Kitabı oku: «The Scalp Hunters», sayfa 7

Chapter Seventeen.
Up the Del Norte

I will not distress you with a parting scene. We were in our saddles before the stars had died out, and riding along the sandy road.

At a short distance from the house the path angled, striking into thick, heavy timber. Here I checked my horse, allowing my companions to pass, and, standing in the stirrup, looked back. My eyes wandered along the old grey walls, and sought the azotea. Upon the very edge of the parapet, outlined against the pale light of the aurora, was the object I looked for. I could not distinguish the features, but I easily recognised the oval curvings of the figure, cut like a dark medallion against the sky.

She was standing near one of the yucca palm trees that grew up from the azotea. Her hand rested upon its trunk, and she bent forward, straining her gaze into the darkness below. Perhaps she saw the waving of a kerchief; perhaps she heard her name, and echoed the parting prayer that was sent back to her on the still breath of the morning. If so, her voice was drowned by the tread of my chafing horse, that, wheeling suddenly, bore me off into the sombre shadows of the forest.

I rode forward, turning at intervals to catch a glimpse of those lovely outlines, but from no other point was the house visible. It lay buried in the dark, majestic woods. I could only see the long bayonets of the picturesque palmillas; and our road now descending among hills, these too were soon hidden from my view.

Dropping the bridle, and leaving my horse to go at will, I fell into a train of thoughts at once pleasant and painful.

I knew that I had inspired this young creature with a passion deep and ardent as my own, perhaps more vital; for my heart had passed through other affections, while hers had never throbbed with any save the subdued solicitudes of a graceful childhood. She had never known emotion. Love was her first strong feeling, her first passion. Would it not, thus enthroned, reign over all other thoughts in her heart’s kingdom? She, too, so formed for love; so like its mythic goddess!

These reflections were pleasant. But the picture darkened as I turned from looking back for the last time, and something whispered me, some demon it was, “You may never see her more!”

The suggestion, even in this hypothetical form, was enough to fill my mind with dark forebodings, and I began to cast my thoughts upon the future. I was going upon no party of pleasure, from which I might return at a fixed hour. Dangers were before me, the dangers of the desert; and I knew that these were of no ordinary character. In our plans of the previous night, Seguin had not concealed the perils of our expedition. These he had detailed before exacting my final promise to accompany him. Weeks before, I would not have regarded them – they would only have lured me on to meet them; now my feelings were different, for I believed that in my life there was another’s. What, then, if the demon had whispered truly? I might never see her more! It was a painful thought; and I rode on, bent in the saddle, under the influence of its bitterness.

But I was once more upon the back of my favourite Moro, who seemed to “know his rider”; and as his elastic body heaved beneath me, my spirit answered his, and began to resume its wonted buoyancy.

After a while I took up the reins, and shortening them in my hands, spurred on after my companions. Our road lay up the river, crossing the shallow ford at intervals, and winding through the bottom-lands, that were heavily timbered. The path was difficult on account of the thick underwood; and although the trees had once been blazed for a road, there were no signs of late travel upon it, with the exception of a few solitary horse-tracks. The country appeared wild and uninhabited. This was evident from the frequency with which deer and antelope swept across our path, or sprang out of the underwood close to our horses’ heads. Here and there our path trended away from the river, crossing its numerous loops. Several times we passed large tracts where the heavy timber had been felled, and clearings had existed. But this must have been long ago, for the land that had been furrowed by the plough was now covered with tangled and almost impenetrable thickets. A few broken and decaying logs, or crumbling walls of the adobe were all that remained to attest where the settlers’ rancho had stood.

We passed a ruined church with its old turrets dropping by piecemeal. Piles of adobe lay around covering the ground for acres. A thriving village had stood there. Where was it now? Where were the busy gossips? A wild-cat sprang over the briar-laced walls, and made off into the forest. An owl flew sluggishly up from the crumbling cupola, and hovered around our heads, uttering its doleful “woo-hoo-a,” that rendered the desolation of the scene more impressive. As we rode through the ruin, a dead stillness surrounded us, broken only by the hooting of the night-bird, and the “cranch-cranch” of our horses’ feet upon the fragments of pottery that covered the deserted streets.

But where were they who had once made these walls echo with their voices? Who had knelt under the sacred shadow of that once hallowed pile? They were gone; but where? and when? and why?

I put these questions to Seguin, and was answered thus briefly —

“The Indians.”

The savage it was, with his red spear and scalping-knife, his bow and his battle-axe, his brand and his poisoned arrows.

