SILVER CARAVANS
Juan and Steven stood upon a desolate hillside, and from behind the
stunted cedar and pines looked down upon a strange scene. Juan had
ridden somewhat out of the way on the trail to Taos, and had led Señor
Estevan up to this mount from which he could see in a small valley below
them a group of people clustering about a small adobe building.
“Look!” pointed Juan. “Listen! It is the _pito_ (the flute).”
On the cold clear air a thin, sweet, flute-like piping arose to them. A
little man down in the valley emerged from the house, carrying a book,
which he held open before him, and from which he read aloud as he walked
along. He was followed by one who played the flute, and behind him came
a small procession, not more than five or six men, who wore masks, but
who were bare to the waist, wearing nothing but white trunks. The men
were striking themselves rhythmically across their backs with great
whips, which were wetted from time to time in a bucket of brine carried
alongside by another man. In a moment blood began to flow down their
backs and the cotton trunks turned red. Steven looked away, shuddering,
but in a low voice Juan once more called his attention to the religious
ceremony below them.
“Señor, but look, Señor!”
Steven again looked down. The procession was winding along a rocky
thorn-strewn trail beneath them, quite near, and following those that
smote themselves with the thorny whips came another, bearing upon his
back a heavy wooden cross. He lifted his face, and Steven recognized
Luis Lopez. Juan pulled Steven back out of sight. They retraced their
path and came out upon a main road where they had left their pack mules
hobbled. Juan pulled and rode beside Steven.
“It is the Penitentes, señor, Los Hermanos De Luz, the Brothers of
Light. I wanted you to see with your own eyes. Don Luis is of them; he
has turned Penitente. This is the Holy Week, you know.”
“It was very old, this custom,” Juan continued. It had come with the
first Spaniards; sometimes an Indian had been Penitente, but rarely.
Long ago the Pecos Indians, of the ruined pueblo one passed on the Trail
to Santa Fe,--did he remember?--had made sacrifices, it was said. But
they were Aztecan; they worshiped differently. Still the Pecos tribes
kept a sacred fire burning in the mountains, while the other Pueblos did
not. Juan said no more and they rode on in silence.
A queer land, thought Steven. Luis could kill a man, steal, murder, and
then atone by repenting in secret, whipping himself hideously. Oh, well,
what did it matter now to him whether Luis repented or not? Steven could
not understand this land. It was old, mysterious, and unfriendly. Yet in
spite of his depression his whole nature responded to the mountains.
They had lingered for four days among the hills, hunting. Spring was
faintly burgeoning. The trees were ready to burst into bud, the air that
blew down from the snow-capped peaks to the north carried that rare
headiness that comes from beyond the timber line.
They shot a huge lobo (wolf) on the way and Steve turned it over to Juan
for a robe. At the end of the fifth day they rode up through the deep
arroyo that lies in the plain this side of Taos Valley, and trotted
along through fertile farms into the tiny town. They made straight to
the house where Colonel Ceran St. Vrain and Charles Bent lived, and
there found young John Smith, Kit Carson, and a dozen long-haired
trappers, guides, and hunters, among them his old friend Pierre Lafitte,
who welcomed Steven right joyously. They sat up half the night, smoking,
talking of the winter’s kill, and what promise the spring held.
“What have you been doing all these winter months, since last I saw
you?” asked Ceran St. Vrain.
Steven told him of the trip south and its object. Ceran nodded.
“You could have done nothing else--nothing better, for that matter.”
“What was that southern country like and how did the streams run?” asked
Kit. He had been down there once, in the Black Mountains, and he drew a
map in the dust with his finger nail. Now what he wanted to know was,
did this here river dreen down into this here valley, and from where did
that thar small stream take its course?
Steven blushed. He had not located himself very well as he went. He was
afraid he had not fixed the lay of the land in his mind, except for the
valley of the Rio Grande.
“Pshaw!” said Kit. “You will never make a good scout if you don’t learn
the mountains and the valleys, and the waterways especial. You’ve got to
fix them all in your mind’s eye; then you never get lost. How did you
ever get out of them White Sands you tell about, I wonder.”
“I didn’t,” Steve admitted, shamefacedly. “I went round and round after
I reached right to the edge, so they told me, till finally de Garcia saw
me and came up after us. I thought all the time that this white desert
kept right on going, as I remember.”
The trappers nodded sympathetically. “That’s the desert for you. Mirage.
