THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND THE TWENTIETH
It was the second day after Pesquiera's challenge that his rival was
called to Santa Fé, the capital of the State, to hold a conference with
his lawyers about the progress of the suit of ouster against those
living on the Moreño grant. Gordon knew how acute was the feeling of the
residents of the valley against him. The Corbetts, whose homestead was
not included in either the original Valdés or Moreño grant, reported
daily to him whatever came to their ears. He could see that the
impression was strong among the Mexicans that their champion, Doña Maria
as they called her, would be worsted in the courts if the issue ever
came to final trial.
To live under the constant menace of an attack from ambush is a strain
upon the best of nerves. Dick and his friend Davis rode out of the
valley to meet the Santa Fé stage with a very sensible relief. For a few
days, anyhow, they would be back where they could see the old Stars and
Stripes flutter, where feudal retainers and sprouts of Spanish
aristocracy were not lying in wait with fiery zeal to destroy the
American interloper.
They reached the little city late, but soon after sunup Gordon rose,
took a bath, dressed, and strolled out into the quaint old town which
lays claim to being the earliest permanent European settlement in the
country. It was his first visit to the place, and as he poked his nose
into out of the way corners Dick found every step of his walk
interesting.
Through narrow, twisted streets he sauntered, along unpaved roads
bounded by century-old adobe houses. His walk took him past the San
Miguel Church, said to be the oldest in America. A chubby-faced little
priest was watering some geraniums outside, and he showed Dick through
the mission, opening the door of the church with one of a bunch of large
keys which hung suspended from his girdle. The little man went through
the usual patter of the guide with the facility of long practice.
The church was built, he said, in 1540, though Bandelier inaccurately
sets the date much later. The roof was destroyed by the Pueblo Indians
in 1680 during an attack upon the settlement, at which time the
inhabitants took refuge within the mission walls. These are from three
to five feet thick. The arrows of the natives poured through the
windows. The señor could still see the holes in the pictures, could he
not? Penuelo restored the church in 1710, as could be read by the
inscription carved upon the gallery beam. It would no doubt interest the
señor to know that one of the paintings was by Cimabue, done in 1287,
and that the seven hundred pound bell was cast in Spain during the year
1356 and had been dragged a thousand miles across the deserts of the new
world by the devoted pioneer priests who carried the Cross to the simple
natives of that region.
Gordon went blinking out of the San Miguel mission into a world that
basked indolently in a pleasant glow of sunshine. It seemed to him that
here time had stood still. This impression remained with him during his
tramp back to the hotel. He passed trains of faggot-laden burros, driven
by Mexicans from Tesuque and by Indians from adjoining villages, the
little animals so packed around their bellies with firewood that they
reminded him of caricatures of beruffed Elizabethan dames of the olden
days.
Surely this old town, which seemed to be lying in a peaceful siesta for
centuries unbroken, was an unusual survival from the buried yesterdays
of history. It was hard to believe, for instance, that the Governor's
Palace, a long one-story adobe structure stretching across one entire
side of the plaza, had been the active seat of so much turbulent and
tragic history, that for more than three hundred years it had been
occupied continuously by Spanish, Mexican, Indian, and American
governors. Its walls had echoed the noise of many a bloody siege and
hidden many an execution and assassination. From this building the old
Spanish cavaliers Onate and Vicente de Salivar and Penalosa set out on
their explorations. From it issued the order to execute forty-eight
Pueblo prisoners upon the plaza in front. Governor Armijo had here
penned his defiance to General Kearney, who shortly afterward nailed
upon the flagpole the Stars and Stripes. The famous novel "Ben Hur" was
written in one of these historic rooms.
But the twentieth century had leaned across the bridge of time to shake
hands with the sixteenth. A new statehouse had been built after the
fashion of new Western commonwealths, and the old Palace was now given
over to curio stores and offices. Everywhere the new era compromised
with the old. He passed the office of the lawyer he had come to consult,
and upon one side of the sign ran the legend:
+---------------------------------+
| Despacho |
| de |
| Thomas M. Fitt, Licendiado. |
+---------------------------------+
Upon the other he read an English translation:
+---------------------------------+
| Law Office |
| of |
| Thomas M. Fitt, Attorney. |
+---------------------------------+
Plainly the old civilization was beginning to disappear before an alert,
aggressive Americanism.
At the hotel the modern spirit became so pronounced during breakfast,
owing to the conversation of a shoe and a dress-goods drummer at an
adjoining table, that Gordon's imagination escaped from the tramp of
Spanish mailclad cavalry and from thoughts of the plots and counterplots
that had been devised in the days before American occupancy.
In the course of the morning Dick, together with Davis, called at the
office of his attorney. Thomas M. Fitt, a bustling little man with a
rather pompous manner, welcomed his client effusively. He had been
appointed local attorney in charge by Gordon's Denver lawyers, and he
was very eager to make the most of such advertising as his connection
with so prominent a case would bring.
He washed the backs of his hands with the palms as he bowed his visitors
to chairs.
"I may say that the case is progressing favorably--very favorably
indeed, Mr. Gordon. The papers have been drawn and filed. We await an
answer from the defendants. I anticipate that there will be only the
usual court delays in pressing the action."
"We'll beat them, I suppose," Dick replied, with a manner almost of
indifference.
"One can never be positive in advance, but I'd like to own your claim to
the estate, Mr. Gordon," laughed the lawyer wheezily.
"Think we'll be able to wolf the real owners out of their property all
right, do you?"
