Chapter 76 - The Hunt of the Wild Horse by Mayne Reid
On the War-Trail
Scarcely staying to quench my thirst, I led my horse across the stream, and commenced scrutinising the trail upon the opposite bank. The faithful trackers were by my side—no fear of them lagging behind.
I had won the hearts of both these men; and that they would have risked life to serve me, I could no longer doubt, since over and over again they had risked it. For Garey strong, courageous, handsome in the true sense, and noble-hearted, I felt real friendship, which the young trapper reciprocated. For his older comrade, the feeling. I had was like himself—indefinable, indescribable. It was strongly tinctured with admiration, but admiration of the intellectual rather than the moral or personal qualities of the man.
Instead of intellectual, I should rather say instinctive—for his keen intuitive thoughts appeared more like instincts, than the results of a process of ratiocination.
That the old trapper admired me—in his own phraseology, “liked me mightily”—I was aware. He was equally zealous as the younger in my service; but too free an exhibition of zeal was in his eyes a weakness, and he endeavoured to conceal it. His admiration of myself was perhaps owing to the fact that I neither attempted to thwart him in his humours nor rival him in his peculiar knowledge—the craft of the prairie. In this I was but his pupil, and behaved as such, generally deferring to his judgment.
Another impulse acted upon the trackers—sheer love of the part they were now playing. Just as the hound loves the trail, so did they; and hunger, thirst, weariness, one or all must be felt to an extreme degree before they would voluntarily forsake it.
Scarcely staying, therefore, to quench their thirst, they followed me out of the water; and all three of us together bent our attention to the sign.
It was a war-trail—a true war-trail. There was not the track of a dog—not the drag of a lodge-pole upon it. Had it been a moving encampment of peaceable Indians, these signs would have been visible; moreover, there would have been seen numerous footsteps of Indian women—of squaws; for the slave-wife of the lordly Comanche is compelled to traverse the prairies à pied, loaded like the packhorse that follows at her heels!
But though no foot-prints of Indian women appeared, there were tracks of women, scores of them, plainly imprinted in the soil of the river-bank. Those slender impressions, scarcely a span in length, smoothly moulded in the mud, were not to be mistaken for the footsteps of an Indian squaw. There was not the wide divergence at the heels with the toes turned inward; neither was there the moccasin-print. No: those tiny tracks must have been made by women of that nation who possess the smallest and prettiest feet in the world—by women of Mexico.
“Captives!” we exclaimed, as soon as our eyes rested upon the tracks.
“Ay, poor critters!” said Rube sympathisingly; “the cussed niggurs hev made ’em fut it, while thur’s been spare hosses a plenty. Wagh! a good wheen o’ weemen thur’s been—a score on ’em at the least. Wagh! I pity ’em, poor gurls! in sech kumpny as they’ve got into. It ur a life they’ve got to lead. Wagh!”
Rube did not reflect how heavily his words were falling upon my heart.
There were the tracks of more than a hundred horses, and as many mules. Some of both were iron-shod; but for all that, we knew they had been either ridden or driven by Indians: they, too, were captives.
The sign helped my companions to much knowledge, that would have been unintelligible to me. It was certainly the path of a war-party of Indians on the back-track. They were laden with plunder, and driving before them, or forcing to follow, a crowd of captives—horses, mules, and women—children, too, for we saw the tiny foot-marks of tender age. The trail was significant of all this—even to me.
But my comrades saw more; they no longer doubted that the Indians were Comanches—a moccasin had been picked up, a castaway—and the leathern tassel attached to the heel declared the tribe to which its wearer belonged to be the Comanche.
The trail was quite fresh; that is, but a few hours had intervened since the Indians passed along it. Notwithstanding the dryness of the atmosphere, the mud on the river-edge had not yet become “skinned,” as the trappers expressed it. The Indians had forded the stream about the time the prairie was set on fire.
The horses, we had been following across the burnt plain, were those of a party who had gone out in pursuit of the steed. Just at the ford, they had overtaken the main body, who carried along the spoil and captives. From that point, all had advanced together.
Had they done so? This was our first object of inquiry. It was almost too probable to admit of a doubt; but we desired to be certain about a matter of such primary importance, and we looked for the hoof with the piece chipped from its edge—easily to be identified by all of us.
In the muddy margin of the stream we could not find it; but the steed may have been led or ridden in front of the rest, and his tracks trampled out by the thick drove that followed.
At this moment, Stanfield came up and joined us in the examination. The ranger had scarcely bent his eyes on the trail, when a significant exclamation escaped him. He stood pointing downward to the track of a shod horse.
“My horse!” cried he; “my horse Hickory, by Gosh!”
“Your horse?”
“May I never see Kaintuck if it ain’t.”
“Yur sure o’ it, ole hoss? yur sure it’s yurn?”
“Sure as shootin’; I shod him myself. I kid tell that ere track on a dry sand-bar. I know every nail thar; I druv ’em wi’ my own hand—it’s him sartin.”
“Wheeo-o!” whistled Rube in his significant way, “thet makes things a leetle plainer, I reck’n; an so I thort all along—an so I thort—ye-es—so I thort. The durned rennygade niggur!” he added with angry emphasis, “I know’d we dud wrong to let ’im go; we oughter served ’im as I perposed; we oughter cut his durnation throat, an scalped ’im the minnut we tuk ’im: cuss the luck thet we didn’t! Wagh!”
Rube’s words needed no interpretation. We knew whose throat he would have cut—that of the Indianised Mexican taken at the mesa; and I remembered that at the time of his capture such had been Rube’s advice, overruled, of course, by the more merciful of his comrades. The trapper had assigned some reason: he knew something of the man’s history.
He now repeated his reasons:
“He ur a true rennygade,” said he; “an thur ain’t on all the parairas a wusser enemy to whites than thet ur—more partiklurly to Texan whites. He wur at the massacree o’ Wilson’s family on the clur fork o’ the Brazos, an wur conspik’us in the skrimmige: a’ more too—it ur thort he toated off one o’ Wilson’s gurls, an made a squaw o’ her, for he’s mighty given thet way I’ve heern. Wagh! he ur wuss than a Injun, for the reezun thet he unerstans the ways o’ the whites. I never know’d sich a foolitch thing as ter let ’im git clur. ’Ee may thank yur luck, Mister Stannafeel, thet he didn’t take yur har at the same time when he tuk yur hoss. Wagh! thet ye may!”
It was Stanfield’s horse that had bee a stolen by the renegade, and the tracks now identified by the ranger were those of that animal—no doubt with the freebooter upon his back.
This new discovery let in a flood of light. Beyond a doubt, the war-party was the same we had met by the mound, with perhaps a reinforcement; the same that had just plundered the Mexican town; the same who had paid their hurried visit to the hacienda, and this renegade—
Ha! Strange remembrances were crowding into my brain. I remembered meeting this semi-savage skulking about the road, after we had granted him his parole; I remembered, upon one occasion, seeing him while riding out with her; I remembered the rude expression with which he had regarded my companion—the glance half-fierce, half-lustful; I remembered that it made me angry; that I rebuked and threatened him—I now remembered all.
Wild thoughts came rushing into my mind—worse thoughts than ever.
I sprang to my saddle; and, calling out some half-coherent orders, rode rapidly along the trail.