless faces would have convinced anybody about their "daring." They looked as if they were ready for anything.

So they were, indeed; and it is quite probable a man of Murray's experience would have guessed at once that they were ready for a good many other things besides mining.

Just now, certainly, they were thinking something else.

"Bill," said the foremost rider to a man a little behind him, "we were wrong to leave the trail of them army fellers. We're stuck and lost in here among the mountains."

"It looks like It. We'll hev to go into camp and scout around till we find a pass. But it wasn't any use follerin' the cavalry arter we found they was bound west."

"That's so. It won't do for us to come out on the Pacific slope. It's Mexico or Texas for us."

"We'd better say Santa F�."

"They'd make us give too close an account of ourselves there. Some of the boys might let out somethin'."

"Guess it's Mexico, then. That isn't far away now. But I wish I knew the way down out of this."

The ruins, strange and wonderful as they were, did not seem to excite any great degree of curiosity among those men.

They talked about them, to be sure, but in a way which showed that they had all seen the same sort of thing before during their wild rovings among the mountains and valleys of the great South-west.

Just such ruins are to be found in a great many places. We do not even know how many, and nobody has been able yet to more than guess by whom they were built or when.

Mere ravines and gorges and ca�ons would not do for this party. They must find a regular "pass," down which they could manage to take their horses and mules and wagons. Even before they halted, several of them had been looking and pointing toward what Murray had spoken of as "the western gap."

That was the opening through the ranges which had been for a moment such a temptation to Steve Harrison.

"It's west'ard, Bill, but it may hev to do for us."

"It may take us down to some lower level, or it may show us a way south."

"The great Southern Pass is down hereaway, somewhar."

"Farther east than this. We ort to strike it, though, before we cross the border."

"Mexico ain't a country I'd choose to go inter, ef I hed my own way; but we've got to go for it this time."

But whatever may have been their reason for seeking Mexico, they were just now a good deal puzzled as to the precise path by means of which they might reach it. It was getting late in the day, too, for any kind of exploration, and the mule-teams looked as if they had done about enough.

So it came to pass that the ruined village of the forgotten people was once more occupied.

Did they go into the houses? No, it was the man called Bill who said it, but all the rest of them seemed to feel just as he did, when he remarked:

"Sleep in one of them things? No, I guess not. Not even if it was roofed in. They were set up too long ago to suit me."

That stamped him as an American, for there is no other people in the world that hate old houses. No real American was ever known to use an old building of any kind a day longer than he could help. He would as soon think of wearing old clothes just because they were old.

The ground near the ruins was covered with fragments of stone and fallen masonry, but there was a good camping-ground between that and the trees from which Murray and Steve had fired at the buck.

"It's the loneliest kind of a place, Captain Skinner," said Bill, just after he had helped turn the mules loose on the grass.

"I wish I knew just how lonely it is. I kind o' smell something."

"Do ye, Cap?"

Every such band of men has its "Captain" of some kind, and sometimes very good discipline and order is kept up. But Captain Skinner was hardly the man anybody would have picked out for a leader, before seeing how the rest listened to what he said, and how readily they seemed to obey him.

He was the shortest, thinnest, ugliest, and most ragged man in the whole party; and just at this moment he did not appear to be carrying any arms except the knife and pistol in his belt.

"If I don't smell it, I can see it. Look yonder, Bill."

"That's so! Blood!"

It was the spot on which the buck had fallen, and in a moment more than half a dozen men were looking around in all directions.

They understood all they saw, too, as well as any Indians in the world, for in less than five minutes Captain Skinner said,

"That'll do, boys. We must follow that trail. Two white hunters. They killed the buck. Both wore moccasins. So they ain't fresh from the settlements. There's something queer about it. They were on foot, and they carried off their game."

It was, indeed, very queer, and it would not do to let any such puzzle as that go by unsolved.

So, while several men were ordered out after game, and several more were left to guard the camp, Captain Skinner himself, with Bill and five others, armed to the teeth, set out at once on the trail of Murray and Steve Harrison.

It was easy enough to follow those two pairs of footprints as long as they were made in the grass. After they got upon rocky ground it was not so easy, and the miners did not get ahead so fast, but they did not lose the trail for a moment. Indeed, it was about as straight in one direction as the nature of the ground would permit.

"Two fellers out yer among these 'ere mountains all by themselves," growled Bill, as they drew near the ledge at the head of the deep ca�on.

"We don't know that they're all alone yet," said Captain Skinner. "They carried that deer somewhere."

"Right down yonder, Captain. They stopped here to rest from kerryin' of it, and I don't blame 'em, if they'd got to tote it down through that thar ca�on."

"It's a deep one, no mistake."

"Captain, look yer!" suddenly exclaimed one of the men. "We've lit on it this time."

"The ledge? I wasn't looking at that."

A perfect storm of exclamations followed from every pair of lips in the party. Such a ledge as that they had never seen before, old mine-hunters as they were; but each one seemed inclined to ask, just as Murray had asked of Steve, what could be done with it?

Gold enough, but nothing to get it out of the rock with, and nowhere to carry it to.

It was a sad problem for men who cared for nothing in the wide world but just such ledges and just such gold. What was the use of it?

Steve Harrison never knew it, but his mine was of a good deal of use to him and Murray just then. It kept Captain Skinner and his men looking at it long enough for them to get nearly back to the camp of the Lipans.

"It won't do, boys," said Captain Skinner, at last; "we're wasting time. Come on."

They followed him, every man turning his head as he did so to take another look at the yellow spots that shone here and there in the quartz.

Their way down the ravine was made with care and circumspection, for they did not know at what moment they might come in sight of "those two fellers and their deer."

It was well for them, probably, that they were cautious, for after a good deal of steep climbing, just as they were about to clamber down one of the rocky "stairs," the man called Bill exclaimed,

"Captain, thar it is—"

"The deer? They've left it. I see it."

"More'n that farther down."

"A big-horn! And if that ain't a painter lying beside it!"

"More'n that, Cap. They didn't give up that thar game for nothin'."

"Lay low, boys! Git to cover right away! Red-skins!"

There was no difficulty in hiding among so many rocks and bowlders, and the miners were out of sight in a moment.

They could see, though, even if they were not seen, and they were soon able to count a dozen Indian warriors leading three pack-ponies as far up the ravine as four-footed beasts could be led.

"Wonder if they've wiped out the two fellers?" said Bill.

"Looks like it. Or they may have captured 'em. Lost their game, if they haven't lost their scalps. Wonder what tribe of redskins they are, anyhow?"

There was a better reason than that why No Tongue and Yellow Head did not come back with their friends, but it was just as well that Captain Skinner and his miners did not understand it.

"Captain," whispered one of the men near him, "shall we let drive at 'em? We could pick off half of 'em first fire."

"Not a shot. All we want just now is to be let alone. I don't mind killing a few redskins."

"Mebbe they killed the two fellers."

"Likely as not. I'm kind o' glad they did. That there ledge is ours now. Let 'em carry off their game, and then we'll climb back. I reckon I know now how we'd best work our way down to the level those Indians came from."

The Lipans made short work of loading their ponies, and the moment they were out of sight the miners began their climb out of that ca�on. There was no good reason why they should follow the Lipans.

CHAPTER VIII

A refusal to go out with the hunters was a strange thing to come from Red Wolf. No other young brave in that band of Apaches had a better reputation for killing deer and buffaloes. It was a common saying among the older squaws that when he came to have a lodge of his own "there would always be plenty of meat in it."

He was not, therefore, a "lazy Indian," and it was something he had on his mind that kept him in