THE NAVAJO TURQUOISE RING
By permission _The Argonaut_, San Francisco, Cal.
"I tell you, Miss Nell, it's not safe for you to ride over the range somuch all alone. That Navajo's plumb crazy about you now, and he's liableto do you some mischief."
The speaker, a handsome, blue-eyed young fellow, clad in the rough garbof a cowboy, with broad sombrero, "chaparejos," his buckskin glovesthrust through his cartridge belt, stood leaning against the door-postof a typical Arizona ranch house. In one hand he held the end of a longhair rope, the other end being fast to his pony, which, all saddled,stood pawing and restless, eager to be away on the range. Slung on thenear side of the saddle was a Winchester carbine, for, between white andred thieves, the cowboys had to be ready for all sorts of emergencies,and besides, the big gray wolves were beginning to show up on the range,and a wolf scalp was worth twenty dollars at the county seat.
The person to whom these remarks were addressed stood idly switching herriding-habit with her "quirt," a handsome piece of cowboy work, overwhich one of her many admirers had spent hours by the light of acampfire plaiting and decorating it with "Turk's heads" and other fancyknots known to cowboy quirt-makers. She was all ready for a ride andwaiting only for her pony to be brought up from the corral, where Juan,the Mexican, was saddling him.
There was a pleading, pathetic tone in the man's voice that spoke thelover, even had his eyes shown no sign of passion; but his words seemedto rouse all the perversity of her sex. Her red lips curled and herbrown eyes snapped. "Oh, pshaw, Mr. Cameron, you're always worryingabout some imaginary danger. Please return me my ring--that is, if youhave finished examining it."
A red wave swept over Cameron's face, like the shadow of a cloud acrossthe prairie on a bright day, and he stood for a full minute idly turningthe ring in question upon the very tip of the little finger of his ownsun-browned hand. It was a splendid specimen of the Navajo silversmith'sart. Now, the Navajo Indians' blankets have made them famous, but theydeserve quite as much fame for their cunning as workers in silver.
This ring was indeed a gem. It was wide, as most of their rings are, cutin two on the inner side so that it could be made larger or smaller by"springing" it to fit any finger, and in the top was set a turquoise asblue as a summer sky--a stone precious to the Navajos--that among thetribe would have bought twenty ponies, a hundred sheep, and squawsgalore. Around the ring ran the most intricate and delicate carving, andthe whole effect was at once unique and barbaric.
The girl's hand was outstretched for the ring, and almost mechanicallythe man turned and dropped it into the upturned palm. "Well, Miss Nell,I've warned you, and I'm sure if Mr. Hull were here that he'd feel justas I do." His voice grew tense. "I can't go with you today, for I've gotto go over the other side of the mountain to see if I can find thoselost horses, and won't be back till dark."
The girl, scarcely heeding his words, took the ring, and in amock-heroic sort of way kissed and slipped it on to her engagementfinger, a gleam of mischief in her eyes, at which action Cameron, stungalmost to madness, smothered a groan, and strode across the porch, hisspurs clanking on the floor, gathering up his hair rope as he went. Withone hand on the pommel of the saddle and the other on the pony's mane,he leaped lightly into his seat without aid of stirrup and, bringing thecoil of rope down on the animal's flank, went off down the line of wirefence on a dead run, and soon turned out of sight around a low hill inthe valley.
The girl watched him in silence until he was lost to view, and then,with a gay laugh, turned into the room, saying, "Poor Cam, what fun itis to tease him!"
A moment later, when Juan appeared at the door with her horse, shepulled on her pretty buckskin gloves, and with a "Goodbye, Mary, I'll behome by noon," to the heavy-faced cook, who stood watching her from thedoor of the log kitchen, she rode off almost as fast as Cameron, but ina different direction.
Three months before these happenings George Hull had gone down to thelittle railroad station, some thirty miles from the ranch, to meet hiswife's only sister, who was coming to spend the summer with them inArizona, and from her first day she had taken to the life like a duckto water. She was a fearless horsewoman, and never so happy as when outon the range riding with the cowboys, if they were there, or alone ifthey were not. Nell Steele was a warm-hearted, impulsive girl, but shecould no more help making a slave of every man she met than she couldstop breathing.
