ACROSS THE BORDER
Yes, there he was, just ahead of me on the platform of the Union Depot
in Kansas City, my partner, James Terry Gardiner, who had wired me to
meet him there a few weeks after I had closed the sale of our Deadman
Ranch, in November, 1882. While his back was turned to me, there was
no mistaking the lean but sturdy figure and alert step.
From the vigorous slap of cordiality I gave him on his shoulder, he
winced and shrank, crying: "Oh, please don't, old man. Been sleeping
in Mexican northers for a fortnight, and it's got my shoulder muscles
tied in rheumatic knots. Don Nemecio Garcia started me off from
Lampadasos with the assurance that my ambulance was generously
provisioned and provided with his own camp-bed, but when night of the
first day's journey came, I found the food limited to _tortillas,
chorisos_, and coffee, and the bed a sheepskin--no more. Stupid of an
old campaigner not to investigate his equipment before starting, was it
not?"
"Worse than that, I should say--sheer madness," I answered. "How did
it happen?"
"Well, you see, Don Nemecio is the _Alcalde_, of his city, and he
showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my
comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in extraordinary luxury.
"But that's over now, thank goodness. And now to business.
"In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the
Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To
the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great
plain the natives call _El Desierto_, known on the map as _Bolson de
Mapini_, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and
Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is
known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry
details.
"Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been
examining--but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is,
are you game for a new ranch deal?"
When I nodded an affirmative, he continued:
"Well, immediately north of the town lies a tract of 250,000 acres in
the fork of the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Alamo, which is the greatest
ranch bargain I ever saw. Heavily grassed, abundantly watered by its
two boundary streams, the valleys thickly timbered with cottonwood, the
plains dotted with mesquite and live oak, in a perfect climate, it is
an ideal breeding range. And it can be bought, for what, do you think?
Fifty thousand Mexican dollars [29,000 gold] for a quarter of a million
acres! Go bag it, and together we'll stock it.
"Of course you'll run some rather heavy risks--else the place would not
be going so cheap--but no more than you have been taking the last five
years in the Sioux country. A little bunch of Lipans are constantly on
the warpath, Mescalero raiding parties drop in occasionally, and the
bandits seem to need a good many _prestamos_; but all that you have
been up against. Better take a pretty strong party, for the
authorities thought it necessary to give me a cavalry escort from
Lampasos to Musquiz and back. And, by the way, pick up a boy named
George E. Thornton, Socorro, N. M., on your way south. While only a
youngster, he is one of the best all-round frontiersmen I ever saw, and
speaks Spanish tolerably. Had him with me in the Gallup country."
Details were settled at breakfast, and there Gardiner resumed his
journey eastward, while I took the next train for Denver. A fortnight
later found me in Socorro, plodding through its sandy streets to an
adobe house in the suburbs where Thornton lodged.
As I neared the door a big black dog sprang fiercely out at me to the
full length of his chain, and directly thereafter the door framed an
extraordinary figure. Then barely twenty-one, and downy still of lip,
Thornton's gray eyes were as cold and calculating, the lines of his
face as severe and even hard, his movements as deliberate and
expressive of perfect self-mastery as those of any veteran of half a
dozen wars. Six feet two in height, straight as a white pine, ideally
coupled for great strength without sacrifice of activity, he looked
altogether one of the most capable and safe men one could wish for in a
scrap; and so, later, he well proved himself.
He greeted me in carefully correct English; and while quiet, reserved,
and cold of speech as of manner, the tones in which he assured me any
friend of Mr. Gardiner was welcome, conveyed faint traces of cordiality
that roused some hope that he might prove a more agreeable campmate
than his dour mien promised. We were not long coming to terms; indeed
the moment I outlined the trip contemplated, and its possible hazards,
it became plain he was keen to come on any terms. To my surprise, he
proposed bringing his dog, Curly. I objected that so heavy a dog would
be likely to play out on our forced marches, and, anyway, would be no
mortal use to us. His reply was characteristic:
"Curly goes if I go, sir; but any time you can tell me you find him a
nuisance, I'll shoot him myself. I've had him four years, had him out
all through Victoria's raid of the Gila, and he's a safer night guard
than any ten men you can string around camp: nothing can approach he
won't nail or tell you of. With Curly, a night-camp surprise is
impossible."
Whatever cross Curly represented was a mystery. Two-thirds the height
and weight of a mastiff, he had the broad narrow pointed muzzle of a
bear, and a shaggy reddish-black coat that further heightened his
resemblance to a cinnamon, with great gray eyes precisely the color of
his master's, and as fierce. Whichever character was formed on that of
the other I never learned--the man's on the dog's, or the dog's on the
man's. Certain it is that not even the luckiest chance could have
brought together man and beast so nearly identical in all their traits.
Both were honest, almost to a fault. Neither possessed any vice I ever
could discover. Each was wholly happy only when in battle, the more
desperate the encounter the happier they. Neither ever actually forced
a quarrel, or failed to get in the way of one when there was the least
color of an attempt to fasten one on them. And yet both were always
considerate of any weaker than themselves, and quick to go to their
defence. Many a time have I seen old Curly seize and throttle a big
dog he caught rending a little one--as I have seen George leap to the
aid of the defenceless. Each weighed carefully his kind, and found
most wanting in something requisite to the winning of his confidence;
and such as they did admit to familiar intimacy, man or beast, were the
salt of their kind.
On the train, south-bound for San Antonio, I learned something of
Thornton's history. The son of a judge of Peoria, Ill., he had until
fifteen the advantage of the schools of his city. Then, possessed with
a longing for a life of adventure in the West, he ran away from home,
worked in various places at various tasks, until, at sixteen (in 1887)
he had made his way to Socorro. Arrived there, he attached himself to
a small party of prospectors going out into the Black Range, into a
region then wild and hostile as Boone found Kentucky. And there for
the last five years he had dwelt, ranging through the Datils and the
Mogallons, prospecting whenever the frequently raiding Apaches left him
and his mates time for work. Indeed, it was Thornton who discovered
and first opened the Gallup coal field, and he held it until Victoria
ran him out. During this time he was in eight desperate fights--the
only man to escape from one of them; but out of them he came unscathed,
and trained to a finish in every trick of Apache warfare.
