ALAMO RANCH

A Story of New Mexico

BY SARAH WARNER BROOKS

Author of "My Fire Opal," "The Search of Ceres," etc.

CAMBRIDGE
PRIVATELY PRINTED
MCMIII

UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON

AND SON . CAMBRIDGE . U.S.A.

TO LEON

Across the silence that between us stays,
Speak! I should hear it from God's outmost sun,
Above Earth's noise of idle blame and praise,—
The longed-for whisper of thy dear "Well done!"

ALAMO RANCH

ALAMO RANCH

A STORY OF NEW MEXICO

CHAPTER I

It is autumn; and the last week in November. In New Mexico, this land of sunshine, the season is now as kindly as in the early weeks of our Northern September.

To-day the sky is one cloudless arch of sapphire! The light breeze scarce ruffles a leaf of the tall alamo, the name tree of this ranch. Here any holding bigger than a kitchen garden is known as a ranch. The alamo, Spanish for poplar, lends here and there its scant, stiff shade to this roomy adobe dwelling, with its warm southern frontage and half-detached wings. Behind the house irregular out-buildings are scattered about.

A commodious corral, now the distinguished residence of six fine Jersey cows, lies between the house and the orchard,—a not over-flourishing collection of peach, apricot, and plum trees.

Here and there may be seen wide patches of kitchen garden, carefully intersected by irrigating ditches.

Near and afar, wide alfalfa fields with their stiff aftermath stretch away to the very rim of the mesa, where the cotton-tail makes his home, and sage-brush and mesquite strike root in the meagre soil. Cones of alfalfa hay stacked here and there outline themselves like giant beehives against the soft blue sky; and over all lies the sunny silence of a cloudless afternoon with its smiling westering sun.

Basking in this grateful warmth, their splint arm-chairs idly tilted against the house-front, the boarders look with sated invalid eyes upon this gracious landscape.

Alamo Ranch is a health resort. In this thin, dry air of Mesilla Valley, high above the sea level, the consumptive finds his Eldorado. Hither, year by year, come these foredoomed children of men to fight for breath, putting into this struggle more noble heroism and praiseworthy courage than sometimes goes to victory in battle-fields.

Of these combatants some are still buoyed by the hope of recovery; others are but hopeless mortals, with the single sad choice of eking out existence far from friends and home, or returning to native skies, there to throw up hands in despair and succumb to the foe.

Sixteen miles away the Organ Mountains—seeming, in this wonderfully clear atmosphere, within but a stone's throw—loom superbly against the cloudless sky; great hills of sand are these, surmounted by tall, serrated peaks of bare rock, and now taking on their afternoon array in the ever-changing light, rare marvels of shifting color,—amethyst and violet, rosy pink, creamy gold, and dusky purple.

The El Paso range rises sombrely on the gray distance, and on every hand detached sugar-loaf peaks lend their magnificence to the grand mesa-range that cordons the Mesilla Valley.

And now, out on the mesa, at first but a speck between the loungers on the piazza and the distant mountain view, a single pedestrian, an invalid sportsman, comes in sight. As he nears the ranch with the slowed step of fatigue, he is heartening himself by the way with a song. When the listeners hear the familiar tune,—it is "Home, Sweet Home,"—one of them rallying his meagre wind whistles a faint accompaniment to the chorus. It is not a success; and with a mirthless laugh, the whistler abandons his poor attempt, and, with the big lump in his throat swelling to a sob, rises from his chair and goes dejectedly in. A sympathetic chord thrills along the tilted piazza chairs.

The discomfited whistler is but newly arrived at Alamo; and his feeble step and weary, hollow cough predict that the poor fellow's journey will not take him back to the "Sweet Home" of the song, but rather to the uncharted country.

And now the invalid sportsman steps cheerily on the piazza.

"Here, you lazy folks," mocks he, holding high his well-filled game-bag, "behold the pigeon stew for your supper!" And good-naturedly hailing a Mexican chore-boy, lazily propped by a neighboring poplar trunk, he cries, "Catch!" and deftly tossing him the game (pigeons from the mesa) goes in to put away his gun. When later he returns to the piazza, bathed and refreshed, it is as if, in a room dim-lit by tallow candles, the gas had suddenly been turned on to a big chandelier.

Seating himself in the vacant arm-chair, he fills a briar-wood pipe. Some of the loungers do likewise; and now, while they smoke and chat, look at the new-comer, Leonard Starr. Though not robust, he has the substantial mien and bearing of one who finds it good to live, and makes those about him also find it good. It is not long before most of these dispirited loungers are laughing at his lively stories and sallies, and cheerily matching them with their own.

Well is it for this troublous world of ours that some of its children are "born to turn the sunny side of things to human eyes."

CHAPTER II

It is the middle of December; the Alamo boarders are now well arrived.

First and foremost, Mr. John Morehouse—the one lion of the ranch—makes his bow. He is conspicuous for his able research in Archæology, and among his fellow boarders is familiarly known as "the Antiquary."

Mr. Morehouse has come to New Mexico in the interest of science; he is not, however, a mere dry-as-dust collector of knowledge, and is very much inclined to unbend himself to the lighter moods and pursuits of his less scholarly fellow-men.

This well-groomed, handsome man of forty is James Morley of Bangor.

He has come to try this healing air for a slight, but persistent, lung affection.

Mr. Morley is known to be a man of means, with all the advantages thus implied; but all the same, he is given to railing at most things under the sun; hence by the boarders he is surreptitiously dubbed "the Grumbler." Mr. Morley's growl is a foregone conclusion, and one may safely reckon on his bark; but as for his bite, it is simply nowhere.

Already he has manifested a most considerate kindness for this gray-eyed little lady from Marblehead, Miss Mattie Norcross,—a sweet-mannered, quiet gentlewoman, who is currently reported as scant of filthy lucre, and hence compelled to content herself with a cramped, inexpensive bedroom for herself and her invalid sister, who has one hopelessly diseased lung. This cheery-faced Irishman, who with his shy little wife is, for a stubborn bronchial trouble, making the grand tour of the world's health resorts, and is now trying New Mexico, is, strange as it may seem, a Methodist minister. His name is Patrick Haley. It may be said of Mr. Haley that he has the genial temperament indigenous to Green Erin, and he has already won golden opinions at Alamo Ranch by the considerate brevity of his grace before meat.

Among the invalids attended by their wives are Mr. Bixbee, from Ohio, and Mr. Fairlee, from New York City.

Mr. Bixbee has been bidden by his medical dictator to repair his damaged vitality by rest and nourishing food. It is predicted that this surfeited "lunger," in escaping his Scylla of consumption, bids fair to strand upon the Charybdis of liver complaint, since Mrs. Bixbee, in her wifely zeal, not only plies him all day long with lunches, but makes night hideous by the administration of raw eggs throughout its drowsy hours.

Mr. Roger Smith, an over-worked Harvard athlete, is taking as a restorative a lazy winter in this restful land. He has also other irons in the fire, of which, later, we shall hear more. Roger Smith is known in Boston society as one having heaps of money, but badly off for pedigree. All the same, he is, in manner and appearance, a gentleman, and has distinctly the hall-mark of Beacon Hill. He is here known as the "Harvard man."

Also, among the sound-lunged invalids, is Mr. Harry Warren, a brilliant Chicago journalist. Mr. Warren is taking a vacation in Mesilla Valley, where he is said to be collecting material for future articles, and possibly for a book.

The Browns have also two table-boarders from Boston,—Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw and her beautiful niece, Louise, a superbly healthy brunette. Their friend, Mr. Henry Hilton, during an absence abroad, has lent for the winter to these ladies his toy ranch, with its aesthetically fashioned dwelling-house.

The Hemmenshaws dine and sup at Alamo Ranch, and the aunt, a cooking-school graduate, is known to make at Hilton Ranch for herself and niece wonderful blazer breakfasts, consisting mainly of dishes new-fangled of name, and eminently trying to mortal digestion. There are, besides, some half-dozen male lungers unaccompanied by friends; and two impecunious invalids to whom the kind-hearted landlord, George Brown, allows bed and board in return for light-choring about the ranch. These latter are democratically counted in with the dining-room boarders.

Leon Starr, by common consent the "star boarder" of Alamo Ranch, has already been presented to the reader. He has taken the large two-windowed room on the ground-floor commanding a glorious view of the distant Organ Mountains. After getting his breath in this unaccustomed altitude, Leon's next care has been for the depressed lungers who daily gather on the boarding-house piazza and wonder if life is still worth living. To get them outside themselves by cheery good-fellowship, to perform for them little homely services, not much in the telling, but making their lives a world easier, has been a part of his method for uplifting their general tone.

Of an inventive turn of mind, and an amateur mechanic, he has brought with him a tiny tool chest; and it soon becomes the family habit to look to Leon Starr for general miscellaneous tinkering, as the mending of door and trunk locks, the regulating watches and clocks, the adjustment of the bedevilled sewing-machine of their good landlady, and the restoration of harmonious working to all disgruntled mechanical gear, from garret to cellar. He it is who, on rainy days, manufactures denim clothes-bags for clumsy-fingered fellows; who fashions from common canes gathered on banks of irrigating ditches, photo-frames for everybody, and shows them how to arrange the long cane tassels with decorative effect above door and window, and how to soften the glare of kerosene lamps by making for them relieving shades of rose-colored paper.

Pessimistic indeed is that lunger who, succumbing to the charm of this gracious nature, does not feel the cheery lift in his heavy atmosphere.

From the landlord and his wife, both worn by the strain of doing their best for chronically discontented people, down to Fang Lee, the Chinese chef, Dennis Kearney, the table-waiter, the over-worked Mexican house-maids, and the two native chore-boys—one and all rise up to call the star boarder blessed.

Out on the mesa the air is finer and brighter than on the lower plane of the ranch, and full of the life and stir of moving things,—quail, rabbits, and doves.