It was an easy task for her, too, and it mattered not whether it wassome high-bred, educated gentleman, or a rough Texas "puncher" who hadnever in all his life spoken a dozen words to a woman of her class. Andnaturally with such surroundings, with men unused to women's wiles, shesoon had the whole country at her feet.
Of them all, however, young Cameron had by far the worst case of it, andthe girl, while in her heart greatly pleased with his attentions, seemedto delight in keeping him in a state of absolute misery by alternatelyraising him to the very highest pinnacle of happiness, and againdropping him into the bottomless pit of despair. Deep in her heart sheknew he was her ideal, but she could not resist the temptation tocoquette with and tease him.
Cameron had come west for his health some years before. Too hardapplication at college had seriously impaired his strength, and he hadbeen ordered to live in the open air for several years. Letters ofintroduction to George Hull had brought him to this ranch in the highmountain country of northern Arizona, and he had taken to the cowboylife from the very first, until now he was looked upon as one of themost trusted and satisfactory "boys" on the place.
The ranch to which George Hull brought his pretty sister-in-law waslocated near the line of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and, as theNavajos are great roamers, it was nothing unusual to have them hanginground. One day a party of them came, bringing in some horses the boyshad missed for some time. It was Miss Steele's first sight of theNavajo, and she came down to the corral, where they were all gathered,to see them. Among them was a young chief named Chatto, who had attendedan Indian school at Albuquerque, and could therefore speak fairly goodEnglish. He was a picture of savage finery. Around his waist was buckleda costly belt made of great plates of solid silver; in his ears hunghuge silver rings; each arm was clasped by bracelets of the sameprecious metal; around his neck were yards of the precious silver,turquoise and shell beads so dear to the Navajo heart; and his moccasinsand leggings were thickly studded with buttons fashioned from dimes,quarters, and half-dollars. Across his shoulders hung a gaudy Navajoblanket, and his horse's bridle was fairly weighted down with glitteringtrophies of the Indian silversmith's skill.
"_He was a picture of savage finery_"]
"_Now the Navajos are famous silversmiths_"]
It was but a few moments before Miss Steele was bartering with him for abracelet; but it was of no avail, he would not sell it at any price.However, when the other Indians left, he stayed behind, until, as thedinner-hour was nearing, the boys asked him to eat with them. It wassoon evident that he had eyes only for Miss Steele; and after dinner shespent an hour talking to him of his school experience and trying tolearn a few words of the Navajo tongue.
The next day he returned, and the next, until it was plainly to beseen that the gay laugh and brown eyes of the girl had completelybewitched him.
One day he came bearing the ring I have described, and shyly offered itto her, insisting that she must place it on her engagement finger, whichshe did, never dreaming that the boys, keenly watching from thebunk-house, had put him up to it, telling him that that was the waywhite lovers did, and that once she put on his ring she was his by allthe laws and customs of the white man.
When Cameron, who was away at the time, heard of it, he was furious, andwent straight to Miss Steele and urged her to return the ring and banishthe Indian from the ranch. But she, seeing that back of his lover'seagerness for her safety was a lover's jealousy as well, affected not tobelieve him, and declared her intention of keeping and wearing the ring.It was this ring that she had kissed so tragically and replaced on h
erhand.
