CHAPTER XXIII
THE QUESTION
The morning following the Feast of the Dead, Oliver Drew rode Poche out of Clinker Creek Cañon, driving Smith ahead of them, on the way to Halfmoon Flat for supplies. Over the hills above the American River he saw a white horse galloping toward him.
This was to be a chance meeting with Jessamy. He had an idea she would not be anxious to face him, after her attempted subterfuge of the night before; so he slipped from the saddle, captured Smith, and led the two animals back into the woods.
Then he hurried to a tree on the outskirts and hid behind it.
On galloped White Ann, with the straight, sturdy figure in the saddle. As they came closer Oliver knew by her face that Jessamy had not seen him; and as they came abreast he stepped out quickly and shouted.
Jessamy turned red, reined in, and faced him, her lips twitching.
"Good morning, my Star of Destiny!" he said.
A flutter of bafflement showed in her black lashes, but the lips continued to twitch mischievously.
"Buenos dias, Watchman of the Dead!" she shot back at him.
Oliver's eyes widened.
"Got under your guard with that one, eh, ol'-timer? Just so! – if you'll permit a Seldenism. Tit for tat, as the fella says! Your move again."
And then she threw back her head and laughed to the skies above her.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Ridin'."
"You weren't headed for the Old Ivison Place."
"No, not this morning. I was not seeking you. But since I've met you, and the worst is over, I'll not avoid you."
"Help me pack a load of grub down the cañon; then I'll go 'ridin' with you."
She nodded assent.
"I thought so," she observed, as he led Poche and Smith from hiding.
"I thought you'd turn back, or turn off, if you saw me here ahead of you," he made confession.
"I might have done that," she told him as they herded Smith into the road and followed him.
They said nothing more about what had taken place the night before until the bags had been filled and diamond-hitched, and Smith was rolling his pack from side to side on the homeward trail. Then Oliver asked abruptly:
"Who laid that fire, and put the box of cloth and the olla at The Four Pools yesterday?"
"Please, sir, I done it," she replied.
"When?"
"Just before I rode to your cabin last evening."
"Uh-huh!" he grunted, and fell silent again.
At the cabin she helped him throw off the diamond-hitch and unload the packbags. Then the shaggy Smith was left to his own devices – much to his loudly voiced disapproval – and Jessamy and Oliver rode off into the hills.
"Which way?" he asked as they topped the ridge.
"Lime Rock," she replied.
Tracing cow paths single-file, they wound through and about chaparral patches and rocky cañons till they reached the old trail that led to Lime Rock.
Lime Rock upreared itself on the lip of a thousand-foot precipice that overhung the river. It was three hundred feet in height, a gigantic white pencil pointing toward the sky. At its base was a small level space, large enough for a wagon and team to turn, but the remainder of the land about and above it was hillside, too steep for cows to climb. And from the edge of the level land the cañonside dropped straight downward, a mass of craggy rocks and ill-nourished growth. The trail that led to Lime Rock wound its way over a shelf four feet in width, hacked in the hillside. One false step on this trail and details of what must inevitably ensue would be hideous.
Oliver led the way when they reached the beginning of the trail. Both Poche and White Ann were mountain bred animals, sure-footed and unconcerned over Nature's threatening eccentricities. For a quarter of a mile the bay and the white threaded the narrow path, their riders silent. Then they came to Lime Rock and the security of the level land about it.
Here Oliver and Jessamy sat their horses and gazed down the dizzy precipice at the rushing river, and up the steep, rocky wall on the other side.
"Do you know who owns the land on which our horses are standing?" Jessamy finally asked.
"I've never given it a thought," said Oliver.
"It belongs to Damon Tamroy."
"That so? I didn't know he owned anything over this way."
"Yes, Damon owns it. But I have an option on it."
"You! Have an option on it!"
"Yes, a year's option. It was rather an underhanded trick that I played on old Damon, but he's not very angry about it. It's my first business venture.
"You see, I learned through a letter from a girl friend in San Francisco that a big cement company was thinking of invading this country. She wrote it merely as a bit of entertaining news, but I looked at it differently.
