THE DANCE OF THE JEMEZ INDIANS
1
One of the poets at Santa Fe had decided to return East and finish a
University course which he had broken by a year of freedom and poetry
in New Mexico. So Wilfrid Ewart bought his horse, an Indian pony,
white, small-footed, and wiry, and named as it were facetiously,
"George." He proved too short for a man of six feet two, but except
at starting, when he sometimes refused to budge for five minutes, he
went as well as the other two horses, Billy and Buck. He proved to be
branded with the mark of the Santo Domingo Indians, and there were many
horses of his size and gait in their pueblo. Every time we met any of
the Indians, however, they would ask suspiciously, "Where you get that
horse?" George gave us some amusement, for he jumped sideways with all
four feet at once when a car passed him, and though slow by habit he
would upon occasion jump to an impulse that he was in a race with my
impetuous Billy. The mile home from the post office we would sometimes
find ourselves in a wild gallop, chased for moments by starved dogs who
drove Billy to additional excitement.
We had a pleasant autumn at Santa Fe, pierced though it was by shafts
of winter cold. The sun heat was great, but there was frost every
night. Ewart had brought literary work, and he sat with his papers in
a profuse sun bath; he became deeply sunburned, and the skin peeled
from the back of his writing hand. But it was good for him. Arriving in
indifferent health, it was remarkable how he improved.
It was unfortunate that winter came so rapidly. Though so far South
we began to have weather much colder than that of New York--and the
snow from the mountain summits crept lower. Snow swept down from the
heights, driven by the wind into our valleys. There were several
October days when the whole desert was clad in unnatural white. Then
the sun came out and, like magic, uncovered the desert again, and the
thirsty sand drank up what dissolved, and soon all was as before.
In a pleasant interlude between snowstorms in early November we set off
for the Jemez Dance, the annual trading fair and _fiesta_ of November
12. My wife and I were on Buckskin and Billy. As we took no pack-horse
along with us we had all our impedimenta strapped on to our saddles. We
had been told we should find no water or provisions on the way, and so
we carried more than we needed to have done. Ewart had four pounds of
ham tied to the pommel of his saddle as well as a waterproof and toilet
case, and his saddle pockets behind him were stuffed.
I carried bags before and behind. And Buck also was much encumbered,
though his rider was so much lighter. Buck made a bad start by
falling into the _Acequia Madre_, the irrigation ditch, with fore
feet in front of a wretched rustic bridge and hind legs hanging in
air. In this posture I had to undo his girths and liberate him from
his packs ere we could get him on to his feet. He started, therefore,
in a melancholy and cautious mood, and we walked him a good deal of
the way. Indeed, in the evening, convinced that he was suffering from
sprain, I persuaded Mrs. Graham to ride Billy whilst I led Buck by
the reins. In this way we reached La Cienega and put up at a Mexican
farm where we were very happily regaled, though we had to go to bed at
eight o'clock and all slept in the same room. Next morning Buckskin
showed that he had no sprain. I had led the horses to water and had
returned to set our coffee-pot on the Mexicans' kitchen fire, and I had
left them barely ten minutes when the farmer's wife came in and said
two of the horses had got out of the inclosure. They were Billy and
Buck. Lightly clad as I was, I threw my saddle on George and bridled
him and went off at once. For I knew that the two miscreants would
make for home at a good pace. George proved his worth that morning.
Chasing other horses was what he was made for. He went like the wind
after these horses. In a mile we got them in view; they were trotting
steadily together; in a mile and a half they stopped and turned to
consider us, and Buck stopped the hesitation by breaking into a hearty
canter joined by Billy. But we overhauled them, and George, without any
guidance from me, turned them both. If only I had been a cowboy and
could have hauled the rope which I held in my hand! Alas, I missed the
chance, and all three horses settled down for a cross-country gallop.
I reflected that we should thus gallop up the main street of Santa Fe
and up the Canon Road and into our familiar yard at noon. It was a
perplexing thought. I slowed down George, therefore, and noticed that
Billy and Buck did the same. I hastened again, they hastened; slowed,
they slowed. But at five miles from La Cienega my second opportunity
came, and I took it. A deep _arroyo_ was spanned by a bridge. It could
be reached across country without my appearing to pursue the horses.