In the mountains, now, you know where you’re at. Somethin’ to go by.”
There was talk of traps and furs and how the Hudson Bay Company had lost
out since the Rocky Mountain Fur Company had taken hold, and there was
wonder what that country was like, way to the northwest, that the folks
who had taken the Oregon Trail had struck out for.
John Smith said he met a French hunter in the mountains by the Red
River, who said that there was an inland sea up north that was as briny
as the Atlantic. “Well, you’d have to swallow that with a little salt,”
spoke up Steven. There was a hearty guffaw, and St. Vrain silenced them
with the withering retort that he not only believed it, but that he knew
a man who had come across the hull of a Dutch ship, big as Columbus had
used, stranded right in the midst of the desert, a hundred miles above
the Gulf. Now what did they make of _that_?
“Nuthin’,” meditated John Smith. “No more’n a stranger could make of the
millions of tons of buffalo bones what you see bleachin’ on the
prairies.”
Someone burned a hole with a hot coal, with which he was lighting a
pipe, and St. Vrain turned to Steven. “That reminds me, lad, when you
return with your first caravan, bring a lot of those amusing little fire
sticks, like the Yankees had. Matches. Some of them were no good at all,
but the first lot set fire at the first scratch, and burned finely.
They’re a great thing, I think, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some day
no one would be without ’em.”
“I’ll send you back some,” Steven replied. “I’ll ship them from New York
if New Orleans hasn’t got any yet. But I’ve decided not to come back
myself.”
“What?” said St. Vrain, in astonishment, “Why, I thought it was all
settled. Surely you don’t mean it, lad. I shall be very sorry.”
“But I do,” said Steven. “I have not seen my father and mother for a
year, nor heard from them. After all, my father has built up a business,
which he wishes his son to carry on. My place is there, where a great
house known by the name I bear is already established.”
“That’s just it,” said St. Vrain, sagely. “It’s all ready made. You had
no hand in it. Here is something you can do yourself. Your father has a
partner, hasn’t he? And you can see him from time to time? Many have
made their pile in the fur business and then retired. But they’ve helped
to build up the country and the trade meanwhile. Trade, my lad, is the
life of any country. Why hasn’t this land of New Spain grown any more in
the three hundred odd years since the Spanish Conquistadores found it
and settled it? No trade with outside countries. That’s why. That’s what
builds any country up. Trade brings in new life.”
But Steven was determined. He would have to go north the day after the
next, then, St. Vrain told him. He could go with Kit there, and join the
party setting out from Bent’s Fort next month. They were going out to
Leavenworth and another return caravan would follow back on the Trail in
June. Steven said he would be ready to go with Kit.
Twenty-four hours later he was still of the same mind. And yet there was
a strange ache in his breast. He sat with St. Vrain before the big
fireplace. Tall Indians from the near-by pueblo which he had passed on
his first trip to Taos in the fall stood around the wall, stately men,
wearing their white deerskin robes, almost as an Arab wears his
burnoose. One of them came over to Steven and showed him a tiny wagon
which he had wrought out of silver--a little covered wagon. Steven gave
the Taos artificer twice its weight in silver for the piece; the Indian
was delighted.
“A silver wagon,” said St. Vrain. “That’s just a sample, silver
caravans, one after another, that’s what that represents. Not only the
hub and the linings of the wheels silver, but the goods inside.” He
nudged Steven in an aside, for there was in the room a mixed company of
Taos Indians, Mexicans from San Fernando de Taos, French trappers in the
employ of the Bents, all eating, drinking, smoking.
“Had you heard about the hold-up of the Yankee caravan?”
Steven told him he had through Doña Katarina, upon her return from
seeing her husband off on his spring round of the traps.
“That’s going to make it harder for the traders this next year. We need
a friend in Santa Fe, Steven, my friend.”
“There’s Don Tiburcio just below,” Steven reminded him. “He wants to
establish himself at Albuquerque. He has gold to invest. I have two
sacks of his money for the trade.... Ah, here’s Kit.”
Young Carson had come in with a swarthy Frenchman, a lean, flashing
hunter who might have been one of the Indians themselves except for his
gayety and his mustachios. He laughed and sang as he flung down his pack
and soon was tearing at his meat with gleaming teeth, half starved from
the long trail just covered.
“Thou, Etienne,” said St. Vrain in French, “when will you have tired of
living the life of the _engagé_, hunting, trapping? For three winters
now, is it not?”
