Gold Blindness
Gold Blindness (GB) appeared in the 8 March 1930 weekly Argosy magazine. The author, Erle Stanley Gardner is best known for his Perry Mason but he was a prolific fictionist in the early 1930s. GB is part of his Whispering Desert stories that often feature Amerindians and the I-teller, Jimmy, is mostly ESG since he spent a lot of his time then driving his Town & Country (Today, SUV) in the Mojave Desert. The girl, Auno, is finely delineated, unforgettable and wonderfully romantic.
Like much fiction for magazines, the story actually begins after the formal beginning (several pages, which has been edited out here). Amerindian lore abounds, eg, p.614, left, the use of coin buttons and its functionality in hard times and the importance of the Moon in Amerindian life, especially Dark Noon, for remembering the dead; p.615 left, New Moon for the very young to sit out alone on the Sacred Mountain and First Quarter Moon for lovers to ramble and Full or Warrior's Moon for men in their prime; and the waning Moon for the old. On p.616 is a sharp description of Dark-of-Moon services for the dead.
The ending, compressed into the short, final paragraph, I leave to each reader. This could have been a beautiful, lo-budget B&W early 1930s movie, perhaps with John Wayne as Jimmy and Anna May Wong as Auno
(ES)
Then let us begin reading:
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I'd been there for a week when I came on her.
It's not very often you see an Indian before an Indian spots you. But I did that with Auno. She was engaged in a ceremonial dance on a little flat of sandstone. It was just after sun up and the air was still pretty crisp.
I saw her shadow first. Shadows are sharp in those mountains and the sun was low enough to make hers long. The shadow moved and I thought I'd seen a deer. Then I moved over a bit.
P.614
and caught sight of the tawny skin weaving in a series of supple gyrations.
She was playing some sort of queer flute. I tried to work nearer, but she saw me.
I passed her going toward the camp. She wasn't even breathing hard, but she'd been staging a sun-up dance and must have run for 300 or so yards as fast as a deer.
She looked at me with smoky eyes.
"You findum deer?" I asked.
"No findum." she said, then, after a moment: "And you don't need to talk that synthetic pidgin English to me. It happens I was educated at Berkeley, and I majored in English."
I stood on one foot then the other, trying to think of the proper comeback for that one. There wasn't any.
Then she smiled. "What were you looking for?"
"Just walking."
"Why are you camped here?"
"For my health."
She let her eyes drift away for a flickering instant, then, turned them back on me, as glittering as obsidian, as expressionless as ebony.
She said, "If you would like to camp in the desert, I know where there is gold."
I did some rapid thinking. I know Indian psychology.
"I am not interested in gold. I want health and I must live in the mountains."
"A white man -- not interested in gold!"
I shook my head doggedly.
"It is an evil. Money is only a way of storing food. But people go mad over it and they ruin their health seeking it. I too had my money madness and then I lost my health. Now I only want to live. One needs very little gold to live."
She smiled at me and as I was admiring the white luster of her perfect teeth, flashing against the tawny silk of her skin, she turned and slipped into the shadows.
Two days later I saw her again. After that she made it a point to keep in contact with me. I figured the tribe had delegated her to see what I was doing and keep track of me.
I was willing.
Gradually she began to talk more. And I think I convinced her I wasn't looking for gold. She told me her name, Auno, She turned out to be the only pretty girl in the tribe. It was just a handful of people anyway, more than a dozen families.
After a while I got acquainted with them. Among them were Hanehagat the chief and Bigluk , a young fellow who was sweet on Auno. And then there was Wailo, the medicine man.
I don't know how old Wailo was. Nobody did. He had some blue tattooing on his face, but the features had wrinkled so much that it showed only as a blotch. No design to it anymore.
Age had withered him until he was a dehydrated shell of a man with wrinkled skin and withered arms and legs. But he was as straight as a young pine. and he had eyes that were like thunderclouds when the lightning first starts to play around the dark places.
He said nothing although his eyes were on me all the time.
I'd been there 3 months before I learned about the moon ceremony. It was an ancient rite, handed down from the time when the tribe was powerful.
It took me quite a while to get the straight of it. I'd have guessed
P.615
they were an offshoot of one of the Pueblo tribes that had drifted through the Navaho country, picked up some Piute and Apache customs, and then settled somewhere around the Death Valley.
Age, disease, changed conditions and white encroachments had done the rest. They were the last remnant of a dying people, and they knew it---all except Auno.
She used to try and pep them up, tell them of the future, predict that they would come back to their own. But the others watched her with somber eyes and said nothing.
It's hard to watch anybody die. Death seems to send a shadow that hovers about the dying one for quite a while before the soul slips its moorings. It's harder still to watch a dying race. That shadow of death seems to be with the very infants. The children play not like normal children but like young corpses walking hand in hand with death.
But it was the moon ceremony I was thinking of
The new moon was the time for the very young people to sit out, all by themselves, on the sacred mountain. When the moon went down it was time to go back to camp and bed.
Then, when the moon got into the first quarter, the lovers went forth into the moonlight, and returned when the moon had gone down.
The full moon was the warriors' moon. It was for the men in the prime of life.
