The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Part 15

"In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great plain the natives call _El Desierto_, known on the map as _Bolson de Mapini_, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry details.

"Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been examining--but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is, are you game for a new ranch deal?"

When I nodded an affirmative, he continued:

"Well, immediately north of the town lies a tract of 250,000 acres in the fork of the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Alamo, which is the greatest ranch bargain I ever saw. Heavily gra.s.sed, abundantly watered by its two boundary streams, the valleys thickly timbered with cottonwood, the plains dotted with mesquite and live oak, in a perfect climate, it is an ideal breeding range. And it can be bought, for what, do you think?

Fifty thousand Mexican dollars [29,000 gold] for a quarter of a million acres! Go bag it, and together we'll stock it.

"Of course you'll run some rather heavy risks--else the place would not be going so cheap--but no more than you have been taking the last five years in the Sioux country. A little bunch of Lipans are constantly on the warpath, Mescalero raiding parties drop in occasionally, and the bandits seem to need a good many _prestamos_; but all that you have been up against. Better take a pretty strong party, for the authorities thought it necessary to give me a cavalry escort from Lampasos to Musquiz and back. And, by the way, pick up a boy named George E. Thornton, Socorro, N. M., on your way south. While only a youngster, he is one of the best all-round frontiersmen I ever saw, and speaks Spanish tolerably. Had him with me in the Gallup country."

Details were settled at breakfast, and there Gardiner resumed his journey eastward, while I took the next train for Denver. A fortnight later found me in Socorro, plodding through its sandy streets to an adobe house in the suburbs where Thornton lodged.

As I neared the door a big black dog sprang fiercely out at me to the full length of his chain, and directly thereafter the door framed an extraordinary figure. Then barely twenty-one, and downy still of lip, Thornton's gray eyes were as cold and calculating, the lines of his face as severe and even hard, his movements as deliberate and expressive of perfect self-mastery as those of any veteran of half a dozen wars. Six feet two in height, straight as a white pine, ideally coupled for great strength without sacrifice of activity, he looked altogether one of the most capable and safe men one could wish for in a sc.r.a.p; and so, later, he well proved himself.

He greeted me in carefully correct English; and while quiet, reserved, and cold of speech as of manner, the tones in which he a.s.sured me any friend of Mr. Gardiner was welcome, conveyed faint traces of cordiality that roused some hope that he might prove a more agreeable campmate than his dour mien promised. We were not long coming to terms; indeed the moment I outlined the trip contemplated, and its possible hazards, it became plain he was keen to come on any terms. To my surprise, he proposed bringing his dog, Curly. I objected that so heavy a dog would be likely to play out on our forced marches, and, anyway, would be no mortal use to us. His reply was characteristic:

"Curly goes if I go, sir; but any time you can tell me you find him a nuisance, I'll shoot him myself. I've had him four years, had him out all through Victoria's raid of the Gila, and he's a safer night guard than any ten men you can string around camp: nothing can approach he won't nail or tell you of. With Curly, a night-camp surprise is impossible."

Whatever cross Curly represented was a mystery. Two-thirds the height and weight of a mastiff, he had the broad narrow pointed muzzle of a bear, and a s.h.a.ggy reddish-black coat that further heightened his resemblance to a cinnamon, with great gray eyes precisely the color of his master's, and as fierce. Whichever character was formed on that of the other I never learned--the man's on the dog's, or the dog's on the man's. Certain it is that not even the luckiest chance could have brought together man and beast so nearly identical in all their traits.

Both were honest, almost to a fault. Neither possessed any vice I ever could discover. Each was wholly happy only when in battle, the more desperate the encounter the happier they. Neither ever actually forced a quarrel, or failed to get in the way of one when there was the least color of an attempt to fasten one on them. And yet both were always considerate of any weaker than themselves, and quick to go to their defence. Many a time have I seen old Curly seize and throttle a big dog he caught rending a little one--as I have seen George leap to the aid of the defenceless. Each weighed carefully his kind, and found most wanting in something requisite to the winning of his confidence; and such as they did admit to familiar intimacy, man or beast, were the salt of their kind.

