Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 7 | Page 3

Were they swept into eternity by a freshet?
Did they lose their provisions and starve in the desert? Did the Indians
revenge themselves for brutality and selfishness by slaying them at
night or from an ambush? Were they killed by banditti? Did they sink
in the quicksands that led the river into subterranean canals? None will
ever know, perhaps; but many years afterward a savage told a priest in
Santa Fe that the regiment had been surrounded by Indians, as Custer's
command was in Montana, and slain, to a man. Seeing that escape was
hopeless, the colonel--so said the narrator--had buried the gold that he
was transporting. Thousands of doubloons are believed to be hidden in
the canon, and thousands of dollars have been spent in searching for
them.

After weeks had lapsed into months and months into years, and no
word came of the missing regiment, the priests named the river El Rio
de las Animas Perdidas--the River of Lost Souls. The echoing of the
flood as it tumbled through the canon was said to be the lamentation of
the troopers. French trappers softened the suggestion of the Spanish
title when they renamed it Purgatoire, and--"bullwhackers" teaming
across the plains twisted the French title into the unmeaning
"Picketwire." But Americo-Spaniards keep alive the tradition, and the
prayers of many have ascended and do ascend for the succor of those
who vanished so strangely in the valley of Las Animas.

RIDERS OF THE DESERT
Among the sandstone columns of the Colorado foot-hills stood the
lodge of Ta-in-ga-ro (First Falling Thunder). Though swift in the chase
and brave in battle, he seldom went abroad with neighboring tribes, for
he was happy in the society of his wife, Zecana (The Bird). To sell
beaver and wild sheep-skins he often went with her to a post on the
New Mexico frontier, and it was while at this fort that a Spanish trader
saw the pretty Zecana, and, determining to win her, sent the Indian on a
mission into the heart of the mountains, with a promise that she should
rest securely at the settlement until his return.
On his way Ta-in-ga-ro stopped at the spring in Manitou, and after
drinking he cast beads and wampum into the well in oblation to its
deity. The offering was flung out by the bubbling water, and as he
stared, distressed at this unwelcome omen, a picture formed on the
surface--the anguished features of Zecana. He ran to his horse, galloped
away, and paused neither for rest nor food till he had reached the post.
The Spaniard was gone. Turning, then, to the foot-hills, he urged his
jaded horse toward his cabin, and arrived, one bright morning, flushed
with joy to see his wife before his door and to hear her singing. When
he spoke she looked up carelessly and resumed her song. She did not
know him. Reason was gone.
It was his cry of rage and grief, when, from her babbling, Ta-in-ga-ro
learned of the Spaniard's treachery, that brought the wandering mind
back for an instant. Looking at her husband with a strange surprise and
pain, she plucked the knife from his belt. Before he could realize her
purpose she had thrust it into her heart and had fallen dead at his feet.

For hours he stood there in stupefaction, but the stolid Indian nature
soon resumed its sway. Setting his lodge in order and feeding his horse,
he wrapped Zecana's body in a buffalo-skin, then slept through the
night in sheer exhaustion. Two nights afterward the Indian stood in the
shadow of a room in the trading fort and watched the Spaniard as he lay
asleep. Nobody knew how he passed the guard.
In the small hours the traitor was roused by the strain of a belt across
his mouth, and leaping up to fling it off, he felt the tug of a lariat at his
throat. His struggles were useless. In a few moments he was bound
hand and foot. Lifting some strips of bark from the low roof, Ta-
in-ga-ro pushed the Spaniard through the aperture and lowered him to
the ground, outside the enclosure of which the house formed part. Then,
at the embers of a fire he kindled an arrow wrapped in the down of
cottonwood and shot it into a haystack in the court. In the smoke and
confusion thus made, his own escape was unseen, save by a guardsman
drowsily pacing his beat outside the square of buildings. The sentinel
would have given the alarm, had not the Indian pounced on him like a
panther and laid him dead with a knife-stroke.
Catching up the Spaniard, the Indian tied him to the back of a horse and
set off beside him. Thus they journeyed until they came to his