Chapter III (2)

Within this space marched the columns of the Coronado expedition, armed to the teeth in all the panoply of grim war, and bent on destruction and conquest; and here, too, plodded meek friar and learned priest, the sons of Francis or of Loyola, armed with the irresistible weapons of the Cross, the Rosary, and the Sacred Text, and likewise bent upon destruction and conquest—the destruction of idols and the conquest of souls.

These were no ordinary mortals, whom the imagination may depict as droning over breviary or mumbling over beads. They were men who had, in several cases at least, been eminent in civil pursuits before the whispers of conscience bade them listen to the Divine command, “Give up all and follow Me.” Eusebio Kino was professor of mathematics in the University of Ingoldstadt, and had already made a reputation among the scholars of Europe, when he relinquished his titles and position to become a member of the order of Jesuits and seek a place in their missionary ranks on the wildest of frontiers, where he, with his companions, preached the word of God to tribes whose names even were unknown in the Court of Madrid.

Of these men and their labors, if space allow, we may have something to learn a chapter or two farther on. Just now I find that all my powers of persuasion must be exerted to convince the readers who are still with me that the sand “wash” in which we are floundering is in truth a river, or rather a little river—the “Riito”—the largest confluent of the Santa Cruz. Could you only arrange to be with me, you unbelieving Thomases, when the deluging rains of the summer solstice rush madly down the rugged face of the Santa Catalina and swell this dry sand-bed to the dimensions of a young Missouri, all tales would be more easy for you to swallow.

But here we are. That fringe of emerald green in the “bottom” is the barley land surrounding Tucson; those gently waving cottonwoods outline the shrivelled course of the Santa Cruz; those trees with the dark, waxy-green foliage are the pomegranates behind Juan Fernandez’s corral. There is the massive wall of the church of San Antonio now; we see streets and houses, singly or in clusters, buried in shade or unsheltered from the vertical glare of the most merciless of suns. Here are pigs staked out to wallow in congenial mire—that is one of the charming customs of the Spanish Southwest; and these—ah, yes, these are dogs, unchained and running amuck after the heels of the horses, another most charming custom of the country.

Here are “burros” browsing upon tin cans—still another institution of the country—and here are the hens and chickens, and the houses of mud, of one story, flat, cheerless, and monotonous were it not for the crimson “rastras” of chile which, like mediæval banners, are flung to the outer wall. And women, young and old, wrapped up in “rebosos” and “tapalos,” which conceal all the countenance but the left eye; and men enfolded in cheap poll-parrotty blankets of cotton, busy in leaning against the door-posts and holding up the weight of “sombreros,” as large in diameter as cart-wheels and surrounded by snakes of silver bullion weighing almost as much as the wearers.

The horses are moving rapidly down the narrow street without prick of spur. The wagons are creaking merrily, pulled by energetic mules, whose efforts need not the urging of rifle-cracking whip in the hands of skilful drivers. It is only because the drivers are glad to get to Tucson that they explode the long, deadly black snakes, with which they can cut a welt out of the flank or brush a fly from the belly of any animal in their team. All the men are whistling or have broken out in glad carol. Each heart is gay, for we have at last reached Tucson, the commercial _entrepôt_ of Arizona and the remoter Southwest—Tucson, the Mecca of the dragoon, the Naples of the desert, which one was to see and die; Tucson, whose alkali pits yielded water sweeter than Well of Zemzen, whose maidens were more charming, whose society was more hospitable, merchants more progressive, magazines better stocked, climate more dreamy, than any town from Santa Fé to Los Angeles; from Hermosillo, in Sonora, to the gloomy chasm of the Grand Cañon—with one exception only: its great rival, the thoroughly American town of Prescott, in the bosom of the pine forests, amid the granite crags of the foot-hills of the Mogollon.

Camp Lowell, as the military post was styled, was located on the eastern edge of the town itself. In more recent years it has been moved seven or eight miles out to where the Riito is a flowing stream. We took up position close to the quartermaster’s corral, erected such tents as could be obtained, and did much solid work in the construction of “ramadas” and other conveniences of branches. As a matter of comfort, all the unmarried officers boarded in the town, of which I shall endeavor to give a succinct but perfectly fair description as it impressed itself upon me during the months of our sojourn in the intervals between scouts against the enemy, who kept our hands full.

