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Men and children seem to thrive in those climates, but it is
death to women, as I had often heard.

It was in the late summer that the boat arrived one day bringing
a large number of staff officers and their wives, head clerks,
and "general service" men for Fort Whipple. They had all been
stationed in Washington for a number of years, having had what is
known in the army as "gilt-edged" details. I threw a linen towel
over my head, and went to the boat to call on them, and,
remembering my voyage from San Francisco the year before,
prepared to sympathize with them. But they had met their fate
with resignation; knowing they should find a good climate and a
pleasant post up in the mountains, and as they had no young
children with them, they were disposed to make merry over their
discomforts.

We asked them to come to our quarters for supper, and to come
early, as any place was cooler than the boat, lying down there in
the melting sun, and nothing to look upon but those hot
zinc-covered decks or the ragged river banks, with their
uninviting huts scattered along the edge.

The surroundings somehow did not fit these people. Now Mrs.
Montgomery at Camp Apache seemed to have adapted herself to the
rude setting of a log cabin in the mountains, but these were
Staff people and they had enjoyed for years the civilized side of
army life; now they were determined to rough it, but they did not
know how to begin.

The beautiful wife of the Adjutant-General was mourning over some
freckles which had come to adorn her dazzling complexion, and she
had put on a large hat with a veil. Was there ever anything so
incongruous as a hat and veil in Ehrenberg! For a long time I had
not seen a woman in a hat; the Mexicans all wore a linen towel
over their heads.

But her beauty was startling, and, after all, I thought, a woman
so handsome must try to live up to her reputation. Now for some
weeks Jack had been investigating the sulphur well, which was
beneath the old pump in our corral. He had had a long wooden
bath-tub built, and I watched it with a lazy interest, and
observed his glee as he found a longshoreman or roustabout who
could caulk it. The shape was exactly like a coffin (but men have
no imaginations), and when I told him how it made me feel to look
at it, he said: "Oh! you are always thinking of gloomy things.
It's a fine tub, and we are mighty lucky to find that man to
caulk it. I'm going to set it up in the little square room, and
lead the sulphur water into it, and it will be splendid, and just
think," he added, "what it will do for rheumatism!"

Now Jack had served in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers
during the Civil War, and the swamps of the Chickahominy had
brought him into close acquaintance with that dread disease.

As for myself, rheumatism was about the only ailment I did not
have at that time, and I suppose I did not really sympathize with
him. But this energetic and indomitable man mended the pump, with
Fisher's help, and led the water into the house, laid a floor,
set up the tub in the little square room, and behold, our sulphur
bath!

After much persuasion, I tried the bath. The water flowed thick
and inky black into the tub; of course the odor was beyond
description, and the effect upon me was not such that I was ever
willing to try it again. Jack beamed. "How do you like it,
Martha?" said he. "Isn't it fine? Why people travel hundreds of
miles to get a bath like that!"

I had my own opinion, but I did not wish to dampen his
enthusiasm. Still, in order to protect myself in the future, I
had to tell him I thought I should ordinarily prefer the river.

"Well," he said, "there are those who will be thankful to have a
bath in that water; I am going to use it every day."

I remonstrated: "How do you know what is in that inky water--and
how do you dare to use it ?"

"Oh, Fisher says it's all right; people here used to drink it
years ago, but they have not done so lately, because the pump was
broken down."

The Washington people seemed glad to pay us the visit. Jack's
eyes danced with true generosity and glee. He marked his victim;
and, selecting the Staff beauty and the Paymaster's wife, he
expatiated on the wonderful properties of his sulphur bath.

"Why, yes, the sooner the better," said Mrs. Martin. "I'd give
everything I have in this world, and all my chances for the next,
to get a tub bath!"

"It will be so refreshing just before supper," said Mrs.
Maynadier, who was more conservative.

So the Indian, who had put on his dark blue waist-band (or sash),
made from flannel, revelled out and twisted into strands of yarn,
and which showed the supple muscles of his clean-cut thighs, and
who had done up an extra high pompadour in white clay, and
burnished his knife, which gleamed at his waist, ushered these
Washington women into a small apartment adjoining the bath-room,
and turned on the inky stream into the sarcophagus.

The Staff beauty looked at the black pool, and shuddered. "Do you
use it?" said she.

"Occasionally," I equivocated.

"Does it hurt the complexion?" she ventured.

"Jack thinks it excellent for that," I replied.

