Chapter 24 - The Scalp Hunters by Mayne Reid
El Sol and La Luna
“Come,” said Seguin, touching me on the arm, “our supper is ready; I see the doctor beckoning us.” I was not slow to answer the call, for the cool air of the evening had sharpened my appetite. We approached the tent, in front of which was a fire.
Over this, the doctor, assisted by Gode and a pueblo peon, was just giving the finishing touch to a savoury supper.
Part of it had already been carried inside the tent. We followed it, and took our seats upon saddles, blankets, and packs.
“Why, doctor,” said Seguin, “you have proved yourself a perfect maître de cuisine to-night. This is a supper for a Lucullus.”
“Ach! mein captain, ich have goet help; Meinherr Gode assist me most wonderful.”
“Well, Mr Haller and I will do full justice to your dishes. Let us to them at once!”
“Oui, oui! bien, Monsieur Capitaine,” said Gode, hurrying in with a multitude of viands. The “Canadien” was always in his element when there was plenty to cook and eat.
We were soon engaged on fresh steaks (of wild cows), roasted ribs of venison, dried buffalo tongues, tortillas, and coffee. The coffee and tortillas were the labours of the pueblo, in the preparation of which viands he was Gode’s master.
But Gode had a choice dish, un petit morceau, in reserve, which he brought forth with a triumphant flourish.
“Voici, messieurs?” cried he, setting it before us.
“What is it, Gode?”
“Une fricassée, monsieur.”
“Of what?”
“Les frog; what de Yankee call boo-frog!”
“A fricassee of bull-frogs!”
“Oui, oui, mon maître. Voulez vous?”
“No, thank you!”
“I will trouble you, Monsieur Gode,” said Seguin.
“Ich, ich, mein Gode; frocks ver goot;” and the doctor held out his platter to be helped.
Gode, in wandering by the river, had encountered a pond of giant frogs, and the fricassée was the result. I had not then overcome my national antipathy to the victims of Saint Patrick’s curse; and, to the voyageur’s astonishment, I refused to share the dainty.
During our supper conversation I gathered some facts of the doctor’s history, which, with what I had already learned, rendered the old man an object of extreme interest to me.
Up to this time, I had wondered what such a character could be doing in such company as that of the Scalp-hunters. I now learned a few details that explained all.
His name was Reichter—Friedrich Reichter. He was a Strasburgher, and in the city of bells had been a medical practitioner of some repute. The love of science, but particularly of his favourite branch, botany, had lured him away from his Rhenish home. He had wandered to the United States, then to the Far West, to classify the flora of that remote region. He had spent several years in the great valley of the Mississippi; and, falling in with one of the Saint Louis caravans, had crossed the prairies to the oasis of New Mexico. In his scientific wanderings along the Del Norte he had met with the Scalp-hunters, and, attracted by the opportunity thus afforded him of penetrating into regions hitherto unexplored by the devotees of science, he had offered to accompany the band. This offer was gladly accepted on account of his services as their medico; and for two years he had been with them, sharing their hardships and dangers.
Many a scene of peril had he passed through, many a privation had he undergone, prompted by a love of his favourite study, and perhaps, too, by the dreams of future triumph, when he would one day spread his strange flora before the savants of Europe. Poor Reichter! Poor Friedrich Reichter! yours was the dream of a dream; it never became a reality!
Our supper was at length finished, and washed down with a bottle of Paso wine. There was plenty of this, as well as Taos whisky in the encampment; and the roars of laughter that reached us from without proved that the hunters were imbibing freely of the latter.
The doctor drew out his great meerschaum, Gode filled a red claystone, while Seguin and I lit our husk cigarettes.
“But tell me,” said I, addressing Seguin, “who is the Indian?—he who performed the wild feat of shooting the—”
“Ah! El Sol; he is a Coco.”
“A Coco?”
“Yes; of the Maricopa tribe.”
“But that makes me no wiser than before. I knew that much already.”
“You knew it? Who told you?”
“I heard old Rube mention the fact to his comrade Garey.”
“Ay, true; he should know him.” Seguin remained silent.
“Well?” continued I, wishing to learn more. “Who are the Maricopas? I have never heard of them.”
