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A TRAMP

ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Yi-

CHARLES ri^LUMMIS:, \%S'^''^^'^^

Author of " A New Mexico David," " Strange Corners
OF Our Country," etc.

LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, «& COMPANY

Limited

%i. gunstan's ||ott3t

Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.G.

1893

Printed by Berwick & Smith,
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

To
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

THIS LITILE INSTALMENT ON A
LARGE DEBT

u Libraiy

PREFACE

I WOULD have this unpretentious book taken
only for what it is — the wayside notes of a happy
vagabondizing. It was written in hurried moments
by the coal-oil lamps of country hotels, the tallow
dips of section-house or ranch, the smoky pine-
knots of the cowboy^s or the hunter's cabin, the
crackling fogon of a Mexican adobe, or the snapping
greasewood of my lonely campfire upon the plains ;
and from that vagrant body and spirit I have not
tried to over-civilize it. A prim chronicle of such
a trip would be no chronicle at all. Nor have I
desired to make it either an atlas or an encyclo-
paedia of the country. Economic and geographic
essays do not belong within its scope. It is merely
a truthful record of some of the experiences and
impressions of a walk across the continent — the
diary of a man who got outside the fences of civil-
ization and was glad of it. It is the simple story
of joy on legs.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/contitrampacrossOOIummrich

CONTENTS

The Start and the Reasons

PAGE

Good-bye to Malaria. — A Walk for Fun. — Amateur
Robbers and the Great Professional. — Personally-Con-
ducted Fishing. —The Beginnings of " Woolliness." —
Joy on Legs 1

Really "Out West"

My First Antelope. — Playing with Rattlesnakes. —
Up the Backbone of the Continent. — A Bootful of
Torture. — Sung to Sleep by Coyotes. — "Held Up"
again. —Making up for Lost Meals 17

In and Out among the Rockies

Trout-Fishing in the South Platte. — A Wonderful
Canal. — The Little Ranch on Plum Creek. — Playing
Pack- Mule. — Coaxing a Rabbit from his Burrow. —
A Hard Night. — Blown from a Bridge. — The Wonder-
land of the Rockies 33

X CONTENTS

IV
Mountain Days

PAGE

Up Pike's Peak.— The Highest Inhabited Building. —
The Costliest Cordwood in the World. — The Twin
Gorges. — A Relic of the Argonauts. — The Odyssey
of the Rockies. — Twice Scalped. — A Mountain Lion
in the Stable 44

Skirting the Rockies

A Shadow saves my Life. — A Fine Canon. — A Mid-
night Eight with a Wildcat. — A Frank Prayer. — Lucky
Bassick and his Claim. — A Humble Friend in Need.

— Finding a Comrade 61

Over the Divide

Scaling the Rockies. — The Trapper in Buckskin. —
Looking down the Muzzle of a Forty-four. — A Starving
Feast on Prairie-dog. — Chased by a Cougar. — Shooting
around a Corner 74

VII
The Land of the Adobe

Among the Pueblos. — The Hero-missionaries and
their Work. — Lost on the Mesas. — Ancient Santa F6.

— Miles of Gold-thread. — A Romantic History. —
Indian Letter- writers. — The Village of Tesuque 93

CONTENTS XI

VIII
The Mineral Belt

PA.OB

The Great Turquoise and its Deserted Drifts. — An
Elastic Road. — The Oldest Gold-fields. — Among the
Mines. — The Paradise of Land- Grabbers. — My Friend
the Desperado. — Mariiio and the Fat Man. — The
Deadly Crossing. — Lost in the Snow Ill

Pulling Through

A Narrow Escape. — San Antonito. — A Rich Trail. —
"Poisoned!" — My First Experience with Chile. — A
Lesson in Traveller's Courtesy. — The Pueblo of Isleta.
— Character of its Citizens 132

The Fiesta de los Muertos

A Day of the Dead in a Pueblo Town. — The Appetite
of a Departed Indian. — The Biscuits of the Angels. —
An Acrobatic Bell. — A Windfall for the Padre 144

Across the Rio Grande

Twenty Miles of Moss Agates. — A Night with the
Cowboys. — Shooting a Tarantula, — Christmas at the
Section-House. — A Board-Hunt. — The Wild Dance at
Laguna. — The City of the Cliff. — Acoma and its
People. — Buried Treasures. — A $70,000 Seat 154

XU CONTENTS

XII
From Cubero to San Mateo

PAGE

Phillips gives up. — Southwestern Eloquence. — The
Buried City of San Mateo. — Home-life on a Hacienda.
— A Mexican "April Fool." — American Citizens who
Torture Themselves and Crucify Each Other. — A New
Mexico Milking 174

XIII

Territorial Types

Mexican Superstitions. — Patapalo's Encounter with
the Original Serpent. — A Meeting with the Devil. —
A New Companion. — An Unwilling Suicide. — The
Rock Springs Rancho. — A Crucifix in Petticoats. —
Burros. — The Census of the Saints. — The New Gar-
den of the Gods.— The "Bad Man" and his Arma-
ment 196

XIV

With the Nomads

Among the Navajos. — Strange Indians. — Wandering
Jewelers. — Barbaric Silver and Costly Blankets. —
Mysterious Beads. — A Navajo Matrimonial Agency. —
Over a Cliff 212

A Streak of Lean

A Broken Arm. — The Pleasures of Self-Surgery. —
Fifty-two Miles of Torture. — Winslow. — The Difficul-

CONTENTS XIU

PAGE

ties of a Transcontinental Railroad. — A Frank Ad-
vertisement. — The Parson and tlie Stolen Cattle 225

XVI

Western Arizona

The Devil's Gorge. — Into Snow Again. — The Great
Pine Forest and its Game. — A Lucky Revolver- shot.
— The King of Black-tails. — A Canon of the ClifE-
Dwellers. — The Greatest Chasm on Earth 235

XVII

The Verge of the Desert

Exploring the Grand Canon. —A Perilous Jump.—
The Edge of the Desert. — Kindly Mrs. Kelly.— The
Tortures of Thirst. — Shadow goes Mad 244

XVIII

The Worst of It

A Fight for Life. — Shadow's Grave. — The Heart of
the Desert. — The Story the Skull told me 255

XIX

On the Home Stretch

A Desert Cut-OfE. — The One Good Chum. — Plucky
Munier. — Days of Horror. — Into "God's Country"
at Last 264

TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

THE START AND THE REASONS

Good-bye to Malaria. — A "Walk for Fun. — Amateur Robbers
and the Great Professional. — Personally-Conducted Fish-
ing. — The Beginnings of " Woolliness." — Joy on Legs.

But why tramp ? Are there not railroads and
Pullmans enough, that you must walk ? That is
what a great many of my friends said when they
learned of my determination to travel from Ohio
to California on foot; and very likely it is the
question that will first come to your mind in read-
ing of the longest walk for pure pleasure that is
on record. But railroads and Pullmans were in-
vented to help us hurry through life and miss most
of the pleasure of it — and most of the profit, too,
except of that jingling, only half -satisfying sort
which can be footed up in the ledger. I was after
neither time nor money, but life — not life in the
pathetic meaning of the poor health-seeker, for I

2 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

was perfectly well and a trained athlete ; but life
in the truer, broader, sweeter sense, the exhilarant
joy of living outside the sorry fences of society,
living with a perfect body and a wakened mind, a
life where brain and brawn and leg and lung all
rejoice and grow alert together. I am an Ameri-
can and felt ashamed to know so little of my own
country as I did, and as most Americans do. I was
young (twenty-six) with educated muscles and
full experience of the pleasures of long pedestrian
tours — that is, such tours as are generally deemed
long. Furthermore, I wished to remove from Ohio
to California. So here was a chance to kill several
birds with one stone; to learn more of the coun-
try and its people than railroad travel could ever
teach; to have the physical joy which only the
confirmed pedestrian knows; to have the mental
awakening of new sights and experiences ; and to
get, in this enjoyable fashion, to my new home.

These were the motives which led me to under-
take a walk of 3507 miles, occupying 143 days.
There was no wager direct or indirect ; no limita-
tion to a specified time, nor any other restriction
to make a slave of me and ruin the pleasure of the
walk. It was purely " for fun " in a good sense ;
and the most productive four months of a rather
stirring life. There was no desire for notoriety —
indeed, I found it generally more comfortable to

THE START AND THE REASONS 3

tell no one on the way my object, and thus to avoid
the stares and questions of strangers. The jour-
ney was often fatiguing, but never dull; full of
hardship and spiced with frequent danger in its
latter half, but always instructive, keenly interest-
ing, and keenly enjoyed, even at its hardest, and
it had some very hard sides. The first half need
be but briefly outlined, for it was through a well-
settled country with little adventure, and though
interesting to me, was no more noteworthy than
many other pedestrian trips in the East. But
from Colorado westward it was an exciting series
of adventures — far more of an experience than I
had at all expected. If the narrative tells only of
my own doings and impressions, you must remem-
ber that I tramped alone, so there is no one else
to share the story — except the dog whose faith-
ful chumship for 1500 adventurous miles, and
whose awful death on the desert are still its most
vivid memories. The tramp cost many times the
amount of a first-class passage by rail ; yet in view
of the time covered by the expedition, the exuber-
ant physical enjoyment, the rich store of informa-
tion, the whole museum of curios and mementos,
and above all the experience, it was very cheap. I
have it to thank that later, when overwork had
brought paralysis upon me, and lost me the use of
my left arm, I came back to the wilderness to study

4 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

and live among the wonderful races and scenes I
had found in walking across the continent, and there
found, at last, perfect strength again.

I had tested Ohio for two years, with results
more flattering to the climate than to me. The
^^ ancient metropolis,'^ former capital of the State
— where the conductor of the old Marietta and
Cincinnati Railroad used to bawl in at the car door
" ChilUcothe ! Fifteen minutes for quinine ! '' — had
approved itself as lovable in all other ways as it was
meteorologically accursed. Its people are delight-
ful, but its oldest inhabitant — and only bustling
one — Dad Fe vernager, quite the reverse. He never
" shook " with me but once ; but that was enough.
And so it was that I moved.

On the 11th of September, 1884, 1 left Chillicothe
by rail for Cincinnati, — that ninety miles being
already an old story, — and from the latter city
began next day my long walk. I wore a close, but
not tight, knickerbocker suit, — one who has not
learned the science of walking doesn't dream what
an aggregate hampering there is in that two feet of
flapping trousers below the knee, — with flannel
shirt, and low, light Curtis & Wheeler shoes. Peo-
ple who do not walk all the time should wear thick-
soled, heavy shoes for a tramp; but if one is to
make a business of walking, the best way is to be
as lightly shod as possible, and let the soles and

THE START AND THE REASONS 0

ankles toughen and strengthen without " crutches."
Since learning to campaign in the Apache moccasin,
I have always preferred a few days of sore feet and
subsequent light-footedness to perpetual dragging
of heavy shoes. My rifle went on by express to
Wa Keeny, Kansas, where I was to shoulder it ;
and my small valise and light, but capacious duck
knapsack made their daily marches on the broader
shoulders of the express companies. The first rule
of walking for pleasure is to walk light, and for
that reason I had long ago discarded the bicycle
for long trips. It is very pleasant to ride, but
when you have to carry your " horse," which would
be about half the time on such a journey, it is as
bad as a ball and chain. Even a real horse would
have made impossible many of my most interesting
experiences, and I had cause to be thankful a thou-
sand times that I was free from all such encum-
brances. In my pockets were writing-material,
fishing-tackle, matches, and tobacco, and a small
revolver, which was discarded for a forty-four-calibre
later on. A strong hunting-knife, the most useful of
all tools, hung at my belt, and in a money-belt next
my skin was buttoned ^300 in $2.50 gold pieces,
which would not suffer from perspiration as paper
money would, and was of small denomination, as
was necessary in a trip where the changing of a $20
piece would have cost my life in a hundred places.

b A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

It was nine o'clock Friday morning, September
12, when I turned my back on Cincinnati and
trudged down the dusty " river road " toward Law-
renceburg. Along the valley of the broad Ohio
the way was pleasant, and yet sad. The round
hills, the wide "bottoms" rustling with yellow
corn, the shimmering, peaceful river, — they were
good to the eye. But everywhere among them
were the broad, half-healed scars of a deadly wound
— the cicatrices of the stupendous flood of Febru-
ary, 1884. Through all these towns and hamlets
the treacherous river — between whose low-water
and high-water marks is the appalling gulf of sev-
enty feet — had written its grim autograph. Cin-
cinnati was too big to be ruined, though the muddy
sea covered many square miles of its area and stood
a story deep in thousands of its buildings. But
the little towns for three hundred miles have never
recovered from that unprecedented avalanche of
waters. Many of them will never fully recover,
for they live in yearly dread of a new visitation.

It might be interesting to detail my experiences
in trudging across the corner of Ohio, the whole
length of Indiana and Illinois ; but it would make
this story too long, and it were better that the
space be saved for the greater interest and excite-
ment of the tramp in the farther West. The most
prominent memory of the first week is — sore feet !

THE START AND THE REASONS 7

I had been walking a good deal for years before
starting on the tramp ; but the ground was burned
up with drought, and the weather was still very-
hot; and walking all day, day after day, on that
baking surface soon made my feet sore as one huge
boil. But the experienced walker does not nurse
such blisters. If you sit down and cure them, they
come back as soon as you resume the march. If
you will shut your teeth and trudge on, and bear
the extreme pain for a few days, the rebellious
soles gradually toughen into self-cure, and the cure
is permanent throughout the journey. So I limped
ahead, with very sorry grimaces and a sorrier gait,
but without giving up, and by the time I stood in
Missouri my feet were as happy as all the rest of
my body. A sprain of my ankle just at starting
cured itself in the same way.

The weather was hardly the best for walking.
Across the first two States it was oppressively hot,
and then I had several days of trudging in a pour-
ing rain. However, it did not drench the spirits
within, and it was welcome as an experience.

Crossing the noble bridge which wades, with
giant legs of granite, across the Father of Waters
at St. Louis, I followed the general course of the
Missouri Pacific Railroad across Missouri, having
some funny experiences with back-country people ;
and at last a bit of adventure a little west of War-

8 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTIKENT

rensburg. From over the hedge of a cosy little
farmhouse a huge and savage dog leaped in pursuit
of me. He did not come to bark, — that was plain
from the first, — but on business. He evidently-
liked strangers — and liked them raw. He did not
pause to threaten or reconnoitre, but made a bee-
line for me; and when close, made a savage leap
straight at my throat. My hunting-knife chanced
to be at my hand, and as he sprang I threw up a
light switch in my left hand. He caught it in his
big jaws ; and in the same instant, with the instinct
of a boxer, I gave a desperate "upper cut" with my
hunting-knife. The strong, double-edged, eight-inch
blade caught him squarely under the throat, and the
point came out of his forehead, so fierce had been
the blow. He never made a sound except a dying
gurgle ; and tugging out the bedded blade by a
violent effort I hastened to depart, leaving him
stretched in the road.

A couple of days later two cheap tramps of the
ordinary sort "held me up" during one of my
returns to the railroad. They were burly, greasy
fellows, the first glance at whom assured me that
they were cowards, and not worth serious treat-
ment. They were both so much larger than I that
they did not deem it worth while to take even a
club to me, and one of them grabbed my coat with
sublime confidence. My weapons were handy, but

THE START AND THE REASONS 9

unneeded. The largest fellow stood just in front
of the rail, so loose, so unbalanced, that it would
have been a sinful waste of opportunity not to
tumble him. Just as he reached his left hand for
my watch, biff! biff! with left and right — his heels
caught on the rail and down he went as only a big
and clumsy animal can fall. Then I whipped out
the knife and started for the amateur robbers,
with a murderous face, but chuckling inwardly — a
chuckle which broke into open laughter as they
fled incontinently down the track, their tatters
streaming behind upon the wind. It was cheap
fun and no danger, for I was armed and they were
not; and the laugh lasts whenever I recall their
comical cowardice.

At Independence, Missouri, I heard a good deal
of the notorious train robbers and murderers, the
James "boys," and had a long talk with Frank
James, who was the brains of the gang, as his
unlamented brother Jesse was its authority. He
looked very little like the typical desperado — a
tallish, slender, angular, thin-chested, round-shoul-
dered, dull-eyed fellow, of cunning but not repulsive
face, and an interesting talker. The home nest of
the outlaws was about Independence, and many of
the citizens who were not their sympathizers had
participated in some of the exciting attempts to
capture the criminals. Frank was as free as you

10 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

or I, a prominent figure at the country fairs, and a
rather influential personage, — all of which struck
me as a trifle odd. I found him in the post-office,
reading his big bundle of mail — most of which, as
the chirography betrayed, was from the "softer"
sex. His hands were loug, taper, and flexible ; his
feet particularly "well-bred." He talked unreserv-
edly of his trials, and was very sarcastic about the
then fashionable habit of attributing to his " gang "
most of the crimes in the United States. I also
ran across several of the self-appointed heroes who
had sought and conscientiously failed to catch the
miscreants after their various robberies and mur-
ders, and heard of their blood-curdling adventures.
For several days after leaving Kansas City
where I made a very brief stay, — since cities are
plenty enough, and I was walking to see some-
thing less hackneyed and more interesting, — my
course lay along the pretty valley of the Kansas
River, properly named the Kaweily, but in common
parlance the Kaw; and very pleasant days they
were. My feet were all right now, and there was
no drawback to absolute enjoyment — except the
mosquitos, which hung about me in clouds, biting
even through my thick, long stockings, whose red
was almost lost under their swarm, But that was
for one day only. At Lawrence, Kansas, I bought a
piece of netting, sewed it into a long cylinder open

THE START AND THE REASONS 11

at the bottom, and gathered at the top so that it
would just go over the crown of ray broad hat, from
whose brim it fell to my feet. After that the
bloodthirsty little pests got no more satisfaction
from my veins.

At Lawrence, too, I visited the Indian school, then
just being completed, where some of my swarthy
young friends of later years are now being edu-
cated, and also witnessed some fishing which seemed
very odd. The Kaw abounds in huge cat-fish,
ranging as high sometimes as one hundred and fifty
pounds, and they are fond of lying in the wild waters
below the sheeting of the Lawrence dam. There are
three or four old boatmen who go fishing for them
under water, and with curious tackle — only a big,
sharp, steel hook securely strapped to the right
arm. Diving into the current, they grope along the
bottom until they touch the eel-like hide of one of
these "hornpouts," and then jab the hook into the
fish wherever they can, like a gaff. There is then
a fearful struggle, for a large fish has great strength
when in his native element ; and shortly before my
visit one of the most expert of these diver-fisher-
men hooked a "cat" too big for him, and was
dragged down and drowned before he could unstrap
the hook from his arm and thus escape.

I made quick work of "stepping off" Kansas;
and, after the Kaw Valley had fallen behind me, with

12 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

daily growing interest. A couple of hundred miles
from Kansas City it began to feel as if I were get-
ting "really out West." In one day I stepped
upon a young rattlesnake — whicli was luckily too
cold and sluggish to strike me before I could jump
off — and saw my first "dog town," with its chat-
tering rodents and stolid owls, my first sage-brush
and cactus and cattle rancho. And the Plains im-
pressed me greatly. They seemed lonelier and
more hopeless than mid-ocean. Such an infinity of
nothing — such a weight of silence ! The outlook
was endless ; it seemed as if one could fairly see
the day after to-morrow crawling up that infinite
horizon !

The 15,000-acre ranch seemed very big to me
then, — it was before the farther West had accus-
tomed me to 100,000 acres and upwards, — and was
very interesting with its 8000 sheep, 500 high-bred
cattle, a score of cowboys, and other things in pro-
portion. The night I was there the coyotes jumped
a high fence and made sad havoc among the valu-
able sheep in the corral ; and this seemed still more
as if I were coming to the borders of an interesting
land.

At Ellsworth, which was then a rather " hard "
village, I first found the cowboy dandy in all his
glory of ^20 sombrero, his fringed and beaded dog-
skin coat and chapparejos (seatless overalls to pro-

THE START AND THE REASONS 13

tect the legs from thorns), his costly boots with
ridiculous French heels, his silver-inlaid spurs
jingling with silver bells, and the pair of pearl-
mounted six-shooters at his belt. I was shy of
him at first, but have since found him a very good
fellow in his rough way, and have experienced at
his hands in the Southwest countless pleasures and
no troubles.

From Ellsworth I made a strong spurt, just to
see what I could do in twenty-four hours. The
conditions were very favorable — the hard, smooth
turf roads are admirable to walk upon, and I was
in perfect trim and unincumbered. In twenty-four
hours I had trotted to Ellis, an even seventy-nine
miles. The distance was made in twenty-one
hours, and the record would have been better had
I not fallen asleep when I sat down to rest, and
thus lost three hours. Walking and I were on
good terms now, and every day scored from thirty
to forty miles; but that spurt from Ellsworth to
Ellis was the longest day's walk I ever made.

At Hays City, a cowboy who had gambled away
his money, pistols, and pony concluded to walk
with me to Wallace, where he had a brother that
he " reckoned would stake him." He had lost his
money at a pleasant bull-fight at Caldwell the pre-
ceding Sunday, and was evidently used to very
tough companionship; but I found him good-

14 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

hearted, lenient toward my ignorance in matters
whereof he was expert, and, altogether, a very-
spicy and entertaining comrade for the one hun-
dred and thirty-one miles in which he shared my
"bed and board." Walking was agony to him in
those tight, tall-heeled boots, but he was game to
the ends of his toes, and hobbled on so pluckily
that I gave up my haste and adopted a gait which
was easier for him. At Wa Keeny I took up my
rifle and bought a blanket, as the nights were get-
ting cold. It was a big one while it had to be car-
ried, but when cowboy Bill Henke and I both had
to curl up in it at night it was very small, and I
could get neither enough of it to keep out the
winds of the plains nor to escape from my com-
panion, who nearly snored my head off nightly.
But we had a very good time by day, popping
prairie-dogs and snakes and herons, watching the
big balls of the curious " tumble-weed " which dries
up in the fall, cracks from its stem, and at the in-
vitation of the first vagrant wind goes tumbling
somersaults off over the plains to visit its relatives
maybe a hundred miles away — racing with that
most agile of snakes, the "blue-racer," or marvel-
ling at the speed with which his horny-nosed
cousin, the "auger-snake," will go down through
the hard dry turf, getting himself out of sight in a
very few moments.

THE START AND THE REASONS 15

At Wallace I left Henke to his brother and
pushed on alone over the bare, dry, endless, water-
less plains, sometimes reaching a wee and shabby
slab town, but more often sleeping out on the
crisp, brown grass. It was getting up in the
world, too. In the less than 500 miles from Kan-
sas City I had been steadily climbing an inclined
plane, and was now nearly 4000 feet above the sea.
Indeed, after passing the Colorado line, there were
very few days in the next 1200 miles when I was
at an altitude much less than 5000 feet.

A few years before, the vast plains of the South-
west had been black with countless herds of buffalo ;
but the pot-hunter, the hide-hunter, and, worst of
all, the soulless fellow who killed for the mere sav-
agery of killing, had already exterminated this
lordly game. The last of the buffaloes was killed
at Cheyenne Wells just as I passed — a grizzled
old bull, who was the sole survivor of his nomad
race. But the turf was cut everywhere still with
their deep, narrow trails ; and every now and then
I came to the grass-grown "wallows," where the
great bovine hunchbacks had scooped out " bowls "
in the turf by revolving upon their backs, to be rid
of the tormenting swarms of gnats.

I had grown robust as a young bison myself.
" Out-of-doors " is a glorious tonic, and when I
rose each morning from the brown lap of Mother

16 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Earth, I seemed to have realized the fable of An-
tseus. My lungs were growing even larger, my
eyes were good for twice their usual range, and
every sinew stood out on my skin like a little
strand of cord. As for my feet, they were much
in the condition of those of the barefoot Georgia
girl of whom Porte Crayon tells as standing by the
hearth. "Sal!" cried her mother, "the's a live
coal under yo' foot ! " Sal did not budge, but
looked up stupidly, and drawled, '^ Which foot,
mam ? "

EEALLY "OUT WEST^'

My First Antelope. — Playing with Rattlesnakes. — Up the
Backbone of the Continent. — A Bootful of Torture. —
Sung to Sleep by Coyotes. — "Held Up" again. —
Making up for Lost Meals.

Trudging up the long, smooth acclivity, pausing
now and then for a shot at the flocks of sandhill
cranes that purred far overhead, I stepped across
the imaginary line into Colorado — my fifth State
— and in the cool, enchanted dusk of an October
evening swung into First View. The "town" con-
sisted of a section house, where a supper of rancid
bacon, half-raw potatoes, leaden bread flounced with
sorghum, and coffee which looked exactly like some
alkaline pools I wot of and tasted about as cheer-
ful, encouraged my lonely belt to reassert itself.
There was no temptation to sleep in the infested
house, and after supper I found a luxurious little
gully in the grassy plain, gathered a little resin-
weed for a pillow, spread my sleeping-bag on the

18 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

soft sand, and turned in. Just as I was dozing off
a tiny patter roused me, and, opening my eyes, I
saw the sharp, inquisitive face of a coyote looking
down at me from the bank not live feet above. I
slid my hand softly to my forty-four, but he was
off like a shot, carrying with him the pretty pelt
for which I was so anxious.

Next morning, before the sun had climbed above
the bare, brown divides of Kansas, I rolled out of
"bed," danced about a few moments in the cold
morning air to unlimber my joints, and then
hastened to introduce my chattering teeth to a
breakfast which would have swamped any less
burglar-proof stomach. Its only merit was that it
was warming. As the day burst into bloom, the
section people pointed out the faint patch of white
upon the far-off western sky from which First
View takes its name — the noble head of Pike's
Peak, which half a century ago was one of the sad-
dest and most romantic goals toward which man
ever struggled. It is nearly one hundred and fifty
miles from First View.

Then, filling the long magazine of my Winches-
ter and stowing a quart bottle of water in one of
the capacious pockets of my coat, I struck out at a
rapid gait northwestwardly, desiring to hunt well
out into the plains and still get back to Kit Carson,
fifteen miles ahead, before night. It is no easy

REALLY "OUT WEST" 19

walking upon the plains at this season of the year.
The short, brown buffalo grass soon polishes one's
soles till they shine like glass, and directly the
feet slip, so that it is rather hard to tell whether
the step carries one farther forward or the slide
farther back.

Ten slippery miles must have been traversed in
this dubious and aggravating locomotion before my
eyes rested on the object of their search. Three
or four miles off, in a low divide, were four tiny
gray dots. They had no apparent shape, nor did
they seem to move ; but the hunter's eye — even
when it has been abused by years in chasing the
alphabet across a white page — is not easily fooled.
They were antelope — and the next thing was to
get them.

The theories of antelope-hunting were suffi-
ciently familiar to me by reading, but when put
into practice they did not fully bear out the books.
A big red bandanna, tied to the end of my bamboo
staff, was soon flapping to the wind, and I lay fully
an hour behind a handy rosette of the Spanish
dagger, innocently expecting my game to come
straight up to me — as they should have done
according to all precedent in the stories. Their
attention soon grasped my signal, and they did
sidle toward me by degrees, demurely nibbling the
dry grass as they advanced. But they had prob-

20 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ably seen auction flags before, and after perhaps a
mile of tlieir herbivorous advance they stopped,
and even began grazing away from me. It was
plain that any further advances toward an ac-
quaintance must come from me.

Leaving the banner snapping in the wind, I
crawled backward on my stomach some hundred
yards to the foot of my low ridge, and then, behind
its shelter, started on a dog-trot up the ravine. For
half a mile or so this shelter lasted, and thence I
had to crawl flat on my face from sage-brush to cac-
tus and from cactus to sage-brush, for fully a mile,
dragging the rifle along the ground, and frequently
stabbed by inhospitable cactus needles. At last,
only three hundred yards away, I pushed the Win-
chester over a little tuft of blue-stem ; but before
my eye could run along the sight, the buck gave a
quick stamp, and off went the four like the wind.
It was a very sore hunter that clambered stiffly to
his feet and shook an impotent fist at those vanish-
ing specks, already half a mile away, and limped
back to where the flag and coat were lying.

But ill-luck can never outweary perseverance;
and a couple of hours later came my revenge. Just
as my head came level with the top of an unusually
high swell a sight caught my eye which made me
drop as if shot. There in the hollow, not over two
hundred and fifty yards away, were three antelope

REALLY "OUT WEST" 21

grazing from ine — an old buck with two-inch prongs
on his antlers, a young buck, and a sleek doe. By-
good luck they did not suspect my presence, and it
must have been minutes that I watched the pretty
creatures through a tuft of grass before I pulled the
trigger. As the smoke blew back past me I saw
the old buck spring high in the air, run a few rods,
and pitch forward upon the earth. His companions
stood bewildered for a second, unknowing which
way to run, and that hesitation was fatal to the
young buck. He started north, but before he had
run a hundred feet another bullet broke his spine.
Before another cartridge could jump from magazine
to barrel the doe was out of sight.

Beautiful animals are these shy rovers of the
plains, graceful and slender as a greyhound, and
fleeter of foot. I can think of nothing else so agile.
They seem, when scared, not to run, but rather to
fly upon the wind like exaggerated thistle-downs.
They stand about three feet high, and weigh from
forty to sixty pounds, but the smallest seemed to
me much nearer six tons by the time I had " packed "
him twenty miles. It took an hour's work, and the
scouring of several acres to get together enough
sage-brush, blue-stem and the bulbous roots of the
soapweed to build a fire which would roast a few
pounds of steaks, and despite the bitter ashes with
which it was covered, meat never tasted better.

22 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

The later afternoon brought another experience
— different, but no less exciting. A lucky shot
brought down a large hawk at very long range,
and I went over to get him. Coming back through
a patch of thick, tall, gumbo grass to where my
antelope and blanket lay, I was wading carelessly
along when a sharp sk-r-r-r ! under my very feet,
sent me about a yard into the air. There were my
tracks in the broken stems on each side of a big
rattler. I had stepped right across him ! !N"ow
he had thrown himself into a coil and was in
unmistakably bad humor, with angry head and the
dry whir of his tail, which moved so fast as to
look like a yellow sheet. From boyhood I have
had a curious affection for snakes — an attraction
which invariably prompts me to play with them
awhile before killing them when the one-sided romp
is over. Even the scar of a rattlesnake bite on
my forefinger, and the memory of its torture, have
not taught me better.

Now I poked out the muzzle of my rifle to his
angry snakeship, and no eye could follow the swift
flash in which he smote it, his fangs striking the
barrel with a little tick, as though a needle had
been stabbed at a pane of glass. I know of noth-
ing more dreamily delicious than to tease a rattler
with some stick or other object just long enough
to keep those grim fangs from one's own flesh. I

REALLY "OUT WEST" 23

have stood for hours thus, thoughtless of discom-
fort, carried away by the indescribable charm of
that grisly presence. Perhaps the consciousness of
jjlaying with death and as his master contributes
something of that charm. Be that as it may, no
one who has ever played with a rattlesnake can
fully disbelieve the superstition that it fascinates
its prey. I have felt it often — a sweet dreami-
ness which has tempted me to drop the stick and
reach out my arms to that beautiful death. Un-
luckily for them, the field mouse and the rabbit
have not a mulish man's will.

Talk of grace in the cat, the deer, and the swan,
why, they are lubbers all beside that wondrous
liquid form. Two-thirds of its length is coiled in
a triple circle, the beaded tail forward, and up on
the other circumference, while opposite and a
trifle "eccentric" (as a machinist would say),
towers a something which no man can describe.
Afterward you may see that it was only a couple
of feet of body, with an ugly little delta of
a head; but in life it appears a distinct and
superior creature. No other creature in the world,
save it wear feathers, is capable of such absolutely
unhampered motion. It swings, sweeps, waves
from side to side, backward and forward, in liquid
sinuousness that is so beautiful as to seem unreal.
The tiny bead eyes, which never wink, glitter like

24 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

living diamonds; the strange, pink mouth, open
wide and flat as a palm, twinkles its flexile thread
of a tongue ; and through all burrs the weird, dry
kr-r-r-r ! of that mysterious tail.

When our play was over, and it was time to
hasten toward Kit Carson, I pinned the neck of
the snake to the ground with the broad muzzle of
the rifle, and reached around for my hunting-knife
to chop off that unsafe head. Just as I was stoop-
ing thus above him he writhed loose, and quicker
than thought made a lunge at my face. That
hideous open mouth, which in that instant seemed
larger than my hand, came within three or four
inches of my nose j but luckily he struck short —
for my wild jump backward was not a tithe swift
enough to have escaped. But I must have made a
considerable dent in the atmosphere. At last I
got him pinned down again and finished him. Did
you ever examine the wonderful adaptation of a
rattler's head for its purposes of death ? The
teeth are like those of ordinary snakes, so tiny as
to be hardly visible, and are only to assist in
swallowing, for no snake chews. At the very outer
rim of the upper jaw and a little back from the
front are the fangs — two tiny points, fine as a
cambric needle and about a quarter of an inch in
visible length. They are imbedded in a strong,
white, elastic muscle, and when the mouth is closed

they lie flat along its roof, pointing backward.
Opening the mouth throws them forward, rigid
and ready for action. They still "rake" back-
ward, and therefore strike far more effectively.
At the very back of the head, on each side of the
neck, are the little bags which hold that strange,
colorless, tasteless essence of death, and a very
tiny duct leads from each to the base of its cor-
responding fang, which is hollow its whole length.
The action of striking squeezes the bags, and a
few drops of poison spurt in an infinitesimal
stream, but with great force, through the duct and
the hollow needles. I have been hit three feet
away by the fluid, when a snake which shared my
room for a year struck at me from the other side
of a wire screen. The poison-bags give the head
of a venomous snake that breadth at the back
which make it a sort of triangle ; and if you see
any serpent without that, you may be sure he is
not dangerous. The head of a harmless snake
looks but little wider than his neck.

An hour later I killed a very tiny snake, only
ten inches long, but with six rattles. He had the
prettiest skin I ever saw ; and he was so wee I
" didn't know he was loaded." He was only half
dead when I reached Kit Carson, and all that
dozen miles was wriggling at the end of a string
tied to a leg of the antelope on my shoulder, his

26 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

spasmodic mouth opening and shutting close to
my fingers. I removed them from this careless
proximity very hastily when the station agent,
shouted, "AVhy, you fool, he's twice as pizen as
the big one ! " The skin of the larger one served
me as a hat band, until a mouse devoured it for
me — as they have many such trophies since. I
don't know why mice should be so fond of eating
snake-skins — unless it is their only revenge on
their traditional foe.

Kit Carson, which I reached that night, was a
sad example of the " floating towns " of early Colo-
rado. When it was the terminal of the track, it
was a rough, bustling place of 6000 people. But
soon the railroad poked a few miles further
through the brown plains ; the houses of Kit Car-
son were torn down and moved to the new ter-
minus ; and so it went on ; and the cities of a day
had soon left only a station and a dugout or two,
up to which the coyotes sneaked impudently as of
yore.

The Big Sandy "flows" through Kit Carson.
That is to say, there is a broad bed of parched
sand, white with alkali dust, stretching along the
plain, but no water visible. Scoop out a few hand-
fuls of sand, however, and you will come to water,
brackish with alkali, and effective enough to purge
the ancient cities of the plain. That

REALLY "OUT WEST" 27

lows the track for about fifty miles, and is the
most navigable stream in Eastern Colorado. I
had not seen a real stream since I left little
Ellis, three hundred and thirty-seven miles from
Denver. There were one or two beds with
occasional pools in their hollows, but nothing
better in all that long, arid stretch. There is one
little muddy, cattle-infested pond near Kit Carson,
whose acre and a half of surface was covered
thick with fat mallard ducks, of which I managed
to get a couple. Here also I killed my first centi-
pede — a hideous fellow, six inches long, a quarter
of an inch across the back, and with about a hun-
dred bow-legs, each tipped with a black fang. Let
one walk across your hand undisturbed, and he
leaves a highly inflamed red track. Hit him dur-
ing that march, and he will sink those hundred
fangs into your flesh, and it will rot away and drop
from the bones. Rattlesnakes and huge, hairy
" bush-spiders " are also common enough ; but the
most dreaded creature in all that wilderness is the
skunk ! The natives are mortally afraid of these
pretty but unpleasant fellows, and declare that
their bite is sure death. The bite of any animal —
even man — when in a rage is highly poisonous,
and I dare say the black-and-white terror of the
plains largely deserves his bad repute. He is very
ready to attack men. The wildest laugh I ever

28 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

had was at a lonely rancho one moonlit night
when we all slept out of doors. I awoke to see
the undressed ranchero fleeing about the house as
though the very deuce were after him, yelling
" murder ! " at every jump, and a big striped skunk
loping after him, in great apparent enjoyment of
the race.

Saturday night brought me to Bo-ye-ro — a little
water tank thirty miles west of Kit Carson — after
a long, vain hunt for antelopes. The only game I
saw was one "cotton-tail" (the small, ordinary
rabbit), and he was in such a sorry pickle that
I made no offer to shoot him. A huge, dark eagle,
with swooping wings that must have spread over
six feet, had his big, sharp talons fixed in the poor
little fellow's wool, and flopped along over him as
he ran. How the rabbit yelled! In that still,
open air you might have heard him a mile, and his
screams were almost human in their agony. Be-
fore the great bird had flown away with his quarry,
however, he spied me and soared off, while poor
cotton-tail limped to his hole to die — for a rabbit
never survives even a trifling scratch.