My eyes and ears were open to the strange scenes and sounds which met them on every side. Tucson was as foreign a town as if it were in Hayti instead of within our own boundaries. The language, dress, funeral processions, religious ceremonies, feasts, dances, games, joys, perils, griefs, and tribulations of its population were something not to be looked for in the region east of the Missouri River. I noted them all as well as I knew how, kept my own counsel, and give now the _résumé_ of my notes of the time.

The “Shoo Fly” restaurant, which offered the comforts of a home to the weary wayfarer in Tucson, Arizona, circa 1869, was named on the principle of “_lucus à non lucendo_”—the flies wouldn’t shoo worth a cent. Like the poor, they remained always with us. But though they might bedim the legend, “All meals payable in advance,” they could not destroy the spirit of the legend, which was the principle upon which our most charming of landladies, Mrs. Wallen, did business.

Mrs. Wallen deserves more than the hasty reference she is receiving in these pages. She was a most attentive and well-meaning soul, understood the mysteries, or some of the mysteries, of the culinary art, was anxious to please, had never seen better days, and did not so much as pretend to have seen any, not even through a telescope.

She was not a widow, as the proprieties demanded under the circumstances—all landladies that I’ve ever read or heard of have been widows—but the circumstance that there was a male attached to the name of Wallen did not cut much of a figure in the case, as it was a well-understood fact that Mrs. Wallen was a woman of nerve and bound to have her own way in all things. Consequently, the bifurcated shadow which flitted about in the corral feeding the chickens, or made its appearance from time to time in the kitchen among the tomato peelings, did not make a very lasting impression upon either the regulars or the “mealers,” the two classes of patrons upon whose dollars our good hostess depended for the support of her establishment.

One line only will be needed to lay before the reader the interior view of the “Shoo Fly.” It was a long, narrow, low-ceiled room of adobe, whose walls were washed in a neutral yellowish tint, whose floor was of rammed earth and ceiling of white muslin. Place here and there, in convenient positions, eight or ten tables of different sizes; cover them with cheap cloths, cheap china and glass—I use the term “cheap” in regard to quality only, and not in regard to the price, which had been dear enough, as everything was in those days of freighting with mule and “bull” teams from Leavenworth and Kit Carson. Place in the centre of each table a lead castor with the obsolete yellow glass bottles; put one large, cheap mirror on the wall facing the main entrance, and not far from it a wooden clock, which probably served some mysterious purpose other than time-keeping, because it was never wound up. Have pine benches, and home-made chairs, with raw-hide bottoms fastened with strings of the same material to the framework. Make the place look decidedly neat and clean, notwithstanding the flies and the hot alkali dust which penetrated upon the slightest excuse. Bring in two bright, pleasant-mannered Mexican boys, whose dark complexions were well set off by neat white cotton jackets and loose white cotton trousers, with sometimes a colored sash about the waist. Give each of these young men a fly-flapper as a badge of office, and the “Shoo Fly” is open for the reception of guests.

Napkins designated the seats of the regular boarders. “Mealers” were not entitled to such distinction and never seemed to expect it. There was no bill of fare. None was needed. Boarders always knew what they were going to get—same old thing. There never was any change during all the time of my acquaintance with the establishment, which, after all is said and done, certainly contrived to secure for its patrons all that the limited market facilities of the day afforded. Beef was not always easy to procure, but there was no lack of bacon, chicken, mutton, and kid meat. Potatoes ranked as luxuries of the first class, and never sold for less than ten cents a pound, and often could not be had for love or money. The soil of Arizona south of the Gila did not seem to suit their growth, but now that the Apaches have for nearly twenty years been docile in northern Arizona, and left its people free from terror and anxiety, they have succeeded in raising the finest “Murphies” in the world in the damp lava soil of the swales upon the summit of the great Mogollon Plateau.

There was plenty of “jerked” beef, savory and palatable enough in stews and hashes; eggs, and the sweet, toothsome black “frijoles” of Mexico; tomatoes equal to those of any part of our country, and lettuce always crisp, dainty, and delicious. For fresh fruit, our main reliance was upon the “burro” trains coming up from the charming oasis of Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora—a veritable garden of the Hesperides, in which Nature was most lavish with her gifts of honey-juiced oranges, sweet limes, lemons, edible quinces, and luscious apricots; but the apple, the plum, and the cherry were unknown to us, and the strawberry only occasionally seen.

