Chapter XI: Section 3839: “All marriages valid by the laws of the place where (3)

“How do you like this?” asked the master of the bow, and as he swept the strings, that saddest of memory songs cried poignantly, a song fit for a desert night and a desert camp: La Golondrina! Such harmonies of double-stopping I had seldom heard. It seemed to me—or was it desert magic?—that Kreisler could do no more. Silence. And then applause from fifty camps.

And Ed’s guitar. Soon the lilting airs of old fandangos would sing through the stunted trees, and one could imagine that the long-dead children of the padres made fiesta.

“Now, Doctor,” said someone.

“What do you play, Doctor?” I asked.

“I play the banjo,” he replied—I thought with a shade of mockery in his voice. Now I had just heard the Spaniard’s violin sob a song that had swept a nation, and Ed’s lightsome Mexican airs were no mean music for a summer camp. Night, under the old trees and in the shadow of the mesa of the gods, brings the romance of serenades, especially soothing after a long, tiresome day.

But—a banjo! That thumpety, plankety, plunkety thing! I was sorry I had spoken. He would oblige with something to fit clogs and the levee, and the whole atmosphere of that evening would vanish, never to return! The doctor opened a case.

“What would you like to hear?”

That is a terrible question from a banjoist, isn’t it?

“Well—what do you play?”

“Oh! the—anything—popular classic stuff. Now there’s the Melody in F or Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, Schubert’s Serenade, the Fifth Nocturne—”

“Great God!” I cried. “On a banjo!”

I think he pulled this little joke on all strangers, for, after allowing it thoroughly to soak in, he brought that wonder instrument closer to the fire and began strumming the strings of it until its resonant cadences hushed all the noises of the camps. Then, softly through the grove, sounded the Melody in F, in organ tones.

Of course you will perceive that I am no musician and no critic. I have not the ear of the one, nor the language of the other. I am simply one of those who like to hear what I like—hopeless. The Andante from the Sonata Pathétique haunted and eluded me for years and, but for a wandering pianist disguised as an investigator, I might have classed it with a dream. Sordid duties dull one to accept coarser things on a phonograph.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “I have played through the East and on Canadian circuits, but I don’t care for the stage. I took up concert work, traveling with glee clubs and orchestras, but that wasn’t much better. Hurried life. I like the quiet places.”

And he was a doctor in the Indian Service!

Someone called: “Play it again!” And he played it again—on a banjo!

Down under the hill were camped a bunch of troubadours that once had trooped with a second company, passing as the Original New York Cast. By the light of a lantern they played accompaniments on an old melodeon, dragged from the schoolhouse. A rousing chorus, and then a tenor voice: the Irish Love Song. Followed a roar of applause that brought drowsy Indians to the mesa edge. Strange Americanos! Strange Bohannas, who mock at drums and chanting, and who then make such queer music and many cries.

And by midnight the fires would die down, one by one, to mere glows. The pueblo lights, high up along the mesa cornice, would be blotted out. Beyond the camps, only the sound of horses munching, the bray of a desert nightingale from the upper corrals, or the canter of a mounted policeman through the sand, as he gave a last look around before rolling in his blanket. Then silence under the dark star-strewn sky, a tranquil desert silence, to be broken, perhaps—who knows?—by ghostly sandals, as the padre walked to see that curious company, asleep in his one-time garden, guests of a pagan feast.

XXII

ON THE HEELS OF ADVENTURE

I have lived both at the Hawes and Burford in a perpetual
flutter, on the heels, as it seems, of some adventure that
should justify the place; but though the feeling had me to
bed at night and called me up again at morning in one
unbroken round of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me
in either worth remark. The man or the hour had not yet come;
but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen’s
Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a
horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the
green shutters of the inn at Burford.
—Stevenson: A Gossip on Romance

Adventure! The Standard Dictionary divides it, like Gaul, into three parts, peculiarly interrelated, yet thinly divisible from each other:—(1) A remarkable or hazardous experience; an unexpected or exciting occurrence. (2) A hazardous or uncertain undertaking; a daring feat. (3) The encountering of risks; daring and hazardous enterprise.

And the writing of it has come to signify swift dramatic action, having a spirited and triumphant finale.

But life in the Desert,—for that matter, life anywhere,—does not advance to a whiplash conclusion. One may not dismiss unwelcome characters simply because convenience or stark justice demands Finis. Despite taut emotions and unsavory possibilities, they go on living and muddling up the action; and the sun rises, and to-morrow is another day. My personal experiences among the Indians in the lonely places have not been exactly hazardous or desperately daring from my point of view, indeed, not half so venturesome as nights I have spent in New York. One will have to accept these reminiscences as simply unusual and I hope not uninteresting happenings, with what of thrill they may inspire. Would you insist that I lug in ghosts or bandits? Should I stage a massacre? Perhaps I could contrive to have Youkeoma abduct the trader’s daughter, and arrange a nick-of-time rescue by the cavalry. But Youkeoma was interested in ceremonies only, as he told me, and the trader had no daughter. I should therefore libel a sincere pagan and a bachelor business-man.

