Overland Part 26

They were interrupted by a cry of surprise and alarm. Several of the muleteers had strayed to the edge of the declivity, and had discovered with their unaided eyesight the little cloud of death in the distance.

Texas Smith approached, looked from under his shading hand, muttered a single curse, walked back to his horse, inspected his girths, and recapped his rifle. In a minute it was known throughout the train that Apaches were in the rear. Without a word of direction, and in a gloomy silence which showed the general despair, the march was resumed. There was a disposition to force a trot, which was promptly and sternly checked by Thurstane. His voice was loud and firm; he had instinctively a.s.sumed responsibility and command; no one disputed him or thought of it.

Three mules which could not rise were left where they lay, feebly struggling to regain their feet and follow their comrades, but falling back with hollow groanings and a kind of human despair in their faces.

Mile after mile the retreat continued, always at a walk, but without halting. It was long before the Apaches were seen again, for the ascent of the plateau lost them a considerable s.p.a.ce, and after that they were hidden for a time by its undulations. But about four in the afternoon, while the emigrants were still at least five miles from the river, a group of savage hors.e.m.e.n rose on a knoll not more than three miles behind, and uttered a yell of triumph. There was a brief panic, and another attempt to push the animals, which Thurstane checked with levelled pistol.

The train had already entered a gully. As this gully advanced it rapidly broadened and deepened into a canon. It was the track of an extinct river which had once flowed into the San Juan on its way to the distant Pacific.

Its windings hid the desired goal; the fugitives must plunge into it blindfold; whatever fate it brought them, they must accept it. They were like men who should enter the cavern of unknown goblins to escape from demons who were following visibly on their footsteps.

From time to time they heard ferocious yells in their rear, and beheld their fiendish pursuers, now also in the canon. It was like Christian tracking the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and listening to the screams and curses of devils. At every reappearance of the Apaches they had diminished the distance between themselves and their expected prey, and at last they were evidently not more than a mile behind. But there in sight was the river; there, enclosed in one of its bends, was an alluvial plain; rising from the extreme verge of the plain, and overhanging the stream, was a bluff; and on this bluff was what seemed to be a fortress.

Thurstane sent all the hors.e.m.e.n to the rear of the train, took post himself as the rearmost man, measured once more with his eye the s.p.a.ce between his charge and the enemy, cast an anxious glance at the reeling beast which bore Clara, and in a firm ringing voice commanded a trot.

The order and the movement which followed it were answered by the Indians with a yell. The monstrous and precipitous walls of the canon clamored back a fiendish mockery of echoes which seemed to call for the prowlers of the air to arrive quickly and devour their carrion.

CHAPTER XIX.

The scene was like one of Dore's most extravagant designs of abysses and shadows. The gorge through which swept this silent flight and screaming chase was not more than two hundred feet wide, while it was at least fifteen hundred feet deep, with walls that were mainly sheer precipices.

As the fugitives broke into a trot, the pursuers quickened their pace to a slow canter. No faster; they were too wise to rush within range of riflemen who could neither be headed off nor flanked; and their hardy mustangs were nearly at the last gasp with thirst and with the fatigue of this tremendous journey. Four hundred yards apart the two parties emerged from the sublime portal of the canon and entered upon the little alluvial plain.

To the left glittered the river; but the trail did not turn in that direction; it led straight at the bluff in the elbow of the current. The mules and horses followed it in a pack, guided by their acute scent toward the nearest water, a still invisible brooklet which ran at the base of the b.u.t.te. Presently, while yet a mile from the stream, they were seized by a mania. With a loud beastly cry they broke simultaneously into a run, nostrils distended and quivering, eyes bloodshot and protruding, heads thrust forward with fierce eagerness, ungovernably mad after water. There was no checking the frantic stampede which from this moment thundered with constantly increasing speed across the plain. No order; the stronger jostled the weaker; loads were flung to the ground and scattered; the riders could scarcely keep their seats. Spun out over a line of twenty rods, the cavalcade was the image of senseless rout.

Of course Thurstane was furious at this seemingly fatal dispersion; and he trumpeted forth angry shouts of "Steady there in front! Close up in the rear!"

