As it is not proposed to give this record of the doings of the "New
Koshare" the circumstantiality of a diary, the chronicler may be allowed
to include the ensuing teas, shooting-matches, and all the lighter
kosharean festivities in the one general and final statement, that they
each came off duly and successfully; and leaving their details
"unhonored and unsung," proceed to a more extended account of the
Saturday evening entertainments,--as all members of the club were
invited to contribute to these evenings, and it was expected that the
Minister would, from the storehouse of his travelling experience,
contribute liberally to their delectability; and that the Journalist
(who naturally thought in paragraphs, and, like the fairy who "spoke
pearls," conversed in exquisitely fashioned sentences) would supplement
the papers of the Antiquary by his own brilliant talks.
And so it was that on the initial Saturday evening, with a full
attendance and great expectations, the Koshare found themselves
convened, the president in the chair, the secretary with notebook in
hand, and all in dignified attention.
The Antiquary--with this apt quotation from Cumming's "Land of Poco
Tiempo"--began his first lecture before the club.
"'New Mexico,'" quoted he, "'is the anomaly of the Republic. It is a
century older in European civilization than the rest, and several
centuries older still in a happier semi-civilization of its own.
It had its little walled cities of stone before Columbus had
grandparents-to-be; and it has them yet.'
"There are," stated Mr. Morehouse, "three typical races in New Mexico.
The American interpolation does not count as a type.
"Of Pueblo Indians there are nine thousand, 'peaceful, home-loving, and
home-dwelling tillers of the soil.' Then, here, and in Arizona, there
are about twenty thousand Navajo Indians,--nomad, horse-loving,
horse-stealing vagrants of the saddle, modern Centaurs. Then come the
Apaches, an uncounted savage horde, whose partial civilization has been
effected by sheer force of arms, and inch by inch: who accept the
reservation with but half a heart, and break bounds at every
opportunity. Last of all come the Mexicans, shrunken descendants of the
Castilian world-finders; living almost as much against the house as in
it; ignorant as slaves, and more courteous than kings; poor as Lazarus,
and more hospitable than Croesus; and Catholics from A to izzard.
"The Navajos and Apaches," said Mr. Morehouse, "have neither houses nor
towns; the Pueblos have nineteen compact little cities, and the Mexicans
several hundred villages, a part of which are shared by the invader.
"'The numerous sacred dances of the Pueblos,' says Cummings, 'are by far
the most picturesque sights in America, and the least viewed by
Americans, who never found anything more striking abroad. The mythology
of Greece and Rome is less than theirs in complicated comprehensiveness;
and they are a far more interesting ethnological study than the tribes
of inner Africa, and less known of by their white countrymen.'
"The Pueblos of New Mexico," explained the Antiquary, "are by no means
to be confounded with the Toltecs or Aztecs. It is, however, barely
possible that in prehistoric ages the race in possession of Mexico may
have had some tribal characteristics of the latter-day Pueblo. As of
that remote time, there is not even a traditionary record; this
supposition is absolutely conjectural.
"By investigation and comparison it has, however, been proved that the
Pueblos have racial characteristics connecting them with some mysterious
stage of human life even older than that of the more barbarous Toltecs
or Aztecs.
"This race has from time immemorial had its book of Genesis. It is not,
like that of the Hebrew, a written record, but has been orally handed
down, and with careful precision, beginning with their original
emergence, as half-formed human beings, from the dark of the mystic
underworld of 'Shipapu' to the world of light.
"After the fashion of most barbarous races, the Pueblo appears
originally to have 'pitched his moving tent' in various parts of Mexico;
and it may be inferred that he endured many casualities before settling
himself in life. It was to tide over this trying epoch in his existence
that 'Those Above,' according to tradition, made for the tribes that
quaint 'Delight-Monger,' with whom we have already made acquaintance,
who led them in their wanderings from the womb of Shipapu to the solid
centre of their world; but, as has been already stated, this record,
going back to an indefinite period of time, and having only the dubious
authority of folk-lore, is only of traditional value.
