The White Scalper Part 34

"My brother will find him again," said the Indian with an accent impossible to describe.

"I hope so, and if it should happen, I a.s.sure you that no one will be able to prevent me killing that reptile."

"No one will try to do so, my brother may rest a.s.sured."

"Nothing less than that certainly was needed to console me for the magnificent opportunity you make me lose today, Chief."

The Indian laughed, and continued--

"I will explain to yon at another moment how it happens that this man is free to retire in peace, when we are threatened by an ambuscade formed by him. For the present, let us not lose precious time in idle talk, for all is ready. My warriors are at their post, only awaiting the signal to begin the contest; do my Pale brothers still intend to accompany us?"

"Certainly, Chief, we are here for that purpose, you can count upon us."

"Good, still I must warn my brothers that they will run a great risk."

"Nonsense," Loyal Heart replied, "it will be welcome, for are we not accustomed to danger?"

"Then to horse, and let us start, as we have to deceive the deceivers."

"But are you not afraid," Loyal Heart observed, "lest Blue-fox has warned his comrades that their tricks are discovered?"

"No, he cannot do so, he has sworn it."

The hunters did not insist further, they knew with what religious exactness Indians keep oaths they make to each other, and the good faith and loyalty they display in the accomplishment of this duty. The Chiefs answer consequently convinced them that they had nothing to apprehend from the Apache Sachem, and, in truth, he had gone off in a direction diametrically opposite to that where his companions were hidden.

The horses were immediately lifted on their legs, the cords removed, and the party set out. They followed a narrow path running between two ravines covered with thick gra.s.s. This path, after running for a mile and a half, debouched on a species of cross roads, where the adventurers had halted for an instant. This spot, called by the Indians the Elk Pa.s.s, had been selected by Black-deer as the gathering place of some forty picked warriors, who were to join the white men and act with them. This junction was effected as the Sachem arranged. The hunters had hardly debouched at the crossroads, ere the Comanches emerged from behind the thicket which had hitherto concealed them, and flocked up to Black-deer.

The band was formed in close column, and flankers went ahead, preceding it but a few yards, and attentively examining the thickets. For many an hour they marched on, nothing attracting their attention, when suddenly a shot was fired in the rear of the band. Almost simultaneously, and as if at a given signal, the fusillade broke out on both sides of the war path, and a shower of bullets and arrows hurtled upon the Comanches and white men. Several men fell, and there was a momentary confusion, inseparable from an unforeseen attack.

By a.s.sent of Black-deer, Loyal Heart a.s.sumed the supreme command. By his orders, the warriors broke up into platoons, and vigorously returned the fire, while retreating to the crossroads, where the enemy could not attack them without discovering themselves; but they had committed the imprudence of marching too fast--the crossroads were still a long way off, and the fire of the Apaches extended along the whole line. The bullets and arrows rained on the Comanches, whose ranks were beginning to be thinned.

Loyal Heart ordered the ranks to be broken, and the men to scatter, a manoeuvre frequently employed in Europe during the Vendean war, and which the Chouans unconsciously obtained from the Indians. The cavalry at once tried to leap the ravines and ditches that bordered the path behind which the Apaches were hidden; but were repulsed by the musketry and the long barbed arrows, which the Indians fired with extreme dexterity. The Comanches and Whites leaped off their horses, being certain of recovering them when wanted, and retreated, sheltering themselves behind trees, only giving way inch by inch, and keeping up a sustained fire with their enemies, who, feeling certain of victory, displayed in their attack a perseverance far from common among savage nations, with whom success nearly always depends on the first effort.

Loyal Heart, so soon as his men reached the clearing, made them form a circle, and they offered an imposing front to the enemy on all sides. Up to this moment, the Apaches had maintained silence, not a single war yell had been uttered, not a rustling of the leaves had been heard.

Suddenly the firing ceased, and silence once again brooded over the desert. The hunters and Comanches looked at each other with a surprise mingled with terror. They had fallen into the trap their enemies had laid for them, while fancying they could spoil it.

There was a terrible moment of expectation, whose anxious expression no pen could depict. All at once the conches and chichikoues were heard sounding on the right and left, in the rear and front! At this signal, the Apaches rose on all sides, blowing their war whistles to excite their courage, and uttering fearful yells. The Comanches were surrounded, and nothing was left them but to die bravely at their posts!

At this terrible sight, a shudder of fear involuntarily rose along those intrepid warriors, but it was almost instantaneously quelled, for they felt that their destruction was imminent and certain.

Loyal Heart and Black-deer, however, had lost none of their calmness; they hoped then, still, but what was it they expected?

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SCALP DANCE.

Far from us the thought of making humanitarian theories with reference to a fight in the heart of the desert between two savage tribes, for it has too long been a principle among civilized nations that the Indians are ferocious brutes, possessed of nothing human but the face, and who should be destroyed, like all other noxious animals, by all possible means, even by those which are too repugnant to humanity for us to attempt for a single moment to defend.

Still, much might be said in favour of these unhappy peoples, who have been oppressed ever since humanity decreed that a man of genius should find once more their country which had so long been lost. It would be easy for us to prove, if we thought proper, that these Peruvians and Mexicans, treated so haughtily and barbarously by the wretched adventurers who plundered them, enjoyed, at the period of the conquest, a civilization far more advanced than that of which their oppressors boasted, who had only one advantage over them in the knowledge of firearms, and who marched cased in steel from head to foot against men clothed in cotton and armed with inoffensive arrows. Placed beyond the pale of society by the unintelligent fanaticism and the inextinguishable thirst for gold which devoured the conquerors, the wretched Indians succ.u.mbed not only to the repeated a.s.saults of their implacable conquerors, but were also destined to remain constantly beneath the oppression of a calumny which made them a stupid and ferocious race.

