"Bring Me His Ears"

by Clarence Edward Mulford

Here was a good chance to test the worth of their disguises, for the three older plainsmen were well-known to some of the Americans and Canadians in the village, having been on long trips into the mountains with a few of them. And so, after the meal of frijoles, atole and jerked meat, the latter a great luxury to Mexicans of the grade of arrieros, Hank and his two Arapahoe companions left the little encampment and wandered curiously about the streets, to the edification of uneasy townsfolk, whose conjectures leaned toward the unpleasant. Ceran St. Vrain, on a visit to the town, passed them close by but did not recognize the men he had seen for days at a time at his trading post on the South Platte. Simonds, a hunter from Bent's Fort, passed within a foot of Hank and did not know him; yet the two had spent a season together in the Middle Park, lying just across the mountain range west of Long's Peak.

Continuing on their way the next morning they camped in the open valley for the night, and the next day crossed a range of mountains. The next village was El Embudo, a miserable collection of mud huts at the end of a wretched trail. The Pueblo de San Juan and the squalid, poverty-stricken village of La Canada followed in turn. Everywhere they found hatred and ill-disguised fear of the Texans roaming beyond the Canadian. Next they reached the Pueblo de Ohuqui and here found snug accommodations for themselves and their animals in the little valley. From the pueblo the trail lay through an arroyo over another mountain and they camped part way down its southeast face with Santa Fe sprawled out below them.

Morning found them going down the sloping trail, the Indian escort surreptitiously examining their rifles, and in the evening they entered the collection of mud houses honored by the name of San Francisco de la Santa Fe, whose population of about three thousand souls was reputed to be the poorest in worldly wealth in the entire province of New Mexico; and, judging from the numbers of openly run gambling houses, rum shops and worse, the town might have deserved the reputation of being the poorest in morals and spiritual wealth.

Sprawled out under the side of the mountain, its mud houses of a single story, its barracks, calabozo and even the "palace" of the governor made of mud, with scarcely a pane of glass in the whole town; its narrow streets littered with garbage and rubbish; with more than two-thirds of its population barefooted and unkempt, a mixture of Spaniards and Indians for generations, in which blending the baser parts of their natures seemed singularly fitted to survive; with cringing, starving dogs everywhere; full of beggars, filthy and in most cases disgustingly diseased, with hands outstretched for alms, as ready to curse the tight of purse as to bless the generous, and both to no avail; with its domineering soldiery without a pair of shoes between them, its arrogant officers in shiny, nondescript uniforms and tarnished gilt, with huge swords and massive spurs, to lead the unshod mob of privates into cowardly retreat or leave them to be slaughtered by their Indian foes, whose lances and bows were superior in accuracy and execution to the ancient firelocks so often lacking in necessary parts; reputed to be founded on the ruins of a pueblo which had flourished centuries before the later "city" and no doubt was its superior in everything but shameless immorality. There, under Sante Fe mountain and the pure and almost cloudless blue sky, along the little mountain stream of the same name, lay Santa Fe, the capital of the department of New Mexico, and the home of her vainglorious, pompous, good-looking, and brutal governor; Santa Fe, the greatest glass jewel in a crown of tin; Santa Fe, the customs gate and the disappointing end of a long, hard trail.

Through the even more filthy streets of the poverty-stricken outskirts of the town went the little atejo, disputing right-of-way in the narrow, porch-crowded thoroughfares with hoja (corn husk) sellers and huge burro loads of pine and cedar faggots gathered from the near-by mountain; past the square where the mud hovels of the soldiers lay; past a mud church whose tall spire seemed ever to be stretching away from the smells below; past odorous hog stys, crude mule corrals with their scarred and mutilated creatures, and sheep pens, and groups of avid cock-fighters; past open doors through which the halfbreed women, clothed in a simple garment hanging from the shoulders, could be seen cooking frijoles or the thin, watery atole and hovering around the flat stones which served for stoves; past these and worse plodded the atejo, the shrewd mules braying their delight at a hard journey almost ended. Sullen Indians, apologetic Mexicans, swaggering and too often drunken soldiers gave way to them, while a string of disputing, tail-tucking dogs followed at a distance, ever wary, ever ready to wheel and run.

Reaching the Plaza Publica, which was so bare of even a blade of grass or a solitary tree, and its ground so scored and beaten and covered with rubbish to suggest that it suffered the last stages of some earthly mange, they came to the real business section of the town, where nearly every shop was owned by foreigners. Around this public plaza stood the architectural triumphs of the city. There was the palacio of the governor, with its mud walls and its extended roof supported on rough pine columns to form a great porch; the custom-house, with its greedy, grafting officials; the mud barracks connected to the atrocious and much dreaded calabozo, whose inmates had abandoned hope as they crossed its threshold; the mud city hall, the military chapel, fast falling into ruin, and a few dwellings. The interest attending the passing of the atejo increased a little as the pack train crossed this square, for the Indian guards were conspicuous by their height and by the breadth of shoulder, and the excellence of their well-kept weapons. Strangers were drawing more critical attention these days, with the Texan threat hanging over the settlements along the Pecos and the Rio Grande. Peon women and Indian squaws regarded the four with apparent approval and as they left the square and plunged into the poorer section again, compliments and invitations reached their ears. Hopeless mozos, or ill-paid servants, most of them kept in actual slavery by debts they never could pay off because of the system of accounting used against them, regarded the four enviously and yearned for their freedom.

Of the four Indians, a tall, strapping Delaware, stooping to be less conspicuous, whose face was the dirtiest in the atejo, suddenly stiffened and then forced himself to relax into his former lazy slouch. The rattle of an imported Dearborn, which at all times had to be watched closely to keep its metal parts from being stripped off and stolen, filled the street as the vehicle rocked along the ruts toward them, drawn by two good horses and driven by one Joseph Cooper, of St. Louis, Missouri. At his side sat his niece, looking with wondering and disapproving eyes about her, her pretty face improved by its coat of healthy tan, but marred somewhat by the look of worry it so plainly showed. She appeared sad and wistful, but at times her thoughts leaped far away and brought her fleeting smiles so soft, so tender, as to banish the look of worry and for an instant set a glory there.

Her glance took in the little pack train and its stalwart guards and passed carelessly over the bending Delaware, and then returned to linger on him while one might count five. Then he and the atejo passed from sight and she looked ahead again, unseeing, for her memory was racing along a wagon road, and became a blank in a frightful, all-night storm. At her sigh Uncle Joe glanced sidewise at her and took a firmer grip on his vile native cigar, and silently cursed the day she had left St. Louis.

"Load of wheat whiskey from th' rancho, I reckon," he said, and pulled sharply on the reins to keep from running over a hypnotized ring of cock-fighters. "How your paw can live all th' year 'round in this fester of a town is a puzzle to me. I'd rather be in a St. Louis jail. Cigar?" he sneered, yanking it from his mouth and regarding it with palpitant disgust. He savagely hurled it from him. "Hell!"

A tangle of arms and legs rolled out of a rum shop and fought impotently in the dust of the street, and sotted faces grinned down at them from the crowded door. A flaky-skinned beggar slouched from behind the corner of the building and held out an imploring hand, which the driver's contemptuous denial turned into a clenched fist afloat in a sea of Spanish maledictions.