away from us, leaving us in the plains without knowledge of the road
to our desired peak. At the which it was resolved by the leaders of
the expedition to return to Santa Fé. But I, not suffering from the
short march, separated from the expedition and went on alone to verify
the report. And in the rancherias [villages] of the Cumanches, where I
was entertained, when I told them the trick and the mockery that the
Frenchman had put upon us, they assured me with one accord that the
said Frenchman did not know the location of the peak at all, and that
he had never been there, for the gold which he took to New Mexico they
themselves had given him in exchange for various trinkets of coral, belts
and other trifles. But that they knew the peak of gold, that was indeed
with an abundance never seen before, and if I would go with them they
would show me it, and I could pick up all I wished, and if we met any
other nation [of Indians] I should not be harmed if with them, for they
were all friends.
“Indeed, most illustrious Sir, only by my fidelity and obedience to
my superior could I contain myself not to march to the peak without
delay; and I told my friends the Mecos Cumanches, that I was going to
seek permission of that Sir Governor of the New Mexico, and with it
would return. I arrived in Santa Fé and sought that permission, but it
was denied me. But continuing my visits to the Mequeria [I find that]
so strong a desire have they formed for the granting of that permission
and the development of this treasure, and the facility there is that the
Spaniards enjoy it and that their Sovereign make heavy his royal coffers,
that I resolved to make a walk of more than seven hundred leagues to seek
the aid and encouragement of Your Excellency. [The brave sergeant so
fully believed in his Peak of Gold that he actually walked nearly 2,200
miles alone through a most dangerous country to lay the matter before the
Viceroy in Mexico.]
“My plan being approved, it is undeniable that the Royal treasury will
be swelled by the tithes and dues to the Royal crown; new interest will
animate men to follow up the discovery, and there will be civilized (with
time and the friendship which is contracted with the nations of the
Cumanches, Yutas and Navajosos) more than three hundred leagues of virgin
and powerful lands—that being reckoned the distance from the city of
Santa Fé to the Peak of Gold. The inhabitants of the internal provinces,
who now live under the yoke of the assaults of the hostile Indians, will
revive; it will be easier for the Sovereign to guard the frontiers of
these his vast dominions. Settlements will be made, and insensibly will
follow the conquest and pacification of the ynfidels, who will easily
embrace the holy Gospel and come under the faith of Jesus Christ. What
results to religion, to the monarch and to his vassals are presented,
even by this clumsy narration!
“I do not intend to burden the Royal treasury with the slightest
expense, nor do I think to involve the Royal arms in actions which might
imperil the troops. My person is declared past its usefulness for the
Royal service, and I count myself as a dead man for entering matters of
importance. But my military spirit does not falter, and I only desire
to manifest, even at the foot of the tomb, my love to my Sovereign.
With only one faithful companion I intend to go among my friends, the
Cumanches, and, with the protection and guidance of them, to enter and
explore the land, silently, without noise or preparation, to force a
passage. Quietness, the gray shadows of the night and our own courage
are the only preparations I make for the difficult undertaking, and,
above all, the divine aid. Having found the desired Peak of Gold,
charted the roads to it, made the due surveys, and gathered so much of
the precious metal as we can transport without making danger (and under
the divine favor), I will present myself again to Your Excellency, and
by your Superiority will be taken such steps as the state of the case
demands.
“Under which considerations, and the solid arguments which I have
expressed, of which Your Excellency can receive full confirmation
from the most excellent Señor Don Pedro de Nava, commander-in-chief
of the interior provinces, and Don Joseph Casiano Feaomil y Garay,
lieutenant-captain of dragoons of San Luís Potosí, I humbly beg of Your
Excellency that in use of your Viceroyal powers, you deign to grant me
your superior permission to go in search of the Peak of Gold; being kind
enough to send to the Señor Don Fernando Chacon, actual Governor of the
New Mexico, that he put no difficulty in my path, and giving orders to
the captains and chiefs of the friendly nations—Cumanches, Yutas and
Navajosos—that they accompany and guide me in this expedition.
“And I respectfully say that my delay in getting to this Capital [the
City of Mexico] was because I had to come nearly all the way on foot,
my horse having given out in that great distance, and that now I am
supported here by alms, such is my great anxiety for the benefit of the
monarch, and beg that I be excused for this paper. [He was too poor to
buy the stamped and taxed paper on which petitions to the Viceroy must be
addressed.]
“For so much I pray Your Excellency’s favor.
BERNARDO CASTRO.”
