THE TENDERFOOT IN NEW MEXICO

ROM the Navajo sheep camps we found our way to Tierra Amarilla, and there we found Tommy Burns, a frontier storekeeper, and a

good man too, of his sort, but there was another man in Tierra Amarilla who interested us much more than Tommy Burns.

This was Captain Pfeiffer, who, as I gathered, was there as the Government Agent for - the Southern Utes, or at any rate for some band of the Utes. Captain Pfeiffer was a Dutchman, not a German but a real Dutchman from Holland, and he had been promoted captain in the U.S. Army for good service during the war, the great war between North and South. Pfeiffer had married a Mexican; I think she was sister to Kit Carson's wife, so that he was brother-in-law to the great frontiersman hero as well as his brother-in-arms. Of course, Kit Carson had been dead for some time now, and Pfeiffer, a widower, was living with his one son here at Tierra Amarillo.¹ He was just as brave a man as they make 'em.

"He's got scars all over if you ever see him stripped," said Tommy Burns, telling us about him. "That's from his big fight with the Navajo. You see he'd been out with a patrol in the Navajo war, and they hadn't found any Navajos. And, they came to a fine waterhole, and they hadn't had a good wash for a long time. Now, Pfeiffer had his wife along with him: the Holland Dutch are about the cleanest people out and he felt that they did badly want a wash. So he

sent his patrol-they was Mexicans-off into the brush, and he and his wife took off their clothes and got into the waterhole to have a real fine old wash. But the Navajos were watching them all the time, and the patrol being some way off, up rushed a bunch of Navajos just on the dead run and loosed off at Pfeiffer and his missus there in the waterhole. They killed Mrs. Pfeiffer plump dead, and a fourteen-year-old Navajo boy who had a bow shot an arrow into Pfeiffer right through his liver.²

"Then came the patrol in a hurry, loping up to take a hand soon as ever they heard the shots, and so the Navajos just simply scooted! The patrol buried poor Mrs. Pfeiffer, it was all they could do, but they took the boy's arrow out of Pfeiffer's liver and carried him back to camp and the doctor fixed him up so as he got well. He's tough as a pine knot, Pfeiffer is. Well, after that, Pfeiffer had an extra-double-down on Navajos. He fought them as long as Government went on making war until the whole Navajo nation almost surrendered; after that Pfeiffer declined to quit, so he just joined the Utes and fought the remaining Navajos, who hadn't surrendered with the main lot.

"One time he was out with a bunch of Utes, and they was hid in brush watching a big band of Navajos not a great ways off. 'Come on,' says Pfeiffer, 'let's go at 'em.' 'No,' says the Ute chief, 'they're too many for that. We'll wait for 'em here and take 'em on in the brush if they feel like trying

¹ Ferd Meyer to W. T. Fletcher, Oct. 29, 1895 notes wife was Antonia Salinas of Alequiu, so Albert Henry Pfeiffer, Jr., Meyer states, "Pfeiffer, probably made his home with ___ Costilla ___

² A. H. Davis endorsed Dec. 26, 1865, notes 1863 death of Mrs. Pfeiffer at the hands of Indians and lists those wounds received from Indians by Pfeiffer.

it, but not out there in the open.' Well, he knew the Utes are better in brush.

"Of course what the Ute chief said went; it was his band of Utes; but that didn't satisfy Pfeiffer. When he found the Utes weren't on for a fight he goes to the edge of the brush and halloes to the Navajos, 'If any man of you wants to fight I'll meet him half-way and we'll have a scrap just the two of us.' 'Nothing doing,' the Navajos shouts back, 'you've got too good guns.' 'Look at here,' says Pfeiffer, 'I'll come naked with nothing but a knife and meet him if so be he'll do the same.'

"One of the Navajo chiefs said he would chip in, so they fixed it like that, and the two men, stripped stark naked, met half-way between the two crowds wearing nothing but a knife apiece, and came to grips. They carved well enough both of 'em, but Pfeiffer let the life out of the Navajo, while the Navajo only wounded him pretty bad. Then the Utes came out of the brush and carried back their man Pfeiffer into it, and there they bound him up and he got well, while the Navajos just simply planted their dead warrior. But that'll show you the kind of a man Pfeiffer is." We did admire the old hero after that, and we talked to him all we could. He was precious fond of a drop of whisky, and he talked to us all the better after it too. We told him the story of our search for gold in the San Juan country.

"Yes, that's all right now," said he (I don't attempt to reproduce his Dutch accent), "but when there was a rush of American prospectors in there in 1863 the United States Government sent Kit Carson and me to turn them out. The Government had their own hands rather more than full with Johnny Reb just then and they didn't want a Ute war on top as an extra. But the Utes were quite determined to make a war if the prospectors didn't quit their mountains, so Kit and me had to sail in and make 'em go. The prospectors went too: they quite saw that the Government had to do it, and they didn't seem to bear any grudge against us. I remember one day there Kit and I came on a lone prospector -I think he was the last of them to go-washing for gold right there on the San Juan itself. And Kit spoke up and just told him how it was and explained things. And the man quite tumbled to it and didn't talk back or make any fuss. 'Only,' says he, 'it's the very. biggest sort of a pity: jes' look in that pan', and he held up to us that last pan he'd just washed, and there we could see the gold at

the bottom shining yellow in among the black sand."