My stomach is never likely to forget those days
across the Colorado plains. Meals were procurable
only at the far-apart section-houses — and such
meals ! Had it not been for the rifle I should
probably have been starved out. Tough and

EEALLY "OUT WEST '' 29

ancient corned beef; bread the color and consist-
ency of Illinois mud ; coffee suggestive of the Ohio
"on a raise"; fermented molasses; butter which
needs no testimonial from me, being old enough to
speak for itself ; and potatoes with all the water
the rivers lack — that was the range of the bill of
unfair. A fifty-verse song, which one of the
section-men at White Horse sang, touched a re-
sponsive chord of my abused within : —

" His bread was nothin' but corndodger.
His beef you couldn't chaw,
But he charged us fifty cents a meal
In the State of Arkansaw ! "

As for the sleeping, the softest beds to be found
— and the only clean ones — were the sand and
the grass ; and upon them I stretched my sleeping-
bag nightly, writing till late by the wavering fire
of grass and little roots, and then turning over for
so sweet a sleep as beds of down seldom know.
My feet, too, shared the adversity, though now so
tough. In hunting I was continually stepping —
when my eyes were busy — into patches of the
prickly pear, and more than once the maddening
needles pierced shoes and foot. Once, when I
stumbled and fell several feet into such a patch,
hundreds of the sting-like daggers went half an
inch through either shoe, pointing forward. I
could not cut off the shoe and walk barefoot a

30 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

hundred miles to a store, and to walk in them was
equally impossible. So they had to be pulled off —
an indescribable torture, which was like pulling
out violently a hundred bedded fish-hooks — and
then the needles had to be carefully plucked from
the shoe.

But for these drawbacks there were equal atone-
ments. That high, dry air was an exhilarating joy
to the swelling lungs ; and the eyes, sharpened
daily to their long-forgotten keenness, feasted full
on a sight whose memory will never dim. The
snowy range of the Rockies, shutting the whole
western sky from north to south, far as sight could
reach — dazzling white by day, melting to indescrib-
able purples at dawn and dusk, distant, severe, and
cold — they are the picture of a lifetime. For three
hundred miles north and south those serrate battle-
ments split the sky, with here and there the sentinel
heads of loftier peaks upreared. Ninety miles to
the south stood the vast pyramid of Pike's Peak,
its great gray head rising from the brown plains
like a giant. North as far, frowned mighty Long's
Peak, with broad shoulders overshadowing all its
fellows, and head among the clouds ; and between
their host of brethren.

Pike's Peak is the most famous, but not the
highest of the Colorado mountains. The altitude
of the Sierra Blanca is 14,464 feet ; Mount Evans,

14,430 ; Gray's Peak, 14,341 ; Long's, 14,271 ; Mount
Wilson, 14,289 ; La Plata, 14,362 ; Uncompahgre,
14,235; Mount Harvard, 14,151; Mount Yale,
14,121 ; Mount of the Holy Cross, 14,176 ; Culebra,
14,049; Pike's Peak, 14,147. There are scores of
other peaks from 10,000 to 13,000 feet high, and
countless " foothills," of which each is taller than
our noblest mountain in the East.

Near Magnolia a hard, mean-faced, foul-mouthed
fellow met me, and before I fairly noticed him, had
a cocked revolver under my nose with a demand to
" give up my stuff." I was considerably worried,
but a look into his eyes convinced me that he
lacked what is called, in the expressive idiom of
the plains, "sand." " Well," I drawled, " I haven't
very much, but what there is you are welcome to,"
and unbuttoning my coat deliberately, as if for a
pocketbook, I jerked out the big, hidden forty-four,
knocked the pistol from his fist with the heavy barrel
in the same motion, and gave him a turn at looking
down a muzzle. Now he was as craven as he had
been abusive, and begged and knelt and blubbered
like the cowardly cur he was. I pocketed his pistol,
which is still among my relics, gave him a few
hearty kicks and cuffs for the horrible names he
had called me when he was "in power," and left
him grovelling there.

So, striding light across the bare, dry plateaus,

32 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

over the alkali-frosted sands of waterless rivers,
glad in the glorious air and the glorious view,
knocking over an antelope now and then, compan-
ioned by squeaky prairie dogs and sung to sleep
by the vociferous coyotes, I came, on the 23d of
October, to handsome, wide-awake Denver, the
Queen City of the plains.

Here I met my family, who had come by the
swifter but less interesting Pullman, and we had
four happy days together before they started for
San Francisco by the Central Pacific, and I donned
my knapsack again and turned my tough feet south-
ward. And what a glorious revenge those four days
in civilization gave my stomach upon its weeks of
adversity ! The waiters at the Windsor used to
stand along the wall in respectful awe to see that
wilderness of dishes before me explored, conquered,
and finally overwhelmed !

Ill

IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES

Trout-Fishing in the South Platte. — A Wonderful Canal. —
The Little Ranch on Plum Creek. — Playing Pack-Mule.

— Coaxing a Rabbit from his Burrow. — A Hard Night.

— Blown from a Bridge. — The Wonderland of the
Rockies.

With an increased and decidedly irksome load I
walked south from Denver, planning to reach Colo-
rado Springs as speedily as possible, and thence
make numerous side tours; but we spin not the
thread of Clotho. At Acequia (a town named after
the Spanish irrigating ditch, and popularly pro-
nounced Saky) an accidental chat with the section
foreman threw me a fortnight out of my course.
He said there were "trout over behind yan hog-
backs"— pointing to a long,' rocky wall at the
foot of the range, some twenty miles away. Trout ?
Trout! Why, for three years I had been fairly
starving for a bout with those beauties — a hunger
which the catfish and " lamplighters " of Ohio had

34 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

utterly failed to satisfy. Hardly pausing to thank
the herald of joyful tidings, I took a bee-line across
the rough plain at a five-mile gait, forgetful of din-
ner, my load — and indeed of everything save my
polka-dotted idols over yonder. The range looked
but two or three miles away at the outset; but
when I had walked rapidly for three solid hours
and the dusk was closing in, it seemed farther
away than ever, and the wolf began to gnaw at my
belt. Just in the edge of night I found a shabby
little cabin on Plum Creek, whose kindly, inquisi-
tive folk found a good supper and a good bed for
me. But my heart sank when they declared with
great positiveness that there were no trout within
two days' march, and they "reckoned they mout
know, bein's they'd lived in them mount'ns goin'
on twenty year." So to-morrow I was to have no
trout, but only that pretty tramp back to the rail-
road. I dreamt that night that a monster trout
was swallowing the section foreman ; and I heartily
wished the dream might come true.

But with the morning came better thoughts. I
would see for myself — and sunrise found me
scrambling over the steep, rocky foothills toward
Turk's Head. At two in the afternoon a sandy
side ravine brought me suddenly out into the bot-
tom of the Platte Cailon, beside the shouting river.
A glorious little stream it is — clear and confident

IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 35

and headstrong as youth, cold as ice, swift as an
arrow, rollicking noisily along the tortuous, boul-
der-strewn channel it has chiselled, down through a
thousand feet of granite.

Two minutes later I was trimming the branches
from a long, heavy young cottonwood, and attach-
ing a line. Grasshoppers were plenty in the canon
— and soon plenty in the case of my harmonica.
Just where a huge ledge jutted twenty feet into
a deep pool of delicious green I made the first
cast. As the 'hopper fell within a foot of the
water, whizz ! came a flash from the depths high
into the air, smote the bait with dexterous tail, and
drove it straight into an open mouth. Splash!
Swish ! Off went the line, sawing through the
deep water, while that twenty-pound mollusk of a
pole bent fairly double. What a glorious electricity
it is that tingles through your fingers at that first
strike of a trout. The pickerel of our lily-flecked
New England ponds seizes his prey with a barely
comparable rush, but then he goes loafing away,
mincing at the minnow critically, dubious whether
to swallow or no ; and when you snub him he soon
pulls in like a limber stick. The bass, be he
green, striped, or black, fights doggedly to the last,
but he is too clumsy. But when King Trout — the
athlete, the sage, and the hero of fish — makes up
his cunning head that he'll risk that specious fly,

36 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

then look out for music ! From the instant he first
touches the hook, until you tear him, still fighting,
from his rippling kingdom, there is no time to
breathe. Yoar line hisses down stream as if tied
to a bullet. Then as swiftly it tears up against
the current. If there be a snag, a root, a tangling
rock in that whole pool around which Sir Trout
may tie your line in a double knot, rest assured he
will do it — unless you hold a steady rein on him.
He will double, leap high above the water, dive to
the rocky bottom, tiirn, twist, and jerk with infinite
ingenuity, to tear the cruel Limerick from his jaw.
And if at last you lift him upon the bank in safety
you need feel no shame that in the contest of wits
it has taken your very keenest to beat that cold-
blooded little fellow.

It took me full five minutes to land my game,
though he weighed but three-quarters of a pound ;
and when he flopped beside me on the bank I threw
up my hat and whooped and danced as wildly
as twenty years before. During the afternoon I
caught twenty more, and in that whole noble string
one could not tell " t'other from which," so exactly
were they of a size. Away up on the headwaters,
back of Pike's Peak, in a rough and trackless wil-
derness, a few days later, I found much larger trout.
The Kocky Mountain trout are not nearly so beau-
tiful as the princes of the Maine and New Hamp-

IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 37

shire brooks, of which they look like a blurred and
faded reprint, but none the less they are famous
sport.

The canon of the South Platte is about thirty
miles long; and though tame compared with the
inner gorges of the range, is wild and clitf -crowded,
and rock-strewn and tortuous enough to impress
the most careless. The sinuous narrow-gauge Den-
ver and South Park Railroad winds like a steel
snake along the bank of the noisy little river,
wriggling between huge boulders, crawling around
the feet of granite giants that the rains and frosts
of ten million years have carved from the eternal
rock. The shaggy cliffs rise a thousand feet above
the restless stream, and here and there are mirrored
in the pellucid pools.

Near the northern end of this cafion is the begin-
ning of a remarkable canal — the " high-line " irri-
gating ditch. This canal had then a total length
of eighty-three miles, a width of twenty feet, and
carried 1184 cubic feet of water per second past a
given point. For miles its bed is hewn from the
living rock, and at one point in the canon it burrows
through the heart of a great mountain of red granite
by a tunnel seven hundred feet long, twenty wide,
and ten high. In Colorado, as in New Mexico,
Arizona, and much more of the vast Southwest, the
rainfall is too slight to nourish the crops, and the

38 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

necessity for irrigation has led to the construction
of countless thousands of miles of ditches to bring
water to the thirsty fields.

After a long and glorious mingling with the trout
of the South Platte, I finally got back to the little
rancho on Plum Creek, where my pack awaited me.
As I attacked a late and lonely supper, the gawky
son of the family sat up to the table and leisurely
dressed my fish under my very nose — but a hunter's
stomach does not mind these little things. My host
was a " York Yankee," shaggy-browed and weath-
ered, inclined to be sociable, but never spendthrift
of words.

In the seven years ending with 1878, Colorado
was devoured by grasshoppers. Her corn-fields
disappeared as by fire ; the grass which is the life
of her millions of horses, cattle, and sheep was
stripped to the roots, and her trees shivered in
leafless nakedness. One July morning in 1875 my
old Yankee drove off to Denver. When he got
home next evening his twenty acres of corn was
absolutely wiped from off the face of the earth, his
cattle range was bare ground, and not a straw was
left of his tall stacks. He showed me where the
ravenous insects had even gnawed half through
the sheathing at the bottom of the outer walls of
the house.

So the old man rambled on j and at last, while I

IK AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 39

resumed my writing at the rickety table, the honest
ranchero and his buxom spouse disrobed and sought
their virtuous couch in the nearest corner. They
had a few cattle, and lived by selling butter, cord-
wood, and railroad ties — the latter hewed in the
mountains and hauled out by gaunt but tireless
little ponies over " roads '^ more unspeakable than
those of the Virginia hills. Their rancho was
school-lands, which they neither bought nor rented,
but had simply to pay taxes upon j and they were
condoling with a neighbor who had leased some
of these lands and had to pay a yearly rental of
twenty-five cents an acre.

My writing kept me busy till within two hours
of sunset next day, and then there was a rough
seventeen miles between me and the necessary post-
office. Over hills and valleys, gullies, irrigating
ditches, and cactus I stumbled on through the dark,
steering by the stars ; and at last reached Sedalia,
just in time for the mail, but wet, lame, and raven-
ous. A pair of scales showed me that my load —
the heavy rifle and six-shooter, cartridge-belt; knap-
sack, blanket, change of shirt and stockings, etc.,
weighed thirty-seven pounds; and that at once
struck me as "riding a free horse to death."
Thenceforth all that could possibly be spared went
ahead from station to station on the broader shoul-
ders of the express company ; and many a night I

40 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

nearly froze for want of the blanket which was sure
to be ahead of or behind me.

Lightened by twelve grateful pounds I resumed
the march next day, zigzagging for a week from road
to mountains and back again, as the whim seized
me, finding enough game to be interesting, and en-
joying every moment as keenly as only trained mus-
cles and careless mind can enjoy. One cotton-tail
that I shot near Castle Kock rolled down his bur-
row dead, and would have escaped me but for a
boyhood lesson from old Hugh, back in the White
Mountains. With the end of my staff I could just
feel the limp fur at the bottom of the hole. Wet-
ting the end of the stick with my mouth, I put it
down until it touched bunny, and twisted it around
gently a few times. Then, when I drew it care-
fully out, there was the rabbit at the end, bound by
a delicate cable of his own silky hair.

The full moon was high overhead as I wound
through the lonely canon of Plum Creek ; and mid-
way of that bare defile my ears pricked up at an
old familiar sound, for years unheard and almost
forgotten — the long, weird howl of the gray wolf.
It is a cry to make the blood curdle ; but there was
no answering yell, and after the first startled grab
at the butt of my forty-four I plodded on.

At Larkspur that night there awaited me a cold
welcome. It was bitter weather. Under the water-

m AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 41

tank the ice was three inches thick, and the savage
wind roared down the canon in icy gusts. There
was no place to sleep save in the "bunk-house."
That had one occupant, and he had one blanket.
My own was in Colorado Springs, and not even a
gunny-sack was to be found to mitigate the night.
The old track-walker shivered under his one tat-
tered cover, and would have no fire in the battered
stove ; he said it " would make the boogs too
wa-akeful." I froze on the bare planks till mid-
night and then in desperation took the law and the
stove into my own hands and built a roaring fire,
which made the night endurable, though I had to sally
forth several times before morning to "rUvStle" fuel.
From Larkspur to the top of the divide, 8000
feet above sea level, was a steady uphill pull, grow-
ing cooler at every step and in the teeth of the
very worst wind I ever encountered. By afternoon
it was a perfect gale, against which I could make
scant two miles an hour by the most violent exer-
tion. At the door of one lonely house I knocked,
and politely asked if they could lend me an auger.
"What d'ye want of a auger?" snapped the hard-
faced woman who answered my rap. "Why, I
thought, madam, that it might help me bore through
this wind" — but she slammed the door in the face
of this ill-timed witticism, and I went without
dinner to pay for being "funny."

42 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

The temperature kept falling and the gale rising
as the day wore on. It was already generously
below zero. Near the aptly named side track of
Greenland, I was crossing a trestle which spans
Carpenter's Creek when a sudden gust, resistless as
a wall, swept me off bodily and flung me upon the
ice and frozen sand a score of feet below. The ice
— thanks to the wind — had but lately formed, and
through I went into a shallow pool. It was better
than falling on the slag rip-rap at the ends of the
bridge; but the eight miles to shelter, walking with
clothing frozen stiff as a plank and nearly every
bone in my body aching, were anything but hilarious.

From the top of the divide there were no tempta-
tions from a straight road to Colorado Springs, the
lovely little city in the edge of the plain under the
very shadow of Pike's Peak. Just back of town is
a hillock one hundred and fifty feet higher than
the main street, sarcastically known as Mount
Washington, because it has just the same altitude
above sea level as the chief of our Eastern moun-
tains.

Not far back into the foothills from Colorado
Springs begins the Garden of the Gods — a wonder-
land fitly named. Here, walled in by rock-bound
peaks, is a wild glen of 2000 acres, and in it, amid
the murmuring pines, a hundred colossal towers and
castles, pinnacles and battlements hewn by time

IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 43

from the deep red sandstone. In the centre of a
great amphitheatre four titanic crags, blood-hued
and radiant, burst from the level ground and soar
three hundred feet aloft. Their tops are fretted
into jagged points, and their sides worn smooth and
sheer. One of the strange *^ monuments '' in this
" land of the standing rocks " is little larger around
than a barrel, but fifty feet high. The heights of
shaggy Olympus were tame beside this stone vision.
Perchance fat Bacchus and knotty Hercules, return-
ing from some godly revel, stopped at these then
uncarven cliffs ; and while the tricksy fancy of the
God of Wine mapped out the imagery of what now
is, the God of Muscle twisted and tore the sand-
stones to these fantastic shapes. But I do not wish
to describe that wonderland — even if I could. It
is something which every American should see;
and seeing it he will realize how little can words
give an idea of its radiant glory. Near by, too, are
superb waterfalls, beautiful caves, and many other
delights; and — what I fear was almost as interest-
ing to me — trout !

MOUNTAIN DAYS

Up Pike's Peak. — The Highest Inhabited Building. — The
Costliest Cordwood in the World. — The Twin Gorges.
— A Relic of the Argonauts. — The Odyssey of the
Rockies. — Twice Scalped. — A Mountain Lion in the
Stable.

Sallying forth from pretty little Manitou at
10 A.M. on November 4 I strode up the steep trail to
Engleman's Canon, bound for Pike's Peak. This
was before the skyward railroad had been built or
even planned, and to get to the top of that giant
mountain one had then to earn his passage. But
mountain-climbing was an old story, and for several
miles I found little difficulty. The old trail was
very rough and steep along the dashing brook,
whose fringe of bushes bent with pear-shaped
icicles. It seemed odd to see icicles with the big
end down ; but these came from the spray, which,
of course, was thickest nearer the brook.

After getting up out of the caiion, and upon a
44

MOUNTAIN DAYS 45

southerly spur of the peak, I began to find trouble
with the snow, which had drifted a couple of feet
deep in the trough-like trail. There was no dodg-
ing it, however, for outside the one path all was
loose, sharp rocks. At the wild, desolate timber-
line, where the last scrubby dwarf of a tree clung
sadly amid the rocks, matters grew worse ; for as
soon as I rounded Windy Point, a savage, icy blast
from the snow-peaks of the Sangre de Cristo fairly
stabbed me through and through. My perspiration-
soaked clothing turned stiff as a board in five min-
utes, and the very marrow in my bones seemed
frozen despite the violent exercise of climbing.
Worst of all, it was almost impossible to breathe
in the face of that icy gale, though otherwise I
have never felt any of the unpleasant symptoms,
either in heart, lungs, or nerves, experienced by
many at that altitude.

It was 3.30 P.M. when I stood panting at the door
of the signal service station on the very crest of
Pikers Peak — then, and perhaps still, the highest
inhabited building on earth. It is 14,147 feet above
the level of the sea — more than two miles higher
than most of you who read this. It was built in 1882
by the government at great expense. The build-
ing was a strong box of stone, some twenty feet by
forty, with walls four feet thick, well padded, and
contained five very comfortable rooms. Since my

46 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

time it has been enlarged. The corps of observers
have a very fair time of it, except in winter, when
they are imprisoned by the snow for months at a
time. In summer the observer spends two weeks
on the peak and then goes down to Colorado
Springs for a fortnight, being relieved by his chum,
who comes up from a vacation, as he goes down to
one. The observations of the various instruments
for recording temperature, velocity of wind, changes
of weather, etc., have to be recorded five times a
day.

Every article of supply has to be " packed " up
that long, narrow trail on burros. The fuel is pine
wood transported from timber-line on burro-back,
six sticks at a load. Uncle Sam owns the wood,
but has to pay $23 a cord for cutting and hauling
it up. It costs some $1300 a year to warm the one
room used as an office. So it is very high fuel,
in more senses than one.

There are many curious things about an altitude
of two miles and a half above the sea. The nerves
are always affected seriously in time, and often
very unpleasantly at once. Few people can sleep
at first at such an elevation. The rare air seems to
evaporate on one's skin, and leaves a delicious cool-
ness like that from an alcohol bath. The great
lessening of the atmospheric pressure gives a
strange and delightful sense of buoyancy.

MOUNTAIN DAYS 47

Mount Washington and its signal service were old
friends of mine, and I was interested in a compari-
son between the old New Hampshire monarch and
the noble Western peak. Timber-line is only a
relative term ; and though Pike's Peak is far more
than twice as tall as its Eastern brother, and the
latter would make only a literal hole-in-the-ground
in the plains at its base, the distance from timber-
line to summit is nearly the same on the two
mountains. The weather is far severer on Mount
Washington than on Pike. The winds attain a
velocity of fifty per cent greater, and, owing to the
far greater density of the air, are much more power-
ful in proportion. The mean temperature is much
lower, and the extreme cold of the lesser peak is
never paralleled on the greater.

The view from Pike's Peak is of the noblest and
strangest. Such a vista could only be where the
greatest mountains elbow the infinite plains. East-
ward they stretch in an infinite sea of brown. At
their edge are the cameos of Manitou and Colorado
Springs ; the Garden of the Gods, now a toy ; the
dark thread of the Ute Pass, through which, in
Leadville's palmy days, streamed the motley
human tide. Seventy miles north is the cloud
that is Denver. Fifty miles to the south, the
smoke of Pueblo curls up from the prairie, falls
back and trails along the plain in a misty belt,

48 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

that reaches farther eastward than the eye can
follow. A little pond-like broadening in this
smoke-river shows the location of La Junta, one
hundred miles away. West of south, in long and
serried ranks, stand the Culebra and Sangre de
Cristo ranges, while nearer, tower the southern
walls of the Grand Canon of the Arkansas. Off to
the west are the far giants of the Eockies in incom-
parable phalanx — for Pike stands in regal isola-
tion a hundred miles from any peer. His sole
companions are the 10,000 and 12,000 foot " foot-
hills " that look up in awe to his lofty throne.

With the setting of the sun came a sight even
more memorable. As the red disk sank behind the
west, the gigantic shadow of the peak crept up on
the foothills, leapt across to the plains, and
climbed at last the far horizon and stood high in
the paling heavens, a vast, shadowy pyramid. It
is a startling thing to see a shadow in the sky.
For a few moments it lingers and then fades in the
slow twilight.

A perpendicular mile below my feet that night
the soft, fleecy clouds went drifting along the
scarred flanks of the grim, unmindful giant, while
the full moon poured down on them her cold, white
glory. Dimmer than the clouds, I traced the white
wraiths of Pike's brother titans, as they tossed
back the snow-hair from their furrowed brows, and

MOUNTAIN DAYS 49

stared solemnly at the round-faced moon. The icy
wind howled against the low building, or dashed
off to drive his cloud-flocks scurrying hither and
yon down the deeper passes of the range. Time
seems hardly to exist up there. Alive, one is yet
out of the world. The impression could hardly be
stronger if one stood upon a planet sole in all
space.

On the afternoon of the 5th, I jumped and slid
the twelve miles from the station down to Manitou
in an hour and fifty-one minutes — a downhill race
which is very exhilarating at the time, but is apt
to have wearisome results on the tendons of un-
practised legs. Next day I set out early, meaning
to explore the twin Cheyenne canons and get
twenty miles or so out on the abandoned " cut-off "
road from Colorado Springs to Caiion City. But
again those speckled rascals upset my plans. That
unmistakable brown flash in one of the pools of the
south caiion banished all other thoughts, and from
exploring I turned to gathering belated grasshop-
pers. A good string of trout soon dangled at my
belt, and then a rolling boulder pitched me a dozen
feet into an icy pool, and gave me a severely
sprained ankle. That ended the fun, and I had to
be content with hobbling through the two small,
but beautiful, gorges.

There is a fascination of their own about these

60 A TBAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

twin gorges ; and though they are small and I have
since explored the sublimest canons on earth, the
memories of Cheyenne will linger with me long.
At the northern flank of Cheyenne Mountain — a
peak without a base, and thrusting its grizzly head
4000 feet out of the flat prairie — the north and
south forks of Cheyenne Creek, split by a huge
crag, come racing down the mountain ridges, cold
as ice, clear as crystal, and forever white with foam
from their breathless leaps. To my taste, the
South Canon is the more interesting, though there
is little choice. On either hand beetle seamed and
jagged mountains of solid rock ; and between their
grim walls dashes the impetuous stream — too clear
and effervescent to be profaned by the malarial
title of creek. A short stretch beyond, the cliffs
seem actually to meet and blend. Their crags, five
hundred feet high, are not more than thirty feet
apart, and a sudden angle beyond apparently oblit-
erates even this gap. This titanic inner portal is
the gem of the whole locality ; but the entire two-
mile walk to the head of the canon is an ever-
varying delight. At every step some new pinna-
cle, or crag, or cliff, peers down at the beholder,
and the great ruddy mountains themselves change
from ridges to peaks, or from peaks to ridges, as
the point of view is shifted. Into the upper end
of the cafxon the brook comes shouting down over

MOUNTAIN DAYS 61

" the Seven Falls " — a beautiful cascade in seven
leaps of from ten to thirty feet each. A rude stair-
case scales the cliff beside the tumbling water ; and
on two apparently inaccessible crags three hundred
feet above are tiny observatories, commanding a
glorious view of the surrounding country.

But that pestiferous ankle made sight-seeing
drag, and at last I limped off into the plains and
was glad enough to stop at the first cabin in my
way.

It was a very interesting spot — not for the
rough little shanty, but for the battered, grizzly
old miner whose home it was. He got home, a
few minutes after my arrival, from the mountains,
where he had been pecking away at one of his
eighteen prospect-holes since the preceding Janu-
ary, while his two young boys " ran the ranch."
For twenty years this shaggy-browed, tangle-
bearded old man had been stumping across the
ranges, with pick and sledge and heavy drills and
frying-pan and blankets and provisions on his
thick, bent shoulders. And while drilling time,
money, life, into the iron ribs of the Rockies, he
had acquired the wonderful education of those who
have had to carve their way through starvation
and disappointment and danger.

It did me good to hear him growl away in some
tale of the days in which he was part — when

52 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Colorado was a patch of the great desert ; when
the three Ute tribes were thick as grasshoppers on
the plains ; when through the winter snows of the
mountain passes struggled the long, gaunt train of
chasers of the new Eldorado. How some stag-
gered grimly onward under their heavy packs,
while others sank sobbing in the great white
drifts ; how a few " struck it ricli,'^ while the for-
gotten thousands wore out their lives in toiling for
the fortune that never came. This is the poetry
and the romance of the Rockies. We hear of the
few mining kings, — the golden accidents of for-
tune,— but who shall tell the epic of that great
heart-break, that myriad suffering of the unrequited
multitude ? Beside that wild story, if it ever be
written, the wanderings of Ulysses will seem a
schoolboy's recess. These men left wives faithful
as Penelope and never returned. They wandered
farther and longer on blistered feet than the sage
of Ithaca on his staunch galley. They pierced a
stranger and wilder land than ever Caesar dreamed
of; and for the best long years of a rugged life-
time they suffered the rack of hardship and danger.
The strong, true, virile simplicity of blind old
Homer, the poet who wrote of real men, is gone.
How he of Scio's rocky isle could have set in
rolling verse the story of the Pacific Argonauts !
And we shall never have that story in its strength

MOUNTAIN DAYS 53

until another Homer rises to sing that Odyssey
of the Kockies — the stormy wanderings of that
great motley throng, the scum of great cities, the
sinew of the workshop and the farm; the gam-
blers, ministers, lawyers, loafers, bankers, thieves,
merchants, beggars, college boys, cowboys, lads
and old men — that plodded across the vast, bare
plains, struggled wearily but hopefully up the
jagged mountain sides, waded the heavy snow
and icy streams, froze and starved, but never
despaired. How they ran hither and yon as de-
lusive Hope blew her golden bubbles about them ;
how they tore up the channels of the wild moun-
tain streams, and grew bent in handling the heavy
sand in long rocker or flaring gold-pan ; how they
dug and scraped and washed, forgetting to eat and
sleep, all for the sake of the little yellow scales
that might blink up at them when the clean-up
came. How young men became old and bent in
the feverish chase, — some of them still roam, un-
easy spectres, through the gulches of the farthest
ranges, — and old men laid their weary bones to
rest beside the lonely claim, the little buckskin bag
of dust still clutched in their bony fingers. How
men made fortunes in some golden placer and then
dropped the last cent into some worthless hole.
How paupers became princes, and princes paupers ;
and the man whose claim to-day was worth its hun-

54 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINEKT

dred thousands, to-morrow turned, a beggar, to
"strike it again " in the hills. How that heteroge-
neous mass of humanity — akin only in the one
absorbing passion — battled with cold and hunger,
with disease and death, with beasts thirsty for
blood, and desperate men still thirstier for gold —
ah, that was our greatest, longest, strangest tragedy.
It sends a thrill through one's veins to meet in
some lonely cabin a gray-haired remnant of those
old heroes whose superhuman valor and vigor
opened these western States and Territories to civi-
lization; the men whose persistent average of ill
luck buried ten dollars in the ground for every
dollar's worth of " dust " that was taken from it ;
yet paved the way to the prosperity of solid busi-
ness. But to-day they are half forgotten. The
mountain brooks go tumbling unchecked to the
rivers ; their bars of shifting sand are unturned by
the greedy shovel, and the little grains of gold
beneath rest free from prying eyes. For the days
of gold-washing are practically over. Placers are
still worked here and there, but they are mostly in
the hands of slow-going foreigners ; for the restless
American is now delving for the rock-bound veins
from which the placer gold originally came.

One of the old man's reminiscences was of the
later but still " woolly " West. In 1877 a wealthy
Detroiter went home from his mines in Leadville

MOUNTAIN DAYS 55

and told some very large stories. His exaggerated
and bragging accounts led several hundred poor
men to return with him to Leadville, where he
glibly promised them employment. They got
there only to find the camp already crowded with
unemployed men dependent on the charity of the
miners. Most of them were without means, and
soon starvation stared them in the face. When
the miners learned the situation, they made the
braggart millionnaire a frontier call. An impolite
rope was stretched over a cedar branch, and one
end discommoded his neck. " Now," said the vis-
itors, " you fooled these men out here to starve, by
your blowing. They've got no work and no way
to get home. Give them fifty dollars apiece to
take them back to Detroit, or you'll dance on noth-
ing in less'n two minutes."

The millionnaire was mulish, and they swung him
up once, twice, three times. At the third eleva-
tion he gasped surrender, and signed a check for
the required amount. A trusty man galloped off
toward distant Denver, and in a few days was back
with the money to send the befooled Detroiters
home.

A man who survives being scalped is a rare phe-
nomenon; but one of the pioneers of Colorado
went through that frightful experience twice and
lived for years after. That was a happy-go-lucky

56 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Irishman known as "Judge" Baldwin. He once
owned the land on which Colorado Springs now
stands, — being swindled out of it, so the story-
goes, by wealthy land-grabbers, — and on that
very spot was scalped by the Utes in the early
days.

A few years later, another party of savages on
the war-path ran across the old miner, shot him,
took what was left of his hair, and left him for
dead in the mountains. He revived, however, and
got to help, and in time fully recovered. After
such wonderful escapes, Baldwin was found one
morning drowned in two feet of water !

The sprained ankle was too painful to permit
rapid walking next day, and I was glad when eigh-
teen hobbling miles brought me at nightfall to a
poor little ranch on waterless Turkey Creek, where
a good-natured young man and his white-haired
mother made me very welcome.

About midnight a fearful uproar in the stable
aroused us ; and when young Bixby and I ran out,
dressed, as Bill Nye says, "in the garments of the
night and a little brief authority," a huge moun-
tain lion sprang out through the side of the little
shed and went bounding off in the moonlight thirty
feet at a leap, even after our startled shots had
wounded him, as red drops next morning showed.
Inside the shed one of the young calves lay dead,

MOUNTAIN DAYS 57

its skull crushed and neck broken by one fearful
cuff of that mighty fore paw.

Walking was still difficult next day, and I did
not hurry, but limped leisurely along, now admiring
the beautiful drift-quartz brought down from the
frozen north in some prehistoric glacier's icy fist,
and now amused by the clouds of chattering bluejays
and impudent magpies. Here, too, I first became
acquainted with the curious pinon — a real pine
tree which bears nuts in its cones, and the most
delicious little nuts I know.

Passing the night comfortably in the pretty
Beaver Creek canon, I started early next morning
for a try at the trout. Soon, however, a figure
outlined against the sky at the top of a great cliff
made me drop my willow pole, unsling the Win-
chester from my back, and sneak up the canon in
quest of some point at which the cliff might be
scaled. Such a long, breathless dance as that little
flock of bighorns led me over cliff and cafion ! and a
fruitless one too, for with all my caution I could not
get within a thousand yards of them. A strange
animal is the cimarron, bighorn, or mountain
sheep, as he is variously called. Take a large ram,
double the size of his horns, plate his skull with
four inches of hardest bone, and you have an
approximation to the bighorn. It would be hard
to find finer frontlets than his. Each ponderous

58 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

horn, curving three to five times upon itself, is
thick at the base as a man's thigh, and all of one
solid armor with the head. The bighorn does not
with malice aforethought leap from high cliffs and
alight upon his head, to save the trouble of going
around, according to the popular fable ; but he is
sometimes forced off or slips, sure-footed as he is,
and then that wonderful helmet stands him in good
stead. His head is the heaviest part of his body,
and he is almost sure to strike upon it ; and it
seems none the worse for an incredible fall. It is
a sight to petrify the unaccustomed hunter when
he sees Don Cimarron fall fifty feet upon a ledge
of rocks, rebound into the air, alight upon his feet
and leap away as though nothing had happened to
give him so much as a headache.

A little side-canon near the ^' Buffalo Sloughs "
led me that afternoon to the rude, lonely cabin of
a gray-haired hunter. He hobbled out as I came
up and shared my tobacco on a sunny rock. " Old
Monny " was the wreck of very much of a man.
His once stalwart figure was hideously bent and
twisted. The right shoulder was all misshapen ;
and the right leg only an awful rope of bone in
many knots, and with hardly more flesh than my
wrist has. Five years ago that day, roughly ten-
der hands had carried Monny from Dead Man's
Canon, a cripple for life. He and his "pardner"

MOUNTAIN DAYS 69

were toiling up the gorge, their small-bore, muzzle-
loading Kentucky rifles over their shoulders. Sud-
denly, from behind a huge boulder they had just
passed, lumbered noiselessly a huge brown-yellow
beast, heavy as a fattened steer. A wild screech
from his chum whirled Monny about, and looking
back, he saw the huge cinnamon bear upreared over
a still palpitating corpse, whose blood and brains
were dripping from one gigantic paw. Monny
threw his long, heavy barrel to as steady a level
as if the game had been a squirrel, and drove
the little leaden pellet through the lower half of
the monster's heart. But a cinnamon dies hard ;
and before the hunter could reload or escape up
the precipitous rocks the brute was upon him.
Felling him with a blow that crushed his right
shoulder like an eggshell, the bear fell dying at
his side, chewing his leg from thigh to ankle, to
its last breath, and then lurched dead across his
almost corpse. And that is why there is one
hunter who goes on a crutch to his beaver-traps
and in quest of game. Monny showed me the skin
of his bear — eleven feet four inches from tip of
nose to root of tail ! Upon the feet were still the
crescents of claws, each six inches long; and on
one side was the wee, round hole that had at last
let out the great, savage life.

A few miles from Monny's cabin my long hunt

60 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

was rewarded. A very lucky long shot brought
down a fine, black-tail deer, upon whose antlers
were six spikes. A ranchero who bargained to
haul the carcass out to town for me evidently con-
cluded that the meat was worth more to him than
the stipulated two dollars ; for I never saw buck or
ranchero again.

Along the roads in that part of Colorado I fre-
quently came to ranches where children of two to
six years were " staked " in front of the house by
a long, strong rope, one end of which was securely
knotted under their arms, while the other was fas-
tened to a stake. This seemed very funny, but
was really a sensible institution to keep the young-
sters of that wild country from straying under the
hoofs of the roving cattle or into the reach of wild
beasts.

Late at night, hot and dusty from a thirty-five-
mile scramble over " parks " and canons, T pounded
away at the door of the first house in Canon City,
where a greasy but abundant supper and a board
" bed " on the floor beside the stove coaxed me to
dream of almost everything except the remarkable
experiences the morrow had in store.

SKIRTING THE ROCKIES

A Shadow saves my Life. — A Fine Canon. — A Midnight
Fight with a Wildcat. — A Frank Prayer. — Lucky
Bassick and his Claim. — A Humble Friend in Need. —
Finding a Comrade.

I WAS a good deal older than the youth of the
Grecian myth when I fell in love with my own
shadow, and it was not, as in his case, because of
its beauty, but for its usefulness. Had I been one
of those people who are " so thin they have to walk
twice to make a shadow," I should not be writing
now; for on that pretty November day, just out of
Cafion City, there was no time for the second walk-
ing. That event recurs oftenest to my mind as an
instance of what very slender threads they some-
times are by which our lives hang. Had it been a
cloudy day, or had it been just as bright and the
sun an hour higher, or had a certain road run south
instead of west, or had it been fringed with grass
instead of level dust, my tramp and my life would
have ended together very abruptly.

62 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Leaving the rifle in Canon City, I started early
to explore the Grand Canon of the Arkansaw,
whose bluff portals open a couple of miles west of
town. Half-way thither I noticed a huge stone
building against the side of a white hill of lime-
stone, half hidden by the clouds from a score of
limekilns. I had talked with no one in Canon
City, and had no idea what this building was ; but
at nearer approach the sight of watchful, hard-
looking men, pacing up and down here and there,
with six-shooters on their hips and double-barrelled
shotguns over their shoulders, told the story as
unmistakably as words told me later. Swarming
about the kilns, delving in the hillside, and engaged
at various other works, were hundreds of fellows
in tell-tale stripes of black and white. It was the
Colorado penitentiary, containing at that time
three hundred and fifty-odd convicts — mostly
murderers and "rustlers" (horse thieves) — all of
whom worked outside the walls by day, unfettered,
but under guard.

Never having seen prisoners thus loose, I grew
interested and trotted like any other fool along
the sidewalk, gazing curiously at the vicious faces
of the hundred jailbirds who were at work on the
two-foot wall at my very side. It did occur to
me that my appearance caused considerable excite-
ment among them j but I could not take the hint,

SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 63

though their faces wore the very look of hungry-
wolves. I was walking westward, and the morn-
ing sun was behind my back — two trifles for
which I have ever since been grateful. A group
of convicts rallying to some work a few hundred
feet to the south caught my eye and turned me
half back to the wall. As I stopped to gaze at
them, something seemed to drag my eyes down to
the light, smooth dust in front of me, and there
was what for an instant made my heart stop beat-
ing. It was only a shadow — a clear, sharp, long
shadow thrown beside my familiar own — the
shadow of a larger burly figure swinging a heavy
stone-hammer above my very head ! That silhou-
ette on the sidewalk will never lose one clear-cut
line in my memory. I had been stupid before,
but I was awake now. To spring half-way to the
middle of the road with a tremendous leap whose
half I could not cover now, jerking my forty-four
from its scabbard even while in the air, and to
" throw down " on the convict with a savage
'' Halt ! '^ was the work of an instant — and none
too soon. The fellow and his mates sprang back
to their work with looks of baffled rage, and one of
the mounted guards came up in such a dash that
he nearly rode me down. Two six-shooters were
buckled to his waist, and his hard face wore an
expression which was anything but pleasant.

