The Lone Ranche Part 21

"Who is Valerian?" feebly interrogates the invalid. Once more the name of a man is making him unhappy.

"Don Valerian!" responds the doctor, in a tone that tells of respect for the individual so designated; "you shall see, senor. You are about to make his acquaintance. No; I am wrong about that. I forgot. You cannot now."

"Cannot! Why?"

"Because you have made it already. _Mira_! He is there!"

This as a tall, elegant man, under thirty years of age, steps inside the chamber, while a still taller form appears in the doorway, almost filling up the s.p.a.ce between the posts.

The latter is Walt Wilder, but the former--who is he? Don Valerian, of course!

"Colonel Miranda!" exclaims Hamersley, starting up on his couch. He has already dismissed all suspicious fears of Don Prospero; and now he no longer dreads Valerian.

"Colonel Miranda, is it you?"

"It is, _mio amigo_, myself, as you see. And I need not tell you how glad I am to meet you again. So unexpected in this queer quarter, where I little hoped to have the pleasure of entertaining an old friend. Our worthy doctor here informs us you will soon get strong again, and become more of a tax on my hospitality than you have yet been. No doubt, after your illness, you'll have the appet.i.te of an ostrich. Well, in one way, that will be fortunate, since we are living, as you may see, in a somewhat Homeric fashion. _Carrambo_! you will be deeming my manners quite as rude as the roughest of Homer's heroes. I am forgetting to introduce you to one of whom you've heard me speak. Though it don't so much signify, since the lady has made your acquaintance already. Permit me to present my dear Adela."

It is the beautiful huntress who steps forward to be introduced, now looking more beautiful than ever.

To Hamersley all is explained by her presence. He remembers the portrait upon the wall, which accounts for his fancy of having seen her face before.

He sees it now; his wonder giving way to an intense, ardent admiration.

Soon, the young lady retiring, his curiosity comes back, and he asks his host for an explanation. How came Colonel Miranda there, and why? By what sinister combination of circ.u.mstances has the military commandant of Albuquerque made his home in the midst of a howling wilderness, for such is the Llano Estacado?

Despite the smiling oasis immediately surrounding it, it cannot have been choice. No. Chance, or rather mischance, must have led to this change in the affairs of his New Mexican acquaintance. More than an acquaintance--a friend who stood by him in the hour of danger, first courageously protecting, then n.o.bly volunteering to act as his second in a duel; afterwards taking him on to his home and showing him hospitality, kind as was ever extended to a stranger in a strange land.

No wonder Frank Hamersley holds him dear. Dearer now, after seeing his sister _in propria persona_--she whose portrait had so much impressed his fancy--the impression now deepened by the thought that to her he has been indebted for his life.

Naturally enough, the young Kentuckian is desirous of knowing all, and is anxious about the fortunes of his Mexican friend, that for the time seem adverse.

"No," is Colonel Miranda's response to his appeal. "Not now, Senor Don Francisco. Our good doctor here places an embargo on any further conversation for the present. The tale I have to tell might too much excite you. Therefore let it rest untold till you are stronger and more able to hear it rehea.r.s.ed. Now, _amigo_, we must leave you alone, or rather, I should say, in the best of good company, for such has your worthy comrade, the Senor Wilder, proved himself to be. No doubt you'll be anxious to have a word with one who, while your life was in danger, would have sacrificed his own to save it. Don Prospero permits him to remain with you and give such explanations as you may need. The rest of us are to retire. _Hasta luega_." So saying, Miranda steps out of the room. "Keep perfectly quiet," adds the ex-army surgeon, preparing to follow. "Don't excite yourself by any act or thought that may cause a return of the fever. For in that lies your greatest danger. Feel confident, _caballero_, that you're in the company of friends. Don Gaulterio here will be able to convince you of that. Ah! senor, you've a nurse who feels a great interest in seeing you restored to health."

p.r.o.nouncing these last words in undertone and with an accent of innuendo, accompanied by a smile which the invalid pleasantly interprets, Don Prospero also retires, leaving his patient alone with his old caravan guide.