But before long he guessed the truth--water! "They will rally at the drinking place," he thought. "Forward the mules!" he yelled. "Steady, you men here! Hold in your horses. Keep in rear of the women. I'll shoot the man who takes the lead."

But even Spanish bits could do no more than detain the horses a rod or two behind the beasts of burden, and the whole panting, snorting mob continued to rush over the loamy level with astonis.h.i.+ng swiftness.

Meanwhile the leading Apaches, not now more than fifty in number, were swept along by the same whirlwind of brute instinct. They diverged a little from the trail; their object apparently was to overlap the train and either head it off or divide it; but their beasts were too frantic to be governed fully. Before long there were two lines of straggling flight, running parallel with each other at a distance of perhaps one hundred yards, and both storming toward the still unseen rivulet. A few arrows were thrown; four or five unavailing shots were fired in return; the hiss of shaft and _ping_ of ball crossed each other in air; but no serious and effective fight commenced or could commence. Both parties, guided and mastered by their lolling beasts, almost without conflict and almost without looking at each other, converged helplessly toward a verdant, shallow depression, through the centre of which loitered a clear streamlet scarcely less calm than the heaven above. Next they were all together, panting, plunging, splas.h.i.+ng, drinking, mules and horses, white men and red men, all with no other thought than to quench their thirst.

The Apaches, who had probably made their cruel journey without flasks, seemed for the moment insatiable and utterly reckless. Many of them rolled off their tottering ponies into the rivulet, and plunging down their heads drank like beasts. There were a few minutes of the strangest peace that ever was seen. It was in vain that two or three of the hardier or fiercer Chiefs and braves shouted and gestured to their comrades, as if urging them to commence the attack. Manga Colorada, absorbed by a thirst which was more burning than revenge, did not at first see the slayer of his boy, and when he did could not move toward him because of fevered mustangs, who would not budge from their drinking, or who were staggering blind with hunger. Thurstane, keeping his horse beside Clara's, watched the lean figure and restless, irritable face of Delgadito, not ten yards distant.

Mrs. Stanley had halted helplessly so near an Apache boy that he might have thrust her through with his lance had he not been solely intent upon water.

It was fortunate for the emigrants that they had reached the stream a few seconds the sooner. Their thirst was first satiated; and then men and animals began to draw away from their enemies; for even the mules of white men instinctively dread and detest the red warriors. This movement was accelerated by Thurstane, Coronado, Texas Smith, and Sergeant Meyer calling to one and another in English and Spanish, "This way! this way!"

There seemed to be a chance of ma.s.sing the party and getting it to some distance before the Indians could turn their thoughts to blood.

But the manoeuvre was only in part accomplished when battle commenced.

Little Sweeny, finding that his mule was being crowded by an Apache's horse, uttered some indignant yelps. "Och, ye b.l.o.o.d.y naygur! Get away wid yerself. Get over there where ye b'long."

This request not being heeded, he made a clumsy punch with his bayonet and brought the blood. The warrior uttered a grunt of pain, cast a surprised angry stare at the shaveling of a Paddy, and thrust with his lance. But he was probably weak and faint; the weapon merely tore the uniform. Sweeny instantly fired, and brought down another Apache, quite accidentally.

Then, banging his mule with his heels, he splashed up to Thurstane with the explanation, "Liftinant, they're the same b.l.o.o.d.y naygurs. Wan av um made a poke at me, Liftinant."

"Load your beece!" ordered Sergeant Meyer sternly, "und face the enemy."

By this time there was a fierce confusion of plungings and outcries. Then came a hiss of arrows, followed instantaneously by the scream of a wounded man, the report of several muskets, a pinging of b.a.l.l.s, more yells of wounded, and the splash of an Apache in the water. The little streamlet, lately all crystal and suns.h.i.+ne, was now turbid and b.l.o.o.d.y. The giant portals of the canon, although more than a mile distant, sent back echoes of the musketry. Another battle rendered more horrible the stark, eternal horror of the desert.