Leon had at first found the thin air of this altitude somewhat difficult; but since time and use have accustomed his lungs to these novel atmospheric conditions, shooting on the mesa has become a part of his daily programme, and his quail, rabbits, and pigeons prove a toothsome contribution to the already excellent ranch table.

A small, shy Mexican herd-boy, pasturing his lean goats on the mesa, gradually makes friends with the tall, kindly sportsman. As they have between them but these two mutually intelligible words, bueno (good) and mucho calor (very warm), their conversation is circumscribed. Kind deeds are, however, more to the point than words, and go without the saying; and when Leon instructed the ragged herd-boy in the use of his bow, and made and weighted his arrows for him, he understood, and became his devoted henchman, following in his path all through the week-day tramps, and on Sundays coming to the ranch with clean face and hands to adore his fetich, and watch, with admiring eyes, his novel works and ways.

CHAPTER III

After a protracted interval of tranquil sunshine, a stormy wind came blustering from the west, bringing to Mesilla Valley, in its wintry train, sunless days, light flurries of snow, and general dreariness.

The boarders, weather-bound and dull, grew sullenly mutinous; and on the third of these stormy days, gathering in the ranch parlor after the mid-day meal, their discontent found vent in banning right and left this "land of sun, silence, and adobe."

"Beastly weather!" muttered the Grumbler, drawing into the stove with a discontented shiver.

"A precious sample, this, of your fine climate, Brown," jeered Bixbee, turning mockingly to the disheartened landlord, who, reckless of expense, commanded of the chore-boy fresh relays of fuel, and incontinently crammed the parlor air-tight, already red-hot.

"I say, fellows," drolled the Harvard man, "let's make tracks for Boston, and round up the winter with furnace heat and unlimited water privileges, as the house-broker has it."

"And with cut-throat plumbers thrown in," suggested the Grumbler with a malicious grin.

"See here, you folks, draw it mild," laughed the star boarder, crossing the room with a finger between the leaves of a volume which he had been reading by the dim afternoon light of this lowering day. "Here, now, is something that fits your case to a T. Let me read you how they doctored your complaint in these parts, æons before you were born."

"Anything for a change," muttered Bixbee, and, with the general consent, Leon read the following:

"'When the people came out of the cold, dark womb of the underworld, then the great sun rose in the heavens. In it dwelt Payatuma, making his circuit of the world in a day and a night. He saw that the day was light and warm, the night dark and cold. Hence there needed to be both summer and winter people.

"'He accordingly apportioned some of each to every tribe and clan, and thus it is down to the present day. Then those above (that is, the Sun-father and the Moon-mother), mindful lest the people on their long journey to the appointed abiding-place succumb to weariness and fall by the way, made for them a koshare, a delight-maker. His body was painted in diagonal sections of black and white, and his head, in lieu of the regulation feather-decorations, was fantastically arrayed in withered corn-leaves.

"'This koshare began at once to dance and tumble. Then the people laughed, and were glad. And ever from that day, in their wanderings in search of a satisfactory settling-place in the solid centre of the big weary world, the koshare led them bravely and well.

"'He it was who danced and jested to make happiness among the people. His it was to smile on the planted maize till it sprouted and flowered in the fertile bottoms, to beam joyously on the growing fruit, that it might ripen in its season.

"'From that day there have been delight-makers in all the Pueblo tribes. The koshare became in time with them an organization, as the Free-masons, or the Knights of Pythias, with us. This necessity, we are told, arose from the fact that among the Pueblos there were summer people who enjoy the sunshine, and winter people,—people who determinedly prefer to live in the dark and cold.'

"Is it not so," said Leon, turning down a leaf and closing his book, "with every people on the face of the earth?

"Is not the 'delight-maker,'—the koshare,—under various names and guises, still in demand? It has struck me," continued he, looking quizzically at this disgruntled assemblage, "that the koshare might be an acceptable addition to our despondent circle."

"Amen!" fervently responded the Methodist minister.

"Right you are," said the Harvard man. "Write me as one who approves the koshare!"

"Yes! yes!" eagerly exclaimed approving voices. "Let us have the koshare here and at once!"

"A capital move," said Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw (born and reared in the climatic belt of clubdom, and regent of a Chapter of Daughters of the Revolution). "Let us have a Koshare Club."

"Good!" echoed Mrs. Fairlee, among her intimates surnamed "the Pourer," because of her amiable readiness to undertake for her friends the helpful office that among afternoon tea-circles has been distinguished by that name. "We might give afternoon teas to the members."

"And why not have recitations, with humorous selections?" bashfully suggested the gray-eyed school-mistress, who rejoiced in a fine-toned voice and in a diploma from the School of Oratory.

"Yes, indeed; and music, acting, and dancing, and all manner of high jinks," exclaimed Miss Louise, who, an accomplished musician, and distinguished for her amateur acting, with her superb health and unfailing flow of spirits, might be counted in as a born koshare.

"And we might unite improvement with diversion, and have, now and then, a lecture, to give interest to our club," suggested Mrs. Bixbee; and here she looked significantly at Mr. Morehouse, "the Antiquary," who as a lecturer was not unknown to fame.

"Lectures," observed the Minister, "though not strictly kosharean, would be highly entertaining, and we can, no doubt, count upon our friend, Mr. Morehouse, to give us the result of some of his research in Mexican Antiquities."

The Antiquary, with a smile, accepted the part assigned him by his fellow-boarder. Here the boarders went to supper, after which the more sleepy sought their beds. The evening blew stormily in; but, gathered about the centre table in the warm parlor, the leading spirits of Alamo Ranch bade the storm go by, while they inaugurated the Club of The New Koshare.

The star boarder was chosen president. The Minister was elected vice-president, Miss Paulina secretary, and the Harvard man treasurer. These preliminaries well arranged, a programme was voted on, and by general approval carried.

Mrs. Fairlee—the Pourer—was to give to the club-members a weekly afternoon tea. An entertainment open to the entire household was, on every Thursday evening, to be given in the ranch dining-room by the Koshare, consisting of music, tableaux, and recitations. A shooting-match, under the direction of Leon, was to come off weekly on the grounds of the establishment. There should be among the clubbists a fund collected for magazines; and on fortnightly Saturday evenings Mr. Morehouse promised to give them lectures, the result of his antiquarian researches in Mexico, New and Old; and during this course papers and talks relating to this subject should supplement his own.

"The Pueblo," commented the Grumbler, "would not have found magazines strikingly kosharean; let us by all means have them," and suiting deed to word, he subscribed to the book-fund on the spot, and paid surreptitiously the subscription of the little school-ma'am, who had previously withdrawn in the interest of her invalid sister.

In this fashion was inaugurated "The New Koshare" of Mesilla Valley; thereafter the Hemmenshaws bundled themselves in winter wraps and, handed into their vehicle by the Harvard man, set out in the storm for their ride to Hilton Ranch, and the Koshare betook themselves to rest.

CHAPTER IV

On the morrow the sun shone warm and bright, and on the mesa, and on all the desert-stretches of mesquite and sage-brush, on the broad alfalfa fields and outlying acres of Alamo Ranch, there was no longer a flake of snow.

Early in this sunny day the star boarder and the Pourer, driven by a leisurely chore-boy, might have been seen taking their way to Las Cruces, the nearest village and postal centre, intent on the procurement of sundry wafers, biscuit, and other edibles pertaining to an afternoon tea.

El Paso, the Texan border-town, some forty miles distant, is properly the emporium of that region. Between it and Las Cruces lies a stretch of desert more barrenly forlorn than the Long Island pine-lands, since it is totally void of forest growth, and has but here and there a sprinkle of mesquite-bushes about three feet in height, the rest being bare sand-ridges.

At El Paso one may ride in street cars, luxuriate in rain-proof dwellings, lighted by electricity, and pretty with lawns and flower-pots. But even at its best, modern civilization, with its push and bustle, ill becomes the happy-go-lucky native Mexican sunning himself in lazy content against the adobe of his shiftily built dwelling.

In a land of well-nigh perpetual blue sky, why need mortal man scramble to make hay while the sun shines? Yesterday has already taken care of itself. To-day is still here, and always there is mañana—to-morrow.

As for our own upstart civilization, in this clime of ancient Pueblo refinements one must own that it takes on the color of an impertinence, and as incongruously exhibits itself as a brand-new patch on a long-worn garment.

But to return to Las Cruces, which is "fearfully and wonderfully made." To look at the houses one might well fancy that the pioneer settlers had folded their hands and prayed for dwellings, and when the answering shower of mud and adobe fell, had contentedly left it where it stuck. All these structures are one-storied, and square-built; each has its one door, a window or two, and a dumpy roof, fashioned for the most part of wattles, for, as it seldom rains here, the Las Crucean has no troublesome prejudice in favor of water-tight roofs. When the sun shines he is all right; and when it rains, he simply moves from under the drip. Here, among confectionery that had long since outlived its desirability, among stale baker's cookies and flinty ginger snaps, the Koshare commissariat foraged discouragedly for the afternoon tea.

Duly supplied with these time-honored sweets, Leon and the Pourer, thus indifferently provisioned, turned their faces homeward, at such moderate pace as seemed good in the eyes of an easy-going Mexican pony and his lazy Indian driver.

On the afternoon of that day Mrs. Bixbee, in her airy bed-chamber, where the folding-bed in the day-time masqueraded as a black walnut bookcase, gave the first Koshare afternoon tea.

Mrs. Fairlee poured from a real Russian Samovar brought over from the Hilton Ranch for this grand occasion. Somewhat to the general surprise, the Grumbler made his bow to the hostess in evening clothes, and though not exuberantly Koshare, he was in an unwontedly gracious mood; partaking with polite zest of the stale chocolates, tough cookies, and flinty ginger snaps; munching long-baked Albert biscuit; serenely bolting puckery Oolong tea; and even handing the cups,—large and substantial ones, kindly furnished from their landlady's pantry,—and commending their solidity and size as far preferable to the Dresden and Japanese "thimbles" commonly appearing on afternoon tea-tables. As for the Pourer, it must be recorded that her grace, facility, and charm of manner gave even stone china tea-cups an air of distinction, and lent to Oolong tea and stale cakes a flavor of refinement. It was on Monday that this function came off successfully.

