Wood Rangers: The Trappers of Sonora

The old hunter felt his heart melt at the sound of the two voices that he loved so much. A short silence followed, then came the answer from the bank.

“The Blackbird wishes the white man to ask for life, and he asks for death. My wish is this, let the white man of the north quit his companions, and I swear on my father’s bones, that his life shall be saved, but his alone; the other three must die.”

Bois-Rose disdained to reply to this offer, and the Indian chief waited vainly for a refusal or an acceptance. Then he continued: “Until the hour of their death, the whites hear the voice of the Indian chief for the last time. My warriors surround the island and the river. Indian blood has been spilled and must be revenged; white blood must flow. But the Indian does not wish for this blood warmed by the ardour of the combat, he wishes for it frozen by terror, impoverished by hunger. He will take the whites living; then, when he holds them in his clutches, when they are like hungry dogs howling after a bone, he will see what men are like after fear and privation; he will make of their skin a saddle for his war-horse, and each of their scalps shall be suspended to his saddle, as a trophy of vengeance. My warriors shall surround the island for fifteen days and nights if necessary, in order to make capture of the white men.”

After these terrible menaces the Indian disappeared behind the trees. But Pepé not willing that he should believe he had intimidated them, cried as coldly as anger would permit, “Dog, who can do nothing but bark, the whites despise your vain bravados. Jackal, unclean polecat, I despise you – I – I” – but rage prevented him from saying more, and he finished off by a gesture of contempt; then with a loud laugh he sat down, satisfied at having had the last word. As for Bois-Rose he saw in it all only the refusal of his heroic sacrifice.

“Ah!” sighed the generous old man, “I could have arranged it all; now it is too late.”

The moon had gone down; the sound of distant firing had ceased, and the darkness made the three friends feel still more forcibly how easy it would have been to gain the opposite bank, carrying in their arms the wounded man. He, insensible to all that was passing, still slept heavily.

“Thus,” said Pepé, first breaking silence, “we have fifteen days to live; it is true we have not much provision, but carramba! we shall fish for food and for amusement.”

“Let us think,” said Bois-Rose, “of employing usefully the hours before daylight.”

“In what?”

“Parbleu! in escaping!”

“But how?”

“That is the question. You can swim, Fabian?”

“How else should. I have escaped from the Salto de Agua?”

“True! I believe that fear confuses my brain. Well! it would not be impossible, perhaps, to dig a hole in the middle of this island, and to slip through this opening into the water. The night is so dark, that if the Indians do not see us throw ourselves into the water, we might gain a place some way off with safety. Stay, I shall try an experiment.” So saying, he detached, with some trouble, one of the trunks from the little island; and its knotty end looked not unlike a human head. This he placed carefully on the water, and soon it floated gently down the stream. The three friends followed its course anxiously; then, when it had disappeared, Bois-Rose said:

“You see, a prudent swimmer might pass in the same manner; not an Indian has noticed it.”

“That is true; but who knows that their eyes cannot distinguish a man from a piece of wood?” said Pepé. “Besides, we have with with us a man who cannot swim.”

“Whom?”

The Spaniard pointed to the wounded man; who groaned in his sleep, as though his guardian angel warned him that there was a question of abandoning him to his enemies.

“What matter?” said Bois-Rose; “is his life worth that of the last of the Medianas?”

“No,” replied the Spaniard; “and I, who half wanted a short time ago to abandon the poor wretch, think now I would be cowardly.”

“Perhaps,” added Fabian, “he has children, who would weep for their father.”

“It would be a bad action, and would bring us ill luck,” added Pepé.

All the superstitious tenderness of the Canadian awoke at these words, and he said —

“Well, then, Fabian, you are a good swimmer, follow this plan: Pepé and I will stay here and guard this man, and if we die here, it will be in the discharge of our duty, and with the joy of knowing you to be safe.”

But Fabian shook his head.

“I care not for life without you; I shall stay,” said he.

“What can be done then?”

“Let us think,” said Pepé.

But it was unluckily one of those cases in which all human resources are vain, for it was one of those desperate situations from which a higher power alone could extricate them. In vain the fog thickened and the night grew darker; the resolution not to abandon the wounded man opposed an insurmountable obstacle to their escape, and before long the fires lighted by the Indians along each bank, threw a red light over the stream, and rendered this plan impracticable. Except for these fires, the most complete calm reigned, for no enemy was visible, no human voice troubled the silence of the night. However, the fog grew more and more dense, the stream disappeared from view, and even the fires looked only like pale and indistinct lights under the shadowy outline of the trees.

