XVI
FINISHING TOUCHES
"Yet there be certain times in a young man's life when through
great sorrow or sin all the boy in him is burnt and seared away
so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of
manhood."
--KIPLING.
The heat of midday was tempered by a light breeze up the San
Christobal Valley, and there was not a single cloud in the June
skies to throw a softening shadow on the yellow plain. A little
group of Mexicans, riding northward with sullen faces, urged on
their jaded ponies viciously as they thought of the gold that was
to have been paid them for this morning's work, and of the gold
that to-morrow night must go to pay the priest who should shrive
them; and they had nothing gained wherewith to pay. Their leader,
whom they had served, had been trapped in his own game, and they
felt themselves abused and deceived.
Down by the brown sands of the river Father Josef waited at the
door of the half-ruined little stone chapel for the strange group
coming slowly toward him: Ferdinand Ramero, riding like a
captured but unconquered king, his head erect, his flashing eyes
seeing nobody; Jondo who could make the shabbiest piece of
horseflesh take on grace when he mounted it, his tanned cheek
flushed, and the spirit of supreme sacrifice looking out through
his dark-blue eyes; Eloise, drooping like a white flower, but
brave of spirit now, sure that her grief and anxiety would be
lifted somehow. I rode beside her, glad to catch the faint smile
in her eyes when she looked at me. And last of all, Rex Krane,
with the same old Yankee spirit, quick to help a fellow-man and
oblivious to personal danger. So we all came to the chapel, but
at the door Rex wheeled and rode away, muttering, as he passed
me:
"I've got business to look after, and not a darned thing to
confess."
And Beverly! He was not with us.
When Rex Krane told his bride good-by up in the Clarenden home on
the Missouri bluff, Mat had whispered one last request:
"Look after Bev. He never sees danger for himself, nor takes
anything seriously, least of all an enemy, whom he will befriend,
and make a joke of it."
And so it happened that Rex had stayed behind to care for
Beverly's arrow wound when Bill Banney had gone out with Jondo on
the Kiowa trail to search for me this side of Pawnee Rock.
So also it happened that Rex had strolled down from Fort Marcy
the night before, in time to see Beverly and the girl in the
Mexican dress loitering along the brown front of La Garita. And
his keen eyes had caught sight of Santan crouching in an angle of
the wall, watching them.
"Indians and Mexes don't mix a lot. And Bev oughtn't mix with
either one," Rex commented. "I'll line the boy up for review
to-morrow, so Mat won't say I've neglected him."
But the Yankee took the precaution to follow the trail to the
Indian's possible abiding-place on the outskirts of Santa
Fé. And it was Rex who most aided Jondo in finding that
the Indian had gone with Ramero's men northward.
"That fellow is Santan, of Fort Bent, Rex," Jondo said.
"Yes, you thought he was Santa and I took him for
Satan then. We missed out on which to knock out of him.
Bev won't care nothin' about his name. He will knock hell out of
him if he gets in that Clarenden boy's way," Rex had replied.
At the chapel door now the Yankee turned away and rode down the
trail toward the little angle where an Indian arrow had whizzed
at our party an hour before.
In the shadow of a fallen mass of rock below the cliff Little
Blue Flower had spread her blanket, with Beverly's coat tucked
under it in a roll for a pillow, and now she sat beside the dying
nun, holding the crucifix to Sister Anita's lips. The Indian
girl's hands were blood-stained and the nun's black veil and gown
were disheveled, and her white head-dress and coif were soaked
with gore. But her white face was full of peace as the light
faded from her eyes.
And Beverly! The boy forgot the rest of the world when one of the
Apache's arrows struck down the pony and the other pierced Sister
Anita's neck. Tenderly as a mother would lift a babe he quickly
carried the stricken woman to the shelter of the rock, and with
one glance at her he turned away.
"You can do all that she needs done for her. Give her her cross
to hold," he said, gently, to Little Blue Flower.
Then he sprang up and dashed across the river, splashing the
bright waters as he leaped to the farther side where Santan stood
concealed, waiting for the return of Ramero's Mexicans.
At the sound of Beverly's feet he leaped to the open just in time
to meet Beverly's fist square between the eyes.
"Take that, you dirty dog, to shoot down an innocent nun. And
that!" Beverly followed his first blow with another.
The Apache, who had reeled back with the weight of the boy's iron
fist, was too quick for the second thrust, struggling to get hold
of his arrows and his scalping-knife. But the space was too
narrow and Beverly was upon him with a shout.
"I told you I'd make a sieve or you the next time you tried to
see me, and I'm going to do it."
He seized the Indian's knife and flung it clear into the river,
where it stuck upright in the sands of the bed, parting the
little stream of water gurgling against it; and with a powerful
grip on the Apache's shoulders he wrenched the arrows from their
place and tramped on them with his heavy boot.
The Indian's surprise and submission were gone in a flash, and
the two clinched in combat.
On the one hand, jealousy, the inherited hatred of a mistreated
race, the savage instinct, a gloating joy in brute strife,
blood-lust, and a dogged will to trample in the dirt the man who
made the sun shine black for the Apache. On the other hand, a mad
rage, a sense of insult, a righteous greed for vengeance for a
cruel deed against an innocent woman, and all the superiority of
a dominant people. The one would conquer a powerful enemy, the
other would exterminate a despicable and dangerous pest.