He had the real spirit of the Argonauts, this crippled old soldier, to
whom poverty and danger and 2,000-mile walks were trifles when they stood
between him and his Peak of Gold.
The Viceroy evidently gave the desired permission—without which, under
the strict Spanish laws, no such venture was to be thought of—and
there were one or more expeditions, but unfortunately we have left no
account of them. It is clear that the Viceroy ordered Governor Chacon,
of New Mexico, to assist Castro in his undertaking, and that the matter
aroused a good deal of interest throughout the provinces of New
Spain. Don Nemecio Salcedo, military commandant at Chihuahua, seems to
have interested himself in the matter, for the next document in this
fragmentary series is a draft of a reply to him from Governor Chacon, as
follows:
“According to that which Your Lordship advises me in communication of the
16th of September of the current year, I repeat that as to the expedition
of Bernardo Castro to the discovery of the Peak of Gold, I will help him
and the others who accompany him, that they may have no difficulty with
the General of the Cumanches, whom, however, I have not yet seen, since
he has not yet returned with the ransom he offered me when he was last in
this capital.
“God, etc. Santa Fee, 25th of Fber, 1803.
“To Señor Don Nemo. Salcedo.”
There was other correspondence between these two on the same matter, for
now we come to an original letter from Commandant Salcedo to Governor
Chacon, replying to a late one of his. It says:
“The communication of Your Lordship, No. 36, of the 18th of last
November, leaves me informed of all the assistances you gave Bernardo
Castro, that he might undertake the second journey [so he had already
made one] from that city, with the object to discover the Peak of Gold,
which he has described in the territory of that province. And of the
results I hope Your Lordship will give me account.
“God guard Your Lordship many years.
“CHIHUAHUA, January 5, 1804.
“NEMECIO SALCEDO.
“To the Sir Governor of New Mexico.”
Poor brave, misguided Bernardo de Castro! I wish we might have more of
the documents about his venturesome wanderings in quest of the Peak of
Gold. He must have gone far out into the wastes of Texas; and at last
he, too, yielded up his life, as did countless of his countrymen before
him, to that deadliest of yellow fevers. We lose all track of him until
Governor Chaves writes from Santa Fé, in 1829, to his superior in the
City of Mexico, who had written to ask him about these and other matters.
His letter says:
“_Most Excellent Sir_: In compliance with that which Your Excellency
requests in your official letter of the 19th of August last, that I make
the necessary verifications upon the mineral reported by the Rev. Father
Custodian of these missions, Fray Sevastian Alvares, to be found among
the gentile Comanches, I have investigated the matter, and place in the
knowledge of Your Excellency that which various of the citizens of this
capital—and all of them most veracious—say. They all agree in that it is
a fact that Don Bernardo de Castro [the old soldier had evidently won
honorable recognition, else a Governor of New Mexico would not speak of
him by the respectful title of “Don”] entered this territory with the
object of seeking the said mineral; that he made various expeditions with
this object, until in one of them he was slain by the heathen Apaches.
“Passing to information received from the travelers to that nation, all
agree in the statement that the Comanches offer to sell them pouches
filled with a metal which appears fine and of great weight, which they
say they get from the neighborhood of the Ash peaks (which are very
well known to our people, but not explored or charted, because they are
distant from the trails).
“The citizen Pablo Martin has been he who expressed himself most fully.
He, knowing that the said Don Bernardo de Castro sought a mineral in the
Comanche nation, has procured them to look for the said mineral. The only
result was that one Comanche named Paño de Lienso [‘Cloth of Linen’], who
made himself his companion, gave him information that beyond the Ash
peaks, in some round hills, were stones with much silver, whereof the
said Comanche had carried some to the province of San Antonio de Bejar
[Texas], where they made buttons for him. He who made the buttons charged
the Comanche to bring him a load [of that metal], but he did not do so,
because in that time came the war of his people with that province. Other
Comanches also have told him [Pablo Martin] that in said spot were stones
with silver.
“This is all I have been able to find out as the results of my
investigations, the which I place in the knowledge of Your Excellency,
that you may put it to the use which you deem best.
“SANTA FEE, 30 of 8ber of 1829.
“CHAVES.”
And there, so far as we know it now, is the story of the Peak of Gold.
Pablo’s Deer Hunt.
[Illustration: IN TA-BI-RÁ]
Pablo’s Deer Hunt.
A PUEBLO FAIRY TALE TOLD OVER.