At San Antonio we were met by Sam Cress, who for the last four years
had been foreman of my Deadman Ranch. Cress was born on Powell River,
Virginia, but had come to Texas as a mere lad and joined a cow outfit.
He had really grown up in the Cross Timbers of the Palo Pinto, where,
in those years, any who survived were past masters not only of the
weird ways and long hours and outlaw broncos, but also of the cunning
strategy of the Kiowas and Comanches who in that time were raiding
ranches and settlements every "light of the moon." Cress was then
twenty-five--just my age--and one of the rare type of men who actually
hate and dread a fight, but where necessary, go into it with a jest and
come out of it with a laugh, as jolly a camp-mate and as steady a
stayer as I ever knew. Charlie Crawford, a half-breed Mexican, taken
on for his fluency in Spanish, completed our outfit. Two mornings
later the Mexican National Express dropped us at the Lampasos depot
about daylight, from which we made our way over a mile of dusty road
winding through mesquite thickets to the Hotel Diligencia, on the main
plaza.
A norther was blowing that chilled us to the marrow, and of course,
according to usual Mexican custom, not a room in the hotel was heated.
The best the little Italian proprietor could do for us was a pan of
charcoal that warmed nothing beyond our finger tips. As soon as the
sun rose, we squatted along the east wall of the hotel and there
shivered until Providence or his own necessity brought past us a peon
driving a burro loaded with mesquite roots. We bought this wood and
dumped it in the central patio of the hotel and there lighted a
campfire that made us tolerably comfortable until breakfast.
Ignorant then of Mexico and its customs, I had fancied that when a
proper hour arrived for a call on the _Alcalde_, Don Nemecio Garcia, I
should have a chance to warm myself properly and had charitably asked
my three mates to accompany me on the visit. But when at ten o'clock
Don Nemecio received us in his office, we found him tramping up and
down the room, wrapped in the warm folds of an ample cloak; his neck
and face swathed in mufflers to the eyes, arctics on his feet, and no
stove or fireplace in the room. As leading merchant of the town, he
soon supplied us with provisions and various articles, and with four
saddle and three pack horses for our journey.
The next day, while my men were busy arranging our camp outfit, I took
train for Monterey to get a letter from General Treviño, commanding the
Department of Coahuila, to the _comandante_ of the garrison at Musquiz.
On this short forenoon's journey I had my first taste of the disordered
state of the country.
About ten o'clock our train stopped at the depot of Villaldama, where I
observed six _guardias aduaneras_ (customs guards) removing the packs
from a dozen mules, and transferring them to the baggage car. Just as
this work was nearing completion, a band of fourteen _contradistas_
dashed up out of the surrounding chaparral, dropped off their horses,
and opened at thirty yards a deadly fire on the guards. With others in
the smoker, next behind the baggage car, I had a fine view of the
battle, but a part of the time we were directly in the line of fire,
for four of our car windows were smashed by bullets, and many bullets
were buried in the car body. Such encounters between guards and
smugglers in Mexico were always a fight to the death, for under the law
the guards received one-half the value of their captures, while of
course the smugglers stood to win or lose all.
As soon as fire opened, the guards jumped for the best cover available,
and put up the best fight they could. But the odds were hopelessly
against them. In five minutes it was all over. Three of the guards
lay dead, one was crippled, and the other two were in flight. To be
sure two of the smugglers were bowled over, dead, and two badly
wounded, but the remaining ten were not long in repossessing themselves
of their goods; and when our train pulled out, the baggage car riddled
with bullets till it looked like a sieve, the ten were hurriedly
repacking their mules for flight west to the Sierras. Later I learned
that early that morning the guards had caught the _conducta_ with only
two men in charge, who had shrewdly skipped and scattered to gather the
party that arrived just in time to save their plunder.
Mexican import duties in those days were so enormous that very many of
the best people then living along the border engaged regularly in
smuggling, as the most profitable enterprise offering. American hams,
I remember, were then sixty cents a pound, and everything else in
proportion. Even in the city of Monterey, stores that displayed on
their open shelves little but native products, had warehouses where you
could buy (at three times their value in the States) almost any
American or European goods you wanted.
Well recommended to General Treviño from kinsmen of his wife, who was a
daughter of General Ord of our army, he gave me a letter to Captain
Abran de la Garza, commanding at Musquiz, directing him to furnish me
any cavalry escort or supplies I might ask for, and the following day
we started north from Lampasos on our one-hundred-mile march to Musquiz.
The first two days of the journey, for fully sixty miles, we travelled
across the lands of Don Patricio Milmo, who thirty years earlier had
arrived in Monterey, a bare-handed Irish lad, as Patrick Miles.
Through thrift, cunning trading, and a diplomatic marriage into one of
the most powerful families of the city, he had oreid his name and
gilded the prospects of his progeny, for he had become the richest
merchant of Monterey and the largest landholder of the state.
On this march north Curly's value was well demonstrated. The first two
nights I divided our little party into four watches, so that one man
should always be awake, and on the _qui vive_. But it took us no more
than these two nights to discover that Curly was a better guard than
all of us put together. Throughout the noon and early evening camp he
slept, but as soon as we were in our blankets he was on the alert, and
nothing could move near the camp that he did not tell us of it in low
growls, delivered at the ear of one or another of the sleepers.
However, nothing happened on the journey up, save at the camp just
north of Progreso, where some of the villagers tried slip up on our
horses toward midnight, and Curly's growls kept them off. Their trails
about our camp were plain in the morning. The evening of the third day
we reached Musquiz, one of the oldest towns of the northern border,
nestled at the foot of a tall sierra amid wide fields of sugar cane,
irrigated by the clear, sweet waters of the Sabinas.
At eight o'clock the next morning I called on Captain Abran de la
Garza, the _Comandante_, to present my letter from General Treviño.
Like the monarch of all he surveyed, he received me in his bed-chamber.
As soon as I entered, it became apparent the Captain was a sportsman as
well as a soldier.