After that the older people came in. They went forth to worship on the wane of the moon. The last quarter was reserved for the sages.
Those Indians ushered in each phase of the moon with a lot of powwow and old Wailo would beat a tom-tom and
wail through some song. It differed for each phase of the moon.
Wailo's personal moon was the very last of the 4th quarter, the one that came up just before the sun. It was a little before dawn and cool. I lay in my blankets and shivered, first with the cold, then with the awful note of a .tom-tom and the song that was going with it. It was a wailing chant, coming in from the distance, borne on the thin, cold air without an echo. It was the voice of an old man, trying to sing---the song of the old moon, the song of coming death, the song of a dying race.
I tried to get back to sleep but I couldn't.
With the red streaks of dawn in the sky Wailo came stealing back to camp. He was all decked out in paint and he moved as silently as a gray ghost.
Then the tribe got up. Little fires began to burn. There was the sound of moccasin feet on the hard ground. And it was time for me to get up.
All this time I hadn't seen anything of the gold, or anything that looked like gold. But I did know that the tribe wasn't dependent upon trading in the ordinary sense of the word.
p.616
The women wove blankets . There were some sheep and there was a little cornfield. But the work was all done after the manner of those who were sure of their living and work only to get what they need.
Besides there were the coin buttons that's the fashion of Indians in that country. They take dimes, quarters, sometimes even half dollars, solder on the back and use the coins for buttons and for ornaments. When times get hard they click the bar off and use their "buttons" for money.
The clothes of this tribe had silver buttons, and they never came off. Whenever anyone needed anything at the trading post they had a way of getting it. Old Wailo seemed to be the treasurer of the tribe.
So, I figured they had a placer deposit somewhere around, and that Wailo had persuaded them it was magic, and only the medicine men could take out the gold.
After that I commenced to watch Wailo.
I figured he must have a stock of gold somewhere. Maybe he knew i was watching him, but I don't think so. Anyhow, he didn't lead me to anything. I watched him, and that's all the good it did me.
But he never seemed to leave the village. He was always around saying very little. His puckery lips sucked into his mouth, his thundercloud eyes darting around the camp, seeing everything.
During the dark of the moon the tribe dedicated the night to those who had already died. They sat up around the big fires, talking in low tones of the dead, and there was a circle where the ghosts were supposed to sit and warm their hands. There were also places for the big chiefs who have passed on.
The tribe slept most of the day, after those night communions with the dead.
P.613 rt
I'd been there for a week when I came on her.
It's not very often you see an Indian before an Indian spots you. But I did that with Auno. She was engaged in a ceremonial dance on a little flat of sandstone. It was just after sun up and the air was still pretty crisp.
I saw her shadow first. Shadows are sharp in those mountains and the sun was low enough to make hers long. The shadow moved and I thought I'd seen a deer. Then I moved over a bit.
P.614
and caught sight of the tawny skin weaving in a series of supple gyrations.
She was playing some sort of queer flute. I tried to work nearer, but she saw me.
I passed her going toward the camp. She wasn't even breathing hard, but she'd been staging a sun-up dance and must have run for 300 or so yards as fast as a deer.
She looked at me with smoky eyes.
"You findum deer?" I asked.
"No findum." she said, then, after a moment: "And you don't need to talk that synthetic pidgin English to me. It happens I was educated at Berkeley, and I majored in English."
I stood on one foot then the other, trying to think of the proper comeback for that one. There wasn't any.
Then she smiled. "What were you looking for?"
"Just walking."
"Why are you camped here?"
"For my health."
She let her eyes drift away for a flickering instant, then, turned them back on me, as glittering as obsidian, as expressionless as ebony.
She said, "If you would like to camp in the desert, I know where there is gold."
I did some rapid thinking. I know Indian psychology.
"I am not interested in gold. I want health and I must live in the mountains."
"A white man -- not interested in gold!"
I shook my head doggedly.
"It is an evil. Money is only a way of storing food. But people go mad over it and they ruin their health seeking it. I too had my money madness and then I lost my health. Now I only want to live. One needs very little gold to live."
She smiled at me and as I was admiring the white luster of her perfect teeth, flashing against the tawny silk of her skin, she turned and slipped into the shadows.
Two days later I saw her again. After that she made it a point to keep in contact with me. I figured the tribe had delegated her to see what I was doing and keep track of me.
I was willing.
Gradually she began to talk more. And I think I convinced her I wasn't looking for gold. She told me her name, Auno, She turned out to be the only pretty girl in the tribe. It was just a handful of people anyway, more than a dozen families.
After a while I got acquainted with them. Among them were Hanehagat the chief and Bigluk , a young fellow who was sweet on Auno. And then there was Wailo, the medicine man.
I don't know how old Wailo was. Nobody did. He had some blue tattooing on his face, but the features had wrinkled so much that it showed only as a blotch. No design to it anymore.
Age had withered him until he was a dehydrated shell of a man with wrinkled skin and withered arms and legs. But he was as straight as a young pine. and he had eyes that were like thunderclouds when the lightning first starts to play around the dark places.
He said nothing although his eyes were on me all the time.
