Campmates: A Story of the Plains

by Kirk Munroe

"Well! that is queer," said the former. "Who do you suppose those chaps are?"

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they were two of the white Indians I have read of," answered "Billy" Brackett; "and, if so, they are the greatest curiosities we'll see in this town."

"I never heard of them," said Glen. "Where did they come from?"

"That's more than I can tell, or anybody else. All we know is that the earliest Spaniards found a race of white people living among the Pueblo Indians, whom they describe as being exactly like these chaps grinning at us from that roof. In one respect they are a distinct race, as they have never been allowed to marry with the dark-skinned Indians; but in every other respect they are thorough Puebloes, and there is no tradition going back far enough to show that they were ever anything else. I believe that the race is nearly extinct, and that they are now so few in number as to be rarely seen."

In this "Billy" Brackett was correct; for at that time there were but three of those white Indians in Zuñi, two men and a woman.

Before leaving this remarkable town of curious people, Glen discovered that they kept eagles for pets, and were also very fond of snakes, especially rattlesnakes, which they did not hesitate to handle freely and even to hold in their mouths. He saw the entire population turn out on the flat roofs of their houses at daybreak, and, facing the east, patiently await the coming of Montezuma, whom they firmly believed would appear some morning in the place of the sun. He heard of, but was not allowed to see, the perpetual fire, lighted by Montezuma, that has been kept burning for ages by a family of priests, set apart and supported by the people for that particular purpose. He saw women grinding corn into fine white meal between two stones, and baking it into delicious thin cakes on another. He saw them weaving blankets, of sheep's wool, so fine that they will hold water for a whole day, and so strong that they will last a long lifetime. He ate some of the white dried peaches and other fruits that these Indians raise in such abundance and prepare with such skill. And what pleased him more than anything else was that, in exchange for two flour-sacks and a small piece of bacon, one of the Indians made him a fine buckskin shirt, very much adorned with fringes, that he wore all the rest of the winter.

It certainly was a most interesting place, and the whole party would gladly have lingered there longer than the three days that could be spared to it. But it was now November, and they must be beyond the San Francisco Mountains before the passes were blocked with heavy snows. So they bade good-bye to Zuñi and New Mexico, and, taking their way past Jacob's Well, where a fine spring bubbles up at the bottom of a funnel-shaped pit, six hundred feet across at the top, and a hundred and fifty feet deep, they entered the little-known region of Northern Arizona.

For three months they toiled through that wild country, as lost to the view and knowledge of white civilization as though they were running their line through Central Africa. Then they emerged on the bank of the mighty Colorado, and, looking across its turbid flood, saw the barren wastes of the Great Colorado Desert; but they gave a shout of joy at the sight, for, with all its dreariness of aspect, that was California, and beyond it lay the Pacific, the goal of their hopes.

The last three months had been filled with toil, hardships, and adventure. Although in that time they saw no white men, nor men of any kind beyond catching occasional glimpses of the stealthy Apaches, who hung on their trail for weeks, and with whom they exchanged more than one rifle-shot, they were never without evidences that this whole vast country had once been occupied by a mighty people. Hardly a day passed that Glen did not hold his rod on the ruined foundation-wall of some huge structure of long ago, or stumble over heaps of broken pottery graceful in form and design, or gaze wonderingly at the stone houses of ancient cliff-dwellers perched on ledges now inaccessible, or walk in the dry beds of crumbling aqueducts, or select choice specimens from piles of warlike implements fashioned from shining crystal or milk-white quartz, or, in some way, have his attention called to the fact that he was traversing a country in which had dwelt millions of his kind, who had long since passed away and been forgotten. He had puzzled over miles of hieroglyphic inscriptions and rude pictures, drawn on the smooth black walls of rugged cañons, and learned from them fragmentary tales of ancient battles or of encounters with savage beasts.

Then, too, he had known hunger and thirst and bitter cold. His Christmas dinner, eaten during a short pause from work on the line, had been a bit of spoiled bacon and a couple of wormy hard-tack, with which, in honor of the day, he had his full share of "Billy" Brackett's treasured cheese, brought out at last to grace this feast. Not only were their provisions nearly exhausted at that time, but it was the fifth day on which they had been unable to wash, for want of water. Two weeks before, a wagon had been sent to the mining-camp of Prescott, nearly a hundred miles away, and they had nearly given up all hopes of its safe return. That night it came into camp, and that night, too, they found a number of rock cisterns full of water. In the darkness of that same evening, while hastening from the pool in which he had been bathing, to get his share of the Christmas supper, poor Glen had run plump into a gigantic cactus, and filled his body with its tiny, barbed thorns. Altogether it was a memorable Christmas, and one he will never forget.