“It is a tribe but little known, a nation of singular men. They are foes of the Apache and Navajo; their country lies down the Gila. They came originally from the Pacific, from the shores of the Californian Sea.”
“But this man is educated, or seems so. He speaks English and French as well as you or I. He appears to be talented, intelligent, polite—in short, a gentleman.”
“He is all you have said.”
“I cannot understand this.”
“I will explain to you, my friend. That man was educated at one of the most celebrated universities in Europe. He has travelled farther and through more countries, perhaps, than either of us.”
“But how did he accomplish all this? An Indian!”
“By the aid of that which has often enabled very little men (though El Sol is not one of those) to achieve very great deeds, or at least to get the credit of having done so. By gold.”
“Gold! and where got he the gold? I have been told that there is very little of it in the hands of Indians. The white men have robbed them of all they once had.”
“That is in general a truth; and true of the Maricopas. There was a time when they possessed gold in large quantities, and pearls too, gathered from the depths of the Vermilion Sea. It is gone. The Jesuit padres could tell whither.”
“But this man? El Sol?”
“He is a chief. He has not lost all his gold. He still holds enough to serve him, and it is not likely that the padres will coax it from him for either beads or vermilion. No; he has seen the world, and has learnt the all-pervading value of that shining metal.”
“But his sister?—is she, too, educated?”
“No. Poor Luna is still a savage; but he instructs her in many things. He has been absent for several years. He has returned but lately to his tribe.”
“Their names are strange: ‘The Sun,’ ‘The Moon’!”
“They were given by the Spaniards of Sonora; but they are only translations or synonyms of their Indian appellations. That is common upon the frontier.”
“Why are they here?”
I put this question with hesitation, as I knew there might be some peculiar history connected with the answer.
“Partly,” replied Seguin, “from gratitude, I believe, to myself. I rescued El Sol when a boy out of the hands of the Navajoes. Perhaps there is still another reason. But come,” continued he, apparently wishing to give a turn to the conversation, “you shall know our Indian friends. You are to be companions for a time. He is a scholar, and will interest you. Take care of your heart with the gentle Luna. Vincente, go to the tent of the Coco chief. Ask him to come and drink a cup of Paso wine. Tell him to bring his sister with him.”
The servant hurried away through the camp. While he was gone, we conversed about the feat which the Coco had performed with his rifle.
“I never knew him to fire,” remarked Seguin, “without hitting his mark. There is something mysterious about that. His aim is unerring; and it seems to be on his part an act of pure volition. There may be some guiding principle in the mind, independent of either strength of nerve or sharpness of sight. He and another are the only persons I ever knew to possess this singular power.”
The last part of this speech was uttered in a half soliloquy; and Seguin, after delivering it, remained for some moments silent and abstracted.
Before the conversation was resumed, El Sol and his sister entered the tent, and Seguin introduced us to each other. In a few moments we were engaged, El Sol, the doctor, Seguin, and myself, in an animated conversation. The subject was not horses, nor guns, nor scalps, nor war, nor blood, nor aught connected with the horrid calling of that camp. We were discussing a point in the pacific science of botany: the relationship of the different forms of the cactus family.
I had studied the science, and I felt that my knowledge of it was inferior to that of any of my three companions. I was struck with it then, and more when I reflected on it afterwards; the fact of such a conversation, the time, the place, and the men who carried it on.
For nearly two hours we sat smoking and talking on like subjects.
While we were thus engaged I observed upon the canvas the shadow of a man. Looking forth, as my position enabled me without rising, I recognised in the light that streamed out of the tent a hunting-shirt, with a worked pipe-holder hanging over the breast.
La Luna sat near her brother, sewing “parfleche” soles upon a pair of moccasins. I noticed that she had an abstracted air, and at short intervals glanced out from the opening of the tent. While we were engrossed with our discussion she rose silently, though not with any appearance of stealth, and went out.
After a while she returned. I could read the love-light in her eye as she resumed her occupation.
El Sol and his sister at length left us, and shortly after Seguin, the doctor, and I rolled ourselves in our serapes, and lay down to sleep.