THE giant cypresses, tall even in the time of Montezuma, the castle of
Chapultepec upon its rock (an island in the plain of Mexico), the
panorama of the great city backed by the mountain range; the two
volcanoes, the Popocatepetl and the Istacihuatl, and the lakes; the
tigers in their cages, did not interest me so much as a small courtyard,
in which, ironed and guarded, a band of Indians of the Apache tribe were
kept confined. Six warriors, a woman and a boy, captured close to
Chihuahua, and sent to Mexico, the Lord knows why; for generally an
Apache captured was shot at once, following the frontier rule, which
without difference of race was held on both sides of the Rio Grande, that
a good Indian must needs be dead.
Silent and stoical the warriors sat, not speaking once in a whole day,
communicating but by signs; naked except the breech-clout; their eyes
apparently opaque, and looking at you without sight, but seeing
everything; and their demeanour less reassuring than that of the tigers
in the cage hard by. All could speak Spanish if they liked, some a word
or two of English, but no one heard them say a word in either tongue. I
asked the nearest if he was a Mescalero, and received the answer:
“Mescalero-hay,” and for a moment a gleam shone through their eyes, but
vanished instantly, as when the light dies out of the wire in an electric
lamp. The soldier at the gate said they were “brutes”; all sons of dogs,
infidels, and that for his part he could not see why the “Gobierno” went
to the expense of keeping them alive. He thought they had no sense; but
in that showed his own folly, and acted after the manner of the
half-educated man the whole world over, who knowing he can read and write
thinks that the savage who cannot do so is but a fool; being unaware
that, in the great book known as the world, the savage often is the
better scholar of the two.
But five-and-twenty years ago the Apache nation, split into its chief
divisions of Mescaleros, Jicarillas, Coyoteros, and Lipanes, kept a great
belt of territory almost five hundred miles in length, and of about
thirty miles in breadth, extending from the bend of the Rio Gila to El
Paso, in a perpetual war. On both sides of the Rio Grande no man was
safe; farms were deserted, cattle carried off, villages built by the
Spaniards, and with substantial brick-built churches, mouldered into
decay; mines were unworkable, and horses left untended for a moment were
driven off in open day; so bold the thieves, that at one time they had a
settled month for plundering, which they called openly the Moon of the
Mexicans, though they did not on that account suspend their operations at
other seasons of the year. Cochise and Mangas-Coloradas, Naked Horse,
Cuchillo Negro, and others of their chiefs, were once far better known
upon the frontiers than the chief senators of the congresses of either of
the two republics; and in some instances these chiefs showed an
intelligence, knowledge of men and things, which in another sphere would
certainly have raised them high in the estimation of mankind.
The Shis-Inday (the people of the woods), their guttural language, with
its curious monosyllable “hay” which they tacked on to everything, as
“Oro-hay” and “plata-hay”; their strange democracy, each man being chief
of himself, and owning no allegiance to any one upon the earth; all now
have almost passed away, destroyed and swallowed up by the “Inday pindah
lichoyi” (the men of the white eyes), as they used to call the Americans
and all those northerners who ventured into their territory to look for
“yellow iron.” I saw no more of the Apaches, and except once, never
again met any one of them; but as I left the place the thought came to my
mind, if any of them succeed in getting out, I am certain that the six or
seven hundred miles between them and their country will be as nothing to
them, and that their journey thither will be marked with blood.
