The Pirates of the Prairies: Adventures in the American Desert

"I gratefully accept, caballero," she replied with a charming smile. "Be kind enough to employ your influence in procuring me some shelter, where I can take a few minutes' repose, which I so greatly need."

"Be good enough to follow me," the young man answered, with a bow; "your wishes shall be immediately satisfied."

Ellen then turned to Harry.

"Thanks, brother," she said to him, cordially offering her hand. "Now, think of yourself; we shall meet again soon."

Then she added, addressing Don Pablo:

"I follow you, caballero."

The Canadian hunter stood for a moment abashed by this hurried leave-taking, but soon raised his head again.

"Hum!" he muttered, "that's the way she leaves me, is it? But why be angry with her, all women are alike – and, then, I have sworn to defend her! Can I compel her to love me?"

And after these philosophical reflections, which restored him all his tranquillity of mind, he threw his rifle over his shoulder, and quietly mixed among Bloodson's partisans.

Don Pablo, in the meanwhile, had conducted the maiden to a cabin miraculously preserved from the flames. At the moment they entered, they were joined by Valentine.

"Ah, a woman," he said, gaily, "all the better."

And laying White Gazelle on the buffalo hides, he added with a smile:

"Permit me, madam, to entrust to your care this young person, whom my friend Curumilla has half killed. We must do all our best to restore life."

Pedro Sandoval, so soon as he had pledged his word, had been freed from his ligatures, though his weapons were taken from him.

"Compañero," he said, "let the señorita do what is necessary; she will manage better than we can."

"Poor child!" Ellen murmured, sympathisingly. "Be assured, gentlemen, that I will take care of her."

"Thanks, madam, thanks," the old Pirate said, as he several times kissed the maiden's hands. "I would give my last drop of blood to see her smile on me again."

"Is she your daughter?" Ellen asked with interest.

The Pirate shook his head sadly.

"We have no children or family, we the accursed ones of civilisation," he said, in a hollow voice; "but, as I have watched over this poor girl almost since her birth, I love her as we are capable of loving. I have always acted as her father, and my greatest grief today is to see her suffering and be unable to relieve her."

"Leave that care to me; I hope you will soon hear her voice and see her smile on you."

"Oh, do that, madam," he exclaimed, "and I, who never yet blessed anything, will worship you as an angel."

The maiden, affected by such devoted love in a nature so rough as that of the Pirate, renewed her assurance of giving the prisoner all the care her position demanded, and the two women remained alone in the tent.

In the meanwhile, a new village had risen, as if by enchantment, on the ruins of the old one. Within a few hours, buffalo skin tents were erected in every direction, and only a few traces remained of the sanguinary contest of which the spot had been the scene on that same day.

A fire was kindled in the public square, and the Apache prisoners, fastened to stakes put up expressly for them, were stoically awaiting the decision on their fate.

All were getting ready for the scalp dance, and a great number of men, tall, handsome, and well dressed, soon invaded every corner of the square. Their faces were blackened, as were those of Unicorn and Pethonista, who led them; after these the old women and children came up in procession, and ranged themselves behind the men. Last of all, the other females came up in close column, two by two, and occupied the centre of the square.

Seven warriors belonging to the Old Dogs formed the band; they, too, had blackened their faces, and three of them carried drums; the other four, chichikouis. The warriors, wrapped in their buffalo robes, had their heads uncovered, and generally adorned with feathers, which fell down behind. The women's faces were also painted, some black, others red; they wore buffalo robes, or blankets dyed of different colours. Two or three, the wives of the principal chiefs, had on white buffalo robes, and wore on their heads an eagle plume, placed perpendicularly.

As Sunbeam, Unicorn's squaw, was absent, the first wife of Pethonista took her place, and, alone, wore the grand sacred cap of feathers. All the other women held in their hands war clubs or muskets, decorated with red cloth and small feathers, the butt of which they struck on the ground while dancing.

We will remark here, that in the scalp dance the women carry arms, and put on the war costume, to the exclusion of the men.

