They looked at the seed corn, and the American complimented Don Nepomuceno on his enterprise as an improving farmer.
"Why don't you take to the business yourself?" said the Mexican, as he relocked the door behind them. "You have money and you have a pair of good mules. You could buy land and work-oxen and hire peons. You would make your living at it easier than at the mining. How long have you been a miner?"
"Ten years, on and off," answered the other. "It is a good slice out of one's life, I admit"; there was a certain wistfulness in his tone. He was beginning to think that perhaps he had missed a good deal of happiness in his time.
"Ten years of wandering!" exclaimed the Mexican. "Ay de mi, but you must be tired. Why should you want to go back to Colorado and begin it all over again?"
"Well, for one thing," answered the other, "I've just heard from an old pard of mine up there, and I think from the way he talks he's got hold of a good thing. I'm going to see."
"And you'll go all that journey just to see!" said the other. "You trust him? You think he's a good man?"
"Well, I don't know so much about that," admitted Stephens. "Truth to tell, the last time I saw him we had considerable of a difference of opinion; in fact we split, and we reckoned to stay split. You see, he busted me up as we call it, ruined me, that is; only I had the luck to sort of pull myself round. But that happened two years ago; all the same I don't say that I want him for a pard again, though he must have pretty well straightened himself out, the way he talks; but still, you bet, I'd like mighty well to shake hands with him, right now."
"And he ruined you?" exclaimed the Mexican.
"Busted me wide open. Left me flat broke," said the American.
"How did it all happen?" asked the other. "Tell us all about it; we have heard some of your adventures, but not this. Come into the sitting-room here and let us have it."
"Well, if it won't bore you, you're welcome," said Stephens, following his host and preparing to refill his pipe.
"Ah, you must smoke when you talk, I know," said Sanchez, "and you wish to smoke your own American tobacco, for you do not like the flavour of our New Mexican punche in your pipe. Ho, a light here, Pedrito! quick, bring a live coal for the señor."
Pedrito, a small son of the peon, came running from the kitchen with a live coal in a piece of hoop iron, which he offered to Stephens, pulling off his cap and standing bareheaded before the honoured guest, with old-world courtesy. Manuelita knew very well what was up, and fixed herself down to listen just by the door, where she could hear every word. Stephens settled himself down comfortably on the divan, and began.
"I picked up with this partner, who has just written me this letter, Rockyfeller his name is, when I was up in Idaho. We took to each other kind of natural-like, and he and I pulled together as amiably as a span of old wheel-horses for a goodish bit. We were quite different sort of men, too, in ourselves; but somehow that seemed to make it all the easier for us to get along. We worked in the mines all that winter, and when spring came we had enough saved to rig out a real A1 prospecting outfit. Rocky—that's what I called him—used to spree a bit every once in a while, but nothing really to hurt, you know. He could pull up short, which is more than most men who go on the spree have sense to do. His sprees didn't prevent our saving over four hundred dollars. Then we bought two cayuses to ride—cayuses is the name they give to those broncho horses up that way,—and a good pack-mule and plenty of grub and blankets. We put in the whole of that summer prospecting off in the Coeur d'Alène country, and we staked out a lot of claims on different lodes, and we put in a good bit of work on some of 'em so as to hold 'em for the year. Well, come fall, we hadn't been able to sell any one of our claims, and we hadn't taken out any high-grade ore that would pay for packing over the mountains to any reduction works, and there we were, short of cash. So we cleared from that Coeur d'Alène country at last. It was too far from a railroad. We sold our claims for what we could get, and that wasn't much, and we lit out for Montana, and there that next summer we just did everlastingly prospect over some of the roughest country I ever ran across. The Indians were powerful bad too, to say nothing of the road-agents. But we struck it at last pretty rich on a lode that we called 'The Last Lap'—that's the last round, you know, that the horses make on a race-track. I'd spent eight mortal years chasing my tail all round the Pacific slope