CHAPTER XII

SILVER CARAVANS

Juan and Steven stood upon a desolate hillside, and from behind the stunted cedar and pines looked down upon a strange scene. Juan had ridden somewhat out of the way on the trail to Taos, and had led Señor Estevan up to this mount from which he could see in a small valley below them a group of people clustering about a small adobe building.

“Look!” pointed Juan. “Listen! It is the _pito_ (the flute).”

On the cold clear air a thin, sweet, flute-like piping arose to them. A little man down in the valley emerged from the house, carrying a book, which he held open before him, and from which he read aloud as he walked along. He was followed by one who played the flute, and behind him came a small procession, not more than five or six men, who wore masks, but who were bare to the waist, wearing nothing but white trunks. The men were striking themselves rhythmically across their backs with great whips, which were wetted from time to time in a bucket of brine carried alongside by another man. In a moment blood began to flow down their backs and the cotton trunks turned red. Steven looked away, shuddering, but in a low voice Juan once more called his attention to the religious ceremony below them.

“Señor, but look, Señor!”

Steven again looked down. The procession was winding along a rocky thorn-strewn trail beneath them, quite near, and following those that smote themselves with the thorny whips came another, bearing upon his back a heavy wooden cross. He lifted his face, and Steven recognized Luis Lopez. Juan pulled Steven back out of sight. They retraced their path and came out upon a main road where they had left their pack mules hobbled. Juan pulled and rode beside Steven.

“It is the Penitentes, señor, Los Hermanos De Luz, the Brothers of Light. I wanted you to see with your own eyes. Don Luis is of them; he has turned Penitente. This is the Holy Week, you know.”

“It was very old, this custom,” Juan continued. It had come with the first Spaniards; sometimes an Indian had been Penitente, but rarely. Long ago the Pecos Indians, of the ruined pueblo one passed on the Trail to Santa Fe,--did he remember?--had made sacrifices, it was said. But they were Aztecan; they worshiped differently. Still the Pecos tribes kept a sacred fire burning in the mountains, while the other Pueblos did not. Juan said no more and they rode on in silence.

A queer land, thought Steven. Luis could kill a man, steal, murder, and then atone by repenting in secret, whipping himself hideously. Oh, well, what did it matter now to him whether Luis repented or not? Steven could not understand this land. It was old, mysterious, and unfriendly. Yet in spite of his depression his whole nature responded to the mountains. They had lingered for four days among the hills, hunting. Spring was faintly burgeoning. The trees were ready to burst into bud, the air that blew down from the snow-capped peaks to the north carried that rare headiness that comes from beyond the timber line.

They shot a huge lobo (wolf) on the way and Steve turned it over to Juan for a robe. At the end of the fifth day they rode up through the deep arroyo that lies in the plain this side of Taos Valley, and trotted along through fertile farms into the tiny town. They made straight to the house where Colonel Ceran St. Vrain and Charles Bent lived, and there found young John Smith, Kit Carson, and a dozen long-haired trappers, guides, and hunters, among them his old friend Pierre Lafitte, who welcomed Steven right joyously. They sat up half the night, smoking, talking of the winter’s kill, and what promise the spring held.

“What have you been doing all these winter months, since last I saw you?” asked Ceran St. Vrain.

Steven told him of the trip south and its object. Ceran nodded.

“You could have done nothing else--nothing better, for that matter.”

“What was that southern country like and how did the streams run?” asked Kit. He had been down there once, in the Black Mountains, and he drew a map in the dust with his finger nail. Now what he wanted to know was, did this here river dreen down into this here valley, and from where did that thar small stream take its course?

Steven blushed. He had not located himself very well as he went. He was afraid he had not fixed the lay of the land in his mind, except for the valley of the Rio Grande.

“Pshaw!” said Kit. “You will never make a good scout if you don’t learn the mountains and the valleys, and the waterways especial. You’ve got to fix them all in your mind’s eye; then you never get lost. How did you ever get out of them White Sands you tell about, I wonder.”

“I didn’t,” Steve admitted, shamefacedly. “I went round and round after I reached right to the edge, so they told me, till finally de Garcia saw me and came up after us. I thought all the time that this white desert kept right on going, as I remember.”

