Richard Townshend - Lone Pine - The Story of a Lost Mine

Beneath all this anger lay two very uncomfortable suspicions. One was that the storekeeper was a man with a great deal of low cunning, and might have, as indeed he boasted, most confoundedly sharp eyes for prying into other people's affairs; and the other was that he, Stephens, had never given such an affair as this a serious thought before, and knew precious little about womankind in general; and this last thought of his was much truer than he himself realised.

There are no men whose experience of women, as a rule, is so small as the pioneers of a new country. In older countries there are unmarried men in plenty, but they are brought into frequent daily contact with the other sex unless they take deliberate pains to prevent it, and not seldom they prove to understand women better than those who might be supposed to have a better right. But the celibates of a new country are quite different. In their case it is not choice but necessity that makes the mere sight of a woman's face a rare thing. In the wild, remote mining camps where Stephens's years of adventure had been mostly passed, among a thousand men there would barely be a score or so who ever brought their women-folks along. True enough, where the miners had struck it rich, and hundreds and thousands of dollars were being taken out by eager crowds of men, another class of women did not delay long in appearing upon the scene; but that was a class from which Stephens studiously kept aloof. He had not even the perverted experience that may be thus gained; and he positively knew less at nine-and-twenty about the ways in which girls think and feel than he had known before he left home at nineteen. If he knew little he had been contented with his ignorance, but now this random shaft of the storekeeper had gone home, and he was contented no longer.

Alighting from Captain Jinks before Don Nepomuceno's door, he was welcomed by the Mexican, who insisted on unsaddling the mule for him himself, loudly calling meanwhile for Pedro to come and take him round to the corral and give him some corn. The house was built in Mexican style, of sun-dried bricks, in the form of a hollow square, with a patio, or courtyard, in the centre on which all the doors and windows gave, the outer wall being blank except for a peephole or two high up. It had a flat clay roof, with a low parapet all round. It was, in fact, a miniature castle, as was every house in the country of any pretensions built during the days when the Navajos and Apaches were a constant terror in the land. Stephens followed his host inside after taking off his spurs, Spanish fashion. He had unbuckled his belt and handed it, revolver and all, to his host, begging him to take charge of it. This, too, he had learned was a piece of Spanish etiquette. You give him your arms to keep, for you are under his protection. Don Nepomuceno bustled around, laying the saddle with its "cantines" neatly in a corner, with the saddle blanket over it, and hanging up the belt on a peg, while he kept calling out to his sister to bring in the dinner, and to the Navajo captive, Juana, to bring water for washing. There were no chairs or tables, but a broad divan covered with gaily striped serapes ran all along one side of the room and served as a seat.

On this Stephens sat down, and, while the master of the house showed his hospitable ardour by urging the women in the kitchen to make a wholly unnecessary haste, the American drew from his pocket the letter he had received at the stage station, and proceeded to read it. It ran as follows:

" To Mr. John Stephens, among the Pueblo Indians of Santiago, N.M.

"Friend Stephens, – It's two years and a half ago that you and me parted company in Helena, Montana, after I'd done my best to bust you that time, you remember. I've knocked around and had my ups and downs since, but I haven't done so badly on the whole. Last summer I was in Col. here, and I got on to a goodish thing up on Boulder. I wish you would come up here this summer and join me in trying to work it, for I think if it was handled right there's big money in it for both of us. I don't want to say too much, for I don't feel plumb sure of this letter reaching you. And for the same reason I don't put in a draft for what I owe you still, but I've got it here for you all right and regular, and if you can't come you've only got to let me know where and how to send it, and it's yours. I'm well enough fixed now to be able to do it right enough. I don't know if there's any chance of this letter finding you. I haven't heard sign or sound of you since we quit being pardners, till yesterday I run on to that Sam Argles as you may remember in Helena in old times; he'd been wintering away down in Arizona, and he said as how when he was passing through New Mexico a stage driver there told him as he knowed of a white man, calling himself John Stephens, that had been a miner, and was living now with the Indians of Santiago, N.M. That Sam Argles is an old gasbag, sure, but I had to allow as it sounded like you in some ways, for he said the driver said this Stephens wouldn't never drink nor gamble; but he said too another thing, that he was living there with 'em as a squawman, and then I didn't hardly believe as it could be you, but I guessed that stage driver might have been lying, and so figuring on it like that I calculated I might as well write you there. Hoping as it is you, and that you're going strong and doing fine, I remain, your former pard,

"You can address me, care of Hepburn & Davis, 397 Arapahoe, Denver."

Stephens perused this letter with a dry smile upon his face.

"Yes, Rocky," he said, apostrophising his ex-partner, "it's me, sure pop, that Mr. Sam Argles heard of here; but I'm not a squawman yet, not quite; you were right not to believe that, not if all the darned fool stage drivers in the country were to swear to it."

By the code of the West, a squawman is nothing less than a renegade to his own race, and is hated accordingly.

He refolded the letter and placed it back in his pocket, as Juana appeared bearing a towel and soap and a bowl, which she placed on the clean-swept floor in front of him preparatory to aiding him to wash by pouring a little stream of water over his hands. The Navajo handmaiden, having been captured as a child, had been brought up in Mexican style, but her blood was pure Indian; that showed plainly in her impassive face as she held the towel for him to wipe his hands, and the strong animal expression given by the heavy jaw and dark skin struck him forcibly. He wondered what she was thinking of as she stood there as still as if she had been cast in bronze, and he reflected, with some disgust at his own stupidity, that that 'cute storekeeper down below could probably have made a pretty accurate guess. Yes, in future he positively would pay more attention to what women were thinking about. In that respect there was no doubt he must amend his ways.

At last Don Nepomuceno condescended to settle down and seat himself on the divan beside his guest; a low table was brought in and placed before them, and on it were set two bowls of rich mutton-broth. When the empty bowls were removed by Juana, the master of the house called out loudly, so as to be heard in the kitchen through the open door, "It is very excellent broth! Ah, what capital broth!"

"I have often heard it said," remarked Stephens, by way of showing his appreciation, "that the Mexican ladies make the best soup in the world."

"It is true, Don Estevan, it is quite true. They are capital cooks, capital. I wonder now, Don Estevan, that you can be contented to cook for yourself. Cooking seems such a waste of time for a man!"

Stephens laughed. "It's my bad luck, señor," he said. "You see, the ladies wouldn't ever look at a rover like myself."

"Don't you believe it, don't you believe it," cried the other; "indeed you have no call to say so. Ah, here is the stew," he added, as Juana set down before each of them two small saucers, one of frijoles, or Mexican beans boiled with onions, and one of stewed mutton with red pepper; in fact both dishes were made nearly red-hot by a liberal admixture of the famous chili colorado. For bread she laid before them tortillas, large thin pancakes of the blue Indian corn, peculiar to New Mexico.