"The Pueblo, no less than the Aztec, is the most religious of human
beings. His ceremonial, like that of the age of Montezuma, is
wonderfully and minutely elaborated; and though originating in a
civilization less splendid and refined, it is really less barbarous,
since its rites have never, like those of the Aztec, included the
horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalism.
"The Pueblo, since his exit from the womb of mother Earth, seems to have
given his principal attention to the cultivation of its soil. All the
same, he appears never to have shirked the less peaceful
responsibilities of his tribe,--putting on his war-paint at the shortest
notice, to settle the quarrels of his clan.
"Although like most men of savage birth and breeding, cruel in warfare,
he seems never to have been abstractedly blood-thirsty, never to have
killed, like his ever-belligerent neighbor, the Apache, purely for
killing's sake; but, his quarrel once ended, and the present security of
his clan well achieved, he has contentedly returned to the peaceful ways
of life; diligently sowing, weeding, and harvesting his crops of maize,
melons, squashes, and beans, and--ever mindful of the propitiative
requirements of 'Those Above'--taking careful heed of his religious
duties.
"For a succinct account of the Pueblo cave (or cliff) dwellers," said
the Antiquary, "I am largely indebted to Bandelier, from whose valuable
Pueblo researches I shall often take the liberty to quote.
"The imperfectly explored mountain range skirting the Rio Grande del
Norte is picturesquely grand.
"Facing the river, the foundation of the chain is entirely volcanic.
"Colossal rocks form the abrupt walls of the gorges between these
mountains, and are often so soft and friable that, in many places they
were easily scooped out with the most primitive tools, or even detached
with the fingers alone.
"In these gorges, through many of which run unfailing streams of water,
often expanding to the proportions of regular valleys, the Pueblo Indian
raised the modest crop that satisfied his vegetable craving.
"As it is easier to excavate dwellings than to pile up walls in the open
air, the aboriginal Mexican's house-building effort was mostly confined
to underground construction. He was, in fact, a 'cave-dweller,' yet
infinitely of more advanced architectural ideas than our own remote
forbears of Anglo Saxon cave-dwelling times.
"Most of these residences might boast of from three to four rooms. They
were arranged in groups, or clusters, and some of them were several
stories high.
"Rude ladders were used for mounting to the terrace or roof of each
successive story. The Pueblo had, literally, a hearthstone in his
primitive home. His fireplace was supplied with a hearth of
pumice-stone. A rudely built flue, made of cemented rubble, led to a
circular opening in the front wall of his cave-dwelling. Air-holes
admitted their scanty light to these dusky apartments, in which there
were not only conveniences for bestowing wearing-apparel, but niches for
ornamental pottery, precious stones, and the like Indian bric-à-brac.
The ground-floor entrance was a rude doorway closed by a hide, or mat.
Plaited mats of Yucca leaves, and deer-hide, by day rolled up in corners
of the sleeping-apartments, served for mattresses at night. A thick
coating of mud, washed with blood, and carefully smoothed, gave to the
floor a glossy effect. Some of the rooms are known to have been in
dimension ten feet by fourteen. Their walls were whitewashed with burnt
gypsum.
"Though the time when these traditional cliff-dwellers wooed and wed,
lived and died in the Rialto vale is long, long gone by, the ruins of
their homes may still be seen. Some of them are tolerably intact; others
are crumbled away to mere shapeless ruins.
"And now, having described their dwellings, let us note some of the most
marked and interesting characteristics of the men and women who made in
them their homes.
"We are apt," said the Antiquary, "to accord to our more enlightened
civilization the origin of communism; yet, antedating by ages our
latter-day socialistic fads, the communal idea enthused this unlettered
people, and to a certain extent seems to have been successfully carried
out.
"Let not the strong-minded Anglo-Saxon woman plume herself upon the
discovery of the equality of the sexes. While our own female suffragists
were yet unborn, the Pueblo wife had been accorded the inalienable right
to lord it over her mankind.
"Among the Mexican cliff-dwellers, 'woman's rights' seem to have been as
indigenous to the soil as the piñon and the prickly pear.
