Mary in California

Front matter

Book.

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Introduction

To try to tell all the wonderful things of California in one small book is impossible. There is only space for a hop, skip, and jump sort of visit. The author hopes that she will make other young people wish to follow Mary to the Golden State and learn for themselves its many attractions, even if they cannot have quite all the adventures that came to this American family Robinson. But the welcome of the Californians will be there in good measure.

The author wishes to thank all the good friends who helped to make this book possible, and especially those at Mills College.

Thanks are also due to the Pasadena Star News for permission to use a photograph, and to the National Geographical Society for several pictures.

Credit is due to the following books and their publishers :

“The House of the Dawn,” by M. E. Ryan, published by McClurg & Co.

“The Flute of the Gods,” by M. E. Ryan, published by Fred. Stokes & Co.

“First Through the Grand Canon,” by Major John W. Powell, published by Macmillan Co.

“The Indian Book,” by Natalie Curtis, published by Harper & Bros.

vii

Introduction viii

Special permission was obtained from Miss Marian Davis, of Mills College, for the use of her play, “The Matilija Poppy,” which was presented at Mills College, and is protected by copyright.

Movies and an Aeroplane in Los Angeles .

XVIII. N

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mary and Trix in Muir Woods .... Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The mules’ heads were turned toward the chasm . . 32

The pageant at Mills College 33

The girls use it for swimming and picnics and fetes . 106

Great cliffs and the long sandy beach below . . . 107

San Francisco’s Golden Gate 144

Winter sports in the Yosemite 105

Great barges of symbolic figures 236

This simply can’t be the first of January . . . .237

*

*

Chapter I

IXT'E were awakened by being thrown violently * * from one side of the berth to the other, and by the sound of the grinding of the brakes against the wheels and the abrupt stopping of the train. In an instant the night’s quiet was broken by eager and alarmed questions from the rest of the suddenly aroused sleepers as to what had happened. Bells were rung for the porter from many quarters. But before he had time to appear, the Doctor peered between the curtains, flash light in hand, and asked if Trix and I were all right.

Trix, our seven-year-old, who slept with me, had only half awakened, as she was thrown against me rather than the side of the car. I saw that the Doctor had drawn on his trousers and coat.

“I think something must have happened,” he said. “If you are not hurt I will go forward. Dave and Mary are putting on some clothes, and it would be well for you to do so too.”

The bells were still ringing in the car, and we could see in the dim light disheveled heads and half clad legs and arms protruding from berths as the male passengers prepared to investigate; At that moment the porter came along. He was greeted with questions:

“What has happened?”

“Has there been an accident?”

“Now don’t you folks be skeert. Just stay in the car along with me,” was the reply. Which would have been reassuring if the man’s voice had not been shaking with fear and his eyes fairly popping out of his head.

“No, I ain’t seen the conductor, but I know it’s all right.”

“No, I cyan’t go out to see. It’s mah duty to stick to mah car. What would dey say to me if I left mah car in the middle of the night, boss?”

There was considerable grumbling, but many of the passengers quieted down, though still talking together in low tones. Two or three imperfectly dressed men issued from behind the curtained berths and stood rather foolishly in the aisle. The porter started to go to the back of the car. At that moment three distinct shots were heard coming from somewhere toward the front of the train. Instantly an uproar broke out in the car, and amid the confusion the porter permanently disappeared.

At the same moment Mary and Dave, the rest of our family, appeared, dressed and full of excitement.

“Mother, what has happened; where is Dad; where are we?”

Where were we indeed? The only thing I knew for certain was that we were on the train running west from Santa Fe, and that our husband and father, who was expected to lecture at Mills College in a week, had left us in the night, clad in shoes and trousers superimposed on pajamas, heading toward some unknown adventure in the dark. We were a peaceful New England doctor’s family. I felt as confused as a Fifth Reader would feel if Nick Carter, detective, suddenly appeared between its covers.