“The Navajoes?” I inquired. “Navajo and Apache.”

“But do they come no more to this place?” A feeling of anxiety had suddenly entered my mind. I thought of our proximity to the mansion we had left. I thought of its unguarded walls. I waited with some impatience for an answer.

“No more,” was the brief reply. “And why?” I inquired.

“This is our territory,” he answered, significantly. “You are now, monsieur, in a country where live strange fellows; you shall see. Woe to the Apache or Navajo who may stray into these woods!”

As we rode forward, the country became more open, and we caught a glimpse of high bluffs trending north and south on both sides of the river. These bluffs converged till the river channel appeared to be completely barred up by a mountain. This was only an appearance. On riding farther, we found ourselves entering one of those fearful gaps, cañons, as they are called, so often met with in the table-lands of tropical America.

Through this the river foamed between two vast cliffs, a thousand feet in height, whose profiles, as you approached them, suggested the idea of angry giants, separated by some almighty hand, and thus left frowning at each other. It was with a feeling of awe that one looked up the face of these stupendous cliffs, and I felt a shuddering sensation as I neared the mighty gate between them.

“Do you see that point?” asked Seguin, indicating a rock that jutted out from the highest ledge of the chasm. I signified in the affirmative, for the question was addressed to myself.

“That is the leap you were so desirous of taking. We found you dangling against yonder rock.”

“Good God!” I ejaculated, as my eyes rested upon the dizzy eminence. My brain grew giddy as I sat in my saddle gazing upward, and I was fain to ride onward.

“But for your noble horse,” continued my companion, “the doctor here would have been stopping about this time to hypothecate upon your bones. Ho, Moro! beautiful Moro!”

“Oh, mein Gott! Ya, ya!” assented the botanist, looking up against the precipice, apparently with a feeling of awe such as I felt myself.

Seguin had ridden alongside me, and was patting my horse on the neck with expressions of admiration.

“But why?” I asked, the remembrance of our first interview now occurring to me, “why were you so eager to possess him?”

“A fancy.”

“Can I not understand it? I think you said then that I could not?”

“Oh, yes! Quite easily, monsieur. I intended to steal my own daughter, and I wanted, for that purpose, to have the aid of your horse.”

“But how?”

“It was before I had heard the news of this intended expedition of our enemy. As I had no hopes of obtaining her otherwise, it was my design to have entered their country alone, or with a tried comrade, and by stratagem to have carried her off. Their horses are swift, yet far inferior to the Arab, as you may have an opportunity of seeing. With such an animal as that, I would have been comparatively safe, unless hemmed in or surrounded, and even then I might have got off with a few scratches, I intended to have disguised myself, and entered the town as one of their own warriors. I have long been master of their language.”

“It would have been a perilous enterprise.”

“True! It was a dernier ressort, and only adopted because all other efforts had failed; after years of yearning, deep craving of the heart. I might have perished. It was a rash thought, but I, at that time, entertained it fully.”

“I hope we shall succeed now.”

“I have high hopes. It seems as if some overruling providence were now acting in my favour. This absence of her captors; and, besides, my band has been most opportunely strengthened by the arrival of a number of trappers from the eastern plains. The beaver-skins have fallen, according to their phraseology, to a ‘plew a plug,’ and they find ‘red-skin’ pays better. Ah! I hope this will soon be over.”

And he sighed deeply as he uttered the last words.

We were now at the entrance of the gorge, and a shady clump of cotton-woods invited us to rest.

“Let us noon here,” said Seguin.

We dismounted, and ran our animals out on their trail-ropes to feed. Then seating ourselves on the soft grass, we drew forth the viands that had been prepared for our journey.

Chapter Eighteen.
Geography and Geology

We rested above an hour in the cool shade, while our horses refreshed themselves on the “grama” that grew luxuriantly around. We conversed about the singular region in which we were travelling; singular in its geography, its geology, its botany, and its history; singular in all respects.

I am a traveller, as I might say, by profession. I felt an interest in learning something of the wild countries that stretched for hundreds of miles around us; and I knew there was no man living so capable of being my informant as he with whom I then conversed.

My journey down the river had made me but little acquainted with its features. At that time, as I have already related, there was fever upon me; and my memory of objects was as though I had encountered them in some distorted dream.

My brain was now clear; and the scenes through which we were passing – here soft and south-like, there wild, barren, and picturesque – forcibly impressed my imagination.