"This way!" Thurstane continued to shout. "Forward, you women; up the hill with you. Steady, men. Face the enemy. Don't throw away a shot. Steady with the firing. Steady!"

The hostile parties were already thirty or forty yards apart; and the emigrants, drawing loosely up the slope, were increasing the distance.

Manga Colorada spurred to the front of his people, shaking his lance and yelling for a charge. Only half a dozen followed him; his horse fell almost immediately under a rifle ball; one of the braves picked up the chief and bore him away; the rest dispersed, prancing and curveting. The opportunity for mingling with the emigrants and destroying them in a series of single combats was lost.

Evidently the Apaches, and their mustangs still more, were unfit for fight. The forty-eight hours of hunger and thirst, and the prodigious burst of one hundred and twenty miles up and down rugged terraces, had nearly exhausted their spirits as well as their strength, and left them incapable of the furious activity necessary in a cavalry battle. The most remarkable proof of their physical and moral debilitation was that in all this melee not more than a dozen of them had discharged an arrow.

If they would not attack they must retreat, and that speedily. At fifty yards' range, armed only with bows and spears, they were at the mercy of riflemen and could stand only to be slaughtered. There was a hasty flight, scurrying zigzag, right and left, rearing and plunging, spurring the last caper out of their mustangs, the whole troop spreading widely, a hundred marks and no good one. Nevertheless Texas Smith's miraculous aim brought down first a warrior and then a horse.

By the time the Apaches were out of range the emigrants were well up the slope of the hill which occupied the extreme elbow of the bend in the river. It was a bluff or b.u.t.te of limestone which innumerable years had converted into marl, and for the most part into earth. A thin turf covered it; here and there were thickets; more rarely trees. Presently some one remarked that the sides were terraced. It was true; there were the narrow flats of soil which had once been gardens; there too were the supporting walls, more or less ruinous. Curious eyes now turned toward the seeming mound on the summit, querying whether it might not be the remains of an antique pueblo.

At this instant Clara uttered a cry of anxiety, "Where is Pepita?"

The girl was gone; a hasty looking about showed that; but whither? Alas!

the only solution to this enigma must be the horrible word, "Apaches." It seemed the strangest thing conceivable; one moment with the party, and the next vanished; one moment safe, and the next dead or doomed. Of course the kidnapping must have been accomplished during the frenzied riot in the stream, when the two bands were disentangling amid an uproar of plungings, yells, and musket shots. The girl had probably been stunned by a blow, and then either left to float down the brook or dragged off by some muscular warrior.

There was a halt, an eager and prolonged lookout over the plain, a scanning of the now distant Indians through field gla.s.ses. Then slowly and sadly the train resumed its march and mounted to the summit of the b.u.t.te.

Here, in this land of marvels, there was a new marvel. Incredible as the thing seemed, so incredible that they had not at first believed their eyes, they were at the base of the walls of a fortress. A confused, general murmur broke forth of "Ruins! Pueblos! Casas Grandes! Casas de Montezuma!"

The architecture, unlike that of Tegua, but similar to that of the ruins of the Gila, was of adobes. Large cakes of mud, four or five feet long and two feet thick, had been moulded in cases, dried in the sun, and laid in regular courses to the height of twenty feet. Centuries (perhaps) of exposure to weather had so cracked, guttered, and gnawed this destructible material, that at a distance the pile looked not unlike the natural monuments which fire and water have builded in this enchanted land, and had therefore not been recognized by the travellers as human handiwork.

What they now saw was a rampart which ran along the brow of the bluff for several hundred yards. Originally twenty feet high, it had been so fissured by the rains and crumbled by the winds, that it resembled a series of peaks united here and there in a plane surface. Some of the gaps reached nearly to the ground, and through these it could be seen that the wall was five feet across, a single adobe forming the entire thickness.

All along the base the dampness of the earth had eaten away the clay, so that in many places the structure was tottering to its fall.

Filing to the left a few yards, the emigrants found a deep fissure through which the animals stumbled one by one over mounds of crumbled adobes.