The next Koshare festivity in regular order was the shooting-match.

Leon, who had inherited from some Nimrod of his race, long since turned to dust, that true eye and steady hand which make gunning a success, was here master of ceremonies as well as contributor of prizes.

The first of these, a pair of gold sleeve-links, he, himself, easily won, and subsequently donated to Dennis the dudish table-waiter. Of the five prizes, two others were won by the two impecunious lungers, one by the Harvard man, and another by the Antiquary. The shooting-match, enjoyed as it was by the near population of Mesilla Valley, proved a big success, and weekly grew in grace with the aborigines as having a fine flavor of circus shows and Mexican bull-fights, and was considered by the Koshare as one of their happiest hits.

Equally successful was the Thursday entertainment, held in the big dining-room, under the auspices of the landlord and his wife, with the cook, waiter, maids, and chore-boys gathered about the open door.

It consisted of vocal and instrumental music, and recitations in prose and rhyme; and, at a late hour, wound up with a bountiful supper contributed to the occasion by the generous landlord.

Miss Hemmenshaw, the star performer, gave, with admirable Rachelesque gesture and true dramatic fire, "The Widow of the Grand Army," recited with exquisite delicacy Shelley's "Cloud," and sent shivers down the backs of the entire assemblage, by a realistic presentation of Rossetti's "Sister Helen." The grey-eyed school-marm recited with genuine "School of Oratory" precision and finish "Barbara Frietchie," Holmes' "Chambered Nautilus," Longfellow's "Sandalphon," and "Tom O'Connor's Cat." Leon read, with admirable humor, some of Mr. Dooley's best; and the Harvard man brought down the house with Kipling's "Truce of the Bear."

There was some fine piano and banjo playing, and the singing of duets; and the Journalist rendered, in his exquisite tenor, Ben Jonson's rare old love-song, "Drink to me only with thine eyes."

"Strange," commented the Antiquary (who in his miscellaneous mental storage had found room for some fine old Elizabethan plays), turning to Miss Hemmenshaw in the pause of the song, "Ben Jonson is dust these three hundred years, and still his verses come singing down the ages, keeping intact their own immortal flavor. The song-maker's is, indeed, an art that 'smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust.' Well might they write him, 'O rare Ben Jonson.'"

"And how exquisitely," responded the lady, "is the air married to the words!" And now the Minister brought forward his Cremona. He was a finished violinist, with a touch that well-nigh amounted to genius. All praised his performance. At its close the Grumbler, in an aside to the Antiquary, thus delivered himself:—

"To some, God giveth common-sense; to others, to play the fiddle!"

From the entry audience the fiddler won rousing rounds of applause, and Dennis, the waiter, ventured on the subdued shuffle of an Irish jig.

This it was that suggested to the Koshare an impromptu dance, and thereupon the young people straightway took the floor. The Minister, kindly oblivious of his cloth, fiddled on; Miss Paulina called off the figures, and so, merrily, ended the first Koshare evening entertainment.

CHAPTER V

As it is not proposed to give this record of the doings of the "New Koshare" the circumstantiality of a diary, the chronicler may be allowed to include the ensuing teas, shooting-matches, and all the lighter kosharean festivities in the one general and final statement, that they each came off duly and successfully; and leaving their details "unhonored and unsung," proceed to a more extended account of the Saturday evening entertainments,—as all members of the club were invited to contribute to these evenings, and it was expected that the Minister would, from the storehouse of his travelling experience, contribute liberally to their delectability; and that the Journalist (who naturally thought in paragraphs, and, like the fairy who "spoke pearls," conversed in exquisitely fashioned sentences) would supplement the papers of the Antiquary by his own brilliant talks.

And so it was that on the initial Saturday evening, with a full attendance and great expectations, the Koshare found themselves convened, the president in the chair, the secretary with notebook in hand, and all in dignified attention.

The Antiquary—with this apt quotation from Cumming's "Land of Poco Tiempo"—began his first lecture before the club.

"'New Mexico,'" quoted he, "'is the anomaly of the Republic. It is a century older in European civilization than the rest, and several centuries older still in a happier semi-civilization of its own. It had its little walled cities of stone before Columbus had grandparents-to-be; and it has them yet.'

"There are," stated Mr. Morehouse, "three typical races in New Mexico. The American interpolation does not count as a type.

"Of Pueblo Indians there are nine thousand, 'peaceful, home-loving, and home-dwelling tillers of the soil.' Then, here, and in Arizona, there are about twenty thousand Navajo Indians,—nomad, horse-loving, horse-stealing vagrants of the saddle, modern Centaurs. Then come the Apaches, an uncounted savage horde, whose partial civilization has been effected by sheer force of arms, and inch by inch: who accept the reservation with but half a heart, and break bounds at every opportunity. Last of all come the Mexicans, shrunken descendants of the Castilian world-finders; living almost as much against the house as in it; ignorant as slaves, and more courteous than kings; poor as Lazarus, and more hospitable than Crœsus; and Catholics from A to izzard.

"The Navajos and Apaches," said Mr. Morehouse, "have neither houses nor towns; the Pueblos have nineteen compact little cities, and the Mexicans several hundred villages, a part of which are shared by the invader.

"'The numerous sacred dances of the Pueblos,' says Cummings, 'are by far the most picturesque sights in America, and the least viewed by Americans, who never found anything more striking abroad. The mythology of Greece and Rome is less than theirs in complicated comprehensiveness; and they are a far more interesting ethnological study than the tribes of inner Africa, and less known of by their white countrymen.'

"The Pueblos of New Mexico," explained the Antiquary, "are by no means to be confounded with the Toltecs or Aztecs. It is, however, barely possible that in prehistoric ages the race in possession of Mexico may have had some tribal characteristics of the latter-day Pueblo. As of that remote time, there is not even a traditionary record; this supposition is absolutely conjectural.

"By investigation and comparison it has, however, been proved that the Pueblos have racial characteristics connecting them with some mysterious stage of human life even older than that of the more barbarous Toltecs or Aztecs.

"This race has from time immemorial had its book of Genesis. It is not, like that of the Hebrew, a written record, but has been orally handed down, and with careful precision, beginning with their original emergence, as half-formed human beings, from the dark of the mystic underworld of 'Shipapu' to the world of light.

"After the fashion of most barbarous races, the Pueblo appears originally to have 'pitched his moving tent' in various parts of Mexico; and it may be inferred that he endured many casualities before settling himself in life. It was to tide over this trying epoch in his existence that 'Those Above,' according to tradition, made for the tribes that quaint 'Delight-Monger,' with whom we have already made acquaintance, who led them in their wanderings from the womb of Shipapu to the solid centre of their world; but, as has been already stated, this record, going back to an indefinite period of time, and having only the dubious authority of folk-lore, is only of traditional value.

"The Pueblo, no less than the Aztec, is the most religious of human beings. His ceremonial, like that of the age of Montezuma, is wonderfully and minutely elaborated; and though originating in a civilization less splendid and refined, it is really less barbarous, since its rites have never, like those of the Aztec, included the horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalism.

"The Pueblo, since his exit from the womb of mother Earth, seems to have given his principal attention to the cultivation of its soil. All the same, he appears never to have shirked the less peaceful responsibilities of his tribe,—putting on his war-paint at the shortest notice, to settle the quarrels of his clan.

"Although like most men of savage birth and breeding, cruel in warfare, he seems never to have been abstractedly blood-thirsty, never to have killed, like his ever-belligerent neighbor, the Apache, purely for killing's sake; but, his quarrel once ended, and the present security of his clan well achieved, he has contentedly returned to the peaceful ways of life; diligently sowing, weeding, and harvesting his crops of maize, melons, squashes, and beans, and—ever mindful of the propitiative requirements of 'Those Above'—taking careful heed of his religious duties.

"For a succinct account of the Pueblo cave (or cliff) dwellers," said the Antiquary, "I am largely indebted to Bandelier, from whose valuable Pueblo researches I shall often take the liberty to quote.

"The imperfectly explored mountain range skirting the Rio Grande del Norte is picturesquely grand.

"Facing the river, the foundation of the chain is entirely volcanic.

"Colossal rocks form the abrupt walls of the gorges between these mountains, and are often so soft and friable that, in many places they were easily scooped out with the most primitive tools, or even detached with the fingers alone.

"In these gorges, through many of which run unfailing streams of water, often expanding to the proportions of regular valleys, the Pueblo Indian raised the modest crop that satisfied his vegetable craving.

"As it is easier to excavate dwellings than to pile up walls in the open air, the aboriginal Mexican's house-building effort was mostly confined to underground construction. He was, in fact, a 'cave-dweller,' yet infinitely of more advanced architectural ideas than our own remote forbears of Anglo Saxon cave-dwelling times.

"Most of these residences might boast of from three to four rooms. They were arranged in groups, or clusters, and some of them were several stories high.

"Rude ladders were used for mounting to the terrace or roof of each successive story. The Pueblo had, literally, a hearthstone in his primitive home. His fireplace was supplied with a hearth of pumice-stone. A rudely built flue, made of cemented rubble, led to a circular opening in the front wall of his cave-dwelling. Air-holes admitted their scanty light to these dusky apartments, in which there were not only conveniences for bestowing wearing-apparel, but niches for ornamental pottery, precious stones, and the like Indian bric-à-brac. The ground-floor entrance was a rude doorway closed by a hide, or mat. Plaited mats of Yucca leaves, and deer-hide, by day rolled up in corners of the sleeping-apartments, served for mattresses at night. A thick coating of mud, washed with blood, and carefully smoothed, gave to the floor a glossy effect. Some of the rooms are known to have been in dimension ten feet by fourteen. Their walls were whitewashed with burnt gypsum.