The knowledge, too, that parts of this region had once been inhabited by the followers of Cortez, as many a ruin testified; that it had been surrendered back to its ancient and savage lords, and the inference that this surrender had been brought about by the enactment of many a tragic scene, induced a train of romantic thought, which yearned for gratification in an acquaintance with the realities that gave rise to it.

Seguin was communicative. His spirits were high. His hopes were buoyant. The prospect of again embracing his long-lost child imbued him, as it were, with new life. He had not, he said, felt so happy for many years.

“It is true,” said he, in answer to a question I had put, “there is little known of this whole region, beyond the boundaries of the Mexican settlements. They who once had the opportunity of recording its geographical features have left the task undone. They were too busy in the search for gold; and their weak descendants, as you see, are too busy in robbing one another to care for aught else. They know nothing of the country beyond their own borders; and these are every day contracting upon them. All they know of it is the fact that thence come their enemies, whom they dread, as children do ghosts or wolves.”

“We are now,” continued Seguin, “near the centre of the continent, in the very heart of the American Sahara.”

“But,” said I, interrupting him, “we cannot be more than a day’s ride south of New Mexico. That is not a desert; it is a cultivated country.”

“New Mexico is an oasis, nothing more. The desert is around it for hundreds of miles; nay, in some directions you may travel a thousand miles from the Del Norte without seeing one fertile spot. New Mexico is an oasis which owes its existence to the irrigating waters of the Del Norte. It is the only settlement of white men from the frontiers of the Mississippi to the shores of the Pacific in California. You approached it by a desert, did you not?”

“Yes; as we ascended from the Mississippi towards the Rocky Mountains the country became gradually more sterile. For the last three hundred miles or so we could scarcely find grass or water for the sustenance of our animals. But is it thus north and south of the route we travelled?”

“North and south for more than a thousand miles, from the plains of Texas to the lakes of Canada, along the whole base of the Rocky Mountains, and half-way to the settlements on the Mississippi, it is a treeless, herbless land.”

“To the west of the mountains?”

“Fifteen hundred miles of desert; that is its length, by at least half as many miles of breadth. The country to the west is of a different character. It is more broken in its outlines, more mountainous, and if possible more sterile in its aspect. The volcanic fires have been more active there; and though that may have been thousands of years ago, the igneous rocks in many places look as if freshly upheaved. No vegetation, no climatic action has sensibly changed the hues of the lava and scoriae that in some places cover the plains for miles. I say no climatic action, for there is but little of that in this central region.”

“I do not understand you.”

“What I mean is, that there is but little atmospheric change. It is but one uniform drought; it is seldom tempestuous or rainy. I know some districts where a drop of rain has not fallen for years.”

“And can you account for that phenomenon?”

“I have my theory. It may not satisfy the learned meteorologist, but I will offer it to you.”

I listened with attention, for I knew that my companion was a man of science, as of experience and observation, and subjects of the character of those about which we conversed had always possessed great interest for me. He continued —

“There can be no rain without vapour in the air. There can be no vapour in the air without water on the earth below to produce it. Here there is no great body of water.

“Nor can there be. The whole region of the desert is upheaved – an elevated table-land. We are now nearly six thousand feet above sea level. Hence its springs are few; and by hydraulic law must be fed by its own waters, or those of some region still more elevated, which does not exist on the continent.

“Could I create vast seas in this region, walled in by the lofty mountains that traverse it – and such seas existed coeval with its formation; could I create those seas without giving them an outlet, not even allowing the smallest rill to drain them, in process of time they would empty themselves into the ocean, and leave everything as it now is, a desert.”

“But how? by evaporation?”

“On the contrary, the absence of evaporation would be the cause of their drainage. I believe it has been so already.”

“I cannot understand that.”

“It is simply thus: this region possesses, as we have said, great elevation; consequently a cool atmosphere, and a much less evaporating power than that which draws up the water of the ocean. Now, there would be an interchange of vapour between the ocean and these elevated seas, by means of winds and currents; for it is only by that means that any water can reach this interior plateau. That interchange would result in favour of the inland seas, by reason of their less evaporation, as well as from other causes. We have not time, or I could demonstrate such a result. I beg you will admit it, then, and reason it out at your leisure.”

“I perceive the truth; I perceive it at once.”

“What follows, then? These seas would gradually fill up to overflowing. The first little rivulet that trickled forth from their lipping fulness would be the signal of their destruction. It would cut its channel over the ridge of the lofty mountain, tiny at first, but deepening and widening with each successive shower, until, after many years – ages, centuries, cycles perhaps – a great gap such as this,” (here Seguin pointed to the cañon), “and the dry plain behind it, would alone exist to puzzle the geologist.”