Thurstane, entering last, looked around him in wonder. He was inside a quadrilateral enclosure, apparently four hundred yards in length by two hundred and fifty in breadth, the walls throughout being the same ma.s.s of adobe work, fissured, jagged, gray, solemn, and in their utter solitariness sublime.

But this was not the whole ruin; the fortress had a citadel. In one corner of the enclosure stood a tower-like structure, forty-five or fifty feet square and thirty in alt.i.tude, surmounted on its outer angle by a smaller tower, also four-sided, which rose some twelve or fourteen feet higher. It was not isolated, but built into an angle of the outer rampart, so as to form with it one solid ma.s.s of fortification. The material was adobe; but, unlike the other ruins, it was in good condition; some species of roofing had preserved the walls from guttering; not a crevice deformed their gray, blank, dreary faces.

Instinctively and without need of command the emigrants had pushed on toward this edifice. It was to be their fortress; in it and around it they must fight for life against the Apaches; here, where a nameless people had perished, they must conquer or perish also. Thurstane posted Kelly and one of the Mexicans on the exterior wall to watch the movements of the savage horde in the plain below. Then he followed the others to the deserted citadel.

Two doorways, one on each of the faces which looked into the enclosure, offered ingress. They were similar in size and shape, seven feet and a half in height by four in breadth, and tapering toward the summit like the portals of the temple-builders of Central America. Inside were solid mud floors, strewn with gray dust and showing here and there a gleam of broken pottery, the whole brooded over by obscurity. It was discoverable, however, that the room within was of considerable height and size.

There was a hesitation about entering. It seemed as if the ghosts of the nameless people forbade it. This had been the abode of men who perhaps inhabited America before the coming of Columbus. Here possibly the ancestors of Montezuma had stayed their migrations from the mounds of the Ohio to the pyramids of Cholula and Tenocht.i.tlan. Or here had lived the Moquis, or the Zunians, or the Lagunas, before they sought refuge from the red tribes of the north upon the b.u.t.tes south of the Sierra del Carrizo.

Here at all events had once palpitated a civilization which was now a ghost.

"This is to be our home for a little while," said Thurstane to Clara.

"Will you dismount? I will run in and turn out the snakes, if there are any. Sergeant, keep your men and a few others ready to repel an attack.

Now, fellows, off with the packs."

Producing a couple of wax tapers, he lighted them, handed one to Coronado, and led the way into the silent Casa de Montezuma. They were in a hall about ten feet high, fifteen feet broad, and forty feet long, which evidently ran across the whole front of the building. The walls were hard-finished and adorned with etchings in vermilion of animals, geometrical figures, and nondescript grotesques, all of the rudest design and disposed without regard to order. A doorway led into a small central room, and from that doorways opened into three more rooms, one on each side.

The ceilings of all the rooms were supported by unhewn beams, five or six inches thick, deeply inserted into the adobe walls. In the ceiling of the rearmost hall (the one which had no direct outlet upon the enclosure) was a trapdoor which offered the only access to the stories above. A rude but solid ladder, consisting of two beams with steps chopped into them, was still standing here. With a vague sense of intrusion, half expecting that the old inhabitants would appear and order them away, Thurstane and Coronado ascended. The second story resembled the first, and above was another of the same pattern. Then came a nearly flat roof; and here they found something remarkable. It was a solid sheathing or tiling, made of slates of baked and glazed pottery, laid with great exactness, admirably cemented and projecting well over the eaves. This it was which had enabled the adobes beneath to endure for years, and perhaps for centuries, in spite of the lapping of rains and the gnawing of winds.

On the outermost corner of the structure, overlooking the eddying, foaming bend of the San Juan, rose the isolated tower. It contained a single room, walled with hard-finish and profusely etched with figures in vermilion. No furniture anywhere, nor utensils, nor relics, excepting bits of pottery, precisely such as is made now by the Moquis, various in color, red, white, grayish, and black, much of it painted inside as well as out, and all adorned with diamond patterns and other geometrical outlines.

"I have seen Casas Grandes in other places," said Coronado, "but nothing like this. This is the only one that I ever found entire. The others are in ruins, the roofs fallen in, the beams charred, etc."