Tonto

“ We'll start out down the trail, but you'll turn back and hide near by to hear what's said. I'll ride into the Basin, have a showdown talk with Cavendish, and meet you later in our cave in the Gap."
The masked man pointed out how Tonto's natural abilities made him the logical one to wait in the forest. No white man could maintain the vigil with the absolute silence that was so imperative. On the other hand, the Indian's scant knowledge of white men's laws and courts of law made him a poor one to dictate the sort of statement that must be secured from Bryant Cavendish. ”

“ While it is commonly agreed that the province of "Totonteac," which figures extensively in certain early Spanish narratives, was the same as Tusayan, the linguistic similarity of the word to "tonto" has been suggested by others. In the troublesome years between 1860 and 1870 the Hopi, decimated by disease and harried by nomads, sent delegates to Prescott asking to be removed to Tonto Basin, and it is not improbable that in making this reasonable request they simply wished to return to a place which they associated with their ancestors, who had been driven out by the Apache. ”

“ The turkey must be caught, and the goat must be brought from the field so I can milk her. Tonto [that was what they called the donkey] is waiting in the shed to be made ready, not to speak of the cat and dog! Bless my soul, how many things there are to be done!”
While his mother talked, Tonio had taken his lasso down from the nail where it hung, and was just quietly slipping out of the door with it, when Doña Teresa saw him. “Here you—Tonio,” she cried, “come back and wash yourself!”
[p 11]
“Can’t I wait until I’ve caught Pinto?” ”

“ Tonio means to be one when he grows up. He practices riding on Tonto, the donkey, now, and he has had his own lasso since he was six.
If you will turn the page you will find a picture of the little adobe hut where Tonio and Tita and Pancho and Doña Teresa live. Pancho isn’t in the picture, because he and Pinto are away in the fields, but Doña Teresa is there grinding her corn, and Tita is feeding the chickens, while Tonio plays with his dog, Jasmin6.
Tonio is looking out from the shed at the end of the hut. Tita’s cat is on the roof. She is almost always on the roof when Jasmin is about. ”

“ Even Lilian and her lover could hear every word.
Camp on Tonto Creek,
December —, 5:30 a.m.
Dear General:
Almy scores again. General Crook sends his best congratulations. The little Bennetts should be safely with you to-night. We see them as far as El Caporal. The general takes short cut for McDowell and thence home. Old Stannard never slept from the moment he got the word until he got the boys. Harris and 'Tonio located the rancheria and led unerringly. We are all happy. ”

“ Another archaeologist says, that "quite recently hieroglyphics were discovered in the Tonto Basin country, depicting the driving out of white people by red men, and local archaeologists have set up a theory that the people who once cultivated these valleys were white. The present Indians have many legends of white men being in their country before the advent of the Spanish conquistodores. ”

“ The general had established field headquarters temporarily at Camp McDowell, down the Verde Valley, and under his somewhat distant supervision four or five little columns of horse, in single file, were boring into the fastnesses of the Mogollon and the Tonto Basin. The runners had been unsuccessful. The renegades would not return. Half a dozen little nomad bands, forever out from the reservation, had eagerly welcomed these malcontents and the news they bore that two of their young braves had been murdered while striving to defend Natzie and Lola. ”

“ One exception is the spring named after General Crook (General’s Springs) , which he discovered, and near which he had such a narrow escape from being killed by Apaches—that makes into the East Fork of the Verde. It is an awe-inspiring sensation to be able to sit or stand upon the edge of such a precipice and look down upon a broad expanse mantled with juicy grasses, the paradise of live stock. There is no finer grazing section anywhere than the Tonto Basin, and cattle, sheep, and horses all now do well in it. ”

“ I'm in with half a dozen cattlemen. We all work together, an' the whole outfit cain't keep these vermints down. Then two years ago the Hash Knife Gang come into the Tonto."
"Hash Knife Gang? What a pretty name!" replied Jean. "Who're they?"
"Rustlers, son. An' shore the real old Texas brand. The old Lone Star State got too hot for them, an' they followed the trail of a lot of other Texans who needed a healthier climate. Some two hundred Texans around heah, Jean, an' maybe a matter of three hundred inhabitants in the Tonto all told, good an' bad. Reckon it's aboot half an' half." ”

