CHAPTER XII

HEART-WOOD

“Yes, you bet I testified,” recounted Hinray, who stood before a mirror hung against a tree and combed his mustaches. “I seen it with my own eyes. ’Twas all the better that the tree _was_ old. You can’t counterfeit _old_ heart-wood. No! Nature ain’t to be duplicated.

“There she read, just as pretty: Silverstake claim, 70 feet east, and south by 30 paces, and on—”

“But when is my father coming back?” Dawn persisted. “Now that the Indian thing is straightened up why doesn’t he come back? I expected him yesterday morning and again this morning. What’s that you have, Hinray? Give it to me now. It’s mail.”

With exasperating deliberation Hinray was sorting out some very dirty envelopes from one or two fairly clean ones. He handed her a heavy, important-looking envelope.

“That’ll be from the Irrigation Service, I take it.”

“Yes, one might guess it from the letterhead,” Dawn replied witheringly.

Hinray appeared not to notice her sarcasm or to have further interest in the letter.

“Oh!” Dawn exclaimed, too disappointed to hide her feelings. “It’s from Garen, and he can’t get away till Thanksgiving. That’s six weeks! He sends two paper clippings. Look, Hinray!” She cried excitedly and thrust the paper before him. “It’s all about the Silverstake tree, and me finding it. Read it.”

The evidence of the Reservation boundary recently located was unmistakable, so the article said; the disputed boundary of the Indian Reservation was now settled, for never had there been any doubt of the validity of the original grant. With the discovery of the old blaze had also come to light the exact location of an ancient silver working, long since forgotten, but referred to in old records and remembered by the Indians. There was still evidence of a long-abandoned shaft on the Indian Reservation, and the vein extended along the mountain to the edge of the Forest Reserve where there was a fault or slipping of the rock. There had been only one claim filed on the faulted vein in the last forty years, and that had been made ten years ago by Damon O’Neill, forest ranger.

Dawn shouted with delight. “Read, read,” Hinray counseled, and she continued. “The immediate workings in the shaft of the Pueblo mine, it was said by the caciques of the Tesuque and Picuris pueblos, had been exhausted, and there was a curse on the mine. One of their chiefs had been killed there by an arrow from the Spirit of the Mountain. Others among the young men thought that it was because the shaft was so inaccessible that work in it had been abandoned. It was less trouble for the Pueblo to get silver for jewelry by working for the white man.”

The article went on to say that the Pueblos, a simple agrarian people, were more interested in their water rights and their crops than anything else, and that now that the source of their rivers had been determined and secured to them, they were satisfied. Through the white friends of the Pueblos the use of their own water had been restored to them, so that never again even in a time of drouth would they be made to suffer for lack of water as they had been in the past ten to twenty years, particularly this summer.

At the end of the article Dawn read the simple statement, “‘The finding of the exact location of the old witness tree was made by Miss Dawn O’Neill, daughter of the Forest Ranger, Damon O’Neill.’

“Dad’s probably getting his sample assayed,” Dawn said. “The claim is his; he can sell it or work it himself if he wants to. Can’t he, Hinray?”

“He can that,” Hinray agreed, “but I misdoubt iffen he’ll want to. If you sell it and it proves to be worth the sellin’ or buyin’, that’ll mean an awful mess in the best stand of timber left up there. It’ll mean workin’s and noises of cranes and pulleys and ingines and dynamitin’.”

“But I thought, Hinray,” Dawn faltered, “that this kind of mining would all be done underground. I thought a shaft and maybe a small engine would be all they’d need.”

“And how would they get the ore out?” Hinray pursued relentlessly. “And where would the miners live? They’d not want to climb up from McGuire’s valley every morning and down every night. No, sirree. Ever go to a silver mine? See them great steam shovels?”

“But, Hinray, don’t be a silly. Those are what they use at the great ghino copper mines, where the ore runs only two per cent. to the ton and is scooped by steam shovel. _This_ ore is rich, rich! And they’d pack it down by burro to the railroad.”