Very frequently the presence of Apaches along the road would cause a panic in trains coming up from the south, and then there would be a fruit famine, during which our sole reliance would be upon the mainstay of boarding-house prosperity—stewed peaches and prunes. There were two other articles of food which could be relied upon with reasonable certainty—the red beet, which in the “alkali” lands attains a great size, and the black fig of Mexico, which, packed in ceroons of cow’s hide, often was carried about for sale.

Chile Colorado entered into the composition of every dish, and great, velvety-skinned, delicately flavored onions as large as dinner plates ended the list—that is to say, the regular list. On some special occasion there would be honey brought in from the Tia Juana Ranch in Lower California, three or four hundred miles westward, and dried shrimps from the harbor of Guaymas. In the harbor of Guaymas there are oysters, too, and they are not bad, although small and a trifle coppery to the taste of those who try them for the first time. Why we never had any of them was, I suppose, on account of the difficulty of getting them through in good condition without ice, so we had to be content with the canned article, which was never any too good. From the Rio Grande in the neighborhood of El Paso there came the “pasas,” or half-dried grape, in whose praise too much could not be said.

The tables were of pine, of the simplest possible construction. All were bad enough, but some were a trifle more rickety than others. The one which wobbled the least was placed close to the north side of the banqueting-hall, where the windows gave the best “view.”

Around this Belshazzarian board assembled people of such consideration as Governor Safford, Lieutenant-Governor Bashford, Chief-Justice John Titus, Attorney-General MacCaffrey, the genial Joe Wasson, Tom Ewing, and several others. I was on a number of occasions honored with a seat among them, and enjoyed at one and the same moment their conversation and the “view” of which I have spoken.

There was a foreground of old tin tomato cans, and a middle distance of chicken feathers and chile peppers, with a couple of “burros” in the dim perspective, and the requisite flitting of lights and shadows in the foliage of one stunted mesquite-bush, which sheltered from the vertical rays of the sun the crouching form of old Juanita, who was energetically pounding between smooth stones the week’s washing of the household, and supplying in the gaudy stripes of her bright “serape” the amount of color which old-school critics used to maintain was indispensable to every landscape.

Juanita was old and discreet, but her thoughts were not altogether on the world to come. Her face was ordinarily plastered with flour-paste, the cosmetic of the Southwest. Why this attention to her toilet, the wisest failed to tell; Often did I assure her that nothing could improve her complexion—a statement not to be controverted—and never did she fail to rebuke me with her most bewitching smile, and the words, “Ah! Don Juan, you’re such a flatterer.”

The gentlemen whose names I have just given are nearly all dead or so well advanced in years and dignity that what I have to say now will not sound like flattery. They had each and all travelled over a great deal of the earth’s surface, and several of them were scholars of ripe learning. I was much younger then than I am now, and of course the attainments of men so much older than myself made a deep impression upon me, but even to this day I would place the names of Titus and Bashford in the list of scholars of erudition whom I have known, and very high up in the list, too.

The remainder of the patrons seemed to be about evenly divided between the cynical grumblers who, having paid their score with regularity, arrogated to themselves the right to asperse the viands; and the eulogists who, owing to temporary financial embarrassments, were unable to produce receipts, and sought to appease their not by any means too hard-hearted landlady by the most fulsome adulation of the table and its belongings.

Like the brokers of Wall Street who are bulls to-day and bears to-morrow, it not infrequently happened among the “Shoo Fly’s” patrons that the most obdurate growler of last week changed front and assumed position as the Advocatus Diaboli of this.

But, take them for all in all, they were a good-hearted, whole-souled lot of men, who had roughed it and smoothed it in all parts of the world, who had basked in the smiles of Fortune and had not winced at her frown; a trifle too quick on the trigger, perhaps, some of them, to be perfectly well qualified to act as Sunday-school superintendents, yet generous to the comrade in distress and polite to all who came near them. The Western man—the Pacific Sloper especially—is much more urbane and courteous under such circumstances than his neighbor who has grown up on the banks of the Delaware or Hudson. There was bitter rivalry between Mrs. Wallen and Mr. Neugass, the proprietor of the “Palace”—a rivalry which diffused itself among their respective adherents.

