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- Author: Mayne Reid
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Whatever their emotions at the moment, they experience a sudden change, succeeded by a series. The first is surprise. While listening to the hoof strokes of the horses, all at once it appears to them that these are not coming down the valley, but up it from below. Is it a sonorous deception, caused by the sough of the cascade or reverberation from the rocks?
More intently they bend their ears, more carefully note the quarter whence proceeds the sound. Soon to answer the above question, each to himself, in the negative. Unquestionably it comes from below.
They have recovered from this, their first surprise, before a second seizes upon them. Mingling with the horses’ tramp they hear voices of men. So much they might expect; but not such voices. For amidst the speeches exchanged arise roars of laughter, not such as could come from the slender gullets of puny Mexicans, nor men of the Spanish race. Nor does it resemble the savage cachinnation of the Comanche Indians. Its rough aspirate, and rude, but hearty, tone could only proceed from Celtic or Anglo-Saxon throats.
While still wondering at the sound ringing in their ears, a sight comes before their eyes which but lessens their surprise by changing it into gladness. Out of the trees at the lower end of the lake a horseman is seen riding—after him a second. Both so unlike Uraga or any of his lancers, so different from what they would deem enemies, that the rifles of Hamersley and the hunter, instead of being aimed to deliver their fire, are dropped, butts to the ground.
Before clearing the skirt of timber, the two horsemen make halt—only for an instant, as if to reconnoitre. They appear surprised at seeing the hut, and not less at sight of a man lying along the ground in front of it. For they are near enough to perceive that he is tied hand and foot, and to note the spilled paraphernalia beside him.
As they are men not easily to be daunted, the tableau, though it somewhat mystifies, does not affright or drive them back. Instead, they advance without the slightest show of fear. And behind the two first showing themselves follow two others, and two more, till fifty have filed out of the timber, and ride across the clear ground, heading direct for the house.
Clad in rough coats of sombre hue, jeans, blanket, and buckskin, not a few of them ragged, with hats of all shapes and styles; carrying rifles in their hands, with revolving pistols and bowie-knives in their belts, there could be no mistaking them for the gaudily-bedizened troop whose horses at sunrise of that same day trampled over the same turf. To the spectators no two cohorts could present a coup d’oeil more dissimilar. Though about equal in numbers, the two bodies of men were unlike in everything else—arms, dresses, accoutrements; even their horses having but slight resemblance. The horsemen late upon the spot would seem dwarfs beside those now occupying it, who in comparison might be accounted giants.
Whatever the impression made upon the young prairie merchant by the sight of the newly-arrived troop, its effect upon the ex-Ranger might be compared to a shock of electricity, or the result that succeeds the inspiration of laughing-gas.
Long before the first files have reached the centre of the cleared space he has sprung to the door, pulled the bar back, slammed open the slabs, almost smashing them apart, and rushed out; when outside sending forth a shout that causes every rock to re-echo it to the remotest corner of the valley. It is a grand cry of gladness like a clap of thunder, with its lightning flash bursting forth from the cloud in which in has been pent up.
After it some words spoken more coherently give the key to its jubilant tone.
“Texas Rangers! Ye’ve jest come in time. Thank the Lord!”
Not necessary to say that the horsemen riding up to the ranche are Captain Haynes and his company of Rangers. They have come up the canon guided by Barbato.
Even more than they is the renegade surprised at seeing a house in that solitary spot. It was not there on his last passing through the valley in company with his red-skinned confederates, the Tenawas, which he did some twelve months before. Equally astonished is he to see Walt Wilder spring out from the door, though he hails the sight with a far different feeling. At the first glance he recognises the gigantic individual who so heroically defended the waggon-train, and the other behind—for Hamersley has also come forth—as the second man who retreated along with him. Surely they are the two who were entombed!
The unexpected appearance produces on the Mexican an effect almost comical, though not to him. On the contrary, he stands appalled, under the influence of a dark superstitious terror, his only movement being to repeatedly make the sign of the Cross, all the while muttering Ave Marias.
Under other circumstances his ludicrous behaviour would have elicited laughter from the Rangers—peals of it. But their eyes are not on him, all being turned to the two men who have issued out of the cabin and are coming on towards the spot where they have pulled up.
Several of them have already recognised their old comrade, and in hurried speech communicate the fact to the others.
“Walt Wilder!” are the words that leap from a dozen pairs of lips, while they, pronouncing the name with glances aghast, look as if a spectre had suddenly appeared to them.
An apparition, however, that is welcome; altogether different to the impression it has produced upon their guide.
Meanwhile, Wilder advances to meet them; as he comes on, keeping up a fire of exclamatory phrases, addressed to Hamersley, who is close behind.
“Air this chile awake, or only dreaming? Look thar, Frank! That’s Ned Haynes, my old captin’. An’ thar’s Nat Cully, an’ Jim Buckland. Durn it, thar’s the hul strenth o’ the kumpany.”