At Huehuetoca I joined the mule-train, doing the twenty miles which in
those days was all the extent of railway in the country to the north, and
lost my pistol in a crowd just as I stepped into the train, some “lepero”
having abstracted it out of my belt when I was occupied in helping five
strong men to get my horse into a cattle-truck. From Huehuetoca we
marched to Tula, and there camped for the night, sleeping in a “meson”
built like an Eastern fondak round a court, and with a well for watering
the beasts in the centre of the yard. I strolled about the curious town,
in times gone by the Aztec capital, looked at the churches, built like
fortresses, and coming back to the “meson” before I entered the cell-like
room without a window, and with a plaster bench on which to spread one’s
saddle and one’s rugs, I stopped to talk with a knot of travellers
feeding their animals on barley and chopped straw, grouped round a fire,
and the whole scene lit up and rendered Rembrandtesque by the fierce glow
of an “ocote” torch. So talking of the Alps and Apennines, or, more
correctly, speaking of the Sierra Madre, and the mysterious region known
as the Bolson de Mapimi, a district in those days as little known as is
the Sus to-day, a traveller drew near. Checking his horse close by the
fire, and getting off it gingerly, for it was almost wild, holding the
hair “mecate” in his hand, he squatted down, the horse snorting and
hanging back, and setting rifle and “machete” jingling upon the saddle,
he began to talk.
“Ave Maria purisima, had we heard the news?” What! a new revolution?
Had Lerdo de Tejada reappeared again? or had Cortinas made another raid
on Brownsville? the Indios Bravos harried Chihuahua? or had the silver
“conduct” coming from the mines been robbed? “Nothing of this, but a
voice ran (corria una voz) that the Apache infidels confined in the
courtyard of the castle of Chapultepec had broken loose. Eight of them,
six warriors, a woman and a boy, had slipped their fetters, murdered two
of the guard, and were supposed to be somewhere not far from Tula, and,
as he thought, making for the Bolson de Mapimi, the deserts of the Rio
Gila, or the recesses of the mountains of the Santa Rosa range.”
Needless to say this put all in the meson almost beside themselves; for
the terror that the Indians inspired was at that time so real, that had
the eight forlorn and helpless infidels appeared I verily believe they
would have killed us all. Not that we were not brave, well armed—in
fact, all loaded down with arms, carrying rifles and pistols, swords
stuck between our saddle-girths, and generally so fortified as to
resemble walking arsenals. But valour is a thing of pure convention, and
these men who would have fought like lions against marauders of their own
race, scarce slept that night for thinking on the dangers which they ran
by the reported presence of those six naked men. The night passed by
without alarm, as was to be expected, seeing that the courtyard wall of
the meson was at least ten feet high, and the gate solid “ahuehuete”
clamped with iron, and padlocked like a jail. At the first dawn, or
rather at the first false dawn, when the fallacious streaks of pink flash
in the sky and fade again to night, all were afoot. Horsemen rode out,
sitting erect in their peaked saddles, toes stuck out and thrust into
their curiously stamped toe-leathers; their “chaparreras” giving to their
legs a look of being cased in armour, their “poblano” hats, with bands of
silver or of tinsel, balanced like halos on their heads.
Long trains of donkeys, driven by Indians dressed in leather, and
bareheaded, after the fashion of their ancestors, crawled through the
gate laden with “pulque,” and now and then a single Indian followed by
his wife set off on foot, carrying a crate of earthenware by a broad
strap depending from his head. Our caravan, consisting of six
two-wheeled mule-carts, drawn by a team of six or sometimes eight
gaily-harnessed mules, and covered with a tilt made from the “istle,”
creaked through the gate. The great meson remained deserted, and by
degrees, as a ship leaves the coast, we struck into the wild and stony
desert country, which, covered with a whitish dust of alkali, makes Tula
an oasis; then the great church sank low, and the tall palm-trees seemed
to grow shorter; lastly church, palms and towers, and the green fields
planted with aloes, blended together and sank out of sight, a faint white
misty spot marking their whereabouts, till at last it too faded and
melted into the level plain.