"I knew where they'd begin their invasion. Right here! That magnificent monument there is solid limestone, and the hills back of it are the same, though covered by a thin layer of soil. So I went to the owner of the land, Damon Tamroy, and got a year's option on it for twenty-five dollars – a hundred and sixty acres.
"How Damon laughed at me! I told him outright why I wanted to buy the land, if ever I could scrape enough together. He didn't consider it very valuable, and it may become mine any day this year that I can pungle up four hundred and seventy-five bucks more. When he quizzed me, I told him frankly that I was doing it in an effort to preserve Lime Rock for posterity, and he laughed louder than ever.
"But he changed his tune when a representative of the cement company approached him with an offer of fifteen dollars an acre. He took his loss good-naturedly enough, but accused me of putting over a slick little business deal on him. I had done so, in a way, and admitted it; and ever since I've been talking myself blue in the face when I meet him, trying to convince him that it's not the money I'm after at all.
"Think of an old hog of a cement company coming in here and erecting a rumbling old plant, with the noon whistle deriding the reverential calm of this magnificent cañon, and their old drills and dynamite and things ripping Lime Rock from its throne! Bah! I'm going to San Francisco soon to get a job. I may decide to go this week. It will keep me hustling to put away four hundred and seventy-five dollars between now and the day my option expires."
Oliver sat looking gravely at the young idealist, suppressing his disappointment over the possibility of her early departure.
"But we have to have cement," he pointed out.
"Do we? Maybe so. But there's lots of limestone in the west. Men don't need to search out such spots as this in which to get it. There are less picturesque places, which will yield enough cement material for all our needs. Sometimes I think these big money-grabbers just love to ruin Nature with their old picks and powder. You may agree with me or not – I don't care. I'm not utilitarian, and don't care who knows it. The world's against me in my big fight to keep the money hogs from robbing life of all its poetry; but it's a fight to the last ditch! I'll save Lime Rock, anyway, if I have to beg and borrow."
"I don't know that I disagree with you at all," he told her softly. "Money doesn't mean a great deal to me. I've shed no idle tears over my failure to inherit the money that I expected would be mine at Dad's death. I hold no ill will toward Dad. There's too much wampum in the world today. It won't buy much. The more people have the more they want. The so-called 'standard of living' continues to rise, and with it the ills of our civilization steadily increase. Luxuries ruin health. Automobiles make our muscles sluggish. Moving pictures clog our thinking apparatus. Telephones make us lazy. Phonographs and piano-players reduce our appreciation of the technique of music, which can come only by study and practice. What flying machines will do to us remains to be seen, but they'll never carry us to heaven!
"No, money means little enough to me. Give me the big outdoors and a regular horse, a keen zest in life, and true appreciation of every creature and rock and tree and blade that God has created, and I'll struggle along."
As he talked the colour had been mounting to her face. When he ceased she turned starry eyes upon him, her white teeth showing between slightly parted lips.
"Oliver Drew," she said, "you have made me very happy. I – "
A rush of blood throbbed suddenly at Oliver's temples, and once again he swung his horse close to hers.
"I'll try to make you happy always," he said low-voiced. "Jessamy – " Again he opened his arms for her, but as before she drew herself away from him.
"Don't! Not – not now! Wait – Oliver!"
"Wait! Always wait! Why?"
"I – I must tell you something first. I can tell you now – after – after last night."
"Then tell me quickly," he demanded.
She rested both hands on her saddle horn and rose in her stirrups. For a long time her black eyes gazed down the precipice below them, while the wind whipped wisps of hair about her forehead. Oliver waited, drunk with the thought of his nearness to her.
"Watchman of the Dead!" she murmured at last.
Oliver started.
"Two years ago," she went on softly, "I met the second Watchman of the Dead. You are the third. The first was murdered in this forest. His name was Bolivio, and he made silver-mounted saddles and hair-tasseled bridles."
Oliver scarce dared to breathe for fear of breaking the spell that seemed to have come over her. She did not look at him. She continued to gaze into her beloved cañon and at her beloved hills beyond.
