Overland Part 19

So with many tremblings, and with the aid of a lariat fastened around her waist and vigorously pulled from above by two Moquis, Aunt Maria clutched and sc.r.a.ped her way to the top of the foundation terrace.

"I shall never go down in the world," she remarked with a shuddering glance backward. "I shall pa.s.s the rest of my days here."

From the first platform the travellers were led to the second and third by stone stairways. They were now upon the inside of the rectangle, and could see two stories of doors facing the plaza and the reservoir in its centre, the whole scene cheerful with the gay garments and smiling faces of the Moquis.

"Beautiful!" said Aunt Maria. "That court is absolutely swept and dusted.

One might give a ball there. I should like to hear Lucretia Mott speak in it."

Her reflections were interrupted by the courteous gestures of a middle-aged, dignified Moqui, who was apparently inviting the party to enter one of the dwellings.

Pepita and the other two Indian women, with the wounded muleteers, were taken to another house. Aunt Maria, Clara, Thurstane, and Phineas Glover entered the residence of the chief, and found themselves in a room six or seven feet high, fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth. The floor was solid, polished clay; the walls were built of the large, sunbaked bricks called adobes; the ceilings were of beams, covered by short sticks, with adobes over all. Skins, bows and arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets, articles of clothing, and various simple ornaments hung on pegs driven into the walls or lay packed upon shelves.

"They are a musical race, I see," observed Aunt Maria, pointing to a pair of painted drumsticks tipped with gay feathers, and a reed wind-instrument with a bell-shaped mouth like a clarionet. "Of course they are. The Welsh were always famous for their bards and their harpers. Does anybody in our party speak Welsh? What a pity we are such ignoramuses! We might have an interesting conversation with these people. I should so like to hear their traditions about the voyage across the Atlantic and the old mill at Newport."

Her remarks were interrupted by a short speech from the chief, whom she at first understood as relating the adventures of his ancestors, but who finally made it clear that he was asking them to take seats. After they were arranged on a row of skins spread along the wall, a shy, meek, and pretty Moqui woman pa.s.sed around a vase of water for drinking and a tray which contained something not unlike a bundle of blue wrapping paper.

"Is this to wipe our hands on?" inquired Aunt Maria, bringing her spectacles to bear on the contents of the tray.

"It smells like corn bread," said Clara.

So it was. The corn of the Moquis is blue, and grinding does not destroy the color. The meal is stirred into a thin gruel and cooked by pouring over smooth, flat, heated stones, the light s.h.i.+ning tissues being rapidly taken off and folded, and subsequently made up in bundles.

The party made a fair meal off the blue wrapping paper. Then the meek-eyed woman reappeared, removed the dishes, returned once more, and looked fixedly at Thurstane's b.l.o.o.d.y sleeve.

"Certainly!" said Aunt Maria. "Let her dress your arm. I have no doubt that unpretending woman knows more about surgery than all the men doctors in New York city. Let her dress it."

Thurstane partially threw off his coat and rolled up his s.h.i.+rt sleeve.

Clara gave one glance at the huge white arm with the small crimson hole in it, and turned away with a thrill which was new to her. The Moqui woman washed the wound, applied a dressing which looked like chewed leaves, and put on a light bandage.

"Does it feel any better?" asked Aunt Maria eagerly.

"It feels cooler," said Thurstane.

Aunt Maria looked as if she thought him very ungrateful for not saying that he was entirely well.

"An' my nose," suggested Glover, turning up his lacerated proboscis.

"Yes, certainly; your poor nose," a.s.sented Aunt Maria. "Let the lady cure it."

The female surgeon fastened a poultice upon the tattered cartilage by pa.s.sing a bandage around the skipper's sandy and bristly head.

"Works like a charm 'n' smells like peach leaves," snuffled the patient.

"It's where it's handy to sniff at--that's a comfort."

After much dumb show, arrangements were made for the night. One of the inner rooms was a.s.signed to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, and another to Thurstane and Glover. Bedding, provisions, and some small articles as presents for the Moquis were sent up from the train by Coronado.