looking for a good lode, and here it was, after all, across on the head-waters of the Missouri in Montana. We knew we'd got a good thing. The ledge was three to five feet thick, with a nice, uniform lot of high-grade ore, and a special streak that would assay up to five hundred dollars a ton. I never saw a nicer lode. The only thing was, it was a plaguy long way from any quartz mill for the free ore, and it was a plaguy sight farther to the only reduction works that could handle the richest portions of it. Of course what the mine wanted was a smelter of its own, right on the spot, but that's what got us. We hadn't the capital to start it. It wanted at least fifty or a hundred thousand dollars laid out before we could hope to get back a cent. That mine was worth a million, if we'd had it in California, but off there, five or six hundred miles from a railroad, owned by us two prospectors who'd just about got to the end of our tether, it was too big a thing for us to handle. Well, we did what work we could on it. We sunk a shaft and ran a bit of a drift, and we went into Helena and we offered a share in it to a few capitalists we thought we could trust. None of 'em would even look at it. At last we ran on to Colonel Starr,—old Beebee Starr; likely you never heard of him, but they knew him well enough up there,—and he rode out with us to see it; and he tumbled to it, too, as soon as ever he'd grubbed out a few specimens with his own pick and had 'em assayed. Well, he wouldn't take a half-interest and find the money to develop the mine, which was what we wanted him to do, and we were stony-broke by that time except for our cayuses and our camp outfit, and winter a-coming on; and the long and short of it was that we gave Colonel Starr a quitclaim deed to our whole interest in the Last Lap Lode for twelve thousand five hundred dollars in greenbacks, paid down on the nail. The Last Lap has paid more than that much in a month in dividends since then, but that's common enough; that's how things do pan out; but I don't believe in whining over my luck, never did. And I'd been waiting eight years for a look in, and I didn't despise getting my half of the twelve thousand five hundred dollars, if the Last Lap was worth a million.
"So we sold the best quartz mine in Montana, and that's where Rocky and I split. We got the money from Colonel Starr in greenbacks, and it was a roll as thick as my arm. And Rocky pouched it all, for I had to go out to a cabin three miles out of town to see another old pard of mine who had been crushed by a fall of rock and was dying. I know I ought never to have left Rocky with that money on him; but what was I to do? It was late in the day; I had to go; I couldn't take it along with me, for a man was liable in those days to be held up anywhere round the outskirts of town by those cursed road-agents. Rocky had kept plumb straight for over a year. I trusted him, and I went. I got back to our hotel that night about ten o'clock, and a man says to me, 'D'you know where your pard Rocky's gone?'
"'No,' says I, 'aint he here?'
"'Not much,' says he; 'he's at Frenchy's, bucking agi'n' the tiger.'
"My heart felt like a lump of ice. I just turned right around and walked across the road to where this Frenchy kept a faro bank, and went in. There was Rocky, about half drunk, sitting at the table, with about three little chips on the cloth before him. I went up and put my hand on Rocky's shoulder and looked on. The dealer turned up the jack, I think it was, and raked in Rocky's stake. Rocky turns his head and looks up at me with a ghastly grin. 'Is that you?' says he; 'Jack, you'd orter hev come before. I've had a devil of a run of bad luck; I'm cleaned out.'
"'In God's name,' says I, 'is that so?'
"'You bet,' says he.
"I felt as if my eyes were two big burning holes in my head. 'God forgive you, Rocky,' says I, 'for playing the giddy goat, and me for leaving you alone for one night in Helena, Montana. Come on out of this now, Rocky, and I'll divide my share with you. I never went back on a pard.'
"Then the big blow came. 'Your share?' says he; 'why it's all gone. It's all gone, every dollar of it, and them chips you saw me lose was the end of the Last Lap Lode.' I heard some bummer behind me give a laugh, one of those whiskey-soaking galoots that think it funny to see the next man cleaned out.
"I felt a queer lump in my throat, and I says to the banker, very solemn, 'Mr. Frenchy, this gentleman here,' I was holding my hand on Rocky, 'he's my pardner, and I must beg you to take notice that half what you've won off him is my property that he had charge of.'
