The Scalp Hunters

A bottle of wine was placed between us, and Seguin, pouring out two glasses, asked me to drink. This courtesy assured me. “But how if the wine be poi – ?” He swallowed his own glass before the thought had fairly shaped itself.

“I am wronging him,” thought I. “This man, with all, is incapable of an act of treachery like that.”

I drank up the wine. It made me feel more composed and tranquil.

After a moment’s silence he opened the conversation with the abrupt interrogatory, “What do you know of me?”

“Your name and calling; nothing more.”

“More than is guessed at here;” and he pointed significantly to the door. “Who told you thus much of me?”

“A friend, whom you saw at Santa Fé.”

“Ah! Saint Vrain; a brave, bold man. I met him once in Chihuahua. Did he tell you no more of me than this?”

“No. He promised to enter into particulars concerning you, but the subject was forgotten, the caravan moved on, and we were separated.”

“You heard, then, that I was Seguin the Scalp-hunter? That I was employed by the citizens of El Paso to hunt the Apache and Navajo, and that I was paid a stated sum for every Indian scalp I could hang upon their gates? You heard all this?”

“I did.”

“It is true.”

I remained silent.

“Now, sir,” he continued, after a pause, “would you marry my daughter, the child of a wholesale murderer?”

“Your crimes are not hers. She is innocent even of the knowledge of them, as you have said. You may be a demon; she is an angel.”

There was a sad expression on his countenance as I said this.

“Crimes! demon!” he muttered, half in soliloquy. “Ay, you may well think this; so judges the world. You have heard the stories of the mountain men in all their red exaggeration. You have heard that, during a treaty, I invited a village of the Apaches to a banquet, and poisoned the viands – poisoned the guests, man, woman, and child, and then scalped them! You have heard that I induced to pull upon the drag rope of a cannon two hundred savages, who know not its use; and then fired the piece, loaded with grape, mowing down the row of unsuspecting wretches! These, and other inhuman acts, you have no doubt heard of?”

“It is true. I have heard these stories among the mountain hunters; but I knew not whether to believe them.”

“Monsieur, they are false; all false and unfounded.”

“I am glad to hear you say this. I could not now believe you capable of such barbarities.”

“And yet, if they were true in all their horrid details, they would fall far short of the cruelties that have been dealt out by the savage foe to the inhabitants of this defenceless frontier. If you knew the history of this land for the last ten years; its massacres and its murders; its tears and its burnings; its spoliations; whole provinces depopulated; villages given to the flames; men butchered on their own hearths; women, beautiful women, carried into captivity by the desert robber! Oh, God! and I too have shared wrongs that will acquit me in your eyes, perhaps in the eyes of Heaven!”

The speaker buried his face in his hands, and leant forward upon the table. He was evidently suffering from some painful recollection. After a moment he resumed – “I would have you listen to a short history of my life.” I signified my assent; and after filling and drinking another glass of wine, he proceeded.

“I am not a Frenchman, as men suppose. I am a Creole, a native of New Orleans. My parents were refugees from Saint Domingo, where, after the black revolution, the bulk of their fortune was confiscated by the bloody Christophe.

“I was educated for a civil engineer; and, in this capacity, I was brought out to the mines of Mexico, by the owner of one of them, who knew my father. I was young at the time, and I spent several years employed in the mines of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi.

“I had saved some money out of my pay, and I began to think of opening upon my own account.

“Rumours had long been current that rich veins of gold existed upon the Gila and its tributaries. The washings had been seen and gathered in these rivers; and the mother of gold, the milky quartz rock, cropped out everywhere in the desert mountains of this wild region.

“I started for this country with a select party; and, after traversing it for weeks, in the Mimbres mountains, near the head waters of the Gila, I found the precious ore in its bed. I established a mine, and in five years was a rich man.

“I remembered the companion of my youth, the gentle, the beautiful cousin who had shared my confidence, and inspired me with my first passion. With me it was first and last; it was not, as is often the case under similar circumstances, a transient thing. Through all my wanderings I had remembered and loved her. Had she been as true to me?

“I determined to assure myself; and leaving my affairs in the hands of my mayoral, I set out for my native city.

“Adèle had been true; and I returned, bringing her with me.

“I built a house in Valverde, the nearest inhabited district to my mine.

“Valverde was then a thriving place; it is now a ruin, which you may have seen in your journey down.

“In this place we lived for years, in the enjoyment of wealth and happiness. I look back upon those days as so many ages of bliss. Our love was mutual and ardent; and we were blessed with two children, both girls. The youngest resembled her mother; the other, I have been told, was more like myself. We doted, I fear, too much on these pledges. We were too happy in their possession.

“At this time a new Governor was sent to Santa Fé, a man who, by his wantonness and tyranny, has since then ruined the province. There has been no act too vile, no crime too dark, for this human monster.

“He offered fair enough at first, and was feasted in the houses of the ricos through the valley. As I was classed among these, I was honoured with his visits, and frequently. He resided principally at Albuquerque; and grand fêtes were given at his palace, to which my wife and I were invited as special guests. He in return often came to our house in Valverde, under pretence of visiting the different parts of the province.

“I discovered, at length, that his visits were solely intended for my wife, to whom he had paid some flattering attentions.

“I will not dwell on the beauty of Adèle, at this time. You may imagine that for yourself; and, monsieur, you may assist your imagination by allowing it to dwell on those graces you appear to have discovered in her daughter, for the little Zoe is a type of what her mother was.

“At the time I speak of she was still in the bloom of her beauty. The fame of that beauty was on every tongue, and had piqued the vanity of the wanton tyrant. For this reason I became the object of his friendly assiduities.

“I had divined this; but confiding in the virtue of my wife, I took no notice of his conduct. No overt act of insult as yet claimed my attention.

“Returning on one occasion from a long absence at the mines, Adèle informed me what, through delicacy, she had hitherto concealed – of insults received from his excellency at various times, but particularly in a visit he had paid her during my absence.

“This was enough for Creole blood. I repaired to Albuquerque; and on the public plaza, in presence of the multitude, I chastised the insulter.

“I was seized and thrown into a prison, where I lay for several weeks. When I was freed, and sought my home again, it was plundered and desolate. The wild Navajo had been there; my household gods were scattered and broken, and my child, oh, God! my little Adèle, was carried captive to the mountains!”

“And your wife? your other child?” I inquired, eager to know the rest.

“They had escaped. In the terrible conflict – for my poor peons battled bravely – my wife, with Zoe in her arms, had rushed out and hidden in a cave that was in the garden. I found them in the ranche of a vaquero in the woods, whither they had wandered.”

“And your daughter Adèle – have you heard aught of her since?”

“Yes, yes, I will come to that in a moment.

“My mine, at the same time, was plundered and destroyed; many of the workmen were slaughtered before they could escape; and the work itself, with my fortune, became a ruin.

“With some of the miners, who had fled, and others of Valverde, who, like me, had suffered, I organised a band, and followed the savage foe; but our pursuit was vain, and we turned back, many of us broken in health and heart.

“Oh, monsieur, you cannot know what it is to have thus lost a favourite child! you cannot understand the agony of the bereaved father!”

The speaker pressed his head between his hands, and remained for a moment silent. His countenance bore the indications of heartrending sorrow.