The Scalp Hunters

The hunters saw now, for the first time, the prospect of penetrating this region with safety, and their minds were filled with fancies wild and romantic. Not a few of them had joined Seguin’s band in hopes that some day this very expedition might be undertaken, and the “golden mountain” reached. What, then, were their feelings when Seguin declared his purpose of travelling by the Prieto! At the mention of it a buzz of peculiar meaning ran through the crowd, and the men turned to each other with looks of satisfaction.

“To-morrow, then, we shall march,” added the chief. “Go now and make your preparations; we start by daybreak.”

As Seguin ceased speaking, the hunters departed, each to look after his “traps and possibles”; a duty soon performed, as these rude rangers were but little encumbered with camp equipage.

I sat down upon a log, watching for some time the movements of my wild companions, and listening to their rude and Babel-like converse.

At length arrived sunset, or night, for they are almost synonymous in these latitudes. Fresh logs were flung upon the fires, till they blazed up. The men sat around them, cooking, eating, smoking, talking loudly, and laughing at stories that illustrated their own wild habits. The red light fell upon fierce, dark faces, now fiercer and more swarthy under the glare of the burning cotton-wood.

By its light the savage expression was strengthened on every countenance. Beards looked darker, and teeth gleamed whiter through them. Eyes appeared more sunken, and their glances more brilliant and fiend-like. Picturesque costumes met the eye: turbans, Spanish hats, plumes, and mottled garments; escopettes and rifles leaning against the trees; saddles, high-peaked, resting upon logs and stumps; bridles hanging from the branches overhead; strings of jerked meat drooping in festoons in front of the tents, and haunches of venison still smoking and dripping their half-coagulated drops!

The vermilion smeared on the foreheads of the Indian warriors gleamed in the night light as though it were blood. It was a picture at once savage and warlike – warlike, but with an aspect of ferocity at which the sensitive heart drew back. It was a picture such as may be seen only in a bivouac of guerilleros, of brigands, of man-hunters.

Chapter Twenty Four.

El Sol and La Luna

“Come,” said Seguin, touching me on the arm, “our supper is ready; I see the doctor beckoning us.” I was not slow to answer the call, for the cool air of the evening had sharpened my appetite. We approached the tent, in front of which was a fire.

Over this, the doctor, assisted by Gode and a pueblo peon, was just giving the finishing touch to a savoury supper.

Part of it had already been carried inside the tent. We followed it, and took our seats upon saddles, blankets, and packs.

“Why, doctor,” said Seguin, “you have proved yourself a perfect maître de cuisine to-night. This is a supper for a Lucullus.”

“Ach! mein captain, ich have goet help; Meinherr Gode assist me most wonderful.”

“Well, Mr Haller and I will do full justice to your dishes. Let us to them at once!”

“Oui, oui! bien, Monsieur Capitaine,” said Gode, hurrying in with a multitude of viands. The “Canadien” was always in his element when there was plenty to cook and eat.

We were soon engaged on fresh steaks (of wild cows), roasted ribs of venison, dried buffalo tongues, tortillas, and coffee. The coffee and tortillas were the labours of the pueblo, in the preparation of which viands he was Gode’s master.

But Gode had a choice dish, un petit morceau, in reserve, which he brought forth with a triumphant flourish.

“Voici, messieurs?” cried he, setting it before us.

“What is it, Gode?”

“Une fricassée, monsieur.”

“Of what?”

“Les frog; what de Yankee call boo-frog!”

“A fricassee of bull-frogs!”

“Oui, oui, mon maître. Voulez vous?”

“No, thank you!”

“I will trouble you, Monsieur Gode,” said Seguin.

“Ich, ich, mein Gode; frocks ver goot;” and the doctor held out his platter to be helped.

Gode, in wandering by the river, had encountered a pond of giant frogs, and the fricassée was the result. I had not then overcome my national antipathy to the victims of Saint Patrick’s curse; and, to the voyageur’s astonishment, I refused to share the dainty.

During our supper conversation I gathered some facts of the doctor’s history, which, with what I had already learned, rendered the old man an object of extreme interest to me.

Up to this time, I had wondered what such a character could be doing in such company as that of the Scalp-hunters. I now learned a few details that explained all.