The trappers nodded sympathetically. “That’s the desert for you. Mirage. In the mountains, now, you know where you’re at. Somethin’ to go by.” There was talk of traps and furs and how the Hudson Bay Company had lost out since the Rocky Mountain Fur Company had taken hold, and there was wonder what that country was like, way to the northwest, that the folks who had taken the Oregon Trail had struck out for.

John Smith said he met a French hunter in the mountains by the Red River, who said that there was an inland sea up north that was as briny as the Atlantic. “Well, you’d have to swallow that with a little salt,” spoke up Steven. There was a hearty guffaw, and St. Vrain silenced them with the withering retort that he not only believed it, but that he knew a man who had come across the hull of a Dutch ship, big as Columbus had used, stranded right in the midst of the desert, a hundred miles above the Gulf. Now what did they make of _that_?

“Nuthin’,” meditated John Smith. “No more’n a stranger could make of the millions of tons of buffalo bones what you see bleachin’ on the prairies.”

Someone burned a hole with a hot coal, with which he was lighting a pipe, and St. Vrain turned to Steven. “That reminds me, lad, when you return with your first caravan, bring a lot of those amusing little fire sticks, like the Yankees had. Matches. Some of them were no good at all, but the first lot set fire at the first scratch, and burned finely. They’re a great thing, I think, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some day no one would be without ’em.”

“I’ll send you back some,” Steven replied. “I’ll ship them from New York if New Orleans hasn’t got any yet. But I’ve decided not to come back myself.”

“What?” said St. Vrain, in astonishment, “Why, I thought it was all settled. Surely you don’t mean it, lad. I shall be very sorry.”

“But I do,” said Steven. “I have not seen my father and mother for a year, nor heard from them. After all, my father has built up a business, which he wishes his son to carry on. My place is there, where a great house known by the name I bear is already established.”

“That’s just it,” said St. Vrain, sagely. “It’s all ready made. You had no hand in it. Here is something you can do yourself. Your father has a partner, hasn’t he? And you can see him from time to time? Many have made their pile in the fur business and then retired. But they’ve helped to build up the country and the trade meanwhile. Trade, my lad, is the life of any country. Why hasn’t this land of New Spain grown any more in the three hundred odd years since the Spanish Conquistadores found it and settled it? No trade with outside countries. That’s why. That’s what builds any country up. Trade brings in new life.”

But Steven was determined. He would have to go north the day after the next, then, St. Vrain told him. He could go with Kit there, and join the party setting out from Bent’s Fort next month. They were going out to Leavenworth and another return caravan would follow back on the Trail in June. Steven said he would be ready to go with Kit.

Twenty-four hours later he was still of the same mind. And yet there was a strange ache in his breast. He sat with St. Vrain before the big fireplace. Tall Indians from the near-by pueblo which he had passed on his first trip to Taos in the fall stood around the wall, stately men, wearing their white deerskin robes, almost as an Arab wears his burnoose. One of them came over to Steven and showed him a tiny wagon which he had wrought out of silver--a little covered wagon. Steven gave the Taos artificer twice its weight in silver for the piece; the Indian was delighted.

“A silver wagon,” said St. Vrain. “That’s just a sample, silver caravans, one after another, that’s what that represents. Not only the hub and the linings of the wheels silver, but the goods inside.” He nudged Steven in an aside, for there was in the room a mixed company of Taos Indians, Mexicans from San Fernando de Taos, French trappers in the employ of the Bents, all eating, drinking, smoking.

“Had you heard about the hold-up of the Yankee caravan?”

Steven told him he had through Doña Katarina, upon her return from seeing her husband off on his spring round of the traps.

“That’s going to make it harder for the traders this next year. We need a friend in Santa Fe, Steven, my friend.”

“There’s Don Tiburcio just below,” Steven reminded him. “He wants to establish himself at Albuquerque. He has gold to invest. I have two sacks of his money for the trade.... Ah, here’s Kit.”

Young Carson had come in with a swarthy Frenchman, a lean, flashing hunter who might have been one of the Indians themselves except for his gayety and his mustachios. He laughed and sang as he flung down his pack and soon was tearing at his meat with gleaming teeth, half starved from the long trail just covered.

