Alamo Ranch Part 3

"The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial.

"It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful a.s.sertion of c.u.mmings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of Was.h.i.+ngton; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was conceived.'

"This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back of his steed, or the fierce Apache, murderous and cruel.

"We must not," said Mr. Morehouse, "take leave of the Pueblo, without some reference to the great flat-topped, slop-sided chain of rock-tables that throughout the length and breadth of his territory rises from the sandy plains, the most famous and best explored of which is known as 'La Mesa Encantada,'--'the Enchanted Mesa.'

"According to tradition the Mesa Encantada gains its romantic name from an event which centuries ago--declares the legend--destroyed the town, then a well-populated stronghold of the Acomas. As a prelude to this legend, let me state that the Pueblo cliff-dwellers often perched their habitations on lofty, sheer-walled, and not easily accessible mesas, a natural vantage-ground from which they might successfully resist their enemies, the nomadic and predatory tribes formerly over-running the country.

"The steep wall of the Acoma Mesa, with its solitary trail, surmounted by means of hand and foot holes pecked in the solid rock, was so well defended that a single man might keep an army at bay. What fear, then, should these Acomas have of their enemies?

"The Acomas, like other Pueblo Indians, have from time immemorial been tillers of the soil.

"From the fertile sands of their valley and its tributaries they won by patient toil such harvests of corn, beans, squashes, and cotton as secured them a simple livelihood; and 'their granaries,' it is a.s.serted, 'were always full enough to enable them, if need be, to withstand a twelvemonth's siege.' How long the top of Katzimo, the site of the Enchanted Mesa, had been inhabited when the catastrophe recorded in the legend befell, no man may say, not even the elders of the tribe; this much is, however, known,--the spring-time had come. The sun-priest had already proclaimed from the housetops that the season of planting was at hand. The seeds from last year's harvest had been gathered from the bins; planting-sticks had been sharpened, and all made ready for the auspicious day when the seer should further announce the time of repairing to the fields. On that day (so runs the tale), down the ragged trail, at early sunrise, clambered the busy natives; every one who was able to force a planting-stick into the compact soil, or lithe enough to drive away a robber crow, hurried to the planting. Only a few of the aged and ailing remained on the mesa.

"While the planters worked in the hot glare of the valley below, the sun suddenly hid his face in angry clouds. The busy planters hastened their work, while the distant thunder muttered and rolled about them. Suddenly the black dome above them was rent as by a glittering sword, and down swept the torrent, until the entire valley became a sheet of flood. The planters sought shelter in the slight huts of boughs and sticks from which the crops are watched.

"The elders bodingly shook their heads. Never before had the heavens given vent to such a cataract.

"When the sudden clouds as suddenly dispersed, and the sun-lit crest of Katzimo emerged from the mist, the toilers trudged toward their mountain home. Reaching the base of the trail, they found their pathway of the morning blocked by huge, sharp-edged pieces of stone, giving mute testimony of the disaster to the ladder-trail above.

"The huge rock ma.s.s, which had given access to the cleft by means of the holes pecked in the trail-path, had in the great cloud-burst become freed from the friable wall, and thundered down in a thousand fragments, cutting off communication with the mesa village. The Acomas, when asked why their ancestors made no desperate effort to reach the sufferers whose feeble voices were calling to them from the summit for succor, but left their own flesh and blood to perish by slow starvation, gravely shook their heads.

"The ban of enchantment had already, for these superst.i.tious pagans, fallen upon the devoted table-land; it had become 'La Mesa Encantada.'

"The publication by Mr. Charles F. Lummis, who resided for several years at the pueblo of Iselta, of the story of Katzimo, the tradition of which was repeated to him by its gray-haired priests some twelve years ago, aroused the interest of students of southwestern ethnology in the history of 'La Mesa Encantada,' and, subsequently, Mr. F. W. Hodge was directed by the Bureau of American Ethnology, of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute, to scale the difficult height of this giant mountain, for the purpose of supplementing the evidence already gained, of its sometime occupancy as a Pueblo town. His party found decided evidence of a former occupancy of the mesa, such as fragments of extremely ancient earthenware, a portion of a sh.e.l.l bracelet, parts of two grooved stone axes, lichen-flecked with age. Here, too, was an unfeathered prayer-stick, a melancholy reminder of a votive offering made, at the nearest point of accessibility, to 'Those Above.'

"'When I consider,' says Mr. Hodge, in his charming paper, 'The Enchanted Mesa,' published in the 'Century Magazine,' some three or four years ago, 'that the summit of Katzimo, where the town was, has long been inaccessible to the Indians, that it has been swept by winds, and washed by rains for centuries, until scarcely any soil is left on its crest, that well-defined traces of an ancient ladder trail may still be seen pecked on the rocky wall of the very cleft through which the traditionary pathway wound its course; and, above all, the large number of very ancient potsherds in the earthy talus about the base of the mesa, which must have been washed from above, the conclusion is inevitable that the summit of 'La Mesa Encantada' was inhabited prior to 1540, when the present Acoma was discovered by Coronado, and that the last vestige of the village itself has long been washed or blown over the cliff.'"