But would the wagons, the animals, and the human members of the party below be safe during the night? Young as he was, and wounded as he was, Thurstane was so badgered by his army habit of incessant responsibility that he could not lie down to rest until he had visited the camp and examined personally into probabilities of attack and means of defence. As he descended the stony path which scored the side of the b.u.t.te, his anxiety was greatly increased by the appearance of a party of armed Moquis rus.h.i.+ng like deer down the steep slope, as if to repel an attack.

CHAPTER XIV.

Thurstane found the caravan in excellent condition, the mules being tethered at the reservoir half-way up the acclivity, and the wagons parked and guarded as usual, with Weber for officer of the night.

"We are in no tanger, Leftenant," said the sergeant. "A large barty of these bueplo beeble has shust gone to the vront. They haf daken atfandage of our bresence to regover a bortion of the blain. I haf sent Kelly along to look after them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust as safe as bossible. Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a goot blace for a gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or two."

"Does Shubert's leg need attention?"

"No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty."

"And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?"

"Berfectly, Leftenant."

"Forty rounds apiece!"

"They are issued, Leftenant."

"If you are attacked, fire heavily; and if the attack is sharp, retreat to the bluff. Never mind the wagons; they can be recovered."

"I will opey your instructions, Leftenant."

Thurstane was feverish and exhausted; he knew that Weber was as good a soldier as himself; and still he went back to the village with an anxious heart; such is the tenderness of the military conscience as to _duty_.

By the time he reached the upper landing of the wall of the pueblo it was sunset, and he paused to gaze at a magnificent landscape, the _replica_ of the one which he had seen at sunrise. There were b.u.t.tes, valleys, and canons, the vast and lofty plateaus of the north, the ranges of the Navajo country, the Sierra del Carrizo, and the ice peaks of Monte San Francisco.

It was sublime, savage, beautiful, horrible. It seemed a revelation from some other world. It was a nightmare of nature.

Clara met him on the landing with the smile which she now often gave him.

"I was anxious about you," she said. "You were too weak to go down there.

You look very tired. Do come and eat, and then rest. You will make yourself sick. I was quite anxious about you."

It was a delightful repet.i.tion. How his heart and his eyes thanked her for being troubled for his sake! He was so cheered that in a moment he did not seem to be tired at all. He could have watched all that night, if it had been necessary for her safety, or even for her comfort. The soul certainly has a great deal to do with the body.

While our travellers sleep, let us glance at the singular people among whom they have found refuge.

It is said hesitatingly, by scholars who have not yet made comparative studies of languages, that the Moquis are not _red men_, like the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Lenni-Lenape, the Sioux, and in general those whom we know as _Indians_. It is said, moreover, that they are of the same generic stock with the Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Peruvians, and all the other city-building peoples of both North and South America.

It was an evil day for the brown race of New Mexico when horses strayed from the Spanish settlements into the desert, and the savage red tribes became cavalry. This feeble civilization then received a more cruel shock than that which had been dealt it by the storming columns of the conquistadors. The horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos from snapping-turtles into condors. Thenceforward, instead of crawling in slow and feeble bands to tease the dense populations of the pueblos, they could come like a tornado, and come in a swarm. At no time were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists and herdsmen safe from robbery and slaughter. Such villages as did not stand upon b.u.t.tes inaccessible to hors.e.m.e.n, and such as did not possess fertile lands immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned or depopulated by slow starvation.

It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are now found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Not of course for all; some, we know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been forsaken because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless fell during wars between different tribes of the brown race. But the cavalry of the desert must necessarily have been a potent instrument of destruction.

It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is peris.h.i.+ng, without the poor consolation of a history to record its sufferings. It comes near to being a repet.i.tion of the silent death of the flint and bronze races, the mound-raisers, and cave-diggers, and cromlech-builders of Europe.

Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an appetizer around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.

"Been out to shake hands with these clever critters," he said. "Best behavin' 'n' meekest lookin' Injuns I ever see. Put me in mind o' cows 'n'

lambs. An' neat! 'Most equal to Amsterdam Dutch. Seen a woman sweepin' up her husband's tobacco ashes 'n' carryin' 'em out to throw over the wall.