My sightseeing over, I got to work. First I went to see the Representative from our district, to ask for letters of introduction. He was cordial enough, but he gave me bad advice. He was very positive that I ought to report to the Indian Commission, and gave me a letter to the Commissioner4. The Commissioner was out of town, and I wasted three days waiting about his office, being questioned by clerks and secretaries. They were not very busy, and seemed to find me entertaining. I thought they were interested in my mission, and interest was what I wanted to arouse. I didn’t know how influential5 these people might be-they talked as if they had great authority. I had brought along in my telescope bag some good pieces of pottery6 — not the best, I was afraid of accident, but some that were representative — and all the photographs Blake and I had taken. We had only a small kodak, and these pictures didn’t make much show, — looked, indeed, like grubby little ‘dobe ruins such as one can find almost anywhere. They gave no idea of the beauty and vastness of the setting. The clerks at the Indian Commission seemed very curious about everything and made me talk a lot. I was green and didn’t know any better. But when one of the fellows there tried to get me to give him my best bowl for his cigarette ashes, I began to suspect the nature of their interest.
At last the Commissioner returned, but he had pressing engagements, and I hung around several days more before he would see me. After questioning me for about half an hour, he told me that his business was with living Indians, not dead ones, and that his office should have informed me of that in the beginning. He advised me to go back to our Congressman7 and get a letter to the Smithsonian Institution. I packed up my pottery and got out of the place, feeling pretty sore. The head clerk followed me down the corridor and asked me what I’d take for that little bowl he’d taken a fancy to. He said it had no market value, I’d find Washington full of such things; there were cases of them in the cellar at the Smithsonian that they’d never taken the trouble to unpack8, hadn’t any place to put them.
I went back to my Congressman. This time he wasn’t so friendly as before, but he gave me a letter to the Smithsonian. There I went through the same experience. The director couldn’t be seen except by appointment, and his secretary had to be convinced that your business was important before he would give you an appointment with his chief. After the first morning I found it difficult to see even the secretary. He was always engaged. I was told to take a seat and wait, but when he was disengaged he was hurrying off to luncheon9. I would sit there all morning with a group of unfortunate people: girls who wanted to get typewriting to do, nice polite old men who wanted to be taken out on surveys and expeditions next summer. The secretary would at last come out with his overcoat on, and would hurry through the waiting-room reading a letter or a report, without looking up.
The office assistants cheered me along, and I kept this up for some days, sitting all morning in that room, studying the patterns of the rugs, and the shoes of the patient waiters who came as regularly as I. One day after the secretary had gone out, his stenographer10, a nice little Virginia girl, came and sat down in an empty chair next to mine and began talking to me. She wasn’t pretty, but her kind eyes and soft Southern voice took hold of me at once. She wanted to know what I had in my telescope, and why I was there, and where I came from, and all about it. Nearly everyone else had gone out to lunch — that seemed to be the one thing they did regularly in Washington — and we had the waiting-room to ourselves. I talked to her a good deal. Her name was Virginia Ward11. She was a tiny little thing, but she had lovely eyes and such gentle ways. She seemed indignant that I had been put off so long after having come so far.
“Now you just let me fix it up for you,” she said at last. “Mr. Wagner is bothered by a great many foolish people who waste his time, and he is suspicious. The best way will be for you to invite him to lunch with you. I’ll arrange it. I keep a list of his appointments, and I know he is not engaged for luncheon tomorrow. I’ll tell him that he is to lunch with a nice boy who has come all the way from New Mexico to inform the Department about an important discovery. I’ll tell him to meet you at the Shoreham, at one. That’s expensive, but it would do no good to invite him to a cheap place. And, remember, you must ask him to order the luncheon. It will maybe cost you ten dollars, but it will get you somewhere.”
I felt grateful to the nice little thing, — she wasn’t older than I. I begged her wouldn’t she please come to lunch with me herself today, and talk to me.
“Oh, no!” she said, blushing red as a poppy. “Why, I’m afraid you think — ”
I told her I didn’t think anything but how nice she was to me, and how lonesome I was. She went with me, but she wouldn’t go to any swell12 place. She told me a great many useful things.
“If you want to get attention from anybody in Washin’ton,” she said, “ask them to lunch. People here will do almost anything for a good lunch.”
“But the Director of the Smithsonian, for instance,” I said, “surely you don’t mean that the high-up ones like that —? Why would he want to bother with a cow-puncher from New Mexico, when he can lunch with scientists and ambassadors?”
