“To those unaccustomed to desert lands the Navajo country
presents in form and color and grouping of topographic
features a surprising and fascinating variety; and those
familiar with arid regions will find here erosion features
of unusual grandeur and beauty.”—Gregory: The Navajo Country
The nearest place of change was the town, with a dinner at the Harvey
House. I planned to make this trip each month, to have a food spree,
quite as on a time rude gentlemen of the cattle days came in from the
ranges, hungry for sights and pleasures, and devoted themselves to the
swift consumption of raw liquors. But four hours of dragging through
heated sand and sunlight, from one lonely landmark to another, with
nothing of interest between, destroyed much of the anticipated
satisfaction. I recall a bit of Washington advice.
“You will find that country,” said the well-meaning fellow, “covered
with black gramma grass. Buy a pinto pony the very first thing you do.
Its keep will be negligible. A saddle will cost but a few dollars. Thus
you will have transportation at all times. It will be a pleasure to
ride into town after office hours. You’ll enjoy riding above all
things.”
Twenty-six miles—fifty-two miles there and back!
Now I had read Western stories, written by O. Henry and others who knew
less about the subject. Playing the sedulous ape, I had written a few
myself. These epics all mentioned areas of black gramma grass, and made
much of swift-footed cayuses that were camouflaged by Nature and
possessed Dante-like noses and broom tails. There is a wondrous lot of
this in the movies, too, and the joyous bounding of the aforesaid
animals, from prairie rise to prairie rise, pressing the miles behind
them, and the carefree demeanor of their riders, surrounded as they are
by creaking leather, wide-barred shirts, and jingling spurs, appeals to
one.
But when you learn that a cayuse-bronk in northern Arizona eats
imported hay at forty and sometimes sixty dollars the ton, the black
gramma grass and pastures all being three hundred miles to the south;
and when you find that the devil is not to be trusted for an instant,
and that he has to be flayed constantly to produce even an amble; and
when you feel—“feel” is the word—the misery twitching completely
throughout the human system from pounding on the wooden anatomy of the
brute, a large part of this paper-and-film appeal vanishes. Moreover,
dusty shirts, alkali-impregnated handkerchiefs, and the smell of a
harness shop do not combine to flavor one’s meals delicately. Big Bill
Hart may have my share of this, and he is welcome.
But there does come a longing “for to admire and for to see” what is
actually out back. That adventure and romance are not to be found in
the beautiful desert distances seems impossible. The dim blue buttes of
the north, mysterious altars of the gods, promised to yield something
from the land they guarded. And when an Agency mechanic told me that he
had orders to visit the Castle Butte station, a far-away outpost, I
recommended myself as a standard camp-cook, recalling the early
mornings of newspaper days when I fried eggs on a gas-stove. We did not
go to the horse-corral and lay our ropes over two spirited steeds, but
at an early hour wended to the barn and harnessed two sturdy old plugs
to a twelve-hundred-pound farm wagon. They were capable of making four
miles an hour, and the wagon had capacity for a grub-box, for blankets,
shovels, rope, and all the things necessary—perhaps—to our getting
there first, and to accomplishing something afterward.
Have you never wondered how those adventurous fellows of the yarns,
outfitted with nothing but a handkerchief, a saddle, and a lariat,
manage to cover leagues upon leagues with the one horse, and never stop
overnight? A Navajo Indian can do with one blanket and a sheepskin
lashed behind his saddle; but even he contrives to find the
trading-posts of the Desert for his grub, and he always reaches a
friendly camp at nightfall.
Smith cautioned me to take a heavy coat, which I would not have thought
of. Right at the start I committed a serious blunder, one that caused
me to suffer bitterly, and one that I have not repeated since.