His name was Reichter – Friedrich Reichter. He was a Strasburgher, and in the city of bells had been a medical practitioner of some repute. The love of science, but particularly of his favourite branch, botany, had lured him away from his Rhenish home. He had wandered to the United States, then to the Far West, to classify the flora of that remote region. He had spent several years in the great valley of the Mississippi; and, falling in with one of the Saint Louis caravans, had crossed the prairies to the oasis of New Mexico. In his scientific wanderings along the Del Norte he had met with the Scalp-hunters, and, attracted by the opportunity thus afforded him of penetrating into regions hitherto unexplored by the devotees of science, he had offered to accompany the band. This offer was gladly accepted on account of his services as their medico; and for two years he had been with them, sharing their hardships and dangers.

Many a scene of peril had he passed through, many a privation had he undergone, prompted by a love of his favourite study, and perhaps, too, by the dreams of future triumph, when he would one day spread his strange flora before the savants of Europe. Poor Reichter! Poor Friedrich Reichter! yours was the dream of a dream; it never became a reality!

Our supper was at length finished, and washed down with a bottle of Paso wine. There was plenty of this, as well as Taos whisky in the encampment; and the roars of laughter that reached us from without proved that the hunters were imbibing freely of the latter.

The doctor drew out his great meerschaum, Gode filled a red claystone, while Seguin and I lit our husk cigarettes.

“But tell me,” said I, addressing Seguin, “who is the Indian? – he who performed the wild feat of shooting the – ”

“Ah! El Sol; he is a Coco.”

“A Coco?”

“Yes; of the Maricopa tribe.”

“But that makes me no wiser than before. I knew that much already.”

“You knew it? Who told you?”

“I heard old Rube mention the fact to his comrade Garey.”

“Ay, true; he should know him.” Seguin remained silent.

“Well?” continued I, wishing to learn more. “Who are the Maricopas? I have never heard of them.”

“It is a tribe but little known, a nation of singular men. They are foes of the Apache and Navajo; their country lies down the Gila. They came originally from the Pacific, from the shores of the Californian Sea.”

“But this man is educated, or seems so. He speaks English and French as well as you or I. He appears to be talented, intelligent, polite – in short, a gentleman.”

“He is all you have said.”

“I cannot understand this.”

“I will explain to you, my friend. That man was educated at one of the most celebrated universities in Europe. He has travelled farther and through more countries, perhaps, than either of us.”

“But how did he accomplish all this? An Indian!”

“By the aid of that which has often enabled very little men (though El Sol is not one of those) to achieve very great deeds, or at least to get the credit of having done so. By gold.”

“Gold! and where got he the gold? I have been told that there is very little of it in the hands of Indians. The white men have robbed them of all they once had.”

“That is in general a truth; and true of the Maricopas. There was a time when they possessed gold in large quantities, and pearls too, gathered from the depths of the Vermilion Sea. It is gone. The Jesuit padres could tell whither.”

“But this man? El Sol?”

“He is a chief. He has not lost all his gold. He still holds enough to serve him, and it is not likely that the padres will coax it from him for either beads or vermilion. No; he has seen the world, and has learnt the all-pervading value of that shining metal.”

“But his sister? – is she, too, educated?”

“No. Poor Luna is still a savage; but he instructs her in many things. He has been absent for several years. He has returned but lately to his tribe.”

“Their names are strange: ‘The Sun,’ ‘The Moon’!”

“They were given by the Spaniards of Sonora; but they are only translations or synonyms of their Indian appellations. That is common upon the frontier.”

“Why are they here?”

I put this question with hesitation, as I knew there might be some peculiar history connected with the answer.

“Partly,” replied Seguin, “from gratitude, I believe, to myself. I rescued El Sol when a boy out of the hands of the Navajoes. Perhaps there is still another reason. But come,” continued he, apparently wishing to give a turn to the conversation, “you shall know our Indian friends. You are to be companions for a time. He is a scholar, and will interest you. Take care of your heart with the gentle Luna. Vincente, go to the tent of the Coco chief. Ask him to come and drink a cup of Paso wine. Tell him to bring his sister with him.”

The servant hurried away through the camp. While he was gone, we conversed about the feat which the Coco had performed with his rifle.

