vacaenbaja
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A Painting for the Governor By John Hilton
A whale and a coyote kept me awake last night. I was
trying to sleep on a normally very comfortable Mexican
canvas cot. It is about the size of a three-quarter bed. The
frame, which folds up in the daytime so it can be stacked
out of the way, is made of two two-by-three lumber. The rest
is a good, strong piece of canvas stretched across the
frame. I was on the cot on the porch of the old mining
house which sits at the very edge of Bahia de Los Angeles.
The Bay of Angels is a very small resort on the Gulf of
California, three days by car or two hours in a light plane
south of Ensenada.
The whale was in my front yard, for the porch comes
right to the high tide line and he was only about a hun-
dred and fifty yards off shore. He snorted and blew and
spouted in a most unreasonable and inconsiderate man-
ner, but then I suppose he had no idea that things other
than whales could be bothered with anything. The coy-
ote was on dry land and up the beach about a hundred
and fifty yards digging in my trash pile and bragging
about his loot.
The result was that I could not get to sleep, so I lay
there trying to figure how to start a book about such a
fantastic land as this. The thinking didn't do me any
more good than the howling of the coyote or the spouting
and blowing of the whale. There was really no way to
start writting a book except to start it, I decided, so I shall
tell first how I painted a picture for the New Governor of
the new State of Baja California.
My friend Carl Dentzel has recently become director
of the famous Southwest Museum near the Arroyo Seco
in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles. Another friend,
Braulio Maldonado, had recently become Governor of
Baja California and still another, Ed Ainsworth of the Los
Angeles Times, came up with a wonderful ideas, "Why
not paint a whole show of paintings on the new State of
Baja California," he suggested, "and get Carl to put on
the show in the Southwest Museum?"
Carl when contacted, was enthusiastic from the start.
He said they were doing over the auditorium of the mu-
seum and the cases would be empty, so why not stage the
show in that large room displaying both paintings and
objects of interest from Baja California in them. He had
still another idea. Possibly we could get the busy new
governor across the boarder for the opening of the show
and invite the governor of our state and other dignitaries
to attend to honor him.
This time, when Ed and I went down to visit the Gov-
ernor, we had along another mutual friend, Ralph Chick,
who had come up with still another idea. he was con-
nected with the Southern California Committee for the
Olympic games, which had discussed presenting Braulio
some sort of plaque or cup for his interest in promoting
clean sports among the young peple of his state. Ralph
made the suggestion that instead of some dust catcher,
they have Braulio's artist friend (meaning me) paint a
favorite scene and they could attach a small bronze pre-
sentation plaque to the frame. The thing was begining
to assume the air of a production.
PART TWO TO FOLLOW
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vacaenbaja
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A Painting for the Governor PART 2
When we arrived in Mexicali, the capital of Baja Cali-
fornia, we could tell the Governor's house by the crowd
outside, which had been standing there vitually day
and night ever since his inauguration. They were people
with problems or congratulations. Braulio saw them all
eventually and shook hands with each, but it took him
twelve to fourteen hours a day to do so. After we had been
ushered through a back door to a private office, we
began to have pangs of conscience about tendering our
invitation and tearing this man away from all these
people whom he had decided to serve, but he dispelled
these feelings at once.
"Sundays are my free days," he smiled, "and it would
do me good to take a trip to Los Angeles to see Don Juan-
ito's paintings of my land."
So we chose a Sunday well in advance and agreeable to
all. He seemed delighted that he was going to receive one
of my paintings from the Olympics Committee and a
little later I got him off to one side and asked what scene
from his state he would like. Suddenly, a faraway look
came into his eyes and he started talking in spanish. It
hardly seemed that he was talking to me but rather to
himself.
"The pine trees are almost black in the early dawn," he
murmered, "as are the rocks and the purple sage. One
long ray of sunshine cuts through the eastern rim of the
valley and casts a green-gold path across the meadow
while the granite picacho glows with a pale rose against
the morning sky."