The room was perhaps thirty by twenty feet in size. Midway of the
north wall stood a rude writing table on which were a few official
papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated
chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall
scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from
a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment,
"Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of
the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering
a tall, gaunt cadaverous frame was plainly outlined. From the headpost
of the cot dangled a sword and two pistols. _And to every bed, table,
stand, and chair was hobbled a gamecock_--a rarely high-bred lot by
their looks, that joined in saluting my entrance with a volley of
questioning crows! It was, I fancy, altogether the most startling
reception visitor ever had.
In a momentary pause in the crowing, there issued from a throat riven
and deep-seamed from frequent floodings with fiery torrents of mescal,
and out of lungs perpetually surcharged with cigarette smoke, a hoarse
croaking, but friendly toned, "_Buenos dias, señor. Sirvase tomar un
asiento. Aqui tiene vd su casa!_" and peering more closely into the
dusky corner, I beheld a great face, lean to emaciation, dominated by a
magnificent Roman nose with two great dark eyes sunk so deep on either
side of its base they must forever remain strangers to one another.
The nose supported a splendid breadth of high forehead, which was
crowned with a shock of coal-black hair, while the jaws were bearded to
the eyes. It was the face of an ascetic Crusader, sensualized in a
measure by years of isolated frontier service and its attendant vices
and degeneration, but still a face full of the noble melancholy of a
Quixote.
Propping himself on a great bony knot of an elbow, the Captain made
polite inquiry respecting my journey, and then asked in what could he
serve me. But when I had explained that I wanted to meet the owner of
the Santa Rosa Ranch, and contemplated going out to see it, it was only
to learn, to my great disappointment, that it had been sold the week
previous to two Scotchmen. Fancy! in a country visited by foreigners,
as a rule, not so often as once a year.
Nor was I consoled when, noting my obvious chagrin, the Captain sought
to lighten the blow by saying: "But, my dear sir, this is indeed
evidence God is guarding you. That ranch has been a legacy of
contention and feud for generations. Besides, what good could you get
of it? Its nearest line to the town is six miles distant, and no life
or property would be safe there a fortnight. Far the best cattle ranch
in this section, a fourth of it irrigable, and as fine sugar-cane land
as one could find, do you fancy it would be tenantless as when God
first made it if safe for occupancy? Why, my dear sir, within the last
six months Juan Gaian's Lipans have killed no less than seventy of our
townsmen, some in their fields, some in the very suburbs of the town,
while Mescaleros are raiding a little lower down the river, and Nicanor
Rascon is apt to sweep down any day with his _bandidos_ and plunder
strong boxes and stores. It is with shame I admit it, for I, Don
Abran, am responsible for the peace and safety of this district. But,
_mil demonios_! what can I do with one troop of cavalry against bandits
ruthless as savages, and savages cunning as bandits?
"Oh! but if I only had horses! Those devils take remounts when they
like from the _remoudas_ of ranchers, but I, _carajo_! I am always
limited to my troop allotment.
"Burn a hundred candles to the Virgin, _amigo mio_, as a thank offering
for your deliverance, and wait and see what happens to the Scotchmen;
and while waiting, it will be my great pleasure to show you some of the
grandest cock-fighting you ever saw. Look at them! Beauties, are they
not? Purest blood in all Mexico! Kept me poor four years getting them
together! But now! Ah! now, it will not be long till they win me
ranches and _remoudas_!
"Ah! me. Time was not so very long ago when Abran de la Garza was
called the most dashing _jefe de tropa_ in the service, when señoritas
fell to him as alamo leaves shower down to autumn winds; when pride
consumed him, and ambition for a Division was burning in his brain.
But now this demon of a frontier has scorched and driven him till
naught remains to him but the chance of an occasional fruitless
skirmish, his thirst for mescal, his greed for _aguilas_, and his cocks
to win them! But, señor, bet no money against them, for it would
grieve me to win from a stranger introduced by my General."
Then, with a grave nod of friendly warning, he turned an affectionate
gaze upon his pets. Meantime, as if conscious of his pride in them,
the cocks were boastfully crowing paeans to their own victories, past
and to come, in shrill and ill-timed but uninterrupted concert, bronze
wings flapping, crimson crests truculently tossing insolent challenge
for all comers.
With the one plan of my trip completely smashed, I felt too much upset
to continue the interview, and excused myself. But after a forenoon
spent alone beside the broad and swift current the Sabinas was pouring
past me, gazing at the dim blue mountain-crests in the west that I had
learned marked its source, the irresistible call to penetrate the
unknown impressed and then possessed me so completely that, at our
midday breakfast, I announced to the Captain I had decided to follow
the river to its head, and pass thence into the desert for a
thirty-days' circle to the north and west.
"But, _valga nu Dios_, man," he objected, "I have no force I can spare
for sufficient time to give you adequate escort for such a journey. It
would be madness to undertake it with less than fifty men. I am
responsible to my General for your safety, and cannot sanction it.
Beyond the Alamo Cañon the only waters are in isolated springs in the
plains and in natural rain-fall tanks along the mountain crests, known
to none except the Indians and Tomas Alvarez, an old half-breed
Kickapoo long attached to my command as scout, who ranged that country
years ago with his tribe, and who guides my troop on such short scouts
as we have been able to make beyond the Alamo, and--"
"Pardon," I ventured to interrupt, "that will do nicely; give me
Alvarez and one good trustworthy soldier, and we'll make the circle
without trouble."
"Six of you! Why, you'd never get twenty miles out of town in that
direction. I can't permit it."
"Pardon again, Don Abran," I broke in, "but we have for years been
accustomed to move in small parties through country that held a hundred
times more hostiles than you have here, and you can trust us to take
care of ourselves. Go we shall in any event, without your men if you
withhold them."
"Well, well, _hijo mio_," he responded, "if you are bound to go, we
will see. Only I shall write my General that I have sought to restrain
you."