Drawing one of the chairs up to the side of the bed, the ex-Ranger sits down upon it, saying,--

"Wal, Frank, ain't it wonderful? That we shed both be hyar, neested snug an' comfortable as two doons in the heart of a hollow tree, arter all the dangersome sc.r.a.pes we've been pa.s.sin' through. Gheehorum! To think o' thar bein' sech a sweet furtile place lyin' plum centre in the innermost recesses o' the Staked Plain, whar we purairey men allers believed thar wun't nothin' 'ceptin' dry desert an' stinkin' sage-bush.

Instead, hyar's a sort o' puradise aroun' us, sech as I used read o'

when I war a youngster in the big Book. Thar's the difference, that in the Gardin o' Eeden thar's but one woman spoken of; hyar thar's two, one o' which you yurself hev called a angel, an' ye hain't sayed anythin'

beyont the downright truth. She air a angel, if iver thar was sech on airth. Now, not detractin' anythin' from her merits, thar's another near hand--somewhat of a smaller sort, though jest as much, an' a little bit more, to my likin'. Ye won't mind my declarin' things that way. As they say in Mexican Spanish, _cadder uner a soo gooster_ (cada una a su gusto), every one to his own way o' thinkin', so my belief air that in this. Gardin o' Eeden thar air two Eves, one o' which, not countin' to be the mother o' all men, will yit, supposin' this chile to hev his way, be the mother o' a large family o' young Wilders."

While Hamersley is still smiling at the grotesque prognostication, the ex-Ranger, seizing hold of his hand, continues,--

"I'm so glad you're a goin' to rekiver. Leavin' out the angels we love, ther'll be some chance to git square wi' the devils we've sech reezun to hate. We may yit make them pay dear for the b.l.o.o.d.y deed they've done in the murderin' o' our innercent companyuns."

"Amen to that," mutters Hamersley, returning the squeeze of his comrade's hand with like determined pressure. "Sure as I live, it shall be so."

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THE RAIDERS RETURNING.

An Indian bivouac. It is upon a creek called "Pecan," a confluent of the Little Witchita river, which heads about a hundred miles from the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado.

There are no tents in the encampment; only here and there a blanket or buffalo robe extended horizontally upon upright poles--branches cut from the surrounding trees. The umbrageous canopy of the pecans protects the encamped warriors from the fervid rays of a noonday sun, striking vertically down.

That they are on the maraud is evidenced by the absence of tents. A peaceful party, in its ordinary nomadic pa.s.sage across the prairies, would have lodges along with it--grand conical structures of painted buffalo skins--with squaws to set them up, and dogs or ponies to transport them when struck for another move.

In this encampment on the Pecan are neither squaws, dogs, nor ponies; only men, naked to the breech clout, their bodies brightly painted from hip to head, chequered like a hatchment, or the jacket of a stage harlequin, with its fantastic devices, some ludicrous, others grotesque; still others of aspect terrible--showing a death's-head and cross-bones.

A prairie man on seeing them would at once say, "Indians on the war trail!"

It does not need prairie experience to tell they are returning upon it.

If there are no ponies or dogs beside them, there are other animals in abundance--horses, mules, and horned cattle. Horses and mules of American breed, and cattle whose ancestral stock has come from Tennessee or Kentucky along with the early colonists of Texas.

And though there are no squaws or papooses in the encampment, there are women and children that are white. A group comprising both can be seen near its centre. It does not need the dishevelled hair and torn dresses to show they are captives; nor yet the half-dozen savages, spear-armed, keeping guard over them. Their drooping heads, woeful and wan countenances, are too sure signs of their melancholy situation.

What are these captives, and who their captors? Two questions easily answered. In a general way, the picture explains itself. The captives are the wives and children, with sisters and grown-up daughters among them, of Texan colonists. They are from a settlement too near the frontier to secure itself against Indian attack. The captors are a party of Comanches, with whom the reader has already made acquaintance; for they are no other than the sub-tribe of Tenawas, of whom the Horned Lizard is leader.

The time is two weeks subsequent to the attack on Hamersley's train; and, judging by the spectacle now presented, we may conclude that the Tenawa chief has not spent the interval in idleness. Nearly three hundred miles lie between the place where the caravan was destroyed and the site of the plundered settlement, whose spoils are now seen in the possession of the savages.

Such quick work requires explanation. It is at variance with the customs and inclinations of the prairie freebooter, who, having acquired a booty, rarely strikes for another till the proceeds of the first be squandered. He resembles the anaconda, which, having gorged itself, lies torpid till the craving of a fresh appet.i.te stirs it to renewed activity.

