The Apaches were discouraged by the immovability of the train, and by the steady and deadly resistance of its defenders. From first to last some twenty-five or twenty-seven of their warriors had been hit, of whom probably one third were killed or mortally wounded.
At the approach of Coronado those who were around the wagons swept away in a panic, and never paused in their flight until they were a good half mile distant. They carried off, however, every man, whether dead or injured, except one alone. A few rods from the train lay a mere boy, certainly not over fifteen years old, his forehead gashed by a bullet, and life apparently extinct. There was nothing strange in the fact of so young a lad taking part in battle, for the military age among the Indians is from twelve to thirty-six, and one third of their fighters are children.
"What did they leave that fellow for?" said Coronado in surprise, riding up to the senseless figure.
"I'll fix him," volunteered Texas Smith, dismounting and drawing his hunting knife. "Reckon he hain't been squarely finished."
"Stop!" ordered Coronado. "He is not an Apache. He is some pueblo Indian. See how much he is hurt."
"Skull ain't broke," replied Texas, fingering the wound as roughly as if it had been in the flesh of a beast. "Reckon he'll flop round. May do mischief, if we don't fix him."
Anxious to stick his knife into the defenceless young throat, he nevertheless controlled his sentiments and looked up for instructions. Since the splendid decapitation which Coronado had performed, Texas respected him as he had never heretofore hoped to respect a "greaser."
"Perhaps we can get information out of him," said Coronado. "Suppose you lay him in a wagon."
Meanwhile preparations had been made for an advance. The four dead or badly wounded draft mules were disentangled from the harness, and their places supplied with the four army mules, whose packs were thrown into the wagons. These animals, by the way, had escaped injury, partly because they had been tethered between the two lines of vehicles, and partly because they had been well covered by their loads, which were plentifully stuck-with arrows.
"We are ready to march," said Thurstane to Coronado. "I am sorry we can't try to recover your men back there."
"No use," commented Texas Smith. "The Patchies have been at 'em. They're chuck full of spear holes by this time."
Coronado shouted to the drivers to start. Commencing on the right, the wagons filed off two by two toward the mouth of the cañon, while the Indians, gathered in a group half a mile away, looked on without a yell or a movement. The instant that the vehicle which contained the ladies had cleared itself of the others, Thurstane and Coronado rode alongside of it.
"So! you are safe!" said the former. "By Heavens, if theyhadhurt you!"
"And you?" asked Clara, very quickly and eagerly, while scanning him from head to foot.
Coronado saw that look, anxious for Thurstane alone; and, master of dissimulation though he was, his face showed both pain and anger.
"Ah—oh—oh dear!" groaned Mrs. Stanley, as she made her appearance in the front of the vehicle. "Well! this is rather more than I can bear. This is just as much as a woman can put up with. Dear me! what is the matter with your arm, Lieutenant?"
"Just a pin prick," said Thurstane.
Clara began to get out of the wagon, with the purpose of going to him, her eyes staring and her face pale.
"Don't!" he protested, motioning her back. "It is nothing."
And, although the lacerated arm hurt him and was not easy to manage, he raised it over his head to show that the damage was trifling.
"Do get in here and let us take care of you," begged Clara.
"Certainly!" echoed Aunt Maria, who was a compassionate woman at heart, and who only lacked somewhat in quickness of sympathy, perhaps by reason of her strong-minded notions.
"I will when I need it," said Ralph, flattered and gratified. "The arm will do without dressing till we reach camp. There are other wounded. Everybody has fought. Mr. Coronado here has done deeds worthy of his ancestors."
"Ah, Mr. Coronado!" smiled Aunt Maria, delighted that her favorite had distinguished himself.
"Captain Glover, what's the matter with your nose?" was the lady's next outcry.
"Wal, it's been bored," replied Glover, tenderly fingering his sore proboscis. "It's been, so to speak, eyelet-holed. I'm glad I hadn't but one. The more noses a feller kerries in battle, the wuss for him. I hope the darned rip'll heal up. I've no 'casion to hev a line rove through it 'n' be towed, that I know of."
"How did it feel when it went through?" asked Aunt Maria, full of curiosity and awe.
"Felt's though I'd got the dreadfullest influenzee thet ever snorted. Twitched 'n' tickled like all possessed."
"Was it an arrow?" inquired the still unsatisfied lady.
"Reckon 'twas. Never see it. But it kinder whished, 'n' I felt the feathers. Darn 'em! When I felt the feathers, tell ye I was 'bout half scairt. Hed 'n idee 'f th' angel 'f death, 'n' so on."
Of course Aunt Maria and Clara wanted to do much nursing immediately; but there were no conveniences and there was no time; and so benevolence was postponed.
