They didn’t treat me bad, and I reckon they intended to trade me off for guns or something, but having been put to herding their horses for them, one night I stole one and rode off. It was fast and hard travel, and before long he died on me and I continued to New Mexico on foot. It was the end of summer before I reached Taos, in the mountains north of Santa Fe. For quite a time I hadn’t seen a town of any description, so I was rather cheered just to see the Pueblo Indians’ dwellings there, though I never could get up much affection for that type of redskin, who was always farmers and lived clustered together like bats from time immemorial. With the whole world open to them, they settled down and raised little patches of beans. The Comanche used to raid them every once in a while and so did the Navaho and Apache. A wild Indian don’t like a tame one.
There was a white town down the trail a piece from the Indian one, so I went on down there. I was sure a sight after those weeks in desert and mountain. I’d kneel down and drink from a pool with my eyes shut so as not see my ugly reflection.
So I can’t blame a famous hero for what he done when I showed up at his front door. I saw this adobe house, see, built around one of them inner courtyards, and I figured this was where I might get a handout. So I goes onto the veranda, and the door was open for it was hot weather, and I calls into the cool, dark interior: “Anybody to home?”
A fellow about my size, short that is, with a sandy mustache and real bandylegs, appears from the shadows within and says: “Git on out of here, you hairy son of a whore.”
And I did, for he was real mean-looking. Later some Mexican off whom I begged a couple tortillas told me that was Señor Kit Carson.
In a day or so I reached Santa Fe, down in its valley among the mountains, with its Mex women in their bright colors and naked shoulders, and Pueblo Indians sitting about selling their junk and a Ute or two in red blankets walking arrogant around, and Spanish cowboys in them tight pants slitted at the ankle, along with the more usual types you might see anywhere. That was quite a town for the time and place, but you would never have known it by one look. Most everybody lived in them adobe houses, which is no more than dried mud; consequently they seem a little childish at first, like some kids patty-caked them together. Even the Governors’ Palace off the town square was of this construction. If St. Louie was your idea of a city, you wouldn’t have thought much of Santa Fe, which one good rain would have turned into a hog wallow.
It was all right with me, though, and I did a lot better there than in St. Louie. I don’t mean I got rich, nor tried to. I took up with a fat Mexican woman who sold chili con carne, tamales, and the like right on the street, also cooked them there over an open fire. She took pity on me for being so skinny, was how it started. Before long I had moved into her little ’dobe house, which we also shared with five or six of her kids, but her husband run off or been killed, she wasn’t sure which. Sometimes she’d believe the first, in which case she’d threaten me with him coming back and knifing me; and sometimes the other, and would want me and her to go to the priest and get hitched.
Estrellita was always yelling and scolding, and occasionally would get sufficiently riled so as to threaten to knife me herself, but I discovered that was the Mexican temperament, and it was easy to get her in a good mood again by doing some romantic thing like calling her “my little chili pepper” or whatnot. Speaking of peppers, my stomach was ruined for years by that Spanish grub and it put more calluses on my tongue than I had on my hands during these months. For I didn’t do no work. I just laid around all day in the shade, and then in the evening, when the air had cooled enough so that the effort of walking wouldn’t upset me, I’d summon up enough energy to drag myself to a cantina and lay into glass after glass of pulque, which Estrellita give me the money to buy.
I was morally very low at this time, and just sixteen. I reckoned it run in the family, having seen my brother Bill, and didn’t worry none. If you want to really relax sometime, just fall to rock bottom and you’ll be a happy man. Most all troubles come from having standards.
I might have died of a bad liver, what with that diet, but I was saved by an old-timer I run into in that cantina. This fellow was about seventy, had a face of white hair, a speech defect which he claimed come from Apache torture when a lad, and professed to be a expert on locating gold. Everybody called him Crazy Charley, or Loco Carlos, depending on their lingo, and you can gather from that what they thought of his ability as a prospector.
