known as
Morados; and those seen by us were without windows and with only one
narrow door. Women meet in one lodge, men in another. The sign manual of
membership is a cross tattooed on forehead, chin or back. When a death
occurs, the body is taken to the Morado, and a wake held. After
Penitente rites have been performed, a priest is called in for final
services; and up to the present, the priests have been unable to break
the strength of these secret lodges. Members are bound by secret oath to
help each other and stand by each other; and it is commonly charged that
politicians join the Penitentes to get votes and doctors to get
patients. Easter and Lent mark the grand rally of the year. On one hill
above the Arroyo Hondo, you can see a succession of crosses where
Penitentes have whipped themselves senseless with cactus belts, or
dropped from exhaustion carrying a cross; and only last spring--1912--a
woman marched carrying a great cross to which the naked body of her baby
was bound. We passed one cross erected to commemorate a woman who died
from self-inflicted injuries suffered during the procession of 1907.

The procession emerges from the Morado chanting in low, doleful tune the
Miserere. First come the Flagellantes, or marchers, scourging their
naked backs with cactus belts and whips. Next march the cross carriers
with a rattling of iron chains fastened to the feet; then, the general
congregation. The march terminates at a great cross erected on a hilltop
to simulate Golgotha. Why do the people do it? "To appease divine
wrath," they say; but they might ask us--why have we dipsomaniacs and
kleptomaniacs and monstrosities in our civilized life? Because "Julia
O'Grady and the Captain's lady are the same as two pins under their
skins." Because human nature dammed up from wholesome outlet of
emotions, will find unwholesome vent; and these dolorous processions are
only a reflex of the dark emotions hidden in a narrow canyon shut off
from the rest of the world.

They were not dolorous emotions that found vent as we drove back down
Arroyo Hondo to the Bridge. Our driver got out a mouth organ. Then he
played and sang snatches of dance tunes of the old, old days in the True
West.

"Allamahoo, right hand to your partner
And grand hodoo."

"Watch your partner and watch her close;
And when you catch her, a double doze."

"The cock flies out and the hen flies in--
All hands round and go it agen."