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One of the poets at Santa Fe had decided to return East and finish a University course which he had broken by a year of freedom and poetry in New Mexico. So Wilfrid Ewart bought his horse, an Indian pony, white, small-footed, and wiry, and named as it were facetiously, "George." He proved too short for a man of six feet two, but except at starting, when he sometimes refused to budge for five minutes, he went as well as the other two horses, Billy and Buck. He proved to be branded with the mark of the Santo Domingo Indians, and there were many horses of his size and gait in their pueblo. Every time we met any of the Indians, however, they would ask suspiciously, "Where you get that horse?" George gave us some amusement, for he jumped sideways with all four feet at once when a car passed him, and though slow by habit he would upon occasion jump to an impulse that he was in a race with my impetuous Billy. The mile home from the post office we would sometimes find ourselves in a wild gallop, chased for moments by starved dogs who drove Billy to additional excitement.
We had a pleasant autumn at Santa Fe, pierced though it was by shafts of winter cold. The sun heat was great, but there was frost every night. Ewart had brought literary work, and he sat with his papers in a profuse sun bath; he became deeply sunburned, and the skin peeled from the back of his writing hand. But it was good for him. Arriving in indifferent health, it was remarkable how he improved.
It was unfortunate that winter came so rapidly. Though so far South we began to have weather much colder than that of New York—and the snow from the mountain summits crept lower. Snow swept down from the heights, driven by the wind into our valleys. There were several October days when the whole desert was clad in unnatural white. Then the sun came out and, like magic, uncovered the desert again, and the thirsty sand drank up what dissolved, and soon all was as before.
In a pleasant interlude between snowstorms in early November we set off for the Jemez Dance, the annual trading fair and fiesta of November 12. My wife and I were on Buckskin and Billy. As we took no pack-horse along with us we had all our impedimenta strapped on to our saddles. We had been told we should find no water or provisions on the way, and so we carried more than we needed to have done. Ewart had four pounds of ham tied to the pommel of his saddle as well as a waterproof and toilet case, and his saddle pockets behind him were stuffed.
I carried bags before and behind. And Buck also was much encumbered, though his rider was so much lighter. Buck made a bad start by falling into the Acequia Madre, the irrigation ditch, with fore feet in front of a wretched rustic bridge and hind legs hanging in air. In this posture I had to undo his girths and liberate him from his packs ere we could get him on to his feet. He started, therefore, in a melancholy and cautious mood, and we walked him a good deal of the way. Indeed, in the evening, convinced that he was suffering from sprain, I persuaded Mrs. Graham to ride Billy whilst I led Buck by the reins. In this way we reached La Cienega and put up at a Mexican farm where we were very happily regaled, though we had to go to bed at eight o'clock and all slept in the same room. Next morning Buckskin showed that he had no sprain. I had led the horses to water and had returned to set our coffee-pot on the Mexicans' kitchen fire, and I had left them barely ten minutes when the farmer's wife came in and said two of the horses had got out of the inclosure. They were Billy and Buck. Lightly clad as I was, I threw my saddle on George and bridled him and went off at once. For I knew that the two miscreants would make for home at a good pace. George proved his worth that morning. Chasing other horses was what he was made for. He went like the wind after these horses. In a mile we got them in view; they were trotting steadily together; in a mile and a half they stopped and turned to consider us, and Buck stopped the hesitation by breaking into a hearty canter joined by Billy. But we overhauled them, and George, without any guidance from me, turned them both. If only I had been a cowboy and could have hauled the rope which I held in my hand! Alas, I missed the chance, and all three horses settled down for a cross-country gallop. I reflected that we should thus gallop up the main street of Santa Fe and up the Canon Road and into our familiar yard at noon. It was a perplexing thought. I slowed down George, therefore, and noticed that Billy and Buck did the same. I hastened again, they hastened; slowed, they slowed. But at five miles from La Cienega my second opportunity came, and I took it. A deep arroyo was spanned by a bridge. It could be reached across country without my appearing to pursue the horses. At the bridge I dismounted and idled and appeared to be interested in the view whilst the two runaways approached. Both suddenly stopped and stared. Billy raised his head very high and kicked out friskily with his hind legs. Buck made a wily detour. But I showed not the least interest, so they began to graze here and there where a tuft of grass appeared. I thereupon made a cup of my hand as if it held corn, and approached Billy, calling him, keeping the hand out of the view of the inquisitive, greedy, but very crafty Buckskin. Billy, however, intoxicated by freedom and the morning air, cut a wild cantrip and fled. But Buck really thought I had corn, and when I approached him I got near enough to put a rope over his neck. Secured and tied to the bridge, he looked a repentant horse. It took another ten minutes to capture Billy, then I changed the saddle on to his back and started all three back to Cienega at a smart trot. Then of course I could reflect how pleasant an adventure it was, the best two hours of the day. It was a pity, however, that the horses should lose their freshness before the real riding of the morning commenced.
