Foxfire Page 16

  “Sure, Lute. You got a great idea there. That’ll cut costs, all right.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  AMANDA sat on the mine office porch until she got restless, then she got up and wandered down to the parking space below the change house and found their car. She put the suit and the basket on the seat, and decided, since as usual it was getting chilly as soon as the sun set, to walk around. They couldn’t really mind that, the prohibition for women applied only to underground.

  Dart would have to come up on top in the elevator thing they called a cage, she knew that much, and she walked over to -the jumble of little buildings below the head frame which stuck up like an intricate steel gallows thirty feet into the air, above the shaft. There was a whirring of machinery from the adjacent hoist house, and she looked timidly inside the open door. Two large Diesels were running the air compressors and the hoist, and Amanda stared at them with the nervous awe the roaring of huge machinery gives to the uninitiated.

  The young hoistman and Amanda saw each other at the same time; he was sitting on a platform by levers and an indicator, and he shouted something at her, and beckoned. She picked her way gingerly over to his platform and said, “I’m Mrs. Dartland. I’m just waiting for my husband to come up.”

  He nodded, showing to Amanda’s relief no particular surprise. He was an earnest young man named Bill Riley, who was new to the Shamrock though he had grown up in the Ray Mines. He was proud of his job, which entailed considerable responsibility, and he was very conscientious. He kept a thermos full of coffee by his stool to give him extra alertness during the long night hours of watching for signals and timing the hoist.

  “That’ll likely be Mr. Dartland now—” he said to Amanda, as a light flashed and a horn buzzed. “D’you want to wait at the collar?”

  Correctly interpreting this as the mouth of the shaft, Amanda picked her way back amongst the whirring engines, and stood outside. The man-cage clanked up into sight, and Dart stepped off, though for an instant she did not recognize him in the hard black helmet with its single lamp flashing in front like a cyclops eye.

  “For the love of Mike—” he said laughing. “Where did you blow from!”

  “Oh, Dart—I’ve got so much to tell you ... ask you, I thought I’d ride home with you. Don’t mind, do you?”

  “I’m charmed.” He squeezed her waist, delighted to hear her voice bright and happy as it had not been in a long time. Delighted that she, who had been lying around the house and moping for days, should have found the energy to walk up to the mine.

  “Did you see Mrs. Cunningham?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, and she’s wonderful, but that isn’t what...” She stopped. No use explaining all that yet.

  “I thought so,” said Dart with satisfaction. Calise had helped as he had known she would. “Wait’ll I change, Andy. I’ve got to shower but I’ll hurry.”

  “You sure need one, my gardenia,” said Amanda wrinkling her nose, “but I love you anyway.”

  Dart laughed and hurried into the change house. He had had a routine day underground. The usual petty problems to be dealt with, mild vexations and then mild pleasure when the problems had been solved. The new cross-cut on the 700 had hit a vein finally, but already it was pinching out again, and it was evidently not the main lode, though a few weeks of highergrade ore had helped. Tyson was still pursuing a waiting policy. Dart’s two interviews with him had been inconclusive. He had listened to Dart’s hunch about driving a blind cross-cut in the old Shamrock, listened indulgently and agreed not to mention it to anyone. But he had not consented.

  “Maybe later, Dart. If we’re really up against it. But you know yourself it’s an expensive gamble. One of these days when I feel a bit better, I’ll get underground with you and have a look, myself. In the meantime you’re doing a fine job.”

  So the mine limped along and Dart, temporarily relinquishing his plan, bent all his efforts to giving the present operating policy as firm a footing as possible. Even to the avoidance of clashes with Mablett, whenever there was no danger to the men involved.

  He ran out of the change house and jumped into the car beside Amanda. “Nice to see you, kid—” he said and kissed her. She snuggled up against him and they started down the mountain road.

  “D’you find the old suit all right?” he asked, as they passed above the mill down in the canyon. The mill lights were off now except for the watchman’s. Be nice if we ever could get out enough ore to keep her running steady down there, thought Dart.