Back and forth across the narrow space hidden from the trail by
fallen rock they threshed like beasts of prey. The Apache had the
swiftness of the snake, his muscles were like steel springs, and
there was no rule of honorable warfare in his code. He bit and
clawed and pinched and scratched and choked and wrenched, with
the grim face and burning eyes of a murderer. But the Saxon
youth, slower of motion, heavier of bone and muscle, with a grip
like iron and a stony endurance, with pride in a conquest by
sheer clean skill, and with a purpose, not to take life, but to
humble and avenge, hammered back blow for blow; and there was
nothing for many minutes to show which was offensive and which
defensive.
As the struggle raged on, the one grew more furious and the other
more self-confident.
"Oh, I'll make you eat dust yet!" Beverly cried, as Santan in
triumph flung him backward and sprang upon his prostrate
form.
They clinched again, and with a mighty surge of strength my
cousin lifted himself, and the Indian with him, and in the next
fall Beverly had his antagonist gripped and helpless.
"I can choke you out now as easy as you shot that arrow. Say your
prayers." He fairly growled out the words.
"I didn't aim at her," the Apache half whined, half boasted. "I
wanted you."
At that moment Beverly, spent, bruised, and bleeding with
fighting and surcharged with the lust of combat, felt all the
instinct of murder urging him on to utterly destroy a
poison-fanged foe to humanity. At Santan's words he paused and,
flinging back the hair from his forehead, he caught his breath
and his better self in the same heart-beat. And the instinct of
the gentleman--he was Esmond Clarenden's brother's son--held the
destroying hand.
"You aimed at me! Well, learn your lesson on that right now.
Promise never to play the fool that way again. Promise the
everlasting God's truth, or here you go."
The boy's clutch tightened on Santan's throat. "By all that's
holy, you'll go to your happy hunting-ground right now, unless
you do!" He growled out the words, and his blazing eyes
glared threateningly at his fallen enemy.
"I promise!" Santan muttered, gasping for breath.
"You didn't mean to kill the nun? Then you'll go with me and ask
her to forgive you before she dies. You will. You needn't try to
get away from me. I let you thrash your strength out before we
came to this settlement. Be still!" Beverly commanded, as Santan
made a mad effort to release himself.
"Hurry up, and remember she is dying. Go softly and speak gently,
or by the God of heaven, you'll go with her to the Judgment Seat
to answer for that deed right now!"
Slowly the two rose. Their clothes were torn, their hair
disheveled, the ground at their feet was red with their blood.
They were as bitter, as distrustful now as when their struggle
began. For brute force never conquers anything. It can only hold
in check by fear of its power to destroy the body. Above the iron
fist of the fighter, and the sword and cannon of the soldier,
stands the risen Christ who carried his own cross up Mount
Calvary--and "there they crucified him."
The two young men, spent with their struggle, their faces stained
with dirt and bloody sweat, crossed the river and sought the
shadowy place where Little Blue Flower sat beside Sister Anita.
Twice Santan tried to escape, and twice Beverly brought him
quickly to his place. It must have been here that I caught sight
of them from the rock above.
"One more move like that and the ghost of Sister Anita will walk
behind you on every trail you follow as long as your flat feet
hit the earth," Beverly declared.
"All Indians are afraid of ghosts and I was just too tired to
fight any more," he said to me afterward when he told me the
story of that hour by the San Christobal River.
Sister Anita lay with wide-open eyes, her hands moving feebly as
she clutched at her crucifix. Her hour was almost spent.
Santan stood motionless before her, as Beverly with a grip on his
arm said, firmly:
"Tell her you did not aim at her, and ask her to forgive you. It
will help to save your own soul sometime, maybe."
Santan looked at Little Blue Flower. But she gave no heed to him
as she put the dropped crucifix into the weakening fingers.
Murder, as such, is as horrifying to the gentle Hopi tribe as it
is sport for the cruel Apache.
Beverly loosed his hold now.
"I did not want to hurt you. Forgive me!" Santan said, slowly, as
though each word were plucked from him by red-hot pincers.
Sister Anita heard and turned her eyes.
"Kneel down and tell her again," Beverly said, more gently.
The Apache dropped on his knees beside the dying woman and
repeated his words. Sister Anita smiled sweetly.
"Heaven will forgive you even as I do," she murmured, and closed
her eyes.
"Go softly. This is sacred ground," my cousin said.
The Indian rose and passed silently down the trail, leaving
Little Blue Flower and Beverly Clarenden together with the dead.
At the stream he paused and pulled his knife from the sands
beneath the trickling waters, and then went on his way.
But an Indian never forgets.
Rex Krane, who had hurried hither from the chapel, closed the
eyes and folded the thin hands of the martyred woman, and sent
Beverly forward for help to dispose of the garment of clay that
had been Sister Anita. From that day something manly and serious
came into Beverly Clarenden's face to stay, but his sense of
humor and his fearlessness were unchanged.
That was a solemn hour in the shadow of the rock down in that
yellow valley, but beautiful in its forgiving triumph. We who had
gathered in the dimly lighted chapel had an hour more solemn for
that it was made up of such dramatic minutes as change the trend
of life-trails for all the years to come.
The chapel was very old. They tell me that only a broken portion
of the circular wall about the altar stands there to-day, a
lonely monument to some holy padre's faith and courage and
sacrifice in the forgotten years when, in far Hesperia, men
dreamed of a Quivera and found only a Calvary.
It may be that I, Gail Clarenden, was also changed as I listened
to the deliberations of that day; that something of youth gave
place for the stronger manhood that should stay me through the
years that came after.