"Might he be put it there himself," said Gus. " Men do such things sometimes."

"No, no," cut in Pfeiffer. "We'd have seen him if he'd done that. That was gold right straight out of the San Juan River."

"Couldn't you take us back there now?" said Gus. "There's no war now. Why couldn't you do that?"

"Well, I dunno but I might," said old Pfeiffer. "Still it's pretty hard to find your way back to a place like that in the mountains which you've only seen once several years ago."

Nevertheless the old hero hardened his heart-he had taken a fancy to Gus and me-and he got on his horse and went out with us for a prospecting trip to find that place on the San Juan where he saw the American miner wash that last pan with the gold in it.

Of course we never found it: Pfeiffer was a perfectly hopeless guide, and he had no more idea of ever finding his way anywhere than the merest baby. Tommy Burns told us afterwards that they never dared trust him out of sight of Camp without a Mexican or an Indian to bring him home. If they neglected to do that he was dead sure to turn up missing.

This was God's truth too, as we found out. He was just a war-dog, the fighting man pure and simple, nothing else. Nor did he care a great deal for gold. Of course he'd have liked to get some just the same as anybody else, but he could do without it all right. Government paid him enough to live on, he liked his Mexicans at Tierra Amarilla well enough, and he liked his friends the Utes better still. He had to get back to meet them, so he said, when they came in for their autumn visit anyway, so we chucked our hopeless search and brought him back to Tierra Amarilla.

Gus and I talked it over. In spite of the old hero being such an utter failure as a guide, we really did believe he actually had seen what he said he had seen, namely a pan washed in the San Juan itself with good gold at the bottom of it. Yes, we would have one more look, late as the season was

getting.

A fresh lot of flour, coffee and bacon was packed on Jinks and away we went. We tried higher up the San Juan now, quite far up into Colorado, only we really hardly knew we were there, the country was so wild and unmapped. We got to Pagosa Springs, and right there at last fortune seemed to smile: we found gold, yes, coarse gold, in the San Juan itself just close to the Springs. Could this be old Pfeiffer's lost place? "No," said Gus. "He gets lost, but he'd have remembered if these Springs had been close there where he saw that man. But I guess this is good enough for us if there's much more of it." The trouble was we couldn't find out how much more there was, for down came the frost and it was no longer possible to work.

"Look at here," said Gus. "Let's go out and tell John Miller and get supplies. Then we'll come back here and stay all winter so we can begin right quick in the spring soon as frost goes. And if John's well he can come and join us then, and we'll all have a good thing. With his rheumatics he'll be better off at Jemez this winter."

"Right you are," said I. "The shortest way to get to John is to cut out going to Tierra Amarilla and travel straight back down to Jemez. It'll give us a chance to see our old friends there anyway."

"And our old enemies too," growled Gus. "You hear me talk. Best thing for us to do is to strike straight for Tierra Amarilla. We'll tell old Pfeiffer of course we've found gold, though it's not his lost place, but he can come and join us in the spring if he likes. We'll not get our supplies at Tierra Amarilla but go right on into Santa Fé where things don't cost half as much, and you can write from there to John Miller and he can chip in next spring same as Pfeiffer if he wants to. Then we'll come right back to here with lots of grub for all winter and be able to start in soon as frost goes."

Gus's head was level as usual and we decided to carry out his plan.

I cannot admit that there is anything in the thirst for gold that lures men into the wilderness. He is not sordid who to win corn drives his furrows over the face of Nature, nor is the hunter a criminal who slays her children in the wild. And in your search for gold, you your-self are but a part of

Nature, and when you take from her you do but come into your own.

No, the sordidness, if there be any, , is not in the search for gold, but in yourself, in your own motives. And ours I hold were not ignoble. I was thirty, and for seven adventurous years I had led a half-savage life on the frontier. I longed to return to civilization, at least for a spell, to taste once more of art, and books, and society, and to see again with eyes whose focus had been altered by that wild life what the thing called civilization stood for. But for such return the first need was money, and therefore I sought for gold.

With Leonardo it was different. In his own country he had loved a woman; but trouble had come between them-his the fault; as he freely admitted-and, idlest of atonements, he ruined himself by gambling. Worse, he recklessly involved himself in that murder-game Mexicans call politics, and now should he return his life was forfeit to the sleepless vengeance of the winning party.

So we both of us needed gold, gold that should give him a fresh start in a new land and throw open to me the path back to civilization.