Now it strikes me that there is more of nervous drama in Colonel Scott’s going alone into a half-hostile camp, facing down a band of sullen fellows, and coming out with obedience to his decisions. It strikes me, too, that in these desert camps that have known so little of discipline, with no force in the offing and no hope of one, is the real drama of an Agent’s life. I can relate my kind of thrill, but there will be little of dramatic conclusions. Nothing of wild rides, and pursuits, and ambuscades; nothing of foiled villains, and certainly nothing of beautiful maidens in distress. This last the Indian Service does not invite, and if accidentally acquired does not long retain.

The nearest to that sort of adventure I ever came was in meeting the mail-hack one cold sunset, far from the Agency. It was driven by a half-frozen Mexican who could speak no English beyond: “Buenas dias, señor. Mucho frio. No savvy.”

There was a pleasing young woman with him, who said she was a teacher, ordered to report to the Agent at Keams Cañon. Our meeting-place was about thirty miles from the last post-house, and quite ninety miles from the railroad. I can imagine how strange and timid one feels under such conditions. It had been a bleak day, and a keen night was coming on. My auto would reach the Agency hours before those two weary bronks could plod in; so I introduced myself, and said she would travel quicker to the Agency with me. She looked me over: dingy hat, rusty puttees, red nose, everything—and decided to remain with the voluble Mexican.

I can remember leaving Chin Lee one winter’s night, black shadows on the snow-covered desert and a razor-edged wind coming straight out of that huge funnel, Cañon de Chelly, to go seventy-five miles to Kayenta, the most isolated post-office and trading-post in the United States. I had been bluffed into it by my friend, the Water-Witch, who wanted to save the morrow’s daylight.

“Can you stand an all-night hike?” he asked, solicitously. “Sing out if you can’t. There’s a good bed here, and—”

“I’m game for it, if you are,” I said, but without enthusiasm.

The engine of his emaciated Ford clucked, and the snow crunched under its wheels. For the first hour a brisk conversation kept us illuminated and fairly warm. Then it grew deadly cold, with that relentless, piercing cold to be experienced only at night in those cruelly bleak, windswept, desert wastes. I bit down on my pipe to prevent my teeth castanetting. I felt of my face to be sure it had not cracked off. And we rode on and on, paralleling the dim Black Mountain barricade. Finally, with bitter exasperation, the Witch called out: “Dammit all! ain’t you cold?”

“Froze,” I gasped.

“Well, there’s a trading-post hiding in this side cañon, if I can find the road to it. You’ll never sing out. I give up. Let’s make for camp before we both perish.”

I uttered choking sounds of thanksgiving. And it drearily seemed, for a space, that he would not be able to find the trail. The snow was unbroken in the hills. Then we caught a gleam from the black, gave a hail, and found a cedar-fire welcome.

Those are Arizona adventures.

One may encounter them in boggy flats, or in blinding snowstorms; in seeking to cross a river in springtime without too much knowledge of the ford; in facing the hot sand’s lash that stings as powdered glass; with exhausted horses and far from the town, on hearing the crunch of a drive-pinion twenty miles the wrong side of home; at nightfall; at midnight, noon, or dawn. The blush of morning on snow-encrusted cliffs, the wistful mysteries of summer twilight, the burnished glories of an autumn sunset, have no appeal then. Simple struggles with the elements and distances of the lonely Desert, when tired out, cold, hungry. They are the day’s work, hard, exhausting work. And one does not record such things in Annual Reports.

But, since adventures are in demand, perhaps I can resurrect a thrill or two from the notebook. Long ago I listed them as scenery for stories, meaning to import a few interesting and even beautiful types as characters, for the honest-to-God, on-the-ground people steadily refused to become heroic. Relatively mild affairs these, with only two persons killed, two crippled up a bit, some little blood spilled, and lots of nervous imagining. My men were uneasy at the time, and I most scared of all.

If I had thrust these episodes on a New York editor, out of their order and true atmosphere, garnished with a picaresque dressing, he might have praised them; but I was not among those killed, and reflection urges that this would probably make a difference to him. Aside from having a thumb sprained when an angry Indian tried to wrench it off my hand, I was not physically hurt; but my nervous system was slightly warped each time, and I have been reported on as an efficient, but very profane man. Quite so. I will admit that I never took any saints along on these trips.

And in every single one of these affairs, the enemy triumphed. “The man or the hour had not yet come”; and while I have had mounted messengers of both sexes come to me on both frosty and tepid nights, their errands, after due investigation, and however irritating, could not be classed as tragic; but there were times when “the feeling of it had me to bed and up again” in a round of anticipation and some little suspense, decidedly not so pleasurable as romantic Stevenson found his.

One undertaking began with Limping Joe paying attention to Do-hahs-tahhe’s wife. This was not appreciated by either of them, and the husband first warned, and then threw Limping Joe bodily out of his neighborhood. This angered the potential home-wrecker, and he returned with a light rifle. Do-hahs-tahhe was sacking corn in his field close to his hogan. He saw Limping Joe approaching, and while .22’s are rabbit-guns, they sometimes go off when least expected and injure people. Again Do-hahs-tahhe flung himself on Limping Joe; he wrenched the rifle away from him, threw out the single shell, and smashed the stock over a stone. Observing then that he held only the barrel, he whirled it around his head and let go of it. It winged off, end over end, and down into the wash.