Eloise sat where I could see her face. The pink bloom had come
back to it, and the golden hair, disordered by our wild ride and
rough climb among the pictured rocks of the cliff, curled
carelessly on her white brow and rippled about her shapely head.
I used to wonder what setting fitted her beauty best--why wonder
that about any beautiful woman?--but the gracious loveliness of
this woman was never more appealing to me than in the soft light
and sacred atmosphere of the church.
Father Josef's first thought was for her, but he brought water
and coarse linen towels, so that, refreshed and clean-faced, we
came in to his presence.
"Eloise," his voice was deep and sweet, "so long as you were a
child I tried to protect and direct you. Now that you are a
woman, you must still be protected, but you must live your own
life and choose for yourself. You must meet sorrow and not be
crushed by it. You must take up your cross and bear it. It is for
this that I have called you back to New Mexico at this time. But
remember, my daughter, that life is not given to us for defeat,
but for victory; not for tears, but for smiles; not for idle
cringing safety, but for brave and joyous struggle."
I thought of Dick Verra, the college man, whose own young years
were full of hope and ambition, whose love for a woman had
brought him to the priesthood, but as I caught the rich tones of
Father Josef's voice, somehow, to me, he stood for success, not
failure.
Eloise bowed her head and listened.
"You must no longer be threatened with the loss of your own
heritage, nor coerced into a marriage for which the Church has
been offered a bribe to help to accomplish. Blood money purifies
no altars nor extends the limits of the Kingdom of the Christ.
Your property is your own to use for the holy purposes of a
goodly life wherever your days may lead you; and whatever the
civil law may grant of power to control it for you, you shall no
longer be harassed or annoyed. The Church demands that it shall
henceforth be yours."
Father Josef's dark eyes were full of fire as he turned to
Ferdinand Ramero.
"You will now relinquish all claim upon the control of this
estate, whose revenue made your father and yourself to be
accounted rich, and upon which your son has been allowed to build
up a life expectation; and though on account of it, you go forth
a poor man in wordly goods, you may go out rich in the blessing
of restoration and repentance."
Ferdinand Ramero's steel eyes were fixed like the eyes of a snake
on the holy man's face. Restoration and repentance do not belong
behind eyes like that.
"I can fight you in the courts. You and your Church may go to the
devil;" he seemed to hiss rather than to speak these words.
"We do go to him every day to bring back souls like yours,"
Father Josef's voice was calm. "I have waited a long time for you
to repent. You can go to the courts, but you will not do it. For
the sake of your wife, Gloria Ramero, and Felix Narveo, her
brother, we do not move against you, and you dare not move for
yourself, because your own record will not bear the light of
legal investigation."
Ferdinand Ramero sprang up, the blaze of passion, uncontrolled
through all his years, bursting forth in the tragedy of the hour.
Eloise was right. In his anger he was a maniac.
"You dare to threaten me! You pen me in a corner to stab me to
death! You hold disgrace and miserable poverty over my head, and
cant of restoration and repentance! Not until here you name each
thing that you count against me, and I have met them point by
point, will I restore. I never will repent!"
In the vehemence of anger, Ramero was the embodiment of the
dramatic force of unrestraint, and withal he was handsome, with a
controlling magnetism even in his hour of downfall.
Jondo had said that Father Josef had somewhere back a strain of
Indian blood in his veins. It must have been this that gave the
fiber of self control to his countenance as he looked with
pitying eyes at Jondo and Eloise St. Vrain.
"The hour is struck," he said, sadly. "And you shall hear your
record, point by point, because you ask it now. First: you have
retained, controlled, misused, and at last embezzled the fortune
of Theron St. Vrain, as it was retained, controlled, misused, and
embezzled by your father, Henry Ramer, in his lifetime. Any case
in civil courts must show how the heritage of Eloise St. Vrain,
heir to Theron St. Vrain at the death of her mother--"
"Not until the death of her mother--" Ferdinand Ramero broke in,
hoarsely.
For the first time to-day the priest's cheek paled, but his voice
was unbroken as he continued:
"I would have been kinder for your own sake. You desire
otherwise. Yes, only after the death of Mary Marchland St. Vrain
could you dictate concerning her daughter's affairs, with most
questionable legality even then. Mary Marchland St. Vrain is not
dead."
The chapel was as silent as the grave. My heart stood still.
Before me was Jondo, big, strong, self-controlled, inured to the
tragic deeds of the epic years of the West. No pen of mine will
ever make the picture of Jondo's face at these words of Father
Josef.
Eloise turned deathly pale, and her dark eyes opened wide, seeing
nothing. It was not I who comforted her, but Jondo, who put his
strong arm about her, and she leaned against his shoulder. Father
and daughter in spirit, stricken to the heart.
"For many years she has lived in that lonely ranch-house on the
Narveo grant in the little cañon up the San Christobal
Arroyo. When the fever left her with memory darkened forever, you
recorded her as dead. But your wife, Gloria Ramero, spared no
pains to make her comfortable. She has never known a want, nor
lived through one unhappy hour, because she has forgotten."
"A priest, confessor for men's inmost souls, who babbles all he
knows! I wonder that this roof does not fall on you and strike
you dead before this altar." Ferdinand Ramero's voice rose to a
shout.
"It was too strongly built by one who knew men's inmost souls,
and what they needed most," Father Josef replied. "You drove me
to this by your insistence. I would have shielded you--and
these."
He turned to Eloise and Jondo as he spoke.
