University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

When the race for life and death commenced between the emigrants and the
Apaches, it seemed as if the former would certainly be able to go two miles before
the latter could cover six.

But the mules were weak, and the soil of the plain was a thin loam into
which the wheels sank easily, so that the heavy wagons could not be hurried beyond
a trot, and before long were reduced to a walk. Thus, while the caravan
was still half a mile from its city of refuge, the foremost hornets of Delgadito's
swarm were already circling around it.

The chief could not charge at once, however, for the warriors whom he had
in hand numbered barely a score, and their horses, blown with a run of over five
miles, were unfit for sharp fighting work. For a few minutes nothing happened,
except that the caravan continued its silent, sullen retreat, while the pursuers
cantered yelling around it at a safe distance. Not a shot was fired by the emigrants;
not a brave dashed up to let fly his arrows. At last there were fifty
Apaches; then there was a hurried council; then a furious rush. Evidently the
savages were ashamed to let their enemies escape for lack of one audacious assault.

This charge was led by a child. A boy not more than fourteen years of age,
screaming like a little demon and discharging his arrows at full speed with
wicked dexterity, rode at the head of this savage hourra of the Cossacks of the
American desert. As the fierce child came on, Coronado saw him and recognized
him with a mixture of wonder, dread, and hate. Here was the son of the
false-hearted savage who had accepted his money, agreed to do his work, and
then turned against him. Should he kill him? It would open an account of
blood between himself and the father. Never mind; vengeance is sweet; moreover,
the youngster was dangerous.

Coronado raised his revolver, steadied it across his left arm, took a calm aim,
and fired. The handsome, headlong, terrible boy swayed forward, rolled slowly
over the pommel of his saddle, and fell to the ground motionless. In the next
moment there was a general rattle of firearms from the train, and the mass of
the charging column broke up into squads which went off in aimless caracolings.
Barring a short struggle by half a dozen braves to recover the young chief's
body, the contest was over; and in two minutes more the Apaches were half a
mile distant, looking on in sulky silence while the train crawled toward the protecting
bluff.

“Hurrah!” shouted Thurstane. “That was quick work. Delgadito doesn't
take his punishment well.”

“Reckon they see we had friends,” observed Captain Glover. “Jest look at
them critters pile down the mounting. Darned if they don't skip like nanny-goats.”

Down the huge steep slope, springing along rocky, sinuous paths, or over the
walls of the terraces, came a hundred or a hundred and fifty men, running with
a speed which, considering the nature of the footing, was marvellous. Before
many in the train were aware of their approach, they were already among the
wagons, rushing up to the travellers with outstretched hands, the most cordial,

cheerful, kindly-eyed people that Thurstane had seen in New Mexico. Good
features, too; that is, they were handsomer than the usual Indian type; some
even had physiognomies which reminded one of Italians. Their hair was fine
and glossy for men of their race; and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of
careful combing. Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to
the knee, with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a
gay woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and
their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as Indians.
These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations of America,
perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their migrations, or possibly by
the temple-builders of Yucatan.

Impossible to converse with them. Not a person in the caravan spoke the
Moqui tongue, and not a Moqui spoke or understood a word of Spanish or English.
But it was evident from their faces and gestures that they were enthusiastically
friendly, and that they had rushed down from their fastness to aid the emigrants
against the Apaches. There was even a little sally into the plain, the
Moquis running a quarter of a mile with amazing agility, spreading out into a
loose skirmishing line of battle, brandishing their bows and defying the enemy to
battle. But this ended in nothing; the Apaches sullenly cantered away; the
others soon checked their pursuit.

Now came the question of encampment. To get the wagons up the bluff,
eight hundred feet or so in height, along a path which had been cut in the rock
or built up with stone, was obviously impossible. Would there be safety where
they were, just at the base of the noble slope? The Moquis assured them by
signs that the plundering horse-Indians never came so near the pueblos. Camp
then; the wagons were parked as usual in a hollow square; the half-starved animals
were unharnessed and allowed to fly at the abundant grass; the cramped
and wearied travellers threw themselves on the ground with delight.

“What a charming people these Monkeys are!” said Aunt Maria, surveying
the neat and smiling villagers with approval.

“Moquis,” Coronado corrected her, with a bow.

“Oh, Mo-kies,” repeated Aunt Maria, this time catching the sound exactly.
“Well, I propose to see as much of them as possible. Why shouldn't the
women and the wounded sleep in the city?”

“It is an excellent idea,” assented Coronado, although he thought with distaste
that this would bring Clara and Thurstane together, while he would be at
a distance.

“I suppose we shall get an idea from it of the ancient city of Mexico, as described
by Prescott,” continued the enthusiastic lady.

“You will discover a few deviations in the ground plan,” returned Coronado,
for once ironical.

