He rose and straightened himself up to his full height, and stretched out his arms as a relief after sitting so still. "I might as well take a look round, though," he said, "and see if that horse is all right. I don't know his tricks, and he might tangle himself up in his picket-rope." He strolled out to where he had fastened him, and made sure that he was all right. As he turned to come back again, he saw something on the ground that caught the fire-light and shone like a jewel. He stooped to pick it up. It was an obsidian arrowhead.
"Volcanic glass," said the miner,--expert as he was in minerals,--critically turning it over and over in his fingers, "and most beautifully chipped. This is a piece of real high-class ancient Indian work. Now, I wonder if that arrow belonged to one of those old Aztec pueblo folks, or if it was one shot at them by some wild Indian. The wild Indians were enemies of the house-people then, same as now."
His imagination took fire as he looked at this relic of ancient strife. The long procession of the centuries unrolled itself before his mind's eye, and he beheld the secular struggle for life of tribe against tribe. Those old pueblo builders, cultivators of corn, house-folk, had always been at odds with their nomad brethren, the hunters of the wild wood and the plains; yet generation after generation, they had gone on being born, growing up, marrying, and begetting a new generation to succeed them, and passing away either in battle for their little community or peacefully by their own hearth. This fire-blackened, clay-plastered angle of the wall, to what unending succession of house-mothers and house-fathers did it not speak? He looked at it with a sort of reverence. The flickering light of the flames, rekindled by him, alien successor as he was of those ancient folk, lit up every detail of the surface. In places the clay daubed on there so many centuries ago looked as fresh as if it had been done last year. Here and there he could see the very finger-marks of the woman who had plastered it; for among the Indians this was ever the task of the women, as he knew very well. Yes, and, by George! there in one spot, low down, was the handprint of a tiny child in the plaster; the little one had been playing beside its mother, and had stuck its hand against the wall while the clay was wet. A strange emotion struck through him at the sight. It was as if the little hand had reached out to him across the years and touched his own. The fire he had kindled on this cold hearth seemed like a sort of altar flame, in memory of the love that had once made this little abode a sacred place.