With this account of the Enchanted Mesa, Mr. Morehouse, amid general applause, ended his interesting paper on the Pueblo Indians; and after a short discussion by the Club of the ancient and modern characteristics of these remarkable aborigines, the Koshare, well pleased with the success of its endeavor to combine improvement with delight, adjourned to the next Monday in January.

Little dreamed Roger Smith as, that night, after the Club entertainment, he handed the Hemmenshaw ladies to their wagon, for the return ride to Hilton Ranch, that the very next week he was to undertake, on their behalf, a hand-to-hand encounter with a blood-thirsty Apache. Yet so was it ordained of Fate.

It has already been stated that these ladies were but day-boarders at Alamo Ranch, occupying, together with Sholto, a Mexican man-of-all-work, the Hilton Ranch, a good mile distant from the boarding-house.

Louise Hemmenshaw, usually in exuberant health, was ill with a severe influenza. It was the third and c.u.mulative day of this disease. Sholto had already been despatched to Brown's for the dinner; Miss Paulina had, in this emergency, undertaken to turn off the breakfasts and suppers from her chafing-dish.

After replenis.h.i.+ng, from the wood basket, the invalid's chamber fire, Miss Paulina administered her teaspoonful of bryonia, gave a settling shake to her pillow, and hurried down to fasten the back door behind Sholto.

Lingering a moment at the kitchen window, the good lady put on her far-off gla.s.ses for a good look across the mesa, stretching--an unbroken waste of sage-brush and mesquite-bush--from the Hilton kitchen garden to the distant line of the horizon.

As she quietly scanned the nearer prospect, Miss Paulina's heart made a sudden thump beneath her bodice, and quickened its pulses to fever-time; for there, just within range of her vision, was the undoubted form of an Apache savage, clad airily in breech-clout, and Navajo blanket. Skulking warily along the mesa, he gained the garden fence and sprang, at a bound, over the low paling. For a moment the watcher stood paralyzed with wonder and dismay.

Meantime, under cover of a rose-trellis, the Apache, looking bad enough and cunning enough for any outrage, coolly made a reconnoisance of the premises. This done, still on all-fours, he gained the bulkhead of the small dark vegetable cellar beneath the kitchen. It chanced to have been inadvertently left open.

With a satisfied grunt (and eschewing the paltry convenience of steps) he bounded at once into its dusky depths.

Summoning her failing courage, this "Daughter of the Revolution"

resolutely tiptoed out the front door, and, with her heart in her mouth, whisking round the corner of the devoted house, shot into place the stout outside bolt of the bulkhead door.

This feat accomplished, she made haste to gain the safe shelter of the adobe dwelling. She next looked well to the bolt fastening the trap-door at the head of the ladder-like stairway leading perilously from the kitchen to the dim region below, where the Apache might now be heard b.u.mping his head against the floor-planks, in a fruitless endeavor to discover some outlet, from this underground apartment, to the family circle above. With the frightful possibility of a not distant escape of her prisoner, the good lady lifted her heart in silent prayer, and hurrying promptly to the chamber of her niece, gave a saving punch to the fire, a gla.s.s of port wine to the invalid, and, feigning an appearance of unconcern, left the room, and slipped cautiously down to the kitchen. Here she dragged an ironing-table, a clothes-horse, and a wood-box on to the trap-door, and breathlessly waited for the Apache's next move.

And now, a step might be heard on the driveway, followed by a rap at the front door.

Prudently scanning her visitor through the sidelight, and a.s.suring herself that he was no breech-clouted savage, but a fellow white man, Miss Paulina let in through the narrowest of openings,--who but their friend the Harvard man! "Dear soul!" tearfully exclaimed the good lady, while Roger Smith stood in mute wonder at the warmth of her greeting.

It was but the work of a moment to explain the situation and acquaint him with the peril of the moment.

Sholto, at his leisurely Mexican pace, now opportunely appeared at the back door with the hot dinner.

"There is a time for all things," said the "president of Chapter 18th,"

as (having pulled the bewildered Mexican inside) she vigorously shot the door-bolt in place, deposited the smoking viands on the sideboard, and thus addressed him. "Sholto," said Miss Paulina, "I have an Apache here in the cellar. For the time being his ability to work us harm is limited; but an Apache is never nice to have round; and, besides, he must have terribly b.u.mped himself poking round there all this time in the dark. One would not unnecessarily hurt even a savage. We must therefore let him up, bind him fast, and take measures for delivering him to the police at Las Cruces. Here is a clothes-line: it is good and strong; make up a la.s.so, and when I open the trap-door, as his head bobs in sight, throw it, and then help Mr. Smith haul him out, and tie him."

Sholto's la.s.so was soon in working order. The trap-door once raised, the head of the unsuspecting savage flew up like a Jack in a box, and with such a rubber-like bound that Sholto's la.s.so went wide of the mark. In this dilemma, a scientific blow from the fist of a Harvard athlete deftly floored him, and, in the consequent lapse of consciousness, he was easily bound, and safely deposited in the bottom of the Hilton express wagon. This accomplished, Sholto and the Harvard man summarily took the road for Las Cruces, some four miles distant. The horse and his driver being in absolute accord as to the ratio of miles proper to the hour, the captors drove leisurely along; the Harvard man meantime relieving the slow monotony of the way, with incident and anecdote, and Sholto, in turn, imparting much interesting New-Mexican information.

