The next day brought news of an obstacle to the march of the wagon train
through Santa Anna and Rio Arriba.
It was reported that the audacious and savage Apache chieftain, Manga
Colorada, or Red Sleeve, under pretence of wanting to make a treaty with
the Americans, had approached within sixty miles of Santa Fé to the west,
and camped there, on the route to the San Juan country, not making
treaties at all, but simply making hot beefsteaks out of Mexican cattle
and cold carcasses out of Mexican rancheros.
"We shall have to get those fellows off that trail and put them across the
Bernalillo route," said Coronado to Garcia.
"The pigs! the dogs! the wicked beasts! the devils!" barked the old man,
dancing about the room in a rage. After a while he dropped breathless into
a chair and looked eagerly at his nephew for help.
"It will cost at least another thousand," observed the younger man.
"You have had two thousand," shuddered Garcia. "You were to do the whole
accursed job with that."
"I did not count on Manga Colorada. Besides, I have given a thousand to
our little cousin. I must keep a thousand to meet the chances that may
come. There are men to be bribed."
Garcia groaned, hesitated, decided, went to some hoard which he had put
aside for great needs, counted out a hundred American eagles, toyed with
them, wept over them, and brought them to Coronado.
"Will that do?" he asked. "It must do. There is no more."
"I will try with that," said the nephew. "Now let me have a few good men
and your best horses. I want to see them all before I trust myself with
them."
Coronado felt himself in a position to dictate, and it was curious to see
how quick he put on magisterial airs; he was one of those who enjoy
authority, though little and brief.
"Accursed beast!" thought Garcia, who did not dare just now to break out
with his "pig, dog," etc. "He wants me to pay everything. The thousand
ought to be enough for men and horses and all. Why not poison the girl at
once, and save all this money? If he had the spirit of a man! O Madre de
Dios! Madre de Dios! What extremities! what extremities!"
But Garcia was like a good many of us; his thoughts were worse than his
deeds and words. While he was cogitating thus savagely, he was saying
aloud, "My son, my dear Carlos, come and choose for yourself."
Turning into the court of the house, they strolled through a medley of
wagons, mules, horses, merchandise, muleteers, teamsters, idlers, white
men and Indians. Coronado soon picked out a couple of rancheros whom he
knew as capital riders, fair marksmen, faithful and intelligent. Next his
eye fell upon a man in Mexican clothing, almost as dark and dirty too as
the ordinary Mexican, but whose height, size, insolence of carriage, and
ferocity of expression marked him as of another and more pugnacious, more
imperial race.
"You are an American," said Coronado, in his civil manner, for he had two
manners as opposite as the poles.
"I be," replied the stranger, staring at Coronado as a Lombard or Frankish
warrior might have stared at an effeminate and diminutive Roman.
"May I ask what your name is?"
"Some folks call me Texas Smith."
Coronado shifted uneasily on his feet, as a man might shift in presence of
a tiger, who, as he feared, was insufficiently chained. He was face to
face with a fellow who was as much the terror of the table-land, from the
borders of Texas to California, as if he had been an Apache chief.
This noted desperado, although not more than twenty-six or seven years
old, had the horrible fame of a score of murders. His appearance mated
well with his frightful history and reputation. His intensely black eyes,
blacker even than the eyes of Coronado, had a stare of absolutely
indescribable ferocity. It was more ferocious than the merely brutal glare
of a tiger; it was an intentional malignity, super-beastly and sub-human.
They were eyes which no other man ever looked into and afterward forgot.
His sunburnt, sallow, haggard, ghastly face, stained early and for life
with the corpse-like coloring of malarious fevers, was a fit setting for
such optics. Although it was nearly oval in contour, and although the
features were or had been fairly regular, yet it was so marked by hard,
and one might almost say fleshless muscles, and so brutalized by long
indulgence in savage passions, that it struck you as frightfully ugly. A
large dull-red scar on the right jaw and another across the left cheek
added the final touches to this countenance of a cougar.
"He is my man," whispered Garcia to Coronado. "I have hired him for the
great adventure. Sixty piastres a month. Why not take him with you
to-day?"
Coronado gave another glance at the gladiator and meditated. Should he
trust this beast of a Texan to guard him against those other beasts, the
Apaches? Well, he could die but once; this whole affair was detestably
risky; he must not lose time in shuddering over the first steps.