She had a pretty little fluttery Southern laugh. “You just name a hotel like the Shoreham to the Director, and try it! There has to be somebody to pay for a lunch, and the scientists and ambassadors don’t do that when they can avoid it. He’d accept your invitation, and the next time he went to dine with the Secretary of State he’d make a nice little story of it, and paint you up so pretty you’d hardly know yourself.”
When I asked her whether I’d better take my pottery — it was there under the table between us — to the Shoreham to show Mr. Wagner, she tittered again. “I wouldn’t bother. If you show him enough of the Shoreham pottery, that will be more effective.”
The next morning, when the secretary arrived at his office, he stopped by my chair and said he understood he had an engagement with me for one o’clock. That was a good idea, he added: his mind was freer when he was away from office routine.
I had been in Washington twenty-two days when I took the secretary out to lunch. It was an excellent lunch. We had a bottle of Chateau14 d’Yquem. I’d never heard of such a wine before, but I remember it because it cost five dollars. I drank only one glass, and that pleased him too, for he drank the rest. Though he was friendly and talked a great deal, my heart sank lower, for he wouldn’t let me explain my mission to him at all. He kept telling me that he knew all about the South-west. He had been sent by the Smithsonian to conduct parties of European archaeologists through all the show places, Frijoles and Canyon15 de Chelly, and Taos, and the Hopi pueblos16. When some Austrian Archduke had gone to hunt in the Pecos range, he had been sent by his chief and the German ambassador to manage the tour, and he had done it with such success that both he and the Director were given decorations from the Austrian Crown, in recognition of his services. Then I had to listen to a long story about how well he was treated by the Archduke when he went to Vienna with his chief the following summer. I had to hear about the balls and receptions, and the names and titles of all the people he had met at the Duke’s country estate. I was amazed and ashamed that a man of fifty, a man of the world, a scholar with ever so many degrees, should find it worth his while to show off before a boy, and a boy of such humble17 pretensions18, who didn’t know how to eat the hors d’enticons grol oelig gifvres any more than if an assortment19 of cocoanuts had been set before him with no hammer.
Imagine my astonishment20 when, as he was drinking his liqueur, he said carelessly: “By the way, I was successful in arranging an interview with the Director for you. He will see you at four o’clock on Monday.”
That was Thursday. I spent the time between then and Monday trying to find out something more about the kind of people I had come among. I persuaded Virginia Ward to go to the theatre with me, and she told me that it always took a long while to get anything through with the Director, that I mustn’t lose heart, and she would always be glad to cheer me up. She lived with her mother, a widow lady, and they had me come to dinner and were very nice to me.
All this time I was living with a young married couple who interested me very much, for they were unlike any people I had ever known. The husband was “in office,” as they say there, he had some position in the War Department. How it did use to depress me to see all the hundreds of clerks come pouring out of that big building at sunset! Their lives seemed to me so petty, so slavish. The couple I lived with gave me a prejudice against that kind of life. I couldn’t help knowing a good deal about their affairs. They had only a small rented flat, and rented me one room of it, so I was very much in their confidence and couldn’t help overhearing. They asked me not to mention the fact that I paid rent, as they had told their friends I was making them a visit. It was like that in everything; they spent their lives trying to keep up appearances, and to make his salary do more than it could. When they weren’t discussing where she should go in the summer, they talked about the promotions21 in his department; how much the other clerks got and how they spent it, how many new dresses their wives had. And there was always a struggle going on for an invitation to a dinner or a reception, or even a tea-party. When once they got the invitation they had been scheming for, then came the terrible question of what Mrs. Bixby should wear.
The Secretary of War gave a reception; there was to be dancing and a great showing of foreign uniforms. The Bixbys were in painful suspense22 until they got a card. Then for a week they talked about nothing but what Mrs. Bixby was going to wear. They decided that for such an occasion she must have a new dress. Bixby borrowed twenty-five dollars from me, and took his lunch hour to go shopping with his wife and choose the satin. That seemed to me very strange. In New Mexico the Indian boys sometime went to trader’s with their wives and bought shawls or calico, and we thought it rather contemptible23. On the night of the reception the Bixbys set off gaily24 in a cab; the dress they considered a great success. But they had bad luck. Somebody spilt claret-cup on Mrs. Bixby’s skirt before the evening was half over, and when they got home that night I heard her weeping and reproaching him for having been so upset about it, and looking at nothing but her ruined dress all evening. She said he cried out when it happened. I don’t doubt it.
