CHAPTER XXII. THE RUBY SILVER MINE.--(_Continued._)
Six months later, in the shade of a light umbrella, I sauntered along the beach at Cape May. Down by the summer sea, where lovers walk with lingering step, rapt, heedless as the dead, of aught but tender glances and soft words whispered under the sound of the surf. After the desert silence and parching dryness of the territories, it was a deep pleasure to breathe once more the salt, moist air, to hear the mighty monotone, and watch the restless play of light and color on breakers rolling in from the far Bermudas, beating against the shore like the tireless heart of earth.
Thinking upon nothing but simple enjoyment of earth, sea, and sky, I strolled in quiet sympathy with the unknown crowd, when suddenly an open carriage, drawn by two horses, stopped near us. It was light as a wicker toy, the airiest, fairiest thing manufactured since the night Cinderella rode to the ball. So slight in construction one might think it would scarcely bear the weight of one person, had we not seen that every portion was perfectly wrought. The tempered steel and light wheels would endure a severe strain. Ornate as burnish could make it, gilding and varnish sparkled in the sunlight, gay rosette and flying ribbon were not lacking. Instead of cloth, the lining was plaited violet satin, of exquisite tint. I have never seen so elegant a turnout elsewhere. The cushions were fit for an empress, laces and velvets to trail on, a seat where a king might rest and keep the soil from the ermine and velvet of his coronation robe.
The small horses seemed made for the fairy carriage. They were coal-black, perfectly matched, without a white hair on them. Your correspondent knows precious little about horses, except one ancient pony, which lost an eye in a pre-historic raid on a corn-crib; but ignorance itself could see these were of no common blood. The broad faces and delicate ears, the luminous eyes, soft as an antelope’s, the arching necks, veiled with silken manes like the fluffy hair of young girls, come of no menial race, such as haul drays and drop on pavements in the streets. The mettlesome, high-bred beauties, pawing impatiently with hoofs like polished ebony, were such steeds as dash through the Ouida novels or come home at the masters’ call under the black tents, the Arab houses of hair. We had started for the light-house, three miles away, and in the dazzle of all that luxury and ease the brightness went out of the day. My walk suddenly became hard and long. It required the entire skill and strength of the liveried driver to manage the reins, while the occupant within leaped nimbly out to adjust some portion of the harness. He was dressed in garments of finest fabric and freshest cut, in which the tailor had missed the easy fit so coveted by gentlemen. A Pactolian watch-chain streamed across his breast, and lightish gloves on massive hands gave the wearer the aspect of being pretty much all gloves. A host of idlers gathered in a moment, and, with them, I stopped to admire the equipage, perfect in make and ornament, costly as money can buy, and then and there broke the tenth commandment.
Evidently the envied man felt fussy and grew fidgety under all those staring eyes. I rubbed mine (not so young as they once were), to clear a confused, bewildering recollection. Could it be? No! impossible! To reassure myself, I looked toward the sea, then back again to the sky, the town. It was no spirit of earth or air, no cheat of vision or brain. The territorial sunburn had faded from his face, but lingered in the scorched carrot hair, and Rocky Mountain wrinkles are not easily ironed out. Well I knew those early crow’s feet at the corners of the milky blue orbs. The owner of the princely establishment, with its rare belongings, was none other than our frontier friend, once sole proprietor of the Dives Mine, in the Cañon de los Angelos, which sold for eighteen hundred thousand dollars.
The golden key opens many doors; but it takes time and some skill to fit it into the lock. The lavender kids split as the Dives miner hastily jerked them off, to fasten a harness-buckle; the flash of a superb diamond ring followed the movement. He threw the delicately tinted gloves on the ground, with words more emphatic than correct, muttered under a scant fringe of pink moustache, then turned a deprecating, apologetic glance toward the crowd.
An instant the ancient prospector held me with his glittering eye. It said, plainly as whisper in my ear: I beg you do not tell on me.
I did not. He hurried back to his place. The Esau hand, with its blazing diamond, closed the door with a heavy slam. It did not hold. He banged it again, and yet once more, growing very red in the face, before he could lean away from our gaze back on the violet cushions. From that soft recess he called loudly to the driver to “git.” There were a few significant nods as the night-black steeds sped with swift grace over the wet beach, but nothing was said except by a very charming young lady, fresh from Ollendorf. She released a loving arm to bend forward a moment and wave her fine little handkerchief at the vanishing show, exclaiming: “_Adieu, monsieur le nouveau riche._”
The sweet girl graduate had taken the sense of the meeting. When the purple and gold passed from sight, the throng fell into line as before the interruption, and in placid enjoyment yielded to the dreamy spell of vesper sunlight and lulling sound. All was refined, serene, restful.