"Mr. Smith," he said, "very glad to know that you are with us. Can you
start in an hour for the camp of Manga Colorada? Sixty miles there. We
must be back by to-morrow night. It would be best not to say where we are
going."
Texas Smith nodded, turned abruptly on the huge heels of his Mexican
boots, stalked to where his horse was fastened, and began to saddle him.
"My dear uncle, why didn't you hire the devil?" whispered Coronado as he
stared after the cutthroat.
"Get yourself ready, my nephew," was Garcia's reply. "I will see to the
men and horses."
In an hour the expedition was off at full gallop. Coronado had laid aside
his American dandy raiment, and was in the full costume of a Mexican of
the provinces--broad-brimmed hat of white straw, blue broadcloth jacket
adorned with numerous small silver buttons, velvet vest of similar
splendor, blue trousers slashed from the knee downwards and gay with
buttons, high, loose embroidered boots of crimson leather, long steel
spurs jingling and shining. The change became him; he seemed a larger and
handsomer man for it; he looked the caballero and almost the hidalgo.
Three hours took the party thirty miles to a hacienda of Garcia's, where
they changed horses, leaving their first mounting for the return. After
half an hour for dinner, they pushed on again, always at a gallop, the
hoofs clattering over the hard, yellow, sunbaked earth, or dashing
recklessly along smooth sheets of rock, or through fields of loose,
slippery stones. Rare halts to breathe the animals; then the steady,
tearing gallop again; no walking or other leisurely gait. Coronado led the
way and hastened the pace. There was no tiring him; his thin, sinewy,
sun-hardened frame could bear enormous fatigue; moreover, the saddle was
so familiar to him that he almost reposed in it. If he had needed physical
support, he would have found it in his mental energy. He was capable of
that executive furor, that intense passion of exertion, which the man of
Latin race can exhibit when he has once fairly set himself to an
enterprise. He was of the breed which in nobler days had produced
Gonsalvo, Cortes, Pizarro, and Darien.
These riders had set out at ten o'clock in the morning; at five in the
afternoon they drew bridle in sight of the Apache encampment. They were on
the brow of a stony hill: a pile of bare, gray, glaring, treeless,
herbless layers of rock; a pyramid truncated near its base, but still of
majestic altitude; one of the pyramids of nature in that region; in short,
a butte. Below them lay a valley of six or eight miles in length by one or
two in breadth, through the centre of which a rivulet had drawn a paradise
of verdure. In the middle of the valley, at the head of a bend in the
rivulet, was a camp of human brutes. It was a bivouac rather than a camp.
The large tents of bison hide used by the northern Indians are unknown to
the Apaches; they have not the bison, and they have less need of shelter
in winter. What Coronado saw at this distance was, a few huts of branches,
a strolling of many horses, and some scattered riders.
Texas Smith gave him a glance of inquiry which said, "Shall we go
ahead--or fire?"
Coronado spurred his horse down the rough, disjointed, slippery declivity,
and the others followed. They were soon perceived; the Apache swarm was
instantly in a buzz; horses were saddled and mounted, or mounted without
saddling; there was a consultation, and then a wild dash toward the
travellers. As the two parties neared each other at a gallop, Coronado
rode to the front of his squad, waving his sombrero. An Indian who wore
the dress of a Mexican caballero, jacket, loose trousers, hat, and boots,
spurred in like manner to the front, gestured to his followers to halt,
brought his horse to a walk, and slowly approached the white man. Coronado
made a sign to show that his pistols were in his holsters; and the Apache
responded by dropping his lance and slinging his bow over his shoulder.
The two met midway between the two squads of staring, silent horsemen.
"Is it Manga Colorada?" asked the Mexican, in Spanish.
"Manga Colorada," replied the Apache, his long, dark, haggard, savage face
lighting up for a moment with a smile of gratified vanity.
"I come in peace, then," said Coronado. "I want your help; I will pay for
it."
In our account of this interview we shall translate the broken Spanish of
the Indian into ordinary English.
"Manga Colorada will help," he said, "if the pay is good."
Even during this short dialogue the Apaches had with difficulty restrained
their curiosity; and their little wiry horses were now caracoling,
rearing, and plunging in close proximity to the two speakers.
