9 New Resources

Their excursions to the plateau back of the cliff village now became numerous, and they were continually making discoveries of value and interest. In a secluded rift or narrow valley Herbert found young maize growing, shooting up stalks tender and yet small, but fresh and green. It was a plot about a quarter of an acre in extent, moistened by drainage from the surrounding slopes, and with a tiny stream flowing down the center, to be lost fifty yards further on in a mighty gulf below. The corn was growing irregularly, but it showed signs of abundant life, and Herbert brought the others to see his discovery.

“This is highly interesting and it also provides a new source of food for us,” said the Professor, looking at the young stalks attentively through his great glasses. “It indicates that Indians lived here long after the cliff dwellers departed or were driven away. Perhaps it is not many years since the Indians themselves left, owing to some kind of superstitious terror, to which savage tribes are subject. It may have been a pestilence or an epidemic, which they attributed to the wrath of the gods of the cliff dwellers. Consequently this place has become, as the Hawaiians would say, tabu to them. So much the better for us, as it gives us the finest kind of protection from their raids.”

“An’ the corn?” said Jedediah Simpson. “How about the corn growin’ here ez fine an’ sassy ez ef it wuz sproutin’ out o’ the good soil aroun’ Lexin’ton, K—y?”

“It is wild corn now. It was planted first by the Indian squaws who now and then do a little cultivation, when the soil is favorable and, when the place was abandoned, the falling grain renewed the stalks year after year. If we stay here long enough we will reap where the Apache women have sown. But we must set some dead falls and snares to protect our future grain from graminivorous and herbivorous wild animals.”

“‘Graminivorous an’ herbivorous,’” said Jedediah Simpson in a whisper to Herbert. “Do you think anybody else could sling big words like them, jest ez smooth an’ easy ez a baby drinkin’ milk. Don’t you think the Purfessor is the greatest man the world hez ever seed?”

“He is certainly a great man,” said Herbert with the utmost sincerity. “For us in this wilderness there could be no greater.”

“He knows everything in the world,” continued Jedediah Simpson in an awed whisper.

They set the snares and dead falls after the usual western fashion, catching a number of wild animals, the skins and flesh of which they could use. This seemed to warn the others away, and the young cornfield was not molested. Herbert, who looked upon it as his by right of discovery, found an ancient and crude hoe in a dark corner of a little cliff house that they had not visited hitherto. It was made of sharp flat stone, with a wooden handle, rotted by age. But Herbert easily replaced the handle, and went forth to work in his corn field, hoeing carefully around each stalk, that is, turning up the fresh loose earth in a little hill. Jedediah Simpson, who knew all about raising Indian corn, helped him with instructions, but Herbert insisted upon doing the work himself. He took a pride in it, and the field soon showed the effect of his systematic care. Favored by one or two kindly rains the stalks shot up in an astonishing manner, and there was ample promise of fine roasting ears in the time to come.

Jedediah Simpson lay at the edge of the field in the shade of an oak, his long thin frame stretched out on the grass, and his broad-brimmed light felt hat covering his forehead to the eyes. He was the picture of content and ease. Herbert in the sun was wielding his stone hoe with vigor, turning up fresh loose earth about every individual stalk.

“Good boy, Herb,” drawled Jedediah in long, slow tones. “Thar ain’t no better occupation fur a growin’ lad than hoein’ corn. I done my share o’ it when I wuz a boy in the neighborhood o’ Lexin’ton, K—y, the fairest spot on this round rollin’ earth, an’ now see what I am. You keep right on, Herb, an’ you’ll be shore to rise to the heights that I’ve riz to.”

Herbert laughed.

“Come on, Jed,” he said. “The sun’s bright an’ fine.”

“Not me,” replied Jedediah. “I know somethin’ ’bout that sun, when you’re hoein’ corn. No, you work right along, Herbert, an’ I’ll take a nap in the shade o’ this tree.”

They let their fire go out one night a little later, and, when the Professor examined their store of matches, he was somewhat worried to find it so small.

“We must save the matches,” he said, “and I will use my fire sticks, although it’s hard work I assure you.”

“Fire sticks?” said Charles inquiringly.

“It’s a method I learned from the civilized Apaches in the eastern part of the territory, and, as a precaution, I have had the fire sticks with me ever since I came to Arizona.”

The two lads and Jedediah followed at the Professor’s heels, curious to see him make fire with sticks. He produced from his stores a stick about two and a half feet long and half an inch thick.

“This,” he said, “is a piece of the stem of the o-oh-kad-je, as the Apaches call it, that is, the fire stick. Now this stick has to coöperate with a piece of yucca, and the rest is hard work, as you shall soon see.”