Limping Joe went down into the wash and found the gun. He examined the lock and saw that a shell would go into it. Pointing it in the air, he pulled the trigger. Bang! it was all right, even though it had no stock for the shoulder. Then Limping Joe put in another shell, stalked up the bank, and shot Do-hahs-tahhe through the lungs.

Therefore the Indian Agent had to forward one physician, one stenographer, one notary public, and a few police, promptly, hurriedly, to take the man’s dying statement: the doctor to tell him he was dying, the stenographer to report him, and the notary to swear them all. The police meantime grabbed Limping Joe. Do-hahs-tahhe died in a few hours and Limping Joe sat in the guardhouse with gyves upon his wrists, also shackles securing his ankles, and a log-chain connecting the two contrivances. I did not intend that he should—and he did not—get away.

This was in Territorial days, and a Reservation criminal-case came, strangely enough, within the jurisdiction of the Territorial courts. I sent for the county sheriff, and he arrived with one huge deputy, both of them heavily armed.

“Why the arsenal?” I asked of the officer, who had a reputation for fearlessness.

“Well, I have had Indian prisoners taken from me before,” he said.

Now there had been some little rumor of dissatisfaction among the relatives and friends of Limping Joe. They felt he should be tried by the Agent, quite as one who had purloined a sheep, and they expected that he would receive a mild type of punishment. Gossip had it that they would oppose his being removed from the Desert.

“I’ll go with you to the Reservation line,” I said to the sheriff, “and this side of it, they will have to take him away from me.”

“Very good,” replied the officer, “because I wouldn’t fight for him.”

And I made up my mind that neither would I.

We started with the stars still bright in the sky, three o’clock of a morning, to cover the thirty-five miles to the line. The sheriff and deputy rode in a buckboard, the prisoner with them. An Indian boy drove my buggy, and I sat with a gun on the seat. Nothing happened. We did not see a Navajo on the trip. After lunching at the line, we parted with the officers, and prepared to return that same day. Seventy miles for the team would be a hard drive and would bring us in late at night; but this is in the day’s work too.

All that afternoon the horses jogged homeward. The prisoner off my hands, I dropped the gun into a bag under the seat. It was getting on to dark when the team began wearily climbing the last long rise that separated us from the drop down into Keams Cañon. There was a fringe of cedars at the top, black as spectres against a dull red sky. The horses plodded nearer and nearer to the crest of the ridge. One could see the branches of the old trees now, as if etched on the sky’s plate.

Then came a call, a Navajo cry. My boy pulled in the team with a sudden wrench. He had been watching the edge of the hill. And from the trees four or five men stepped quickly into the road. I made a swift clutch on the seat for the gun, and then realized that it could not be there. The bag had slipped back into the boot, and was mixed with halters, nose-bags, and the clutter of a desert buggy. There was a moment—it seemed a week—of tense chilliness, while they lingered in the dusk, as if waiting for us. One cannot wheel a buggy in a desert road. It was either stop or go on. Then they crossed into the cedars, and we heard them moving off, talking in Navajo. One began to sing. My Indian boy laughed as if relieved.

“The miners,” he said.

And sure enough, they were my own coal-working gang that had quit the drift at five o’clock and had reached that point on their way home. But I had thought, and so had my driver, that friends of Limping Joe were about to greet us. It was just the right time in the evening, and just the right color in the sombre landscape; and they had stepped from the trees, half-waiting, in just that manner.

Limping Joe? The court treated him with customary severity. For this deliberate, cold-blooded murder he received the terrible sentence of three years in the penitentiary, and had quite six months off for good behavior. During his protracted absence I issued rations to his aged parents and, after quite a little correspondence, some of it acrid in tone, convinced my Washington critics that I had not persecuted the poor fellow.

The East contains very few officials having the courage of Roosevelt, who wrote, with respect to the Navajo particularly:—

These are as a whole good Indians ... although some are very bad
and should be handled rigorously....

For the last quarter of a century the lawless individuals among
them have done much more wrong (including murder) to the whites
than has been done to them by lawless whites. The lawless Indians
are the worst menace to the others among the Navajo and Utes; and
very serious harm has been done by well-meaning Eastern
philanthropists who have encouraged and protected these criminals.

And Francis E. Leupp, one-time Commissioner of Indian Affairs, held this view:—

Agents and other Government officials, when of the best type, have
done most good; and when not of the right type have done most evil;
and they have never done any good at all when they have been afraid
of the Indians or have hesitated relentlessly to punish Indian
wrongdoers.

Apart from the administration period of these two men, few Indian Agents have expected to receive support in any effort thoroughly to punish Indian criminals in the Desert. The tone of the Indian Bureau this last decade has been largely one of compromise and apology: with superiors in office; to sentimentalists; with and to discontented or stupid or evil Indians who blocked progress. Annually, when seeking appropriations, it has apologized to Congress for asking, and then apologized most humbly when denied. Charged with the protection and welfare of incompetent human beings, one would think it dealt in wooden dolls. Inconsistent, and of little vision, wastefully parsimonious, ignoring sage advice, ready to compromise, it has been a poor source for justice and a sorry judge of men. Of timely intelligence it has demonstrated little, and of sincerity, less. To manœuvre in the winds of expediency, to trim sail for maintenance in office, to drift hopefully, has been its course and policy. The distant field has viewed such variable charts with suspicion and dismay.

