THE LOST MINE.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 235, 14 March 1885, Page 1

THE LOST MINE.

By Thomas A. Janvieb,

Ix the upper valley of the liio Grande for a hundred years the Christian Spaniards had wrought evil in Christ's name. From their stronghold in the town of the Holy Faith their cruel power had spread out over all the valley lands, constraining the Pueblo Indians, in the fear of death, to grievous toil in the mines, and to a yet more grievous service in the worship of the Spanish gods. And the Pueblos, in whose breasts hope scare longer had a home, almost had ceased to beg from their own god deliverance. That was a most cruel and wicked time.

And it was in that time that marvellous treasure flowed from a certain mine up in the ISangre de Cristo mountains that was called, because it belonged to the Fathers whose monastery was at {Santa Clara, In mina de los Pndres. Of all the many rich mines in this silver-strewn range, the Mine of the Fathers was incomparably the richest. From it came wealth so great that even the avarice of those who fattened ivpon its kingly revenue was almost sated. And yet, as its shafts sank deeper, and as its galleries penetrated yet further into the bowels of the mountain, richer und richer grew its yield. So over all the realm of J^ew Spain, and thence across the seas even to the old Sjjanish country, the fame of la mitta, dc los Padres went abroad.

But, with the story of its wondrous product of glittering silver, never a word Avas told of the bitter misery of those who toiled in its dark depths, — driven more harshly than ever beasts were driven, crushed down by toil to cruel and painful death, that the treasure might be wrung from the rock and brought within the reach of man. Nor was there any sign in the triumphant tidings sent homeward of the thousands of converts to the Christian faith at what cost of death to hundreds these thousands, through terror of death, had been won to the service of the Christian God ; at what cost of rigid, ruthless mastership this service was maintained.

So at last, in that direful summer of the year 1680, the wind that the Spaniards had sown for a century came up a whirlwind of flame and blood, sweeping over and devastating all the land. Out from a clear sky came the storm. In a moment was upon them, in its terrible might and majesty, the pursuing wrath of God. Almost to a man the dwellers in the outpost towns — Taos, .Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Santa Cruz — were slain. At last even Sata Fe itself was abandoned, and the conquered masters fied pitifully southward for refuge from their conquering slaves. So was a great wrong punished; so at last was justice done to the Pueblos : when the Grod who is Grod of both pagan and Christian in his pity gave them his strength.

Long years passed by before the Spaniards again made good their hold upon the land ; and when at last their strength in possession was restored, and the new dwellers in the monastery at Santa Clara sought to re-open the Mine of the Fathers, out of which those before them, had drawn so great a revenue, no trace of the mine could they anywhere find ! That the maps and plans of it which had been in the monastery should be gone was no surprising matter; but strange it was that the very mine itself should have vanished from the earth ! Seeking it diligently, but finding it not, they came to know that the Pueblos, remembering the horror of their toil in former times, iiad destroyed the trail leading up to it aiupng the mountains ; with infinite labour had filled in the great main shaft, and had taken away all traces of the^ workings from around the shaft's mouth. And knowing this, they sought to wrest the secret from them. Some were put to the torture, some were slain outright, that the living might be driven by dread of a like fate to tell where the ■ mine was hid. But neither biting pain nor fear of death sufficed to shake their stern resolve. Bravely, grimly, in painful life and in dying agony, ,

