The War Trail: The Hunt of the Wild Horse

Such was the first rush of my reflections on becoming assured that the steed had been captured by Indians – that Isolina was in their hands. I only thought of her safety – that she was rescued from pain and peril, perhaps from death; and the thought was a gleam of joy.

Alas! only a gleam; and the reflections that followed were painfully bitter.

I could not help thinking of the character of the savages into whose hands she had fallen. If they were the same band that had harried the frontier town, then were they southern Indians – Comanche or Lipan. The report said one or other; and it was but too probable. True, the remnant of Shawanos and Delawares, with the Kickapoos and Texan Cherokees, sometimes stray as far as the banks of the Rio Grande. But the conduct was not theirs: these tribes, from long intercourse with whites, have been inducted into a sort of semi-civilisation; and their hereditary hostility for the pale-face has died out. Pillage and murder are no longer their trade; it could not have been they who had made the late foray. It might have been “Wild Cat” with his wicked Seminoles, now settled on the Texan frontier; but the act was more in keeping with the character of the mezcal-eating Apachés, who of late years had been pushing their expeditions far down the river. Even so – it mattered little; Apachés are but Comanches, or rather Comanches Apachés, and whether the Indians on whose trail we were standing were one or the other – whether Apaché, Lipan, Comanche, or their allies Caygua, Waco, or Pawnee-Pict, it mattered not; one and all were alike; one or other of them, my reflections were bitterly the same. Well understood I the character of these red men of the south; so far differing from their kindred of the north – so far different from that ideal type of cold continence, it has pleased the poet and the writer of romance to ascribe to them. The reverse of the medal was before my mind’s eye; the memory of many a scene was in my thoughts, of many a tale I had heard, illustrating the uxorious disposition, the wild unbridled wantonness of these lords of the southern plains.

Not then did I dwell long on such thoughts; for they had their influence in urging me onward, and onward I spurred.

There was another reason for our rapid advance: all of us were under the extreme agony of thirst – literally gasping for water; and thus physical suffering impelled us to ride forward as fast as our jaded horses could carry us over the ground.

Timber was at length before our eyes – green foliage – looking all the fresher and brighter from contrast with the black plain which it bounded. It was a grove of cottonwoods, skirting a prairie-stream; and beyond this the fire had not extended.

Wild joyous cries escaped from men and horses, as their eyes rested upon the limpid stream.

The men galloped over the bank, leaped out of their saddles, and without a thought of drowning, plunged breast-deep into the water. Some lifted the crystal liquid in their palms; others, more impatient, bent down, and ducking their faces in the flood, drank à la mode du cheval.

I noticed that the trappers behaved less recklessly than the rest; before going down to drink, the eyes of both were directed, with instinctive caution, along the banks, and into the timber.

Close to where we had halted, I observed a crossing, where numerous tracks of animals formed in the soil a deep, well-beaten path. Rube’s eyes were upon it, and I saw that they were glistening with unusual excitement.

“Told ’ee so!” cried he, after a short survey: “yanner’s thur trail —war-trail, by the Eturnal!”

Chapter Seventy Five.

The “Indios Bravos.”

You may be asking, what the trapper meant by a war-trail? It has been a phrase of frequent occurrence with us. It is a phrase of the frontier. Even at the eleventh hour, let me offer its explanation.

For half a century – ay, for three centuries and more – even since the conquest itself – the northern frontier of Mexico has been in, what is termed in old-fashioned phraseology, a “disturbed state.” Though the semi-civilised Aztecs, and the kindred races of town-dwelling Indians, easily yielded to the sword of the Spanish conquerors, far different has been the history of the wild tribes – the free hunters of the plains. Upon those mighty steppes that occupy the whole central area of the North American continent, dwell tribes of Indians – nations they might be called – who neither know, nor ever have known, other rule than that of their own chieftains. Even when Spain was at her strongest, she failed to subjugate the “Indios bravos” of her frontiers, who to the present hour have preserved their wild freedom. I speak not of the great nations of the northern prairies – Sioux and Cheyenne – Blackfeet and Crow – Pawnee and Arapahoe. With these the Spanish race scarcely ever came in contact. I refer more particularly to the tribes whose range impinges upon the frontiers of Mexico – Comanche, Lipan, Utah, Apaché, and Navajo.

It is not in the annals of Spain to prove that any one of these tribes ever yielded to her conquering sword; and equally a failure has been the attempt to wheedle them into a fanatical civilisation by the much-boasted conquest of the mission. Free, then, the prairie Indians are from white man’s rule, and free have they been, as though the keels of Columbus had never ploughed the Carib Sea.