“Where’s Dad?” repeated fourteen-year-old Mary, the oldest of the children, her gray eyes black with excitement and her bobbed hair flying in all directions. “Has he gone forward?”

“I’m going too,” added Dave. He looked quite fierce in the dim light, his red unbrushed hair standing straight up on his head, without a necktie, his collar unbuttoned, and his shirt tails stuffed unceremoniously into his trousers.

Trix was wide awake by this time. She was too excited to dress, and climbed about the berth in her short white nightie and bare feet.

Two more shots were heard.

“Mother, we must go and see,” cried Mary.

“Indeed you must not,” I answered. “It might be a holdup. The trains are sometimes cut in two, and my end of it might be left here while your part went on.”

I slid down on to the floor, sufficiently dressed as I thought, to be greeted with laughter by the two children.

“Now, Mother, you can’t be a rock of Gibraltar with your hair hanging down your back and the canons between your skirt and waist only half hidden by your coat. I may go — say yes — of course I can,” and Mary started down the aisle.

I grasped Dave by the arm. “Your father would be very angry if you went, Dave,” I said.

“But, Mother, he told us always to stick together,” objected Dave. “Let me run after her. We won’t go far, I promise you. Please, Mother” — and without waiting for an answer he broke from my loosening grasp and rushed after Mary. Several men had gone to the front of the car, and I felt sure they would prevent the children from leaving it. I turned my attention to dressing Trix, who since the departure of Mary and Dave had decided that she wanted to have her clothes on.

All sorts of vague rumors began to float about. We heard that the train had gone off the track, that the express car had been entered by bandits, that we would all be robbed, perhaps murdered. Trix was enjoying it all thoroughly.

“Look at that lady, Mother,” she giggled. “See, that one — she’s holding her hair in her hands — she hasn’t any on her head. And oh, Mother, what fat looking legs that one has.”

I tried my best to subdue her interest in a stout gentleman with a hat on and little else. He was holding a set of false teeth in his hand. A young woman with gaily painted cheeks kept poking her head from between the curtains of her berth and calling for the porter, while a gentle elderly lady repeated over and over again, “Henry cannot stand excitement unless he has his coffee. Can’t I get some coffee somewhere?”

We were about to quiet down again when a shot rang out close by and a bullet whizzed through my window, breaking the glass. Instantly shrieks were heard on all sides. Trix and I were fortunately jn the corridor of the car, and so were not hurt. But I confess to feeling strange and not a little anxious. Then came the sound of loud voices and a man in uniform, the Pullman conductor, entered the car followed by a little troop of passengers.

“Don’t be alarmed, ladies,” he said. “There has been a slight accident — the engine ran off the track and a gang of robbers tried to hold up the train, but we got one of them and the rest are gone. So you can all turn in again.”

“Is any one hurt?” asked a woman’s voice.

“Yes, the bandit we captured. No one else, I assure you. He is being attended to by a doctor. Is every one all right here?”

“Our berth is full of broken glass,” I said. “A bullet went through the window.”

The conductor was all interest in a moment. “You are sure that you are not hurt,” he wanted to know. “Nothing broken except the window — nothing injured?”

I assured him that all was well.

“The porter must make your berth up again. Where is the porter, anyway?”

“He’s probably in the linen closet praying for Lady Luck to help him,” suggested Dave, who had joined us with Mary.

The conductor, who had evidently read the stories of Lady Luck and the Mascot Goat, laughed heartily, and then pressed the bell button several times. Presently the porter appeared. He was looking a little untidy and soiled, but assured the conductor that he had stuck by his car.

“I wouldn’t leave mah car and mah passengers, boss,” he repeated.

The conductor told him to make up the berth again and be quick about it.

“Be sure and let me know if anything was injured,” was his parting word to me.