"'That's no use, young man,' says the banker to me. 'We play for keeps in this house, and so you'll find it.'
"'We'll see about that,' says I. 'Now, Rocky, tell me, is the whole of the Last Lap gone, the whole of the twelve thousand five hundred dollars?'
"'Every last cent,' says Rocky. I could see by his looks that he felt powerful mean.
"'Then, mister,' says I to the banker—I was determined to be deadly civil—'six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars of what you've took from this gentleman belongs to me.'
"'You're interfering with the progress of the game,' says he; 'and say, look here, you don't need to make that remark of yours here again. That's entirely a matter between you and your pard; it's none of my business, but if you want any advice of me, it is that you take him outside and settle it with him.'
"He had his gang around him, and I saw that they had the deadwood on me, and the other players wanted to go ahead with their game. I was a stranger from the mountains, dead-broke, with no backing, and I felt there was no show for me in that shebang. I didn't open my mouth, but I set myself to get Rocky home, first thing. I had pretty near to drag him there. When I got him on the street the whiskey he'd drunk went into his head, and he was like a madman. He wanted to fight me, actually he did, till I got his gun away from him. He hit me, yes, he struck me with his fist, till I had to pinion him; luckily I was the stronger man of the two. I got him back to our room at last, and got him to bed. He just laid there on his bed like a log and snored. And I laid over there on mine and cursed. I lay awake all that night thinking. I'd been a brother to Rocky; I'd saved him time and again before that night; and now he'd been and given me clean away,—lost me the only good stake I'd ever had in eight years.
"I was sick. I didn't know what to do. We hadn't even money to pay our livery-stable and hotel bill. We'd put up at a first-class hotel when we made our bargain with Colonel Starr, reckoning to pay our account out of the proceeds of the Last Lap. Now, by selling our cayuses we'd hardly cover it; so that here we were, fairly busted, afoot, stony-broke, and winter coming on. Sick was no name for what I felt. It was all to begin over again, and I was eight years older than when I started out at prospecting. You bet I felt old that night. Morning came, and I couldn't eat any breakfast. Rocky was snoring still. I belted on my six-shooter, stepped over to Frenchy's, and asked for the proprietor. They told me he wasn't up. It was a tony gambling-house, you know, quite a 'way-up' sort of place. I sat down and said I could wait. At last they told me he'd see me. I was shown up into a room. He was there, spick and span, in a biled shirt and diamond pin, and all that.
"'Sit down,' says he.
"'Thank you,' said I, 'I can stand. I prefer it.' There was a table between us.
"'Let me warn you,' says he, 'at once, that this room is loopholed, and that you are now covered with a double-barrelled shot-gun, loaded with sixteen buckshot in both barrels, at about ten feet off. If you make a move towards that six-shooter you've brought you'll be filled so full of lead that your hide wouldn't hold shucks.'
"'All right,' said I, 'I expected as much. I didn't bring this six-shooter to argue with you.'
"He kind of laughed at that. 'Then what the h—l did you bring it here for?' says he.
"'To protect myself on the street,' says I; 'to protect myself from footpads as I go back to my hotel with my money.'
"'What money's that you're talking about?' says he.
"'My money,' says I, 'that you've won off my pardner last night, six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks. That'll need protecting.'
"He gave a kind of a grin. 'It's protected by them thirty-two buckshot at the present moment,' he says, 'and I guess they're good enough to guarantee it.'
"'I'm not denying it,' says I. 'I've come here, as a gentleman, to appeal to you as a gentleman, to restore me my money that my pardner's wrongly handed over to you.'
"He looked amused. 'I notice you don't speak as if you upheld the game wasn't square,—as if he'd been robbed of it here,' says he.
"'I don't know nothing at all about that,' says I. 'I don't gamble myself, but I don't doubt your game's a square game enough, as things go. People say it is. I don't complain of the game; that's Rocky's business, if it's anybody's. It's my money that I'm talking about, whether it was a skin game that he lost it over or not. It's those greenbacks that Colonel Starr paid me that I'm here for.'
