University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
GOOD-BYE.

THESE Indians, and all Indians for that
matter, have some strange customs, at which
we laugh, or talk of in a mild, missionary,
patronizing sort of a way.

Did it ever occur to an American sovereign, as he
lifted up his voice in the public places, and thanked
God that he is not as Indians are, that they may
possibly laugh at some of his customs too? I think
it never did.

When an Indian gets sick his friends have a dance.
When a white man begins to lose his hair he rushes
off to a barber, and has what he has left cut off to
the scalp. Nature, always obliging, comes to his
assistance then; and he never has to have any great
portion of it cut again, but is permitted to make the
rest of the journey with his head as bright and
naked as a globe.

Very odd to have a dance when you get ill; but
not half so odd as it is to cut off your hair to save

your hair. Indians, who never cut the hair, and
women also, who until recently wore their hair
nearly natural, never are bald. Yet I reckon men
have gone on cutting their hair for baldness, the very
thing that brings it on, for thousands of years past,
and, I suppose, will still go on doing so for thousands
of years to come.

We received some visits now from the chief of the
Shastas. He was not a tall man, as one would
suppose who had seen his warriors, but a giant in
strength. You would have said, surely this man is
part grizzly bear. As I have said before, he was
bearded like a prophet.

I now began to spend days and even weeks in the
Indian village over towards the south in a canon,
took part in the sports of the young men, listened to
the teachings and tales of the old, and was not unhappy.

The Prince was losing his old cheerfulness as
the summer advanced, and once or twice he half
hinted of taking a long journey away to the world
below.

At such times I would so wish to ask him where
was his home, and why he had left it, but could not
summon courage. As for myself, let it be here
understood, once for all, that when a man once casts
his lot in with the Indians he need return to his
friends no more, unless he has grown so strong of

soul that he does not need their countenance, for he is
with them disgraced for ever. I had crossed the
Rubicon.

It was the time of the Autumn Feasts, when the
Indians meet together on a high oak plain, a sort of
hem of the mountain, overlooking the far valley of
the Sacramento, to celebrate in dance and song
their battles of the summer and recount the virtues
of their dead. On this spot, among the oaks, their
fathers had met for many and many a generation.
Here all were expected to come in rich and gay
attire, and to give themselves up to feasting and
the dance, and show no care in their faces, no
matter how hard fortune had been upon them.

Indian summer, this. A mellowness and balm in
all the atmosphere; a haze hanging over all things,
and all things still and weary like, like a summer
sunset.

The manzineta-berries were yellow as gold, the
rich anther was here, the maple and the dogwood that
fringed the edge of the plain were red as scarlet, and
set against the wall of firs in their dark, eternal green.

The scene of the feast was a day's ride from the
cabin, and the Prince and I were expected to attend.
Paquita would of course be there, and who shall
say we had not both looked forward to this day with
eagerness and delight?

Gold, in any quantity, except in romance, is the

heaviest and hardest thing to carry and keep with
you in your wanderings in the mountains you can
imagine.

We had saved only a trifle of dust compared to the
amount report credited us with. This we put in
four little buckskin bags, each taking two and placing
them one in the left and one in the right pocket of
his catenas. This held them to their places in hard
rides; besides it was a sort of laying in of stores for
some storm that might blow in upon us at any moment.
Even if the lessons of the squirrels and the Indian
women, all the autumn days laying up their stores
for winter, had gone for nought, the lesson of the
Humbug miners was not forgotten. And yet I had
no idea that any grave danger could overtake us
there, and I am certain I had no desire to leave the
peaceful old forests and the calm delight of the
mountain camp.

Of course I was very silly, as most young people
are; but it seemed to me the world below was but
a small affair, and all the people in it of but little
consequence, so long as Paquita and the Prince
were remaining in the mountains.

Had they gone down into the world, then the
mountains had been rugged and cold enough, no
doubt, and the world below much like home; but
while they remained I had no thought of going
away.

The mine did not promise much after all. We
began to have a strong suspicion that we had only
chanced upon a pouch in the rock—a little “chimney”
that nurses a few thousand dollars' worth of dust
about the flue, and nothing more—with the quartz
rock back of this, as barren and hard as flint. A
common thing is this, and the most disappointing of all
things. Years ago, before the miners began to learn
this, many a fortune was squandered in erecting
mills on ledges that never offered any further reward
than the one little pocket.

We went to the feast—rode through the forest
in a sort of dream. How lovely! The deer were
going in long bands down their worn paths to the
plains below, away from the approaching winter.
The black bears were fat and indolent, and fairly
shone in their rich oily coats, as they crossed the
trail before us.

Hundreds were at the feast, and we were more
than welcome. The Chief came first, his warriors
by his side, to give us the pipe of peace and welcome,
and then a great circle gathered around the fire, seated
on their robes and the leaves; and as the pipe went
round, the brown girls danced gay and beautiful,
half-nude, in their rich black hair, and flowing robes.

But Paquita was shy. She would not dance,
for somehow she seemed to consider that this
was a kind of savage entertainment, and out of place

for her. She had seen just enough of civilized life
to deprive her of the pleasures of the wild and free.

There had grown a cast of care upon her lovely
face of late. She was in secret of all the Indians'
plans. At least she was a true Indian—true to the
rights of her race, and fully awake to a sense of their
wrongs.