“ I have been stationed among the Apaches for the last five years and have fought them all over Arizona. Surely I ought to know how to take care of myself."
"I don't doubt that, captain. It's the kids I'm thinking of. The renegades from the reservation are out in great numbers now and they are supposed to be all down in the Tonto Basin, but I've seen their moccasin tracks everywhere from the Colorado Chiquito across the 'Mogeyone,' and I'm hurrying in to Verde now to give warning and turn the troops this way." ”

“ In a little less than two years from that eventful night among the cedars, the Archers, three, were once more welcomed to the general's roof, escorted the last ten miles of the dusty stage ride from the desert by Harris, whose letters to the general or to Mrs. Archer had been regular as the fortnightly mail. With the morrow he and 'Tonio were on hand to hail them, looking fit and spare and sinewy as ever they had of old, for these were strenuous days and stirring times in the Apache-haunted mountains—the Tontos had broken faith and were again afield. ”

“ All braves, unafraid of a thousand Tontos, eager only to meet and punish their traitor fellows who had taken the White Chief's pay and bread, pledged their best services and then gone renegading to the fastnesses of the Mogollon," adding with scorn unspeakable, "taking other women with them." ”

“ Archer's gentle, anxious eyes following the soldierly form just vanishing within the shadows at the office, Lilian's gaze fixed upon the handsome features of the young soldier before her.
"'Tonio brought news, did he not?" asked Mrs. Stannard.
"'Tonio had to tell something, you know, to cover his mysterious movements. 'Tonio's story may be cock and bull for all we know. It is just such a yarn as I have heard told many a time and oft in the Columbia basin. Most Indians are born liars, and 'Tonio has everything to gain and nothing to lose in telling a believable whopper now. ”

“ Tonty paid small heed to their silence; for in his mind was the one great thought that La Salle was alive and might reach the fort at any time. Four years before, his beloved leader had gone from the fort on the Illinois to Canada and across to France; and three years before, he had sailed from France for the mouth of the Mississippi. In all that time, alternating between hope and the gloomy despair which lately had so often fallen upon his soul, Tonty had waited hoping each day for news from his lost chief. ”

“ Tony Tonks glanced every now and then with great curiosity at my uncle, and at this pocket which was hanging with its weight under the arm of a curved Windsor chair; as a fisherman likes to see his bag hang down, but only once in his lifetime has that pleasure.
But though Tony Tonks might go (more readily than the fish who won’t come at all) into that pocket, Nature had provided him with compensation for his want of magnitude. There never lived a very small man yet, who was not in his own opinion big. ”

“ This is better for you than the marriage you would have made. What business have you to ally yourself with Le Ber? What business have you with marriage at all? For my part, I would object to any marriage you had in view, but Le Ber’s daughter was the worst marriage for you in New France.”
“Tonty!” gasped La Salle. With the swiftness of an Indian, Tonty was flying across the clearing. The explorer’s unwary messenger Jolycœur he had left behind him bound with hide thongs and lying in Father Hennepin’s inner room. ”

“ With cannon booming overhead, Tonty passed its base followed by the people who were to ascend with him, and landed west of it, on a sandy strip where the voyager could lay his hand on that rugged fern-tufted foundation. Barbe and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine followed him along a path cut through thickets, around moss-softened irregular heights of sandstone, girdled in below and bulging out above, so that no man could obtain foothold to scale them. ”

“ And now La Salle fell sick—so seriously that, in alarm lest he should not reach Canada, he sent Tonty ahead to carry the good news of the trip to the French settlements. Tonty with four men hurried northward. He had passed the Ohio and was drawing near the Illinois Valley when one day thirty Illinois warriors burst out of the woods with drawn bows, taking the party for Iroquois. But just in time one warrior recognized Tonty and cried out, “It is my comrade! They are Frenchmen!” After a short stop at the Tamaroa village, Tonty pushed on to the white settlements. ”

