Part 14

For some time that afternoon we had been in the shadow of a mountain to the west, and the light was fading fast, when, as we rose upon a knoll above the stream whose bed we were ascending, Price saw that it was a good camping-ground, and the caravan came to a halt. Wood was abundant about us, so that water was soon boiling, and slices cut from a frozen shoulder of beef were presently frying in the saucepan, while the tea drew to a fearful strength at the fire’s edge. After supper and a smoke, we made ready our bed. An old piece of canvas, some seven feet by fourteen, was first spread upon level ground; then we arranged upon half of it all the gunny-sacks that we had brought as cushions for the pack-saddles. These formed a mattress, over which we spread our blankets, drawing up finally the unused half of the canvas as a top covering. Going to bed consisted simply of taking off our boots and folding our coats for pillows, then disappearing with all speed under the blankets, with the canvas drawn well over our heads to keep out the bitter night cold of that altitude in late November. Our animals browsed near the camp, the bells about their necks tinkling as they moved, until they, too, found shelter and settled down to rest.

When I wakened it was from deepest sleep, and I looked out from under cover for some sign of day, but there was none. The stars were shining undimmed, with the effect of nearness which brought back vividly an illusion of childhood. Nothing in their position gave me a hint of the time, but Price, on waking, saw at a glance that the dawn was near. Scarcely was the fire lit and water put on to boil before the dark bulks of the mountains to the east were clear cut against a brightening sky. Breakfast over and the dishes washed, we had a smoke and, having fed the animals from a little store of grain, we saddled and packed them for the day’s march.

Nothing in the previous day’s experience suggested the rigor of this afternoon’s progress. All went prosperously in the morning, for we were still following the wagon trail, and the burros kept it as by instinct. Only the snow was deepening, which was a reminder of the warnings we received in Creede that we were attempting the pass dangerously late in the year. What with snow and the loss of leaves, the “look” of the region had so far changed since Price passed that way in spring that, with small wonder, he could not find the lead of the foot-trail that crosses the Divide. Again and again we struck in to the left only to discover presently that we were following a false lead, until Price, impatient of further dallying, boldly led the way in an ascent of a trackless mountain whose farther side, he knew, would disclose the lost trail.

A long, steep climb by a well-trodden way is difficult at the best for pack animals, but we were now in a forest with the course obstructed by undergrowth and the trunks of fallen trees, and the uncertain footing covered with treacherous snow. The burros took it splendidly from the first, straining their muscles in a toilsome climb that was doubly hard because of its obstacles. But as the hours passed and the way grew more difficult, their strength began to fail. Then came long resting spells, followed by spurts of frantic climbing. Again and again we seemed to be nearing the top, only to find the crest of a ridge with another summit towering far beyond. Presently the burros were falling from sheer fatigue. With a few yards of upward struggle, down they would sink exhausted, and, after letting them rest, Price and I had our hands full in dragging them to their feet again.

It was nearing sunset when we gained the top, and, once there, all our troubles vanished. We passed from the cover of the wood out upon a treeless slope, swept clear of snow and covered by the past summer’s growth of grass, brown and dry and excellent fodder. A stream flowed through the natural meadow, and on a ledge above it, as plain as day, was the winding trail making off in the direction of the Divide. We gratefully camped there that night, while our tired beasts gorged themselves with grass.

Whatever the difficulties of crossing were to be, we were clearly not to be hampered by foul weather. The night was as still and cold as the last had been, and the morning again was cloudless. We were up by starlight as before, and the camp-fire was sending volleys of glowing sparks into the surrounding darkness when the signs of dawn appeared. I went to the brook for water and was back just in time to see the sunrise from the camp. We were in a narrow valley that stretched southwestward in an upward trend toward the summit of the range. From its northeastern opening we could see far over a confused mass of mountains whose outlines grew clearer in the return of day. With infinite majesty the light streamers flung themselves across the sky, paling the bright stars; and, when a distant snow-peak caught the first clear ray, all the others seemed to lift their heads in an ecstasy of praise and welcome. In another moment the eastern wall of our valley was fringed by a tracery of fire, where level beams shone through the trees which stood out against the sky. And last, upon us in the depth of the valley, the sun rose, prodigal of his splendor and of his gifts of light and life.