"Though the time when these traditional cliff-dwellers wooed and wed, lived and died in the Rialto vale is long, long gone by, the ruins of their homes may still be seen. Some of them are tolerably intact; others are crumbled away to mere shapeless ruins.

"And now, having described their dwellings, let us note some of the most marked and interesting characteristics of the men and women who made in them their homes.

"We are apt," said the Antiquary, "to accord to our more enlightened civilization the origin of communism; yet, antedating by ages our latter-day socialistic fads, the communal idea enthused this unlettered people, and to a certain extent seems to have been successfully carried out.

"Let not the strong-minded Anglo-Saxon woman plume herself upon the discovery of the equality of the sexes. While our own female suffragists were yet unborn, the Pueblo wife had been accorded the inalienable right to lord it over her mankind.

"Among the Mexican cliff-dwellers, 'woman's rights' seem to have been as indigenous to the soil as the piñon and the prickly pear.

"In the primitive Pueblo domicile, the wife appears, by tribal consent, to have been absolutely 'cock of the walk.' The husband had no rights as owner or proprietor of the family mansion, and, as an inmate, was scarcely more than tolerated.

"The wife, in those ever-to-be-regretted days, not only built and furnished the house,—contributed to the kitchen the soup pot, water jars, and other primitive domestic appliances,—but figured as sole proprietor of the entire establishment.

"The Pueblo woman, though married, still had, with her children, her holding in her own clan. In case of her death, the man's home being properly with his clan, he must return to it.

"The wife was not allowed to work in the fields. Each man tilled the plot allotted him by his clan. The crops, once housed, were controlled by the woman, as were the proceeds of communal hunts and fisheries.

"The Pueblos had their system of divorce. It goes without saying that it was not attended by the red-tape complications of our time. As the husband's continuance under the family roof-tree depended absolutely on his acceptability to the wife, at any flagrant marital breach of good behavior she simply refused to recognize him as her lord. In vain he protested, stormed, and menaced; the outraged better half bade him go, and he went! Thus easily and informally were Pueblo marriages dissolved; and, this summary transaction once well concluded, each party had the right to contract a second marriage.

"The Pueblo Indian is historically known as a Catholic; that is to say, he told his beads, crossed his brow with holy water, and duly and devoutly knelt at the confessional. This done, he tacitly reserved to himself the privilege of surreptitiously clinging to the Paganism of his forbears, and zealously paid his tithe of observances at the ancient shrine of 'the Sun Father' and 'the Moon Mother.'

"Some of the Pueblo tribes are said still to retain the use of that ancient supplicating convenience, 'the prayer-stick.'

"'Prayer-sticks, or plumes,'" explained the Antiquary, "are but painted sticks tufted with down, or feathers, and, by the simple-minded Indian, supposed especially to commend him to the good graces and kindly offices of 'Those Above.' In a certain way, the aboriginal prayer-stick seems to have been a substitute for an oral supplication.

"The Pueblo, pressed for time, might even forego the hindering ceremonial of verbal request, adoration, or thanksgiving, and hurriedly deposit, as a votive offering to his easily placated gods, this tufted bit of painted wood; and, furthermore, since prayer-sticks were not always within reach, it was permitted him in such emergencies to gather two twigs, and, placing these crosswise, hold them in position by a rock or stone. And this childish make-shift passed with his indulgent gods for a prayer!

"The most trivial commonplace of existence had, with the superstitious Pueblo, its religious significance; and it would seem to have been incumbent on him literally to 'pray without ceasing.' Hence the prayer-plume, or its substitute, was, with him, one of the necessities of life. Time would fail me to tell of the ancient elaborate religious rites and superstitions of the Mexican Indian; to recount his latter-day ceremonials, wherein Pagan dances, races, and sports are like the jumble of a crazy quilt, promiscuously mixed in with Christian festas and holy saint-days; and indeed the subject is too large for my sketchy handling. It may not, however, be amiss to notice the yearly celebration of the festival of San Estevan. It may be still witnessed, and seems to have been the original Harvest-home of the Mexican Indian, the observance of which has been handed down in various ways from all times, and among all peoples, and is probably the parent of our Thanksgiving holiday.

"The monks of the early Catholic church, in their missionary endeavor to commend the Christian religion to the pagan mind, took care to graft upon each of the various festas of the Pueblo one of their own saint-day names. Thus it was that the Acoma harvest-home masquerades under the guise of a saint-name, though an absolutely pagan ceremonial.

"It is still observed by them with genuine Koshare delight. There are dances, races, and tumbling, and the carnival-like showering of Mexican confetti from the roofs of adobe houses. In summing up this brief account of the sedentary New Mexican, I quote literally the forceful assertion of Cummings. 'The Pueblos,' says this writer, 'are Indians who are neither poor nor naked; who feed themselves, and ask no favors of Washington; Indians who have been at peace for two centuries, and fixed residents for perhaps a millennium; Indians who were farmers and irrigators, and six-story housebuilders before a New World had been beaten through the thick skull of the Old. They had,' he continues, 'a hundred republics in America centuries before the American Republic was conceived.'

"This peaceably minded people, as has already been stated, are by no means to be confounded with the roving New Mexican aborigines, with the untamed Navajo scouring the plains on the bare back of his steed, or the fierce Apache, murderous and cruel.

"We must not," said Mr. Morehouse, "take leave of the Pueblo, without some reference to the great flat-topped, slop-sided chain of rock-tables that throughout the length and breadth of his territory rises from the sandy plains, the most famous and best explored of which is known as 'La Mesa Encantada,'—'the Enchanted Mesa.'

"According to tradition the Mesa Encantada gains its romantic name from an event which centuries ago—declares the legend—destroyed the town, then a well-populated stronghold of the Acomas. As a prelude to this legend, let me state that the Pueblo cliff-dwellers often perched their habitations on lofty, sheer-walled, and not easily accessible mesas, a natural vantage-ground from which they might successfully resist their enemies, the nomadic and predatory tribes formerly over-running the country.

"The steep wall of the Acoma Mesa, with its solitary trail, surmounted by means of hand and foot holes pecked in the solid rock, was so well defended that a single man might keep an army at bay. What fear, then, should these Acomas have of their enemies?

"The Acomas, like other Pueblo Indians, have from time immemorial been tillers of the soil.

"From the fertile sands of their valley and its tributaries they won by patient toil such harvests of corn, beans, squashes, and cotton as secured them a simple livelihood; and 'their granaries,' it is asserted, 'were always full enough to enable them, if need be, to withstand a twelvemonth's siege.' How long the top of Katzimo, the site of the Enchanted Mesa, had been inhabited when the catastrophe recorded in the legend befell, no man may say, not even the elders of the tribe; this much is, however, known,—the spring-time had come. The sun-priest had already proclaimed from the housetops that the season of planting was at hand. The seeds from last year's harvest had been gathered from the bins; planting-sticks had been sharpened, and all made ready for the auspicious day when the seer should further announce the time of repairing to the fields. On that day (so runs the tale), down the ragged trail, at early sunrise, clambered the busy natives; every one who was able to force a planting-stick into the compact soil, or lithe enough to drive away a robber crow, hurried to the planting. Only a few of the aged and ailing remained on the mesa.

"While the planters worked in the hot glare of the valley below, the sun suddenly hid his face in angry clouds. The busy planters hastened their work, while the distant thunder muttered and rolled about them. Suddenly the black dome above them was rent as by a glittering sword, and down swept the torrent, until the entire valley became a sheet of flood. The planters sought shelter in the slight huts of boughs and sticks from which the crops are watched.

"The elders bodingly shook their heads. Never before had the heavens given vent to such a cataract.

"When the sudden clouds as suddenly dispersed, and the sun-lit crest of Katzimo emerged from the mist, the toilers trudged toward their mountain home. Reaching the base of the trail, they found their pathway of the morning blocked by huge, sharp-edged pieces of stone, giving mute testimony of the disaster to the ladder-trail above.

"The huge rock mass, which had given access to the cleft by means of the holes pecked in the trail-path, had in the great cloud-burst become freed from the friable wall, and thundered down in a thousand fragments, cutting off communication with the mesa village. The Acomas, when asked why their ancestors made no desperate effort to reach the sufferers whose feeble voices were calling to them from the summit for succor, but left their own flesh and blood to perish by slow starvation, gravely shook their heads.

"The ban of enchantment had already, for these superstitious pagans, fallen upon the devoted table-land; it had become 'La Mesa Encantada.'

"The publication by Mr. Charles F. Lummis, who resided for several years at the pueblo of Iselta, of the story of Katzimo, the tradition of which was repeated to him by its gray-haired priests some twelve years ago, aroused the interest of students of southwestern ethnology in the history of 'La Mesa Encantada,' and, subsequently, Mr. F. W. Hodge was directed by the Bureau of American Ethnology, of the Smithsonian Institute, to scale the difficult height of this giant mountain, for the purpose of supplementing the evidence already gained, of its sometime occupancy as a Pueblo town. His party found decided evidence of a former occupancy of the mesa, such as fragments of extremely ancient earthenware, a portion of a shell bracelet, parts of two grooved stone axes, lichen-flecked with age. Here, too, was an unfeathered prayer-stick, a melancholy reminder of a votive offering made, at the nearest point of accessibility, to 'Those Above.'

"'When I consider,' says Mr. Hodge, in his charming paper, 'The Enchanted Mesa,' published in the 'Century Magazine,' some three or four years ago, 'that the summit of Katzimo, where the town was, has long been inaccessible to the Indians, that it has been swept by winds, and washed by rains for centuries, until scarcely any soil is left on its crest, that well-defined traces of an ancient ladder trail may still be seen pecked on the rocky wall of the very cleft through which the traditionary pathway wound its course; and, above all, the large number of very ancient potsherds in the earthy talus about the base of the mesa, which must have been washed from above, the conclusion is inevitable that the summit of 'La Mesa Encantada' was inhabited prior to 1540, when the present Acoma was discovered by Coronado, and that the last vestige of the village itself has long been washed or blown over the cliff.'"

