Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  In the uncertain light of a dawning day a cowboy approached the privy to ease himself but found the place already occupied. Impatient, he admonished the occupant: “Come on, man, don’t take all day!” The occupant did not answer. The cowboy became fidgety: “Seems I’ve been talkin’ Chinese to a pack mule. Get off the pot, Rube, or do I have to kick you out?” Again there was no response. At that the desperate cowboy got into a horn-tossing mood, kicked in the door, grabbed the corpse by the scruff, yanked it from its seat, giving it a mighty clout on the head, yelling, “You damn son of a bitch! I’ll teach you to try to make a fool out of me!”

  The corpse slumped to the floor. The cowboy took a closer look and exclaimed: “Goda’mighty! Good nightshirt! I’ve killed the feller. It’s only a no-account Mex, I reckon, but it could get me into trouble. I’ve got to get rid of him.”

  After making sure that nobody was watching, the buckaroo carried the body to an empty wagon and tossed it in. “I’ve got to get hold of a hoss,” the cowhand muttered to himself, “and dump him into the nearest canyon. They’ll think he was murdered by some badmen.” He wrapped the body in an old horse blanket, tied it up with a rope, and went off in search of a horse.

  After the cowpoke was gone, a drifter came riding up on a spavined pinto and spied the big bundle in the wagon. “Wonder what could be inside?” he mused. “Could be somethin’ valuable.” Quickly, he hoisted the heavy bundle behind him on his horse and rode on as fast as his sorry nag could carry its double load. When the drifter thought he was far enough to be safe, he rode into an arroyo surrounded by cottonwoods. There, out of sight, he eagerly untied and unwrapped the bundle. “Holy Moses!” he exclaimed. “It’s a stiff! They’ll think that I’ve done him in. With my record I wouldn’t have a chance. I must get this hombre far away and cover my tracks.” The drifter rewrapped the corpse and rode on all day until he came to a small cowtown. He once more unwrapped the body and dragged it into the nearest saloon, pretending to be a staggering boozer supporting his drunken pal. He propped his burden against the bar, made his inconspicuous exit, and rode off without looking back.

  Inside the saloon, bellying up to the bar, was the “Texas Keed,” a buck-toothed juvenile gunslinger. The Keed eyed the corpse with suspicion: “Stop starin’ at me, if ya know what’s good fer ya. I don’t like to be stared at.”

  The corpse leaned on the bar, saying nothing. “I’m the human tornado loaded with chain lightnin’! I’m the admiration of all wimmin and the terror of their husbands. I’m the walkin’ death and not one to be fooled with, stranger. I won’t say it a third time—stop starin’ at me!”

  The corpse, grinning disdainfully, remained silent. Beside himself with rage, the Texas Keed whipped out his six-gun and let fly, ventilating the corpse with a hail of bullets.

  “You’ve blown out his lamp, by Ned!” the bardog accused the Keed. “He warn’t armed. This warn’t a fair fight. This calls fer a necktie party.”

  “Hell,” said the Texas Keed, “I only winged him. He ain’t daid, he jest fainted with fear. I myself’ll get him to the pillroller.” He dragged the body out and plumped it on his horse, telling the bystanders, “I’ve only nicked him. The sawbones’ll fix him up awright.” The Keed trotted off.

  Part way out of town, he encountered the stagecoach coming in from Tularosa. It was empty, except for the driver. With a sudden inspiration, the Keed hurled the body under the wheels of the stage-coach, yelling at the driver, “You dumb bastard! Why don’t ya watch what yer doin’! You’ve run this feller over. He’s crow meat fer sure. Yep, he’s gone up the flume, awright.”

  “It ain’t my fault,” protested the driver. “He jumped right in front of me. He musta been drunk.”

  “You’re supposed to look out fer drunks,” said the Keed, spurring on his horse.

  “Jesus, this could lose me my job,” said the stage driver to himself. He propped up the corpse beside him on the driver’s seat, making it look natural. In town he took on three passengers for Socorro—one soiled dove of the prairie, one drummer, and one cowman. Then he proceeded on his round.

  “What’s the matter with him?” inquired the soiled dove, pointing at the corpse.

  “Drunk as a b’iled owl,” said the driver, “dead to the world, ma’am. You know how these fellers are. Once they start, they can’t stop. I’ve got to get him home to his old lady.”

