Foxfire

by Anya Seton

  “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.

  For hours they saw nobody, they were alone on the road, and Dart, moved by an interior pressure of his own, suddenly began to speak of the history of this Tonto Basin. Hugh did not listen, he had covered his mouth with a bandanna and gone to sleep.

  But Amanda, at first indifferent though surprised that Dart could be so talkative, soon found her interest fastened. Only sixty years ago this wide, pleasant valley had been Arizona’s “dark and bloody ground.” Here over and over again man had killed man in fear and in greed. The Graham-Tewkesbury feud had been a struggle between white men for the land. It had started ludicrously enough in the classic conflict between sheepherders and cattlemen, and finished in an orgy of purposeless killing, still inexplicable to those who had watched in horror from the outside.

  “How queer”—said Amanda—“that that should happen, where there’s so much land, surely room for everybody.”

  “Do we white men ever believe there’s enough of anything?” said Dart.

  She looked at him curiously. This did not sound like him. She thought of the sidewalk encounter with John Whitman this morning. It had seemed to her no more than a trifling incident, and one more proof of Dart’s different reactions from other people. Perhaps it had been more than that. But she had put away from her the struggle to understand him.

  Dart began to speak again, in a detached and musing voice, as though he wished to fill space with inconsequential sound, and the story he told was again of violence. He spoke of the Battle of the Caves which had taken place not far from Roosevelt Dam, which they had recently crossed, but long before the dam had been built, when the Salt River still pursued its ancient course.

  This battle had been one of the decisive victories in General Crook’s campaign against the Apaches. Here 320 United States soldiers had trapped 76 Apache men, women, and children in a cave and caused their massacre.

  Tanosay’s aunt had been trapped in that cave too, but this Dart did not say. Instead he commented in the same judicial voice, “It was of course necessary to subjugate and subdue the Indians in any way possible. They were vicious and treacherous, and there wasn’t room in this country for both races.”

  Again she was startled, for his tone was serious. How often she had heard him make a remark like that in sarcasm, in irony, but now there was no irony. He’s siding with us, she thought, how strange, but the realization gave her no warmth.

  “Do you think we’ll make Staghorn all right tonight?” she asked.

  Dart glanced up at the northwestern sky. During the last hour thunderheads had been piling up on the Mazatzals. “If the road doesn’t get so slick we can’t stay on it. We’ve got to cross the range yet.”

  They made it across the mountains to Staghorn by one o’clock that night, and long before they drew up beside the two dark log cabins in a clearing of pines, Amanda had lost much of her newfound confidence. It had duly rained, a brief shower, but they had skidded down switchbacks and into culverts. The staunch little Ford had failed twice, once by blowing out a tire, and again by jarring loose the ignition. Both these emergencies had been fixed by Dart while Hugh stood by holding the flashlight and cursing and shivering, for it had turned freezing cold. While they were fixing the tire a great black form had loomed out of the woods, reared up and stared at them. Amanda had screamed, and Hugh, dropping the flashlight whipped out his Colt .44 from the holster and fired. But the great form lumbered away.

  “Bear,” said Dart, watching, then turned back to the tire.

  Amanda made no further sound, steeling herself to realize that the true ordeal had not yet begun. She set her jaw and endured the rest of that ride.

  Staghorn consisted of a one-room general store and a cabin behind it, both made of rough yellow pine. It was run by a corpulent old-timer known as Payson Pete, because he had lived in Payson most of his sixty years. He had, however, been born further north under the shadow of the Mogollon Rim, to Mormon pioneers. He had lived in and around Gila County all his life, nor wished to go further afield. In truth there was no need to, Gila County contained an example of every type of Western attraction—desert, valleys, mountains, mining, and the open range—everything but a city, and for cities Pete had no use.

