Thurstane found the caravan in excellent condition, the mules being
tethered at the reservoir half-way up the acclivity, and the wagons parked
and guarded as usual, with Weber for officer of the night.
"We are in no tanger, Leftenant," said the sergeant. "A large barty of
these bueplo beeble has shust gone to the vront. They haf daken atfandage
of our bresence to regover a bortion of the blain. I haf sent Kelly along
to look after them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust
as safe as bossible. Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a
goot blace for a gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or
two."
"Does Shubert's leg need attention?"
"No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty."
"And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?"
"Berfectly, Leftenant."
"Forty rounds apiece!"
"They are issued, Leftenant."
"If you are attacked, fire heavily; and if the attack is sharp, retreat to
the bluff. Never mind the wagons; they can be recovered."
"I will opey your instructions, Leftenant."
Thurstane was feverish and exhausted; he knew that Weber was as good a
soldier as himself; and still he went back to the village with an anxious
heart; such is the tenderness of the military conscience as to _duty_.
By the time he reached the upper landing of the wall of the pueblo it was
sunset, and he paused to gaze at a magnificent landscape, the _replica_ of
the one which he had seen at sunrise. There were buttes, valleys, and
cañons, the vast and lofty plateaus of the north, the ranges of the Navajo
country, the Sierra del Carrizo, and the ice peaks of Monte San Francisco.
It was sublime, savage, beautiful, horrible. It seemed a revelation from
some other world. It was a nightmare of nature.
Clara met him on the landing with the smile which she now often gave him.
"I was anxious about you," she said. "You were too weak to go down there.
You look very tired. Do come and eat, and then rest. You will make
yourself sick. I was quite anxious about you."
It was a delightful repetition. How his heart and his eyes thanked her for
being troubled for his sake! He was so cheered that in a moment he did not
seem to be tired at all. He could have watched all that night, if it had
been necessary for her safety, or even for her comfort. The soul certainly
has a great deal to do with the body.
While our travellers sleep, let us glance at the singular people among
whom they have found refuge.
It is said hesitatingly, by scholars who have not yet made comparative
studies of languages, that the Moquis are not _red men_, like the
Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Lenni-Lenape, the Sioux, and in general
those whom we know as _Indians_. It is said, moreover, that they are of
the same generic stock with the Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Peruvians,
and all the other city-building peoples of both North and South America.
It was an evil day for the brown race of New Mexico when horses strayed
from the Spanish settlements into the desert, and the savage red tribes
became cavalry. This feeble civilization then received a more cruel shock
than that which had been dealt it by the storming columns of the
conquistadors. The horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and
Navajos from snapping-turtles into condors. Thenceforward, instead of
crawling in slow and feeble bands to tease the dense populations of the
pueblos, they could come like a tornado, and come in a swarm. At no time
were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists and herdsmen safe from
robbery and slaughter. Such villages as did not stand upon buttes
inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess fertile lands
immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned or
depopulated by slow starvation.
It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are
now found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Not of course for all; some,
we know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been
forsaken because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless
fell during wars between different tribes of the brown race. But the
cavalry of the desert must necessarily have been a potent instrument of
destruction.
It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is
perishing, without the poor consolation of a history to record its
sufferings. It comes near to being a repetition of the silent death of the
flint and bronze races, the mound-raisers, and cave-diggers, and
cromlech-builders of Europe.
Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having
had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an
appetizer around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.
"Been out to shake hands with these clever critters," he said. "Best
behavin' 'n' meekest lookin' Injuns I ever see. Put me in mind o' cows 'n'
lambs. An' neat! 'Most equal to Amsterdam Dutch. Seen a woman sweepin' up
her husband's tobacco ashes 'n' carryin' 'em out to throw over the wall.
Jest what they do in Broek. Ever been in Broek? Tell ye 'bout it some
time. But how d'ye s'pose this town was built? _I_ didn't see no stun up
here that was fit for quarryin'. So I put it to a lot of fellers where
they got their buildin' m'ter'ls. Wal, after figurin' round a spell, 'n'
makin' signs by the schuner load, found out the hull thing. Every stun in
this place was whittled out 'f the ruff-scuff at the bottom of the
mounting, 'n' fetched up here in blankets on men's shoulders. All the mud,
too, to make their bricks, was backed up in the same way. Feller off with
his blanket 'n' showed me how they did it. Beats all. Wust of it was,
couldn't find out how long it took 'em, nor how the job was lotted out to
each one."
"I suppose they made their women do it," said Aunt Maria grimly. "Men
usually put all the hard work on women."
"Wal, women folks do a heap," admitted Glover, who never contradicted
anybody. "But there's reason to entertain a hope that they didn't take the
brunt of it here. I looked over into the gardens down b'low the town, 'n'
see men plantin' corn, 'n' tendin' peach trees, but didn't see no women at
it. The women was all in the houses, spinnin', weavin', sewin', 'n' fixin'
up ginerally."
"Remarkable people!" exclaimed Aunt Maria. "They are at least as civilized
as we. Very probably more so. Of course they are. I must learn whether the
women vote, or in any way take part in the government. If so, these
Indians are vastly our superiors, and we must sit humbly at their feet."
During this talk the worn and wounded Thurstane had been lying asleep. He
now appeared from his dormitory, nodded a hasty good-morning, and pushed
for the door.
"Train's all right," said Glover. "Jest took a squint at it. Peaceful's a
ship becalmed. Not a darned Apache in sight."
"You are sure?" demanded the young officer.
"Better get some more peach-leaf pain-killer on your arm 'n' set straight
down to breakfast."