Perhaps a parable may prove amusing.

“Colonel” Oldhouse, who had about reached the retirement age, suspected all new-fangled methods. Behind his desk rested an old hand-made army-chest, strapped and locked to withstand the strains and bruises of frontier travel. The Colonel dated from those days when the stage ran “to the States,” and Santa Fe was an outpost of progress. In that chest reposed his warrants and accounts, neatly arranged, jacketed, and briefed. He could go to it in the dark and instantly find Voucher 137 for the second quarter of 1889.

“Colonel,” said a very young man, “Why don’t you order some files for your papers, with sliding drawers, and rods, and—”

The Colonel snorted.

“They’re no good,” he snapped; “the damned things are made by machinery!”

Exactly, Colonel; you have accurately described the ineffectiveness of a filing-case.

XXIII

THE RED BOOTLEGGERS

And I will make it felony to drink small beer.—King Henry VI

The heart of the Enchanted Desert, consisting of the Hopi Reserve and a wide strip of Navajo country surrounding it as a frame, was not troubled by the liquor problem among its natives so long as the State of Arizona remained generously wet. The Hopi Indians have no use for liquor, and will not tolerate it. On one occasion men of the mesas, who were without authority to act as policemen, arrested and brought in a Navajo who had simply exhibited a suspicious bottle; a very singular thing for Hopi to do, since they are not bold, even when commissioned. For years Hopi and Navajo freighters packed Government stores from the railroad town of Holbrook, distant eighty miles from the Agency and nearly fifty of them outside the reservation, without engaging in sprees or bootlegging. The Navajo rather likes his beverages, and they do not improve him as a neighbor; but drunkenness was rare even among the Navajo in those days.

When the State went dry, the acquisition of liquor presented something of adventure to those who were naturally lawless. And it was not long before cargoes of cheering fluids began to arrive in the Navajo country from New Mexico. The town of Gallup became a point of interest for Indians who never before had visited it. Gallup is one hundred and five miles from the Hopi Agency, and of course contraband is not packed along highroads. When the “special officers” of the Indian Liquor Service descended on Gallup, the Navajo organized relays to serve the back country; and the special officers did not follow into the lonesome places. One might be sure that at every Navajo gathering there would be boozing, and at points one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from the source, and that same distance from special officers. The smugglers would hide the liquor beyond the great circle of campers, in the black of some thicket, and along in the early morning hours, when chance visitors had departed and watchers were tired out, the bibulous would appear in various stages of intoxication. They were then dangerous.

My police force consisted of eight Indians, half of them Navajo. This was the “army” granted me in 1911, with due regard for Colonel Scott’s recommendation that I should have twenty-five men headed by a white officer. And in 1921, ten years after that first recommendation, Major-General Scott, retired, of the Board of Indian Commissioners, reviewed the Hopi-Navajo situation, and again reported:—

In 1882 an Executive Order set apart 2,472,320 acres (3863 square miles) of land for the Moqui Reservation, for the use and occupancy of the Hopi and such other Indians as the Secretary of the Interior might designate.

At that time someone with a ruler drew on a map a parallelogram which represented an area, approximately 75 by 55 miles, for a reservation, without the least regard to topographical and ethnological conditions, and misnamed it the “Moqui Reservation.”

It is quite apparent that in 1882 the authorities in Washington either were densely ignorant of the situation in this country at that time, or were utterly indifferent to it; and by laying out the reservation with a desk ruler and an utter disregard of the welfare of the Hopi, they laid the foundations for trouble and suffering which have developed a situation that calls for remedial action by the Indian Office.

This whole land is semi-arid, and a large portion of it is absolute desert. The Navajo are aggressive and independent. There is no doubt that the majority of those on the Moqui Reserve have come in from all sides with a deliberate purpose of taking the grazing land which rightfully belongs to the Hopi. When a Navajo sees a Hopi with anything he wants, he takes it, and there is no recourse.

For years this preventable situation has continued. In 1911 I was sent by President Taft to Keams Cañon with troops, to enforce some regulations of the Indian Office. I then found the Navajo encroaching on Hopi land and mistreating the Hopi Indians. The Agent, at that time, was given but three policemen, too poorly paid to attract the right men with which to maintain order on a reservation having the area of an empire. I then recommended that he be given twenty-five well-paid policemen with a white chief. The number was increased to eight without change of compensation, which number has lately been reduced to six.

This statement is enough to show the absurdity of any expectation that the superintendent can keep order. The superintendent is powerless to maintain the dignity of his office, with the result that the authority and dignity of the Indian Office and of the United States are made a mock over a large section of Arizona.

You see, my successor was having his troubles too with the gentle feudists, and the Hopi were petitioning as usual. So the Office changed the name of the Reservation.

In addition to the eight men that had been granted me, several of the range employees were commissioned as special officers of the Indian Liquor Service. Perhaps I should say, “Deputy special-officers of the Service for the suppression of the liquor traffic among Indians.” But what is a title among friends? And the commission was a splendid gratuity, carrying no extra compensation, whereas the employee so acting, in a true missionary spirit, simply risked his life. Few men care for this work, and fewer are zealous at it. Those who came into the regular Service as farmers or stockmen did not relish finding themselves drafted as policemen. It is dangerous work among such Indians as the Navajo, and the man, white or Indian, who accepts this duty expects assurance of consideration and backing should anything unpleasant occur. And in time they all heard of the Walter Runke case, plus the charming experiences of that Agent’s faithful subordinates.