64 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

"Why, you infernal blankety-blank fool," he
snapped. " Don't you know no better'n to sashay
along in reach o' them fellers, with a gun stickin'
out handy-like ? There's nineteen life-termers in
thet gang you was a-huggin' up to so, an' thet pop
o' yourn meant life an' liberty to any one on 'em
thet could get his hooks onto it. 'Bout quarter 'f
a secont an' your head would 'a' been mush, an'
we'd 'a' had a break fur the hills. Now git out
into the middle o' the road, d — n ye, an' keep
ez fur from anything stripid ez you know how.
Git ! " I shivered a little and '- got," and found
no fault with the dust in the middle of the road.
Ordinarily I do not like strangers to address me as
brusquely as did this fortified person on the black
horse, but under the circumstances it would hardly
have made me resentful had he shaken me.

To guard this great body of desperate ruffians,
there were thirty -eight guards on foot, armed with
double-barrelled shotguns (with nine buckshot in
each barrel) and forty-five-calibre six-shooters.
Three mounted patrolmen, without guns, but carry-
ing two big Colt's revolvers apiece, were constantly
riding about the entire place. In the little stone
sentry-boxes along the high wall which enclosed
the small yard of the "pen" were several expert
marksmen, each armed with the finest long-range
rifle ever manufactured, with telescope sights, and

SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 65

good in such hands to bring down a man at eight
hundred yards every time. But, despite these des-
perate odds against them, the unarmed convicts
sometimes made a break for liberty. Only a few-
months before this, fourteen of the worst des-
peradoes working on the limestone quarries had
"jumped" their "walking boss" with rocks and
hammers. By almost a miracle he escaped serious
injury from their first volley of missiles and saved
his revolvers — the object of attack. Despite the
ominous cries of "halt" and the click of his six-
shooters and a dozen farther guns, three of the
party started like goats up the precipitous rock.
Two turned back as the buckshot began to patter
on the cliff around them, but the third, a gritty
murderer, kept on. Under that deadly fire he
gained the top of the great gray ridge and looked
across into the rocky fastnesses of the great range.
In two seconds more he would be out of sight and
safe — for he could reach the canons long before
any pursuer. And just then there was a little
white puff from the corner watch-tower, away down
there in the valley a full thousand yards away ; and
the mountain echoes caught up and bandied a spite-
ful ^' crack!'' The convict leaped high into the air
with a wild shriek, and fell back dead upon the
sunny rocks.

For the unpleasant experiences of the morning

6Q A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

the later hours fully repaid ; and among the glories
of the Grand Canon of the Arkansaw I forgot all
about stripes and stone-hammers. It is a very
small canon beside some I have seen ; but a very
noble and imposing one, with a savage grandeur
all its own. For nine miles the wild little river
seethes over the granite debris at the bottom of a
gloomy chasm it has cut through the Eocky Moun-
tains. As the range rose on the slow upheaval of
the inner fires, the tireless stream kept carving,
chiselling, gouging, polishing, with the flinty tools
itself had brought for unknown miles ; and when
the flat strata had changed to a contorted sierra,
the rugged channel kept its place far down toward
the level of the outer plains. The mountains beetle
3000 feet above the howling torrent, usually in-
accessible slopes, but sometimes in savage cliffs
which overhang the very stream. About midway
of the canon is the famous Koyal Gorge, Avith sheer
walls a thousand feet in air. The Denver and Rio
Grande Eailway, bound for Salt Lake, follows the
river through this whole wild pass; and in the
Eoyal Gorge hangs to the vertical cliff by great
iron rods and A-shaped spans.

After exploring the canon from end to end I
returned to Canon City, resumed my rifle, and
struck off by a little trail into the Greenhorn
Mountains in quest of game. The range gets its

SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 67

name not from the pervasive tenderfoot, but from
the famous Comanche chief Cuerno Verde, or
Green Horn, whom the Spaniards encountered
there in the last century. The striking miners of
Coal Creek were just then scouring the country
and killing even the blue jays to stave off starva-
tion ; so my hunt was fruitless. Nightfall caught
me away up in the Wet Mountains without food
or shelter. Just as I was preparing, however, to
dig a hole and crawl in out of the cold I spied a
little cabin on the next hill, and was soon there.
No one was at home ; but the door was unlocked,
and the pick, gold-pan, and drills told me that the
owner was a miner — and so that the house was
free to use by a stranger. No provisions were
discoverable, but I had about a peck of shrivelled
wild plums in my pockets, and they made a very
good supper before a roaring fire of the fragrant
cedar. The one window of the one room was
merely a hole in the wall ; and on the rafter above
my head the miner's six ancient hens sat in a
dumpy row. It had been a hard day ; and after
supper I rolled myself in the tattered blankets of
my unaware host and soon fell asleep before the
mud fireplace.

Along in the night a great uproar overhead
brought me to my feet in sleepy alarm. By the
dying coals I could see two savage eyes above me,

68 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

glowing weirdly. There are still people who talk
soberly of wild beasts' eyes that shine in utter
darkness — as though there were such a thing as
phosphorescent eyes ! That, of course, is a fable —
no animal's eyes shine except by reflection of some
other light, any more than the moon could shine
if the sun were quenched. Many a time I have
felt wild eyes which I could not see, and when I
would have given a great deal to be able to locate
the invisible danger prowling in the black night
about me.

But now I was not stopping to ponder whether
those two spots of uncanny yellow glowed with
their own or with a borrowed light. The one
present proposition was that they were eyes, and
that behind them was some wild beast. It must be
a cat of some sort, — nothing else could have got up
to the rafters, — and some unpleasant recollections
of former encounters with its kind made me unwill-
ing to give it the first chance to strike.

My rifle stood in a corner; but the ponderous
Remington was at my belt, and I " turned loose "
into the darkness about those two little balls of
angry fire. There was a blood-curdling screech
and something came crashing to the floor and
began scrambling toward the window, evidently
crippled. I pulled the trigger again, but there
was only a dull click — the wantonly beheaded

SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 69

magpies of my afternoon's careless practice were
avenged.

But a forty-four makes a terrible shillalah ; and
with the crazy zeal which at times catches the least
courageous hunter, I clubbed it and "waded in."
It was rather a one-sided fight, for those blows
would have felled a horse. Once the plucky brute
caught the butt in his teeth and raked my duck
coat with his cruel claws ; and both, as the novel-
ists say, "will carry the scars to their dying day."
At last a lucky whack settled my unseen foe, and I
blew up the fire for light on the subject. It was
a wildcat, as I suspected — but such a wildcat!
Though he was now dead as Adam, his size actually
terrified me. Had I dreamed of his proportions I
would have crawled up the chimney sooner than
face him. One who has scraped an intimate ac-
quaintance with the bob-cats and lynxes of the
Maine forests, hardly cares for a hand-to-hand
struggle with a cat of twice their size, and I had
not then learned that the Kocky Mountain variety,
though far larger, is far more cowardly. With his
long, milk-white teeth, his needle-pointed sickles of
claws, and his marvellous agility and muscularity,
this fellow could have cleaned out a room full of
men, armed how you will, had he known his talents.
My bullet had broken his right fore leg at the shoul-
der, and the first crack over his head with that trip-

70 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

hammer of a revolver practically settled the ques-
tion. He brought me supper as well as excitement,
for he had killed a hen. I cleaned and cooked the
aged bird, and chewed her tough tissues till nearly-
day light. As for the cat, I "packed'^ him some
ten miles on my shoulders next day for the sake of
weighing him ; and a rancher's scales showed him
up at fifty-three and a half pounds. His beautiful
mottled hide still serves me as a rug.

The night following, I slept at a little ranch-
house in a lonely canon of the Greenhorn range.
I do not remember the name of the white-haired,
blind old mother there, but her politics will never
slip my recollection. After the humble breakfast
in the morning she had us all upon our knees, and
uttered a prayer which I fancy no campaign since
has duplicated. You must remember that it was
a fortnight after the presidential election of 1884,
and the result was still in doubt. After praying
for mankind in general, and with a gentle mother-
liness for the stranger within their gates, she went
on solemnly : —

" We do not know yet, 0 Lord, how the tide of
our country's affairs has turned, hut we fear tJiose
nasty Democrats have seized the reiris of government
But we beseech thee, great Euler, that if it be con-
sistent with thy will, Mr. Blaine may be our Presi-
dent, and that wicked man Cleveland be rebuked ! "

SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 71

In these mountains I saw from a distance the
famous Bassick mine — a characteristic example of
the irony which mocks the fortune-seeker. Years
ago a poor fellow, whose eternal ill-luck would have
discouraged Job, sank a big shaft there, and left
his last nickle at the bottom. He never got a cent
out; and drifted off into the farther mountains,
never to return. In the little camp was a penniless
fellow who pottered around here and there on
fruitless prospecting tours; while his brave little
wife kept the pot at a boil by taking in washing.
One day he strolled into the deserted mine. The
frosts of two winters had been gnawing the walls,
and here and there had " stoped down " big patches.
The wanderer idly dug his pick into the wall and
pried out a yellow nugget half as big as his fist.
The luckless first owner had burrowed within six
inches of the richest " lead " in Colorado ; and who
should find the treasure but pauper Bassick ! That
afternoon he refused $100,000 for his claim, and
before long the Bassick mine was "stocked up '^ at
two millions and a quarter.

Getting back to the railroad fifteen miles west
of Pueblo, I found adversity. It was late at night,
bitter cold, and my clothing was wet from fording
the river. A couple of American houses refused
to open to me, fearing a "hold up," and I should
have frozen but for the kindness of some rough,

72 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ignorant Italian laborers who occupied an open,
stoveless box car. One of them, after talking with
me awhile, said : " Me no hava except three blanket
— give-a you two " — and so he did, himself crawl-
ing in between two companions to keep from freez-
ing. It was the first time I had met churlish
treatment, and the simple humanity of my unknown
Italian friend shone in creditable contrast with the
coarse selfishness of "his betters."

It was section supper time as I strode up to the
section-house at San Carlos, and the men were just
lifting the hand-car from the track. A beautiful
young greyhound flew out at me savagely ; one of
the laborers gave him a curse and a lift with his
heavy brogan. The dog had been left there friend-
less at the death of his master. If I wanted him
I could have him. Of course I wanted him ; he
was too young and handsome and spirited to be
left to the abuse of those two-legged brutes. How
little I dreamed then what that careless mercy
meant — of the pleasures, the privations, and the
deadly dangers we were to go through together,
this slender black dog and I ; or of the awful expe-
rience that was to mark our parting, and leave
with me some of the brightest and some of the
saddest memories of a crowded life.

He was wild as a deer, used only to starvation
and brutal blows, but a fine specimen of his blood.

SKIETING THE ROCKIES 73

It was a scant and dirty supper that evening, but I
saved half of it in a paper and came out to begin
my fight for friendship. Starved as he was, it
took an hour's patient diplomacy to lure him into
the bunk-house, where we presently established
a trembling confidence. Next morning the men
helped me to catch and tie him after a wild mglee,
in which several of us were bitten, and then I had
an hour of real battle before he would lead — now
holding the rope against his frantic struggles to
escape, and now swinging off his savage and
despairing rushes at me. At last his dog-sense
triumphed, and he followed peaceably but shiver-
ing. " Shadow " was his name thenceforth, and
he was the truest shadow that ever followed. Two
hours later he did me the only ill-turn of his faith-
ful young life. Coming around a spur I found
myself within a hundred feet of four fat antelope.
But just as I pulled trigger, Shadow saw them too,
and made a terrified leap aside. His cord was tied
to my wrist, and he jerked the rifle so that the
ball struck a hundred yards from aim. I had still
time to drop one or two of the antelope as they ran
straight from me, but doubly frightened at the report,
the poor pup kept up such a dancing and howling at
the end of his rope that I had to give it up. And so,
empty-handed and footsore, we came late to the
town of Spoons — the Mexican hamlet of Cucharas.

OVER THE DIVIDE

Scaling tlie Rockies. — The Trapper in Buckskin. — Looking
down the Muzzle of a Forty-four. — A Starving Feast
on Prairie-dog. — Chased by a Cougar. — Shooting around
a Comer.

For more than fifty miles I had been walking
without apparent effect straight at two great blue
islands that rose from the level distance of the
plains. They were the Spanish Peaks, lonely and
glorious outposts of the superb Sangre de Cristo
range. Under their shadows we stepped into a
civilization that was then new to me — that of the
swarthy Mexicans and their quaint adobe houses,
with regiments of mongrel curs and flocks of
silken-haired Angora goats. I was very suspicious
of the people, — a foolishness which long subse-
quent dwelling among them removed, — and Shadow
shared my distrust of the much more numerous
canine population. V^e steered clear of all the
houses, and several times went hungry for our
74

OVER THE DIVIDB 75

folly. Why is it that the last and most difficult
education seems to be the ridding ourselves of the
silly inborn race prejudice ? We all start with it,
we few of us graduate from it. And yet the clear-
est thing in the world to him who has eyes and a
chance to use them, is that men everywhere — •
white men, brown men, yellow men, black men —
are all just about the same thing. The difference
is little deeper than the skin.

In Colorado the Mexicans are much in the mi-
nority, and are frequently nicknamed " greasers " —
a nomenclature which it is not wise to practise as
one proceeds south, and which anyway is born of
an unbred boorishness of which no Mexican could
ever be guilty. They are a simple, kindly people,
ignorant of books, but better taught than our own
average in all the social virtues — in hospitality,
courtesy, and respect for age. They are neither so
" cowardly " nor so " treacherous " as an enormous
class that largely shapes our national destinies;
and it would be a thorn to our conceit, if we could
realize how very many important lessons we could
profitably learn from them. I speak now from
years of intimate, but honorable, personal acquaint-
ance with them — an acquaintance which has
shamed me out of the silly prejudices against them
which I shared with the average Saxon. I know
their good and their bad ; I know the taste of their

76 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

midnight buckshot as well as can any man of pene-
trable tissues ; but the individual is not the race —
and the Mexican race is worthy every manly man's
respect.

But now they were very new to me, and very
suspicious, and their quaint plazas were full of
interest. The first we encountered was on the
willowy banks of Cucharas Creek. It was a village
in one piece — a long, rambling, many-roomed shed
of apparent mud, ten feet high, and several hun-
dred in length. The building was what is tech-
nically known in the Southwest as a jacal, as
contradistinguished from the commoner and firmer
house built of sun-dried adobe bricks in regular
masonry. The jacal is made by setting a palisade
around the space desired to be housed, roofing it
with poles, straw, and dirt, and chinking the cracks
between the upright logs with adobe mud.

After a day's plodding through the little valley
lined with the flat Mexican settlements, we started
early one icy morning to scale the backbone of the
continent, a few miles south of Veta Pass. There
were thirteen miles of very precipitous climbing,
and toward the top of Middle Creek Pass we came
near congealing as the savage wind poured down
upon us like an avalanche of ice-water. On the
summit of the Rockies we had to wade several
miles in the teeth of a fierce snow squall and were

OVER THE DIVIDE 77

glad enough, to get down into the sheltering trough
of Wagon Creek. Half way up the mountain I
had for the first time released Shadow from his
leading string, and he verified his name by tagging
along at my heels in solemn gratitude. He was
very subdued for a four months' P^PPy — the
shadow of the old brutalities had not yet lifted
from his sky, and he crept up to me shivering
to enjoy with fear the first caress he had ever
known.

It began to look as if we were to sleep out in
that pitiless weather. A snowy ermine scurrying
across the ice-bound brook was the only token of
life. But just at dark we were relieved by seeing
the smoke curling from a log cabin against the
wooded hillside. The sole occupant, a frayed old
prospector, welcomed us cordially ; and while he
chopped up a dead pine he had dragged down the
hill, I cooked supper in the rude adobe fire-place.
Good " frying-pan bread," fried pork, coffee, and a
can of beans from my pocket, made a feast to
which we all did full justice. Then there came a
deep mellow voice outside ; and in a moment en-
tered a sturdy hunter, clad in fringed buckskin
from head to foot.

A wanderer from Plymouth Kock, I decided at
once ; and so he was. He need hardly have told
me — his attentions to the bean-can were enough.

78 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Wide though the Yankee wanders, he never forgets
his motto — Uhi heart, ihi patria. He was a rarely-
interesting specimen of manhood, this Lora Wash-
burn ; and among the pleasantest memories of the
whole tramp are those of the two days passed in
his company. Of medium height, a form whose
every line bespoke extraordinary strength and agil-
ity, a face of manly clearness, a manner quiet and
modest, he was good to look at in his picturesque
garb, and better still to listen to.

In the morning, after breakfast, we made an
inspection of the old man's iron mines — a huge
"hogback" sixty feet wide and several hundred
yards long of solid, black malleable metal. But
here, as everywhere else in the West, was the
irrepressible conflict. Whether we met the farmer
" under " the great irrigating ditches, or the small
cattle-rancher, or the lone prospector, they all
had the same story. It was the Western game
applied to life — a financial freeze-out. Great com-
panies owned the canals, and most of the crops
went for water-rentals. Syndicates bought and
fenced the rare springs and water-pockets, and the
small man's cattle could die of thirst. It is little
wonder that to this day there are " fence-cutting "
wars on a scale that would astound the East. Land
is worth nothing in nine-tenths of the Southwest —
it is water that counts. The wealthy men who get

OVER THE DIVIDE 79

a spring command the range sometimes for a thou-
sand square miles — as far as their cattle can rove
from water, and get back again alive — and they
gird this huge, unbought domain with barbed wire.
But the day of the fence is past. I can lead you
along fifty miles apiece of more than one fence,
lined on the outside with the bleached bones of
the poor man's cattle. But the fifty miles of wire
have gone down in a night. Their chopped strands
lie where they fell ; of their posts remains but a line
of little ash-hillocks ; and they never will be rebuilt !
As to the lone miner who " strikes it," he is other-
wise " frozen out." In addition to its modest ten
cents a mile fare, the railroad erects equally monu-
mental freight-rates — which are a prohibition on
the shipping of ore — until the miner gets tired
and the railroad gets the mine for a song, and
sings it itself. These are no anarchistic fancies,
but cold facts in a large part of the West — facts
which statecraft would better face manfully than
laugh down until some day they shall remedy
themselves after the unpleasant fashion of forces
that are denied an outlet.

It was still early when Lora and Shadow and I
started down the old government trail at a lively
pace. He was the only live, real walker I met on
the whole long journey, and there was a keen zest
in reeling off the frosty miles with such a compan-

80 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ion — and with some of the noblest scenery in the
world about us. In front was the lovely San Luis
Valley ; behind, Veta and its smaller brethren, and
at our right the stupendous bulk of Sierra Blanca,
tallest and noblest of all Colorado's congress of
Titans. As for Shadow, he seemed to feel the
exhilaration, too, and kept us in a roar with frantic
but unavailing pursuit of his first jackrabbits
The weather turned ugly^ and a spiteful sleet
pelted our faces ; but Washburn's modest reminis-
cences made the way short. Almost before we
knew it, we had passed deserted Fort Garland and
came in sight of an ancient adobe hut on the banks
of Trincheras Creek. Here we met the trapper's
brother, a sawed-off Hercules not over five feet in
height, but enormously powerful in chest and
shoulders. He was sauntering easily along with
the king of all antelopes upon his shoulders, as
though its one hundred and fifty pounds had been
a pillow. We went into camp together, and ate
and smoked and talked far into the night, and then
rolled off to sleep under the heavy wagon sheet.
Around the walls hung queer, round, shield-like
affairs, looking worthless enough, but each stand-
ing for eight or nine dollars even in that market —
for they were all prime beaver-skins. The animal
has to be skinned so as to make the pelt circular,
in order to preserve its full value j and these furry

OVEK THE DIVIDE 81

disks, some three feet in diameter, are bound to
willow hoops to dry. In those days the creek all
along those meadows was full of quiet ponds and
substantial dams built by these wonderful four-
footed engineers. They can generally fell a tree,
a foot through, as exactly to the desired line as
could any old lumberman, but should the tree
chance to fall wrong, they leave it and attack an-
other. I have known no pleasanter days than the
many spent in spying upon the work of a beaver
colony as the voiceless artisans dam running
streams, cut the green clubs for their winter food,
or mud-plaster the roofs of their conical lodges
with their trowel tails.

Washburn had run away from his Cape Cod
home at sixteen, and shipped before the mast on a
New Bedford whaler, cruising from Arctic floes to
tropic seaweed. Then he was second mate on a
San Francisco schooner, and threw up that berth to
follow a gold excitement. He was t)y turns hunter,
scout in the deadly Sioux wars of 1876, and miner,
and at last with his brother Carroll went to trapping
beaver, otter, bear, etc., for pelt or bounty, in the
fur season, and mining in the summer. He had
lived a good deal more in his thirty-five years than
a hundred average existers do in a lifetime, and
was as modest about it all as though his most
startling adventures had been the common experi-

82 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ence of mankind. One of his bear stories — wormed
out of him with considerable difficulty — is illus-
trative of how hard the professional hunter earns
his money.

"I was trapping in the Little Rockies back in
187- " said he, in his deep chest-tones, "and tak-
ing out a good many beaver. One day I wounded
an old she grisly, breaking her fore paw, but didn't
get her. Two or three days later, I ran across her
den in a deep canon — a sort of natural cave. At
its mouth the hole was too low to walk into, and I
had to crawl in on hands and knees ; but a few feet
along it opened up into a high chamber. Away at
the far end, something like forty feet from me, I
could see where the nest was, down a few feet below
the general level of the cave ; but the brutes were
lying low, growling away in the dark, and wouldn't
come out. Presently a cub lifted his head above
the edge of the nest. I was waiting for him, and
he fell back with a ball through his brain from my
buffalo gun — a Sharpe, fifty calibre, and one hun-
dred and twenty-five grains of powder. By and by
up came another cub, and down he went ; and then
another. But the old she wouldn't raise, but kept
close, growling among her dead like distant thun-
der. I threw rocks in on her, and she would snarl
and move, but never expose her head. At last I
got sick of that and thought to myself, ' Well, old

OVER THE DIVIDE 8S

girl, if you won't come my way I'll have to come
yours.' So I stuck my pine torch in a crack above
my head, and stood up on ray feet. Then I could
see into the nest, but it was just a mass of fur, and
I couldn't tell t'other from which, for the old one
had her head down among her cubs. Well, I
couldn't afford to wound her, and it wasn't a very
rich light to shoot by, but I was bound to have her.
So I threw the cocked rifle to my shoulder with my
right hand, and with the left tossed a boulder into
the nest. I saw the great head lift slowly from the
mass and wave from side to side in ugly style, and
before it could drop back there was a chunk of lead
buried in it, and I was flying down the canon.
Finding that she didn't follow, I went back to
the hole and crawled in, clutching the old Sharpe
tightly. But it wasn't much fun to tackle that
nest. All was quiet in it, but that didn't signify
anything. A wounded bear is a devilish brute, and
a foxy one, and nothing was likelier than that she
was just laying for me. So I stood there for quar-
ter of an hour chucking over into that nest the
biggest rocks I could get hold of, always with the
rifle at a ready. Then, as there was no stir, I ven-
tured up and found them all stone dead — the old
she and three cubs, and dragged them out into the
canon. Yes, she was a pretty big one — nigh onto
ten hundred." That is one of the stories Lora told

84 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

me by the dancing firelight, as simply and unaffect-
edly as if it had been a trifle. It was impossible
to look into the narrator's clear, manly eyes and
doubt the truth of a word. It seems a pity, any-
how, that we get into this habit of deeming every
man a liar just because he has seen and done more
in the world than our narrow lives take in. It
does not follow, simply because we are timid stay-
at-homes, in a tame country, that every one else
has had as dull an existence as ours.

Leaving the two manly trappers next morning
with hearty regret. Shadow and I tramped off across
the plains, suffering much from the cacti, which
filled the poor dog's feet with their agonizing
needles and kept me busy relieving his involuntary
pincushions. At Alamosa we regained the railroad
and found a landlord who charged me full hotel
rates for Shadow. It is pleasant to remember that
he may still be charging; for in the short argument
which followed the presentation of his bill, my
logic was prior and therefore convincing.

Here we crossed the Kio Grande, there a beauti-
ful mountain stream, unspoiled by the roily rivers
and irrigating ditches of its lower course. A few
miles south I found great areas peppered with
curious volcanic pebbles, among which I gathered
many beautiful nuggets of moss agate and chalce-
dony, with five poor opals. This interesting sort

OVER THE DIVTDB 85

of gravel spoiled speed ; and we were two days in
getting twenty miles to Antonito. There I sat
down in the telegraph office to catch up with my
correspondence. A sudden disturbance caused me
to look up. A big, well-dressed man stood four
feet from me j and in front of him was a short,
tough-faced desperado shoving the cold muzzle of a
forty-four under his nose, and cursing him with
indescribable fluency. The big man, who was white
as a sheet, did not look to me thick enough to stop
a bullet at such short range j and the hundred-ton
cannon I have seen never looked half as big or ugly
as that miserable blue-steel bore which was peering
straight at me. I felt sure that if that horny finger
put a hair's weight more upon the trigger the big
man was not the only one who would get hurt. I
have sometimes had to look these gift-houses in the
mouth, but it is different when they are personal —
there is an endurable excitement then. But it is
always a doubly unsatisfactory business intercept-
ing other people's messages; and in this punctil-
ious country should be particularly avoided. I
didn't know the fellow; and if I were to go to
stopping bullets which were not meant for me, he
might take it as an impertinence. So, sooner than
meddle, I modestly sidled out of range ; while the
gentleman with the advantage continued his exhor-
tation. " You'll do me up, will you ? " he reiter-

66 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ated. "I've heard what you talked about me.
You lie — you did ! I've got a good mind to kill
you anyhow, just for luck. Yes " — as the victim
moved as if for the weapon I could see bulging his
coat-tails — " you make a break to pull on me, and
I'll pump enough lead into you to patch a mile of
hell ! "

But at last the big man begged off so piteously
that he was allowed to depart on an opportune
train; and the aggressor disappeared across the
street. " Who's the man with the gun ? " I asked
the quiet agent.

" Him ? Oh, he's Meyers. Keeps yan saloon.
He's constable — been constable four years now."

"Guess he didn't want to shoot very bad?" I
ventured, feeling much better since emerging from
temporary retirement.

" Don't you fool yourself ! Meyers'd jest as soon
shoot as eat. He's killed more'n one — that's
what he's constable fer. We hef to hev' a pretty
tough man fer constable down yer. Ef Dalton
hadn't 'a' kep' up his hands, you'd 'a' seen some
fun — but Meyers couldn't shoot no man with his
hands up."

My sleeping-bag on the board floor of the " hotel "
was my bed that night, and my pebble-laden duck
coat my pillow ; while two other guests divided
their night-long attention between me and their

OVER THE DIVIDE 87

delirium tremens. With the exception of their
ravings the accommodations were a fair sample of
what I was to have in seven cases out of ten
through the fifteen hundred remaining miles of the
tramp.

Five miles south of Antonito stands the stone
post which marks the State line, and with one step
beyond it we were upon the there unprepossessing
soil of New Mexico. The whole country was now
wildly volcanic, blanketed with great lava flows
and strewn with lava blocks. A bitter head wind
buffeted us all day, tilling eyes, nostrils, and lungs
with the fearful alkali dust which makes life a
burden. Thirty miles of that sort of thing made a
hard day's work, and we were more than content
to reach the lone section-house at No Agua ( " No
Water").

The ground was lost under six inches of snow
when we rose in the morning, and the storm con-
tinued savagely all day. By night it was hard
wading, and we were pretty well tired out by the
time we reached Servilleta — so the railroad spells
it : it should be Cebollita. The snow largely left
us next day, and in the afternoon I wounded a
deer by a snap shot. We followed his blood-dotted
trail for ten miles and then had to give it up.
Cold, famished, without food or water, night not
far, but the nearest house fifteen miles away, I

88 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

began to anticipate a sorry night. By the greatest
good luck, a belated prairie-dog sat upon his burrow-
to watch us, and a ball cut off his head. We got
back at last to the railroad, where I found a bat-
tered powder-can, and with snow from a shady
ravine parboiled my game therein, afterward roast-
ing him at a camp-fire. He was rank, and covered
with greasewood ashes, but no meal ever tasted
sweeter to me — and Shadow was equally pleased
with his share. That gave us strength to push on
to Barranca, where a late but hearty supper at the
section-house — which, as at most of these places,
comprised the entire ^'town" — fully revived us.
There was glorious moonlight, and despite the
hard pull of the day I decided to keep on to Em-
budo, seven miles below. Just south of Barranca
the track suddenly pitches off the edge of the high
plateaus, and for eight miles tumbles down a wind-
ing caflon with a grade of two hundred feet to the
mile. We trotted swiftly and in high spirits down
the steep slope, now in the clear moonlight, and
now in deep shadow. But just as my ears caught
the hoarse roar of the boulder-fretted river to the
bottom of whose wild gorge we were fast coming,
my spirits and my poise were simultaneously upset
by Shadow, who bolted between my very legs from
behind. When I recovered my feet and looked
back for the cause of his fright I saw that he had

OVEE THE DIVIDE 8^

"come into camp" none too soon. Twenty feet
behind us a huge mountain lion was crouching in
the middle of the track. I could even hear his long
tail thumping against the ties. The rifle went to
my shoulder like lightning ; but there in the dark-
ness of the deep cut I could not even see the sights.
It was one of the hardest moments I ever went
through — not for fear, for I knew the great brute
would not attack me unless cornered ; but because
here was the game I wanted most of all and every
drop of hunter blood in me was tingling for him.
But it was a thousand to one against a fatal shot
in that light ; and once wounded, I needed no tell-
ing what he would do. For what seemed hours I
stood with finger trembling on the trigger; and
then the great cat gave a frightful leap up the side
of the cut, and disappeared in the bushes. But
poor Shadow, who had been whining and cowering
against me in mortal terror, did not easily forget
that shock, and all the night upon the rough plank
floor at Embudo he moaned and shivered in my
arms.

For several miles below Embudo (" the funnel ")
the Rio Grande pours through a curious, narrow
little canon which fully justifies its name, and then
glides out into a pretty, widening valley, dotted with
frequent and contented Mexican plazas of a very
different type from those we had seen in Colorado.

90 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

There were wee peach orchards and tiny gardens,
each inclosed by a breast-high adobe wall, and neat
adobe houses under the giant cottonwoods, and cat-
tle and burros grazing the brown meadows, and
primitive little mills, and now and then there came
the greaseless shriek of old carretas — clumsy carts
whose wheels were carved in one block from cross-
sections of huge sycamores, and without hub, spokes,
or tires.

In front of one of these quiet hamlets I met
a gambler-looking fellow driving two handsome
horses to a buckboard. He was well-dressed, fat,
and evidently full of coarse good humor with him-
self and the world. He pulled up and began to
quiz me in an impudent way that made my fingers
grow warm, though I held my temper.

"Say, pardner," he chuckled, "thet blunderbuss
o' yourn don't look like 't 'd shoot nothiu'. Wot'll
you take fur it ? ''

" Oh," I answered carelessly, but resenting the
slur on a trusty weapon, " I'll trade even for your
mouth — that ought to kill at a mile, and the rifle's
good for only five hundred yards."

" Sorto' smart to-day, ain't yo ' ? Tell yo' wot
I'll do. I'll put up this yer hat inside o' fifty
yards, and bet yo' a dollar yo' can't hit it fr'm
whar yo' stand."

By this time I was getting warm enough to pick

OVER THE DIVIDE 91

him up at his own game, and retorted, " Done ! Put
up your hat."

He took off his handsome new silk "tile," walked
forty yards or so toward the river, and set it down
— behind the stump of a big cottonwood. "Shoot
away. Cap ! " he laughed maliciously. I was literally
"stumped," and was just about to give in when a
glitter over against an adobe wall caught my eye.

"Say, how many shots will you give me from
here?"

"Oh, all yo' want," he chuckled.

I marked the spot, walked over to the adobe and
picked up the steel plough which had attracted
my attention. Carrying it past the now puzzled
sharper, I set it down beside the stump, turning the
share up at what I guessed to be about the proper
angle. My new acquaintance now saw the point
and made a vigorous protest. He was going down
to remove the hat ; but the rifle was in my hands,
and I convinced him that as he had had his laugh
it would not be wise to interfere with mine. I
came back to the mark, took careful aim and fired
— no score. Twice I went down and shifted the
plough, always keeping the rifle in hand — for the
gambler had a very unpleasant look, and there was
a tell-tale lump under his coat. The third ball
struck the curving share midway, glanced along
its polished surface, and in a flattened mass struck

92 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

that $12 hat amidships, and made an utter wreck
of it.

"Now," I said to the discomfited sharper, "I don't
want your dollar, for I think you stole it. But let
me give you a pointer. Next time you go fishing
for suckers, don't throw your hook in Yankee
waters."

"I'll be blanked if I do, young feller," he ex-
claimed bitterly ; and in five minutes he was gone
in a cloud of dust, the tatters of the hat on his
pomatumed head.

With pleasant stops at here and there a hospit-
able Mexican house — for I was losing my imbecile
suspicions — we came at last to Espanola, then the
end of the miserable little narrow-gauge railroad.
Here we crossed the Rio Grande on a crazy bridge j
and after seven miles down the valley came to the
pretty Pueblo Indian town of San Ildefonso, where
we were very courteously treated by old Alonzo,
governor of that strange little aboriginal republic,
and slept on wee wool mattresses upon the adobe
floor in the midst of the Indian family.

VII

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE

Among the Pueblos. — The Hero-missionaries and their
Work. — Lost on the Mesas. — Ancient Santa F6. —
Miles of Gold-thread. — A Romantic History. — Indian
Letter-writers. — The Village of Tesuque.

It pleases me to remember how that, my first
introduction to the Pueblo Indians, impressed me ;
for now I have lived for four years among them in
one of their own houses, in one of their own towns,
and with them as my almost sole neighbors, and
they seem like lifelong friends. But then they
were new to me in every detail, and it filled me
with astonishment to find Indians who dwelt in
excellent houses, with comfortable furniture and
clean beds, and clothing and food; Indians who
were as industrious as any class in the country, and
tilled pretty farms, and had churches of their own
building, and who learned none of these things
from us, but were living thus before our Saxon
forefathers had found so much as the shore of New

94 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

England. The old governor, my host, was courtesy
itself, and entertained me very ably, though at
disadvantage, for my struggles with Spanish in
those days were, for grace and comfort, something
like the Scottish minister's definition of a "phe-
nomenon " : ''A cow ye know, and that is not a
phenomenon ; and an apple tree ye know, and that
is not a phenomenon, but when ye see the cow
climbing the apple tree, tail first, that is a phe-
nomenon ! "

San Ildefonso is one of the smaller pueblos,
having but two or three hundred people. It is
built in a rambling square of two-story terraced
adobes around the plaza and its ancient cotton-
woods. The old church and its ruined convent —
monuments to the zeal of the heroic Spanish mis-
sionaries — doze at the western end of the square,
forgetful of the bloody scenes they have witnessed.
Here the first pioneers of Christianity were poi-
soned by their savage flock; and here in the red
Pueblo Rebellion of 1680 three later priests were
roasted in the burning church. But all that is
past. To-day the Indians are peaceful, well-to-do,
happy farmers, with broad fields of corn and wheat,
beans, watermelons, and squashes reaching along
the river, and little fruit orchards about their quiet
town ; members of the church, and citizens of the
United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 95

— though that fact seems never to have penetrated
the powers at Washington. There is an equally
dense popular ignorance as to the Spanish doings
in the beginning of the New World, and particu-
larly the beginning of the United States. Our
partisan histories, even our encyclopedias, are
either strangely silent or as strangely biased. They
do not seem to realize the precedence of Spain, nor
the fact that she made in America a record of hero-
ism, of unparalleled exploration and colonization
never approached by any other nation anywhere.
Long before a Saxon had raised so much as a
hut in the New World, or penetrated a hundred
miles from the coast, the Spanish pioneers had
explored America from Kansas to Cape Horn, and
from sea to sea; and had, far inland, a chain of
Spanish cities five thousand miles long ! We talk
of the cruelty of the Spanish conquests ; but they
were far less cruel than the Saxon ones. The
Spaniard never exterminated. He conquered the
aborigine and then converted and educated him,
and preserved him — with a scholarship, humanity,
and zeal of which, to our shame be it said, our own
history does not furnish the hint of a parallel. The
proof is in living flesh and blood. If we ever reach as
humane and honorable an Indian policy as Spain has
maintained firmly for three hundred and fifty years,
it will be a most creditable national achievement.

96 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Among the most striking chapters of the real
American history which I hope to live to see in
print (for we have none now) ; a history which
shall be able to grasp the fact that the American
continent has a heart as well as an Atlantic cuticle ;
which shall realize that there is a West, and was
one long before there was an East ; which shall so
far escape the ignorance of prejudice as to admit
the fact that the Anglo-Saxon played a very squeaky
second fiddle in pioneering in the New World — in
such a history there will be no more thrilling record
than that of the now unwritten heroism of the
Catholic missionaries to the Southwest. Heroism
outside my creed is just as heroic as heroism within
it ; and it must be a very bigoted and narrow-gauge
Christian or free thinker who cannot admire that
absolutely unparalleled story of devotion, of daunt-
less courage, superhuman endurance, and boundless
faith. No other church ever made such a record as
that which Kome has carved in the flinty bosom of
the Southwest. The labors of Father Junipero Serra
and other Franciscans on the coast, nearly a couple
of centuries later, were heroic, but in no way
comparable to the incredible achievements of the
devoted frailes who penetrated and subdued the
incomparable deserts of the Southwest with their
ferocious savage tribes.

