The Lone Ranche by Mayne Reid (rooftoppers .txt) 📖

An Indian bivouac. It is upon a creek called “Pecan,” a confluent of the Little Witchita river, which heads about a hundred miles from the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado.

There are no tents in the encampment; only here and there a blanket or buffalo robe extended horizontally upon upright poles—branches cut from the surrounding trees. The umbrageous canopy of the pecans protects the encamped warriors from the fervid rays of a noonday sun, striking vertically down.

That they are on the maraud is evidenced by the absence of tents. A peaceful party, in its ordinary nomadic passage across the prairies, would have lodges along with it—grand conical structures of painted buffalo skins—with squaws to set them up, and dogs or ponies to transport them when struck for another move.

In this encampment on the Pecan are neither squaws, dogs, nor ponies; only men, naked to the breech clout, their bodies brightly painted from hip to head, chequered like a hatchment, or the jacket of a stage harlequin, with its fantastic devices, some ludicrous, others grotesque; still others of aspect terrible—showing a death’s-head and cross-bones.

A prairie man on seeing them would at once say, “Indians on the war trail!”

It does not need prairie experience to tell they are returning upon it. If there are no ponies or dogs beside them, there are other animals in abundance—horses, mules, and horned cattle. Horses and mules of American breed, and cattle whose ancestral stock has come from Tennessee or Kentucky along with the early colonists of Texas.

And though there are no squaws or papooses in the encampment, there are women and children that are white. A group comprising both can be seen near its centre. It does not need the dishevelled hair and torn dresses to show they are captives; nor yet the half-dozen savages, spear-armed, keeping guard over them. Their drooping heads, woeful and wan countenances, are too sure signs of their melancholy situation.

What are these captives, and who their captors? Two questions easily answered. In a general way, the picture explains itself. The captives are the wives and children, with sisters and grown-up daughters among them, of Texan colonists. They are from a settlement too near the frontier to secure itself against Indian attack. The captors are a party of Comanches, with whom the reader has already made acquaintance; for they are no other than the sub-tribe of Tenawas, of whom the Horned Lizard is leader.

The time is two weeks subsequent to the attack on Hamersley’s train; and, judging by the spectacle now presented, we may conclude that the Tenawa chief has not spent the interval in idleness. Nearly three hundred miles lie between the place where the caravan was destroyed and the site of the plundered settlement, whose spoils are now seen in the possession of the savages.

Such quick work requires explanation. It is at variance with the customs and inclinations of the prairie freebooter, who, having acquired a booty, rarely strikes for another till the proceeds of the first be squandered. He resembles the anaconda, which, having gorged itself, lies torpid till the craving of a fresh appetite stirs it to renewed activity.

Thus would it have been with the Tenawa chief and his band, but for a circumstance of a somewhat unusual kind. As is known, the attack on the prairie traders was not so much an affair of the Horned Lizard as his confederate, the military commandant of Albuquerque. The summons had come to him unexpected, and after he had planned his descent on the Texas settlement. Sanguinary as the first affair was, it had been short, leaving him time to carry out his original design, almost equally tragical in its execution. Here and there, a spear standing up, with a tuft of light-coloured hair, blood-clotted upon its blade, is proof of this. Quite as successful, too. The large drove of horses and horned cattle, to say nothing of that crowd of despairing captives, proves the proceeds of the later maraud worth as much, or perhaps more, than what had been taken from the traders’ waggons.

Horned Lizard is jubilant; so, also, every warrior of his band. In loss their late foray has cost them comparatively little—only one or two of their number, killed by the settlers while defending themselves. It makes up for the severe chastisement sustained in their onslaught upon the caravan. And, since the number of their tribe is reduced, there are now the fewer to share with, so that the calicoes of Lowell, the gaudy prints of Manchester, with stripes, shroudings, and scarlet cloth to bedeck their bodies, hand mirrors in which to admire themselves, horses to ride upon, mules to carry their tents, and cattle to eat—with white women to be their concubines, and white children their attendants—all these fine things in full possession have put the savages in high spirits—almost maddened them with delight.