To us the prevailing local fears seemed absurd. Admittedly there were
only sixteen of the Lipans then left, men, women, and children, their
chief, Juan Galan, the son by a Lipan squaw, of the father of Garza
Galan, then the leading merchant of the town, and later a distinguished
Governor of his State. Originally a powerful tribe occupying both
banks of the lower Rio Grando to the south of the Comanches, in their
wars with Texans and Mexicans the Lipans had dwindled until only this
handful remained. Three years earlier the entire band had been
captured after a desperate fight, and removed by the Mexican
authorities to a small reservation five hundred miles southwest of
Musquiz. But at the end of two years, as soon as the guard over them
relaxed, indomitable as Dull Knife and his Cheyennes in their desperate
fight (in 1879) to regain their northern highland home, Juan Galan and
his pathetically small following jumped their reservation and dodged
and fought their way back to the Musquiz Mountains; and there for the
last ten months, constantly harassed and harassing, they had been
fighting for the right to die among the hills they loved. To the
natives they were blood-thirsty wolves, beasts to be exterminated; to
an impartial onlooker they were a heroic band courting death in a
splendid last fight for fatherland. Their bold deeds would fill a
book. Even in this town of fifteen hundred people guarded by a troop
of cavalry, no one ventured out at night except from the most pressing
necessity; and of the seventy killed by them since their return, nearly
a third were macheted in the streets of Musquiz during Juan Galan's
night raids on the town.
The most effective work against them was done by a band of about a
hundred Seminole-negro half-breeds, to whom the Government had made a
grant of four square leagues twenty-five miles west of Musquiz, on the
Nacimiento. Come originally out of the Indian territory in the United
States, where the Seminoles had cross-bred with their negro slaves,
this same band a few years earlier had been most efficient scouts for
our own troops at Fort dark, and other border garrisons, and it was
this record that led the Mexican Government to seek and lodge them on
the Nacimiento, as a buffer against the Lipans.
That night arrangements for our trip were concluded: the Captain
consented to furnish me old Tomas Alvarez and a young soldier named
Manuel, but only on condition that he himself should escort us, with
fifty men of his troop, one day's march up the river, which would carry
us beyond the recent range of the Lipans. So early the next morning we
marched out westward, passing the last house a half-mile outside the
centre of the town, along a dim, little-travelled trail that followed
the river to the Seminole village on the Nacimiento. The day's journey
was without incident, other than our amusement at what seemed to us the
Captain's overzealous caution in keeping scouts out ahead and to right
and left of the column, and in posting sentries about our night camp.
The following morning, a Sunday, after much good advice, the kindly
Captain bade us a reluctant farewell, and led his troops down-river
toward home, while our little party of six headed westward up-river.
Near noon we sighted the Seminole village, and shortly entered it, a
close cluster of low jacals built of poles and mud. Odd it looked, as
we entered, a deserted village, no living thing in sight but a few
dogs. Thus our surprise was all the greater when, nearing the farther
edge of the village, our ears were greeted with the familiar strains of
"Jesus, Lover of My Soul," issuing from a large _jacal_ which we soon
learned was the Seminole church. Fancy it! the last thing one could
have dreamed of! An honest old Methodist hymn sung in English by
several score devout worshippers in the heart of Mexico, on the very
dead line between savagery and civilization, and at that, sung by a
people all savage on one side of their ancestry and semi-savage on the
other.
Before the singing of the hymn was finished, startled by the barking of
their dogs, out of the low doorway sprang half a dozen men, strapping
big fellows,--one, the chief, bent half double with age,--all heavily
armed. The moment they saw we were Americans we were most cordially
received, and even urged to stop a few days with them, and give them
news of the Texas border. But for this we had no time; and after a
short visit--for which the congregation adjourned service--we filled
our canteens, let our horses drink their fill at the great Nacimiento
spring that burst forth a veritable young river from beneath a low
bluff beside the town, and struck out westward for Alamo Cañon. Our
afternoon march gave us little concern, for our route lay across
rolling, lightly timbered uplands that offered little opportunity for
ambush. That night we made a "dry camp" on the divide, preferring to
approach the Alamo in daylight.
Having struck camp before dawn the next morning, by noon we saw ahead
of us a great gorge dividing the mountain we were approaching--great in
its height, but of a scant fifty yards in breadth, perpendicular of
sides, a narrow line of brush and timber creeping down along its
bottom, but stopping just short of the open plains. Scouting was
useless. If there were any Indians about, we certainly had been seen,
and they lay in ambush for us in a place of their own choosing. We
must have water, and to get it must enter the cañon. So straight into
the timber that filled the mouth of the gorge we rode at a run, riding
a few paces apart to avoid the possible potting of our little bunch,
and a hundred yards within the outer fringe of timber we reached the
water our animals so badly needed.
And right there, all about the "sink" of the Alamo, where the last
drops of the stream sank into the thirsty sands, the bottom was covered
thick with fresh moccasin tracks, and in a little opening in the bush
near to the sink smouldered the embers of that morning's camp-fire of a
band of Lipans. Apparently we were in for it and seriously debated a
retreat. Our position could not be worse. Tomas told us that the
trail of the Lipans led straight up the valley, and for eight miles the
cañon was never more than three hundred yards wide, and often no more
than fifty, with almost perpendicular walls rising on either side two
hundred or more feet in height, so nearly perpendicular that we would
for the entire distance be in range from the bordering cliff crests,
while any enemy there ambushed would be so safely covered they could
follow our route and pick us off at their leisure. To be sure, the
brush along the stream afforded some shelter, but no real protection.
However, out now nearly fifty miles from Musquiz and well into the
country we had come to see, we pushed ahead. Cress, Thornton, and
Manuel prowling afoot through the brush a hundred yards in advance,
Crawford, Tomas and myself bringing up the rear with the horses. And
so we advanced for nearly half a mile when the Lipan trail turned east,
toward Musquiz, up a crevice in the cliff a goat would have no easy
time ascending. Thus we were led to argue that the Lipans had left
their camp before discovering our approach, and by this time were
probably miles away to the east.
Mounting, therefore, we made the beat pace our pack animals could stand
up through the eight miles of the narrows, riding well apart from each
other, the only safeguard we could take, all craning our necks for view
of the cliff crests ahead of us. But no living thing showed save a few
deer and coyotes, and two mountain lions that, alarmed by our
clattering pace, slipped past us back down the gorge. When at last we
reached the end of the narrows and the cañon broadened to a width of
several hundred yards, all but fifty or seventy-five yards of the belt
of timber lining the stream along the south wall being comparatively
level grassy bunch land, nearly devoid of cover, we congratulated
ourselves that we had not been scared into a retreat.
