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Page 68
She fell on her knees before him. Lifting her hands as in
prayer, she implored: "I never thought of his promise to you. He
never thought of it. Go find him--bring him back to me!"
"Bring him back?" howled the excited Sheriff, his eyes bulging,
his cheeks swelling, his red hair bristling, and his voice
ringing in its highest key. "Bring him back? You just bet I
will. That's why I'm sheriff of Pinal County."
Slim whirled out of the door as if propelled by a gigantic blast.
Echo fell fainting at her mother's feet.
CHAPTER XII
The Land of Dead Things
Forth to the land of dead things, through the cities that are
forgotten, fared Dick Lane. Tricked by his friend, with the
woman he loved lost to him, he wandered onward.
Automatically he took up again his quest for buried treasure.
That which in the flush of youthful enthusiasm and roseate
prospects of life and love had seized him as a passion was now a
settled habit. And fortunately so, for it kept him from going
mad. He had no thought of gain--only the achievement of a
purpose, a monomania.
With this impulse was conjoined a more volitional motive--he
wished to revenge himself upon the Apaches, and chiefly upon the
renegade McKee, whom he supposed still to be with them. Somehow
he blamed him, rather than Jack Payson, as being the chief cause
of his miseries. "If he had not stolen the buried gold, I would
have returned in time," he muttered. "He is at the bottom of all
this. As I walked away from Jack in the garden, I felt as if it
was McKee that was following me with his black, snaky eyes."
Accordingly, Dick directed his way to a region reputed to be both
rich in buried treasure and infested by hostile Indians.
The fable of the Quivira, the golden city marked now by the ruins
of the Piro pueblo of Tabiri, south of the salt-deposits of the
Manzano, is still potent in Arizona and New Mexico to lure the
treasure-seeker. Three hundred and fifty years ago it inspired a
march across the plains that dwarfs the famous march of the
Greeks to the sea. It led to the exploration of the Southwest
and California before the Anglo-Saxon settlers had penetrated
half a hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. The cities are
forgotten to-day. The tribe which gave it a name proved to be
utter barbarians, eaters of raw meat, clad only in skins, without
gold, knowing nothing of the arts; Teton nomads, wandering
through Kansas. Yet each decade since witnesses a revival of a
wonderful story of the buried treasures of the Grand Quivira.
The myth originated in New Mexico in 1540. Antonio de Mendoza
was the viceroy of New Spain. Having practically conquered the
New World, the adventurers who formed his court, having no
fighting to do with common enemies, began to hack each other.
Opportunely for the viceroy, Fra Marcos discovered New Mexico and
Arizona. Gathering the doughty swordsmen together, Mendoza
turned them over to the brilliant soldier and explorer, Francisco
Vasquez de Coronado, with strict orders to get them as far from
the viceroy as he could, and then lose them.
Coronado and his band were the first to see the Grand Canon of
the Colorado. In the latter weeks of 1540 they were in the town
of Tiguex. As they were less welcome than the modern tourists,
who are now preyed upon where these preyed, the natives sent them
on to the pueblo of the Pecos. Mendoza had sent Coronado into
New Mexico on the strength of the trimmings of the myth of the
"Seven Cities of Cibola." The fabled cities of gold proved to be
peaceful settlements. Coronado attempted to lose his cut-throats
by having them settle in the country. A plains Indian, captive
among the Pecos, changed his plans, and led him to undertake his
wonderful march. The Pecos wished to get rid of the guests, so
they concocted a marvelous story of buried treasures, and made
the poor captive father it. To the gold-chasers the captive was
known as "The Turk," his head being shaven and adorned only with
a scalp-lock, a custom noticeable because of its variance from
that of the long-haired Pueblos.
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