Boy With the U. S. Survey Read online

  CHAPTER X

  AMERICANS THAT ARE FORGOTTEN

  The elation that Roger felt over the successful issue of the heliographmessage with which he had been intrusted soon dwindled away under therealization that he did not know what was coming next. The onlyinstructions he had received were that he was to take Duke to Prescott,Ariz., there to leave him with certain friends of Masseth's who wouldtake care of him. Masseth had also told him to call for his mail, and ofcourse the presumption was that he would there receive notice as to thenext step in his Survey work. But for the moment he was masterless, andthe boy felt a little lost.

  So when Roger had packed the little heliograph instrument in as smallcompass as possible, in order that it might not be ungainly in thesaddle, and gone to the edge of the Canyon to look over, the scenestruck him with loneliness. In precisely the same place, two monthsbefore, he had stood and made up his mind to risk the peril of thatsingle-handed journey, and his courage began to revive as he rememberedhow well it had resulted. Down below him he could see Bright AngelCreek, and far away, the peak to which he had signaled, all redolent ofthe interest of the summer now fast waning. Even the trail upon which heset out to return was full of the memories of his frontiersman friend,who had lightened the way with anecdote and information on his firstjourney there.

  But while Roger was inly conscious of a feeling of isolation in beingthus cut off from all the Survey parties, and looked forward to his rideto Needles with little anticipation, that sense was not shared by Duke,who, having twice before with Roger traversed the high Kaibab plateau,remembered well the succulent long bunch-grass, the fragrant lupine andthe toothsome wild oats. For the Kaibab plateau, lying high andtherefore being moister than the surrounding territory, is a veritablegarden. The gently declining ravines, instead of being filled withboulders at the bottom, are decked with flowers and their bases areavenues of smooth, rich lawn; on the banks rise spruces and pines, withthe white trunks and pale foliage of the quivering aspen; and on thetable-land above in wild profusion grow every sort of herb and plantand flower.

  The desert lies to the north, the inaccessible Canyon to the south, analkali waste to the westward, and the desolate cactus land to the east,but the Kaibab plateau, 8,000 feet above the sea, is a sylvan paradise.Yet there is no running water, and travel over it must be well withinreach of trails. Here alone, in this vast arid tract, it rainsfrequently, but the rains form no streams, for the whole plateau ispitted with cups or depressions ten to twenty feet across, into whichthe water runs, and through which by some underground passages itdisappears only to swell in some invisible manner the swollen torrent ofthe Colorado, 6,000 feet below.

  Through this plateau Roger rode slowly, enjoying its peacefulness thewhile. No great hurry consumed him, his present work was done, and untilhe reached Prescott, he was his own master. Duke, moreover, had faredill in the hard riding of the past few weeks, and so it was by very easystages that the boy crossed the Kaibab, and indeed, loafed one wholeweek in the wonderful De La Motte Park, in the midst of the plateau, togive his horse a rest and to let him fill out his bones a little on thesucculent grasses. A most beautiful country to enter--and a hard one toleave. No artificial maze is more confusing, for enticing as the ravinesare, they are all exactly alike, no landmarks exist by which a directionmay be followed, and the valleys themselves wind and double like afrightened hare.

  Roger, however, had crossed this forest the first time with thefrontiersman, who knew the trails like a book, and he had learned thegeneral lie of the country from him. Besides, the lad had imbibed enoughwoodcraft since his appointment on the Survey to enable him to follow atrail, no matter how faint or tortuous, a thing which even the Mormonherders who follow the mazes of the wood with a keenness equal to thatof the Indians, and with more intelligence, admit is a difficult thingto do.

  But idleness was in no sense a characteristic of Roger's make-up, and hewas glad when he reached Stewart's Canyon, where the main trail took adirect road northwards to round the Dragon and the Little Dragon and toskirt the Virgin Range still further to the northward. But as the traildescended into the valley and the altitude became less, it was seen thatParadise was left behind. Instead of pines and aspens, the ferociousand forbidding cactus took its place. The yuccas or Spanish bayonets,the prickly pear, the gaunt Sahaura and the spiny devil, together withother truculent barbarians of the vegetable kingdom convinced the boythat he had left behind all the attractive part of his trip.

  To the west, Roger quickened his pace and passed over the Shewitzplateau, crossing stretches of lava, black and recent-looking, as thoughthey had been erupted but a few years before. Then, coming to the famousgeological break in the rocks known as the Hurricane Fault, he turnedsharply to the south through the plain uninteresting territory ofEastern Nevada and California and reached the Needles again with littletrouble to himself or Duke. By this time Roger felt quite at home in andabout the Canyon, and he was conscious of boyish pride when theproprietor of El Garces, the big hotel at the Needles, welcomed him asan old traveler.

