Beside each cabin was a small garage for one machine. As almost everywhere in America, the garage was never closed. The garages of Captain O'Hay did not even have an outside door. Theoretically, your machine may be stolen, but actually it seldom happens. Who will take the trouble at night to roll out a locked machine, change the licence number and hide from the police? It was too complicated, did not pay. It was no occupation for a respectable thief. It simply did not pay. If there was money lying around . . .
Mr. Adams spoke more than once on that subject.
"In our small towns," he said, "people leave their doors open when they go away. Gentlemen, it may seem to you that you are now in a land where there are none but honest people. But, as a matter of fact, we are just as much thieves as anyone else—as the French or the Greeks or the Italians. The point is that we begin to steal at a higher level. We are much wealthier than Europe, so no one here will steal a coat, shoes, or bread. I am not speaking of hungry people. A hungry man might take these things. That happens, although rarely. I am referring to thieves. It doesn't pay for them to bother with second-hand coats. It's too complicated. The same is true of automobiles. But I wouldn't advise you to leave a hundred-dollar bill lying around. I'm sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but I am quite sure it would be stolen at once. Write that down in your little notebooks. Beginning with a hundred dollars—no, even with fifty dollars—Americans are as much addicted to stealing as the rest of humankind. And they make up for it by securing sums of which poor Europe has never even dreamed."
We again took our places in the machine and drove to the Indians. In the advancing twilight our mouse-coloured car almost merged with the barren, ashen landscape. After two miles we were at the entrance to a village of the Pueblo Indians, the only Indian tribe which still lives where it had lived before the appearance of the white man in America. All the other tribes have been driven off their territories and driven about repeatedly into sundry places, each worse than its predecessor. The Pueblos have preserved their ancient land only because nothing of interest to the white man could be found there. Here is neither oil nor gold nor coal nor good pasture.
The inscription on a wooden sign announced that it is necessary to secure the permission of the governor of the tribe before investigating the village. The governor's small hut was near by. The air resounding with our cheerful good-evenings and our hats rising in greeting, we went in to see the governor, and stopped in astonishment. Before the hearth, where two logs burned brightly, squatted an old Indian. The reflection of the flame glided over the smooth red skin of his face. Sitting thus, with his eyes shut, he looked like a hawk dropping off to sleep in a zoological garden, occasionally raising his eyelids in order to regard the people around his cage with detestation and boredom or in order to lunge with his beak at the little sign with the Latin inscription which testified that he was actually a hawk, the ruler of mountain-tops and of mountain ranges.
Before us sat one of those who at one time smoked the pipe of peace or "went out on the warpath," a bloodthirsty and honourable Indian. As a matter of fact, neither Captain Mayne Reid nor Gustav Emarre had deceived us. In our childhood we had imagined Indians to be just like that. He did not respond to our greeting, his face remaining to the fire. When we said that we wanted to look over the village, he scarcely nodded his head in indifference, without uttering a word. A young Indian approached us and said that the governor was very old and weak and that he was dying.
When we came out of the house of the chief, boys had already surrounded our automobile. These were Indian children, dark-eyed, with straight black hair, small aquiline noses, and skin the colour of a copper coin. They regarded us from a safe distance, but there was no fear in their scrutiny. They behaved like young lions. One cub, by the way, ended up by coming closer to us and demanding proudly that we give him five cents. When we refused, he did not deign to beg, but turned away contemptuously.
Around us stood remarkable houses. Nearly a thousand people live in the village, and all of them have managed to lodge in two or three houses. These are huge clay buildings of several stories, made up of individual rooms adjoining each other. The houses rise in terraces, and each floor has a flat roof. The stories communicate with each other by means of attached wooden ladders, ordinary, easily slapped together ladders of the kind used by janitors and house painters. Previously, when the Pueblos were independent, the entire tribe lived in one colossal clay house. When the stepladders were taken into the house, the house became a fortress, with only its bare walls on the outside. Thus they live even today, although conditions are radically different now.
There was an odour of smoke, and manure in the square. Lively rust-coloured shoats ran underfoot. Several Indians stood on the roofs of a house. They were wrapped from head to foot in their blankets and looked at us silently. Kindly Indian dogs ran up and down the step-ladders with the dexterity of boatswains. It was quickly turning dark.
A grey Indian with an imperious face approached us. He was the village policeman. He was wrapped up to his head in a baize blanket which was white with blue. In spite of his high calling, his duties were quite peaceable and not at all onerous. He told us that his business was to chase the children to school every morning. He invited us to come in and see him tomorrow morning at this school, and he would show us the village. It was too late now and people were already going to bed. This conversation was carried on while we were standing beside a stream that meandered between the houses. A wide log thrown across the stream served as a bridge. Nothing here was reminiscent of the year 1935, and our automobile, outlined dimly in the darkness, seemed a Wellsian time machine that had just arrived. We returned to Taos.
In five minutes we passed through the several centuries that separate the village from Taos. In the town were well-lighted stores, automobiles standing at kerbs, genuine American popcorn was being roasted in a little store, orange juice was being served in the drug-store, everything went on its way as if there never had been any Indians in the world.
We drove into the quadrangular square. Its principal ornament was a combination of antiquary and restaurant establishment entitled "Don Fernando." For a town which was far from the railroad and had only two thousand inhabitants, the little restaurant was very good. We were served by small, silent Indian women, who were supervised by a man nth the sad face of a Vilna Jew. He came and took our order. He was Don Fernando himself. Our guess proved only half right. Don Fernando was actually a Jew. But he was not a Vilna Jew. He was a Swiss Jew. He told us that himself. As to the circumstances under which he acquired the title of don, he kept quiet; but it may be supposed that if commercial interests demanded it, he would not have hesitated to call himself even a grandee.
He told us that out of the two thousand population of Taos nearly two hundred are people devoted to art. They paint pictures, compose verses, create symphonies and sculptures, chisel or carve one thing or another. They have been drawn here by the environment. The wildness of nature, the juncture point of three cultures—Indian, Mexican, and pioneer American-—as well as by the low cost of living.
Not far from us sat a little lady in a black suit who kept constantly looking at us. The more she stared at us, the more excited she became. When we were in the curio section of the restaurant and were examining there the Indian dolls made of suede and the brightly coloured gods with green and red noses, Don Fernando again approached us. He said that a Mrs. Feshina, a Russian lady who had been living in Taos for a long time, would like to speak with us. It was very interesting, indeed, to meet a Russian living in Indian territory. A minute later the lady who had been sitting in the restaurant came over, smiling nervously.