The Story of a Mine
His horse neighed twice from the summit, but Concho heard him not. Then the brush crackled on the ledge above him, a small fragment of rock rolled near his feet, but he stirred not. And then two black figures were outlined on the crags beyond.
“St-t-t!” whispered a voice. “There is one lying beside the furnace.” The speech was Spanish, but the voice was Wiles’s.
The other figure crept cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked over. “It is Concho, the imbecile,” said Pedro, contemptuously.
“But if he should not be alone, or if he should waken?”
“I will watch and wait. Go you and affix the notification.”
Wiles disappeared. Pedro began to creep down the face of the rocky ledge, supporting himself by chemisal and brush-wood.
The next moment Pedro stood beside the unconscious man. Then he looked cautiously around. The figure of his companion was lost in the shadow of the rocks above; only a slight crackle of brush betrayed his whereabouts. Suddenly Pedro flung his serape over the sleeper’s head, and then threw his powerful frame and tremendous weight full upon Concho’s upturned face, while his strong arms clasped the blanket-pinioned limbs of his victim. There was a momentary upheaval, a spasm, and a struggle; but the tightly-rolled blanket clung to the unfortunate man like cerements.
There was no noise, no outcry, no sound of struggle. There was nothing to be seen but the peaceful, prostrate figures of the two men darkly outlined on the ledge. They might have been sleeping in each other’s arms. In the black silence the stealthy tread of Wiles in the brush above was distinctly audible.
Gradually the struggles grew fainter. Then a whisper from the crags:
“I can’t see you. What are you doing?”
“Watching!”
“Sleeps he?”
“He sleeps!”
“Soundly?”
“Soundly.”
“After the manner of the dead?”
“After the fashion of the dead!”
The last tremor had ceased. Pedro rose as Wiles descended.
“All is ready,” said Wiles; “you are a witness of my placing the notifications?”
“I am a witness.”
“But of this one?” pointing to Concho. “Shall we leave him here?”
“A drunken imbecile,—why not?”
Wiles turned his left eye on the speaker. They chanced to be standing nearly in the same attitude they had stood the preceding night. Pedro uttered a cry and an imprecation, “Carramba! Take your devil’s eye from me! What see you? Eh,—what?”
“Nothing, good Pedro,” said Wiles, turning his bland right cheek to Pedro. The infuriated and half-frightened ex-vaquero returned the long knife he had half-drawn from its sheath, and growled surlily: “Go on then! But keep thou on that side, and I will on this.” And so, side by side, listening, watching, distrustful of all things, but mainly of each other, they stole back and up into those shadows from which they might like evil spirits have been poetically evoked.
A half hour passed, in which the east brightened, flashed, and again melted into gold. And then the sun came up haughtily, and a fog that had stolen across the summit in the night arose and fled up the mountain side, tearing its white robes in its guilty haste, and leaving them fluttering from tree and crag and scar. A thousand tiny blades, nestling in the crevices of rocks, nurtured in storms and rocked by the trade winds, stretched their wan and feeble arms toward Him; but Concho the strong, Concho the brave, Concho the light-hearted spake not nor stirred.
CHAPTER IV
WHO TOOK IT
There was persistent neighing on the summit. Concho’s horse wanted his breakfast.
This protestation reached the ears of a party ascending the mountain from its western face. To one of the party it was familiar.
“Why, blank it all, that’s Chiquita. That d–d Mexican’s lying drunk somewhere,” said the President of the B. M. Co.
“I don’t like the look of this at all,” said Dr. Guild, as they rode up beside the indignant animal. “If it had been an American, it might have been carelessness, but no Mexican ever forgets his beast. Drive ahead, boys; we may be too late.”
In half an hour they came in sight of the ledge below, the crumbled furnace, and the motionless figure of Concho, wrapped in a blanket, lying prone in the sunlight.
“I told you so,—drunk!” said the President.
The Doctor looked grave, but did not speak. They dismounted and picketed their horses. Then crept on all fours to the ledge above the furnace. There was a cry from Secretary Gibbs, “Look yer. Some fellar has been jumping us, boys. See these notices.”
There were two notices on canvas affixed to the rock, claiming the ground, and signed by Pedro, Manuel, Miguel, Wiles, and Roscommon.
“This was done, Doctor, while your trustworthy Greaser locater,—d—n him,—lay there drunk. What’s to be done now?”
