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- Author: Mayne Reid
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After parting from Pecan Creek, with their faces set westward, they had a journey before them anything but easy or pleasant. On the contrary, one of the most difficult and irksome. For it lay across a sterile tract—the great gypsum bed of North-western Texas, on which abut the bluffs of the Llano Estacado. Mile after mile, league after league; no “land in sight,” to use a prairie-man’s phrase—nothing but level plain, smooth as a sleeping sea; but, unlike the last, without water—not a sheet to cheer their eyes, not a drop to quench the thirst, almost choking them. Only its resemblance, seen in the white mist always moving over these arid plains—the deluding, tantalising mirage. Lakes lay before them, their shores garlanded by green trees, their bosoms enamelled with islets smiling in all the verdure of spring—always before them, ever receding; the trees, as the water, never to be reached!
Water they do arrive at more than once—streams rushing in full flow across the barren waste. At sight they ride towards them rapidly. Their horses need not to be spurred. The animals suffer as themselves, and rush on with outstretched necks, eager to assuage their thirst. They dip their muzzles, plunge in their heads till half-buried, only to draw out again and toss them aloft with snorts of disappointment shaking the water like spray from their nostrils. It is salt!
For days they have been thus journeying. They are wearied, worn down by fatigue, hungry; but more than all, tortured by the terrible thirst—their horses as themselves. The animals have become reduced in flesh and strength; they look like skeletons staggering on, scarce able to carry their riders.
Where is the Mexican conducting them? He has brought them into a desert. Is the journey to end in their death? It looks like enough.
Some counsel killing him, and returning on their tracks. Not all; only a minority. The majority cry “Onward!” with a thought beyond present suffering. They must find the bones of Walt Wilder and bury them! Brave men, true men, these Texan Rangers! Rough in outward appearance, often rude in behaviour, they have hearts gentle as children. Of all friends the most faithful, whether it be affection or pure camaraderie. In this case a comrade has been killed—cruelly murdered, and in a strange manner. Its very strangeness has maddened them the more, while sharpening their desire to have a last look at his remains, and give them Christian burial. Only the fainthearted talk of retreating; the others do not think of it, and these are more than the majority.
On, therefore, they ride across treeless, grassless tracks; along the banks of streams, of whose bitter, saline waters they cannot drink, but tantalising themselves and their animals. On, on!
Their perseverance is at length rewarded. Before their eyes looms up a line of elevated land, apparently the profile of a mountain.
But no; it cannot be that.
Trending horizontally, without curvature, against the sky, they know it is not a mountain, but a mesa—a table-land.
It is the Llano Estacado.
Drawing nearer, they get under the shadow of its beetling bluffs.
They see that these are rugged, with promontories projecting far out over the plain, forming what Spanish Americans, in their expressive phraseology, call ceja.
Into an embayment between two of the out-stretching spurs Barbato conducts them.
Joyously they ride into it, like ships long storm-tossed entering a haven of safety; for at the inner end of the concavity there is a cleft in the precipitous wall, reaching from base to summit, out of which issues a stream whose waters are sweet!
It is a branch of the Brazos River, along whose banks they have been some time travelling, lower down finding its waters bitter as gall. That was in its course through the selenite. Now they have reached the sandstone it is clear as crystal, and to them sweeter than champagne.
“Up it lies our way,” says the renegade guide, pointing to the portals of the canon through which the stream debouched from the table to the lower plain.
But for that night the Rangers care hot to travel further. There is no call for haste. They are en route to bury the bones of a dead man, not to rescue one still living.
Just as the Texan Rangers are approaching the Staked Plain on its eastern edge, another body of horsemen, about their equal in number, ascends to the same plateau, coming from the very opposite direction—the west.
Only in point of numbers, and that both are on horseback, is there any similitude between the two troops. Individually they are unlike as human beings could be; for most of those composing the Texan party are great, strapping fellows, fair-haired, and of bright complexions; whereas they coming in the counter direction are all, or nearly all, small men, with black hair and sallow visage—many of them dark as Indians. Between the horses of the two troops there is a proportionate disparity in size; the Texans bestriding animals of nearly sixteen hands in height, while they approaching from the west are mounted on Mexican mustangs, few over fourteen. One alone at their head, evidently their leader, rides a large American horse. In point of discipline the second troop shows superiority. It is a military organisation pur sang, and marches in regular formation, while the men composing it are armed and uniformed alike. Their uniform is that of Mexican lancers, very similar to the French, their arms the same. And just such are they; the lancers of Colonel Uraga, himself at their head.
Having crossed the Rio Pecos bottom, and climbed up the bluffs to the higher bench of the Llano Estacado, they strike out over the sterile plain.
