The Trail of The Badger: A Story of the Colorado Border Thirty Years Ago

by Anonymous

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE OLD PUEBLO HEAD-GATE

  It was about two in the afternoon that we parted with our friend, andwishing him the best of success, we watched him ride away until theshimmering haze drawn by the heat of the sun from the surface of thevalley, finally obscured him from our view altogether. Then, turning ourponies, we rode back up the mountain and once more descended to ourcamp, where we found Pedro waiting for us.

  As it was then too late to begin any fresh enterprise, especially one sodifficult as the attempt to climb the canon-wall was likely to be, wedetermined to postpone the expedition until next morning. In order, too,that we might be in good fettle for the adventure, we went to bed thatnight as soon as it got dark; no more late hours for us; late hours atnight not being conducive to clear heads in the morning--and it was morethan likely that clear heads might be very essential to the success ofthe task in hand.

  About an hour after sunrise we set off on foot down the left bank ofthe stream, making our way along the steep slope of stone scraps, bigand little, which bordered its edge, and after a pretty rough scramblewe reached a spot about a mile below camp where Pedro had told us hethought there was a possible way up--a narrow cleft in the rocky wall,none too wide to admit the passage of the Mexican's big body--andfollowing the sturdy hunter, who acted as guide, we began the ascent.

  There was no great difficulty about it at first, for the crevice, thoughstill very narrow, was not particularly steep. After climbing up aboutthree hundred feet, however, the ascent became much more abrupt, andpresently we came to a place where the bed of the dry watercourse wasblocked entirely by a smooth, water-worn mass of rock, twenty feet high,filling the whole width of the crevice, and overhanging in such a mannerthat even a lizard would have had difficulty in climbing up it.

  We were looking about for some means of surmounting this obstacle, whenPedro, who had stepped back a little to survey it, called our attentionto what appeared to be a number of steps, or, rather, foot-holes in therock about ten feet up, just above the bulge.

  "Hallo!" cried Dick. "This looks promising. Those holes were made witha purpose. I believe we've struck the original Pueblo highway afterall."

  "It does look like it," I agreed. "But how are we going to get upthere?"

  "Senor," said Pedro to Dick, "if you will stand on my shoulders, I thinkyou can reach those holes."

  "All right," replied Dick. "Let's try."

  It was simple enough. Dick easily reached the lower steps, which, it washardly to be doubted, had been cut for the purpose, and scrambled up tothe top. Then, letting down the rope we had brought for such anemergency, he called to me to come up. With a boost from Pedro, and withthe rope to hold on by, I was quickly standing beside my partner, whenup came Pedro himself, hand over hand.

  If this was really the road by which the Pueblos originally came up--andfrom those nicks in the rock we felt pretty sure it was--it was theroughest and by long odds the most upended road we had ever traveledover. It was, in fact, a climb rather than a walk: we had to use ourhands nearly all the time.

  We had come within a hundred feet of the top, when, looking upward, Iwas startled to see on an overhanging ledge a large, tawny, cat-likeanimal calmly sitting there looking down at us.

  "Look there, Dick!" I cried. "What's that?"

  "A mountain-lion!" exclaimed my partner. "My! What a shot!"

  It happened, however, that we were at a point where it was necessary tohold on with our hands to prevent ourselves from slipping back; it wasimpossible to shoot. The "lion" therefore continued to stare at us andwe at him, until Dick shouted at him, when the beast leisurely walkedoff and disappeared round a corner.

  "Well!" remarked my companion. "I never saw a mountain-lion so calm andunconcerned before. As a rule they are the shyest of animals."

  "All the animals up here are like that," remarked Pedro. "Many timessince I have lived on the mountain I have seen them come down to theedge of the canon to look at me--deer and even mountain-sheep andwolves; yes, many times wolves. They have no fear of man."

  "That's queer," said I. "I wonder why not."

  "Senor," replied Pedro, looking rather surprised at my lack ofintelligence, "it is simple: since the days of the Pueblos there hasbeen no man up here."