And then I left them, directing Charley to wait, and prepare the
bath for the second victim.

By and by the beauty came out. "Where is your mirror ?" cried she
(for our appointments were primitive, and mirrors did not grow on
bushes at Ehrenberg); "I fancy I look queer," she added, and, in
truth, she did; for our water of the Styx did not seem to
affiliate with the chemical properties of the numerous cosmetics
used by her, more or less, all her life, but especially on the
voyage, and her face had taken on a queer color, with peculiar
spots here and there.

Fortunately my mirrors were neither large nor true, and she never
really saw how she looked, but when she came back into the
living-room, she laughed and said to Jack: "What kind of water
did you say that was? I never saw any just like it."

"Oh! you have probably never been much to the sulphur springs,"
said he, with his most superior and crushing manner.

"Perhaps not," she replied, "but I thought I knew something about
it; why, my entire body turned such a queer color."

"Oh! it always does that," said this optimistic soldier man, "and
that shows it is doing good."

The Paymaster's wife joined us later. I think she had profited by
the beauty's experience, for she said but little.

The Quartermaster was happy; and what if his wife did not believe
in that uncanny stream which flowed somewhere from out the
infernal regions, underlying that wretched hamlet, he had
succeeded in being a benefactor to two travellers at least!

We had a merry supper: cold ham, chicken, and fresh biscuit, a
plenty of good Cocomonga wine, sweet milk, which to be sure
turned to curds as it stood on the table, some sort of preserves
from a tin, and good coffee. I gave them the best to be had in
the desert--and at all events it was a change from the Chinaman's
salt beef and peach pies, and they saw fresh table linen and
shining silver, and accepted our simple hospitality in the spirit
in which we gave it.

Alice Martin was much amused over Charley; and Charley could do
nothing but gaze on her lovely features. "Why on earth don't you
put some clothes on him?" laughed she, in her delightful way.

I explained to her that the Indian's fashion of wearing white
men's clothes was not pleasing to the eye, and told her that she
must cultivate her aesthetic sense, and in a short time she would
be able to admire these copper-colored creatures of Nature as
much as I did.

But I fear that a life spent mostly in a large city had cast
fetters around her imagination, and that the life at Fort Whipple
afterwards savored too much of civilization to loosen the bonds
of her soul. I saw her many times again, but she never recovered
from her amazement at Charley's lack of apparel, and she never
forgot the sulphur bath.




CHAPTER XX

MY DELIVERER

One day, in the early autumn, as the "Gila" touched at Ehrenberg,
on her way down river, Captain Mellon called Jack on to the boat,
and, pointing to a young woman, who was about to go ashore, said:
"Now, there's a girl I think will do for your wife. She imagines
she has bronchial troubles, and some doctor has ordered her to
Tucson. She comes from up North somewhere. Her money has given
out, and she thinks I am going to leave her here. Of course, you
know I would not do that; I can take her on down to Yuma, but I
thought your wife might like to have her, so I've told her she
could not travel on this boat any farther without she could pay
her fare. Speak to her: she looks to me like a nice sort of a
girl."

In the meantime, the young woman had gone ashore and was sitting
upon her trunk, gazing hopelessly about. Jack approached,
offered her a home and good wages, and brought her to me.

I could have hugged her for very joy, but I restrained myself and
advised her to stay with us for awhile, saying the Ehrenberg
climate was quite as good as that of Tucson.

She remarked quietly: "You do not look as if it agreed with you
very well, ma'am.''

Then I told her of my young child, and my hard journeys, and she
decided to stay until she could earn enough to reach Tucson.

And so Ellen became a member of our Ehrenberg family. She was a
fine, strong girl, and a very good cook, and seemed to be in
perfect health. She said, however, that she had had an obstinate
cough which nothing would reach, and that was why she came to
Arizona. >From that time, things went more smoothly. Some yeast
was procured from the Mexican bakeshop, and Ellen baked bread and
other things, which seemed like the greatest luxuries to us. We
sent the soldier back to his company at Fort Yuma, and began to
live with a degree of comfort.

I looked at Ellen as my deliverer, and regarded her coming as a
special providence, the kind I had heard about all my life in New
England, but had never much believed in.

After a few weeks, Ellen was one evening seized with a dreadful
toothache, which grew so severe that she declared she could not
endure it another hour: she must have the tooth out. "Was there a
dentist in the place?"

I looked at Jack: he looked at me: Ellen groaned with pain.