He laid a piece of dry soft yucca on the ground and planted his foot firmly upon it. He dipped the end of the fire stick in some sand, and pressed it firmly into a shallow depression of the yucca. Then he began to whirl the fire stick rapidly between his hands.

The little professor was a man of great strength. Charles and Herbert did not appreciate until now how very strong he really was. He had long arms, flexible and enduring as steel, and he twirled the stick with amazing rapidity, all the time keeping the end firmly fixed in the yucca.

A minute, two minutes. Perspiration stood out on the face of Professor Erasmus Darwin Longworth, but the speed of the revolving fire stick did not decrease. Gradually a very fine charcoal was ground from the yucca, and when the Professor thought he had enough, he spread it out on the dry grass. Then he blew a light breath or two upon it and it sprang into a flame, which was quickly communicated to small sticks of dry yucca, and then to larger wood, soon making a fine roaring fire.

Professor Longworth put away his fire stick and sat down, panting but triumphant.

“Friction, my lads, it’s friction that does it, as it does many other things in this world. That is probably one of the most primitive human methods of making a fire, but it works. And primitive as it is, it doubtless took savages thousands of years to evolve it.”

Charles tried his hand at the fire stick a few days later, and succeeded, although the task exhausted him, but Herbert failed entirely and went in disgust to his corn field.

The Professor and Charles found at the furthest corner of the plateau remains of an Apache village which had ceased to exist probably twenty years before. Scattered about were pieces of pottery in a good state of preservation, which confirmed the Professor in his opinion that the Apaches had left in a panic.

“Superstition and terror were certainly at their heels,” he said. “They had suffered a great disaster of some kind, and they thought that the god of the cliff dwellers was coming down upon them with the sword of wrath. Here are a number of their cooking utensils, quite intact. See this.”

He picked up a large pot of unglazed earthenware, made from red clay, holding perhaps three gallons.

“This,” said he, “in the tongue of the Apache is the a-mat, that is, the pot to cook in, and this is the haht-ki-ivah or bowl to hold food.”

The latter was also made of red, unglazed earthenware, and was broad and shallow, holding at least four gallons. They found other bowls and pots. Some were decorated with narrow horizontal or zigzag lines, made of lighter-colored clay. None of them had legs. When used for cooking they were, as the Professor explained, supported over the fire on three stones which were called o-kuth-ku-nu.

They discovered in a little gully, half hidden in drift, two globular water jars of red clay covered with loosely woven basketwork. Each jar would hold about four gallons, and, cleaning them out, they set them aside, resolved at some convenient time to take them down to the cliff village.

Charles found in the same gully a curious flat stone, about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide, evidently shaped by the hand of man. He held it up before the Professor.

“Now what is this?” he asked—he was curious to see if the Professor would know and he believed that he would.

“That,” replied Professor Longworth promptly, “is the metate or in Apache ha-pi used by the Apache squaw in grinding corn. She sits down, holds this between her legs, lays the corn upon it, and grinds it with the rubbing stone or ha-pe-cha, one of which ought to be somewhere near us. Ah, here it is!”

He pulled from the debris a stone about six inches long and three inches thick. Like the metate it was of black lava.

“When the squaw has spread out the corn on the ha-pi,” said the Professor, “she grasps the ha-pe-cha in both hands, and makes a rolling motion over the corn forward and back, for all the world like the rolling pin of our mothers. We’ll take these along too some day, as we shall need them when the corn in Herbert’s field matures.”

Under the guidance of the Professor they discovered other supplies of food, which the ordinary man would never have noticed. They gathered the seeds of the saguara or giant cactus, called by the Indians ah-ah and considered by them a great delicacy. They also took later on the ripe pods of the mesquite, ground them on the rubbing stone, and made them into bread.

But their greatest resource was the mescal or American aloe, which the Apaches eat all the year around. They went down the lower slopes, and found it in perfection on the south side of high hills and on mesas or table lands that inclined to the south. Here it grew thickly, whole fields of it in the loose stony soil, and under the guidance of the Professor they went forth with their heavy hunting knives.

They cut down the plants, taking none that was not at least eighteen inches high, lopping off the stems close to the ground. Afterward they trimmed the projecting ends of the leaves so that every plant took a shape somewhat like a large ball. Then they carried them in the large flat baskets that they had found in the village to a good place in a ravine where they dug a pit at the bottom of which they built a fire.

They threw many loose stones on the fire, and when these were steaming hot they pitched the mescal on top of them, covering the plants afterward with grass and earth.

“We’ll let the mescal stay in there forty-eight hours,” said Professor Longworth. “I never did this before, but I have read the descriptions of it many times.”

“O’ course he knows how,” said Jedediah Simpson to Herbert. “Thar ain’t nothin’ he don’t know.”

