Foxfire (39 page)

Tessie's warm heart ached for the Dartlands. She could feel that something was very wrong between the two of them, let alone the troubles you could see, like losing the baby and Mr. Dartland losing his job and leaving town under a cloud. But it certainly was queer the way the girl stayed on in the hospital after she was well—though Tessie almost alone in Lodestone did not impute this behavior to a guilty passion between Amanda and the Doctor. She was wiser than this, and shrewder, too. Amanda's was the behavior of extreme innocence, not intrigue.

“It's just that those two young Dartlands hasn't learned how to get along,” she said to Tom. “When trouble comes they draw apart and think about themselves, instead o' finding comfort in each other.” She patted her husband's hand and he responded with an affectionate grunt.

“All the same—''added Tessie thoughtfully—“I wonder where they're off to, next week. It seems very strange.”

How strange Tessie could not know. Nor would she ever have understood the illusion that danced on the horizon for the three disparate human beings who were linked together in the quest. For each the fox light that lured them to the lost treasure took a different form, but for each the cold beckoning gleam sprang from the ashes of disillusion and bitterness.

T
HEY LEFT
Lodestone at five o'clock on Saturday morning, September second, Amanda and Dart on the front seat of the Lizzie and Hugh squeezed behind with their bags, knapsacks, blankets, and two guns. They intended to get sup-lies and a pack burro later, at Staghorn, a tiny trading post and ranch on the edge of the Mazatzal Mountains.

Dart, after consultation with Geological Survey quadrangles for the region, and comparison with the nearly unintelligible copper map made by the Mimbreño Indian a hundred years ago, had settled on the general location most likely to contain the Pueblo Encantado: the wild northern reaches of the Mazatzals, east of the Verde River. In this decision he was aided by memory. On that day in the Apache rancheria when Tanosay had confided the map and the legend to an awed boy of fifteen, he had said in speaking of the lost valley that it was “maybe four days' journey from the great bridge that held the earth on its back.” This would be the natural bridge near Payson.

Four days' journey to an Indian afoot in rough country probably meant about fifty miles, and Dart considered this a sufficient clue, combined with the others, to use as a basis for exploration.

He did not, however, share Amanda's and Hugh's optimism. They saw only a square inch on the map with a road of sorts leading towards this inch where Dart said they would search. Both felt immediate certainty that the thing would be easy, and they were annoyed with Dart for his refusal to admit it. He, who knew his southwestern mountains and the conditions they would find in a wilderness of volcanic malpais, box canyons, and uncertain water supply, did not bother to argue with them.

They were all three silent as they left Lodestone that morning. Amanda looked back on the sleeping town, rosy-gray and quiet in the dawn light, while a peculiar sensation oppressed her heart. Not regret, exactly—for her whole soul was focused on escape. Not shame—for surely the failures there had been none of her doing, and yet it seemed that her oppression contained something of both, of shame and regret. She moved as far as possible from Dart on the seat, then broke the silence with a casual remark. “I hope it isn't going to be as hot today as yesterday.”

During this period that she and Dart were still bound together by their common aim, it was obvious that the strain must be relieved and the failure between them ignored, as all the passion they had shared must be ignored. They were now simply members of an impersonal expedition.

“It'll be hot all right until we pick up some altitude,” said Dart, slowing for the turn onto the highway to Globe, and she knew from the tone of his response that he shared her decision. But then, when had it ever been hard for Dart to be impersonal?

At eight-thirty they stopped at the Dominion Hotel in Globe for a cup of coffee. A party of breakfasting tourists stared at the trio with interest as they filed into the dining room. Hugh and Dart wore laced leather boots, levis, worn leather jackets, and carried stetsons in their hands. Amanda wore levis, the cashmere sweater, and a brown twill cap with a sun visor.

“They cowboys, Ma?” shrilled a young voice from the tourists' table, and a woman's voice replied complacently, “Yes, dear.”

Amanda giggled suddenly. We're much more exciting than that if you only knew it, you tenderfeet, she thought. We're treasure seekers. Her spirits rose. She was young, and strong again. She was quit of Lodestone forever. She was embarked on a great adventure. What did anything else matter? She fished in her pocket and bringing out her compact she applied powder and lipstick, and fluffed her hair out over her cheeks beneath the cap.