At the bridge I dismounted and idled and appeared to be interested in
the view whilst the two runaways approached. Both suddenly stopped and
stared. Billy raised his head very high and kicked out friskily with
his hind legs. Buck made a wily detour. But I showed not the least
interest, so they began to graze here and there where a tuft of grass
appeared. I thereupon made a cup of my hand as if it held corn, and
approached Billy, calling him, keeping the hand out of the view of
the inquisitive, greedy, but very crafty Buckskin. Billy, however,
intoxicated by freedom and the morning air, cut a wild cantrip and
fled. But Buck really thought I had corn, and when I approached him I
got near enough to put a rope over his neck. Secured and tied to the
bridge, he looked a repentant horse. It took another ten minutes to
capture Billy, then I changed the saddle on to his back and started all
three back to Cienega at a smart trot. Then of course I could reflect
how pleasant an adventure it was, the best two hours of the day. It was
a pity, however, that the horses should lose their freshness before the
real riding of the morning commenced.
We all set off at once for Penya Blanca, on the Rio Grande. We had
hoped to ford the river that day, but now hope of that was gone. Yet
it was a very pleasant day's riding, following over sand and bowlders
and running water the scores of zig-zags of stream which threatened a
profound ravine. All was gray. Tumultuous piles of rock stared down
at us as we clattered along--the horses lapped at the water and made
deep hoof-marks in the wet sand. There were no birds, no flowers, no
evergreens--no life but that of ourselves and the sunlight on the gray
pebbles. Even the fire which we made of water-washed wood burned with
invisible flames, and the steam did not show till the water raised the
lid of our coffeepot and boiled over. We sat together in the early
afternoon, quaffed coffee, and ate down our weight of provisions. We
had even got hay for our horses at a farmhouse, and we eased their
girths and fed them a little and watered them ere we resumed our way.
We reached Penya Blanca at night, led o'er the moor by flickering
lights. We nearly went to the Indian village of Cochiti, as its lights
on the other side of the Rio Grande beckoned much more certainly. But
after traversing a mile of deep sand we turned our horses and made
for other lights which we judged rightly must indicate the settlement
of the Mexicans. Penya Blanca is a squatters' village, extensive and
substantial, though none of the settlers there have adequate legal
title to the land they hold as theirs. Their forefathers came there to
obtain the protection of the Cochiti Indians from the raiding Navajos,
and they stopped there and took to themselves a large fertile slice of
the lands of the Indians.
It was not too easy to obtain shelter for the night--but Ewart was
taken in at a house where there was to be a wedding next day, and
nobody there except he slept a wink all night long. He had hot coffee
and a substantial breakfast before dawn. We were not so lucky, but we
had a mattress and a floor in a room of an empty house. The horses
fared best of all, being put into a cosy corral with heaps of alfalfa
and corn and a grand disarray of cornhusks. Next morning we had them
saddled at dawn, and rode to the fording of the river as sunrise was
breaking over the mountains.
That day was a glorious one; first through the brown-leaved woods of
the river shore, then up over sandbanks and crags, through copse and
boscage, ever higher, to wild rocky country and vast wastes where no
man lived and no cattle of any kind found pasture. The morning sun was
over-swept by snow clouds, the winds hurried over mountain sides in
white capes of flurrying snow. Snow blew lustily into our faces and
over our horses. We rode into fast-dropping curtains of thick snow and
rode through them and out of them into radiant sunlight again. There
joined us on the way many Indians clad in cotton shirts and breeches
and with old scarlet and orange blankets swathed about their shoulders
like capes. Their polished ebony hair hung in long, rough-tied plaits
from their lightly turbaned heads. I say turbaned, but the turban was
no more than a gayly colored kerchief tied like a bandage around their
temples.
"How!" "How!" they cried in little yelps as they drew abreast of us.
"Hello!" we replied. "Going to Jemez Dance?"
"_Si, si_," they answered. "You going?"
Few spoke any English, but they were delighted to have us of their
company, and we went with various parties for many miles. Once there
were more than twelve of us all cantering together over the vague
trail, and it was a pretty sight.
"_Poco frio_--a little cold," was a favorite remark of ours.
"_Si, mucho frio_," they replied. "Not a little but very cold!"
They stopped and lit five-minute bonfires of dried weeds, just to warm
their hands and bodies. Round these blazes they fairly danced. In the
twilight of the late afternoon among the snow patches, these bonfire
dances were most eerie in appearance.