"Then he fairly laughed out. 'Why, you galoot,' says he, 'you talk like a tenderfoot, yet you've been around this Western country long enough to cut your eye-teeth. When did you ever hear of a professional gambler giving up the stakes after he'd won 'em?'
"'I don't know as I ever did,' says I; 'but if not, here's the place for it to begin to happen, right here and now. I tell you I've got to have that money. I tell you I'm tired. I've prospected in every range of mountains there is in three Territories to find that Last Lap Lode. I've been eight years sweating and starving and freezing and wrastling round. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I got my stake, and I've got to have it. I tell you again I'm tired. I won't go through it all again for nothing. I'm either going out of this room with my money in my pocket, or I'm going out of it feet first, with a hole in my head you could put your fist through. I don't threaten nobody, but I'll have my money or I'll die right here.'
"'You say you don't threaten,' says he suspiciously. 'Aint that what you're saying now—something darned like a bluff?'
"'No,' says I, 'it aint. I don't threaten,' and I turned my right hip round towards him where I had my pistol slung. 'I'll hold up my hands and you can take away this pistol if you like,' and I threw up both my arms over my head.
"'Put down your hands,' says he quietly, 'I don't want to take your pistol.' There were mirrors all round the room, and as I turned I caught sight of my face, and though I felt red-hot I could see I was as white as a sheet, and my eyes like coals of fire. Truth to tell, I was mad. 'Don't take things too hard,' says he, 'it'll come right. I know just how you feel. I've been busted myself more nor once. Look here, young man, I've rather taken a liking to you. I'm going to set you going again. I'll give you a thousand dollars out of my own pocket, and that'll start you, and all I'll ask is—'
"'You'll give h—l!' I burst out. 'I'm not a beggar! I don't want no man's charity. I want my money—six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks—neither more nor less. That's all.'"
Stephens paused. The vividness of his own recollections, excited by the recital of the incident, had flushed his face and quickened his breathing. His pipe had gone out, and he signalled to the boy for another coal to relight it. Manuelita sprang up, ran to the kitchen hearth, snatched a coal from it, and gave it to the boy to carry in.
Don Nepomuceno, keenly interested, leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "Yes," he said, "yes. Gambling makes much trouble. I know it, for I was a great gambler myself. There were four years that I gambled a great deal, when I was sowing my wild oats." He nodded with the sententiousness of a reformed character, who yet relished the reminiscence. "It's a bad thing, very bad. But young men will be young men. Now, there's my son Andrés, he gambled a great deal too much last winter. But, look you, I am keeping that young man now out in camp with the sheep herd, to see after the peons. The lambing season is just coming on, and they are going off up the Valle Grande, where there is much green grass. That is far away from the settlements; he can't get into much trouble up there, can he?" and the father chuckled with self-satisfaction over his ingenious little manoeuvre. "But here, I am interrupting you, Don Estevan, and I want to hear the rest of your story. Please excuse me, and continue."
"Well," resumed Stephens, "the upshot of it was he saw I was in earnest. So I was. I expected to die right there. If he'd attempted to leave that room, I'd have jumped him, and then they'd have killed me. I didn't mind, I was so wound up. He turns to me, and says he, 'I believe I'm going to do a thing that I never did before, young man. I'm going to give you back that money that your partner lost of yours.' He went to a safe he had in the corner, unlocks it, takes out a roll of notes and brings 'em to the table. 'Jake,' he sung out to his man through the wall, 'you can put away that shot-gun, it aint needed.'
"He counts out to me the full amount and hands it over.
"'Mr. Frenchy,' says I, 'you're a gentleman. I'll never forget this the longest day I live.'
"'No more'll I,' says he, with a dry grin on his face. 'The laugh's on me this time, I think,' he says, 'and I can tell you that aint the case very often.'