It was a Spanish priest who discovered New

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 97

Mexico and Arizona, a long, long lifetime before
an Anglo-Saxon had so much as seen the coast of
the United States; and long before the Pilgrim
Fathers held services on the shore of New England,
Catholic fathers were converting dusky congrega-
tions in little mud chapels in the very heart of the
continent. In heroism and devotion they ranked
with the early martyrs ; and too frequently, too,
in their sufferings. Hundreds of them watered the
bare, brown soil with their blood. In one day
alone, in the red insurrection of 1680, twenty-one
priests were butchered by the swarthy insurgents,
in nearly as many localities in Kew Mexico. The
main line of Spanish colonization was of course
along the valley of the Kio Grande ; but the padres
were everywhere. Unarmed and alone they pene-
trated to the Moqui pueblos, three hundred miles
west ; to Zuni, to Acoma, and established the lonely
missions. They had a different people to deal with
from those whom Serra found in California in 1759
— a wild, savage-hearted, treacherous race of idola-
ters. They built no such noble piles as our coast
missions ; but their box churches of stone and adobe
were part of a grander monument, of which with
more than its classic pertinence may be said, " If
you seek their monument, look around you.'* They
have left their indelible impress in every nook of
the most unpromising field on earth j their stamp

98 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

is still upon its customs, its language, and its relig-
ion. And it was no ephemeral zeal. The history
of the Eoman church in New Mexico is the history
of the country for a third of a millennium. They
did more to conquer the Southwest than did the
Spanish soldiery. Where there was one battle there
were ten thousand prayers and exhortations ; for
every fort there were a score of churches. And
while the military influence of Spain in what is now
the United States lies forgotten under the dust of
centuries, its religious influence is the ruling power
to-day in an enormous area.

From San Yldefonso to Santa Y6 is less than
thirty miles, but it gave me a hard day. A Mexi-
can, evidently misunderstanding my jargon, directed
me south instead of east ; and as the trail was dim
and crossed by and branching into countless others,
I soon found myself at a loss in the wilderness.
All day long we wandered over the gravelly mesas,
suffering torture from thirst, for I had brought no
water, and not a little from hunger. Shadow came
to appreciate the unpleasant situation, and every
now and then howled dolefully. At last, at eight
o'clock at night, just as I was deciding to dig a
hole in the sand and crawl in for the night, a dim
light far ahead made me throw my hat aloft and
whoop like a Comanche. An hour later Shadow
and I were seriously lowering the water of a well

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 99

at the first house in Santa Fe, and in a few minutes
more were in the hospitable clutches of friends,
after a painful walk of forty-two miles with a heavy
load, for I had brought my knapsack all the way
from Espafiola.

Quaint old Santa Fe interested us much — me,
because it is the most curious town in the country
which is shared by Americans, and Shadow, because
it was the first real town he had ever been in. He
revelled in the narrow old streets, in the vehicles,
in the burros with their kidney-shaped loads of
wood, and, above all, in the market, where hung
meat plenty, and even jackrabbits. It was very
difficult to convince him that these tempting dis-
plays were not for his special benefit, and particu-
larly the first jackrabbits that he had seen so tame
that he could actually catch them. We were there
eight days, travelling about a great deal and find-
ing many interesting things. The possibilities
of the adobe surprised me, for there we found hand-
some residences and creditable four-story buildiugs
made of the despised "mud brick." It was very
interesting, too, to watch the Mexican workmen
turning gold and silver bars into miles of precious
wire, and winding that, in turn, into the exquisite
and intricate patterns of their characteristic filigree
jewelry.

Santa Fe was founded in 1605 by Juan de Onate,

100 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

the colonizer and first governor of New Mexico.
There was long a contention that it antedated St.
Augustine, Florida; but history is as conclusive
on this point as on the year of Waterloo. St.
Augustine was founded in 1560, and was the first
Caucasian town in the United States. The second
was San Gabriel de los Espanoles, now Chamita,
which I had passed just before reaching Espaiiola.
Onate founded this in 1598. The third was Santa
Fe, 1605.

There are a great many other fables about Santa
Fe, now exploded by scientific research, but still
current ; but the truth is romantic and interesting
enough. The ^^ oldest church in America" dates
only from 1710, the original church having been
destroyed in the rebellion of 1680. There are
many older churches here in New Mexico ; but for
all that, the old church of Santa Fe is a valuable
historic building. The " oldest house in America,"
just back of this church, is not half so old as some
other houses in New Mexico ; but the tourist can-
not so easily see them, and this is really a very
old building, perhaps older than any in the East.
The adobe "Palace" is similarly broidered with
vague fables ; but though it is not an old building
at all, it stands on historic ground.

The early history of Santa Fe was full of romance
and danger. Its most thrilling chapters were those

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 101

of the Pueblo rebellion. In 1680 the swarming In-
dians besieged the place. Governor Otermin and his
handful of men fought long against the overwhelm-
ing odds, and finally carved their way through the
savages and retreated to El Paso.

In 1693 Diego de Vargas, the generous and brave
reconqueror, stormed Santa F^, and took it away
from the Pueblos; but they had destroyed the
Spanish buildings, and, worst of all, the archives.

The quaint old town, instinct with the romance
of two hundred and seventy-five years, is well
worth detailed inspection, but I need not go into
details here. It has often been described, and is
easy to be seen for one's self. This is not a guide-
book, but the record of a walk and of some of the
salient points which struck the walker — the ran-
dom impressions of then, recounted by the light of
later study and intimate acquaintance.

The characteristic industry of Santa F^ is the
manufacture of Mexican filigree. It is very inter-
esting to watch — as any one is welconxe to do —
the various processes through which the precious
metals must pass ere they emerge in the shape of
that wonderful jewelry which is so widely re-
nowned. In the showcases you may see countless
bracelets, chains, napkin rings, card-holders, card-
cases, earrings, breastpins, hair combs, and other
articles in gold and silver, composed of the most

102 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

exquisite, dainty, and complicated designs — slip-
pers, scrolls, mandolins, guitars, butterflies, grass-
hoppers, flowers of all sorts, fish, and everything
else that ingenuity can devise. And each article
is made by the innumerable twistings of wires as
delicate as a hair. The gold or silver is melted
from coin in a crucible, and cast in an ingot about
twelve inches long and half an inch in diameter.
This is repeatedly passed between powerful steel
rollers in slots of graduated size, and at every pas-
sage becomes slenderer and longer. Then it is
taken to still finer rolls, and pressed and pressed
again, until the once ingot has become a scarcely
visible wire, thousands of feet in length. A few
yards of this — as much as can conveniently be
handled — is then doubled, and the loop placed on
a rapidly revolving hook, while the operator holds
the ends. Thus is soon formed a double twisted
wire. This is put through a smooth roll, and
comes out a tiny flattened wire, the two edges
being beaded of course, wherever the two strands
have crossed each other. This beading process is
necessary to give an edge that will hold. Mean-
time the artistic German foreman has drawn a leaf
or a scroll ; a Mexican workman takes some heavier
wire and makes a frame of the shape designed;
and then, catching the end of the beaded wire, pro-
ceeds to fill his frame. He has a little brass-

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 103

covered affair which looks like the bottom of a
pocket flask. Along the greatest diameter of its
oval base is a row of microscopic teeth ; and around
these he weaves the beaded wire in and out with
intricate twists which no Yankee eye can follow.
Thus he arranges the gauzy meshes, which another
workman solders into the frame ; the frame
and others, similarly filled, are joined together
until the whole design is complete ; the burnisher
does his work, and there you have a dream of
exquisite beauty which can no more be described
than can the most delicate traceries of a frosted
window-pane. The mechanical part is all done by
Mexican workmen — we are of too impatient blood
for such slow pains-taking — but the designing is
mostly by American and German artists.

A more interesting ethnologic study is among
the Indian scholars of the now numerous special
schools in Santa Fe. Whatever thoughtful people
may think as to our justification in forcibly taking
these citizens of the United States (for all Pueblo
Indians are citizens) away from their homes to be
given an alleged education, the processes are in-
structive and full of interest. The adaptability of
the Pueblo child to these new conditions is surpris-
ing to the average visitor. I can best illustrate it
by reproducing some of their own letters given me
at the time. You must remember that up to the

104 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

time of going to school these swart pupils have
none of that help from heredity which is such an
advantage to our children — who are really half-
educated before they begin to be educated at all.
But to the letters.

Here is a comically idiomatic one from a young
Pueblo whose schooling had lasted but a year. The
handwriting is very fair.

"Indian School,
"Albuquerque, N. M.

"My Dear Maj. Sanchez: I am so glad to see
you this morning but when you go home did not
said good buy in me Maj Sanchez I think you very
good man to take care the Indians Pueblo I guess
you know yesterday morning one Ute boy died in
the mountains and this morning Mr Loveland go
get that died boy

"This afternoon 1st and 5th Div boys worked
and I work in the Laundry and other boys work in
the new ground make a road and two boys cutting
the oats last week San Domingo came down in here
he said 28 day more stand here This morning I
cut the bread in the kitchen when finished cut
bread then put on the table in dining room to eat
the boys when ready to breakfirst

"I have learn maps of Aisa and Europ and U S s

" Yesterday great wide blew I think fell down in

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 105

the bedroom I am afraid Maj Sanchez and other
boys slept and get up afraid some said I think fell
down this house Them told boys I said no not fell
down just wide blew outside

"When I go home I have much to do in the
home work in the garden hoe and then again other
garden cut wheat and I have cows to take carry
and I have horses and burros and sometime go to
Santa Fe I have Fourth Reader now good buy Maj
Sanchez

"Your Friend

" Fritz Bradford
"Santo Domingo, N M"

Now I call that an interesting letter, and the
description of the cyclone is graphic if not gram-
matical.

That is one of the poorest of the lot. Here is a
good one from a fifteen-year-old boy who had been
at school three years.

"My Dear Maj. Sanchez: This evening I am
going to write you a letter to tell you all about the
school. We have not so many boys as we use to
have, because all the Sandia boys went home and
nearly all the Laguna. But we expect to have
more boys and girls the next year, because we are
going to have a better house and school than this.

106 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

But I think I will not come here to school — I
think I better go to Carlisle if my parents let me
go, because I want to see the large town and some
others interesting things. If you see my parents,
please tell them I am well and tell them the time
is coming when we all go home, and tell my father
that I want to go to Carlisle to school.

"I have been in school only a few days last month
and this, because we were working in the new build-
ing, we painted the whole building. I had worked
45 days and Mr. Bryan pa}^ me 50 cents a day, and
I earn $22.50. I don't know how well you can
understand me, because I cannot speak very good
English yet. That is all I can write tonight, for
it is pretty near bed-time, and we must get ready
to go to bed.

"Your friend

" James D. Porter,
"PojOAQUE Pueblo, N. M."

Porter's Indian name is Marcos Tapia ("Mark
Wall''). The name of his pueblo is pronounced
Po-w/mcfc-y.

From Santa Fe we visited the pueblo of Tesiique,
seven miles north — one of the smaller of these
Indian town-republics, but one of the easiest of
access to the tourist. Its houses are of a now
uncommon type, double, two-storied, and terraced

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 107

on both sides, half facing to the central plaza, and
half to the cold world. Half the roof of the first
story forms a porch for the second. In the whole
pueblo there was not then a door on the ground
floor J and there were but few windows. To get
into a lower story, one must climb a ladder to the
roof, open a trap-door, and go down another lad-
der.

The upper houses open by ordinary doors to the
roof. All are adobe, small but well made, and have
from one to three rooms — generally two. They are
whitewashed with gypsum inside, and beautifully
neat. In the corner of each room is the comical — but
withal incomparably convenient — adobe fire-place,
common to all Mexican and Indian houses, and in
it stand the knotted sticks of cedar, for in this
country wood is always burned upright instead of
horizontally. In the hearth, in all probability,
you may see sundry rude images of red clay bak-
ing, or well-made pottery, of peculiar polish and
decoration, and characteristic shape. Now some
very excellent travellers from the East buy these
fantastic images and take them home as "Indian
idols," whereby they become a laughing-stock.
These people are hardly more idolaters than we are.
They make these "idols" simply to sell to the
confiding, and they do sell both by the hundreds.
Nor are pottery and earthen dolls their only

108 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

resources thereunto. On their walls hang Spring-
field and Winchester rifles, double-barrelled shot-
guns, and the like, cartridge belts and reloading
tools ; but they sell to tourists any quantity of
bows and arrows and raw-hide shields, and the
tourists carry off the relics as something really
used by the "red" men! They pay five or six
prices for them, too, for the Pueblos have not been
slow to learn from the Jews who trade with them.

I know not why it is; but people who had "good
horse sense " back in Boston, New York, or Cincin-
nati, seem when they get West to be ambitious
only to show how foolish they can be.

Now when a Westerner sees anything novel and
surprising he takes it all in without moving a
muscle. He "always comes downstairs that way."
He has learned the a, b, c of the savoir faire — when
in a strange place, to keep his eyes and ears open, his
mouth shut. Thereby, he always escapes making
a spectacle of himself. If the Easterner in the
West would follow this rule, he would be less
"filled" with ridiculous stories. The people of
the West are not particularly looking for some one
to impose upon and tell silly fables to ; but they
are kind-hearted, and when they see that the
tourist will be disappointed unless he is " filled "
— as is generally the case — they try to accommo-
date him.

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 109

111 every house at Tesiique, as in other pueblos,
the visitor will find the cooking arrangements
among the chief points of interest. At the side of
one of the rooms — usually that also used as a store-
house and granary — is a wooden trough, a foot deep,
from three to five feet long, and three wide. In it
are fastened from one to three curious rocks, shaped
something like a bracket, slightly concave, and
sloping from the edge to the bottom of the trough.
They are about six inches wide and eighteen long,
and weigh fifty to one hundred and fifty pounds
apiece. These are the Pueblo metates, or hand-
mills, and on these, with smaller, oval stones, thin
enough to be easily grasped, the women rub down
their blue maize into a sweet pulp. This batter is
then spread on flat rocks over the fire, and there
baked into guayaves. Jerked meat — that is, meat
cut into thin strips and dried in the sun on lines —
hangs on the walls, and there are other provisions
stowed away in various corners. A few red earthen
cooking-pots, and the brightly painted tinajas, or
water-jars, a coffee-pot, and some minor accessories
complete the outfit.

When you go to visit an American friend of
family, the chances are that his young hopefuls may
make life heavy. But the Pueblos do not turn loose
on you a pack of devastating infants. Go into one
of these little "mud huts," and you will see the

110 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

baby strapped hand and foot, and wound so about
with cloths that it cannot stir. A small board
swings from the low rafters by buckskin thongs,
and on this board the pappoose lies serene as a sum-
mer dream. I have known thousands of tiny Pue-
blos, and it is one of the rarest things in the
world to hear one of them screeching.

VIII

THE MINERAL BELT

The Great Turquoise and its Deserted Drifts. — An Elastic
Road. — The Oldest Gold-fields. — Among the Mines. —
The Paradise of Land-Grabbers. — My Friend the Des-
perado. — Marino and the Fat Man. — The Deadly Cross-
ing. — Lost in the Snow.

Parting with regret from the " ancient metrop-
olis " of New Mexico, whose every nook we had
pried into for eight happy days, we turned south
and trudged blithely down the long, sloping
plateaus. The town had already begun to pall on
Shadow, — chiefly, I suspect, because he had me
less to himself there, — and he was very antic on
taking again to the road. That very afternoon,
however, his spirits were sadly snubbed. We
came near two preoccupied coyotes which were
trying to dig a rabbit from his hole, and Shadow
took after them very valorously. The mean little
wolves led him off a safe distance from my rifle,
and then allowed him to catch up with them —

111

112 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

and how he wished they hadn't ! He made a brave
fight, but was sorely overmatched, and was glad
enough to break away and make back to me, with
several unpleasant cuts in his sleek coat.

Passing through the unimportant mining camp
of Bonanza and on to Carbonate ville, — a town six
miles from a drop of water, — we came to the little
gray knob of " Mount " Chalchuitl, the only tur-
quoise mine on the continent, except one known
only to the Zunis, and the one prehistoric mine in
the whole Southwest, despite the numerous fables
of ancient gold there. It was very long ago when
the first stone hammer was swung by swarthy fists
against those white rocks and thumped out the
first little nugget of the stone that stole its color
from the sky. The great hill is fairly honey-
combed, and on one side is a great hole which
could swallow a four-story block without a strain.
The Pueblos have always prized the turquoise
above all other ornaments, — they had neither gold
nor silver in the old days, — and were pecking
away with their rude tools at this precious deposit
long before Columbus. Some thirty acres are
covered with debris from their ancient mines, and
upon these dumps great cedars have grown to the
maturity of centuries. The tale is gravely printed
in histories that the early Spanish conquerors
enslaved the Pueblos in this and other mines, and

THE MINERAL BELT 113

that part of this mountain caved in and buried a
lot of the unfortunate Indians. But this is a silly
fable, for the Spanish never enslaved the Pueblos,
and were, on the contrary, the most humane neigh-
bors the American Indian ever had — and never
worked this or any other mine in Kew Mexico
until very modern times.

We prospected the strange hill for several hours,
and I cut my head and knees badly in crawling
along a half-filled ancient tunnel for a couple of
hundred feet — to the audible discontent of Shadow,
who would neither enter the dismal hole himself
nor assent to my doing so. A fine stone hammer
and some beautiful nuggets of pure azure — very
different from the worthless green of most of the
veins — rewarded my efforts.

Crossing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa F^
Railroad at Cerillos and wading the icy Galisteo,
we entered upon the most elastic road of my
experience. Unwilling to trust my memory, at
this late date, for details of impression, I go back
to my letter-book and reproduce what I wrote to
friends that night. It may nob be scientifically
exact, but it covers the experience better than
anything I could write now. The letter says : —

"... Here I was, perplexed by about fifteen dif-
ferent roads branching off in all directions, and had
to take one by guess. Meeting a teamster soon

114 A TRA3kIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

after, I asked him if this was the road to Golden.
'Yes,' said he, 'and you've got a big afternoon's
walk before you. Golden's twelve miles from
here.' That didn't trouble me, and I tramped
three miles up the hills until I met two men in an
express. They informed me that I was now four-
teen miles from Golden, and on the right road. A
mile and a half beyond, two ox-teams loaded with
coal hove in sight, and the drivers said, 'Yes,
straight road, sixteen miles.' That began to give
me a pain, and when I found a man working at a
coal bank, a hundred yards further on, I asked
him the distance to Golden in a voice that would
have drawn tears from a turnip. He mildly but
firmly replied that it was just eighteen miles.
Then I sat down on a rock and felt of my feet, to
see if they hadn't got turned around somehow. A
long-bearded bushwhacker came loping along on a
little bronco, and to him I appealed : ' Say, Mister,
don't impose on an orphan, but tell me how far it
is to Golden. If it's fifty miles, just spit it right
out, for I want to know the worst. They've been
breaking it to me gently all the way, but I want
you to tell me the whole bitter truth. ' He looked
at me compassionately, doubtless thinking me a
crank, and told me it was not quite twenty miles
to Golden. The conversations occurred exactly as
I have reported them. The only thing that puzzles

THE MINERAL BELT 115

me is, how they were all so unanimous in sticking
on tAvo miles each time. There must have been a
conspiracy to impose upon my confidence. The
reason none of them knew the distance is, that the
road has not been surveyed; but if any of you
should ever want to walk it I can tell you that it
is just twenty and one-eighth miles — I measured
it that fateful afternoon. And mean miles they
are — sandy, hilly, and dull. There is some very
pretty scenery, too, as your way winds among the
rough Ortiz Mountains ; but by the time you have
climbed ten miles of semi-perpendicular sand, and
still have not reached the height of land, the
beauties of nature are quoted considerably below
par. If it hadn't been for my canteen, filled with
muddy water from the vile Galisteo, I never should
have got out, for it is the dryest road. With every
'snifter ' of that water I swallowed a tablespoonful
of iron rust and sand, but it tasted sweet as honey.
Clear water lacks body anyhow, and iron is good
for the system. At last the highest pitch was
reached, and Shadow and I started on the long
delayed down grade. Just at sunset a young fel-
low on horseback informed me that it was still
two miles to Golden. I hurried on for half an
hour and met a Mexican who said Golden was
three miles away. But finally, after a mile climb
up the wooded hill, I heard the welcome voice of

116 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

a big dog, and a moment later caught the dim from
a score of windows, and I was in Golden."

It is a unique and interesting camp, this to
which we came so tired and hungry on the evening
of December 5th — Golden, or the New Placers.

Our twelve days among its mines were of the
most enjoyable of the whole journey, though with-
out startling adventures. A miner friend from
Ohio took us to his rough little jacal and made us
very much at home. After the first two days
there came heavy snowstorms and the weather
grew very bitter at that altitude of over seven
thousand feet, but every day, and all day long, we
trudged over the snow-buried mountains with
Charlie Smith, poking into the numerous mines
and countless prospect holes in their rocky ribs,
exploring the underground miles of the great San
Pedro copper mine, and gathering whole sacks of
beautiful specimens of the brilliant copper ores,
and plenty of quartz lumps peppered with yellow
gold. Shadow's fear of losing me soon overcame
his horror of underground, and he tugged reluc-
tantly at my heels through the drifts and tunnels,
and showed his relief by wild capers whenever we
got back to the. light of day. It was in the placer
mines, however, that I found the greatest pleas-
ure, and Shadow the utmost tribulation. The
Mexicans who worked these slow but sure-paying

THE MINERAL BELT 117

mines — while the more "ambitious" Americans
were trying to find fortune by one stroke in the
quartz veins — took a great fancy to me, and let
me work all I desired on their claims. But when-
ever I swung down by the rope to the bottom of
one of their thirty-foot shafts and crawled out of
sight in the drift to scrape up a " prospect " from
the pay-streak, Shadow sat on the very brink of
the shaft and howled at the top of his voice till I
came up again. He was very deeply interested in
the subsequent panning-out of the pay-dirt, and
never moved from my side during the entire oper-
ation, no matter what the temptations of vagrant
curs or other excitements. It did not take me
long to become expert with rocker and pan, and I
have still several little phials of nuggets and
" dust " as trophies of my first gold-washing.

Golden is one of the pioneer gold-fields of the
United States. The New Placers — so named from
the vast areas of auriferous gravel which sur-
rounded the town — have been worked by the
Mexicans since 1828, which gives priority over all
other workings in this country, except those of
Cabarrus County, North Carolina, which were dis-
covered a generation earlier. The history of the
brave little town has been made tragic by its con-
nection with an American perversion of a Spanish
land grant. People of the East look upon the

118 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Southwestern land grant as a collective swindle
and a monstrosity, forgetful that these grants were
made by the Spanish Crown in the same way and
for the same reasons, and conveying just as valid
title as the land grants of England or France upon
which the skeptics themselves live. The Kew
Mexican land grant is a perfectly normal and
proper institution in itself, and the only trouble
about it arises from the frauds practised by some
American land pirates. The grant which laps
over Golden is a sample of their operations. The
original Spanish grant was miles away — a small
triangle of a few hundred acres, with its apex
pointing west. Under the manipulations of a
syndicate successive surveys turned the grant over
like the leaf of a book, so that its apex pointed
east, and swelled it to 35,000 acres, taking in a
very rich mineral country. The syndicate then
endeavored to oust the sturdy miners whose claims
they had thus suddenly blanketed; but that was
another thing, and after years of litigation and
occasional resort to arms the miners still hold their
own. Most of the land grants in New Mexico are
not frauds, and but for our government's shameful
disregard of the treaty promises under which it
acquired this Territory the matter would have
been adjusted long ago. Nothing has been done
to settle the question of land titles in the South-

THE MINERAL BELT 119

west — a very simple matter, requiring only an
investigation to prove what grants are fraudulent
and should therefore be thrown out, and what are
real and should stand — until within a year; but
now a measure has at last been passed by Congress
which promises the necessary relief.

So the short American years of Golden have been
troublous ones; but they were the moral making of
the camp. Most mining towns of the frontier
acquire and hold the lawless ; but the bitter tribu-
lations of Golden sifted the " stayers " to the solid
few. It took men to hold the camp through those
years of hardship and danger, and men they are
every one, tried and not found wanting. It was a
hard life through all that bitter struggle — a life of
persecution by powerful enemies through venal
courts, of perverted law and unperverted lead;
when every man and boy packed a six-shooter at
his waist, and knew not when his day might come,
for more than Once the hired assassin's bullet
whistled down the lonely canon. And in those
stirring days a black-eyed woman of ninety pounds
was editing and issuing alone — while her husband
fought the monopoly at its eastern home — the
brightest, savagest, most fearless bantam of a
weekly newspaper in the West, the long-dead
Golden Retort. Its incisive editorials are worth
reading yet, for their lonely but undaunted defiance

120 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

and bitter arraignment of the corrupt power which
then swayed the whole Territory.

The most dramatic episode of the " war " was in
May, 1883. The monopoly seemed on the point of
ousting the prospectors from their rightful claims.
But one fine day as the hundred imported opera-
tives of the big copper mine filed out to dinner,
eleven quiet men of Golden, decorated with Win-
chesters and Colts, stepped into the mine and said,
"Guess weM better run this thing awhile now."
And they had their way. The laborers were urged
to " run them out " ; but the laborers could see no
profit in playing target at $1.50 per diem. The
hardy eleven camped in the mouth of the mine,
and held it, despite official threats to starve them
out, smoke them out, shoot them out. No one
seemed anxious to bell the cat. That capture was
in one way conclusive ; for though the questions of
law have not even yet been settled, the monopo-
lists ceased at last their highwaymen's tactics, and
sought and made compromises which were advan-
tageous to both sides. Now capital and the pros-
pector work there side by side, and there is no
longer strife to retard the development of those
rich, ore-laden ranges. After lying in neglected
rust for years, the million-dollar works of the big
copper mine are running again; and all is lovely.

One of the first things to strike an observant eye

THE MINERAL BELT 121

in a western mining camp is a diagrammatic expla-
nation of the distrust felt in the East toward min-
ing ventures. That so many have been " bitten "
in these ventures is very little the fault of the
West. There have been some wilful swindles, it
is true ; but the mountains are there, and the metal
is in them; and nine times out of ten the trouble is
solely in the methods obstinately clang to by the
eastern stockholders. The mine is safely bought,
the board of directors safely elected, the stock
safely subscribed ; and then with the first step out
of doors the trouble begins. Instead of placing
the practical supervision of the mine in the hands
of a miner, it is generally given to an eastern
favorite who knows no more of mines, to quote a
western simile, "than a pig does of side pockets."
And the fearful and wonderful things he does!
You can trace his footprints in every camp of the
West; and along his trail are generally the bones
of the enterprise he bungled to death. To take an
example from Golden. One Ohio company, years
ago, invested in a ten-stamp quartz-mill to be set
up here. The tenderfoot superintendent was a
part of the machinery, as usual. Arriving here he
turned up his nose at advice, and went his own
gait. And what do you imagine he did? Well,
not much — except to erect that costly mill several
miles up a dry canon of eternal rock, where water

122 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

could not be had by drilling a mile ! He seemed
ignorant that a stamp-mill cannot be run without
water. There the mill was when I came; and
agents of the company were begging help from the
miners of Golden — help to move the mill a few
miles to where it could be operated. Another
company expended ^750,000 in the laudable scheme
to run a fifteen-mile pipe-line from the Sandias to
Golden, and thus bring water to hydraulic the
enormous areas of gold-bearing gravel. This was
all very well; but again the greenhorn manager
made his mark. To withstand that enormous
pressure he laid six-inch pipe of sheet-iron! Of
course that papery conduit bursted before it was
half full of water. The company's three-quarters
of a million turned to yellow rust; and there Avas
an end of it. And so it goes — and the West is
abused by the eastern stockholders for their own
folly.

And do not make the common eastern mistake of
deeming the western man an ignorant desperado,
and the western miner a besotted brute like the
imported navvies of eastern coal mines. Let me
tell you, that in these little prospect holes or
down in the developed shafts, pickins^ away at
the stubborn veins or tilting the gold-pan, you
will find your peers or your betten^;. Some of
these earth-stained, ragged men are better educated

THE MINERAL BELT 123

than you or I, and the majority of them are fully
as shrewd and fully as honest. These men are not
coolies. They are not here as day laborers, toiling
for a pittance of some other man's money; but they
are men who left perhaps better chances back East
than you have now, and came out here to make for-
tunes. They have no master, and what they have
is their own. Perhaps it is only a little hole sunk
a few yards into the hard rock ; but that hole may
mean more money than you ever handled in all
your life of business. Of course, on the other
hand, it may not be worth a continental cent, but
a miner is willing to take his chances.

With the snow more than two feet deep on a
level, and a walk of fifty lonely miles to the rail-
road ahead, the getting away from Golden did not
look inviting. But I was getting hungry for mail ;
and as the snow showed no signs of disappearing,
there was nothing to do but wade it. The faithful
low shoes — now nearly through their third pair of
soles — were not to be given up ; but they and the
long stockings made slender protection against the
drifts, and so I bound up my feet and legs in
gunny-sacks, which were lighter and warmer than
boots. Had it not been for those ungainly leggins,
I never should have got through that awful day ;
for with boots, even the best, my feet would have
frozen.

124 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

It was 10.30 of a pleasant December morning
when we bade a hearty farewell to our new-found
friends in Golden, and started trudging up the
longj gentle slope toward the Tijeras ('' Scissors ")
canon, through the deep snow and with a heavy-
burden on my shoulders — for I had shipped only
the copper and silver specimens to the railroad by
stage, and was carrying the gold specimens to pack
and ship at Albuquerque. My entire load weighed
nearly forty pounds, which is altogether too much
even in the best of walking. After a couple of
miles we left the well-broken road to San Pedro,
and struck off through the scattered pinons south-
west wardly. We had now no path save the tracks
of a single horse which had been ridden to Carnoe
the day before, so we had to break our own way.
It was the hardest long walk I ever attempted; and
poor Shadow fared no better. The snow came
above his belly, so that it was impossible for him
to plough any distance ; and the only gait by which
he could get along was a series of wearisome
bounds. In and out among the foothills of the
San Ysidro range we wound, breathing hard with
the violent labor, perspiring heavily despite the
cold, floundering along as best we might through the
snow which grew deeper and deeper as we kept
gaining a higher altitude. Had I dreamed that it
was so bad, I never would have taken that moun-

THE MINERAL BELT 125

tainous route, but would have gone to the railroad
at Wallace, where the valley is too warm for much
snow. But now I did not like to turn back, and
determined to break through to Tijeras if possible.
After some five hours of fearful toil, we reached
the little creek at the foot of the noble Sandias,
and crossed it at a spot which has bloody memories.
While in Golden I had become acquainted with
the famous desperado, Marino Lebya, a herculean
Mexican of astonishing agility and almost match-
less skill with the revolver — one of his favorite
pastimes being to spur his fleet horse through a
village, shooting off the heads of chickens as he
galloped past ! He was a known murderer, having
slain many men in quarrels or for purposes of rob-
bery, and a perennial horse-thief; but he walked
the streets of Golden as freely as any one. There
were many warrants out against him, but the
numerous officers who came down periodically from
Santa Fe to arrest him always took very good care
not to find him, nor to let him find them; for
whenever he heard of such an official visit he
always buckled on his unerring six-shooters and
rode into Golden at top speed, to " see who would
take Marifio." His bravado was endless, and
covered no lack of courage. He was ordinarily
a good-natured fellow, and I had many very enter-
taining talks with him without at all suspecting

126 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

who he was; but those for whom he conceived a
dislike were apt to fare ill. He was a good deal
of a joker, and sometimes a very cruel one. A
very wealthy and very round eastern man who once
came to Golden to buy some mines, doubtless has
no difficulty to this day in recalling his first — and
last — meeting with Lebya. His negotiations were
progressing very favorably, and he had stepped
into the shanty saloon to "set 'em up'* to a num-
ber of miners. Just then the door swung open,
and in strode the huge Mexican, his broad, rather
handsome face flushed with drinking, and the two
unerring six-shooters in his belt. Marino never
liked fat men — they always seemed to irritate him
by their rotund sleekness, and at sight of the capi-
talist his brow clouded. The outlaw spoke excel-
lent English ; and stalking up to the stranger he
demanded: "Who told you to come here? We
don't want fat men here ! " The little crowd fell
back, and the capitalist's face turned the color of
paper as the desperado seized him by the shoulder.
He could only stammer, "Wh-what's the ma-mat-
ter?"

•' I'm Mariiio, and I hate fat men," was the reply.
"If you're here to-morrow I'll peg you down out
here and light a fire on that big stomach " — and
leaving the stranger more dead than alive, Mariiio
went off up street. It is hardly necessary to add

THE MINERAL BELT 127

that the capitalist did not wait for that abdominal
conflagration. There was no stage, but he would
sooner have walked out than spend that night in

Golden. He got away somehow; and the

Mining and Milling Company died thus in its in-
fancy.

But to return to the bank of San Pedro Creek.
Some time before my visit, an American doctor
coming up from Albuquerque had stopped over
night at Tijeras, and had carelessly exposed a con-
siderable roll of money. He rode a fine horse, and
had a good revolver. Next morning as he came on
toward Golden, Marino's gang — who had taken a
short cut from Tijeras to get ahead — ambushed
him at this very crossing. His horse fell at their
first volley, crushing his leg beneath it, but he
fought bravely, emptying his six-shooter at the
assassins, until he fell, heavy with bullets. The
outlaws took his valuables and then burned the
bodies of horse and rider. For a long time noth-
ing was known of his fate. At last his brother
came from the East to make search and finally
found his watch in pawn at Bernalillo. By this
clew four of the murderers were traced, and an
Albuquerque mob left them dangling to four tele-
graph poles. Marino, howevei;, escaped, and retri-
bution did not overtake him until three years after
I knew him. A Mexican whom he had treated

128 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

with great generosity, and upon whose friendship
he relied, was bribed to kill him, or to assist a
deputy sheriff in doing so. The precious couple
met Marino on the forest road a few miles from
Golden, and the always alert outlaw challenged
them. "What? Don't you know me?" cried the
false friend, riding up with a cordial smile and
extending his hand. As MariSo grasped it, the
traitor jerked him forward and the cowardly officer
put a bullet through Marino's brain from behind.
Had the heavy ball gone through the heart instead
of instantly paralyzing the great nerve-centre,
there is no doubt that a man of Marino's force of
will would have slain both his murderers before
dying himself; and they knew that no mere sur-
prise, however complete, could make them a match
for that lightning marksman. Only some such
cowardly trap as theirs could have conquered him.
Mariiio was dearly loved by the common people, to
whom he was a very Robin Hood, fleecing only the
rich and dividing with the humble; but he was a
terror to that whole section, and his death was a
relief to the public.

In the ruins of the old church just beyond this
fatal crossing I stopped to rest and escape the icy
wind, for all my clothing was wringing wet, while
Shadow was in a perfect lather. In ten minutes
we were on the road again, but with increasing

^ THE MINERAL BELT 129

anxiety. There had been an ominous change in
the weather, and sheet-like clouds covered the sky.
The wind was rising, too; and suddenly I saw,
with a thrill of terror, that a few finer particles of
the dry snow were beginning to blow northward.
That may seem a circumstance too trivial to men-
tion at all, but I knew it was a matter of life or
death. We were in a trackless wilderness, far
from help, or food, or warmth, and with no more
than the remotest idea in what direction they lay;
night near at hand, and a deadly cliill in the air,
and our only guide to safety the footprints of a
horse. In ten minutes my fears were realized.
The wind took sudden strength, and came shriek-
ing savagely down the valley, scooping up great
sheets of the snow-flour and whirling it hither and
yon in blinding volleys. The footprints, upon
which our lives might depend, drew dimmer, faded,
were wiped out altogether. I pulled my hat over
my eyes, shut my teeth, and plunged desperately
and blindly on in the general direction of the now
obliterated trail. It was a fearful struggle against
that head-wind, through the snow. Presently
Shadow crouched under a spreading pinon, whose
piny boughs kept off the storm, and howled dis-
mally. I called to him, and then walked on,
thinking that the poor fellow would surely follow;
but he was too worn out, and only howled the

130 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

louder and did not budge. I went back to him,
put my knife-belt around his neck, and led him.
For perhaps a mile he did his best to come on, but
then he could keep his feet no longer, and could
only be dragged limp and helpless as a dead body.
That would not do — the strap would choke him.
Deadly as the danger was I could not desert him
— dear Shadow, who had come to seem more like a
brother than a dog, in our long and lonely walk
together. I picked him up and threw him upon
my heavy knapsack, his legs on either side of my
neck, and carried him as one carries a sheep. And
then I began to lose all hope. My load was crush-
ing, the drifts grew more impassable, the wind more
cruel. It was already several degrees below zero.
Down my legs and body trickled rivulets of sweat;
and my outer clothing, sweat-soaked for hours, was
now frozen stiif . We were off the road, too, and
in a rough country, cut every few rods by deep
arroyos running to the creek. These were drifted
full; and a hundred times I tumbled into them
without warning, cutting and bruising us both
cruelly, the fine snow sifting down my back and
chilling my strength; floundering out again only
by the energy of despair, and struggling on only
to fall into another trap. My strength was gone.
The enduranc which had never failed before,
though often sorely tested, was at an end. Nothing

THE MINERAL BELT 131

but " bulldog " kept me up. I knew that to stop
meant sure death, and with unseeing eyes, and
ears ringing with strange sounds, and mind sink-
ing into a strange, pleasant numbness, I still strug-
gled on, making a new footprint less fast than the
drifting storm covered the last one made. And
then I stepped in a burrow and fell backward, and
could not rise again; and there we lay, done for
and lost in the trackless snows of the Sandias.

PULLING THROUGH

A Narrow Escape. — San Antonito. — A Rich Trail. —
"Poisoned!" — My First Experience with Chile. —
A Lesson in Traveller's Courtesy. — The Pueblo of
Isleta. — Character of its Citizens.

