In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

CHAPTER XVIII THE DANCE OF THE JEMEZ INDIANS

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One of the poets at Santa Fe had decided to return East and finish a University course which he had broken by a year of freedom and poetry in New Mexico. So Wilfrid Ewart bought his horse, an Indian pony, white, small-footed, and wiry, and named as it were facetiously, "George." He proved too short for a man of six feet two, but except at starting, when he sometimes refused to budge for five minutes, he went as well as the other two horses, Billy and Buck. He proved to be branded with the mark of the Santo Domingo Indians, and there were many horses of his size and gait in their pueblo. Every time we met any of the Indians, however, they would ask suspiciously, "Where you get that horse?" George gave us some amusement, for he jumped sideways with all four feet at once when a car passed him, and though slow by habit he would upon occasion jump to an impulse that he was in a race with my impetuous Billy. The mile home from the post office we would sometimes find ourselves in a wild gallop, chased for moments by starved dogs who drove Billy to additional excitement.

We had a pleasant autumn at Santa Fe, pierced though it was by shafts of winter cold. The sun heat was great, but there was frost every night. Ewart had brought literary work, and he sat with his papers in a profuse sun bath; he became deeply sunburned, and the skin peeled from the back of his writing hand. But it was good for him. Arriving in indifferent health, it was remarkable how he improved.

It was unfortunate that winter came so rapidly. Though so far South we began to have weather much colder than that of New York—and the snow from the mountain summits crept lower. Snow swept down from the heights, driven by the wind into our valleys. There were several October days when the whole desert was clad in unnatural white. Then the sun came out and, like magic, uncovered the desert again, and the thirsty sand drank up what dissolved, and soon all was as before.

In a pleasant interlude between snowstorms in early November we set off for the Jemez Dance, the annual trading fair and fiesta of November 12. My wife and I were on Buckskin and Billy. As we took no pack-horse along with us we had all our impedimenta strapped on to our saddles. We had been told we should find no water or provisions on the way, and so we carried more than we needed to have done. Ewart had four pounds of ham tied to the pommel of his saddle as well as a waterproof and toilet case, and his saddle pockets behind him were stuffed.

I carried bags before and behind. And Buck also was much encumbered, though his rider was so much lighter. Buck made a bad start by falling into the Acequia Madre, the irrigation ditch, with fore feet in front of a wretched rustic bridge and hind legs hanging in air. In this posture I had to undo his girths and liberate him from his packs ere we could get him on to his feet. He started, therefore, in a melancholy and cautious mood, and we walked him a good deal of the way. Indeed, in the evening, convinced that he was suffering from sprain, I persuaded Mrs. Graham to ride Billy whilst I led Buck by the reins. In this way we reached La Cienega and put up at a Mexican farm where we were very happily regaled, though we had to go to bed at eight o'clock and all slept in the same room. Next morning Buckskin showed that he had no sprain. I had led the horses to water and had returned to set our coffee-pot on the Mexicans' kitchen fire, and I had left them barely ten minutes when the farmer's wife came in and said two of the horses had got out of the inclosure. They were Billy and Buck. Lightly clad as I was, I threw my saddle on George and bridled him and went off at once. For I knew that the two miscreants would make for home at a good pace. George proved his worth that morning. Chasing other horses was what he was made for. He went like the wind after these horses. In a mile we got them in view; they were trotting steadily together; in a mile and a half they stopped and turned to consider us, and Buck stopped the hesitation by breaking into a hearty canter joined by Billy. But we overhauled them, and George, without any guidance from me, turned them both. If only I had been a cowboy and could have hauled the rope which I held in my hand! Alas, I missed the chance, and all three horses settled down for a cross-country gallop. I reflected that we should thus gallop up the main street of Santa Fe and up the Canon Road and into our familiar yard at noon. It was a perplexing thought. I slowed down George, therefore, and noticed that Billy and Buck did the same. I hastened again, they hastened; slowed, they slowed. But at five miles from La Cienega my second opportunity came, and I took it. A deep arroyo was spanned by a bridge. It could be reached across country without my appearing to pursue the horses. At the bridge I dismounted and idled and appeared to be interested in the view whilst the two runaways approached. Both suddenly stopped and stared. Billy raised his head very high and kicked out friskily with his hind legs. Buck made a wily detour. But I showed not the least interest, so they began to graze here and there where a tuft of grass appeared. I thereupon made a cup of my hand as if it held corn, and approached Billy, calling him, keeping the hand out of the view of the inquisitive, greedy, but very crafty Buckskin. Billy, however, intoxicated by freedom and the morning air, cut a wild cantrip and fled. But Buck really thought I had corn, and when I approached him I got near enough to put a rope over his neck. Secured and tied to the bridge, he looked a repentant horse. It took another ten minutes to capture Billy, then I changed the saddle on to his back and started all three back to Cienega at a smart trot. Then of course I could reflect how pleasant an adventure it was, the best two hours of the day. It was a pity, however, that the horses should lose their freshness before the real riding of the morning commenced.

We all set off at once for Penya Blanca, on the Rio Grande. We had hoped to ford the river that day, but now hope of that was gone. Yet it was a very pleasant day's riding, following over sand and bowlders and running water the scores of zig-zags of stream which threatened a profound ravine. All was gray. Tumultuous piles of rock stared down at us as we clattered along—the horses lapped at the water and made deep hoof-marks in the wet sand. There were no birds, no flowers, no evergreens—no life but that of ourselves and the sunlight on the gray pebbles. Even the fire which we made of water-washed wood burned with invisible flames, and the steam did not show till the water raised the lid of our coffeepot and boiled over. We sat together in the early afternoon, quaffed coffee, and ate down our weight of provisions. We had even got hay for our horses at a farmhouse, and we eased their girths and fed them a little and watered them ere we resumed our way.

We reached Penya Blanca at night, led o'er the moor by flickering lights. We nearly went to the Indian village of Cochiti, as its lights on the other side of the Rio Grande beckoned much more certainly. But after traversing a mile of deep sand we turned our horses and made for other lights which we judged rightly must indicate the settlement of the Mexicans. Penya Blanca is a squatters' village, extensive and substantial, though none of the settlers there have adequate legal title to the land they hold as theirs. Their forefathers came there to obtain the protection of the Cochiti Indians from the raiding Navajos, and they stopped there and took to themselves a large fertile slice of the lands of the Indians.