Travellers in a perpetual stream we met journeying to Mexico, and every
now and then passed a straw-thatched “jacal,” where women sat selling
“atole,” that is a kind of stirabout of pine-nut meal and milk, and
dishes seasoned hot with red pepper, with “tortillas” made on the
“metate” of the Aztecs, to serve as bread and spoons. The infidels, it
seemed, had got ahead of us, and when we slept had been descried making
towards the north; two of them armed with bows which they had roughly
made with sticks, the string twisted out of “istle,” and the rest with
clubs, and what astonished me most was that behind them trotted a white
dog. Outside San Juan del Rio, which we reached upon the second day, it
seemed that in the night the homing Mescaleros had stolen a horse, and
two of them mounting upon him had ridden off, leaving the rest of the
forlorn and miserable band behind. How they had lived so far in the
scorched alkali-covered plains, how they managed to conceal themselves by
day, or how they steered by night, no one could tell; for the interior
Mexican knows nothing of the desert craft, and has no idea that there is
always food of some kind for an Apache, either by digging roots, snaring
small animals, or at the last resort by catching locusts or any other
insect he can find. Nothing so easy as to conceal themselves; for
amongst grass eight or nine inches high, they drop, and in an instant,
even as you look, are lost to sight, and if hard pressed sometimes escape
attention by standing in a cactus grove, and stretching out their arms,
look so exactly like the plant that you may pass close to them and be
unaware, till their bow twangs, and an obsidian-headed arrow whistles
through the air.
Our caravan rested a day outside San Juan del Rio to shoe the mules,
repair the harness, and for the muleteers to go to mass or visit the
“poblana” girls, who with flowers in their hair leaned out of every
balcony of the half-Spanish, half-Oriental-looking town, according to
their taste. Not that the halt lost time, for travellers all know that
“to hear mass and to give barley to your beasts loses no tittle of the
day.”
San Juan, the river almost dry, and trickling thirstily under its red
stone bridges; the fields of aloes, the poplars, and the stunted palms;
its winding street in which the houses, overhanging, almost touch; its
population, which seemed to pass their time lounging wrapped in striped
blankets up against the walls, was left behind. The pulque-aloes and the
sugar-canes grew scarcer, the road more desolate as we emerged into the
“terra fria” of the central plain, and all the time the Sierra Madre,
jagged and menacing, towered in the west. In my mind’s eye I saw the
Mescaleros trotting like wolves all through the night along its base,
sleeping by day in holes, killing a sheep or goat when chance occurred,
and following one another silent and stoical in their tramp towards the
north.
Days followed days as in a ship at sea; the waggons rolling on across the
plains; and I jogging upon my horse, half sleeping in the sun, or
stretched at night half dozing on a tilt, almost lost count of time.
Somewhere between San Juan del Rio and San Luis Potosi we learned two of
the Indians had been killed, but that the four remaining were still
pushing onward, and in a little while we met a body of armed men carrying
two ghastly heads tied by their scalp-locks to the saddle-bow. Much did
the slayers vaunt their prowess; telling how in a wood at break of day
they had fallen in with all the Indians seated round a fire, and that
whilst the rest fled, two had sprung on them, as they said, “after the
fashion of wild beasts, armed one with a stick, and the other with a
stone, and by God’s grace,” and here the leader crossed himself, “their
aim had been successful, and the two sons of dogs had fallen, but most
unfortunately the rest during the fight had managed to escape.”
San Luis Potosi, the rainless city, once world-renowned for wealth, and
even now full of fine buildings, churches and palaces, and with a
swarming population of white-clothed Indians squatting to sell their
trumpery in the great market-square, loomed up amongst its fringe of
gardens, irrigated lands, its groves of pepper-trees, its palms, its
wealth of flowering shrubs; its great white domes, giving an air of
Bagdad or of Fez, shone in the distance, then grew nearer, and at last
swallowed us up, as wearily we passed through the outskirts of the town,
and halted underneath the walls.
The city, then an oasis in the vast plateau of Anáhuac (now but a station
on a railway-line), a city of enormous distances, of gurgling water led
in stucco channels by the side of every street, of long expanses of
“adobe” walls, of immense plazas, of churches and of bells, of countless
convents; hedged in by mountains to the west, mouth of the “tierra
caliente” to the east, and to the north the stopping-place for the long
trains of waggons carrying cotton from the States; wrapped in a mist as
of the Middle Ages, lay sleeping in the sun. On every side the plain
lapped like an ocean, and the green vegetation round the town stopped so
abruptly that you could step almost at once from fertile meadows into a
waste of whitish alkali.