they held the secret locked within their breasts. So the years drifted by, and were marshaled into centuries; the power of the Spaniards waned to a shadow and vanished ; a new race came in and possessed what, in times of old, had been their possessions; and while, through these fleeting years and slowmoving centuries, through all this wreck and change, the fame of la mina de los Padres lived on as a legend, the mine itself never was known of men. In the legend of it that survived, 'twas said that upon him who should find it again would fall the curse of the Pueblos' god. There is no more beautiful sight in all the fair land that once was the realm of New Spain than the view at sunset from Santa Clara looking westward, down the valley of the Rio Grande. The town — a score or so of brown adobe houses, clustered around the old church and now the partly ruined monastery — stands upon a little promontory, the last low wave of the foot-hills of the Sangre de Oristo range. The mountain ramparts which tower on eaoh side of the valley go down in grand perspective toward the west, theirpeaks standing out blue-grey against the brighter bluegray of the evening sky. And off toward the dying sun the sky takes a violent tint, and then a rose, and then a soft, rich red, and then a glowing crimson that is flecked and spangled with a great glory of flaming gold. Yet is the setting sun not seen, for, cutting off sight of it completely, the great castellated mountain of San Ildefonso raises the level lines of its broad battlements darkly, sharply against the dazzle of light and colour beyond. Leading downward, as though it were a glittering highway to this lordly castle's gates, the Eio Grande flows saioothly between its low banks: Ihe rod and golden gleamings of the evening sky reflected on its rapid current. Each ni°-ht there is fresh joy in beholding anew this magnificent resplendency, this perfect picture fresh from the hand of God.

Techita, sitting in a nook in the bluff below the walls of the old monastery, loved greatly to look upon this God-given picture; to watch its glory grow as the sun dropped down beyond the mountain of San Ildefonso sr.id thence sent up rich colourings over all the western sky ; to watch its glory wane as the sun sank yet lower behind the far mountains beyond, and the colour-music slowly died away. And then, when the edge of night was come, and gray darkness was shutting in the west, and in the east only faint, soft colourings remained, it was her wont to go gently into the dusky church, and thSref before the old picture of the sweet Santa Clara, make her pure? offering of thankfulness in prayer. Nor would Techita's thankfulness be lessened, as she walked slowly away from the church in the twilight, by catching sight of Juan standing by the doorway of his little home in a corner of the old monastery, and by seemg 1 , even in the half darkness, the love -light shining in his eyes. Yet with her gladness that Juan loved her ■would come troublous doubts into Techita's heart. For, down in this old Mexican town, these two were living over the story that is as old as human life itself, and that ever is sorrowfully new — the story of a hopeless love.

A stranger coming to Santa Clara —at lea§t a stranger from the barbarous northern, country —would have perceived no outward difference in the estates of old Pablo, Techita's father, and of Techita's lover, Juan. Such a stranger, supposing that he had taken the trouble to think anything about them at all, would have "sized them up," after the abrupt, uncivil manner of Americanos generally, simply as a pair of poverty-stricken Mexicans; and he might- have gone a step further, and wondered-how on earth they managed to keep body and.soul together, anyway. But so far as old Pablo was concerned, this estimate would have been' very* far astray. In point of fact, old:Pablfr'; vfas a rich man. Half a mile of the best la'nrl

along the river was his; his also was the great flock of goats that every night at milking time came trooping homeward to tlie corral; his also was the great herd of cattle that pastured on the mesa negra, half a dozen leagues away to the north ; and in his granaries was a vast store of barley and beans and corn. But Juan had neither flocks nor herds nor lands ! All his earthly possessions were the few household things in the little home that the Padre, pitying him, had suffered him to make for himself in a corner of the old monastery. All his wealth was his strong young body and stout heart and ready hands. Of a truth, this handsome Juan had been born into the world under an unlucky star. While he was yet a boy, the dreadful viruelas had swept down upon Santa Clara, and in a month's time his father and his mother, together with half the little town, were huddled into hastily dug graves. And he was still a boy when the old aunt who had cared for him died also, and left him to make his fig-ht for life alone. Then it was that the good Padre had found for him a home in an odd corner of the old monastery, long since deserted of its old-time tenants and falling slowly into complete decay. Here, for a dozen years and more, he had made shift to live, helping the Padre in the offices of the church, herding goats in the fallow season of the year, and in the growing season working in the fields. The Padre, whose heart was tender, greatly loved the lonely boy ; and by the Padre's care he had become a prodigy of learning. Actually, he cuuld read ! And, still more wonderful, he could sign his name ! and make about it, too, as brave a maze of flourishes as any Mexican in all the land. But for all his headful of knowledge, Juan was the poorest of the poor. No wonder, then, that his love for Techita was hopeless. Pablo was a shrewd old fellow, with a keen eye—for all his look of sleepiness—for money - holding; and that his daughter (who also was his only child, for Pablito and Pablito's mother had died together in a single day in that dismal smallpox time) should marry a rich man was the dearest purpose of his heart. During the past year or two, since Techita had begun to blossom into womanhood, the gossips of the little town had affirmed that the solemn old Don Jose, who owned the great hacienda at Abiqui, was the husband for Techita whom y old Pablo had in mind. But there were those • who said—saying it beneath the breath, for " Don Pablo was one whom it was not well to offend —that to put such a fate upon • Techita would be a crime. And others, still bolder, declared that Juan and Tehita, the handsomest couple in all the valley's length, were sent thus together into the world by the good God that they might be man and wife. But these whisperings never came to old Pablo's ears; and had they come, he would have laughed at them as old women's foolishness, so right it seemed to him that his daughter should wed her wealth with greater wealth ; so absurd would have seemed to him the suggestion that she should wed with such a one as this goat-herding, field-working Juan.