I saw it all again and knew that he was talking of a
morning that we had shared many years before in a high
meadow of the Sierra San Pedro Martir. The meadow was
called "La Encantada" (The Enchanted) and the picacho
had two names, two faces, and two characters. From the
side of the meadow it was called L Providencia. From
the scorching San Felipe desert, ten thousand feet below
its highest frowning crags, it was called El Picacho del
Diablo--the peak of Providence or of the Devil, depend-
ing upon the viewpoint.
Yes I saw it all and remembered it all and knew that
somehow I must pant it, for this mountain ment a great
deal to my friend. It was to this meadow he would ride to
camp and think things out when real crossroads were
ahead in his life. It was here that he had dreamed out
loud of all the brave, fine things he wanted for this land
of his when it became a state. I had shared that dream
and now it was up to me to put its symbol into paint in
order that my friend could see again the place he loved,
for he was far too busy now to take the long pack trip.
When I told my friends, they all agreed it was a"nat-
ural."
Now all I had to do was paint an entire one-man show
of pictures about Baja California and a very special pic-
ture of the Picacho from La Encantada. A few days later
I was on the road with my Jeep, loaded with camping and
painting gear, headed for the Meling ranch and the En-
chanted Meadow high above it.
The sun was low when I left the "improved road" and
turned off on a much smoother, old fashioned desert
trail toward Rancho San Jose. It had been many years
since I had traveled this road with the late C. E. Utt, who
had planted trout in the streams of the San Pedro Martir.
I remembered, with pleasure, the many days on horse-
back on leisurely jaunts through the top of the sierra
with this truly fine man. It was Mr. Utt, in fact, who
really introduced me to Baja California below Ensenada.
To him I owe tremendous debt of gratitude for the
wonder and beauty on which he opened the door.
The San Telmo Valley was much more intensively cul-
tivated that it had been when I last came this way. I re-
membered each turn in the road, I thought, but changes
of some magnitude had taken place since the first eve-
ning I had camped with Mr. Utt beyond San Telmo and
feasted on freshly shot quail roasted on a stick over the
coals. The road became more and more confused, so far
as I was concerned. I came up to a sign but it was lying flat
on the ground and no logic could determine which road
led to Rancho San Jose. I chose the left because it seemed
to have more travel but the whole thing looked wrong
somehow. Then ahead I saw a zigzag road climbing high
over the first range of the mountain so I decided that they
had probably built a new road to Meling's.
PART 3 To FOLLOW
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durrelllrobert
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Mood: thriving in Baja
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Great story. When was it written?
Bob Durrell
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vacaenbaja
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Charles Edward Utt was born around 1866. From a comment that he made to John Hilton later in this story Mr. Utt says that he is over eighty. We can
determine that Mr. Utt would have been eighty years old around 1946. He died in 1951. Part of the story occured somewhere in that time frame.
While Mr. Hilton was talking to Alberta Meling over breakfast
it seems that Mt. Utt had since passed on.
[Edited on 5-18-2012 by vacaenbaja]
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vacaenbaja
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A Painting for the Governor PART 3
Long before I got to the foot of the grade I realized that
most of the traffic had turned off to ranches but the road
could be seen leading to the top, glistening in the last
rays of a tired day, so up I started in the little Jeep. It was
not long before I was glad to have the four-wheel drive
and then the compuond gears, for the road was deeply
rutted and rocky. it was also narrow to
turn even a Jeep around. Storm waters had cut it so that
deep ditches ran down the road and I found myself coax-
ing the Jeep along, riding the ridges while straddling
ditches three feet deep. There was no turning back; all I
could hope for was a turn-around at the top or a road of
some sort that would drop me down into the San Jose
Valley. The last pitch was really steep. The ditches were
so deep that, had I slipped off, I would have hung the Jeep
there for good. Then, suddenly, we came to the top, the
Jeep and I, and I got out and gave the little creature a friendly pat on its metal hood. below stretched the valley
of San Telmo and the plains beyond. The Pacific looked
as peaceful as its name from this height. A fog was begin-
ning to creep in around the volcanic peaks to the south
that mark San Quintin Bay.