"So you are hurt?" said Thurstane to Texas Smith, noticing his torn and bloody shirt.
"It's jest a scrape," grunted the bushwhacker. "Mought'a'been worse."
"It was bad generalship trying to save you. We nearly paid high for it."
"That's so. Cost four greasers, as 'twas. Well, I'm worth four greasers."
"You're a devil of a fighter," continued the Lieutenant, surveying the ferocious face and sullen air of the cutthroat with a soldier's admiration for whatever expresses pugnacity.
"Bet yer pile on it," returned Texas, calmly conscious of his character. "So be you."
The savage black eyes and the imperious blue ones stared into each other without the least flinching and with something like friendliness.
Coronado rode up to the pair and asked, "Is that boy alive yet?"
"It's about time for him to flop round," replied Texas indifferently. "Reckon you'll find him in the off hind wagon. I shoved him in thar."
Coronado cantered to the off hind wagon, peeped through the rear opening of its canvas cover, discovered the youth lying on a pile of luggage, addressed him in Spanish, and learned his story. He belonged to a hacienda in Bernalillo, a hundred miles or more west of Santa Fé. The Apaches had surprised the hacienda and plundered it, carrying him off because, having formerly been a captive among them, he could speak their language, manage the bow, etc.
For all this Coronado cared nothing; he wanted to know why the band had left Bernalillo; also why it had attacked his train. The boy explained that the raiders had been driven off the southern route by a party of United States cavalry, and that, having lost a number of their braves in the fight, they had sworn vengeance on Americans.
"Did you hear them say whose train this was?" demanded Coronado.
"No, Señor."
"Do you think they knew?"
"Señor, I think not."
"Whose band was this?"
"Manga Colorada's."
"Where is Delgadito?"
"Delgadito went the other side of the mountain. They were both going to fight the Moquis."
"So we shall find Delgadito in the Moqui valley?"
"I think so, Señor."
After a moment of reflection Coronado added, "You will stay with us and take care of mules. I will do well by you."
"Thanks, Señor. Many thanks."
Coronado rejoined Thurstane and told his news. The officer looked grave; there might be another combat in store for the train; it might be an affair with both bands of the Apaches.
"Well," he said, "we must keep our eyes open. Every one of us must do his very utmost. On the whole, I can't believe they can beat us."
"Nombre de Dios!" thought Coronado. "How will this accursed job end? I wish I were out of it."
They were now traversing the cañon from which they had been so long debarred. It was a peaceful solitude; no life but their own stirred within its sandstone ramparts; and its windings soon carried them out of sight of their late assailants. For four hours they slowly threaded it, and when night came on they were still in it, miles away from their expected camping ground. No water and no grass; the animals were drooping with hunger, and all suffered with thirst; the worst was that the hurts of the wounded could not be properly dressed. But progress through this labyrinth of stones in the darkness was impossible, and the weary, anxious, fevered travellers bivouacked as well as might be.
Starting at dawn, they finished the cañon in about an hour, traversed an uneven plateau which stretched beyond its final sinuous branch gullies, and found themselves on the brow of a lofty terrace, overlooking a sublime panorama. There was an immense valley, not smooth and verdurous, but a gigantic nest of savage buttes and crags and hills, only to be called a valley because it was enclosed by what seemed a continuous line of eminences. On the north and east rose long ranges and elevated table-lands; on the west, the savage rolls and precipices of the Sierra del Carrizo; and on the south, a more distant bordering of hazy mountains, closing to the southwest, a hundred miles away, in the noble snowy peaks of Monte San Francisco.
With his field-glass, Thurstane examined one after another of the mesas and buttes which diversified this enormous depression. At last his attention settled on an isolated bluff or mound, with a flattened surface three or four miles in length, the whole mass of which seemed to be solid and barren rock. On this truncated pyramid he distinguished, or thought he distinguished, one or more of the pueblos of the Moquis. He could not be quite sure, because the distance was fifteen miles, and the walls of these villages are of the same stone with the buttes upon which they stand.
"There is our goal, if I am not mistaken," he said to Coronado. "When we get there we can rest."
The train pushed onward, slowly descending the terrace, or rather the succession of terraces. After reaching a more level region, and while winding between stony hills of a depressing sterility, it came suddenly, at the bottom of a ravine, upon fresh green turf and thickets of willows, the environment of a small spring of clear water. There was a halt; all hands fell to digging a trench across the gully; when it had filled, the animals were allowed to drink; in an hour more they had closely cropped all the grass. This was using up time perilously, but it had to be done, for the beasts were tottering.