  “She’ll give him what-for, I bet,” said the cowman.

  They rolled on for some time. In the dark of a starless night the driver could barely make out the shape of a lone ’dobe house along the way. It gave him an idea: “This is the place,” he said. “Come on, you old booze hound.” He halted the stage, got the corpse down from its seat, draped it with one arm over his shoulder and dragged it to the house. He propped it against the door, and went back to the coach. Back upon his lofty throne he remarked to his passengers, “These drunks sure are a pain in the ass, if you pardon the expression.”

  “That’s no way to talk to a lady,” said the soiled dove.

  Inside the adobe, Doña Inez shook her husband awake: “Mi esposo, did you hear it? There’s someone at the door.”

  “Maybe another one of your lovers, mujer sucia, every night another one! It was only the stage passing by.”

  “No, no, husband, there is someone at the door. And how can you be so cruel as to remind me of what should be forgotten. Go and see what it is.”

  “Madre Santíssima, how you plague me,” grumbled Don Policarpo. He lit his lamp and went to the door. He had to push it open against the weight of the corpse, which fell down with a plop on the porch’s wooden floor.

  “Eeegh!” the cantinero screamed in terror. “Holy Mother, protect us from evil!” Trembling with fear, his teeth chattering, he told his wife: “That cabrón, your dead lover, he’s come back to haunt us. Válgame Dios! It is witchcraft. We are lost!”

  “It seems we’ll have to inconvenience our good neighbor Vigil the saddlemaker one more time,” said Doña Inez.

  The Caveman of the Hermit Peaks

  In 1860, at Las Vegas, New Mexico, Don Manuel found himself host to a holy man, forbidding, even fear-inspiring, yet kindly mannered. The visitor from out of nowhere had long-flowing white hair and a scraggly beard. He was clad in a black robe that enveloped his body from the neck down to his bare feet. A curiously carved belt encircled his waist. From it dangled a rosary, made by himself out of wood, nuts, and leaves. His face was broad but cavernous, his mouth but a thin slash across his face. His eyes were hollow, but consumed with an inner fire. Some said that his gaze was like an auger boring into their minds and hearts.

  The stranger called himself a solitary wanderer, a pilgrim who had roamed the world from one sanctuary, shrine, and holy place to the next in his endless search for salvation. He told his host that in between wanderings he had lived for years at a time as a world-shy hermit in caves or grottoes, beneath overhanging rocks, or on wind-swept mountaintops, amid wild animals, shunning the company of his fellowmen. He revealed himself as a Carthusian monk, bound by his vows to a life of prayer, silence, chastity, and self-denial. Don Manuel also discovered that beneath his black robe, his only garment, the stranger wore a girdle of spikes and thorns to mortify his flesh and, perhaps, atone for sins, real or imagined.

  The visitor was known by many names—Fray Francisco, Don Juan Castellano, or Don Agustín. Some who were uncomfortable in his presence dubbed him the “mad anchorite.” Those to whom he had done some kindness, and they were many, called him El Santo Ermitaño, or even Señor Jesús. He later told Don Manuel that his true name was Giovanni d’Agostini and that in 1800 he had entered the earthly vale of tears at Rome, the Eternal City—a son of sunny Italy. He added that he had made many pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, Lourdes, Trier, Canterbury, and to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, in Poland, whose wonder-working image shed real tears, once every year, on the day of the Savior’s Crucifixion.

  In 1840 he had received a revelation. The
Virgin had appeared to him in a dream, commanding him to travel to the New World to preach and spread the teachings of Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order. Thus he had sailed across the ocean to Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean Islands, sometimes reviled and imprisoned, as the Church eyed him with suspicion, even, on occasion, accusing him of practicing forbidden arts. A further vision had drawn him to the Shrine of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe and, hence, to New Mexico.

  At Las Vegas the common folk revered the hermit, convinced that he had the gift of healing, as well as many herbs, known only to him, to cure diseases regular doctors were powerless to heal. A girl named Concepción, coughing up blood, her body ravaged by consumption, came to him for help. He had given her a potion made from twelve different herbs, and she had gotten well. Her pale, sunken cheeks grew ruddy. Her wasted body put on flesh. Her ugliness turned to beauty. She married a good man.