  “Uhuh—” said Amanda. “And I found something else too. Something I think is frantically exciting.”

  “Not pictures of nekkid ladies I hope, I can’t remember exactly how much of my past’s in that trunk!”

  “No nekkid ladies. A—a basket.”

  “Basket?”

  She reached around to the back seat, and held the basket near his face. “Here it is—can you see what it is?”

  He slowed down and peered through the gloom. “Oh, yes,” he said after a moment. “That was Saba’s, my mother’s—she wove it. I’d forgotten where it was. Is that so exciting?”

  “Do you remember what’s in it?”

  “Not very well. I think Saba put in whatever’s there.” He was puzzled by the tension he felt in Amanda, and a trifle uneasy. He knew that his Indian background did not usually give her pleasure.

  “I’ll show you when we get home—” she said brightly. “By the way—I cooked a stew this morning, out of that cook book Mama sent. I don’t think it’ll be too awful, and there’s some left in that bottle of hootch Hugh gave us last week. We’ll have a party.”

  “Fine,” said Dart, “but are we celebrating anything special?”

  “Indeed we are!” cried Amanda.

  After a couple of drinks, the stew and coffee, Amanda cleared the table of dishes, and brought in the basket with a little air of mystery. Her eyes were shining and Dart contemplated her with affection and amusement.

  “So Saba made the basket?” she asked putting it on the table between them.

  He nodded, smiling. He remembered vividly when it was made, because he had been about seven and very bored with hunting for “Devil’s Claw,” the dark pincer-like mountain plant which alone could produce the black design.

  “There’s lots of queer little things in here,” said Amanda spreading them on the table, but carefully leaving in the basket the copper disk and the notes. “What are they, Dart? Did you play with them?”

  “Good Lord, no!” cried Dart staring at the buckskin pouch, and the feathers, and the piece of horn and the beaded thong. “I wasn’t even allowed to touch them.”

  “Why? What are they?”

  “They were Tanosay’s. He was a great shaman, a medicine man. These were the instruments of—of his trade.” Dart spoke lightly but his eyes were thoughtful. The awe with which these little objects had once inspired him was inextricably mingled with his reverence for Tanosay who had never doubted their power.

  “Tell me about them,” said Amanda.

  He saw that she was working up to some sort of climax, but also that she seemed to be interested. For some reason the Apache basket had broken through the tenuous barrier she had, since their arrival in Arizona, erected against his Indian blood.

  “Well,” he said, picking up the pouch, and loosening the drawstring. “These were all used in various ceremonies. This yellow powder is hoddentin, the pollen of the tule, a kind of bullrush that grows in swamps.” He showed her a pinch of it, then put the pinch back in the bag. “It’s considered very sacred.”

  He picked up the feathers. “These came off an eagle. Four is the Apache sacred number. They give strength and courage to the fainthearted.” He smiled and took up the beaded thong. “This is called the Izze-Kloth, I suppose you might call it a sort of Indian rosary, since it’s used for prayers and incantations. And this little hunk of horn was the most important of all to Tanosay.”

  “Why?” she asked as he paused.

&
nbsp; “It’s hard to explain.... Each medicine man, or woman, discovers some object in nature which is his own particular channel through which the great Life Spirit flows. His power, he calls it. It might be lightning, or a fox or a snake or a rock ... anything. For Tanosay it was the white-tailed deer, because of a mystical experience he had in his youth. This bit of horn came from that deer. He had”—added Dart slowly—“great faith in it.”

  Amanda stared at her husband. She had never heard him use just that grave and musing tone before. Surely the blunt practical Dart did not also have faith in these primitive fetishes, interesting though they might be as curiosities.

  He raised his eyes and smiled at her, answering as though she had spoken. “I don’t know, Andy, but I’ve seen Tanosay make some remarkable cures, after the Agency doctor had given the patient up completely.”

  “Oh, well, of course—” she said after a moment. “One does hear of faith cures all the time. Like Mesmer and ... and Coue.”

  Dart laughed. He began to gather up Tanosay’s ceremonial objects. “Let’s have one more cigarette and then tackle those dishes,” he said.

