BY THE OIL SEEP UNDER THE BLUFF
ON LANDIS turned the bit of black rock over and over in his hand as he held it under the searching Nevada sunlight. The lids of his light blue eyes narrowed as he looked, and he chewed nervously at the corner of his long upper lip under its cropped reddish mustache. Finally, as though wholly satisfied with the close scrutiny he had given it, he nodded his head slowly.
“You think he good? All same like that other kin’ you show um me?”
The young Paiute was peering into his palm, too.
“I guess so, Nick,” answered Landis; “Anyway, you no tell um ’nother man ’bout this. Savvy?”
The Paiute nodded. It was evident that he “savvied.” He had shown Landis a copper ledge off in the mountains, two years before, and Landis had given him a hundred dollars. It was Indian Nick’s opinion that Landis was “heap pretty good man;” and he now recognized the value of silence until such a time as Landis would let him speak. Other white men had, before this, got him to show them prospects upon promises, and—without an exception—had cheated him out of his due. But Jon Landis was different. This big, quiet man who talked but little, and never laughed at all—him he would be “partner” with, and show him the place down by the river where the black rock sample came from, and the bluffs where—underneath—a queer little spring (that wasn’t water) oozed forth, and lost itself a dozen feet away in the muddy current of the greater stream.
Indian Nick didn’t know what that stream—a very, very little stream—was; and he didn’t care to know. Indians as a rule are not inquisitive. He only knew it looked “heap greasy;” and if the black rock on the sandy mesa above was like the piece that Landis showed him, saying it was from California—then Nick was to have another hundred dollars.
Now that Landis had “guessed” that the rock sample was the same sort, Nick (seeing a hundred dollars easily earned) looked furtively about him as they stood on the railroad track—where the section house and the freight house were sole evidence of a station—to discover if they had been observed talking together. For even a Paiute knows that precaution may prevent a secret from being suspected. No, no one had seen them together. The section foreman was out on the road with his men, and the telegraph operator had not come out of his office in the freight house since he had reported the train that had just brought Landis back to Nevada. No one from the town (as the mining camp up in the foothills was called) had come down to the station that day. The Indian was satisfied; no one would guess that he and Landis were “partners.”
“You come now; I show you that place. He not far—can walk.”
“How far?”
“Maybe two mile, I think. You see. You come now?”
Landis deliberated. Presently he asked:
“You got a shovel, Nick? Got a pick at your wick-i-up?”
“I got um ol’ one—not much good.”
“Well, never mind; they’ll do for today. You go get ’em, and trot on ahead. Where is it?”
Nick pointed in the direction of the river bluffs; and when Landis had reached the mesa the Paiute—with pick and shovel—was already there.
“The ol’ man—my father—asked um me where I go. I no tell um. He ask what for I take pick—take um shovel—what I do. I no say nothin’.”
“That’s right, Nick! Don’t tell anybody. By an’ by, when I get the business all fixed, then we’ll talk. Savvy?”
And again Nick “savvied.”
All about them was the black rock from which Nick had got the sample. Not much of it, but enough to demonstrate the value of what it indicated. It was undoubtedly asphaltum; the indication for oil was good—more than good. Landis was interested. The Paiute was moving off through the stunted greasewood to the bluffs near the river edge, and Landis followed.
The face of the bluffs—eroded and uneven—rose high above the river level; leaving but a narrow footway between their base and the stream, here at this point. Across by the other bank, was a growth of rabbit-wood and sage. A twisted, leafless buck-bush stood lonely and alone at the rim of a dry slough. The carcass of a dead horse—victim of some horse-hide hunter—furnished a gruesome feast for a half dozen magpies that fluttered chattering away as the two figures appeared on the top of the bluffs; and a coyote that had been the magpies’ companion, slipped away into the thicket of rabbit-wood. The river was deep here, and dirty with the debris brought down by its rising waters. Froth, and broken twigs, and sticks swirled around in the eddies. To Landis, there was something unspeakably depressing about the place, though he was well used to the country in all its phases. Its very stillness seemed today to weigh on him.
The two men began the descent; the Indian slipping quickly down the face of the bluffs, and Landis clambering after.
There—at the foot—in a gully so narrow it would escape any but the keenest eye, a tiny, slow-moving, dark thread of a stream oozed from beneath the bluffs of clay, and following the bottom of the narrow cut that ran at right angles to the river—slipped down into the roily waters that bore it away. Landis squatted down by it for closer inspection. He rubbed it between his fingers. He smelt of it. Yes, it was oil!