“I never knew him to fire,” remarked Seguin, “without hitting his mark. There is something mysterious about that. His aim is unerring; and it seems to be on his part an act of pure volition. There may be some guiding principle in the mind, independent of either strength of nerve or sharpness of sight. He and another are the only persons I ever knew to possess this singular power.”

The last part of this speech was uttered in a half soliloquy; and Seguin, after delivering it, remained for some moments silent and abstracted.

Before the conversation was resumed, El Sol and his sister entered the tent, and Seguin introduced us to each other. In a few moments we were engaged, El Sol, the doctor, Seguin, and myself, in an animated conversation. The subject was not horses, nor guns, nor scalps, nor war, nor blood, nor aught connected with the horrid calling of that camp. We were discussing a point in the pacific science of botany: the relationship of the different forms of the cactus family.

I had studied the science, and I felt that my knowledge of it was inferior to that of any of my three companions. I was struck with it then, and more when I reflected on it afterwards; the fact of such a conversation, the time, the place, and the men who carried it on.

For nearly two hours we sat smoking and talking on like subjects.

While we were thus engaged I observed upon the canvas the shadow of a man. Looking forth, as my position enabled me without rising, I recognised in the light that streamed out of the tent a hunting-shirt, with a worked pipe-holder hanging over the breast.

La Luna sat near her brother, sewing “parfleche” soles upon a pair of moccasins. I noticed that she had an abstracted air, and at short intervals glanced out from the opening of the tent. While we were engrossed with our discussion she rose silently, though not with any appearance of stealth, and went out.

After a while she returned. I could read the love-light in her eye as she resumed her occupation.

El Sol and his sister at length left us, and shortly after Seguin, the doctor, and I rolled ourselves in our serapes, and lay down to sleep.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The War-Trail

The band was mounted by the earliest dawn, and as the notes of the bugle died away our horses plashed through the river, crossing to the other side. We soon debouched from the timber bottom, coming out upon sandy plains that stretched westward to the Mibres Mountains. We rode over these plains in a southerly direction, climbing long ridges of sand that traversed them from east to west. The drift lay in deep furrows, and our horses sank above the fetlocks as we journeyed. We were crossing the western section of the Jornada.

We travelled in Indian file. Habit has formed this disposition among Indians and hunters on the march. The tangled paths of the forest, and the narrow defiles of the mountains admit of no other. Even when passing a plain, our cavalcade was strung out for a quarter of a mile. The atajo followed in charge of the arrieros.

For the first day of our march we kept on without nooning. There was neither grass nor water on the route; and a halt under the hot sun would not have refreshed us.

Early in the afternoon a dark line became visible, stretching across the plain. As we drew nearer, a green wall rose before us, and we distinguished the groves of cotton-wood. The hunters knew it to be the timber on the Paloma. We were soon passing under the shade of its quivering canopy, and reaching the banks of a clear stream, we halted for the night.

Our camp was formed without either tents or lodges. Those used on the Del Norte had been left behind in “caché.” An expedition like ours could not be cumbered with camp baggage. Each man’s blanket was his house, his bed, and his cloak.

Fires were kindled, and ribs roasted; and fatigued with our journey (the first day’s ride has always this effect), we were soon wrapped in our blankets and sleeping soundly.

We were summoned next morning by the call of the bugle sounding reveille. The band partook somewhat of a military organisation, and everyone understood the signals of light cavalry.

Our breakfast was soon cooked and eaten; our horses were drawn from their pickets, saddled, and mounted; and at another signal we moved forward on the route.

The incidents of our first journey were repeated, with but little variety, for several days in succession. We travelled through a desert country, here and there covered with wild sage and mezquite.

We passed on our route clumps of cacti, and thickets of creosote bushes, that emitted their foul odours as we crushed through them. On the fourth evening we camped at a spring, the Ojo de Vaca, lying on the eastern borders of the Llanos.

Over the western section of this great prairie passes the Apache war-trail, running southward into Sonora. Near the trail, and overlooking it, a high mountain rises out of the plain. It is the Pinon.

It was our design to reach this mountain, and “cacher” among the rocks, near a well-known spring, until our enemies should pass; but to effect this we would have to cross the war-trail, and our own tracks would betray us. Here was a difficulty which had not occurred to Seguin. There was no other point except the Pinon from which we could certainly see the enemy on their route and be ourselves hidden. This mountain, then, must be reached; and how were we to effect it without crossing the trail?