"In the primitive Pueblo domicile, the wife appears, by tribal consent,
to have been absolutely 'cock of the walk.' The husband had no rights as
owner or proprietor of the family mansion, and, as an inmate, was
scarcely more than tolerated.
"The wife, in those ever-to-be-regretted days, not only built and
furnished the house,--contributed to the kitchen the soup pot, water
jars, and other primitive domestic appliances,--but figured as sole
proprietor of the entire establishment.
"The Pueblo woman, though married, still had, with her children, her
holding in her own clan. In case of her death, the man's home being
properly with _his_ clan, he must return to it.
"The wife was not allowed to work in the fields. Each man tilled the
plot allotted him by his clan. The crops, once housed, were controlled
by the woman, as were the proceeds of communal hunts and fisheries.
"The Pueblos had their system of divorce. It goes without saying that it
was not attended by the red-tape complications of our time. As the
husband's continuance under the family roof-tree depended absolutely on
his acceptability to the wife, at any flagrant marital breach of good
behavior she simply refused to recognize him as her lord. In vain he
protested, stormed, and menaced; the outraged better half bade him _go_,
and he _went_! Thus easily and informally were Pueblo marriages
dissolved; and, this summary transaction once well concluded, each party
had the right to contract a second marriage.
"The Pueblo Indian is historically known as a Catholic; that is to say,
he told his beads, crossed his brow with holy water, and duly and
devoutly knelt at the confessional. This done, he tacitly reserved to
himself the privilege of surreptitiously clinging to the Paganism of his
forbears, and zealously paid his tithe of observances at the ancient
shrine of 'the Sun Father' and 'the Moon Mother.'
"Some of the Pueblo tribes are said still to retain the use of that
ancient supplicating convenience, 'the prayer-stick.'
"'Prayer-sticks, or plumes,'" explained the Antiquary, "are but painted
sticks tufted with down, or feathers, and, by the simple-minded Indian,
supposed especially to commend him to the good graces and kindly offices
of 'Those Above.' In a certain way, the aboriginal prayer-stick seems to
have been a substitute for an oral supplication.
"The Pueblo, pressed for time, might even forego the hindering
ceremonial of verbal request, adoration, or thanksgiving, and hurriedly
deposit, as a votive offering to his easily placated gods, this tufted
bit of painted wood; and, furthermore, since prayer-sticks were not
always within reach, it was permitted him in such emergencies to gather
two twigs, and, placing these crosswise, hold them in position by a rock
or stone. And this childish make-shift passed with his indulgent gods
for a prayer!
"The most trivial commonplace of existence had, with the superstitious
Pueblo, its religious significance; and it would seem to have been
incumbent on him literally to 'pray without ceasing.' Hence the
prayer-plume, or its substitute, was, with him, one of the necessities
of life. Time would fail me to tell of the ancient elaborate religious
rites and superstitions of the Mexican Indian; to recount his latter-day
ceremonials, wherein Pagan dances, races, and sports are like the jumble
of a crazy quilt, promiscuously mixed in with Christian festas and holy
saint-days; and indeed the subject is too large for my sketchy handling.
It may not, however, be amiss to notice the yearly celebration of the
festival of San Estevan. It may be still witnessed, and seems to have
been the original Harvest-home of the Mexican Indian, the observance of
which has been handed down in various ways from all times, and among all
peoples, and is probably the parent of our Thanksgiving holiday.
"The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to
commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft
upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day
names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the
guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial.
"It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are
dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican
confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief
account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful
assertion of Cummings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who
are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of
Washington; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed
residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and
irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been
beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a
hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was
conceived.'
"This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no
means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the
untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back of his steed, or the
fierce Apache, murderous and cruel.
"We must not," said Mr. Morehouse, "take leave of the Pueblo, without
some reference to the great flat-topped, slop-sided chain of rock-tables
that throughout the length and breadth of his territory rises from the
sandy plains, the most famous and best explored of which is known as 'La
Mesa Encantada,'--'the Enchanted Mesa.'
