Red Mesa

Red Mesa by Warren H. Miller (1953)

Red Mesa opens in the cliff country of Arizona, where two young companions, Sid Colvin and the veteran cowman Big John, are searching the canyon walls for a Smithsonian-noted cliff dwelling marked on a map by Doctor Fewkes. After a laborious effort building ladders of lodgepole pine and rigging them with lariats, they scale the face to reach the cavate dwelling at Honanki. Inside they find finely woven baskets, black pottery, and strings of dried corn, and on the smooth rock wall a name inscribed in red earth letters: FRA PEDRO DEL VACAS, 1680. Sid identifies the date with the great massacre of Spanish missionaries and reasons that this Dominican friar, wounded while fleeing the Apaches, was sheltered by the pueblo people and left his name for any future missionary to find. Searching further, they discover his stone-lined grave, and inside it a fired pottery plaque bearing Latin text. Among the words Sid can puzzle out are aurum et argentum, Pinacate, Sonoyta, Papagoii, and Mesa Rubra. He becomes convinced the plaque describes a Spanish mine located twenty-one miles northeast of Pinacate in a place called Red Mesa, and determines to bring the find to his friend and mining-engineer companion Leslie Henderson, called Scotty, who is prospecting in the Santa Catalinas. Scotty is introduced at his camp near the White River Apache country, despondent over a poor copper assay and burdened by a letter from his mother describing the impending sale of the family property, a consequence of reduced income since the war took his father. He is accompanied by Niltci, a Navaho youth who has been with him since a previous adventure. Their giant coonhound Ruler picks up a cougar trail, and the chase across mountain terrain ends with Scotty shooting the cat from the saddle while Niltci delivers a finishing knife stroke. During the hunt Big John and his Airedale Blaze appear, having ridden down from the Honanki region. Sid arrives shortly after bearing the pottery plaque, and the party reunites. The four ride to a mission school at San Mateo of the Apaches to have the Latin translated. The teacher there proves to be a lean, shifty Mexican named Vasquez, whose face betrays naked cupidity as he reads the inscription silently. He attempts to palm off its contents as mere missionary record concerning the Papagoes, folds the plaque under his arm in a gesture of possession, and refuses to return it. Scotty tackles him at the legs in a football charge while Sid wrenches the plaque free, and they escape through a rear window ahead of Vasquez's shouts and a rush of Apache men from the surrounding huts. A mounted pursuit is organized, but the boys outrun it. Sid realizes that though they have recovered the plaque Vasquez has memorized its contents, and he suspects the man will ride by train toward Nogales and try to raise a party in Mexico to reach Red Mesa first. Pushing back to Scotty's camp, the whole outfit packs up for a night ride south, leaving Niltci behind briefly to deal with an Apache spy who has been shadowing them. Niltci rejoins the column the next morning, leading the spy's horse, saying only that he has the man's pony and offering nothing further. The party descends from the mountains, crosses the railroad above Tucson, and enters the Papago Reservation. Vasquez is spotted at a small mission village and gallops away. The riders water their horses swiftly at the village well and race for the hills just ahead of Vasquez and a body of drunk Papago riders he has aroused. During the running fight across the Baboquivari Desert, Niltci slips from his saddle and disappears into the sage while Big John drapes Blaze under a blanket across Niltci's horse as a decoy. Niltci meanwhile creeps up on the Papago horse-holder, knocks him down, and rides off with all the pursuers' mounts, leaving Vasquez's party stranded. The group collects the stolen ponies, drops them near the Quijotoa mountains after dark, and camps on the lava-edged desert. The next morning they push through the Growler mountains to Represa Tank and the Camino del Diablo, then strike southwest toward Cerro Colorado with the object of sighting Red Mesa from its summit. Standing on the flat top of the hill, they scan the plain between themselves and Pinacate and can see no mesa anywhere. Scotty's hopes collapse. Big John points out, however, that the Papago informants of 1680 may have confused compass bearings, and that the Hornaday mountains to the northwest of Pinacate are granite country where mineral might actually occur. The party rides for those