On the train, south-bound for San Antonio, I learned something of Thornton's history. The son of a judge of Peoria, Ill., he had until fifteen the advantage of the schools of his city. Then, possessed with a longing for a life of adventure in the West, he ran away from home, worked in various places at various tasks, until, at sixteen (in 1887) he had made his way to Socorro. Arrived there, he attached himself to a small party of prospectors going out into the Black Range, into a region then wild and hostile as Boone found Kentucky. And there for the last five years he had dwelt, ranging through the Datils and the Mogallons, prospecting whenever the frequently raiding Apaches left him and his mates time for work. Indeed, it was Thornton who discovered and first opened the Gallup coal field, and he held it until Victoria ran him out. During this time he was in eight desperate fights--the only man to escape from one of them; but out of them he came unscathed, and trained to a finish in every trick of Apache warfare.

At San Antonio we were met by Sam Cress, who for the last four years had been foreman of my Deadman Ranch. Cress was born on Powell River, Virginia, but had come to Texas as a mere lad and joined a cow outfit.

He had really grown up in the Cross Timbers of the Palo Pinto, where, in those years, any who survived were past masters not only of the weird ways and long hours and outlaw broncos, but also of the cunning strategy of the Kiowas and Comanches who in that time were raiding ranches and settlements every "light of the moon." Cress was then twenty-five--just my age--and one of the rare type of men who actually hate and dread a fight, but where necessary, go into it with a jest and come out of it with a laugh, as jolly a camp-mate and as steady a stayer as I ever knew. Charlie Crawford, a half-breed Mexican, taken on for his fluency in Spanish, completed our outfit. Two mornings later the Mexican National Express dropped us at the Lampasos depot about daylight, from which we made our way over a mile of dusty road winding through mesquite thickets to the Hotel Diligencia, on the main plaza.

A norther was blowing that chilled us to the marrow, and of course, according to usual Mexican custom, not a room in the hotel was heated.

The best the little Italian proprietor could do for us was a pan of charcoal that warmed nothing beyond our finger tips. As soon as the sun rose, we squatted along the east wall of the hotel and there shivered until Providence or his own necessity brought past us a peon driving a burro loaded with mesquite roots. We bought this wood and dumped it in the central patio of the hotel and there lighted a campfire that made us tolerably comfortable until breakfast.

Ignorant then of Mexico and its customs, I had fancied that when a proper hour arrived for a call on the _Alcalde_, Don Nemecio Garcia, I should have a chance to warm myself properly and had charitably asked my three mates to accompany me on the visit. But when at ten o'clock Don Nemecio received us in his office, we found him tramping up and down the room, wrapped in the warm folds of an ample cloak; his neck and face swathed in m.u.f.flers to the eyes, arctics on his feet, and no stove or fireplace in the room. As leading merchant of the town, he soon supplied us with provisions and various articles, and with four saddle and three pack horses for our journey.

The next day, while my men were busy arranging our camp outfit, I took train for Monterey to get a letter from General Trevino, commanding the Department of Coahuila, to the _comandante_ of the garrison at Musquiz.

On this short forenoon's journey I had my first taste of the disordered state of the country.

About ten o'clock our train stopped at the depot of Villaldama, where I observed six _guardias aduaneras_ (customs guards) removing the packs from a dozen mules, and transferring them to the baggage car. Just as this work was nearing completion, a band of fourteen _contradistas_ dashed up out of the surrounding chaparral, dropped off their horses, and opened at thirty yards a deadly fire on the guards. With others in the smoker, next behind the baggage car, I had a fine view of the battle, but a part of the time we were directly in the line of fire, for four of our car windows were smashed by bullets, and many bullets were buried in the car body. Such encounters between guards and smugglers in Mexico were always a fight to the death, for under the law the guards received one-half the value of their captures, while of course the smugglers stood to win or lose all.

As soon as fire opened, the guards jumped for the best cover available, and put up the best fight they could. But the odds were hopelessly against them. In five minutes it was all over. Three of the guards lay dead, one was crippled, and the other two were in flight. To be sure two of the smugglers were bowled over, dead, and two badly wounded, but the remaining ten were not long in repossessing themselves of their goods; and when our train pulled out, the baggage car riddled with bullets till it looked like a sieve, the ten were hurriedly repacking their mules for flight west to the Sierras. Later I learned that early that morning the guards had caught the _conducta_ with only two men in charge, who had shrewdly skipped and scattered to gather the party that arrived just in time to save their plunder.

Mexican import duties in those days were so enormous that very many of the best people then living along the border engaged regularly in smuggling, as the most profitable enterprise offering. American hams, I remember, were then sixty cents a pound, and everything else in proportion. Even in the city of Monterey, stores that displayed on their open shelves little but native products, had warehouses where you could buy (at three times their value in the States) almost any American or European goods you wanted.

