—Mrs. C. L. Whiton.
Our stay was comparatively not as long as our talk in sandy San Luis, for we soon left its pastures behind and were steaming southward, but with slower and slower speed. Again we were twisting our toilsome way up the valley’s “purple rim,” since it was easier to go over the high bank than down through the rugged cañon, where the wagon-road runs. The summit of this ridge, beyond which lies the valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, is not attained until you reach Barranca (“a high river-bank”), sixty-five miles from Antonito, and one of the most attractive spots in the region. The altitude is over eight thousand feet, and the air of that perfect purity extolled in all that is written of mountain districts. The station, with its half dozen accompanying houses, all owned and occupied by those in the service of the railway, stands in the midst of acres of sunflowers, which all summer long spread their yellow disks to the full gaze of the sun, and dare him to outshine them. I have seen sunflowers before, but never in such masses and splendor of tone as here. Near by one catches sight of the green of the leaves and stems between, like the mottled plumage of some canaries, while the mass of chrome-yellow atop is picked off with maroon dots of seed-centers. Distance loses these details to one’s eye, and gives only a billowy stretch—a glorious sulphur sea, intense as burnished gold, rolling between you and a dark green shore of piñon foliage. This August landscape, indeed, divides into three great portions, relieved by few variations, yet never for a moment monotonous. In the foreground are the brilliant, owl-eyed flowers; above them the stratum of well-rounded tree-tops, blackish in shadow; after that the far-away mountains, delicately green, or deep blue, or washed with an amethystine tint. Arching over all bends the cloudless azure of the canopy.
Our cars safely side-tracked, the Madame and I wander aimlessly about during the warm afternoon, while the Musician takes his rifle and saunters away down the tapering track, and Photographer and Artist set resolutely off for a tramp to the top of some buttes. Returning in good time for our twilight dinner, the rifleman brings no game, but reports having seen a cotton-tailed hare and some ravens. The climbers come in very weary. Their buttes were far away and lofty. From their summits they could distinguish Fernandez de Taos, and are not surprised to learn that more freight is gradually being transferred thence from here than from Embudo, the designated station for Taos. They could see more grand peaks than they could count on their fingers and toes; and told us about the road to Ojo Caliente, the Warm Springs of New Mexico, famous for almost three centuries.
This was an objective point twelve miles away; but the stages which now run, had not then begun their daily mail-trips, so we had to dispatch a messenger for a vehicle. Three Mexicans lay stretched out on the station-platform asleep. They had lain there all day waiting in lazy patience the coming of the pay-car which owed them a few dollars. For uno peso—one dollar—one of them consented to take a message to Antonio Joseph, who owns the springs; and, mounting his burro, scampered off with an appearance of tremendous haste, which doubtless diminished as soon as he had placed the first thicket behind him.
The Madame and I took our chairs into the shadow of the dining-car, and read and sewed while the sun sank reluctantly down. It was very quiet, the humming of wild bees and wasps furnishing almost the only sound. Soon I noticed that between our glances a mound of earth had been thrown up about a dozen feet from where we sat. A moment later there was a stirring in the nearest clump of sunflowers, some soil was tossed up, immediately followed by a brown nose and shaggy little head, which instantly disappeared, only to come up again, pushing before it a handful of dirt from its tunnel. This was repeated a dozen times or more, at the end of which the little workman came on top and surveyed his surroundings. He saw us, but as we kept still he took no alarm, and presently let himself down backwards into his burrow. He was not gone “for good,” however. In a moment the blunt, stiff-whiskered snout and black eyes peered out, and made a grasp at a stem of the sunflower. It was large and tough, and the first bite only made it tremble; but a second nipped it off. Then seizing it by the butt,—he was wise enough not to drag it leaves foremost,—he pulled it down into his hole, and apparently carried it to the innermost chamber, for some minutes elapsed before he returned for a second flower stem, to add to his winter stock.
We knew him well enough. He was the gopher, a large kind of ground squirrel, not easily to be distinguished from a prairie-dog in race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If any one desires to know more about him, let him “look up the authorities,” as Professor Polycarp P. Pillicamp would say.
SIERRA BLANCA.