"One more point, since you hold it ready to spring when I am
through. You stand accused of plotting for your father's murder.
The evidence still holds, and some men who rode with you to-day
to seize this gentle girl and drag her back to a marriage with
your son--and save your ill-gotten gold thereby--some of these
men who will confess to me and do penance to-morrow night, are
the same men who long ago confessed to other crimes--you can
guess what they were.
"It pays well to repent before such a holy tattler as yourself."
Ramero's blue eyes burned deep as their fire was centered on the
priest.
"These are the counts against you," Father Josef said in review,
ignoring the last outburst of wrath. "A life of ease and
inheritance through money not your own, nor even rightly yours to
control. A stricken woman listed with the dead, whose memory
might have come again--God knows--if but the loving touch of
childish hands had long ago been on her hands. It is years too
late for all that now. A brave young ward rescued from your
direct control by Esmond Clarenden's force of will and daring to
do the right. You know that last pleading cry of Mary
Marchland's, for Jondo to protect her child, and how Clarenden,
for love of this brave man, came to New Mexico on perilous trails
to take the little Eloise from you. And lastly in this matter,
the threats to force a marriage unholy in God's sight, because no
love could go with it. Your mad chase and villainous intention to
use brute force to secure your will out yonder on the rocks above
the cliff. You have debauched an Apache boy, making him your tool
and spy. You sanctioned the seizing of a Hopi girl whose parents
you permitted to be murdered, and their child sold into slavery
among foreign tribes. You have stirred up and kept alive a feud
of hatred and revenge among the Kiowa people against the life and
property of Esmond Clarenden and all who belong to him. And,
added to all these, you stand to-day a patricide in spirit,
accused of plotting for the murder of your own father. Do not
these things call for restoration and repentance?"
Ferdinand Ramero rose to his feet and stood in the aisle near the
door. His face hardened, and all the suave polish and cool
concentration and dominant magnetism fell away. What remained was
the man as shaped by the ruling passions of years, from whose
control only divine power could bring deliverance. And when he
spoke there was a remorseless cruelty and selfishness in his low,
even tones.
"You have called me a plotter for my father's life--based on some
lying Mexican's love of blackmail. You do not even try to prove
your charge. The man who would have killed him was Theron St.
Vrain, and his brother, Bertrand. That Theron was disgraced by
the fact you know very well, and the blackness of it drove him to
an early grave. So this young lady here, whom I would have
shielded from this stain upon her name in the marriage to my son,
may know the truth about her father. He was what you, Father
Josef, try to prove me to be."
He paused as if to gather venom for his last shaft.
"These two, Theron and Bertrand, were equally guilty, but through
tricks of their own, Theron escaped and Bertrand took the whole
crime on himself. He disappeared and paid the penalty by his
death. His body was recovered from the river and placed in an
unmarked grave. Why go back to that now? Because Bertrand St.
Vrain's clothes alone on some poor drowned unknown man were
buried. Bertrand himself sits here beside his niece, Eloise St.
Vrain. John Doe to the world, the man who lives without a name,
and dares not sign a business document, a walking dead man. I
could even pity him if he were real. But who can pity
nothing?"
A look of defiance came into the man's glittering eyes as he took
one step nearer to the door and continued:
"Esmond Clarenden drove me out of the United States with threats
of implicating me in the death of my father, and I knew his power
and brutal daring to do anything he chose to do. It was but his
wish to have revenge for this nameless thing--"
The scorn of Ramero's eyes and voice as he looked at Jondo were
withering.
"And this thing keeps me here by threats of attacks, even when he
knows that by such attacks he will reveal himself. It has been a
grim game." Something of a grin showed all of the man's fine
teeth. "A grim game, and never played to a finish till now. I
leave it to you, Father Josef, to judge who has been the stronger
and who comes out of it victor. I make restoration--of what? I
leave the St. Vrain money that I have guarded for Eloise, the
daughter of the man who killed, or helped to kill, my father. You
can control it now, among you: Clarenden, already rich; your
Church, notorious in its robbery of the poor by enriching its
coffers; or this uncle here, who is dead and buried in an unknown
grave. That is all the restoration I can make. Repentance, I do
not know what that word means. Keep it for the poor devils you
will gather in to-morrow night to be shriven. They need it. I do
not."
He turned and strode out of the church and, mounting his horse,
rode like a madman up the yellow valley of the San Christobal. In
after years I could find no term to so well describe that last
act as the words of Beverly Clarenden, who came to the chapel
just in time to hear Ferdinand Ramero's closing declaration, and
to see his black scowl and scornful air, as, in a royal madness,
he defied the power of man and denounced the all-pitying love
that is big enough for the most sinful.
"It was Paradise lost," Beverly declared, "and Satan falling
clear to hell before the Archangel's flaming sword. Only he went
east and the real Satan dropped down to his place. But they will
meet up somewhere, Ramero and the real one, and not be able to
tell each other apart."
And Jondo. My boyhood idol, brave, gentle, unselfish, able
everywhere! Jondo, who had kept my toddling feet from stumbling,
who had taught me to ride and swim and shoot, who had made me
wise in plains lore, and manly and clean among the rough and
vulgar things of the Missouri frontier. Jondo, whose big, cool
hand had touched my feverish face, whose deep blue eyes had
looked love into my eyes when I lay dying on Pawnee Rock! A man
without a name! A murderer who had by a trick escaped the law,
and must walk evermore unknown among his fellow-men! Something
went out of my life as I looked at him. The boy in me was burned
and seared away, and only the man-to-be, was left.