Moving again; five miles more traversed; another spring and patch of turf discovered; a rough ravine through a low sandstone ridge threaded; at last they were on one of the levels of the valley. Three of the Moqui towns were now about eight miles distant, and with his glass Thurstane could distinguish the horizontal lines of building. The trail made straight for the pueblos, but it was almost impassable to wagons, and progress was very slow. It was all the slower because of the weakness of the mules, which throughout all this hair-brained journey had been severely worked, and of late had been poorly fed.
Presently the travellers turned the point of a naked ridge which projected laterally into the valley. There they came suddenly upon a wide-spread sweep of turf, contrasting so brilliantly with the bygone infertilities that it seemed to them a paradise, and stretching clear on to the bluff of the pueblos.
There, too, with equal suddenness, they came upon peril. Just beyond the nose of the sandstone promontory there was a bivouac of half naked, dark-skinned horsemen, recognizable at a glance as Apaches. It was undoubtedly the band of Delgadito.
The camp was half a mile distant. The Indians, evidently surprised at the appearance of the train, were immediately in commotion. There was a rapid mounting, and in five minutes they were all on horseback, curveting in circles, and brandishing their lances, but without advancing.
"Manga Colorada hasn't reached here yet," observed Thurstane.
"That's so," assented Texas Smith. "They hain't heerd from the cuss, or they'd a bushwhacked us somewhar. Seein' he dasn't follow our trail, he had to make a big turn to git here. But he'll be droppin' along, an' then we'll hev a fight. I reckon we'll hev one any way. Them cusses ain't friendly. If they was, they'd a piled in helter-skelter to hev a talk an' ask fur whiskey."
"We must keep them at a distance," said Thurstane.
"You bet! The first Injun that comes nigh us. I'll shute him. They mustn't be 'lowed to git among us. First you know you'd hear a yell, an' find yourself speared in the back. An' them that's speared right off is the lucky ones."
"Not one of us must fall into their hands," muttered the officer, thinking of Clara.
"Cap, that's so," returned Texas grimly. "When I fight Injuns, I never empty my revolver. I keep one barl for myself. You'd better do the same. Furthermore, thar oughter be somebody detailed to shute the women folks when it comes to the last pinch. I say this as a friend."
As a friend! It was the utmost stretch of Texas Smith's humanity and sympathy. Obviously the fellow had a soft side to him.
The fact is that he had taken a fancy to Thurstane since he had learned his fighting qualities, and would rather have done him a favor than murder him. At all events his hatred to "Injuns" was such that he wanted the lieutenant to kill a great many of them before his own turn came.
"So you think we'll have a tough job of it?" inferred Ralph.
"Cap, we ain't so many as we was. An' if Manga Colorada comes up, thar'll be a pile of red-skins. It may be they'll outlast us; an' so I say as a friend, save one shot; save it for yourself, Cap."
But the Apaches did not advance. They watched the train steadily; they held a long consultation which evidently referred to it; at last they seemed to decide that it was in too good order to fall an easy prey; there was some wild capering along its flanks, at a safe distance; and then, little by little, the gang resettled in its bivouac. It was like a swarm of hornets, which should sally out to reconnoitre an enemy, buzz about threateningly for a while, and sail back to their nest.
The plain, usually dotted with flocks of sheep, was now a solitude. The Moquis had evidently withdrawn their woolly wealth either to the summit of the bluff, or to the partially sheltered pasturage around its base. The only objects which varied the verdant level were scattered white rocks, probably gypsum or oxide of manganese, which glistened surprisingly in the sunlight, reminding one of pearls sown on a mantel of green velvet. But already the travellers could see the peach orchards of the Moquis, and the sides of the lofty butte laid out in gardens supported by terrace-walls of dressed stone, the whole mass surmounted by the solid ramparts of the pueblos.
At this moment, while the train was still a little over two miles from the foot of the bluff, and the Apache camp more than three miles to the rear, Texas Smith shouted, "The cusses hev got the news."
It was true; the foremost riders, or perhaps only the messengers, of Manga Colorada had readied Delgadito; and a hundred warriors were swarming after the train to avenge their fallen comrades.
Now ensued a race for life, the last pull of the mules being lashed out of them, and the Indians riding at the topmost speed of their wiry ponies.
When the race for life and death commenced between the emigrants and the Apaches, it seemed as if the former would certainly be able to go two miles before the latter could cover six.
But the mules were weak, and the soil of the plain was a thin loam into which the wheels sank easily, so that the heavy wagons could not be hurried beyond a trot, and before long were reduced to a walk. Thus, while the caravan was still half a mile from its city of refuge, the foremost hornets of Delgadito's swarm were already circling around it.