A new era has dawned upon the tribe of which Horned Lizard is head. Hitherto it has been a somewhat starving community, its range lying amid sterile tracts, on the upper tributaries of the Red River and Canadian. Now, before it is a plentiful future—a time of feasting and revelry, such as rarely occurs to a robber band, whether amidst the forest-clad mountains of Italy, or on the treeless steppes of America.

The Tenawa chief is both joyous and triumphant. So, too, his second in command, whose skin, with the paint cleansed from it, would show nearly white. For he is a Mexican by birth; when a boy made prisoner by the Comanches, and long since matriculated into the mysteries of the redman’s life—its cunning, as its cruelties.

Now a man, he is one of the chiefs of the tribe, in authority only less than the Horned Lizard himself, but equal to the latter in all the cruel instincts that distinguish the savage. “El Barbato” he is called, from having a beard, though this he keeps clean shaven, the better to assimilate himself to his beardless companions; while, with painted face and hair black as their own, he looks as Indian as any of them. But he has not forgotten his native tongue, and this makes him useful to those who have adopted him, especially when raiding in the Republic of Mexico. It was through him the Tenawa chief was first brought to communicate with the military robber, Uraga.

The Indian bivouac is down in the creek bottom in a little valley, on both sides flanked by precipitous cliffs. Above and below these approach each other, so near as to leave only a narrow path along the edge of the stream.

The savages are resting after a long, rapid march, encumbered with their spoils and captives. Some have lain down to sleep, their nude bodies stretched along the sward, resembling bronze statues tumbled from their pedestals. Others squat around fires, roasting collops from cattle they have killed, or eating them half raw.

A few stand or saunter by the side of the captives, upon these casting covetous glances, as if they only waited for the opportunity to appropriate them. The women are all young; some of them scarce grown girls, and some very beautiful.

A heart-harrowing sight it would be for their fathers, brothers, husbands and sweethearts, could they but witness it. These may not be far off.

Some suspicion of this has carried the Horned Lizard and El Barbato up to the crest of the cliff. They have been summoned thither by a sign, which the traveller on the prairies of Texas or the table plains of Mexico never sees without stopping to scrutinise and shape conjecture about its cause. Before entering the canon through which runs Pecan Creek, the Tenawa chief had observed a flock of turkey-buzzards circling about in the air. Not the one accompanying him and his marauders on their march, as is the wont of these predatory birds. But another quite separate gang, seen at a distance behind, apparently above the path along which he and his freebooters had lately passed.

As the Comanche well knows, a sign too significant to be treated lightly or with negligence. And so, too, his second in command. Therefore have they climbed the cliff to obtain a better view of the birds—those flying afar—and, if possible, draw a correct conclusion as to the cause of their being there.

On reaching the summit they again see them, though so far off as to be barely visible—black specks against the blue canopy of the sky. Still near enough to show a large number circling about over some object that appears stationary.

This last observation seems satisfactory to the Tenawa chief, who, turning to his fellow-freebooter, shouts out,—

“Nothing to fear. Don’t you remember, Barbato, one of our horses gave out there, and was left? It’s over him the zopilotés are swooping. He’s not dead yet; that’s why they don’t go down.”

“It may be,” rejoins the renegade. “Still I don’t like the look of it. Over a dead horse they’d hardly soar so high. True, they keep in one place. If it were Texans pursuing us they’d be moving onward—coming nearer and nearer. They’re not. It must be, as you say, the horse. I don’t think the people of the settlement we struck would be strong enough to come after us—at least not so soon. They may in time, after they’ve got up a gathering of their Rangers. That isn’t likely to be till we’ve got safe beyond their reach. They won’t gain much by a march to the Witchita mountains. Por cierte! the zopilotés out yonder are over something; but, as they’re not moving on, most likely it’s the horse.”

Again the Horned Lizard gives a grunt, expressing satisfaction; after which the two scramble back down the cliff, to seek that repose which fighting and forced