He offered no word of defense from the accusation against him,
nor made a plea of innocence, but sat looking straight at Father
Josef, who looked at him as if expecting nothing. And as they
gazed into each other's eyes, a something strong and beautiful
swept the face of each. I could not understand it, and I was
young. My lifetime hero had turned to nothingness before my eyes.
The world was full of evil. I hated it and all that in it was, my
trusting, foolish, short-sighted self most of all.
But Eloise--the heart of woman is past understanding--Eloise
turned to the man beside her and, putting both arms around his
neck, she pressed one fair cheek against his brown bearded one,
and kissed him gently on the forehead. Then turning to Father
Josef, no longer the dependent, clinging maiden, but the loving
woman, strong and sure of will, she said:
"I must go to my mother. So long as she lives I will never leave
her again."
She did not even look at me, nor speak a word of farewell, as if
I were the murderer instead of that man, Jondo, whom she had
kissed.
I saw her ride away, with Little Blue Flower beside her. I saw
the green mesa, the red cliffs above the growing things, the
glitter of the San Christobal water on yellow sands, the level
plain where the narrow white trail crept far away toward Gloria
Narveo's lonely ranch-house, strong as a fort built a hundred
years ago, in a little cañon of the valley. I saw a young,
graceful figure on horseback, and the glint of sunlight on golden
hair. But the rider did not turn her head and I could not get one
glance of those beautiful dark eyes. A great mass of rock hid the
line of the trail, and the two, Eloise and Little Blue Flower,
rounded the angle and rode on out of my sight.
I helped to dig open the curly mesquite and to shovel out the
sand. I heard the burial service, and saw a rudely coffined form
lowered into an open grave. I saw Rex Krane at the head, and
Jondo at the foot, and Beverly's bleeding hands as he scraped the
loose earth back and heaped it over that which had been called
Sister Anita; I heard Father Josef's voice of music repeating the
"Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." And then we turned away and
left the spot, as men turn every day to the common affairs of
life.
Four days later Little Blue Flower came to me as I, still numb
and cold and blankly unthinking, sat beside Fort Marcy and looked
out with unseeing eyes at the glory of a New-Mexican sunset.
"I come from Eloise." The sadness of her face and voice even the
Indian's self-control could not conceal.
"She is sad, but brave, and her mother loves her and calls her
'Little One.' She will never grow up to her mother. But"--Little
Blue Flower's voice faltered and she gazed out at the far Sandia
peaks wrapped in the rich purple folds of twilight, with the
scarlet of the afterglow beyond them--"Eloise loves Beverly. She
will always love him. Heaven meant him for her." There were some
other broken sentences, but I did not grasp them clearly
then.
The world was full of gray shadows. The finishing touches had
been put on life for me. I looked out at the dying glow in the
west, and wondered vaguely if the sun would ever cross the
Gloriettas again, or ever the Sangre-de-Christo grow radiant with
the scarlet stain of that ineffable beauty that uplifts and
purifies the soul of him who looks on it.
XVII
SWEET AND BITTER WATERS
Trust me, it is something to be cast
Face to face with one's self at last,
To be taken out of the fuss and strife,
The endless clatter of plate and knife,
The bore of books, and the bores of the street,
And to be set down on one's own two feet
So nigh to the great warm heart of God,
You almost seem to feel it beat
Down from the sunshine, and up from the sod.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
My hair is very white now, and my fingers hold a pen more easily
than they could hold the ox-goad or the rifle, and mine to-day is
all the backward look. Which look is evermore a satisfying thing
because it takes in all of life behind in its true proportion,
where the forward look of youth sees only what comes next and
nothing more. And looking back to-day it seems that, of the many
times I walked the long miles of that old Santa Fe Trail, no
journey over it stands out quite so clear-cut in my memory as the
home trip after I had watched the going away of Eloise, and
witnessed the flight of Ferdinand Ramero, and listened to the
story of Jondo's life.
When Little Blue Flower left me sitting beside Fort Marcy's wall
my mind went back in swift review over the flight of days since
Beverly Clarenden and I had come from Cincinnati. I recalled the
first meeting of Eloise with my cousin. How easily they had
renewed acquaintance. I had been surprised and embarrassed and
awkward when I found her and Little Blue Flower down by the Flat
Rock below St. Ann's, in the Moon of the Peach Blossom. I
remembered how I had monopolized all of her time in the days that
followed, leaving good-natured Bev to look after the little
Indian girl who never really seemed like an Indian to him. And
keen-piercing as an arrow came now the memory of that midnight
hour when I had seen the two in the little side porch of the
Clarenden home, and again I heard the sorrowful words:
"Oh, Beverly, it breaks my heart."
Eloise had just seen Beverly kiss Little Blue Flower in the
shadows of the porch. And all the while, good-hearted, generous
boy that he was, he had never tried to push his suit with her,
had made her love him more, no doubt, by letting me have full
command of all of her time, while he forgot himself in showing
courtesy to the Indian girl, because Bev was first of all a
gentleman. I thought of that dear hour in the church of San
Miguel. Of course, Eloise was glad to find me there--poor,
hunted, frightened child! She would have been as glad, no doubt,
to have found big Bill Banney or Rex Krane, and I had thought her
eyes held something just for me that night. She had not seen
Beverly at the chapel beside the San Christobal River, and to me
she had not given even a parting glance when she went away. If
she had cared for me at all she would not have left me so. And I
had climbed the tortuous trail with her and stood beside her in
the zone of sanctuary safety that Father Josef had thrown about
us two.
