Chapter 30 - The Rifle Rangers by Mayne Reid
A Shot in the Dark
The “City of the True Cross” fell upon the 29th of March, 1847, and the American flag waved over the castle of San Juan de Ulloa. The enemy’s troops marched out upon parole, most of them taking their way to their distant homes upon the table-lands of the Andes.
The American garrison entered the town, but the body of our army encamped upon the green plains to the south.
Here we remained for several days, awaiting the order to march into the interior.
A report had reached us that the Mexican forces, under the celebrated Santa Anna, were concentrating at Puente Nacional; but shortly after it was ascertained that the enemy would make his next stand in the pass of the Cerro Gordo, about half-way between Vera Cruz and the mountains.
After the surrender of the city we were relieved from severe duty, and Clayley and I, taking advantage of this, resolved upon paying another stolen visit to our friends.
Several parties of light horse had been sent out to scour the country, and it had been reported that the principal guerilla of the enemy had gone farther up towards the Puente Nacional. We did not, therefore, anticipate any danger from that source.
We started after nightfall, taking with us three of our best men—Lincoln, Chane, and Raoul. The boy Jack was also of the party. We were mounted on such horses as could be had. The major had kept his word with me, and I bestrode the black—a splendid thoroughbred Arab.
It was a clear moonlight, and as we rode along we could not help noticing many changes.
War had left its black mark upon the objects around. The ranchos by the road were tenantless—many of them wrecked, not a few of them entirely gone; where they had stood, a ray of black ashes marking the outline of their slight walls. Some were represented by a heap of half-burned rubbish still smoking and smouldering.
Various pieces of household furniture lay along the path torn or broken—articles of little value, strewed by the wanton hand of the ruthless robber. Here a petaté, or a palm hat—there a broken olla; a stringless bandolon, the fragments of a guitar crushed under the angry heel, or some flimsy articles of female dress cuffed into the dust; leaves of torn books—misas, or lives of the Santisima Maria—the labours of some zealous padre; old paintings of the saints, Guadalupe, Remedios, and Dolores—of the Niño of Guatepec—rudely torn from the walls and perforated by the sacrilegious bayonet, flung into the road, kicked from foot to foot—the dishonoured penates of a conquered people.
A painful presentiment began to harass me. Wild stories had lately circulated through the army—stories of the misconduct of straggling parties of our soldiers in the back-country. These had stolen from camp, or gone out under the pretext of “beef-hunting.”
Hitherto I had felt no apprehension, not believing that any small party would carry their foraging to so distant a point as the house of our friends. I knew that any detachment, commanded by an officer, would act in a proper manner; and, indeed, any respectable body of American soldiers, without an officer. But in all armies, in war-time, there are robbers, who have thrown themselves into the ranks for no other purpose than to take advantage of the licence of a stolen foray.
We were within less than a league of Don Cosmé’s rancho, and still the evidence of ruin and plunder continued—the evidence, too, of a retaliatory vengeance; for on entering a glade, the mutilated body of a soldier lay across the path. He was upon his back, with open eyes glaring upon the moon. His tongue and heart were cut out, and his left arm had been struck off at the elbow-joint. Not ten steps beyond this we passed another one, similarly disfigured. We were now on the neutral ground.
As we entered the forest my forebodings became painfully oppressive. I imparted them to Clayley. My friend had been occupied with similar thoughts.
“It is just possible,” said he, “that nobody has found the way. By heavens!” he added, with an earnestness unusual in his manner, “I have been far more uneasy about the other side—those half-brigands and that villain Dubrosc.”
“On! on!” I ejaculated, digging the spurs into the flanks of my horse, who sprang forward at a gallop.
I could say no more. Clayley had given utterance to my very thoughts, and a painful feeling shot through my heart.
My companions dashed after me, and we pressed through the trees at a reckless pace.
We entered an opening. Raoul, who was then riding in the advance, suddenly checked his horse, waving on us to halt. We did so.
“What is it, Raoul?” I asked in a whisper.
“Something entered the thicket, Captain.”
“At what point?”
“There, to the left;” and the Frenchman pointed in this direction. “I did not see it well; it might have been a stray animal.”
“I seed it, Cap’n,” said Lincoln, closing up; “it wur a mustang.”
“Mounted, think you?”
“I ain’t confident; I only seed its hips. We were a-gwine too fast to get a good sight on the critter; but it wur a mustang—I seed that cl’ar as daylight.”
I sat for a moment, hesitating.
“I kin tell yer whether it wur mounted, Cap’n,” continued the hunter, “if yer’ll let me slide down and take a squint at the critter’s tracks.”