Walt is now close to their horses’ heads, and the rangers, assured it is himself and not his ghost, are still stricken with surprise. Some of them turn towards the Mexican for explanation. They suppose him to have lied in his story about their old comrade having been closed up in a cave, though with what motive they cannot guess. The man’s appearance does not make things any clearer. He still stands affrighted, trembling, and repeating his Paternosters. But now in changed tone, for his fear is no longer of the supernatural. Reason reasserting itself, he has given up the idea of disembodied spirits, convinced that the two figures coming forward are real flesh and blood; the same whose blood he assisted in spilling, and whose flesh he lately believed to be decaying in the obscurity of a cave. He stands appalled as ever; no more with unearthly awe, but the fear of an earthly retribution—a terrible one, which he is conscious of having provoked by the cruel crime in which he participated.
Whatever his fears and reflections they are not for the time intruded upon. The rangers, after giving a glance to him, turn to the two men who are now at their horses’ heads; and, springing from their saddles, cluster around them with questions upon their tongues and eager expectations in their eyes.
The captain and Cully are the two first who interrogate.
“Can we be sure it’s you, Walt?” is the interrogatory put by his old officer. “Is it yourself?”
“Darn me ef I know, cap. Jess now I ain’t sure o’ anythin’, arter what’s passed. Specially meetin’ you wi’ the rest o’ the boys. Say, cap, what’s fetched ye out hyar?”
“You.”
“Me!”
“Yes; we came to bury you.”
“Yis, hoss,” adds Cully, confirming the captain’s statement. “We’re on the way to gie burial to your bones, not expecting to find so much flesh on ’em. For that purpiss we’ve come express all the way from Peecawn Crik. An’ as I know’d you had a kindly feelin’ for yur ole shootin’-iron, I’ve brought that along to lay it in the grave aside o’ ye.”
While speaking, Cully slips out of his saddle and gives his old comrade a true prairie embrace, at the same time handing him his gun.
Neither the words nor the weapon makes things any clearer to Walt, but rather add to their complication. With increased astonishment he cries out,—
“Geehorum! Am I myself, or somebody else? Is’t a dream, or not? That’s my ole shootin’ stick, sartin. I left it over my hoss, arter cuttin’ the poor critter’s throat. Maybe you’ve got him too? I shedn’t now be surprised at anythin’. Come, Nat; don’t stan’ shilly-shallyin’, but tell me all about it. Whar did ye git the gun?”
“On Peecawn Crik. Thar we kim acrost a party o’ Tenawa Kimanch, unner a chief they call Horned Lizart, o’ the whom ye’ve heern. He han’t no name now, seein’ he’s rubbed out, wi’ the majority of his band. We did that. The skrimmage tuk place on the crik, whar we foun’ them camped. It didn’t last long; an’ arter ’twere eended, lookin’ about among thar bodies, we foun’ thar beauty o’ a chief wi’ this gun upon his parson, tight clutched in the death-grup. Soon’s seeing it I know’d ’twar yourn; an’ in coorse surspected ye’d had some mischance. Still, the gun kedn’t gie us any informashun o’ how you’d parted wi’ it. By good luck, ’mong the Injuns we’d captered a Mexikin rennygade—thet thing ye see out thar. He war joined in Horned Lizart’s lot, an’ he’d been wi’ ’em some time. So we put a loose larzette roun’ his thrapple, an’ on the promise o’ its bein’ tightened, he tolt us the hul story; how they hed attackted an’ skuttled a carryvan, an’ all ’bout entoomin’ you an’ a kimrade—this young fellur, I take it—who war wi’ ye. Our bizness out hyar war to look up yur bones an’ gie ’em a more Christyun kind o’ beril. We were goin’ for that cave, the rennygade guidin’ us. He said he ked take us a near cut up the gully through which we’ve just come—arter ascendin’ one o’ the heads o’ the Loosyvana Rod. Near cut! Doggone it, he’s been righter than I reck’n he thort o’. Stead o’ your bones thar’s yur body, wi’ as much beef on’t as ever. Now I’ve told our story, we want yourn, the which appears to be a darned deal more o’ a unexplainable mistry than ourn. So open yur head, ole hoss, and let’s have it.”
Brief and graphic as is Cully’s narrative, it takes Walt still less time to put his former associates in possession of what has happened to himself and Hamersley, whom he introduces to them as the companion of his perilous adventures—the second of the two believed to have been buried alive!
The arrival of the Rangers at that particular time is certainly a contingency of the strangest kind. Ten minutes later, and they would have found the jacal deserted; for Hamersley and Wilder had made up their minds to set off, taking the traitor along with them. The Texans would have discovered signs to tell of the place having been recently occupied by a large body of men, and from the tracks of shod horses these skilled trailers would have known the riders were not Indians. Still, they would have made delay around the ranche and encamped in the valley for that night. This had been their intention, their horses being jaded and themselves wearied making their way up the canon. Though but ten miles in a direct line, it was well nigh twenty by the winding of the stream—a good, even difficult, day’s journey.
On going out above they would have seen the trail of Uraga’s party, and known it to be made by Mexican soldiers. But, though these were their sworn foemen, they might
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