The chief could not charge at once, however, for the warriors whom he had in hand numbered barely a score, and their horses, blown with a run of over five miles, were unfit for sharp fighting work. For a few minutes nothing happened, except that the caravan continued its silent, sullen retreat, while the pursuers cantered yelling around it at a safe distance. Not a shot was fired by the emigrants; not a brave dashed up to let fly his arrows. At last there were fifty Apaches; then there was a hurried council; then a furious rush. Evidently the savages were ashamed to let their enemies escape for lack of one audacious assault.
This charge was led by a child. A boy not more than fourteen years of age, screaming like a little demon and discharging his arrows at full speed with wicked dexterity, rode at the head of this savagehourraof the Cossacks of the American desert. As the fierce child came on, Coronado saw him and recognized him with a mixture of wonder, dread, and hate. Here was the son of the false-hearted savage who had accepted his money, agreed to do his work, and then turned against him. Should he kill him? It would open an account of blood between himself and the father. Never mind; vengeance is sweet; moreover, the youngster was dangerous.
Coronado raised his revolver, steadied it across his left arm, took a calm aim, and fired. The handsome, headlong, terrible boy swayed forward, rolled slowly over the pommel of his saddle, and fell to the ground motionless. In the next moment there was a general rattle of firearms from the train, and the mass of the charging column broke up into squads which went off in aimless caracolings. Barring a short struggle by half a dozen braves to recover the young chief's body, the contest was over; and in two minutes more the Apaches were half a mile distant, looking on in sulky silence while the train crawled toward the protecting bluff.
"Hurrah!" shouted Thurstane. "That was quick work. Delgadito doesn't take his punishment well."
"Reckon they see we had friends," observed Captain Glover. "Jest look at them critters pile down the mounting. Darned if they don't skip like nanny-goats."
Down the huge steep slope, springing along rocky, sinuous paths or over the walls of the terraces, came a hundred or a hundred and fifty men, running with a speed which, considering the nature of the footing, was marvellous. Before many in the train were aware of their approach, they were already among the wagons, rushing up to the travellers with outstretched hands, the most cordial, cheerful, kindly-eyed people that Thurstane had seen in New Mexico. Good features, too; that is, they were handsomer than the usual Indian type; some even had physiognomies which reminded one of Italians. Their hair was fine and glossy for men of their race; and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of careful combing. Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to the knee, with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a gay woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as Indians. These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations of America, perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their migrations, or possibly by the temple-builders of Yucatan.
Impossible to converse with them. Not a person in the caravan spoke the Moqui tongue, and not a Moqui spoke or understood a word of Spanish or English. But it was evident from their faces and gestures that they were enthusiastically friendly, and that they had rushed down from their fastness to aid the emigrants against the Apaches. There was even a little sally into the plain, the Moquis running a quarter of a mile with amazing agility, spreading out into a loose skirmishing line of battle, brandishing their bows and defying the enemy to battle. But this ended in nothing; the Apaches sullenly cantered away; the others soon checked their pursuit.
Now came the question of encampment. To get the wagons up the bluff, eight hundred feet or so in height, along a path which had been cut in the rock or built up with stone, was obviously impossible. Would there be safety where they were, just at the base of the noble slope? The Moquis assured them by signs that the plundering horse-Indians never came so near the pueblos. Camp then; the wagons were parked as usual in a hollow square; the half-starved animals were unharnessed and allowed to fly at the abundant grass; the cramped and wearied travellers threw themselves on the ground with delight.
"What a charming people these Monkeys are!" said Aunt Maria, surveying the neat and smiling villagers with approval.
"Moquis," Coronado corrected her, with a bow.
"Oh, Mo-kies," repeated Aunt Maria, this time catching the sound exactly. "Well, I propose to see as much of them as possible. Why shouldn't the women and the wounded sleep in the city?"
"It is an excellent idea," assented Coronado, although he thought with distaste that this would bring Clara and Thurstane together, while he would be at a distance.
"I suppose we shall get an idea from it of the ancient city of Mexico, as described by Prescott," continued the enthusiastic lady.
"You will discover a few deviations in the ground plan," returned Coronado, for once ironical.
Aunt Maria's suggestion with regard to the women and the wounded was adopted. The Moquis seemed to urge it; so at least they were understood. Within a couple of hours after the halt a procession of the feebler folk commenced climbing the bluff, accompanied by a crowd of the hospitable Indians. The winding and difficult path swarmed for a quarter of a mile with people in the gayest of blankets, some ascending with the strangers and some coming down to greet them.
"I should think we were going up to the Temple of the Sun to be sacrified," said Clara, who had also read Prescott.
"To be worshipped," ventured Thurstane, giving her a look which made her blush, the boldest look that he had yet ventured.