The yellow cottonwoods above the Rio Grande shivered in the fresh October
morning as the sun peeped over the Eagle Feather mountain into the valley
of his people. Above the flat, gray pueblo of Shee-eh-huíb-bak the bluish
breath of five hundred slender chimneys melted skyward in tall spirals.
Upon here and there a level housetop a blanket-swathed figure stared
solemnly at the great, round, blinding house of T’hoor-íd-deh, the Sun
Father.
Then a burro, heavy eared and slow of pace, rattled the gravel on the
high bluff, gazed mournfully on the muddy eddies, and broke out in
stentorian brays. Apparently Flojo[32] felt downcast. Across these
treacherous quicksands the grass was still tall in the _vega_—why did
not Pablo take him over too? And mustering up his ears, he trotted
almost briskly down the slope to the water’s edge, where a swart young
Apollo was just stepping into the swift current. Tall, sinewy, lithe as
Keem-eé-deh, the mountain lion that lent its tawny hide for the bow-case
in his hand; his six feet of glowing bronze broken only by a modest clout
of white at the supple waist, his dense black hair falling straight upon
broad, bare shoulders, and his dark eyes watchful of the swirling waters,
the young Pueblo strode sturdily in, paying no heed to the forlorn
watcher upon the shore. In a moment he was in the channel swimming
easily, one hand holding the bow-case above the red bundle upon his jet
crown. _Sush-sh! sush-sh! splosh! splash! splash!_ and Flojo heaved a
great sigh as his master went spattering across the farther shoals, and
at last climbed the sandy eastern bank.
Pablo unrolled the bundle from his head, wriggled, wet-skinned, into the
red print shirt and snowy _calzoncillos_, wrapped their flapping folds
about his calf with the buckskin leggings of rich maroon; belted these at
either knee with a wee, gay sash from the looms of Moqui, fastened the
moccasins with their silver buttons, and, with the tawny sheath of bow
and arrows slung across his back, started at a swift walk. Once only he
stopped, after a scramble up the gravel hills that scalloped the plateau,
to look back a moment. The long ribbon of the valley, now faded from its
summer green, banded the bare brown world from north to south, threaded
with the errant silver of the river, whose farthest shimmer flashed back
from under the purple mass of the Mountain of the Thieves. Midway lay
the pueblo, dozing amid its orchards below the black cone of the Kú-mai,
and Pablo shook his head sadly, as he turned again and strode across the
broad, high _llano_.
“It is not well in the village,” he muttered, “for it is full of them
that have the evil road. The Cum-pah-huít-lah-wen have told me that
the half of those of Shee-eh-huíb-bak are witches; but not all can be
punished. But it is in ill times for us. _Tio_ Lorenzo is twisted by
the Bads so that he cannot walk; and many die; and did not Ámparo and
José Diego marry the prettiest maidens of the Tee-wahn, only to find
them witches? How shall one take a wife when so many are accursed? It is
better to hunt and forget the women, as do the warriors; for we know not
who are True Believers, and who have to do with the ghosts.”
Across the wide, sandy plateau the young Indian walked with undiminished
pace; and as the house of the Sun Father stood in the middle of the sky,
he entered a rocky cañon of the Eagle Feather mountain and began to
climb a spur of the great peak. The huddled dry leaves under a live oak
caught his eye, and he turned them with deft foot. “Here Pee-íd-deh,
the deer, slept last night,” he exclaimed, “for the fresh earth clings
to their under side. And here is a hair, and here the footmark. If only
Keem-eé-deh will help me.”
Kneeling by the tree, he broke off a twig and stuck it in the earth in
front of the footprint, the fork pointing backward, that Pee-íd-deh might
trip and fall as it ran. Then, drawing the Left-Hand Pouch from his
side, he opened it and reverently took out a tiny parcel in buckskin,
whose folds soon disclosed a little image of the Mountain Lion, chief
of hunters, carved from adamantine quartz. Its eyes were of the sacred
turquoise; and in the center of the belly was inlaid a turquoise heart
over the hollow which held a pinch of the holy corn meal. On the right
side was lashed a tiny arrow-head of moss agate—one of the precious
“thunder knives” which the Horned Toad had made and had left for Pablo on
the plains of the Hollow Peak of Winds. Putting the fetich to his mouth
and inhaling from the stone lips, the hunter prayed aloud to Keem-eé-deh
to give him true eyes and ears, and swift feet to overtake; and rising,
gave a low, far roar to terrify the heart and loosen the knees of his
prey. Then, restoring the image to its pouch, with bow in hand and three
arrows held ready, he pushed rapidly up hill, with keen eyes to the
dim trail. Here a trampled grass blade, there a cut leaf or overturned
pebble, and again a faint scratch on the rocks, led him on. At last, just
where the flat top of the mountain had been wrought to a vast arrow-point
by the Giant of the Caves, he saw a sleek doe standing under a shabby
aspen. Down on his belly went Pablo, and with a new breath-taking from
the stone lips of the prey-god, crawled snake-like forward. The deer
moved not, and within fifty yards Pablo tugged an arrow to its agate head
and drove it whirring through Pee-íd-deh’s heart. The doe turned her
great, soft eyes toward him, sniffed the air and went bounding up the
rocky ledges as if unhurt. Yet on the left side the grey feathers of the
shaft touched the skin; and once on the right Pablo caught the sparkle of
the gem tip.