"Why, yes! of course there is," said this man for emergencies;
"Fisher takes out teeth, he told me so the other day."

Now I did not believe that Fisher knew any more about extracting
teeth than I did myself, but I breathed a prayer to the Recording
Angel, and said naught.

"I'll go get Fisher," said Jack.

Now Fisher was the steamboat agent. He stood six feet in his
stockings, had a powerful physique and a determined eye. Men in
those countries had to be determined; for if they once lost
their nerve, Heaven save them. Fisher had handsome black eyes.

When they came in, I said: "Can you attend to this business, Mr.
Fisher?"

"I think so," he replied, quietly. "The Quartermaster says he has
some forceps."

I gasped. Jack, who had left the room, now appeared, a box of
instruments in his hand, his eyes shining with joy and triumph.

Fisher took the box, and scanned it. "I guess they'll do," said
he.

So we placed Ellen in a chair, a stiff barrack chair, with a
raw-hide seat, and no arms.

It was evening.

"Mattie, you must hold the candle," said Jack. "I'll hold Ellen,
and, Fisher, you pull the tooth."

So I lighted the candle, and held it, while Ellen tried, by its
flickering light, to show Fisher the tooth that ached.

Fisher looked again at the box of instruments. "Why," said he,
"these are lower jaw rollers, the kind used a hundred years ago;
and her tooth is an upper jaw."

"Never mind," answered the Lieutenant, "the instruments are all
right. Fisher, you can get the tooth out, that's all you want,
isn't it?"

The Lieutenant was impatient; and besides he did not wish any
slur cast upon his precious instruments.

So Fisher took up the forceps, and clattered around amongst
Ellen's sound white teeth. His hand shook, great beads of
perspiration gathered on his face, and I perceived a very strong
odor of Cocomonga wine. He had evidently braced for the occasion.

It was, however, too late to protest. He fastened onto a molar,
and with the lion's strength which lay in his gigantic frame, he
wrenched it out.

Ellen put up her hand and felt the place. "My God! you've pulled
the wrong tooth!" cried she, and so he had.

I seized a jug of red wine which stood near by, and poured out a
gobletful, which she drank. The blood came freely from her mouth,
and I feared something dreadful had happened.

Fisher declared she had shown him the wrong tooth, and was
perfectly willing to try again. I could not witness the second
attempt, so I put the candle down and fled.

The stout-hearted and confiding girl allowed the second trial,
and between the steamboat agent, the Lieutenant, and the red
wine, the aching molar was finally extracted.

This was a serious and painful occurrence. It did not cause any
of us to laugh, at the time. I am sure that Ellen, at least,
never saw the comical side of it.

When it was all over, I thanked Fisher, and Jack beamed upon me
with: "You see, Mattie, my case of instruments did come in handy,
after all."

Encouraged by success, he applied for a pannier of medicines, and
the Ehrenberg citizens soon regarded him as a healer. At a
certain hour in the morning, the sick ones came to his office,
and he dispensed simple drugs to them and was enabled to do much
good. He seemed to have a sort of intuitive knowledge about
medicines and performed some miraculous cures, but acquired
little or no facility in the use of the language.

I was often called in as interpreter, and with the help of the
sign language, and the little I knew of Spanish, we managed to
get an idea of the ailments of these poor people.

And so our life flowed on in that desolate spot, by the banks of
the Great Colorado.

I rarely went outside the enclosure, except for my bath in the
river at daylight, or for some urgent matter. The one street
along the river was hot and sandy and neglected. One had not only
to wade through the sand, but to step over the dried heads or
horns or bones of animals left there to whiten where they died,
or thrown out, possibly, when some one killed a sheep or beef.
Nothing decayed there, but dried and baked hard in that
wonderful air and sun.

Then, the groups of Indians, squaws and halfbreeds loafing around
the village and the store! One never felt sure what one was to
meet, and although by this time I tolerated about everything that
I had been taught to think wicked or immoral, still, in
Ehrenberg, the limit was reached, in the sights I saw on the
village streets, too bold and too rude to be described in these
pages.

The few white men there led respectable lives enough for that
country. The standard was not high, and when I thought of the
dreary years they had already spent there without their families,
and the years they must look forward to remaining there, I was
willing to reserve my judgement.




CHAPTER XXI

WINTER IN EHRENBERG

We asked my sister, Mrs. Penniman, to come out and spend the
winter with us, and to bring her son, who was in most delicate
health. It was said that the climate of Ehrenberg would have a
magical effect upon all diseases of the lungs or throat. So, to
save her boy, my sister made the long and arduous trip out from
New England, arriving in Ehrenberg in October.