Every cab, every party, was more than they could afford. If he lost an umbrella, it was a real misfortune. He wasn’t lazy, he wasn’t a fool, and he meant to be honest; but he was intimidated25 by that miserable26 sort of departmental life. He didn’t know anything else. He thought working in a store or a bank not respectable. Living with the Bixbys gave me a kind of low-spiritedness I had never known before. During my days of waiting for appointments, I used to walk for hours around the fence that shuts in the White House grounds, and watch the Washington monument colour with those beautiful sunsets, until the time when all the clerks streamed out of the treasury building and the War and Navy. Thousands of them, all more or less like the couple I lived with. They seemed to me like people in slavery, who ought to be free. I remember the city chiefly by those beautiful, hazy27, sad sunsets, white columns and green shrubbery, and the monument shaft28 still pink while the stars were coming out.
I got my interview with the Director of the Smithsonian at last. He gave me his attention, he was interested. He told me to come again in three days and meet Dr. Ripley, who was the authority on prehistoric29 Indian remains30 and had excavated31 a lot of them. Then came an exciting and rather encouraging time for me. Dr. Ripley asked the right sort of questions, and evidently knew his business. He said he’d like to take the first train down to my mesa. But it required money to excavate32, and he had none. There was a bill up before Congress for an appropriation33. We’d have to wait. I must use my influence with my Representative. He took my pottery to study it. (I never got it back, by the way.) There was a Dr. Fox, connected with the Smithsonian, who was also interested. They told me a good many things I wanted to know, and kept me dangling34 about the office. Of course they were very kind to take so much trouble with a green boy. But I soon found that the Director and all his staff had one interest which dwarfed35 every other. There was to be an International Exposition of some sort in Europe the following summer, and they were all pulling strings36 to get appointed on juries or sent to international congresses — appointments that would pay their expenses abroad, and give them a salary in addition. There was, indeed, a bill before Congress for appropriations37 for the Smithsonian; but there was also a bill for Exposition appropriations, and that was the one they were really pushing. They kept me hanging on through March and April, but in the end it came to nothing. Dr. Ripley told me he was sorry, but the sum Congress had allowed the Smithsonian wouldn’t cover an expedition to the Southwest.
Virginia Ward, who had been so kind to me, went out to lunch with me that day, and admitted I had been let down. She was almost as much disappointed as I. She said the only thing Dr. Ripley really cared about was getting a free trip to Europe and acting38 on a jury, and maybe getting a decoration. “And that’s what the Director wants, too,” she said. “They don’t care much about dead and gone Indians. What they do care about is going to Paris, and getting another ribbon on their coats.”
The only other person besides Virginia who was genuinely concerned about my affair was a young Frenchman, a lieutenant39 attached to the French Embassy, who came to the Smithsonian often on business connected with this same International Exposition. He was nice and polite to Virginia, and she introduced him to me. We used to walk down along the Potomac together. He studied my photographs and asked me such intelligent questions about everything that it was a pleasure to talk to him. He had a fine attitude about it all; he was thoughtful, critical, and respectful. I feel sure he’d have gone back to New Mexico with me if he’d had the money. He was even poorer than I.
I was utterly40 ashamed to go home to Roddy, dead broke after all the money I’d spent, and without a thing to show for it. I hung on in Washington through May, trying to get a job of some sort, to at least earn my fare home. My letters to Blake had been pretty blue for some time back. If I’d been sensible, I’d have kept my troubles to myself. He was easily discouraged, and I knew that. At last I had to write him for money to go home. It was slow in coming, and I began to telegraph. I left Washington at last, wiser than I came. I had no plans, I wanted nothing but to get back to the mesa and live a free life and breathe free air, and never, never again to see hundreds of little black-coated men pouring out of white buildings. Queer, how much more depressing they are than workmen coming out of a factory.
I was terribly disappointed when I got off the train at Tarpin and Roddy wasn’t at the station to meet me. It was late in the afternoon, almost dark, and I went straight to the livery stable to talk Bill Hook for news of Blake. Hook, you remember, had done all our hauling for us, and had been a good friend. He gave me a glad hand and said Blake was out on the mesa.
“I expect maybe he’s had his feelings hurt here. He’s been shy of this town lately. You see, Tom, folks weren’t bothered none about that mesa so long as you fellows were playing Robinson Crusoe out there, digging up curios. But when it leaked out that Blake had got a lot of money for your stuff, then they begun to feel jealous — said them ruins didn’t belong to Blake any more than anybody else. It’ll blow over in time; people are always like that when money changes hands. But right now there’s a good deal of bad feeling.”