Hugh and Dart both watched her. “Effect of the return to civilization, I gather,” said Hugh morosely. “I wish to God you'd stay here and riot louse up this expedition for us.”

“Well, I won't stay here,” she cried smiling. “I can't wait to lay my own two pretty little hands on the——”

“Shut up!” Hugh banged his fist down on the table, drowning out her last word. “You damn fool, haven't you got sense enough not to go blabbing all over the place 1” He threw a quick glance around the dining room.

Indignant color flooded her cheeks. “Heavens, we don't have to be
this
grim, do we! You sound like a dime novel. ‘ “Hist!” he snarled, and two more redskins bit the dust.'”

“I don't give a goddam what I sound like. You keep your trap shut.”

Instinctively she looked at Dart. He was the one to give orders, he was the one to arbitrate. But Dart was gazing out of the window at the busy life that passed on the town's main street; he seemed quite withdrawn from them, though the instant she put down her empty coffee cup, he spoke without turning his head. “Okay, let's go.” He put a quarter on the table, and stood up.

They walked out through the dark Victorian lobby decorated with cholla cactus chandeliers, elk heads and cuspidors, into the Saturday morning bustle of Broad Street. They clambered back into the flivver and waited, for this was one of its temperamental moments when the starter failed and Dart had to crank.

“D'you want help?” Hugh called reluctantly from the back seat. “Can you manage with that hand?” But the injured fingers had healed perfectly, only pink, crinkled scars remained, and Hugh was not surprised at Dart's refusal.

Just as the engine started they heard a clear hail, “Ola! Dartland!” They all swiveled around to the street. The Apaches were streaming into town from the reservation, as they always did on Saturdays. There were a half-dozen of them sitting on boards in an open pickup truck, and it was the driver who had hailed Dart.

Dart straightened up slowly as the truck pulled alongside and the driver jumped out. It was John Whitman, dressed in his best yellow satin shirt, silver belt, and turquoise earrings. He advanced grinning, while the truckful of Indians peered over and laughed. Amanda saw Rowena and waved. The Apache girl waved back.

“Well, my friend—” cried John Whitman, pumping Dart's hand. “It's good to see you again. You come to town for the day, too?”

Dart shook his head. He could not smile. How little he wanted to see this young man who had been his boyhood companion, who shared with him memories of Tanosay, and Saba.

“What is it, Ishkinazi?” asked the young Indian in Apache instantly perceptive, “trouble?”

Dart let silence answer. They stood together on the sidewalk, Dart offered John a cigarette, and they both smoked a while. Hugh and Amanda, in the car, waited impatiently.

“Where do you go, then?” asked the Indian at last.

“North,” said Dart. Both men turned and looked up Broad Street to the northern sky, an azure bowl cupping great mounds of thick white cumulus clouds.

“To Holbrook, maybe?” suggested the Indian. “To the railroad? You are leaving our country?”

Dart knew that this unusual persistence sprang from friendship, and perhaps something more. Apache intuition is very keen. But he could not lie.

“No. We go north to the Mazatzal Mountains.” He met the other's eyes, then turned away.

The Apache's lids flickered, his smile disappeared, he took a long drag on his cigarette. In the pickup truck the other Indians were murmuring and laughing with each other. Rowena had swung the cradle board around on her lap and was modestly nursing the baby under her blue Mother Hubbard blouse. They were content to wait until John should be ready to drive them to Pinal Ranch on the road to Superior. There at the Ranch some of the tribe had been encamped while gathering acorns. There would be a festive meeting.

Hugh, however, was fidgeting. “For Christ's sake. Dart”—he shouted above the rattle of the Ford's engine—“you going to lounge there all day with that guy? Tell him to go back to his squaw.”

John Whitman glanced around very briefly at the doctor. Apaches do not like the term “squaw.”

“I must go,” said Dart. “Good-bye again. Good luck.”

“Wait!” The Indian threw his cigarette butt on the sidewalk, and crushed it with his heel. “Something has changed you, Ishkinazi. You have become all white. I see it in your eyes as you look at me. That is well, no doubt. It is what she-who-has-gone-away wished for you.”