Fitt's smile went out like the flame of a burnt match. The wrinkles of
laughter were ironed out of his fat cheeks. He stared at his client in
surprise. It took him a moment to voice the dignified protest he felt
necessary.
"Our title is good in law, Mr. Gordon. I have been over the evidence
very carefully. The court decisions all lean our way. Don Bartolomé
Valdés, the original grantee, failed to perfect his right of ownership
in many ways. It is very doubtful whether he himself had not before his
death abandoned his claim. His official acts appear to point to that
conclusion. Our case is a very substantial one--very substantial,
indeed."
"The Valdés' tenants have settled on the land, grazed their flocks over
it, bought farms here and there from the heirs, haven't they?"
"Exactly. But if the sellers cannot show a good title--and my word as a
lawyer for it they can't. Prove that in court and all we'll need is a
writ of ejectment against the present holders as squatters. Then----"
Fitt snapped his finger and thumb in an airy gesture that swept the
Valdés' faction into the middle of the Pacific.
"It'll be the story of Evangeline all over again, won't it?" asked
Gordon satirically.
"Ah! You have a kind heart, Mr. Gordon. Your sympathy does you credit.
Still--business is business, of course."
"Of course," Dick picked up a pen and began to jab holes aimlessly into
a perfectly good blotter tacked to the table. "Well, let's hear the
story--just a sketch of it. Why do the rightful heirs lose out and the
villain gain possession?"
Mr. Fitt smiled blandly. He had satisfied himself that his client was
good pay and he did not intend to take offense. "It pleases you to be
facetious, Mr. Gordon. But we all know that what this country
needs--what such a valley as the Rio Chama ought to have--is up to date
American development. People and conditions are in a primitive state.
When men like you get possession of the Moreño and similar tracts New
Mexico will move forward with giant strides to its great destiny. Time
does not stand still. The day of the indolent semi-feudal Spanish system
of occupancy has passed away. New Mexico will no longer remain _mañana_
land. You--and men like you--of broad ideas, progressive, energetic----"
"Quite a philanthropist, ain't I?" interrupted Gordon, smiling lazily.
"Well, let's hear the yarn, Mr. Fitt."
The attorney gave up his oration regretfully. He subsided into a chair
and resumed the conversational tone.
"You've got to understand how things were here in the old Spanish days,
gentlemen. Don Bartolomé for instance was not merely a cattleman. He was
a grandee, a feudal lord, a military chief to all his tenants and
employees. His word was law. The power of life and death lay in him."
Dick nodded. "Get you."
"The old Don was pasturing his sheep in the Rio Chama valley and he had
started a little village there--called the place Torreon, I think, from
a high tower house he had built to overlook the valley so that Indians
could be seen if they attempted an attack. Well, he takes a notion that
he'd better get legal title to the land he was using, though in those
days he might have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a
range. So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a
grant of land. The governor, anxious to please him, orders the
constitutional alcalde, a person named José Garcia de la Mora, to
execute the act of possession to Valdés of a tract described as follows,
to wit----"
"I've heard the description," cut in the young man. "Well, did the Don
take possession?"
"We claim that he never did. He visited there, and his shepherds
undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant. But Valdés and
his family never actually resided on the estate. Other points that
militate against the claim of his descendants may be noted. First, that
minor grants of land, taken from within the original Valdés grant, were
made by the governor without any protest on the part of the Don. Second,
that Don Bartolomé himself, subsequently Governor and Captain-General of
the province of New Mexico, did, in his official capacity as President
of the Council, endorse at least two other small grants of land cut out
from the heart of the Valdés estate. This goes to show that he did not
himself consider that he owned the land, or perhaps he felt that he had
forfeited his claim."
"Or maybe it just showed that the old gentleman was no hog," suggested
Gordon.
"I guess the law will construe it as a waiver of his claim. It doesn't
make any allowances for altruism."
"I've noticed that," Gordon admitted dryly.
"A new crowd of politicians got in after Mexico became independent of
Spain. The plums had to be handed out to the friends of the party in
power. So Manuel Armijo, the last Mexican Governor of the province,
being a favorite of the President of that country because he had
defeated some Texas Rangers in a battle, and on that account endowed
with extraordinary powers, carved a fat half million acres out of the
Valdés grant and made a present of it to José Moreño for 'services to
the government of Mexico.' That's where you come in as heir to your
grandfather, who purchased for a song the claim of Moreño's son."
"My right has been lying dormant twenty-five years. Won't that affect
its legality?"
"No. If we knock out the Valdés' grant, all we have to do is to prove
the legality of the Moreño one. It happens we have evidence to show that
he satisfied all legal requirements by living on the land more than four
years. This gave him patent in perpetuity subject to taxes. By the
payment of these we can claim title." Fitt rubbed his hands and walked
backward and forward briskly. "We've got them sewed up tight, Mr.
Gordon. The Supreme Court has sustained our contention in the almost
parallel Baca case."
"Fine," said Dick moodily. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be
annoyed at his counsel because the latter happened to be an alert and
competent lawyer. But somehow all his sympathies were with Valencia
Valdés and her dependents.
"If you'd like to look at the original documents in the case, Mr.
Gordon----"
"I would."
"I'll take you up to the State House this afternoon. You can look over
them at your leisure."
Davis laughed at his friend as they walked back to the hotel.
"I don't believe you know yourself what you want. You act as if you'd
rather lose than win the suit."
"Sometimes I'm a white man, Steve. I don't want to grab other people's
property just because some one can dig up a piece of paper that says
it's mine. We sit back and roast the trusts to a fare-you-well for
hogging all there is in sight. That's what Fitt and his tribe expect me
to do. I'm damned if I will."