Keen to put as much distance as we could between us and the Lipans, we
travelled on up the cañon at a sharp trot, keeping well to its middle,
until about 5 p.m., when we reached a point where it widened into a
broad bay, nearly seven hundred yards from crest to crest, with a dense
thicket of mesquite trees near its centre that made fine shelter and an
excellent point of defence for a night camp. The stream hugged the
east wall of the cañon, where it had carved out a tortuous bed perhaps
one hundred and fifty yards wide, and so deep below the bench we
occupied that only the tops of tall cottonwoods were visible from the
thicket.
While the rest of us were busy unsaddling and unpacking, Thornton slung
all our canteens over his shoulder, and started for the stream. But no
sooner had he disappeared below the edge of the bench, a scant two
hundred yards from our camp, before a rapid rifle fire opened which,
while we knew it must proceed from his direction, echoed back from one
cliff wall to the other until it appeared like an attack on our
position from all sides, while the echoes multiplied to the volume of
cannon fire at the sound of each shot. Indeed, never have I heard such
thunderous, crashing, ear-splitting gun-detonations except on one other
occasion, when aboard the British battle ship _Invincible_ and in her
six-inch gun battery while a salute was being fired.
Frightened by the fire, one of our pack horses stampeded down the
cañon. Sending Manuel in pursuit, and leaving Tomas at the camp,
Crawford, Cress, and I ran for the break of benchland, to reach and aid
Thornton. Nearing it, all three dropped flat, and crawled to its edge,
just in time to see George make a neat snap shot at a Lipan midway of a
flying leap over a log, and drop him dead. Old George was standing
quietly on the lower slope of the bench just above the timber, while
the shots from eight or ten Lipan rifles were raining all about him!
The Lipans lay in the timber only one hundred to one hundred and fifty
yards away, and it was a miracle they did not get him. Instantly Cress
and Crawford slipped back out of range, made a detour that brought them
to the bench edge within fifty yards of the Lipans' position, and
opened on them a cross fire, while I lay above George and shelled away
at the smoke of their discharge, for not one showed a head after George
potted the jumper. Five minutes after Cress and Crawford opened on
them, the Lipan fire ceased entirely. For an hour we scouted along the
bank trying to locate them, but apparently they had withdrawn.
Then, while the others covered us, George and I slipped through the
bush to investigate his kill, and found a great gaunt old warrior at
least sixty years old, wrinkled of face as if he might be a hundred,
but sound of teeth and coal-black of hair as a youth, his face and body
scarred in nearly a score of places from bullet and machete
wounds,--the sign manual writ indelibly on his war-worn frame by many a
doughty enemy. We carried him to the bench crest, Crawford fetched a
spade and we dug a grave and buried him with his weapons laid upon his
breast, as his own people would have buried him, and then we fired
across his grave the final salute he obviously so well had earned.
More than he would have done for us? Yes, I dare say. But then our
points of view were different. Throughout his long life a terror to
all whites he doubtless had been; upon us he was stealthily slipping,
ruthless as a tiger; but then he and his tribesmen and lands had so
long been prey to the greed of white invaders of his domain that it is
hard to blame him for fighting, according to the traditions of his
race, to the death.
Lying in camp within the thicket that night, naturally without a fire,
Thornton made it plain that his voluntary start for water was
providentially timed. He told us that, while descending the slope to
the timber, he saw the head of a little column of Indians, stealing up
the valley through the brush, saw them before they saw him; but just as
he saw them, he slipped on some pebbles and nearly fell, making a noise
that attracted their attention. Instantly they slid into cover, and
opened fire on him.
Asked by me why he himself had not sought cover, George answered, "No
show to get one except by keeping out in the open on the high ground,
and I _wanted one_!"
It was plain the Lipans had sighted us when too late to lay an ambush
for us in the narrows, had made a short cut through the hills and
dropped down into the stream bed with the plan to attack us at our
night camp. Evidently they had not expected us to camp so early, and
were jogging easily along through the brush, for once off their guard.
But for George's chance start for the stream, nothing but faithful old
Curly's perpetual watchfulness could have saved us from a bad mix-up
that night. Already it had been so well proved that we could safely
trust Curly to guard us against surprise, we slept soundly through the
night, without disturbance of any sort.
The next forenoon's march to the head waters of the Alamo was an
anxious one, and was made with the utmost caution, for we were sure the
Lipans would be lying in wait for us; but no sign of them did we again
see for three weeks.
Leaving the Alamo, we made a great circle through the desert, swinging
first north toward the Sierra Mojada, then south, and ultimately
eastward toward Monclova. The trip proved to be one of great hardship
and danger, but only from scarcity of water; for while at isolated
springs we found recent camps of one sort of desert prowler or another,
we neither met nor saw any. Finally, late one night of the fourth
week, we reached a little spring called Zacate, out in the open plain
only about thirty miles south of Musquiz. But between us and only five
miles south of the town stretched a tall range through which Tomas knew
of only two passes practicable for horsemen; one, to the west, via the
Alamo, the route we had come, would involve a journey of eighty miles,
while by the other, an old Indian and smugglers' trail crossing the
summit directly south of Musquiz, we could make the town in thirty-two
miles. The latter route Tomas strongly opposed as too dangerous.
Twelve miles from where we lay it entered the range, and for fifteen
miles followed terrible rough cañons wherein, every step of the way, we
should be right in the heart of the recent range of the Lipans, and
where every turn offered chance of a perfect ambush. But with our
horses exhausted, worn to more shadows from long marches through
country affording scant feed, with not one left that could much more
than raise a trot, we finally decided to chance the shorter route.
That night we supped on cold antelope meat and biscuits, to avoid
building a fire, and rolled up in our blankets, but not to rest long
undisturbed.
Shortly after midnight Curly roused us with low growls. Though the
moon was full, the night was so clouded one could hardly see the length
of a gun-barrel. Curly's warnings continuing, George and Tomas rolled
out of their blankets and crawled out among and about the horses, and
lay near them an hour or more, till Curly's growls finally ceased.