Expecting to return next day, I persuaded myself that two sacks of
beck-a-shay nahto, or genuine “cattle” tobacco, would be sufficient for
the trip. But desert plans are subject to change, and desert wisdom is
painfully acquired. I now have drilled myself never to forget matches
and a filled canteen, baling-wire,—otherwise “Arizona silk,”—repair
parts for the lizard, a piece of rope, tools, and a heavy coat of
sheepskin, plus a tobacco factory unless the route is marked by
trading-posts every thirty miles. I arrange these things automatically,
because on that trip I tried to smoke powdered alfalfa in a cob pipe.
Northward we wended all day, one rugged mesa slope and huge flat
succeeding another, always rising. After passing Lone Cottonwood
Spring, where the water was an excellent imitation of thick gray
pea-soup that the horses disdained, we lunched at a delightful place
known as Coyote Springs, one of the ten thousand Southwest waterholes
so named. In the naming of springs and precious water it would seem
that the vocabulary of the pioneers was decidedly limited. But it would
have been the same by any other name. A hole scooped in a soft rock and
sand hill, fenced with crooked and cracking cottonwood branches, as the
Navajo build their corrals, with not a vestige of relieving green
within miles of it. All around the sand was packed hard by the flocks
of sheep that came to water. Overhead was a broiling sun, and this
barren area reflected every bit of the glare and heat that it did not
hold as a stove. The air was heavy with the aroma of sheep, and alkali
showed ghastly white in the spring’s overflow. Nevertheless, it was an
oasis and held water. Here and there were picked and bleaching bones.
The coyotes knew its name.
Many buttes not to be seen from the Agency were now in sight. One lumpy
mound resembled a coiled snake—Rattlesnake Butte; another was shaped as
a pyramid, although no one had heard of Cheops or Chephren; and a
third, which had crumbled, was like a huge four-poster bed that some
forgotten giant had wrecked.
A bite to eat, and on again, lumbering down the yielding banks of
washes, and scrambling up and out of them. Truly a couple of sturdy
plugs were required to drag the wagon up those heavy slopes. Providing
the traveler has time and patience, and is built with a steel-riveted
frame, the old-time farm wagon with three-inch tires is the surest
method of making such a journey. It rolls and pitches as a squat lugger
in a choppy sea, but it gets there.
While the Desert appears as a level sward, one soon finds that there is
no sward to speak of, and that one million tangled hummocks fast follow
the first million, each bunch of sparse grass, each growth of
greasewood or saltbush having its own protecting hillock of sand. A
good road in those days was one that a stout wagon could get over
without being wrecked.
It is quite an experience to travel for hours toward a given point
marked by a solitary pinnacle, a veritable mountain having sheer sides,
and fail to reduce the distance appreciably. The sun was nearly down
when we crawled along a valley between two of these monsters. One,
named Chimney Butte, a huge truncated cone resting on massive
shoulders, was the highest in that country; and the other, Castle
Butte, looked like a ruined mediæval stronghold, having a causeway
flanked by towers, above which loomed dim embattlements and casements.
In the brilliant daylight the height of Chimney Butte is dwarfed by
desert distances; and Castle Butte is not always robed in fancy; but it
was now twilight, the time when the Desert is most sombre and fanciful,
and it was my entrance to that garden of the vanished gods. These two
gigantic piles were as the awesome portals of a ruined gateway, the
pass to an unknown, mysterious country; and the whole setting, fading
into night, gloomy with the menace of silence, held something of the
strange unreality of a dream. And came on suddenly the dark and cold.
How did Smith manage to follow the road? I could no longer see it, and
had more than enough to do to cling to the pitching seat of the wagon.
We headed straight into the blackness. What yawning precipices might be
awaiting us! I became chilled and cramped, and was thankful for that
greatcoat, though it did not pad me against the rude shocks of the
going.
“How much farther is it to this Agency?” I asked.
“Oh! over in the hills a bit—‘bout three miles furder to go yit. It
ain’t an agency, yeh know—nothin’ but a missionary and a log hut.”
And we plunged into another of the dark defiles. Then out of the black,
on a bit of cold wind, came a desert welcome that one never forgets, a
promise of rare comfort when one is hungry and cramped with cold, the
pungent incense of burning cedar. Now from the deep shadow of a
hillside arose a thin column of sparks, glinting, flying jewels of the
night.
