“How long will it take him to go to the Pueblo, Salvador?” asked the commandant.
“Oh! not long,” replied Salvador, “long as a good horse.”
Experientia docet. Before I saw those tracks I used to set down the accounts I read in my Grecian history of wonderful time made by messengers to Athens and other classic centres as antique yarns. I now believe in the fastest Grecian time reported. Thus, the torch of faith is often lit by the merest straying spark—a lesson to us not to limit our belief to what is within the scope of our knowledge. We know so little.
Jim and Joe had begun to growl over the continual ups and downs of the journey when we saw Salvador, who was some three or four hundred yards ahead, dismount at the foot of what seemed to be the steepest ascent yet.
“This must be a stiff one,” said the commandant. “I see Salvador has dismounted. It takes a pretty steep ascent to make an Indian or a Mexican dismount. They hold to the saddle until the animal begins to bend backward.”
It was a steep and toilsome ascent, winding in and out through huge boulders just wide enough apart to let a horse squeeze through. It was not always easy to convince the horses that there was room enough for them to pass. They would refuse to be convinced, and obstinately draw back, to the discomfort and danger of those leading them, and more so of those following.
At last we reached the top of the ascent. The descent on the other side was a worthy pendant to it. We halted on the crest to enjoy the landscape before us. From the base of the height a level plain spread away for miles, unbroken save by a cluster of lofty perpendicular white rocks, each rising independently from the level plain. On the top of the highest of these rocks stood a little town, the smoke from its chimneys mingling with the clouds. This was Acoma.
We descended slowly and carefully. A brisk trot of about two miles brought us to two lofty natural columns, through which the trail passed. They seemed the pillars of a gigantic portal—a resemblance which had struck the Indians, for they named it El Puerto: The Gate. We had now reached the base of the inhabited rock. An excavation near the base was pointed out to us by Salvador as the trace of an attempt to mine the position by the Spanish invaders! I think the story rather a doubtful one.
I judged the rock to be about two hundred and fifty feet in height. The path up the rocky side to the village was steep and narrow. No wheeled vehicle has ever entered the Pueblo. The primitive carreta, with its clumsy wheels of solid disks cut from the trunk of some gigantic cotton-wood, stopped short at the base—going thus far and no further. Provisions and other necessaries are packed up on the backs of surefooted donkeys. Water for drinking purposes is carried up on the heads of the Indians in large earthen vessels named tinajas; for other uses rain-water is carefully gathered in natural tanks or hollows in the summit of the rock. There is a bypath or short-cut up to the Pueblo which the Acomas generally use when unburdened or in a hurry. A glance showed us that it was only practicable for Acoma Indians. This short-cut is in the most nearly perpendicular of any of the rocky sides. It consists of holes in the smooth and vertical side of the rock, in which the Indians place their hands and feet, and climb up after the fashion of sailors clambering up rigging, and with no less rapidity.
We returned to the common highway, which now seemed by comparison a flowery path of dalliance. It was slow and tiresome work, however. After a rest or two, to breathe our animals and ourselves, we finally reached the comparatively level space, some acres in area, on the summit of the rock.