“Dear Bill:—The car went beautifully. We wish we could take you with us!”
CHAPTER XV
LAGUNA AND ACOMA
IN spite of Toby’s making the slight error of driving fourteen miles with the emergency brake on, we seemed to have placed misadventure behind us for a brief season at least. We coasted the twenty-three switch backs of La Bajada hill, now an old story, and returned for the night to the Harvey hotel at Albuquerque, where the transcontinental traveler gets his first notion of Western heat, and wonders if he is in any danger from the aborigines selling pottery on the railroad platforms, and speculates as to whether the legs of the squaws can possibly fill the thick buckskin leggins they parade in so nonchalantly. If it is his first visit West, he little realizes how Harveyized these picturesque creatures have become, and he snatches eagerly at what he thinks may be his last chance to pick up some curios. The pottery, from the village of Acoma, is genuine, though of a tourist quality. The white doeskin legs are also genuine, although many pueblo women have ceased to wear them except to meet the twelve o’clock. They always inspire in me an awed respect, worn under the burning sun with such sang froid. The explanation for this indifference to discomfort lies in the fact that a lady’s social prominence is gaged by the number of doeskin wrappers she displays, as the Breton peasant is measured by her heavy petticoats, and a Maori belle by her tattooing: il faut souffrir pour être belle.
The Indians furnished the most entertaining spectacle of modern, prosperous Albuquerque, whose solid virtues intrigue the hobo but little. We took advantage of her porcelain bathtubs, and then hastened on into a more primitive region, which became wilder and wilder as we neared the Arizona boundaries. Only two little adventures befell; neither had a proper climax. A two day old lamb, wobbly and frightened, had lost its mother, and wandered bleating pitifully from one sheep to another, who treated it with cold disdain. It finally approached our car as if it had at last reached its goal; but asking for nourishment, it received gasoline, and seeking woolly shelter, it was startled by metal walls. Piteously weak and terrified, the thumping of its heart visibly stirring its coat, it fled away in distress, with us at its frail little heels. Yet run our fastest, we could not catch it, though we tried every subterfuge. We baa-ed as if we were its mother, and it approached cautiously, to scamper off when our hands shot out to catch it. Poor little fool! It had not the courage to trust us, though it longed to, and after a hot and weary hour, we had to leave it to starve. As we started off, another car shot past us, challengingly, its very tail light twinkling insolence. A dark and handsome face leered back at us, with a full-lipped, sinister smile. At the next settlement, where we stopped to buy food, this half-breed Mephisto was there lounging against the counter, and looking at us with the look that is like a nudge. When we left, he swaggered after, and kept his car for some miles close behind ours. The country was so wild that we saw a coyote sneaking through the sage, and not long after, a wildcat disappeared into a clump of piñon. Beyond the orange cliffs we saw in the distance, we could expect no human assistance, and it was uncomfortably near nightfall. Then, to our relief, the road branched, one fork leading to a silver mine. Our Mexican shot into it, giving us a parting grimace. Slight enough, this was our first and last encounter with that particular sort of danger.
At sunset we came to Laguna, ancient and gray as the rocks on which it sprawled, its church tower picked out against a golden sky. This is the first Kersian pueblo met going from east to west. Ancient as it seems, it is the offspring of the parent pueblo of Acoma, which itself descended from an older town situated on the Enchanted Mesa. “Laguna” seems a sad misnomer for this waste of sand and rock. But years ago, what is now desert was a country made fertile by a great lake. When a dissension arose in old Acoma, as frequently happened among these “peaceful” Indians, the dissatisfied members of the tribe left Acoma, and settled near the lake. Here they stayed from habit long after the lake had dried and its green shores became barren sand-heaps, until the new town became as weather-beaten as its parent. This is why, unlike most pueblos, Laguna and Acoma share the same dialect.
PUEBLO WOMEN GRINDING CORN IN METATE BINS.
The women are the millers who grind the varied colored corn in lava bins.