I'd been there 3 months before I learned about the moon ceremony. It was an ancient rite, handed down from the time when the tribe was powerful.
It took me quite a while to get the straight of it. I'd have guessed
P.615
they were an offshoot of one of the Pueblo tribes that had drifted through the Navaho country, picked up some Piute and Apache customs, and then settled somewhere around the Death Valley.
Age, disease, changed conditions and white encroachments had done the rest. They were the last remnant of a dying people, and they knew it---all except Auno.
She used to try and pep them up, tell them of the future, predict that they would come back to their own. But the others watched her with somber eyes and said nothing.
It's hard to watch anybody die. Death seems to send a shadow that hovers about the dying one for quite a while before the soul slips its moorings. It's harder still to watch a dying race. That shadow of death seems to be with the very infants. The children play not like normal children but like young corpses walking hand in hand with death.
But it was the moon ceremony I was thinking of
The new moon was the time for the very young people to sit out, all by themselves, on the sacred mountain. When the moon went down it was time to go back to camp and bed.
Then, when the moon got into the first quarter, the lovers went forth into the moonlight, and returned when the moon had gone down.
The full moon was the warriors' moon. It was for the men in the prime of life.
After that the older people came in. They went forth to worship on the wane of the moon. The last quarter was reserved for the sages.
Those Indians ushered in each phase of the moon with a lot of powwow and old Wailo would beat a tom-tom and
wail through some song. It differed for each phase of the moon.
Wailo's personal moon was the very last of the 4th quarter, the one that came up just before the sun. It was a little before dawn and cool. I lay in my blankets and shivered, first with the cold, then with the awful note of a .tom-tom and the song that was going with it. It was a wailing chant, coming in from the distance, borne on the thin, cold air without an echo. It was the voice of an old man, trying to sing---the song of the old moon, the song of coming death, the song of a dying race.
I tried to get back to sleep but I couldn't.
With the red streaks of dawn in the sky Wailo came stealing back to camp. He was all decked out in paint and he moved as silently as a gray ghost.
Then the tribe got up. Little fires began to burn. There was the sound of moccasin feet on the hard ground. And it was time for me to get up.
All this time I hadn't seen anything of the gold, or anything that looked like gold. But I did know that the tribe wasn't dependent upon trading in the ordinary sense of the word.
p.616
The women wove blankets . There were some sheep and there was a little cornfield. But the work was all done after the manner of those who were sure of their living and work only to get what they need.
Besides there were the coin buttons that's the fashion of Indians in that country. They take dimes, quarters, sometimes even half dollars, solder on the back and use the coins for buttons and for ornaments. When times get hard they click the bar off and use their "buttons" for money.
The clothes of this tribe had silver buttons, and they never came off. Whenever anyone needed anything at the trading post they had a way of getting it. Old Wailo seemed to be the treasurer of the tribe.
So, I figured they had a placer deposit somewhere around, and that Wailo had persuaded them it was magic, and only the medicine men could take out the gold.
After that I commenced to watch Wailo.
I figured he must have a stock of gold somewhere. Maybe he knew i was watching him, but I don't think so. Anyhow, he didn't lead me to anything. I watched him, and that's all the good it did me.
But he never seemed to leave the village. He was always around saying very little. His puckery lips sucked into his mouth, his thundercloud eyes darting around the camp, seeing everything.
During the dark of the moon the tribe dedicated the night to those who had already died. They sat up around the big fires, talking in low tones of the dead, and there was a circle where the ghosts were supposed to sit and warm their hands. There were also places for the big chiefs who have passed on.
The tribe slept most of the day, after those night communions with the dead.
LOVERS' MOON
I got an idea during those long sessions around the spectral fires.
When the new moon came I went to Hanebagat, the chief, and told him that I was the same as a member of the tribe now, and that I would go out on the ceremony of the 1st quarter of the moon. He agreed.
The word got spread around, and Bigluk made a protest to the chief. It was easy to see how his mind worked. There weren't more than 5 or 6 of them that came under the lovers' moon and Bigluk was afraid I'd get too thick with Auno. He'd always preempted her for the moon ceremonies before.
But Auno whispered to Hanebagat and the chief stood pat.
When the moon came to the 1st quarter, Wailo got out the sacred drum, put on some ceremonial paint and chanted a song that was supposed to be the thrilling song of love. But he knew the race was dying and sadness crept into his voice. The chant sounded more like a dirge for all its swing and occasional burst of noise.
After he chant we went out onto the sacred mountain, walking hand in hand. On the mountain we separated, each going by himself.
That was the ceremony. The young men were supposed to meditate on the hunt and upon warlike deeds. The girls were to think of the tanning of skins, the cooking of food, the rearing of a family when they should get married.
If one of the young men chanced on one of the young women after
P.617
we had separated, he could talk with her. If they stayed together until the moon set, then it was equivalent to a marriage ceremony.
Of course, all the young men in the tribe wanted to marry Auno. But Bigluk seemed to have the best chance. He was big and surly and he sort of kept the others away. There wasn't one of them, though, that hadn't tried to find her on the mountain after they'd separated.
Custom decreed that the women should leave first. After a few minutes the young men walked apart.