Aunt Maria's suggestion with regard to the women and the wounded was
adopted. The Moquis seemed to urge it; so at least they were understood.
Within a couple of hours after the halt a procession of the feebler folk commenced
climbing the bluff, accompanied by a crowd of the hospitable Indians.
The winding and difficult path swarmed for a quarter of a mile with people in
the gayest of blankets, some ascending with the strangers and some coming
down to greet them.

“I should think we were going up to the Temple of the Sun to be sacrified,”
said Clara, who had also read Prescott.

“To be worshipped,” ventured Thurstane, giving her a look which made her
blush, the boldest look that he had yet ventured.

The terraces, as we have stated, were faced with partially dressed stone.
They were in many places quite broad, and were cultivated everywhere with admirable
care, presenting long green lines of corn fields or of peach orchards.
Half-way up the ascent was a platform of more than ordinary spaciousness which
contained a large reservoir, built of chipped stone strongly cemented, and brimming
with limpid water. From this cistern large earthen pipes led off in various
directions to irrigate the terraces below.

“It seems to me that we are discovering America,” exclaimed Aunt Maria,
her face scarlet with exercise and enthusiasm.

Presently she asked, in full faith that she was approaching a metropolis,
“What is the name of the city?”

“This must be Tegua,” replied Thurstane. “Tegua is the most eastern of
the Moqui pueblos. There are three on this bluff. Mooshaneh and two others
are on a butte to the west. Oraybe is further north.”

“What a powerful confederacy!” said Aunt Maria. “The United States of
the Moquis!”

After a breathless ascent of at least eight hundred feet, they reached the undulated,
barren, rocky surface of a plateau. Here the whole population of Tegua
had collected; and for the first time the visitors saw Moqui women and children.
Aunt Maria was particularly pleased with the specimens of her own sex;
she went into ecstasies over their gentle physiognomies and their well-combed,
carefully braided, glossy hair; she admired their long gowns of black woollen,
each with a yellow stripe around the waist and a border of the same at the bottom.

“Such a sensible costume!” she said. “So much more rational and convenient
than our fashionable fripperies!”

Another fact of great interest was that the Moquis were lighter complexioned
than Indians in general. And when she discovered a woman with fair skin,
blue eyes, and yellow hair—one of those albinos who are found among the inhabitants
of the pueblos—she went into an excitement which was nothing less
than ethnological.

“These are white people,” she cried, losing sight of all the brown faces.
“They are some European race which colonized America long before that modern
upstart, Columbus. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the Northmen
who built the old mill at Newport and sculptured the Dighton Rock.”

“There is a belief,” said Thurstane, “that some of these pueblo people, particularly
those of Zuni, are Welsh. A Welsh prince named Madoc, flying before
the Saxons, is said to have reached America. There are persons who hold
that the descendants of his followers built the mounds in the Mississippi Valley,
and that some of them became the white Mandans of the upper Missouri, and
that others founded this old Mexican civilization. Of course it is all guess-work.
There's nothing about it in the Regulations.”

“I consider it highly probable,” asserted Aunt Maria, forgetting her Scandinavian
hypothesis. “I don't see how you can doubt that that flaxen-haired girl
is a descendant of Medoc, Prince of Wales.”

“Madoc,” corrected Thurstane.

“Well, Madoc then,” replied Aunt Maria rather pettishly, for she was dreadfully
tired, and moreover she didn't like Thurstane.

A few minutes' walk brought them to the rampart which surrounded the pueblo.
Its foundation was a solid blind wall, fifteen feet or so in height, and built
of hewn stone laid in clay cement. Above was a second wall, rising from the

first as one terrace rises from another, and surmounted by a third, which was
also in terrace fashion. The ground tier of this stair-like structure contained
the storerooms of the Moquis, while the upper tiers were composed of their two-story
houses, the entire mass of masonry being upward of thirty feet high, and
forming a continuous line of fortification. This rampart of dwellings was in the
shape of a rectangle, and enclosed a large square or plaza containing a noble
reservoir. Compact and populous, at once a castle and a city, the place could
defy all the horse Indians of North America.

“Bless me! this is sublime but dreadful,” said Aunt Maria when she
learned that she must ascend to the landing of the lower wall by a ladder. “No
gate? Isn't there a window somewhere that I could crawl through? Well,
well! Dear me! But it's delightful to see how safe these excellent people have
made themselves.”

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

“I shall never go down in the world,” she remarked with a shuddering glance
backward. “I shall pass the rest of my days here.”

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

“Beautiful!” said Aunt Maria. “That court is absolutely swept and
dusted. One might give a ball there. I should like to hear Lucretia Mott speak
in it.”

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

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

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

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

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

“It smells like corn bread,” said Clara.

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

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

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

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

“Does it feel any better?” asked Aunt Maria eagerly.

“It feels cooler,” said Thurstane.

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

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

“Yes, certainly; your poor nose,” assented Aunt Maria. “Let the lady cure
it.”

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

“Works like a charm 'n' smells like peach leaves,” snuffled the patient.
“It's where it's handy to sniff at—that's a comfort.”

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

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