On leaving the ranch, the girl gave her pony an almost free rein for thefirst two or three miles. It was a glorious morning in September, whenthe sun had lost its greatest power, and the air was fairly intoxicatingin its freshness. The range never looked finer than it did now, afterthe summer rains had covered it with a wonderful growth of grass dottedwith millions of daisies, black-eyed Susans, purple lupines, and dozensof other varieties of prairie flowers, which, in places, fairly made theair heavy with their perfume. The trail led her over a wide mesa, and atits highest point she stopped her pony and drank in the wondrous scene.Away off to the north the great tablelands, or mesas, where live thesnake-loving Moqui Indians, hung in an almost indescribable grandeur,blue and misty against the sky, more like a mirage than a reality. Acouple of saucy prairie dogs barked shrilly at her from their adjacentvillage; a coyote, disturbed by her coming, skulked hastily away fromwhere he had been trying to surprise a little calf, left lying under asagebush while its mother went on down the trail to water. Aboveher, high in the heavens, idly circled half a dozen heavy-wingedturkey-buzzards, those scavengers of the prairies, a sure sign thatsomewhere below them an animal lay dead and they were gathering for afeast. As far as the eye could reach were rolling hills, with here andthere parks of cedars, while scattered over the prairie were hundreds ofcattle and horses, for George Hull was one of the heaviest cattle-ownersin northern Arizona, and this was the heart of his range.
Across the valley below her she could see the figure of a solitaryhorseman, which, after a few moments she decided to be Cameron, althoughshe had thought him miles away from there by this time. Her pony havingrecovered his wind, she started down the mesa toward the approachingfigure, glad to see some human being in all that waste of lonelinessaround her. As she drew nearer, she saw that it was no white man, but anIndian, the red sash tied around his head being plainly visible at quitea distance, but undaunted, she kept on her course, presuming him to bethe Indian mail-carrier who came in from the agency twice a week withthe mail-sack tied behind his saddle.
As the distance between them lessened, she saw with great uneasinessthat it was her admirer, Chatto, and, with a sort of guilty fear in herheart, she turned off the trail and pushed her pony into a lope towarda bunch of horses grazing near, as if she wanted to look at them closer.A glance over her shoulder showed her that the Indian had also turnedand was following her, and the girl, now thoroughly alarmed, urged herpony to his fullest speed. The Indian called to her to stop, but sheonly rode the harder. Chatto, however, was well mounted and slowlygained on the flying figure; her cowboy hat had blown from her head, butwas held by the string around her neck as she urged her pony with voiceand quirt.
"Stop, I shoot!" called the Navajo, but she rode the faster, expectingevery instant to hear the crack of his Winchester. At last he was withinthirty feet of her, and she felt that her pony had done his utmost andthere was no escape. Another look over her shoulder showed her that theIndian had taken down his long rawhide reata and was swinging it roundand round his head preparatory for a throw at her. She rememberedhearing Hull tell of Mexican and cowboy fights, where the victim wasroped and pulled off his horse and across the prairie, until everysemblance of human shape was dragged out of it, and her heart sankwithin her, for she knew by some woman's instinct that he had realizedshe had been fooling him, and was thirsting for revenge.
Faster and faster they rode, and nearer and nearer he drew, till shecould hear the "swish" of the rope through the air; she crouched lowover the saddle to offer as small a mark as possible, meantime prayingfor deliverance, which in her heart she little thought would come.
Cameron found his horses but a few miles out from the ranch, and,quickly rounding them up, started the bunch toward home on a sharp run,arriving there not long after Miss Steele had left. Questioning Mary asto the direction she had taken, he struck off again on the range in acourse that he shrewdly judged would enable him, as if by accident, tomeet Miss Steele on her homeward way.
Some three or four miles from the ranch the mesa he was crossing endedabruptly in a cliff some two hundred feet high, which extended forseveral miles in an unbroken line with but one or two places where ananimal could get up or down. The view from the edge of this cliff or"rim rock," as it was more commonly called, over the wide valley spreadout below it for miles and miles was unexcelled, and Cameron, knowingthat Miss Steele must come up this cliff at one of two places, headedfor the one he felt she would be most likely to take. As he drew nearthe edge of the mesa he left the trail and rode over to the cliff; andthinking perhaps to surprise a bunch of antelope feeding quietly in thevalley below him, as well as to prevent Miss Steele from first seeinghim, should she chance to be below, he left his pony under a cedar and,taking his Winchester in his hand, carefully walked up to the edge ofthe cliff.
