The Border Rifles: A Tale of the Texan War

"Oh, oh, señor Captain," he said, in a sombre voice, "you have a singular way of questioning your friends."

"Who assures me that you are a friend? I do not know you."

"That is true, but you know the person who sent me to you; that person is your Chief as he is mine. I obeyed him by coming to find you, as you ought to obey him by following the orders he has given you."

"Yes, but those orders were sent me through you."

"What matter?"

"Who guarantees that the despatch you have brought me was really handed to you?"

"Caramba, Captain, what you say is anything but flattering to me," the guide replied with an offended look.

"I know it; unhappily we live at a time when it is so difficult to distinguish friends from foes, that I cannot take too many precautions to avoid falling into a snare; I am entrusted by Government with a very delicate mission, and must therefore behave with great reserve toward persons who are strangers to me."

"You are right, Captain; hence, in spite of the offensive nature of your suspicions, I will not feel affronted by what you say, for exceptional positions require exceptional measures. Still, I will strive by my conduct to prove to you how mistaken you are."

"I shall be glad if I am mistaken; but take care. If I perceive anything doubtful, either in your actions or your words, I shall not hesitate to blow out your brains. Now that you are warned, it is your place to act in accordance."

"Very good, Captain, I will run the risk. Whatever happens. I feel certain that my conscience will absolve me, for I shall have acted for the best."

This was said with an air of frankness which, in spite of his suspicions, had its effect on the Captain.

"We shall see," he said; "shall we soon get out of this infernal forest in which we now are?"

"We have only two hours' march left; at sunset we shall join the persons who are awaiting us."

"May Heaven grant it!" the Captain muttered.

"Amen!" the soldier said boldly.

"Still, as you have not thought proper to answer any of the questions I asked you, you must not feel offended if I do not let you out of sight from this moment, and keep you by my side when we start again."

"You can do as you please, Captain; you have the power, if not the right, on your side, and I am compelled to yield to your will."

"Very good, now you can sleep if you think proper."

"Then you have nothing more to say to me?"

"Nothing."

"In that case I will avail myself of the permission you are kind enough to grant me, and try to make up for lost time."

The soldier then rose, stiffing a long yawn, walked a few paces off, lay down on the ground, and seemed within a few minutes plunged in a deep sleep.

The Captain remained awake. The conversation he had held with his guide only increased his anxiety, by proving to him that this man concealed great cunning beneath an abrupt and trivial manner. In fact, he had not answered one of the questions asked him, and after a few minutes had succeeded in making the Captain turn from the offensive to the defensive, by giving him speciously logical arguments to which the officer was unable to raise any objection.

Don Juan was, therefore at this moment in the worst temper a man of honour can be in, who is dissatisfied with himself and others, fully convinced that he was in the right, but compelled, to a certain extent, to allow himself in the wrong.

The soldiers, as generally happens in such cases, suffered from their chief's ill temper; for the officer, afraid of adding the darkness to the evil chances he fancied he had against him, and not at all desirous to be surprised by night in the inextricable windings of the forest, cut the halt short much sooner than he would have done under different circumstances.

At about two o'clock P.M. he ordered the boot and saddle to be sounded, and gave the word to start.

The greatest heat of the day had passed over, the sunbeams being more oblique, had lost a great deal of their power, and the march was continued under conditions comparatively better than those which preceded it.

As he had warned him, the Captain intimated to the guide that he was to ride by his side, and, so far as was possible, did not let him out of sight for a second.

The latter did not appear at all troubled by this annoying inquisition; he rode along quite as gaily as heretofore, smoking his husk cigarette, and whistling fragments of jarabés between his teeth.

The forest began gradually to grow clearer, the openings became more numerous, and the eye embraced a wider horizon; all led to the presumption that they would soon reach the limits of the covert.

Still, the ground began rising slightly on both sides, and the path the conducta followed grew more and more hollow, in proportion as it advanced.

"Are we already reaching the spurs of the mountains?" the Captain asked.

"Oh, no, not yet," the guide answered.

"Still we shall soon be between two hills?"

"Yes, but of no height."

"That is true; still, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to pass through a defile."

"Yes, but of no great length."

"You should have warned me of it."

"Why so?"

"That I might have sent some scouts ahead."

"That is true, but there is still time to do so if you like; the persons who are waiting for us are at the end of that gorge."

"Then we have arrived?"

"Very nearly so."

"Let us push on in that case."

"I am quite ready."

They went on; all at once the guide stopped.

"Hilloh!" he said, "Look over there, Captain; is not that a musket barrel glistening in the sunbeams?"

The Captain sharply turned his eyes in the direction indicated by the soldier.

At the same moment a frightful discharge burst forth from either side of the way, and a shower of bullets poured on the conducta.

Before the Captain, ferocious at this shameful treachery, could draw a pistol from his belt, he rolled on the ground, dragged down by his horse, which had a ball right through its heart.

The guide had disappeared, and it was impossible to discover how he had escaped.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JOHN DAVIS

John Davis, the ex-slave dealer, had too powerful nerves for the scenes he had witnessed this day, and in which he had even played a very active and dangerous part, to leave any durable impressions on his mind.