"According to tradition the Mesa Encantada gains its romantic name from
an event which centuries ago--declares the legend--destroyed the town,
then a well-populated stronghold of the Acomas. As a prelude to this
legend, let me state that the Pueblo cliff-dwellers often perched their
habitations on lofty, sheer-walled, and not easily accessible mesas, a
natural vantage-ground from which they might successfully resist their
enemies, the nomadic and predatory tribes formerly over-running the
country.
"The steep wall of the Acoma Mesa, with its solitary trail, surmounted
by means of hand and foot holes pecked in the solid rock, was so well
defended that a single man might keep an army at bay. What fear, then,
should these Acomas have of their enemies?
"The Acomas, like other Pueblo Indians, have from time immemorial been
tillers of the soil.
"From the fertile sands of their valley and its tributaries they won by
patient toil such harvests of corn, beans, squashes, and cotton as
secured them a simple livelihood; and 'their granaries,' it is asserted,
'were always full enough to enable them, if need be, to withstand a
twelvemonth's siege.' How long the top of Katzimo, the site of the
Enchanted Mesa, had been inhabited when the catastrophe recorded in the
legend befell, no man may say, not even the elders of the tribe; this
much is, however, known,--the spring-time had come. The sun-priest had
already proclaimed from the housetops that the season of planting was at
hand. The seeds from last year's harvest had been gathered from the
bins; planting-sticks had been sharpened, and all made ready for the
auspicious day when the seer should further announce the time of
repairing to the fields. On that day (so runs the tale), down the ragged
trail, at early sunrise, clambered the busy natives; every one who was
able to force a planting-stick into the compact soil, or lithe enough to
drive away a robber crow, hurried to the planting. Only a few of the
aged and ailing remained on the mesa.
"While the planters worked in the hot glare of the valley below, the sun
suddenly hid his face in angry clouds. The busy planters hastened their
work, while the distant thunder muttered and rolled about them. Suddenly
the black dome above them was rent as by a glittering sword, and down
swept the torrent, until the entire valley became a sheet of flood. The
planters sought shelter in the slight huts of boughs and sticks from
which the crops are watched.
"The elders bodingly shook their heads. Never before had the heavens
given vent to such a cataract.
"When the sudden clouds as suddenly dispersed, and the sun-lit crest of
Katzimo emerged from the mist, the toilers trudged toward their mountain
home. Reaching the base of the trail, they found their pathway of the
morning blocked by huge, sharp-edged pieces of stone, giving mute
testimony of the disaster to the ladder-trail above.
"The huge rock mass, which had given access to the cleft by means of the
holes pecked in the trail-path, had in the great cloud-burst become
freed from the friable wall, and thundered down in a thousand
fragments, cutting off communication with the mesa village. The Acomas,
when asked why their ancestors made no desperate effort to reach the
sufferers whose feeble voices were calling to them from the summit for
succor, but left their own flesh and blood to perish by slow starvation,
gravely shook their heads.
"The ban of enchantment had already, for these superstitious pagans,
fallen upon the devoted table-land; it had become 'La Mesa Encantada.'
"The publication by Mr. Charles F. Lummis, who resided for several years
at the pueblo of Iselta, of the story of Katzimo, the tradition of which
was repeated to him by its gray-haired priests some twelve years ago,
aroused the interest of students of southwestern ethnology in the
history of 'La Mesa Encantada,' and, subsequently, Mr. F. W. Hodge was
directed by the Bureau of American Ethnology, of the Smithsonian
Institute, to scale the difficult height of this giant mountain, for the
purpose of supplementing the evidence already gained, of its sometime
occupancy as a Pueblo town. His party found decided evidence of a former
occupancy of the mesa, such as fragments of extremely ancient
earthenware, a portion of a shell bracelet, parts of two grooved stone
axes, lichen-flecked with age. Here, too, was an unfeathered
prayer-stick, a melancholy reminder of a votive offering made, at the
nearest point of accessibility, to 'Those Above.'