The conquest of the New World was one of the most odious monstrosities of the middle ages, fertile though they were in atrocities. Millions of men, whose blood was poured out like water, were coldly killed; empires crumbled away for ever, entire populations disappeared from the globe, and left no trace of their pa.s.sage but their whitened bones. America, which had been so populous, was almost suddenly converted into an immense desert, and the proscribed relics of this unfortunate race, driven back into barbarism, buried themselves in the most remote countries, where they resumed the nomadic life of the old days, continually carrying on war against the whites, and striving to requite them in detail all the evils they had received at their hands for centuries.

It is only for a few years past that public opinion has been stirred up as to the fate of the Indians; and various means have been attempted--not to civilize them, though that wish has been put forward, but to put a stop to reprisals; consequently they have been placed in horrible deserts; which they have been forbidden to leave. A sanitary cordon has been formed round them, and as this method was not found sufficiently expeditious to get rid of them, they have been gorged with spirits. We will declare here the happy results obtained from these Anglo-American measures: ere a century has elapsed, not a single native will be left on the territory of the Union. The philanthropy of these worthy northern republicans is a very fine thing, but Heaven save us from it!

In every battle there are two terrible moments for the commander who has undertaken the great responsibility of victory: the one, when he gives the signal of attack and hurls his columns at the enemy; the other, when organizing the resistance, he calmly awaits the hour when the decisive blow must be dealt in accordance with his previous combinations. Loyal Heart was as calm and quiet as if witnessing an ordinary charge; with flashing eye and haughty lip he recommended his warriors to save their powder and arrows, to keep together, and sustain the charge of the Apaches, without yielding an inch of ground. The Comanches uttered their war yell twice, and then a deadly silence brooded over the clearing.

"Good!" the hunter said, "you are great braves; I am proud of commanding such intrepid warriors. Your squaws will greet you with dances and shouts of joy on your return to the village, and proudly count the scalps you bring back at your girdle."

After this brief address the hunter returned to the centre of the circle, and the Whites waited with their finger on the trigger, the Redskins with levelled bows. In the meanwhile, the Apaches had quitted their ambuscade, had formed their ranks, and were marching in excellent order on the Comanches. They had also dismounted, for a hand-to-hand fight was about to begin between these irreconcilable enemies.

The night had entirely slipped away; by the first beams of day, which tinged the tops of the trees, the black and moving circle could be seen drawing closer and closer round the weak group formed by the Comanches and the adventurers. It was a singular thing in prairie fashions that the Apaches advanced slowly without firing, as if wishing to destroy their enemies at one blow. Tranquil and Loyal Heart shook hands while exchanging a calm smile.

"We have five minutes left," said the hunter; "we shall settle a goodly number before falling ourselves," the Canadian answered.

Loyal Heart stretched out his hand toward the north-west.

"All is not over yet," he said.

"Do you hope to get us out of this sc.r.a.pe?"

"I intend," the young man answered, still calm and smiling, "to destroy this collection of brigands to the last man."

"May Heaven grant it!" the Canadian said, with a doubtful shake of the head.

The Apaches were now but a few yards off, and all the rifles were levelled as if by common agreement.

"Listen!" Loyal Heart muttered in Tranquil's ear.

At the same moment distant yells were heard, and the enemy stopped with alarmed hesitation.

"What is it?" Tranquil asked.

"Our men," the young man answered laconically.

A sound of horses and firearms was heard in the enemy's rear.

"The Comanches! the Comanches!" the Apaches shouted.

The line that surrounded the little band was suddenly rent asunder, and two hundred Comanche hors.e.m.e.n were seen cutting down and crushing every foeman within reach. On perceiving their brothers the hors.e.m.e.n uttered a shout of joy, to which the others enthusiastically responded, for they had fancied themselves lost.

Loyal Heart had calculated justly, he had not been a second wrong; the warriors ambuscaded by Black-deer to effect a diversion and complete the victory arrived at the decisive moment. This was the secret of the young Chief's calmness, although in his heart he was devoured by anxiety, for so many things might delay the arrival of the detachment. The Apaches, thus taken by surprise, attempted for a few minutes a desperate resistance; but being surrounded and overwhelmed by numbers, they soon began flying in all directions. But Black-deer's measures had been taken with great prudence, and a thorough knowledge of the military tactics of the prairies: the Apaches were literally caught between two fires.

Nearly two-thirds of the Apache warriors, placed under the command of Blue-fox to attempt the daring stroke he had conceived, fell, and the rest had great difficulty in escaping. The victory was decisive, and for a long long time the Apaches would not dare to measure themselves again with their redoubtable enemies. Eight hundred horses and nearly five hundred scalps were the trophies of the battle, without counting some thirty wounded. The Comanches had only lost a dozen warriors, and their enemies had been unable to scalp them, which was regarded as a great glory. The horses were collected, the dead and wounded placed on litters, and when all the scalps had been lifted from the Apaches who had succ.u.mbed during the fight, their bodies were left to the wild beasts, and the Comanche warriors, intoxicated with joy and pride, remounted their horses and returned to the village.

The return of the Expeditionary corps was a perfect triumphant march.