There were only 3 young women. One was very fat. The other was homely. The 3rd was Auno. There were only 3 men beside myself. One of them was rather ugly.
After the girls had gone the men separated and I found myself out on the moonlit mountain. Below was the camp. One of the warriors started a chant that ran for a few bars , then wailed into silence. Here and there a shadow flitted.
Auno was an adept at keeping separate. They could find her, have a little chat, and she'd glide off like a shadow. But, for the most part, they couldn't find her.
I sat in the shadow of a clump of juniper and watched Bigluk. He tried to trail her for a while but that was too slow. She could make tracks faster than he could find them in the moonlight. So he got in the shadow of a pine trunk and searched the mountain.
Finally he was off like a deer.
I watched him. He ran fast and well. He jumped into a bush clump and there was a sound of struggle, the low laugh of a woman, the exclamation of a man's voice, and Bigluk came out looking disgusted.
The fat girl was clinging to his arm,
p.617 rt
pouring words at him. Bigluk was shaking his head. He jerked
his arm free and went down the mountainside,peering into brush clumps.
Far above him I heard a low laugh that sounded like the tinkle of a bell.
He turned and charged like a mad bull. But he might as well have been chasing a shadow. He became dignified then and walked about with slow steps, pacing in the moonlight, no doubt meditating upon his life. But I noticed he had his eye peeled for every bit of motion.
When the moon went down we started for camp, coming in one at a time in silence. Then we rolled into the blankets.
The next night it was the same, and the next.
I didn't move around much. I kept up there on the mountainside, mostly in the shadows. The fat girl found me once on the 2nd night, but I left her. She'd have been willing to stay until the moon went down, which, as I said, would have been the same as marriage.
On the 4th night the moon was pretty strong. It was about the last of the ceremonial phase given over to the younger people. Bigluk had charged around as usual. Once he had caught Auno and they had talked for 15 or 20 minutes. I couldn't hear what they said, but he was doing most of the talking, and his voice was getting that note in it that comes to people when they're desperate over something.
Auno left him. That was the custom: either could leave the other and the other must not follow.
Bigluk walked into the shadows and stayed there.
I went out into the moonlight walk-
P.618
ing, thinking. I knew it was no use to look for Auno. She could hide from the keen eyes of the Indians, and it would be too simple for her to elude me with my civilization-dulled senses. She could hide from me so easily it would make me seem absurd. I could no more hope to find her than I could elude the fat girl.
The fat girl talked a little English and she got herself in my way, so I'd have to either talk to her or be rude.
I paused for a few minutes, talked.
"You no go 'way," she said, and her eyes were bright.
I laughed.
"You too good-looking to waste yourself on white, Missa Flint. You get nice Indian."
She parted her lips and the moon gleamed on her teeth.
"I make you good squaw... I show you plenty gold."
She lowered her voice for the last few words, glanced quickly around her.
I knew the danger. If other ears overheard, the fat one had pronounced her death sentence. But she had the keen sense of an Indian, and there wasn't much chance anyone would have been in hearing.
I looked at her, hesitated.
She gently tilted one shoulder blade with a seductive motion.
I got a grip on myself.
"Gold no good," I said sternly. "Gold only good to buy food. Out here plenty food. One needs not much gold."
And I walked away.
It was a struggle and I wasn't sure why I hadn't said "yes" to the girl. I might have married her, got her to show me where the gold was, and then sneaked back some night, got what I wanted for a stake, and left. I turned it over in my mind and then turned it down.
p.618rt
we had separated, he could talk with her. If they stayed together until the moon set, then it was equivalent to a marriage ceremony.
Of course, all the young men in the tribe wanted to marry Auno. But Bigluk seemed to have the best chance. He was big and surly and he sort of kept the others away. There wasn't one of them, though, that hadn't tried to find her on the mountain after they'd separated.
Custom decreed that the women should leave first. After a few minutes the young men walked apart.
There were only 3 young women. One was very fat. The other was homely. The 3rd was Auno. There were only 3 men beside myself. One of them was rather ugly.
After the girls had gone the men separated and I found myself out on the moonlit mountain. Below was the camp. One of the warriors started a chant that ran for a few bars , then wailed into silence. Here and there a shadow flitted.
Auno was an adept at keeping separate. They could find her, have a little chat, and she'd glide off like a shadow. But, for the most part, they couldn't find her.
I sat in the shadow of a clump of juniper and watched Bigluk. He tried to trail her for a while but that was too slow. She could make tracks faster than he could find them in the moonlight. So he got in the shadow of a pine trunk and searched the mountain.
Finally he was off like a deer.
I watched him. He ran fast and well. He jumped into a bush clump and there was a sound of struggle, the low laugh of a woman, the exclamation of a man's voice, and Bigluk came out looking disgusted.
The fat girl was clinging to his arm,
p.617 rt
pouring words at him. Bigluk was shaking his head. He jerked
his arm free and went down the mountainside,peering into brush clumps.
Far above him I heard a low laugh that sounded like the tinkle of a bell.
He turned and charged like a mad bull. But he might as well have been chasing a shadow. He became dignified then and walked about with slow steps, pacing in the moonlight, no doubt meditating upon his life. But I noticed he had his eye peeled for every bit of motion.