"'When I consider,' says Mr. Hodge, in his charming paper, 'The
Enchanted Mesa,' published in the 'Century Magazine,' some three or
four years ago, 'that the summit of Katzimo, where the town was, has
long been inaccessible to the Indians, that it has been swept by winds,
and washed by rains for centuries, until scarcely any soil is left on
its crest, that well-defined traces of an ancient ladder trail may still
be seen pecked on the rocky wall of the very cleft through which the
traditionary pathway wound its course; and, above all, the large number
of very ancient potsherds in the earthy talus about the base of the
mesa, which must have been washed from above, the conclusion is
inevitable that the summit of 'La Mesa Encantada' was inhabited prior to
1540, when the present Acoma was discovered by Coronado, and that the
last vestige of the village itself has long been washed or blown over
the cliff.'"
With this account of the Enchanted Mesa, Mr. Morehouse, amid general
applause, ended his interesting paper on the Pueblo Indians; and after a
short discussion by the Club of the ancient and modern characteristics
of these remarkable aborigines, the Koshare, well pleased with the
success of its endeavor to combine improvement with delight, adjourned
to the next Monday in January.
Little dreamed Roger Smith as, that night, after the Club entertainment,
he handed the Hemmenshaw ladies to their wagon, for the return ride to
Hilton Ranch, that the very next week he was to undertake, on their
behalf, a hand-to-hand encounter with a blood-thirsty Apache. Yet so was
it ordained of Fate.
It has already been stated that these ladies were but day-boarders at
Alamo Ranch, occupying, together with Sholto, a Mexican
man-of-all-work, the Hilton Ranch, a good mile distant from the
boarding-house.
Louise Hemmenshaw, usually in exuberant health, was ill with a severe
influenza. It was the third and cumulative day of this disease. Sholto
had already been despatched to Brown's for the dinner; Miss Paulina had,
in this emergency, undertaken to turn off the breakfasts and suppers
from her chafing-dish.
After replenishing, from the wood basket, the invalid's chamber fire,
Miss Paulina administered her teaspoonful of bryonia, gave a settling
shake to her pillow, and hurried down to fasten the back door behind
Sholto.
Lingering a moment at the kitchen window, the good lady put on her
far-off glasses for a good look across the mesa, stretching--an unbroken
waste of sage-brush and mesquite-bush--from the Hilton kitchen garden to
the distant line of the horizon.
As she quietly scanned the nearer prospect, Miss Paulina's heart made a
sudden thump beneath her bodice, and quickened its pulses to fever-time;
for there, just within range of her vision, was the undoubted form of an
Apache savage, clad airily in breech-clout, and Navajo blanket. Skulking
warily along the mesa, he gained the garden fence and sprang, at a
bound, over the low paling. For a moment the watcher stood paralyzed
with wonder and dismay.
Meantime, under cover of a rose-trellis, the Apache, looking bad enough
and cunning enough for any outrage, coolly made a reconnoisance of the
premises. This done, still on all-fours, he gained the bulkhead of the
small dark vegetable cellar beneath the kitchen. It chanced to have been
inadvertently left open.
With a satisfied grunt (and eschewing the paltry convenience of steps)
he bounded at once into its dusky depths.
Summoning her failing courage, this "Daughter of the Revolution"
resolutely tiptoed out the front door, and, with her heart in her mouth,
whisking round the corner of the devoted house, shot into place the
stout outside bolt of the bulkhead door.
This feat accomplished, she made haste to gain the safe shelter of the
adobe dwelling. She next looked well to the bolt fastening the trap-door
at the head of the ladder-like stairway leading perilously from the
kitchen to the dim region below, where the Apache might now be heard
bumping his head against the floor-planks, in a fruitless endeavor to
discover some outlet, from this underground apartment, to the family
circle above. With the frightful possibility of a not distant escape of
her prisoner, the good lady lifted her heart in silent prayer, and
hurrying promptly to the chamber of her niece, gave a saving punch to
the fire, a glass of port wine to the invalid, and, feigning an
appearance of unconcern, left the room, and slipped cautiously down to
the kitchen. Here she dragged an ironing-table, a clothes-horse, and a
wood-box on to the trap-door, and breathlessly waited for the Apache's
next move.