Every one had retired by this time behind the curtains, though there was a good deal of more or less quiet talking going on. I sent Mary and Dave, protesting, back to their berths. The porter kept up a steady stream of words:

“I told you all I wouldn’t leave mah car. I always stick by mah passengers.”

Trix and I were just settling down to rest when the Doctor appeared. Of course I wanted to know all the details at once. We left the indignant Trix in her berth and went out on to the platform. The door of the vestibule was open, and we could look out on a clear, cold, starry night amid a scene of rocky desolation. Great crags seemed to surround us on all sides, wonderful and wild — the mountains of our well loved New Mexico.

“It really has been an exciting night,” said the Doctor. “The bandits had tampered with the rails, and if we had not been going slow around the curve we might all have gone to glory. As it was the engine bumped along on the ties and stayed right side up, until brought to a stop. The clerk and messenger on the express car opened the door to see what was going on, and were confronted by two sixshooters. But the messenger is a husky fellow, over six feet and strong as an ox. He took a chance and jumped right on top of the men with the guns. There was some excitement for a few minutes, but of course the pistol shots brought the train crew running. Two of the bandits escaped, but the fellow the messenger had landed on never budged. He was squeezed nearly flat and had a bullet in his arm beside from his friend’s revolver. And now comes the best part of the whole story — who do you think the bandit was? Just our old friend El Lobo, from New Mexico.”

“It isn’t possible !”

“Not possible, but it is, just the same. And what do you think he had strung on a chain about his neck? Nothing less than Mary’s lost Indian ring.”

“Now come,” I said, “you are telling me the plot of a movie.”

“I am not, it is the sure-enough truth. And you ought to have seen the ugly look he gave me when I claimed the ring.”

“Have you got it?”

“No, they would not let me have it till I could prove my claim. We’ll let Mary tell them in the morning.”

The train must have remained stationary for a long time — long enough for a wrecking crew and a new engine to arrive and start us going again. But we were all peacefully sleeping by that time. When the car finally awoke the next morning we were two hours late, and traveling along the high plateaus of Arizona. Distant mountains rimmed the horizon and great white clouds rose like snow peaks in the clear blue sky.

Trix and I were later than the others. For some time before I fully awoke I could hear as in a dream a steady stream of words, which gradually formed itself into a narrative in Mary’s voice.

“It was when we were in New Mexico, last summer. We were digging in an Indian mound and I found an Indian ring with queer figures on it — sort of Chinese, you know. The Indians didn’t want me to have it. They stole it twice, I think, and stole me, too. Finally we sent it home by registered mail, but we never heard of it again. We found the box that we had sent it in, though, broken open in a cave where some loot from a train robbery had been taken. And it was the same man who held up the train last night I El Lobo, they called him in Santa Fe. He must have taken my ring from the mail in the other train and have kept it all this time. Dad says he was wearing it around his neck last night, the ring — my ring, strung on a long silk cord. Isn’t it wonderful to think I’ll get it back? The Indians have all sorts of legends connected with it. And a man who knows all about such things says it has Chinese characters on it. It is supposed to be unlucky to wear it — for a white person, you know.”

I stuck my head out from between the curtains and saw that Mary was sitting with a gentleman and lady in one of the double seats which had been put in daytime form by the porter. It was after nine o’clock.

“Well, Mother, are you awake at last?” called Mary, and ran over to kiss me good morning. “Father and Dave and I had breakfast a long time ago. And, oh, Mother, did Dad tell you about finding my ring again, and El Lobo ?”

Then whispering in my ear, she went on : “I have been talking to the nicest people ! They live in Los Angeles, and hope we’ll come to visit them. They haven’t any children, but love them. He was in France in the war doing Y. M. C. A. work. He’s just coming home from Germany, and she went over to meet him. Their name is Norton.”

“Wait till I am dressed to introduce me,” I broke in laughingly. Trix was clamoring for help behind me, and insisted on my buttoning her up at once.

“You had better hurry or there won’t be any breakfast, Mother,” Mary said as she went back to her friends.