"'I think likely,' says I, getting up to go. 'Good morning, mister; will you shake hands?'
"'That I will,' says he; and we shook.
"'Look here,' says he, holding me by the hand, 'I want to ask you one thing more. If you thought you had the best right to this money why didn't you go to a lawyer and enter suit for it?'
"'Go to a lawyer!' said I; 'what would I do that for? The law in Montana's a thief; you know it, and everyone knows it.' So it was, Don Nepomuceno. The head of the ladrones there was the regular, lawful, elected sheriff of Helena; the road-agents ran the country in fact.
"'No,' says I to Mr. Frenchy, 'I didn't want no lawyer. I heard say you were a gentleman, and I thought I'd give you a chance to prove it, and I'm glad I did.'"
Stephens took a few draws at his pipe; the excitement into which he had worked himself over his story was passing off now the climax was over.
"Well," he resumed, "I went back to my hotel and I woke Rocky. I told him we must part, and I offered to divide. He wouldn't quite do that, but he took a thousand dollars off me. He was mighty penitent, but I told him I'd no use for such a pard any more. I was sick of Montana altogether, and concluded to skip. I paid my hotel bill, went over to Frenchy's and made him a present of my cayuse, and I donated over to him my share in every claim I had located in Montana to compensate him for what he had lost by giving up the half of Rocky's losings. I believe he's made a pot of money out of some of those claims since. I took the stage for Green River City, and then for Denver, and I got through safe without being held up. I salted down most of my money into Denver real estate, which pays me a fair interest, and part I've used in paying my way while I've been prospecting in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. And that's how I come to be here."
"Thank you, Don Estevan, thank you," said the Mexican. "It is most interesting; but I wonder you can think of going back to such a compañero. It is a very perilous idea."
"Oh, well," answered Stephens carelessly, as he rose to take his departure, "meeting him isn't the same thing as going and doubling up with him again. I'll be apt to know more about that when I see him."
But Manuelita's heart gave a little painful throb at the discovery that this man, in whom she was fast learning to take an interest too great for her own peace of mind, could return so lightly to a life that had already brought him into such dangers, and could depart apparently without thinking of her, or of what his loss might mean to her. He did indeed belong to another world.
His mule was brought out and saddled, and his belt once more buckled on, with the revolver hanging low on his right hip. He warmly grasped Don Nepomuceno's hand at parting, and with a smile and a bow and his hat doffed to the ladies, he swung himself into the saddle and rode away.
Don Nepomuceno and his sister stood in the great doorway at the entrance to the courtyard, looking after his retreating form. He rode with the long stirrup and erect military seat of one who had seen service in a United States cavalry regiment, no bad school for horsemanship; his fine figure and his athletic frame showed off to great advantage. A hundred yards away, at the bend of the road, he turned in his saddle to wave his hat once more in a final adieu, and the warm sunlight kissed his profusion of golden curls. Manuelita ran back into the house that her aunt might not detect the emotion betrayed by her quivering lip. But the elder lady had her gaze steadily directed towards the parting guest. "Ah, que hombres tan aventureros, si, son estos!" she said—"What bold adventurers they are, those men!"
"True indeed," answered her brother, "'tis most true. For myself, I hate the Americans, most of them, but admire this one, and I like him too. But he is set on this life of adventure. I sounded him on the matter; I even hinted to him that it was full time for him to marry and settle down. But he would none of it."
"Es hombre muy frio"—"He is a very cold man"—said the Mexican woman, and there was a spice of scorn as well as regret in her tone. She despised a man who was a laggard in love, and her spoken judgment had coincided with Manuelita's thought.
"It is true, it is most true," assented her brother. "He is cold. These Americans are not impassioned in the love of women as we are. The chill of their frozen North is in the very marrow of their bones. They are not like unto us of Mexico and the South."
Those who know them best will bear witness that, whether they are descended from Spanish conquistadores, from the devoted warriors of Montezuma, the passionate hearts of the sons and daughters of Mexico prove them in very truth to be Children of the Sun.