After our arrival at Ojo de Vaca, Seguin drew the men together to deliberate on this matter.

“Let us spread,” said a hunter, “and keep wide over the paraira, till we’ve got clar past the Apash trail. They won’t notice a single track hyar and thyar, I reckin.”

“Ay, but they will, though,” rejoined another. “Do ye think an Injun’s a-goin’ to pass a shod horse track ’ithout follerin’ it up? No, siree!”

“We kin muffle the hoofs, as far as that goes,” suggested the first speaker.

“Wagh! That ud only make it worse. I tried that dodge once afore, an’ nearly lost my har for it. He’s a blind Injun kin be fooled that away. ’Twon’t do nohow.”

“They’re not going to be so partickler when they’re on the war-trail, I warrant ye. I don’t see why it shouldn’t do well enough.”

Most of the hunters agreed with the former speaker. The Indians would not fail to notice so many muffled tracks, and suspect there was something in the wind. The idea of “muffling” was therefore abandoned. What next? The trapper Rube, who up to this time had said nothing, now drew the attention of all by abruptly exclaiming, “Pish!”

“Well! what have you to say, old hoss?” inquired one of the hunters.

“Thet yur a set o’ fools, one and all o’ ee. I kud take the full o’ that paraira o’ hosses acrosst the ’Pash trail, ’ithout making a sign that any Injun’s a-gwine to foller, particularly an Injun on the war-beat as them is now.”

“How?” asked Seguin.

“I’ll tell yur how, cap, ev yur’ll tell me what ’ee wants to cross the trail for.”

“Why, to conceal ourselves in the Pinon range; what else?”

“An’ how are ’ee gwine to ‘cacher’ in the Peenyun ’ithout water?”

“There is a spring on the side of it, at the foot of the mountain.”

“That’s true as Scripter. I knows that; but at that very spring the Injuns ’ll cool their lappers as they go down south’ard. How are ’ee gwine to get at it with this cavayard ’ithout makin’ sign? This child don’t see that very clur.”

“You are right, Rube. We cannot touch the Pinon spring without leaving our marks too plainly; and it is the very place where the war-party may make a halt.”

“I sees no confoundered use in the hul on us crossin’ the paraira now. We kan’t hunt buffler till they’ve passed, anyways. So it’s this child’s idee that a dozen o’ us ’ll be enough to ‘cacher’ in the Peenyun, and watch for the niggurs a-goin’ south. A dozen mout do it safe enough, but not the hul cavayard.”

“And would you have the rest to remain here?”

“Not hyur. Let ’em go north’ard from hyur, and then strike west through the Musquite Hills. Thur’s a crick runs thur, about twenty mile or so this side the trail. They can git water and grass, and ‘cacher’ thur till we sends for ’em.”

“But why not remain by this spring, where we have both in plenty?”

“Cap’n, jest because some o’ the Injun party may take a notion in thur heads to kum this way themselves. I reckin we had better make blind tracks before leavin’ hyur.”

The force of Rube’s reasoning was apparent to all, and to none more than Seguin himself. It was resolved to follow his advice at once. The vidette party was told off; and the rest of the band, with the atajo, after blinding the tracks around the spring, struck off in a north-westerly direction.

They were to travel on to the Mezquite Hills, that lay some ten or twelve miles to the north-west of the spring. There they were to “cacher” by a stream well known to several of them, and wait until warned to join us.

The vidette party, of whom I was one, moved westward across the prairie.

Rube, Garey, El Sol, and his sister, with Sanchez, a ci-devant bull-fighter, and half a dozen others, composed the party. Seguin himself was our head and guide.

Before leaving the Ojo de Vaca we had stripped the shoes off the horses, filling the nail-holes with clay, so that their tracks would be taken for those of wild mustangs. Such were the precautions of men who knew that their lives might be the forfeit of a single footprint.

As we approached the point where the war-trail intersected the prairie, we separated and deployed to distances of half a mile each. In this manner we rode forward to the Pinon mountain, where we came together again, and turned northward along the foot of the range.

It was sundown when we reached the spring, having ridden all day across the plain. We descried it, as we approached, close in to the mountain foot, and marked by a grove of cotton-woods and willows. We did not take our horses near the water; but, having reached a defile in the mountain, we rode into it, and “cached” them in a thicket of nut-pine. In this thicket we spent the night.