I HAVE been in a great many dangers of many-
sorts where I expected to feel death's hand on my
shoulder the next moment; but in none where
escape seemed more absolutely impossible than
that night in the Sandia snows. And yet there
was none of the usual horror now — for that mer-
ciful drowsiness of mind and body was like an an-
aesthetic against the protracted dread which other-
wise would have been unbearable. With every
breath I grew more comfortable in body and more
dreamily content. The reality of death seemed
far off and hazy — as though it concerned only
some other person. Shadow was under my neck
and propped me up like a pillow. He did not
move and I thought perhaps he was dead, but did
132

PULLING THROUGH 138

not look to see. It did not seem to interest me.
I was warm and free from pain, and my lids were
very heavy. The storm was passing, and on the
western horizon lay a tiny belt of sapphire sky.
The sun was just entering it, red and swollen.
Now it was half down behind the black peaks;
and on a sudden I saw two tiny specks moving
across the sinking disk of day. The sight roused
me like a douche of ice-water. It was as though a
rough and painful hand had shaken me savagely
from a happy dream. There was an inexpressible
pain in the awakening; I came back in an instant
under the accumulated tortures of the day, but
without volition, and indeed against my will.
But there was no helping it — it was no thought,
or reasoning back, but a violent force apparently
quite outside of me. Yet, of course, it was all
within the strange chamber of the brain — for it was
Hope come to life again, and dragging Will from
his faint. For those two specks meant life ahead.
They had no shape, for they were five miles away;
but their motion told the story to a hunter's eye.
They might have been horses, so far as visible
form went ; but they moved as only men move —
and men they were. I staggered to my feet with
a yell of joy — a yell that started from deep lungs
but fainted on powerless lips in a babyish squeal
that made me laugh hysterically. I was wide

134 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

awake now — weak as a child, but with the will
again supreme. I threw Shadow again upon my
shoulders, and plunged on through the heavy-
drifts, with no more thought of dying. But it
was a fearful struggle, and many a time I thought
that I must drop and give up, even with life so
near. Death seemed awful now, and fear helped
my trembling legs. And at last, in the cold, still
night, guided by a blazing window, I stumbled
into the little hamlet of San Antonito, and fell
fainting across the threshold of the first house.

The owner, a kindly German trader named
Walther, dragged me in and brought me to with
hot wine and with dry clothing and with rubbing;
and when at last I could help myself I tried the
same treatment on Shadow, all except the cloth-
ing. A roaring fire, a hot, appetizing supper, and
a delicious bed were such inconceivable luxuries
as they cannot dream of who have never been
through such an experience ; and soon we had for-
gotten the horrors of the day. Next morning —
thanks to perfect physical training — I felt all
right except for a strange weakness which did not
wear off for some days; and although Shadow's
ears were so badly frozen that they never fully
recovered, he seemed otherwise in very good trim.
We made an early start, for I was growing anx-
ious to reach a post-office; and there were several

PULLING THROUGH 135

little Mexican hamlets along the way, in case we
found ourselves " outnumbered " by the snow.

For three miles we had a frightful time, —
steeply up hill through waist-high snow, — and
then crossed the divide and had a long, rough
declivity before us. Now, with every mile, the
snow was perceptibly less: and by the time we
had passed Cafioncito and another " town " of five
houses, our wading was not more than ten inches
deep. That is not generally pleasant walking, but
to us it seemed a perfect paradise. At Tijeras we
began to find bare patches, wherein the mud was
deeper than were the alternate drifts. But little
things like that made no impression on our rising
spirits ; and stopping at Tijeras only long enough to
swallow a tortilla and some tasteless Mexican curd
cheese, we hurried on down the head of the Tijeras
Canon. As we went on the snow grew scantier,
for we had already descended a couple of thousand
feet, perhaps; and the alternate snowbanks and
bare gravel bars caused me a curious find. A pair
of oxen had gone down the road ahead of us ; and
T frequently noticed that whenever they came to
the bare ground the little "stilts" of snow which
had caked in their hoofs broke off — a trifle to be
thought of only because I was familiar with the
discomforts of walking on such snowballs, and
reflected what a nuisance it would be if my heels

136 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

"balled up" as high as did those of the oxen.
Just then a curious glitter caught my eye and I
stooped to see what it was. One of the hoof-cakes
in breaking from the hoof had caught a consider-
able ball of gravel in its wet clutch and now lay
half turned over, leaving a cavity in the soil
beneath. And right in that casual gravel cup lay
the cause of the glitter — a beautiful nugget of
placer gold, weighing only about three dollars, but
one of my pet " relics " because it came to me in so
odd a way.

Just at sunset we came to the two houses which
comprised Carnoe, and were hospitably taken in by
the poor Mexican at the second. I shall always
remember Kamon Arrera, the first Mexican in
whose house I began to understand the universal
hospitality of these simple folk — both for his
courtesy and for a very funny acquaintance I
found there. You may be sure Shadow and I were
ravenous by this time ; and the prospect of appeas-
ing our appetites looked to me very slender. This
fear was confirmed when Sefior Arrera led me to
the kitchen for supper. Upon the lonely looking
table was only a cup of coffee, a dry tortilla (the
everlasting unleavened cakes, cooked on a hot
stone), and a smoking platter of apparent stewed
tomatoes. Now if there is anything which does
not appeal to my stomach it is stewed tomatoes ;

PULLING THROUGH 137

but I was too hungry to be fastidious. There was
nothing wherewith to eat except an enormous iron
spoon, and with starving and unseemly haste I
ladled a liberal supply from the platter to my
plate and swallowed the first big spoonful at a
gulp. And then I sprang up with a howl of pain
and terror, fully convinced that these " treacherous
Mexicans " had assassinated me by quick poison —
for I had very ignorant and silly notions in those
days about Mexicans, as most of us are taught by
superficial travellers who do not know one of the
kindliest races in the world. My mouth and
throat were consumed with living fire, and my
stomach was a pit of boiling torture. I snatched
the cup of hot coffee and swallowed half its con-
tents — which aggravated my distress ten-fold, as
any of you will understand who may try the
experiment. I rushed from the house and plunged
into a snowbank, biting the snow to quench that
horrible inner fire. Poor Arrera followed me in
astonishment, but smothering his laughter. What
was the matter with the senor? I came very near
answering with my six-shooter, but his sincerity
was plain, and I listened to him. Poison? No,
indeed, senor. That was only chile coloradOf chile
con came, which liked to the Mexicans mucho —
and to many Americanos tambien. And so it was
— only the universal red pepper of the Southwest,

138 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

red pepper ground coarse and stewed with little
bits of meat; an ounce or so of meat to a pint of
the reddest, fiercest, most quenchless red pepper
you ever dreamed of ! I let him lead me back to
the house, but with no more thought of eating.
I felt inwardly raw from lips to waist, and great
tears rolled down my cheeks for hours. Shadow
ate greedily of the dreadful stuff, but I slept that
night on a stomach which was empty, but cer-
tainly did not feel lonely, and a solemn vow never
again to look upon the chile when it was Colorado.
But next morning when I came out to breakfast
very faint and weak, there was only the platter of
blood-red stew and the tortilla and the coffee. I
gulped down tlie leaden tortilla, with frequent
gulps of coffee, and sighed. I was very hungry.
The chile con carne smelt very good, at least.
Perhaps — and I took a bare drop upon the spoon
and put it to quaking lips. Hm! Not so bad!
Still I remembered last night, and took two drops.
Rather good! A spoonful — a plateful — another
— in fine, when I was done, not a bit was left of
that inflammatory two quarts upon the platter,
and I actually wished for more! The chile
" habit " is a curious thing. Simply agonizing at
first taste, the fiery mess soon conquers such an
affection as is never won by the milder viands,
which are sooner liked and sooner forgotten. I

PULLING THROUGH 139

never missed and longed for any other food as I
did for chile when I got back to civilization.

From Carnoe it was a short, dry morning's walk
across the upland slope from the mountains to the
Rio Grande at the enterprising little American
city of Albuquerque, where I stopped a day to get
even with correspondence. Coming out of there a
bright December morning, I also " got even " with
something else — with an emergency at which we
all have to rebel now and then, but which the
traditions of an effete civilization do not always
permit us to meet in the soul-satisfying manner I
was able to, and for which I am sure of being
envied. There are few of us who have not felt
an old-Adam yearning to rend some boor who
" cut " us or met our courtesy with a brutal cold-
ness; and in behalf of sputtering humanity I was
glad to get back one blow.

As I trudged along the sandy road, my rifle on
my shoulder, I met a middle-aged, handsome,
well-tended American, jogging along on a valuable
horse. In this native land of courtesy I had
learned that human decency of the road which
brightens travel in a Spanish country. Whoso met
me greeted me politely and gave me good day;
and now I did the same. So when the florid per-
sonage on a high horse came face to face with me
I said ; —

140 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT

"Good afternoon, sir."

He looked at me coldly, and made no sign.

"Good afternoon, sir," I repeated, with a sud-
den change of heart. But he only stared with
more insolent disdain.

He was within six feet. I snapped the rifle
forward from my shoulder and looked him in the
eye along the sights. The hammer was up.

"Perhaps you did not hear my remark, sir. I
said good afternoon to you."

This was said very quietly, but it had a remark-
able effect. The ruddy purple cheeks paled sud-
denly, and the pudgy hands grasped spasmodically
at the saddle-horn, as if to keep from a fall.

"Good afternoon, sir! Good afternoon, sir! A
very fine afternoon, sir! I hope you are well,
sir. I beg pardon, beg pardon, sir! " he stuttered,
and putting spurs to his horse was off like the
wind, never once stopping to look back.

Three hours' walk thence to the south along the
river — which was fairly alive with wild geese
and ducks — brought us to the quaint Pueblo
Indian town of Isleta. There was little dream in
me, as we rambled through the strange little city
of adobe, and interviewed its swarthy people, that
this was some time to be my home — that the
quiet, kindly dark faces were to shine with neigh-
borliness; and to look sad when the tiny blood-

PULLING THROUGH 141

vessel in my brain had broken anew and left me
speechless and helpless for months, or when I fell
bored with buckshot by the midnight assassin,
nor of all the other strange happenings a few years
were to bring. But though there was no seeing
ahead to that which would have given a deeper
interest, the historic old town, which was the
asylum of the surviving Spaniards in that bloody
summer of 1680, had already a strong attraction
for me. There were more tine-looking Indians
and more spacious and admirable houses than I
had yet seen — and, indeed, Isleta, which is the
next largest of the nineteen pueblos, numbering
over one thousand one hundred people, has the
largest and best rooms, the largest and best farms,
and most extensive orchards and herds and other
wealth, though it is one of the least picturesque,
since its buildings are nearly all of but one story,
while in some pueblos the houses are six stories
high.

The pueblo of Isleta is one of the strange little
city-republics of that strange Indian race which
had achieved this quaint civilization of their own
before Columbus was born. Its people own over a
hundred and fifteen thousand acres of land under
United States patent, and their little kingdom
along the Eio Grande is one of the prettiest places
in New Mexico. They have well-tended farms,

142 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

orchards and vineyards, herds of cattle, sheep, and
horses, and are indeed very different in every way
from the average eastern conception of an Indian.
It is a perennial wonder to me that American
travellers care so little to see the wonders of their
own land. They find abroad nothing more pic-
turesque, nothing more marvellous, in scenery or
in man, than they could easier see within the
wonderland of the Southwest, with its strange
landscapes, its noble ruins of a prehistoric past,
and the astounding customs of its present aborig-
ines. A pueblo ceremonial dance is one of the
most remarkable sights to be witnessed anywhere ;
and there are many other customs no less worth
seeing.

I have lived now in Isleta for four years, with
its Indians for my only neighbors; and better
neighbors I never had and never want. They are
unmeddlesome but kindly, thoughtful, and loyal,
and wonderfully interesting. Their endless and
beautiful folklore, their quaint and often astonish-
ing customs, and their startling ceremonials have
made a fascinating study. To relate even the
small part of these things which I have learned
would take volumes ; but one of the first and least
secret customs I witnessed may be described here.
The Chinese feed their dead, beginning with a
grand banquet which precedes the hearse, and is

PULLING THEOUGH 143

spread upon the newly covered grave. The Pue-
blos do not thus. The funeral is decked forth
with no baked meats ; and the banquet for all the
dead together is given once a year in a ceremonial
by itself. The burials take place from their
Christian church; and the only remarkable cere-
monies are those performed in the room where
the soul left its clay tenement. All that is a
secret ceremony, however, and may be seen by no
stranger. But all are free to witness the strange
rites of the Day of the Dead.

THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS

A Day of the Dead in a Pueblo Town. — The Appetite of a
Departed Indian. — The Biscuits of the Angels. — An
Acrobatic Bell. — A Windfall for the Padre.

To-day the aborigines who sleep nine feet deep
in the bosom of the bare gravel graveyard in front
of the quaint church of the pueblo of Isleta have
the first square meal they have enjoyed in a twelve-
month; for to-day the Day of the Dead is cele-
brated with considerable pomp and ceremony. It
is to be hoped that death sonjewhat dulls the edge
of an Indian's naturally robust appetite, else so
protracted a fast would surely cause him incon-
venience. But the rations are generous when they
do come.

The bustle of preparation for the Fiesta de los
Muertos has been upon the pueblo for several days,
in a sort of domestic crescendo. While the men
have been — as usual in the fall — looking rather
devotedly upon the new wine when it is a sallow
144

THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 145

red, and loading themselves by day to go off in
vocal pyrotechnics at night, when they meander
arm in arm about the village singing an aboriginal
"won't go until morning," the women have been
industriously employed at home. They never seem
to yearn for the flowing bowl, and keep steadfastly
sober throughout the temptations of wine-making,
always ready to go out and collar a too obstreperous
spouse and persuade him home. It is well for the
family purse that this is so. We have a governor
this year who is muy hravo, and woe to the con-
vivialist who lifts his ululation where Don Vicente
can hear him, or who starts in to smash things
where the old man's eagle eye will light upon him.
In a brief space of time two stalwart alguazils will
loom up on the scene, armed with a peculiar adjust-
able wooden yoke — a mammoth handcuff in design
— which is fitted around the culprit's neck, and off
he is dragged by the handles to the little 'dobe jail,
there to repent of his folly until he has added a
dollar or two to Don Vicente's treasury.

For the last three days the dark little store of
the trader has been besieged by a crowd of women,
bearing fat brown babes in the shawls upon their
backs, and upon their erect heads sacks of corn or
wheat, or under their arms the commonest fractional
currency of the pueblo — the sheepskin, worth ten
or fifteen cents according to weight. Some bring

146 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

coin of the realm, for this is one of the wealthiest
pueblos as well as the largest. Their purchases
were sugar, flour, lard, candles, calicoes, and occa-
sionally chocolate, all with festal intent.

For three days, too, the queer mud bee-hives of
ovens outside the houses have been "running to
their fullest capacity " all over town. Betimes in
the morning, the prudent housewife would be seen
instigating a generous and persistent fire in her
homo. Then, when the thick adobe walls were
hot enough, she would rake out the coals and ashes,
and swab the interior with a wet rag tied to a pole.
Next, a brief disappearance into the house, and a
prompt emergence with a broad, clean board, cov-
ered with the most astounding freaks of ingenuity
in dough. In most things the Pueblo appears
unimaginative enough — though this is a deceptive
appearance — but when it comes to sculpturing
feast-day bread and cakes the inventive talent dis-
played outdoes the wildest delirium of a French
pastry-cook. Those culinary monstrosities could
be safely worshipped without infringing the Deca-
logue, for they are like unto nothing that is in the
earth, nor in the heavens above the earth, nor in
the waters under the earth. Their shapes always
remind me of Ex-Treasurer Spinner's signature —
and they are quite as unapproachable.

Having been placed in the oven, the door of

THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 147

which was then closed with a big, flat stone, and
sealed with mud, the baking remained there its
allotted time, and then, crisp and delicious — for
there are few better breadmakers than these Pue-
blos— it was stowed away in the inner room to
await its ceremonial use.

Yesterday began more personal preparations for
the important event. Go into whatever dooryard
you would, you found anywhere from one to half a
dozen dusky but comely matrons and maids, bend-
ing over brightly painted tinajas and giving careful
ablution to their soft black hair. Inside the house,
mayhap, gay red calicoes were being deftly stitched
into simple garments, and soft white buckskins
being cut into the long strips to be wound into the
characteristic female " boot. " The men were doing
little, save to lend their moral support. But late
last night, little bands of them wandered jovially
over the pueblo, pausing at the door of every house
wherein they found a light, and singing a pious
appeal to all the saints to protect the inmates —
who were expected to reward this intercession by
gifts of bread, meat, coffee, tobacco, or something
else, to the prayerful serenade rs.

Thus anticipated, the Day of the Dead dawned
clear and warm. As the sun crawled above the
ragged crest of the Sandias, the gray old sacristan,
in shirt and calzoncillos of spotless white, climbed

148 A TRAI^IP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

the crazy staircase to the roof of the church and
assaulted the bell, which has had comparatively-
few breathing-spells the rest of the day. The ring-
ing of the church-bell of Isleta is an experience
that is worth a long journey to enjoy. The bells
hang in two incongruous wooden towers, perched
upon the front corners of the huge adobe church.
There are no ropes, and tongues would be a work
of supererogation. The ringer, stepping into the
belfry through a broken blind, grasps a hammer in
his hand, and hits the bell a tentative rap as if to
see whether it is going to strike back. Encouraged
by finding that it does not, he gives it another
thump after a couple of seconds; then another;
then, growing interested, he whales it three times
in half as many seconds ; then, after a wee pause,
he yields to his enthusiasm, rushes upon the bell,
drubs it in a wild tattoo, curries it down from
crown to rim with a multiplicative scrub, and
thenceforth devotes himself to making the greatest
possible number of sound-waves to the second.
As a bell-persecutor, he has no superiors.

All this feverish eloquence of the bell had no
visible effect for awhile. The people evidently
knew its excitable temperament, and were in no
hurry to answer its clatter. But by nine o'clock
there was a general awakening. Along the aim-
less " street " across the big flat plaza, long lines of

THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 149

women began to come churchward in single file.
Each bore upon her head a big, flaring basket —
the rush chiquihuite of home make, or the elegantly-
woven Apache jicara — heaped high with enough
toothsome viands to make the soundest sleeper in
the campo santo forget his fear of fasting. Each
woman was dressed in her best. Her moccasins
and queer aldermanic " boots " shone bright and
spotless ; her dark skirt of heavy home-woven stuff
was new, and showed at its ending by the knee a
faint suggestion of snowy white ; her costliest cor-
als and turquoise and silver beads hung from her
neck; the tapalo which covered all her head except
the face was of the gayest pattern. One young girl
had a turkey -red table-cloth for a head-shawl, and
another an American piano-cover of crimson with
old gold embroidery.

Marching through the opening in the high adobe
wall which surrounds the graveyard, each woman
went to the spot whose gravel covered beloved
bones, set her basket down there, planted a lot of
candles around it, lighted them, and remained
kneeling patiently behind her offering. It was a
quaint and impressive sight there under the bright
New Mexico sun — the great square, shut in by the
low adobe houses (for Isleta has none of the ter-
raced houses of the more remote pueblos), the huge
adobe church filling the space on the north, with

150 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

its inadequate steeples, its two dark arches, and its
long dwindle into the quarters of the priest; the
indiscriminate graveyard, whose flat slope showed
only the three latest of its unnumbered hundreds
of graves; the hundred kneeling women weeping
quietly under their shawls and tending the candles
around their offerings while the dead ate to their
heart's content, according to the belief of these
simple folk.

The big, clumsy doors of the church were open,
and presently some of the newcomers entered with
their basket offerings, crossing themselves at the
door, and disposed their baskets, their candles, and
their knees at certain points along the rude floor of
loose boards laid flat on smooth adobe. It was not
at random that they took these scattered positions.
These were they whose relatives had enjoyed the
felicity of being buried under the church floor ; and
each knelt over the indistinguishable resting-place
of her loved and lost. The impressive mass was
prefaced by a short, business-like talk from the new
priest. It had always been the custom for the
women to wail loudly and incessantly over the
graves, all through mass; but the new padre
intended to inaugurate a reform right here. He
had told them the Sunday before that there must be
no " keening " during divine service ; and now he
gave them another word of warning on the same

THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 151

subject. If they did not maintain proper quiet
during mass he would not bless the graves.

The warning was effective, and the mass went on
amid respectful silence. A group of Mexican
women kneeling near the altar rail, sang timidly
in pursuit of the little organ, with which they
never quite caught up. The altar flared with
innumerable candles which twinkled on ancient
saints and modern chromos, on mirrors and tinsel
and paper flowers. Through the three square,
high, dirty windows in the five-foot adobe wall the
sunlight strained, lighting up vaguely the smooth
round vigas and strange brackets overhead; the
kneeling figures, the heaped-up baskets, and the
flickering candles on the floor below. Near the
door, under the low gallery, stood a respectful
knot of men, Indians and Mexicans. The gray-
headed sacristan and his assistant shufiled hither
and thither with eagle eyes, watching the candles
of the women lest they burn too low and kindle the
floor ; and now and then stooping to snuff out some
threatening wick with their bare fingers and an air
of satisfaction. Sometimes they were a little too
zealous, and put out candles which might safely
have burned three or four minutes longer. But no
sooner were their backs turned than the watchful
proprietress of that candle would reach over and
relight it. There should be no tallow wasted.

152 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

At last the mass was over and the padre went
into the retiring room to change his vestments,
the women and baskets retaining their positions.
Directly he reappeared, and the sacristan tottered
beside him with a silver bowl of holy water.
Stopping in front of the woman and basket nearest
the altar, the priest read a long prayer for the
repose of the soul over whose long-deserted tene-
ment she knelt, and then sprinkled holy water
thitherward, at once moving on to the next. The
woman thus satisfied rose, put the basket on her
head, and disappeared in the long side passage lead-
ing to the priest's quarters, while the ayiidante
thumbed out her candles and tossed them into a
wooden soap box which he carried. So went the
slow round throughout the church, and then
through the hundred patient kneeling waiters on
the gravel of the campo santo outside. As soon as
a grave was blessed, the woman, the candles, and
the basket of goodies vanished elsewhere, and the
padre's storeroom began to swell with fatness.
The baskets were as notable for neat arrangements
as for lavish heaping. A row of ears of corn stand-
ing upright within the rim of the basket formed
a sort of palisade which doubled its capacity.
Within this cereal stockade were artistically
deployed those indescribable contortions in bread
and cake, funny little "turnovers " with a filling of

THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 153

stewed dried peaches ; half dried bunches of grapes
whose little withered sacks of condensed sunlight
and sweetness were like raisins, and still display-
ing the knots of grass by which they had dangled
from the rafters; watermelons, whole or sliced;
apples, quinces and peaches, onions, and occasion-
ally candy and chocolate. The beauty of it all was,
that after the dear departed had gorged their fill,
there was just as much left for the padre, whose
perquisite the remainder invariably is. He treated
me to a peep into his storeroom in the evening,
and it was a remarkable sight. Fully two tons of
these edible offerings, assorted as to their kinds,
filled the floor with enormous heaps, and outside,
in the long portal^ was enough blue, and red, and
white corn to fill an army of horses. Bread led
the list; and as the liberal proportion of lard in
this bread keeps it good for months, the padre ^s
housekeepers will not need to bake for a long time
to come.

With the blessings of the last grave, the services
of the Fiesta de los Muertos were over, and the
population settled down to the enjoyment of a rare
repose — for they are a very industrious people and
always busy, save on holidays, with their farms,
their orchards, their houses, and other matters.

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE

Twenty Miles of Moss Agates. — A Night with the Cow-
boys. — Shooting a Tarantula. — Christmas at the Sec-
tion-House.— A Board-Hunt. — The Wild Dance at
Laguna. — The City of the Cliff. — Acoma and its Peo-
ple.—Buried Treasures. — A $70,000 Seat.

At Isleta the Atlantic and Pacific Eailroad has
its junction with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe, and I was to follow the general line of the
former road, which gives access to the most won-
derful and the least-known corners of America.
I had a very jolly night singing college songs and
chatting with one of the operators at the little
junction office, — a brave, gentle boy who was fight-
ing off consumption here, and who died at last,
far from his eastern home, — and next morning
turned my back to the pleasant Eio Grande Valley
and climbed the long volcanic hills to the west.
It was a day of surprises to me. At the top of
the ten-mile divide were many extinct craters,
164

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 155

some of which I explored, and their work of for-
gotten ages marked the whole surrounding country.
All day long I was walking over pebbles and
stones which are almost treasures in the East —
twenty miles of moss agates! I picked them up
at every rod or so — nuggets from the size of a
bean to larger than my head, and many of them
most beautiful specimens. There was also much
petrified wood — gorgeous chips of hardest agate,
of all colors, and still plainly showing the struc-
ture of the plant that had turned to stone uncounted
thousands of years ago. When, late at night, I
reached Eio Puerco (the " Dirty Kiver ") my load
weighed fifty -one pounds, — thanks to the peck or
so of agates in the capacious pockets of my duck
coat, — and I was glad to see the end of that heavy
thirty -five miles. My bed of a blanket on the
board floor of the station — the only accommoda-
tions, nine times out of ten, for the next nine hun-
dred miles — was luxury enough after such a
playing at pack-beast.

The Eio Puerco is well named, and is a type of
many of the strange streams of the Southwest.
There are in New Mexico and Arizona and the
desert border of the Garden State of States some
clear and beautiful brooks of pure, delicious water,
sealed with the crowning approval of trout; and
there are as many sluggish, slimy, villainous

156 A TKAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT

streams whose alkaline waters are rank poison
which no thing can drink nor life inhabit, and the
Eio Puerco is one of the latter. It is over a hun-
dred and twenty-five miles in length and flows
mostly through one of the most untravelled por-
tions of New Mexico, — a tiny brook whose volume
is no more than that of a five-mile rivulet in the
East, — watering and making green a pretty thread
of a valley, but itself accurst.

The next day's walk was short, but very weari-
some with that crushing load, and at the sight of
San Jose — a "town" of a section-house and a
ranch-house — I decided to do no more without
rest. A long-haired cowboy, with a twenty-pound
buffalo gun across the saddle, came loping up as I
drew near, greeted me pleasantly, made fast
friends with suspicious Shadow, and bade me
over to the ranch-house for the night. My even-
ing in the wind-swept shanty with him and the
three other cowboys then at headquarters — the
rest being scattered over the many leagues of
the range — was a very pleasant one. Cowboy
hospitality is always genuine, though rough, and
one who has trouble with these wild riders has
only himself to thank. Here I got rid of one of
the most troublesome parts of my load — trading
my venerable and battered Winchester rifle for a
splendid new Colt's six-shooter with all its trap-

ACROSS THE EIO GRANDE 157

pings — a perfect weapon which has since seen me
through many a "close call." The exchange was
a most welcome relief, and as for effectiveness, I
soon got so handy with the new arm that there
was no need for the rifle.

On the road to El Kito next day I met two
belated foes, my encounter with whom illustrates
the curious and unreasoning prejudices which are
born in us and will not begone. One was a slug-
gish, half-frozen rattlesnake, whose head I incon-
tinently hacked off with unalarmed hunting-knife.
The other was a huge, dark, hairy tarantula — or,
to be more exact, the bush spider, popularly called
tarantula. He was lively enough, and jumped at
me a foot at a lift. Within a yard of him I would
not have come for worlds. I cut his hideous body
in twain from ten feet away with a careful bullet
from my forty-four. Snakes I have always rather
liked and never had the remotest fear of; but that
inborn horror of spiders I have never been able to
shake off — though in disgust at the weakness I
forced myself for two years to catch and kill in my
bare fingers every spider I found and suffered in-
conceivably in doing it. But to this day a cold
chill runs down me whenever I come suddenly upon
one of these most devilish of created things.

It was Christmas Eve when we reached El Eito
and its lone section-house, and I felt a bit of hoi-

158 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

lowness under my heart. This did not seem par-
ticularly Christmas-like to a graduate from the old
New England fire-place, with its pendent stock-
ings, and from the glorious Christmas dinner of
the old home. But there was no use in moping
about it, and I strode up to the section-house to
the usual wretched supper. But there was a con-
siderable surprise for me. The section "boss," a
tall, angular, good-natured Pennsylvanian named
Phillips, seemed to " take a shine " to me at once,
and before supper was over he had invited me to
stay over to-morrow and eat Christmas iinner
with them. The " boys " had " chipped i». ' and
sent to Albuquerque for turkey and cranberries,
and all the other blessed old standbys, and it was
going to be "the real thing." I made a feeble
remark about being in haste to reach San Mateo,
but Phillips suppressed me at once. "'Tain't
every day we kill a pig and give the brustles to
the poor," he said, "and you'll just stay and eati ''

And stay I did. And what with a visit to the
little Indian pueblo near by, and a successful hunt
for coyotes, and a memorable dinner, it was, after
all, a rather merry Christmas for Shadow and me,
with our rough hosts, in the dirty little section-
house among the lava crags of El Kito.

" Stumpin' it to Californy, hey? " ejaculated the
section-boss for the twentieth time, as though the

ACROSS THE RIO GRAKDE 159

idea was a burr in his mind. And then at last he
got beyond the exclamation and suddenly cried,
"Banged if I don't stump it with you! "

I looked at him in mild astonishment, but he
was as good as his word. That very night he
threw up his position, made arrangements about
his pay checks, and packed in a bandanna hand-
kerchief what he wished for the journey, giving
the rest of his scant belongings to the laborers.
He did not ask whether I desired his company,
nor did it seem necessary to advise him against
the undertaking — for there was little likelihood
that one of his temperament would carry this sud-
den resolve very far.

That evening I took time for a little hunting on
a plan which caused great wonderment to Phillips
and his men. The country was swarming with
coyotes, which were feasting on the countless dead
cattle; but it was very hard to get within rifle-
shot of the cunning brutes. I particularly wanted
another skin just then; and determined to get it
by a board-hunt. Phillips got me a smooth board,
an inch auger, and some lard, at my request, and I
soon made a lapboard. A dozen auger-holes,
bored almost through, were filled with lard, in
which were a few grains of strychnine, and then
the surface of the board was similarly smeared.
Carrying this peculiar trap half a mile from the

160 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

house, I set it in a pass between the cliffs, and
came back to our Christmas dinner. Had I put
out a piece of poisoned meat, Mr. Coyote would
have picked it up and trotted off to die, of course,
but very likely in the next county, where he would
not enrich me. But any carnivorous animal that
comes to a lapboard stays there — licking the lard
first from the level, and then squeezing its tongue
into the holes for what is there, until the sudden
spasm comes and it is too late to run for water.
Sure enough, next morning at sunrise the largest
and handsomest coyote I ever saw, before or since,
was lying with his nose not six inches from the
fatal board. I "cased" him — that is, took off
the whole skin without a cut, pulling the whole
body through the mouth — to the utter stupefac-
tion of the Mexican laborers, who would not
believe such a thing possible. That is the hardest
way to skin an animal, but it is the only way to
save the whole pelt without the serious waste from
the "tags," which come where a skin is "pegged
out" to dry. The hide, which comes off like a
tight glove, inside out, should be re-turned, so
that the flesh side is within, and then stuffed with
straw or any substance which will fill it out
plumply and still allow a slight circulation of air
within. When it is perfectly dry it can be slit
from chin to tail with a sharp knife, and there you

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 161

have a perfect and sightly pelt. It took me three
hours of grubbing in the short, dry buffalo grass to
get enough to fill the coyote's suit, but the skin,
which I have yet, was fine enough to pay for the
trouble.

At 10.30 Phillips bade good-bye to El Rito, and
we started off together. At noon we came to
Laguna, where the Indians were holding their
remarkable holiday dances — as the wild yells that
came down the wind apprised us miles away. On
the bridge which spans the creek near the pueblo,
Shadow, bewildered by these howls, suddenly
turned back to me for protection. The section-
men were pushing the heavy handcar against the
wind, and in his fright he collided with it. One
wheel ran over him, derailing the car; and there
he was, half dangling between the ties and half
entangled in the wheels. I feared he was done
for; but when we pulled him out from the wreck
he was uninjured. "A fool fer loock!" com-
mented the stumpy Irishman; and I agreed with
him.

Laguna is the most picturesque of the pueblos
that are easily accessible ; and as the railroad runs
at the very base of the great dome of rock upon
which the quaint, terraced houses are huddled,
there is no difficulty in reaching it. On the sum-
mit of the rock is the plaza or large public

162 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

square, surrounded on all sides by the tall house-
walls and entered only by three narrow alleys.
We hastened up the sloping hill by one of the
strange footpaths which the patient feet of two
centuries have worn eight inches deep in the solid
rock, and entered the plaza. It was a remarkable
sight. The house-tops were brilliant with a gor-
geously apparelled throng of Indian spectators,
watching with breathless interest the strange scene
at their feet. Up and down the plaza's smooth
floor of solid rock the thirty dancers were leaping,
marching, wheeling, in perfect rhythm to the wild
chant of the chorus, and to the pom, pom, of a
huge drum. Their faces were weirdly besmeared
with vermilion and upon their heads were war-
bonnets of eagle feathers. Some carried bows and
arrows, some elaborate tomahawks, — though that
was never a characteristic weapon of the Pueblo
Indians, — some lances and shields, and a few
revolvers and Winchesters. They were stripped
to the waist and wore curious skirts of buckskin
reaching to the knee, ponderous silver belts, — of
which some dancers had two or three apiece, — and
an endless profusion of silver bracelets and rings,
silver, turquoise, and coral necklaces and ear-rings,
and sometimes beautifully beaded buckskin leg-
gins. The captain or leader had a massive neck-
lace of the terrible claws of the grizzly bear. He

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 163

was a superb Apollo in bronze ; fully six feet three
inches tall, and straight as an arrow. His long
raven hair was done up in a curious wad on the
top of his head and stuck full of eagle feathers.
His leggins were the most elaborate I ever saw —
one solid mass behind of elegant bead-work. He
carried in his hand a long, steel-pointed lance,
decorated with many gay-colored ribbons, and he
used this much after the fashion of a drum-major.
When we first arrived upon the scene, and for
half an hour thereafter, the dancers were formed
in a rectangle, standing five abreast and six deep,
jumping up and down in a sort of rudimentary
clog-step, keeping faultless time and ceaselessly
chanting to the "music" of two small bass drums.
The words were not particularly thrilling, consist-
ing chiefly, it seemed to my untutored ear, of " Ho !
o-o-o-h ! Ho ! Ho ! Ah ! Ho ! " but the chant was a
genuine melody, though different in all ways from
any tune you will hear elsewhere. Then the leader
gave a yelp like a dog, and started off over the
smooth rock floor, the whole chorus following in
single file, leaping high into the air and coming
down, first on one foot and then on the other, one
knee stiff and the other bent, and still singing at the
top of their lungs. No matter how high they
jumped, they all came down in unison with each
other and with the tap of the rude drums. Ko clog-

164 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT

dancer could keep more perfect time to music than
do these queer leapers. The evolutions of their
"grand march" are too intricate for description,
and would completely bewilder a fashionable leader
of the German. They wound around in snake-like
figures, now and then falling into strange but regu-
lar groups, never getting confused, never missing
a step of their laborious leaping. And such endur-
ance of lung and muscle! They keep up their
jumping and shouting all day and all night. Dur-
ing the whole of this serpentine dance, the drums
and the chorus kept up their clamor, while the
leader punctuated the chant by a series of wild
whoops at regular intervals. All the time too,
while their legs were busy, their arms were not less
so. They kept brandishing aloft their various
weapons, in a significant style that " would make
a man hunt tall grass if he saw them out on the
plains," as Phillips declared. And as for atten-
tive audiences, no American star ever had such a
one as that which watched the Christmas dance at
Laguna. Those eight hundred men, women, and
children all stood looking on in decorous silence,
never moving a muscle nor uttering a sound. Only
once did they relax their gravity and that was at
our coming. My nondescript appearance, as I
climbed up a house and sat down on the roof, was
too much for them, as well it might be. The

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 165

sombrero, with its snake-skin band; the knife and
two six-shooters in my belt; the bulging duck coat
and long-fringed snowy leggins; the skunk-skin
dangling from my blanket roll ; and last, but not
least, the stuffed coyote over my shoulders, looking
natural as life, made up a picture I feel sure they
never saw before and probably never will see again.
They must have though me Pa-puk-ke-wis, the wild
man of the plains. A lot of the children crowded
around me, and when I caught the coyote by the
neck and shook it, at the same time growling at
them savagely, they jumped away and the whole
assembly was convulsed with laughter.

For hours we watched the strange, wild spectacle,
until the sinking sun warned us to be moving, and
we reluctantly turned our faces westward. It was
after dark when we reached the nasty little section-
house which comprised Cubero, and we found no
supper and no better bed than the greasy floor.
Phillips had been in high spirits all day, and was
constantly exclaiming about the surprise of the
natives when we should have walked to California.
"I'll show you how to do it!" he cried, over and
over. "I used to walk forty miles a day on an
average and carry a surveyor's chain." But at the
Cubero accommodations he began to grumble.

Cubero is the nearest station to the most wonder-
ful aboriginal city on earth — cliff -built, cloud-

166 A TRAIVIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

swept, matcliless Acoma. Thirteen miles south, up
a valley of growing beauty, we came to the home
of these strange sky-dwellers, a butte of rock nearly
four hundred feet tall and seventy acres in area.

We were handsomely entertained in the comfort-
able and roomy house of Martin Valle, the seven-
times governor of the pueblo — a fine-faced, kindly,
still active man of ninety, who rides his plunging
bronco to-day as firmly as the best of them ; and
who in the years since our first meeting has become
a valued friend. With him that day was his her-
culean war-captain, Faustino. I doubt if there was
ever carved a manlier frame than Faustino's; and
certain it is that there never was a face nearer the
ideal Mars. A grand, massive head, outlined in
strength rather than delicacy; great, rugged feat-
ures, yet superbly moulded withal — an eye like
a lion's, nose and forehead full of character, and a
jaw which was massive but not brutal, calm but
inexorable as fate. I have never seen a finer face
— for a man whose trade is war, that is. Of course
it would hardly fit a professor's shoulders. But it
will always stand out in my memory with but two
or three others — the most remarkable types I have
ever encountered. One of the Council accom-
panied us, too, a kindly, intelligent old man named
Jose Miguel Chino — since gone to sleep in the
indeterminate jumble of the gray graveyard.