The terraces, as we have stated, were faced with partially dressed stone. They were in many places quite broad, and were cultivated everywhere with admirable care, presenting long green lines of corn fields or of peach orchards. Half-way up the ascent was a platform of more than ordinary spaciousness which contained a large reservoir, built of chipped stone strongly cemented, and brimming with limpid water. From this cistern large earthen pipes led off in various directions to irrigate the terraces below.
"It seems to me that we are discovering America," exclaimed Aunt Maria, her face scarlet with exercise and enthusiasm.
Presently she asked, in full faith that she was approaching a metropolis, "What is the name of the city?"
"This must be Tegua," replied Thurstane. "Tegua is the most eastern of the Moqui pueblos. There are three on this bluff. Mooshaneh and two others are on a butte to the west. Oraybe is further north."
"What a powerful confederacy!" said Aunt Maria. "The United States of the Moquis!"
After a breathless ascent of at least eight hundred feet, they reached the undulated, barren, rocky surface of a plateau. Here the whole population of Tegua had collected; and for the first time the visitors saw Moqui women and children. Aunt Maria was particularly pleased with the specimens of her own sex; she went into ecstasies over their gentle physiognomies and their well-combed, carefully braided, glossy hair; she admired their long gowns of black woollen, each with a yellow stripe around the waist and a border of the same at the bottom.
"Such a sensible costume!" she said. "So much more rational and convenient than our fashionable fripperies!"
Another fact of great interest was that the Moquis were lighter complexioned than Indians in general. And when she discovered a woman with fair skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair—one of those albinos who are found among the inhabitants of the pueblos—she went into an excitement which was nothing less than ethnological.
"These are white people," she cried, losing sight of all the brown faces. "They are some European race which colonized America long before that modern upstart, Columbus. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the Northmen who built the old mill at Newport and sculptured the Dighton Rock."
"There is a belief," said Thurstane, "that some of these pueblo people, particularly those of Zuni, are Welsh. A Welsh prince named Madoc, flying before the Saxons, is said to have reached America. There are persons who hold that the descendants of his followers built the mounds in the Mississippi Valley, and that some of them became the white Mandans of the upper Missouri, and that others founded this old Mexican civilization. Of course it is all guess-work. There's nothing about it in the Regulations."
"I consider it highly probable," asserted Aunt Maria, forgetting her Scandinavian hypothesis. "I don't see how you can doubt that that flaxen-haired girl is a descendant of Medoc, Prince of Wales."
"Madoc," corrected Thurstane.
"Well, Madoc then," replied Aunt Maria rather pettishly, for she was dreadfully tired, and moreover she didn't like Thurstane.
A few minutes' walk brought them to the rampart which surrounded the pueblo. Its foundation was a solid blind wall, fifteen feet or so in height, and built of hewn stone laid in clay cement. Above was a second wall, rising from the first as one terrace rises from another, and surmounted by a third, which was also in terrace fashion. The ground tier of this stair-like structure contained the storerooms of the Moquis, while the upper tiers were composed of their two-story houses, the entire mass of masonry being upward of thirty feet high, and forming a continuous line of fortification. This rampart of dwellings was in the shape of a rectangle, and enclosed a large square or plaza containing a noble reservoir. Compact and populous, at once a castle and a city, the place could defy all the horse Indians of North America.
"Bless me! this is sublime but dreadful," said Aunt Maria when she learned that she must ascend to the landing of the lower wall by a ladder. "No gate? Isn't there a window somewhere that I could crawl through? Well, well! Dear me! But it's delightful to see how safe these excellent people have made themselves."
So with many tremblings, and with the aid of a lariat fastened around her waist and vigorously pulled from above by two Moquis, Aunt Maria clutched and scraped her way to the top of the foundation terrace.
"I shall never go down in the world," she remarked with a shuddering glance backward. "I shall pass the rest of my days here."
From the first platform the travellers were led to the second and third by stone stairways. They were now upon the inside of the rectangle, and could see two stories of doors facing the plaza and the reservoir in its centre, the whole scene cheerful with the gay garments and smiling faces of the Moquis.
"Beautiful!" said Aunt Maria. "That court is absolutely swept and dusted. One might give a ball there. I should like to hear Lucretia Mott speak in it."
Her reflections were interrupted by the courteous gestures of a middle-aged, dignified Moqui, who was apparently inviting the party to enter one of the dwellings.
Pepita and the other two Indian women, with the wounded muleteers, were taken to another house. Aunt Maria, Clara, Thurstane, and Phineas Glover entered the residence of the chief, and found themselves in a room six or seven feet high, fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth. The floor was solid, polished clay; the walls were built of the large, sunbaked bricks called adobes; the ceilings were of beams, covered by short sticks, with adobes over all. Skins, bows and arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets, articles of clothing, and various simple ornaments hung on pegs driven into the walls or lay packed upon shelves.