These things were clear enough to me, but when I tried to think
again of all that Little Blue Flower had said an hour ago my mind
went numb:
"Her mother knew her, but only as the little Eloise long lost and
never missed till now. The mother, too, was very beautiful, and
young in face, and child-like in her helplessness. The lonely
ranch-house, old, and strong as a fort, girt round by tall
cañon walls, nestled in a grassy open place; and not a
comfort had been denied the woman there. For Gloria Ramero,
Ferdinand's wife, had governed that. And Eloise had entered there
to stay. This much was clear enough. But that which followed
seemed to twist and writhe about in my mind with only one thing
sure--Eloise loved Beverly, would always love him. And he could
not love any one else. He could be kind to any girl, but he would
not be happy. Some day when he was older--a real man--then he
would long for the girl of his heart and his own choice, and he
would find her and love her, too, and she would love him and
those who stood between them they both would hate. And Eloise
loved Beverly. She could not send Gail any words herself, but he
would understand."
So came the Indian girl's interpretation of the case, but the
conclusion was the message meant for me. I wondered vaguely, as I
sat there, if the vision had come to Beverly years ago as it had
come to me: three men--the soldier on his cavalry mount, Jondo,
the plainsman, on his big black horse, and between the two,
Esmond Clarenden, neither mounted nor on foot, but going forward
somehow, steady and sure. And beyond these three, this side of
misty mountain peaks, the cloud of golden hair, the sweet face,
with dark eyes looking into mine. I had not been a dreamer, I had
been a fool.
Through Beverly I learned the next day that Ferdinand Ramero had
come into Santa Fé late at night and had left early the
next morning. Marcos Ramero, faultlessly dressed, lounged about
the gambling-halls, and strolled through the sunny Plaza, idly
and insolently, as was his custom. But Gloria Ramero, to whom
Marcos long ago ceased to be more than coldly courteous, had left
the city at once for the San Christobal Valley, to devote herself
to the care of the beautiful woman whom her brother Felix Narveo
in his college days had admired so much.
As for Jondo, years ago when we had met Father Josef out by the
sandy arroyo, he had left us to follow the good man somewhere,
and had not come back to the Exchange Hotel until nightfall.
Something had come into his face that day that never left it
again. And now that something had deepened in the glance of his
eye and the firm-set mouth. It was through that meeting with
Father Josef that he had first heard of the supposed death of
Mary Marchland St. Vrain, and it was through the priest in the
chapel he had heard that she was still alive.
Neither Beverly nor Bill Banney nor Rex Krane knew what I had
heard in the church concerning Jondo's early career, and I never
spoke of it to them. But to all of us, outside of that
intensified something indefinable in his face, he was unchanged.
He met my eye with the open, frank glance with which he met the
gaze of all men. His smile was no less engaging and his manner
remained the same--fearless, unsuspicious, definite in serious
affairs, good-natured and companionable in everything. I could
not read him now, by one little line, but back of everything lay
that withering, grievous thought--he was a murderer. Heaven pity
the boy when his idol falls, and if he be a dreaming idealist the
hurt is tenfold deeper.
And yet--the trail was waiting there to teach me many things, and
Jondo's words rang through the aisles of my brain:
"If you ever have a real cross, Gail, thank the Lord for the open
plains and the green prairies, and the danger stimulus of the old
Santa Fé Trail. They will seal up your wounds, and soften
your hard, rebellious heart, and make you see things big, and
despise the little crooks in your path."
Our Conestoga wagons, with their mule-teams, and the few ponies
for scout service, followed the old trail out of the valley of
the Rio Grande to the tablelands eastward, up the steep sidling
way into the passes of the Glorietta Mountains, down through
lone, wind-swept cañons, and on between wild, scarred
hills, coming, at last, beyond the picturesque ridges,
snow-crowned and mesa-guarded, into the long, gray, waterless
lands of the Cimmarron country. Here we journeyed along
monotonous levels that rose and fell unnoted because of lack of
landmarks to measure by, only the broad, beaten Santa Fé
Trail stretched on unbending, unchanging, uneffaceable.
As the distance from spring to spring decreased, every drop of
water grew precious, and we pushed on, eager to reach the richer
prairies of the Arkansas Valley. Suddenly in the monotony of the
way, and the increasing calls of thirst, there came a sense of
danger, the plains-old danger of the Comanche on the Cimarron
Trail. Bill Banney caught it first--just a faint sign of one
hostile track. All the next day Jondo scouted far, coming into
camp at nightfall with a grave report.
"The water-supply is failing," he told us, "and there is
something wrong out there. The Comanches are hovering near,
that's certain, and there is a single trail that doesn't look
Comanche to me that I can't account for. All we can do is to
'hold fast,'" he added, with his cheery smile that never failed
him.