Away we went for Tierra Amarilla; but when we got there we didn't much want to stop. The place was simply full of Jicarilla Apaches: they had drawn their rations. and there they were serenading around town like lively fiends. They had got their skins full of Tommy Burn's whisky through the medium of their Mexican friends and were feeling gay. Consequently Gus and I simply went to old Pfeiffer's house and let him know our plans; then we bought some bread and beef from a Mexican we knew, pretty tough beef it was too, and though it was already dusk we lit out again down the Chama valley to find a camp where we would be well out of the way of those drunken Jicarillas. We had a good bit of a way to go too, for all the grass had been fed off as bare as the back of your hand anywhere near Tierra Amarilla and we pushed on a good couple of leagues before we turned off from the trail into the pine timber.

Dark though it was, we hadn't blundered far before we stumbled on to the prettiest little camping place that two tired men need want to see, good grass for the horses, plenty of dry wood lying about for our fire, and the tall pines to shelter us and to sing us to

sleep with the murmuring voice of the wind in their branches. Conveniently near the trail it was too, so that we could start out bright and early in the morning; and we thankfully stripped off our saddles and Gus picketed the horses while I made a fire and chip-chopped slices of the tough meat on a log á la Texas Tom. The coffee soon was boiled, and our mouths were watering for the fried collops which were nearly done when we heard an unearthly yell down the trail. "What's that mean?" said I, looking at Gus. We listened, and the sound was borne to our ears again on the night wind, and this time it seemed nearer than before. "That them Jicarilla Apaches," said Gus; "and they yell because they mad drunk." Again the horrible chorus rang out, now only some half a mile distant. Gus looked at me in the firelight. "They going to pass pretty dose by us on the trail," he said. "They bound to see this fire. They come to see what we do. You know how they boss round among them wretched peons in Tierra Amarilla and order them about like dogs. 'Indian hungry; go cook meat. Indian thirsty: go, make coffee; give sugar, heap sugar. Then they slap them peons' faces if they don't obey. You want to stand that?-or what you want to do?"

"See them in Hades first," returned I hotly.

"Then better we put out this fire," said Gus.

And with that we sprang at the fire and kicked the embers right and left and trampled them all out we could. We shoved the coffee pot and pan under a bush, and grabbed our Winchesters and flung ourselves down behind the log on which I had been chip-chopping the steak. Nearer and nearer came the yells: there were a few live coals still glowing, but the breath of the night wind caused them to glow fitfully. Would the Indians see them as they rode by? They were almost abreast of us now, and the air was a-quiver with their resonant fiendish voices.

I have said that our camp was conveniently near the trail; it seemed rather too near to be pleasant just then! We held our breath and listened. We could see nothing, but there was much comfort in the feel of a Winchester with fifteen shots in the magazine as those yells rang in our ears. Was that a step? That crash in the bush must be an Indian pony trampling its way to us! No, those shouts were farther off. Could they really have missed seeing those tell-tale embers of our fire? Were

they really passing by?

Yes, they sounded now distinctly farther down the trail. We breathed again more freely. Slowly the harsh voices grew fainter; they sounded fitfully farther and farther off, and the sough of the pine branches came plainer to our ears as the peaceful silence gathered round us once more.

With lightened hearts we jumped up from behind our logs; we heaped together the scattered embers and piled fresh wood on them, and pre-sently the coffee pot began to sing again and the collops were spluttering in the pan, and Gus and I got our square meal at last.

But we were destined to meet with those Jicarillas again! A fortnight later we were returning by the same trail from Santa Fé, and almost at this very same spot we met them; but they were not drunk this time. Swiftly and silently they pushed past us. Anxiety, anger, ay, and fear were visible in their haste. Some were on horse and some on foot, but three of them were swathed mummy-like in bandages and lashed to cross-sticks fastened across a pair of lodge poles, making rude sledges or "travaux," as they were called by the French voyageurs, the upper ends being tied to the ponies' backs, while the lower ends bumped along the ground. Every step the ponies took must have been agony to the wounded men, who lay there grim and silent, and their ashen-gray faces turned with stoical indifference to me as they were dragged rapidly past.

The Jicarilla band at this moment looked like hunted wolves, and hunted, indeed, they were, hunted fugitives, seeking safety in their mountain fastness. They had been drinking in Tierra Amarilla again, and this last time they had met their match and something over. It so happened that a band of Utes had come in there also to trade, and had started gambling with the Jicarillas. And between the whisky and the gambling they started a quarrel, and then out flashed the knives. The Jicarillas managed to cut one Ute's throat beyond the power of bandages to mend, and the Utes on their side had carved three of the Apaches badly, and these three unfortunates, cruelly wounded as they were, were being dragged away like this to save, if possible. their scalps. For the Ute braves were bound to have a life for a life. And I looked at the ashen-gray faces of those three wounded red men as they

bumped along past me in the trail, and felt that their end was near. Poor wretches, they too were

doomed to be numbered among the victims of the drink-fiend, the worst enemy of their race.