"We will talk of this by ourselves," said Coronado. "Let us go to your
camp."
The conjoint movement of the leaders toward the Indian bivouac was a
signal for their followers to mingle and exchange greetings. The
adventurers were enveloped and very nearly ridden down by over two hundred
prancing, screaming horsemen, shouting to their visitors in their own
guttural tongue or in broken Spanish, and enforcing their wild speech with
vehement gestures. It was a pandemonium which horribly frightened the
Mexican rancheros, and made Coronado's dark cheek turn to an ashy yellow.
The civilized imagination can hardly conceive such a tableau of savagery
as that presented by these Arabs of the great American desert. Arabs! The
similitude is a calumny on the descendants of Ishmael; the fiercest
Bedouin are refined and mild compared with the Apaches. Even the brutal
and criminal classes of civilization, the pugilists, roughs, burglars, and
pickpockets of our large cities, the men whose daily life is rebellion
against conscience, commandment, and justice, offer a gentler and nobler
type of character and expression than these "children of nature." There
was hardly a face among that gang of wild riders which did not outdo the
face of Texas Smith in degraded ferocity. Almost every man and boy was
obviously a liar, a thief, and a murderer. The air of beastly cruelty was
made even more hateful by an air of beastly cunning. Taking color,
brutality, grotesqueness, and filth together, it seemed as if here were a
mob of those malignant and ill-favored devils whom Dante has described and
the art of his age has painted and sculptured.
It is possible, by the way, that this appearance of moral ugliness was due
in part to the physical ugliness of features, which were nearly without
exception coarse, irregular, exaggerated, grotesque, and in some cases
more like hideous masks than like faces.
Ferocity of expression was further enhanced by poverty and squalor. The
mass of this fierce cavalry was wretchedly clothed and disgustingly dirty.
Even the showy Mexican costume of Manga Colorada was ripped, frayed,
stained with grease and perspiration, and not free from sombre spots which
looked like blood. Every one wore the breech-cloth, in some cases nicely
fitted and sewed, in others nothing but a shapeless piece of deerskin tied
on anyhow. There were a few, either minor chiefs, or leading braves, or
professional dandies (for this class exists among the Indians), who
sported something like a full Apache costume, consisting of a
helmet-shaped cap with a plume of feathers, a blanket or _serape_ flying
loose from the shoulders, a shirt and breech-cloth, and a pair of long
boots, made large and loose in the Mexican style and showy with dyeing and
embroidery. These boots, very necessary to men who must ride through
thorns and bushes, were either drawn up so as to cover the thighs or
turned over from the knee downward, like the leg-covering of Rupert's
cavaliers. Many heads were bare, or merely shielded by wreaths of grasses
and leaves, the greenery contrasting fantastically with the unkempt hair
and fierce faces, but producing at a distance an effect which was not
without sylvan grace.
The only weapons were iron-tipped lances eight or nine feet long, thick
and strong bows of three or three and a half feet, and quivers of arrows
slung across the thigh or over the shoulder. The Apaches make little use
of firearms, being too lazy or too stupid to keep them in order, and
finding it difficult to get ammunition. But so long as they have to fight
only the unwarlike Mexicans, they are none the worse for this lack. The
Mexicans fly at the first yell; the Apaches ride after them and lance them
in the back; clumsy _escopetos_ drop loaded from the hands of dying
cowards. Such are the battles of New Mexico. It is only when these
red-skinned Tartars meet Americans or such high-spirited Indians as the
Opates that they have to recoil before gunpowder. [Footnote: Since those
times the Apaches have learned to use firearms.]
The fact that Coronado dared ride into this camp of thieving assassins
shows what risks he could force himself to run when he thought it
necessary. He was not physically a very brave man; he had no pugnacity and
no adventurous love of danger for its own sake; but when he was resolved
on an enterprise, he could go through with it.