There was a curious ashen tint in the bronze of his cheeks, as the hunter
sprang to his feet and began running in pursuit. “Truly, that was to the
life,” he whispered to himself. “And why does she not fall? Will it be
that they of the evil road have given me the eye?” And stopping short,
he fished out a bit of corn husk and a pinch of the sweet _pee-én-hleh_
and rolled a cigarette, lighting it from his flint and steel. The first
puff he blew slowly to the east, and then one to the north, and one to
the west, and one south, one overhead, and one downward, all about, that
the evil spirits of the Six Ways might be blinded and not see his tracks.
When the sacred _weer_ was smoked, he rose and took up the trail again.
It was easy to be followed, now, in the soft wood soil of the mountain
top; and in the very edge of the farther grove of aspens he saw the doe
again, grazing in unconcern. Worming from tree to tree, Pablo came close,
and again sent a stone-tipped shaft. It struck by the very side of the
first, and drank as deep; but the doe, pricking up her ears as if she had
but heard the whizz of the arrow, trotted easily away and disappeared
over the eastern brow of the mountain, amid the somber pines.
Pablo was very pale now, but not yet daunted. He smoked again to the Six
Ways and prayed to all the Trues to help him, and with another arrow on
the string, pushed forward.
Where the tall pines dwindled to scrubby cedars he came again to his
quarry. But now the doe was more alert and would not let him within
bowshot. Only she looked back at him with big, sad eyes and trotted just
away from range. And soon Night rolled down the mountain from behind him
and filled the whispering forest and drowned the great, still plains
beyond, and he lost her altogether.
“This is no deer,” said Pablo, gloomily, as he stretched himself under a
twisted _savino_ for the night, “but one who has _wahr_, the Power. And
her eyes, how they are as those of women sorrowing, large and wet! But
I will see the end, even though I die.” And weary with the rugged forty
miles of the day, he was soon asleep.
As the blue flower of dawn bloomed from the eastern gray, Pablo rose,
and smoked again the sacred smoke and inhaled the strengthful breath of
Keem-eé-deh, and started anew on his awesome hunt. Soon he found the
trail marked with dark blotches, and all day long he followed it. Just as
the sun-house stood on the dark western ridges he came to the foot of a
high swell, on whose summit gleamed the gray of strange, giant walls.
“It will be the bones of Ta-bi-rá,” thought Pablo aloud, “for my father
often told me of the great city of the Pi-ro that was beyond Cuaray in
the First Times, before the lakes of the plain were accursed to be salt,
before Those-of-the-Old came to dwell on the river that runs from the
Dark Lake of Tears. But how shall a deer come thus into the plains, which
are only of the prong-horns?[33] Yet I have walked in her road all day,
and here are her marks, going”—and he stopped, for his sharp ear caught
a faint, far-off chant. It seemed to come from the ruins that crowned
the hill; and, dropping to the earth, Pablo began to crawl from cedar
to cedar, from rock to rock toward it. At the very crest of the rounded
ridge was a long line of jumbled stone—the mound of fallen fortress
houses—and beyond, from the gathering dusk, loomed the ragged, lofty
walls of a vast temple. Under the shadows of the mound he crawled far
around to the rear end of the gray wall, and then along the wall itself
toward the huge buttresses that proclaimed its front. The chant was close
at hand now—the singer was evidently within the ruined temple. But the
tongue Pablo did not know. It was not so musical as his soft Tee-wahn,
nor was it like the guttural of the Quéres—for that he knew also—and
yet it was some voice of the Children of the Sun, and not the outlandish
babble of the Americanoodeh, nor of the Spanish Wet-Head. It was not,
then, some new _tonto_ come to dig for the fabled gold of Ta-bi-rá—whose
shafts yawned black in the gray bedrock and here and there through the
very base of the great wall—but some Indian, and probably a medicine man,
for the song was not as those of the careless. Pablo crouched in the
darkness against the eastern end of the wall, listening, forgetful of
the bewitched deer and of all else. Once in a wild swell of the song he
thought he discerned a familiar word.