  Pablo, a santero, who could no longer carve his wooden images of saints because an opaque film covered his eyes, asked the ermitaño to give him back his sight. The Carthusian put a salve on Pablo’s eyes, the film dissolved, and the joyful woodcarver went back to his God-pleasing work. As word of the hermit’s healing powers spread, Don Manuel’s home was besieged, day and night, by crowds of the lame, the halt, and the blind, wishing to be cured.

  “I thank you for your hospitality,” the monk told his host, “but I must leave you to seek the life of solitude that is ordained for me.” On his bare feet Don Giovanni ventured into the mountain wilderness, some thirty miles from Las Vegas. On Cerro Tecolote, the Hill of Owls, he discovered a cavern in a canyon wall that he chose for his abode. He stuck nails, pointing inward, into his cave’s entrance, so that he should painfully bump into them, reminding him thereby to tell his beads and say his prayers. Once a month the saintly hermit emerged from his cave to wander down to Las Vegas, where he exchanged beautifully carved crucifixes and rosaries for cornmeal and salt. From his grotto’s ceiling, moisture dripped, drop-by-drop, into a hollowed-out spot on the cave floor. From there he got all the water he needed. The people said that three drops of this water, caught at the top of one’s tongue, would make a person tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but nobody was ever able to catch more than two drops. Only for the hermit did the water drip with any sufficiency. That is why some people in Las Vegas remained liars all their lives. Some folks chanced upon him in the woods at the foot of his mountain. He was talking to animals, like Saint Francis, and the wild beasts answered. This, the watchers swore, they had seen with their own eyes.

  Even on Cerro Tecolote the hermit’s cave was besieged by many people clamoring to be doctored or to receive a blessing. The Santo Ermitaño felt that his solitude was overwhelmed by these visitors and withdrew to another, higher, more remote cave in the Organ Mountains, three hundred feet below the eastern summit of the great twin peaks dominating the landscape for many miles around. These peaks were bare of all vegetation, with a smooth, naked surface of gray rock glittering in the sunlight. Here too he was searched out by his admirers, though less numerous than before. These good folks put up a wooden shelter for him, which he never used, and erected three large crosses for his edification on the very top of his peak.

  Visitors returning to their villages below told of the hermit’s God-given power to perform miracles. There was no water on the peak to quench their thirst, but the holy one had struck the side of a cliff with his wand and forthwith crystal-clear water gushed from a crack in the rock wall. Others related that three does came and showed him where to strike the cliff and said that this water had a healing magic in it, because the hermit bathed a blind woman’s eyes with it and she could see. To feed his visitors, the Carthusian always had a huge pot ready, filled with delicious chili stew, and the pot always remained full to the brim no matter how many people ate from it. Once twelve men came to see the hermit. He had only half a handful of mush in his cave but, miracle of miracles, it fed them all. His devotees also swore that the saintly man was able to read their minds.

  The solitary cave dweller predicted his own death. Every night as darkness fell he lit a bonfire that could be seen clearly in the valley below. Comforted by its warmth and the light shed by its flames, he prayed and chanted sacred songs. One day in April 1869 he told a visiting priest, “Tonight there will be no fire.”

  When the villagers noticed that on this evening the fire, whose flames had become for them a beacon of faith, was missing, they crossed themselves and said to each other, “The Santo Ermitaño is dead.”

  A party of men who had loved him made the arduous ascent to discover what had become of Don Giovanni. To their horror they found the old man in his cave, murdered, a dagger thrust through his heart. Don Giovanni’s premonition had turned out to be true. There were rumors that not a dagger but many Apache arrows had killed him, that the Indians, without his knowing it, had hated him for establishing his sanctuary at a site sacred to them. Still others maintained that he had been hacked to pieces with swords and machetes by bandits who hoped to find golden church treasures inside his trunk, which was so heavy that two men could not lift it.

  The hermit’s death has remained a mystery to this day. After his murder an old woman said that she had overheard him talking to a one-eyed stranger, saying, “I know you are the man who has come to kill me.”

  A few old people still pray to him and tell of miracles resulting from such invocations. The twin mountains on whose summit he sought refuge have been known ever since as the Hermit Peaks.