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 167

In a " street " paved with the eternal rock of the
mesa were a hundred children playing jubilantly.
It was a pleasant sight, and they were pleasant
children. I have never seen any of them fighting,
and they are as bright, clean-faced, sharp-eyed, and
active as you find in an American schoolyard at
recess. The boys were playing some sort of Acoma
tag, and the girls mostly looked on. I don't know
that they had the scruples of the sex about boister-
ous play. But nearly every one of them carried a
fat baby brother or sister on her back, in the bight
of her shawl. These uncomplaining little nurses
were from twelve years old down to five. Truly,
the Acoma maiden begins to be a useful member of
the household at an early age !

Coming back from an exploration of the great
church with its historic paintings, and the dizzy
"stone ladder" where the patient moccasins of
untold generations have worn their imprint six
inches deep in the rock, I found the old governor
sitting at his door, indulging in the characteristic
" shave " of his people. He was impassively peck-
ing away at his bronze cheeks and thinking about
some matter of state. The aborigine does not put
a razor to his face, but goes to the root of the mat-
ter— plucking out each hirsute newcomer bodily
by pinch of fingernails, or with knife-blade against
his thumb, or with tweezers. The governor's

168 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

"razor" was a unique and ingenious affair. He
had taken the brass shell of a 45-60 rifle cartridge,
split it nearly to the base, flattened the two sides,
filed their edges true, and given them a slight
spread at the fork. Thus he got a pair of tweezers
better adapted to his work than the American style.
With this he was coolly assaulting his kindly old
face, mechanically and methodically, never wincing
at the operation.

As we talked in disjointed Spanish, I saw a very
wonderful thing — such a thing as is probably not
to be seen again in a lifetime. An old crone came
in, carrying a six-months' babe. She was a hundred
years old, toothless, — for a wonder, for Acoma
teeth are long-lived, — snowy-haired, and bony, but
not bent. She and the infant were the extremes of
six generations, for it was her great-great-great-
great-grandchild that dangled in her shawl. I saw
the grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-
great-grandmother of the child afterwards, the
mother being absent at Acomita. Poor old woman !
Think of her having cared for five generations of
measles, croup, colic, and cholera infantum!

There was a wonderful foot-race that day, too,
between half a dozen young men of Acoma and an
equal number from Laguna. There were several
hundred dollars' worth of ponies and blankets upon
the race, and much loud talking accompanied the

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 169

preliminaries. Then the runners and the judges
went down to the plain, while every one else gath-
ered on the edge of the cliff. At the signal, the
twelve lithe, clean-faced athletes started off like
deer. Their running costume consisted of the
dark-blue patarabo, or breech-clout, and their sin-
ewy trunks and limbs were bare. Each side had a
stick about the size of a lead pencil ; and as they
ran, they had to kick this along in front of them,
never touching it with the fingers. The course was
around a wide circuit which included the mesa of
Acoma and several other big hills. I was told
afterward that the distance was a good twenty-five
miles. The Acoma boys, who won the race, did
it in two hours and thirty-one minutes — which
would be good running, even without the stick-
kicking arrangement.

I gathered many interesting trophies at Acoma
— moccasins, necklace ornaments of native jet
(which is found rather abundantly in that region),
and some superb arrow-heads of red moss agate,
opaline, and smoky topaz, and many other curios.

Near Cubero, by the way, is a startling " buried
treasure," if popular tradition is to be believed.
A hill not far from the railroad is its alleged hid-
ing-place.

According to the accepted story, an expedition
from Old Mexico was returning from California

170 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT

long ago, with an incredible treasure — so mucli
gold that it loaded down some hundreds of burros.
They had come safely across the desert, and thus
far into New Mexico, when they were set upon by
the Apaches in such numbers as to make matters
extremely ticklish even for so strong a party. As
their only way of escape they dug and timbered a
big tunnel, buried their seven million dollars^
worth of gold dust and nuggets therein securely,
and thus lightened, made a rapid push for home.
The Apaches were too many for them, however,
and killed off nearly all before they reached Chi-
huahua. The few survivors made several desperate
efforts to get back and remove their treasure, but
instead left their scattered bones to bleach on the
arid plains, till at last only one man of all the
party was left. He died some years later in
Europe, whither he had gone to enlist capital for
an expedition strong enough to stand off the
Indians, who were then making it sultry for
New Mexico. After his death the story of the
seven millions slumbered for a term of years.
Few, if any, in New Mexico had ever heard of it,
and the hill rested undisturbed. At last a quiet,
mysterious German appeared one day in the Mexi-
can hamlet of Cubero. He was on some moment-
ous mission, but no one could leam what it was
until he had carefully picked out a few men whom

ACROSS THE EIO GRANDE 171

he deemed trustworthy, and to them confided his
secret. A couple of years before he had cared for
a destitute and dying Mexican, who had rewarded
his kindness by leaving him the story of the seven
million and a map of the spot where it was buried.
He had this map and a written guide with him.
The map showed Mount San Mateo, the adjacent
mesas, the lava flow, "a creek full of sardines"
(the Agua Azul), and the hill of gold. In a very
short time the German mysteriously disappeared
from the village, and so did several well-known
citizens. No one knew what had become of them,
till a sheep-herder found them digging away at a
hill beyond McCarty's. They labored there some
weeks, and then the German fell sick and had to
be removed to Cubero. He died soon after, and as
their work had disclosed nothing tempting, his
Mexican partners soon wearied of the job. The
story had leaked out, however, and ever since then
there have been intermittent but in the aggregate
very extensive attempts to unearth the alleged
treasure. Mexicans have pottered away there
some of their abundant leisure ; American ranchers
have excavated a good deal, and railroad men have
thrown up their jobs to take a spell with pick and
spade. One party of Mexicans from Cubero worked
there a long time. They were finally rewarded by
coming to loose earth and then a timbered tunnel.

172 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

But no sooner did they strike the cavity than
appalling noises rushed forth, and believing the
place haunted, they ran away never to return.

But that golden myth was less interesting to me
than a strange bonanza which I personally know to
be authentic. It is located in the old town of
Cubero, three miles from the station. One of the
first houses in the hamlet is that of Don Pablo
Pino, the leading merchant of western New Mexico
a generation ago. It is a big, square adobe, with
the customary placita or court in the centre. The
front door, which few Americans are allowed to
enter, is an invention of Don Pablo's. It is about
six feet wide and five feet high. Now Don Pablo
is a tall man, as well as a very heavy and aged
one ; and to bend his rheumatic joints every time
he went in or out would be intolerable. So above
the centre of the door a dome a foot higher has been
sawed out, wide enough for the passage of his head.
On any bright day the old man may be seen; but
his wife, an aged sylph of three hundred pounds,
is never visible. She has more important cares
within. Don Pablo has always distrusted the
" gringo " banks, — since there have been any in the
Territory, — and has for years kept his hard cash in
a safe guarded by the most unique time -lock on
record. In a strong inner room, which no stranger
ever sees, a narrow hole has been dug down through

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 173

the adobe floor. In it lie something like $70,000
in coin ; and in a chair upon its trap-door sits the
ponderous senora! Truly, it would be an unman-
nerly cracksman who should tamper with that lock!
There are men and guns in plenty about. A strong
armed force could hardly capture the strangely
guarded treasure, and there have never been, I
believe, any attempts. And to this day, the old
man, bent over his stout stick, suns himself before
his quaint doorway; while his better and heavier
half still dozes day and night in her unshifted arm-
chair above the treasure.

XII

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO

Phillips gives up. — Southwestern Eloquence. — The Buried
City of San Mateo. — Home-life on a Hacienda. — A
Mexican "April Fool," — American Citizens who Tor-
ture Themselves and Crucify Each Other. — A New
Mexico Milking.

The morning when we resumed our westward
way from Cubero, the ground was six inches deep
with snow, and the storm increasing. The break-
fast was simply uneatable, and we started off
poorly prepared for so hard a day's work. The
slush and mud made walking very difficult ; and as
we were going steadily up grade the road grew
worse with every mile. A hearty dinner at
McCarty's cheered us; but as the afternoon wore
on Phillips began to be a kill-joy. He was not a
profane man, but his groans, sighs, objurgations of
the weather, and growing pessimism about life in
general made the way almost as cheerful as a
funeral procession. " Say, don't you know this is
174

FROM CUBEEO TO SAN MATEO 175

an awful big undertaking to walk to Los Angeles,"
he broke out every now and then ; and it was plain
what shape his thoughts were taking. He kept
falling behind and then running to catch up, while
I ploughed ahead as fast as ever I could. My heart
rather smote me, but it was a mercy to both of us
to try his metal at the outset; if he was "infirm
of purpose," the sooner we parted company the
better for both ; and if he was of the real stuff this
would bring it out.

For only twenty-five miles, that was a very hard
day's work, and when we reached Grant's in the
evening Phillips' walking days were done. He
left me there and took the train for California, and
I never saw him but once again.

From Grant's I was to make a side-trip of
twenty-five miles up to the quaint Mexican hamlet
of San Mateo to visit Colonel Manuel Chaves, the
finest rifle shot and greatest Indian fighter in the
Southwest in his day. Our five days' acquaint-
ance then ripened into one of the dearest of
friendships, and since the old hero's death his
gallant sons have grown near to me in com-
panionship through such dangers as draw men
together.

But the getting to San Mateo must not be over-
looked. The snows were deep and it was late at
night J but a servant of the Chaves house was at

176 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Grants with a "bull- team." If I walked, the
hospitable Spanish hearts would be outraged. Ko,
I must get into the big freight-wagon and go to
sleep — Tircio had strict orders not to let me
walk. So I obediently crawled under the wagon-
sheet and snuggled down in my sleeping-bag, while
Tircio sat forward and promulgated his blacksnake
and exhorted the oxen. Once in awhile he said
something personal to them, but no more than
any one would say who had to drive such stupids.
There was no hint of the rare pyrotechnics to
follow.

New Mexico is the native heath of profanity.
I have heard with interest the oratory of those
who elsewhere enjoy an undeserved repute for
their ability to swing the dictionary around by
the tail and shake all the swear-words loose. But
bless you, they don't know their "a, b, abs."
The most unambitious paisano can swear around
them and past them and over them with the easy
grace of a greyhound circumnavigating a tortoise.
It was a NeAV Mexican who was the only man I
ever heard divorce a polysyllable with an oath. I
brought him word that a certain desperado was
" hunting " him.

"Wal?" he growled.

" Wal ! " I retorted, " I've ridden twenty miles
to tell you, so he shouldn't catch you short."

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 177

"Wal, I'm under no obli-byGod-gation to you,
sir, if you did, blankety blank ! "

But he was only an Eastern man New Mexi-
canized. The natives are not guilty of such
vague and meaningless blasphemy. They swear
methodically, gracefully, fluently, comprehen-
sively, homogeneously, eloquently, thoughtfully —
I had almost said, prayerfully. They curse every-
thing an inch high; they ransack the archives of
history, and send forward a search-warrant into
the dim halls of futurity, to make sure that
nothing curse worthy escapes. But there is noth-
ing brutal about it. It is courteous, tactful,
musical, rapt — at times majestic. It carries a
sense of artistic satisfaction.

It was providential that I had by now scraped
some approximate acquaintance with that melodi-
ous tongue, for my Jehu knew not a word of
English. All went well until we came to cross
the tiny arroyo in the Portecito. Here we slumped
suddenly in a quicksand. The hind wheels went
down almost from sight, the front wheels and the
oxen hung on the bluff farther bank — and then
Tircio let go. A perfect gentleman, Tircio. A
quiet, hard-working, honest boy whose dimpled
babes at home tweak his thin beard by hours
unchidden, and whose heart and home are open as
the soul of New Mexican hospitality. But as an

178 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

exhorter of cattle — well, I believe the Eecording
Angel must have just given it up, after a bit, and
dropped the ledger and gone away to rest. And
the substance of his oration was in words and
figures as follows, to wit : —

^' Malditos bueyes! Of ill-said sires and dams!
[Nothing intentional here.] Malaia your faces!
Also your souls, bodies, and tails ! [Crack !] That
your fathers be accursed, and your mothers three
times! [Crack!] Jump, then! May condemna-
tion overtake your ears, and your brand-marks
tambien! [Crack!] The Evil One take away your
sisters and brothers, and the cousin of your grand-
mother! [Crack! Crack!] That the coyotes may
eat your uncles and aunts! Diablos! [Crack!]
Get out of this ! Go, sons of sleeping mothers that
were too tired to eat! Comof [Crack! Crack!]
The fool that broke you, would that he had to
drive you in injierno, with all your cousins and
relations by marriage ! [Crack!] Ill-said family,
that wear out the yoke with nodding in it ! Curse
your tallow and hoofs ! Would that I had a cJiicote
of all your hides at once, to give you blows!
[Crack!] Malaia your ribs and your knee-joints,
and any other bones I may forget! Anathema
upon your great-great-grandfathers, and every-
thing else that ever wore horns ! Mai — "

Here I interposed, for I was slowly freezing,

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 179

and Tircio was just beginning to get interested.
Business before pleasure, always; and the first
business was to send him for assistance. The last
words I caught, as he trudged off to San Mateo
through the storm, were : —

" — and your dewlaps and livers! And curse
everything from here to Albuquerque and back
four times ! And — "

Then he faded into the night, while I tried
to remember his adjectives to keep warm — for
there was nothing wherewith to build a fire.

It was a bitter night there, too cold for sleeping,
too stormy for anything else. I took Shadow into
the sleeping-bag, and we kept each other from
freezing — but only that. At last came the muffled
beat of horse-hoofs; and in a moment more Tircio
drew up beside the wagon with two stout allies.
The freight was soon unloaded, the fresh horses
soon helped the wagon out, and with my head on
a soap-box I slept sweetly while we bumped over
the roads and gullies to San Mateo.

There was the true Spanish hospitality — a uni-
versal welcome which the very name of the home
betokens, for it is Sucasa, "Your Own House."
The time passed very quickly with hunting and
exploring by day, and filling the long winter
evenings with song and quaint Spanish games with
the cordial household. Three wintry days I spent

180 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

digging in a wonderful American Pompeii. Three-
quarters of a mile from the Chaves homestead is a
low, irregular mound, within a few rods of which
one might pass without a suspicion of its interest.
For the hundred years that mound has been known
to civilized people, it kept its secret well hidden
until 1884. But one day a savage windstorm
gouged out a lot of sand from its flanks, and a
passer noticed the top of a remarkable wall peep-
ing out. Don Amado Chaves, eldest son of the
brave old Colonel, and now Territorial Superin-
tendent of Public Instruction, had excavations made
which showed that the mound was the grave of an
entire prehistoric pueblo — buried by the drifting
sands of countless ages. The whole of the first
story is still standing, though all the rooms were
choked with debris from the walls of the second
and third stories. The masonry is of stone, and
wonderfully good. Down one of those time-tried
walls the point of a spade slides as down a planed
board. This was the first of the countless won-
derful ruins in New Mexico with which I became
familiar; and exploration of hundreds of others
since has not destroyed my interest in that
strange, buried, prehistoric city of the aborigine
at San Mateo. The pueblo was built in one enor-
mous fort-house in the shape of a rectangle inclos-
ing a courtyard. The outer walls were nearly

FEOM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 181

two hundred feet long on a side, and about thirty
to forty feet high. Not a door or loophole of any
sort broke that wall, and the only access to the
courtyard, upon which all the doors and "win-
dows" opened, was by ladders which could be
pulled up over the wall, thus leaving the inhabi-
tants inside their strange stone box, very safe from
any foes of their day. Even the doorways upon
the little inner square, and those from room to
room within, were so tiny that a foe already in
the house could easily be overcome as he squeezed
through — wee openings only about sixteen inches
wide and three feet or less in height. In my
excavations — for I shouldered a spade and dug
there enthusiastically, as would any young Ameri-
can who had a chance — I uncovered several of
these "toy" doors, which interested me greatly.
I did not then know that these were the character-
istic doorways of all ancient pueblo architecture,
these harassed people preferring domestic incon-
veniences for the sake of greater safety against
their innumerable foes ; and I was quite ready to
accept the theories of equally green folk (who,
however, are not too modest to write " scientific "
books) that such ruins were peopled by a race of
dwarfs.

But despite the strength of its solid stone walls,
this house-town of perhaps tw^o hundred people

182 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

had met the fate of so many of the pueblos of the
old days, and tragedy is written all across its
mysterious ruins. The lower rooms (which are
all perfect except as to roof) are choked with
the debris of the upper ones — full of charred
remnants of roof and rafter. The pueblo was
taken in war, — doubtless by surprise, for it should
easily have withstood any assault with the weapons
of those days, and doubtless by the Navajos, who
roamed thickest there, — many of its people were
slain, and then the firebrand of the savage victors
did its work and tumbled the ruined home upon
the careless grave of the dead owners. There are
many, many human bones under that ancient
wreck, and Don Amado once dug up, in the
largest room of all, the perfect skeleton of a
woman, her long, silken, black hair still beautiful
as in the forgotten days when she washed it at the
little acequia (irrigating ditch) whose course can
still be dimly traced along the valley. I found
many arrowheads and implements of petrified wood
and volcanic glass, a few finely made bone beads,
and bushels of fragments of pottery, still beauti-
fully bright of hue after all these centuries, and
many other interesting relics.

The home-life of the lovable Mexican family
with whom I spent those stormy but happy four
days interested me greatly. The large, roomy,

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 183

comfortably appointed adobe house was as unlike a
New England homestead as possible in all but the
one thing — that it was hoine; and home not only
for its people, but for their guests. The beds, cov-
ered with priceless Navajo blankets, were scrupu-
lously neat; and so was everything else in the
domestic economy. The food, though still new to
me, was abundant and very good. The usual bill
of fare included stews of mutton with rice, beef
roasted in delicious cubes, beef shredded and
stewed with the quenchless but delightful chile,
frijoles (the brown beans of the Southwest) cooked
as only a Mexican can cook them ; white and gra-
ham bread of home-made flour not robbed of its
nutrition by roller processes, and baked in little
"shortened" cakes called galletitas; wine, perfect
coffee, and canned fruits. All the baking was
done in the big adobe beehives of ovens in the
courtyard; the other cooking upon the kitchen
stove. A dozen ever-amiable servants kept all the
affairs of the extensive household in excellent
shape. The large scale of housekeeping at such a
hacienda may be inferred from the one item of
coffee, of which 2500 pounds was consumed there
yearly.

In the evenings we gathered in one of the big
rooms, by the rollicking light of the adobe fire-
place, and sang the sweet Spanish folk-songg, or

184 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

played happy, simple games. The old hero Don,
wasted with disease from a hundred wounds and fifty
years of incomparable hardships; his Madonna-
faced wife, his very beautiful daughters and dash-
ing sons, and cousins and friends, old and young
— how the faces all come back to me now, though
so many of the dearest sleep under the long shadow
of the noble peak of San Mateo.

Among the quaint social games we played were
many closely similar to the old-fashioned ones of
New England. The play '^Floron'^ (the ring) is
very much the same as "Button, button, who's got
the button?" except that a ring is the article
hidden from hand to hand, and that a pretty
Spanish couplet is sung throughout the game.
" El molino " (the mill) is a version of the familiar
game wherein the players are named after the
various accessories of a mill. The leader tells a
story and at the mention therein of any article the
player meant thereby must rise and change his or
her chair, and when " the mill is broken " all jump
up and scramble for new seats. The " bullet " is
something like "fishing for apples." A conical
peak of flour is built upon a plate, and a leaden
bullet balanced upon its apex. The players in
turn take a table knife and cut away as much of
the flour hill as possible without disturbing the
bullet. The one who causes it to fall has to do

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 185

penance. The bullet is again placed on top of the
cut pile and the loser has to pick it up with his
teeth, an operation during which some one is sure
to give the bent head a shove which thrusts his
face deep into the flour. Forfeits figure largely
in the games and are often comical, but never
really unkind. A favorite is to order the penitent
to make a speech wherein another player supplies
the gestures. The second player stands behind the
first with his arms under those of the victim, and
carries on a most impressive gesticulation while
the victim speaks. The end of the oration is gen-
erally wild laughter, for the hands take occasion
to rub imaginary tears from the orator's face, and
to leave thereon two broad smooches of lampblack.
This trick, of course, is never played on ladies,
whose forfeits are generally no more severe than
the recitation of a didio (a Spanish epigrammatic
verse); or the blowing out of a candle, passed
rapidly before their faces ; or the giving of " three
sighs for the one you love best." There is nothing
like Copenhagen or any of the similar old-fashioned
rural games of the East. The strict Spanish deco-
rum would never tolerate such innovations. But
"the mill" and "the bullet" and "spinning the
plate " and a hundred other diversions as childlike
and as childishly enjoyed fully entertained us.
There is among the New Mexicans no St. Valen-

186 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

tine and no April Fool. Most of the young people
of the Territory never even heard of these Saxon
institutions. They have, however, a custom which
seems to be a distant cousin to both, and that is
the dia de los Santos Inocentes, the day of the Holy
Innocents. It falls on January 28th, and is an
occasion of as much mirth among the olive-skinned
young folk of New Spain as February 14th and
April 1st to Yankee boys and girls, being enjoyed
by much older jokers than would nowadays con-
descend to such frivolities in the East.

On that day it is the ambition of every wide-
awake young lady of the lonely little Mexican ham-
lets to hacer d uno inocente — to make some one an
innocent. The methods employed for this jovial
"fooling" are generally thus: We will suppose
that Pedro is a young man of the village and Maria
a mischievous maiden. On the morning of Janu-
ary 28th Pedro is busy with some duty, when a
very small and very tattered messenger arrives at
the house and delivers a note to him. Pedro has
perhaps forgotten the day altogether, and, entirely
unsuspecting, he reads : —

"Appreciated Friend: Will you do me the
favor to lend me your horse to-day that I may take
a paseo 9 Your friend,

"Maria Baca."

FBOM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 187

*' Por supuesto/' says the obliging Pedro; and
going out into the fields with his rope he lassos a
horse, bridles it, and sends it by the small envoy
to Maria.

In a little time the boy returns with his hands
full. In one is a broom — a tiny, cunning toy of a
broom tied with a pretty ribbon — and a very wee
cup of water to wet it in. In the other hand is a
note, always in these words ; —

"My Dear Friend: May God repay you for
[being so] innocent. Here I send you a little
broom and a little cup, that you may sweep off the
innocence from yourself.

" With pleasant remembrances, your friend,

"Maria."

The cup of water goes with the miniature broom,
after an old Spanish custom. The natives of New
Mexico to this day use very few of our American
brooms with handles. Their escoba is a thick wisp
of broom-corn tied in a round sheaf, and sweeping
with it requires one to bend half double. It is
never used dry; the housewife always dips the
end in a dish of water to lay the dust.

When Pedro has read this note, two facts dawn
on him — first, that he has been made an inocentey
and, second, that his horse is now a hostage to the

188 A TRAISIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

fair joker, and that he cannot recover it without the
proper desempeflo — atonement. He always takes
the trick in good part and proceeds to redeem his
horse by making some pretty present to Maria, or
by promising to give a dance, with refreshments
(chocolate, cakes, etc.), in her honor. This prom-
ise is always sacredly kept, and the ball ends in
innocent hilarity the good-natured trick of the
Santos Inocentes. The word santos is doubtless
used of those who are befooled in token of the
ancient feeling, still current among all Spanish
peoples, that those of little wit are dear to and
under the special protection of God, and therefore
holy.

The practice of desempeflo is a very ancient one
in all Spanish countries, and figures in many quaint
customs. Here, for instance, there is always the
" redeeming " of a little girl after her first dance.
Her parents, of course, accompany her to the ball
— there is no escorting by beaux to such affairs,
nor to any others, for Spanish young ladies. When
the girl, be she sixteen or six, has completed her
first dance, two elderly men, friends of the family,
make an "arm-chair" by crossing each others'
wrists, after a fashion familiar to our boyhood,
lift the debutante thereon, and carry her in
triumph to her parents to demand the desempeflo.
She is not released until the parents promise to

FEOM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 189

give a grand ball in honor of the friends "who
captured the child," and when that festivity comes
off she is belle of the occasion. In the remoter
villages the " grand ball " is but a little dance in a
clay-floored room, lit by flickering candles, and
with no more orchestra than a blind old fiddler and
an energetic youth with an accordeon. But simple
and plain as it is, there is a thorough spirit of
zest which is not always found in more brilliant
gatherings.

Here at San Mateo, too, I formed my first
acquaintance with those astounding fanatics, the
Penitentes — an acquaintance which afterward came
very near costing my life on several occasions.
These ignorant perverters of a once godly brother-
hood were formerly scattered all through New
Mexico; but of late years have died out save in
the remoter hamlets like San Mateo. Their only
appearance as a religious brotherhood is during the
forty days of Lent; but then they do penance for
the sins of the whole year. Naked to the waist,
their heads covered with a black bag like a hang-
man's cap, their bleeding bare feet guided by the
"Brothers of Light," they make their awful pro-
cessions, flaying their own bare backs with cruel
scourges till the blood runs to their heels, bearing
crosses of crushing weight or burdens of cactus
lashed tight to the quivering flesh. And on Good

190 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Friday they culminate with the actual crucifixion
of one of their number, chosen by lot ! Afterward
I not only witnessed these ghastly scenes, but
photographed them all, including the crucifixion.
We read with a shiver of the self-tortures of East
Indian fakeers, most of us ignorant that in the
oldest corner of our own enlightened nation as
astounding barbarities are still practised by citi-
zens and voters of the United States.

My eyes were beginning to open now to real
insight of the ' things about me ; and everything
suddenly became invested with a wondrous inter-
est. It is not an inevitable thing. Thousands
live for years beside these strange facts, too care-
less ever to see them ; but the attention once secured
never goes hungry for new interest. Years of study
since have not worn out for me the fascination of
the real inner meaning of this unguessed land —
its history, its habits, and its mental processes. It
is a world by itself — a land as much outside the
United States ethnologically as within it geograph-
ically. Every pettiest act of life is new and
strange to the intelligent man from the East —
tinged sometimes with humor, sometimes with
pathos, always with interest.

A trivial matter which is one of the first to
strike the newcomer was more seriously impressed
upon me here — and in later days has been so oft

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 191

reiterated as fairly to leave a scar on memory.
That is, the liberty allowed stock in the South-
west. I do not refer to mining stock, — which is
always too depressed to take advantage of any
liberty, — but quadrupeds. The fence is a refine-
ment of scepticism which has no place in the New
Mexican economy ; and stables are almost unheard-
of. The faith of the country is sublime. The
traveller camps indefinitely in a field four hundred
miles square, and turns his horse loose on Space.
The ranchero, just in from an eighty mile ride, and
under bonds to make a similar paseo to-morrow,
does likewise. For three hundred years the paisano
has been nightly dismissing his stock with firm
faith that in the opalescent dawn the animals will
come knocking at the door to be saddled. For
three hundred years he has been daily rising to
look out upon a landscape bereft of quadrupedality ;
and to sally forth with a rope and provisions for
a fortnight. As a rule, the horse is found before
the provisions run out ; and the few searchers who
have starved had little pity. More than two
weeks' rations of flour and bacon is too much to
pay for a New Mexican horse, anyhow. Occasion-
ally some sceptic thinks to supplement Providence
by rawhide handcuffs on the forefeet of his Eosin-
ante; but the impertinence is properly rebuked.
The distance between here and Halifax that a hob-

192 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

bled horse cannot travel in a night would scarce
make a promenade for a weary tumble-bug. Hob-
bles seem to add just the incentive the jaded bronco
was looking for. Like all great souls, he loves to
triumph over obstacles ; and his triumph is apt to
lap over into Utah. Nor have you got him when
you find him. He knows that sudden joy is apt
to be fatal — and he is no wilful homicide. It is
his disposition to break it to you gently. Indeed,
by the time you get him, your joy is so tempered
that it would not be dangerous to a man with both
feet in the grave.

The best way to catch a horse, under these cir-
cumstances, is with a six-shooter. Of course you
then have to walk home, a few hundred miles;
and you get no further good of the horse — but the
satisfaction is cheap at double the money.

A like originality of method obtains in other
processes of farm and fireside. As to milking,
I shall never forget my first experience. Juan Eey
had lassoed a yearling, with the other end of the
rope tied to his waist; and had last been heard
from down in Sierra County, still pleading with
the steer to pause and consider. The place was
therefore short by two maul-like but useful fists;
and Don Amado came to me and said : —

"Can you milk?"

"Certainly I can milk.''

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 193

"Well, I wish you'd come out and help us.
There are only three men in the house, and I hate
to tackle such a job short-handed. "

We went out to the corral, fenced with tortuous
trunks of cedar. The lair of the cow was there.
So was Casimiro with a fifty-foot reata. Don
Amado had brought a fence rail, but I was un-
armed. The rest took off their coats, and I fol-
lowed suit.

"Are you ready?" asked Don Amado with com-
pressed lips.

Casimiro swung his noose, and dropped it deftly
around the horns of the old sorrel. She seemed
surprised, and expostulated ; but at last we tripped
her with the rail, and bound her hand and foot.
I was lost in astonishment at this programme,
but refrained from advertising myself.

The cow was now pried to her feet and leaned
against the side of the corral, being blindfolded
with my bandanna. We had failed to provide a
gag — which I regretted shortly afterward when
she gave me a dimple where I could take no real
pride in showing it.

Just as I had the milking well in hand the rope
broke. Casimiro was let in on the mud floor, I
was bucked into the horsepond, and the cow began
to scale the fence. She started out well, but the
posts were too high for her sequel, and there she

194 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

hung, a bovine see-saw. Then was the hour of
our triumph. Her hind feet were at once anchored
to the posts, and we three hung on her horns to
keep that end down while poor, crippled Madalena
hobbled out and did the milking. This done,
we had only to chop down the fence, ease up our
ropes, and let old sorrel go. Simplest thing in
the world, when you know how. It seemed a bit
complicated then, but I soon recovered from my
surprise. With immaterial variations, that is the
orthodox way to milk a New Mexican country cow.

XIII

TERRITORIAL TYPES

Mexican Superstitions. — Patapalo's Encounter with the
Original Serpent. — A Meeting with the Devil. — A
New Companion. — An Unwilling Suicide. — The Rock
Springs Rancho. — A Crucifix in Petticoats. — Burros. —
The Census of the Saints. — The New Garden of the
Gods. — The " Bad Man " and his Armament.

Getting back at last to the railroad, after those
happy and instructive days at hospitable San
Mateo, I was busy a couple of days at Grant's
packing my Acoma relics, nuggets, pelts, and other
curios to be shipped to Los Angeles ; and had time
to form some instructive acquaintances. Here I
ran across a quaint old Mexican who was my first
point of contact with the remarkable superstitions
of his people. Witchcraft is firmly believed in
throughout New Mexico to-day; and by no one
more devoutly than by poor Francisco Cordoba,
better known as Patapalo, or "Peg-leg." He has
good grounds for the faith that is in him; for

195

196 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

years ago one of the three live brujas of San Eafael

— whom I had the pleasure of photographing later

— bewitched him, and twisted his legs so horribly
that he scarce can walk. And that has not been his
only experience with the supernatural. Years ago,
when he lived in Socorro, he had a very remark-
able adventure, as I have heard from his own lips.

A friend said to him one day : " Patapalo, why
are you so stupid? Come with me to-night and I
will make you the wisest man in the world — so
that you can play any music, talk any language,
know what happens a hundred miles away."
Patapalo demurred at first, but consented after
long solicitation. What occurred is best told in
his own words — or rather in an exact translation
of them.

"That night, it might be eight o'clock, Jose
came for me, and we started walking across the
plain. After we had gone a matter of a half hour
we found 10,000 mesquite bushes. I was often
there before, but never saw a single mesquite. I
said, 'What is this thing?' but Jose said, 'Keep
your tongue to your teeth and come on.' Then I
saw that each bush had a rosary hanging on it. 1
was to speak, but at the moment we came to a
door, very great, and with an iron lock. Jose
knocked. A voice within replied, 'Who comes?'
Jose said, 'We are two. One is ignorant.' Then

TERRITORIAL TYPES 197

the door opened itself, and we went into a room,
so large I could not see the end of it. It was very-
light and I saw hundreds of people. The men
were on the one side of the room and the women
on the other side. Many of them I knew, from
Socorro and other places. In the middle were
hundreds of musicians with all classes of instru-
ments— many such as I never saw before. Then
the musicians went to play very fine music, and
the men and women danced together.

"Such fine dancers I have never, never seen.
Then a very large goat came in and spoke to all,
and everybody had to kiss him. And when the
goat had gone there was a snake — of larger body
than mine — came in upright. And it came to
every man and wound itself around him and put
its tongue in his mouth, and the same to every
woman. And when he did so they talked words
which I could not understand. But when he
came to me and put his face before mine, my heart
left me, and I cried, 'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, save
me ! ' And at the instant I was standing alone in
the plain and the snake was gone, and the people
and Jose, and there was only a strong smell of
asufre. 1 walked home a long way very much
alarmed. Next day I saw Jose and he said, Tool!
The snake was ready to give you the tongue of
wisdom, but you called the holy name and ruined

198 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

all. ' He wanted me to go again, but I was afraid
and never did. No, I had not been drinking a
drop since many weeks."

Every old-time paisano remembers, too, the
experience of Ambrosio Trujillo — now gone to
his long account. He was sadly addicted to
liquor, and his oaths generally took the form of an
invocation to Satan. One fine moonlight night as
Ambrosio was reeling homeward, he stubbed his
toe, and angrily cried " that the devil take me ! "
Instantly his Sulphurous Majesty sprang from the
heart of a rock close by with a polite " Buenas
noches, amigo! what wilt thou? "

" Come, take a drink with me, " replied Ambrosio,
nothing abashed.

"Thanks! " said Satan, "but I never drink."

Ambrosio came nearer, — he was, drunk or sober,
a fearless man, — and the devil suddenly vanished,
leaving only a strong smell of brimstone. He
had human form, but his eyes and mouth were
living fire. Ambrosio went home a changed man.
From that time on he never dared go out at night;
and to the hour of his death, three years after-
ward, he never drank another drop.

Side by side with these quaint phases of native
life and thought I found as interesting types of
the practical and unconventional. The 99,000
acre rancho of the Acoma Land and Cattle Com-

TERRITORIAL TYPES 199

pany touches Grant's; and then and there began
friendships with some of its cowboys, which have
since brought many pleasant experiences. They
were not all rough men, — some had more than the
average education, — but the roughest were men.
Poor, brave, loyal Frank West, whose life was
pitched out lately by a bucking bronco, was a
man of uncommon parts. He was an unmitigated
cowboy, but a well educated one — a clergyman's
son who had drifted into this wild life not from
wildness, but for health. His speech was a
Joseph's coat of many colors — with remnants of
the college slang around which had accreted a
wonderful conglomerate of the breezy idiom of the
frontier. He was the terror of cattle thieves, but
never quarrelsome — a quiet, gentle, unpretentious
hero, and with a keen eye to the humorous side.

When Shadow and I started west again from
Grant's, we had acquired a new companion and a
much worse one than weak-kneed but kind-hearted
Phillips. It was a Pennsylvania sewing-machine
agent whom we will call Locke. He had seen in
the Albuquerque papers something about our jour-
ney, and got off the cars at Grant's to accompany
us. He had left a dollar or two, and a great
wealth of confidence, and nearly " talked our ears
off," He was a gentleman of chronic woes, and
in the first hour of acquaintance told me sorrows

200 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

enough to have swamped the Great Eastern had
she tried to carry them all.

For the first few miles the walking, though bad,
was not seriously so; but we were fast climbing
the Continental Divide, gaining about one hundred
feet in altitude with every mile — and with every
mile progress grew more difficult. By noon we
were in six-inch snow; and this grew continually
deeper, until it was almost to our knees. We
cooked lunch over a fire of chips, hacked with my
hunting-knife from a dead cedar, and pushed on.
Shadow was enjoying himself hugely, for the coun-
try was alive with cotton-tails, and in the deep
snow he caught several; but we bipeds were not
quite so happy. My companion, having told all
his hoarded troubles, now found new ones to engage
his attention. He kept wishing he were dead, and
at last declared that he would kill himself if he
only knew how! It was very hard to keep from
laughing; but with a very solemn face I handed
him one of my six-shooters, saying : " Here, help
yourself ! You are quite right ! " But he gave me
a look of ineffable reproach, pushed away the
proffered panacea for his woes, and declared that
he didn't see how people could be such heartless
brutes! As night came on matters looked rather
gloomy. It had become very cold, the snow was
full knee-deep, and we were wet, cold, and hungry.

TERRITORIAL TYPES 201

At last, when it was quite dark, the man of woes
sat down in the snow and refused to go any farther.
I tried to cheer him up, for Chaves could not be
more than five miles ahead; but he declared that
he would not budge another inch — he was going to
die right there — and began to cry like a child. It
is a dreadful thing to hear a man cry, even when
you feel contempt for his tears ; and for a moment
I even thought of taking him up forcibly and carry-
ing him. But as he weighed one hundred and
seventy pounds and I one hundred and forty-five
that was out of the question.

Just then I caught the blessed glimmer of a light
among the pinons only a few hundred yards away.
Even this did not serve to start Locke, and I had
to get him up by brute force and some very savage
threats. We stumbled through the snow to a poor
little Mexican ranch-house, where the courteous
owner and his huge wife were very kind. They
toasted us before the blazing mud fire-place and
turned themselves out of bed to give a comfortable
couch to two bedraggled, disreputable-looking
strangers ; and then that foolish Locke lay awake
all night, fearing that if he went to sleep our hosts
would cut our throats for his dollar. Poor Juan
Arragon and poor fat wife ! They long ago went
to a world where I hope they were as hospitably
cared for as they cared for us. In the morning

202 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

they gave us the last morsel in the shabby little
home, and proudly declined my proffered money.
Their hospitality was not for sale — it was from
the heart, as with all their kindly race. I shall
not soon forget the Kock Springs ranch; nor its
bright boy, rejoicing in the startling name — com-
mon enough among his people — of Jesus Maria ;
nor its score of mongrel curs who sore beset poor
Shadow; nor even its curious crucifixes. Upon
the walls were four or five little bronze statuettes,
representing the Saviour upon the cross, naked save
for the customary cloth about the loins. Some-
how, though, this was not quite up to the Mexican
ideas of propriety, so around the waist of each
figure they had put a funny little frilled calico
petticoat !