Well recommended to General Trevino from kinsmen of his wife, who was a daughter of General Ord of our army, he gave me a letter to Captain Abran de la Garza, commanding at Musquiz, directing him to furnish me any cavalry escort or supplies I might ask for, and the following day we started north from Lampasos on our one-hundred-mile march to Musquiz.

The first two days of the journey, for fully sixty miles, we travelled across the lands of Don Patricio Milmo, who thirty years earlier had arrived in Monterey, a bare-handed Irish lad, as Patrick Miles.

Through thrift, cunning trading, and a diplomatic marriage into one of the most powerful families of the city, he had oreid his name and gilded the prospects of his progeny, for he had become the richest merchant of Monterey and the largest landholder of the state.

On this march north Curly's value was well demonstrated. The first two nights I divided our little party into four watches, so that one man should always be awake, and on the _qui vive_. But it took us no more than these two nights to discover that Curly was a better guard than all of us put together. Throughout the noon and early evening camp he slept, but as soon as we were in our blankets he was on the alert, and nothing could move near the camp that he did not tell us of it in low growls, delivered at the ear of one or another of the sleepers.

However, nothing happened on the journey up, save at the camp just north of Progreso, where some of the villagers tried slip up on our horses toward midnight, and Curly's growls kept them off. Their trails about our camp were plain in the morning. The evening of the third day we reached Musquiz, one of the oldest towns of the northern border, nestled at the foot of a tall sierra amid wide fields of sugar cane, irrigated by the clear, sweet waters of the Sabinas.

At eight o'clock the next morning I called on Captain Abran de la Garza, the _Comandante_, to present my letter from General Trevino.

Like the monarch of all he surveyed, he received me in his bed-chamber.

As soon as I entered, it became apparent the Captain was a sportsman as well as a soldier.

The room was perhaps thirty by twenty feet in size. Midway of the north wall stood a rude writing table on which were a few official papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering a tall, gaunt cadaverous frame was plainly outlined. From the headpost of the cot dangled a sword and two pistols. _And to every bed, table, stand, and chair was hobbled a gamec.o.c.k_--a rarely high-bred lot by their looks, that joined in saluting my entrance with a volley of questioning crows! It was, I fancy, altogether the most startling reception visitor ever had.

In a momentary pause in the crowing, there issued from a throat riven and deep-seamed from frequent floodings with fiery torrents of mescal, and out of lungs perpetually surcharged with cigarette smoke, a hoa.r.s.e croaking, but friendly toned, "_Buenos dias, senor. Sirvase tomar un asiento. Aqui tiene vd su casa!_" and peering more closely into the dusky corner, I beheld a great face, lean to emaciation, dominated by a magnificent Roman nose with two great dark eyes sunk so deep on either side of its base they must forever remain strangers to one another.

The nose supported a splendid breadth of high forehead, which was crowned with a shock of coal-black hair, while the jaws were bearded to the eyes. It was the face of an ascetic Crusader, sensualized in a measure by years of isolated frontier service and its attendant vices and degeneration, but still a face full of the n.o.ble melancholy of a Quixote.

Propping himself on a great bony knot of an elbow, the Captain made polite inquiry respecting my journey, and then asked in what could he serve me. But when I had explained that I wanted to meet the owner of the Santa Rosa Ranch, and contemplated going out to see it, it was only to learn, to my great disappointment, that it had been sold the week previous to two Scotchmen. Fancy! in a country visited by foreigners, as a rule, not so often as once a year.

Nor was I consoled when, noting my obvious chagrin, the Captain sought to lighten the blow by saying: "But, my dear sir, this is indeed evidence G.o.d is guarding you. That ranch has been a legacy of contention and feud for generations. Besides, what good could you get of it? Its nearest line to the town is six miles distant, and no life or property would be safe there a fortnight. Far the best cattle ranch in this section, a fourth of it irrigable, and as fine sugar-cane land as one could find, do you fancy it would be tenantless as when G.o.d first made it if safe for occupancy? Why, my dear sir, within the last six months Juan Gaian's Lipans have killed no less than seventy of our townsmen, some in their fields, some in the very suburbs of the town, while Mescaleros are raiding a little lower down the river, and Nicanor Rascon is apt to sweep down any day with his _bandidos_ and plunder strong boxes and stores. It is with shame I admit it, for I, Don Abran, am responsible for the peace and safety of this district. But, _mil demonios_! what can I do with one troop of cavalry against bandits ruthless as savages, and savages cunning as bandits?