The mild ripples, changeful as the hues of the dolphin, came and went, leaving their slight tracery in the sand, secret messages from hidden depths far away. The blue waters murmured mystic music to fair and gracious maidens and youths of gentle, graceful mien; tender cushats, cooing and wooing and sighing, but not for the touch of vanished hands. The rhythmic ebb and flow charmed the sense with hints of warbling peris and dying cadences of mermaids’ songs. Earth and ocean in perfect tune, the very air thrilled with a tremulous harmony, while youth and beauty wove their low, sweet idyl. Lapwings glided along the sands, where the sick lady rested in her invalid chair, under a gayly-striped awning. White gulls screamed and circled round a ship lying at anchor in the shining bay, her flag a wavy line of brilliant color against the pale horizon. Beyond it, in dim perspective, a long procession of vessels slowly sailing. An endless picture, suggestive of famous places and unknown nations, gathered treasure of pearl and amber, spicery and silks, and happy home, coming from voyages through halcyon seas, by distant fragrant shores. The wind was warm, its breath was balm, the world was lulled to rest.
A flush of pink fell from out the tranquil sky. It dropped fresh roses on faded cheeks, and in its blush I saw the young face beside me as it had been the face of an angel. Then I thought the beautiful is wealth, the world over. My darling holds in her slender hand the keys of the palaces.
The walk to the light-house was not so bad, after all.
[Illustration: Zuñi Effigies.]
My holiday ended, I returned to the City of Holy Faith, and exactly a year from the date of this story took my constitutional walk in the splendor of sunlight such as never falls on land or sea east of the Rocky Mountains. No fear of rain to drive me indoors, no speculations about clear or cloudy to-morrows, we know a radiant shining will lighten the coming morning, just as it filled the sky of yesterday. With the Pueblos, I am a devout sun-worshipper and love at his rising to salute the lord of light and life, and again “under the sad passion of the dying day” to watch his departure. Returning from my invisible altar on old Fort Marcy, I threaded my way through cramped and crooked streets, and, making the round of the Plaza, saw beside the gate a _burro_ being loaded with a miner’s outfit. He was not much larger than a dog; beyond compare the most wretched of his miserable race, a pitiable wreck. He was mangy and sore-eyed, his tail tapered to a stumpy point, the tuft at the end fallen beyond the reach of any “restorer.” Patches of hair worn off in various portions of his body exposed wrinkled, leathery hide, and the dark cross over the shoulders was pitted with scars, like marks of small-pox. There was not enough flesh on those protrusive bones to make one meal for the ravening mountain wolf, or a respectable lunch for half a dozen carrion crows. Arid and dusty, the creature looked like the mummy of some antediluvian animal. Easy to see his portion had been kicks, scourge, goads, abuse; no champagne savannah, no green meadow or lush blue grass in his line of travel; but life-withering marches in snowy and sandy desert, where scant herbage and meagre shrub were enough for the starving slave.
Yet the sorry beast was not senseless nor altogether broken in spirit. A train of mules went by. Among them he recognized an old acquaintance, a fellow-sufferer. He lifted his head and plucked up heart for a passing salute, essaying a feeble bray. The unwonted sound was too great an effort for the gaunt throat. It died in a hoarse rattle and was buried in a succession of notes, the strangest mortal ear has heard since that old day Jubal first struck the gamut.
Pick, shovel, bags of crackers, blanket, and coffee-pot were piled high on the tough burden-bearer, and, watching the loading done by a Mexican boy, a tall man lazily leaned against the diminutive brute, apparently reckless of the danger of upsetting donkey and cargo, and sending them sprawling across the sidewalk. There was nothing to draw attention in his familiar uniform--high-top boots, cactus-proof buckskin pants, hickory shirt, red neck-handkerchief; but under the broad slouch hat were straggling locks that caught my eye--a peculiar tinge of reddish bronze, the _cabello del oro_ of the Argonaut of ’79.
The never-resting wheel of fortune had made the downward curve. The Dives miner had summered in Saratoga, betting on cards and horses, had staked tens of thousands on the hazard of a dicer’s throw, lost everything, and now was back to the starting-place, ready to try again. I remembered the purple and gold, the dash and glitter of the rich man at Cape May. The apparition of prancing steeds of matchless beauty, with dainty limbs, too dainty for the sand they touched but to spurn, flitted before me.
Gambler though he was and deserved it, the forlornness of the change would touch a harder heart than yours or mine, dear reader. I stepped toward the gate. At that moment Dives--perhaps I had best say Lazarus--poked the poor _burro_ with a sharp stick and, in a high, gay voice, struck up:
“Of all the wives you e’er can know, There’s none like Nancy Lee, I trow.”
Then, as Bunyan hath it, he went on his way and I saw him no more.
This story sounds like a pure invention. Does it not? I confess to trifling attempts in decorative art, a tiny dash of color, the least bit of embroidery, just to round a corner and give a little life to dullness, you know, but not now. My hero is to-day a day-laborer, working in the great King Henry lead in the Shakespeare district of New Mexico--the man who for one brief summer reckoned his money by hundreds of thousands. You can see him when you go.