Then we called them in and all lay down, and finished the night in
peace. Early the next morning, however, a short circle discovered the
trail of three Indians who had crept near to the horses and
reconnoitred our position. Their back trail led due northeast, the
direction we had to follow; and when we had ridden out half a mile from
the Ojo Zacate, we found where their trail joined that of the main
band. The "sign" showed they had been south toward Monclova on a
successful horse-stealing raid, for it was plain they had passed us in
the night with a bunch of at least twenty horses, heading toward a
point of the range only five or six miles west of where we should be
compelled to enter it.
We were in about as bad a hole as could be conceived. Plainly the
Indians knew of our presence in the vicinity. It was equally certain
their scouts would be watching our every move throughout the day, and
there was not one chance in a thousand of our crossing the range
without attack from some ambush of such vantage as to leave small
ground for hope that we could survive it. All but Cress and Thornton
urged me to turn back, although we were all nearly afoot, and had no
food left except two or three pounds of flour, and a little meat.
After very short deliberation I decided to go ahead. The Lipans knew
precisely where we were, and if they wanted us they could (in the event
of a retreat) easily run us down and surround us and hold us off food
and water until we were starved out sufficiently to charge their
position and be shot down. Better far put up a bold bluff and take
chances of cutting through them.
So on we plodded slowly toward the hills, all of us walking most of the
way to save our horses all we could. At 2 p.m. we cut the old trail
Tomas was heading us toward, and shortly thereafter entered the mouth
of a frightfully rough cañon, its bottom and slopes thickly covered
with nopal, sotol, and mesquite, and, later, higher up, with pines,
junipers, oaks, and spruces, with here and there groups of great
boulders that would easily conceal a regiment. Two or three miles in,
the gorge deepened until tall mountain slopes were rising steeply on
either side of us, and narrowed until we had to pick our way over the
rough boulders of the dry stream-bed.
Our advance was slow, for it had to be made with the utmost caution.
Thornton, Cress, and Tomas scouted afoot, one in the bottom of the
gorge, and one half-way up each of its side walls, while Manuel and
Crawford followed two hundred yards behind them, also afoot, driving
the saddle and pack horses; and I trailed two hundred yards behind the
horses, watching for any sign of an attempted surprise from the rear.
Thus scattered, we gave them no chance to bowl over several of us at
the first fire from any ambush they might have arranged.
From the windings of the cañon we were out of sight of each other much
of the time; personally, I recall that afternoon as one of the most
lonely and uncomfortable I ever passed. I slipped watchfully along,
stopping often to listen, eyes sweeping the hillsides and the gulch
below me, searching every tree and boulder, with no sound but the
soughing of the wind through the tree-tops, and an occasional soft
clatter of shingle beneath the slipping hoofs of my unshod horse.
But throughout the afternoon the only sign of man or beast that I saw
was a lot of sotol plants recently uprooted, and their roots eaten by
bears.
Shortly after dark we reached the only permanent water in the cañon, a
clear, cold, sweet spring, bursting out from beneath a rock, only to
sink immediately into the arid sands of the dry stream-bed.
Immediately below the spring and midway of the gorge bottom stood an
island-like uplift, twenty yards in length by ten in width, covered
with brush, leaving on either side a narrow, rocky channel, and from
either side of these two channels the cañon walls, heavily timbered,
rose very steeply. Just above these narrows, the gorge widened into
seven or eight acres of level, park-like, well-grassed benchland, and
into this little park we turned our horses loose for the night, for
they were too worn to stray.
Having made eight or ten miles up the cañon during the afternoon march,
we were now within a mile of the summit, and no more than seven miles
from Musquiz. Indeed we should have tried to reach the town that night
had not Tomas told us the next three miles of the trail were so steep
and rough he could not undertake to fetch us over it unless we
abandoned our animals, saddles, and packs.
We turned into our blankets early, after a cold supper, for we did not
care to chance a fire. Cress and I slept together in the channel to
the west of the island; Manuel and Tomas to the east of it quite out of
our sight; Thornton and Crawford ten paces north, in sight of both
ourselves and the Mexicans. A little moonlight filtered down through
the trees, but not enough to enable us to see any distance.
Scarcely were we asleep, it seemed to me, before Curly awakened Cress
and myself, growling immediately at our heads. Rising in our blankets,
guns in hand, and listening intently, we could hear on the hillside
above us what sounded like the movements of a bear. Whatever it might
be, it was approaching. Not a word had been spoken, and Curly's growls
were so low we had no idea any of the others had been roused. So we
sat on the alert for perhaps fifteen minutes, when the sounds above us
began receding, and we lay down again. But just as we were passing
back into dreamland, Curly again startled us with a sharper, fiercer
note that meant trouble at hand.
As we rose to a sitting posture, in the dim moonlight we could plainly
see a dark crouching figure twenty yards below, which advanced a step
or two, stopped as if to listen, and again advanced and stopped. What
it was we could not make out. At first I thought it must be a bear,
but presently I felt sure I caught the glimmer of a gun barrel, and
nudged Cress with my elbow. We were in the act of raising our rifles
to down it, whatever it might be, when Thornton sang out, "Hold on,
boys; that's old Tomas!" And, indeed, so it proved. All had been
awakened at the first alarm, and Thornton had seen Tomas roll from his
blankets into the bottom of the east channel, and crawl away on the
scout for the cause of Curly's uneasiness that so nearly had cost him
his life. He had been so intent for movement on the hillsides he had
not noticed us watching him.
The next morning we were moving by dawn, Tomas, Cress, and myself in
the lead, the others trailing along one hundred or two hundred yards
behind us. For half a mile the gorge widened, as most mountain gorges
do near their heads, into beautiful grassy slopes rising steeply before
us, thickly timbered with post oak. Then, issuing from the timber, we
saw it was a blind cañon we were in, a _cul de sac_, with no pass
through the crest of the range.
Before us rose a very nearly perpendicular wall for probably six
hundred feet, up which the old trail zigzagged, climbing from ledge to
ledge, so steep that when, later, we were fetching our horses up it,
one of the pack horses lost its balance and fell fifty feet, crippling
it so badly we had to kill it. The cliff face, about three hundred
yards in width, and flanked to right and left by the walls of the
cañon, was entirely bare of trees, but thickly strewn with boulders.
From an enemy on the top of the two flanking walls, climbers up the
cliff face could get no shelter whatever. Thus it was important that
our advance should reach the summit as quickly as possible. So, up the
three of us scrambled, about thirty yards apart, disregarding the trail.