I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You mean you ain’t heard about the German, Fechtig? Well, Rodney’s got some surprise waiting for you! Why, he’s had the damnedest luck! He’s cleaned up a neat little pile on your stuff.”
I begged him to tell me what stuff he meant.
“Why, your curios. This German, Fechtig, come along; he’d been buying up a lot of Indian things out here, and he bought you whole outfit41 and paid four thousand dollars down for it. The transaction made quite a stir here in Tarpin. I’m not kicking. I made a good thing out of it. My mules43 were busy three weeks packing the stuff out of there on their backs, and I held the Dutchman up for a fancy price. He had packing cases made at the wagon44 shop and took ’em up to the mesa full of straw and sawdust, and packed the curios out there. I lost one of my mules, too. You remember Jenny? Well, they were leading her down with a big box on her, and right there where the trail runs so narrow around a bump in the cliff above Black Canyon, she lost her balance and fell clean to the bottom, her load on her. Pretty near a thousand feet, I guess. We never went down to hold a post-mortem, but Fechtig paid for her like a gentleman.”
I remember I sat down on the sofa in Hook’s office because I couldn’t stand up any longer, and the smell of the horse blankets began to make me deathly sick. In a minute I went over, like a girl in a novel. Hook pulled me out on the sidewalk and gave me some whisky out of his pocket flask45.
When I felt better I asked him how long this German had been gone, and what he had done with the things.
“Oh, he cleared out three weeks ago. He didn’t waste no time. He treated everybody well, though; nobody’s sore at him. It’s your partner they’re turned against. Fechtig took the stuff right along with him, chartered a freight car, and travelled in the car with it. I reckon it’s on the water by now. He took it straight through into Old Mexico, and was to load it on a French boat. Seems he was afraid of having trouble getting curiosities out of the United States ports. You know you can take anything out of the City of Mexico.”
I had heard all I wanted to hear. I went to the hotel, got a room, and lay down without undressing to wait for daylight. Hook was to drive me and my trunk out to the mesa early the next morning. All I’d been through in Washington was nothing to what I went through that night. I thought Blake must have lost his mind. I didn’t for a minute believe he’d meant to sell me out, but I cursed his stupidity and presumption46. I had never told him just how I felt about those things we’d dug out together, it was the kind of thing one doesn’t talk about directly. But he must have known; he couldn’t have lived with me all summer and fall without knowing. And yet, until that night, I had never known myself that I cared more about them than about anything else in the world.
At the first blink of daylight I jumped up from my damnable bed and went round to the stable to rout13 Hook out of his bunk47. We had breakfast and got out of town with his best team. On the way to the mesa we had a break-down, one of the old dry wheels smashed to splinters. Hook had to unhitch and ride back to Tarpin and get another. Everything took an unreasonably48 long time, and the afternoon was half gone when he put me and my trunk down at the foot of the Black Canyon trail. Every inch of that trail was dear to me, every delicate curve about the old pi?on roots, every chancy track along the face of the cliffs, and the deep windings49 back into shrubbery and safety. The wild-currant bushes were in bloom, and where the path climbed the side of a narrow ravine, the scent50 of them in the sun was so heavy that it made me soft, made me want to lie down and sleep. I wanted to see and touch everything, like home-sick children when they come home.
When I pulled out on top of the mesa, the rays of sunlight fell slantingly through the little twisted pi?ons, — the light was all in between them, as red as a daylight fire, they fairly swam in it. Once again I had that glorious feeling that I’ve never had anywhere else, the feeling of being on the mesa, in a world above the world. And the air, my God, what air! — Soft, tingling51, gold, hot with an edge of chill on it, full of the smell of pi?ons — it was like breathing the sun, breathing the colour of the sky. Down there behind me was the plain, already streaked52 with shadow, violet and purple and burnt orange until it met the horizon. Before me was the flat mesa top, thinly sprinkled with old cedars53 that were not much taller than I, though their twisted trunks were almost as thick as my body. I struck off across it, my long black shadow going ahead.
I made straight for the cabin, it was about three miles from the spot where the trail emerged at the top. I saw smoke rising before I could see the hut itself. Blake was in the doorway54 when I got there. I didn’t look at his face, but I could feel that he looked at mine.
“Don’t say anything, Tom. Don’t rip me up until you hear all about it,” he said as I came toward him.