The Indians were so cold they made their horses go faster and faster
to keep warm. But as ours were more heavily burdened we kept a more
moderate pace and let the Indians go ahead. We made a big pot of coffee
in the afternoon and that kept warm our toes otherwise chilled in the
stirrups. The Indians, on in front, had been eating melons and throwing
down chunks of rind. In this rind and mouthfuls of snow, Billy and Buck
took enormous pleasure, simply guzzling over them. George, however,
seemed to have toothache and turned his head away.
One of the Indians helped us greatly when we rode on. He was from San
Felipe, and named Lorenzo. He turned out of the party he belonged to
and watched us lest we should go astray. Possibly he saved us from a
night wandering in the mountains. For when we had taken a wrong trail
and gone some way upon it our attention was arrested by long persistent
cries which we felt had references to us. And looking about, we saw the
silhouette of Lorenzo on the top of a little mountain and saw that he
was signaling us to come toward him.
This we did, and we found we had been going on a dangerous precipitous
trail which in truth led no whither except to goat pastures and hideous
abysses. Lorenzo went with us the rest of the way and we descended
into the Jemez valley by a track that none but Mexican ponies would
follow; down narrow gullies, along broken ledges, down sharp slides and
drops. The whole country side dropped in tumultuous crags and steeps,
shale slopes, cliffs, precipices--to the Jemez River. The last light of
evening gleamed on us and we left our fate to Lorenzo and the horses
to do with it what they would--an adventurous, and, as it seemed, a
perilous, ride.
At nightfall, as the village church was ringing for vespers, we rode
into the crowded pueblo and were four out of many who had come to the
great dance and fiesta.
2
The Jemez Dance used to be one of the finest and most elaborate of the
Indian dances, and the tribe, living more remotely, had kept itself
more fresh and vivid and unspoiled than for instance the Tesuque
Indians, the pets of the artists, who dance on the same day. But the
growth of the great city of Albuquerque and the development of the
high road to Jemez Springs have attracted the gaze of the white man in
all its vulgar curiosity and ignorance. I do not speak of artists and
poets, who are as reverent at a dance as the most pious at Mass, but of
those who think of life as a colored supplement to a Sunday paper, a
Chaplinade, a burlesque, something over which to be facetious.
"There's a bunch of dudes coming over from a dude ranch," said a
cowboy, referring to a touring party from a fashionable resort.
"A speculator come here las' week from Albuquerque and booked up every
spare room in the pueblo," said another. "But the road's nigh blocked
with snow. Guess we sha'n't see any Albuquerque folk this year. Too
much scared of being stranded. Once a party got snowed up here for a
week."
"There's a man here I'd like to insult," said Ewart with a laugh. "He
is Babbitt himself. I'd like to go up to him and say '_Mr. Babbitt, I
believe_,' with a courtly bow."
Babbitt was certainly there with his wife and kodak and furs and
waiting automobile, but he was not duplicated. He stood out in relief
against all the rest. For all the lesser Babbitts had been scared by
the snow.
November the 12th, Spanish festival of St. Iago, festival of the war
cry by which the country was conquered, Saint Iago a ellos,--_Up and
at them, St. James!_ was the great day at Jemez. It was a bleak Sunday
morning and the stark, jagged hills, pedestals of rock, standing places
which encompass the dark village were lit by radii of a flashing
sunrise. Silhouetted up there stood solitary Indians, watching
religiously, and they remained till night had fled and the living
sanguine of the mountains was revealed. Down below, in the streets of
the pueblo, you would think there were a hundred wild horses. For the
visiting Indians, unable to find stabling, had turned their horses
loose, and they ran about like dogs, hunting for provender, whinnying
to one another, biting one another, kicking, scampering from yard to
yard. Our three horses were set upon by droves which I sought to keep
off whilst they ate.
Usually in the morning the Jemez Indians dance a horse dance--very
fitting in such a place of horses--one Indian is made up as a horse,
and he is accompanied by a drummer with a soot-colored face, and a
naked mirth-maker. And these parade the mud-built town. But this year
that dance was omitted.
