stopped the caravan at once, and we remained the rest of the night on
that spot. With the first light of morning a wonderful sight struck our
eyes: As far as we could see, there lay a plain black as coal,—not only
were all the bushes and grass burnt, but the earth was so glossy that
the feet of our mules and the wheels of the wagons were reflected in it
as they might have been in a mirror. We could not see clearly the width
of the fire, for the horizon was still hazy from smoke; but I gave
command without hesitation to turn to the south, so as to reach the
edge of that tract instead of venturing on the burnt country. I knew
from experience what it is to travel on burnt prairie land where there
is not a blade of grass for draught-beasts. Since evidently the fire
had moved northward with the wind, I hoped by going toward the south to
reach the beginning of it.
The people obeyed my order, it is true, but rather unwillingly, for
it involved God knows how long a delay in the journey. During our
halt at noon the smoke became thinner; but if it did, the heat grew
so terrible that the air quivered from its fervency, and all at once
something took place which might seem a miracle.
On a sudden the haze and smoke parted, as if at a signal, and before
our eyes rose the Sierra Nevada, green, smiling, wonderful, covered
with gleaming snow on the summits, and so near that with the naked
eye we could see the dents in the mountains, the green lakes, and the
forests. It seemed to us that a fresh breeze filled with odors from the
pitchy fir was coming to us above the burnt fields, and that in a few
hours we should reach the flowery foothills. At this sight the people,
worn out with the terrible desert and with labors, went out of their
minds almost with delight; some fell on the ground sobbing, others
stretched forth their hands toward heaven or burst into laughter,
others grew pale without power to speak. Lillian and I wept from
delight too, which in me was mingled with astonishment, for I had
thought that a hundred and fifty miles at least separated us yet from
California; but there were the mountains smiling at us across the burnt
plain, and they seemed to approach as if by magic, and bend toward us
and invite us and lure us on.
The hours fixed for rest had not passed yet, but the people would not
hear of a longer halt. Even the sick stretched out their yellow hands
from beneath the canvas roofs and begged us to harness the mules and
drive on. Briskly and willingly we moved forward, and to the biting
of the wheels on the charred earth were joined the cracking of whips,
shouts, and songs; of driving around the burnt tract there was not
a word now. Why go around when a few tens of miles farther on was
California and its marvellous snowy mountains? We went straight across
toward them.
Meanwhile the smoke covered the bright view from us again with a
wonderful suddenness. Hours passed; the horizon came nearer. At last
the sun went down; night came. The stars twinkled dimly on the sky,
but we went forward without rest; still the mountains were evidently
farther than they seemed. About midnight the mules began to squeal and
balk; an hour later the caravan stopped, for the greater number of the
beasts had lain down. The men tried to raise them, but there was no
chance of doing so. Not an eye closed all night. At the first rays of
light our glances flew eagerly into the distance and—found nothing. A
dark mourning desert extended as far as the eye could see, monotonous,
dull, defining itself with a sharp line at the horizon; of yesterday’s
mountains there was not a trace.
The people were amazed. To me the ominous word “mirage” explained
everything, but also it went with a quiver to the marrow of my bones.
What was to be done,—go on? But if that burnt plain extended for
hundreds of miles? Return, and then seek some miles distant the end of
the burnt tract?—but had the mules strength to go back over the same
road? I hardly dared to look to the bottom of that abyss, on the brink
of which we were all standing. I wished, however, to know what course
to take. I mounted my horse, moved forward, and from a neighboring
elevation I took in with my eye a wider horizon with the aid of a
field-glass. I saw in the distance a green strip. When I reached it,
however, after an hour’s journey, the place turned out to be merely
a lake along the bank of which the fire had not destroyed vegetation
completely. The burnt plain extended farther than vision through the
glass. There was no help, it was necessary to turn back the caravan and
go around the fire. For that purpose I turned my horse. I expected to
find the wagons where I had left them, for I had given command to wait
for me there. Meanwhile, disobeying my command, they had raised the
mules, and the caravan went on. To my questions they answered moodily:
“There are the mountains, we will go to them.”