When the moon went down we started for camp, coming in one at a time in silence. Then we rolled into the blankets.
The next night it was the same, and the next.
I didn't move around much. I kept up there on the mountainside, mostly in the shadows. The fat girl found me once on the 2nd night, but I left her. She'd have been willing to stay until the moon went down, which, as I said, would have been the same as marriage.
On the 4th night the moon was pretty strong. It was about the last of the ceremonial phase given over to the younger people. Bigluk had charged around as usual. Once he had caught Auno and they had talked for 15 or 20 minutes. I couldn't hear what they said, but he was doing most of the talking, and his voice was getting that note in it that comes to people when they're desperate over something.
Auno left him. That was the custom: either could leave the other and the other must not follow.
Bigluk walked into the shadows and stayed there.
I went out into the moonlight walk-
P.618
ing, thinking. I knew it was no use to look for Auno. She could hide from the keen eyes of the Indians, and it would be too simple for her to elude me with my civilization-dulled senses. She could hide from me so easily it would make me seem absurd. I could no more hope to find her than I could elude the fat girl.
The fat girl talked a little English and she got herself in my way, so I'd have to either talk to her or be rude.
I paused for a few minutes, talked.
"You no go 'way," she said, and her eyes were bright.
I laughed.
"You too good-looking to waste yourself on white, Missa Flint. You get nice Indian."
She parted her lips and the moon gleamed on her teeth.
"I make you good squaw... I show you plenty gold."
She lowered her voice for the last few words, glanced quickly around her.
I knew the danger. If other ears overheard, the fat one had pronounced her death sentence. But she had the keen sense of an Indian, and there wasn't much chance anyone would have been in hearing.
I looked at her, hesitated.
She gently tilted one shoulder blade with a seductive motion.
I got a grip on myself.
"Gold no good," I said sternly. "Gold only good to buy food. Out here plenty food. One needs not much gold."
And I walked away.
It was a struggle and I wasn't sure why I hadn't said "yes" to the girl. I might have married her, got her to show me where the gold was, and then sneaked back some night, got what I wanted for a stake, and left. I turned it over in my mind and then turned it down.
p.618rt
As I walked and looked at the moon, I inhaled great lungfuls of air and wondered if there mightn't be something in the philosophy of Wailo after all.
I rounded a bush and Auno got to her feet with a single bound, like a startled deer. Then she paused, poised on one lithe leg, half turned.
"Don't run, Auno," I said.
She settled back on her 2 feet, looked at me.
It was well done but I knew that her ears had heard my steps long before I came to her. Perhaps they had heard
P.619
the conversation between the fat girl and myself.
"I was thinking and you startled me," she half whispered.
"Thinking of what, Auno?"
She raised her head, looking at me with half-closed eyes, then tilted her neck, after the manner of a listening deer.
"He comes. You will go with me and we will avoid him."
I listened but could hear nothing save the faint rustle of the night wind on the moonlit slope of the mountain. But her delicate senses had apprised her of the coming of Bigluk.
"Very, very softly," she said as she nestled her warm hand confidingly in mine and guided me along the moonlit game trails that networked the side of the slope.
We crossed the ridge and were in shadow. Then she paused, listened, and led me into the deeper darkness.
"Now we are safe."
Reluctantly I let go of her hand. Of a sudden I realized what this girl had come to mean to me.
"So you would not marry, get the gold and desert the tribe?" she cooed.
"You heard, then?"
"I heard."
I shifted my weight from 1 foot to the other, not knowing just what to say next.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I do not care for gold---no, I'll be honest; that is not it."
She came closer to me. I could feel the warmth of her body, glowing through the soft tanned fawn-skin of her clothes.
"You are not like other white men. You are more of a man, less of a hog?"
"It is because I love you!" I told her and swept the girl into a tender embrace.
p.619rt
Quick as I was, she could have avoided me had she desired. Her splendid muscles functioned as easily and swiftly as those of a springing cougar. But she slipped into the curve of my arm and after a moment, raised her red lips to mine.
Long minutes we stood, close up to each other, I feeling the warm fragrance of her breath on my cheek.
The moon slid lower in the dark sky.
"It is not the gold?"
"It is not the gold."
And at that moment, gold seemed sordid to me. I resented the very use of the word.
She sank to the ground, pulled me down beside her, slipped her head upon my shoulder, laughed and snuggled close to me, patted my cheek and hair, kissed my eyes, looked up at he star-studded sky and rippled into another laugh.
"Soon the moon sets, Jimmy."
"You will go back with me, Auno, beloved?"
For a long minute she was silent, thinking.
I knew when a sudden thought came to her. I could feel her body stiffen in my embrace. The hands were at my shoulder where her head had been, now pushing us apart.
"Perhaps it is because you knew I loved you, Jimmy. You still want the gold, but you would rather have the gold and me, than the gold and her."
I was on my feet, words poured from my lips.
I convinced her heart but the thought remained in her mind.
"We will see," she said, and made a single writhing motion which gathered the cloak of darkness about her as a tangible thing. One moment she had been there. The next she was gone.