The chieftainess stood at the right extremity of the band. She had in her hand a long wand, from whose upper end were suspended four scalps, still dripping with blood, surmounted by a stuffed jay, with outstretched wings; a little lower, on the same staff, were five more scalps. Opposite her stood another woman, carrying eight scalps in the same way, while the majority of the rest had either one or two.

The women formed a semicircle; the musicians, placed on the right, began their deafening noise, beating the drums with all their strength, singing their exploits, and shaking the chichikouis. The squaws then began dancing. They took little steps, balancing to the right and left; the two ends of the semicircle advanced and fell back in turn; the dancers shrieked at the top of their lungs, and produced a fearful concert, which can only be compared to the furious miauwling of a multitude of cats.

The Apache prisoners were fastened to stakes in the centre of the circle. Each time the women approached them in their evolutions, they overwhelmed them with insults, spat in their faces, and called them cowards, hares, rabbits, and dogs without hearts.

The Apaches smiled at these insults, to which they replied by enumerating the losses they had entailed on the Comanches, and the warriors they had killed. When the dance had lasted more than an hour, the women, exhausted with fatigue, were compelled to rest, and the men advanced in their turn, and stood before the prisoners.

Among them was one Valentine would have liked to save – it was Black Cat. The hunter therefore resolved to interfere, and employ all his influence with Unicorn to obtain the life of the Apache chief.

Valentine did not conceal from himself the difficulty of such an undertaking with men to whom vengeance is the first duty, and whose good will he was, above all, afraid of alienating. But powerful reasons compelled him to act thus, and he resolved to attempt it. He therefore advanced without hesitation to Unicorn, who was preparing the punishment of the prisoners, and touched him lightly on the arm.

"My brother is the first sachem of the Comanches," he said to him.

The chief bowed silently.

"His calli," Valentine continued, in an insinuating voice, "disappears under the scalps of his enemies, so numerous are they, for my brother is more terrible than lightning in combat."

The Indian regarded the hunter with a proud smile.

"What does my brother want?" he asked.

"Unicorn," Valentine continued, "is no less wise at the council fire than he is intrepid in battle. He is the most experienced and revered of the warriors of his nation."

"My brother, the great pale hunter, must explain himself clearly, in order that I may understand him," the sachem answered, with a shade of impatience.

"My brother will listen to me for a moment," Valentine continued, quite unmoved. "Several Apache warriors have fallen alive into his hands."

"They will die!" the chief said, hoarsely.

"Why kill them? Would it not be better to set a ransom on them and send them back to their tribe, thus proving to the Apaches that the Comanches are great warriors, who do not fear them?"

"The palefaces understand nothing about war: a dead man is no longer to be feared. If you pardon an enemy, you run the risk of him taking your scalp on the morrow. The Apaches must die. They have burnt my village, killed the squaws and children of my young men. Blood demands blood. They have an hour to live!"

"Very good," the hunter replied, who understood that if he attempted to save all the prisoners he should not succeed, and was therefore compelled, much against the grain, to compromise; "the warriors must die; that is the law of war, and I do not seek to oppose it; but among them there is one for whom my heart swells with pity."

"The Apache prisoners are mine," Unicorn objected.

"I do not deny it, and my brother has the right to dispose of them as he pleases, and I cannot object; hence I ask a favour of my brother."

The chief frowned slightly, but Valentine went on without seeming to notice the tacit dissatisfaction of the Comanche:

"I have a great interest in saving this man."

"My brother is white. The palefaces have a gilded tongue; they know how to find words which say all they wish. My brother is aware that I can refuse him nothing. Who is the warrior he desires to save?"

"Does my brother promise me that the man shall not perish, whoever it may be, whose life I may demand?"

The Comanche Chief was silent for a moment, looking fixedly at the hunter, who watched him with equal attention.

"Unicorn is my friend," Valentine continued. "I have a perfectly new rifle: if it pleases my brother, I will give it to him."

At this insinuation a slight smile enlivened the chief's face.

"Good: I accept the rifle," he answered. "It is a proper weapon for a sachem. My brother has my word. Who is the warrior he wishes to save?"

"Black Cat."