But the Doctor was making his way to the unfortunate cause of their defeat, lying there quite mute to their reproaches. The others followed him.
The Doctor knelt beside Concho, unrolled him, placed his hand upon his wrist, his ear over his heart, and then said:
“Dead.”
“Of course. He got medicine of you last night. This comes of your d–d heroic practice.”
But the Doctor was too much occupied to heed the speaker’s raillery. He had peered into Concho’s protuberant eye, opened his mouth, and gazed at the swollen tongue, and then suddenly rose to his feet.
“Tear down those notices, boys, but keep them. Put up your own. Don’t be alarmed, you will not be interfered with, for here is murder added to robbery.”
“Murder?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, excitedly, “I’ll take my oath on any inquest that this man was strangled to death. He was surprised while asleep. Look here.” He pointed to the revolver still in Concho’s stiffening hand, which the murdered man had instantly cocked, but could not use in the struggle.
“That’s so,” said the President, “no man goes to sleep with a cocked revolver. What’s to be done?”
“Everything,” said the Doctor. “This deed was committed within the last two hours; the body is still warm. The murderer did not come our way, or we should have met him on the trail. He is, if anywhere, between here and Tres Pinos.”
“Gentlemen,” said the President, with a slight preparatory and half judicial cough, “two of you will stay here and stick! The others will follow me to Tres Pinos. The law has been outraged. You understand the Court!”
By some odd influence the little group of half-cynical, half-trifling, and wholly reckless men had become suddenly sober, earnest citizens. They said, “Go on,” nodded their heads, and betook themselves to their horses.
“Had we not better wait for the inquest and swear out a warrant?” said the Secretary, cautiously.
“How many men have we?”
“Five!”
“Then,” said the President, summing up the Revised Statutes of the State of California in one strong sentence; “then we don’t want no d–d warrant.”
CHAPTER V
WHO HAD A LIEN ON IT
It was high noon at Tres Pinos. The three pines from which it gained its name, in the dusty road and hot air, seemed to smoke from their balsamic spires. There was a glare from the road, a glare from the sky, a glare from the rocks, a glare from the white canvas roofs of the few shanties and cabins which made up the village. There was even a glare from the unpainted red-wood boards of Roscommon’s grocery and tavern, and a tendency of the warping floor of the veranda to curl up beneath the feet of the intruder. A few mules, near the watering trough, had shrunk within the scant shadow of the corral.
The grocery business of Mr. Roscommon, although adequate and sufficient for the village, was not exhausting nor overtaxing to the proprietor; the refilling of the pork and flour barrel of the average miner was the work of a brief hour on Saturday nights, but the daily replenishment of the average miner with whisky was arduous and incessant. Roscommon spent more time behind his bar than his grocer’s counter. Add to this the fact that a long shed-like extension or wing bore the legend, “Cosmopolitan Hotel, Board or Lodging by the Day or Week. M. Roscommon,” and you got an idea of the variety of the proprietor’s functions. The “hotel,” however, was more directly under the charge of Mrs. Roscommon, a lady of thirty years, strong, truculent, and good-hearted.
Mr. Roscommon had early adopted the theory that most of his customers were insane, and were to be alternately bullied or placated, as the case might be. Nothing that occurred, no extravagance of speech nor act, ever ruffled his equilibrium, which was as dogged and stubborn as it was outwardly calm. When not serving liquor, or in the interval while it was being drank, he was always wiping his counter with an exceedingly dirty towel,—or indeed anything that came handy. Miners, noticing this purely perfunctory habit, occasionally supplied him slily with articles inconsistent with their service,—fragments of their shirts and underclothing, flour sacking, tow, and once with a flannel petticoat of his wife’s, stolen from the line in the back-yard. Roscommon would continue his wiping without looking up, but yet conscious of the presence of each customer. “And it’s not another dhrop ye’ll git, Jack Brown, until ye’ve wiped out the black score that stands agin ye.” “And it’s there ye are, darlint, and it’s here’s the bottle that’s been lukin’ for ye sins Saturday.” “And fwhot hev you done with the last I sent ye, ye divil of a McCorkle, and here’s me back that’s bruk entoirely wid dipping intil the pork barl to giv ye the best sides, and ye spending yur last cint on a tare into Gilroy. Whist! and if it’s fer foighting ye are, boys, there’s an illigant bit of sod beyant the corral, and it may be meself’ll come out with a shtick and be sociable.”