He paused, then went on in a lower voice, each guttural Apache word taut with meaning. “Yet I hope you have not forgotten that you were once a member of our clan. Not forgotten that you were much
trusted
and beloved by he who was your grandfather and our chief?” He paused again, staring gravely at Dart's averted face. “As
I
was also,” he added very slowly, with meaning.

Dart raised his head. He looked steadily into the black unwinking eyes that were nearly on a level with his own. “I
have
forgotten,” he said. “I have become, as you say, wholly white, for no man may ride two horses.”

Their long expressionless gaze held for a second, then the two young men separated in silence. John returned to the truck and swung himself up on the seat. Dart stepped into the Ford. Both vehicles pulled away from the curb, and started up Broad Street, past the shops and the movie theater and the courthouse, past the enormous tailing dumps of the once so productive Old Dominion Mine.

They continued together on the highway for four more miles, then Dart turned north on a broad dirt road. The truck full of Indians went onward through Miami towards the summit of the Pinals. There was no gesture of farewell as the two vehicles parted company. Again the black curtain descended in Dart's mind, shutting off a new foreboding which he did not wish to analyze, and for which there was no plausible basis.

 

All that day the sun beat down on their heads, for the Ford's top had long since disintegrated into tatters. The heat rose, searing, fierce, from the desert floor, a fitful wind raised dust devils to writhe amongst the saguaros and the cholla, and when they passed the infrequent cars dust enveloped them like a yellow fog, sifting grit into eyes and nostrils and between the teeth.

Amanda grew dizzy from the baking heat and the lurching of the little car around interminable curves, but she made no complaint. I can stand it, she thought proudly, I can stand anything; even the sight of her first rattler, limp and dead on the road, crushed by an earlier car. At least she had learned during her months in Lodestone that the tenderfoot fear of rattlesnakes was largely unnecessary. Tessie Rubrick had lived in Arizona fifteen years and never seen a rattler. Besides, they had anti-venom in the medical kit which Hugh had provided.

This isn't so bad, she thought, pleased that familiarity had vanquished so many of her earlier fears. How this road would have terrified her a few months ago, and now she scarcely noticed its dangers. There were, besides, compensations. A glimpse of the Tonto cliff dwellings high in a cave on a mountainside; the first unexpected view of blue water at Roosevelt Lake, sparkling beneath the white-capped Sierra Anchas. The white patches on the mountains were not snow, Dart said in answer to her exclamation, they were the tailings from asbestos mines.

“Mines, way up there!” she cried in astonishment. “It doesn't seem possible. I thought this was the wilds.”

“I don't suppose there are many square feet anywhere in this country that some man hasn't trodden at some time,” said Dart.

“Yes, damn it—” interposed Hugh, leaning forward. “I hope to God nobody but Indians have trodden this place we're going. Might be sheepherders, wandering cowpunchers—gives me the jitters to think of it.”

“I don't think you need worry,” said Dart dryly. “Look, there're the Four Peaks, those are the Mazatzals.”

His passengers stared far to the west where four jagged crests and a fifth tiny one reared sharp against the cloud-banked sky. Seven and a half thousand feet tall, they towered above the lower Superstitions to the south. Since the beginning of mankind these peaks had been guardians to the desert peoples. They had marked the end of the world, and beyond them one might not venture. They had been given many names by their beholders, some had tried to minimize their majesty and called them “Four brothers and little sister”; the first American pioneers, a matter-of-fact race disinclined to imagery, had named them the Four Peaks; some of the Apache tribes had called them the “four terrible horns of the Thunder Gods,” seeing in them portentous embodiment of their own sacred number; but few had ever beheld them without awe. Nor did Amanda.

“Is it near those peaks we search?” she asked faintly.

“No,” said Dart, “beyond them to the north.”

They paused at the little hamlet of Roosevelt to buy cold drinks and gas, then they wound along the shores of the vast lake until they reached the dam, and they crossed it, leaving behind the Apache Trail which they had been following. The Trail continued through magnificent scenery towards Phoenix, and was a popular tourist route for the adventurous. But the road they now followed became far worse, narrow and dangerous, as it clung to the precipitous indented sides of the lake.