Etienne smiled back in perfect good nature, “Never, I think, my friend,
though some day duty may recall me. I think your mountains have got hold
of me. Their clutch is stronger than that of the vigilants of the French
Republic.”
Steven looked sharply at him. The man had indeed the look of the French
noble house of Napoleonic sympathies.
“Etienne was a French colonel of the Guards,” explained St. Vrain.
“Something happened in his life. He came to this country, as you see,
down the Mississippi, over the plains, and he cannot break himself
away.”
A great weight was on Steven’s chest. He thought perhaps he was going to
be ill. Never did he remember having had such a feeling of depression.
This was the last night he should spend with this company. These daring,
free, wild, fearless men, rich and uncouth, sharing a common love for
the grandeur of the mountains, speaking the same tongue, understanding
the silence of the timber-line heights--was he never to mingle with them
again? Had he lived and dared throughout the past twelvemonth just to go
away, now that he had become one with the life? St. Vrain broke in on
his thoughts.
“This Steven has grown two inches this year, I swear,” said he, “and see
how thick through the chest the man is.” He no longer called him lad,
thought Steven, “This life has made a man of him. Here’s where he
belongs.”
Unable to bear his heavy chest in company any more, Steven got up and
went out. He paced up and down in the moonlight, and his thoughts were
of the girl he had left standing before her hearth but a few nights
before. Why had she ever warned him, in the first place? Why had she
come to let him out the _carcel_? That debt angered him. And why had she
sent him away on an errand of life and death only to treat him like a
felon while he was gone? The more he thought of it the heavier became
his chest and the tightness about his heart caused an acute pain. The
chill indifference that had brought him north had melted away. But this
hurt that followed his indifference was worse than anything else could
have been.
He strode back and forth in the road in an unconscious effort to work
off the pain that had accumulated and become dammed up during the past
few days, the burning sense of injustice. No, he could not stay in this
country, much as he loved it. The very name of Santa Fe would always be
connected with Consuelo. Her lovely face was the first he had seen as he
entered the Villa, and the last. If he did not put her sharply out of
his mind now it would be the last that he carried out of the West.
She had played fast and loose with so fine a gentleman as Tiburcio de
Garcia, he told himself, not asking why. Her family meant more to her
than anything else could--her family pride. Who were these dons of New
Mexico, anyway, that did not look down on trade as did the old French
aristocrats of New Orleans? They had no scruples about trade. But he,
Steven Mercer, came from a line of traders who had scoured the Seven
Seas; from Caracas to Cuba, from China to Bombay, from Leavenworth to
New Mexico.
In a rage he strode down the street and turned in at a brightly lighted
little place whence came the sounds of music and dancing. Doña Magdalena
de Archibec knew how to entertain. Always there was music in her place,
a bright-eyed _muchacha_ or two to dance or to be merry with, tables for
cards and lotto. The place was merry tonight indeed. There were more
than the usual number of trappers and pleasure-loving youths, who
frolicked on the eve of Easter, now that Good Friday had passed. A
solitary fiddler with but one leg, who sat with his chair tilted back
against the wall, threw back his head, closed his eyes, and played all
that he saw in his soul. A girl called Rosita slipped smilingly into a
chair beside Steven, where he sat at the end of the room. She smiled
close into his face and laid a very soft hand over his, humming gay
little airs that followed the fiddle like a happy soul singing with a
sad one.
“You are too sad, señor,” Rosita laughed in a sweet, hoarse voice.
She soothed him, reminded him vaguely of some one else. Other men came
up to dance with her, but she waved them away. “No, no; he is sad. I
must to cheer him.... Why are you sad?” she begged. “Girl, no?”
Steven made as if to rise from the table, but her expression showed that
she was hurt, that her face was that of a tender child. He sat down
again.
“What would you do,” he asked, “if you had done everything that some one
asked of you, and then after you had risked life and all, asking
nothing, found that she had let you be blamed for something you did not
do, something--well, a thief, a low common thief? It was a lie, even
though a silent lie.”
“Perhaps there was a reason,” offered Rosita, sympathetically. “I do not
always tell the truth. My papa he does not know that I dance here. He
would be most unhappy that I dance to make money, and sing for strange
men. Yet it is very nice. I make silver money. I take it to my mamma, my
papa--he is crippled, can never walk--and to the eight _niños_. I tell
the lie to my parents. Why make them sad? Alas! they must think the
streets of Taos are paved with gold or silver that I can find so much
money sweeping and washing the dishes for the _padrona_!” She smiled a
trifle sadly, and then both of them laughed. A fat, pock-marked Mexican
boy came for her and she rose to whirl in solemn circles with him.