  "Why, I suppose there hasn't!" cried Dick. "That didn't occur to mebefore, either. It will be interesting to see how the wild animalsbehave, Frank. It will be like Robinson Crusoe on his island."

  He spoke in Spanish, as we always did when Pedro was in company, notwishing him to feel that he was left out. It was Pedro who replied.

  "I know not," said he, "the honorable gentleman, Senor Don Crusoe, ofwhom you speak, but for ourselves we must have care."

  "Why, Pedro. What do you mean?"

  "The wolves up here are many, and they will surely smell us out."

  "Well, suppose they do, Pedro. What then?" asked Dick, jokingly. "Youare not afraid of wolves, are you?"

  This seemed a reasonable question, remembering how boldly he had facedthem that time at the head of the Mescalero valley.

  "Most times I have no fear," replied Pedro, simply, "but up here it isdifferent. These wolves know not what a man is; they will smell us out,and they will think only, 'Here is something to eat;' they do not knowenough to be afraid."

  "I suppose that is likely," Dick assented. "You are quite right, Pedro:we must take care. I don't suppose there will be anything to fear fromthem during daylight, but we'll keep a sharp lookout, all the same. Comeon, let us get forward."

  In another ten minutes we had reached the top, when, turning up-stream,we presently came to the dry gully which led down to where the old flumeonce stood. Thence, turning "inland," as one might say, we followed upthe bed of this gully, finding that it had its head in a little grassybasin which looked as though it had once been a small lake. In crossingthis basin we stirred up from among the bushes a band of blacktail deer,which ran off about fifty yards and then stood still to look at us;these usually shy animals being evidently consumed with curiosity at thesight of three strange beasts walking on their hind legs. Undoubtedly,we were the first human beings they had ever encountered.

  We did not molest them, but pursuing our course across the littlebasin, we were about to proceed up a narrow, stony draw at its furtherend, when a sudden scurry of feet behind us caused us to look back. Theband of deer had vanished, and in their stead were four wolves, which,when we turned round, drew up in line and stood staring at us!

  As Dick had said, the wild animals up here were making themselvesdecidedly "interesting."

  Pedro had an arrow fitted to his bow in an instant, while Dick and Isimultaneously cocked our rifles and stood ready. The wolves, however,remained stationary; it was evidently curiosity and not hunger thatinspired them. Seeing this, I picked up a pebble and threw it at them,just to see what they would think of it. The stone struck the groundclose under their noses, making them all start, passed between two ofthem and went hopping along the ground, when, to our great amusement,the whole row of them turned, ran after the stone, sniffed at it, oneafter the other, and then came back to the old position. It looked socomical that Dick and I burst out laughing; whereupon the wolves, whohad doubtless never heard such a sound before, retreated a few paces,where they once more turned round to stare at us.

  "Well, Pedro!" cried Dick. "They don't seem to be very dangerous. If allthe wolves up here are like that we needn't be afraid of them."

  "They are not hungry just now," replied Pedro, so significantly that ourmerriment was checked; "and you see for yourselves," he added, "that aman is a new animal to them. They know not what to make of us. It isthat which makes me uneasy. A big pack of hungry wolves would be verydangerous, for the reason that they have never learned that we aredangerous, too. For me, I am afraid of them."

  Such an admission, coming from such a man, one who, we knew, was notlacking in courage, was impressive; so, in order that he should notregard us as merely a pair of careless, light-headed
boys, Dick assuredhim in all earnestness that we had no intention of treating the matterlightly; that we fully understood and agreed with his view of thematter.

  "You are quite right, Pedro," said he. "We can't afford to be careless.A pack of wolves is dangerous enough when you know what to expect ofthem, but when you don't----! It will pay us to be careful, all right;there's no doubt about that. Come on, now. Let us get ahead. Thosebeasts back there have gone off--to tell the others, perhaps."

  Proceeding up the stony draw for about half a mile, we presently cameupon a most unexpected sight:--a little lake, covering perhaps a spaceof twenty acres, its surface, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the treesand rocks surrounding it, and dotted all over with hundreds of wildducks and geese.