But although they have preserved their independence for three centuries, for three centuries have they never known peace. Between the red Indian and the white Iberian, along the frontier of Northern Mexico, a war-border has existed since the days of Cortez to the present hour – constantly shifting north or south, but ever extended from east to west, from ocean to ocean, through wide degrees of longitude. North of this border ranges the “Indio bravo;” south of it dwells his degenerate and conquered kinsman, the “Indio manso” – not in the “tents,” but in the towns of his Spanish conqueror – the former, free as the prairie wind; the latter, yoked to a condition of “peon” vassalage, with chains as strong as those of slavery itself. The neutral belt of hostile ground lies between – on the one side half defended by a line of garrisoned forts (presidios); on the other, sheltered from attack by the wild and waterless desert.

I have stated that this war-border has been constantly shifting either northward or southward. Such was its history up to the beginning of the present cycle. Since then, a remarkable change has been going forward in the relative position of Indian and Iberian; and the line of hostile ground has been moving only in one direction – continually towards the south! To speak in less metaphorical phrase, the red man has been encroaching upon the territory of the white man – the so-called savage has been gaining ground upon the domain of civilisation. Not slowly or gradually either, but by gigantic strides – by the conquest of whole provinces as large as England ten times told!

I shall make the announcement of a fact, or rather a hypothesis – scarcely well known, though strange enough. It may interest, if not surprise, the ethnologist. I assert, then, that had the four tribes of North Mexican Indians – Comanche, Lipano, Apaché, and Navajo – been left to themselves, in less than another century they would have driven the degenerate descendants of the conquerors of Cortez from the soil of Anahuac! I make this assertion with a full belief and clear conviction of its truthfulness. The hypothesis rests upon a basis of realities. It would require but very simple logic to prove it; but a few facts may yield illustration.

With the fall of Spanish rule in Mexico, ended the predominance of the Spaniard over the Indian. By revolution, the presidios became shorn of their strength, and no longer offered a barrier even to the weakest incursion. In fact, a neutral line no more exists; whole provinces – Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Cinaloa, and Leon – are no better than neutral ground, or, to speak more definitely, form an extended territory conquered and desolated by the Indians. Even beyond these, into the “provincias internas,” have the bold copper-coloured freebooters of late carried their forays – even to the very gates of Durango. Two hundred Comanche warriors, or as many Apachés, fear not to ride hundreds of miles into the heart of civilised Mexico – hesitate not to attack a city or a settlement – scruple not to drag from hearth and home lovely maids and tender children —only these – and carry them slave and captive to their wild fastnesses in the desert! And this is no occasional foray, no long gathering outburst of revenge or retaliation; but an annual expedition, forming part of the regular routine of the year, and occurring at the season when the buffalo have migrated to the north – occurring in that month in the calendar of these aboriginal brigands jocosely styled the “Mexican moon!”

Upon whose head falls the blow thus periodically repeated? Upon the poor and unprotected? No doubt you will fancy so.

A single fact may serve to undeceive you. Only a few years ago, Trias, a man of “first family” in Mexico and governor of the large state of Chihuahua, lost one of his sons by an Indian foray. The boy was taken prisoner by the Comanches; and it was only after years of negotiation and payment of a large sum, that the father recovered his child. Thus the governor of a province, with means and military at his command, was not powerful enough to cause the surrender of his captive son: he was forced to buy him!

It is computed that at this moment there are three thousand white captives in the hands of the North Mexican Indians – nearly all of them of Spanish descent. They are mostly females, and live as the slave-wives of their captors – if such connexion may be dignified by the name. There are white men, too, among the Indians – prisoners taken in their youth; and strange as it may appear, few of them – either of the men or women – evince any desire to return to their former life or homes. Some, when ransomed, have refused the boon. Not uncommon along the frontier has been witnessed that heart-rending scene – a father who had recovered his child from the savages, and yet unable to reclaim its affection, or even to arouse it to a recognition of its parentage. In a few years – sometimes only months – the captives forget their early ties, and become wedded to their new life – become Indianised!

But a short time before, an instance had come under our own observation. The wounded brave taken in the skirmish at the mound was a full-blooded Mexican – had been carried off by the Comanches, some years before, from the settlements on the Lower Rio Grande. In consideration of this, we gave him his liberty – under the impression that he would gladly avail himself of the opportunity to return to his kindred.

He proved wanting in gratitude as in natural affection. The same night on which he was set free, he took the route back to the prairies, mounted upon one of the best horses of our troop, which he had stolen from its unfortunate owner!

Such are the “Cosas de Mexico” – a few of the traits of frontier-life on the Rio Bravo del Norte.

But what of the war-trail? That is not yet explained.

