by the trampling of goats on a threshing
floor, or the run of burros round and round a kraal chased by a boy,
while a man scrapes away the grain and forks aside the chaff. There are
white man's courts and white man's laws, down at the white man's town of
Taos; but the Indian has little faith in, and less respect for, these
white man courts and laws, and out at Taos has his own court, his own
laws, his own absolute and undisputed governor, his own police, his own
prison and his own penalties. The wealth of Midas would not tempt a Taos
Indian to exchange his life in the tiered adobe villages for all that
civilization could offer him. Occasionally a Colonel Cody, or Showman
Jones, lures him off for a year or two to the great cities of the East;
but the call of the wilds lures him back to his own beehive houses. He
has plenty to eat and plenty to wear, the love of his family, the open
fields and the friendship of his gods--what more can life offer?

Don't leave the Southwest without seeing Taos. It might be part of
Turkey, or Persia, or India. It is the most un-American thing in
America; and yet, it is the most typical of those ancient days in
America, when there was no white man. Just here, before the ethnologist
arises to correct me, let it be put on record that the Taos people do
not consider themselves Indians. They claim descent rather from the
Aztecs, or Toltecs of the South. While the Navajo and Apache and Ute
legends are of a great migration from Athabasca of the North, the pueblo
legend is of a coming from the Great Underworld of the South.

* * * * *

The easiest way to reach Taos is by the ancient city of Santa Fe. You go
by rail to Servilleta, or Barrancas, then stage it out to the Indian
pueblos. Better wire for your stage accommodation from the railroad. We
did not wire, and when we left the railroad, we found seven people and a
stage with space for only four. The railroad leads almost straight north
from Santa Fe over high, clear mesas of yellow ocher covered with scrub
juniper. There is little sign of water after you leave the Rio Grande,
for water does not flow uphill; and you are at an altitude of 8,000 feet
when you cross the Divide. You pass through fruit orchards along the
river, low headed and heavy with apples. Then come the Indian villages,
San Ildefonso, and Espanola, and Santa Clara, where the strings of red
chile bake in the sunlight against the glare adobe. Women g