What a joy to see her, and to initiate her into the ways of our
life in Arizona! Everything was new, everything was a wonder to
her and to my nephew. At first, he seemed to gain perceptibly,
and we had great hopes of his recovery.

It was now cool enough to sleep indoors, and we began to know
what it was to have a good night's rest.

But no sooner had we gotten one part of our life comfortably
arranged, before another part seemed to fall out of adjustment.
Accidents and climatic conditions kept my mind in a perpetual
state of unrest.

Our dining-room door opened through two small rooms into the
kitchen, and one day, as I sat at the table, waiting for Jack to
come in to supper, I heard a strange sort of crashing noise.
Looking towards the kitchen, through the vista of open doorways,
I saw Ellen rush to the door which led to the courtyard. She
turned a livid white, threw up her hands, and cried, "Great God!
the Captain!" She was transfixed with horror.

I flew to the door, and saw that the pump had collapsed and gone
down into the deep sulphur well. In a second, Jack's head and
hands appeared at the edge; he seemed to be caught in the debris
of rotten timber. Before I could get to him, he had scrambled
half way out. "Don't come near this place," he cried, "it's all
caving in!"

And so it seemed; for, as he worked himself up and out, the
entire structure feel in, and half the corral with it, as it
looked to me.

Jack escaped what might have been an unlucky bath in his sulphur
well, and we all recovered our composure as best we could.

Surely, if life was dull at Ehrenberg, it could not be called
exactly monotonous. We were not obliged to seek our excitement
outside; we had plenty of it, such as it was, within our walls.

My confidence in Ehrenberg, however, as a salubrious
dwelling-place, was being gradually and literally undermined. I
began to be distrustful of the very ground beneath my feet. Ellen
felt the same way, evidently, although we did not talk much about
it. She probably longed also for some of her own kind; and when,
one morning, we went into the dining-room for breakfast, Ellen
stood, hat on, bag in hand, at the door. Dreading to meet my
chagrin, she said: "Good-bye, Captain; good-bye, missis, you've
been very kind to me. I'm leaving on the stage for Tucson--where
I first started for, you know."

And she tripped out and climbed up into the dusty, rickety
vehicle called "the stage." I had felt so safe about Ellen, as I
did not know that any stage line ran through the place.

And now I was in a fine plight! I took a sunshade, and ran over
to Fisher's house. "Mr. Fisher, what shall I do? Ellen has gone
to Tucson!"

Fisher bethought himself, and we went out together in the
village. Not a woman to be found who would come to cook for us!
There was only one thing to do. The Quartermaster was allowed a
soldier, to assist in the Government work. I asked him if he
understood cooking; he said he had never done any, but he would
try, if I would show him how.

This proved a hopeless task, and I finally gave it up. Jack
dispatched an Indian runner to Fort Yuma, ninety miles or more
down river, begging Captain Ernest to send us a soldier-cook on
the next boat.

This was a long time to wait; the inconveniences were
intolerable: there were our four selves, Patrocina and Jesusita,
the soldier-clerk and the Indian, to be provided for: Patrocina
prepared carni seca with peppers, a little boy came around with
cuajada, a delicious sweet curd cheese, and I tried my hand at
bread, following out Ellen's instructions.

How often I said to my husband. "If we must live in this wretched
place, let's give up civilization and live as the Mexicans do!
They are the only happy beings around here.

"Look at them, as you pass along the street! At nearly any hour
in the day you can see them, sitting under their ramada, their
backs propped against the wall of their casa, calmly smoking
cigarettes and gazing at nothing, with a look of ineffable
contentment upon their features! They surely have solved the
problem of life!"

But we seemed never to be able to free ourselves from the fetters
of civilization, and so I struggled on.

One evening after dusk, I went into the kitchen, opened the
kitchen closet door to take out some dish, when clatter! bang!
down fell the bread-pan, and a shower of other tin ware, and
before I could fairly get my breath, out jumped two young squaws
and without deigning to glance at me they darted across the
kitchen and leaped out the window like two frightened fawn.

They had on nothing but their birthday clothes and as I was
somewhat startled at the sight of them, I stood transfixed, my
eyes gazing at the open space through which they had flown.