Several times my white deputies, aided by Indian police, made arrests in camps in the wee sma’ hours, and had their prisoners taken from them. Several times they managed to deliver prisoners at the Agency, and the apology of a guardhouse failed to retain them. After I had the window-bars reënforced and the door double-grated, and chained a few worthies to the wall, the effect of punishment slightly improved. But I could do this only after having procured the guilty ones, and the hunting of them was becoming more and more dangerous. One night, between the hours of ten and two, I searched a number of Navajo camps in the north, seeking an escaped prisoner. This was probably a hazardous proceeding, for the innocent Indians felt aggrieved at the invasion of their privacy, and the guilty had the pleasure of outwitting me—a very easy performance.

When next a dance was advertised, I assembled the Indian police, the judges, and a dozen of the influential head-men or chiefs of the tribe. I counseled them all to assist in this campaign against liquor, which was ruining their young men; and this they promised to do. Especially were the older chiefs earnest about it. They did not wish the tribe to suffer discredit, with the strong probability of a few murders to boot. About twenty men departed to the place of the dance, all pledged to exert their very best grade of moral suasion, fatherly counsel, and peaceful penetration.

Two days later a squad of indignant head-men assembled in my office. They were evidently angry about something; and the spokesman talked plainly.

“We have failed,” he said. “After midnight the drunkards began to appear, and dance and shout and annoy decent people. Several were arrested by the police, but they were supported by others, and the police could do nothing without fear of hurting someone. Then we old men undertook to shame them. They rose against us all, and drove us headlong from the camp—police, judges, chiefs. This matter places us in a shameful position before our people. We want you to write to Washington for soldiers. They have sent soldiers here before, and they can do so again. We need them. You tell Washington that.”

But just at that time Washington had its hands full of typewriters, holding the Germans to strict accountability on paper; and one Villa was scouting along the Border.

My remaining hope was to trap the smugglers before they reached the scene of disposal. And following this method, it came about that One-eyed Dan and his partner, hailing from the Fort Defiance district, were arrested as they traveled north on my reservation. They had a trunk loaded with the most diabolical booze. It was in standard bottles, with all seals intact; but the bottoms had been plugged by an electric process, and the good stuff replaced with a concoction that suggested Battle-axe tobacco in a solution of nitric acid. Two drinks of this would cause a jack rabbit to assault a bobcat. And for this enthusiasm Navajo Indians would cheerfully pay thirty-five dollars the quart.

We lost little time in questioning these fellows. The Federal Court was in session at Prescott, Arizona. One-eyed Dan et al., arrested at noon, were delivered at the Agency by two o’clock; and by three, autos were rolling with these gentry and witnesses and the evidence, toward the railroad. We would catch the night train, and make a swift job of it; one day peddling in the empire, the next in court and ready for sentence. Dan and his compadre were made comfortable in a back seat, handcuffed, and shackled together. A Navajo will not hesitate to leap from a car if free, and then it is either let him go or wing him. It doesn’t pay to wing him.

But we were delayed. One cannot make an average twenty miles per hour through that country, and it was close to six o’clock when we reached the Indian Wells trading-post, just across the reservation line. All through that district the Navajo are settled upon alternate sections of land governed by the Leupp Indian Agency, and it is not “reservation” of a solid block. The intervening sections are “railroad lands,” bonus grants for building what is now the Santa Fe system. In this fashion the Government gave the first railway a very large part of the Southwest, a seemingly unimportant and nonproductive country at that time, and one could find Santa Fe titles forty miles either side of its tracks. The Indians knew nothing of these paper records, and roamed indiscriminately with their camps and sheep, wrangling about water with range cattlemen who had leased from the railroad, viewing with suspicion those few men who bought outright; and Washington found it—still finds it—“a very perplexing question.”

The trading-post was closed, its owner at supper. But sitting on the stone doorstep was a dejected Navajo who appeared to have had a desperate and losing battle. His head, face, and shirt were covered with blood, some of which had dried; and some of the fresh he was still trying to staunch. Just then the trader appeared.

“Glad you arrived,” he said, seeming relieved. “I was wondering what to do about this. I saw the whole affair. This man fought with two Navajo off there in the flat. They were through here several days ago, going to the railroad for liquor. Seems that they got back with it all right, and wouldn’t give this chap his share. Anyway, they fought it out, beating him over the head with their forty-fives. I’ve been washing his scalp this last half-hour.”

He could give the names of the two, and the location of their home camp.

“Just back in the hills,” he said, waving. “Not more than two miles at most. They ought to be cinched.”

“It’s not my jurisdiction,” I said. “Their Agent is fifty miles away, and one hundred miles roundabout the railroad.”

“Time he gets here,” said the trader, “booze and all will be gone, and may be another scrap or two; like as not, murder done.”

“Have they been gathering for a sing?” I asked.

“No, nothing scheduled like that. They’re running north into your country, peddling a little along the way.”