With this account of the Enchanted Mesa, Mr. Morehouse, amid general applause, ended his interesting paper on the Pueblo Indians; and after a short discussion by the Club of the ancient and modern characteristics of these remarkable aborigines, the Koshare, well pleased with the success of its endeavor to combine improvement with delight, adjourned to the next Monday in January.

Little dreamed Roger Smith as, that night, after the Club entertainment, he handed the Hemmenshaw ladies to their wagon, for the return ride to Hilton Ranch, that the very next week he was to undertake, on their behalf, a hand-to-hand encounter with a blood-thirsty Apache. Yet so was it ordained of Fate.

It has already been stated that these ladies were but day-boarders at Alamo Ranch, occupying, together with Sholto, a Mexican man-of-all-work, the Hilton Ranch, a good mile distant from the boarding-house.

Louise Hemmenshaw, usually in exuberant health, was ill with a severe influenza. It was the third and cumulative day of this disease. Sholto had already been despatched to Brown's for the dinner; Miss Paulina had, in this emergency, undertaken to turn off the breakfasts and suppers from her chafing-dish.

After replenishing, from the wood basket, the invalid's chamber fire, Miss Paulina administered her teaspoonful of bryonia, gave a settling shake to her pillow, and hurried down to fasten the back door behind Sholto.

Lingering a moment at the kitchen window, the good lady put on her far-off glasses for a good look across the mesa, stretching—an unbroken waste of sage-brush and mesquite-bush—from the Hilton kitchen garden to the distant line of the horizon.

As she quietly scanned the nearer prospect, Miss Paulina's heart made a sudden thump beneath her bodice, and quickened its pulses to fever-time; for there, just within range of her vision, was the undoubted form of an Apache savage, clad airily in breech-clout, and Navajo blanket. Skulking warily along the mesa, he gained the garden fence and sprang, at a bound, over the low paling. For a moment the watcher stood paralyzed with wonder and dismay.

Meantime, under cover of a rose-trellis, the Apache, looking bad enough and cunning enough for any outrage, coolly made a reconnoisance of the premises. This done, still on all-fours, he gained the bulkhead of the small dark vegetable cellar beneath the kitchen. It chanced to have been inadvertently left open.

With a satisfied grunt (and eschewing the paltry convenience of steps) he bounded at once into its dusky depths.

Summoning her failing courage, this "Daughter of the Revolution" resolutely tiptoed out the front door, and, with her heart in her mouth, whisking round the corner of the devoted house, shot into place the stout outside bolt of the bulkhead door.

This feat accomplished, she made haste to gain the safe shelter of the adobe dwelling. She next looked well to the bolt fastening the trap-door at the head of the ladder-like stairway leading perilously from the kitchen to the dim region below, where the Apache might now be heard bumping his head against the floor-planks, in a fruitless endeavor to discover some outlet, from this underground apartment, to the family circle above. With the frightful possibility of a not distant escape of her prisoner, the good lady lifted her heart in silent prayer, and hurrying promptly to the chamber of her niece, gave a saving punch to the fire, a glass of port wine to the invalid, and, feigning an appearance of unconcern, left the room, and slipped cautiously down to the kitchen. Here she dragged an ironing-table, a clothes-horse, and a wood-box on to the trap-door, and breathlessly waited for the Apache's next move.

And now, a step might be heard on the driveway, followed by a rap at the front door.

Prudently scanning her visitor through the sidelight, and assuring herself that he was no breech-clouted savage, but a fellow white man, Miss Paulina let in through the narrowest of openings,—who but their friend the Harvard man! "Dear soul!" tearfully exclaimed the good lady, while Roger Smith stood in mute wonder at the warmth of her greeting.

It was but the work of a moment to explain the situation and acquaint him with the peril of the moment.

Sholto, at his leisurely Mexican pace, now opportunely appeared at the back door with the hot dinner.

"There is a time for all things," said the "president of Chapter 18th," as (having pulled the bewildered Mexican inside) she vigorously shot the door-bolt in place, deposited the smoking viands on the sideboard, and thus addressed him. "Sholto," said Miss Paulina, "I have an Apache here in the cellar. For the time being his ability to work us harm is limited; but an Apache is never nice to have round; and, besides, he must have terribly bumped himself poking round there all this time in the dark. One would not unnecessarily hurt even a savage. We must therefore let him up, bind him fast, and take measures for delivering him to the police at Las Cruces. Here is a clothes-line: it is good and strong; make up a lasso, and when I open the trap-door, as his head bobs in sight, throw it, and then help Mr. Smith haul him out, and tie him."

Sholto's lasso was soon in working order. The trap-door once raised, the head of the unsuspecting savage flew up like a Jack in a box, and with such a rubber-like bound that Sholto's lasso went wide of the mark. In this dilemma, a scientific blow from the fist of a Harvard athlete deftly floored him, and, in the consequent lapse of consciousness, he was easily bound, and safely deposited in the bottom of the Hilton express wagon. This accomplished, Sholto and the Harvard man summarily took the road for Las Cruces, some four miles distant. The horse and his driver being in absolute accord as to the ratio of miles proper to the hour, the captors drove leisurely along; the Harvard man meantime relieving the slow monotony of the way, with incident and anecdote, and Sholto, in turn, imparting much interesting New-Mexican information.

Presently a faint stir, as of the quiet, persistent nibbling of a mouse in the wall, might (but for the talking) have been heard from the bottom of the wagon. "Poor beggar!" said the Harvard man, at last recalling to mind the captive Apache; "he must, by this time, be about ready to come to." And taking from his over-coat pocket a tiny flask of brandy, he turned on his seat with the humane intention of aiding nature in bringing about that restoration. "Gone! clean gone! by George!" exclaimed the astonished athlete. The cunning savage had, with his sharp, strong teeth, actually gnawed through his wrist cords, and, with tooth and nail extricating himself from the knotted clothes-line, was already on his return from the unsatisfactory husks of Mesilla Valley, to the fatted veal of the U. S. government, in his father's house,—"The Reservation." "They are fleet steeds that follow!" quoted the Harvard man as the jubilant Apache, with flying heels, loomed tantalizingly on the distant plain. The startled cotton-tail, swept by "the wind of his going," scurried breathlessly to his desert fastnesses among the sage-brush and mesquite.

With a humorous glance at his fast-vanishing form, the Harvard man measured with his eye the intervening distance, the speed of the escaped captive, and the pace of the propeller of the Hilton express, and gracefully accepted the situation. Sholto lazily turned the horse's head, and in process of time the discomfited captors of Miss Paulina's Apache—like John Gilpin—

"Where they did get up
Did get down again."

Meantime, Miss Hemmenshaw brought up the mid-day meal.

"Auntie," said the invalid, "this feverish cold puts queer fancies in my head. While you were away, I must have taken a little nap, and when I awoke there seemed to be some sort of a rumpus going on below; after which I fancied that a team started away from the back door. It could not have been Sholto's; for he would be coming from Brown's about that hour with our dinner."

"It may have been just a part of your dream, dear," pacified the aunt; "but come, now, here is our dinner. Let us have it together. A wonderfully nice dinner Mrs. Brown has sent us, too, and you can venture to-day on a quail, and a bit of orange pudding. For myself, I am as hungry as a bear;" and, removing the books from the oval bedroom table, Miss Paulina laid the cloth, set out the dishes and glasses, and daintily arranged the viands, which the two ladies discussed with evident relish.

"And now," said the aunt, "since you have dined, and have something to brace you up, I will 'tell my experience;'" and forthwith she related to the astonished Louise the adventure of the morning. The good lady had but accomplished her exciting account, when the valiant captors of the Apache drove up.

Miss Paulina, with the concentrated importance of her entire "Chapter," met and opened the door to her hero.

"Well?" asked she of the crestfallen athlete.

"No: ill!" replied he; "the Apache never reached Las Cruces. He managed to unbind himself, and slipped from our hands by the way. The clothes-line has come back safe; but the savage is, long ere this, well on his road to the Mescalero Reservation."

"Well," said Miss Paulina, judicially, "I can't say that I'm sorry. The creature had a rough time bumping about that low, dark cellar; and your blow on his head was a tough one. And when one considers the slip-shodness of things at Las Cruces, and the possible insecurity of their jail, we, on the whole, are the safer for his escape; and he will, of course, feel more at home now in the Reservation, and will probably remain there for a while, after the fright we gave him."

Thus reassured, the Harvard man accepted Miss Hemmenshaw's invitation to stay to supper. And presently the convalescing invalid came down to express her thanks for his devoir of the morning. Reclining on the parlor lounge, in a cream-white tea gown, she looked so lovely that a man might well have dared a whole tribe of savages in her defence. By and by they had a quiet game of chess. It goes without saying that the lady won. There might be men hard-hearted enough to beat Louise Hemmenshaw at chess. The Harvard man was not of them.

So slipped away this happy afternoon; and, at sunset Sholto appeared with the tea equipage, and the young people covertly made merry over a chafing-dish mess achieved by the Cooking School pupil; and under cover of rarebit, water-biscuit, and cups of Russian tea, the Harvard man made hay for himself in this bit of sunshine, and grew in favor with both aunt and niece.

With Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw, true to her aristocratic birth and breeding, pedigree far out-weighed filthy lucre. To be well born was, in her estimation, to be truly acceptable to gods and men.

Roger Smith, with his plebeian surname and unillustrious "tanner" grandfather, was by no means a suitable husband for her motherless niece, to whom, as the head of her brother's household, she had for years filled a parent's place. Louise Hemmenshaw, as the good lady shrewdly guessed, was the magnet that drew this undeclared lover to Mesilla Valley. During the preceding winter they had met at many social functions in Boston and Cambridge, and he had become the willing captive of her bow and spear. He had never told his love.