"Oh, where shall I begin!" she cried at last. "Where is the beginning? A man would begin at the first, I suppose, but a woman just can't! But I won't be true to the feminine method and begin at the end. I won't be a copy-cat. I'll begin in the middle, anyway."
A smile flickered across her red lips; but still she gazed away from him.
"Two years ago," she said, "I met the dearest man."
Oliver straightened, and lumps shuttled at the hinges of his jaws.
"I was riding White Ann on one of my lonely wanderings through the woods. I met him on the ridge above the Old Ivison Place and the river.
"After that I met him many times, in the forest and elsewhere; and the more I talked with him the more I liked him. He was my idea of a man."
Oliver, too, was now gazing into the cañon, but he saw neither crags nor trees nor rushing green river.
"And he grew to like me," her low tones continued. "We talked on many subjects, but mostly of what we've been talking about today.
"He was an idealist, this man. He was comparatively wealthy, but there are things in life that he placed above money and its accumulation. By and by he grew to like me more and more, and finally he told me point blank that I was his ideal woman; and then he grew confidential and told me all about himself – his past, present, and what he hoped for in the future. And in my hands he placed a trust. Please God, I have tried to keep the faith!"
She threw back her head and followed the flight of an eagle soaring serenely over Lime Rock. And with her eyes thus lifted she softly said:
"That man was Peter Drew – your father."
Oliver's breast heaved, but he made no sound. Once more her eyes were sweeping the abyss.
"That's the middle," she said. "Now I'll go back to the beginning and tell you what Peter Drew entrusted to my keeping.
"Thirty years ago Peter Drew, who then called himself Dan Smeed, was the partner of Adam Selden. They mined and hunted and trapped together throughout this country.
"There were other activities, too, which I shall not mention. You understand. Your father told me all about it, kept nothing back. Remember that I said he was my idea of a man; and if in his youth he had been wild and – well, seemed criminally inclined – I found that easy to forget. Certainly the manliness and sacrifice of his later years wiped out all this a thousand times.
"Well, to proceed: Peter Drew and Adam Selden married Indian girls. Peter Drew won out in the fire dance and became a member of the Showut Poche-dakas. Adam Selden failed, and, according to the custom, took his wife from the tribe and lived with her elsewhere. Six months afterward the wife of Selden died.
"Peter Drew, however, having become a recognized member of the tribe, was taken into their full confidence. According to their simple belief, he had conquered all obstacles that stood between him and this affiliation; therefore the gods had ordained that full trust should be placed in him. And with their beautiful faith and simplicity they did not question his honesty. So according to an old, old tradition of the tribe the white man was appointed Watchman of the Dead.
"I know little of this story. All of the traditions of the Showut Poche-dakas are clouded, so far as our interpretation of them goes. But it appears, from what your father told me, that ages ago a white-skinned chief had been Watchman of the Dead. Mercy knows where he came from, for, so far as history goes, the whites had not then invaded the country. But after him, whenever a white-skinned man conquered the evil spirits of the fire and became a member, he was appointed Watchman of the Dead. So in the natural order of things the honour came to Peter Drew.
"Up to this time the only other Watchman of the Dead remembered by even old Maquaquish and Chupurosa was the man called Bolivio. Holding this simple office, it seems that Bolivio had stumbled upon the secret so jealously guarded by the Showut Poche-dakas. He tried to turn this secret information to his own advantage, and in so doing he broke faith with the tribe that had adopted him as a brother. Found dead in the forest with a knife in his heart, is the abrupt climax of his tale of treachery. And so the tradition of the lost mine of Bolivio had its birth.
"Centuries ago, no doubt, the Showut Poche-dakas discovered the spodumene gems which were responsible for the fiction concerning the lost mine of Bolivio. They polished them crudely and worshipped them. Spodumene gems always are found in pockets in the rock, and they are always hidden in wet clay in these pockets. Solid stone will be all about them, with no trace of disintegrated matter, until a pocket is struck. Therein will be found separate stones of varying sizes, always sealed in a natural vacuum, which in some way forever retains moisture in the clay.