I did not try even to struggle, for I saw that there was no human power
present to stop those men. Perhaps I should have gone back alone with
Lillian, but my wagon was not there, and Lillian had gone on with Aunt
Atkins.
We advanced. Night came again, and with it a forced halt. Out of the
burnt plain rose a great lurid moon and lighted the distance, which
was equally black. In the morning only half of the wagons could be
moved, for the mules of the others had died. The heat of that day was
dreadful. The sun’s rays, absorbed by the charred land, filled the
air with fire. On the road one of the sick men expired in dreadful
convulsions, and no one undertook his burial; we laid him down on the
plain and went farther.
The water in the lake at which I had been the day before refreshed
men and animals for a time, but could not restore their strength. The
mules had not nipped a grass blade for thirty-six hours, and had lived
only on straw which we took out of the wagons; but even that failed
them now. We marked the road as we went with their bodies, and on the
third day there was left one only, which I took by force for Lillian.
The wagons and the tools in them, which were to give us bread in
California, remained in that desert,—be it cursed for all ages!
Every one now except Lillian went on foot. Soon a new enemy looked us
in the eyes,—hunger. A part of our provisions had been left in the
wagons, that which each one could carry was eaten. Meanwhile there
was not a living thing in the country around us. I alone in the whole
caravan had biscuits yet and a piece of salt meat; but I hid them for
Lillian, and I was ready to rend any man to pieces who would mention
that food. I ate nothing myself, and that terrible plain stretched on
without end.
As if to add to our torments the mirage appeared in the midday hours on
the plain again, showing us mountains and forests with lakes; but the
nights were more terrible than ever. All the rays which that charred
land stole from the sun in the daytime came out at night, scorching our
feet and parching our throats. On such a night one man lost his mind,
and sitting on the ground burst into spasmodical laughter, and that
dreadful laughter followed us long in the darkness. The mule on which
Lillian was riding fell; the famishing people tore it to bits in a
twinkle, but what food was that for two hundred!
The fourth day passed and the fifth. From hunger, the faces of the
people became like those of birds of some kind, and they began to look
with hate at one another. They knew that I had provisions; but they
knew, too, that to ask one crumb of me was death, hence the instinct
of life overcame in them hunger. I gave food to Lillian only at night,
so as not to enrage them with the sight of it. She implored me by all
that was holy to take my share, but I threatened to put a bullet in my
brain if she even mentioned it. She was able, however, to steal from my
watchfulness crumbs which she gave to Aunt Atkins and Aunt Grosvenor.
At that time hunger was tearing my entrails with iron hand, and my head
was burning from the wound.
For five days there had been nothing in my mouth but water from that
lake. The thought that I was carrying bread and meat, that I had them
with me, that I could eat, became a torture; I was afraid besides, that
being wounded, I might go mad and seize the food.
“O Lord!” cried I in spirit, “suffer me not to become so far brutalized
as to touch that which is to keep her in life!” But there was no mercy
above me. On the morning of the sixth day I saw on Lillian’s face fiery
spots; her hands were inflamed, she panted loudly. All at once she
looked at me wanderingly, and said in haste, hurrying lest she might
lose presence of mind,—
“Ralph, leave me here; save yourself, there is no hope for me.”
I gritted my teeth, for I wanted to howl and blaspheme; but saying
nothing I took her by the hands. Fiery zigzags began to leap before my
eyes in the air, and to form the words: “Who worshipped and served the
creature more than the Creator?” I had broken like a bow too much bent;
so, staring at the merciless heavens, I exclaimed with my whole soul in
rebellion,—
“I!”
Meanwhile I was bearing to the mount of execution my dearest burden,
this my only one, my saint, my beloved martyr.
I know not where I found strength; I was insensible to hunger, to heat,
to suffering. I saw nothing before me, neither people nor the burning
plain; I saw nothing but Lillian. That night she grew worse. She lost
consciousness; at times she groaned in a low voice,—
“Ralph, water!” And oh, torments! I had only salt meat and dry
biscuits. In supreme despair I cut my arm with a knife to moisten her
lips with my blood; she grew conscious, cried out, and fell into a
protracted faint, from which I thought she would not recover. When she
came to herself she wished to say something, but the fever had blunted
her mind, and she only murmured,—
“Ralph, be not angry! I am your wife.”