Thus would it have been with the Tenawa chief and his band, but for a circ.u.mstance of a somewhat unusual kind. As is known, the attack on the prairie traders was not so much an affair of the Horned Lizard as his confederate, the military commandant of Albuquerque. The summons had come to him unexpected, and after he had planned his descent on the Texas settlement. Sanguinary as the first affair was, it had been short, leaving him time to carry out his original design, almost equally tragical in its execution. Here and there, a spear standing up, with a tuft of light-coloured hair, blood-clotted upon its blade, is proof of this. Quite as successful, too. The large drove of horses and horned cattle, to say nothing of that crowd of despairing captives, proves the proceeds of the later maraud worth as much, or perhaps more, than what had been taken from the traders' waggons.

Horned Lizard is jubilant; so, also, every warrior of his band. In loss their late foray has cost them comparatively little--only one or two of their number, killed by the settlers while defending themselves. It makes up for the severe chastis.e.m.e.nt sustained in their onslaught upon the caravan. And, since the number of their tribe is reduced, there are now the fewer to share with, so that the calicoes of Lowell, the gaudy prints of Manchester, with stripes, shroudings, and scarlet cloth to bedeck their bodies, hand mirrors in which to admire themselves, horses to ride upon, mules to carry their tents, and cattle to eat--with white women to be their concubines, and white children their attendants--all these fine things in full possession have put the savages in high spirits--almost maddened them with delight.

A new era has dawned upon the tribe of which Horned Lizard is head.

Hitherto it has been a somewhat starving community, its range lying amid sterile tracts, on the upper tributaries of the Red River and Canadian.

Now, before it is a plentiful future--a time of feasting and revelry, such as rarely occurs to a robber band, whether amidst the forest-clad mountains of Italy, or on the treeless steppes of America.

The Tenawa chief is both joyous and triumphant. So, too, his second in command, whose skin, with the paint cleansed from it, would show nearly white. For he is a Mexican by birth; when a boy made prisoner by the Comanches, and long since matriculated into the mysteries of the redman's life--its cunning, as its cruelties.

Now a man, he is one of the chiefs of the tribe, in authority only less than the Horned Lizard himself, but equal to the latter in all the cruel instincts that distinguish the savage. "El Barbato" he is called, from having a beard, though this he keeps clean shaven, the better to a.s.similate himself to his beardless companions; while, with painted face and hair black as their own, he looks as Indian as any of them. But he has not forgotten his native tongue, and this makes him useful to those who have adopted him, especially when raiding in the Republic of Mexico.

It was through him the Tenawa chief was first brought to communicate with the military robber, Uraga.

The Indian bivouac is down in the creek bottom in a little valley, on both sides flanked by precipitous cliffs. Above and below these approach each other, so near as to leave only a narrow path along the edge of the stream.

The savages are resting after a long, rapid march, enc.u.mbered with their spoils and captives. Some have lain down to sleep, their nude bodies stretched along the sward, resembling bronze statues tumbled from their pedestals. Others squat around fires, roasting collops from cattle they have killed, or eating them half raw.

A few stand or saunter by the side of the captives, upon these casting covetous glances, as if they only waited for the opportunity to appropriate them. The women are all young; some of them scarce grown girls, and some very beautiful.

A heart-harrowing sight it would be for their fathers, brothers, husbands and sweethearts, could they but witness it. These may not be far off.

Some suspicion of this has carried the Horned Lizard and El Barbato up to the crest of the cliff. They have been summoned thither by a sign, which the traveller on the prairies of Texas or the table plains of Mexico never sees without stopping to scrutinise and shape conjecture about its cause. Before entering the canon through which runs Pecan Creek, the Tenawa chief had observed a flock of turkey-buzzards circling about in the air. Not the one accompanying him and his marauders on their march, as is the wont of these predatory birds. But another quite separate gang, seen at a distance behind, apparently above the path along which he and his freebooters had lately pa.s.sed.

As the Comanche well knows, a sign too significant to be treated lightly or with negligence. And so, too, his second in command. Therefore have they climbed the cliff to obtain a better view of the birds--those flying afar--and, if possible, draw a correct conclusion as to the cause of their being there.