Part 10 (1/2)
”So that's what we've come out for to see, is it?” he mused, aloud.
”That's the precious old town that we've dodged Indians, and shot rattlesnakes, and sunburnt our noses, and rain-soaked our dress suits for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cus.h.i.+ony cactus and tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless pit. Humph! That's what you call Santa Fe! 'The city of the Holy Faith!'
Well, I need a darned lot of 'holy faith' to make me see any city there.
It's just a bunch of old yellow brick-kilns to me, and I 'most wish now I'd stayed back at Independence and hunted dog-tooth violets along the Big Blue.”
”It's not Boston, if that's what you were looking for; at least there's no Bunker Hill Monument nor Back Bay anywhere in sight. But I reckon it's the best they've got. I'm tired enough to take what's offered and keep still,” Bill Banney declared.
I, too, wanted to keep still. I had only a faint memory of a real city.
It must have been St. Louis, for there was a wharf, and a steamboat and a busy street, and soft voices--speaking a foreign tongue. But the pictures I had seen, and the talk I had heard, coupled with a little boy's keen imagination, had built up a very different Santa Fe in my mind. At that moment I was homesick for Fort Leavenworth, through and through homesick, for the first time since that April day when I had sat on the bluff above the Missouri River while the vision of the plains descended upon me. Everything seemed so different to-night, as if a gulf had widened between us and all the nights behind us.
We went into camp on the ridge, with the journey's goal in plain view.
And as we sat down together about the fire after supper we forgot the hards.h.i.+ps of the way over which we had come. The pine logs blazed cheerily, and as the air grew chill we drew nearer together about them as about a home fireside.
The long June twilight fell upon the landscape. The pinon and scrubby cedars turned to dark blotches on the slopes. The valley swam in a purple mist. The silence of evening was broken only by a faint bird-note in the bushes, and the fainter call of some wild thing stealing forth at nightfall from its daytime retreat. Behind us the mesas and headlands loomed up black and sullen, but far before us the Sangre-de-Christo Mountains lifted their glorified crests, with the sun's last radiance bathing them in crimson floods.
We sat in silence for a long time, for n.o.body cared to talk. Presently we heard Aunty Boone's low, penetrating voice inside the wagon corral:
”You pore gob of ugliness! Yo' done yo' best, and it's green corn and plenty of watah and all this grizzly-gray gra.s.s you can stuff in now.
It's good for a mule to start right, same as a man. Whoo-ee!”
The low voice trailed off into weird little whoops of approval. Then the woman wandered away to the edge of the bluff and sat until late that night, looking out at the strange, entrancing New Mexican landscape.
”To-morrow we put on our best clothes and enter the city,” my uncle broke the silence. ”We have managed to pull through so far, and we intend to keep on pulling till we unload back at Independence again.
But these are unsafe times and we are in an unsafe country. We are going to do business and get out of it again as soon as possible. I shall ask you all to be ready to leave at a minute's notice, if you are coming back with me!”
”Now you see why I didn't join the army, don't you, Krane?” Bill Banney said, aside. ”I wanted to work under a real general.”
Then turning to my uncle, he added:
”I'm already contracted for the round trip, Clarenden.”
”You are going to start back just as if there were no dangers to be met?” Rex Krane inquired.
”As if there were dangers to be _met_, not run from,” Esmond Clarenden replied.
”Clarenden,” the young Bostonian began, ”you got away from that drunken mob at Independence with your children, your mules, and your big Daniel Boone. You started out when war was ragin' on the Mexican frontier, and never stopped a minute because you had to come it alone from Council Grove. You shook yourself and family right through the teeth of that Mexican gang layin' for you back there. You took Little Trailing Arbutus at p.a.w.nee Rock out of pure sympathy when you knew it meant a fight at sun-up, six against fifty. And there would have been a b.l.o.o.d.y one, too, but for that merciful West India hurricane bustin' up the show. You pulled us up the Arkansas River, and straddled the Gloriettas, with every danger that could ever be just whistlin' about our ears. And now you sit there and murmur softly that 'we are in an unsafe country and these are unsafe times,' so we'd better be toddlin' back home right soon. I want to tell _you_ something now.”
He paused and looked at Mat Nivers. Always he looked at Mat Nivers, who since the first blush one noonday long ago, so it seemed, now, never appeared to know or care where he looked. He must have had such a sister himself; I felt sure of that now.
”I want to tell _you_,” Rex repeated, ”that I'm goin' to stay with you.
There's something _safe_ about you. And then,” he added, carelessly, as he gazed out toward the darkening plain below us, ”my mother always said you could tie to a man who was good to children. And you've been good to this infant Kentuckian here.”
He flung out a hand toward Bill Banney without looking away from the open West. ”When you want to start back to G.o.d's country and the land of Plymouth Rocks and p.a.w.nee Rocks, I'm ready to trot along.”
”I'm glad to hear you say that, Krane,” Esmond Clarenden said. ”I shall need all the help I can get on the way back. Because we got through safely we cannot necessarily count on a safe return. I may need you in Santa Fe, too.”
”Then command me,” Rex replied.