"Wah! I suspected it: however, no matter, my brother, can be at his ease. Black Cat shall be saved."

"I thank my brother," Valentine said warmly. "I see that his heart is noble! He is a great warrior!"

Then, alter affectionately pressing the chief's hand, Valentine returned to his station, suppressing a sigh of satisfaction.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TORTURE

The Apaches, who had been fastened for a long time to the stakes at which they would be tortured, regarded the terrible preparations for their atrocious punishment with a calm eye, and not a muscle quivering in their stoical and indifferent faces. So great was their carelessness, or, at any rate, it appeared so, that you might have fancied that they were merely about to figure as spectators in the gloomy tragedy preparing, although they were destined to play so terrible a part in it.

So soon as Valentine left him, Unicorn ordered the torture to commence, but he suddenly altered his mind.

"My sons," he said, addressing the Comanche warriors, and pointing to Black Cat; "this man is a chief, and as such can claim an exceptional death, in which he can prove to us his constancy and courage under suffering. Send him to the happy hunting grounds in such a way that the warriors of his nation whom he meets in another life may give him a reception worthy of him. Tomorrow the old men and chiefs will assemble round the council fire, to invent a punishment meet for him. Take him from the stake."

The Indians frenziedly applauded these words, which promised them so attractive a spectacle for the morrow.

"The Comanches are boasting and cowardly women," Black Cat broke out; "they do not know how to torture warriors. I defy them to make me utter a groan, if the punishment lasted a whole day."

"The Apache dogs can bark," Unicorn said coldly; "but if their tongue is long, their courage is short; tomorrow, Black Cat will weep like a daughter of the palefaces."

Black Cat shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and the Comanches repeated their frenzied applause.

"Unfasten him," Unicorn commanded a second time.

Several warriors approached the Apache chief, cut the cords that bound him to the stake, and then secured his limbs and threw him at the foot of a tree, Black Cat not deigning to make a sign evidencing the slightest irritation. After exchanging a glance with Valentine, Unicorn placed himself at the head of a band of warriors, who formed a semicircle round the prisoners. The chieftainess placed herself opposite to him, with the women; the band struck up more noisily than ever, and the torture began.

The squaws and warriors danced round the prisoners, and in passing before them, each, whether a man or woman, cut off a strip of flesh with long, sharp scalping knives. In making these wounds, the Comanches employed the utmost precaution to prevent the knives running too deep into the flesh, lest the victims should run the chance of dying at once, which would have unpleasantly modified the intention of the Indians, by depriving them of a sight from which they promised themselves so much pleasure.

The Apaches smiled on their torturers, and excited them still more by telling them that they did not know how to treat their prisoners; that their wounds were only so many mosquito stings; that the Apaches were far more skilful; and that the many Comanche prisoners they had made endured in their tribe much more atrocious sufferings.

The unfortunate men were in a pitiable state: their bodies were only one wound, from which the blood streamed. The Comanches grew excited and rage seized upon them, on hearing the insults of their enemies. A woman rushed all at once on one of the prisoners whose words were the bitterest, and with her sharp and curved talons tore out his eyes, which she swallowed on the spot, saying to him —

"Dog, you shall not see the sun again."

"You have torn out my eyes, but left me my tongue," the prisoner replied, with a smile rendered more hideous by the two empty and bleeding sockets. "'Twas I who devoured the quivering heart of your son, Running-water, when he entered my calli to steal horses. Do what you please, I am revenged beforehand!"

The woman, exasperated by this last insult, rushed upon him and buried her knife in his heart. The Apache burst into a hoarse laugh, which suddenly changed into the death rattle, and fell a corpse while uttering the words —

"I said truly that you do not know how to torture your prisoners – dogs, rabbits, thieves!"

The Comanches doubled their fury on the wretched victims, incessantly hacking and stabbing them, and though the majority were dead already, they did not leave off till they had destroyed all appearance of humanity. The scalps were then raised, and the victims thrown into the fire prepared for them.

The Comanches danced and howled round this fire until their voice and strength failed them, and they fell exhausted, in spite of the drums and chichikouis. The men and women, stretched on the ground pell-mell, soon fell asleep, in that strange state of intoxication produced by the odour of the blood shed during this atrocious butchery.