And "Paloma," the snow-white burro at Kock
Springs, reminds me that I have been shamefully
long in coming to that corner-stone of New Mexi-
can independence, the burro. This pocket edition
of the donkey is one of the most interesting natives
and ornaments of the Southwest. He is a shade
larger than the jackrabbit, and as strong as a horse.
It is no rare thing to see a half -cord of wood, or a
quorum of a ton of hay meandering across the aim-
less New Mexican landscape. This is apt to puzzle
the stranger, but the native accepts it without
astonishment. A careful analysis always shows a

TERRITOKIAL TYPES 203

base of burro in the mass. As a pack-beast he is
matchless — patient, strong, sure-footed as a moun-
tain-shesp. As a saddle animal, he is intermittent
but advantageous. He cannot help the size of his
ears ; and they are no mean shelter to the rider.
If you get saddle-weary, you just put your feet
down and let him walk on from under. If he were
to tire, you could put a shawl-strap on him and
take him home. I have never known this neces-
sity to arise ; but those who have ridden that noble
animal, the horse, on these Southwestern plains and
have had now and then to walk home and " pack "
the saddle, will appreciate this advantage. So you
get your animal back to camp, it really matters
little whether you take him as a seat or as hand-
baggage. If his face be a fair index, the burro is
the wisest thing in the creation — an owl looks the
greenhorn beside him. He is also the sleepiest.
He sometimes lies down for a nap, but that is
needless. He can sleep equally well standing or
in putative motion. And yet, when he runs wild,
— as he does in herds of several hundred, in some
remote localities, — the fleetest horse can barely
overhaul him in a long chase. And when young,
and particularly when furred with cockle-burs, he
is the *'cunningest" thing on earth.

It is an error to deem him stupid. He is like
his master — a deal wittier than he looks. We

204 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

hear little of New Mexican humor; but an Irish-
man could hardly have bettered the famous " Census
of the Saints."

A Frenchman, settled in New Mexico, fell in dis-
pute with a native as to which nation had the more
saints.

" Pero, " said the Mexican at last, " already makes
an hour that we argue ourselves without to finish
nothing. VamosI To the proof! That we seat
ourselves here joined. Then name thou thy saint
and pull out for him a hair of my chin, and I will
do the same. So, poco pronto, we shall count and
see to whom are more of saints."

^'C^est bien. Saint Sulpice," said the French-
man, plucking a hair from his adversary's beard
and laying it upon the table.

"San Juan," retorted the Mexican, in kind.

"Sainte Marie." (A hair.)

"Santa Ana."

"Saint Marc."

"San Pablo." "

So it went for ten minutes. Then the exasper-
ated Mexican ended the argument and his tally-
sheet by wrenching a whole fistful from the chin
of the Gaul with a triumphant yell of " Los doce
apostolos de una vez ! " ^

The snow grew deeper and deeper as we toiled
1 u The Twelve Apostles at once! "

TERRITORIAL TYPES 205

up the grade next day. At noon we stood upon
the crest of the Continental Divide — that vast
water-shed, 7297 feet above the sea, from whose
eastern slope the rain-drops find their way to the
Gulf of Mexico, while those upon the western side
are borne to the Pacific Ocean.

Six miles down hill brought us to Coolidge
and the first mail I had had in a month. This
was the only town of one hundi^ed people (ex-
cept the Indian pueblos) between Albuquerque
and Winslow, nearly three hundred miles. Be-
yond Coolidge the mud and slush soon became
awful to contemplate, and we had to walk all day
upon the ends of the ties, which were generally
clear on the south side of the track. I had a good
time all the morning picking up beautiful petri-
factions, both of shells and wood, and again my
pockets began to appear like anvils in size and
weight. We passed the little town of Gallup,
famous for its great deposits of bituminous coal,
and sustained entirely by the miners. The shafts
are some three miles north of town, and are reached
by a track whose grade is over three hundred feet
to the mile. Here we left behind the remarkable
red sandstone mesas which skirt the road all the
way from Bluewater, and which form a glorious
panorama that is aptly termed " the New Garden
of the Gods." It does indeed recall the Garden at

206 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Manitou, being of the same radiant hue and much
the same formation, but is on a vastly more stupen-
dous scale, though less grotesque in architecture.
For fifty miles the red, rocky wall runs on, usually
parallel with the track, and three to thirty miles
from it, in picturesque, broken, ever-varying bluffs,
two hundred to five hundred feet in height. Their
usual form is that of rectangular or square blocks,
hundreds of feet in each dimension, and fronting
toward the track almost as regularly as a row of
business buildings. A few, particularly at the
eastern end, are eroded into terraced castles; and
others have assumed more strange and irregu-
lar shapes. But the finest easily accessible freaks
of this strange gallery are a short distance west of
Wingate. From the fort itself one notes two
small, peculiar, twin pinnacles, rising above an
intervening ridge. As one walks on down the
track from the station, the baffling ridge slowly
fades away, and soon one stands in wonder before
that strange piece of nature's architecture — "the
Navajo church." "Back half a mile from the dress-
parade of red-coated giants it stands — a vast
cathedral hewn aptly from the solid rock by
Time's patient hand. You see it all there; the
vast bulk of nave and transept, of pillar, arch, and
dome ; while in the middle front, exactly as human
art could have placed it, soars aloft the dizzy

TERRITORIAL TYPES 207

tower with its slender pinnacles. Here the soft
gray sandstone comes out in exquisite contrast to
the deep prevailing red. Just beyond the church
is "Pyramid Rock," a curious, conical peak, high-
est of all the mesas, and beautiful in hue and
contour. This strange wall parts company with
the railroad near Gallup, but by no means ends
here. Its ruby cliffs run across clear to the big
Colorado Kiver, with breaks and variations, and far
up north into the Navajo Reservation, full of
strangely beautiful freaks of form and color.
Among their curious parks are found the beautiful
Navajo garnets, some of which are handsome as
rubies ; the pretty olivines, and other semi-precious
stones. These are not dug up by the prospector,
but mined exclusively by very small, very red, and
very pugnacious six-legged miners — namely, by the
ants. Their tall hills are the original and aborig-
inal garnet diggings; and among their little
" dumps " of tiny pebbles I have picked up many
a clear pigeon-blood garnet and light green olivine,
and one precious pellet of an emerald. The
Navajos — whose reservation lies north of the
track and parallel with it for fifty miles here —
gather and bring in these stones by the handful
and sell them to the traders. Most of them are
small ; but I have seen a perfect one of twenty-five
carats. One of the right color, free from flaws,

208 A TftAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

and large enough to cut in carbuncle, is a beauti-
ful and a very valuable gem. There are also fine
topazes. Kone of the higher gems have ever been
found in New Mexico — unless we except the
famous Canon de Tsayee [generally miscalled du
Chelly] swindle of a few years ago, when two
French sharpers salted that lonely and distant
canon with South African diamonds, bought up
the expert who was sent out, and got ^200,000
out of their scheme before the rascality was
exposed.

There was little else of interest until Manuelito,
the last station in New Mexico, except a curious
coward who kept an Indian trading-post at Defi-
ance. On a shelf which went around under the
whole long counter of his stone store, he had more
than a hundred loaded and cocked rifles and six-
shooters; and he took great delight in showing
how rapidly he could whirl from the goods on the
high shelves, snatch a firearm in each hand, and
" throw down " on us — a rather risky object les-
son. He was, as one might see at first glance, a
real specimen of a class now happily about extinct
— a man about five-feet-ten in height, of heavy
and muscular frame, a face with regular but hard
features, the neck of a bull, and the under jaw of
a terrapin; dressed in a soiled percale shirt and
bell-bottomed pants fringed with solid silver but-

TERKITORIAL TYPES 209

tons down the outside of eacli leg. He was the
utmost type of the " holy terror " of the West, the
"Ba-ad Man from Bodie," the "Howling Wolf
from the headwaters of Bitter Creek." The most
fanciful eastern correspondent could not exagger-
ate — if he could fairly do justice to — this Man of
Gore. His only conversation was of shooting and
cutting, and of " what a holy time " he had kill-
ing off enough Navajos to keep the rest humble;
illustrating how he would pump any one who
molested him so full of lead that some tenderfoot
would come along and locate a claim there ; and in
general letting us know what a " terror on wheels "
he was. Poor Locke listened with his chin drop-
ping, and Shadow kept to a modest corner. But
his status was plain enough. He was mereiy some
eastern hoodlum, out here for two or three years,
living in constant terror of the Navajos and tramps,
which he endeavored to conceal by murderous
talk and braggadocio. A few Indians came in to
trade, and he bullyragged and browbeat them
unmercifully. A rather handsome young Navajo
named John, employed to herd his cattle, came in
from the cold day's ride, and was abused and
reviled as few men ever were. Then Smith told
me how a former servant had, upon being dis-
charged, broken into the store during his absence,
and stolen $300 worth of goods. Smith and a

210 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

companion saddled their horses and set out in
pursuit as soon as a traitorous Navajo, tempted by-
reward, revealed the hiding-place of his fellow.
They came back with the stolen goods and a
blanket rolled around a vest and pair of pants,
stiff with gore. They had "found the cuss where
he got sorry and committed suicide."

"What," said I, "a Navajo commit suicide for
remorse at stealing?"

"Ya-as," answered the bad man, "an' I'll give

some more of the the same chance to kill

themselves if they ain't careful." Then he

had the effrontery to show me that hideously
besmeared clothing, with a round hole on the left
flap of the breast and back. There was not a
grain of powder in it, and that showed that the
fatal ball came from a distance. The truth of the
story is, as I learned, that Smith and his chum
overtook the young thief, and with a single bullet
settled both him and his horse. They cut off the
Indian's clothes, leaving the poor devil on the
frozen ground in November. He lived for nine-
teen days, having been found by Indians and taken
to his hogan.

The oral desperado's dreadful talk was to im-
press us and scare us out of any possible burgla-
rious scheme.

He did not dare to let us sleep in the store, so

TERRITORIAL TYPES 211

we went over to a little rancli building hard by,
along with his clever assistant. The wind whistled
through big cracks, and I could see the sky in a
dozen places overhead, but we slept very warmly,
nevertheless, under many blankets and an old
wagon-sheet spread upon the floor.

XIV

WITH THE NOMADS

Among the Navajos. — Strange Indians. — Wandering Jew-
elers. — Barbaric Silver and Costly Blankets. — Mys-
terious Beads. — A Navajo Matrimonial Agency. — Over
a Cliff.

At Manuelito Locke said his shoes were getting
thin, and he guessed he'd take the cars. Phillips
had walked thirty -eight miles with me, and Locke
seventy-eight. His departure was a relief, for
Shadow alone was much better company. Here I
scraped an interesting acquaintance with the Nava-
jos, and acquired a load of their characteristic
treasures — including a lot of the barbaric silver
bracelets, belt-disks, earrings, etc., and a magnifi-
cent blanket of their matchless weaving. Although
among the most savage aborigines of the West, the
Navajos excel in two semi-civilized industries.
They number about twenty thousand. Their reser-
vation, lying part in northwestern New Mexico and
part in northeastern Arizona, is a huge wilderness
212

WITH THE NOMADS 213

without towns or houses, but dotted here and there
with their little corn-patches and rude, lone hogans
— temporary tent-shaped huts of logs and earth.
They are absolute nomads, and never stay long in
one hogan — and will never enter it again when
death has once been in it. They are the wealthiest
nomad Indians in the United States, and perhaps
in the world. Their enormous herds of inbred but
tireless and beautiful ponies — descendants of the
Arab horses brought by the Spanish, for there were
no horses in either America before the conquest —
are not their only riches. They have great wealth
of the superb blankets of their own weaving; a
hundred thousand head of cattle, and a million and
a half of sheep, and vast store of silver ornaments
of their own manufacture.

Silver is the only metal used by either Pueblo or
Navajo for purposes of ornamentation. For gold
they have no use whatever; and it is only those
approximate to the railroad and therefore conver-
sant with white man's ways, that will even receive
Uncle Sam's yellow dinero. Their supply of silver
is now drawn almost exclusively from civilized
coin.

The silversmith among either Pueblos or Navajos
is a person of mighty influence. Upon his inven-
tive and mechanical skill, each aborigine depends
for the wherewithal to cut an imposing figure at

214 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

the feast-day dance or the bet-staggering horse-race.
His tools are simple, not to say crude. A hammer
or two, a three-cornered file, a rude iron punch,
and a primitive arrangement for soldering, com-
prise his outfit. If a Pueblo, one of the neat little
rooms in his house, equipped with a little bench,
serves him for a workshop ; if a Navajo, his smithy
is under the alleged shelter of his hogan; and a
smooth stone is his work-bench.

The simplest form of silver ornament is the but-
ton, a decoration of which both races are immensely
fond. Neither of them uses the button in its legit-
imate role of constrained intimacy with a button-
hole. Some of them wear American vests with
American buttons, but the home-made silver button
is reserved solely for purposes of decoration and not
of repression. It serves to set off moccasin, leg-
ging, belt, pistol-belt, gun-scabbard, saddle and
bridle, and also the little leathern pouch which
goes in lieu of pockets. The commonest button is
made from a silver dime, strongly arched, polished
smooth, and with a tiny eyelet soldered down in
the concavity of the under side, far beyond the
reach of a needle, and therefore fastenable only by
a wee thong of buckskin. These dime buttons are
largely used in decorating the edges of a broad
strap or similar article. Buttons made of a twenty-
five cent piece and those from a half dollar are

WITH THE NOMADS 216

more worn as simple ornaments, at knees or throat.
T have seen a venerable Navajo with twenty buttons
fastened to the welt-seam of each legging; each
button made of a quarter, and with the die perfect
on each, despite the rounded form. From plain
buttons to ornamented ones is but a step. The
simplest design is made by filing a number of con-
centric rays upon a button; and from this, up to
really elaborate work, there are designs of all
sorts.

Akin to the buttons are the striking belt-disks
which glisten upon every well-to-do Pueblo and
Navajo on festal occasions. These are always cir-
cular, slightly arched, average four inches in di-
ameter, are handsomely made, and average $3 in
weight. From eight to a dozen of these are worn,
strung upon a narrow thong as a belt. Some
ultra-dandies have a shoulder-belt of them besides.

In horse-trappings, the well-to-do Navajo is par-
ticularly gorgeous. Besides a large weight of sun-
dry silver ornaments on his saddle, his " Sunday "
bridle is one mass of silver, and but an infinitesi-
mal fraction of the leather substratum is visible.
It is nothing uncommon to see ^40 to f 60 weight
in silver on one bridle. The straps are covered
with silver sheaths, and more or less heavy pen-
dants dangle upon the foretop and from the bits.
The Pueblos occasionally thus be-silver their bri-

216 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

dies, but are not as daft about the custom as are
the Navajos.

The most popular form of jewelry with both races
is the bracelet. In early days it had its useful as
well as its ornamental adaptation. To protect the
left wrist from the vicious sting of the bow string,
the men very commonly wore a broad wristlet of
leather, tied at one side with a buckskin thong.
Those who were able to afford it put a silver disk
on the upper side of this, making a very striking
bracelet. Specimens of these, however, are now
extremely rare. It was my good fortune at Manu-
elito to acquire an ancient Zuni wristlet, its silver
top rudely engraved with the sacred image of the
full-rayed sun; but I have never since been able
to duplicate it.

Ordinarily, however, with both races the brace-
let is merely ornamental, and is worn equally by
men and women. From one to a dozen may be
seen on a single wrist, but the average number is
about three. The simplest bracelets — commonest
with the Navajos — are simply round circlets,
generally tapering a little to the ends, and marked
with little file-cut lines. A silver dollar is usually
entirely used up in hammering one of them out.
A step higher are the flat bands now more in
vogue. The Pueblos tend to light ones, and the
Navajos to heavy. I have one made by Chit-Chi,

WITH THE NOMADS 217

the best silversmith of the Navajos, which is an
inch and a half wide in its greatest breadth, and
weighs ^3. Some of these band bracelets are still
ornamented with a file, but the prettiest are figured
by countless punchings with a little die. The
Pueblo silversmiths have invented two designs
peculiar to themselves, and sometimes solder a very
chaste relief design upon the smooth band, and
sometimes tip the ends with little balls. Neither
of these customs has been followed by their cruder
neighbors on the west. Indeed, the average of
Pueblo workmanship in silver is far above that
of the Navajos ; and some of it is really beautiful.
Next to the bracelet in importance, and also
worn by both sexes, is the earring. It doesn't hurt
aboriginal ears to suffer, and one general charac-
teristic of New Mexican native ear-gear is its
generous weight. The commonest design is a
simple, file-marked silver wire bent to a circle,
and with one end filed smaller than the other.
The wearers take off their earrings but rarely; and
the ends of the stiff wire are brought together in
the ear with a few hammer-taps. A favorite ear-
ring is a smooth wire circle with a sliding silver
ball on it. Others are made flat. This about
covers the Navajo line of ingenuity, but the
Pueblo craftsmen devise some decidedly clever
designs. A Zuni smith made a very complicated

218 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

affair with two native emerald knobs in the lower
extremities; and a pair of Acoma earrings are
graceful crescents with an attempt at filigree fill-
ing. Both these rather uncommon specimens
fasten with a hinged catch.

Beads of some sort are indispensable to the
happiness of either Pueblo or Navajo, and only
three varieties are used — coral, silver, and shell.
The coral necklaces are of the very best, — it is
impossible to palm off on them an inferior quality,
— are long enough to go from two to six times
around the neck in a loose loop, and sometimes
cost as high as ^100. Trinkets of any sort are
very seldom hung to a coral necklace. These are
bought, of course, from the American traders.
Shell necklaces are the most common, and are
highly prized. The most valuable are of unknown
antiquity and of an unknown shell, thin, pinkish,
and cut into little disks about one-fourth of an inch
in diameter. The commoner ones are made from
a heavier and pinker shell. Where these shells
come from, no one knows. There is a fortune
awaiting the white man who can find out. On
shell necklaces it is common to hang turquoise
pendants every two or three inches. These tur-
quoise beads are oblong or flat pear-shaped, about
half an inch to an inch in length, and are some-
times valued at several horses apiece. All the

WITH THE NOMADS 219

aboriginal tribes of the Southwest put an enormous
value on the turquoise, and it was their chief
prehistoric currency. Most of it is too green to be
valuable in the eastern market, but specimens
have been taken out as fine as the costliest Persian
stone. It is used by the native tribes in ornaments
of nearly every sort.

The prettiest necklaces are of silver. They
contain from thirty to one hundred round, hollow
beads from one-fourth to three-fourths of an inch
in diameter. The best specimens have a three or
four inch cross pendant in front, and a wee cross
strung after every second or third bead. The
beads average ten cents in price, and the crosses
fifteen cents. How the native workmen, with
their rude tools, make hollow beads so perfectly,
is a marvel.

Finger-rings are a little less numerous, but still
common enough, and remarkable skill is often
displayed in their workmanship. Plain round
rings — of the American matrimonial pattern —
are almost unknown here, the fashion being in
chased bands and sets. The Navajos set native
garnets or turquoise in rude box settings; and the
Acoma smith sometimes makes a curious attempt
at a crown setting. One of the most notable native
rings I have ever found here was made for me
later by Chit-Chi as a token of affection, and

220 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

entirely on his own deAdce. It is of the nature of
a cameo ring, the "cameo" being cut from an
American dollar, with the Liberty head protuber-
ant upon it. I have also some specimens of excel-
lent inlaid work in these metals.

A silver ornament peculiar to the Pueblos is the
dress-pin worn by the women. Their dresses are
something like blankets, worn over one shoulder
and under the other, reaching just below the
knees, and fastened down the right side with huge
pins. These are sometimes brass, but generally of
silver, made by soldering two or three twenty-five
or fifty cent pieces upon a pin. Sometimes the
coins are left intact; sometimes polished and
chased. I have seen a really elegant one, made
of a polished and concave dollar, covered with
relief work and set with imitation opal from a
cheap American piece of trumpery.

The results of a mixture of native workmanship
with American ideas are sometimes curious. Chit-
Chi, who is a brother of the famous old ex-chief of
the Navajos, Manuelito, — for whom the station is
named, — is a very clever fellow and has done some
very fair work for a few American patrons. The
universal rule is with Pueblo and Navajo smiths
to charge as much for the work as for the silver.
For instance, if you give them a silver dollar for
the material for a breast-pin you will have to give

WITH THE NOMADS 221

them another for their labor — and so on up.
Chit-Chi is a short but powerfully formed man of
pleasant and intelligent face. Among my Indian
friends here was also Klah (the " Left-Handed "),
a bronze giant, with whom I afterward had some
very amusing adventures. He is another brother
of Manuelito.

Having caught up, at Manuelito, with my corre-
spondence, 1 strolled up over the mesas. A mile or
so from the station, I came upon a Navajo hogan.
A superb blanket was being made on the rude
loom; a stolid-blinking wahboose lay in a corner
strapped upon a board and swathed till only its
fat face and bead-like eyes were visible; an old
woman was washing out her hair in a big olla, her
sister was tanning a buckskin, and her daughter
was making bread.

The daughter was a real Navajo belle, about fif-
teen years old, clean, bright, and decidedly pretty.
The old woman could speak a little fractured Mexi-
can, and I said to her in that tongue, " That your
girl?"

"Yes."

" What'U you take for her?"

" Diez caballos " (ten horses), answered the crone,
holding up her ten fingers, " ^sta muncho bonita.'*

I admitted that the girl was bonita, but I didn't
have the ten horses with me to-day, and guessed I

222 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

would not buy. She did not come down in her
price, but kept reiterating that the girl was both
buena and honita. Such is maternal affection
among the Navajos — so different from our Chris-
tian mothers, who never think of wealth, title, or
position, but always of the moral virtues and intel-
lectual decorations of a prospective son-in-law !
This slave-market system is the ordinary matri-
monial etiquette among the barbarous Navajos.
Their civilized neighbors, the Pueblos, would never
think of such an atrocity.

The most striking thing among the Kavajos is
their blanket-weaving. They have taken it up
since the Conquest, — for there Avere neither sheep
nor sheep-wool in America until the Spaniards
came, — and indeed learned it from the Pueblos.
In prehistoric times they wove only cotton tunics.
But now the teacher has given up weaving, and the
pupil has gone far ahead. The Navajos make the
most durable, and handsomest, and the costliest
blankets in the world ; and from them down to the
cheapest and ugliest. I have in my collection
blankets worth $200 apiece, which took a solid
twelve-month in the weaving, and will hold water.
The Navajo "loom'' is a curious affair. A smooth
branch is suspended by thongs from the roof of the
hogan; and close to the floor is another, attached
to the first by stout cords, and weighted with rocks

WITH THE NOMADS 223

SO as to keep a proper tension. The stout cords of
the warp are then stretched between these two at
regular intervals; and squatting before this rude
loom Mrs. Navajo weaves in the woof by hand, a
thread at a time, crowding each thread down tight
with a hardwood batten stick.

Beyond the beautiful mesas which are just west
of Manuelito the valley of the Rio Puerco of the
West begins to narrow, as the creek has to pass
through a small range of hills. All along here we
see big bands of sheep and horses, grazing con-
tentedly amid the saffrony sage ; and off to one's
side one's eye may usually catch a tiny barbaric
figure — a Navajo youngster, guarding the stock.
It is comical enough to see that seven or eight
year old tot — clothed in a single cotton garment,
which combines the attractions of the ballroom and
the ballet, being extremely brief at both ends —
standing out there on the lonely plains as sole
guard over two hundred to five hundred sheep
and goats ; but apparently no whit worried or lone-
some.

It is painful to recall the day after I left Manu-
elito and crossed the line into Arizona, for thence-
forth the whole tramp was an experience one would
not care to repeat, though it is well to have had it
once. The walking was still atrocious. We had
passed Billings with a hasty look at the wonderful

224 A TRAIVIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

petrified forest, where the ground for miles is
covered with giant trunks and brilliant chips of
trees that are not only stone, but most splendid
stone, agate of every hue, with crystals of ame-
thyst and smoky topaz — and camped in a deserted
Navajo hogan. Starting out in the raw, gray dawn,
we soon crossed the fresh trail of a deer. The
animal had gone up a "draw," and thinking to
head him off, I started to climb the precipitous
face of a fifty-foot mesa of shale. Shadow sat
whining below, and watched as I climbed cau-
tiously the crumbling ledges. Half-way up, as my
weight came upon a jutting shelf, it suddenly
broke beneath my feet. The ledge to which I was
holding crumbled too; and in a shower of rock I
fell back sprawling through the air and landed
upon the jagged debris twenty feet below, and
knew no more.

A STREAK OF LEAN

A Broken Arm. — The Pleasures of Self- Surgery. — Fiity-
two Miles of Torture. — Winslow. — The Difficulties of
a Transcontinental Railroad. — A Frank Advertisement.
— The Parson and the Stolen Cattle.

When life came back to me, Shadow was licking
my face and whining plaintively. My whole body
was afire with pain, and here and there were red
drops upon the rocks and snow and upon my cloth-
ing. My left arm was doubled under me and
twisted between two rocks, and when at last I
mustered strength and courage to rise, it was to
make a serious discovery. That arm — always my
largest and strongest — was broken two inches
below the elbow, and the sharp, slanting, lower
end of the large bone protruded from the lacerated
flesh. Here was a bad job — an ugly fracture, and
so far from any medical help that the arm would
probably be past saving before I could get there.

■H

226 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

I thought very hard for a few moments. There
was but one thing to be done — the arm was to be
put in shape right there.

I placed the discolored hand between my feet
and tried thus to tug the bone back to its place ;
but flesh and blood could not stand it. Ah ! The
strap of my discarded canteen ! It was very long
and broad and strong leather — just the thing! I
gave it two flat turns about the wrist, and buckled
it around a cedar tree. Beside the tree was a big
squarish rock. Upon this I mounted, facing the
tree; set my heels upon the very edge, clenched
my teeth and eyes and fist, and threw myself
backward very hard. The agony, incomparably
worse than the first, made me faint; but when I
recovered consciousness the arm was straight and
the fracture apparently set — as indeed it proved to
be. I cut some branches, held them between my
teeth, trimmed them with the hunting-knife, and
made rude splints. And then with Shadow, who
had been as tenderly and tactfully sympathetic as
a brother through it all, plodding mournfully at
my side and heedless of the rabbits, I staggered
back toward the railroad.

Ah, the torture of that walk ! Cut and bruised
from head to foot; that agonizing arm quivering
to the jar of every footstep; weak with pain and
loss of blood, Avith cold, wet feet slipping in the

A STREAK OF LEAN 227

muddy snow — a thousand years could not drown
the memory of that bitter 6th of January.

At the track I found an old spike-keg; and one
of the broad staves, cut in halves crosswise and
trimmed a little, made good splints which never
came off until the arm was well.

It was a serious problem at first what to do; but
after thinking it all over, I decided to keep on.
It is not pleasant to walk with a broken arm, but
neither is it pleasant to be in bed with one. It
would be a shame to give up the tramp already so
rich in interest and experience; and it would be
quite as easy after all to keep walking and bear
the pain and get whatever distraction I might,
than to go home by rail and then have the pain for
company. And so I walked the remaining seven
hundred miles to Los Angeles with the broken arm
slung in a bandanna. Afterwards I had plenty of
chance to learn handiness with one hand; for in
1888 a stroke of paralysis rendered this same left
arm powerless, and for three years and seven months
— until its complete recovery in '91 — I never
moved a finger of it. But a dead arm is a less ill-
natured companion than a broken one, and with time
and practice the right hand grew fully adequate to
the tasks of my home in the wilderness — to the
use of rifle and shot-gun, the climbing of cliffs, the
building of log houses, the making of thousands of

228 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

photographs, even the breaking of my own broncos.
But I cannot say that the earlier fracture was as
easy to be borne.

For that day it was necessary to push on to
where there would be care if I should need it, and
to get to the money awaiting me in the post-office
at Winslow, for 1 had but a dollar left. And from
the treacherous cliff to Winslow 1 walked without
rest. Of that hideous fifty-two miles tliere is but
dim recollection in me. I remember a wet, sullen
landscape of widening valleys and diminishing
hills; a muddy river fringed with scant cotton-
woods; now and then a lonely section-house at
one of which I got a lunch of bread and butter; a
slow track-walker who spoke to me kindly; a
ceaseless yell of coyotes; the occasional blur and
roar of a passing train; the cold, drenching rain
all day, and the shivering night; and through all
a burden of aching legs and bursting head and that
ever-present arm. When at last the little "Ari-
zona Central " hotel at Winslow welcomed me to
its shabby fare, I had been walking for thirty
continuous hours, and in a little more than forty-
eight hours past had walked one hundred and
fifteen miles.

The accommodating postmaster filled my big
duck pockets with welcome mail; and after a
ravenous dinner and a short sleep I was all right,

A STREAK OF LEAN 229

though weak and a bit tremulous. I was thor-
oughly happy, in that receptive condition where
one can understand what comfort really is — and
who doesn't know how to appreciate that blessing
has only half lived. Fire means nothing to a man
who has never been half-frozen, nor food to him
who has never been half-starved.

And now tilled, and warmed, and rested, a fra-
grant regalia from thoughtful friends on the coast
between my teeth, and word from dear ones to read,
I could sympathize with the boy who used to cut his
finger "because it felt so good when it got well! '^

Winslow is the lowest point touched by the Santa
F^ route in the seven hundred and seventy-six
miles from Delhi, Colorado, to Peach Springs, Ari-
zona Territory, except the pueblo of Isleta, which
has exactly the same altitude — 4808 feet above the
sea. That will give you a fair idea what a great
upland the Southwest is. The town is in the valley
of the Little Colorado — a slender oasis across the
vast surrounding deserts. It is a warm country,
and I was glad to have — as I did at leaving — two
whole days of walking on bare ground, after over
two hundred miles of snow. Luckily it was not
in the season of the terrific sandstorms which are
so prevalent there, when travel is impossible and
trains are blockaded by sand. I find few Easterners
who travel out this way have any conception of the

230 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

difficulties of operating a transcontinental line.
If they had, their foolish grumbling would be less
obtrusive. It is one thing to build and operate a
railroad one, two, or three hundred miles long in
the flat Eastern States, where there is a population
at every few miles, where timber, rock-ballast,
fuel, water, and cheap labor abound, and where
local fares and freights pay expenses and divi-
dends. It is quite another to build and maintain
a road some thousands of miles long through one of
the bleakest, barest, most inhospitable areas on
earth, where there is neither fuel, water, tie-lum-
ber, ballast, nor labor; where it is two hundred to
three hundred miles between towns of a hundred
people; and where the whole road is made up of
grades that would be thought a hard wagon-road in
the East. " How slowly we are going ! " groans
some passenger whose time may be worth a dollar
a day; "I wonder why it is?" Nothing, much,
except that a ninetj'-ton engine is managing to pull
him up a hill at the foot of w^hich one of the puny
forty -ton racers of his country would stall. " And
what are those funny tanks on flat cars that we
pass at every siding?" Not much; they mean
only that in this Avilderness we have to haul water
by the train-load to feed the locomotives and to
keep from death the operators and laborers at
lonely little stations. The Atlantic and Pacific

A STREAK Of' LEAK 231

Railroad is eight hundred and fifteen miles long.
The water it has to haul is equivalent to hauling
one of those huge tank-cars of 30,000 gallons of
water six thousand miles a day, every day in the
year! Its service of coal for its own use — exclu-
sive of all the coal-trains taken to the coast as
freight — amounts to hauling one car, or twenty
tons, of coal thirty thousand miles a day, and every
day in the year. The country, nine-tenths of the
way, gives only sand for a roadbed. Whatever
ballast is needed must be quarried and hauled a
few hundred miles. If a bridge is swept away or
burned, the material for the temporary and the
permanent repairs has to come hundreds of miles.
The ties and telegraph poles cannot be felled across
the track from handy forests, but are transported
from one hundred to one thousand miles. The
eating-houses are planted amid a land which was
meant to feed only its indigenous horned toads and
rattlesnakes; and every morsel of the excellent
meals comes from Kansas City and Los Angeles.

Winslow was a curious little town, supported
entirely by the railroad and distant cattle-ranches.
It occurred to me that I had not seen, in any stream
since the Arkansaw, such a thing as a dam.
Probably none of them were worth it. Nor did I
see one from Winslow on clear to the coast. And
for that matter, I did not see or hear of a church,

232 A TRAMP ACROSS THE COKTINENT

except the Mexican and Indian structures, between
Albuquerque and San Bernardino, a distance of
over eight hundred miles. I could hardly blame
the Baptists from keeping out of so dry a land;
but some of the other denominations, which require
less water, might have tried it. In most of the
" towns " then there were more saloons than dwell-
ings; and sometimes the saloon was the only
building in sight except the section-house. Wins-
low was adorned at my coming with very startling
posters, which were also displayed all up and
down the Territory. I took home with me several
copies, one of which still adorns my scrapbook. It

runs : —

— STOP AND READ! —

J. H. BREED
Having returned from Chicago with the largest and

FINEST STOCK OF GOODS

Ever brought into Arizona, is prepared to give the people of

— WINSLOW —

And surrounding countrj" the

DAMNDEST BARGAINS

Ever heard of in this part of the World.

I Carry

A HELL OF A LARGE ASSORTMENT OP GOODS,

Which space will not allow me to enumerate here, but if you

will hitch up, and call on the " OLD MAN," you can

bet your shirt tail he will treat you right — and

sell you anything you may want in his line.

J. H. BREED,

Winslow, A.T.

A STREAK OF LEAN 233

Shadow and I stayed there three days, resting
very hard. Locke was there, too, and was very
proud of having fooled a conductor by some piteous
tale into bringing him all the way from Manuelito.
He left Winslow next day after my arrival, going
through to California on a freight train in charge
of a carload of cattle; and I afterward learned
some curious facts. The cattle had been gathered
away south of Winslow, by "rustlers" (stock
thieves), who hired my " Knight of the Sorrowful
Countenance" to escort the stolen animals to a
CQn federate of theirs in Los Angeles, and gave
him a ticket and money therefor. In those days
emigrant cars were hauled on freight trains, and
among the other passengers on this train was an
unworldly old clergyman, with whom the irrepres-
sible Locke became acquainted, and who had a
ticket for San Francisco. As the train approached
the coast Locke began to fear trouble — the theft
of the cattle might be discovered and officers might
be waiting for him in Los Angeles. The more he
thought the more he disliked the prospect. He
began to tell the clergyman sad tales of San Fran-
cisco and to paint the attractions of Los Angeles in
glowing colors, and at last persuaded the unsus-
pecting old man to swap tickets and take charge of
the cattle from Mojave to Los Angeles. At Mojave
they parted, Locke going north to San Francisco

234 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINEKT

and the minister south to Los Angeles. I can
imagine the good man found this the hardest flock
to which he ever ministered. At every stop he
had to get out and see to his charges, prodding with
a long, iron-pointed pole those that had lain down
that they might get up before being trampled to
death, and superintending their food and water.
When the train arrived in Los Angeles a tough-
looking fellow with an unorthodox breath stepped
up to the clergyman and said : —

" Yo' did well, pardner ! Didn't nobody

ketch on at all ? Come over 'n' let's irrigate.
Hey? Don't never drink? Wal, I'm blankety-
blank-blank! Wal, take this, anyhow," and he
slipped a twenty-dollar gold-piece into the hand
of the puzzled minister, who walked away wonder-
ing what it all meant, that people in California
were so gratuitous of profanity and double eagles.

XVI

WESTERN ARIZONA

The Devil's Gorge. — Into Snow Again. — The Great Pine
Forest and its Game. — A Lucky Revolver-shot. — The
King of Black-tails. — A Canon of the Cliff-Dwellers.—
The Greatest Chasm on Earth.

Starting early from Winslow on the third day,
rested and feeling very robust save for the pain in
my arm, I tramped twenty-seven miles across the
smooth, long aclivity of red sandstone dust, start-
ing a few rabbits and finding in the cuts some
beautiful veins of satin spar and gypsum. Early
evening found me at the brink of one of the
characteristic wonders of Arizona — the Canon
Diablo, or "Devil's Gorge." It is a startling thing
to ride or walk across those brown plains, level
as a floor, and to come suddenly and without warn-
ing upon a gigantic split in the earth, a split of
dizzy depth and great length. The Canon Diablo
is such a crack over forty miles long. Where the
A. & P. railroad crosses it on a wonderful trestle,

235

236 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

the chasm is five hundred and twenty feet wide and
two hundred and eighteen feet deep. To appreciate
its majesty one must clamber down the terraced
cliffs to the bottom and look up, for distance is
always minified when we look down upon it.
There one finds that the stone abutments, which
from above look no larger than a carpenter's
" horse, " are really forty feet high, and of propor-
tionate base.

My bed that night — and for a majority of the
nights thereafter when I slept under a roof at all
— was a chair; and with the unceasing pain my
dreams were not of the sweetest. In all the rest
of the journey until the day before I reached Los
Angeles there were but six towns, two of which I
passed in the night; and my lodgings were either
the bare ground, or a chair tilted back beside the
stove of some lone telegraph station, for the
bunks in the section-houses were a little too dirty
for even so hardened a traveller.