We all set off at once for Penya Blanca, on the Rio Grande. We had hoped to ford the river that day, but now hope of that was gone. Yet it was a very pleasant day's riding, following over sand and bowlders and running water the scores of zig-zags of stream which threatened a profound ravine. All was gray. Tumultuous piles of rock stared down at us as we clattered along—the horses lapped at the water and made deep hoof-marks in the wet sand. There were no birds, no flowers, no evergreens—no life but that of ourselves and the sunlight on the gray pebbles. Even the fire which we made of water-washed wood burned with invisible flames, and the steam did not show till the water raised the lid of our coffeepot and boiled over. We sat together in the early afternoon, quaffed coffee, and ate down our weight of provisions. We had even got hay for our horses at a farmhouse, and we eased their girths and fed them a little and watered them ere we resumed our way.
We reached Penya Blanca at night, led o'er the moor by flickering lights. We nearly went to the Indian village of Cochiti, as its lights on the other side of the Rio Grande beckoned much more certainly. But after traversing a mile of deep sand we turned our horses and made for other lights which we judged rightly must indicate the settlement of the Mexicans. Penya Blanca is a squatters' village, extensive and substantial, though none of the settlers there have adequate legal title to the land they hold as theirs. Their forefathers came there to obtain the protection of the Cochiti Indians from the raiding Navajos, and they stopped there and took to themselves a large fertile slice of the lands of the Indians.
It was not too easy to obtain shelter for the night—but Ewart was taken in at a house where there was to be a wedding next day, and nobody there except he slept a wink all night long. He had hot coffee and a substantial breakfast before dawn. We were not so lucky, but we had a mattress and a floor in a room of an empty house. The horses fared best of all, being put into a cosy corral with heaps of alfalfa and corn and a grand disarray of cornhusks. Next morning we had them saddled at dawn, and rode to the fording of the river as sunrise was breaking over the mountains.
That day was a glorious one; first through the brown-leaved woods of the river shore, then up over sandbanks and crags, through copse and boscage, ever higher, to wild rocky country and vast wastes where no man lived and no cattle of any kind found pasture. The morning sun was over-swept by snow clouds, the winds hurried over mountain sides in white capes of flurrying snow. Snow blew lustily into our faces and over our horses. We rode into fast-dropping curtains of thick snow and rode through them and out of them into radiant sunlight again. There joined us on the way many Indians clad in cotton shirts and breeches and with old scarlet and orange blankets swathed about their shoulders like capes. Their polished ebony hair hung in long, rough-tied plaits from their lightly turbaned heads. I say turbaned, but the turban was no more than a gayly colored kerchief tied like a bandage around their temples.
"How!" "How!" they cried in little yelps as they drew abreast of us.
"Hello!" we replied. "Going to Jemez Dance?"
"Si, si," they answered. "You going?"
Few spoke any English, but they were delighted to have us of their company, and we went with various parties for many miles. Once there were more than twelve of us all cantering together over the vague trail, and it was a pretty sight.
"Poco frio—a little cold," was a favorite remark of ours.
"Si, mucho frio," they replied. "Not a little but very cold!"
They stopped and lit five-minute bonfires of dried weeds, just to warm their hands and bodies. Round these blazes they fairly danced. In the twilight of the late afternoon among the snow patches, these bonfire dances were most eerie in appearance.
The Indians were so cold they made their horses go faster and faster to keep warm. But as ours were more heavily burdened we kept a more moderate pace and let the Indians go ahead. We made a big pot of coffee in the afternoon and that kept warm our toes otherwise chilled in the stirrups. The Indians, on in front, had been eating melons and throwing down chunks of rind. In this rind and mouthfuls of snow, Billy and Buck took enormous pleasure, simply guzzling over them. George, however, seemed to have toothache and turned his head away.
One of the Indians helped us greatly when we rode on. He was from San Felipe, and named Lorenzo. He turned out of the party he belonged to and watched us lest we should go astray. Possibly he saved us from a night wandering in the mountains. For when we had taken a wrong trail and gone some way upon it our attention was arrested by long persistent cries which we felt had references to us. And looking about, we saw the silhouette of Lorenzo on the top of a little mountain and saw that he was signaling us to come toward him.
This we did, and we found we had been going on a dangerous precipitous trail which in truth led no whither except to goat pastures and hideous abysses. Lorenzo went with us the rest of the way and we descended into the Jemez valley by a track that none but Mexican ponies would follow; down narrow gullies, along broken ledges, down sharp slides and drops. The whole country side dropped in tumultuous crags and steeps, shale slopes, cliffs, precipices—to the Jemez River. The last light of evening gleamed on us and we left our fate to Lorenzo and the horses to do with it what they would—an adventurous, and, as it seemed, a perilous, ride.
At nightfall, as the village church was ringing for vespers, we rode into the crowded pueblo and were four out of many who had come to the great dance and fiesta.