[Illustration: “THE BONES OF TA-BI-RÁ”]
“Hoo-máh-no?” he kept repeating to himself. “Surely, the grandfather
Desidério said me that word when he told of Them-of-the-Old, when
They-with-Striped-Faces dwelt on yonder mesa. But they are all dead these
many years.”
A swift, short flash split the darkness, and a growl of far thunder
rolled across the ruins. Pablo glanced at the heaven. It was sown thick
with the bright sky-seeds that flew up when the Coyote disobeyed the
Trues and opened the sacred bag. From horizon to horizon there was not a
cloud; but again the flash came, and again the mighty drum-beat of Those
Above. Pablo crept to a breach in the wall, and peeped into the gloomy
interior of the temple. Even as he looked, the zig-zag arrow of the Trues
leaped again from ghostly wall to wall; and its blinding flight showed
him that at which he caught his breath. For squat by a corner in the wall
was a white-headed Indian waving his bare arms; and facing him and Pablo
a dusky maiden, with drooping head. But her face was burned into his
heart.
“Surely, such are precious to the Trues! For she is as the Evening
Star, good to see!” and Pablo craned forward eagerly. “The _viejo_ will
be a Shaman,” he added, mentally, “for so our own Fathers make the
lightning come at the medicine dance.[34] But she! If there were such in
Shee-eh-huíb-bak, then one might take a wife—for her face is no face of a
witch!”
Just then there came another flash; and then a soft, girlish cry. The
magic lightning of the conjurer had betrayed Pablo; and before he could
spring away a heavy hand was upon his shoulder.
“_Hi-ma-tu-kú-eh?_” demanded a deep voice in an unknown tongue.
“_Nah Tee-wah_,” said the abashed hunter, trying in vain to shake off
that strong grasp.
“Tee-wah?” said the stranger, speaking in Pablo’s own language. “I, too,
have the tongue of Shee-eh-huíb-bak, for my wife was of there. But now
she has gone to Shee-p’ah-poón, and there lives for me only my child, and
she is hurt. But what hast thou here, peeping at our medicine?”
“It is by chance, Kah-báy-deh,” answered Pablo. “For yesterday when the
sun was _so_, I wounded a deer, and unto here I have followed it in vain.
For, perhaps, it has the Power, and I could not kill it. And when I heard
thy song I came, not knowing what it was.”
“Since yesterday when the sun was _so_, thou hast followed the road of a
wounded deer? And how wounded?”
“In truth, I gave it two arrows through the life, but it minded them not.”
“Come, then, and thou shalt see thy hunting,” and he drew Pablo into the
temple. In a moment a dry arm of the _entraña_ (which the Trues gave for
the first candles) was burning; and by its smoky, flaring light Pablo
could see his strange surroundings. Beside him, that breakless hand
still on his shoulder, stood an aged Indian. His hair was white as the
snows of Shoo-p’ah-toó-eh, and his undimmed eyes shone from deep under
snowy brows. He was naked but for the breech-clout, and upon his left arm
was a great gauntlet from the forepaw of Ku-aí-deh, the bear, with all
its claws. But at his wrinkled face Pablo stared in affright, for all
across it ran long, savage knife-stripes, so old that they, too, were cut
with wrinkles. “_Rayado!_” flashed through the young hunter’s mind, “even
as were They-of-the-Old who dwelt in the mesa of the Hoo-máh-no! But they
are all dead since long ago.”
But even his superstitious terror could not keep his eyes from that
modest figure crouched in the angle of the strange wall. Truly, she was
good to look at. In the soft olive of the cheeks a sweet, deep red was
spreading. Under the downcast eyes the lashes drew dark lines across the
translucent skin. A flood of hair poured into her lap, and from under
its heavy waves peeped a slender hand. It was plain from her dress that
she was none of the _bárbaros_, but a Pueblo. There was the same modest
black _manta_ of his people, the same fat, boot-like leg-wraps of snowy
buckskin, the same dainty brown moccasins. Even the heavy silver rosary
was about her neck, and from her ears hung strands of precious turquoise
beads from the white, blue-veined heart of Mount Chalchihuitl. But even
the white silver, and the stone that stole its color from the sky were
not precious beside that sweet young face from which Pablo could not turn
away.