When we were nearly half-way up, and just as we had paused to catch our
breath, several rifle shots rang out in quick succession, which, from
some peculiar echo of the cañon, sounded as if they had been fired
beneath us. Upon turning, we could see nothing of our three mates or
the horses--they were hidden from our view by the timber. Fancying
they were attacked from the rear, I was about to call a return to their
relief, when I saw Thornton run to the near edge of the timber, drop on
one knee behind a tree, and open fire on the cliff-crest directly above
our heads.
Whirling and looking up, I was just in time to see eight or ten men bob
up on the crest and take quick snap shots at the three of us in the
lead, and then duck to cover. We were so nearly straight under them,
however, that they overshot us, although they were barely one hundred
yards from us. Dropping behind boulders we peppered back at the
flashes of their rifles, which was all we three in the lead thereafter
saw of them; for after the first volley most of them lay close and
directed their fire at the men in the edge of the timber, but
occasionally a rifle was tipped over the edge of a boulder and fired at
random in our direction. And all the time they were yelling at us,
"_Que vienen, puercos! Que vienen!_" (Come on, pigs! Come on!)
I was puzzled. Both Cress and I thought they were Mexicans, but Tomas
insisted they were Lipans. And sure enough it was the Lipans all spoke
Spanish and dressed like Mexican peons. Whoever they might be, we
could not stay where we were. By the firing and voices there were at
least a dozen of them, and obviously it was only a matter of moments
before they would occupy the two flanking walls and have us openly
exposed.
It was a bad dilemma. Retreat was impossible, down a gorge commanded
at short range from both sides. If we took shelter in it, they could
starve us out; if we attempted to descend it, they could easily pick us
off; if any of us escaped back to the plain it would only be to incur
greater exposure if they pursued, or probably to perish of hunger
before we could reach any settlements. Thus the situation called for
no reflection--it was charge and dislodge them, or die.
Yelling to the boys below to close up on us, we three settled down to
the maintenance of the hottest fire we could deliver at the rifle
flashes above us, to cover their advance. Luckily there were many
boulders scattered along the grassy treeless slope they had to advance
across to reach the foot of the cliff. Thus by darting from one
boulder to another they had tolerable cover and were able to reach us
with no worse casualties than a comparatively slight flesh wound
through Manuel's side and the shooting away of Thornton's belt buckle.
Then we started the charge, led really by Thornton, who, active as a
goat, would have raced straight into the downpour of lead if I had not
continually restrained him. Three would scramble up fifteen or twenty
feet, and then drop behind boulders, while the other three kept up a
heavy fire on the summit; and then the rear rank would advance to a
line with their position, while they shelled the enemy. All the time a
rain of bullets was splashing on the rocks all about us, but luckily
for us they did not expose themselves enough to deliver an accurate
fire.
After we had made five or six such rushes, and were about half-way up,
we could hear the voices of what sounded like the larger part of the
band receding. Supposing they were swinging for the two side walls to
flank us we doubled our speed and presently dropped beneath the shelter
of a wall of rock about four feet high, from behind which our enemy had
been firing.
Two or three minutes earlier their fire had ceased, and what to make of
it we did not know. We found that an exposure of our hats on our
gun-muzzles drew no fire; yet, driven by sheer desperation, and
expecting that every man of us would get shot full of holes, we
simultaneously sprang over the rock, and dropped flat on the
summit--amid utter silence, about the most happily surprised lot of men
in all Mexico! The enemy had decamped. But where? And with what
purpose? And why had they not flanked us!
Careful scouting soon showed they had retired in a body down the trail
we must follow to reach Musquiz, as for nearly three miles the descent
was as rough and difficult as the ascent had been.
Leaving Cress, who was ill, and Manuel, who was weak from loss of
blood, to hold the summit, the rest of us descended to fetch up our
horses, and a hard hour's job we had of it, for we packed on our backs
the load of the dead pack horse and those of his mates the last half of
the ascent, rather than risk losing another animal.
Upon our return we found Manuel gloating over three trophies--a hat
shot through the side by a ball that had evidently "creased" the
wearer's head, an old Spanish spur and a gun scabbard--which he seemed
to find salve for the burning wound in his side.
Beneath us to the north lay Musquiz, in plain sight, a scant six miles
distance. In the clear dry air of the hills, it looked so near that a
good running jump might land one in the plaza, and yet none of us
expected we all should enter it again. The odds were against it, for
below us lay three miles of hill trail any step down which might land
us in a worse ambush than the last and we never imagined the enemy
would fail to engage us again. But the descent had to be made, and
down it we started, Cress and Manuel bringing up the rear with the
horses, the rest of us scouting ahead, dodging from rock to tree,
advancing slowly, expecting a volley, but receiving none.
For a mile the band followed the trail, and we followed their fresh
tracks; then they left the trail and turned west through the timber.
However, we never abated our watchfulness until well out of the hills
and near the outskirts of the town, which we reached shortly after
noon. There, breakfasting generously if not comfortably with Don Abran
and his gamecocks, I got news that made me less regretful of my failure
to obtain the Santa Rosa Ranch: one of its two Scotch purchasers had
been killed two days before my return, in attempting to repel a raid on
his camp by Nicanor Rascon!
With Cress too ill to travel, the next morning I left Crawford to care
for him, bade farewell to good old Don Abran, and started for Lampasos
with Thornton and Curly.
We nooned at Santa Cruz, a big sheep ranch midway between Musquiz and
Progreso, leaving there about two o'clock. An hour later, we heard
behind us a clatter of racing hoofs, and presently were overtaken by a
hatless Mexican, riding bareback at top speed, who told us that shortly
after our departure the Lipans had raided Santa Cruz, and that of its
twelve inhabitants, men, women and children, he was the only survivor.
Thus were the Lipans still levying heavy toll for their wrongs!
Toward evening we entered Progreso a village reputed among the natives
to be a nest of thieves and assassins. While Thornton was away buying
meat and I was rearranging our pack, six of the ugliest-looking
Mexicans I ever saw strolled across the plaza, evidently to size up our
outfit. Apparently it was to their liking, for when, twenty minutes
later, we were riding into the ford of the Rio Salado just south of the
town, the six, all heavily armed, loped past us, and when they emerged
from the ford openly and impudently divided, three taking to the brush
on one side of the road, and three on the other, riding forward and
flanking the trail we had to follow. From then till dark their hats
were almost constantly visible, two or three hundred yards ahead of us.