The social discrepancy between the lovely aristocrat and Roger—the grandson of Roger the Tanner—was too wide to be easily overstepped.

Ostensibly the Harvard man had come to New Mexico to recruit his spent energies; but in his heart of hearts he knew that dearer than health was the hope of winning the heart of Louise Hemmenshaw. Already his native refinement and charm of manner had commended him to Miss Paulina; and now, his prowess in the day's adventure had made her, for good and all, his warm friend. As to her niece, he told himself, as, that night, by the light of a low moon, he took his way to Alamo Ranch, recalling the tender pressure of the invalid's white hand, when, with a rosy blush, she bade him good-night, that in his wooing he had to-day "scored one;" and with the confident egotism of presumptuous mortals, when events play unexpectedly into their hands, he decided that Fate had prearranged this timely call of his on the Hemmenshaws, and had timed the arrival of the Apache at that opportune hour, with an especial view to the fulfilment of his own cherished wishes.

CHAPTER VI

Another two weeks of lighter Koshare festivities had again brought round the more solid fortnightly entertainment of the Club.

Its members duly assembled, the president in his chair, and the secretary at attention, Mr. Morehouse thus began his second paper.

"Before Texas," said he, "became a part of an independent republic, and until after the Mexican war (when we forced Mexico to sell us all California, New Mexico, and Arizona, nearly all of Utah and Nevada, besides Texas, and the greater part of Colorado), Mexico proper reached way up here; and it is thought by some archaeologists that the mesas or table-mountain land especially characterizing the New Mexican landscape may have afforded the suggestion for the Teocallis of the great pyramid-like mounds, with terraced sides, built by the Aztecs. Some scholars have even convinced themselves that the Aztec culture must have originated here in the North. Others wholly discard the conclusion.

"Mr. Baxter, in his valuable and interesting book of Mexican travel, says, decidedly, 'The New Mexican Indians were not Aztecs, and Montezuma had no more to do with New Mexico than he did with New England.' And with this assertion I think we must all, perforce, agree.

"Of the Toltecs, the probable predecessors in Mexico of the Aztecs, all written records," said the Antiquary, "have long since perished. They are known to us only through traditionary legends orally handed down by the races that succeeded them.

"They are said to have entered the Valley of Anahnac from a northerly direction, coming from a mysterious unknown region, and probably before the close of the seventh century. They appear to have been a far more gentle and refined nation than their immediate successors, the half-savage Aztecs, who, at last, with their semi-civilization, dominated Mexico. By general archæological agreement, the Toltecs were well instructed in agriculture, and many of the most useful mechanic arts.

"'They were,' declares Prescott, 'nice workers in metals.' They invented the complex arrangement of time adopted by the Aztecs, who are said to have been largely indebted to them for the beginnings of that incongruous civilization which reached its high-water mark in the reign of the Montezumas. So late as the time of the Spanish Conquest the remains of extensive Toltec buildings were to be found in Mexico.

"'The noble ruins of religious and other edifices,' says the same writer, 'still to be seen in Mexico, are referred to this people, whose name, Toltec, has passed into a synonym for Architect.'

"After a period of four centuries—having succumbed to famine, pestilence, and unsuccessful wars—this remarkable people disappeared from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it. It is conjectured that some of them may have spread over the region of Central America and the neighboring isles; and that the majestic ruins of Mitla and Paleque are the work of this vanished race. Tradition affirms that a remnant of Toltecs still lingering in Anahnac 'gave points' to the next inhabitants; and the Tezcucans are thought to have derived their gentle manners and comparatively mild religion from the handful of Toltecs who still remained in the country. A Spanish priest, with that keen relish for the marvellous common to his kind, accounts for this mysterious disappearance by supernatural stories of giants and demons.

"According to good authorities, more than a hundred years elapsed between the strange disappearance of the Toltecs from the land of Anahnac and the arrival on its borders of the Aztecs.

"After the nomadic fashion of barbarous races, this people did not at once make a permanent settlement, but pitched their tents in various parts of the Mexican valley, enduring many casualties and hardships, and being at one time enslaved by a more powerful tribe, whom their prowess subsequently dominated.

"Some of these wanderings and adventures are perpetuated in their oral traditional lore.

"One of these legends is well substantiated, and current at this day, having been the origin of the device of the eagle and cactus, which form the arms of the present Mexican republic, and may be found on the face of the Mexican silver dollar. Thus it runs: 'Having in 1325 halted on the southwestern borders of the larger Mexican lakes, the Aztecs there beheld, perched on the stem of a prickly pear, which shot out from a crevice of a rock that was washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in his talons, and his broad wings open to the rising sun.

"'They hailed the auspicious omen, which the oracle announced as an indication of the site of their future city.'

"The low marshes were then half buried in water; yet, nothing daunted, they at once proceeded to lay the sloppy foundation of their capital, by sinking piles into the shallows. On these they erected the light dwelling-fabrics of reeds and rushes,—the frail beginnings of that solid Aztec architecture carried to such elegant elaboration in the time of the Montezumas. In token of its miraculous origin they called their city Tenochtitlan. Later it was known as Mexico, a name derived from the Aztec war-god, Mexitil.

"It has been shown that the Aztec race, once permanently established in Mexico, finally attained to a civilization far in advance of the other wandering tribes of North America.

"'The degree of civilization which they had reached,' says Prescott, 'as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered not far short of that enjoyed by our Saxon ancestors under Alfred. In respect to the nature of it, they may better be compared to the Egyptians; and the examination of their social relations and culture may suggest still stronger points of resemblance to that ancient people.

"'Their civilization,' he goes on to say, 'was, at the first, of the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce virtues of the Aztec were all his own. They refused to submit to European culture—to be engrafted on a foreign stock. They gradually increased in numbers, made marked improvements both in polity and military discipline, and ultimately established a reputation for courage as well as cruelty in war which made their name terrible throughout the valley.' In the early part of the fifteenth century—nearly a hundred years after the foundation of the city—that remarkable league—of which it has been affirmed that 'it has no parallel in history'—was formed between the states of Mexico and Tezcuco, and the neighboring little kingdom of Tlacopan, by which they agreed mutually to support each other in their wars, offensive and defensive, and that in the distribution of the spoil one-fifth should be assigned to Tlacopan and the remainder be divided—in what proportions is uncertain—between the two other powers.

"What is considered more remarkable than the treaty itself, however, is the fidelity with which it was kept.

"During a century of uninterrupted warfare that ensued no instance, it is declared, occurred in which the parties quarrelled over the distribution of the spoil. By the middle of the fifteenth century the allies, overleaping the rocky ramparts of their own valley, found wider occupation for their army, and under the first Montezuma, year after year saw their return to the Mexican capital, loaded with the spoils of conquered cities, and with throngs of devoted captives.

"No State was able long to resist the accumulated strength of the confederates; and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, on the arrival of the Spaniards, the Aztec dominion reached across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific."

Here Mr. Morehouse ended his paper on the Toltecs, and the Koshare, with many thanks for his interesting account of these ancient races, supplemented his information by a general discussion of the genuineness of the accepted authorities for the early history of the Aztecs and of the time of Montezuma.

"Prescott," said the Minister, "traces some points of resemblance between the history of the Aztecs and that of the ancient Romans; especially in polity and military success does he compare them."

"Unfortunately," observed the Antiquary, "the earlier records of the Mexican people can only be scantily gleaned from oral tradition and hiero-graphical paintings."

"Later, however," remarked the Journalist, "we have the seemingly more definite and reliable accounts of the Spanish chronicles."

"These," returned the Minister, "being usually ecclesiastic, have warped their record to suit their own bigoted views; consequently, much of the narrative popularly known as Mexican history is to be taken with more than the proverbial pinch of salt."

"It has," said the Journalist, "been urged by realistic critics of our own fascinating historian—Prescott—that since he drew his historic data, with the exception of the military record of the Spaniards, from these unreliable sources, his history is little other than the merest romance. Plainly, the assertions of some of the chroniclers are scarce more worthy of credence than the equally fascinating adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, and the impossible stories of Baron Munchausen. 'Bernard Diaz'—that enigmatical personage from whom many of Prescott's data are drawn—tells us that the Aztecs actually fattened men and women in cages, like spring chickens, for their sacrifice, and asserts that at the dedication of one of their temples a procession of captives two miles long, and numbering seventy-two thousand persons, were led to sacrifice! By the way, it has, however, been latterly proved that the so-called sacrificial stone, now exhibited in the National Museum of Mexico, is not a relic of the Aztecs, but of the earlier Toltecs (who were not addicted to human sacrifice), and is as innocent of human blood as the Calendar Stone, referred to the same period. The critics of Diaz have detected in his account constant blunders in many important matters, and his glaring geographical errors would seem to prove that, though he claims to have been, all through the Conquest, the very shadow of Hernando Cortez, he has never even been in the country he describes!"

"From what I have read of Bernald," said Leon, "I think we may finish him off with 'Betsy Prig's' very conclusive objection to Sairey Gamp's 'Mrs. Harris'—there ain't no sich person!"

"Even so," exclaimed the Minister, "I, for one, agree with certain downright critics who contend that Diaz was a pure fabrication, a priestly scheme of the Roman Church to screen the cruel enormities of their agent, Cortez. Father Torquemada, another of Prescott's authorities, is thought to be scarcely more reliable. Las Casas, another of our historian authorities, whose history was, at the time, promptly suppressed by the all-powerful Inquisition, declares these Spanish histories of the Conquest to be 'wicked and false.'"

"And yet, in spite of these strictures," contended Leon, "I, for one, still pin my faith to Prescott and his implicit honesty of purpose. He gave us, in his own learned and fascinating way, the narrative of these priestly chroniclers as he found it. If the chroniclers lied, why, so much the worse for the chroniclers."