P.620
That was the last night of the lovers. Thereafter, Auno avoided me. And Bigluk had muttered some comment to the elders of the tribe. I detected a feeling of hostility which had not before been apparent.
The full moon came and went.
One morning the air was calm, still, cold. I set out with my rifle, going more for the exercise than anything else, for there was plenty of meat in camp.
A bush ahead of me showed a ripple of motion. I flung up the gun, and Auno stepped out into the trail.
"Are your eyes still the eyes of a white man?" she asked, tauntingly. "Do you not know that a deer would not be on the windward side of the bush? Think you that a deer would shut off his vision on the same side that his nose was blind?"
I muttered something about having seen motion and acted automatically.
She laughed, beckoned for me to follow.
She picked her way down a game trail, came to a canyon, paused, looked about her, her eyes snapping, every muscle poised, tense.
Then she took my hand. Together we raced up a bed of smooth rock, worn down by the torrents of many cloud-bursts.
She paused where a branch canyon came into the main cleft in the hills, parted a bit of brush, and disclosed a worn trail.
I followed her without a word.
p.620rt
The trail ended at a rock. Behind the rock was a place which yawned black and forbidding, the entrance to a cave.
She slipped into it, grasped a torch from a place in the wall, lit it, and advanced.
The smoking fumes of the pitch torch gave weird shadows which danced about on the wall of the cave. A damp smell of musty ages was in the atmosphere. A bat flew past, almost knocking against my shoulder.
The girl stopped, held forward the torch.
I saw where some subterranean stream had cut a channel through the cave, leaving coarse bits of gravel, bigger rocks worn smooth. I saw where a dike of rock came across the course of that ancient stream , making a dam. And I saw something else; pebbles that were not pebbles but glittered here and there as the light of the torch struck them.
Mostly they were black, but in places the black oxidation had been rubbed off and the gold showed through. I had seen black gold in places before.
"Behold," she said, "the treasure of the tribe. There is more here than many men could possibly carry away."
I knew she was right.
Auno moved the torch and I saw a row of something white, something which sent a sudden chill through my bones. They were skeletons, 3 of them!
There they sat, grinning into the dark depths of the cavern, grouped in a row upon a little shelf in the rock.
"And these," she went on, "are the white men whose greed betrayed them. These are the skeletons of those who would have looted our treasure, stolen from us that which is ours."
p.621
"Murder?" I asked.
"Bah!" she spat, an expletive of disgust. "Murder is it? Didn't the white men crowd us out of our own country, banish us to the burning desert? And now that we have a little of the precious metal in our possession, they must come even here and grab that too!"
I decided not to argue the point.
"Yes," she said, and her voice was low, almost crooning, "these men discovered our secret, tried to steal our treasure. The braves trailed them, cut off their escape and returned the bodies to the cave. They wanted the treasure so much! Let them remain with it always.
"But they were foolish, Jimmy. They took the gold and started over the mountains toward the road. Had they been wise they would have gone out into the desert. There they would have had heat and thirst, but the shifting sands would have drifted in over their tracks.
"Wailo guards the treasure. And in the mornings when there is a very old moon, and Wailo is on the mountainside, a man could enter here, wait until dawn came, and then slip out. He would get far before he would be missed."
I thought that over, the last sentence in particular.
"You are telling me how I could steal the gold?"
She nodded.
"Why?"
"Because either you love me or you love the gold. I want to find out which. If it is the gold, take what you can carry and go. If you love me---well, then when there comes a new moon again, Jimmy, and we walk upon the mountainside, perhaps---"
Her voice trailed into silence.
p.621rt
I grasped her in my arms. The torch fell, sputtering to the floor, flickered a minute and went out.. There in the darkness of the cave we embraced and I whispered that gold meant nothing to me.
Of a sudden she broke away.
"Quick!" she breathed, and grasping the still smoking torch, led me farther back into the black recesses of the mountain.
There was the sound of feet upon the gravel floor of the cave. Some one stumbled, halted. A match blazed, a torch burst into flame, and I could see Wailo, the magician peering about the shadows.
His wrinkled skin seemed as coarse as an elephant's foot-pad. But his eyes glittered with an undying spirit that made the flames of the torch sparkle in dancing reflections.
For several minutes he stood, listening, watching. Then he stooped, gathered some of the gold and retraced his steps. The torch went out and darkness fell.
We sat, she in my arms, and waited until an hour had passed. Then we, too, sought the sunlight.
I thought much of that cave during the next 2 days. But mostly the thoughts came to me at night. I wondered if I had dropped so low as to be unworthy of Auno's confidence.
That fine, clean girl meant more to me than anything in the world. Beauty, charm, perfect health; and we could live the care-free life of Nature's children out in the desert, out where the tumbled mountains stretched their glistening sides down toward the shimmering heat of Death Valley.
p.622
Then I thought of the gold. Try as I might, I couldn't get the yellow metal out of my mind. I thought of what it would buy.
Then I realized what the Indian girl had done. She had put my soul to the test. If I had greed, she had shown me how to take all the gold I could carry and escape. If I had spoken the truth and cared nothing for gold---then the next new moon would see us walking together down from the mountain.