  Changing at Prescott Junction, it was not long before Roger foundhimself in Prescott, a thriving and flourishing town of the Southwesterntype. There Roger found a large packet of mail, letters from home,notes from former school friends to whom he had written at divers timesthroughout his trip, and which had been sent to Washington, his fieldaddress not being known. But the letter that was first opened bore nostamp, being franked with the seal of the United States GeologicalSurvey.

  As before, there was inclosed with the letter of instructions a personalletter from Mitchon, to the effect that favorable reports had beenreceived and implying that his next party probably would be the lastbefore his start on the Alaskan trip. The last few words made Rogeralmost leap with delight, for it was evidence to him that if hecontinued as well as he had begun, he would be accepted by Rivers, whichthroughout had been the goal of his ambition.

  The letter of direction, moreover, was fairly pleasing, though couchedin the usual dry official terms. It was to the effect that he shouldjoin the topographical party under the leadership of Mr. Gates, presentpost-office address being Aragon, County Presidio, Texas, and that theparty was engaged in mapping the Shafter quadrangle. Borrowing a largeatlas, the boy promptly proceeded to look up Aragon and Shafter, andfound, to his delight, that it was near the boundary line of Mexico.

  After scampering through the rest of his mail, Roger promptly went tothe little depot and asked for a ticket to Aragon. Leisurely the agentwent about filling his request, then, looking at him with half-shuteyes, said, with the easy familiarity of the West:

  "Folks down there?"

  "No," said Roger shortly, "going down on government business."

  The agent's eyes opened slightly with a gleam of amusement in them.

  "Ain't you pretty young for the Pecos country, son?" he said.

  "Why?" asked the boy, quickly.

  "Wa'al, it's pretty wild down there yet. It's nothing like what it usedto be in the days when the Apaches used it as a sort o' Tom Tiddler'sground for picking up scalps, but I wouldn't go so fur as to call it anabode of peace, right now."

  "But the Indians are all in reservations now!" said Roger, surprised atthe suggestion of danger.

  "That's right, son, so they are. But the Greasers ain't all dead yet,more's the pity."

  "What's a Greaser?"

  "Guess you don't know much about that saloobrious portion of the worldif you ain't had the pleasure of a Greaser's company. Why, son, he's avarmint that's about one-fourth Mexican, one-fourth Spaniard, one-fourthIndian, and the other quarter just plain meanness. He's as venomous as arattler, as sneaking as a coyote, as bad-tempered as a bob-cat, and justabout as pretty to look at as a Gila monster."

  Roger laughed.

  "You don't seem to love them much," he said, "but I guess thatdescription's coming it a little strong."

  "Not a blamed bit!" answered the agent, handing the boy his ticket, "an'you'll find out that the rest of t
he people down there are just about asfond of 'em as me. I lived down in Tombstone for some years, and Iwouldn't take the whole county of Cochise for a gift unless I couldteetotally banish all those cusses. Prescott ain't any lily-fingeredEastern town, by a long shot, but it's a Sunday school compared to thePecos country, you can bet on that!"

  "Well," replied the boy, nodding, "I'll try to come out of there alive,just the same."

  "Hope you do, son," was the reply, "an' I'll give you jest one piece ofadvice which may help that hope along a lot. It's this--don't let anyGreaser who has a grudge agin you get within' knifin' distance, or yourcamp mates will be picking out a nice chaste headstone and sending yourlast lovin' messages to your friends."

  "All right," replied the boy cheerfully, "I'll keep it in mind."

  The day following, Roger, having regretfully bidden good-by to Duke,boarded the train for the Pecos country, but the trip was so repletewith wonder that there was no time for lamenting even the absence of afavorite horse. Passing through Phoenix, which a few years ago wasnothing but the desolate haunt of the dying consumptive, and which,through irrigation, has become one of the garden spots of the Southwest,they came to Casa Grande. Roger had never even heard of the place, butin the observation car an elderly man, who was traveling with his son,began speaking of the wonderful ruins that lay north of the road, andcasually showed that he was going to stop off and visit them. After amoment's hesitation, Roger, who had been sitting close by, turned tohim.

  "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but I felt sure you would not mindmy hearing what you said about the Casa Grande ruins."

  "Not at all, my boy," was the ready reply, "I am only glad if I was ableto interest you."

  "Immensely," said Roger. He paused diffidently, then went on, "I am onthe Geological Survey, sir," he said, "and on my way to join a newparty, but have a day or two to spare, as the Director has been so kindas to give me opportunities to visit different fields of work to gainexperience for a trip to Alaska next year. You said you were going tovisit Casa Grande, and--I hope you won't mind my saying this--I shouldlike to go with you if I might, and learn something about a place ofwhich I know so little."