“ Dependent and unarmed colonists were placed in the centre of the camp. Tonty himself, with his usual care on this journey, had helped to pitch a tent of blankets and freshly cut poles for Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier and the officer’s wife, who clung to her in the character of guardian. The other immigrants understood and took pleasure in this small temporary home, built nightly for a girl whose proud silence among them they forgave as the caprice of beauty. ”

“ At the same time, local tradition is positive that Tonty came back, poor, to the Rock to die, in 1718.
Death had stripped him of every tie. He had helped to build that city near the Mississippi’s mouth which was La Salle’s object, and had also helped found Mobile. The great west owes more to him than to any other man who labored to open it to the world. Yet historians say the date of his death is unknown, and tradition around the Rock says he crept up the stony path an old and broken man, helped by his Indian and a priest, died gazing from its summit, and was buried at its west side. ”

“ If a man must keep patting the populace, he can do little else. But I am glad you overtook me here. My Tonty, if I had a hundred men like you I could spread out the unknown wilderness and possess it as that child possesses that hide of buffalo.”
Though their undertakings were united, and the Italian had staked his fortune in the Norman’s ventures, La Salle always assumed, and Tonty from the first granted him, entire mastery of the West. Both looked with occupied eyes at Barbe, who felt her life enlarged by witnessing this conference. ”

“ Mademoiselle Cavelier’s wardrobe was by no means equal to that gorgeous period in which she lived, being planned by her uncle the Abbé and executed by the frugal and exact hands of a self-denying sisterhood. But who can hide a girl’s supple slimness in a gown plain as a nun’s, or take the blossom-burnish off her face with colonial caps? Dark curls showed around her temples. Barbe’s aquiline face had received scarcely a mark since Tonty saw it at Fort Frontenac. ”

“ Barbe’s high childish voice distinctly and sincerely stated, “No, monsieur; I have fought all the girls at the convent on your account. Jeanne le Ber said nothing against you; but she is a Le Ber. I am glad you came back in such grandeur. I was determined to be in the grandeur myself. But it is not a time to give you my cheek for a kiss.”
La Salle smiled over her head at Tonty. The Italian noted her marked resemblance to the explorer. She had the same features in delicate tints, the darkness of her eyelashes and curls only emphasizing the type. ”

“ All these figures, and the spectacles swarming around the beaver fair, like combinations in a kaleidoscope to be seen once and seen no more, gave Tonty such condensed knowledge of the New World as no ordinary days could offer.
La Salle alone, though fresh from audiences at court and distinguished by royal favor, stood abashed and annoyed by the part he must play toward civilized people.
“Look at the Sieur de la Salle,” observed Du Lhut to Tonty. “There is a man who stands and fights off the approach of every other creature.”
“There never was a man better formed for friendship,” retorted Tonty. ”

“ What is your name?”
“Sanomp,” answered the Iroquois. “My white brother with the iron hand has not seen me before.”
He spread open on the bench Barbe had occupied a present of fine furs and dried meat.
“Why does my brother bring me these things?” inquired Tonty, realizing as he looked at the gift how much of this barbarian’s wealth was bestowed in such an offering.
“Listen,” said Sanomp. [14] He had a face of benevolent gravity,—the unhurried, sincere face of man living close to Nature. “It is a chief of the Seneca tribe who speaks to my white brother.” ”

“ She looked at her uncle, answering his smile of amusement. But curving her neck from side to side, she still examined the Italian soldier.
“I can outrun most people,” suggested Barbe; “but Monsieur de Tonty looks very tall and strong.”
“Your intention is to take to the woods as soon as marriage sets you free?”
“My uncle La Salle, I do have such a desire to be free in the woods!”
“Have you, my child? If the wilderness thus draws you, you will sometime embrace it. Cavelier blood is wild juice.” ”