The nights passed. I slept less. The thought of the gold tortured my mind.
Then came the old moon, the last night of the withered moon when there was a mere streak of crescent light riding in the heavens a half hour before dawn.
And then I heard the faint boom-boom-boom of Wailo's drum as the old man communed with himself. I thought of the shriveled arm, the wrinkled face, thought of how he had been with the tribe when he was a young man and
p.622rt
walked on the mountainside in the light of the new moon.
And I remembered what Auno had said, that this was the safe time to steal the treasure. I tried not to think of the cursed stuff , but my thoughts turned to the gold.
A clammy sweat clothed my body. I raised myself on one elbow. The camp was silent.
Faintly, I could hear the chant of Wailo's song of extreme age, the chant that greets the grave. The drum gave forth hollow booming, throbbing like a pulse in the night. It seemed to lift me up...to lead me...
"Waiter! Bring me another bottle! And bring a bottle for my friend here, too!
"Take the price from this sack. See! It contains gold. There is lots of gold, pure virgin gold. My friend and I are celebrating---celebrating my return to civilization.
To start reading Slim Novel 2 now, click: 2.1 A Date in Tokyo/Anti American Rantthe conversation between the fat girl and myself.
"I was thinking and you startled me," she half whispered.
"Thinking of what, Auno?"
She raised her head, looking at me with half-closed eyes, then tilted her neck, after the manner of a listening deer.
"He comes. You will go with me and we will avoid him."
I listened but could hear nothing save the faint rustle of the night wind on the moonlit slope of the mountain. But her delicate senses had apprised her of the coming of Bigluk.
"Very, very softly," she said as she nestled her warm hand confidingly in mine and guided me along the moonlit game trails that networked the side of the slope.
We crossed the ridge and were in shadow. Then she paused, listened, and led me into the deeper darkness.
"Now we are safe."
Reluctantly I let go of her hand. Of a sudden I realized what this girl had come to mean to me.
"So you would not marry, get the gold and desert the tribe?" she cooed.
"You heard, then?"
"I heard."
I shifted my weight from 1 foot to the other, not knowing just what to say next.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I do not care for gold---no, I'll be honest; that is not it."
She came closer to me. I could feel the warmth of her body, glowing through the soft tanned fawn-skin of her clothes.
"You are not like other white men. You are more of a man, less of a hog?"
"It is because I love you!" I told her and swept the girl into a tender embrace.
p.619rt
Quick as I was, she could have avoided me had she desired. Her splendid muscles functioned as easily and swiftly as those of a springing cougar. But she slipped into the curve of my arm and after a moment, raised her red lips to mine.
Long minutes we stood, close up to each other, I feeling the warm fragrance of her breath on my cheek.
The moon slid lower in the dark sky.
"It is not the gold?"
"It is not the gold."
And at that moment, gold seemed sordid to me. I resented the very use of the word.
She sank to the ground, pulled me down beside her, slipped her head upon my shoulder, laughed and snuggled close to me, patted my cheek and hair, kissed my eyes, looked up at he star-studded sky and rippled into another laugh.
"Soon the moon sets, Jimmy."
"You will go back with me, Auno, beloved?"
For a long minute she was silent, thinking.
I knew when a sudden thought came to her. I could feel her body stiffen in my embrace. The hands were at my shoulder where her head had been, now pushing us apart.
"Perhaps it is because you knew I loved you, Jimmy. You still want the gold, but you would rather have the gold and me, than the gold and her."
I was on my feet, words poured from my lips.
I convinced her heart but the thought remained in her mind.
"We will see," she said, and made a single writhing motion which gathered the cloak of darkness about her as a tangible thing. One moment she had been there. The next she was gone.
P.620
That was the last night of the lovers. Thereafter, Auno avoided me. And Bigluk had muttered some comment to the elders of the tribe. I detected a feeling of hostility which had not before been apparent.
The full moon came and went.
One morning the air was calm, still, cold. I set out with my rifle, going more for the exercise than anything else, for there was plenty of meat in camp.
A bush ahead of me showed a ripple of motion. I flung up the gun, and Auno stepped out into the trail.
"Are your eyes still the eyes of a white man?" she asked, tauntingly. "Do you not know that a deer would not be on the windward side of the bush? Think you that a deer would shut off his vision on the same side that his nose was blind?"
I muttered something about having seen motion and acted automatically.
She laughed, beckoned for me to follow.
She picked her way down a game trail, came to a canyon, paused, looked about her, her eyes snapping, every muscle poised, tense.
Then she took my hand. Together we raced up a bed of smooth rock, worn down by the torrents of many cloud-bursts.
She paused where a branch canyon came into the main cleft in the hills, parted a bit of brush, and disclosed a worn trail.
I followed her without a word.
p.620rt
The trail ended at a rock. Behind the rock was a place which yawned black and forbidding, the entrance to a cave.
She slipped into it, grasped a torch from a place in the wall, lit it, and advanced.
The smoking fumes of the pitch torch gave weird shadows which danced about on the wall of the cave. A damp smell of musty ages was in the atmosphere. A bat flew past, almost knocking against my shoulder.
The girl stopped, held forward the torch.