With the first light of morning we made a reconnaissance of our caché.

In front of us was a low ridge covered with loose rocks and straggling trees of the nut-pine. This ridge separated the defile from the plain; and from its top, screened by a thicket of the pines, we commanded a view of the water as well as the trail, and the Llanos stretching away to the north, south, and east. It was just the sort of hiding-place we required for our object.

In the morning it became necessary to descend for water. For this purpose we had provided ourselves with a mule-bucket and extra xuages. We visited the spring, and filled our vessels, taking care to leave no traces of out footsteps in the mud.

We kept constant watch during the first day, but no Indians appeared. Deer and antelopes, with a small gang of buffaloes, came to the spring-branch to drink, and then roamed off again over the green meadows. It was a tempting sight, for we could easily have crept within shot, but we dared not touch them. We knew that the Indian dogs would scent their slaughter.

In the evening we went again for water, making the journey twice, as our animals began to suffer from thirst. We adopted the same precautions as before.

Next day we again watched the horizon to the north with eager eyes. Seguin had a small pocket-glass, and we could see the prairie with it for a distance of nearly thirty miles; but as yet no enemy could be descried.

The third day passed with a like result; and we began to fear that the warriors had taken some other trail.

Another circumstance rendered us uneasy. We had eaten nearly the whole of our provisions, and were now chewing the raw nuts of the pinon. We dared not kindle a fire to roast them. Indians can read the smoke at a great distance.

The fourth day arrived and still no sign on the horizon to the north. Our tasajo was all eaten, and we began to hunger. The nuts did not satisfy us. The game was in plenty at the spring, and mottling the grassy plain. One proposed to lie among the willows and shoot an antelope or a black-tailed deer, of which there were troops in the neighbourhood.

“We dare not,” said Seguin; “their dogs would find the blood. It might betray us.”

“I can procure one without letting a drop,” rejoined a Mexican hunter.

“How?” inquired several in a breath.

The man pointed to his lasso.

“But your tracks; you would make deep footmarks in the struggle?”

“We can blind them, captain,” rejoined the man.

“You may try, then,” assented the chief.

The Mexican unfastened the lasso from his saddle, and, taking a companion, proceeded to the spring. They crept in among the willows, and lay in wait. We watched them from the ridge.

They had not remained more than a quarter of an hour when a herd of antelopes was seen approaching from the plain. These walked directly for the spring, one following the other in Indian file. They were soon close in to the willows where the hunters had concealed themselves. Here they suddenly halted, throwing up their heads and snuffing the air. They had scented danger, but it was too late for the foremost to turn and lope off.

“Yonder goes the lasso!” cried one.

We saw the noose flying in the air and settling over his head. The herd suddenly wheeled, but the loop was around the neck of their leader; and after three or four skips, he sprang up, and falling upon his back, lay motionless.

The hunter came out from the willows, and, taking up the animal, now choked dead, carried him towards the entrance of the defile. His companion followed, blinding the tracks of both. In a few minutes they had reached us. The antelope was skinned, and eaten raw, in the blood!

Our horses grow thin with hunger and thirst. We fear to go too often to the water, though we become less cautious as the hours pass. Two more antelopes are lassoed by the expert hunter.

The night of the fourth day is clear moonlight. The Indians often march by moonlight, particularly when on the war-trail. We keep our vidette stationed during the night as in the day. On this night we look out with more hopes than usual. It is such a lovely night! a full moon, clear and calm.

We are not disappointed. Near midnight the vidette awakes us. There are dark forms on the sky away to the north. It may be buffaloes, but we see that they are approaching.

We stand, one and all, straining our eyes through the white air, and away over the silvery sward. There are glancing objects: arms it must be. “Horses! horsemen! They are Indians!”

“Oh, God! comrades, we are mad! Our horses: they may neigh!”

We bound after our leader down the hill, over the rocks, and through the trees. We run for the thicket where our animals are tied. We may be too late, for horses can hear each other miles off; and the slightest concussion vibrates afar through the elastic atmosphere of these high plateaux. We reach the caballada. What is Seguin doing? He has torn the blanket from under his saddle, and is muffling the head of his horse!