"They are a musical race, I see," observed Aunt Maria, pointing to a pair of painted drumsticks tipped with gay feathers, and a reed wind-instrument with a bell-shaped mouth like a clarionet. "Of course they are. The Welsh were always famous for their bards and their harpers. Does anybody in our party speak Welsh? What a pity we are such ignoramuses! We might have an interesting conversation with these people. I should so like to hear their traditions about the voyage across the Atlantic and the old mill at Newport."
Her remarks were interrupted by a short speech from the chief, whom she at first understood as relating the adventures of his ancestors, but who finally made it clear that he was asking them to take seats. After they were arranged on a row of skins spread along the wall, a shy, meek, and pretty Moqui woman passed around a vase of water for drinking and a tray which contained something not unlike a bundle of blue wrapping paper.
"Is this to wipe our hands on?" inquired Aunt Maria, bringing her spectacles to bear on the contents of the tray.
"It smells like corn bread," said Clara.
So it was. The corn of the Moquis is blue, and grinding does not destroy the color. The meal is stirred into a thin gruel and cooked by pouring over smooth, flat, heated stones, the light shining tissues being rapidly taken off and folded, and subsequently made up in bundles.
The party made a fair meal off the blue wrapping paper. Then the meek-eyed woman reappeared, removed the dishes, returned once more, and looked fixedly at Thurstane's bloody sleeve.
"Certainly!" said Aunt Maria. "Let her dress your arm. I have no doubt that unpretending woman knows more about surgery than all the men doctors in New York city. Let her dress it."
Thurstane partially threw off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeve. Clara gave one glance at the huge white arm with the small crimson hole in it, and turned away with a thrill which was new to her. The Moqui woman washed the wound, applied a dressing which looked like chewed leaves, and put on a light bandage.
"Does it feel any better?" asked Aunt Maria eagerly.
"It feels cooler," said Thurstane.
Aunt Maria looked as if she thought him very ungrateful for not saying that he was entirely well.
"An' my nose," suggested Glover, turning up his lacerated proboscis.
"Yes, certainly; your poor nose," assented Aunt Maria. "Let the lady cure it."
The female surgeon fastened a poultice upon the tattered cartilage by passing a bandage around the skipper's sandy and bristly head.
"Works like a charm 'n' smells like peach leaves," snuffled the patient. "It's where it's handy to sniff at—that's a comfort."
After much dumb show, arrangements were made for the night. One of the inner rooms was assigned to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, and another to Thurstane and Glover. Bedding, provisions, and some small articles as presents for the Moquis were sent up from the train by Coronado.
But would the wagons, the animals, and the human members of the party below be safe during the night? Young as he was, and wounded as he was, Thurstane was so badgered by his army habit of incessant responsibility that he could not lie down to rest until he had visited the camp and examined personally into probabilities of attack and means of defence. As he descended the stony path which scored the side of the butte, his anxiety was greatly increased by the appearance of a party of armed Moquis rushing like deer down the steep slope, as if to repel an attack.
Thurstane found the caravan in excellent condition, the mules being tethered at the reservoir half-way up the acclivity, and the wagons parked and guarded as usual, with Weber for officer of the night.
"We are in no tanger, Leftenant," said the sergeant. "A large barty of these bueplo beeble has shust gone to the vront. They haf daken atfandage of our bresence to regover a bortion of the blain. I haf sent Kelly along to look after them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust as safe as bossible. Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a goot blace for a gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or two."
"Does Shubert's leg need attention?"
"No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty."
"And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?"
"Berfectly, Leftenant."
"Forty rounds apiece!"
"They are issued, Leftenant."
"If you are attacked, fire heavily; and if the attack is sharp, retreat to the bluff. Never mind the wagons; they can be recovered."
"I will opey your instructions, Leftenant."
Thurstane was feverish and exhausted; he knew that Weber was as good a soldier as himself; and still he went back to the village with an anxious heart; such is the tenderness of the military conscience as toduty.
By the time he reached the upper landing of the wall of the pueblo it was sunset, and he paused to gaze at a magnificent landscape, thereplicaof the one which he had seen at sunrise. There were buttes, valleys, and cañons, the vast and lofty plateaus of the north, the ranges of the Navajo country, the Sierra del Carrizo, and the ice peaks of Monte San Francisco. It was sublime, savage, beautiful, horrible. It seemed a revelation from some other world. It was a nightmare of nature.