I had left Price squatting near the fire with his face to the east as he cut slices of bacon into a saucepan. On my return from the brook I found him still sitting there, but grown oblivious to bacon. His forearms were resting on his knees, while loosely in one hand he held a knife and a piece of bacon in the other. From under an old felt hat, long, black, matted hair fell upon his neck and mingled with a dark, unkempt beard. His face, blackened by the smoke of the camp-fire, was lifted to the eastern sky, and his eyes were on the sunrise. Such a look, transfixed with reverence and wonder, seemed to link him with some early epoch of the race, when the sense of power and beauty awoke in man; and as he drew himself erect without lifting his eyes from the scene before him, “It’s not strange,” he remarked, “that men have worshipped the sun.”

The snow grew deeper with every mile of the march that morning. We were nearing the Divide, and one evidence of it was the piercing wind that blew down the gorge. Not since the morning of the first day out had either of us ridden; for the animals had as much as they could do to carry themselves and their packs, and now we found that we must help them by opening a path through the snow. It lay a foot deep before us, then two feet and more as we mounted the Divide, so that Price and I were soon alternating in the work of breaking a way. One of us would plunge through until fagged out, then the other would take his place in treading down the drift, and so we forged ahead, a few yards at a time, wet to the skin with melting snow and cut to the bone by the wind.

I do not know how far we travelled that day; it could not have been many miles, and I do not care to think of possible consequences, had we been overtaken by a storm, instead of having the fairest possible winter weather. But we put in more than eight hours of continuous work and were repaid in the late afternoon by reaching camping-ground on the western side of the Divide, almost as good as that which we found for the night before.

The next day’s, Tuesday’s, march was one that dwells delightfully in memory—not for any element of excitement, but for the simple joy of it. All day we descended by a trail that wound through cañon after cañon, crossing and recrossing the streams whose waters were flowing toward the Pacific, as those of the day before were to find a final outlet in the Atlantic. It was cold, but it seemed like spring in contrast with the day before, for the sun shone bright, and birds were in the trees, and here and there the snow had melted, giving to the soil the suggestion of returning life.

The burros plainly shared the feeling of relief in reaching a more passable region, and the art of burro-punching began, consequently, to disclose its difficulties. From one side and then the other of the trail they would break away in all directions, exploring the surrounding country, never with an air of mischief, but always with a sober, dogged perversity that was the more exasperating because it wore a mask of reason. Once back into the trail, they might keep it faultlessly for miles on end, and then, from no apparent cause, begin once more to wander. They were most difficult to manage at the fords. Generally they scattered to the four winds at the first approach to water, and when we had corralled them again and forced them down to the brink, they would stand calmly, planted ankle-deep in the stream, resolutely determined not to move. It was then that Price gave vent to real profanity, and I am bound to own that it was effective. When beating and prodding and the milder invective failed to urge the burros forward, Price would stand back, pale with rage, and begin to swear, calling upon all his gods and blasting the reputations of his beasts unto the third and fourth generation of their ancestors. By some subtle perception they seemed to understand that this meant business, and slowly at first, but presently, as though they rather enjoyed the water, they waded through and started down the trail beyond.

We camped that night in a narrow cañon whose level bed was well grown with trees and walled by scarped cliffs, which rose sheer above it. Price said that it formed a miniature Yosemite, and certainly it made good camping-ground; for with plenty of wood and water, it was well protected from the wind, and we slept there in great comfort. But our fare was growing monotonous. We soon exhausted the supply of beef and had since been living upon bacon and bread, so that we heartily welcomed the sight of a ranchman’s cabin near the end of the next day’s march, for there we purchased a peck of potatoes and thus enlarged our bill of fare to bacon and “spuds” and bread and gravy.

Thanksgiving-day was celebrated by faring sumptuously in the evening and sleeping under cover. And it was the more delightful celebration for being wholly unpremeditated. There was no prospect through the day of anything but the usual march and camp in the open at night. We were plainly in a more populous region, for we had struck a wagon trail again, and repeatedly, in the morning, we met farm wagons laden with solemn families in Sunday dress. As the afternoon wore on we grew hungrier for thinking of Thanksgiving dinners. At dusk we were passing a ranch upon which the hay presses had just ceased working for the day. A little farther down the road we overtook two men who were about to enter a wooden building, which proved to be a deserted school-house. Price hailed them and they turned, standing in the open door. Practised as he was in the amenities of the frontier, it took him no time to strike up an acquaintance, and soon we were bade welcome to share the school-house as a camping-place.

Our hosts were a young American frontiersman and his “partner,” an Indian, who together had a contract for pressing hay on the neighboring ranch, and who were living meanwhile in this deserted building. Having admitted us, they completed their welcome by doing everything in their power for our comfort. They arranged with the owner to pasture our animals on the ranch for the night, and showed us where to find wood for a fire and where on the floor to spread our bed. And when the evening meal was ready, they proposed that we should club together, giving us of their fresh meat and roasted Indian corn and steaming hot bread in exchange for our “spuds” and bacon. But we had some chance of making return, for they had no tobacco to compare with ours, and far into the night we sat talking, over pipes fragrant of good weed.