Charley, the Indian, was in the corral, filling the ollas, and,
hearing the commotion, came in and saw just the disappearing
heels of the two squaws.

I said, very sternly: "Charley, how came those squaws in my
closet?" He looked very much ashamed and said: "Oh, me tell you:
bad man go to kill 'em; I hide 'em."

"Well," said I, "do not hide any more girls in this casa! You
savez that?"

He bowed his head in acquiescence.

I afterwards learned that one of the girls was his sister.

The weather was now fairly comfortable, and in the evenings we
sat under the ramada, in front of the house, and watched the
beautiful pink glow which spread over the entire heavens and
illuminated the distant mountains of Lower California. I have
never seen anything like that wonderful color, which spread
itself over sky, river and desert. For an hour, one could have
believed oneself in a magician's realm.

At about this time, the sad-eyed Patrocina found it expedient to
withdraw into the green valleys of Lower California, to
recuperate for a few months. With the impish Jesusita in her
arms, she bade me a mournful good-bye. Worthless as she was from
the standpoint of civilized morals, I was attached to her and
felt sorry to part with her.

Then I took a Mexican woman from Chihuahua. Now the Chihuahuans
hold their heads high, and it was rather with awe that I greeted
the tall middle-aged Chihuahuan lady who came to be our little
son's nurse. Her name was Angela. "Angel of light," I thought,
how fortunate I am to get her!

After a few weeks, Fisher observed that the whole village was
eating Ferris ham, an unusual delicacy in Ehrenberg, and that the
Goldwaters' had sold none. So he suggested that our commissary
storehouse be looked to; and it was found that a dozen hams or so
had been withdrawn from their canvas covers, the covers stuffed
with straw, and hung back in place. Verily the Chihuahuan was
adding to her pin-money in a most unworthy fashion, and she had
to go. After that, I was left without a nurse. My little son was
now about nine months old.

Milk began to be more plentiful at this season, and, with my
sister's advice and help, I decided to make the one great change
in a baby's life i.e., to take him from his mother. Modern
methods were unknown then, and we had neither of us any
experience in these matters and there was no doctor in the
place.

The result was, that both the baby and myself were painfully and
desperately ill and not knowing which way to turn for aid, when,
by a lucky turn of Fortune's wheel, our good, dear Doctor Henry
Lippincott came through Ehrenberg on his way out to the States.
Once more he took care of us, and it is to him that I believe I
owe my life.

Captain Ernest sent us a cook from Yuma, and soon some officers
came for the duck-shooting. There were thousands of ducks around
the various lagoons in the neighborhood, and the sport was rare.
We had all the ducks we could eat.

Then came an earthquake, which tore and rent the baked earth
apart. The ground shivered, the windows rattled, the birds fell
close to the ground and could not fly, the stove-pipes fell to
the floor, the thick walls cracked and finally, the earth rocked
to and fro like some huge thing trying to get its balance.

It was in the afternoon. My sister and I were sitting with our
needle-work in the living-room. Little Harry was on the floor,
occupied with some toys. I was paralyzed with fear; my sister did
not move. We sat gazing at each other, scarce daring to breathe,
expecting every instant the heavy walls to crumble about our
heads. The earth rocked and rocked, and rocked again, then swayed
and swayed and finally was still. My sister caught Harry in her
arms, and then Jack and Willie came breathlessly in. "Did you
feel it?" said Jack.

"Did we feel it!" said I, scornfully.

Sarah was silent, and I looked so reproachfully at Jack, that he
dropped his light tone, and said: "It was pretty awful. We were
in the Goldwaters' store, when suddenly it grew dark and the
lamps above our heads began to rattle and swing, and we all
rushed out into the middle of the street and stood, rather
dazed, for we scarcely knew what had happened; then we hurried
home. But it's all over now."

"I do not believe it," said I; "we shall have more"; and, in
fact, we did have two light shocks in the night, but no more
followed, and the next morning, we recovered, in a measure, from
our fright and went out to see the great fissures in that
treacherous crust of earth upon which Ehrenberg was built.

I grew afraid, after that, and the idea that the earth would
eventually open and engulf us all took possession of my mind.

My health, already weakened by shocks and severe strains, gave
way entirely. I, who had gloried in the most perfect health, and
had a constitution of iron, became an emaciated invalid.

>From my window, one evening at sundown, I saw a weird procession
moving slowly along towards the outskirts of the village. It must
be a funeral, thought I, and it flashed across my mind that I had
never seen the burying-ground.

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