Fortunately we found plenty of food in the dining car, also David and the Doctor, who were still eating griddle cakes and discussing the adventure of the night before. El Lobo, the captured train robber, had been quite badly hurt, and the Doctor had been called upon earlier in the morning to attend him.

“There is no doubt but that it is our old friend of Santa Fe. He was part Chinese, you remember, which added to his Mexican-Indian ancestry gives him a very oriental look. There is equally no doubt that he had around his neck a peculiar Chinese cord which carried Mary’s Indian ring. I think we can get it back. But seriously, my dear, I wonder if it would not be better to leave it with El Lobo. It sounds absurd and like a dime novel, I know. But we had trouble enough with the thing in New Mexico last summer. Perhaps El Lobo has as much right to it as we have.”

“Why, Dad,” exclaimed Dave, “Mary found it in the Indian mound. Of course it’s hers ! And you wouldn’t let an old train robber get it away from us. You ought to be ashamed of being such a scare-cat.”

“Mary will want it back,” observed Trixy, from the bottom of a bowl of cereal.

Trix was right. There was no doubt that Mary wanted it back. So the Doctor put in a claim describing the ring, and how it had been lost from the registered mail six months ago, in New Mexico. Mary went with her father to identify the ring, and returned feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Mother, I can’t imagine why I thought him handsome, when we saw him in Santa Fe. He is dreadful looking. They took the ring off him, but if he hadn’t been so badly hurt I don’t believe they could have. He didn’t want to give it up a bit, you could see that.”

“I think we had better let him have it,” I observed, looking at my fourteen-year-old daughter with a feeling of discomfort and almost of foreboding. The ring had cost her enough danger before. Why should she be mixed up in some old oriental superstition?

But the matter was taken out of our hands, in a

A Holdup — We Meet El Lobo Again n

way. For while we were flying over the plains and approaching Williams, the bandit suffered a severe hemorrhage and was removed from the train. So the ring was given us by the conductor, together with the cord of red and black silk which had held it.

We were late in arriving in the little town of Williams, and the train for the Grand Canon, whither we were bound, was made up and ready to go. Mr. and Mrs. Norton, to whom Mary had introduced us, were also planning to leave the through train and go to the canon. We hurried off with our bags, leaving our trunks to go on without us. We had only time to snatch some sandwiches and fruit and get on the branch train, when we were off, full of anticipation and excitement.

Chapter II First Sight Of The Grand Canon — A New Indian Friend

TXT’E sat on the steps of the back platform of the * * rear car and got our first glimpse of the real cattle country. The great rolling plain stretched away for miles, dotted here and there with thickets, and with low mountains in the distance.

Here we saw the first prairie dogs of the trip. They ran in and out of the brush or sat on their sandy mound houses, with forepaws folded over their fat stomachs. Herds of red cattle, with pleasant white faces, grazed about and watched the train with quiet curiosity as we passed.

Once when the train stopped, Dave called our attention to a heap of skeletons and bones near the track.

“What are they, Daddy?” he asked.

“I am afraid it is all that is left of a bunch of cattle that probably died of starvation and cold last winter.”

“But, Daddy, how terrible. Couldn’t anything be done for them?”

“I think so, and Uncle Sam thinks so,” was the answer. “On the government ranges there are shelters and the herds are fed and watched during the 12 winter storms. But a great many ranch owners do not seem to care, or fail to realize how much the poor creatures must suffer before they are finally reduced to the heap of bones you see here. These men claim that it would cost too much to care for the stock. They prefer to lose a number each year. But even if it were not so cruel, it would be poor policy. For the poor survivors are in bad shape to send to market and the cows are often too weak to have healthy calves, so that the herds do not increase normally.”

“I can’t bear to think of the poor things wandering around in the snow,” said Mary. “Do you remember that dreadful picture of the sheep all huddled together, lost in a blizzard? I always have hated to look at it. I suppose cattle would be just the same. Can’t the ranchers be forced to do something?”

