CHAPTER V.
ON THE RIO GRANDE. AN ABSTRACT OF THE AUTHOR'S GENEALOGY OF MATERNALLINEAGE
In the month of September I came to the end of my journey, as I arrivedon the Rio Abajo. Now I began the second chapter of my life's voyage.No longer a precocious child, I was growing to young manhood and wasnot lacking in those qualities which are essential in the successfulperformance of life's continual struggle. I was heartily welcomed by myuncle, my mother's brother. My aunt, poor lady, had, of course, givenme up as lost and greeted me with joyful admiration. But she did notventure close to me, for in me she saw a strong, lusty young man,bright eyed, alert-looking and carrying a deadly army revolver andwicked hunting knife at his belt. To be sure, I was suntanned andgraybacked beyond comparison with the dust of a thousand miles of wagonroad.
As I had expected, I found my uncle in very prosperous circumstances,in a commercial sense. And no wonder, for he was a tall, fine-lookingman, under forty and overflowing with energy and personal magnetism.And my mother's little family tree did the rest--aye, surely, it wasnot to be sneezed at, as will be presently seen.
Of course, mother traced her ancestral lineage, as all other people do,to Adam and Eve in general, but in particular she claimed descent fromthose ancient heroes of the Northland, the Vikings. These daring roversof the seas were really a right jolly set of men. In their smallgalleys they roamed the trackless seas, undaunted alike by the terrorsof the hurricane as by the perils of unknown shores. On whatever coastthey chanced--finding it inhabited, they landed, fought off the men andcaptured their women. They sacked villages and plundered towns, andloading their ships with booty, they set sail joyfully, homeward boundfor the shores of the misty North Sea, the shallow German Ocean. Herethey had a number of retreats and strongholds. There was Helgoland, themysterious island; Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the river Elbe; Buxtehude,notoriously known from a very peculiar ferocious breed of dogs; NorseLoch on the coast of Holstein, and numerous other locker, or inlets,hard to find, harder to enter when found and hardest to pronounce. Inthe course of time these rovers were visited by saintly Christianmissionaries and, like all other Saxon tribes, they accepted the lightof the Christian Gospel. They saw the error of their way and eschewedtheir vocation of piracy and devoted their energies to commerce and thespreading of the Gospel of Christ.
Piously they decorated the sails of their crafts and blazoned their warshields with the sign of the cross. They kidnapped holy priests (forotherwise they came not), and taking them aboard their ships, theysailed to their several ports. Then they forced the unwilling Fathersto unite them in holy wedlock to the maidens of their choice. To manyhavens they sailed, and in every one they had an only wife. They madetheir priests inscribe texts from the holy Gospel on pieces ofparchment made from the skin of hogs, and instead of robbing people, asof yore, they paid with the word of Holy Scripture for the booty theylevied. This, they said, was infinitely more precious than any worldlydross. All hail to the memory of my gallant maternal ancestor, who,when surfeited with the caresses of his Fifine of Normandy, flew to thearms of Mercedes of Andalusia. Next, perhaps, he appeared in Greenland,blubbering with an Esquimau heiress. Anon, you might have found him inColumbia in the tolls of a princely Pocahontas. In Mexico he ate theardent chile from the tender hand of his Guadalupita, and later on hewas on time at a five o'clock family tea party in Japan, or he mighthave kotowed pidgin-love to a trusting maid in a China town of fairCathay. In Africa--oh, horror!--here I draw the veil, for in my mind'seye I behold a burly negro (yes, sah!) staring at me out of fishy, blueeyes. It is said of these gallant rovers of the seas that they weresubject to a peculiar malady when on shore. It caused them to staggerand swagger, use violent language, and deport themselves not unlikepeople who are seized with mal de mer, or sickness of the sea. Whenattacked by this failing, their wives would cast them bodily into theholds of their ships and start them out to sea, where they soonrecovered their usual health and equilibrium and continued on theirrounds. They were the first of all commercial travelers and thehardiest, jolliest and most prosperous--but they did not hoard theirearnings.
My uncle conducted a store, selling merchandise of every description.Dutch uncle though he was to me, I must give him thanks for the carefulbusiness training he bestowed on me. I say with pride that I proved tobe his most apt and willing pupil. He taught me how the natives, bynature simple-minded and unsophisticated, had lost all confidence intheir fellow-men in general and merchants in particular through the, tosay the least, very dubious and suspicious dealings of the tribes ofIsrael. My uncle said he was an old timer in New Mexico, but the Jewwas there already when he came and, added he, thoughtfully, "I believethe Jews came to America with Columbus." With a pack of merchandisestrapped to his back, this king of commerce crossed the plains in theface of murderous Indians and with the unexplainable, crafty cunning ofhis race, he sold tobacco and trinkets to the warriors who had set outto kill him, and to the squaws he sold Parisian lingerie at a bargain.He swore that he was losing money and selling the goods below cost, notcounting the freight.
As the Indians had no money and nothing else of commercial value tohim, he bartered for the trophies of victory which the proud chiefscarried suspended from their belts. Deprecatingly he called theirattention to the undeniable fact that these articles had been wornbefore and had to be rated as second-hand goods. But he hoped that hisbrother-in-law, Isaac Dreibein, who conducted a second-handhairdressing establishment in New York City, would take these goods offhis hands. This trade flourished for a time, until, as usual, Israelfell off from the Lord, by opening shop on the Sabbath. An unluckyMoses got into a fatal altercation with a Comanche chief, whom hecheated out of a scalplock, as he was as baldheaded as a hen's egg.Thereat the Indians became suspicious and refused to trade with theJews ever after.
With proverbial German thoroughness, uncle instructed me in all thetricks and secrets of his profession. He had found that the Mexicanswere good buyers, if handled scientifically, for they would never leavethe store until they had spent all their money. Therefore, in order toencourage our customers, we kept a barrel of firewater under thecounter as a trade starter. One or more drams of old Magnolia wouldstart the ball to roll finely. Our merchandise cost mark was made upfrom the words, "God help us!" Every letter of this pious sentimentdesignated one of the numbers from one to nine and a cross stood fornaught. When I said to uncle, "No wonder that our business prospersunder this mark--God help us!--but say, who helps our customers?" hewas nonplussed for a moment, and then he laughed heartily and said thatthis had never worried him yet.
There was not much money in circulation in New Mexico at that time, asthe country was without railroads and too isolated to market farmproduce, wool and hides profitably. Mining for gold was carried on atPinos Altos, near the southern boundary, but the Apaches did notencourage prospecting to any extent. During the period of the discoveryof gold in California, in the days of "forty-nine," the people of NewMexico had become quite wealthy through supplying the California placerminers with mutton sheep at the price of an ounce of gold dust perhead, when muttons cost half a dollar on the Rio Grande. At that rateof profit they could afford the time and expense of driving their herdsof sheep to market at Los Angeles, even though the Apaches of Arizonatook their toll and fattened on stolen mutton.