"Lying," complained the Grumbler, "is a malady most incident to historians;" and thereupon rose to open the parlor door for the gray-eyed school teacher, who just then bade the Koshare good-night, adding that she had already been too long away from her sister.

And now the chairman announced the next paper in the Koshare course for the second Saturday in February, and the members, one and all, dispersed.

Sholto, roused from a most enjoyable series of naps, brought his wagon to the side door, and with a friendly grasp from the hand of Miss Paulina, and a shy, tremulous clasp from that of her niece, the Harvard man saw the ladies off.

CHAPTER VII

February had come, bringing in its train such weather as verified the warmest praise of New Mexico's perfect climate.

It was on one of its most spring-like afternoons that a walking party of eight set out to pay a long-proposed visit to the ladies at Hilton Ranch.

As the little party went gayly along the mesa, Leon, carrying his gun, shot doves for the evening meal, while the rest walked on, chatting merrily.

The ladies talking over, by the way, the late attempt of the Apache on Hilton Ranch, Mrs. Bixbee declared herself curious to see the cellar in which Miss Paulina had caught that prowling savage. On their arrival that good lady, informed of this desire, kindly proceeded to gratify her guest, and the entire party was presently led by her to the kitchen, the hero of this adventure modestly walking beside the fair lady of his love. Sholto, busied about the place, was just then out of call, and Miss Hemmenshaw, intent to afford them a peep into the cellar, begged the Harvard man to raise for her the heavy trap-door.

The dear lady never quite knew how it was that, leaning forward, she lost her balance, and, but for the prompt help of Roger Smith, might have landed, pell-mell, on the cellar bottom; or how, in rescuing her, he himself made the misstep that, ere he could recover his poise, threw him to the end of the ladder-like cellar stairs.

Recovering breath, Roger Smith cheerily called up to the affrighted group at the top, "All right!" but, on pulling himself together to make the ascent, he suddenly found all wrong. He had sprained his ankle; and it was with painful effort that he won to the top. At this juncture Sholto, aroused by the unwonted rumpus, made his appearance, anticipating no less a disaster than the reappearance of the slippery savage, for whom he still held the lasso "in pickle." Disabled by the sprain, the Harvard man submitted himself to the stout arms of the Mexican, and, by Miss Paulina's direction, was carried into the bedroom adjoining the ranch parlor.

There, laid upon a movable couch which served the double purpose of sofa and bed, Sholto having, not without difficulty, removed his boot and stocking, he submitted the swollen foot to the careful inspection of Miss Hemmenshaw, who, with a steadiness of nerve not unworthy of her "Chapter," put the dislocated joint in place, bandaged the injured member with arnica, administered an internal dose of the same restorative, and duly followed it with a glass of old Port. This done, Sholto wheeled the sufferer's couch into the adjoining parlor. Half an hour later Leon came in with a well-filled game-bag; and after an hour of mild Koshare merriment, in which the athlete but feebly joined (the pain of his ankle was still terrible), the little party took its way, in the fading sunlight, to Alamo Ranch. Miss Paulina, having promptly decided that her patient was unequal to the return by way of the jolting Hilton express team, sent to Mrs. Brown an order for supper for her guest, Louise, and herself. It was duly conveyed to Hilton's by an Alamo chore-boy. Sholto, as the sole male dependence of Hilton's, must stick to his post; for, sagely observed the "Daughter of the Revolution," two women, heroic though they might be, were no match for an Apache marauder; and as for poor Roger Smith, he could now neither "fight" nor "run away."

Sholto lighted the lamps, laid the supper on the low Queen Anne table, added fresh water from the spring, and when a pot of tea had been made by the hostess' own careful hand, and Sholto had wheeled up the couch of the invalid, that he might take his supper à la Roman, the three made a cheery meal.

When the man had removed the supper things, and piled fresh wood on the andirons, the ladies brought their work-baskets; and while they busied themselves with doily and centre-piece, the Harvard man, lying in the comfort of partial relief from pain, watched the dainty fingers of Louise Hemmenshaw as she bent industriously over her embroidery, and fell fathoms deeper in love with the dear and beautiful girl.

Roger Smith stayed on at Hilton Ranch, where, thrown day after day in semi-helplessness on the kind attendance of Miss Paulina and the sweet society of her niece, he (I grieve to say) fell a ready prey to the suggestions of a certain wily personage who (according to Dr. Watts) finds employment for idle hands, and thus conceived the wickedness of cunningly using this accident to further his own personal ends. Thus devil-tempted, this hitherto upright young person resolved that it should be a long day before his sprained ankle should permit him to return to Brown's, and lose this precious opportunity of establishing himself in the good graces of the aunt, and winning the love of the niece.

Far from approving the crooked policy which led Roger Smith to feign lameness long after the injured ankle had become as sound as ever, the present historian can only, in view of this lapse from integrity, affirm with Widow Bedott that "we're poor creeturs!" and, with that depreciative view of humanity, go on with this truthful narrative.

A whole delicious month had been passed by the Harvard man in this paradise,—Elysian days, while, waited on by Sholto, petted by Miss Paulina, and companioned by the loveliest of houris, he dreamed out his dream.

At last, on a certain decisive evening, Roger Smith found himself alone in the gloaming with Louise Hemmenshaw. The aunt, who through all these weeks had zealously chaperoned her niece, had passed into the dining-room to evolve some chafing-dish delicacy for the evening meal. Without, the setting sun flooded all the west with gold, touched the distant mountain peaks with splendor, and threw a parting veil of glory over the wide mesa. Within, the firelight made dancing shadows on the parlor wall, where the pair sat together in that eloquent silence so dear to love. "Well," said the athlete to himself (compunctiously glancing at his superfluous crutches, left within easy reach of his hand), "this performance can't go on forever. I have made believe about long enough; what better may I do than own up this very night, and somehow bring this base deceit to an end."

Mentally rehearsing the formula, in which, over and over, he had asked the hand of this beautiful aristocrat, his mind still sorely misgave him. "Why," thought this depressed lover, "was not my name Winthrop, Endicott, or Sturgis, instead of Smith; and my grandfather a senator, a judge, or even a stockbroker, rather than a tanner?"

Neither Miss Paulina nor her brother, he discouragedly mused, would ever countenance this unequal match. His millions would with them weigh nothing against "the claims of long descent."

The sun had gone down, the after-glow had faded to gray. They were still alone. The firelight half revealed the lovely figure beside the hearth. In that gown of golden-brown velvet, with the creamy old lace at wrists and throat, the brown hair combed smoothly from the white forehead, knotted behind and fastened with a quaint arrow of Etruscan gold, Louise Hemmenshaw was simply adorable! It was indeed good to be here; and why should not a life so sweet and satisfying go on indefinitely?

"It is four weeks to-day since I fell down cellar,"—such was the commonplace beginning to this much considered tale of love.

"Really?" said the lady, looking innocently up from an absorbed contemplation of the fender. "It has not seemed so long. I never before realized what a serious thing it is to sprain one's ankle. You have been a most patient sufferer, Mr. Smith; and, indeed, for the past two weeks, a most jolly one. Aunt Paulina was saying to-day that it was high time we all went back to Alamo for our meals, and helped out the Koshare doings of the Club."

"Dear Miss Hemmenshaw," here blurted out the culprit, "do not despise me for my meanness, since it is all for love of you that I have been shamming lameness. For these last two weeks I could at any time have walked as well as ever." And, hereupon, without the slightest reference to his crutches, he rose from his chair and skipped over to her side. "A sprain," explained this audacious lover, "may be cured in a fortnight, but it takes a good month to woo and win a fair lady. Having soon after my accident decided that point, I have done my best. Tell me, dear Louise," pleaded he, "that my time has been well spent. Say that, deceitful ingrate though I am, you will take me, for good and all."

"Roger Smith," replied the lady, with much severity, "you have repaid the devoted care of two unsuspecting females by a whole fortnight of wilful duplicity. For my aunt I cannot answer; for myself, I can only reply,—since to err is human; to forgive, womanlike,—dear Roger, on the whole, I will."

Miss Paulina, a moment later entering the parlor, surprised her invalid guest, standing crutchless on his firm feet, with his arm thrown about the waist of her niece. "Well, well!" exclaimed the astonished lady, "and without his crutches!"

"Dear Miss Paulina," said Roger Smith with a happy laugh, "my ankle is as well as ever; and your niece has promised to marry me. Say that you will have me for your nephew."

"I seem already to have gotten you, my good sir, whether I will or no," laughed Miss Hemmenshaw. "But, my stars and garters" (mentally added she), "what ever will my brother say? A tanner's grandson coming into the family! and he a Hemmenshaw, and as proud as Lucifer!" "Never mind, Auntie dear," said the smiling fiancée, guessing her thoughts. It will be all right with father when he comes to know Roger; and besides, let us remember that under the 'Star Spangled Banner' we have our 'Vanderbilts,' our 'Goulds,' and our 'Rockefellers;' but no Vere de Veres. And if we had, why, Love laughs at heraldry, and is

"'Its own great loveliness alway.'"

"To-morrow," said Miss Paulina decisively, "we will all dine at Alamo Ranch."

CHAPTER VIII

Through this month of wooing and betrothing at Hilton Ranch, the Koshare, at Alamo, never once remitted its endeavor to hearten the despondent.

The weekly entertainments took their regular course, and were successfully carried on, and, in due time, the fortnightly club convened to listen to the Antiquary's account of "Montezuma and his Time."

And here the Koshare chronicle returns on its track to record that able paper.

"As a consistent Koshare," said Mr. Morehouse, to his eager listeners, "it behooves me to give—without that dry adherence to facts observed by the 'Gradgrind' historian—the charming melodramatic details of that romantic monarch's life and times afforded by the popular Munchausen-like data of the Spanish chroniclers, albeit they have in their entirety, all the fascination, and, sometimes, all the unbelievableness of a fairy tale.