“There’s it,” he announced, as if somewhat relieved, himself.
It was a little house, built of boards, having but two rooms, one large
enough for a bed and dresser, the other containing a cookstove, table,
and two chairs. Its outside dimensions could not have been more than
twelve by twenty feet. And when the stove was filled with dry cedar one
was tempted, after a complete toasting on one side, to dispense with
the table. But there was no complaint to make of this on our arrival.
The fire had the cheering crackle of Yuletide, and soon coffee and
bacon added their aroma. The hospitality of the good missionary and his
wife was like all those welcomes extended in the solitary places, when
the visitor is not touring with a notebook and a nose. The meal ended,
and all news exchanged, we said good night and opened the door.
“’Ere’s a go!” one might have exclaimed, without hurting the feelings
of a preacher. It was snowing! And even a preacher would have remarked
further, probably with adjectives, on seeing that Government house in
which we were to spend the night. It was a log hut in truth, built
corral-fashion, the poles set on end, the chinks originally plastered
with adobe. There was but one room, containing a single bunk made of
boards, an old cookstove, and a collection of broken tools and empty
canned-goods cases. The floor was of packed earth. Without
exaggeration, I may say that the roof and the floor were intact; but
practically all the caulking had escaped from the log walls, and the
wind felt its way inside with long icy fingers. The mechanic dropped
into the bunk and was asleep almost instantly; and, after building a
rushing fire in the stove, I rolled myself in Government blankets, and
rolled again, this time under the stove, to pass the night.
But I did not rest in the poetry of the wild. The refulgent moon did
not come up to spill its splendor through the open door, nor even
through the extensive openings of the wall; the perfume of the growing
pines did not soothe with healing balsam, the cry of the loon did not
sound from across the lake, and so forth. The floor, however, was under
that stove; and the floor had not been constructed along those
scientific lines followed in the building of Ostermoor mattresses.
Plastic as is my figure, it refused to conform.
And to add to my distress, someone in all that vast and lonely country
owned an old gray horse. I know he was old, and I know he was gray, for
he acted just like a silly old gray horse. And he was hobbled, and he
was out in the snow, and he had a bell tied to his neck.
Clankety-clank-clank, clang, claaangngng—clankety, clang, clank!
Around and around and around the house he voyaged all that night,
proceeding by hops and plunges as a hobbled horse must, his gait just
enough hampered by the lashings of his two front feet to impart a
syncopated tempo to the discords and jangles of that flat metallic
bell. At times he would pause, as if for breath, and there would be
quiet—deep silence—just sufficient for a doze; then—clankety, clang,
clang, clank! he would break out again.
I have listened to jazz orchestras of various colors and degrees of
crime, and other peace-destroying nuisances meriting death; but I have
never heard anything equal to the nocturnal pilgrimage of that old gray
horse. I would drop off to sleep, and suddenly wake as if feeling his
hobbled feet squarely in the centre of my contracted chest; but he
would be ten yards off, miserably clanking his way to another sector of
the snow-covered terrain. And confused, I would lift my head to listen,
knocking it of course against the bottom of the stove, when a long
icicle would stab through a wall chink and take me fairly in the ear.
Perhaps it was a pleasant night for Smith, who faithfully and
harmoniously snored away the hours.
With the dawn I struggled up. No! I did not bound out joyously to
gambol in the pure air of the stunted cedar-forest. It was a cold gray
dawn with a foot of snow, and there was a dank rheumatic caress in it.
With all speed I began smashing a packing case for kindling. Crash!
down came the axe, and splinters flew wide, when Smith stirred in his
bunk, awakening to duty and the dangers thereof. He blinked his eyes
and spluttered:—
“Watch out for that dynamite.”
“Dynamite?”
“Yes; it’s right under my bunk. Chop your wood furder off.”
I followed these directions to the letter. In fact, I gently carried
all the wood outside and chopped it.