Clara met him on the landing with the smile which she now often gave him. "I was anxious about you," she said. "You were too weak to go down there. You look very tired. Do come and eat, and then rest. You will make yourself sick. I was quite anxious about you."
It was a delightful repetition. How his heart and his eyes thanked her for being troubled for his sake! He was so cheered that in a moment he did not seem to be tired at all. He could have watched all that night, if it had been necessary for her safety, or even for her comfort. The soul certainly has a great deal to do with the body.
While our travellers sleep, let us glance at the singular people among whom they have found refuge.
It is said hesitatingly, by scholars who have not yet made comparative studies of languages, that the Moquis are notred men, like the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Lenni-Lenape, the Sioux, and in general those whom we know asIndians. It is said, moreover, that they are of the same generic stock with the Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Peruvians, and all the other city-building peoples of both North and South America.
It was an evil day for the brown race of New Mexico when horses strayed from the Spanish settlements into the desert, and the savage red tribes became cavalry. This feeble civilization then received a more cruel shock than that which had been dealt it by the storming columns of the conquistadors. The horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos from snapping-turtles into condors. Thenceforward, instead of crawling in slow and feeble bands to tease the dense populations of the pueblos, they could come like a tornado, and come in a swarm. At no time were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists and herdsmen safe from robbery and slaughter. Such villages as did not stand upon buttes inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess fertile lands immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned or depopulated by slow starvation.
It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are now found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Not of course for all; some, we know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been forsaken because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless fell during wars between different tribes of the brown race. But the cavalry of the desert must necessarily have been a potent instrument of destruction.
It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is perishing, without the poor consolation of a history to record its sufferings. It comes near to being a repetition of the silent death of the flint and bronze races, the mound-raisers, and cave-diggers, and cromlech-builders of Europe.
Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an appetizer around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.
"Been out to shake hands with these clever critters," he said. "Best behavin' 'n' meekest lookin' Injuns I ever see. Put me in mind o' cows 'n' lambs. An' neat! 'Most equal to Amsterdam Dutch. Seen a woman sweepin' up her husband's tobacco ashes 'n' carryin' 'em out to throw over the wall. Jest what they do in Broek. Ever been in Broek? Tell ye 'bout it some time. But how d'ye s'pose this town was built?Ididn't see no stun up here that was fit for quarryin'. So I put it to a lot of fellers where they got their buildin' m'ter'ls. Wal, after figurin' round a spell, 'n' makin' signs by the schuner load, found out the hull thing. Every stun in this place was whittled out 'f the ruff-scuff at the bottom of the mounting, 'n' fetched up here in blankets on men's shoulders. All the mud, too, to make their bricks, was backed up in the same way. Feller off with his blanket 'n' showed me how they did it. Beats all. Wust of it was, couldn't find out how long it took 'em, nor how the job was lotted out to each one."
"I suppose they made their women do it," said Aunt Maria grimly. "Men usually put all the hard work on women."
"Wal, women folks do a heap," admitted Glover, who never contradicted anybody. "But there's reason to entertain a hope that they didn't take the brunt of it here. I looked over into the gardens down b'low the town, 'n' see men plantin' corn, 'n' tendin' peach trees, but didn't see no women at it. The women was all in the houses, spinnin', weavin', sewin', 'n' fixin' up ginerally."
"Remarkable people!" exclaimed Aunt Maria. "They are at least as civilized as we. Very probably more so. Of course they are. I must learn whether the women vote, or in any way take part in the government. If so, these Indians are vastly our superiors, and we must sit humbly at their feet."
During this talk the worn and wounded Thurstane had been lying asleep. He now appeared from his dormitory, nodded a hasty good-morning, and pushed for the door.
"Train's all right," said Glover. "Jest took a squint at it. Peaceful's a ship becalmed. Not a darned Apache in sight."
"You are sure?" demanded the young officer.
"Better get some more peach-leaf pain-killer on your arm 'n' set straight down to breakfast."
"If the Apaches have vamosed, Coronado might join us," suggested Thurstane.
"Never!" answered Mrs. Stanley with solemnity. "His ancestor stormed Cibola and ravaged this whole country. If these people should hear his name pronounced, and suspect his relationship to their oppressor, they might massacre him."
"That was three hundred years ago," smiled the wretch of a lieutenant.
"It doesn't matter," decided Mrs. Stanley.
And so Coronado, thanks to one of his splendid inventions, was not invited up to the pueblo.
The travellers spent the day in resting, in receiving a succession of pleasant, tidy visitors, and in watching the ways of the little community. The weather was perfect, for while the season was the middle of May, and the latitude that of Algeria and Tunis, they were nearly six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and the isolated butte was wreathed with breezes. It was delightful to sit or stroll on the landings of the ramparts, and overlook the flourishing landscape near at hand, and the peaceful industry which caused it to bloom.