"The Aztec government," prefaced the Antiquary, "was an elective monarchy, the choice always restricted to the royal family.

"The candidate usually preferred must have distinguished himself in war; though, if (as in the case of the last Montezuma) he was a member of the priesthood, the royal-born priest, no less than the warrior was, with the Aztec, available as an emperor.

"When the nobles by whom Montezuma the Second was made monarch went to inform the candidate of the result of the election, they are said to have found him sweeping the court of the temple to which he had dedicated himself. It is further asserted that when they led him to the palace to proclaim him king, he demurred, declaring himself unworthy the honor conferred on him. It is a humiliating proof of the weakness of human nature in face of temptation, to find that, later, this pious king so far forswore his humility as to pose before his subjects as a god; that five or six hundred nobles in waiting were ordered to attend daily at his morning toilet, only daring to appear before him with bared feet.

"It was not until, by a victorious campaign, he had obtained a sufficient number of captives to furnish victims for the bloody rites which Aztec superstition demanded to grace his inauguration, that—amidst that horrible pomp of human sacrifice which stained the civilization of his people—Montezuma was crowned.

"The Mexican crown of that day is described as resembling a mitre in form, and curiously ornamented with gold, gems, and feathers.

"The Aztec princes, especially towards the close of the dynasty, lived in a barbaric Oriental pomp, of which Montezuma was the most conspicuous example in the history of the nation.

"Elevation, like wine, seems to have gone to the head of the second Montezuma.

"An account of his domestic establishment reads like the veriest record of midsummer madness. Four hundred young nobles, we are told, waited on the royal table, setting the covers, in their turn, before the monarch, and immediately retiring, as even his courtiers might not see Montezuma eat. Having drunk from cups of gold and pearl, these costly goblets, together with the table utensils of the king, were distributed among his courtiers. Cortez tells us that so many dishes were prepared for each meal of this lordly epicure, that they filled a large hall; and that he had a harem of a thousand women. His clothes, which were changed four times a day (like his table service), were never used a second time, but were given as rewards of merit to nobles and soldiers who had distinguished themselves in war. If it happened that he had to walk, a carpet was spread along his way, lest his sacred feet should touch the ground. His subjects were required, on his approach, to stop and close their eyes, that they might not be dazzled by his effulgent majesty. His ostentatious humility gave place to an intolerable arrogance. He disgusted his subjects by his haughty deportment, exacting from them the most slavish homage, and alienating their affection by the imposition of the grievous taxes demanded by the lavish expenditure of his court.

"In his first years Montezuma's record was, in many respects, praiseworthy. He led his armies in person. The Aztec banners were carried far and wide, in the furthest province on the Gulf of Mexico, and the distant region of Nicaragua and Honduras. His expeditions were generally successful, and during his reign the limits of the empire were more widely extended than at any preceding period.

"To the interior concerns of his kingdom he gave much attention, reforming the courts of justice, and carefully watching over the execution of the laws, which he enforced with stern severity.

"Like the Arabian ruler,—Haroun Alraschid, of benign memory,—he patrolled the streets of his capital in disguise, to make personal acquaintance with the abuses in it. He liberally compensated all who served him. He displayed great munificence in public enterprise, constructing and embellishing the temples, bringing water into the capital by a new channel, and establishing a retreat for invalid soldiers in the city of Colhuacan.

"According to some writers of authority there were, in Montezuma's day, thirty great caciques, or nobles, who had their residence, at least a part of the year, in the capital.

"Each of these, it is asserted, could muster a hundred thousand vassals on his estate. It would seem that such wild statements should be 'taken with a pinch of salt.' All the same, it is clear, from the testimony of the conquerors, that the country was occupied by numerous powerful chieftains, who lived like independent princes on their domains. It is certain that there was a distinct class of nobles who held the most important offices near the person of their emperor.

"In Montezuma's time the Aztec religion reached its zenith. It is said to have had as exact and burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in any nation. 'One,' observes Prescott, 'is struck with its apparent incongruity, as if some portion had emanated from a comparatively refined people, open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a spirit of unmitigated ferocity; which naturally suggests the idea of two distinct sources, and authorizes the belief that the Aztecs had inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was afterwards engrafted their own mythology.' The Aztecs, like the idolaters to whom Paul preached, declaring the 'Unknown God' of their 'ignorant worship,' recognized a Supreme Creator and Lord of the Universe.

"In their prayers they thus addressed him: 'The God by whom we live, that knoweth all thoughts, and giveth all gifts;' but, as has been observed, 'from the vastness of this conception their untutored minds sought relief in a plurality of inferior deities,—ministers who executed the creator's purposes, each, in his turn, presiding over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various affairs of man.' Of these there were thirteen principal deities, and more than two hundred inferior; to each of whom some special day or appropriate festival was consecrated.

"Huitzilopotchli, a terrible and sanguinary monster, was the primal of these; the patron deity of the nation. The forms of the Mexican idols were quaint and eccentric, and were in the highest degree symbolical.

"The fantastic image of this god of the unpronounceable name was loaded with costly ornaments; his temples were the most stately and august of their public edifices, and in every city of the empire his altars reeked with the blood of human hecatombs.

"His name is compounded of two words, signifying 'humming-bird' and 'left;' from his image having the feathers of this bird on his left foot.

"Thus runs the tradition respecting this god's first appearance on earth: 'His mother, a devout person, one day, in her attendance on the temple, saw a ball of bright-colored feathers floating in the air. She took it and deposited it in her bosom, and, consequently, from her, the dread deity was in due time born.' He is fabled to have come into the world (like the Greek goddess, Minerva) armed cap-à-pie with spear and shield, and his head surmounted by a crest of green plumes.

"A far more admirable personage in their mythology was Quetzalcoatl, god of the air; his name signifies 'feathered serpent' and 'twin.' During his beneficent residence on earth he is said to have instructed the people in civil government, in the arts, and in agriculture. Under him it was that the earth brought forth flower and fruit without the fatigue of cultivation.

"Then it was that an ear of corn in two days became as much as a man could carry; and the cotton, as it grew beneath his fostering smile, took, of its own accord, the rich dyes of human art.

"In those halcyon days of Quetzalcoatl all the air was sweet with perfumes and musical with the singing of birds.

"Pursued by the wrath of a brother-god, from some mysterious cause unexplained by the fabler, this gracious deity was finally obliged to flee the country. On his way he is said to have stopped at Cholula, where the remains of a temple dedicated to his worship are still shown.

"On the shores of the Mexican Gulf Quetzalcoatl took leave of his followers, and promising that he and his descendants would revisit them hereafter, entered his 'Wizard Skiff,' and embarked on the great ocean for the fabled land of Tlapallan.

"The Mexicans looked confidently for the second coming of this benevolent deity, who is said to have been tall in stature, with a white skin, long, dark hair, and a flowing beard. Undoubtedly, this cherished tradition, as the chroniclers affirm, prepared the way for the reception of the Spanish conquerors.

"Long before the landing of the Spaniards in Mexico, rumors of the appearance of these men with fair complexions and flowing beards—so unlike their own physiognomy—had startled the superstitious Aztecs. The period for the return of Quetzalcoatl was now near at hand. The priestly oracles were consulted; they are said to have declared, after much deliberation, that the Spaniards, though not gods, were children of the Sun; that they derived their strength from that luminary, and were only vulnerable when his beams were withdrawn; and they recommended attacking them while buried in slumber. This childish advice, so contrary to Aztec military usage, was reluctantly followed by these credulous warriors, and resulted in the defeat and bloody slaughter of nearly the whole detachment.

"The conviction of the supernaturalism of the Spaniard is said to have gained ground by some uncommon natural occurrences, such as the accidental swell and overflow of a lake, the appearance of a comet, and conflagration of the great temple.

"We are told that Montezuma read in these prodigies special annunciations of Heaven that argued the speedy downfall of his empire.

"From this somewhat digressive account of the Aztec superstition, in regard to the 'second coming' of their beneficent tutelar divinity, which, as may be seen, played into the hands of Cortez, and furthered his hostile designs upon Mexico, let us return to the time in Aztec history when no usurping white man had set foot upon Montezuma's territory.

"We are told that this people, in their comparative ignorance of the material universe, sought relief from the oppressive idea of the endless duration of time by breaking it up into distinct cycles, each of several thousand years' duration. At the end of each of these periods, by the agency of one of the elements, the human family, as they held, was to be swept from the earth, and the sun blotted out from the heavens, to be again freshly rekindled. With later theologians, who have less excuse for the unlovely superstition, they held that the wicked were to expiate their sins everlastingly in a place of horrible darkness. It was the work of a (so-called) Christianity to add to the Aztec place of torment the torture of perpetual fire and brimstone. The Aztec heaven, like the Scandinavian Valhalla, was especially reserved for their heroes who fell in battle. To these privileged souls were added those slain in sacrifice. These fortunate elect of the Aztecs seem to have been destined for a time to a somewhat lively immortality, as they at once passed into the presence of the Sun, whom they accompanied with songs and choral dances in his bright progress through the heavens. After years of this stirring existence, these long-revolving spirits were kindly permitted to take breath; and thereafter it was theirs to animate the clouds, to reincarnate in singing birds of beautiful plumage, and to revel amidst the bloom and odors of the gardens of Paradise.

"Apart from this refined Elysium and a moderately comfortable hell, void of appliances for the torture of burning, the Aztecs had a third place of abode for immortals. Thither passed those 'o'er bad for blessing and o'er good for banning,' who had but the merit of dying of certain (capriciously selected) diseases. These commonplace spirits were fabled to enjoy a negative existence of indolent contentment. 'The Aztec priests,' says Prescott, 'in this imperfect stage of civilization, endeavored to dazzle the imagination of this ignorant people with superstitious awe, and thus obtained an influence over the popular mind beyond that which has probably existed in any other country, even in ancient Egypt.'