On this particular day, however, Mr. Roscommon was not in his usual spirits, and when the clatter of horses’ hoofs before the door announced the approach of strangers, he absolutely ceased wiping his counter and looked up as Dr. Guild, the President, and Secretary of the new Company strode into the shop.
“We are looking,” said the President, “for a man by the name of Wiles, and three Mexicans known as Pedro, Manuel, and Miguel.”
“Ye are?”
“We are!”
“Faix, and I hope ye’ll foind ‘em. And if ye’ll git from ‘em the score I’ve got agin ‘em, darlint, I’ll add a blessing to it.”
There was a laugh at this from the bystanders, who, somehow, resented the intrusion of these strangers.
“I fear you will find it no laughing matter, gentlemen,” said Dr. Guild, a little stiffly, “when I tell you that a murder has been committed, and the men I am seeking within an hour of that murder put up that notice signed by their names,” and Dr. Guild displayed the paper.
There was a breathless silence among the crowd as they eagerly pressed around the Doctor. Only Roscommon kept on wiping his counter.
“You will observe, gentlemen, that the name of Roscommon also appears on this paper as one of the original beaters.”
“And sure, darlint,” said Roscommon, without looking up, “if ye’ve no better ividince agin them boys then you have forninst me, it’s home ye’d bether be riding to wanst. For it’s meself as hasn’t sturred fut out of the store the day and noight,—more betoken as the boys I’ve sarved kin testify.”
“That’s so, Ross, right,” chorused the crowd, “We’ve been running the old man all night.”
“Then how comes your name on this paper?”
“O murdher! will ye listen to him, boys? As if every felly that owed me a whisky bill didn’t come to me and say, ‘Ah, Misther Roscommon,’ or ‘Moike,’ as the case moight be, sure it’s an illigant sthrike I’ve made this day, and it’s meself that has put down your name as an original locater, and yer fortune’s made, Mr. Roscommon, and will yer fill me up another quart for the good luck betune you and me. Ah, but ask Jack Brown over yar if it isn’t sick that I am of his original locations.”
The laugh that followed this speech, and its practical application, convinced the party that they had blundered, that they could obtain no clue to the real culprits here, and that any attempt by threats would meet violent opposition. Nevertheless the Doctor was persistent:
“When did you see these men last?”
“When did I see them, is it? Bedad, what with sarvin up the liquor and keeping me counters dry and swate, I never see them at all.”
“That’s so, Ross,” chorused the crowd again, to whom the whole proceeding was delightfully farcical.
“Then I can tell you, gentlemen,” said the Doctor, stiffly, “that they were in Monterey last night, that they did not return on that trail this morning, and that they must have passed here at daybreak.”
With these words, which the Doctor regretted as soon as delivered, the party rode away.
Mr. Roscommon resumed his service and counter wiping. But late that night, when the bar was closed and the last loiterer was summarily ejected, Mr. Roscommon, in the conjugal privacy of his chamber, produced a legal-looking paper. “Read it, Maggie, darlint, for it’s meself never had the larning nor the parts.”
Mistress Roscommon took the paper:
“Shure, it’s law papers, making over some property to yis. O Moike! ye havn’t been spekilating!”
“Whist! and fwhotz that durty gray paper wid the sales and flourishes?”
“Faix, it bothers me intoirely. Shure it oin’t in English.”
“Whist! Maggie, it’s a Spanish grant!”
“A Spanish grant? O Moike, and what did ye giv for it?”
Mr. Roscommon laid his finger beside his nose and said softly, “Whishky!”
PART II.—IN THE COURTS
CHAPTER VI
HOW A GRANT WAS GOT FOR IT
While the Blue Mass Company, with more zeal than discretion, were actively pursuing Pedro and Wiles over the road to Tres Pinos, Senors Miguel and Manuel were comfortably seated in a fonda at Monterey, smoking cigarritos and discussing their late discovery. But they were in no better mood than their late companions, and it appeared from their conversation that in an evil moment they had sold out their interest in the alleged silver mine to Wiles and Pedro for a few hundred dollars,—succumbing to what they were assured would be an active opposition on the part of the Americanos. The astute reader will easily understand that the accomplished Mr. Wiles did not inform them of its value as a quicksilver mine, although he was obliged to impart his secret to Pedro as a necessary accomplice and reckless coadjutor. That Pedro felt no qualms of conscience in thus betraying his two comrades may be inferred from his recent direct and sincere treatment of Concho, and that he would, if occasion offered or policy made it expedient, as calmly obliterate Mr. Wiles, that gentleman himself never for a moment doubted.