Valentine, despite the almost insurmountable disgust this scene had occasioned him, did not wish to retire, as he feared lest Black Cat might be massacred by the Comanches in a moment of mad fury. This precaution was not vain: several times, had he not resolutely interfered, the Apache chief would also have been sacrificed to the hatred of his enemies, who had attained a paroxysm of fury impossible to describe.

When the camp was plunged in silence, and everybody asleep, Valentine proceeded cautiously in the direction where the Apache chief lay bound, who watched him come up with a very peculiar glance. Not saying a word, the hunter, after assuring himself that nobody was watching his movements, cut all the cords that bound him. The Apache bounded like a jaguar, but fell back again on the ground; the cords had been tied so securely that they had entered into his flesh.

"My brother must be prudent," the Frenchman said gently. "I wish to save him."

He then took his flask and poured a few drops of brandy on the pallid lips of the chief, who gradually recovered, and at length stood on his feet. Bending a searching glance on the man who so generously paid him attentions he was far from expecting, he asked in a hoarse voice —

"Why does the pale hunter wish to save me?"

"Because," Valentine answered, without hesitation, "my brother is a great warrior in his nation, and must not die. He is free."

And holding out his hand to the chief, he helped him to walk. The Indian followed him unresistingly, but without a word. On reaching the spot where the horses of the tribe were picketed, Valentine selected one, saddled it, and led it to the Apache, who, during the hunter's short absence, had remained motionless on the same spot.

"My brother will mount," he said.

The warrior was still so weak that Valentine was compelled to help him into the saddle.

"Can my brother keep on his horse?" he asked, with tender solicitude.

"Yes," the Apache answered, laconically.

The hunter took the gun, bow, and panther skin quiver of the chief which he handed to him, saying gently —

"My brother will take back his arms. A great warrior as he is must not return to his tribe like a timid woman; he should be able to kill a stag, if he met one on the road."

The Indian seized the weapons; a convulsive tremor ran over his limbs, and joy gained the victory over Indian stoicism. This man, who had faced a horrible death without change of countenance, was conquered by the Frenchman's noble conduct; his granite heart was softened; a tear, doubtless the first he had ever shed, escaped from his fever parched eyes, and a sob burst from his overcharged breast.

"Thanks," he said, in a choking voice, so soon as words could find their way to to his lips; "thanks, my brother is good, he has a friend."

"My brother owes me nothing," the hunter replied, simply; "I act as my heart and my religion order me."

The Indian remained pensive for a moment, then he muttered, shaking his head dubiously:

"Yes, I have heard that said before, by Father Seraphin, the Chief of Prayer of the palefaces. Their God is omnipotent, He is before all merciful; is not that a blessing?"

"Remember, chief," Valentine quietly interrupted him, "that I save your life in the name of Father Seraphin, whom you seem to know."

The Apache smiled softly.

"Yes," he said, "these are his words, 'Requite good for evil.'"

"Remember those divine precepts which I put in practice today," Valentine exclaimed, "and they will support you in suffering."

Black Cat shook his head.

"No," he said, "the desert has its own laws, which are immutable; the red skins are of a different nature from the palefaces: their law is one of blood, and they cannot alter it. Their law says: 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' The maxim is derived from their fathers, and they are obliged to submit to it, and follow it; but the redskins never forget an insult or a kindness. Black Cat has a great memory."

There was a silence of some minutes, during which the two men regarded each other attentively. At length the Apache spoke again.

"My brother will lend me his gourd."

The hunter gave it to him; the Apache quickly raised it to his lips, and took a mouthful. Then, bending down to Valentine, he placed his hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the lips, while allowing a portion of the fluid he held in his mouth to pass into the hunter's.

On the prairies of the Far West this ceremony is a species of mysterious initiation, and the greatest mark of attachment one man can give another. When two men have embraced in this way, they are henceforth friends, whom nothing can separate save death, and they help one another without hesitation under all circumstances.

