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Page 69
"The Turk" told of a tribe of plainsmen who had a great store of
the yellow substance. They were called the Quivira. He would
lead them to the ancient Rockefellers. Coronado put him at the
head of his band, and followed him eastward over the plains. For
months they plodded after him, the Indian trying to lose
Coronado, and that valiant warrior endeavoring to obey orders to
"shake" his band. About the middle of what is now the Indian
Territory, Coronado began to suspect that "The Turk" was selling
him a gold brick instead of a bonanza. Landmarks began to look
strangely alike. "The Turk," as he afterward confessed, was
leading them in a circle. Coronado sent the most of his band
back to the Mexican border, retaining about thirty followers.
With the help of heated bayonets and sundry proddings, he then
impressed upon "The Turk" that it was about time for him to find
the Quiviras, or prepare to go to the happy hunting-grounds of
his ancestors. After many hardships, "The Turk" located the
tribe they were seeking near the present site of Kansas City. All
that Coronado found in the way of metal was a bit of copper worn
by a war-chief. Not only was the bubble burst, but the bursting
was so feeble that Coronado was disgusted. He beheaded the guide
with his own hands as a small measure of vengeance. With his
followers he retraced his weary road to Tiguex. The lesson
lasted for half a century, when the myth, brighter, more alluring
than ever, arose and led others on to thirsty deaths in the bad
lands and deserts of the Southwest.
It was to the modern version that Lane had succumbed. From the
Sweetwater he roved to the south of Albuquerque, where the narrow
valley of the Rio Grande is rimmed on the east by an arid plateau
twenty miles wide; and this is, in turn, walled in by a long
cordillera. Through the passes, over the summit, Lane climbed,
descending through the pineries, park-like in their grandeur and
immensity, to the bare, brown plains which stretch eastward to
the rising sun. In the midst of the desert lies a chain of
salines, accursed lakes of Tigua folk-lore. Beyond them the
plain melts and rebuilds itself in the shimmering sun.
To the south and southeast spectral peaks tower to the clouds.
Northward the blue shadows of the Sante Fe fall upon the
pine-clad foot-hills.
Along the lower slopes of the Manzano are the ruins of the
ancient pueblos. Abo and Cuarac are mounds of fallen buildings
and desert-blown sand. Solemn in their grandeur, they dominate
the lonely landscape in a land of adobe shacks.
Thirty miles from Cuarac, to the southeast, lies Tabiri, the
"Grand Quivira." Huddled on the projecting slopes of the rounded
ridges, access to it is a weary, dreary march. The nearest water
is forty miles away. Toiling through sand ankle-deep, the
traveler plods across the edge of the plains, through troughlike
valleys, and up the wooded slope of the Mesa de los Jumanos. A
mile to the south a whale-back ridge springs from the valley,
nosing northward.
No sound breaks the stillness of the day. From the higher ridges
the eye falls upon the pallid ghost of the city. Blotches of
juniper relieve the monotony of the brown, lifeless grass. Grays
fade into leaden hues, to be absorbed in the ashy, indeterminate
colors of the sun-soaked plains. No fitter setting for a
superstition could be found. Once a town of fifteen hundred
inhabitants, the topography of ridge gave it an unusual shape.
Ruins of three four-story terrace houses face one another across
narrow alleys. Six circular cisterns yawn amid mounds of fallen
walls. At the center of the southerly blocks towers a gray
quadrangular wall, the last of a large building. At the western
terminus of the village, where the slope falls away to the
valley, is a gigantic ruin. Its walls are thirty feet high and
six feet thick. The roof has fallen, and the topmost layers of
the bluish-gray limestone are ragged and time-worn.
The building had a frontage of two hundred and two feet, and its
greatest depth was one hundred thirty-one feet. Flat-faced
prisms, firmly laid in adobe mortar, are placed at irregular
intervals in the walls.
The northern part of the ruin is one great cross-shaped room,
thirty-eight feet wide and one hundred and thirty-one feet long.
A gate fifteen feet wide and eleven feet high opens to the
eastward. A mighty timber forms an arch supporting fifteen feet
of solid masonry.
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