One of the Indians helped us greatly when we rode on. He was from San Felipe, and named Lorenzo. He turned out of the party he belonged to and watched us lest we should go astray. Possibly he saved us from a night wandering in the mountains. For when we had taken a wrong trail and gone some way upon it our attention was arrested by long persistent cries which we felt had references to us. And looking about, we saw the silhouette of Lorenzo on the top of a little mountain and saw that he was signaling us to come toward him.
This we did, and we found we had been going on a dangerous precipitous trail which in truth led no whither except to goat pastures and hideous abysses. Lorenzo went with us the rest of the way and we descended into the Jemez valley by a track that none but Mexican ponies would follow; down narrow gullies, along broken ledges, down sharp slides and drops. The whole country side dropped in tumultuous crags and steeps, shale slopes, cliffs, precipices—to the Jemez River. The last light of evening gleamed on us and we left our fate to Lorenzo and the horses to do with it what they would—an adventurous, and, as it seemed, a perilous, ride.
At nightfall, as the village church was ringing for vespers, we rode into the crowded pueblo and were four out of many who had come to the great dance and fiesta.
2
The Jemez Dance used to be one of the finest and most elaborate of the Indian dances, and the tribe, living more remotely, had kept itself more fresh and vivid and unspoiled than for instance the Tesuque Indians, the pets of the artists, who dance on the same day. But the growth of the great city of Albuquerque and the development of the high road to Jemez Springs have attracted the gaze of the white man in all its vulgar curiosity and ignorance. I do not speak of artists and poets, who are as reverent at a dance as the most pious at Mass, but of those who think of life as a colored supplement to a Sunday paper, a Chaplinade, a burlesque, something over which to be facetious.
"There's a bunch of dudes coming over from a dude ranch," said a cowboy, referring to a touring party from a fashionable resort.
"A speculator come here las' week from Albuquerque and booked up every spare room in the pueblo," said another. "But the road's nigh blocked with snow. Guess we sha'n't see any Albuquerque folk this year. Too much scared of being stranded. Once a party got snowed up here for a week."
"There's a man here I'd like to insult," said Ewart with a laugh. "He is Babbitt himself. I'd like to go up to him and say 'Mr. Babbitt, I believe,' with a courtly bow."
Babbitt was certainly there with his wife and kodak and furs and waiting automobile, but he was not duplicated. He stood out in relief against all the rest. For all the lesser Babbitts had been scared by the snow.