Valentine knew this, and hence, in spite of the disgust he internally experienced, he did not oppose the action of the Apache chief. On the contrary, he yielded to it joyfully, comprehending the immense advantages he should, at a later date, derive from this indissoluble alliance with one of the most influential Apache sachems, those allies of Red Cedar, on whom he had sworn to take an exemplary revenge.

"We are brothers," Black Cat said, gravely. "Henceforth, by day or night, wherever the great pale hunter may direct his footsteps, a friend will constantly watch over him."

"We are brothers," the hunter replied; "Black Cat will ever find me ready to come to his assistance."

"I know it," said the warrior. "Farewell; I will return to the warriors of my tribe."

"Farewell," Valentine said.

And vigorously lashing his horse, the Apache Chief started at full speed, and soon disappeared in the darkness. Valentine listened for a moment to the echo of his horse's hoofs on the hardened ground, and then returned thoughtfully to the calli, in which Ellen was nursing White Gazelle.

CHAPTER XXVI

TWO WOMEN'S HEARTS

Ellen felt moved with pity at the sight of this young and lovely woman, who lay on the floor of the hut, and whom life seemed to have quitted forever. She felt for her, although she never remembered to have seen her before, a sympathy for which she could not account, and which instinctively attracted her.

Who was this woman? How had she, still so young, become mixed up in these scenes of murder and associated with these savage prairie men, to whom every human being is an enemy, every valuable article a booty? Whence arose this strange ascendancy which she exerted over outlaws, whom she made cry like children?

All these thoughts crossed Ellen's mind, and heightened, were that possible, the interest she felt in the stranger. And yet, in her heart, a vague fear, an undefinable presentiment warned her to be on her guard, and that this woman, gifted with, a strange character and fatal beauty, was an enemy, who would destroy her happiness forever.

As Ellen was one of those rare women for whom evil sentiments did not exist, and who made it a principle to obey, under all circumstances, the impulse of her heart, without reflecting on the consequences that might result from it, she silenced the feeling of revolt within her, and bent over White Gazelle.

And with that exquisite tact, innate in the female heart, she sat down by the side of the sufferer, laid her beautiful head on her knees, loosened her vest, and gave her that busy attention of which the other sex alone possess the secret.

The two maidens, thus grouped on the uneven floor of a wretched Indian hut, offered an exquisite picture. Both deliciously lovely, though of different beauty – for Ellen had the most lovely golden locks ever seen, while the Gazelle, on the contrary, had the warm tint of the Spanish woman, and hair of a bluish black – presented the complete type, in two different races, of the beau-ideal of woman, that misunderstood and incomprehensible being, the fallen angel in whose heart God seems to have let fall a glorious beam of His divinity, and who retains a vague reminiscence of that Eden which she made us lose.

The American woman, that perfect whole, a composition of graces, volcanic and raging passions, angel and demon, who loves and hates simultaneously, and who makes the man she prefers feel in the same second the joys of paradise and the nameless tortures of the Inferno! Who could even analyze this impossible nature, in which virtue and vices, strangely amalgamated, seem to personify the terrible convulsions of the soil on which she lives, and which has created her?

For a long time, Ellen's cares were thrown away. White Gazelle remained pale and cold in her arms. The maiden began to grow alarmed. She knew not to what she should have recourse, when the stranger made a slight movement, and a faint ruddiness tinged her cheeks. She uttered a profound sigh, and her eyelids painfully rose. She looked round her in amazement, and then closed her eyes again.

After a moment, she opened them once more, raised her hand to her brow as if to dissipate the clouds that obscured her mind, fixed her eyes on the person who was attending to her, and then, with a frown and quivering lips, she, tore herself from the arms that entwined her, and, bounding like a panther, sought shelter in one of the corners of the hut, without ceasing to gaze fixedly at the young American, who was startled at this strange conduct, and could not understand it.

The two girls remained thus for a few seconds, face to face, devouring each other with their eyes, but not exchanging a syllable. No other sound could be heard in the hut, save the panting respiration of the two females.

"Why do you shun me?" Ellen at length asked in her harmonious voice, soft as the cooing of a dove. "Do I frighten you?" she added, with a smile.