Price and I were making progress in acquaintance, and every day I had fresh cause for self-congratulation at my extraordinary luck in having fallen in with so good a guide. Of excellent Irish family, Price was not without education and a taste for letters, although he had chosen, almost as a boy, the career of an adventurer on the frontier. And now at middle life, having ranged the Southwest as few men have done, and having seen all phases of its life and shared most of them, he was looking forward to further casual living, perfectly content so long as he had a camping outfit and could wander as he pleased over the face of nature. That some day he would “strike it rich” he never doubted—and may his faith come true. Meanwhile he was getting a good deal out of life. Nature in her milder moods was a constant solace and a joy to him. In long marches through golden Indian summer days, he sang and spouted verses of his own, and told me veritable Ulysses’s tales of men and their strange ways. The few books which he had read he had made his own, for his memory was retentive, and he never forgot, apparently, a face or a name, so that his progress through the country was like a walk about his own neighborhood.

With the instinctive, gentlemanlike reserve of the Western frontiersman, he never questioned me about myself; he was far more interested in what knowledge I might have gathered, which he could add to his own. Oddly enough, it was the little reading that I had done in philosophy that seemed to attract him most. Many a night when it was mild enough to sleep with our heads uncovered we lay side by side, “overarched by gorgeous night,” gazing into the starry firmament, and I would tell him what I could of theories of the universe from Thales to Herbert Spencer, feeling all the while the tension of his mind as he reached out eagerly for these guesses at the mystery of things.

It happened that I had been reading “Coningsby,” at Creede, and Prince slipped the copy into his pocket as we left the camp. He devoured it by our camp-fires at night. The story held him, but most of all he was spellbound by its literary charm, and he added a quaint reason for his liking in the remark:

“You know,” he said to me, “Lord Beaconsfield was always square with the Irish.”

His national partisanship was of the stanchest, and he had always given to the Irish fund when he could; but the outcome of the fight in Committee Boom No. 15 had been too much for him, and he would stoutly maintain that never again, so long as the “traitors” who had turned against Parnell were in the ascendant, would he interest himself in furthering Home Rule—threads of vital connection which were a little strange, I thought, between points so widely severed as St. Stephen’s and the deserts of Arizona.

Elsewhere I have already sketched in outline our trip as we walked south together from Durango to the San Juan, then through the Navajo Reservation to the high plateau of northern New Mexico, where, utterly deserted by fair weather, we camped for a week, while a cold wave swept over us, forcing the thermometer down to ten and twelve degrees below zero, and nearly freezing us and our animals in the still cold of the winter nights.

Even after we got under way again and were making progress southward in the direction of the “rimrock” of the Mogollon Mountains, persistent ill-luck followed us in the shape of almost nightly falls of snow and rain, which added nothing to the comfort of sleeping on the ground or walking across an almost trackless waste. But if we were disappointed here, Price’s promise of Indian summer was abundantly fulfilled when once we had waded through the snow in the great primeval forests that cover the northern slopes of the Mogollons, and made the abrupt descent of the “rimrock.” It was like the contrast of Florida with our Northern winter. The live-oak and budding cottonwood and the warm sun and sprouting grass gave us royal welcome from the cold and snow beyond; and, at the end of the first day’s journey in this region, we came out upon a ranch. It was thirty miles to the nearest neighbor, and the ranchman and his wife were glad to see anyone, even casual “burro-punchers,” like Price and me. There chanced to be a considerable company at the ranch that night. An outfit of three men who were hunting mountain lion through the range for the sake of the bounty on their scalps had come there to camp, bringing with them the carcass of a bear. And the postman, whose beat took him from the Santa Fé line southward through some Mormon settlements and on to scattered ranches north of the Tonto Basin, was also quartered there. So that we sat down more than a dozen strong to dine on bear steak and potatoes and bread and coffee; and when dinner was over, Price and I again had the good fortune to find that our tobacco suited well the taste of the company. We were gathered now in the living-room of the cabin. Some of the men were seated on the floor and others in rough, hand-made chairs about a wood fire in a large, open fireplace. The talk ranged at random over phases of hard living known to such men as these. It was varied and rich and sometimes racy. In it Price shone as a bright, particular star. None had travelled the Southwest so thoroughly as he, or experienced so much of its characteristic life. Then his native readiness at narrative stood him in good stead, and, penniless prospector that he was, he held unchallenged the centre of the stage.