  “Oh, no, waitl There’s something else in the basket.... Look, do you remember this?” she held out to him the copper disk.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Dart taking it in his hand and examining it with amusement. “The map to the Pueblo Encantado. That sure gave me a thrill when I was fifteen.”

  “It seemed to give your father a thrill, too,” she said giving him the notes. “Have you ever read these?”

  “I don’t think so—” Dart leafed them over. “Poor old Dad, this sort of thing was a hobby of his those last years when he couldn’t get around much. Made him feel adventurous.” “But, Dart—” she said frowning. “Didn’t Tanosay give you that map later, after your father died? Didn’t Tanosay believe in the Lost Mine?”

  “Tanosay wasn’t interested in any mine —” said Dart beginning to laugh, “Andy, don’t tell me...” He stared at her sober intent little face. “Andy, you haven’t been bitten by the bug, just like that....”

  “What bug?” she said crossly.

  “Lost Gold fever. Pie in the sky—My poor baby, there’s at least four hundred lost treasures in the Southwest, and I guess through the years since old Coronado first got the idea, there’s been a million suckers hunting for them.”

  “I don’t care,” she said her eyes flashing. “This is a special one, your father said so.”

  Dart stopped laughing, he gave her a keen look. “I guess I better read those notes.” He pulled the kerosene lamp nearer to him, and bent his dark head over the papers. She sat back and waited. The little kitchen smelled of the kerosene lamp, and of stew and onions. She got up and opened the back door a crack, then came and sat down again tensely.

  Dart finished the notes and raised his head. “Yes,” he said. “It’s a swell yarn. These old Spanish padres come to life, don’t they?”

  “But what happened next, Dart? The part your father started to write and didn’t.” She pulled the notes over and looked at the last page. “...the further angles that comprise archeology, geology, and the history of the Apache Indians’? Why didn’t he go on?”

  “I don’t know. But I think he didn’t go on because my mother asked him not to.”

  “Why should she do that?”

  Dart pulled out cigarettes, offered her one, and lit them. “Look, Andy, I’ll tell you what I know about this legend, but really it’s nothing to get steamed up about.”

  She leaned a little forward across the table. “Well, tell me....”

  “You haven’t seen any cliff dwellings, have you?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I’ve read about them, of course.”

  “You’ve read about a whole lot of things, my pet. Well, anyway, there are hundreds of cliff dwellings over parts of Arizona and New Mexico, though the most famous one is probably Mesa Verde in Colorado. They were all built by Indians, called Anasazi or ‘The Ancient Ones’ by the nomadic Navajo and Apache tribes who came to this country later; nobody knows just how or from where. Probably all these Indians came at different times from Asia, via Bering Strait, but that doesn’t matter to us though it keeps the archeologists sweating and snarling happily at each other.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Go on, what about this particular Pueblo Encantado?”

  “It’s a legend in Tanosay’s tribe, the Coyoteros. There’s a theory that the Coyotero branch of Apaches were amongst the first to come south into Arizona, and that they intermarried with the descendants of the Anasazi whom they found here. That would probably be in the fifteenth century, though nobody knows that either. The story was handed down by word of mouth to Tanosay back through his father’s father’s father X number of times. Anyway, one of Tanosay’s remote ancestors married an Anasazi girl whose own ancestors had once lived in the Pueblo Encantado, and abandoned it intact for good reasons.”

  “What reasons?” she said as he paused. “And when would they have abandoned it?”

  Dart laughed. “Your avid interest is most flattering, and I’m giving you the best gems culled from Archeology I at Tucson, but nobody knows the answer to that one, either. Why, indeed, sometime between 1200 and 1400, did all the Ancient Ones abandon their beautiful fortress cliff dwellings? Drought? Maybe. Disease? Maybe. Depredations by the Navajo or Apache? Maybe. But for the Pueblo Encantado, none of those are the reasons handed down through the tribe to Tanosay.”