“Mm-mm. Would they now? Do you think if Perry and that gang got interested they’d stop at a _burro load_ of rich ore? Not them. They’d have a railroad spur run right up into the mountains, that’s what. Look at what they do just to get timber out. Build camps, stores, railroads. They have to. Thing to do is work it yourselves. Little by little as you can.”

Dawn was visibly depressed. “But Dad’s no miner, and I’m surely not. I don’t want to work underground, Hinray, at the _roots_ of trees, or in the heart of the mountain. We’re foresters, Hinray, the two of us.”

“Well,” Hinray concluded consolingly, “perhaps Perry and them’ll buy it from yore father. Now they’ve been shet out of the Indian Reservation range they’ve had to sell their cattle. But Gershwin took no loss. Not he! Mark my words. ’Twas a fine set of cattle his herders drove down to the stockyards to ship east. What profit Perry made he lost in the bank. He brought nothin’ with him; he took nothin’ away.”

“And the James?” Dawn queried. “How did they come out? I never heard.”

“I reckon that poor fellow had to let his profit go, if he had any, to cover his loan. But if he had any cash in hand I hope he kept holt of it.” Hinray was a confirmed skeptic about the ways of the financial world.

Dawn sat idly on the porch, her back against the wall, grateful for the October sun. Shep lay with his head in her lap, and Piñon was grazing near the cabin. The trees parted below them at the ford where the trail turned up the Cascada, and a rider appeared. It was an Indian, mounted on a little cream-colored pony. The diminutive creature plodded slowly up the incline to the porch, weary as though it had traveled far that day. The Indian slid from his horse as Dawn greeted him. It was Julio, a boy who had worked for Damon in restoring Pueblo cave dwellings. He was a nephew of the rain-priest.

Julio seated himself on the steps and Dawn asked him if he would have food, but he shook his head gravely and courteously. The boss, her father, where was he? Dawn explained that Damon had gone into town two days after the storm and had not yet returned. They were expecting him the next day. Julio remained quiet and reflective a while and then turned to her and said in a manner both sorrowful and proud, “We have found him, the Priest of the Rain. He has gone to the Dance Hall of the Dead. For two days we have searched.”

Dawn was mystified. In reply to her eager questions Julio told the story. “He was a great rainmaker, Mi-uchin,” he concluded devoutly. “Never have we had such rain in our lifetime in response to prayer. For one week he fasted and prayed in the mountains, and you saw—” He waved his hand about the heavens.

“But none knew where he had gone or that he had gone. When he did not return during the days following the rain, we came to search for him—I leading the young men, for I thought I knew where he would be. But we found him not there.—Mi-uchin gave his life in exchange for the rain, for when at last it came it took him. He lay in the stream, washed, and with a great happiness upon his face—” The boy fell silent. Dawn had no further words; her tender pity had been sympathy enough.

At length the boy drew a deerskin pouch from his pocket. “I have brought this for you,” he said. “It is a gift from our people for you.” He held out a chain of white shell from which hung an emblem of turquoise mosaic of unusual design. “For you,” Julio repeated, “because of your friendship for our people. And that you have saved their land and their water. The forest has held our secret since the boyhood of my grandfather. That secret was shown to _you_. Take this.” He regarded Dawn with a look of superstitious awe.

She took the luck emblem reverently. But, she told Julio, she had already been more than repaid for the chance service she had been able to do the pueblo. Long ago Mi-uchin had shown her the Source and the ancient shaft of the Indian mine. She had known all the time where the Indians came to get their silver and where they held their springtime ceremonies. “But no one shall ever know from me,” she concluded.

“Mi-uchin knew that you were like a good tree,” said Julio, “the heart-wood of which is sound. Once the heart decays the tree falls, the forest falls. It is so with men. What is graven on the stout heart remains there.

“The red men gave you the forest,” he said after a while, finding his words with difficulty. “It is for you to keep it. I go. Good-by.”