Our horses being so jaded, we were sure they were not the prize sought,
and it remained certain they were after our saddles and arms.
Riding quietly on behind them until it was too dark to see our move or
follow the trail, we slipped off to the westward of the road, and
camped in a deep depression in the plain, where we thought we could
venture a small fire to cook our supper. But the fire proved a
blunder. Before the water was fairly boiling in the coffee pot, Curly
signalled trouble, and we jumped out of the fire-light and dropped flat
in the bush just as the six fired a volley into the camp, one of the
shots hitting the fire and filling our frying-pan with cinders and
ashes. For an hour or more they sneaked about the camp, constantly
firing into it, while we lay close without returning a single shot,
content they would not dare try to rush us while uncertain of our
position. And so it proved, for at length Curly's warnings ceased, and
we knew they had withdrawn.
Waiting till midnight, we saddled and packed and made a wide detour to
the west, striking the road again perhaps four miles nearer Lampasos,
which we reached safely late in the next afternoon; our grand old
camp-guard, Curly, in better condition than either of us.
Curiously, seven months later, in August, 1883, while on another
ranch-hunting trip in Mexico, this time along the eastern slope of the
Sierra Madre in northern Chihuahua at least five hundred miles distant
from Musquiz, I learned the solution of our puzzle as to whether our
last fight in Coahuila was with Lipans or Mexicans. The manager of the
Corralitos Ranch, which I was then engaged in examining, was Adolph
Munzenberger. The previous Winter he had lived in Musquiz, as
Superintendent of the Cedral Coal Mines. While there, however, I had
not met him or his family.
One evening at dinner, Mrs. Munzenberger asked me, "Have you ever,
perchance, been in Coahuila?"
"Yes," I answered, "I spent several weeks in the State last Winter."
"And how did you like it?" she asked.
"Well, I must say I found rather too many thrills there for comfort," I
replied. And when I mentioned affair on the sierra south of Musquiz,
she broke in with:
"Indeed! And you are the crazy gringo Don Abran tried to stop from
going into the desert! We heard of it; in fact, it was the talk of the
town, and no one expected you would ever get back. And by the way, it
was a contraband _conducta_ owned by friends of ours who attacked you
back of the town! Droll, is it not?"
"Perhaps--now," I doubtfully answered.
"Yes," Mrs. Munzenberger continued, "they were on their way to
Monclova. The night before the attack, the wife of the owner (one of
the leading merchants of the town) took me to their camp in the brush
near town to see their goods; and a lovely lot of American things they
had."
"But why did they attack us?" I queried.
"Well, you see, it was this way," she explained. "The smugglers broke
camp long before dawn, and started south over the same trail by which
you were approaching; they wanted to get over the summit before the
Lipans or guards were likely to be stirring, for it was a point at
which _conductas_ were often attacked. But shortly after sunrise, and
just as they advance guard reached the summit, they discovered your
party ascending, and, mistaking your uniformed soldiers for guardias,
the leader lined a dozen of his men along the ridge, and opened on you,
while his _mayordomo_ rushed the pack mules of the _conducta_ back down
the trail they had come. Early in the fight they discovered you wore a
party of _gringos_, and not guards, and decamped as soon as their
_conducta_ had time to reach a point where they could leave the rail.
"Had their goods not been at stake, they would have wiped you out, if
they could, for the leader's brother got shot in the head of which he
died the same day. Indeed, when the two men you left behind started to
leave the country, he had planned to follow and kill them, but luckily
Don Abran heard of it, and restrained him."
And this explained the mystery why they had not flanked us!
Brave to downright rashness, George Thornton lasted only about two
years longer.
The Winter of 1883-84 he spent with me on my Pecos Ranch. Early in the
Spring he came to me and said:
"Old man, if you want to do me a favor, get me an appointment as Deputy
United States Marshal in the Indian Territory. I'm going to quit you,
anyway. My guns are getting rusty. It's too slow for me here."
"Why, George," I replied, "if you are bound to die why don't you blow
your brains out yourself?"--for at the time few new marshals in the
Indian Territory survived the first year of their appointment.
"Never mind about me," he answered; "I'll take care of George. Anyway,
I'd rather get leaded there than rust here."
So I got him the appointment.
A few months later, when the Territory was thrown open to settlement,
Thornton homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of land which early
became a town site, and now is the business centre of the city of
Guthrie. Had he lived and retained possession of his homestead, it
would have made him a millionaire. But greedy speculators soon started
a contest of his title.
While this contest was at its height, one day Thornton learned some
Indians living a few miles from the town were selling whiskey, contrary
to Federal law. As he was mounting for the raid, having intended to go
alone, a man he scarcely knew offered to accompany him, and Thornton
finally deputized him.
The story of his end was told by the Indians themselves, who later were
captured by a large force of marshals, and tried for his murder. They
said that just at dusk they saw two horsemen approaching. Presently
they recognized Marshal Thornton and at once opened fire on him, eight
of them, from behind the little grove of cottonwoods in which they were
camped. Immediately Thornton shifted his bridle to his teeth, and
charged them straight, firing with his two ".41" Colts. The moment he
charged, his companion dodged into a clump of timber, where they saw
him dismount. On came Thornton straight into their fire shooting with
deadly accuracy, killing two of their number, and wounding another
before he fell.
Presently, at the flash of a rifle from the brush where his companion
had dismounted, Thornton pitched from his horse dead. They had done
their best to kill him, they frankly swore, but it was his own deputy's
shot that laid him low.
All the collateral circumstantial evidence so fully corroborated this
that the Indians were acquitted. The shot that killed him hit him in
the back of the head and was of a calibre different from that of the
Indians' guns; and his deputy never returned to Guthrie.
That it was a murder prearranged by some of the greedy contestants for
his land, was further proved by the fact that every scrap of his
private papers was found to have disappeared, and, through their loss,
his family lost the homestead.
Curly's end is another story. Happily he was spared to me some years.