  The elder man held out his hand.

  "Glad to have you," he said, heartily, shaking hands. Then, turning, heintroduced him to his son, Phil, a young fellow about Roger's age, andbut very few minutes elapsed before the train stopped.

  "Of course you know," said Roger's new friend, when they were in thestage and bowling through the plain, "that this part of the country isjust full of evidences of a civilization far earlier than the Indiansand earlier even than the Aztecs or Toltecs."

  "But, father," said Phil, "I supposed the Aztecs were the first peoplein the country!"

  "So do many people, Phil," was the reply, "but they were not. They werea wandering tribe, as Indians might be, who conquered a people olderthan themselves called the Nahoas, about whom we know very little. Butthe Aztecs achieved a good deal of skill in working in stone, and thefact that their monuments are not perishable, makes their civilizationenduring in fame."

  "Then the Nahoas were the first?" queried Roger.

  But his informant shook his head, smiling slightly.

  "They may have been," he answered, "but it seems very doubtful. I thinkwe have to go back a great deal further when we start to look for earlyAmericans."

  "Why?"

  "Because of the evident age of the remains. For example," he continued,"I don't suppose either of you has been noticing this road?"

  "I've been wondering at it this last half hour," said Roger. "It isn'tlike any canyon that I ever saw, and by the way it cuts throughdifferent levels of strata it can't have been made by water. And if it'smade by hand, why should they cut a road, when it could have been madeon the level above with half the trouble?"

  "You are observant, my boy, and your eye has been well trained," was theapproving reply. "But you don't seem to realize that this may beartificial and yet not have been intended for a road, although it is soused now."

  "Oh, I know," broke in Phil, "it must be a canal."

  "Hardly big enough for a canal," said his father, "though you are on theright track. This was an irrigating ditch, and if you will notice, atalmost regular intervals, smaller dry ditches fork from it. This desertthrough here is just honeycombed with works of irrigation, greataqueducts, canals and lateral ditches, which at one time must have madethis barren waste a field of blossoms."

  "It seems a shame, somehow," said Roger, "to think of all that workbeing abandoned."

  "Abandoned indeed! This place once possibly was the New York or Londonof its time, but ruins represent all that is left of the cities, and athousand different kinds of cactus have taken the place of thecornfield and the vineyard. And," he added, pointing ahead, "of all thepalaces of those unknown emperors, ruins like these are all thatremain."

  The boys thought it rather a strain on the imagination to picturepalaces in the dry square adobe walls, but as they walked up close tothem, some lurking hint of former greatness became felt. The Casa Grandemust have stood some four or five stories in height and the rooms wererarely less than twenty feet square, so that the idea was given not onlyof size but also of extreme age, this being due in part, of course, tothe softness of the material of which they were built.

  Only a hint of greatness, but when, standing beside the ruins, the boyslooked over the country below them, the real magnitude of the workbecame apparent. Following the pointing forefinger of the elder man,Roger could see what ninety-nine out of every hundred would haveoverlooked, the regular relations of green defiles, which, though veiledby the hand of time, were evidently artificial work. One great canalcould be traced tapping the Salt River on the south side, near the mouthof the Verde; this, for three miles and a half, formerly flowed througha bed cut by hand out of the naked rock in the Superstition Mountainsto a depth of a hundred feet. This canal alone, with its four branchesand the distributing ditches, irrigated 1,600 square miles of country,and the engineering would be no disgrace to modern times.

  "And how long ago were these canals dug?" asked Roger.

  "No one knows," was the truthful and unhesitating reply. "It is a puzzlethat so far archaeologists have tried in vain to solve. They must beolder than the Aztlan civilizations----"

  "What are those?" asked Phil.

  "Aztecs, Toltecs, and that bunch, aren't they?" queried Roger, wantingto show his knowledge.

  "Mayas, too," said the other, smiling assent, "and they must be olderthan the Nahoa empire, of which little is left except in the south ofPeru. Just how old is impossible to say, and the only clew we have isthat these canals and ditches are in part filled up with volcanic lavaand debris from the Bradshaw mountains, and geologists are able to showthat these eruptions cannot have taken place less than two thousandyears ago."

  "That's as old as Rome!" said Roger in surprise.

  "That means that the end of it, at latest guess, was older than thebeginning of Rome, practically. And, though this volcanic action hasbeen later than these immense works of early man in America, there isleft neither a tradition of the millions of people who lived then, noreven of the forces which led to the decay of the empire and theoverwhelming volcanic disaster in which it may have closed."

