Saddle and Mocassin

by Francis Francis

Amongst other trips of a similar nature, which we made about this time, was one into the Cojon Bonita, or Beautiful Box, a district adjoining Animas Valley (only lying on the Mexican side of the border), where the Colonel had lately purchased 360,000 acres of land from the Mexican Government. The few cattle that had drifted down there excepted, this tract was as yet unstocked, and was said to contain a great quantity of game. Unfortunately it was noted also as being a favourite haunt of the hostile Apaches, to whom the broken nature of the ground peculiarly recommended itself. An Indian there was as safe as a rat in a rabbit-warren, and a white man as completely at his mercy as though he had been a bound sheep.

As Apaches were known to have been recently in the neighbourhood, it would have been foolhardy to go down there and camp with less than six or eight men, and these we had not at our disposal. However, Major Tupper simplified matters by saying that he himself wished to make a reconnaissance in that direction, and would come with us and bring an escort of ten men. F. and W., two friends of the Colonel's, accompanied us from the Gray Place, and Huse joined us as we passed the Lang ranch. With the addition of four packers for the inevitable pack-train, therefore, we formed an extensive party. It augured badly for sport, and the augury was verified, for the joint bag (and most of the men went out) was one black-tail killed by F. Tramping and climbing, wading and sliding, I tore two new pair of mocassins to rags, and only saw two head of game—two black-tail in the distance—some wild turkey tracks, a fresh Indian mocassin track (whether of scout or hostile I knew not, but its Indian origin was proved by the in-turned toes, and absence of any sign of instep, or of thrown-up dirt at the toes), and a lately deserted camp-fire still burning. Nevertheless the trip was a delightful picnic, and as such deserves grateful recollection.

A mile or so over the Mexican border-line, the track we followed suddenly descended, and we found ourselves in a maze of beautiful glades and valleys, the grassy hills which formed them being of the same height as the level of the plain that we had quitted. As we proceeded, the hills rose rapidly, here and there revealing their rocky framework in gaunt cliffs and naked elbows; live-oaks intermingled with the cotton-woods in the bottoms and towered above them on the hillsides, whilst the richest and most luxuriant grasses spread everywhere. Truly the district deserved its name of Beautiful Box.

The old Spaniards, by the way, displayed great felicity in their nomenclature. They were evidently closely observant, too, for, in the same virile spirit of simplicity and directness which characterises all that is really typical of old Spanish art, they generally seized on the salient features of the place to be christened, and allowed play to the imagination only in so wording the title that, although apt and descriptive, it did not become absolutely commonplace. In travelling through the States, the poverty of invention, patent lack of observation, and vulgarity displayed in the nomenclature is extraordinary,[35] and is in striking contrast with the work of the superseded Spaniards, or with the exquisitely beautiful names that sprang like inspirations from the hearts of those admirable godfathers and godmothers, the Indians, and remain a legacy of unset poetic gems, croppings up of a great lead of poetry buried now for ever beneath an avalanche of the Caucasian race. Nowhere can you find that the untutored savage has bestowed his own name on a mountain or river! Such sublime insolence is far less frequent even in Mexico (colonised though the country was by the proudest and most egotistical race in the world) than in the States. But in the States, with everything grand and beautiful in nature to stimulate the imagination, the refined product of modern culture has found nothing fitter to inscribe upon the newest and fairest page that civilisation has turned than his own unmeaning appellation, nothing more remarkable to call attention to than his own vulgarity, and Jonesvilles, Smithtowns, Robinsonopolises, Brown Cities, and the like, besides similarly denominated mountains and rivers, render the map hideous and the Anglo-Saxon race ridiculous. Curious indeed is the influence of modern culture. Has it not founded the mighty order of Snobs, and created the distinctive spirit of modern times—vulgarity—the religion without creed or God, fashioned as it has been since faith and God-manufacture perished beneath the growing blight of egotism?

In the Cojon Bonita we threaded our way along a narrow smuggler's trail, through scenery that grew wilder and wilder every moment. The topaz-tinted grasses of autumn contrasted with gray or purple cliffs, the dark foliage of the live-oak with the pale leaves of the cotton-tree, sycamore, or willow. Some of the clouds of colouring that the latter triad presented were simply exquisite. Every shade of amber, crushed strawberry, and all their next-of-kin, combined to make a chord of marvellous delicacy, soft in its gradations as the clouds of heaven, and as powerfully relieved against the velvet-toned rocks, as they against the azure sky. Through all this chaos of colour and beauty, shattered light and shadow, wound a little stream—lento, piano, dolce, allegro, vivace, forte—gliding now over gold and chocolate bars of shingle, now over purple shelves of rock, now silent and deep, now garrulous and shallow, now unimpeded and smooth, now checked by a great drift-wood trunk from below which trailed long liquid tresses, foamy, rebellious, and white, or undulating, glossy, and dark in hue, whilst everywhere amidst the crystal ripples danced flitting reflections of blue sky and lovely foliage, crossed by the darting phantoms of frightened fish. The frou-frou of dried leaves and herbage, the murmur of waters, and the whispering of the afternoon winds as they played hide and seek in the thousand cañons of the Cojon Bonita, filled the air with a dreamy tumult. It was a wild spot—as wild

"As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover."

Here, if anywhere, it seemed that the old mythical people of the woods, and mountains, and streams—the nymphs, the fauns, and satyrs, and other damsels and gentry of irregular habits and questionable record that were once the fashion, must have retreated. But if they had done so, like "ole Brer Rabbit," they "lay low." No nymph, with scanty costume and dishevelled tresses, sprang from the long grass and fled at our approach. No satyr appeared and faded from sight amidst the aged trunks. We were alone, apparently.

At length we reached the spot where it was decided that we should camp; the stream that we had followed was joined here by another, and three cañons debouched upon a little open space, trefoil-shaped. It was too late to start on a tramp, so the close of the afternoon was spent in catching fish. How did we catch them?—we had neither tackle nor nets. Well, we exploded a bit of giant powder in the midst of a shoal, and that is the shameful truth of it. It was the only possible means at hand of getting them, and the Colonel had set his affections on a fry for that evening. The confession is disgraceful, but the crime was partly expiated by our having to strip and wade into the icy water, in that deep corner in the rocks, after sundown, in order to collect the stunned fish that floated on the surface.

Hunting, as has been remarked, proved a failure. The size of our party, though it ensured our own safety, militated against our success. Moreover, not very long before, a band of native scouts had spent three days here, and killed over a hundred deer. My most vivid recollections of the trip, therefore, are connected with the evenings that we spent round the camp-fire. A steep amphitheatre of hills surrounded us, overspread by jewelled skies as serene and blue as the deepest coral seas; at an hour that grew later and later, the red moon stole up over the jagged ridges and shed its gorgeous light on the scene; a hundred yards off, on ground below us, were the quarters of the men, and their camp-fires flashed and twinkled amidst the cotton-woods, their laughter and choruses reached us pleasantly on the night air.