“If we had waited but a little he would have given more,—this cock-eye!” regretted Manuel querulously.
“Not a peso,” said Miguel, firmly.
“And why, my Miguel? Thou knowest we could have worked the mine ourselves.”
“Good, and lost even that labor. Look you, little brother. Show to me now the Mexican that has ever made a real of a mine in California. How many, eh? None! Not a one. Who owns the Mexican’s mine, eh? Americanos! Who takes the money from the Mexican’s mine? Americanos! Thou rememberest Briones, who spent a gold mine to make a silver one? Who has the lands and house of Briones? Americanos! Who has the cattle of Briones? Americanos! Who has the mine of Briones? Americanos! Who has the silver Briones never found? Americanos! Always the same! Forever! Ah! carramba!”
Then the Evil One evidently took it into his head and horns to worry and toss these men—comparatively innocent as they were—still further, for a purpose. For presently to them appeared one Victor Garcia, whilom a clerk of the Ayuntamiento, who rallied them over aguardiente, and told them the story of the quicksilver discovery, and the two mining claims taken out that night by Concho and Wiles. Whereat Manuel exploded with profanity and burnt blue with sulphurous malediction; but Miguel, the recent ecclesiastic, sat livid and thoughtful.
Finally came a pause in Manuel’s bombardment, and something like this conversation took place between the cooler actors:
Miguel (thoughtfully). “When was it thou didst petition for lands in the valley, friend Victor?”
Victor (amazedly). “Never! It is a sterile waste. Am I a fool?”
Miguel (softly). “Thou didst. Of thy Governor, Micheltorena. I have seen the application.”
Victor (beginning to appreciate a rodential odor). “Si! I had forgotten. Art thou sure it was in the valley?”
Miguel (persuasively). “In the valley and up the falda.”1
Victor (with decision). “Certainly. Of a verity,—the falda likewise.”
Miguel (eying Victor). “And yet thou hadst not the grant. Painful is it that it should have been burned with the destruction of the other archives, by the Americanos at Monterey.”
Victor (cautiously feeling his way). “Possiblemente.”
Miguel. “It might be wise to look into it.”
Victor (bluntly). “As why?”
Miguel. “For our good and thine, friend Victor. We bring thee a discovery; thou bringest us thy skill, thy experience, thy government knowledge,—thy Custom House paper.”2
Manuel (breaking in drunkenly). “But for what? We are Mexicans. Are we not fated? We shall lose. Who shall keep the Americanos off?”
Miguel. “We shall take ONE American in! Ha! seest thou? This American comrade shall bribe his courts, his corregidores. After a little he shall supply the men who invent the machine of steam, the mill, the furnace, eh?”
Victor. “But who is he,—not to steal?”
Miguel. “He is that man of Ireland, a good Catholic, at Tres Pinos.”
Victor and Manuel (omnes). “Roscommon?”
Miguel. “Of the same. We shall give him a share for the provisions, for the tools, for the aguardiente. It is of the Irish that the Americanos have great fear. It is of them that the votes are made,—that the President is chosen. It is of him that they make the Alcalde in San Francisco. And we are of the Church like him.”
They said “Bueno” altogether, and for the moment appeared to be upheld by a religious enthusiasm,—a joint confession of faith that meant death, destruction, and possibly forgery, as against the men who thought otherwise.
This spiritual harmony did away with all practical consideration and doubt. “I have a little niece,” said Victor, “whose work with the pen is marvellous. If one says to her, ‘Carmen, copy me this, or the other one,’—even if it be copper-plate,—look you it is done, and you cannot know of which is the original. Madre de Dios! the other day she makes me a rubric3 of the Governor, Pio Pico, the same, identical. Thou knowest her, Miguel. She asked concerning thee yesterday.”
With the embarrassment of an underbred man, Miguel tried to appear unconcerned, but failed dismally. Indeed, I fear that the black eyes of Carmen had already done their perfect and accepted work, and had partly induced the application for Victor’s aid. He, however, dissembled so far as to ask:
“But will she not know?”
“She is a child.”
“But will she not talk?”
“Not if I say nay, and if thou—eh, Miguel?”
This bit of flattery (which, by the way, was a lie, for Victor’s niece did not incline favorably to Miguel), had its effect. They shook hands over the table. “But,” said Miguel, “what is to be done must be done now.” “At the moment,” said Victor, “and thou shalt see it done. Eh? Does it content thee? then come!”