"Oh! but if I only had horses! Those devils take remounts when they like from the _remoudas_ of ranchers, but I, _carajo_! I am always limited to my troop allotment.

"Burn a hundred candles to the Virgin, _amigo mio_, as a thank offering for your deliverance, and wait and see what happens to the Scotchmen; and while waiting, it will be my great pleasure to show you some of the grandest c.o.c.k-fighting you ever saw. Look at them! Beauties, are they not? Purest blood in all Mexico! Kept me poor four years getting them together! But now! Ah! now, it will not be long till they win me ranches and _remoudas_!

"Ah! me. Time was not so very long ago when Abran de la Garza was called the most dashing _jefe de tropa_ in the service, when senoritas fell to him as alamo leaves shower down to autumn winds; when pride consumed him, and ambition for a Division was burning in his brain.

But now this demon of a frontier has scorched and driven him till naught remains to him but the chance of an occasional fruitless skirmish, his thirst for mescal, his greed for _aguilas_, and his c.o.c.ks to win them! But, senor, bet no money against them, for it would grieve me to win from a stranger introduced by my General."

Then, with a grave nod of friendly warning, he turned an affectionate gaze upon his pets. Meantime, as if conscious of his pride in them, the c.o.c.ks were boastfully crowing paeans to their own victories, past and to come, in shrill and ill-timed but uninterrupted concert, bronze wings flapping, crimson crests truculently tossing insolent challenge for all comers.

With the one plan of my trip completely smashed, I felt too much upset to continue the interview, and excused myself. But after a forenoon spent alone beside the broad and swift current the Sabinas was pouring past me, gazing at the dim blue mountain-crests in the west that I had learned marked its source, the irresistible call to penetrate the unknown impressed and then possessed me so completely that, at our midday breakfast, I announced to the Captain I had decided to follow the river to its head, and pa.s.s thence into the desert for a thirty-days' circle to the north and west.

"But, _valga nu Dios_, man," he objected, "I have no force I can spare for sufficient time to give you adequate escort for such a journey. It would be madness to undertake it with less than fifty men. I am responsible to my General for your safety, and cannot sanction it.

Beyond the Alamo Canon the only waters are in isolated springs in the plains and in natural rain-fall tanks along the mountain crests, known to none except the Indians and Tomas Alvarez, an old half-breed Kickapoo long attached to my command as scout, who ranged that country years ago with his tribe, and who guides my troop on such short scouts as we have been able to make beyond the Alamo, and--"

"Pardon," I ventured to interrupt, "that will do nicely; give me Alvarez and one good trustworthy soldier, and we'll make the circle without trouble."

"Six of you! Why, you'd never get twenty miles out of town in that direction. I can't permit it."

"Pardon again, Don Abran," I broke in, "but we have for years been accustomed to move in small parties through country that held a hundred times more hostiles than you have here, and you can trust us to take care of ourselves. Go we shall in any event, without your men if you withhold them."

"Well, well, _hijo mio_," he responded, "if you are bound to go, we will see. Only I shall write my General that I have sought to restrain you."

To us the prevailing local fears seemed absurd. Admittedly there were only sixteen of the Lipans then left, men, women, and children, their chief, Juan Galan, the son by a Lipan squaw, of the father of Garza Galan, then the leading merchant of the town, and later a distinguished Governor of his State. Originally a powerful tribe occupying both banks of the lower Rio Grando to the south of the Comanches, in their wars with Texans and Mexicans the Lipans had dwindled until only this handful remained. Three years earlier the entire band had been captured after a desperate fight, and removed by the Mexican authorities to a small reservation five hundred miles southwest of Musquiz. But at the end of two years, as soon as the guard over them relaxed, indomitable as Dull Knife and his Cheyennes in their desperate fight (in 1879) to regain their northern highland home, Juan Galan and his pathetically small following jumped their reservation and dodged and fought their way back to the Musquiz Mountains; and there for the last ten months, constantly hara.s.sed and hara.s.sing, they had been fighting for the right to die among the hills they loved. To the natives they were blood-thirsty wolves, beasts to be exterminated; to an impartial onlooker they were a heroic band courting death in a splendid last fight for fatherland. Their bold deeds would fill a book. Even in this town of fifteen hundred people guarded by a troop of cavalry, no one ventured out at night except from the most pressing necessity; and of the seventy killed by them since their return, nearly a third were macheted in the streets of Musquiz during Juan Galan's night raids on the town.