Now it looked as if someone should do something without waiting for telegrams and a handful of printed tracts. I had One-eyed Dan already in hand, and three “special deputies” to assist in the capture of those who had trimmed the fellow on the doorstep. The injured man agreed to identify and to appear against them. We would bag the whole outfit, and stand four in court next day. The trail was warm, and the Leupp Agent could not hope to arrive before the next afternoon. And it was only two miles over the hill.

“We’ll have some supper, and then get those fellows, if you” (meaning the trader) “will show the road.”

“I sure will,” he agreed.

After a meal, he led the way in his car, and we followed. Two miles over the hill! It is true we found one deserted camp. And then we went on and on. The orders were, silence, and lights out. The road into the Castle Butte country is winding, over little steep-pitched hills and down through narrow washes. When we had gone five miles, deep night had shut down, lighted only by a misty moon that rather obscured things in those twisted little vales and defiles. Suddenly the trader stopped his car.

“I believe that’s one of them,” he called.

Ahead of us showed a pony. Two of the deputies jumped out and ran forward, to find a man and a boy on the one horse. Off came the man, and the boy too. At the car he was identified as one of the assailants. The pony was turned loose to graze. The man joined One-eyed Dan et al. in the rear seat, another pair of handcuffs making the three secure in one squad.

But we had reckoned without the boy. He was about ten years old, and these things seemed to him as mysterious, not to say alarming. When he realized that strange men had chained up his kinsman, he raised a soul-stirring bawl to Heaven. It was no time or place for explanations, so we gagged him with a handkerchief and prepared to go on.

“How much farther?” I asked the guide.

“Just over the next hill.”

“Well, this speedometer says we have come seven miles.”

“From the next pitch we shall see the camp,” he assured me, confidently.

“How many live there?”

“Two families.”

And from the next rise we could see the light of a fire.

“It looks like a larger camp than that,” I told him. “Are you sure there is no sing going on?”

“Not a sign of it these last several days. That fire’s in the corral, just beyond their hogans.”

“Then run all three cars fairly close to the gate of it. Keep these prisoners in the last one, back in the shadow, and don’t make a show of guns. I’ll go in and investigate. If you fellows hear a row, you can then come up.”

The light of the fire grew brighter as we crept on, driving the cars as noiselessly as possible, and one learns to do that in the Desert. The corral was a large one, the logs set on end, and the firelight streamed through the crevices. One could not see inside until very close. About twenty yards from the gate or entrance we lined the cars, throwing the headlights on that opening. It is trying to face a brilliant auto-lamp, and those behind it have an advantage. I jumped from the step and went quickly forward, carrying a quirt.

In a strange country and among strange Indians, a gun may prove a dangerous weapon; but that does not prevent one from carrying a quirt having a loaded grip.

If anyone had caught the boy’s cries or had heard our approach, there was no sign of it. Apparently there was no one to hear. The place seemed deserted. Outside the corral, one could see only a silent camp, untenanted, noiseless, painted by a great wave of brilliant light. No dogs started up. It was very strange, and decidedly unlike most Navajo camps.

At a brisk walk I went through the corral gate—to face fifty or more husky Navajo Indians, all males, crowded together, waiting. And each one of them eyed me as if to ask my business. They knew that I was not their Nahtahni.

There was no going back. I would have to chance their sober or drunken condition. I walked up to the fire, and asked, with as much unconcern as possible to muster: “Where is Bitani Bega?”

Silence—that sullen, contemptuous silence of the suspicious Navajo who has not come forward to greet one, and who will hide whatever he knows behind a mask of indifferent and stolid ignorance. I looked them over, wondering if they were all strangers to me. A colony of my Navajo lived in the southern line and traded at the Indian Wells post; but not a man of them could I see. Then, in all that crowd, I sighted an educated face. One learns to distinguish between the Navajo who has been to school and the one who has never had a hair-cut. The former has a keener expression, a brighter cast of countenance, though his hair may be once again uncared for. I walked up to him, and demanded: “Where did you go to school?”

He wavered for a moment, as if to deny his knowledge of English, and then answered: “At Leupp.”

“Why did n’t you speak up before? You know me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I remember you at Leupp. I was a little boy then, and you went away. You are superintendent up here somewhere.”

I felt easier now. But I did not care to have any one of them straggle outside, to learn that I had three Navajo handcuffed in my car, and one of them their own, to say nothing of a boy who had been gagged. Just then the trader and one of my deputies, who had waited long enough and were wondering what had happened to me, appeared in the gateway. I told them to stop there; and, as I expected, so long as they were there, no one of the crowd sought to go out.

“You can interpret for me,” I said to the returned student. “I am looking for a man named Bitani Bega, who lives in this district, and who runs booze. He beat up another Navajo this afternoon at Indian Wells. I want to know where he is.”

The young Navajo rattled this off to the crowd.

“Ep-ten,” they began to exclaim, in various tones, shaking their heads, meaning that this was entirely outside their knowledge.

“Do you see that fellow here?” I called to the trader, wondering what I should do if he did recognize him. But the trader shook his head.

At one end of the corral was a brush shelter or shed. Under it camp equipment was scattered: harness, boxes, kegs for water-carrying, and blanketed bundles.

“Tell them I am going to search the camp,” I said.

“Search for what?” several asked.