There was little time to study the landscape. the sun
had already dipped below the fog bank. Not too far from the
top I began to see signs of travel from a dim road which
joined the one I was traveling. A little farther on i spotted
a ranch house and stopped to inquire. A young man told me, with considerable amusement, that I was on the
wrong road., that this was an abandoned logging road and
everyone knew it had washed out several years ago. Then
he told me to go on down and through a gate, turn right
and follow the ridge of the mountain until I reached the
Meling road.
I did and found it. At the foot of the steep grade were
the familiar roof tops and trees of the Rancho San Jose.
As I drove down the lane of the giant cottonwoods, I
wondered if anyone here would remember me after all
these years. There had been no way of letting them know
I was comming and I certainly hoped that the Meling hos-
pitality had not worn thin since my last visit.
I got out of the Jeep and walked up onto the old porch.
It all looked the same. The door opened and there was
Alberta Meling. She looked the same. "Hello, John," she
said. "I'll bet you haven't had any supper yet. You go
wash and I'll rustle you up something." You would have
thought I had been away for the day or a week at the most.
The bathroom was in the same place, the towels right
where I had remembered them, and I needed to wash for
the road from the end of the pavement had been mighty
dusty in an open Jeep.
The "something" that she "rustled up" turned out to
be a whole meal with elederberry pie for dessert. She sat
at the table with me, drank a cup of coffee, and talked as
I ate. The elderberries, she explained, were ripening plen-
tifully along the creek now but it was hard to get anyone
to pick them so she had picked them herself.
"By the way," she said finally, "you seem to have
picked up quite a bit of weight since I saw you last but
you look fine." Suddenly everything came back into
focus. We again occupied the correct positions in time
and space. Someone had admitted that time had actually
passed since I had taken the last meal with this same
woman at this same table, sitting on this same chair.
"You look just like you did last time," I said truthfully
and tritely. "You haven't changed a bit."
Nor had her daughter, who came in just then and said
hello in such a matter of fact way that I again had the
feeling that I had only been away a week. Then two
young ladies appeared and when they had convinced me
that they were the grandchildren who had been playing
around the yard when I was there last, I realized how
durable the Meling women were and how old I was really
getting.
Later, as I stood around in the kitchen getting in the
way while Alberta put things away, I asked he a ques-
tion I had been going to ask for years. Once I read a book
by a man named North. It was called Camp and Camino
in Lower California. The San Francisco earthquake took
place during one one of North's journeys described in that
book. Among other things he described was a young
woman known up and down the peninsula. "Miss Bertie"
was the most attractive and interesting woman in all of
Baja California. He went on to state that she could shoe
a horse, rope a steer, or chase off a bandit and yet she
could appear in the ranch house in the evening in the
most feminine of dresses and serve the most delicous
meals with the manners and grace of any hostess in Eng-
land or on the Continent. So this night I asked Alberta if
she was by any chance, Miss Bertie in North's book.
She placed onthe table the plate of homemade butter she
had in here hand and looke steadily at me for a moment.
"If I admitted that, you would know how old I am,
wouldn't you? Mr. North was a great friend of my father's
and he stayed at the ranch while he was writting his book.
I had an autographed copy here for years but one of our
paying guests took it along when he left. I sure would
like to have it back."
Some of the ranch hands had come up on the porch and
were sitting in the moonlight, talking in low tones. I rec-
ognized them and stepped out to say hello. One of them
asked if I had my guitar so I went out to the Jeep and
got it. We all sat and sang the same old Mexican songs
we had sung together so long ago, and the thread of time
got all tangled up again for it was the very same moon
shinning through the very same cottonwood trees and
nothing had really changed except my grey hair and
extra weight, and those disgustingly precious and healthy
granddaughters who must have been large for their age.