Chapter Forty Three

A Feat of Herculean Strength

Let us now glance at the spot occupied by the Blackbird. The fires lighted on the banks threw at first so strong a light that nothing could escape the eyes of the Indians, and a sentinel placed near each fire was charged to observe carefully all that passed on the island. Seated and leaning against the trunk of a tree, his broken shoulder bound up with strips of leather, the Blackbird only showed on his face an expression of satisfied ferocity; as for the suffering he was undergoing, he would have thought it unworthy of him to betray the least indication of it. His ardent eye was fixed continually on the spot where were the three men, whom he pictured to himself as full of anguish.

But as the fog grew thicker, first the opposite bank and then the island itself, became totally invisible. The Indian chief felt that it was necessary to redouble his surveillance. He ordered one man to cross the river, and another to walk along the bank, and exhorted every one to watchfulness.

“Go,” said he, “and tell those of my warriors who are ordered to watch these Christians – whose skins and scalps shall serve as ornaments to our horses – that they must each have four ears, to replace the eyes that the fog has rendered useless. Tell them that their vigilance will merit their chief’s gratitude; but that if they allow sleep to deaden their senses, the hatchet of the Blackbird will send them to sleep in the land of spirits.”

The two messengers set off, and soon returned to tell the chief that he might rest satisfied that attention would be paid to his orders. Indeed, stimulated at once by their own hatred of the whites, and by the hope of a recompense – fearing if sleep surprised them, not so much the threatened punishment as the idea of awaking in the hunting-grounds of the land of spirits, bearing on their foreheads the mark of shame which accompanies the sentinel who gives way to sleep – the sentinels had redoubled their vigilance. There are few sounds that can escape the marvellous ears of an Indian, but on this occasion the fog made it difficult to hear as well as to see, and the strictest attention was necessary. With closed eyes and open ears, and standing up to chase away the heaviness that the silence of nature caused them to feel, the Indian warriors stood motionless near their fires, throwing on on from time to time some fagots to keep them ablaze.

Some time passed thus, during which the only sound heard was that of a distant fall in the river.

The Blackbird remained on the left bank, and the night air, as it inflamed his wounds, only excited his hatred the more. His face covered with hideous paint, and contracted by the pain – of which he disdained to make complaint – and his brilliant eyes, made him resemble one of the sanguinary idols of barbarous times. Little by little, however, in spite of himself, his eyes were weighed down by sleep, and an invincible drowsiness took possession of his spirit. Before long his sleep became so profound, that he did not hear the dry branches crackle under a moccasin, as an Indian of his tribe advanced towards him.

Straight and motionless as a bamboo stem, an Indian runner covered with blood and panting for breath, waited for some time until the chief, before whom he stood, should open his eyes and interrogate him. As the latter showed no signs of awaking, the runner resolved to announce his presence, and in a hollow, guttural voice, said —

“When the Blackbird shall open his eyes, he will hear from my mouth words which will chase sleep far from him.”

The chief opened his eyes at the voice, and shook off his drowsiness with a violent effort. Ashamed at having been surprised asleep, he muttered:

“The Blackbird has lost much blood; he has lost so much that the next sun will not dry it on the ground, and his body is more feeble than his will.”

“Man is made thus,” rejoined the messenger, sententiously.

The Blackbird continued without noticing the reflection:

“It is some very important message doubtless, since the Spotted Cat has chosen the fleetest of his runners to carry it?”

“The Spotted Cat will send no more messengers,” replied the Indian. “The lance of a white man has pierced his breast, and the chief now hunts with his fathers in the land of spirits.”

“What matter! he died a conqueror? he saw, before he died, the white dogs dispersed over the plain?”

“He died conquered; and the Apaches had to fly after losing their chief and fifty of their renowned warriors.”

In spite of his wound, and of the empire that an Indian should exercise over himself, the Blackbird started up at these words. However, he restrained himself, and replied gravely, though with trembling lips —

“Who, then, sends you to me, messenger of ill?”

“The warriors, who want a chief to repair their defeat. The Blackbird was but the chief of a tribe, he is now the chief of a whole people.”