After the interval appointed by the Professor the pit was opened, and the mescal taken out. The fiber then had become tougher but the fleshy part of the plant had turned to a sweet juicy pulp. The portion not to be used soon was taken out, and spread in large cakes on sticks where it dried and was rolled up.

“If we keep this long,” said the Professor, “it will become very hard and tough, and we shall have to soak it in water before we can eat it, but it will be valuable to us, as a reserve supply of food, in case of need.”

“The greatest man in the world,” breathed Jedediah Simpson again.

But the Professor’s drafts upon his resources did not stop with the mescal.

“It is well to have studied the products of desert and semi-desert lands and their uses,” he said. “I have been able to put such knowledge in practice in both Asia and Africa, and that fact will help us here.”

He showed them on the slopes the opuntia or prickly pear, also called the tuna, which he said would ripen in September, now at hand, and could be used, and he pointed out the Spanish bayonet, the fruit of which resembled a banana.

“It will ripen in October and can be eaten,” said Professor Longworth. “In addition to these things we shall have the camas or bulb of the wild hyacinth, which the Apaches call a-nya-ka. Then there are seeds of the ground or mock orange; acorns, in Apache i-hi-mi-a; pine nuts, in Apache, u-koh; wild garlic, wild potatoes, currants, juniper berries, and many other things which I need not describe now. Every land, no matter how inhospitable it may seem, contains food for man if you only know how to find it.”

“But, Professor,” said Jedediah Simpson, “you’re the only man that knows how to find it.”

Professor Nicholas Longworth smiled benignly. He did not mind a little spontaneous and sincere praise now and then.

“Not the only one, Jedediah,” he said, “but I am glad for our sakes just now that I am one of those who do know.”

A day or two after the curing of the mescal Charles wandered on a hunting expedition about a dozen miles among the hills and slopes. He had not been successful, and, seeing water shining among the trees, he went at once toward it as he was both hot and thirsty. He came to a narrow but swift and deep creek, thickly lined with a species of willow.

He pushed his way through the willows, and, kneeling, drank of the water which was cold and fresh. But when he rose again he noticed that his clothing was spangled with a whitish sugary substance. He could not understand it, until he looked at the leaves of the willows and saw that they were covered with the same substance. He touched a leaf to his lips, and found it sweet and pleasant to the taste. He did not know what he had found, but, when he returned to the village, he reported his discovery to Professor Longworth.

The Professor requested a minute description of the willows, and also of the thin, sugarish covering that he had found upon the leaves. Charles was a close observer and he gave it to him absolutely correct in every detail.

“This is unique,” he said. “What you have found on those willows, Charles, is honey dew. So far only one other case of this kind is known. It is found on the leaves and young stems of a peculiar kind of willow that grows along Date Creek in Arizona. You can make a fine drink out of it, as I can very soon prove to you.”

The Professor and the two boys went on the following day to the creek, and broke off a quantity of the young stems and leaves of the willows which they stirred vigorously in water. The result was a pleasant and refreshing drink of which Charles and Herbert imbibed very freely, but took no harm. They returned to the creek more than once for the stems and leaves of the willows, and usually kept one of the big three-gallon jars filled with the sugar water.

The hunting was also good. They shot the hare (ku-le), the rabbit or cotton tail (he-lo), the deer (kwa-ka) and the antelope (mu-ul). It was Professor Longworth who told them the Apache names of these animals, and the village was soon as well stored with food and drink as it probably ever had been in the time of the cliff dwellers.

“The term has often been abused,” said Professor Longworth, “but we are really the heirs of the ages. The cliff dwellers dug out our houses for us a thousand years ago, maybe, and have left them for us along with many valuable utensils. The Apaches have also been in this vicinity, and, in their hasty departure, left articles which have contributed to our comfort. This is certainly a wonderful region, a most picturesque and extraordinary corner of our country, and I shall never regret my stay here.”

“Me neither,” said Jedediah Simpson. “The only thing we need is a little more music. Ef we could only have a brass band playin’ now an’ then out thar on the terrace I’d be puffickly happy.”

But Herbert did not miss the brass band. They were all sitting by the fire as the evenings were always chill, and he thought how wonderful his luck had been to fall in with such good and resourceful friends. He walked to the edge of the terrace and looked down in the black gulf. Then he picked up a stone as large as his fist and dropped it into the darkness. He heard one or two sounds far below, as it rebounded from the side of the cliff, and then nothing, although he stood for a moment or two with his right ear bent forward listening.

“What are you doing, Herbert?” asked Charles.

“I know,” said Professor Longworth with intuition. “He’s making comparisons that please him. He’s telling himself how glad he is to be up here with us instead of tumbling down the cliff a thousand feet alone and in the darkness.”

“That’s so,” said Herbert, as he returned to the fire.

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