A STREET IN ACOMA, NEW MEXICO.
A flock of ducks splashed in a rainpool in the middle of the road.
THE ACOMA MISSION, NEW MEXICO.
At the head of the village stands the old stone church, built with giant timbers.
Acoma, different as it was, reminded me oddly of the New England nature. At its heart lay a spiritual beauty,—this intense beauty of the desert,—and wrapped about it a shell of hard, chill unloveliness. The three little streets, dribbling off to the edge of the rock, had no welcome for us. Its houses, two and three tiered, slabbed with flint instead of the more pleasing adobe, closed tight to our approach. The windows were mean and tiny, made before the era of glass, of translucent slabs of mica, roughly set in the walls. The houses, bleak and blackened, were roughly masoned of the same flint-like stone as the church. The few interiors we saw were barely furnished; a few bowls on the dirt floor, a lava corn bin,—nothing more. A flock of ducks splashed in a rainpool in the middle of the road; a mangy mongrel yapped at us, and women on the housetops scolded whenever Toby ventured to produce her camera. With their colored veils, red skirts and bright sashes they gave the village its only animation, as they brought out more and more bits of pottery to tempt us, carrying it carelessly on their heads down the ladders of the houses.
Solomon, the only man in sight, took every opportunity to efface himself whenever the bargaining raised a cross-ruff of feeling. He even ducked around a corner when a very stout lady, having sold us all her pottery, again brought up the subject of our paying five dollars admission. We appeased her by offering her a bribe to carry our purchases down to the car. While we were still halfway down, lifting our feet laboriously from the heavy sand, we saw her, a tiny round dot, with the ollas balanced above her floating turquoise scarf, stepping blithely and lightly over the desert floor.
“What a pity we couldn’t get any pictures,” I said to Toby, as we raced a thunder-cloud back to Laguna.
“H’m!” said Toby. “I took a roll of pictures while you kept them busy selling pottery. I got a beauty of the fat woman who made such a fuss. I must say it would be an improvement if half of her passed into the camera.”