Above the town, in a foothill of the Sierra Madre about three leagues
away, is situated the “Enchanted City,” never yet fouled by the foot of
man, but yet existent, and believed in by all those who follow that best
part of history, the traditions which have come down to us from the times
when men were wise, and when imagination governed judgment, as it should
do to-day, being the noblest faculty of the human mind. Either want of
time, or that belittling education from which few can escape, prevented
me from visiting the place. Yet I still think if rightly sought the city
will be found, and I feel sure the Mescaleros passed the night not far
from it, and perhaps looking down upon San Luis Potosi cursed it, after
the fashion that the animals may curse mankind for its injustice to them.
Tired of its squares, its long dark streets, its hum of people; and
possessed perhaps with that nostalgia of the desert which comes so soon
to all who once have felt its charm when cooped in bricks, we set our
faces northward about an hour before the day, passed through the gates
and rolled into the plains. The mules well rested shook their bells, the
leagues soon dropped behind, the muleteers singing “La Pasadita,” or an
interminable song about a “Gachupin” {131} who loved a nun.
The Mescaleros had escaped our thoughts—that is, the muleteers thought
nothing of them; but I followed their every step, saw them crouched round
their little fire, roasting the roots of wild “mescal”; marked them upon
the march in single file, their eyes fixed on the plain, watchful and
silent as they were phantoms gliding to the north.
Crossing a sandy tract, the Capataz, who had long lived in the “Pimeria
Alta,” and amongst the Maricopas on the Gila, drew up his horse and
pointing to the ground said, “Viva Mexico!—look at these footmarks in the
sand. They are the infidels; see where the men have trod; here is the
woman’s print and this the boy’s. Look how their toes are all turned in,
unlike the tracks of Christians. This trail is a day old, and yet how
fresh! See where the boy has stumbled—thanks to the Blessed Virgin they
must all be tired, and praise to God will die upon the road, either by
hunger or some Christian hand.” All that he spoke of was no doubt
visible to him, but through my want of faith, or perhaps lack of
experience, I saw but a faint trace of naked footsteps in the sand. Such
as they were, they seemed the shadow of a ghost, unstable and unreal, and
struck me after the fashion that it strikes one when a man holds up a
cane and tells you gravely, without a glimmering of the strangeness of
the fact, that it came from Japan, actually grew there, and had leaves
and roots, and was as little thought of as a mere ash-plant growing in a
copse.
At an “hacienda” upon the road, just where the trail leads off upon one
hand to Matehuala, and on the other to Rio Verde, and the hot countries
of the coast, we stopped to pass the hottest hours in sleep. All was
excitement; men came in, their horses flecked with foam; others were
mounting, and all armed to the teeth, as if the Yankees had crossed the
Rio Grande, and were marching on the place. “Los Indios! si, señor,”
they had been seen, only last night, but such the valour of the people of
the place, they had passed on doing no further damage than to kill a
lamb. No chance of sleep in such a turmoil of alarm; each man had his
own plan, all talked at once, most of them were half drunk, and when our
Capataz asked dryly if they had thought of following the trail, a silence
fell on all. By this time, owing to the horsemen galloping about, the
trail was cut on every side, and to have followed it would have tried the
skill of an Apache tracker; but just then upon the plain a cloud of dust
was seen. Nearer it came, and then out of the midst of it horses
appeared, arms flashed, and when nearing the place five or six men
galloped up to the walls, and stopped their horses with a jerk. “What
news? have you seen anything of the Apaches?” and the chief rider of the
gallant band, getting off slowly, and fastening up his horse, said, with
an air of dignity, “At the ‘encrucijada,’ four leagues along the road,
you will find one of them. We came upon him sitting on a stone, too
tired to move, called on him to surrender, but Indians have no sense, so
he came at us tired as he was, and we, being valiant, fired, and he fell
dead. Then, that the law should be made manifest to all, we hung his
body by the feet to a huisaché tree.” Then compliments broke out and
“Viva los valientes!” “Viva Mexico!” “Mueran los Indios salvajes!” and
much of the same sort, whilst the five valiant men modestly took a drink,
saying but little, for true courage does not show itself in talk.