There was a rest of several hours. The rancheros fed the horses on corn
which they had brought in small sacks. Texas Smith kept watch, suffered no
Apache to touch him, had his pistols always cocked, and stood ready to
sell life at the highest price. Coronado walked deliberately to a retired
spot with Manga Colorada, Delgadito, and two other chiefs, and made known
his propositions. What he desired was that the Apaches should quit their
present post immediately, perform a forced march of a hundred and forty
miles or so to the southwest, place themselves across the overland trail
through Bernalillo, and do something to alarm people. No great harm; he
did not want men murdered nor houses burned; they might eat a few cattle,
if they were hungry: there were plenty of cattle, and Apaches must live.
And if they should yell at a train or so and stampede the loose mules, he
had no objection. But no slaughtering; he wanted them to be merciful: just
make a pretence of harrying in Bernalillo; nothing more.
The chiefs turned their ill-favored countenances on each other, and talked
for a while in their own language. Then, looking at Coronado, they
grunted, nodded, and sat in silence, waiting for his terms.
"Send that boy away," said the Mexican, pointing to a youth of twelve or
fourteen, better dressed than most Apache urchins, who had joined the
little circle.
"It is my son," replied Manga Colorada. "He is learning to be a chief."
The boy stood upright, facing the group with dignity, a handsomer youth
than is often seen among his people. Coronado, who had something of the
artist in him, was so interested in noting the lad's regular features and
tragic firmness of expression, that for a moment he forgot his projects.
Manga Colorada, mistaking the cause of his silence, encouraged him to
proceed.
"My son does not speak Spanish," he said. "He will not understand."
"You know what money is?" inquired the Mexican.
"Yes, we know," grunted the chief.
"You can buy clothes and arms with it in the villages, and aguardiente."
Another grunt of assent and satisfaction.
"Three hundred piastres," said Coronado.
The chiefs consulted in their own tongue, and then replied, "The way is
long."
"How much?"
Manga Colorada held up five fingers.
"Five hundred?"
A unanimous grunt.
"It is all I have," said Coronado.
The chiefs made no reply.
Coronado rose, walked to his horse, took two small packages out of his
saddle-bags and slipped them slily into his boots, and then carried the
bags to where the chiefs sat in council. There he held them up and rolled
out five _rouleaux_, each containing a hundred Mexican dollars. The
Indians tore open the envelopes, stared at the broad pieces, fingered
them, jingled them together, and uttered grunts of amazement and joy.
Probably they had never before seen so much money, at least not in their
own possession. Coronado was hardly less content; for while he had
received a thousand dollars to bring about this understanding, he had
risked but seven hundred with him, and of these he had saved two hundred.
Four hours later the camp had vanished, and the Indians were on their way
toward the southwest, the moonlight showing their irregular column of
march, and glinting faintly from the heads of their lances.
At nine or ten in the evening, when every Apache had disappeared, and the
clatter of ponies had gone far away into the quiet night, Coronado lay
down to rest. He would have started homeward, but the country was a
complete desert, the trail led here and there over vast sheets of
trackless rock, and he feared that he might lose his way. Texas Smith and
one of the rancheros had ridden after the Apaches to see whether they kept
the direction which had been agreed upon. One ranchero was slumbering
already, and the third crouched as sentinel.
Coronado could not sleep at once. He thought over his enterprise,
cross-examined his chances of success, studied the invisible courses of
the future. Leave Clara on the plains, to be butchered by Indians, or to
die of starvation? He hardly considered the idea; it was horrible and
repulsive; better marry her. If necessary, force her into a marriage; he
could bring it about somehow; she would be much in his power. Well, he had
got rid of Thurstane; that was a great obstacle removed. Probably, that
fellow being out of sight, he, Coronado, could soon eclipse him in the
girl's estimation. There would be no need of violence; all would go easily
and end in prosperity. Garcia would be furious at the marriage, but Garcia
was a fool to expect any other result.
However, here he was, just at the beginning of things, and by no means
safe from danger. He had two hundred dollars in his boot-legs. Had his
rancheros suspected it? Would they murder him for the money? He hoped not;
he just faintly hoped not; for he was becoming very sleepy; he was asleep.
He was awakened by a noise, or perhaps it was a touch, he scarcely knew
what. He struggled as fiercely and vainly as one who fights against a
nightmare. A dark form was over him, a hard knee was on his breast, hard
knuckles were at his throat, an arm was raised to strike, a weapon was
gleaming.
On the threshold of his enterprise, after he had taken its first hazardous
step with safety and success, Coronado found himself at the point of
death.