  He had once been a hell-raising cowpuncher, a maverick amongst sober, industrious Mormons, but of late years, since setting up the isolated little store which catered to an occasional prospector, sheepherder, or hunter, he had grown both fat and placid. His wife Molly was as fat as himself, for they lived on baked beans, canned spaghetti, smoked pork, and pies. Eating had become satisfactory pastime for the many days and sometimes weeks when no customers came near Staghorn.

  Pete and Molly slept well, too. After the arrival of the Dartland Ford, neither the barking of the little terrier nor the men’s shouts awakened them. Dart finally pounded on the cabin door until Pete waddled out in his night shirt, clutching a blanket around him with one hand and a candle in the other.

  “Howdy, folks—” he yelled, yawning. “You lost? You took the wrong turn matter of fifteen miles back off the Bush Highway, that’s what it is.”

  “We’re not tourists,” said Dart impatiently, “and we’re not lost. We aim to do a little camping over towards the Verde. We hoped you could outfit us.”

  Pete was startled. He had been fooled by Dart’s cultivated Eastern accent, and he couldn’t see the three very clearly in the darkness. “Reckon I could”—he said dubiously—“if your wants ain’t too fancy. We’ll see in the morning. You kin sleep in the store. The stove’s going. Make yourselves t’home, folks.” He yawned and retired to his cabin.

  The Dartlands and Hugh took their host at his word. They hauled an old bearskin and a couple of cheap saddle blankets down from the shelves in the store, wrapped themselves in separate cocoons, and settled down on the floor by the stove. And they slept heavily.

  When Amanda awoke the store was filled with dazzling sunlight, the exhilaration of pine-scented air, and the smell of coffee, from the cabin behind.

  Amanda stretched, pleased that she was scarcely stiff despite six hours on the floor, and that her zeal for the adventure had returned. She got up and looked across the store to the place where Dart had lain, but he was already gone, had folded his bearskin, returned it to the shelf, and removed his own blanket. Behind the stove Hugh still snored. She got up and glanced at Hugh as she passed him, then turned away embarrassed. In the nakedness of sleep she found him repellent and yet almost pathetic. He frowned as he slept, his bristling brows drawn together as though in pain. His slack lips twitched spasmodically. Above the pasty, freckled skin of his forehead she saw his scalp through the thinning sandy hair. He looked more than his thirty-eight years, and yet she could see for the first time the sort of little boy Hugh must have been. A tough, cruel little boy, sullenly impervious to authority, careful always to hit first lest he be hit, and perhaps very insecure once, long ago before he had learned to transmute fear into aggression.

  Had any woman ever really loved him? she wondered. But then, what is love?

  Love’s but a frailty of the mind,

  When ’tis not with ambition joined—

  As she paused on the doorstep of Staghorn’s general store in the wilds of central Arizona, this couplet flashed through Amanda’s mind. She saw the blue book which had contained it, Restoration Dramatists, she saw the whiteness of the page, and the black underscorings and exclamation marks put around the
couplet by a girl’s enthusiastic pencil. But it wasn’t Amanda who had so approvingly underscored that cynical passage. It was Jean, years earlier.

  And when Amanda in her turn had used the book at Vassar, she had violently disagreed with Jean’s markings. What a romantic little fool I was! Then Amanda thought of Tim Merrill, deliberately re-evaluating the decision she had made that night at El Castillo when she returned to Dart. No, Tim was not the answer either. Her disenchantment had been complete. It was independence that she wanted, beholden to no man. An island unto myself, like Dart.

  Dart was already eating at the rough table in the cabin when Amanda entered. He said “Hello’’ coolly, then returned at once to his consultation with Pete, who sat at the head of the table gorging on flapjacks.

  Molly had cooked breakfast for them: coffee with condensed milk, sourdough bread, and a mountain of flapjacks drowned in corn syrup. She trundled her bulk back and forth between cookstove and table heaping the plates, and urging in a thick comfortable voice, “Eat hearty now, folks. Don’t be bashful. You need plenty of vittles in the stummick if you’re going to hit the trail.”