She was surely lovelier now than ever before; tall,
and lithe, and graceful as a mountain lily swayed by
the breath of morning. On her face, through the
tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maidenhood,
the indescribable sacred something that makes a
maiden holy to every man of a manly and chivalrous
nature; that makes a man utterly unselfish, and perfectly
content to love and be silent, to worship at a
distance, as turning to the holy shrine of Mecca, to
be still and bide his time; caring not to possess
in the low coarse way that characterizes your
common love of to-day, but choosing rather to go
to battle for her,—bearing her in his heart through
many lands, through storms and death, with only
a word of hope, a smile, a wave of the hand from a
wall, a kiss blown far, as he mounts his steed below
and plunges into the night. That is a love to live
for. I say the knights of Spain, bloody as they
were, were a noble and a splendid type of men in
their way.

The Prince was of this manner of men. He was

by nature a knight of the chivalrous, grand old days
of Spain, a hero born out of time, and blown out of
place, in the mines and mountains of the North.

Once he had taken Paquita in his arms, had folded
a robe around her as if she had been a babe. She
was all—everything to him. He renounced all this.
Now he did not even touch her hand.

The old earnestness and perplexity had come upon
the Prince again on our coming to the feast. Once,
when the dance and song ran swift and loud and
all was merriment, I saw him standing out from
the circle of warriors, of young maidens and men,
with folded arms, looking out on the land below.
I had too much respect, nay reverence, for this man
to disturb him. I leaned against a tree and looked
as he looked. Once his eyes left the dance before
him, and stole timidly toward the place where
Paquita sat with her brother watching the dance.
What a devotion in his face. I could not understand
him. Now he turned to the valley again, tapped
the ground with his foot in the old, restless way,
but his eyes soon wandered back to Paquita. At
last my gaze met his. He blushed deeply, held down
his head and walked away in silence.

The next day was the time set apart for feats of
horsemanship. The band was driven in, all common
property, and the men selected their horses. The
Prince drew out with his lasso a stout black steed,

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE FAREWELL.

[Description: 645EAF. Illustration page. A white man stands next to a horse and he has his arm wrapped around a young female Indian. He is kissing her. Another white man watches the couple. Many Indians, clustered near teepees in the background, are also watching on. ]

with a neck like a bull. His mane poured down on
either side, or stood erect like a crest; a wiry, savage,
untrained horse that struck out with his feet, like an
elk at bay. He saddled him, and led him out all
ready now, where the other horses stood in line, then
came to me, walked a little way to one side, put out
one hand and with the other drew me close to him,
held down his head to my uplifted face, and said,

“Good-bye.”

I sprang up and seized hold of him, but he went
on calmly—

“I must go away. You are happy here; you will
remain, but I must go. After many years I will
return. You will meet me here on this spot, years
and years from to-day. Yes, it will be many years;
a long time. But it is short enough, and long enough.
I will forget her—it—I will forget by that time, you
see, and then there is all the whole world before me
to wander in.”

He made the sign of departure. The chief came
forward, Paquita came and stood at his side. He
reached his hands, took her in his arms, pressed her
to his breast an instant, kissed her pure brow once,
with her great black eyes lifted to his, but said no
word.

The Indians were mute with wonder and sorrow.
When you give the sign of going, there is no one to
say nay here. No one importunes you to stay; no

one says come to my place or come to mine. No
such folly. You know that you are welcome to one
and all, and they know that if you wish to go, you
wish to go, and that is all there is of it. This is the
highest type of politeness; the perfect hospitality.

The Prince turned to his steed, drew his red silk
sash tighter about his waist, undid the lasso, wound
the lariat on his arm, and wove his hand in the flowing
mane as the black horse plunged and beat the
air with his feet. Then he set him back on his
haunches, sprang from the ground, and forward
plunged the steed with mane like a storm, down the
place of oaks, pitching towards the valley.

The trees seemed to open rank as he passed, and
then to close again; a hand was lifted, a kiss thrown
back across the shoulder, and he was gone—gone
down in the sea below us, and I never saw my Prince
again for many a year. Noble, generous, self-denying
Prince! The most splendid type of the chivalric and
the perfect man I had ever met.

All this was so sudden that I hardly felt the
weight of it at first, and for want of something to
do to fill the blank that followed, I mounted my
horse and took part in the sports with the gayest of
the gay.

Indians do not speak of anything that happens
suddenly. They think it over, all to themselves, for
days, unless it is a thing that requires some action

or expression at once, and then speak of it only
cautiously and casually. It is considered very vulgar
indeed to give any expression to surprise, and
nothing is more out of taste than to talk about a
thing that you have not first had good time to think
about.

During the day I noticed that my catenas were
heavier than usual, and unfastening the pockets, I
found that they contained all four of the bags of
gold.

Why had he left himself destitute? Why had
he gone down to battle with the world without a
shield?—gone to fight Goliath, as it were, without
so much as a little stone. I wanted to follow him
and make him take the money—all of it. I despised
it, it made me miserable. But I had learned to obey
him, to listen to him in all things. And was he not
a Prince?

“Ah!” said I to myself, at last, “he has gone
down to take possession of his throne. He will
cross the seas and see maidens fair indeed, nearly as
lovely in some respects as Paquita;” and this was
my consolation.

“Years and years,” I said to myself that night as I
looked in the fire, and the dance went on; “Years
and years!” I counted it upon my fingers, and said
—“I will be dead then.”