3
The night after the dance there was a fight between the Navajos and the Apaches, two or three score of the latter having ridden in and begun strutting through the pueblo with their orange-colored scarves and big feathers in their dark sombreros. They and the Navajos were the fiercest of the Indians and used to ravage the whole country even down as far as Chihuahua in Old Mexico. And they are still warlike people, ready to start strife on a slight pretext. The Navajos are especially untamable.
The horses also this night got into trouble, their exasperation and hunger seeming to possess them. Juan Louis Pecos, the Indian who had charge of our three steeds, did the best he could, but that was not much. George and Buck were tied to a post. Billy had been put in hobbles and turned loose. But the Indian horses constantly invaded the yard of the house where we were staying, and the unhobbled ones drove Billy away from his feed. Juan, having taken part in the dance, was very late in bringing the alfalfa, and when he brought it it proved to be of a very thorny nature, reaped with abundant weeds from Indian fields. Just after nine at night we had an exciting half hour.
Billy, having been dispossessed, vented his rage on George, whom in any case he regarded as an interloper, and drove him round and round the post to which he was tied until the rope was wound tight. The little white pony looked as if he were going to strangle himself, and he was in a violent excitement, kicking out with his hind legs and straining with all his neck muscles. Buck, tied near him, craftily avoided all entanglements. But Billy, hobbled as he was, could not be restrained. Ewart untied Buck and he scampered off, and I cut George's rope, sawing it for several seconds, for it was a very stout fine line of an unbreakable kind. George meanwhile let out at all and sundry, and when cut loose dashed away with Billy after him.
Mrs. Graham happily recaptured Buckskin at the drinking trough—fortunately he had not grasped the geography of the large ramshackle yard, else he would no doubt forthwith have set off for home. Ewart and I chased the other two horses to the accompaniment of the clangor of Billy 's chain-hobbles. They got into the main street of the pueblo and Billy made such a pace, even hobbled, that we could not overtake them; he leapt like a hobbyhorse, he trotted in short rapid steps, and he certainly made the white pony go. George, however, doubled on us and Billy doubled across our tracks also. We cried to Apaches and Navajos to aid us, but they looked on gloomily from their blankets. Dogs rushed about and barked and gave chase, and we, with electric torches in our hands, strove to see the horses we were after. Billy was audible by the sound of his hobbles. But suddenly, to my horror, I saw his big shadowy body leap in air and heard a sickening thud. He seemed to have gone neck over crop. I could not surmise what had happened to him. There was, however, a chance to run down George in a corner of a waste field, and I ran to assist Ewart. George was recaptured. Then with torches we sought the form of Billy. He made not a sound now and might be dead.
I found him at last, lying stretched out as if he had breathed his last. But he was far from dead. Seeing me, he made a great effort to get up, but fell back helpless. Then I saw what had happened. He had caught the shoe of one of his hind legs in the chain which held his two fore legs, and a link was firmly embedded between the iron and the hoof. I felt much relieved, petted him, and then with a big stone in one hand and the electric light and his hind leg in the other I started the awkward job of knocking the bit of chain out of his hoof. Ewart held George and shed his light also on the scene. Indians came and peered at us out of the darkness, and the hubbub of dogs barking continued all over the village.
Billy was freed without further accident, and the three horses were tied up in separate places, and in a repentant mood they stood and watched till morning. They looked very miserable at dawn. For they had had no corn, and the other horses had stolen their hay, and they had had a series of frights in the night. I went with an old Indian on to the top of his roof, and we filled a sack with ripe corn on the cobs—some yellow, some scarlet, some almost blue, and we fed the horses personally, each of us his own, and that was a great comfort. Then we saddled up and rode on to the trading post of San Ysidro.
Here an enormous trade was being done by white traders buying up all manner of Indian wares and selling store goods in exchange. We took refuge in Miller's Trading Store and put our horses in charge of "Velvet Joe" who led them to happy quarters. Buck rolled on his back for a long time and then sat on the soft ground and looked around him like a contented dromedary. Velvet Joe came and told us the horse was ill. But he did not understand the joy of the escape from that exasperating pueblo and its wild horses. Billy and George, having contemplated Buckskin for a while, followed his example and took a good roll also.
Next day we rode to Zia on sand dunes over the Jemez River, in a fullness of sunshine. In the evening we made the pueblo of Santa Ana and slept in an Indian house, all on the floor of a mud-built room. An ex-governor was our host, a very gentle and indeed beautiful Indian. At dawn the day following we climbed the dark table mountain, having to lead our horses and coax them to mount the steep slopes of volcanic scoriæ and bowlders. Looking backward, we saw Santa Ana removed to obscurity and littleness far away on the yellow evenness of the river shore. We with our horses were exalted on black and dreadful cliffs. Cold winds sprang at us from the ravines. Persistent winds blew against us and athwart us. We achieved nevertheless the summit—and the summit was a new country, a wide, grassy plateau miles across, but without view except cloud and sky. Perhaps we were lucky, but we rode on to the faint sheep trail to San Felipe and came at last, after an hour or two of riding, to a plunging, rocky stairway leading downward, a nose-dive down to the Rio Grande River, and there, like a Moorish city, lay the beautiful yellow pueblo of San Felipe. The horses did not object to the steep descent; all three in single file we descended slowly and processionally, down to the village of our friend Lorenzo. And the first Indian we met there was he.
Lorenzo took us where we could get food, and happily put us on the way to Santo Domingo which at nightfall we reached. We still rode on to the Mexican stores and inn two or three miles nearer Santa Fe, and there, feeling pretty tired, we did justice to a hot supper of ham and eggs and coffee and potatoes and other good things.
The next day was the last day of our ride, and we experienced a violent snowstorm, climbing La Bajada Hill in an upflutter of snowflakes, and finding the moor above it deep in snow. A pitiless east wind drove a blizzard against us, caking our right-hand sides with ice and snow. The horses grew all white; "domes of silence" raised their hoofs, additional snow boots fixed on their hoofs. They stumbled repeatedly. Twenty miles in a raging blizzard was an ordeal for them as much as for us, but they knew they were nearing home and comfortable, happy quarters. "There's no Place Like Home" was written on the knowing features of Buck. And Billy, who was none the worse for his adventure with his hobbles, encouraged Buck onward as it seemed.
That night, when we had all changed our clothes and the horses were fed and housed and we sat and watched three-foot logs flaming from a broad hearth, we felt we had had an adventure—we had gone far, we had seen new life, we had lived intimately with our horses for a week, and it had been greatly worth while.
Cigarette smoke rose from our chairs in meditative rings.