  Molly was curious about the party, not because the tall young man offered no special explanation for the camping trip—folks who turned up in this neck of the woods were often reticent about their business—but because there was a girl with them. This was almost unprecedented, and Molly hadn’t figured it out yet. A pretty girl, too, with big eyes, blue as a robin’s egg, though awful quiet and much too skinny for Molly’s taste. She had a wedding ring so she must belong to one or the other of the men, but Molly was jiggered if she could make out which, even after the older sandy-haired one came in and sat down grumpy as a bear to his breakfast. Because none of the three said anything to the others. The girl didn’t say anything at all, the sandy-haired fellow just grunted from time to time, and the tall young one who was nice-looking in a way, and seemed to be the boss, just talked with Pete about supplies. They didn’t want many supplies, either. Pete’s moonface began to look crestfallen. He’d decided they must be some queer kind of dude after all, maybe artists or rockhounds, and he could unload a lot of fool stuff on them had been gathering dust on the shelves for a dog’s age. But he couldn’t. The young fellow said right out they were short of cash, and it seemed he knew exactly what he needed.

  The first thing was a pack burro. Pete had a couple of those, grazing in the corral down by the creek. They were kind of wild since Pete had got too heavy to use them much, but the young fellow said that didn’t matter, and paid five dollars for one, with rope and pack bags thrown in. He sure knew his way around.

  “You’ll need horses, of course,” Pete said hopefully. “You can get some over to the 7-Bar Ranch down by Sunflower, I’ll fix it for you so they’ll be here by tomorrow.”

  But the young fellow didn’t want horses, and didn’t want to wait till tomorrow. They were going to start right away, as soon as they’d stocked up.

  “But there’s a fair trail down to the Verde, kind o’ rough through Deadman’s Creek, but you could make it on horseback,” objected Pete, who had the usual Western horror of going anywhere on foot. “Them horses wouldn’t cost much to hire.”

  The young fellow still said no. Pete shrugged his fat shoulders and gave up, contenting himself with what he could sell them: flour, bacon, jerky, baked beans, coffee, canned tomatoes, condensed milk, a box of Hershey bars, and matches. They’d brought cigarettes with them from Globe. They bought cartridges and canteens too, and they borrowed an empty five-gallon can for water.

  “They’re never fixin’ to just go down to the Verde,” said Pete in an aside to his wife, as he viewed Dart’s expert loading of the burro. “They’re aiming for a lot rougher country than that.” He noted the miner’s pick that Dart was slinging on the pack, and he lumbered over, heavily jocular.

  “Say, you folks—if you wasn’t headin’ into the wrong mountains I’d say you was after the ‘Lost Dutchman’!” He wheezed and chuckled, prodding Hugh in the ribs. “That mine’s down in the Superstitions, they say, leastwise a hull lot of suckers ’re forever huntin’ it. You won’t find nothin’ in the Matazals.”

  “Don’t expect to,” said Hugh curtly, moving away from the jovial finger. Dart continued loading the burro.

  Pete, nothing daunted, turned to Amanda, who stood silently watching. “Say, ma’am”—he said, chuckling again—“d’you know why these here mountains ’re called the Matazals?”

  She knew that they were not spelled that way on the map, but even Dart gave them that local pronunciation. She shook her head repressively, dreading further curiosity.

  “They say that once mebbe two, three hundred years ago there was a great Injun pow wow up in them mountains up North. Now it’s turrible rough country, I ain’t ever been up in there myself and I don’t know anyone who has, but them ’Paches went, except they had an old chief was purty feeble, he wanted to go too, awful bad, but he couldn’t make it. They had to leave him behind down in the valley. And the old chief was ‘Mad-as-hell,’ begging your pardon, lady—D’you get it?” he asked, anxiously, for the girl looked startled, her blue eyes wide, and the two men by the burro had both stopped and turned toward him as though this stock joke was something important, and like they expected something more.

  Then Dart laughed. “Sure we get it.” He pulled the rope again under the burro’s belly and fastened it in a diamond hitch. “D’you ever see any Apaches round about here?” he asked casually.