  "Here's the head of the ditch!" cried Dick, exultingly. "Here's wherethe Pueblos got their water! They drew from this lake down the gully wehave just come up. The mouth of the draw has been blocked by the cavingof the sides, you see, but it will be an easy job to dig a narrow trenchthrough the dam, and then the pitch is so great that the water will soonscour a channel for itself. Don't you think so, Pedro? The water musthave run down here, filled the grassy basin where the deer were, flowedout at its lower end down the gully to the flume, and then by the ditchover the foothills to the valley. Wasn't that the way of it, Pedro?"

  It was natural that Dick should address his question to the Mexicanrather than to me, for Pedro, one of a race that had followedirrigation for centuries, knew far more of its practical possibilitiesthan I did, and his opinion was infinitely more valuable than mine waslikely to be. In reply, he nodded his big head and said, gravely:

  "That is it. It is not possible to doubt. The Pueblos drew their waterfrom the lake at this point. That is very sure. But----"

  "But what?" asked Dick.

  "This lake is small, and I see nowhere any stream coming into it,"replied Pedro.

  "That's a fact," Dick assented. "Perhaps it is fed by undergroundsprings. Let us walk round the lake and see where the water runs out andhow much of a stream there is. That is what concerns us. Where it comesfrom doesn't matter particularly--it's how much of it there is."

  Our walk round the little lake, however, resulted in a disappointmentwhich staggered us for the moment. There was no outlet. The lake wasland-locked; the one insignificant rivulet we found running into itbeing evidently no more than enough to counterbalance the dailyevaporation.

  "Well," remarked Dick, after a long pause, "there is one thing sure:the Pueblos never built a flume and dug that big, long ditch to carrythis trifling amount of water. This lake, after all, was not the sourceof supply, as we were supposing. It was a reservoir, perhaps, butnothing more. The real source was somewhere higher up."

  If Dick was right--and there could be hardly a doubt that he was--themost promising direction in which to continue our search would be on thewest side of the lake, whence the little rivulet came down. Anexamination of the ravine in which the stream ran showed evidence thatit had at one time carried much more water than at present, so, withhopes renewed, we set off at once along its steep, stony bed.

  The country on that side was very rough and precipitous, and the ravineitself, reasonably wide at first, became narrower and narrower, and itssides more and more lofty, until presently it became so contracted thatwe might have imagined ourselves to be walking up a very narrow lanewith rows of ten-story houses on either side. The sky above us was amere ribbon of blue.

  After climbing upward for about half a mile, we began to catchoccasional glimpses ahead of us of a frowning cliff which bade fair tobar our further progress altogether, and we were beginning to wonderwhether we had not chosen the wrong ravine after all, when suddenly,with one accord, we all stopped short and cocked our ears. There was asound of running water somewhere close by!

  There was a bend in the gorge just here, and we could not see ahead, butthe instant we detected the sound of water, Dick, with a shout, sprangforward, and with me close on his heels and the short-legged Pedro somedistance in the rear, dashed up the bed of the ravine and round thecorner.

  What a wonderful sight met our gaze! Out of the great cliff I mentionedjust now there came roaring down a magnificent stream, which, fallinginto a deep pool it had worn for itself in the rocks, went boiling andfoaming off through a second ravine to the right--a fine thing to see!

  But what was finer, and infinitely more interesting, was the originalPueblo head-gate, so set in the narrow gorge in which we stood that thewater, which, if left to itself, would have flowed down our ravine, wasforced to run off through the other channel.

  It was a remarkable piece of work for such a primitive people to haveperformed, considering especially the very inferior tools they had to doit with. The walls of the gorge came together at this point in such amanner that they were not more than five feet apart and were sostraight-up-and-down that they looked as though they had been trimmed byhand--as possibly they had been to some extent. Taking advantage of thisnarrow gap, the Pueblos had cut a deep groove in the rocks on eitherside of the ravine, and in these grooves they had set up on end a greatflat stone about five feet high and three inches thick--it must haveweighed a thousand pounds or more.