  She waited impatiently as he stopped. He was staring at the copper disk and he heard once more the solemn voice of Tanosay. He felt again the weight of the old hand upon his shoulder and saw by the light of the campfire the stern admonishing eyes as they gazed down on the upturned boyish face. He could not now remember the Apache words that Tanosay had used, but he remembered well the tenor of them and the tingle of awe he had felt as he listened.

  The City of Spirits lay somewhere in the wildest mountains of Apacheria, said Tanosay. Far north into the turquoise sky beyond the four sacred horn peaks. Long, long before the coming of the Dinneh, by which Tanosay meant his own people, the city in the hidden canyon had been a happy land where the Anasazi dwelt in joy and contentment. Then evil entered into their hearts, greed and lust stung their bowels like serpents and the Great Spirit became very angry. He came down to them in a dreadful blast of thunder and lightning and drove them from the happy land which they no longer deserved. He made of it a sacred place, and set mountain spirits to guard it from all earthly wickedness. But when He saw how bitterly the Ancient Ones regretted their lost paradise, and the peace which had once been theirs, He softened their exile by a promise.

  If the city and the valley were forever kept from human defilement, those of the ancient blood might go back there someday and live again in everlasting contentment. And Tanosay so profoundly believed this that the listening boy, in whose blood there was a strain of the Anasazi blood, had believed it too at that time—as Saba did.

  Dart became again conscious of Amanda’s expectant face; he sighed and he overcame his increasing reluctance to continue the story.

  He resumed the light casual tone in which he had been speaking. “The tradition is a sort of Garden of Eden tale, I suppose. The Anasazi were driven out because they had sinned. But this Coyotero band, though none of them has ever seen it, still think of the place as a kind of heaven. Sacred and inviolate. It is forbidden to go near it. Not that that would be easy, since nobody has the faintest idea just where it is.”

  “But what about the map?” cried Amanda. “The copper thing.”

  “That was made by an enemy, a Mimbreño Apache, over a hundred years ago, with copper from the Santa Rita mines in New Mexico, I guess. Anyway, the Mimbreños and Coyoteros were at war, and this particular Mimbreño seems to have stumbled on the most infuriating thing he could do to the Coyoteros—invading their sacred canyon. However, he never even got back across the Tonto Creek with his map before the Coyoteros made mincemeat of him.”

&nb
sp; “Oh,” said Amanda thoughtfully. “But why did they keep the map if they didn’t want anyone to know where the enchanted pueblo was?”

  Dart laughed, tamping out his cigarette. “For one thing, it’s a very bad map; look at it, the Mimbreño doubtless meant it only as a guide for himself—and secondly, I suppose the Coyoteros felt that anything associated with the sacred place became tinged with magic too, and must be preserved. Now, I’ve told you all I know. Let’s get at those dishes, before I fall to snoring.”

  “But the mine—” said Amanda, not moving from the table. “The wall of gold? You haven’t said a thing about that.” “Because I don’t know a thing about that!” answered Dart with some impatience, “and I thoroughly doubt that there is such a thing.”

  “The Padre said so—Father Gonzales—” she said frowning, “and he had a lot of gold stuff in his pocket.”

  “Which he might have picked up anywhere in his wanderings, as the other guy, his superior, intimated. Most of those mountains up there are mineralized. Also he might have stolen the stuff.... Andy, for the love of Mike, he was nothing but a crazy old man with a wild story. He had to cook up something to explain the disappearance of his brother missionary, whom he probably murdered.”

  “But you believe he actually found the hidden canyon, and the lost city—the particular one Tanosay told you about?”

  “I suppose so—” said Dart, getting up, “the details correspond to Coyotero tradition, general location, malpais, invisible entrance to the canyon through a rock door, waterfall, etc.” He put the copper disk and his father’s notes into the basket. “I’ll carry this back to the trunk someday when I’m near Mrs. Cunningham’s. I promised Tanosay to take care of them, though I must confess I’d forgotten all about them.” Amanda got up too; she walked to the stove and picked up the kettle of steaming water, poured a little over the dishes in the pan, and then she put the kettle down; she turned and looked up at him.