"If the Apaches have vamosed, Coronado might join us," suggested
Thurstane.
"Never!" answered Mrs. Stanley with solemnity. "His ancestor stormed
Cibola and ravaged this whole country. If these people should hear his
name pronounced, and suspect his relationship to their oppressor, they
might massacre him."
"That was three hundred years ago," smiled the wretch of a lieutenant.
"It doesn't matter," decided Mrs. Stanley.
And so Coronado, thanks to one of his splendid inventions, was not invited
up to the pueblo.
The travellers spent the day in resting, in receiving a succession of
pleasant, tidy visitors, and in watching the ways of the little community.
The weather was perfect, for while the season was the middle of May, and
the latitude that of Algeria and Tunis, they were nearly six thousand feet
above the level of the sea, and the isolated butte was wreathed with
breezes. It was delightful to sit or stroll on the landings of the
ramparts, and overlook the flourishing landscape near at hand, and the
peaceful industry which caused it to bloom.
Along the hillside, amid the terraced gardens of corn, pumpkins, guavas,
and peaches, many men and children were at work, with here and there a
woman.
The scene had not only its charms, but its marvels. Besides the grand
environment of plateaus and mountains in the distance, there were near at
hand freaks of nature such as one might look for in the moon. Nowhere
perhaps has the great water erosion of bygone aeons wrought more
grotesquely and fantastically than in the Moqui basin. To the west rose a
series of detached buttes, presenting forms of castles, towers, and
minarets, which looked more like the handiwork of man than the pueblo
itself. There were piles of variegated sandstone, some of them four
hundred feet in height, crowned by a hundred feet of sombre trap. Internal
fire had found vent here; its outflowings had crystallized into columnar
trap; the trap had protected the underlying sandstone from cycles of
water-flow; thus had been fashioned these sublime donjons and pinnacles.
They were not only sublime but beautiful. The sandstone, reduced by ages
to a crumbling marl, was of all colors. There were layers of green,
reddish-brown, drab, purple, red, yellow, pinkish, slate, light-brown,
orange, white, and banded. Nature, not contented with building enchanted
palaces, had frescoed them. At this distance, indeed, the separate tints
of the strata could not be discerned, but their general effect of
variegation was distinctly visible, and the result was a landscape of the
Thousand and One Nights.
To the south were groups of crested mounds, some of them resembling the
spreading stumps of trees, and others broad-mouthed bells, all of vast
magnitude. These were of sandstone marl, the caps consisting of hard red
and green shales, while the swelling boles, colored by gypsum, were as
white as loaf-sugar. It was another specimen of the handiwork of deluges
which no man can number.
Far away to the southwest, and yet faintly seen through the crystalline
atmosphere, were the many-colored knolls and rolls and cliffs of the
Painted Desert. Marls, shales, and sandstones, of all tints, were strewn
and piled into a variegated vista of sterile splendor. Here surely
enchantment and glamour had made undisputed abode.
All day the wounded and the women reposed, gazing a good deal, but
sleeping more. During the afternoon, however, our wonder-loving Mrs.
Stanley roused herself from her lethargy and rushed into an adventure such
as only she knew how to find. In the morning she had noticed, at the other
end of the pueblo from her quarters, a large room which was frequented by
men alone. It might be a temple; it might be a hall for the transaction of
public business; such were the diverse guesses of the travellers. Into the
mysteries of this apartment Aunt Maria resolved to poke.
She reached it; nobody was in it; suspicious circumstance! Aunt Maria put
an end to this state of questionable solitude by entering. A dark room; no
light except from a trap door; a very proper place for improper doings. At
one end rose a large, square block of red sandstone, on which was carved a
round face environed by rays, probably representing the sun. Aunt Maria
remembered the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs, and judged that the old
sanguinary religion of Tenochtitlan was not yet extinct. She became more
convinced of this terrific fact when she discovered that the red tint of
the stone was deepened in various places by stains which resembled blood.
Three or four horrible suggestions arose in succession to jerk at her
heartstrings. Were these Moquis still in the habit of offering human
sacrifices? Would a woman answer their purpose, and particularly a white
woman? If they should catch her there, in the presence of their deity,
would they consider it a leading of Providence? Aunt Maria,
notwithstanding her curiosity and courage, began to feel a desire to
retreat.
Her reflections were interrupted and her emotions accelerated by darkness.
Evidently the door had been shut; then she heard a rustling of approaching
feet and an awful whispering; then projected hands impeded her gropings
toward safety. While she stood still, too completely blinded to fly and
too frightened to scream, a light gleamed from behind the altar and
presently rose into a flame. The sacred fire!--she knew it as soon as she
saw it; she remembered Prescott, and recognized it at a glance.
By its flickering rays she perceived that the apartment was full of men,
all robed in blankets of ebony blackness, and all gazing at her in solemn
silence. Two of them, venerable elders with long white hair, stood in
front of the others, making genuflexions and signs of adoration toward the
carved face on the altar. Presently they advanced to her, one of them
suddenly seizing her by the shoulders and pinioning her arms behind her,
while the other drew from beneath his robe a long sharp knife of the
glassy flint known as obsidian.
At this point the horrified Aunt Maria found her voice, and uttered a
piercing scream.
At the close of her scream she by a supreme effort turned on her side,
raised her hands to her face, rubbed her eyes open, stared at Clara, who
was lying near her, and mumbled, "I've had an awful nightmare."
That was it. There was no altar, nor holy fire, nor high priest, nor flint
lancet. She hadn't been anywhere, and she hadn't even screamed, except in
imagination. She was on her blanket, alongside of her niece, in the house
of the Moqui chief, and as safe as need be.