Scarcely staying to quench my thirst, I led my horse across the stream,
and commenced scrutinising the trail upon the opposite bank. The
faithful trackers were by my side--no fear of them lagging behind.
I had won the hearts of both these men; and that they would have risked
life to serve me, I could no longer doubt, since over and over again
they _had_ risked it. For Garey strong, courageous, handsome in the
true sense, and noble-hearted, I felt real friendship, which the young
trapper reciprocated. For his older comrade, the feeling. I had was
like himself--indefinable, indescribable. It was strongly tinctured
with admiration, but admiration of the intellectual rather than the
moral or personal qualities of the man.
Instead of intellectual, I should rather say instinctive--for his keen
intuitive thoughts appeared more like instincts, than the results of a
process of ratiocination.
That the old trapper admired me--in his own phraseology, "liked me
mightily"--I was aware. He was equally zealous as the younger in my
service; but too free an exhibition of zeal was in his eyes a weakness,
and he endeavoured to conceal it. His admiration of myself was perhaps
owing to the fact that I neither attempted to thwart him in his humours
nor rival him in his peculiar knowledge--the craft of the prairie. In
this I was but his pupil, and behaved as such, generally deferring to
his judgment.
Another impulse acted upon the trackers--sheer love of the part they
were now playing. Just as the hound loves the trail, so did they; and
hunger, thirst, weariness, one or all must be felt to an extreme degree
before they would voluntarily forsake it.
Scarcely staying, therefore, to quench their thirst, they followed me
out of the water; and all three of us together bent our attention to the
sign.
It was a _war-trail_--a true war-trail. There was not the track of a
dog--not the drag of a lodge-pole upon it. Had it been a moving
encampment of peaceable Indians, these signs would have been visible;
moreover, there would have been seen numerous footsteps of Indian
women--of squaws; for the slave-wife of the lordly Comanche is compelled
to traverse the prairies _a pied_, loaded like the packhorse that
follows at her heels!
But though no foot-prints of Indian women appeared, there _were_ tracks
of women, scores of them, plainly imprinted in the soil of the
river-bank. Those slender impressions, scarcely a span in length,
smoothly moulded in the mud, were not to be mistaken for the footsteps
of an Indian squaw. There was not the wide divergence at the heels with
the toes turned inward; neither was there the moccasin-print. No: those
tiny tracks must have been made by women of that nation who possess the
smallest and prettiest feet in the world--by women of Mexico.
"Captives!" we exclaimed, as soon as our eyes rested upon the tracks.
"Ay, poor critters!" said Rube sympathisingly; "the cussed niggurs hev
made 'em fut it, while thur's been spare hosses a plenty. Wagh! a good
wheen o' weemen thur's been--a score on 'em at the least. Wagh! I pity
'em, poor gurls! in sech kumpny as they've got into. It ur a life
they've got to lead. Wagh!"
Rube did not reflect how heavily his words were falling upon my heart.
There were the tracks of more than a hundred horses, and as many mules.
Some of both were iron-shod; but for all that, we knew they had been
either ridden or driven by Indians: they, too, were captives.
The sign helped my companions to much knowledge, that would have been
unintelligible to me. It was certainly the path of a war-party of
Indians _on the back-track_. They were laden with plunder, and driving
before them, or forcing to follow, a crowd of captives--horses, mules,
and women--children, too, for we saw the tiny foot-marks of tender age.
The trail was significant of all this--even to me.
But my comrades saw more; they no longer doubted that the Indians were
Comanches--a moccasin had been picked up, a castaway--and the leathern
tassel attached to the heel declared the tribe to which its wearer
belonged to be the Comanche.
The trail was quite fresh; that is, but a few hours had intervened since
the Indians passed along it. Notwithstanding the dryness of the
atmosphere, the mud on the river-edge had not yet become "skinned," as
the trappers expressed it. The Indians had forded the stream about the
time the prairie was set on fire.
The horses, we had been following across the burnt plain, were those of
a party who had gone out in pursuit of the steed. Just at the ford,
they had overtaken the main body, who carried along the spoil and
captives. From that point, all had advanced together.
Had they done so? This was our first object of inquiry. It was almost
too probable to admit of a doubt; but we desired to be certain about a
matter of such primary importance, and we looked for the hoof with the
piece chipped from its edge--easily to be identified by all of us.
In the muddy margin of the stream we could not find it; but the steed
may have been led or ridden in front of the rest, and his tracks
trampled out by the thick drove that followed.
At this moment, Stanfield came up and joined us in the examination. The
ranger had scarcely bent his eyes on the trail, when a significant
exclamation escaped him. He stood pointing downward to the track of a
shod horse.
"My horse!" cried he; "my horse Hickory, by Gosh!"
"Your horse?"
"May I never see Kaintuck if it ain't."
"Yur sure o' it, ole hoss? yur sure it's yurn?"
"Sure as shootin'; I shod him myself. I kid tell that ere track on a
dry sand-bar. I know every nail thar; I druv 'em wi' my own hand--it's
him sartin."
"Wheeo-o!" whistled Rube in his significant way, "thet makes things a
leetle plainer, I reck'n; an so I thort all along--an so I thort--
ye-es--so I thort. The durned rennygade niggur!" he added with angry
emphasis, "I know'd we dud wrong to let 'im go; we oughter served 'im as
I perposed; we oughter cut his durnation throat, an scalped 'im the
minnut we tuk 'im: cuss the luck thet we didn't! Wagh!"
Rube's words needed no interpretation. We knew whose throat he would
have cut--that of the Indianised Mexican taken at the mesa; and I
remembered that at the time of his capture such had been Rube's advice,
overruled, of course, by the more merciful of his comrades. The trapper
had assigned some reason: he knew something of the man's history.
He now repeated his reasons:
"He ur a true rennygade," said he; "an thur ain't on all the parairas a
wusser enemy to whites than thet ur--more partiklurly to Texan whites.
He wur at the massacree o' Wilson's family on the clur fork o' the
Brazos, an wur conspik'us in the skrimmige: a' more too--it ur thort he
toated off one o' Wilson's gurls, an made a squaw o' her, for he's
mighty given thet way I've heern. Wagh! he ur wuss than a Injun, for
the reezun thet he unerstans the ways o' the whites. I never know'd
sich a foolitch thing as ter let 'im git clur. 'Ee may thank yur luck,
Mister Stannafeel, thet he didn't take yur har at the same time when he
tuk yur hoss. Wagh! thet ye may!"
It was Stanfield's horse that had bee a stolen by the renegade, and the
tracks now identified by the ranger were those of that animal--no doubt
with the freebooter upon his back.
This new discovery let in a flood of light. Beyond a doubt, the
war-party was the same we had met by the mound, with perhaps a
reinforcement; the same that had just plundered the Mexican town; the
same who had paid their hurried visit to the hacienda, and this
renegade--
Ha! Strange remembrances were crowding into my brain. I remembered
meeting this semi-savage skulking about the road, after we had granted
him his parole; I remembered, upon one occasion, seeing him while riding
out with _her_; I remembered the rude expression with which he had
regarded my companion--the glance half-fierce, half-lustful; I
remembered that it made me angry; that I rebuked and threatened him--I
now remembered all.
Wild thoughts came rushing into my mind--worse thoughts than ever.
I sprang to my saddle; and, calling out some half-coherent orders, rode
rapidly along the trail.