The road leading down to the valley ran close under the cliff and waslost to sight around a point of the mesa but a short distance to hisright. Carefully scanning the prairie, he could see no one, but, fromthe way three or four bunches of wild horses were tearing across thevalley below him, he felt satisfied, that either she or some one elsehad started them, and concluded to wait a few moments.
Suddenly, from far below, came a sound that for an instant sent hisheart to his throat, for it seemed as if he heard a woman's voice, borneupward from around the point to his right, and yet it was far morelikely to be the almost human cry of a mountain lion, or even thechildish yell of some lone coyote, either of which could readily bemistaken for a female voice in distress. As Cameron stood there, fairlyholding his breath in his eagerness to catch the faintest sound frombelow, one moment assuring himself that his ears were at fault and thenext so certain that it was a woman's voice that he could scarcely waitfor its repetition in order that he could be sure which way to go, onceagain there came faintly and yet more definitely than before the cry ofdistress. The voice was Miss Steele's, and before he was really surefrom which quarter it came, there burst into sight around the point ofthe mesa, not a quarter of a mile away from him but down in the valley,the figure of a girl on horseback leaning low over her pony's neck, andurging him to his utmost speed on the road leading up to the cliff,while some forty or fifty feet behind her, riding as hard as she was theNavajo Chatto, his red head-band gone, his long black hair streaming outin the wind, and whirling over his head in a great loop his rawhidereata.
It took Cameron but an instant to grasp the situation and see that theIndian had tried to overtake the girl, and failing, meant to rope anddrag her from her horse. He quickly saw also that busied with his reata,and not having a chance to use the quirt, his pony was falling slightlybehind, for the Navajos seldom wear spurs, and the girl was not sparingher pony's flanks, but was using her quirt at every jump. Cameron'sfirst impulse was to spring down the cliff, and run to her aid, butwith a groan he realized that it would take him too long to do this, forit was only by careful climbing that one could get down the first fortyor fifty feet of the wall, and then the rest would be slow traveling atthe very best. The race below him was in plain view now, and in a fewrods more they would pass out of his sight in the little side canyonthrough which the road led up to the top of the cliff. To ride back tothat place would take too long, also, and the man quickly realized thatit was no time to delay.
To kill a Navajo meant trouble for everybody around, for the whole tribewould take it up, and wreak vengeance upon any white settlers they couldfind, hence that was not to be thought of except in the last extremity.But Cameron knew that he could kill the Navajo's pony and save the girl.Throwing his Winchester over a rock for a rest, with a mental estimateof five hundred yards' distance to his mark, he took careful aim at theshoulder of the Indian's pony and sent a shot which sped fair and trueto its mark, the animal rolling headlong in the dirt, and the ridersprawling fully twenty feet away, but unharmed.
For an instant the Indian was stunned, then, evidently thinking his ponyhad fallen by accident, arose and started toward him. Cameron, however,was
ready for this move. Presuming the Navajo would try to get hisrifle, which was slung in its holster underneath the dead horse, he senta second shot, before Chatto could get half way to the body, strikingthe ground close enough to him to convince him as to the cause of thepony's fall. With true Indian instinct he turned and, to disconcertCameron's aim, ran in a zig-zag way to a deep ditch, or wash, near theroad, into which he threw himself and crawled and wormed his way down towhere the sides were high enough to shelter his body.
Meantime Cameron, not daring to leave his place until he knew the girlwas safely up the cliff, forced the Navajo to keep to cover by firing anoccasional shot in his direction, until, with a sigh of relief, he sawthe girl "raise the hill" at his left, and stood up and waved his hat toher. Up to this time she had scarcely known to what cause she owed herdeliverance. All she knew was that a shot had been fired, and she heardno more thunder of horse's hoofs behind her, but not being too sure ofwhat it all meant, she never drew rein nor spared her pony until she sawCameron's figure on the cliff and knew that she was safe.
A few moments later an hysterical, sobbing girl threw herself from hersaddle straight into the arms of the man who loved her, and whom, shenow knew, she loved.
Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan Outlaw and Other Stories Page 8