  Against this stone head-gate, on its inner side, the water stood fourfeet deep, and it was obvious that when the gate was raised the floodwould go raging down the gorge we had just ascended into the little lakebelow, leaving the bed in which it now ran high and dry.

  Undoubtedly, it was this stone door with which the Pueblos used toregulate their water-supply, prying it up and holding it in position,perhaps, with blocks of wood, which, after the Indians deserted thevalley, had in time rotted away, allowing the gate to fall, thusshutting off the water entirely.

  However that may have been, one thing at any rate wascertain:--Whenever our flume and our ditch were ready, here was waterenough for thousands of acres only waiting to be let loose.

  For a long time Dick and I stood with our hands resting on the top ofthe head-gate and our chins resting on our hands, watching the water asit went foaming and splashing down the other ravine, and as we stoodthere, there came over us by degrees a sense of the real importance tous of this discovery. We were only boys, after all, and we had gone intothis enterprise more or less in the spirit of adventure, but now itgradually dawned upon us that we had in reality arrived at a point wherethe roads forked:--Here, ready to our hands, was work for a lifetime,and we had to decide whether we were going into it heart and soul orwhether we were not. Every boy arrives at this fork in the roads sooneror later, and when he does, he is apt to feel pretty serious. I know wedid.

  With us, however, the question seemed to settle itself, for Dick,presently straightening up and turning to me, said:

  "Frank! What will your Uncle Tom say? Will he be willing that you shouldstay out in this country and take to wheat-raising and ditch-buildingand so forth?"

  "If I know Uncle Tom," I replied, "he'll be not only willing butdelighted. If we make a success of this thing--as we will if hard workwill do it--just imagine how proudly he will point to us as proofs ofhis theory that a fellow may sometimes learn more out of school than init. In fact, if I'm not much mistaken, he will be eager to help; and ifwe need money for the work, as we certainly shall, I shan't hesitate toask him for it. I shall inherit a little when I come of age, and I'mpretty sure Uncle Tom will advance me some if I need it. But how aboutthe professor, Dick? How will he fancy the idea of your settling down inthis valley? For if we _do_ go into this thing in earnest, that is whatit means."

  "I know it does," replied my companion, seriously. "And I'm glad of it.I'll let you into a little secret, Frank. For some time past theprofessor has been worrying himself as to what was to become of me: whatbusiness or occupation I was fit for with my peculiar bringing-up--forthere is no getting over the fact that it has been peculiar--and theprofessor, considering himself responsible for it, has been prettyanxious about the result. Now, here is an occupation all laid out forme, and nobody will be so ple
ased to hear of it as the professor. Itwill take a burden off his mind; and I'm mighty glad to think it will."

  "I see," said I. "I should think you would be: such a fine old fellow ashe is. So, then, Dick, it is settled, is it, that we go ahead? What'sthe first move, then?"

  "Why, the first move of all, I think, is to get back to the lake and eatour lunch, and while we are doing so we can consult as to what work tostart upon and how to set about it. What time is it, Pedro?"

  "Midday and ten minutes," promptly replied the Mexican, casting an eyeat the sun; while I, pulling out my watch, saw that he had hit itexactly, as he always did, I found later.

  "Then let us get back to the lake," said Dick. "Hark! What was that? Thewater makes so much noise that I can't be sure, but it sounded to melike wolves howling."

  Pedro nodded his big head. "It will be well to go down to where thereare some trees," said he. "This arroyo, with its high walls, is not agood place."

  As we walked down the ravine and got further away from the water, wecould hear more distinctly the cry of the wolves. Pedro stopped shortand listened intently.

  "There is a good many of them," said he. "I think they come hunting us.Let us get up on this rock here and wait a little."

  In the middle of the ravine lay a great flat-topped stone, about sixfeet high, and to the top of this we soon scrambled--there was plenty ofroom--and there for a minute or two we waited. The cry of the huntingwolves grew louder and louder, and presently, around a bend a shortdistance below, loping along with their noses to the ground, there camea band of sixteen of them. At sight of us they stopped short, andthen--showing plainly that they knew of no danger to themselves--with ayell of delight at having run down their prey, as they supposed, theycame charging up the ravine!