“It is out of our way. Perhaps you had better,” I added, after a little reflection. “Raoul, you and Chane dismount and go with the sergeant. Hold their horses, Jack.”
“If yer’ll not object, Cap’n,” said Lincoln, addressing me in a whisper, “I’d rayther go ’ithout kump’ny. Thar ain’t two men I’d like, in a tight fix, better’n Rowl and Chane; but I hev done a smart chance o’ trackin’ in my time, an’ I allers gets along better when I’m by myself.”
“Very well, Sergeant; as you wish it, go alone. We shall wait for you.”
The hunter dismounted, and having carefully examined his rifle, strode off in a direction nearly opposite to that where the object had been seen.
I was about to call after him, impatient to continue our journey; but, reflecting a moment, I concluded it was better to leave him to his “instincts”. In five minutes he had disappeared, having entered the chaparral.
We sat in our saddles for half an hour, not without feelings of impatience. I was beginning to fear that some accident had happened to our comrade, when we heard the faint crack of a rifle, but in a direction nearly opposite to that which Lincoln had taken.
“It’s the sergeant’s rifle, Captain,” said Chane.
“Forward!” I shouted; and we dashed into the thicket in the direction whence the report came.
We had ridden about a hundred yards through the chaparral, when we met Lincoln coming up, with his rifle shouldered.
“Well?” I asked.
“’Twur mounted, Cap’n—’tain’t now.”
“What do you mean, Sergeant?”
“That the mustang hed a yeller-belly on his back, and that he hain’t got ne’er a one now, as I knows on. He got cl’ar away from me—that is, the mustang. The yeller-belly didn’t.”
“What! you haven’t—?”
“But I hev, Cap’n. I had good, soun’ reason.”
“What reason?” I demanded.
“In the first place, the feller wur a gurillye; and in the next, he wur an outpost picket.”
“How know you this?”
“Wal, Cap’n, I struck his trail on the edge of the thicket. I knowed he hedn’t kum fur, as I looked out for sign whar we crossed the crik bottom, an’ seed none. I tuk the back track, an’ soon come up with him under a big button-wood. He had been thar some time, for the ground wur stamped like a bullock-pen.”
“Well?” said I, impatient to hear the result.
“I follered him up till I seed him leanin’ for’ard on his horse, clost to the track we oughter take. From this I suspicioned him; but, gettin’ a leetle closter, I seed his gun an’ fixin’s strapped to the saddle. So I tuk a sight, and whumelled him. The darned mustang got away with his traps. This hyur’s the only thing worth takin’ from his carcage: it wudn’t do much harm to a grizzly b’ar.”
“Good heaven!” I exclaimed, grasping the glittering object which the hunter held towards me; “what have you done?”
It was a silver-handled stiletto. I recognised the weapon. I had given it to the boy Narcisso.
“No harm, I reckin, Cap’n?”
“The man—the Mexican? How did he look?—what like?” I demanded anxiously.
“Like?” repeated the hunter. “Why, Cap’n, I ’ud call him as ugly a skunk as yer kin skeer up any whar—’ceptin’ it mout be among the Digger Injuns; but yer kin see for yurself—he’s clost by.”
I leaped from my horse, and followed Lincoln through the bushes. Twenty paces brought us to the object of our search, upon the border of a small glade. The body lay upon its back, where it had been flung by the rearing mustang. The moon was shining full upon the face. I stooped down to examine it. A single glance was sufficient. I had never seen the features before. They were coarse and swart, and the long black locks were matted and woolly. He was a zambo; and, from the half-military equipments that clung around his body, I saw that he had been a guerillero. Lincoln was right.
“Wal, Cap’n,” said he, after I had concluded my examination of the corpse, “ain’t he a picter?”
“You think he was waiting for us?”
“For us or some other game—that’s sartin.”
“There’s a road branches off here to Medellin,” said Raoul, coming up.
“It could not have been for us: they had no knowledge of our intention to come out.”
“Possibly enough, Captain,” remarked Clayley in a whisper to me. “That villain would naturally expect us to return here. He will have learned all that has passed: Narcisso’s escape—our visits. You know he would watch night and day to trap either of us.”
“Oh, heavens!” I exclaimed, as the memory of this man came over me; “why did I not bring more men? Clayley, we must go on now. Slowly, Raoul—slowly, and with caution—do you hear.”
The Frenchman struck into the path that led to the rancho, and rode silently forward. We followed in single file, Lincoln keeping a look-out some paces in the rear.