I make the statement simply to preserve the record of the times, that the patrons of the “Shoo Fly” never let go an opportunity to insinuate that the people to be met at the “Palace” were, to a large extent, composed of the “_nouveaux riches_.” There was not the slightest foundation for this, as I can testify, because I afterward sat at Neugass’s tables, when Mrs. Wallen had retired from business and gone into California, and can recall no difference at all in the character of the guests.

Tucson enjoyed the singular felicity of not possessing anything in the shape of a hotel. Travellers coming to town, and not provided with letters which would secure them the hospitality of private houses, craved the privilege of “making down” their blankets in the most convenient corral, and slept till early morn, undisturbed save by the barking of dogs, which never ceased all through the night, or the crowing of loud-voiced chanticleers, which began ere yet the dawn had signalled with its first rosy flush from the peak of the Santa Rita. It was the customary thing for wagon trains to halt and go into camp in the middle of the plaza in front of the cathedral church of San Antonio, and after the oxen or mules had been tied to the wheels, the drivers would calmly proceed to stretch out tired limbs in the beautiful moonlight.

I never could see the advantage of such a state of affairs, and felt that it belittled the importance of the town, which really did a very large business with the surrounding country for hundreds of miles. There are always two and even three different ways of looking at the same proposition, and to Bob Crandall and Vet Mowry this manner of camping “_à la belle étoile_” was the one thing “to which they pointed with pride.” It was proof of the glorious climate enjoyed by Tucson. Where else in the whole world, sir, could a man camp out night after night all the year round? Was it in Senegambia? No, sir. In Nova Zembla? No, sir. In Hong Kong? No, sir. In Ireland?—but by this time one could cut off the button, if necessary, and break away.

So there were only three places in which people could get acquainted with one another—in the “Shoo Fly” or “Palace” restaurants; in the gambling resorts, which never closed, night or day, Sunday or Monday; and at the post-office, in the long line of Mexicans and Americans slowly approaching the little square window to ask for letters.

For the convenience of my readers and myself, I will take the liberty of presenting some of my dead and gone friends in the “Shoo Fly,” where we can have seats upon which to rest, and tables upon which to place our elbows, if we so desire.

But first a word or two more about Tucson itself.

It was in those days the capital of the Territory of Arizona, and the place of residence of most of the Federal officials. Its geographical situation was on the right bank of the pretty little stream called the Santa Cruz, a mile or more above where it ran into the sands. In round figures, it was on the 32d degree of north latitude, and not far from the 112th degree west from Greenwich. The valley of the Santa Cruz, although not much over a mile and a half wide, is wonderfully fertile, and will yield bountifully of all cereals, as well as of the fruits of the south temperate or north tropical climes, and could easily have supported a much larger population, but on account of the bitter and unrelenting hostilities waged by the Apaches, not more than 3,200 souls could be claimed, although enthusiasts often deluded themselves into a belief in much higher figures, owing to the almost constant presence of trains of wagons hauled by patient oxen or quick-moving mules, or “carretas” drawn by the philosophical donkey or “burro” from Sonora. The great prairie-schooners all the way from the Missouri River made a very imposing appearance, as, linked two, and even three, together, they rolled along with their heavy burdens, to unload at the warehouses of the great merchants, Lord & Williams, Tully, Ochoa & De Long, the Zeckendorfs, Fish & Collingwood, Leopoldo Carrillo, or other of the men of those days whose transactions ran each year into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Streets and pavements there were none; lamps were unheard of; drainage was not deemed necessary, and water, when not bought from the old Mexican who hauled it in barrels in a dilapidated cart from the cool spring on the bishop’s farm, was obtained from wells, which were good and sweet in the first months of their career, but generally became so impregnated with “alkali” that they had to be abandoned; and as lumber was worth twenty-five cents a foot, and therefore too costly to be used in covering them, they were left to dry up of their own accord, and remain a menace to the lives and limbs of belated pedestrians. There was no hint in history or tradition of a sweeping of the streets, which were every bit as filthy as those of New York.