And now, a step might be heard on the driveway, followed by a rap at the
front door.
Prudently scanning her visitor through the sidelight, and assuring
herself that he was no breech-clouted savage, but a fellow white man,
Miss Paulina let in through the narrowest of openings,--who but their
friend the Harvard man! "Dear soul!" tearfully exclaimed the good lady,
while Roger Smith stood in mute wonder at the warmth of her greeting.
It was but the work of a moment to explain the situation and acquaint
him with the peril of the moment.
Sholto, at his leisurely Mexican pace, now opportunely appeared at the
back door with the hot dinner.
"There is a time for all things," said the "president of Chapter 18th,"
as (having pulled the bewildered Mexican inside) she vigorously shot the
door-bolt in place, deposited the smoking viands on the sideboard, and
thus addressed him. "Sholto," said Miss Paulina, "I have an Apache here
in the cellar. For the time being his ability to work us harm is
limited; but an Apache is never nice to have round; and, besides, he
must have terribly bumped himself poking round there all this time in
the dark. One would not unnecessarily hurt even a savage. We must
therefore let him up, bind him fast, and take measures for delivering
him to the police at Las Cruces. Here is a clothes-line: it is good and
strong; make up a lasso, and when I open the trap-door, as his head bobs
in sight, throw it, and then help Mr. Smith haul him out, and tie him."
Sholto's lasso was soon in working order. The trap-door once raised, the
head of the unsuspecting savage flew up like a Jack in a box, and with
such a rubber-like bound that Sholto's lasso went wide of the mark. In
this dilemma, a scientific blow from the fist of a Harvard athlete
deftly floored him, and, in the consequent lapse of consciousness, he
was easily bound, and safely deposited in the bottom of the Hilton
express wagon. This accomplished, Sholto and the Harvard man summarily
took the road for Las Cruces, some four miles distant. The horse and his
driver being in absolute accord as to the ratio of miles proper to the
hour, the captors drove leisurely along; the Harvard man meantime
relieving the slow monotony of the way, with incident and anecdote, and
Sholto, in turn, imparting much interesting New-Mexican information.
Presently a faint stir, as of the quiet, persistent nibbling of a mouse
in the wall, might (but for the talking) have been heard from the bottom
of the wagon. "Poor beggar!" said the Harvard man, at last recalling to
mind the captive Apache; "he must, by this time, be about ready to come
to." And taking from his over-coat pocket a tiny flask of brandy, he
turned on his seat with the humane intention of aiding nature in
bringing about that restoration. "Gone! clean gone! by George!"
exclaimed the astonished athlete. The cunning savage had, with his
sharp, strong teeth, actually gnawed through his wrist cords, and, with
tooth and nail extricating himself from the knotted clothes-line, was
already on his return from the unsatisfactory husks of Mesilla Valley,
to the fatted veal of the U. S. government, in his father's house,--"The
Reservation." "_They are fleet steeds that follow!_" quoted the Harvard
man as the jubilant Apache, with flying heels, loomed tantalizingly on
the distant plain. The startled cotton-tail, swept by "the wind of his
going," scurried breathlessly to his desert fastnesses among the
sage-brush and mesquite.
With a humorous glance at his fast-vanishing form, the Harvard man
measured with his eye the intervening distance, the speed of the escaped
captive, and the pace of the propeller of the Hilton express, and
gracefully accepted the situation. Sholto lazily turned the horse's
head, and in process of time the discomfited captors of Miss Paulina's
Apache--like John Gilpin--
"Where they did get up
Did get down again."
Meantime, Miss Hemmenshaw brought up the mid-day meal.
"Auntie," said the invalid, "this feverish cold puts queer fancies in my
head. While you were away, I must have taken a little nap, and when I
awoke there seemed to be some sort of a rumpus going on below; after
which I fancied that a team started away from the back door. It could
not have been Sholto's; for he would be coming from Brown's about that
hour with our dinner."