I saw where some subterranean stream had cut a channel through the cave, leaving coarse bits of gravel, bigger rocks worn smooth. I saw where a dike of rock came across the course of that ancient stream , making a dam. And I saw something else; pebbles that were not pebbles but glittered here and there as the light of the torch struck them.
Mostly they were black, but in places the black oxidation had been rubbed off and the gold showed through. I had seen black gold in places before.
"Behold," she said, "the treasure of the tribe. There is more here than many men could possibly carry away."
I knew she was right.
Auno moved the torch and I saw a row of something white, something which sent a sudden chill through my bones. They were skeletons, 3 of them!
There they sat, grinning into the dark depths of the cavern, grouped in a row upon a little shelf in the rock.
"And these," she went on, "are the white men whose greed betrayed them. These are the skeletons of those who would have looted our treasure, stolen from us that which is ours."
p.621
"Murder?" I asked.
"Bah!" she spat, an expletive of disgust. "Murder is it? Didn't the white men crowd us out of our own country, banish us to the burning desert? And now that we have a little of the precious metal in our possession, they must come even here and grab that too!"
I decided not to argue the point.
"Yes," she said, and her voice was low, almost crooning, "these men discovered our secret, tried to steal our treasure. The braves trailed them, cut off their escape and returned the bodies to the cave. They wanted the treasure so much! Let them remain with it always.
"But they were foolish, Jimmy. They took the gold and started over the mountains toward the road. Had they been wise they would have gone out into the desert. There they would have had heat and thirst, but the shifting sands would have drifted in over their tracks.
"Wailo guards the treasure. And in the mornings when there is a very old moon, and Wailo is on the mountainside, a man could enter here, wait until dawn came, and then slip out. He would get far before he would be missed."
I thought that over, the last sentence in particular.
"You are telling me how I could steal the gold?"
She nodded.
"Why?"
"Because either you love me or you love the gold. I want to find out which. If it is the gold, take what you can carry and go. If you love me---well, then when there comes a new moon again, Jimmy, and we walk upon the mountainside, perhaps---"
Her voice trailed into silence.
p.621rt
I grasped her in my arms. The torch fell, sputtering to the floor, flickered a minute and went out.. There in the darkness of the cave we embraced and I whispered that gold meant nothing to me.
Of a sudden she broke away.
"Quick!" she breathed, and grasping the still smoking torch, led me farther back into the black recesses of the mountain.
There was the sound of feet upon the gravel floor of the cave. Some one stumbled, halted. A match blazed, a torch burst into flame, and I could see Wailo, the magician peering about the shadows.
His wrinkled skin seemed as coarse as an elephant's foot-pad. But his eyes glittered with an undying spirit that made the flames of the torch sparkle in dancing reflections.
For several minutes he stood, listening, watching. Then he stooped, gathered some of the gold and retraced his steps. The torch went out and darkness fell.
We sat, she in my arms, and waited until an hour had passed. Then we, too, sought the sunlight.
I thought much of that cave during the next 2 days. But mostly the thoughts came to me at night. I wondered if I had dropped so low as to be unworthy of Auno's confidence.
That fine, clean girl meant more to me than anything in the world. Beauty, charm, perfect health; and we could live the care-free life of Nature's children out in the desert, out where the tumbled mountains stretched their glistening sides down toward the shimmering heat of Death Valley.
p.622
Then I thought of the gold. Try as I might, I couldn't get the yellow metal out of my mind. I thought of what it would buy.
Then I realized what the Indian girl had done. She had put my soul to the test. If I had greed, she had shown me how to take all the gold I could carry and escape. If I had spoken the truth and cared nothing for gold---then the next new moon would see us walking together down from the mountain.
The nights passed. I slept less. The thought of the gold tortured my mind.
Then came the old moon, the last night of the withered moon when there was a mere streak of crescent light riding in the heavens a half hour before dawn.
And then I heard the faint boom-boom-boom of Wailo's drum as the old man communed with himself. I thought of the shriveled arm, the wrinkled face, thought of how he had been with the tribe when he was a young man and
p.622rt
walked on the mountainside in the light of the new moon.
And I remembered what Auno had said, that this was the safe time to steal the treasure. I tried not to think of the cursed stuff , but my thoughts turned to the gold.
A clammy sweat clothed my body. I raised myself on one elbow. The camp was silent.
Faintly, I could hear the chant of Wailo's song of extreme age, the chant that greets the grave. The drum gave forth hollow booming, throbbing like a pulse in the night. It seemed to lift me up...to lead me...
"Waiter! Bring me another bottle! And bring a bottle for my friend here, too!
"Take the price from this sack. See! It contains gold. There is lots of gold, pure virgin gold. My friend and I are celebrating---celebrating my return to civilization.
The End of "Gold Blindness"
(Dr Stim's Editor's note: The Perry Mason man was a very good writer; short story amateurs can learn a lot just analyzing (And note the authentic Indian lore and an attractive squaw) but philosophers learn more by thinking about the meaning of civilization at the end. The ending was probably truncated at the original editor's request. But still very realistic because most men (or women in today's LGBT age) would stupidly end up doing what Jimmy did. Or what do you think?)
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