The age of the garbage piles was distinctly defined by geological strata. In the lowest portion of all one could often find arrowheads and stone axes, indicative of a pre-Columbian origin; super-imposed conformably over these, as the geologists used to say, were skins of chile Colorado, great pieces of rusty spurs, and other reliquiæ of the “Conquistadores,” while high above all, stray cards, tomato cans, beer bottles, and similar evidences of a higher and nobler civilization told just how long the Anglo-Saxon had called the territory his own.

This filthy condition of the streets gave rise to a weird system of topographical designation. “You want to find the Governor’s? Wa’al, podner, jest keep right down this yere street past the Palace s’loon, till yer gets ter the second manure-pile on yer right; then keep to yer left past the post-office, ’n’ yer’ll see a dead burro in th’ middle of th’ road, ’n’ a mesquite tree ’n yer lef’, near a Mexican ‘tendajon’ (small store), ’n’ jes’ beyond that’s the Gov.’s outfit. Can’t miss it. Look out fur th’ dawg down ter Muñoz’s corral; he’s a salviated son ov a gun.”

It took some time for the ears of the “tenderfoot” just out from the States to become habituated to the chronology of that portion of our vast domain. One rarely heard months, days, or weeks mentioned. The narrator of a story had a far more convenient method of referring back to dates in which his auditory might be interested. “Jes’ about th’ time Pete Kitchen’s ranch was jumped”—which wasn’t very satisfactory, as Pete Kitchen’s ranch was always getting “jumped.” “Th’ night afore th’ Maricopa stage war tuck in.” “A week or two arter Winters made his last ’killin’’ in th’ Dragoons.” “Th’ last fight down to th’ Picach.” “Th’ year th’ Injuns run off Tully, Ochoa ’n’ DeLong bull teams.”

Or, under other aspects of the daily life of the place, there would be such references as, “Th’ night after Duffield drawed his gun on Jedge Titus”—a rather uncertain reference, since Duffield was always “drawin’ his gun” on somebody. “Th’ time of th’ feast (_i.e._, of Saint Augustine, the patron saint of the town), when Bob Crandall broke th’ ‘Chusas’ game fur six hundred dollars,” and other expressions of similar tenor, which replaced the recollections of “mowing time,” and “harvest,” and “sheep-shearing” of older communities.

Another strain upon the unduly excitable brain lay in the impossibility of learning exactly how many miles it was to a given point. It wasn’t “fifty miles,” or “sixty miles,” or “just a trifle beyond the Cienaga, and that’s twenty-five miles,” but rather, “Jes’ on th’ rise of the mesa as you git to th’ place whar Samaniego’s train stood off th’ Apaches;” or, “A little yan way from whar they took in Colonel Stone’s stage;” or, “Jes’ whar th’ big ‘killin’’ tuk place on th’ long mesa,” and much more of the same sort.

There were watches and clocks in the town, and some Americans went through the motions of consulting them at intervals. So far as influence upon the community went, they might just as well have been in the bottom of the Red Sea. The divisions of the day were regulated and determined by the bells which periodically clanged in front of the cathedral church. When they rang out their wild peal for early Mass, the little world by the Santa Cruz rubbed its eyes, threw off the slight covering of the night, and made ready for the labors of the day. The alarm clock of the Gringo might have been sounding for two hours earlier, but not one man, woman, or child would have paid the slightest attention to the cursed invention of Satan. When the Angelus tolled at meridian, all made ready for the noon-day meal and the post-prandial siesta; and when the hour of vespers sounded, adobes dropped from the palsied hands of listless workmen, and docile Papagoes, wrapping themselves in their pieces of “manta” or old “rebosos,” turned their faces southward, mindful of the curfew signal learned from the early missionaries.

They were a singular people, the Papagoes; honest, laborious, docile, sober, and pure—not an improper character among them. Only one white man had ever been allowed to marry into the tribe—Buckskin Aleck Stevens, of Cambridge, Mass., and that had to be a marriage with bell, book, and candle and every formality to protect the bride.

I do not know anything about the Papagoes of to-day, and am prepared to hear that they have sadly degenerated. The Americans have had twenty years in which to corrupt them, and the intimacy can hardly have been to the advantage of the red man.