Presently a faint stir, as of the quiet, persistent nibbling of a mouse in the wall, might (but for the talking) have been heard from the bottom of the wagon. "Poor beggar!" said the Harvard man, at last recalling to mind the captive Apache; "he must, by this time, be about ready to come to." And taking from his over-coat pocket a tiny flask of brandy, he turned on his seat with the humane intention of aiding nature in bringing about that restoration. "Gone! clean gone! by George!"

exclaimed the astonished athlete. The cunning savage had, with his sharp, strong teeth, actually gnawed through his wrist cords, and, with tooth and nail extricating himself from the knotted clothes-line, was already on his return from the unsatisfactory husks of Mesilla Valley, to the fatted veal of the U. S. government, in his father's house,--"The Reservation." "_They are fleet steeds that follow!_" quoted the Harvard man as the jubilant Apache, with flying heels, loomed tantalizingly on the distant plain. The startled cotton-tail, swept by "the wind of his going," scurried breathlessly to his desert fastnesses among the sage-brush and mesquite.

With a humorous glance at his fast-vanis.h.i.+ng form, the Harvard man measured with his eye the intervening distance, the speed of the escaped captive, and the pace of the propeller of the Hilton express, and gracefully accepted the situation. Sholto lazily turned the horse's head, and in process of time the discomfited captors of Miss Paulina's Apache--like John Gilpin--

"Where they did get up Did get down again."

Meantime, Miss Hemmenshaw brought up the mid-day meal.

"Auntie," said the invalid, "this feverish cold puts queer fancies in my head. While you were away, I must have taken a little nap, and when I awoke there seemed to be some sort of a rumpus going on below; after which I fancied that a team started away from the back door. It could not have been Sholto's; for he would be coming from Brown's about that hour with our dinner."

"It may have been just a part of your dream, dear," pacified the aunt; "but come, now, here is our dinner. Let us have it together. A wonderfully nice dinner Mrs. Brown has sent us, too, and you can venture to-day on a quail, and a bit of orange pudding. For myself, I am as hungry as a bear;" and, removing the books from the oval bedroom table, Miss Paulina laid the cloth, set out the dishes and gla.s.ses, and daintily arranged the viands, which the two ladies discussed with evident relish.

"And now," said the aunt, "since you have dined, and have something to brace you up, I will 'tell my experience;'" and forthwith she related to the astonished Louise the adventure of the morning. The good lady had but accomplished her exciting account, when the valiant captors of the Apache drove up.

Miss Paulina, with the concentrated importance of her entire "Chapter,"

met and opened the door to her hero.

"Well?" asked she of the crestfallen athlete.

"No: ill!" replied he; "the Apache never reached Las Cruces. He managed to unbind himself, and slipped from our hands by the way. The clothes-line has come back safe; but the savage is, long ere this, well on his road to the Mescalero Reservation."

"Well," said Miss Paulina, judicially, "I can't say that I'm sorry. The creature had a rough time b.u.mping about that low, dark cellar; and your blow on his head was a tough one. And when one considers the slip-shodness of things at Las Cruces, and the possible insecurity of their jail, _we_, on the whole, are the safer for his escape; and _he_ will, of course, feel more at home now in the Reservation, and will probably remain there for a while, after the fright we gave him."

Thus rea.s.sured, the Harvard man accepted Miss Hemmenshaw's invitation to stay to supper. And presently the convalescing invalid came down to express her thanks for his devoir of the morning. Reclining on the parlor lounge, in a cream-white tea gown, she looked so lovely that a man might well have dared a whole tribe of savages in her defence. By and by they had a quiet game of chess. It goes without saying that the lady won. There _might_ be men hard-hearted enough to beat Louise Hemmenshaw at chess. The Harvard man was not _of_ them.

So slipped away this happy afternoon; and, at sunset Sholto appeared with the tea equipage, and the young people covertly made merry over a chafing-dish mess achieved by the Cooking School pupil; and under cover of rarebit, water-biscuit, and cups of Russian tea, the Harvard man made hay for himself in this bit of suns.h.i.+ne, and grew in favor with both aunt and niece.

With Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw, true to her aristocratic birth and breeding, pedigree far out-weighed filthy lucre. To be well born was, in her estimation, to be truly acceptable to G.o.ds and men.

Roger Smith, with his plebeian surname and unill.u.s.trious "tanner"

grandfather, was by no means a suitable husband for her motherless niece, to whom, as the head of her brother's household, she had for years filled a parent's place. Louise Hemmenshaw, as the good lady shrewdly guessed, was the magnet that drew this undeclared lover to Mesilla Valley. During the preceding winter they had met at many social functions in Boston and Cambridge, and he had become the willing captive of her bow and spear. He had never told his love.