Along the hillside, amid the terraced gardens of corn, pumpkins, guavas, and peaches, many men and children were at work, with here and there a woman.
The scene had not only its charms, but its marvels. Besides the grand environment of plateaus and mountains in the distance, there were near at hand freaks of nature such as one might look for in the moon. Nowhere perhaps has the great water erosion of bygone aeons wrought more grotesquely and fantastically than in the Moqui basin. To the west rose a series of detached buttes, presenting forms of castles, towers, and minarets, which looked more like the handiwork of man than the pueblo itself. There were piles of variegated sandstone, some of them four hundred feet in height, crowned by a hundred feet of sombre trap. Internal fire had found vent here; its outflowings had crystallized into columnar trap; the trap had protected the underlying sandstone from cycles of water-flow; thus had been fashioned these sublime donjons and pinnacles.
They were not only sublime but beautiful. The sandstone, reduced by ages to a crumbling marl, was of all colors. There were layers of green, reddish-brown, drab, purple, red, yellow, pinkish, slate, light-brown, orange, white, and banded. Nature, not contented with building enchanted palaces, had frescoed them. At this distance, indeed, the separate tints of the strata could not be discerned, but their general effect of variegation was distinctly visible, and the result was a landscape of the Thousand and One Nights.
To the south were groups of crested mounds, some of them resembling the spreading stumps of trees, and others broad-mouthed bells, all of vast magnitude. These were of sandstone marl, the caps consisting of hard red and green shales, while the swelling boles, colored by gypsum, were as white as loaf-sugar. It was another specimen of the handiwork of deluges which no man can number.
Far away to the southwest, and yet faintly seen through the crystalline atmosphere, were the many-colored knolls and rolls and cliffs of the Painted Desert. Marls, shales, and sandstones, of all tints, were strewn and piled into a variegated vista of sterile splendor. Here surely enchantment and glamour had made undisputed abode.
All day the wounded and the women reposed, gazing a good deal, but sleeping more. During the afternoon, however, our wonder-loving Mrs. Stanley roused herself from her lethargy and rushed into an adventure such as only she knew how to find. In the morning she had noticed, at the other end of the pueblo from her quarters, a large room which was frequented by men alone. It might be a temple; it might be a hall for the transaction of public business; such were the diverse guesses of the travellers. Into the mysteries of this apartment Aunt Maria resolved to poke.
She reached it; nobody was in it; suspicious circumstance! Aunt Maria put an end to this state of questionable solitude by entering. A dark room; no light except from a trap door; a very proper place for improper doings. At one end rose a large, square block of red sandstone, on which was carved a round face environed by rays, probably representing the sun. Aunt Maria remembered the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs, and judged that the old sanguinary religion of Tenochtitlan was not yet extinct. She became more convinced of this terrific fact when she discovered that the red tint of the stone was deepened in various places by stains which resembled blood.
Three or four horrible suggestions arose in succession to jerk at her heartstrings. Were these Moquis still in the habit of offering human sacrifices? Would a woman answer their purpose, and particularly a white woman? If they should catch her there, in the presence of their deity, would they consider it a leading of Providence? Aunt Maria, notwithstanding her curiosity and courage, began to feel a desire to retreat.
Her reflections were interrupted and her emotions accelerated by darkness. Evidently the door had been shut; then she heard a rustling of approaching feet and an awful whispering; then projected hands impeded her gropings toward safety. While she stood still, too completely blinded to fly and too frightened to scream, a light gleamed from behind the altar and presently rose into a flame. The sacred fire!—she knew it as soon as she saw it; she remembered Prescott, and recognized it at a glance.
By its flickering rays she perceived that the apartment was full of men, all robed in blankets of ebony blackness, and all gazing at her in solemn silence. Two of them, venerable elders with long white hair, stood in front of the others, making genuflexions and signs of adoration toward the carved face on the altar. Presently they advanced to her, one of them suddenly seizing her by the shoulders and pinioning her arms behind her, while the other drew from beneath his robe a long sharp knife of the glassy flint known as obsidian.
At this point the horrified Aunt Maria found her voice, and uttered a piercing scream.
At the close of her scream she by a supreme effort turned on her side, raised her hands to her face, rubbed her eyes open, stared at Clara, who was lying near her, and mumbled, "I've had an awful nightmare."
That was it. There was no altar, nor holy fire, nor high priest, nor flint lancet. She hadn't been anywhere, and she hadn't even screamed, except in imagination. She was on her blanket, alongside of her niece, in the house of the Moqui chief, and as safe as need be.