The most effective work against them was done by a band of about a hundred Seminole-negro half-breeds, to whom the Government had made a grant of four square leagues twenty-five miles west of Musquiz, on the Nacimiento. Come originally out of the Indian territory in the United States, where the Seminoles had cross-bred with their negro slaves, this same band a few years earlier had been most efficient scouts for our own troops at Fort dark, and other border garrisons, and it was this record that led the Mexican Government to seek and lodge them on the Nacimiento, as a buffer against the Lipans.

That night arrangements for our trip were concluded: the Captain consented to furnish me old Tomas Alvarez and a young soldier named Manuel, but only on condition that he himself should escort us, with fifty men of his troop, one day's march up the river, which would carry us beyond the recent range of the Lipans. So early the next morning we marched out westward, pa.s.sing the last house a half-mile outside the centre of the town, along a dim, little-travelled trail that followed the river to the Seminole village on the Nacimiento. The day's journey was without incident, other than our amus.e.m.e.nt at what seemed to us the Captain's overzealous caution in keeping scouts out ahead and to right and left of the column, and in posting sentries about our night camp.

The following morning, a Sunday, after much good advice, the kindly Captain bade us a reluctant farewell, and led his troops down-river toward home, while our little party of six headed westward up-river.

Near noon we sighted the Seminole village, and shortly entered it, a close cl.u.s.ter of low jacals built of poles and mud. Odd it looked, as we entered, a deserted village, no living thing in sight but a few dogs. Thus our surprise was all the greater when, nearing the farther edge of the village, our ears were greeted with the familiar strains of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," issuing from a large _jacal_ which we soon learned was the Seminole church. Fancy it! the last thing one could have dreamed of! An honest old Methodist hymn sung in English by several score devout worshippers in the heart of Mexico, on the very dead line between savagery and civilization, and at that, sung by a people all savage on one side of their ancestry and semi-savage on the other.

Before the singing of the hymn was finished, startled by the barking of their dogs, out of the low doorway sprang half a dozen men, strapping big fellows,--one, the chief, bent half double with age,--all heavily armed. The moment they saw we were Americans we were most cordially received, and even urged to stop a few days with them, and give them news of the Texas border. But for this we had no time; and after a short visit--for which the congregation adjourned service--we filled our canteens, let our horses drink their fill at the great Nacimiento spring that burst forth a veritable young river from beneath a low bluff beside the town, and struck out westward for Alamo Canon. Our afternoon march gave us little concern, for our route lay across rolling, lightly timbered uplands that offered little opportunity for ambush. That night we made a "dry camp" on the divide, preferring to approach the Alamo in daylight.

Having struck camp before dawn the next morning, by noon we saw ahead of us a great gorge dividing the mountain we were approaching--great in its height, but of a scant fifty yards in breadth, perpendicular of sides, a narrow line of brush and timber creeping down along its bottom, but stopping just short of the open plains. Scouting was useless. If there were any Indians about, we certainly had been seen, and they lay in ambush for us in a place of their own choosing. We must have water, and to get it must enter the canon. So straight into the timber that filled the mouth of the gorge we rode at a run, riding a few paces apart to avoid the possible potting of our little bunch, and a hundred yards within the outer fringe of timber we reached the water our animals so badly needed.

And right there, all about the "sink" of the Alamo, where the last drops of the stream sank into the thirsty sands, the bottom was covered thick with fresh moccasin tracks, and in a little opening in the bush near to the sink smouldered the embers of that morning's camp-fire of a band of Lipans. Apparently we were in for it and seriously debated a retreat. Our position could not be worse. Tomas told us that the trail of the Lipans led straight up the valley, and for eight miles the canon was never more than three hundred yards wide, and often no more than fifty, with almost perpendicular walls rising on either side two hundred or more feet in height, so nearly perpendicular that we would for the entire distance be in range from the bordering cliff crests, while any enemy there ambushed would be so safely covered they could follow our route and pick us off at their leisure. To be sure, the brush along the stream afforded some shelter, but no real protection.

However, out now nearly fifty miles from Musquiz and well into the country we had come to see, we pushed ahead. Cress, Thornton, and Manuel prowling afoot through the brush a hundred yards in advance, Crawford, Tomas and myself bringing up the rear with the horses. And so we advanced for nearly half a mile when the Lipan trail turned east, toward Musquiz, up a crevice in the cliff a goat would have no easy time ascending. Thus we were led to argue that the Lipans had left their camp before discovering our approach, and by this time were probably miles away to the east.