“For liquor,” and with no positive assurance that I would be permitted to continue long, I went about it. It was simply a display, to keep up appearances. Any quantity of liquor would have been cached outside, and as all present were sober, it was not likely that any had been brought in. My sole idea was to bluff them for a little, and then get away. I sincerely wanted to get away without fuss. Undoubtedly they had congregated for a drinking bout, and I had one of them, and the second bootlegger was probably watching from some hillside brush at that moment. Later in the night they would welcome him and his assortment of bottled trouble. They moved away from their belongings, and I failed to find any contraband in the various bales and kegs scattered under the shelter.

“You tell these men that I am going on to Leupp. If there is any boozing here, you may expect that Nahtahni will hear of it.”

They received this in silence, but it was a silence that seemed to bode me no great blessing. The men at the gate swung the cars around to head away from there, and then I strolled out of the corral, carrying a belief that I had narrowly missed something. And if you do not grasp my emotion, if you think I was unnecessarily alarmed, I cannot hope to convince you or explain how one feels hostility and resentment among these desert people. I was not welcome in that camp, and very likely it was a good thing for me that I did not find Bitani Bega.

The road away from the camp was now better known to us, and we did not waste time. At the first camp we dropped the boy, and he scuttled away in the shadows, followed by a lecture in Navajo.

“How’s the Cottonwood crossing?” someone asked the trader.

“It’s all right, if you know where to hit it,” he replied. “Go on down there and wait for me. I’ll get my coat at the store, and a couple of shovels, and then pilot you across. Don’t attempt it without me. You’ll get bogged, sure.”

He left us at the next turning, and we went on to the crossing. There was no bridge in those days, and the Cottonwood was a nasty place. At times one could go straight across, and at other times he would do well to go several miles up the wash to cross and return. We drove on carefully and worked our way to the edge of a hummocky place, and there was nothing to do but wait for the trader’s return. The night had grown clearer now; the air was crisp and the stars bright.

“I’ll see if the engine needs any water,” said one of the men.

The three prisoners drowsed in the rear seat. We both got out and leaned our rifles against a front fender. The driver of the other car did the same. Having watered the iron horses, we stepped off a few yards and stood talking, when suddenly, one of the men threw up his hand and called: “Listen!”

One can hear noises a long way in the open spaces, and we had left the hills and were now in a great flat. On the quiet air came the sound of many hoofs, drumming, racing down on us. A quick scramble back to the cars and the rifles. There was no crossing that wash without a guide. We swung the cars broadside of the road, and turned off the lights.

Of course, we thought the boy had returned, and they were now about to rescue their captured neighbor. Naturally they would seek us at the crossing. I threw the rifle lever and a shell into the breech, and leaned across the engine. We would have the car between us.

The hoofs pounded nearer, a dozen or more ponies.

“Uptohulloa!” roared the big stockman, a word he could fire like a broadside. They reined in, a group of shadowy horsemen.

“Where you going?” was pieced out from our smattering of Navajo. Then one of them rode forward, and we recognized a man from a camp below the wash.

“Going home,” he said, simply.

We had no fault to find with this, and said so. Their ponies slowly and gingerly began crossing the bog, following a devious trail. Another thrill shattered. It is a land where nothing ever happens until, through misfortune or misunderstanding, the wholly unexpected occurs.

When our guide came up, we too crossed, and three hours later we reached the Holbrook jail. The deputy sheriff in charge said that all hotels were filled, and we were too tired to seek lodging elsewhere. What would do for the prisoners would be gratefully accepted by the posse. So we all slept that night behind the bars.

Very early I found a physician to examine and dress the wounds of our battered witness, and I telegraphed the Leupp Indian Agent for instructions as to the one prisoner from his Bidahoche province. He replied that he would come for the man. We went on to court with the liquor cases. [3] There One-eyed Dan and his partner pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to a rest of several months in jail; whence, having recuperated and made new plans, they returned to the back-country game with renewed spirits.

My colleague of the Leupp Agency managed things differently. The complainant and prisoner were taken to his headquarters, where he heard the case as Nahtahni, and sentenced the guilty to break rock for a considerable period. However, this was not nearly so impressive to the Indian as action in a foreign court, removed from the Indian country; but it is a pity that the circumstance of capture and the possibility of crime weigh so little when the Indian culprit is arraigned before those not conversant with his daily life.

XXIV

HELD FOR RANSOM

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you,
We have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

—Songs from English History

For seven long years I lived in a two-penny house at the Agency, the rooms of which were nine by twelve, and the floors not level. I decided to increase the size of it, so that three or four visitors might arrange themselves in one room without compelling their host to step outside. This necessitated removing several walls, and for months I slept in a draughty place, surrounded by broken plaster, piles of lumber, mortar-boards and paint-pots. If one wished to call, he scrambled up a long plank having cleats nailed to it, fell over the débris, and projected himself into my bedroom. It was literally all doorway, and it opened on the Desert.

One morning, about three A.M., I was aroused by a resounding crash. Some one called earnestly for Moungwi. I turned on a flashlight, and rescued an Indian policeman from a trap of metal-lathe and scaffolding. It was one of the Tewa who had ridden in.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked him.

“There’s a man shot in the Wepo Wash—Navajo; and they’re holding a Hopi for it. Billa Chezzi says must kill him pronto. Come right away and stop it. Here’s a letter.”