Know, then, that from the country of the Indians to that of the Mexicans extend many great paths, running for hundreds of miles from point to point. They follow the courses of streams, or cross vast desert plains, where water is found only at long intervals of distance. They are marked by the tracks of mules, horses, and captives. Here and there, they are whitened by bones – the bones of men, of women, of animals, that have perished by the way. Strange paths are these! What are they, and who have made them? Who travel by these roads that lead through the wild and homeless desert?

Indians: they are the paths of the Comanche and Caygua – the roads made by their warriors during the “Mexican moon.”

It was upon one of these that the trapper was gazing when he gave out the emphatic utterance —

“War-trail, by the Eturnal!”

Chapter Seventy Six.

On the War-Trail

Scarcely staying to quench my thirst, I led my horse across the stream, and commenced scrutinising the trail upon the opposite bank. The faithful trackers were by my side – no fear of them lagging behind.

I had won the hearts of both these men; and that they would have risked life to serve me, I could no longer doubt, since over and over again they had risked it. For Garey strong, courageous, handsome in the true sense, and noble-hearted, I felt real friendship, which the young trapper reciprocated. For his older comrade, the feeling. I had was like himself – indefinable, indescribable. It was strongly tinctured with admiration, but admiration of the intellectual rather than the moral or personal qualities of the man.

Instead of intellectual, I should rather say instinctive – for his keen intuitive thoughts appeared more like instincts, than the results of a process of ratiocination.

That the old trapper admired me – in his own phraseology, “liked me mightily” – I was aware. He was equally zealous as the younger in my service; but too free an exhibition of zeal was in his eyes a weakness, and he endeavoured to conceal it. His admiration of myself was perhaps owing to the fact that I neither attempted to thwart him in his humours nor rival him in his peculiar knowledge – the craft of the prairie. In this I was but his pupil, and behaved as such, generally deferring to his judgment.

Another impulse acted upon the trackers – sheer love of the part they were now playing. Just as the hound loves the trail, so did they; and hunger, thirst, weariness, one or all must be felt to an extreme degree before they would voluntarily forsake it.

Scarcely staying, therefore, to quench their thirst, they followed me out of the water; and all three of us together bent our attention to the sign.

It was a war-trail– a true war-trail. There was not the track of a dog – not the drag of a lodge-pole upon it. Had it been a moving encampment of peaceable Indians, these signs would have been visible; moreover, there would have been seen numerous footsteps of Indian women – of squaws; for the slave-wife of the lordly Comanche is compelled to traverse the prairies à pied, loaded like the packhorse that follows at her heels!

But though no foot-prints of Indian women appeared, there were tracks of women, scores of them, plainly imprinted in the soil of the river-bank. Those slender impressions, scarcely a span in length, smoothly moulded in the mud, were not to be mistaken for the footsteps of an Indian squaw. There was not the wide divergence at the heels with the toes turned inward; neither was there the moccasin-print. No: those tiny tracks must have been made by women of that nation who possess the smallest and prettiest feet in the world – by women of Mexico.

“Captives!” we exclaimed, as soon as our eyes rested upon the tracks.

“Ay, poor critters!” said Rube sympathisingly; “the cussed niggurs hev made ’em fut it, while thur’s been spare hosses a plenty. Wagh! a good wheen o’ weemen thur’s been – a score on ’em at the least. Wagh! I pity ’em, poor gurls! in sech kumpny as they’ve got into. It ur a life they’ve got to lead. Wagh!”

Rube did not reflect how heavily his words were falling upon my heart.

There were the tracks of more than a hundred horses, and as many mules. Some of both were iron-shod; but for all that, we knew they had been either ridden or driven by Indians: they, too, were captives.

The sign helped my companions to much knowledge, that would have been unintelligible to me. It was certainly the path of a war-party of Indians on the back-track. They were laden with plunder, and driving before them, or forcing to follow, a crowd of captives – horses, mules, and women – children, too, for we saw the tiny foot-marks of tender age. The trail was significant of all this – even to me.

But my comrades saw more; they no longer doubted that the Indians were Comanches – a moccasin had been picked up, a castaway – and the leathern tassel attached to the heel declared the tribe to which its wearer belonged to be the Comanche.

The trail was quite fresh; that is, but a few hours had intervened since the Indians passed along it. Notwithstanding the dryness of the atmosphere, the mud on the river-edge had not yet become “skinned,” as the trappers expressed it. The Indians had forded the stream about the time the prairie was set on fire.

The horses, we had been following across the burnt plain, were those of a party who had gone out in pursuit of the steed. Just at the ford, they had overtaken the main body, who carried along the spoil and captives. From that point, all had advanced together.

Had they done so? This was our first object of inquiry. It was almost too probable to admit of a doubt; but we desired to be certain about a matter of such primary importance, and we looked for the hoof with the piece chipped from its edge – easily to be identified by all of us.