  On their way back to the train, the old traveler gave Roger a longaccount of the early settlement of that part of the country by theSpaniards, and pointed out, as they passed through Tucson a few hourslater, the quaint mediaeval architecture of a town which claims itsbeginning as far back as 1560, and in which many houses three centuriesold are still standing; the oldest town in the Southwest, with theexception of Santa Fe.

  A mirage, or rather a succession of them, formed the basis for somethrilling African desert tales, with which Phil's father waswell-primed, and when, passing round the mile-long horseshoe curve, thetrain pulled into El Paso, Roger was extremely sorry to leave thefriends who had made his trip such a pleasant one.

  A few hours sufficed for the
boy to purchase some trifles needed tomake up his equipment, and bright and early the following morning hestarted for Aragon, where he would find out the location of the party hewas to join. It was quite dull after the jollity and interest of thetrip to El Paso, and Roger began to wish that he had arrived, and waspining to get into action again. But the incident for which he wasanxious did not fail him. As the train pulled up at Chispa, a stationabout fifty miles west of Aragon, it was seen that almost the wholepopulation of the village was at the depot, a crowd numbering perhapstwenty people, and foremost among them a man carrying a little girl,about eight years old, in his arms.

  In answer to questions put to him in Spanish, for he could speak noEnglish, the father explained his trouble by pointing to six littlemarks on the girl's leg, three groups of two, all near each other. Nosooner was it seen what the trouble was than a big six-footer shoulderedhis way through the car.

  "When?" he asked.

  In a torrent of Spanish and gesticulation, the man explained that thechild had been struck by a rattlesnake three times, fortunately, a smallone, just half an hour before the train came in, and that he was goingto take her to the nearest doctor, who was in Marfa, a town some fewstations down the line.

  "Well," said the big man, "I can fix her, I guess. That is, I've got theregular serum here, but I haven't a syringe. Any gentleman got ahypodermic needle?"

  But none of the passengers would confess to the use of a needle, becauseof its implication that its owner would be a "dope fiend," and thequerist shrugged his shoulders.

  "Are you a doctor?" asked one of the men in the car.

  "I'm not a little girl doctor, I'm a cattle doctor," answered the bigman with a laugh, "or at least I'm a government inspector, and I haven'tanything smaller than this!" He pulled out of his case a hypodermicsyringe used for injecting fluid into cattle.

  But the father sent up a cry of protest at the sight of the instrument,and would not allow it to be used. The matter was explained to him inSpanish, in English, and in half a dozen different dialects of each, buthe only shook his head.

  "Has anybody got a sharp knife? I mean really sharp," next asked theinspector, who had assumed control of the situation and was in no wisedisconcerted by the opposition of the girl's father. There was amoment's pause and then Roger stepped forward.

  "I was taught on the Survey," he emphasized the words to give themweight with the government official, "to keep a blade sharp, and I guessthis is about as good steel as you can get."

  The inspector took it, opened it, and ran his thumb along the blade.

  "It's a good knife, son," he said, "but it's no surgical instrument.Some one lend me a razor, I use a safety myself."

  Of the stock of razors that were handed to him, the big man took one,sterilized it in some boiling water from the dining car, and prepared tomake an incision in the girl's leg just above the fang marks.

  But no sooner had the blade touched the skin and drawn a little blood,than with a yell the father leaped straight at the inspector, flashing aknife as he did so. Not expecting an attack, the government man wouldhave been taken unawares, but that is a land of quick action, and beforethe Mexican could bring his arm down, he found his wrist seized, and arevolver barrel an inch from his nose stopped his onward rush.

  "That's a Greaser's gratitood, every time," said the holder of the gun."Go ahead with your job, pard, and if this ornery cayuse so much assquirms, I'll give you an elegant opportoonity to perform a littleoperation for bullet extraction."

  The inspector, who, seeing that the danger was averted, had gone back tohis task, merely nodded. He made several wide and deep incisions,thinking that scars were better than death, and then, despite the cryingof the girl and the fluent curses of the father, rubbed soda in thewounds with a vigorous hand.

  "There!" he said, as he completed the task. "I think she'll do all rightnow!"

  "But is that a sure preventive?" asked the boy.

  "No, son," was the reply. "To be honest with you, nothing's sure againsta rattler, because, you see, some folks' constitutions are worked onmore easily than others, but in a certain number of cases the soda fixesit. That is, if you're not afraid to cut deep enough."

  "Then," Roger said, "it just means that you've probably saved the girl'slife?"

  "Well," replied the other, "that's putting it a little strongly. And,anyhow, if you're on the Survey, you know mighty well that whengovernment men do that sort of thing they don't talk about it."