I carried her farther in silence. I had grown stupid from pain.
The seventh day came. The Sierra Nevada appeared at last on the
horizon, and as the sun was going down the life of my life began to
quench also. When she was dying I placed her on the burnt ground and
knelt beside her. Her widely opened eyes were gleaming and fixed on me;
thought appeared in them for a moment, and she whispered,—
“My dear, my husband!” Then a quiver ran through her, fear was on her
face,—and she died.
I tore the bandages from my head, and lost consciousness. I have no
memory of what happened after that. As in a kind of dream I remember
people who surrounded me and took my weapons; then they dug a grave, as
it were; and, still later, darkness and raving seized me, and in them
the fiery words: “Who worshipped and served the creature more than the
Creator!”
* * * * *
I woke a month later in California at the house of Moshynski, a
settler. When I had come to health somewhat I set out for Nevada; the
prairie had grown over again with grass, and was abundantly green, so
that I could not find even her grave, and to this day I know not where
her sacred remains are lying. What have I done, O God, that Thou didst
turn Thy face from me and forget me in the desert?—I know not. Were it
permitted me to weep even one hour at her grave, life would be easier.
Every year I go to Nevada, and every year I seek in vain. Since those
dreadful hours long years have passed. My wretched lips have uttered
more than once, Let Thy will be done! But without her it is hard for
me in the world. A man lives and walks among people, and laughs even
at times; but the lonely old heart weeps and loves, and yearns and
remembers.
I am old, and it is not long till I shall make another journey, the
journey to eternity; and for one thing alone I ask God,—that on those
celestial plains I may find my heavenly one, and not part from her ever
again.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: SACHEM]
[Illustration: SACHEM]
IN the town of Antelope, situated on a river of the same name in the
State of Texas, every living person was hurrying to the circus. The
inhabitants were interested all the more since from the foundation of
the town that was the first time that a circus had come to it with
dancing women, minstrels, and rope-walkers. The town was recent.
Fifteen years before not only was there not one house there, but in all
the region round about there were no white people. Moreover, on the
forks of the river, on the very spot on which Antelope was situated,
stood an Indian village called Chiavatta. That had been the capital
of the Black Snakes, who in their time were such an eyesore to the
neighboring settlements of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia, that
these settlements could endure them no longer. True, the Indians were
only defending their “land,” which the State government of Texas had
guaranteed to them forever by the most solemn treaties; but what was
that to the colonists of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia? It is true
that they took from the Black Snakes earth, air, and water, but they
brought in civilization in return; the redskins on their part showed
gratitude in their own way,—that is, by taking scalps from the heads of
the Germans. Such a state of things could not be suffered. Therefore,
the settlers from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia assembled on a
certain moonlight night to the number of four hundred, and, calling to
their aid Mexicans from La Ora, fell upon sleeping Chiavatta.
The triumph of the good cause was perfect. Chiavatta was burned to
ashes, and the inhabitants, without regard to sex or age, were cut to
pieces. Only small parties of warriors escaped who at that time were
absent on a hunt. In the town itself not one soul was left living,
mainly because the place lay in the forks of a river, which, having
overflowed, as is usual in spring-time, surrounded the settlement
with an impassable gulf of waters. But the same forked position which
ruined the Indians, seemed good to the Germans. From the forks it was
difficult to escape, but the place was defensible. Thanks to this
thought, emigration set in at once from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia
to the forks, in which in the twinkle of an eye, on the site of the
wild Chiavatta, rose the civilized town of Antelope. In five years it
numbered two thousand inhabitants.
In the sixth year they discovered on the opposite bank of the forks
a quicksilver mine; the working of this doubled the number of
inhabitants. In the seventh year, by virtue of Lynch law, they hanged
on the square of the town the last twelve warriors of the Black
Snakes, who were caught in the neighboring “Forest of the Dead,”—and
henceforth nothing remained to hinder the development of Antelope.