Leaving the noisy crew drinking confusion to their enemies, we rolled
into the plain. Four dusty leagues, and the huisaché tree growing by
four cross trails came into sight. We neared it, and to a branch, naked
except his breech-clout, covered with bullet-wounds, we saw the Indian
hang. Half-starved he looked, and so reduced that from the bullet-holes
but little blood had run; his feet were bloody, and his face hanging an
inch or two above the ground distorted; flies buzzed about him, and in
the sky a faint black line on the horizon showed that the vultures had
already scented food.
We left the nameless warrior hanging on his tree, and took our way across
the plain, well pleased both with the “valour” of his slayers and the
position of affairs in general in the world at large. Right up and down
the Rio Grande on both sides for almost a thousand miles the lonely cross
upon some river-side, near to some thicket, or out in the wide plain,
most generally is lettered “Killed by the Apaches,” and in the game they
played so long, and still held trumps in at the time I write of, they,
too, paid for all errors, in their play, by death. But still it seemed a
pity, savage as they were, that so much cunning, such stoical
indifference to both death and life, should always finish as the warrior
whom I saw hang by the feet from the huisaché, just where the road to
Matehuala bifurcates, and the trail breaks off to El Jarral. And so we
took our road, passed La Parida, Matehuala, El Catorce, and still the
sterile plateau spread out like a vast sea, the sparse and stunted bushes
in the constant mirage looming at times like trees, at others seeming
just to float above the sand; and as we rolled along, the mules
struggling and straining in the whitish dust, we seemed to lose all trace
of the Apaches; and at the lone hacienda or rare villages no one had
heard of them, and the mysterious hegira of the party, now reduced to
three, left no more traces of its passing than water which has closed
upon the passage of a fish.
Gomez Farias, Parras, El Llano de la Guerra, we passed alternately, and
at length Saltillo came in sight, its towers standing up upon the plain
after the fashion of a lighthouse in the sea; the bull-ring built under
the Viceroys looking like a fort; and then the plateau of Anáhuac
finished abruptly, and from the ramparts of the willow-shaded town the
great green plains stretched out towards Texas in a vast panorama; whilst
upon the west in the dim distance frowned the serrated mountains of Santa
Rosa, and further still the impenetrable fastnesses of the Bolson de
Mapimi.
Next day we took the road for Monterey, descending in a day by the rough
path known as “la cuesta de los fierros,” from the cold plateau to a land
of palms, of cultivation, orange-groves, of fruit-trees, olive-gardens, a
balmy air filled with the noise of running waters; and passing underneath
the Cerro de la Silla which dominates the town, slept peacefully far from
all thoughts of Indians and of perils of the road, in the great
caravansary which at that time was the chief glory of the town of
Monterey. The city with its shady streets, its alameda planted with
palm-trees, and its plaza all decorated with stuccoed plaster seats
painted pale pink, and upon which during both day and night half of the
population seemed to lounge, lay baking in the sun.
Great teams of waggons driven by Texans creaked through the streets, the
drivers dressed in a “défroque” of old town clothes, often a worn
frock-coat and rusty trousers stuffed into cowboy boots, the whole
crowned with an ignominious battered hat, and looking, as the Mexicans
observed, like “pantomimas, que salen en las fiestas.” Mexicans from
down the coast, from Tamaulipas, Tuxpan, Vera Cruz and Guatzecoalcos
ambled along on horses all ablaze with silver; and to complete the
picture, a tribe of Indians, the Kickopoos, who had migrated from the
north, and who occasionally rode through the town in single file, their
rifles in their hands, and looking at the shops half longingly, half
frightened, passed along without a word.