As it is early morning, and the air is chilly, they wear their ample cavalry cloaks of bright yellow cloth. These falling back over the flanks of their horses, with their square lancer caps, plumed, and overtopped by the points of the pennoned lances, give them an imposing martial appearance. Though it is but a detachment of not over fifty men—a single troop—riding by twos, the files stretch afar in shining array, its sheen all the more brilliant from contrast with the sombre sterility of the desert.
A warlike sight, and worthy of admiration, if one knew it to be an expedition directed against the red pirates of the plains, en route to chastise them for their many crimes—a long list of cruel atrocities committed upon the defenceless citizens of Chihuahua and New Mexico. But knowing it is not this—cognisant of its true purpose—the impression made is altogether different. Instead of admiration it is disgust; and, in place of sending up a prayer for its success, the spectator would feel apprehension, or earnestly desire its failure.
Its purpose is anything but praiseworthy. On the contrary, sinister, as may be learnt by listening to the conversation of the two who ride at the head of the detachment, some paces in advance of the first file. They are its chief and his confidential second, the ruffian Roblez.
Uraga is speaking.
“Won’t our worthy friend Miranda be surprised when he sees us riding up to the door of his jacal, with these fifty fellows behind us? And the old doctor, Don Prospero? I can fancy his quizzical look through those great goggle spectacles he used to wear. I suppose they are still on his nose; but they’ll fly off as soon as he sees the pennons of our lances.”
“Ha! ha! ha! That will be a comical sight, colonel. But do you think Miranda will make any resistance?”
“Not likely. I only wish he would.”
“Why do you wish that?”
“Ayadante! you ask a stupid question. You ought to have a clearer comprehension in the brisk, bright atmosphere of this upland plain. It should make your brain more active.”
“Well, Coronel mio, you’re the first man I ever saw on the way to make a prisoner who desired to meet resistance. Carrambia! I can’t understand that.”
“I don’t desire to make any prisoner—at least, not Don Valerian Miranda. For the old doctor, I shan’t much care one way or the other. Living or dead, he can’t do any great harm. Miranda I’d rather take dead.”
“Ah! now I think I comprehend you.”
“If he show the slightest resistance—raise but a hand—I shall have him that way.”
“Why can’t you anyhow? Surely you can deal with him as you think proper—a refugee, a rebel?”
“There you again show your want of sense. You’ve got a thick skull, teniente; and would be a bad counsellor in any case requiring skilful management. This is one of the kind, and needs the most delicate manipulation.”
“How so?”
“For several reasons. Remember, Roblez, we’re not now acting with the Horned Lizard and his painted freebooters. Our fellows here have eyes in their heads, and tongues behind their teeth. They might wag the latter to our disadvantage if we allowed the former to see anything not exactly on the square. And if we were to shoot or cut down Miranda, he not resisting, that would be a scandal I might have difficulty in suppressing. It would spread surely, go over the country, get to the ears of the Central Government, and return to New Mexico with a weight that might overwhelm me. Besides, amigo mio, it would spoil my plan in several respects—notably, that with the nina and others too numerous to mention. Of course, we’ll kill him if we can, with fair pretext for doing so. But unless he show fight, we must take him alive, his guests along with him. I hope he will.”
“I think it likely you’ll have your hopes. The two Americanos are not men to submit tamely. Remember how they fought at the attack on their waggon-train, and how they got off afterwards. They’re a rough couple, and likely to give us anything but a smooth reception.”
“The rougher the better. That would be just as wanted, and we’ll settle everything at once. If otherwise, I have my plan fixed and complete.”
“What is it, colonel?”
“Not now. I’ll tell you in the proper time. First to make experiment of what’s immediately before us. If it succeed, we shall return this way with only women as our prisoners. If it fail, we’ll have men—four of them. A word in your ear to content you for the while. Not one of the four will ever enter the prison of Albuquerque.”
“You intend sending them to some other?”
“I do.”
“Where?”
“A gaol from which there can be no escape—need I name it?”
“You need not. There’s but one will answer your description—the grave.”
With this solemn conjecture the sotto voce conversation comes to a close, the ruffians riding at the head of their troop, far extending after, its files resembling the vertebrae of some grand glittering serpent on its way to seize a victim, the two in front fair types of its protruding poisonous fangs.
Between lovers, those who truly love, the parting is ever painful Frank Hamersley, taking leave of Adela Miranda, feels this as does Walt Wilder separating from Conchita.
There may be a difference in degree, in the intensity of their respective passions; perhaps also something in its character. Still the sentiment is the same. Both suffer at the thought of separation, feel it keenly. All the more as they reflect on
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