, Therefore it was that Techita, knowing well, and dreading much her father's will concerning her, felt her heart troubled within her by knowing of the love that Juan had for her ; by knowing that her own love was given to Juan in return. And often, as she knelt in the church as the daylight passed away, she prayed that the gentle Santa Clara would soften her father's heart, so that happiness might come to her and to her lover. But the time went on, and no change came to open the way whereon she longed'to go ; and each passing month now, as she grew rapidly into womanhood, made the time more near for her to be the wife of Don Jose. Thus matters stood when all the valley was filled with wonder by the sudden incoming of the Americanos from the North — not as an army waging war, as they had come three and thirty years ogo, but as an army building a railroad. What a railroad was these people —whose only notions of locomotion were their own legs, and the legs of burros, and heavy wooden carts— did not at all know ; but as it was an invention of the Americanos there could be no doubt that it was something devilish. Presently, as their fields were laid waste, and their cherished water-courses broken, all possible doubts of the absolute devilishness of the railroad were removed. It was a thing to be abhorred. And when, the railroad being- builded, all manner of evil Americanos — cut-throats, desperadoes, the ad-vance-guard of rascality that pours into each newly-opened region of the West— came down upon them, destroying the pleasant peacefulness of their quiet land, their hatred of their old-time enemies grew yet more bitter and intense ; the more intense because, instinctively, they knew their own powerlessness to stay the incoming stream. Tae wave that surged down upon them was a mighty one ; for, now that the railroad had opened the way to ifc, the ancient fame of the treasure-laden Sangre de Cristo was remembered, and everywhere the mountains were dotted with prospectors' camps. Once more the legend of the Mine of the Fathers was revived, and -in many a camp hearts beat quicker and breath came shorter as the story •of its. marvellous riches was told anew. Again it was sought for, with not less eagerness and more skill than it had been sought for. two hundred years before ; and again was - the search fruitless and, dn vain. One after a^j)tHeij they who; sought : f or. it gave up their -.i^ea^h as hopeless, or were satisfied with

making lesser strikes, until only one man remained to carry the search on. But this m»n stuck grimly to the purpose that had brought him southward from the States.

Dick Irving was a person who did what he made up his mind to do. Up in Pueblo — the Colorado town in the Arkansas Valley — he had come across a trooper of Price's old command, who had fought his way down from Tsoa to Santa Fe in 1847 ; and who, the fighting ended, had married a Mexican Avife and had settled himself for life in the land that he had helped to win. There are not a few of these bits of army drift scattered over the country north of Santa Fe. And this old soldier told so glowing a story of la mina de los Padres that Irving forthwith sold out his interest in the "Rattling Meg," up at Leadville, and in a week's time was down in the Sangre de Cristo with his prospecting outfit, and at work. " I'll find that mine or I'll die for it!" he told his Leadville partner before he left for the south ; and he added, his hand resting easily on his forty- four : : "If any man is ahead of me, by , I'll shoot him and jump his claim !" In matters of this nature Dick Irving was a man who kept his word. (To he continued.)