mountains through the barren sand and lava of the Pinacate region. Sid leaves the others hunting and climbs alone with Blaze after mountain sheep along the flanks of the Hornaday range. He is tracking a ram when arrows flash across the slope and the animal falls before he can fire. An unknown Indian has shot it. While Sid waits to see who will emerge, Blaze is struck by an arrow through the back above the shoulders, apparently paralyzed, and Sid is seized from behind by a garrotte and strangled into unconsciousness. He wakes bound, his captors two Apache men who march him over a ridge. There he sees for the first time the formation he will recognize as Red Mesa: two great vertical walls of red granite cast up by ancient lava explosion, closing an interior valley, with a black lava apron spanning the gap between them. A cave mouth in the apron leads to a sulphur-tinged tunnel, and through it Sid is guided blindfolded and hauled up into the hidden valley above. The valley, which the Apaches call the Arms of the Great Mystery, contains a pond, cultivated plots of corn, beans, peppers, and squash, and grass lodges housing a small band of Apache. Their leader, Chief Honanta, speaks excellent English. Sid learns that Honanta is the son of Chief Chuntz, who fell in a cavalry fight at Apache Cave, and that he and his mother survived solely because a young white officer struck up a soldier's rifle and had the wounded squaw carried to ambulances, giving her a twenty-dollar gold piece as he did so. Honanta wears that gold piece on a beaten silver chain. He has educated himself, become disgusted with white civilization, and brought the remnants of the Yellow Bear clan to this inaccessible place to live by the old ways. He considers Sid dangerous to his tribe but treats him with formal hospitality because the name Colvin moves him deeply, suggesting the boy may be the son of that officer. Hano, the young Apache who captured Sid against orders, is condemned to await the judgment of the tribal elders. Exploring the valley, Sid finds a deep gorge containing a wide ore vein of native copper and silver, the mine described on the plaque. He also observes that Hano's wife Nahla has just delivered their first child. Moved by the family's plight and calculating that Ruler will track him here regardless, Sid cuts Hano free with his hunting knife and sends him out through the tunnel, asking him to find the others, bring water for the pinto waiting on the mountain, and avoid a fight. Hano goes, taking the water jug. Sid conceals the door of the medicine lodge with a prayer stick. When Nahla discovers her husband gone and raises the alarm, Honanta confronts Sid and finally acknowledges that Sid's acting was for the tribe's sake, but says the old men must decide. He has Sid bound to the post in the medicine lodge and leaves him under guard, promising he will be released the following day at a set hour. Meanwhile Blaze, the Airedale, revives alone on the mountain. The arrow did not sever his spine but paralyzed him temporarily. He chews off the protruding ends of the shaft and drags himself down the mountain following the scent of Big John's white mustang. Reaching the crater where the others shot an antelope, he finds Scotty's forgotten canteen, worries it open with his teeth, and laps up the water. Threatened by circling coyotes he charges one and drives it off, then crawls on through the night. He finally reaches camp at Papago Tanks, licking Big John's boots and drinking from the rock tank until he can take no more. Big John pulls out the arrow stub; Niltci identifies it as Apache. Scotty and Niltci leave camp that night with Ruler to backtrack Blaze and find some sign of Sid. At the antelope crater they discover the chewed canteen and Blaze's story written in the sand. Looking east from the crater rim they spot a watch fire on Cerro Colorado, which Niltci identifies as Mexican. Scotty realizes Vasquez has reached the area by rail through Nogales, climbed Cerro Colorado looking for Red Mesa without finding it, and is now moving toward Represa Tank and the Pass. He and Niltci hurry back to report to Big John. During this same night, Hano descends the tunnel, passes the valley guard, tracks the pinto to its picket, waters it from the jug, and rides to locate the white party. He sees the Mexican fires moving across the plain. Understanding that Vasquez intends to scour the area until he finds Red Mesa, and that twelve guerrillas would overwhelm three white men, Hano revises his earlier plan of leading everyone on a fatal race along the Camino del Diablo and decides instead