THE CAMP AT THE SPRING.
"Crockett, there isn't any use talking. We've an awful tough job cut
out."
The old bear-hunter had stuck his coonskin cap upon the muzzle of his
rifle, and he stared up at it for a moment.
"Reckon we have," he said; "but we kin skirmish around the corners of
it somehow. I've been in tight places before now, but I allers crawled
out or fought out."
"We'll have to fight out this time," said the large, determined-looking
man he was talking with. "But what on earth are we to do for money?"
"We're played out," replied Crockett, thoughtfully. "We've borrowed
all we could. We've taxed till we can't put on any more. Uncle Sam
won't let us have any. Houston, we're in a hole."
"The worst of it is right here," continued Houston. "If the
legislature lays a tax, all the cash is appropriated before it's
collected. What I want is some money to spend without giving any
account of it. We want a powder-and-lead fund. I've spent all I had."
"You kin skin my pile," said Crockett. "Wish thar was more of it.
We're torn down poor. We might almost be whipped by Santa Anna for
want of money to keep the men in the field. Think of losing the Alamo!"
"I couldn't help it just now if we did," groaned Houston. "It's safe
yet."
"'Tis till somebody comes to take it," was the ominous response of
Crockett, as he lowered his rifle and put on his coonskin. "Just as I
told ye. Travis is off on his scout with half the garrison. Bowie
went on that expedition of his, and I hope he may get back. Thar isn't
enough powder in the fort to fire all the guns more'n twice 'round. No
provisions to speak of. No nothin'. If Greasers enough came, they
could a' most walk right in."
"They're not ready to come yet," said Houston; "but they're coming,
Davy! There 'll be blood when they get in as far as the Alamo!"
"You bet thar will!" shouted Crockett, springing to his feet. "I mean
to be thar when they come. We kin hold it ag'in' all Mexico if we've
men and powder."
The two Texan patriots were not in any house. They had been sitting
side by side upon a log not far from a rail-fence corner where their
horses were hitched. From what they said it appeared that they had met
there by appointment. It was as good a parlor as such men needed to
discuss affairs of state in. Houston had now risen, and they were
walking toward their horses.
"Crockett," he said, "it's time for me to git up and git. You go on to
Washington. See what you can do. Inquire about rifles and cannon and
ammunition."
"Well," replied Crockett, "money's the best kind of am'nition, but we
needn't forget one thing. Santa Anna feels a kind of bowel grip right
thar. He can't fetch as many rancheros as he'd like to cross the Rio
Grande with. He'd ruther 'tend a cock-fight any day than meet us in a
shootin' match, onless he was ten to one."
"I wouldn't mind four to one," said Houston, "but I would mind being
cut up for lack of powder to shoot with."
"You bet!" said Crockett, bitterly. "Think of bein' jest murdered by
Greasers!"
They had reached their horses, and in a moment more they were steadily
galloping northward.
A very undefined domain was the vast region to which the Spanish
conquerors had given the name of Texas. They had never thoroughly
explored it, nor had they determined its boundaries. Its northerly
line was that of the then French province of Louisiana, and that was as
uncertain as the weather. It might be said to begin at the Sabine Pass
on the sea-shore. From that it was supposed to wander inland. The
United States surveyors had made their own maps after Jefferson
purchased Louisiana from Napoleon, but they had no direct French or
Spanish help.
Westward, Texas was believed to have a limit somewhere among the as yet
unvisited mountains and plains. No line had been fixed on that side.
Southward, the old Spanish maps, and afterwards the Mexican copies of
them, were at variance as to whether the Nueces River or the Rio Grande
marked the Texas border. This was of less consequence so long as Texas
should belong to Mexico, but, a few years later, those conflicting maps
played an important part in bringing about the war with the United
States. All of that record belongs to history, and so does the older
claim that Texas never, at any time, belonged to Spain, but was, in
part at least, French territory, and was sold to the United States,
accordingly, along with Louisiana.
It is history now, but that history had not been made up when, late
that day, Colonel Bowie and his men rode out of the long ravine and
found themselves upon an open prairie. It was dotted here and there
with groves of oak. Much more interesting at first to the mounted
marksmen was the fact that it was also dotted by several small droves
of wild cattle.
"Buffalo!" exclaimed Bowie. "I didn't think of meeting any here. We
must have one. Then we'll go into camp as soon as we can find water."
"Ugh!" came instantly from the Lipan boy. "Red Wolf find heap water."
"Bully!" said the colonel. "This used to be a Lipan hunting-ground.