PART 4 TO FOLLOW
[Edited on 5-14-2012 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 5-14-2012 by vacaenbaja]
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vacaenbaja
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A Painting for the Governor PART4
I told Alberta of the painting I intended to do for our
friend Bralio and she said she was short-handed because
Andy, her son, was up in the States with his wife, who
was ill, but she would get someone to take me into the
sierra the next day. I tried to visualize the lean young
deer-hunting kid, Andy married and gave up. It was time
to go to bed and the moonlight was bothering my eyes.
Things get started early at the Meling ranch and the
next moring was typical. I came out into the kitchen to
find that breakfast already was under construction. Ask-
ing about my animals, I discovered that Alberta had sent
a man ahead with the stock to a high point on another log-
ing road which also had been built and abandoned since
I had been there. She explained that this way I would not
have to ride so far. The boy would probably be waiting
at an old corral and I could pack my things right out of the
Jeep onto the pack mule and leave the Jeep on the side of
the mountain until I needed it.
"You don't look to me as if you had been on a horse
lately," she said smiling. Figuring back six or seven years,
I was inclined to agree with her and thanked her for her
consideration. "You've got a good strong horse," she
added, "biggest one on the ranch--name's Abandonado.
Nobody wanted him when he was a colt, he was so funny
looking but the kids took him over and now he's a very
useful mountain horse. He'll get you there and back all
right."
She told me I need not hurry as the Jeep would get me
to the meeting point about when the boy arrived with
the horses, if I had a leisurely breakfast. We talked about
Mr. Utt mostly at breakfast, and how much he loved the
mountain and the trout fishing he had made possible. We
talked about Braulio, the man and the governor, and
about Jimmy Utt, the son of C. E. Utt, who was now in
Washington as a Congressman. We talked about our mu-
tual friend Alberto Maas, down in Alamos, Sonora, and
how he liked the mountain, but mostly the conversation
was about Mr. Utt. Neither of us said wished he was
here yet both of us surely did. the mountain would not
seem the same without him.
The Jeep rattled merrily up the logging road and, as I
climbed, I could look out at ridge after ridge stretching
off toward the ocean. over against the main mountain, I
could see the remaining scars of the ditch built by Alber-
ta's grandfather to bring water to the placer mines that
once thrived on this side of the mountain. this was the
ditch the engineers said could not be built, so the stub-
born Scandinavian built it anyway and it washed out a
lot of gold.
Finally I came to the little turn-off Alberta described.
At its end was a turn-around for cars, a spring, a small
corral, two horses and a mule, but no cowhand. I got out
of the Jeep and called. Nothing happened. I climbed
throught the fence into the small corral and walked over
to the horses. there I thought I heard the growl of some
wild animal and was about to go back to the Jeep for my
pistol when I realized it was a man snoring. A little far-
ther on, under the shade of a small pine, lay my traveling
companion, a youth in blue jeans, denim shirt, and a straw
hat. His head was pillowed in his saddle, cowboy fashion.
The saddle blanket was spread out under him and he lay
ther, spread eagle, flat on his back. How one so young
could have developed such a monstrous snore was and
is a puzzle to me. I spoke to him but he could not hear
me above his own racket. It sounded like feeding time at
the San Diego zoo. I shouted and still failed to get
through. Finally, I gingerly pulled on one foot and he
awoke, looked at me wide-eyed for a moment, sprang to
his feet and said "Vamanos" (Let's go).
We soon had the horses saddled and the supplies out
of the Jeep and onto the pack. I asked the boy how long
he had been waiting. He turned from the cinch he was
tightening, squinted at the sun, and said, "twenty-five
minutes." I found it hard to believe that snoring could
reach such a crescendo in twenty-five minutes but I
found out later that he not only reached this pitch in five
minutes flat but that he had a remarkable ability to judge
elapsed time by looking at the sun or the moon.
From this point on, we were soon among the large
pines and traveling a good deal in the shade. My horse,
Abandonado, was as big as Alberta had described him.