“I think conditions are improving. Humane societies have taken up the cause, and the government ranges are an object lesson. Of course some cattle will stray away and be lost. That cannot be helped. It must have been the same in their wild state before men assumed responsibility for their care. The shipping of cattle, too, is being looked after more than ever before. In old days the cattle cars that took the creatures east to be slaughtered were so crowded that many of the animals were trampled and died on the way. They were often left for days without food or water. But now laws have been passed for the protection of animals. Of course thoughtless and inhuman shippers break the law. If they are caught they can be punished, but it takes constant watching.”

“Sometimes I feel like never eating any meat again,” said Mary slowly.

“I think we all do when we stop to think,” I remarked.

“Would you like to be a Buddhist, Mary?” asked her father. “They believe that they must not take the life of any living thing.”

“Not even flies and mosquitoes and ants and spiders?” Dave demanded.

“No orthodox Buddhist will kill anything,” replied the Doctor.

“Not even if they bit him?” said Trix.

“My physiology book says insects are more dangerous and kill more people than battles,” remarked Dave.

“I wouldn’t like to be a Buddhist to that extent, Dad,” laughed Mary.

“Let’s go in,” suggested the Doctor. “It’s a case of ashes to ashes, dust to dust; If the smoke doesn’t get me, the cinders must.”

“I feel as black as the ace of spades,” I responded.

We went into the car and found Mr. and Mrs. Norton. They, like ourselves, were to visit the Grand Canon for the first time.

“I understand that there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world,” said Mr. Norton. “Most mountains you look up to, but here you look down on the tops of them. You plan to go down into the canon, do you not?”

“Surely,” we replied in chorus.

“Did you bring any riding togs?” asked Mrs. Norton. “I understand no one is allowed to go down into the canon in skirts. The mules have a special dislike for skirts ever since a very fat woman rode down in them. Her donkey, looking around inquiringly on feeling the heavy weight, mistook her billowy skirt for something strange and dangerous. He shied, with terrible consequences.”

“What happened?” demanded Dave breathlessly.

“Well, I don’t know that anything happened, but the story is that the lady went over the bank. A strong wind happened to be blowing and it filled her skirt like a balloon. So when the scared mule reached the end of the trail at breakneck speed, he found the lady sitting at the bottom, breathless and red in the face, but quite unhurt by her marvelous descent. The mule seemed to think that dangerous medicine, as our Indian friends would say, was somehow mixed up in that skirt and lady. He turned about and went back over the trail alone. Since then, the rule is, no skirts in the canon.”

“But what happened to the fat lady?” asked Trix, wide-eyed with amazement, “and is it true?”

“Well, I haven’t heard that she is to be seen at the bottom, nor does her ghost haunt the river, so I suppose she must somehow have gotten back to the top. But I never heard that part of the story.”

“What is the fashion in clothes?” asked the Doctor, laughing.

“I have heard that it is blue denim divided skirts and farmers’ hats, becoming to the young and slim,” answered Mr. Norton.

There were some audible sighs from those of us who were not slim.

“I wish I had brought my riding trousers,” said Mary sadly. “I hate the thought of denim things/’

Not long after this the train rolled into the canon station. We drove up a short, steep slope in a big bus to the attractive low wooden hotel.

“Oh, Mother,” said Trix, “there’s a house like the pueblo at Taos; look quick.”

“Why quick?” asked Dave. “It won’t run away.”

I looked in the direction toward which Trix pointed. Sure enough, an Indian house, of the pueblo type, stood within sight of the hotel. It was built of stone, and had several stories.

“I want to go there,” said Trix.

“Later, manana,” said the Doctor.

We wandered through the big hotel living rooms, built attractively of dark wood. While the Doctor was negotiating for accommodations we went into a side parlor, where Mary discovered some paintings, of great cliffs and vast abysses, of strange colors and forms, a mixture of Egyptian temple and rocky mountains.