Go ahead. Find us a good spring."
Red Wolf had his orders and off he went, while Jim Cheyne looked after
him and remarked emphatically,--
"That young chap's going to be a buster. But now, boys, don't let's
load up too much with meat. One good critter's all we want."
"All right," replied one of his comrades; "but, Jim, if we keep our
hair on overnight thar won't be any time wasted on huntin' to-morrow."
"We shall strike straight for the Nueces, and then for the Rio Grande,"
said Bowie. "Great Bear hasn't let up on us, and we must look out for
him all the time. He's just death on a trail."
"You kin swar to that," added Cheyne. "He's as ready to ride into
Mexico, too, as we are. How's that, Tetzcatl?"
"_Bueno!_" snapped the dark-faced panther. "Comanches find Bravo's
lancers beyond the river. Kill them all."
He gave no reason for the resentful feeling he had shown against Great
Bear, but loud chuckles among the men expressed their approval of his
idea that if the Comanches should meet the lancers the story of the
Kilkenny cats would be repeated.
A general hunt was forbidden on account of the horses, and only two men
went out as buffalo butchers.
On leaving his party, Red Wolf rode in a kind of long circuit instead
of aiming at the nearest grove. He galloped a full mile before he gave
any reason why he had not gone in a straight line. He may have been a
little uncertain about his landmarks, but he made no considerable error
in his calculations.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed, as he pulled in upon the crest of a prairie roll
and looked forward earnestly. "Heap hole. Big stone. Big Knife get
water."
He was near the brink of a deep and remarkable hollow. It was almost
regularly funnel-shaped, and on the opposite side of it sat a large
boulder of granite. Such "sink-holes" can be found only in limestone
formations. They are supposed to lead to caverns and subterranean
watercourses. The presence of a mass of granite was, therefore, one of
the many puzzles for geologists. Perhaps it had floated there upon a
cake of ice. Then the ice had melted; the water had run off down the
sink-hole; and the boulder was left to supply the red hunters of the
plains with a perpetual guide-board.
"Big stone here," he said. "Water there."
The direction in which he rode away gave his words an explanation. He
went as straight as an arrow for more than another mile, hardly
glancing aside, either at groves of trees or herds of fat bisons.
Meantime, the white men he was providing refreshment for rode slowly
onward. They heard a brace of rifle reports, and took the success of
their hunters for granted. They remarked to each other, however, that
good luck was with them, for "bufler" were getting scarcer year after
year so far as that to the eastward.
"One of these days," said Bowie, "they'll all be gone. This 'll be
corn land then, and every farmer 'll raise his own beef."
"He'll kill it for himself, too," laughed Cheyne. "I don't want to be
here then. I'd ruther have my beef runnin' round the prairie for free
shootin'."
Bowie's eyes were all the while busy in a search for "sign." He had
found none near his present line of march, but if he could have looked
back upon his entire trail he would have seen several things to
interest him.
The first point was in the timber at the upper end of the long ravine.
A dozen braves of the Comanches were grouped, on foot, around the
opening through which Tetzcatl had so suddenly disappeared. They were
watching, bow in hand, as if it had been the den of some wild animal,
or rather as if, possibly, some returning Texan might at any moment
show himself as a target.
Not far down the ravine, but on the upper level on one side of it,
three more braves sat in silence by the body of their tribesman who had
been slain by the bullet of Cheyne or Bowie. Every now and then they
peered over into the gorge below and listened as if for the sounds of
horse-hoofs upon the gravelly bottom. Watchers had been set,
therefore, to intercept any returning ranger. That was only by way of
precaution, in case of an escape from the other part of the relentless
pursuit.
Miles and miles away, along the route of the winding cleft and on its
westerly side, rode twice as many Comanches as had been with Great Bear
when first he had been seen by Red Wolf, on the plain beyond the
chaparral, two days before. His reinforcements had arrived and he was
ready for extensive mischief.
At point after point, wherever the ravine was approachable and descent
into it fairly easy, a warrior on foot, sometimes even on horseback,
would go down and search any soft earth at the side of the little rill
at the bottom. Then he would swiftly return, report that he had found
the trail; that Bowie's men were farther down, all of them; and the
band would ride steadily on.
Of course, this did not mean rapid riding, but it did mean a deadly and
persistent pursuit. It meant a bloody revenge for slain warriors.
One brave was now sent back after the squad of watchers, but Great
Bear's force was a very strong one without them. Yet other braves were
riding fast and far in the advance.