The note he handed me had been hurriedly written by an Indian girl of the mesa, and she had been so filled with the necessity for my coming “to stop it” that she had failed to give all the facts. It appeared however that an unfortunate Hopi, held a prisoner by the Navajo of the North, was to be butchered by sundown; and the sun had gone down and was about to come up again.

I aroused the physician and the big stockman from their slumbers.

“We’ll start at daylight, so get ready.”

The stockman routed out the Navajo interpreter, and they began adjusting a Ford car, in the hope that it would hold together through a nervous experience.

Just at daybreak a range Navajo rode in with another note. This was from the redoubtable Ed, trading now in the Bakidbahotzne country of the central North, and who kept me advised from that distant station.

Billa Chezzi and his gang have a Hopi boy up here, and all last
night they argued to kill him. I advised them to send for you. They
are not in the best of humors. Seems that this Hopi boy shot a
Navajo boy. Bring the doctor. The Navajo is not dead yet.

Now this looked a trifle better, but there was an ominous possibility in his last sentence. “The Navajo is not dead—yet.”

There were four of us in the car: the physician, the stockman, the Indian interpreter, and myself. Several policemen clattered their way over the shorter trails, but I did not feel that they would help matters much. On reaching the First Mesa we learned that a Hopi lad named Lidge Palaquoto, the son of Pah-lah, a widow, and who was aged about fourteen years, had been out with sheep in the upper Wepo Wash. He had carried a .22 rabbit-gun. When he did not return at nightfall, search developed that he was in the hands of the Black Mountain Navajo. He had somehow and for some unknown reason shot a Navajo boy, about two years older than himself.

We would have to round the First Mesa and go through the Wepo Valley sand, but at that Henry’s contrivance would make better time than the traditional bronk. In a novel, requiring at this stage a thrilling rescue, we should have rushed to the corrals, subdued several chilly and resisting horses, and consumed four hours pounding through sand and greasewood, to arrive with a clatter and amid dust and revolver smoke. We should have dashed down on them, spattered a volley, swept the lad from the ground in passing, plunged on, and disappeared in a blaze of glory. Yes, I have written that sort of nerve tonic. But we didn’t do anything of the kind. We used a Ford. And despite all one’s imagination and nervous energy, there is no glory in a Ford.

But in the more prosaic manner we could make the trip in two hours, without saddle-sores, carrying all the believed-necessary tools for any possible emergency. The doctor had his kit for his method of life-saving. There were two Winchester carbines, the stockman packed his cavalry-type .45, and I carried in a spring-sling under my left arm one of Mr. Colt’s automatic specials. It did not invite attention there, hampered no one, and could be withdrawn in less than an hour’s time. The Government officials at Washington consider these adjuncts altogether unnecessary, and often write words to that effect; and they are unnecessary in Washington, where the writing officials who frown on them are usually to be found at desks, nursing plans for future campaigns. This affair was not billed for Washington. It did not concern auto traffic. It was to be staged in the upper Wepo Wash, and Ed’s note had stated that Billa Chezzi stood peevishly at the head of his gang. One should keep in mind that the Navajo go armed. There would be plenty of forty-fives and a few heavy rifles in that crowd. I had prevented their procuring ammunition from the licensed traders of the reservation, but no one prevented their procuring it off the reservation, from unregulated traders and in the railroad towns. Both Federal and Arizona State law decree against the furnishing of either arms or ammunition to Indians, and despite numerous murders in the Navajo country, these laws have been the deadest of defunct letters.

Perhaps, trending along the lines of recent admonitions, we should have carried an outfit for the making of tea, together with several hymnbooks. However, I had other ideas on this subject. I recalled how this favored son of the Desert, to wit, Billa Chezzi, had held up Hubbell the trader, threatening him with a rifle, until disarmed, overpowered, and chained to a post. How he had started a war against a former superintendent. How another Arizona pioneer had been forced to beat Billa nearly to death in defense of his own life. This last affair had occurred at Fort Defiance. And, of course, to be fair to the chief, he had been drunk on all occasions; but could I be sure of his sobriety on this one?

When the car swung around the point of the First Mesa, I counseled the doctor thus:—

“Ed seems to think this Navajo boy will not live. Let us hope he is alive when we get there. You examine him and, at first opportunity, without inviting excitement, tell me about how long he will last. I shall have just that much time in which to settle things. I may need it.”

“Suppose he dies?” said the doctor.

“I am hoping he will not die until I have made arrangements. If he kicks in before that, I don’t know just what will happen.”

And this did not appear to ease the physician’s mind.

Half an hour later we saw them, a large party of Indians in the central flat. Some of them were mounted, but for the most part they had turned their ponies loose to graze and were grouped in a throng on foot. It would be there among them, probably haranguing, that I should find old Billa Chezzi, alias Crooked Fingers, with a black silk handkerchief swathed about his head, the perfect picture of a desert bandit. Old, wrinkled, and yellow-toothed, with bleary eyes that narrowed when he became sullen, Billa Chezzi was not the pleasantest of the Navajo chiefs.

“When we get there,” I said to the stockman, “look around for that Hopi boy. If you see a Hopi boy, and you have an opportunity, put him in the car; and then you stay with him.”