"This peculiarity appealed to the superstitious natures of the Showut Poche-dakas. It is their age-old custom to bury their dead in pockets hacked in cliffs of solid stones, sealing them with a cement of clay and pulverized granite. One can readily see how the discovery of these beautiful gems, sealed in pockets as they sealed their dead, might affect them. They determined that the glittering stones represented the bodies of their ancestors, and from that time on the lilac-tinted gems became something to be worshipped and guarded faithfully.
"Doubtless when Bolivio was appointed Watchman of the Dead he was told this secret, and learned where the stones were to be found. He got some of them, and sent them East to find out whether they were valuable. He polished two, and placed them in bridle conchas. Then before word came from New York the Indians stabbed him for his deceit.
"His elaborate equestrian outfit remained with the tribe, and your father acquired it when he became Watchman of the Dead. For some reason unknown to him, the stones were allowed to remain in the conchas; and he told me that he always imagined them to be a symbol of his office. Anyway, you, Oliver Drew, are the Watchman of the Dead, and your right to own and use that gem-mounted bridle goes unchallenged by the Showut Poche-dakas."
She paused reflectively.
"All this your father told me," she presently continued. "He told me, too, that the secret place where the gems are to be found is on the Old Ivison Place. It was unclaimed land then, and your father camped there with his Indian wife, as was demanded of the Watchman of the Dead. Before his time, Bolivio had camped there. Later, Old Man Ivison homesteaded the place, knowing nothing of its strange history. He was a kindly old man, liked by everybody; and each year he allowed the Indians to hold their Mona Fiesta at The Four Pools. Though he had no idea why they held it in this exact spot each time – that up the slope above them was a hidden treasure that would have made the struggling homesteader rich for life.
"Then your father told me the worst part of it all. He and Selden, it seems, had found out more of the story of Bolivio than is to be unravelled today, with most of the old-timers dead and gone and the Indians always closemouthed. Anyway, they two found out about the secret gems and the significance of the fire dance. So they had planned deliberately to marry Indian girls to further their knowledge of this matter.
"It was understood between them that Adam Selden would intentionally fail to win out in the fire dance, and that Peter Drew, who was a Hercules for endurance and strength, would win if he could, and thus become Watchman of the Dead and learn the whereabouts of the brilliants. This scheme they carried out, and Peter Drew took up residence with his brown-skinned bride on what is today the Old Ivison Place.
"Then he redeemed himself by falling in love with his wife. In time he found out where the gem pockets were situated. But when Selden came to him to see if he'd stumbled on to the secret, he put him off and said, 'Not yet.'
"From the date of the Fiesta de Santa Maria de Refugio until the night of the Mona Fiesta he remained undecided what to do. Somehow or other, he told me, though he had been a highwayman and was then protected from the flimsy law of that day only by his Indian brothers, he could not bring himself to break faith with them.
"Then came the night of the first Mona Fiesta since he became Watchman of the Dead; and that night temporarily decided him.
"When he squatted in the circle about the fire and saw the rapt, tear-stained, brown faces of these people who had placed absolute faith in him, he fell under the spell of their simplicity, and swore that so long as he lived he would not betray their trust.
"And he lived up to it, with his partner, Adam Selden importuning him daily to get the stones and skip the country. And finally to be rid of Selden and the double game he was obliged to play, Peter Drew left with his wife one night and did not return for fifteen years.
"And since then there has been no Watchman of the Dead until the night you defeated the evil spirits in the fire dance.
"Out in the world of white men Peter Drew settled down to ranching. His Indian wife had died two years after he left this country. With her gone, and the new order of things all about him, he began to wonder if he had not been a fool.
"Up here in the lonesome hills was wealth untold, so far as he knew, and he renounced it for an ideal. To secure those gems he had only to show ingratitude to the Showut Poche-dakas, had only to break faith with a handful of ignorant, simple-minded Indians. What did they and their ridiculous beliefs amount to in this great scheme of life as he now saw it? Each day men on every hand were breaking faith to become wealthy, were trampling traditions and ideals underfoot to gain their golden ends. Business was business – money was money! Had he not been a fool? Was he not still a fool – to renounce a fortune that was his for the taking?