“I’ve heard enough to about do for me,” I blurted55 out. “What made you do it, Blake? What made you do it?”
“It was a chance in a million, boy. There wasn’t any time to consult you. There’s only one man in thousands that wants to buy relics56 and pay real money for them. I could see how your Washington campaign was coming out. I know you’d thought about big figures, so had I. But that was all a pipe dream. Four thousand’s not so bad, you don’t pick it up every day. And he bore all the expenses. Why, it was a terrible expensive job, getting all that frail57 stuff out of here. Who else would have bought it, I want to know? We’d have had to pack it around at Harvey Houses, selling it at a dollar a bowl, like the poor Indians do. I took the best chance going, for both of us, Tom.”
I didn’t say anything, because there was too much to say. I stood outside the cabin until the gold light went blue and a few stars came out, hardly brighter than the bright sky they twinkled in, and the swallows came flying over us, on their way to their nests in the cliffs. It was the time of day when everything goes home. From habit and from weariness I went in through the door. The kitchen table was spread for supper, I could smell a rabbit stew58 cooking on the stove. Blake lit the lantern and begged me to eat my supper. I didn’t go into the bunk-room, for I knew the shelves in there were empty. I heard Blake talking to me as you hear people talking when you are asleep.
“Who else would have bought them?” he kept saying. “Folks make a lot of fuss over such things, but they don’t want to pay good money for them.”
When I at last told him that such a thing as selling them had never entered my head, I’m sure he thought I was lying. He reminded me about how we used to talk of getting big money from the Government.
I admitted I’d hoped we’d be paid for our work, and maybe get a bonus of some kind, for our discovery. “But I never thought of selling them, because they weren’t mine to sell — nor yours! They belonged to this country, to the State, and to all the people. They belonged to boys like you and me, that have no other ancestors to inherit from. You’ve gone and sold them to a country that’s got plenty of relics of its own. You’ve gone and sold your country’s secrets, like Dreyfus.”
“That man was innocent. It was a frame-up,” Blake murmured. It was a point he would never pass up.
“Whether he’s guilty or not, you are! If there was only anybody in Washington I could telegraph to, and have that German held up at the port!”
“That’s just it. If there was anybody in Washington that cared a damn, I wouldn’t have sold ’em. But you pretty well found out there ain’t.”
“We could have kept them, then,” I told him. “I’ve got a strong back. I’m not so poor that I have to sell the pots and pans that belonged to my poor grandmothers a thousand years ago. I made all my plans on the train, coming back.” (It was a lie, I hadn’t.) “I meant to get a job on the railroad and keep our find right here, and come back to it when I had a lay-off. I think a lot more of it now than before I went to Washington. And after a while, when that Exposition is over and the Smithsonian people get home, they would come out here all right. I’ve learned enough from them so that I could go on with it myself.”
Blake reminded me that I had my way to make in the world, and that I wanted to go to school. “That money’s in the bank this minute, in your name, and you’re going to college on it. You’re not going to be a day-labourer like me. After you’ve got your sheepskin, then you can divide with me.”
“You think I’d touch that money?” I looked squarely at him for the first time. “No more than if you’d stolen it. You made the sale. Get what you can out of it. I want to ask you one question: did you ever think I was digging those things up for what I could sell them for?”
Rodney explained that he knew I cared about the things, and was proud of them, but he’d always supposed I meant to “realize” on them, just as he did, and that it would come to money in the end. “Everything does,” he added.
“If that nice young Frenchman I met had come down here with me, and offered me four million instead of four thousand, I’d have refused him. There never was any question of money with me, where this mesa and its people were concerned. They were something that had been preserved through the ages by a miracle, and handed on to you and me, two poor cow-punchers, rough and ignorant, but I thought we were men enough to keep a trust. I’d as soon have sold my own grandmother as Mother Eve — I’d have sold any living woman first.”
“Save your tears,” said Roddy grimly. “She refused to leave us. She went to the bottom of Black Canyon and carried Hook’s best mule42 along with her. They had to make her box extra wide, and she crowded out an inch or so too far from the canyon wall.”
This painful interview went on for hours. I walked up and down the kitchen trying to make Blake understand the kind of value those objects had had for me. Unfortunately, I succeeded. He sat slumping60 on the bench, his elbows on the table, shading his eyes from the lantern with his hands.
“There’s no need to keep this up,” he said at last. “You’re away out of my depth, but I think I get you. You might have given me some of this Fourth of July talk a little earlier in the game. I didn’t know you valued that stuff any different than anything else a fellow might run on to: a gold mine or a pocket of turquoise61.”