Instead the traders and the Navajos chaffered over the price of
blankets. Snowflakes fell indolently on to the gray streets, on to the
horses' backs, on to the many hogs, on to the quaint mud domes of the
bread ovens, the _estufas_, in front of the houses, but it settled
most of all on the gorgeous handwoven blankets of the Navajos. Every
year hundreds of Navajos ride in from their country, which lies between
the Jemez River and the Grand Cañon, and bring a years' product in
woven blankets, and there come to meet them here many Indians from
Santo Domingo. For the Domingo Indians mine turquoise, and are clever
craftsmen in silver. The Navajos want silver and turquoise ornaments;
the Domingans want blankets. So a great barter takes place. Besides
these, the white trader comes and buys in dozens and makes many
profitable deals.
"Don't tell anybody," said Mrs. Babbitt. "I've brought these parrot
feathers. Don't you think I might get a bracelet with them?"
And she did.
Meanwhile from a squatters' village came a meager crowd of Mexicans
in black, and filled the seats of the little Indian church, and gave
to the _fiesta_ the appearance of a Christian festival. A priest also
appeared and a Roman Mass was sung. A group of Mexican youths with guns
waited to fire a volley in air at the elevation of the Host--but they
were discouraged and took to random firing instead.
"I think we'd better give these fellows a wide berth," said Ewart, as
he watched the way they were fooling with their rifles.
They were neither pious nor careful, for they continued taking shots at
sparrows and crows while the figures of St. Iago and the emblems of the
Church were carried past them in procession.
Curiously irrelevant seemed the diminutive, black-dressed procession,
following a white-surpliced priest, a man with a lantern, a man with
a Cross, and two men with figures of the Saint, a Mexican carrying a
modern, machine-made St. James and an Indian carrying the original
Indian-made image of wood. The Navajos, all between six and seven
feet tall, swathed from head to ankles in voluminous, bright colored
blankets, looked exceedingly morosely at the spectacle, only their
dark, cavernous eyes staring from faces which they covered even to
their noses with the flaps of their blankets. The wind blew, the dust
rose, the snow came slanting down, and the black-robed Mexicans turned
their faces away as they trudged. The Cross and the flickering lantern
wavered in air as they went.
There met them, accidentally, the heralds of the dance, the ugliest and
squattest of the Jemez Indians, their faces blackened out with soot,
and bearing in their hands tiny, home-made drums which they beat with a
will. The tom-tom was beaten by two of them, and a third, with widely
dilated eyes and old, strained, carved-out face and flying hair, sang
in pagan voice--_Hoi hoi ho-ho, ha-ha-ha-ha_. The Church went one way;
they went another, without a salute, as if one were invisible to the
other.
At noon the Presbyterian missionary made his annual visit and, with
the Agent and the District Nurse and the aid of a harmonium, struck
up "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me." The Indians had marched out in
their beauty; no ugliness now, no devil frightening, but a serene
picture of physical loveliness. The _Koshare_, spirits of ancestors,
mirth-makers, leaders of the dance, had been prohibited this year,
their nakedness having been considered unseemly by the white onlookers.
But the youth of the village were nearly naked, and nothing short of
glory to their Creator.
The dance was like wind in the corn or fast-traveling shadows on the
hills; it was like the dimpling of the waves where many waters meet
together; it was like the arching of the necks, the waving of the
manes of many horses on the prairie; it was like the trembling of
morning light upon the mountains and the sea. The snowflakes emulated
it but did not succeed. And all who watched seemed turned to stone, to
perfect immobility, by the perfection of the movement that they saw.
The hundreds of tall Navajos were like statues, and those on the roofs
looking down on the wide, brown, sandy, open place of the dance--there
were many on the roofs--looked like figures that had survived centuries
and looked on unmoved hundreds of time, hundreds of years. They were
completely and sharply silhouetted against the mountains and the sky.
The Jemez men were painted a dark yellow, and wore white moccasins
threaded with silver bells. In their hands they carried gourds with
peas in them which they rattled. 'Twixt their bare arms and an armlet
they carried slips of green pine. They were crowned with leaves and
feathers, they had turquoise necklaces on their smooth round necks. And
their long, coal-black hair hung on their backs to the mount of their
hips. The barefooted women wore green _tablitas_, like crowns, on their
heads, and colored _fajas_ about their waists. They had bracelets
and rings, they held green branches in their hands. Their dance was
a tremble, a departure from calm; the men's dance between them a
prolonged ecstasy, a descending out of eternal movement into calm.