The door of the dining-room stood open, and, when I had finished my pipe, I joined the ranchman’s wife, who sat beside the table in a rocking-chair, holding in her arms her oldest child, a boy of five or six. She seemed glad to have someone to talk to. The conversation at table had swept from end to end in a manner diverting to her, but in which she as little dreamed of joining as a bird would venture with untried wings into a high wind. She was too delicately reared to be at home in the thickening tobacco-smoke of the living-room and so she was alone with the child, the hired woman being in the kitchen. I praised the country side which she and her husband had chosen as their home, and told her how well it contrasted with a region only a few miles to the north; but, if I found a way to her heart at all, it was in genuine admiration of the boy, whose light hair rested in moist curls about his glowing face, as he lay sleeping in his mother’s arms. She was not a discontented woman—far from it; she was young, and her eyes shone with health and with vital interest in the things about her. But it was rarely that she saw anyone from the world outside, and I was a stranger, and when I owned to having been in the Northwest, she told me eagerly that her own people and her husband’s lived “back east in Minnesota,” where they both were born and bred.

How can I suggest the pathos of it? She was not complaining and yet, as she went on telling me of an earlier time, it was almost as a captive might have spoken of the wide range of living when he was free. Life in constant contact with her friends and the breadth of their many interests was in such striking contrast to existence on a ranch, with the nearest neighbor thirty miles in the offing, and with never a look from year to year over the rugged hills that formed the horizon.

One could see at a glance the opposite effects of the change upon the two natures. Her husband, native-born and country-bred, like herself, and schooled as a man must be whose bringing up is in a community which draws its blood and traditions pure from New England, yet had become more a frontiersman every year, in whom the memories of earlier things faded fast before the dominant realities of his new surroundings. She, on the contrary, cherished these memories of her own—her home and friends and church associations and Chautauqua circle (she told me particularly of that) until they were enshrined within her, and one could but see that, however loneliness might oppress her, she had an escape which must have furnished at times an enjoyment keener, perhaps, than any which real experience would have brought.

I have forgotten its name, but I think that it was known as “Young’s Valley,” a region some distance south of the “rimrock” and north of the hills which hem in the Tonto Basin. There were several ranches there, and a well-defined trail led on, by way of San Reno Pass, to Phœnix. When we entered the valley Price was all for veering off to the southwest and reaching Phœnix by the Natural Bridge, which he wished me to see. We left the trail near the first cabin which we passed in the valley, a deserted cabin for the time, and struck across the grass-grown hills in search of another way. Soon we were in a maze of trails; they were leading in every direction, but they were cattle-paths, and we came upon herds feeding over the winter-brown hills. It was a gently rolling country at the first, where Price had not the smallest difficulty in steering a course; for, although he had never been there before, yet the way had been described to him and he had no fear of losing it. Our only danger lay, apparently, in exhausting our provisions before reaching an inhabited region beyond. But we thought little of that, and entered light-heartedly enough upon an exploration that was new and attractive to us both.

Trouble began with the weakening of our burros. We had very little grain when we left the Tonto trail, and we counted upon fodder enough from a grazing country. But the grass grew thinner as we went, and the leanness of the cattle attested the leanness of the land, until we began to fear that our beasts would not have strength enough to pull through. Moreover, the country became increasingly rough, so that the effort of travel was the greater. Soon there came a day when our animals were weak and tottering under their loads, and we ourselves had to begin the march on a breakfast of tea and a few boiled beans, which exhausted our store. Still Price was confident of getting through, and, if the burros could hold out, there was prospect of plenty by night.

In the middle of the morning we found lying beside the trail a cow that was plainly dying. For an hour we worked over her, trying to discover evidences of a wound or of a broken leg, and trying, too, to ease her pain. I left her alive regretfully, but Price advised against shooting her.

Matters grew serious that afternoon. The trail became hopelessly lost, so that not even Price, with his developed instinct, could find it again. We were in the heart of the hills now, with cañons opening in strange confusion about us. One after another we explored them, only to find each a “box-cañon” at the end. Price was sure that our desired country lay just beyond, and it was maddening, late in the day, to acknowledge that he could find no way out but the one by which we entered. It was a sorry retreat; hungry and worn we went supperless into camp. By rare good luck, however, we hit upon camping-ground where there was more grass than we had seen for some time, and in the morning our burros and the pony were comparatively revived, fit again for a hard journey. And we gave it them.