The getting of breakfast, a complete demonstration of my culinary
ignorance, occupied me fully in the half-dark. I walked to and fro
gingerly, fearing to wake the dynamite; and I wondered how that stupid
fellow could have slept and have snored as he did, superimposed above a
quiescent earthquake. Dynamite is a great friend to man in the rocky
gorges of the West, but it should not be permitted to join the family
circle.
When next I opened the door, what a transformation! I had come to this
place in the cold grim darkness, heartened only by the perfume of
burning cedar. Occupied with the wood and the wet-handled axe, I was
dimly aware of a drowsy landscape in the clammy mist of dawn. But now
the sun had lifted, and the scene was a snowy fairyland. The gnarled
cedars of the foreground were laden with dripping snow, their branches
picked out with gems. And where the snow lay in unbroken sheets, pure
white, glistening, the shadows of the dwarfed trees formed rare
patterns. Behind the house were cliffs, and each gaunt angle held its
draping of snow. The time-worn bastions of those lava ledges stood as
gaping at the winter’s cheery Good-morning. It was a stage scene under
the great amber light.
A long valley stretched away to the Bidahoche Plains and the Bad Lands
with their honeycombed hills. Its dim recesses were now painted by the
first plashes of sunshine. To left and right, overhanging the snowy
meadows, reared great buttresses and crags of lava, and all down the
valley ancient promontories loomed amid the fading veils of mist.
Prehistoric ages had seen these as the shelving inner walls of some
vast crater, when they had seared and glazed and baked and colored to
form Nature’s pottery. Now, broken and rent apart, they stood as
fantastic separate monuments, lining that sunlit corridor to the outer
plains.
Dominating the foreground was Squash Blossom Butte, an inverted bloom
that the storms of æons had carved and a million rare sunsets tinted.
The Indians reverence the squash blossom as a symbol of fruition, and
perhaps—who knows—in its delicate bell-shaped flower they see more than
the mere promise of a harvest. It is found in Navajo silver-work,
strung into those massive necklaces of which they are so proud; and
when one goes into Hopi land he finds it imitated in the dressing of
their maidens’ hair. So they named this altar.
It was commanding in the morning light; it was the last thing seen down
the valley, a scarlet head thrust into a sober sky, as that second
night came on. The sunset lavished all its rainbow shades on it.
Richest gold and lavender above, purple tones and lava-green below;
bands of saffron melting into slatey shades; emerald and crimson
deepening into jetty blacks when the afterglow had vanished. An aged
throne of the gods. And clearly sweet, as desert music, came the
half-hushed sound of sheep moving among the cedars; and a young Navajo
girl paused at the edge of a thicket to gaze shyly at our cabin, then
to hurry away, the tiny bells at her belt tinkling, having all the
romance of the gypsies.
There is no finer landscape in the Southwest than this seldom-visited
country of the Moqui Buttes where, according to the Hopi, the one-time
giants had their dwelling places. The wondrous piles and pinnacles of
the Grand Cañon present a chaotic struggle that has ceased in all its
awesome disorder and aged grandeur. It makes man gasp and wonder, but
it does not invite the smile of reverie. This scene about the sunset
throne had that serenity born of isolation. It was small enough to
invite intimacy. Like the kingdom of a fairy tale, the tranquil valley
encompassed its own world, dreaming, smiling in its sleep.
Many times since have I crossed the Butte country, seeing it frozen in
winter and again broiling under a summer sun that scorched from the
cedars their sweetest aromas. I have always found it a haven, full of
peace.
Next day we returned to the Agency, an uneventful retreat, save for a
jouncing box of dynamite that leaped like a thing fiendishly alive
whenever the wheels slammed into a rut. My nerves were not in the best
shape. I had been smoking powdered alfalfa in a pipe. And I would look
back from the high seat, half fearing each time to catch that dynamite
in the very act of going off. But luck was with us; we herded it safely
into the Agency storehouse; and I rushed to the post for a can of real
tobacco.