He was in fact, a great white giant of a horse and looked
like something that should be hauling fire engines in-
stead of climbing the San Pedro Martir. He had never out-
grown a strange, ungainly look that had made him un-
wanted as a colt but I found him strong, sure-footed and,
best of all, willing, which is a bit more than I could say for
my packer.
PART 5 TO FOLLOW
[Edited on 5-18-2012 by vacaenbaja]
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vacaenbaja
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A Painting for the Governor PART 5
We stopped for lunch at a place Mr. Utt used to call
Camp Contentment. The stream there had changed quite
a bit, having cut a much deeper channel than in the days
I camped there. My companero pulled off the packs and
saddles. He accepted the sandwiches I handed him and
watched me dubiously as I gathered fresh watercress to
put into mine. When I offered him some, he grinned and
said, "Grass, senor, is for cows." This was his longest re-
mark to date. I felt I must be getting through to him I
started to say something to him a few minutes later and
was answered with a snore. He had spread out in his
favorite pose and stayed that way for an hour while I
wandered about trying to limber up legs that had not
been astraddle a horse in a long, long time. I realized that
the only reason I would not take my dinner off the man-
tlepiece that night was the fact that there would be no mantlepiece.
A little way from where we had stopped, I saw a fa-
miliar fallen tree and kicked about the pine needles
until I found the rock I was looking for. Here, I had only
camped one night with Andy Meling and Mr. Utt. Andy
had shot a fat, young buck and I had eaten tenderloin
broiled over the coals until it started to oozing out of my
pores.
A hundred or so yards away stood a hugh pine near a
giant boulder of granite. Mr. Utt had shown me that spot
and said "John, I am over eighty. When a man reaches
my age, he knows anything can happen. If I should die
on a pack trip in these mountains, please don't carry my
remains down out of them. Burry me here between this
boulder and that tree." I took off my hat and stood there
for a while in memory of this small wiry man who had
brought so much pleasure to others in his life and had de-
rived so much joy in doing so. A plaque should be planted
on that granite boulder in his memory as the man who
brought the trout to the mountain.
The San Pedro Martir is, in effect, an island. It is an
island of alpine country croscut by laughing streams of
clear water, bejeweled by meadows of matchless beauty.
It is an island surrounded on all sides by desert and on two
side of that by seas. When Mr. Utt first came down to
those mountains, ther were no squirrels to chew the
pine cones that lay untouched all over the ground. He
liberated California grey squirrels and i not only saw
their marks on the cones but saw some very sassy speci-
mens of the squirrels themslves. This may not please
biologists who nowadays frown on such things unless
they do them, but I am sure the squirrels are happy. It
took Mr. Utt years and dozens of attempts before he got
fingerlings to develop into nice trout in the once fishless
streams, but he was a persevering man, and the fact is
that all of the streams on the mountain reflect his energy
and perseverance. he would catch from one stream and
pack over the ridge to another drainage until he had the job
done. All in all, he spent more than thirty summer trips
in these hills looking after his fish and squirrels, catching
fish after they became plentiful and taking friends like
me along to share the fun.
I awakened my snoring companion and we were soon
saddled and climbing again. Ridge after ridge we crossed
and meadow after park-like meadow. there were too
many cattle in them now and some even had pigs rooting
about at a kind of nut grass. this cuts up the meadows
and then rain takes the dirt down the trout streams and
befouls them, killing many fish. If the practice is not
stopped, the damage will be permanent and trout will be
as hard to find as as the once plentiful mountain sheep. I
understand that some day the Mexican government
plans to withdraw this beautiful mountain top from such
uses and make it into a national park for the enjoyment
of all. Sooner or later, some wild scheme for cutting the
timber on the mountain might go beyond the point of
road building and stock selling, and then Mexico would
lose something very distinctive and precious: the island
mountain of San Pedro Martir.
PART 6 TO FOLLOW
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vacaenbaja
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A Painting for the Governor PART 6
It was late in the afternoon when we finally came to
the entrance of La Encantada. I pulled my horse to a stop
and started to look about for a good place to camp but my
cowpuncher companion said this place was infested with
mosquitoes and the water was unfit for drinking. He
knew a much better spot, he said, just a little way ahead.
