And by midnight the fires would die down, one by one, to mere glows. The pueblo lights, high up along the mesa cornice, would be blotted out. Beyond the camps, only the sound of horses munching, the bray of a desert [[286]]nightingale from the upper corrals, or the canter of a mounted policeman through the sand, as he gave a last look around before rolling in his blanket. Then silence under the dark star-strewn sky, a tranquil desert silence, to be broken, perhaps—who knows?—by ghostly sandals, as the padre walked to see that curious company, asleep in his one-time garden, guests of a pagan feast. [[287]]
XXII
ON THE HEELS OF ADVENTURE
I have lived both at the Hawes and Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels, as it seems, of some adventure that should justify the place; but though the feeling had me to bed at night and called me up again at morning in one unbroken round of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth remark. The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen’s Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the green shutters of the inn at Burford.—Stevenson: A Gossip on Romance
Adventure! The Standard Dictionary divides it, like Gaul, into three parts, peculiarly interrelated, yet thinly divisible from each other:—(1) A remarkable or hazardous experience; an unexpected or exciting occurrence. (2) A hazardous or uncertain undertaking; a daring feat. (3) The encountering of risks; daring and hazardous enterprise.
And the writing of it has come to signify swift dramatic action, having a spirited and triumphant finale.
But life in the Desert,—for that matter, life anywhere,—does not advance to a whiplash conclusion. One may not dismiss unwelcome characters simply because convenience or stark justice demands Finis. Despite taut emotions and unsavory possibilities, they go on living and muddling up the action; and the sun rises, and to-morrow is another day. My personal experiences among the Indians in the lonely places have not been [[288]]exactly hazardous or desperately daring from my point of view, indeed, not half so venturesome as nights I have spent in New York. One will have to accept these reminiscences as simply unusual and I hope not uninteresting happenings, with what of thrill they may inspire. Would you insist that I lug in ghosts or bandits? Should I stage a massacre? Perhaps I could contrive to have Youkeoma abduct the trader’s daughter, and arrange a nick-of-time rescue by the cavalry. But Youkeoma was interested in ceremonies only, as he told me, and the trader had no daughter. I should therefore libel a sincere pagan and a bachelor business-man.
Now it strikes me that there is more of nervous drama in Colonel Scott’s going alone into a half-hostile camp, facing down a band of sullen fellows, and coming out with obedience to his decisions. It strikes me, too, that in these desert camps that have known so little of discipline, with no force in the offing and no hope of one, is the real drama of an Agent’s life. I can relate my kind of thrill, but there will be little of dramatic conclusions. Nothing of wild rides, and pursuits, and ambuscades; nothing of foiled villains, and certainly nothing of beautiful maidens in distress. This last the Indian Service does not invite, and if accidentally acquired does not long retain.
The nearest to that sort of adventure I ever came was in meeting the mail-hack one cold sunset, far from the Agency. It was driven by a half-frozen Mexican who could speak no English beyond: “Buenas dias, señor. Mucho frio. No savvy.”