Two “Tagblätter” (daily papers) were published in the town, and one
“Montagsrevue” (Monday Review). A line of railroad united the place
with Rio del Norte and San Antonio; on Opuncia Gasse (Opuncia Street)
stood three schools, one of which was a high school. On the square
where they had hanged the last Black Snakes, the citizens had erected
a philanthropic institution. Every Sunday the pastors taught in the
churches love of one’s neighbor, respect for the property of others,
and similar virtues essential to a civilized society; a certain
travelling lecturer read a dissertation “On the rights of nations.”
The richest inhabitants had begun to talk of founding a university,
to which the government of the State was to contribute. The citizens
were prosperous. The trade in quicksilver, oranges, barley, and wine
brought them famous profits. They were upright, thrifty, industrious,
systematic, fat. Whoever might visit in later years Antelope with a
population nearing twenty thousand would not recognize in the rich
merchants of the place those pitiless warriors who fifteen years
before had burned Chiavatta. The days passed for them in their stores,
workshops, and offices; the evenings they spent in the beer-saloon
“Golden Sun” on Rattlesnake Street. Listening to those sounds somewhat
slow and guttural of “Mahlzeit, Mahlzeit!” (meal-time, meal-time),
to those phlegmatic “Nun ja wissen Sie, Herr Müller, ist das aber
möglich?” (Well, now, Herr Müller, but is that possible?), that clatter
of goblets, that sound of beer dropping on the floor, that plash of
overflowing foam; seeing that calm, that ness, those Philistine
faces covered with fat, those fishy eyes,—a man might suppose himself
in a beer-garden in Berlin or Monachium, and not on the ruins of
Chiavatta. But in the town everything was “ganz gemüthlich” (altogether
cosey), and no one had a thought of the ruins. That evening the whole
population was hastening to the circus, first, because after hard labor
recreation is as praiseworthy as it is agreeable; second, because the
inhabitants were proud of its arrival. It is well-known that circuses
do not come to every little place; hence the arrival of the Hon. M.
Dean’s troupe had confirmed the greatness and magnificence of Antelope.
There was, however, a third and perhaps the greatest cause of the
general curiosity.
No. Two of the programme read as follows:
“A walk on a wire extended fifteen feet above the ground will be made
to the accompaniment of music by the renowned gymnast Black Vulture,
sachem of the Black Snakes, the last descendant of their chiefs, the
last man of the tribe. 1. The walk; 2. Springs of the Antelope; 3. The
death-dance and death-song.”
If that “sachem” could rouse the highest interest in any place, it was
surely in Antelope. Hon. M. Dean told at the “Golden Sun” how fifteen
years before, on a journey to Santa Fé, he had found, on the Planos de
Tornado, a dying old Indian with a boy ten years of age. The old man
died from wounds and exhaustion; but before death he declared that the
boy was the son of the slain sachem of the Black Snakes, and the heir
to that office.
The troupe sheltered the orphan, who in time became the first acrobat
in it. It was only at the “Golden Sun,” however, that Hon. M. Dean
learned first that Antelope was once Chiavatta, and that the famous
rope-walker would exhibit himself on the grave of his fathers. This
information brought the director into perfect humor; he might reckon
now surely on a _great attraction_, if only he knew how to bring out
the effect skilfully. Of course the Philistines of Antelope hurried to
the circus to show their wives and children, imported from Germany, the
last of the Black Snakes,—those wives and children who in their lives
had never seen Indians,—and to say: “See, we cut to pieces men just
like that fellow, fifteen years ago!” “Ach, Herr Je!” It was pleasant
to hear such an exclamation of wonder from the mouth of Amalchen,
or little Fritz. Throughout the town, therefore, all were repeating
unceasingly, “Sachem! Sachem!”
From early morning the children were looking through cracks in the
boards with curious and astonished faces; the older boys, more excited
by the warrior spirit, marched home from school in terrible array,
without knowing themselves why they did so.
It is eight o’clock in the evening,—a wonderful night, clear, starry.