“And you think that the plains lying among the Andes and the Rocky Mountains are the dry beds of seas?”

“I doubt it not; seas formed after the upheaval of the ridges that barred them in, formed by rains from the ocean, at first shallow, then deepening, until they had risen to the level of their mountain barriers; and, as I have described, cut their way back again to the ocean.”

“But does not one of these seas still exist?”

“The Great Salt Lake? It does. It lies north-west of us. Not only one, but a system of lakes, springs, and rivers, both salt and fresh; and these have no outlet to the ocean. They are barred in by highlands and mountains, of themselves forming a complete geographical system.”

“Does not that destroy your theory?”

“No. The basin in which this phenomenon exists is on a lower level than most of the desert plateaux. Its evaporating power is equal to the influx of its own rivers, and consequently neutralises their effect; that is to say, in its exchange of vapour with the ocean, it gives as much as it receives. This arises, not so much from its low elevation as from the peculiar dip of the mountains that guide the waters into its bosom. Place it in a colder position, ceteris paribus, and in time it would cut the canal for its own drainage. So with the Caspian Sea, the Aral, and the Dead Sea. No, my friend, the existence of the Salt Lake supports my theory. Around its shores lies a fertile country, fertile from the quick returns of its own waters moistening it with rain. It exists only to a limited extent, and cannot influence the whole region of the desert, which lies parched and sterile, on account of its great distance from the ocean.”

“But does not the vapour rising from the ocean float over the desert?”

“It does, as I have said, to some extent, else there would be no rain here. Sometimes by extraordinary causes, such as high winds, it is carried into the heart of the continent in large masses. Then we have storms, and fearful ones too. But, generally, it is only the skirt of a cloud, so to speak, that reaches thus far; and that, combined with the proper evaporation of the region itself, that is, from its own springs and rivers, yields all the rain that falls upon it. Great bodies of vapour, rising from the Pacific and drifting eastward, first impinge upon the coast range, and there deposit their waters; or perhaps they are more highly-heated, and soaring above the tops of these mountains, travel farther. They will be intercepted a hundred miles farther on by the loftier ridges of the Sierra Nevada, and carried back, as it were, captive, to the ocean by the streams of the Sacramento and San Joaquim. It is only the skirt of these clouds, as I have termed it, that, soaring still higher, and escaping the attractive influence of the Nevada, floats on, and falls into the desert region. What then? No sooner has it fallen than it hurries back to the sea by the Gila and Colorado, to rise again and fertilise the slopes of the Nevada; while the fragment of some other cloud drifts its scanty supply over the arid uplands of the interior, to be spent in rain or snow upon the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Hence the source of the rivers running east and west, and hence the oases, such as the parks that lie among these mountains. Hence the fertile valleys upon the Del Norte, and other streams that thinly meander through this central land.

“Vapour-clouds from the Atlantic undergo a similar detention in crossing the Alleghany range; or, cooling, after having circled a great distance round the globe, descend into the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi. From all sides of this great continent, as you approach its centre, fertility declines, and only from the want of water. The soil in many places where there is scarcely a blade of grass to be seen, possesses all the elements of vegetation. So the doctor will tell you; he has analysed it.”

“Ya, ya! dat ish true,” quietly affirmed the doctor.

“There are many oases,” continued Seguin; “and where water can be used to irrigate the soil, luxuriant vegetation is the consequence. You have observed this, no doubt, in travelling down the river; and such was the case in the old Spanish settlements on the Gila.”

“But why were these abandoned?” I inquired, never having heard any reason assigned for the desertion of these once flourishing colonies.

“Why!” echoed Seguin, with a peculiar energy; “why! Unless some other race than the Iberian take possession of these lands, the Apache, the Navajo, and the Comanche, the conquered of Cortez and his conquerors, will yet drive the descendants of those very conquerors from the soil of Mexico. Look at Sonora and Chihuahua, half-depopulated! Look at New Mexico; its citizens living by suffrance: living, as it were, to till the land and feed the flocks for the support of their own enemies, who levy their blackmail by the year! But, come; the sun tells us we must on. Come!

“Mount! we can go through,” continued he. “There has been no rain lately, and the water is low, otherwise we should have fifteen miles of a ride over the mountain yonder. Keep close to the rocks! Follow me!”

And with this admonition he entered the cañon, followed by myself, Gode, and the doctor.