"He called himself an ignorant man. He told himself – and truly, too – that countless men whom he knew, who had read a thousand books to one merely opened by him – men of education, men of affairs – would laugh at him, and themselves would have wrested the treasure from its hiding place without a qualm of conscience. Civilization was stalking on in its unconquerable march. Should a handful of uncouth Indians, a superstitious, dwindling tribe of near-savages, be permitted to handicap his part in this triumphal march? No – never!
"But always, when he made ready to return to the scenes of his young manhood, there came before him the picture of brown, tear-stained faces about a fire, and of an old blind man speaking softly as if telling a story to eager children. Highwayman Peter Drew had been, but never in his life had he broken faith with a friend. Loyalty was the very backbone of my idealist, and he turned away from temptation and doggedly followed his plough.
"For thirty years and more the question faced him. Should he get the gems and be wealthy, and break faith with those who had entrusted him with the greatest thing in their lives – these people who had called him brother, whose last remnant of food or shelter was his for the asking? Or should he remain an idealist, a poor man, but loyal to his trust? The answer was No or Yes!
"Can't your imagination place you in his shoes? Unlettered, not sure of himself, ashamed of what he doubtless termed his chicken-heartedness. Don't you know that all of us are constantly ashamed of our secret ideals – ashamed of the best that is in us? We fear the ridicule of coarser minds, and hide what is Godlike in our hearts. And on top of this, your father was ignorant, according to present day standards, and knew it. But for thirty years, Oliver Drew, he prospered while his idealism fought the battle against the lust for wealth. Idealism won, but Peter Drew died not knowing whether he had been a wise man or a fool. He died a conqueror. Give us more of such ignorance!
"And he educated you, left you penniless, and placed his momentous question in your keeping.
"Fifteen years ago he bought the Old Ivison Place, though the Indians do not know it. Adam Selden has searched for the gems without result ever since Peter Drew left the country; and it was because of him that your father kept his purchase a secret. Two years ago, while you were in France, Peter Drew came here, met me and liked me, and told me all that I have told you.
"He knew that when you rode into this country with the saddle and bridle of Bolivio that the Showut Poche-dakas would know who you were, and would take you in and make you Watchman of the Dead. Peter Drew wanted you to be penniless, as he had been when he first faced the question. He gave me money with which to help along the cause. So far I've only had to use it for liquid courtplaster, an olla, and a few bolts of calico. You were to learn nothing of the story from my lips. You were to face the question blindly, with no other influences about you save those that he had experienced.
"I have done my best to carry out his wishes. You are the Watchman of the Dead. You own the land on which the treasure lies. You are brother of the Showut Poche-dakas. The treasure is yours almost for the lifting of a hand. You are almost penniless.
"There's your question, Oliver Drew. Say Yes and the gems are yours. Say No, and you have forty acres of almost worthless land, a saddle horse and outfit, and youth and health, and the lifetime office of Watchman of the Dead!"
She ceased speaking. There were tears in her great black eyes as she looked at him levelly.
"But – but – " Oliver floundered. "I don't know where the gems are. Selden has hunted them for thirty years, and has failed to find them. I've seen many evidences of his search. Will the Showut Poche-dakas tell me where they are?"
"Your father thought that perhaps, after what has passed in connection with former Watchmen of the Dead, you might not be told the exact location. So he made provision for that."
She reached in her bosom and handed him an envelope sealed with wax.
On it he read in his father's hand:
"Map showing exact location of what is known as the lost mine of Bolivio."
"If you open it," she said, "your answer probably will be No, and you become owner of the gems. If you destroy it unopened, your answer is Yes, and you are a poor man. Yes or No, Oliver Drew? Think over it tonight, and I'll meet you here tomorrow at noon."
"What do you want my answer to be?" he asked.
"I have no right to express my wishes in the matter," she said. "And your answer is not to be told to me, you must remember, but to your father's lawyers."
Then she turned White Ann into the narrow trail that led from Lime Rock.