  The Miracles of Chimayo

  Every Good Friday the roads to Chimayo, twenty-five miles north of Santa Fe, are crowded with pilgrims on their way to the miraculous Shrine of Chimayo, where they hope to be cured of whatever ails them. Some come by car or motorcycle, others on horseback; but many come on foot, ten, twenty, even thirty miles to make it hard on themselves, some run, and a handful even go so far as to make the journey on their knees. El Santuario de Chimayo is New Mexico’s Lourdes, where miracles of healing occur and the happily cured leave their canes and crutches behind, hanging at the shrine’s wall, mute testimony to the shrine’s curative powers.

  It all started during the semana santa, Holy Week, in the year of our Lord 1823. Don Bernardo Abeyta, a pious and God-fearing man, belonging to the Brotherhood of Penitentes, was mortifying his flesh on a lonely hill. He was scourging himself with a whip studded with nails and thorns, crying fervently: “Yo penitente pecador—I am a repentant sinner.” Thus he atoned for his sins, which in his case were mere trifles. As he prayed and lashed himself, he beheld a wondrous light emanating from a nearby hole in the ground, close by a little stream that runs through the Chimayo Valley. Weak though he was from fasting and torturing himself, his legs crippled by rheumatism, Don Bernardo hobbled over to the shining light as fast as a deer and began digging in the ground with his bare hands. As he scooped out the earth, he came upon a crucifix bearing the carved image of Our Lord of Esquipulas. Now Esquipulas is a place of veneration in faraway Guatemala and how Nuestro Señor came from this far land to New Mexico is a great mystery, but then for a saint nothing is impossible and he can perform many miracles where and how he wishes. Don Bernardo fell upon his knees to worship the santo, offering a prayer to it. He then brought the image to Father Sebastián de Alvarez, the village priest, who took the saint to the Church of Santa Cruz, where he placed it in a niche of the main altar. But the next day the miraculous cross and image was back in its hole in the ground where it had been found.

  “Some foolish trickster has done this, bringing the santo back here,” complained Father Sebastián, “but I will put things right.” So the priest took San Esquipulas back to Santa Cruz and put him into the same niche again. But the following morning the saint was back in his old hole.

  “Santa Cruz and Chimayo are such tiny, no-account places, not fitting to be the abode of a saint as great as this,” said Don Bernardo. “I am sure he wants to be in the big church of our capital city of Santa Fe.” />
  Whereupon Don Bernardo got on his old mule and took the saint to the big church, where he put him right next to the altar. But the unbelievable happened—next morning the Lord of Esquipulas was back where he wanted to be.

  “I think the saint wants to stay here with us,” said Don Bernardo.

  His wife began to grumble: “Mi esposo, this santo is just a piece of carved wood. You neglect your fields, your sheep, and me, your wife, for the sake of this wooden image. I shall burn it up!”

  She had hardly uttered these evil words when she became crooked and hunchbacked, with her mouth pulled out of shape, making her hideous to look at.

  “See what you have done, foolish mujer,” Don Bernardo told his wife. “Let us kneel and pray to the saint to make you as pretty as before.”

  They prayed and Señora Abeyta took on her old shape again.

  Don Bernardo still suffered agonizing pain from his rheumatism. One evening he was sitting on a hill overlooking the valley, admiring the sunset, when the Lord of Esquipulas appeared to him, standing by the little stream, enveloped by a heavenly light. Don Bernardo hastened to venerate the saint, but when he got there, lifting up his folded hands, the vision disappeared. Don Bernardo fell upon his knees on the very spot where the saint had been standing and was instantly, and forever, cured of his rheumatism. In gratitude for this wonderful blessing Don Bernardo built a santuario with a splendidly carved and painted altar at the very place the santo had indicated. He enshrined El Posito, the sacred spot from which he had dug the crucifix, in a small square room to the left of the altar. There too he placed the cross with its saint, and it is said that once, during Holy Week, it sprouted branches and green leaves. From time to time, the santo gets down from the cross and takes on human shape, journeying far and wide to perform good deeds. On such occasions he travels so fast and far that he wears out his shoes. So people who believe in him are forever busy making new boots for him. Whenever the santo leaves the santuario, he does it in the middle of the night, because he does not want to be seen changing himself into a living man. From the six-foot-deep hole in the center of the little room, pilgrims take the miraculous earth that cures the diseases of all who truly believe in its powers. And no matter how much of holy earth they dig up, there is always more.