A hand touched Steven upon the shoulder. It was Pierre. “Some one asks
for you outside,” he said, “a lady. She waits before the house of Ceran
St. Vrain, seated upon a white horse.”
Steven stared at him almost uncomprehendingly; but he rose to his feet
and followed Pierre out into the moonlight. Consuelo sat atop her white
horse, saddled bravely with the chair saddle of red Spanish leather. She
gazed down at him anxiously. Her face looked very small and white
beneath her dark reboso. As Steven advanced and stood at her stirrup, an
Indian guide who had been waiting beside her touched heels to his horse
and rode on up the road.
“Ess-tevan,” she whispered, “I have come after you--to tell you--what in
Santa Fe you would not hear. I am so, so sorry for all. It was wrong of
me, I see, to be thinking of Luis, but I did not think of him only. I
thought--that you loved the Americana, ’Ope Bragdon, and that you would
for her sake be glad to go into the desert, as well as for the child.
And about the--the picture. I could not tell my father.” Her voice
broke, stopped. There was no word from Steven. She found a sobbing
breath and hurried on. “You do not know how he would take such things.
He is too proud. I could only wait and pray. Father Filemon Hubert said
that it was right, that all would come right. How I have wept.
“Even now, that the painting is back again, my father has had a stroke.
He could not bear it, to know about Luis. And Luis--he has gone away
from home. We have not seen him since the night you were with us.” It
was too much. She had said bravely all that there was to say, with no
help from Steven. He was standing with bowed head at her side.
Then he lifted his face and spoke, wonderingly and ashamed: “And you
came all this way across the mountains just to tell me, worthless and
hasty as I have been, about it all, when I would not even stay to
listen.” He raised his arms, lifted her down from the saddle, and
carried her like a child into St. Vrain’s house, and did not stop till
he had set her down before the fire in the brightly lighted room. He
asked for a room and food for the lady, and while people flew in all
directions to bring hot coffee and broth, Steven with eyes for nothing
else leaned above her and whispered, “Consuelo, Consuelo.”
All the trappers and rough hunters in their shaggy sheepskins, their
coon caps, their fringed and soiled buckskins, arose and filed quietly
out and down the street to Magdalena de Archibec’s.
Steven knew now that the thing he most wanted was to stay in the
mountains, to trade with New Mexico and to mingle in the company of
Indians and fighters, of traders and exploring trappers. Not to
Chihuahua would his pilgrimage be, to buy brocades and bracelets of
garnets for his sweetheart, as the young swains of New Spain were wont,
to show their valor, braving Indians and deserts--but to New Orleans,
where one day he would take his bride to the home of his parents. He
hung about her neck a riband from which dangled the tiny silver wagon of
the caravans.
“Next year we shall travel with them, _verdad_?”
While they waited for the fraile to come over from his house, whither
Ceran St. Vrain had sent to fetch him, Consuelo lifted a radiant face,
dewy with tears. “And our house shall be furnished not from Chihuahua,
not from Spain, but from America, and the bodegas of Mercer & Son.”
_De Despedida_
And so Steven and Consuelo lived in the land of the Red Trail’s end and
built for the coming empire from the East. Though the Trail was
crimsoned for a quarter of a century afterward with the blood of
pioneers, and the prairies encarnadined with the dying buffalo, still
the silver caravans came. Over the Red Trail Consuelo and Steven
traveled in their youth, again in middle life, to find upon their return
a Santa Fe which was now within the borders of the United States, an
American territory. When civil war divided North and South and the house
of Mercer & Co. came to ruin, Steven in his maturity knew why he had
left home, and his father and mother, to found a new fortune.
Steven did not live to see the snorting iron horse steam along the banks
of the Arkansas. And the city which was first to be founded, three
centuries before, by the Conquistadores of Old Spain was the last to be
relinquished by Spanish-speaking rulers, to learn the tongue of new
conquerors and become one of the United States. Yet had it not been for
Bent, St. Vrain, Hope and Don Tiburcio, Consuelo and Steven, the Villa
de Santa Fe would never have rendered herself peacefully over to the
Americans.