Miguel nodded to Manuel. “We will return in an hour; wait thou here.”
They filed out into the dark, irregular street. Fate led them to pass the office of Dr. Guild at the moment that Concho mounted his horse. The shadows concealed them from their rival, but they overheard the last injunctions of the President to the unlucky Concho.
“Thou hearest?” said Miguel, clutching his companion’s arm.
“Yes,” said Victor. “But let him ride, my friend; in one hour we shall have that that shall arrive YEARS before him,” and with a complacent chuckle they passed unseen and unheard until, abruptly turning a corner, they stopped before a low adobe house.
It had once been a somewhat pretentious dwelling, but had evidently followed the fortunes of its late owner, Don Juan Briones, who had offered it as a last sop to the three-headed Cerberus that guarded the El Refugio Plutonean treasures, and who had swallowed it in a single gulp. It was in very bad case. The furrows of its red-tiled roof looked as if they were the results of age and decrepitude. Its best room had a musty smell; there was the dampness of deliquescence in its slow decay, but the Spanish Californians were sensible architects, and its massive walls and partitions defied the earthquake thrill, and all the year round kept an even temperature within.
Victor led Miguel through a low anteroom into a plainly-furnished chamber, where Carmen sat painting.
Now Mistress Carmen was a bit of a painter, in a pretty little way, with all the vague longings of an artist, but without, I fear, the artist’s steadfast soul. She recognized beauty and form as a child might, without understanding their meaning, and somehow failed to make them even interpret her woman’s moods, which surely were nature’s too. So she painted everything with this innocent lust of the eye,—flowers, birds, insects, landscapes, and figures,—with a joyous fidelity, but no particular poetry. The bird never sang to her but one song, the flowers or trees spake but one language, and her skies never brightened except in color. She came out strong on the Catholic saints, and would toss you up a cleanly-shaven Aloysius, sweetly destitute of expression, or a dropsical, lethargic Madonna that you couldn’t have told from an old master, so bad it was. Her faculty of faithful reproduction even showed itself in fanciful lettering,—and latterly in the imitation of fabrics and signatures. Indeed, with her eye for beauty of form, she had always excelled in penmanship at the Convent,—an accomplishment which the good sisters held in great repute.
In person she was petite, with a still unformed girlish figure, perhaps a little too flat across the back, and with possibly a too great tendency to a boyish stride in walking. Her brow, covered by blue-black hair, was low and frank and honest; her eyes, a very dark hazel, were not particularly large, but rather heavily freighted in their melancholy lids with sleeping passion; her nose was of that unimportant character which no man remembers; her mouth was small and straight; her teeth, white and regular. The whole expression of her face was piquancy that might be subdued by tenderness or made malevolent by anger. At present it was a salad in which the oil and vinegar were deftly combined. The astute feminine reader will of course understand that this is the ordinary superficial masculine criticism, and at once make up her mind both as to the character of the young lady and the competency of the critic. I only know that I rather liked her. And her functions are somewhat important in this veracious history.
She looked up, started to her feet, leveled her black brows at the intruder, but, at a sign from her uncle, showed her white teeth and spake.
It was only a sentence, and a rather common-place one at that; but if she could have put her voice upon her canvas, she might have retrieved the Garcia fortunes. For it was so musical, so tender, so sympathizing, so melodious, so replete with the graciousness of womanhood, that she seemed to have invented the language. And yet that sentence was only an exaggerated form of the ‘How d’ye do,’ whined out, doled out, lisped out, or shot out from the pretty mouths of my fair countrywomen.
Miguel admired the paintings. He was struck particularly with a crayon drawing of a mule. “Mother of God, it is the mule itself! observe how it will not go.” Then the crafty Victor broke in with, “But it is nothing to her writing; look, you shall tell to me which is the handwriting of Pio Pico;” and, from a drawer in the secretary, he drew forth two signatures. One was affixed to a yellowish paper, the other drawn on plain white foolscap. Of course Miguel took the more modern one with lover-like gallantry. “It is this is genuine!” Victor laughed triumphantly; Carmen echoed the laugh melodiously in child-like glee, and added, with a slight toss of her piquant head, “It is mine!” The best of the sex will not refuse a just and overdue compliment from even the man they dislike. It’s the principle they’re after, not the sentiment.