A New Year's Eve in New Mexico [pp. 54-63]

,A New Year's Eve in New Mexico.
merous small lateral ravines or gulches,
resulting from gradual erosion. These
connect with a labyrinthine maze of
deeper and more complicated indentations and box cafions in the mountains,
with steep, wooded, arroyo-seamed sides
admirably adapted for the concealment of an ambushingparty where they
debouch upon the road; or to cover its
hurried march across country, - a desideratum to which the Apache warriors
attached great importance in their lightning raids.
The Burro Sierras consist of the Big
Burros and the Little Burros, which are
merely a continuation of the first in a
gradually diminishing span. The whole
system is a jumble of mountains, thrown
up and standing in social groups, their
eastern base falling away in terraces,
from each of which, in an increasing
scale, the wide-spreading landscape below reveals itself, map-like, for vast distances in bird's eye views, as one ascends
towards the summits; while on the western side the descent towards the mesquite orchards is in long, even slopes,
until the candelabra-like saguarros and
mescal bearing plains are reached, with
their nopals and charambullas, and other
varieties of the cactus family.
Throughout the entire system game
of all kinds indigenous to that section,
— cinnamon and black bear, Virginia
and black-tailed deer, wild turkey and
quail, and cottontail rabbit - was still
abundant, and a scouting or raiding
party crossing it could always depend
on procuring a supply sufficient to last
several days after getting beyond it.
There is a streak of country crossing
the Burros which seems to be the especial habitat of the silver gray cactus rat,
of which the Apaches are exceedingly
fond as an article of diet, and which is
always found in the range of the Agave
Americana or mescal melocactus. This
rodent, the handsomest of its species, —
a branch of the Didomys genus, — colonizes among the roots of the saguarra
and other stem cactuses of the grandiflora, gnawing the roots to get at the
succulent sap; and eventually, in the
course of time, the cactus pines away,
the upper part of its stem drying up and
dying first.
When an Apache sees the top of a
saguarra turning yellow while its lower
part is still a vivid green, with its small
red flowers adhering to the trunk, he
knows that the rats have their burrows
beneath, and he turns aside and roots
up the colonists, which he kills with
much glee, and hangs by the tails to the
cartridge-belt around his waist,-together with such scalps as he may have
picked up by the way,- until the time
comes for his next meal.
Under the combined circumstances
of the Burros forming a natural covered
way for the Indian raiding parties, and
the assurance of plenty of food while in
them, their predilection for these wild
and almost inaccessible recesses was not
to be wondered at.
The picket at Burro Springs consisted
of five privates of the Twelfth Regiment
of United States Infantry, under Sergeant Buford. Their camp,- three
small tents, protected in the rear by a
mass of natural masonry, and in front
by a small earth breastwork constructed
by the squad, —was established in close
proximity to the springs, jutting out
from underneath a chaotic pile of volcanic rocks, thrown up in some long
past subterranean convulsion and eruption near the road.
A short distance below it, on the other side of the way, stood a small log
cabin, in which lived a settler named
Smith, who, with his family, consisting
of his wife, one grown-up daughter, and
two smaller ones not yet in their teens,
had preempted a land claim of one hundred and sixty acres which, owing to the
springs on it, was valuable in that driedup section of the country. These people, on account of their dangerously exposed situation, right in the midst of the
1890.]
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