That night I could not sleep, and the stars and I stared long at
each other. They were so golden and so far away. And one, as I
looked, slipped from its place and trailed wide across the sky
until it vanished, leaving a stream of golden light that lingered
before my eyes. I thought of the trail in the San Christobal
Valley, and again I saw the sunlight on golden hair as Eloise
with Little Blue Flower passed out of sight around the shoulder
of a great rock beside the way. At last came sleep, and in my
dreams Eloise was beside me as she had been in the church of San
Miguel, her dark eyes looking up into mine. I knew, in my dream,
that I was dreaming and I did not want to waken. For, "Eloise
loved Beverly, would always love him." Little Blue Flower had
said it. The face was far away, this side of misty mountain
peaks, and farther still. I could see only the eyes looking at
me. I wakened to see only the stars looking at me. I slept again
deeply and dreamlessly, and wakened suddenly. We were far and
away from the Apache country, but there, for just one instant, a
face came close to mine--the face of Santan--the Apache. It
vanished instantly as it had come. The night guard passed by me
and crossed the camp. The stars held firm above me. I had had
another dream. But after that I did not sleep till dawn.
The day was very hot, with the scorching breeze of the plains
that sears the very eyeballs dry. Through the dust and glare we
pressed on over long, white, monotonous miles. Hovering near us
somewhere were the Comanches--waiting; with us was burning
thirst; ahead of us ran the taunting mirage--cool, sparkling
water rippling between green banks--receding as we approached,
maddening us by the suggestion of its refreshing picture, the
while we knew it was only a picture. For it is Satan's own
painting on the desert to let men know that Dante's dream is mild
compared to the real art of torment. Men and animals began to
give way under the day's burden, and we moved slowly. In times
like these Jondo stayed with the train, sending Bill Banney and
Beverly scouting ahead. That was the longest day that I ever
lived on the Santa Fé Trail, although I followed its miles
many times in the best of its freighting years.
The weary hours dragged at last toward evening, and a dozen signs
in plains lore told us that water must be near. As we topped a
low swell at the bottom of whose long slide lay the little oasis
we were seeking, we came upon Bill Banney's pony lying dead
across the trail. And near it Bill himself, with bloated face and
bleared eyes, muttering half-coherently:
"Water-hole! Poison! Don't drink!"
And then he babbled of the muddy Missouri, and the Kentucky blue
grass, and cold mountain springs in the passes of the Gloriettas,
warning us thickly of "death down there."
"Down there," beside the little spring shelved in by shale at the
lower edge of the swell, we found a tiny cairn built of clumps of
sod and bits of shale. Fastened on it was a scrap from Bill's
note-book with the words
Spring poisoned. Bev gone for water not very far on.--BILL.
So Bill had drunk the poisoned water and had tried to reach
us. But for fear he might not do it, he had scrawled this warning
and left it here. Brave Bill! How madly he had staggered round
the place and threshed the ground in agony when he tried to mount
his poisoned pony, and his first thought was for us. The plains
made men see big. Jondo had told me they could do it. Poor Bill,
moaning for water now and tossing in agony in Jondo's wagon! The
Comanches had been cunning in their malice. How we hated them as
we stood looking at the waters of that poisoned spring!
Rex Krane's big, gentle hands were holding Bill's. Rex always had
a mother's heart; while Jondo read the ground with searching
glance.
"We will wait here a little while. Bev will report soon, I hope.
Come, Gail," he said to me. "Here is something we will follow
now."
A single trail led far away from the beaten road toward a stretch
of coarse dry yucca and loco-weeds that hid a little steep-sided
draw across the plains. At the bottom of it a man lay face
downward beside a dead pony. We scrambled down, shattering the
dry earth after us as we went. Jondo gently lifted the body and
turned it face upward. It was Ferdinand Ramero.
The big plainsman did not cry out, nor drop his hold, but his
face turned gray, and only the dying man saw the look in the blue
eyes gazing into his. Ramero tried to draw away, fear, and hate,
and the old dominant will that ruled his life, strong still in
death. As he lay at the feet of the man whose life hopes he had
blasted, he expected no mercy and asked for none.
"You have me at last. I didn't put the poison in that spring. I
would not have drunk it if I had. It was the one below I fixed
for you. And I'm in your power now. Be quick about it."
For one long minute Jondo looked down at his enemy. Then he
lifted his eyes to mine with the victory of "him that overcometh"
shining in their blue depths.
"If I could make you live, I'd do it, Fred. If you have any word
to say, be quick about it now. Your time is short."
The sweetness of that gentle voice I hear sometimes to-day in the
low notes of song-birds, and the gentle swish of refreshing
summer showers.
Ferdinand Ramero lifted his cold blue eyes and looked at the man
bending over him.
"Leave me here--forgotten--"
"Not of God. His Mercy endureth forever," Jondo replied.
But there was no repentance, no softening of the hard, imperious
heart.
We left him there, pulling down the loose earth from the steep
sides of the draw to cover him from all the frowning elements of
the plains. And when we went back to the waiting train Jondo
reported, grimly:
"No enemy in sight."
We laid Bill Banney beside the poisoned spring, from whose bitter
waters he had saved our lives. So martyrs filled the unknown
graves that made the milestones of the way in the days of
commerce-building on the old Santa Fé Trail.
The next spring was not far ahead, as Bill's note had said, but
the stars were thick above us and the desolate land was full of
shadows before we reached it--a thirst-mad, heart-sore crowd
trailing slowly on through the gloom of the night.
Beverly was waiting for us and the refreshing moisture of the air
above a spring seemed about him.
"I thought you'd never come. Where's Bill? There's water here. I
made the spring myself," he shouted, as we came near.
The spring that he had digged for us was in the sandy bed of a
dry stream, with low, earth-banks on either side. It was full of
water, hardly clear, but plentiful, and slowly washing out a
bigger pool for itself as it seeped forth.
"There is poison in the real spring down there." Beverly pointed
toward the diminished fountain we had expected to find. "I've
worked since noon at this."