They surged up the village street, ever forward, ever more of them,
more strung-out, more beautiful--accompanying at the side were dramatic
groups in everyday attire, chanting, exhorting the unseen Powers,
roaring together fantastic choruses of semimusical gibberish. And the
drums beat inexorably, as if they were the voice of the gods, the
control whom no one at any time had ever disobeyed.
You are changed to stone, yes, to the stone of the Stone Age. Babbitt
has gone; there is only this that you see. Ah, no--for somewhere a
church bell has been set a-ringing and a harmonium is playing a hymn;
yes, there it is, in much rebellion and complaint--"_Nearer, my God,
to Thee!_" Mr. Babbitt nonchalantly strides in among the dancers and
distributes cigarettes which the dancers, being nearly naked, cannot
put away. He will not be denied. He photographs the scene. He has a
knowing look. The Indian Governor is angered, but what can he do? There
is nothing the white man understands except force; neither manners, nor
reason, nor what is sacred. So the will of the white man will prevail.
The beautiful dancing will cease.
"I give it ten years," said the Forestry agent of the Government.
"By that time they will all be citizens. It will be a Presbyterian
village."
"Just like a village in the Highlands of Scotland," I hazarded.
The agent smiled. For he was a Highlander by extraction. The Scot,
though sentimental at home about "the snowflake that softly reposes"
on his native hills, about the heather, the kilt, the bagpipe, and the
rest, is often the most unsentimental and prosaic fellow when in the
presence of another nation's romance.
However, the Presbyterians have it not all their own way in Jemez.
The Catholics claim it as their ground, sanctified by the blood of
Franciscan martyrs. They are educating the children and making them,
therefore, extremely naughty and ill-behaved during the dance. For they
are taught to despise paganism. The pranks played by the children on
their dancing fathers and mothers I should prefer not to mention in
describing the beautiful dance. Yet they were there and were signs of
the times.
3
The night after the dance there was a fight between the Navajos and the
Apaches, two or three score of the latter having ridden in and begun
strutting through the pueblo with their orange-colored scarves and
big feathers in their dark sombreros. They and the Navajos were the
fiercest of the Indians and used to ravage the whole country even down
as far as Chihuahua in Old Mexico. And they are still warlike people,
ready to start strife on a slight pretext. The Navajos are especially
untamable.
The horses also this night got into trouble, their exasperation and
hunger seeming to possess them. Juan Louis Pecos, the Indian who had
charge of our three steeds, did the best he could, but that was not
much. George and Buck were tied to a post. Billy had been put in
hobbles and turned loose. But the Indian horses constantly invaded the
yard of the house where we were staying, and the unhobbled ones drove
Billy away from his feed. Juan, having taken part in the dance, was
very late in bringing the alfalfa, and when he brought it it proved
to be of a very thorny nature, reaped with abundant weeds from Indian
fields. Just after nine at night we had an exciting half hour.
Billy, having been dispossessed, vented his rage on George, whom in any
case he regarded as an interloper, and drove him round and round the
post to which he was tied until the rope was wound tight. The little
white pony looked as if he were going to strangle himself, and he was
in a violent excitement, kicking out with his hind legs and straining
with all his neck muscles. Buck, tied near him, craftily avoided all
entanglements. But Billy, hobbled as he was, could not be restrained.
Ewart untied Buck and he scampered off, and I cut George's rope,
sawing it for several seconds, for it was a very stout fine line of an
unbreakable kind. George meanwhile let out at all and sundry, and when
cut loose dashed away with Billy after him.
Mrs. Graham happily recaptured Buckskin at the drinking
trough--fortunately he had not grasped the geography of the large
ramshackle yard, else he would no doubt forthwith have set off for
home. Ewart and I chased the other two horses to the accompaniment of
the clangor of Billy 's chain-hobbles. They got into the main street
of the pueblo and Billy made such a pace, even hobbled, that we could
not overtake them; he leapt like a hobbyhorse, he trotted in short
rapid steps, and he certainly made the white pony go. George, however,
doubled on us and Billy doubled across our tracks also. We cried to
Apaches and Navajos to aid us, but they looked on gloomily from their
blankets. Dogs rushed about and barked and gave chase, and we, with
electric torches in our hands, strove to see the horses we were after.
Billy was audible by the sound of his hobbles. But suddenly, to my
horror, I saw his big shadowy body leap in air and heard a sickening
thud. He seemed to have gone neck over crop. I could not surmise what
had happened to him. There was, however, a chance to run down George
in a corner of a waste field, and I ran to assist Ewart. George was
recaptured. Then with torches we sought the form of Billy. He made not
a sound now and might be dead.
