CHAPTER XXI
In the dry clean air of the Southwest all things change slowly. Growth isslow and decay is even slower. The body of a dead horse in the desert doesnot rot but dessicates, the hide remaining intact for months, the bonesperhaps for years. Men and beasts often live to great age. The _pinon_trees on the red hills were there when the conquerors came, and they arenot much larger now--only more gnarled and twisted.
This strange inertia seems to possess institutions and customs as well aslife itself. In the valley towns, it is true, the railroads have broughtand thrown down all the conveniences and incongruities of civilization.But ride away from the railroads into the mountains or among the lava_mesas_, and you are riding into the past. You will see little earthentowns, brown or golden or red in the sunlight, according to the soil thatbore them, which have not changed in a century. You will see grainthreshed by herds of goats and ponies driven around and around thethreshing floors, as men threshed grain before the Bible was written. Youwill see Indian pueblos which have not changed materially since the bravedays when Coronado came to Taos and the Spanish soldiers stormed theheights of Acoma. You will hear of strange Gods and devils and of the evileye. It is almost as though this crystalline air were indeed a great clearcrystal, impervious to time, in which the past is forever encysted.
The region in which Ramon's heritage lay was a typical part of thisforgotten land. In the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, it was acountry of great tilted _mesas_ reaching above timber line, covered forthe most part with heavy forests of pine and fir, with here and theregreat upland pastures swept clean by forest fires of long ago. Along thelower slopes of the mountains, where the valleys widened, were primitivelittle _adobe_ towns, in which the Mexicans lived, each owning a few acresof tillable land. In the summer they followed their sheep herds in theupland pastures. There were not a hundred white men in the whole of ArribaCounty, and no railroad touched it.
In this region a few Mexicans who were shrewder or stronger than theothers, who owned stores or land, dominated the rest of the people much asthe _patrones_ had dominated them in the days before the Mexican War. Herestill flourished the hatred for the gringo which culminated in that war.Here that strange sect, the _penitentes hermanos_, half savage and halfmediaeval, still was strong and still recruited its strength every yearwith young men, who elsewhere were refusing to undergo its brutaltortures.
For all of these reasons, this was an advantageous field for the fightRamon proposed to make. In the valley MacDougall's money and influencewould surely have beaten him. But here he could play upon the ancienthatred for the gringo; here he could use to the best advantage theprestige of his family; here, above all, if he could win over the_penitentes_, he could do almost anything he pleased.
His plan of joining that ancient order to gain influence was not anoriginal one. Mexican politicians and perhaps one or two gringos had doneit, and the fact was a matter of common gossip. Some of these _penitentes_for a purpose had been men of great influence, and their initiations hadbeen tempered to suit their sensitive skins. Others had been Mexicans ofthe poorer sort, capable of sharing the half-fanatic, half sadistic spiritof the thing.
Ramon came to the order as a young and almost unknown man seeking its aid.He could not hope for much mercy. And though he was primitive in manyways, there was nothing in him that responded to the spirit of thisordeal. The thought of Christ crucified did not inspire him to enduresuffering. But the thought of a girl with yellow hair did.