But all the varied peoples, the curious half-wild, half-patriarchal life,
the fruits and flowers, the strangeness of the place, could not divert my
thoughts from the three lone pathetic figures, followed by their dog,
which in my mind’s eye I saw making northward, as a wild goose finds its
path in spring, leaving no traces of its passage by the way. I wondered
what they thought of, how they looked upon the world, if they respected
all they saw of civilized communities upon their way, or whether they
pursued their journey like a horse let loose returning to his birthplace,
anxious alone about arriving at the goal. So Monterey became a memory;
the Cerro de la Silla last vanishing, when full five leagues upon the
road. The dusty plains all white with alkali, the grey-green
sage-bushes, the salt and crystal-looking rivers, the Indians bending
under burdens, and the women sitting at the cross roads selling
tortillas—all now had changed. Through oceans of tall grass, by muddy
rivers in which alligators basked, by “bayous,” “resacas,” and by
“bottoms” of alluvial soil, in which grew cotton-woods, black-jack, and
post-oak, with gigantic willows; through countless herds of half-wild
horses, lighting the landscape with their colours, and through a rolling
prairie with vast horizons bounded by faint blue mountain chains, we took
our way. Out of the thickets of “mezquite” wild boars peered upon the
path; rattlesnakes sounded their note of warning or lay basking in the
sun; at times an antelope bounded across our track, and the rare villages
were fortified with high mud walls, had gates, and sometimes drawbridges,
for all the country we were passing through was subject to invasions of
“los Indios Bravos,” and no one rode a mile without the chance of an
attack. When travellers met they zigzagged to and fro like battleships
in the old days striving to get the “weather gauge,” holding their horses
tightly by the head, and interchanging salutations fifty yards away,
though if they happened to be Texans and Mexicans they only glared, or
perhaps yelled an obscenity at one another in their different tongues.
Advertisements upon the trees informed the traveller that the place to
stop at was the “Old Buffalo Camp” in San Antonio, setting forth its
whisky, its perfect safety both for man and beast, and adding curtly it
was only a short four hundred miles away. Here for the first time in our
journey we sent out a rider about half-a-mile ahead to scan the route,
ascend the little hills, keep a sharp eye on “Indian sign,” and give us
warning by a timely shot, all to dismount, “corral” the waggons, and be
prepared for an attack of Indians, or of the roaming bands of rascals who
like pirates wandered on the plains. Dust made us anxious, and smoke
ascending in the distance set us all wondering if it was Indians, or a
shepherd’s fire; at halting time no one strayed far from camp, and we sat
eating with our rifles by our sides, whilst men on horseback rode round
the mules, keeping them well in sight, as shepherds watch their sheep.
About two leagues from Juarez a traveller bloody with spurring passed us
carrying something in his hand; he stopped and held out a long arrow with
an obsidian head, painted in various colours, and feathered in a peculiar
way. A consultation found it to be “Apache,” and the man galloped on to
take it to the governor of the place to tell him Indians were about, or,
as he shouted (following the old Spanish catchword), “there were Moors
upon the coast.”
Juarez we slept at, quite secure within the walls; started at daybreak,
crossing the swiftly-running river just outside the town, at the first
streak of light; journeyed all day, still hearing nothing of the
retreating Mescaleros, and before evening reached Las Navas, which we
found astir, all lighted up, and knots of people talking excitedly,
whilst in the plaza the whole population seemed to be afoot. At the long
wooden tables set about with lights, where in a Mexican town at sundown
an al fresco meal of kid stewed in red pepper, “tamales” and “tortillas,”
is always laid, the talk was furious, and each man gave his opinion at
the same time, after the fashion of the Russian Mir, or as it may be that
we shall yet see done during debates in Parliament, so that all men may
have a chance to speak, and yet escape the ignominy of their words being
caught, set down, and used against them, after the present plan. The
Mescaleros had been seen passing about a league outside the town. A
shepherd lying hidden, watching his sheep, armed with a rifle, had spied
them, and reported that they had passed close to him; the woman coming
last and carrying in her arms a little dog; and he “thanked God and all
His holy saints who had miraculously preserved his life.” After the
shepherd’s story, in the afternoon firing had been distinctly heard
towards the small rancho of Las Crucecitas, which lay about three leagues
further on upon the road. All night the din of talk went on, and in the
morning when we started on our way, full half the population went with us
to the gate, all giving good advice; to keep a good look-out, if we saw
dust to be certain it was Indians driving the horses stolen from Las
Crucecitas, then to get off at once, corral the waggons, and above all to
put our trust in God. This we agreed to do, but wondered why out of so
many valiant men not one of them proffered assistance, or volunteered to
mount his horse and ride with us along the dangerous way.