I believed him for a while but after the sun went down
and we had not reahed this p****** of a camp site, I
began asking questions. Seven years off a horse, and then
a ride of this length over such trails, was begining to
tell. My posterior had ceased to hurt. It had no feeling
whatsoever. the rest of my body screamed but still we
kept on.
I had dreamed of spending the night at the south end
of Encantada by the rushing stream of clear water, watch-
ing the moon rise over the far ridge and in the morning
getting the sketches I wanted. here I was plodding on
through the darkness , hungry, sore and tired, and getting
madder by the moment. In my years of traveling in Mez-
ican mountains, this wasw the first mule driver who had
ventured to question my decision of when or where to
camp.
Finally, my delightful companion stopped and I could
hear the sound of a good many voices. He hallooed and
someone answered his call. Now I was really mad. he
had known all along that there was a group of Mexican
cowhands up here in the north end of the meadow and
my desire to camp in solitude had no attraction for him
when he could drag me along for another hour through
the dark and have congenial company.
When I climbed off the horse my legs buckled under
me and I landed on my posterior in a most ungraceful
pile. Even Abandonado laughed. I could tell it was funny
but couldn't somehow get up the energy to laugh. One
of the cowhands came and gave me a hand and another
pushed a bottle of mescal toward me. I felt better at once.
They were a friendly lot. they insisted that we join them
in a supper of a kind of gravey of venison jerky, chiles, and
onions with warmed-over tortillas and coffee. It was good
nourishing food and we needed it.
It turned out that there were mosquitoes in this camp.
They went to work soon after supper and kept it up until
a breeze mercifully rose and drove them off. It also
turned out the the water supply came from a small hole
dug out in the middle of the meadow. It was surrounded
by cow droppings, since it was not fenced, and the cattle
wandered through the camp and drank there. If I was a little
upset it made slight difference to my guide. He was hav-
ing a reunion with lads of his own age whom he had not
seen for months. The joking and laughing and psuedo-
singing came louder as the night progressed so I moved
my bedroll about a quarter of a mile away to get some
sleep.
The moon came up over the ridge as I had remembered
and the meadow turned silver. The shouting and carous-
ing of the cowhands was far enough away to become
background noise. I was almost enjoying the peace I had
come so far to find. I dropped off to sleep but the camp
was still roaring and I imagine it continued until early
dawn.
I awoke about five o'clock and wandered over to where
my traveleing companion slept. It wasn't hard to locate
him by sound, He had gone to sleep with his boots on
and in his characteristic position. I shook him awake and
made it very evident that the honeymoon was over and
from now on I was calling the shots.
"Go get the horses at once," I ordered in no uncertain
terms. "I will get a fire going and make some coffee."
"I thought you were going to make some drawings
here," he groaned.
"Not here," I said, "nor now." I wanted to make draw-
ings at the south end but that will have to wait until to-
morrow morning. Now we are going to that peak you see
up there so I can make a drawing of the great picacho."
"There is no trail there," groaned my obviously hung-
over mule driver.
"Yes there is," I replied. "I have been there three times
on horseback. It is long and rocky and very steep but we
can make it."
"I do not know the way," he objected.
"Then ask your friends the way," was my answer. "I
am sure thaey have all been there many times. Now get
the stock in and saddle up while I cook breakfast."
By the time we were ready to leave, our hosts one by
one began to awaken. I had made plenty of coffee and
was aable to repay their hospitality with an eye-opener.
Our hosts insisted that there was nothing on top of the
peak but a mountain and the San Felipe Desert and the
Pacific to bee seen and if I had been there three times be-
fore I would most certainly be wasting my time going
back to look at nothing but scenery. They even thought
it would be nice if I went fishing. They were plugging
as hard as they could for their pal, but it did no good.