A breeze from the suburbs brings the odor of orange groves, which in
the town is mingled with the odor of malt. In the circus there is a
blaze of light. Immense pine-torches fixed before the principal gate
are burning and smoking. The breeze waves the plumes of smoke and the
bright flame which illuminates the dark outlines of the building. It is
a freshly erected wooden pile, circular, with a pointed roof, and the
starry flag of America on the summit of it. Before the gate are crowds
who could not get tickets or had not the wherewithal to buy them;
they look at the wagons of the troupe, and principally at the canvas
curtain of the great Eastern door, on which is depicted a battle of the
whites with the redskins. At moments when the curtain is drawn aside
the bright refreshment-bar within is visible, with its hundreds of
glasses on the table. Now they draw aside the curtain for good, and the
throng enters. The empty passages between the seats begin to resound
with the steps of people, and soon the dark moving mass fills all the
place from the highest point to the floor. It is clear as day in the
circus, for though they had not been able to bring in gas pipes, a
gigantic chandelier formed of fifty kerosene lamps takes its place. In
those gleams are visible the heads of the beer drinkers, fleshy, thrown
back to give room to their chins, the youthful faces of women, and the
pretty, wondering visages of children, whose eyes are almost coming out
of their heads from curiosity. But all the spectators have the curious,
self-satisfied look that is usual in an audience at a circus. Amid the
hum of conversation interrupted by cries of “Frisch wasser! frisch
wasser!” (fresh water), all await the beginning with impatience.
At last a bell sounds, six grooms appear in shining boots, and stand in
two ranks at the passage from the stables to the arena. Between those
ranks a furious horse rushes forth, without bridle or saddle; and on
him, as it were a bundle of muslin ribbons and tulle, is the dancer
Lina. They begin manœuvring to the sound of music. Lina is so pretty
that young Matilda, daughter of the brewer on Opuncia Gasse, alarmed at
sight of her beauty, inclines to the ear of Floss, a young grocer from
the same street, and asks in a whisper if he loves her yet. Meanwhile
the horse gallops, and puffs like an engine; the clowns, a number of
whom run after the dancer, crack whips, shout, and strike one another
on the faces. The dancer vanishes like lightning; there is a storm of
applause. What a splendid representation! But No. One passes quickly.
No. Two is approaching. The word “Sachem! sachem!” flies from mouth to
mouth among the spectators. No one gives a thought now to the clowns,
who strike one another continually. In the midst of the apish movements
of the clowns, the grooms bring lofty wooden trestles several yards
in height, and put them on both sides of the arena. The band ceases
to play Yankee Doodle, and gives the gloomy aria of the Commandore in
Don Juan. They extend the wire from one trestle to the other. All at
once a shower of red Bengal light falls at the passage, and covers the
whole arena with a bloody glare. In that glare appears the terrible
sachem, the last of the Black Snakes. But what is that? The sachem is
not there, but the manager of the troupe himself, Hon. M. Dean. He
bows to the public and raises his voice. He has the honor to beg “the
kind and respected gentlemen, as well as the beautiful and no less
respected ladies, to be unusually calm, give no applause, and remain
perfectly still, for the chief is excited and wilder than usual.” These
words produce no little impression, and—a wonderful thing!—those very
citizens of Antelope who fifteen years before had destroyed Chiavatta,
feel now some sort of very unpleasant sensation. A moment before, when
the beautiful Lina was performing her springs on horseback, they were
glad to be sitting so near, right there close to the parapet, whence
they could see everything so well; and now they look with a certain
longing for the upper seats of the circus, and in spite of all laws of
physics, find that the lower they are the more stifling it is.
But could that sachem remember? He was reared from years of childhood
in the troupe of Hon. M. Dean, composed mainly of Germans. Had he not
forgotten everything? This seemed probable. His environment and fifteen
years of a circus career, the exhibition of his art, the winning of
applause, must have exerted their influence.
Chiavatta, Chiavatta! But they are Germans, they are on their own soil,
and think no more of the fatherland than _business_ permits. Above all,
man must eat and drink. This truth every Philistine must keep in mind,
as well as the last of the Black Snakes.