The road led upwards towards some foothills, set about with scrubby
palms; not fifteen miles away rose the dark mountains of the Santa Rosa
chain, and on a little hill the rancho stood, flat-roofed and white, and
seemingly not more than a short league away, so clear the light, and so
immense the scale of everything upon the rolling plain. I knew that in
the mountains the three Indians were safe, as the whole range was Indian
territory; and as I saw them struggling up the slopes, the little dog
following them footsore, hanging down its head, or carried as the
shepherd said in the “she-devil’s” arms, I wished them luck after their
hegira, planned with such courage, carried out so well, had ended, and
they were back again amongst the tribe.
Just outside Crucecitas we met a Texan who, as he told us, owned the
place, and lived in “kornkewbinage with a native gal,” called, as he
said, “Pastory,” who it appeared of all the females he had ever met was
the best hand to bake “tortillers,” and whom, had she not been a
Catholic, he would have made his wife. All this without a question on
our part, and sitting sideways on his horse, scanning the country from
the corner of his eye. He told us that he had “had right smart of an
Indian trouble here yesterday just about afternoon. Me and my ‘vaquerys’
were around looking for an estray horse, just six of us, when close to
the ranch we popped kermash right upon three red devils, and opened fire
at once. I hed a Winchester, and at the first fire tumbled the buck; he
fell right in his tracks, and jest as I was taking off his scalp, I’m
doggoned if the squaw and the young devil didn’t come at us jest like
grizzly bars. Wal, yes, killed ’em, o’ course, and anyhow the young ’un
would have growed up; but the squaw I’me sort of sorry about. I never
could bear to kill a squaw, though I’ve often seen it done. Naow here’s
the all-firedest thing yer ever heard; jes’ as I was turning the bodies
over with my foot a little Indian dog flies at us like a ‘painter,’ the
varmint, the condemndest little buffler I ever struck. I was for
shootin’ him, but ‘Pastory’—that’s my ‘kornkewbyne’—she up and says it
was a shame. Wal, we had to bury them, for dead Injun stinks worst than
turkey-buzzard, and the dodgasted little dog is sitting on the grave,
’pears like he’s froze, leastwise he hastn’t moved since sun-up, when we
planted the whole crew.”
Under a palm-tree not far from the house the Indians’ grave was dug, upon
it, wretched and draggled, sat the little dog. “Pastory” tried to catch
it all day long, being kind-hearted though a “kornkewbyne”; but, failing,
said “God was not willing,” and retired into the house. The hours seemed
days in the accursed place till the sun rose, gilding the unreached Santa
Rosa mountains, and bringing joy into the world. We harnessed up the
mules, and started silently out on the lonely road; turning, I checked my
horse, and began moralizing on all kinds of things; upon tenacity of
purpose, the futility of life, and the inexorable fate which mocks
mankind, making all effort useless, whilst still urging us to strive.
Then the grass rustled, and across an open space a small white object
trotted, looking furtively around, threw up its head and howled, ran to
and fro as if it sought for something, howled dismally again, and after
scratching in the ground, squatted dejectedly on the fresh-turned-up
earth which marked the Indians’ grave.