We drank, and life came back to us. We pitched camp, and then
listened to Beverly's story of the sweet and bitter waters of the
trail that day. And all the while it seemed as if Bill Banney was
just out of sight and might come galloping in at any moment.
"You know what happened up the trail," my cousin said, sadly.
"Bill was ahead of me and he drank first, and galloped back to
warn me and beg me to come on for water. I thought I could get
down here and take some water back to Bill in time. It's all
shale up there. No place to dig above, nor below, even if one
dared to dig below that poison. But I found a dead coyote that
had just left here, and all springs began to look Comanche to me.
I lariated my pony and crept down under the bank there to think
and rest. Everything went poison-spotted before my eyes."
"Where's your pony now, Bev?" Jondo asked.
"I don't know sure, but I expect he is about going over the Raton
Pass by this time," Beverly replied. "Down there things seemed to
swim around me like water everywhere and I knew I'd got to stir.
Just then an Indian came slipping up from somewhere to the spring
to drink. He didn't look right to me at all, but I couldn't sit
still and see him kill himself. If he needed killing I could have
done it for him, for he never saw me. Just as he stooped I saw
his face. It was that Apache--Santan--the wander-foot, for I
never heard of an Apache getting so far from the mountains. I
ought to have kept still, Jondo"--Beverly's ready smile came to
his face--"but I'd made that fellow swear he'd let me eternally
alone when we had our little fracas up by the San Christobal
Arroyo, so something like conscience, mean as the stomach-ache,
made me call out:
"'Don't drink there; it's poison.'
"He stopped and stared at me a minute, or ten minutes--I didn't
count time on him--and then he said, slow-like:
"'It's the spring west that is poisoned. I put it there for you.
You will not see your men again. They will drink and die. Who put
this poison here?'
"'Lord knows. I didn't,' I told him. 'Two of you carrying poison
are two too many for the Cimarron country.'
"And I hadn't any more conscience after that, but I was faint and
slow, and my aim was bad for eels. He could have fixed me right
then, but for some reason he didn't."
Beverly's face grew sad.
"He made six jumps six ways, and caught my pony's lariat. I can
hear his yell still as he tore a hole in the horizon and jumped
right through. Then I began on that spring. 'Dig or die. Dig or
die.' I said over and over, and we are all here but Bill. I wish
I'd got that Apache, though."
Jondo and I looked at each other.
"The thing is clear now," he said, aside to me. "That single
trail I found back yonder day before yesterday was Santan's
running on ahead of us to poison the water for us and then steal
a horse and make his way back to the mountains. An Apache can
live on this cactus-covered sand the same as a rattlesnake. He
fixed the upper spring and came down here to drink. Only
Beverly's conscience saved him here. Heaven knows how Fred Ramer
got out here. He may have come with some Mexicans on ahead of us
and left them here to drop his poison in this lower spring. Then
he turned back toward Santa Fé and found his doom up there
at Santan's spring.
"I'm like Bev. I wish he had gotten the Apache, now. I don't know
yet how I was fooled in him, for he has always been Fred Ramer's
tool, and Father Josef never trusted him. And to think that Bill
Banney, in no way touching any of our lives, should have been
martyred by the crimes of Fred and this Apache! But that's the
old, old story of the trail. Poor Bill! I hope his sleep will be
sweet out in this desolate land. We'll meet him later
somewhere."
The winds must have carried the tale of poisoned water across the
Cimarron country, for the Comanches' trail left ours from that
day. Through threescore and ten miles to the Arkansas River we
came, and there was not a well nor spring nor sign of water in
all that distance. What water we had we carried with us from the
Cimarron fountains. But the sturdy endurance of the days was not
without its help to me. And the wide, wind-swept prairies of
Kansas taught me many things. In the lonely, beautiful land,
through long bright days and starlit nights, I began to see
things bigger than my own selfish measure had reckoned. I thought
of Esmond Clarenden and his large scheme of business; Felix
Narveo, the true-hearted friend; and of Father Josef and his life
of devotion. And I lived with Jondo every day. I could not forget
the hour in the little ruined chapel in the San Christobal
Valley, and how he himself had made no effort to clear his own
name. But I remembered, too, that Father Josef, mercilessly just
to Ferdinand Ramero, had not even asked Jondo to defend himself
from the black charge against him.
The sunny Kansas prairies, the far open plains, and the wild
mountain trails beyond, had brought their blessing to Jondo,
whose life had known so much of tragedy. And my cross was just my
love for a girl who could not love me. That was all. Jondo had
never forgotten nor ceased to love the mother of Eloise St.
Vrain. I should be like Jondo in this. But the world is wide.
Life is full of big things. Henceforth, while I would not forget,
I, too, would be big and strong, and maybe, some time, just as
sunny-faced as my big Jondo.
The trail life, day by day, did bring its blessing to me. The
clear, open land, the far-sweeping winds, the solitude for
thought, the bravery and gentleness of the rough men who walked
the miles with me, the splendor of the day-dawn, the beauty of
the sunset, the peace of the still starlit night, sealed up my
wounds, and I began to live for others and to forget myself; to
dream less often, and to work more gladly; to measure men, not by
what had been, but by how they met what was to be done.
From all the frontier life, rough-hewn and coarse, the elements
came that helped to make the big brave West to-day, and I know
now that not the least of source and growth of power for these
came out of the strength and strife of the things known only to
the men who followed the Santa Fé Trail.