  Pete shook his head. “Naw. They’s a few near Payson, but you want to see plenty ’Paches you got to go over to the reservations. THAT ain’t what you’re after, is it?” Six years ago there’d been a couple fellows from the East got lost off the Highway and wandered into Staghorn. From something called the Smithsonian in Washington they’d said they’d come, and they was making a study of “modern Apache living conditions,” and they’d asked a lot of damfool questions nobody could answer but an Indian and ten to one he wouldn’t. “There ain’t NOTHIN’ up beyond here, mister,” said Pete firmly to Dart, “exceptin’ a mess of granite and malapie, ain’t even been surveyed exceptin’ from an aireoplane and I don’t advise you to go into it. Especially with a young lady.”

  “Oh, we’ll be very careful,” interjected Amanda, smiling at him. “This is just a little camping trip. Just for fun.” She was in a fever to be off, but the charming smile she had given Pete to shut him up had the opposite effect, for it awakened chivalry in his massive bosom, and he examined Dart’s preparation with a new and disapproving eye.

  “You’re travelin’ turrible light for ‘fun,’” he said. “What’s the lady goin’ to sleep in? They ain’t enough beddin’ for a gel.”

  “Oh, I can manage as well as the men can,” said Amanda hastily. She had agreed to no quarter, no special consideration.

  But Dart paused and turned. He did not look at Amanda, he gave Pete a considering gaze, weighing the justice of his objection, then he said, “Maybe you’re right. You got a heavy blanket for sale, and a poncho?”

  “You bet!” Pete waddled happily back to the store.

  “Oh, but Dart—you don’t have to—we shouldn’t spend the money.” Almost she put her hand on his arm, then drew it back.

  “As long as you insist on coming, it’d be foolish to take a chance of your getting sick, nuisance for all of us,” said Dart. He walked over to the Ford, which was parked behind the store to await their return, and began to stow away the gear that they were not taking.

  Hugh snorted, looking up from his cartridge belt which he had been filling. “At least I won’t have to be nauseated by the cooing of lovebirds on this expedition,” he said. “That’s always something.”

  She flushed, and walking up to the burro tried to pat it. The animal bared yellow teeth and whickered unpleasantly, backing off. But it had stood perfectly quiet for Dart.

  Damn Dart, she thought violently, resenting this further proof of their helplessness without him. She set her jaw and
approached the burro again, but he laid his ears back and snapped his teeth two inches from her hand.

  “Tonto ain’t used to women,” observed Pete advancing from the store. “You’d best keep away from him, ma’am.”

  Lovely, she thought. A happy little trip into the mountains with three male animals who don’t want me along. But I’m going to do it, and I’m going to get back, and I’m going to be rich. Pockets full of gold, and then get out of this hellish country forever.

  “All set?” said Dart, coming up to them from the car. “Let’s get going.” He unhitched the burro and held the lead rope in his hand. “So long,” he said cordially to Pete, and to Molly, who had come out of the cabin to join her husband. “We’ll be back when you see us.” He started off towards the edge of the clearing, and the trail through the chaparral growth of manzanita and scrub oak. The burro followed, his bell tinkling.

  “Good-bye,” cried Amanda warmly, suddenly seeing reassurance in the two solid figures by the log cabin. “Thanks for everything. You’ve been swell.” She followed Dart and the burro at a respectful distance from the latter’s heels.

  Hugh made no farewells. He did not look back. His head throbbed and despite the water he had drunk that morning, his mouth and throat were dry as cotton. He had a quart of grain alcohol in his knapsack, and a filled flask in his left hip pocket, but they would have to be rationed until he craved a drink even worse than now.

  He’d had another bottle of hootch hidden in the car, and had tried to slip it into his blanket roll so Dart wouldn’t notice it when he was loading the burro. But Dart had known at once, and put the bottle back into the car, saying pleasantly enough, “No dice, Hugh. We’ll have enough trouble hauling water without bothering with this stuff.”