“Mother, they are wonderful, but what are they, and could anything be like that? Could there be mountains with all those colors?”

“It doesn’t seem possible, but we’ll wait and see,” I answered.

Presently the Doctor hailed us. “Let’s have our first view of the canon now,” he called. “Then we’ll have a quick wash and a quick supper and go to Sentinel Place for the sunset. I am told it is well worth doing.”

“I want to see the Indian house,” remarked Trix.

“You shall see it afterward,” said her father.

It was only a short walk from the hotel and tourists, and commonplace things. Then we stood looking breathlessly over the stone parapet into the great canon.

“There is nothing else like it on earth” — the words seemed to ring in my head.

“I am not sure whether it’s heaven or the other place,” I heard the Doctor say, half under his breath.

“Mother, it is like the pictures in the hotel,” exclaimed Mary. “Those great things down there are like Egyptian figures and pyramids — it is partly the colors. I never saw anything like it.”

“No, I don’t suppose any of us have,” I answered.

“How far across is it? What made it?” asked Dave.

“The Colorado River is responsible, under God,” replied the Doctor gravely.

“Mother, I’m scared,” whispered Trix, and hid her head against me. “Can’t I go to the Indian house?” she asked in a very small voice.

“I’ll go with her,” said Dave.

“I’m almost afraid to trust you two alone here,” I said. “It’s absurd, I know, but Trix is so small and the canon so huge.”

“My, ain’t nature grand,” observed Dave.

“Oh, run along and keep away from the edge,” said the Doctor. “I’ll come for you shortly. We ought to get back to supper.”

I watched them run off together and then turned back to the canon lying below us, so immovable, brilliant.

“How deep is it, Daddy?” asked Mary.

“Seven miles by trail and eight miles across. We don’t see the river at the bottom from here, they tell me. Just look across at the flat plain on the other side. Think of the feelings the first Indian must have had who galloped across the plain and came suddenly to the edge.”

“I bet he prayed to the Great Spirit ! I hope it wasn’t at night,” responded Mary cheerfully.

“Well, I suppose we’d better go back to the hotel,” said the Doctor. “We can go by way of the Hopi Indian house and pick up the children. I declare,” he added, “I don’t see Trix riding down the trail to-morrow. What shall we do with her?”

We went into the Indian house, which was much more beautiful inside than the pueblo in New Mexico had been. Skins hung on the walls, and finely woven rugs and pottery were placed about to be looked at and, if possible, sold. Trix and Dave were talking with a fine-looking Indian in native costume.

Trix ran to us immediately. “Come and talk to him. He’s awfully nice,” she whispered quite audibly.

“Does he talk English?” we asked.

“Yes, indeed. Do come, Mother. He has a boy just my age. Can I go and see him? He wants me to.”

We joined Dave and his new friend.

“I hope the children have not bothered you,” I began.

“No, indeed,” was the quiet answer. “They are good children. The little girl is coming to see my boy, if you will allow it.”

“Are you a Carlisle graduate?” asked the Doctor.

“No, but I am a college graduate. A real Indian, too,” he added in response to a disappointed grunt from Dave.

“Would you like to know my Indian name?”

“Please tell us,” cried Trix.

“It is Oh-we-tahuh — they call me that because I have made little paintings. It means picture writing. Before I went to college they called me Mo-wa-the, which means flash of light, because I was a quick runner.”

“It is a pretty name — Mo-wa-the. We’ll have to call Dave that,” I said.

“Now, Mother,” said Dave. While the Indian asked :

“Is he a good runner?”

“Aw, nothing much,” answered Dave quickly.

“How do you happen to be here in Indian dress?” asked Mary.

“I came back to live with my people; and because I could not live away from the canon. But I do not always wear the dress. My boy wears an Indian suit made by Montgomery Sears,” he added, looking at me with twinkling eyes.