“All right, Nick! You’ll get your hundred dollars!”
Nick grinned delightedly; but the face of Landis—from the high cheek bones down to the square set jaws that were burned as red as the skin of an Indian is supposed to be—was a mask of immobility. This find meant many thousands of dollars to him, but he only said:
“Here, boy! Pitch in now, and dig out under that bank!” as he pointed out a part of the bluff at the very edge of the gully. And Nick—strong, and young, and keen as himself to know how much of the “greasy” stream was dammed up behind the bluffs that the pick could disclose, swung it with strong strokes that ate into the clay in a way that did Landis good to see.
He had been working but a short time when the pick point caught into something other than lumps of clay; caught at it—clawed at it—and then dragged out (one—two—half a dozen) bones stripped of all flesh.
Nick stopped.
“What are you stopping for?” Landis asked sharply. “Go on! It’s only some horse or a cow that’s died here.” But already he himself had seen the thigh bone of a human being. Nick hesitated; still staring at what lay there.
“Damn you, go on! What’s the matter with you?”
The steady strokes recommenced. Little by little there was uncovered and dragged out the skeleton of someone Who Once Was. Nick looked sullen and strange, but he did not falter. He worked steadily on until they lay—an indistinguishable heap—beside the narrow gully. Landis said nothing, and the pick strokes ate farther and farther into the bank.
Suddenly there was a terrible sound—half a shriek and half a gurgle that died away in the throat—which startled them; and swinging around, Landis saw an old Indian tottering along the narrow ledge that bordered the river there. He was stumbling and blindly staggering toward them, waving his arms above his head as he came. A bareheaded, vilely dirty and ragged old man—how old no one might be able to say. As his bleared eyes found the skeleton heap, he shrieked forth in the Indian tongue something (though Landis knew no word of what he might say) that sent a chill over him of prescient knowledge of what was to come. He turned his back on the old man, and addressed himself to Nick.
“What does he say?”
The younger Paiute looked old and gray with a horror that Landis refused to translate.
“My father——”
“Yes, I know. Your father. What does he say?”
“My father——” Nick’s words came slowly, “He say——them——bones——”
“For God’s sake, what? Why don’t you say what? Can’t you talk?”
“Them,” Nick’s teeth were chattering now, “my——my——mother.”
Landis caught his breath. Then a stinging pain shot through his left arm, and something fell to the ground. He swung around in time to see the old Paiute, with another stone in his raised hand, his face distorted with hate and fury.
“Quit that!” Landis yelled, and strode toward him. But the old man’s fury was now turned to fear as he saw this white giant bearing down on him, and the stone fell short of its mark. He started to flee before the strength he feared, but the narrow ledge that lay between the river and the bluff would have been but insecure foothold for steadier steps than his. He tripped—reeled—and then with a cry that Landis will remember so long as he lives—he went backward; and down into the muddy river the eddies sucked him—down and down—and so out of sight.
Then Jon Landis fought with the one who, with raised pick, stood ready to avenge the death of his father, and the desecration of his other dead. The struggle was not long, but they fought as men do who know that but one man shall live when the combat be done. Twice the pick descending almost struck the bared head of the white man; thrice his adversary forced him to the very water’s edge. Landis knew he was fighting for his life, and he watched his opportunity. It came. Eluding that rain of death-meant blows, he caught the Indian close to him, and with a quick movement flung the pick far out into the river. Then they clinched in the final struggle for life that to the white man or the brown man is equally dear. Back and forth, swaying and bending, the hot breath of each in the other’s face, they moved over the narrow confine. It was not for long; for—with one mighty final effort—Landis wrenched himself loose, caught at the other, shoved—flung him off, and it was over. Jon Landis stood there alone.
The fleshless skull grinned out at him from the heap of bones. Landis shivered; he felt cold. Overhead, clouds like swansdown were beautiful against the sapphire blue of the afternoon sky. A soft wind blowing down the valley brought him the sound of a locomotive’s whistle; and the breeze was sweet with the breath of spring flowers growing upon the banks, away from the bluffs. A little brown bird began to warble from the buck-brush across the river.
It must have been five minutes that Landis stood there without moving. Then he picked up the shovel and walked over to the Indian woman’s bones. It did not take him long to dump them into the little gully where the oil ran, and to cover them over with loose earth from the place she had lain for thirty years. Afterward, he scraped the earth about with the broken shovel, to destroy all footprints. Then he dropped it into the stream. He would never come here again; and now there was no evidence that he had ever been there.
Then he climbed the bluffs. Nor did he look back as he walked rapidly away.