I found him at last, lying stretched out as if he had breathed his
last. But he was far from dead. Seeing me, he made a great effort to
get up, but fell back helpless. Then I saw what had happened. He had
caught the shoe of one of his hind legs in the chain which held his
two fore legs, and a link was firmly embedded between the iron and
the hoof. I felt much relieved, petted him, and then with a big stone
in one hand and the electric light and his hind leg in the other I
started the awkward job of knocking the bit of chain out of his hoof.
Ewart held George and shed his light also on the scene. Indians came
and peered at us out of the darkness, and the hubbub of dogs barking
continued all over the village.
Billy was freed without further accident, and the three horses were
tied up in separate places, and in a repentant mood they stood and
watched till morning. They looked very miserable at dawn. For they
had had no corn, and the other horses had stolen their hay, and they
had had a series of frights in the night. I went with an old Indian
on to the top of his roof, and we filled a sack with ripe corn on the
cobs--some yellow, some scarlet, some almost blue, and we fed the
horses personally, each of us his own, and that was a great comfort.
Then we saddled up and rode on to the trading post of San Ysidro.
Here an enormous trade was being done by white traders buying up all
manner of Indian wares and selling store goods in exchange. We took
refuge in Miller's Trading Store and put our horses in charge of
"Velvet Joe" who led them to happy quarters. Buck rolled on his back
for a long time and then sat on the soft ground and looked around him
like a contented dromedary. Velvet Joe came and told us the horse
was ill. But he did not understand the joy of the escape from that
exasperating pueblo and its wild horses. Billy and George, having
contemplated Buckskin for a while, followed his example and took a good
roll also.
Next day we rode to Zia on sand dunes over the Jemez River, in a
fullness of sunshine. In the evening we made the pueblo of Santa Ana
and slept in an Indian house, all on the floor of a mud-built room. An
ex-governor was our host, a very gentle and indeed beautiful Indian.
At dawn the day following we climbed the dark table mountain, having
to lead our horses and coax them to mount the steep slopes of volcanic
scoriæ and bowlders. Looking backward, we saw Santa Ana removed to
obscurity and littleness far away on the yellow evenness of the river
shore. We with our horses were exalted on black and dreadful cliffs.
Cold winds sprang at us from the ravines. Persistent winds blew against
us and athwart us. We achieved nevertheless the summit--and the summit
was a new country, a wide, grassy plateau miles across, but without
view except cloud and sky. Perhaps we were lucky, but we rode on to the
faint sheep trail to San Felipe and came at last, after an hour or two
of riding, to a plunging, rocky stairway leading downward, a nose-dive
down to the Rio Grande River, and there, like a Moorish city, lay the
beautiful yellow pueblo of San Felipe. The horses did not object to
the steep descent; all three in single file we descended slowly and
processionally, down to the village of our friend Lorenzo. And the
first Indian we met there was he.
Lorenzo took us where we could get food, and happily put us on the way
to Santo Domingo which at nightfall we reached. We still rode on to the
Mexican stores and inn two or three miles nearer Santa Fe, and there,
feeling pretty tired, we did justice to a hot supper of ham and eggs
and coffee and potatoes and other good things.
The next day was the last day of our ride, and we experienced a violent
snowstorm, climbing La Bajada Hill in an upflutter of snowflakes, and
finding the moor above it deep in snow. A pitiless east wind drove a
blizzard against us, caking our right-hand sides with ice and snow.
The horses grew all white; "domes of silence" raised their hoofs,
additional snow boots fixed on their hoofs. They stumbled repeatedly.
Twenty miles in a raging blizzard was an ordeal for them as much as
for us, but they knew they were nearing home and comfortable, happy
quarters. "There's no Place Like Home" was written on the knowing
features of Buck. And Billy, who was none the worse for his adventure
with his hobbles, encouraged Buck onward as it seemed.
That night, when we had all changed our clothes and the horses were fed
and housed and we sat and watched three-foot logs flaming from a broad
hearth, we felt we had had an adventure--we had gone far, we had seen
new life, we had lived intimately with our horses for a week, and it
had been greatly worth while.
Cigarette smoke rose from our chairs in meditative rings.