to combine with the whites against the Mexicans. He signals in the dark, is challenged by Niltci rising from the ground, and after tense identification is brought in to Big John's camp. Big John at once strikes camp, loads the wounded Blaze onto a bed of blankets across the pinto, and the whole party pushes through the night back across the lava to the Pass, arriving at dawn. Hano leads them to a notch guarded by two rocky spurs and dense mesquite cover. Scotty slips away from the group with Ruler, puts the dog on Sid's boot-print trail, and begins climbing the mountain independently. Big John and Niltci take positions on the low eastern spur to watch the Pass. The Mexican column enters the Pass in white clothing and silver-spurred boots, Vasquez in his striped serape at the head. A band of mountain sheep appears on the ridge above them. The Mexicans dismount and begin shooting sheep indiscriminately, pursuing them up the slope in a slaughter that, if it continues, will carry the hunters directly over the ridge and into sight of Red Mesa's valley. Hano, watching this with rising fury as his tribe's principal meat supply is massacred, snatches Niltci's rifle and fires into the hunters and at the horses in the Pass below. Big John, recognizing the tactical opportunity of shooting the horses, joins in with his heavy rifle. Vasquez is unhorsed. The remaining Mexicans scatter into the rocks and a firefight begins. Vasquez himself, scrambling high on a pinnacle, finally sights the red walls of Red Mesa and screams in triumph. Scotty, climbing with Ruler and Hano's tracking as guide, is led directly to the lava apron and the cave. He and his dog make their presence known, and the heavy cannonlike reports of his.405 rifle striking the upper crags send the guerrillas scrambling for new cover. Inside the valley, Honanta performs the Sun Dance at dawn, the ceremony he vowed forty years before in gratitude for the intervention that saved his mother's life. Sid stands opposite as the physical representative of that deliverer. When the shadow reaches the appointed crack in the west wall, Honanta tells Sid he must go forth. The assembled warriors line the cave entrance with arrows drawn. Honanta steps forward and wraps his own arms around the boy, placing his body between Sid and the Apache bows, declaring that he will go out with him and let them shoot if they must. The crisis is broken when Scotty's rifle fire erupts on the mountain side and the sound of Mauser volleys tells everyone that the Mexicans have arrived and the village faces an outside threat. Sid calls for a truce and stays to fight alongside the Apache. The combined force of Scotty above, Niltci below, and the Apache warriors emerging onto the lava slope drives the guerrillas off the mountain in a rout. During the rout, Vasquez finds his way around to the rocky lair where Big John lies wounded, intending to finish him, when an Apache war bow fires and Vasquez falls. Honanta himself, exhausted from the dance, stands over the fallen man. Big John is found face down, alive but gravely wounded from a Mauser ball that drove through his shoulder, nicked a lung, and emerged from his chest. Honanta offers to bring him into the valley where the tribe's medicine men can treat him, and extends friendship to all of Sid's companions. Sid asks one further thing of Honanta: that he come and meet Sid's father, Colonel Colvin. Honanta agrees. The company then turns anxious attention to Hano, whose war cry has not been heard since he rode out as a decoy to draw the Mexicans away from the mountains across the desert sands.

By Warren H. Miller · First published 1953 · Genre: Adventure, Historical Fiction, Western · 12 chapters · 62,784 words

First lines

Above a timbered valley in the southwest rises a towering wall of gorgeous cliffs such as only Arizona can produce. Their rock pinnacles are banded with color -- red strata, ochre, blue, green, and white -- all in wavy horizontal lines like layer cake. These long walls were scoured clean and smooth long ago by prehistoric water action. They were broken with deep fissures -- fissures that now cleave the cliff from top to bottom -- "chimneys" that mean seven hundred feet of sheer ascent to him who would dare scale these heights.

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southwestern fiction · desert landscape · mesa setting · american west · geological imagery · landscape-focused · regional fiction · nature writing · frontier themes · indigenous themes · red rock formations · environmental

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