“Thou, Etienne,” said St. Vrain in French, “when will you have tired of living the life of the _engagé_, hunting, trapping? For three winters now, is it not?”

Etienne smiled back in perfect good nature, “Never, I think, my friend, though some day duty may recall me. I think your mountains have got hold of me. Their clutch is stronger than that of the vigilants of the French Republic.”

Steven looked sharply at him. The man had indeed the look of the French noble house of Napoleonic sympathies.

“Etienne was a French colonel of the Guards,” explained St. Vrain. “Something happened in his life. He came to this country, as you see, down the Mississippi, over the plains, and he cannot break himself away.”

A great weight was on Steven’s chest. He thought perhaps he was going to be ill. Never did he remember having had such a feeling of depression. This was the last night he should spend with this company. These daring, free, wild, fearless men, rich and uncouth, sharing a common love for the grandeur of the mountains, speaking the same tongue, understanding the silence of the timber-line heights--was he never to mingle with them again? Had he lived and dared throughout the past twelvemonth just to go away, now that he had become one with the life? St. Vrain broke in on his thoughts.

“This Steven has grown two inches this year, I swear,” said he, “and see how thick through the chest the man is.” He no longer called him lad, thought Steven, “This life has made a man of him. Here’s where he belongs.”

Unable to bear his heavy chest in company any more, Steven got up and went out. He paced up and down in the moonlight, and his thoughts were of the girl he had left standing before her hearth but a few nights before. Why had she ever warned him, in the first place? Why had she come to let him out the _carcel_? That debt angered him. And why had she sent him away on an errand of life and death only to treat him like a felon while he was gone? The more he thought of it the heavier became his chest and the tightness about his heart caused an acute pain. The chill indifference that had brought him north had melted away. But this hurt that followed his indifference was worse than anything else could have been.

He strode back and forth in the road in an unconscious effort to work off the pain that had accumulated and become dammed up during the past few days, the burning sense of injustice. No, he could not stay in this country, much as he loved it. The very name of Santa Fe would always be connected with Consuelo. Her lovely face was the first he had seen as he entered the Villa, and the last. If he did not put her sharply out of his mind now it would be the last that he carried out of the West.

She had played fast and loose with so fine a gentleman as Tiburcio de Garcia, he told himself, not asking why. Her family meant more to her than anything else could--her family pride. Who were these dons of New Mexico, anyway, that did not look down on trade as did the old French aristocrats of New Orleans? They had no scruples about trade. But he, Steven Mercer, came from a line of traders who had scoured the Seven Seas; from Caracas to Cuba, from China to Bombay, from Leavenworth to New Mexico.

In a rage he strode down the street and turned in at a brightly lighted little place whence came the sounds of music and dancing. Doña Magdalena de Archibec knew how to entertain. Always there was music in her place, a bright-eyed _muchacha_ or two to dance or to be merry with, tables for cards and lotto. The place was merry tonight indeed. There were more than the usual number of trappers and pleasure-loving youths, who frolicked on the eve of Easter, now that Good Friday had passed. A solitary fiddler with but one leg, who sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, threw back his head, closed his eyes, and played all that he saw in his soul. A girl called Rosita slipped smilingly into a chair beside Steven, where he sat at the end of the room. She smiled close into his face and laid a very soft hand over his, humming gay little airs that followed the fiddle like a happy soul singing with a sad one.

“You are too sad, señor,” Rosita laughed in a sweet, hoarse voice.

She soothed him, reminded him vaguely of some one else. Other men came up to dance with her, but she waved them away. “No, no; he is sad. I must to cheer him.... Why are you sad?” she begged. “Girl, no?”

Steven made as if to rise from the table, but her expression showed that she was hurt, that her face was that of a tender child. He sat down again.

“What would you do,” he asked, “if you had done everything that some one asked of you, and then after you had risked life and all, asking nothing, found that she had let you be blamed for something you did not do, something--well, a thief, a low common thief? It was a lie, even though a silent lie.”

“Perhaps there was a reason,” offered Rosita, sympathetically. “I do not always tell the truth. My papa he does not know that I dance here. He would be most unhappy that I dance to make money, and sing for strange men. Yet it is very nice. I make silver money. I take it to my mamma, my papa--he is crippled, can never walk--and to the eight _niños_. I tell the lie to my parents. Why make them sad? Alas! they must think the streets of Taos are paved with gold or silver that I can find so much money sweeping and washing the dishes for the _padrona_!” She smiled a trifle sadly, and then both of them laughed. A fat, pock-marked Mexican boy came for her and she rose to whirl in solemn circles with him.