We asked for directions and got two sets: the long, easy which I had gone before, and a steep short cut. I was
for the long route but my pal insisted that the short cut
would only take an hour each way. He even insisted that
we take no water or lunch but I took a canteen full of
water that smelled slightly of essence of steer, some crackers, and a can of minced ham.
PART 7 TO FOLLOW
[Edited on 5-18-2012 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 5-19-2012 by vacaenbaja]
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vacaenbaja
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A Painting For The Governor PART 7
The short cut turned out to be a stairway of solid stone.
A horse could make it if you got off and pushed. I did not
mind walking, in fact I welcomed it. This used a different
set of muscles. It was a rest for me. If there is anything a
cowhand hates, it's walking, but I will say that the lad
was game and although he stopped once in a while to
wipe the alcohol from his brow, he kept up pretty well.
I was obvious that this was not one of the men usually
used to take tourist into the mountain. Aberta must
have really been shorthanded when she sent him.
It took two hours and three quarters to reach the top
but we made it and I, for one, thought it was worth it.
The horses and the cowhand were of the opposite view
but I climbed out on a crag and made some sketches and
took some photos. From here I could turn one way and
see the Pacific Ocean, turn the other and look clear across
the San Felipe Desert to the Gulf and beyond to the sand
dunes on the coast of northern Sonora.
It was here on my last trip with Mr. Utt that we sat and
shivered by a tiny fire waiting for the fog to lift on the
Pacific for he felt in his heart that it would be the last
time he would see this sight.
I made my sketches of the picacho and one looking
back down into the Encantada. I offered my pal a drink
of the bovine-flavored water. He gulped his share. He also
made no bones about eating his share of the light lunch
he said we should not take. As I got ready to start back
he suggested that we go home the long or easy way. I was
perfectly willing but something went wrong with his cal-
culations. We ended up on the wrong ridge and had to
lead the horses for another two hours before we could
get back on the trail.
The sun was nearly down when we finally returned to
the cowboy camp. My companion slid from his horse and
asked hoarsely for a drink but his pals informed him that
they had drunk all there was. As if this disappointment
were not enough, I told him to round up and saddle the
pack mule for we were camping at the south end of En-
cantada where we should have camped the night before.
He suggested that we could get up very early in the morn-
ing and get there in time for the Governor's sketch but I
was firm now. I had the whip hand and my second wind.
The walking had limbered my muscles. Another hour
ride did not seem bad to me at all.
The south end was just as beautiful as I had remem-
bered . I found the same clump of trees even in the dusk.
We made a campfire and I cooked a fine supper while
the cowhand took care of the stock. The moon came up
over the meadow this time and it was peaceful--no
horseplay, no shouting, and no mosquitoes for the water
was running swiftly here. I had been hoarding a half pint
of good tequila and in a mament of compassion I shared
it with my companion after supper. Then I placed my
bed behind a big rock and=where his snoring did not disturb
me too much and sleot the sleep of the righteous.
The first grey light was enough to awaken me and I
was on the edge of the meadow with my sketchbook.
The blue-grey sage with its purple flowers was damp with
the night's dew. The miracle began. the soft glow over the granite ridge to the east became stronger and sud-
denly a shaft of gold broke across the meadow and the
picacho glowed a warm rose as if from an inner light. I
knew, as I watched and sketched, that the painting would
be a good one.
The opening day of my one-man show at the South-
west Museum was a success beyond out wildest dreams.
the Governor of Baja California arrived with representa
tives from the various cities in the new state, military
men, and just plain citizens who were friends of mine or
his and wanted to be there. The American politicians
sent telegrams of regret and stayed away en masse. This
gave time for some very interesting and sincere speeches
from the people of both sides of the boarder. About three
times as many people came as were invited, for folks
brought friends and no one minded. The press ate it up
ands did stories with pictures in all the papers. When
Braulio saw his painting at the end of the auditorium in
a case with the Mexican flag, he simply stood there for a
moment and murmured "Mi Picacho," and I knew that
what ever the trouble or expanse, it was well worth it.
Finis
[Edited on 5-19-2012 by vacaenbaja]
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