Part 5 (2/2)

But Schiefflin was indifferent to these wild goings on. To him the Bruncknow house meant shelter from the Apaches; that was all. He could roll up in his blankets here at night knowing that he would waken in the morning without any likelihood of looking up into the grinning faces of savages who had tracked him to his camp.

He minded his own business. As a matter of fact his own business was the only thing he deemed worth minding. It was the one affair of importance in the whole world. The more he saw of those hills the surer he became that they contained minerals. Somewhere among them, he fervently believed, an ore body of great richness lay hidden from the world. And he had been devoting the years of his manhood to seeking just such a secret. In those long years of constant search a longing mightier than the l.u.s.t for riches had grown within him.

Explorers know that longing and some great scientists; once it owns a man he becomes oblivious to all else.

Every day Schiefflin set forth on his mule from the adobe house. He rode out into the hills. All day he hunted through the winding gullies for some bits of float which would betray the presence of an outcropping on the higher levels. Once he cut the fresh trail of a band of Apaches and once he caught sight of two mounted savages riding along a slope a mile away. Several times he picked up specimens of rock which bore traces of silver. But he found no ore worth a.s.saying.

The men at the Bruncknow house saw him departing every morning and shook their heads. They had seen other men ride out alone into the hills and they had afterward found some of those travelers--what the Apaches had left of them. It was no affair of theirs--but they fell into the habit of watching the tawny slopes every afternoon when the shadows began to lengthen and speculating among themselves whether the bearded rider was going to return this time. Which was as close to solicitude as they could come.

One of their number--he had lost two or three small bets by Schiefflin's appearing safe and sound on various evenings--took it upon himself to give their visitor a bit of advice.

”What for,” he asked, ”do yo'-all go a-takin' them pasears that-a-way?”

Schiefflin smiled good-naturedly at the questioner.

”Just looking for stones,” he said.

”Well,” the other told him, ”all I got to say is this. Yo'-all keep on and yo'll sure find yo'r tombstone out there some day.”

He never dreamed that he had named a town.

Nor did Schiefflin think much of it at the moment: he had received other warnings, just as strong, before. But none of them had been put as neatly as this. So the words abode in his memory although they did not affect his comings and goings in the least.

Only a few days later he left the Bruncknow house for a longer trip than usual. He rode his mule down the San Pedro toward the mouth of the dry wash in which the two prospectors had found that silver ore the day before they died.

And the luck that guides a man's steps toward good or ill, as the whim seizes it, saw to it that he came into the old camp where the Apaches had enjoyed their morning murder months before.

Some one had buried both bodies but whoever had done this--possibly it was one of the self-styled miners at the Bruncknow house--had not enough interest in minerals to disturb the little heap of specimens.

It lay there near the graves, just as the Apaches had left it, just as its original owners had piled it up before they sought their blankets; to dream perhaps of their big strike while death waited for the coming of the dawn, to cheat them out of their discovery.

The story was as plain as printed words on a page: the nameless graves among the tall clumps of bear-gra.s.s proclaimed the penalty for venturing into this neighborhood. The little handful of dark-colored stones betrayed the secret of the riches in the hills. The dry wash came down between the ridges half a mile ahead to show the way to other float like this.

It was as though, after the years of long and constant search he found himself faced by a grim challenge, to attain the consummation of his hopes on pain of death.

When he had examined the bits of rock he mounted his mule and struck out for the mouth of the dry wash.

After he had ridden for some distance up the stony bed of the arroyo he dismounted and came on slowly leading the patient animal. He searched the rocks for fragments of float. At times he left the mule and crept to the summit of a near-by ridge where he remained for some minutes looking out over the country for some sign of Indians.

The day wore on and as he went further the hills to the south became loftier; the banks drew closer in on both sides of him; the boulders in the arid bed were larger. Cactus and Spanish bayonet hara.s.sed him like malignant creatures; skeleton ocatillas and bristling yuccas imposed th.o.r.n.y barriers before him. The sun poured its full flood of white-hot rays upon him. He wound his way in and out among the obstacles, keeping his intent eyes upon the glaring rocks, save only when he lifted them to look for lurking savages. The shadows of noonday lengthened into the shades of afternoon; they crept up the hillsides until only the higher peaks remained a-s.h.i.+ne; evening came.

Schiefflin picked up a sharp fragment of blackish rock.

Horn silver. In those days when the great Comstock lode was lessening its yield and the metal was at a premium, such ore as this which he held meant millions--if one could but find the main ledge. He scanned the specimen closely, looked round for others and then, as his eyes roved up the hillside the exultation born of that discovery pa.s.sed from him.

Dusk was creeping up from the valley. The time had pa.s.sed when he could return by daylight to the Bruncknow house. He must make the most of the scant interval which remained before darkness, if he would find a hiding-place where he could camp.

He glanced about him to fix the landmarks in his memory, that he might return to this spot on the morrow. Then he led the mule away into the hills and picketed it out behind a ridge where it would be out of sight from pa.s.sing Apaches.

He found his own hiding-place a mile away from where he had tethered the animal. Here three huge bare knolls of granite boulders rose beside the wash. From the summit of any one of these a man could survey the whole country; between its ragged rocks he would be invisible to any one below. He chose the highest one and crept to its crest.

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