A hand touched Steven upon the shoulder. It was Pierre. “Some one asks for you outside,” he said, “a lady. She waits before the house of Ceran St. Vrain, seated upon a white horse.”

Steven stared at him almost uncomprehendingly; but he rose to his feet and followed Pierre out into the moonlight. Consuelo sat atop her white horse, saddled bravely with the chair saddle of red Spanish leather. She gazed down at him anxiously. Her face looked very small and white beneath her dark reboso. As Steven advanced and stood at her stirrup, an Indian guide who had been waiting beside her touched heels to his horse and rode on up the road.

“Ess-tevan,” she whispered, “I have come after you--to tell you--what in Santa Fe you would not hear. I am so, so sorry for all. It was wrong of me, I see, to be thinking of Luis, but I did not think of him only. I thought--that you loved the Americana, ’Ope Bragdon, and that you would for her sake be glad to go into the desert, as well as for the child. And about the--the picture. I could not tell my father.” Her voice broke, stopped. There was no word from Steven. She found a sobbing breath and hurried on. “You do not know how he would take such things. He is too proud. I could only wait and pray. Father Filemon Hubert said that it was right, that all would come right. How I have wept.

“Even now, that the painting is back again, my father has had a stroke. He could not bear it, to know about Luis. And Luis--he has gone away from home. We have not seen him since the night you were with us.” It was too much. She had said bravely all that there was to say, with no help from Steven. He was standing with bowed head at her side.

Then he lifted his face and spoke, wonderingly and ashamed: “And you came all this way across the mountains just to tell me, worthless and hasty as I have been, about it all, when I would not even stay to listen.” He raised his arms, lifted her down from the saddle, and carried her like a child into St. Vrain’s house, and did not stop till he had set her down before the fire in the brightly lighted room. He asked for a room and food for the lady, and while people flew in all directions to bring hot coffee and broth, Steven with eyes for nothing else leaned above her and whispered, “Consuelo, Consuelo.”

All the trappers and rough hunters in their shaggy sheepskins, their coon caps, their fringed and soiled buckskins, arose and filed quietly out and down the street to Magdalena de Archibec’s.

Steven knew now that the thing he most wanted was to stay in the mountains, to trade with New Mexico and to mingle in the company of Indians and fighters, of traders and exploring trappers. Not to Chihuahua would his pilgrimage be, to buy brocades and bracelets of garnets for his sweetheart, as the young swains of New Spain were wont, to show their valor, braving Indians and deserts--but to New Orleans, where one day he would take his bride to the home of his parents. He hung about her neck a riband from which dangled the tiny silver wagon of the caravans.

“Next year we shall travel with them, _verdad_?”

While they waited for the fraile to come over from his house, whither Ceran St. Vrain had sent to fetch him, Consuelo lifted a radiant face, dewy with tears. “And our house shall be furnished not from Chihuahua, not from Spain, but from America, and the bodegas of Mercer & Son.”

_De Despedida_

And so Steven and Consuelo lived in the land of the Red Trail’s end and built for the coming empire from the East. Though the Trail was crimsoned for a quarter of a century afterward with the blood of pioneers, and the prairies encarnadined with the dying buffalo, still the silver caravans came. Over the Red Trail Consuelo and Steven traveled in their youth, again in middle life, to find upon their return a Santa Fe which was now within the borders of the United States, an American territory. When civil war divided North and South and the house of Mercer & Co. came to ruin, Steven in his maturity knew why he had left home, and his father and mother, to found a new fortune.

Steven did not live to see the snorting iron horse steam along the banks of the Arkansas. And the city which was first to be founded, three centuries before, by the Conquistadores of Old Spain was the last to be relinquished by Spanish-speaking rulers, to learn the tongue of new conquerors and become one of the United States. Yet had it not been for Bent, St. Vrain, Hope and Don Tiburcio, Consuelo and Steven, the Villa de Santa Fe would never have rendered herself peacefully over to the Americans.