The Land of Dead Things
Forth to the land of dead things, through the cities that are forgotten, fared Dick Lane. Tricked by his friend, with the woman he loved lost to him, he wandered onward.
Automatically he took up again his quest for buried treasure. That which in the flush of youthful enthusiasm and roseate prospects of life and love had seized him as a passion was now a settled habit. And fortunately so, for it kept him from going mad. He had no thought of gain—only the achievement of a purpose, a monomania.
With this impulse was conjoined a more volitional motive—he wished to revenge himself upon the Apaches, and chiefly upon the renegade McKee, whom he supposed still to be with them. Somehow he blamed him, rather than Jack Payson, as being the chief cause of his miseries. "If he had not stolen the buried gold, I would have returned in time," he muttered. "He is at the bottom of all this. As I walked away from Jack in the garden, I felt as if it was McKee that was following me with his black, snaky eyes."
Accordingly, Dick directed his way to a region reputed to be both rich in buried treasure and infested by hostile Indians.
The fable of the Quivira, the golden city marked now by the ruins of the Piro pueblo of Tabiri, south of the salt-deposits of the Manzano, is still potent in Arizona and New Mexico to lure the treasure-seeker. Three hundred and fifty years ago it inspired a march across the plains that dwarfs the famous march of the Greeks to the sea. It led to the exploration of the Southwest and California before the Anglo-Saxon settlers had penetrated half a hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. The cities are forgotten to-day. The tribe which gave it a name proved to be utter barbarians, eaters of raw meat, clad only in skins, without gold, knowing nothing of the arts; Teton nomads, wandering through Kansas. Yet each decade since witnesses a revival of a wonderful story of the buried treasures of the Grand Quivira.
The myth originated in New Mexico in 1540. Antonio de Mendoza was the viceroy of New Spain. Having practically conquered the New World, the adventurers who formed his court, having no fighting to do with common enemies, began to hack each other. Opportunely for the viceroy, Fra Marcos discovered New Mexico and Arizona. Gathering the doughty swordsmen together, Mendoza turned them over to the brilliant soldier and explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, with strict orders to get them as far from the viceroy as he could, and then lose them.
Coronado and his band were the first to see the Grand Canon of the Colorado. In the latter weeks of 1540 they were in the town of Tiguex. As they were less welcome than the modern tourists, who are now preyed upon where these preyed, the natives sent them on to the pueblo of the Pecos. Mendoza had sent Coronado into New Mexico on the strength of the trimmings of the myth of the "Seven Cities of Cibola." The fabled cities of gold proved to be peaceful settlements. Coronado attempted to lose his cut-throats by having them settle in the country. A plains Indian, captive among the Pecos, changed his plans, and led him to undertake his wonderful march. The Pecos wished to get rid of the guests, so they concocted a marvelous story of buried treasures, and made the poor captive father it. To the gold-chasers the captive was known as "The Turk," his head being shaven and adorned only with a scalp-lock, a custom noticeable because of its variance from that of the long-haired Pueblos.
"The Turk" told of a tribe of plainsmen who had a great store of the yellow substance. They were called the Quivira. He would lead them to the ancient Rockefellers. Coronado put him at the head of his band, and followed him eastward over the plains. For months they plodded after him, the Indian trying to lose Coronado, and that valiant warrior endeavoring to obey orders to "shake" his band. About the middle of what is now the Indian Territory, Coronado began to suspect that "The Turk" was selling him a gold brick instead of a bonanza. Landmarks began to look strangely alike. "The Turk," as he afterward confessed, was leading them in a circle. Coronado sent the most of his band back to the Mexican border, retaining about thirty followers. With the help of heated bayonets and sundry proddings, he then impressed upon "The Turk" that it was about time for him to find the Quiviras, or prepare to go to the happy hunting-grounds of his ancestors. After many hardships, "The Turk" located the tribe they were seeking near the present site of Kansas City. All that Coronado found in the way of metal was a bit of copper worn by a war-chief. Not only was the bubble burst, but the bursting was so feeble that Coronado was disgusted. He beheaded the guide with his own hands as a small measure of vengeance. With his followers he retraced his weary road to Tiguex. The lesson lasted for half a century, when the myth, brighter, more alluring than ever, arose and led others on to thirsty deaths in the bad lands and deserts of the Southwest.
It was to the modern version that Lane had succumbed. From the Sweetwater he roved to the south of Albuquerque, where the narrow valley of the Rio Grande is rimmed on the east by an arid plateau twenty miles wide; and this is, in turn, walled in by a long cordillera. Through the passes, over the summit, Lane climbed, descending through the pineries, park-like in their grandeur and immensity, to the bare, brown plains which stretch eastward to the rising sun. In the midst of the desert lies a chain of salines, accursed lakes of Tigua folk-lore. Beyond them the plain melts and rebuilds itself in the shimmering sun.