Sooner or later it was sure that such a following, by trailers so
skilful and so determined, would bring them near enough for a sweeping
blow. What could half a dozen rangers and one Lipan boy do against the
overwhelming rush of a hundred and fifty warriors?
Red Wolf did not actually come back to his white friends. He only rode
near enough to whoop to them and to wave his lance, as if inviting them
to follow.
"That's high!" exclaimed Jim Cheyne. "We might ha' hunted for water
all night if it hadn't been for him."
"It takes an Indian sometimes," replied the colonel. "But this crowd
won't make a long camp on this prairie."
"You bet!" came from several voices at once, and away they rode after
the young Lipan.
It was a very pretty place for a camp, when they came to look at it.
Nearly an acre of ground was occupied by tall, old sycamores and
spreading oaks, and outside of these were bushes. In the middle of all
was a fine spring, from which a tiny brooklet rippled out into the
plain. Close around the spring the ground had been trodden hard by the
hoofs of many generations of buffalo and deer, but there was plenty of
grass without picketing their horses outside of the grove.
"Boys," said Bowie, "if Great Bear should find us, he'll have braves
enough to corral us in such a place as this. They could just ride
around and around, out of shot, and pen us in till we starved."
"That's so," put in a short, bandy-legged ranger whom the others had
called "Joe," without troubling themselves to add any other name; "but
I reckon we won't wait to be penned in. What I'm a-thinkin' of jest
now is bufler hump."
He had the entire sympathy of his hungry comrades, and they did not
have to wait long. The fire was hardly up in good shape before the two
hunters rode in, bringing the best pieces of a fine "bufler."
"Now we're all right for rations," said Jim Cheyne; "but I'd like to
know what's went with that young Lipan wolf."
Every man glanced quickly around him, but the son of Castro was nowhere
to be seen. He had been as ready for his supper as any white man, but
stronger than anything else was his feeling that he was on his first
war-path. He was a brave of the Lipans, with a new name and a new
knife. He had already won some glory and he was burning for more. As
for even buffalo "hump," a Lipan warrior who could not go without his
dinner had never yet been heard of.
He had mounted silently, therefore, and had galloped away, straight
back, along the line by which he had first come to the grove and
spring. He and his pony had been watered, and the latter had nibbled a
little grass, but that was all.
"Comanche come to hole," he said to himself, as he rode along. "Red
Wolf see."
The plan in his head seemed to include nothing more than scouting duty,
but this was of a peculiar and dangerous kind.
The shadows were deepening in the groves and on the prairie when Red
Wolf reached the sink-hole, but he was able to examine it carefully.
The sides of the funnel-shaped hollow were not too steep in some
places, and he led his mustang half-way down. He picketed him there,
upon a slope where he could stand, a little uncomfortably, and pick
grass, which was greener than any on the outside prairie. As soon as
this was cared for, Red Wolf went up again and stationed himself by the
boulder. There was quite enough granite for one watcher to hide behind.
"Ugh!" he said. "Texan too much fire. Comanche find camp. Where Big
Knife?"
It required eyes like his to detect, at that distance, a few faint
sparks which had floated up above the trees and an exceedingly dull
glow of light that was just then showing.
"Texan heap fool!" he exclaimed. "Great Bear come. Ugh!"
He hardly did his white chief justice, however, for Colonel Bowie was
even then ordering the fire to be smothered as soon as the needful
cooking could be done. There would be no more sparks nor any glow to
betray the camp.
"Colonel," said Joe in reply, "it's all right, but we'd better jest lop
down and snooze. Mebbe it's all the chance we'll git for a nap."
"Snooze away," said the colonel; but Jim Cheyne was looking around him,
and he suddenly exclaimed,--
"I say! What's become of that thar old tiger? He didn't go off with
the Lipan cub."
"No," said Joe. "That he didn't. He was 'round yer chawin' bufler
meat not five minutes ago. I heerd him say something 'bout his
mule----"
"Mule's gone," came from a ranger who had stepped away to look for him.
"Tell ye what, boys, that thar old rascal's gone back on us."
"I reckon not," replied Bowie, after a moment of consideration. "He
hasn't gone to Great Bear, but we shan't see him again till we get to
the Hacienda Dolores. Red Wolf's gone scouting."
"That's his best hold," said Joe. "Glad he went; but they'll get him
if he doesn't watch out sharp."
That was precisely what he was doing, as he crouched behind the
boulder, almost as motionless and silent as the stone itself.