"It may have been just a part of your dream, dear," pacified the aunt;
"but come, now, here is our dinner. Let us have it together. A
wonderfully nice dinner Mrs. Brown has sent us, too, and you can
venture to-day on a quail, and a bit of orange pudding. For myself, I am
as hungry as a bear;" and, removing the books from the oval bedroom
table, Miss Paulina laid the cloth, set out the dishes and glasses, and
daintily arranged the viands, which the two ladies discussed with
evident relish.
"And now," said the aunt, "since you have dined, and have something to
brace you up, I will 'tell my experience;'" and forthwith she related to
the astonished Louise the adventure of the morning. The good lady had
but accomplished her exciting account, when the valiant captors of the
Apache drove up.
Miss Paulina, with the concentrated importance of her entire "Chapter,"
met and opened the door to her hero.
"Well?" asked she of the crestfallen athlete.
"No: ill!" replied he; "the Apache never reached Las Cruces. He managed
to unbind himself, and slipped from our hands by the way. The
clothes-line has come back safe; but the savage is, long ere this, well
on his road to the Mescalero Reservation."
"Well," said Miss Paulina, judicially, "I can't say that I'm sorry. The
creature had a rough time bumping about that low, dark cellar; and your
blow on his head was a tough one. And when one considers the
slip-shodness of things at Las Cruces, and the possible insecurity of
their jail, _we_, on the whole, are the safer for his escape; and _he_
will, of course, feel more at home now in the Reservation, and will
probably remain there for a while, after the fright we gave him."
Thus reassured, the Harvard man accepted Miss Hemmenshaw's invitation to
stay to supper. And presently the convalescing invalid came down to
express her thanks for his devoir of the morning. Reclining on the
parlor lounge, in a cream-white tea gown, she looked so lovely that a
man might well have dared a whole tribe of savages in her defence. By
and by they had a quiet game of chess. It goes without saying that the
lady won. There _might_ be men hard-hearted enough to beat Louise
Hemmenshaw at chess. The Harvard man was not _of_ them.
So slipped away this happy afternoon; and, at sunset Sholto appeared
with the tea equipage, and the young people covertly made merry over a
chafing-dish mess achieved by the Cooking School pupil; and under cover
of rarebit, water-biscuit, and cups of Russian tea, the Harvard man made
hay for himself in this bit of sunshine, and grew in favor with both
aunt and niece.
With Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw, true to her aristocratic birth and
breeding, pedigree far out-weighed filthy lucre. To be well born was, in
her estimation, to be truly acceptable to gods and men.
Roger Smith, with his plebeian surname and unillustrious "tanner"
grandfather, was by no means a suitable husband for her motherless
niece, to whom, as the head of her brother's household, she had for
years filled a parent's place. Louise Hemmenshaw, as the good lady
shrewdly guessed, was the magnet that drew this undeclared lover to
Mesilla Valley. During the preceding winter they had met at many social
functions in Boston and Cambridge, and he had become the willing captive
of her bow and spear. He had never told his love.
The social discrepancy between the lovely aristocrat and Roger--the
grandson of Roger the Tanner--was too wide to be easily overstepped.
Ostensibly the Harvard man had come to New Mexico to recruit his spent
energies; but in his heart of hearts he knew that dearer than health was
the hope of winning the heart of Louise Hemmenshaw. Already his native
refinement and charm of manner had commended him to Miss Paulina; and
now, his prowess in the day's adventure had made her, for good and all,
his warm friend. As to her niece, he told himself, as, that night, by
the light of a low moon, he took his way to Alamo Ranch, recalling the
tender pressure of the invalid's white hand, when, with a rosy blush,
she bade him good-night, that in his wooing he had to-day "scored one;"
and with the confident egotism of presumptuous mortals, when events play
unexpectedly into their hands, he decided that Fate had prearranged this
timely call of his on the Hemmenshaws, and had timed the arrival of the
Apache at that opportune hour, with an especial view to the fulfilment
of his own cherished wishes.