The noble snowy range of the San Francisco
peaks, 12,000 feet high, drew nearer as we climbed
the steady grade, and there was sure to be trouble
in their cold recesses. Six hours, indeed, after
passing Canon Diablo, I met an unpleasant snow-
storm, which chilled us the more after the hot sun
at Winslow. From that on for over one hundred
and fifty miles we were never out of the snow;

WESTERN ARIZONA 237

and for some days it was very troublesome. All
the way across the noble timber belt, eighty miles
wide and several hundred north and south, which
is such a contrast to most of the treeless plateaus
of Arizona, we were wading much of the time
knee-deep, but with many interesting things to
make us forget these physical discomforts. It is
a beautiful area, that great forest of the Flagstaff
region — thousands of square miles of natural
parks, unspoiled by underbrush, with giant, spar-
like pines standing sentinel about the smooth
glades of knee-deep grass, rent here and there by
terrific canons, bathed in the clear, exhilarant air
of more than six thousand feet above the sea, and
full of game. In side-trips off through the forest
we came now and then upon all sorts of tracks in
the snow — the rounded triangle of the rabbit, the
beaten run-way of the lordly black-tailed deer, the
pronged radii of the wild turkey, the big, dainty
pat-marks of the mountain lion and the smaller
ones of the wildcat, the dog-like prints of the
coyote and of foxes little and big, and many more.
The day after passing the little saw-mill town of
Flagstaff brought us glorious sport. The snow
was very deep, and I should have taken no extra
miles of it, lest I catch cold in the wounded arm ;
but we could sniff game in the air and who could
help hunting? We poked through the drifts for

238 A TRAMP ACROSS tHE CONTINENT

many fruitless miles, but late in the afternoon
came our reward. We climbed a long, wooded
hill against the cold wind, and just as we cleared
its summit Shadow sprang forward like an arrow,
with ringing tongue. There under the steep brow
of the bluff, not more than thirty feet away, was a
royal buck, the largest black-tail I have ever looked
upon. He was already in the air in the first mad
plunge for flight, and I am sure my first bullet had
sped before he touched the snow again. Bang!
bang! bang! till the six-shooter was empty, and
before the echo of the last report had ceased to
ring through the forest, the an tiered monarch
sprang doubly high, pitched forward upon the
snow, and lay kicking upon his side. Shadow
closed in with his usual temerity, and for his pains
got a parting kick that sent him twenty feet in a
howling sprawl. By the time I could reach the
spot the deer was quite dead, and I was greatly
elated to find that of my six shots at the flying
target, five had taken effect. One ball — probably
the last — had passed through the brain from
behind one ear to in front of the opposite eye.
He was a noble specimen, weighing certainly over
two hundred pounds, and with seven spikes on his
magnificent antlers. It seemed a bitter shame to
leave him there to the wolves and ravens; but we
were at least ten miles from the railroad, and there

WESTEKN ARIZONA 239

was no help for it. I carved out several pounds
of steaks, wrapped them in a piece of the hide,
and stowed the bundle in an accommodating peck
pocket of my duck coat. And then those antlers
— they must go home with me ! But " how ? " was
a perplexing question. My hacks with the hunt-
ing-knife upon that skull were very much like
stabbing a turtle with a feather. At last I reloaded
the six-shooter, stood face to face with my game,
and drove bullets through his skull until there was
a ring of holes about the horns, and with a little
knife-work I got them with their uniting frontlet,
afterward shipping them to Los Angeles from the
first station.

Eight miles east of Flagstaff, and about four
south of the track, among the noble pine timber, a
canon yawns as sudden and as sheer as Canon
Diablo, but far greater. It is a vast, zigzag cleft
in the level Mogollon plateau, eighty miles long
with its windings, nine hundred feet to the bottom
at its deepest point, and from a few hundred feet
to half a mile from brink to brink. It is of dark,
hard metamorphic rock, and its top is lined with
royal pines; while goodly trees in the narrow
channel of its dry bed look from above like dark
moss. It is, like Cafion Diablo and nearly all
hard-rock gorges of the Southwest, of a peculiar
terraced formation, so that its cliff-sides seem

240 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

flights of gigantic but irregular steps. Here I
found my first ruins of the so-called cliff-dwellers,
who were, as modern archaeology has fully proved,
only Pueblo Indians like those among whom I
live to-day, and not some extinct race. The
houses are very small rooms of stone masonry,
built on these narrow shelves of the wild cliff.
Many of them are still entire ; and in them I dug,
from under the dust of centuries, dried and
shrunken corn-cobs, bits of pottery, an ancient
basket of woven yucca fibre exactly such as is made
to-day by the Pueblos of remote, cliff-perched
Moqui, and a few arrow-heads and other stone
implements. There are many hundreds of these
long-forgotten ruins in that grim canon; and it
well repays as long a visit as one can give it.

It was well past midnight when we camped in
the snow a little west of Williams, and on the sum-
mit of the Arizona Divide, 7345 feet above the
sea. There was a pile of new -cut ties, which were
soon transformed into a cubby -house, with a " bed-
stead " of two dry ties ; and there we passed the
bitter night very cosily, with feet to a roaring fire
and stomachs distended with a huge meal of veni-
son roasted in the ashes.

In the rocky fastnesses of Johnson's Canon, by
which the railroad slides down from the shoulders
of the great range to lower valleys, we started a

WESTERN ARIZONA 241

couple of wildcats, and a lucky shot finished one,
though I missed a much easier shot at the other.
The fur was in prime condition, and I spent three
laborious hours skinning the big cat — a job which
could never have been accomplished with one hand,
had T worn false teeth.

Nearly all day we were in sight of the strange,
natural column of stone sixty feet high and no
bigger around than a barrel, which towers aloft
upon a shoulder of Bill Williams's Mountain, and
is called "Bill Williams's Monument." Bill was
a famous scout of early days, and died in his cave
on the mountain like a gray wolf in his den. The
Apaches caged him there, and finally slew the grim
old hunter, but not until he had sent thirty-seven
of their braves ahead to the happy hunting-grounds.

Down the long, swift slope, from over 7000 feet
at Supai to less than five hundred at the Colorado
River, we travelled swiftly. The snow lay behind
us, the ground was dry, the sun hot, and the
strange vegetation of the edge of the great desert
was fast unfolding. The days began to grow too
warm for comfort, and the nights remained very
cold; and this severe range of temperature, charac-
teristic of desert countries, was very trying. The
country, too, afforded poorer and poorer foraging,
and such meals as we found would have discour-
aged any but athletic stomachs. As for beds, I

242 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

slept in less than half a dozen in the last eight
hundred miles.

There was nothing worthy of record in the days
to Peach Springs, though none were uninterest-
ing. At that little station on the railroad I
stopped to visit the greatest wonder of the world
— the Grand Canon of the Colorado. A twenty-
three mile walk north from Peach Springs led
us first over a low ridge of dreary gravel hills,
and then steeply downward more than three
thousand feet, to the bottom of the most stupend-
ous abyss upon which the eye of man has looked.
After the first few miles the rough road winds at
the bottom of the Peach Springs "Wash," itself a
grander canon than any of Colorado's wonders.
From the deep snows of three days before we had
descended to the tropics, and found verdure and
full-leaved bushes and springing flowers. Birds
sang and butterflies hovered past. The wild
majestic cliffs loomed taller, nobler, more marvel-
lous, at every step, until the Wash ran abruptly
up against a titanic pyramid of roseate rock, and
was at an end, and we turned at right angles into
the grander canon of Diamond Creek. The sun
was already lost behind the left-hand walls, but
the rock domes and pinnacles high above were
glorified with the ruddy western glow. For another
mile we hurried on, clambering over rocks, pene-

WESTERN ARIZONA 243

trating dense willow thickets, leaping the swift
little brook a score of times — and a long, jarring
leap was not the most comfortable thing for me
just then. And at last, where the cliifs shrank
wider apart, a vast rock wall, 6000 feet in air,
stood grimly facing us, and the brook's soft treble
was drowned in a deep, hoarse roar that swelled
and grew as we climbed the barricade of boulders
thrown up by the river against the saucy impact
of the brook, and sank in silence beside the Rio
Colorado.

I dragged together a great pile of driftwood and
built a roaring fire upon the soft, white sand, for
there must be no catching cold in that arm. In
half an hour I moved the fire, scooped a hollow in
the dry and heated sand, rolled our one blanket
about Shadow and myself, and raked the sand up
about us to the neck. And there we slept, beside
the turbid river, whose hoarse growl filled the
night, and under the oppressive shadow of the
grim cliffs, whose flat tops were more than a mile
above our heads.

XVII

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT

Exploring the Grand Canon. — A Perilous Jump. — The
Edge of the Desert. — Kindly Mrs. Kelly. — The Tor-
tures of Thirst. — Shadow goes Mad.

I SHALL not attempt to describe the Grand Caiion
of the Colorado, for language cannot touch that
utmost wonder of creation. There is but one
thing to say: "There it is; go see it for yourself."
It is incomparably the greatest abyss on earth —
greatest in length, greatest in depth, greatest in
capacity, and infinitely the most sublime. Hun-
dreds of miles long, more than a mile deep, so
wide that the best hundred-ton cannon ever made
could not throw a missile from brink to opposite
brink in many places, ribbed with hundreds of side-
caiions which would be wonders anywhere else, its
matchless walls carved by the eternal river into a
myriad towering sculptures — into domes, castles,
towers, pinnacles, columns, spires — whose mate-
rial is here sandstone, there volcanic rock, yon-
244

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 245

der limestone, and again bewildering marble —
threaded by the greatest stream in half a continent,
which looks a mere steel ribbon at the bottom of
that inconceivable gorge, the Grand Canon of
Colorado is that of which there is no such thing as
description. Even the present eye cannot fully
comprehend it; and one goes away from the dazing
view crowded upon with thoughts and feelings
which grow and swell within, and become more
vivid instead of fainter as time goes by. It is a
crying shame that any American who is able to
travel at all should fail to see nature's masterpiece
.upon this planet before he fads abroad to visit
scenes that would not make a visible scratch upon
its walls.

Before daybreak next morning we were up and
climbing one of the rugged terraced walls of a vast
butte to get the view from its crest. It was a
toilsome and painful climb to me, thanks to the
arm, and at the easiest points it is no easy task
for any one; but the reward of that groaning,
sore, skyward mile lay at the top. From that
dizzy lookout I could see a hundred miles of the
stupendous workshop of the Colorado — that inef-
fable wilderness of flat-topped buttes threaded by
the windings of the vast cleft.

The descent was ten times worse than the ascent
— more difficult, more dangerous, and more pain-

246 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ful. Once I backed over a little ledge, and reach-
ing down my foot found nothing below. A startled
glance over my shoulder showed a narrow cleft
fifty feet deep just below me ! I had not seen it
in my look from farther along the ledge, whence
only the shelf which the gully split was visible.
It was a trying situation. I was too tired to do
the old college-day trick of "chinning" by one
hand, and besides, that hand had a very different
hold from a smooth horizontal bar or flying ring.
The cleft was seven or eight feet wide, and about
ten feet below me. I saw with the first trial that
there was no getting back to the top of my ledge.
My right arm was almost at full length to hold by
the edge, and my feet were in a horizontal crack
which admitted them two or three inches into the
cliff. It required the utmost caution to keep my
slung left arm from being squeezed against the
rock, and such a squeeze would have made me
faint with agony and fall. There were but two
courses, — to try to jump so as to land on the side
of the cleft, or to hang on till exhausted, and then
drop to sure death. It did not take long to choose
or decide upon the necessary precautions. It was
a very doubtful undertaking, — to spring backward
and sidewise from such a foothold, fall ten feet,
and gain four laterally. The edge of the cleft was
nearer my right hand by several feet, but I could

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 247

not jump to the right, as you may readily see by
placing yourself in a similar attitude, because that
clinging arm was in the way. I was tired, more
with pain than with exertion, and needed every
bit of strength and agility for that supreme effort.
I shifted my feet into an easier position, loosened
my hand clutch for a moment, and even hung my
upper teeth upon a point of rock to ease my legs
a few pounds. For a moment so, and then with
a desperate breath I thrust my whole life into a
frantic effort, and sprang backwards out into the
air.

If the Colorado Canon ran all its seven hundred
miles through cliffs of solid gold, I would not make
that jump again for the whole of it ; but now that
it is all over, I am glad to have done it, for the
sake of the experience, just as I am glad of a great
many other things which were unspeakably fearful
in their time. It was a well-judged jump, and it
needed my best. I landed upon my back on the
outer edge of the shelf, whence a push would have
rolled me half a mile, unless one of those vicious-
pointed jags below had stopped me long enough to
cut me in twain, and with my feet hanging over
the brink of the cleft. Shadow had found an easy
way, and joined me in a moment. Of course the
heavy fall was unspeakable torture to the broken
arm, and for some hours I lay there sick and faint

248 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

ill the blistering sun before there was strength in
me to continue the descent. You may be very
sure that I backed over no more ledges without
a full knowledge of how the bottom was to be
reached, and that it was a great relief to stand
again in the fantastic wash of Diamond Creek.

When we had done so much exploring as was
possible in my crippled condition, and on the short
rations I had been able to bring, we started back
to Peach Springs, and arrived after a tiresome but
uneventful walk, marked only by Shadow's first
introduction to a rattlesnake. In all our trip to-
gether it had been weather too wintry for the
snakes to emerge from their holes; but in this
tropical valley we found a very large one that day.
Shadow's fearlessness in "tackling" any and all
foes had been sheer impudent ignorance, and I was
glad to find that there was one creature which he
instinctively feared. His whole back was a-bristle,
and his growls were fairly startling in their unac-
customed intensity ; but he could not be persuaded
to come near that ugly coil even when the snake
was killed.

From Peach Springs onward the desert began
to assert itself more and more, with rare little
oases which only helped to emphasize the crowd-
ing barrenness. In a little canon not far west of
Peach Springs I saw the first running water visi-

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 249

ble from the railroad in a good deal more than two
hundred miles ; and it was only a wee trickle that
died upon its sandy bed within a mile of the
spring. Near it, too, but farther down the same
wash, whose underground flow was raised by a
windmill, was a little patch of cabbage, the first
green thing I had seen in six hundred miles, ex-
cept the sombre needles of pine and juniper. Out-
side the few and far-parted shanty towns there
were now no houses. The section-houses and sta-
tions were merely box-cars, with rude bunks and
tables, wretched and comfortless, and none too
clean.

Along here we became acquainted with a race
of filthy and unpleasant Indians, who were in
world-wide contrast with the admirable Pueblos
of New Mexico. These unattractive aborigines,
ragged, unwashed, vile, and repulsive-faced, were
the Hualapais (pronounced Wholl-ah-pie), a dis-
tant offshoot of the far-superior Apaches. They
were once very warlike, but since they were
thrashed into submission by the noblest and great-
est of Indian fighters, and the most shamefully
maligned. General George Crook, they have fallen
into harmlessness and worthlessness. They man-
ufacture nothing characteristic, as do nearly all
other aborigines, and are of very little interest.
Their shabby huts of sticks, gunnysacks, and tins

250 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

are visible here and there along the railroad, and
their unprepossessing faces are always to be found
at the stations.

After a brief pause at the then twenty-house
metropolis of Hackberry to inspect its low-grade
copper mines, we made the end of a thirty-six-mile
walk at Hualapai, another box-car section-house,
and one of which I shall always cherish pleasant
memories. A big, savage white dog flew out at
Shadow with inhospitable bark, and the outlook
was not wholly encouraging. But a little, thin-
faced Irish woman drove off Shadow's assailant
and bade me enter. Could I get something to eat,
and sleep beside the stove (for I had had to ship
my blanket home, since it was too much of a bur-
den through the midday heat, and with the broken
arm; and the nights were cold), and do a little
writing at the table ? Of course I could, and she
bustled around to get me supper.

"An' phat's the mather wid dhe arrum?" she
asked kindly, noticing the sling ; and when I told
her the tears started in her tired blue eyes.

" Och ! The poor lad ! The poor brave lad !
Out in this wicked counthry wid a broken arrum ! "
And she ran to bring me a pie meant for the men's
supper, and other section-house delicacies, bound to
soothe my hunger if she could not mend my bones.
After a generous supper she went to the other car

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 251

and dragged in her own mattress and quilts and
made me a luxurious bed on the floor, despite my
protests. In the morning she firmly refused the
customary payment. In vain I told her I had
plenty of money and could not be content to
impose upon her. She only said over and over :
"Ko, it's not meself '11 tek the firsht nickel from
yees, poor lad. Ye'U need it, or ever ye get out av
this sad place."

Two years later, on a visit to New Mexico, I
came late at night to the lone section-house of
Cubero and slept on the floor till morning. At
breakfast I noticed something familiar about the
face of the little old woman, but could not " place "
her until I had gone half a mile. Then her tall
old husband and her bright sons were astonished
to see the stranger fly back to the house, throw his
arms about little Mrs. Kelly, and give her a sound-
ing smack on her withered cheek ! She was even
more dumfounded than they, until I said: "So
you don't remember the ^poor lad' with a grey-
hound and a broken arm that slept on the best
mattress at Hualapai, and left no pie for Kelly's
supper ? " And then there was great laughing and
chattering, and a few stealthy tears. I was just
learning photography, and the miserable picture I
made then and there of warm-hearted Mrs. Kelly
and all is one of my pet mementoes. The desert

252 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

does not share the general broad hospitality of the
West ; and the night at Hualapai was one of the
few oases in my memories of half a thousand
miles.

At hardly any of the stations through that vast
stretch of country is there any water. In a few
cases there are springs within a few leagues which
can be piped to the track, but in most places the
supply comes many scores of miles in trains of
huge tank-cars, and is delivered into barrels half
buried beside the track.

Below Kingman we got our first glimpse of that
tree of tatters which was ever after to have for me
a tragic association — the yucca palm. They were
here small and scrubby specimens, much less than
the yuccas along the Mojave Kiver, and not at all
to be compared to the huge yuccas of Old Mexico.
Thirst began to torment us most seriously, too —
it had long been troublesome ; now it was agoniz-
ing. Crippled as I was, and burdened with revol-
vers, cartridge-belt, writing materials, and every-
thing essential — for I could buy nothing but
wretched food in a hundred miles at a time — it
was impossible to carry a canteen ; and the most I
could afford was a quart bottle of water as a day's
rations for Shadow and myself. He had to have
much the larger share, which he drank greedily
from my sombrero ; and there was not enough to

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 253

keep either of us from severe suffering in trudging
thirty to forty miles a day in that fearful sun.
Had it not been for hunter experience, which made
me never touch a drop of water before noon, no
matter how choked, and to keep my salivary glands
awake by a smooth quartz pebble under my tongue,
I do not know what would have become of me. As
it was, more than once we came at night to a sta-
tion with tongues swollen dry and rough as files
projecting beyond our cracked lips, and the first
drink brought a spasm of pain. Despite the heat
Shadow had been indefatigable in his pursuit of
rabbits. I was averaging over thirty -five miles a
day in my haste to get across that forbidding land
and to meet a sudden need for my presence in Los
Angeles, and Shadow, I believe, must have travelled
at least three miles to my two.

But now it had begun to tell on him, and he ran
no more, but dangled wistfully at my heels, and
would not eat. At^ Yucca, after a fearful day, we
found only a miserable shanty of shakes, almost as
open as a rail fence. There was no covering to be
had for love or money, and the drip from the water
tank made two-foot icicles that night. At last I
found a torn and dirty gunny-sack — and that was
our bed. As usual now in these wretched nights.
Shadow and I lay spoon-fashion, huddled close to
keep from freezing. That night he was strangely

254 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

uneasy and groaned and growled and twisted in his
sleep, but I thought nothing of it. Next morning,
when we had travelled some four miles down the
track, he suddenly turned and fled back to Yucca.
Utterly dumfounded at this desertion by the faith-
ful dog who had always seemed haunted by a fear
that he might lose me, and who would even spring
from his nap if I changed my seat in a room and
refuse to lie down again until he had been caressed
and convinced that I was not going to escape, I
trudged back the suffering miles to Yucca. He was
lying in the shade of the tank, and growled hoarsely
as I approached. T put a strap around his neck
and led him away. He followed peaceably, and in
a couple of miles I had forgotten my wonderment
and was busy with other thoughts. And on a sud-
den, as I strode carelessly along, there came a snarl
so unearthly, so savage, so unlike any other sound
I ever heard, that it froze my blood ; and there
within six inches of my throat was a wide, frothy
mouth with sunlit fangs more fearful than a rattle-
snake's ! Shadow was mad I

XVIII

THE WORST OF IT

A Fight for Life. — Shadow'.s Grave. — The Heart of the
Desert. — The Story the Skull told me.

If I had never " wasted " time in learning to box
and wrestle there would have been an end of me.
But the trained muscles awaited no conscious tele-
gram from the brain, but acted on their own motion
as swiftly and as rightly as the eye protects itself
against a sudden blow. Ducking back my head, I
threw the whole force and weight of legs, arm, and
body into a tremendous kick and a simultaneous
wild thrust upon the leading-strap. My foot caught
Shadow glancingly on the chest and he went rolling
down the thirty-foot embankment. But he was
upon his feet again in an instant and sprang wolf-
ishly toward me. I snatched at the heavy six-
shooter, but it had worked around to the middle of
my back, and was hampered by the heavy-pocketed,
long duck coat. Before it was even loosened in its

scabbard; the dog was within six feet. I sprang to

265

256 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT

the edge of the bank, and threw all my force into a
kick for life. It caught him squarely under the
chin, and rolled him again violently to the bottom.
Up and back he came, like the rebound of a rubber
ball, and just as he was within four feet I wrested
the Colt loose, ''threw it down" with the swift
instinctive aim of long practice, and pulled the trig-
ger even as the muzzle fell. The wild tongue of
flame burnt his very face, and he dropped. But in
an instant he was up again and fled shrieking across
the barren plain. The heavy ball had creased his
skull and buried itself in his flank. I knew the
horrors of a gunshot wound; my poor chum
should never go to die by inches the hideous death
of the desert. A great wave of love swept through
me and drowned my horror. I had tried to kill
him to save myself, now I must kill him to save
him from the most inconceivable of agonies. My
trembling nerves froze to steel ; I must not miss !
I would not ! I dropped on one knee, caught his
course, calculated his speed, and the spiteful crack
of the six-shooter smote again upon the torpid air.
He was a full hundred and fifty yards away, flying
like the wind, when the merciful lead outstripped
and caught him and threw him in a wild somer-
sault of his own momentum. He never kicked or
moved, but lay there in a limp, black tangle, mo-
tionless forever.

THE WORST OF IT 267

Weak and faint and heavy-hearted, I dug with
my hunting-knife a little grave beneath a tattered
yucca and laid the poor clay tenderly therein, and
drew over it a coverlet of burning sand, and piled
rough lava fragments on it to cheat the prowling
coyote, and ** blazed" the tattered tree. There
I left poor Shadow to his last long sleep, and went
alone down the bitter desert.

The country was fast turning more infinitely
desolate. Wider and wider were the reaches of
molten sand, whose alkaline clouds swept in gusts
up the valley, choking and stinging throat and eyes
and nostrils. Then I came down into the green
valley of the Colorado, where were little ponds and
waving grasses and willow thickets and little brush
rancherias of the Mojave Indians. Swarthy women
were washing at the little pools ; and in a larger
pond, left by the river in high water, several
Mojave men were fishing in an odd fashion. Three
of them had each a huge osier basket, canoe-shaped,
ten feet long and three feet wide. These they
submerged in the water, while three other Indians
splashed greatly with long poles. When the fish-
ers lifted their basket-nets, each had a lot of sil-
very, smelt-like fish ; and these they tossed deftly
into deep creels slung to their backs.

They are a curious and physically admirable
race, these Mojaves — tall and lithe and matchless

258 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

runners for a day or two at a pull ; superb swim-
mers, full of strange customs, but sadly degener-
ate in morals. In warm weatber — and it is hardly
ever cold in their tropic valley — the men wear
only a breech-clout, and the women a single garment
generally made of flaming bandannas bought in the
piece. They dress their long hair in curious ropes,
and plaster the scalp with mud, tattoo the chin in
wild patterns, and have no ornaments save fichus,
which they make with great skill from tiny glass
beads. They have been practising cremation from
time immemorial, and were just having a funeral
near East Bridge. The corpse, dressed in its best,
was stretched on top of a huge pile of dry old ties
from the railroad, and the chief mourner touched a
torch to the heap of dry brush at the bottom. As
the flames sprang aloft and hissed and roared, the
mourners stood in a gloomy ring, chanting a wild
refrain ; and as the savage fire and savage song
went on, they threw upon the pyre from time to
time all the earthly possessions of the deceased,
and one by one their own garments and ornaments.
Passing the strange, jagged spires of peaks, which
are called the Needles because two of them have
natural eyelets, — though these are visible only
from the canon, and not from the railroad, — I
crossed the 1300-foot drawbridge, now abandoned
for a fine new cantilever, a dozen miles below, and

THE WOKST OF IT 259

stood upon the there forbidding soil of California.
A night at the rather pretty little railroad town of
Needles, and I started off again into the grim
Mojave Desert. It was the beginning of two hun-
dred miles whose sufferings far outweighed all that
had gone before. There were five telegraph sta-
tions in that awful stretch, and the largest town
in one hundred and sixty miles had three houses.
There were not even section-men at the rare sta-
tions— only a telegraph operator and a track-
walker. They had little to eat for themselves and
could seldom spare me anything. My board was
the daily quart of water and a cake of chocolate —
which contains more nutriment in the same bulk
than anything else available, and which was all I
could carry. By night I covered myself with sand
or slept in a wooden chair beside the stove of a lit-
tle telegraph office, getting up a dozen times to
replenish the fire, and sorely missing my absent
blanket. By day I trudged on through the blind-
ing glow, suffering unspeakably from thirst and a
good deal still from the broken bone, which was
now rapidly knitting. The glare of that desert
sun was murderous, and still worse the reflection
from the molten sands, which the eye could not
escape. At last I took to walking nights, since
there was a full moon, and trying — but with scant
success — to sleep by day. Starting out from the

260 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

little bunk-house of Amboy at sunset, I left behind
the beloved low shoes which I had worn 3300 miles,
and had just changed for the night because they
leaked sand so badly. I travelled twenty miles
before missing them from my belt, and made every
effort to recover them. But there was no telegraph
station ; and before my letter reached him the track-
walker had burned them up, and so I lost two real
friends.

That night, to make a short cut, I tramped
through a long, low range of the peculiar hills of
the desert. As I trudged along over the white,
bare sand, or the areas of black, volcanic pebbles,
the moonlight gleam on some peculiar object drew
me over a few hundred feet to the right of my
pathless course. As I came nearer and nearer, a
thrill of awe ran through me, for the strange object
slowly took shape to my eyes — a shape hideously
suggestive in this desolate spot. As I knelt on the
barren sands and lifted that bleached and flinty
skull, or looked around at the bones which had
once belonged to the same frame, now wide-scat-
tered by the snarling coyote, there rose before my
eye the tragedy of that Golgotha, vivid as day.

I saw the summer glare of the merciless desert,
the sun like fire overhead, the sand like molten
lead below ; the slow ox-teams of a little band of
immigrants toiling in agony across that plain of

THE WORST OF IT 261

death, whose drivers, crazed by the fierce smiting
of the sun reeled stumblingly along, their cracked
tongues unable even to curse; while the great,
patient oxen, lifting their feet from the blistering
soil, shook them and bawled piteously. I saw the
gaunt faces as the blood-warm water in the kegs
fell lower and lower, till one desperate man set out
to seek for water among the nearest mountains. I
saw him turn his back resolutely to the caravan
and push bravely toward the desolate, rocky, tree-
less hills, while sun and sand grew yet more fear-
ful in their white glow; and the strong breeze in
his face brought no life, but was as the breath of
a fiery furnace. T saw him plod on through the
cailons drifted high with sand; over sharp, rocky
spurs and down desolate defiles where the feet of
coyotes for thousands of years have worn deep
pathways in the limestone floor; tearing up with
trembling hands the sands of some mountain
arroyo, only to find them still parched and burn-
ing, deep as his arm could reach. He struggled
on for weary miles, gasping, burning, failing in
strength and courage, until nature could no more,
and he sank exhausted upon the bare ground, half
swooning and half delirious. But the demon of
thirst soon dragged him to his feet again, and bade
him return to the wagons; and he started back.
But blinded eyes and shrivelling brain were treach-

262 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

erous guides, and he wandered farther and farther
from salvation, until at last the knowledge that he
was lost seared itself upon his mind. That sobered
him, and with desperate coolness he tried to get
his bearings. But it was too late. . . .

Next day the lying mirage nearly fooled me to a
like end. I had camped, unable to reach a station,
my water was gone, and all day I had been half
dead with thirst. And down in yonder seething
valley I saw a broad, blue lake, its very ripples
visible as they danced in the westering sun. It
was as hard an effort of the will as I ever made
not to rush down the long, gentle slope and throw
myself into that azure paradise and soak and drink
— but I knew there was no water there, simply
because so large a lake does not exist in the desert ;
and that even if it were water it would be poison,
since there was neither inlet nor outlet to that bowl
of a valley. And so with tottering legs, and blear
eyes that dared not look back, and cracked lips and
tongue, I ran away until out of sight behind a
friendly ridge; and after two fearful hours fell
exhausted under a tank by the railroad.

On over the sandy, volcanic wastes, past the bar-
ren, contorted ranges of savage ruggedness and
wonderful color, I trudged rapidly as possible;
and still neither too hurried nor too beset with dis-
comfort to extract a great deal of interest and infor-

THE WORST OF IT 263

mation from every cruel day. This is a country of
strange things ; but none stranger than the appear-
ance of its mountains. They are the barest, bar-
renest, most inhospitable-looking peaks in the
whole world ; and they are as uncordial as they
look. Many a good man has left his bones to
bleach beside their cliffs or in their death-trap val-
leys. They are peculiar in the abrupt fashion in
which they rise from the plain, and more so in
their utter destitution of vegetable life in any
form. But strangest of all is their color. The
prevailing hue is a soft, dark, red brown, or occa-
sionally a tender purple ; but here and there upon
this deep background are curious light patches,
where the fine sand of the desert has been whirled
aloft and swept along by the mighty winds so com-
mon there, and rained down upon the mountain
slopes where it forms deposits scores of feet in
depth, and acres in extent. The rock bases of
the mountains are completely buried in gentle axi-
clivities of sand, while the cream or fawn-colored
patches are often to be seen many hundreds of
feet above the surrounding level. These moun-
tains are not very high — none, I should judge,
over 5000 or 6000 feet — but very vigorous in
outline, and, at certain stages of the daylight,
very beautiful in color. Nearly all, too, are rich
in mineral, and will pay if the water problem is
ever solved — as it is not too likely to be.

XIX

ON THE HOME STRETCH

A Desert Cut-OfC. — The One Good Chum. — Plucky Munier.
— Days of Horror. — Into "God's Country " at Last.

Getting to Daggett, the station for the rich sil-
ver-mining camp of Calico, about midday, I took
a brief rest and then turned southward. Here I
was to leave the railroad for good, and strike out
across the desert and over the ranges to "God's
country " on the other side. The California South-
ern Eailway, by which the Atlantic and Pacific
Railroad now runs to Los Angeles, was not yet
built ; and this cut-off on foot was a serious matter.
Just as I was starting off, I found a new companion
who was poor and ragged, but infinitely more of a
man than those who had shared — and half spoiled
— short stretches earlier in the tramp. He was a
young French Canadian named Albert Munier;
had come to the mining camp of Calico, and been
fleeced by his absconding employer ; and now, pen-
niless and ragged, wished to get to Los Angeles.
264

ON THE HOME STBETCH 265

Would I mind if he walked with me ? There was
a pleasant frankness in his face ; and I promptly-
said " Come on ! "

Neither of us will be likely to forget that after-
noon, the most awful of all my journey. We
missed the trail, and for six anguished hours stag-
gered through the heavy sand, over fiery hills and
down hollows that were like a furnace. I had
thought I knew thirst before; but it was never
understood until that afternoon. A score of times
I thought we must fall and die there, and only
mulish will kept us up. The blood-warm water
from his canteen and my beer-bottle — for I
had long ago to discard my ponderous canteen —
seemed to have no effect whatever. The only
relief we found was when we built a hot fire of the
roots of the greasewood, and over its malodorous
ashes made chocolate in a tomato-can Munier had
brought along. The sand was ankle-deep, and
flung the ghastly heat back in our faces with blind-
ing power.

For the last five miles I had to help poor Munier
along by the arm. And just at sunset we came,
more dead than alive, to Stoddard's Wells, the
only water in fifty miles. There was a little flow
of water from a tunnel in the hill, and a miserable
" house " of split shakes, inhabited by the two only
absolute curs I met in the nearly five months.

266 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

They would not let us sleep in tlie house, though I
offered a handful of silver for the use of a battered
chair beside the fire, for my arm showed bad
symptoms that day, and I dared not catch cold in
it. They said they did not keep a house for tramps,
and when I showed them a pocketful of creden-
tials, waved them aside, vowing they could not
read, which was a lie. They ordered us out of
the house, and stood in the door berating us in the
vilest language. Our blood boiled, but we could
not even take the old savage satisfaction of thrash-
ing them, for they were wretched, hacking con-
sumptives, come here to stave off death, and even
a cripple could not strike them.

A grim night we passed by our little camp-fire
of greasewood twigs — 4000 feet above the sea,
and chilled by a fierce wind from off the snow
peaks of the Sierra Madre. I was worn out, for
my day's walk had been forty miles, — eighteen
before Munier joined me at Daggett, — and miles of
great suffering, but I dared not go to sleep. At
last weariness overcame me, and I dropped off.
When I woke Munier was sitting and shivering by
the little fire, and feeding it with weeds, while I
was warmly wrapped in his huge old ulster ! The
unselfish fellow had gone cold himself to save me
from a chill that he knew would be dangerous.

The next day's equally painful tramp was mostly

ON THE HOME STRETCH 267

down hill, but even more torrid as we came to
lower altitudes. Never was there so blessed a
sight as when, at last, we looked down from the
top of a high ridge, which has since been dis-
covered to be a mountain of pure marble, to a
green ribbon of a valley, two hundred yards wide,
with noble cotton-woods, and a broad, clear, shallow
river, the Mojave. We stopped at a pleasant little
ranch, where gray-headed Rogers had his 2000
snowy-fleeced Angora goats, and next day, crossing
the river where the little railroad town, of Victor
has since been built, plodded up the long, sandy
slope toward the noble range which shuts off the
grimmest of deserts from the Eden of the world.
It was another hard day, but now there was the
scant shade of junipers and thirty -foot yucca palms
under which to rest. Poor Munier was suffering
terribly. He pulled off his shoes and showed me
his roasted feet, which were actually covered,
above and below, with blisters large as a half-
dollar. But his pluck was splendid, and he strug-
gled on, smothering his groans, joking as best he
could, and never grumbling.

Up the long, smooth slope we came with the
afternoon, paused on the brink of the sudden
"jumping-off place," and plunged down into the
steep depths of the strange Cajon (box pass, pro-
nounced Cah-/iOMe) Pass. A few miles of barren

268 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT

gullies and ridges, and we came to a little house
beside a tender green where the sands of the
arroyo thanked a tiny spring. And here poor
Munier fell, unable to move another step. I made
arrangements at the house for him, gave him half
my dwindling money ; and with a hearty and regret-
ful hand-clasp left the brave fellow and hurried on
down the canon.

Soon a wee thread of water trickled along the
wet sand, caressing grateful blades of grass ; and
it grew in volume and in voice as we sped side by
side down the deepening gorge. I began to cross
musical brooklets, that flashed down the canon's
walls to the central stream. The deep-green man-
zanito bushes, with their red-satin bark and their
tiny peduncles of snow-white blossoms, were all
about ; and the soft night wind that drifted up the
Pass seemed fraught with the odors of Araby the
blest. Then came the Toll-Gate, a lovely little
villa framed in orchards, and with a trout-pond
under its big cotton-woods ; and I broke into song
at this forerunner of the new Eden.

In the soft, sweet evening I came to the first
fence I had seen in five hundred miles, and an
orchard in fragrant bloom of peach and apricot,
and to the hospitable little farmhouse that used to
be "Vincent's.'' Ah, such luxury! When kindly
Mrs. Vincent knew me, she spread such a supper as

ON THE HOME STRETCH 269

my long-abused stomach had lost all memory of;
and for that I had had no fruit in so long, she gave
me in sumptuous array about my plate fourteen
kinds of delicious home-made preserves ! That
night, for the first time since breaking my arm, I
was able to get off all my clothing, and revel in
a glorious bath and a spotless bed.

Next day I trotted gayly down the caiion, climbed
over the western wall, and struck out along the
foothills. Now I was truly in " God's country " —
the real Southern California, which is peerless.

It was the last day of January. The ground
was carpeted with myriad wild flowers, birds filled
the air with song, and clouds of butterflies fluttered
past me. I waded clear, icy trout brooks, startled
innumerable flocks of quail, and ate fruit from the
gold-laden trees of the first orange orchards I
had ever seen. Pretty Pomona gave me pleasant
lodgings that night, and next day, February 1, 1885,
a thirty-mile walk through beautiful towns, past
the picturesque old Mission of San Gabriel, and
down a matchless valley, brought me at midnight
to my unknown home in the City of the Angels.

When I pulled off my shoes from tired feet that
night, I had walked since leaving Cincinnati in my
roundabout course a fraction over 3507 miles. I
had been out one hundred and forty-three days,
and had crossed eight States and Territories,

270 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT

nearly all of them along their greatest length.
My arm had knitted perfectly, and in a few days
more was out of its bandages. It was a good job
of amateur surgery, and is fully as straight and as
strong as its mate. The longest and happiest
"tramp" ever made for pure pleasure was over;
and at nine o'clock next morning I was in the
harness, as city editor of the Los Angeles Daily
Times.

Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston.

Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston.

St. Dunstan's House, Fetter Lane,

London, E.G. 1892.

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GLENELG, P., Devil and the

Doctor, Is.

GLOVER, R., Light of the

World, n. ed., 2s. 6J.
GLUCK. See Great Musicians.
Goethe's Faustus^ in orig. ihyme,

by Huth, 5s.
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(Low's German Series), 3s. Qd.
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to Conquer, by Austin Dobson,

illust by E. A. Abbey, 8k.

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Great Artists, JBiographies,
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Claude le Lorrain.

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Cox and De Wint.

George Cruikshank.

Delia Robbia and Cellini, 2s. 6d.

Albrecht Diirer.

Figure Paintings of Holland.

Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Ac.

Fra Bartolommeo, &c.

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Ghiberti and Donatello, 2s. 6<2.

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Hogarth, by A. Dobson.

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Landscape Painters of H^Ufttidi ' >

Landseer.

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Little Masters of Germany, by
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Mantegna and Francia.

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Baphael.

A Select List of Books

Great Artists — continued.

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*Berlioz.

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Mendelssohn.

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♦Palestrina and the Roman School.

Purcell.

Eossini and Modern Italian School.

Schubert.

Schumann.

Richard Wagner.

Weber.

♦ Are not yet 'pvhlis'hed.

Greece. See Foreign Countries.

GRIEB, German Dictionary ^ n.
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GROVES, J. Percy. See

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Handy Guide to Dry-fly Fishing^
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Hints on proving Wills without
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