“I suppose you gave him my diary along with the rest?”
“No,” said Blake, his voice growing gloomier and darker, “that’s in the Eagle’s Nest, where you hid it. That’s your private property. I supposed I had some share in the relics we dug up — you always spoke62 of it that way. But I see now I was working for you like a hired man, and while you were away I sold your property.”
I said again it wasn’t mine or his. He took something out of the pocket of his flannel63 shirt and laid it on the table. I saw it was a bank passbook64, with my name on the yellow cover.
“You may as well keep it,” I said. “I’ll never touch it. You had no right to deposit it in my name. The townspeople are sore about the money, and they’ll hold it against me.”
“No they won’t. Can’t you trust me to fix that?”
“I don’t know what I can trust you with, Blake. I don’t know where I’m at with you,” I said.
He got up and began putting on his coat. “Motives don’t count, eh?” he said, his face turned away, as he put his arm into the sleeve.
“They would in anything of our own, between you and me,” I told him. “If it was my money you’d lost gambling65, or my girl you’d made free with, we could fight it out, and maybe be friends again. But this is different.”
“I see. You make it clear.” He was quietly stirring around as he spoke. He got his old knapsack off its nail on the wall, opened his trunk and took out some underwear and socks and a couple of shirts. After he had put these into the bag, he slung66 it over one shoulder, and his canvas water-bag over the other. I let these preparations go on without a word. He went to the cupboard over the stove and put some sticks of chocolate into his pocket, then his pipe and a bag of tobacco. Presently I said he’d break his neck if he tried riding down the trail in the dark.
“I’m not riding the trail,” he replied curtly67. “I’m going down the quick way. My horse is grazing in Cow Canyon.”
“I noticed the river’s high. It’s dangerous crossing,” I remarked.
“I got over that way a few days ago. I’m surprised at you, using such common expressions!” he said sarcastically68. “Dangerous crossing; it’s painted on signboards all over the world!” He walked out of the cabin without looking back. I followed him to the V-shaped break in the rim59 rock, hardly larger than a man’s body, where the spliced69 tree-trunks made a swinging ladder down the face of the cliff. I wanted to protest, but only succeeded in finding fault.
“You’ll catch your knapsack on those forks and come to grief.”
“That’s my look-out.”
By this time my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and I could see Blake quite clearly — the stubborn, crouching70 set of his shoulders that I used to notice when he first came to Pardee and was drinking all the time. There was an ache in my arms to reach out and detain him, but there was something else that made me absolutely powerless to do so. He stepped down and settled his foot into the first fork. Then he stopped a moment and straightened his pack, buttoned his coat up to the chin, and pulled his hat on tighter. There was always a night draught71 in the canyon. He gripped the trunk with his hands. “Well,” he said with grim cheerfulness, “here’s luck! And I’m glad it’s you that’s doing this to me, Tom; not me that’s doing it to you.”
His head disappeared below the rim. I could hear the trees creak under his heavy body, and the chains rattle72 a little at the splicings. I lay down on the ledge73 and listened. I could hear him for a long way down, and the sounds were comforting to me, though I didn’t realize it. Then the silence closed in. I went to sleep that night hoping I would never waken.
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dome
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treasury
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decided
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commissioner
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influential
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pottery
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Congressman
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unpack
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luncheon
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stenographer
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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canyon
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| n.峡谷，溪谷 | |
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pueblos
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| n.印第安人村庄( pueblo的名词复数 ) | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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promotions
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| 促进( promotion的名词复数 )； 提升； 推广； 宣传 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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intimidated
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| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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excavated
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| v.挖掘( excavate的过去式和过去分词 )；开凿；挖出；发掘 | |
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excavate
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| vt.挖掘，挖出 | |
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appropriation
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| n.拨款，批准支出 | |
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dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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appropriations
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| n.挪用（appropriation的复数形式） | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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unreasonably
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| adv. 不合理地 | |
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windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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cedars
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| 雪松，西洋杉( cedar的名词复数 ) | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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blurted
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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slumping
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| 大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的现在分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下] | |
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turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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passbook
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| n.存折；顾客赊欠账簿 | |
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gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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sarcastically
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| adv.挖苦地，讽刺地 | |
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spliced
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| adj.（针织品）加固的n.叠接v.绞接( splice的过去式和过去分词 )；捻接（两段绳子）；胶接；粘接（胶片、磁带等） | |
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crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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