After quitting Blue-fox, he galloped on for some time in the direction where he expected to find the Jaguar; but gradually he yielded to his thoughts, and his horse, understanding with that admirable instinct which distinguishes these noble animals, that its rider was paying no attention to it, gradually reduced its pace, passing from the gallop to a trot, and then to a foot-pace, walking with its head down, and snapping at a few blades of grass as it passed.

John Davis was considerably perplexed by the conduct of one of the persons with whom accident had brought him in contact on this morning so fertile in events of every description. The person who had the privilege of arousing the American's attention to no eminent degree was the White Scalper.

The heroic struggle sustained by this man alone against a swarm of obstinate enemies, his herculean strength, the skill with which he managed his horse – all in this strange man seemed to him to border on the marvellous.

During bivouac watches on the prairie he had frequently heard the most extraordinary and exaggerated stories told about this hunter by the Indians with, a terror, the reason of which he comprehended, now that he had seen the man; for this individual who laughed at weapons directed against his chest, and ever emerged safe and sound from the combats he engaged in, seemed rather a demon than a being appertaining to humanity. John Davis felt himself shudder involuntarily at this thought, and congratulated himself in having so miraculously escaped the danger he had incurred in his encounter with the Scalper.

We will mention, in passing, that no people in the world are more superstitious than the North Americans. This is easy to understand: this nation – a perfect harlequin's garb – is an heterogeneous composite of all the races that people the old world; each of the representatives of these races arrived in America, bearing in his emigrants' baggage not only his vices and passions, but also his creed and his superstitions, which are the wildest, most absurd, and puerile possible. This was the more easily effected, because the mass of emigrants, who have at various periods sought a refuge in America, was composed of people for the most part devoid of all learning, or even of a semblance of education; from this point of view, the North Americans, we must do them the justice of saying, have not at all degenerated; they are at the present day at least as ignorant and brutal as were their ancestors.

It is easy to imagine the strange number of legends about sorcerers and phantoms which are current in North America. These legends, preserved by tradition, passing from mouth to mouth, and with time becoming mingled one with the other, have necessarily been heightened in a country where the grand aspect of nature renders the mind prone to reverie and melancholy.

Hence John Davis, though he flattered himself he was a strong-minded man, did not fail, like all his countrymen, to possess a strong dose of credulity; and this man, who would not have recoiled at the sight of several muskets pointed at his breast, felt himself shiver with fear at the sound of a leaf falling at night on his shoulder.

Moreover, so soon as the idea occurred to John Davis that the White Scalper was a demon, or, at the very least, a sorcerer, it got hold of him, and this supposition straightway became an article of belief with him. Naturally, he found himself at once relieved by this discovery; his ideas returned to their usual current, and the anxiety that occupied his mind disappeared as if by enchantment; henceforth his opinion was formed about this man, and if accident again brought them face to face, he would know how to behave to him.

Happy at having at length found this solution, he gaily raised his head, and took a long searching look around him at the landscape he was riding through.

He was nearly in the centre of a vast rolling prairie, covered with tall grass, and with a few clumps of mahogany and pine trees scattered here and there.

Suddenly he rose in his stirrups, placed his hand as a shade over his eyes, and looked attentively.

About half a mile from the spot where he had halted, and a little to the right, that is to say, exactly in the direction he intended to follow himself, he noticed a thin column of smoke, which rose from the middle of a thicket of aloe and larch trees.

On the desert, smoke seen by the wayside always furnishes ample matter for reflection.

Smoke generally rises from a fire round which several persons are seated.

Now man, in this more unfortunate than the wild beasts, fears before all else on the prairie meeting with his fellow-man, for he may wager a hundred to one that the man he meets will prove an enemy.

Still John Davis, after ripe consideration, resolved to push on toward the fire; since morning he had been fasting, hunger was beginning to prick him, and in addition he felt excessively fatigued; he therefore inspected his weapons with the most scrupulous attention, so as to be able to have recourse to them if necessary, and digging the spur into his horse's flank, he went on boldly toward the smoke, while carefully watching the neighbourhood for fear of a surprise.

At the end of ten minutes he reached his destination; but when fifty yards from the clump of trees, he checked the speed of his horse, and laid his rifle across the saddle-bow; his face lost the anxious expression which had covered it, and he advanced toward the fire with a smile on his lips, and the most friendly air imaginable.

In the midst of a thick clump of trees, whose protecting shade offered a comfortable shelter to a weary traveller, a man dressed in the costume of a Mexican dragoon was lazily seated in front of a fire, over which his meat was cooking, while himself smoked a husk cigarette. A long lance decorated with its guidon leaned against a larch tree close to him, and a completely harnessed horse, from which the bit had, however, been removed, was peaceably nibbling the tree shoots and the tender prairie grass.

This man seemed to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age; his cunning features were lit up by small sharp eyes, and the copper tinge of his skin denoted his Indian origin.

He had for a long time seen the horseman coming toward his camp, but he appeared to attach but slight importance to it, and quietly went on smoking and watching the cooking of his meal, not taking any further precaution against the unforeseen visitor than assuring himself that his sabre came easily out of its scabbard. When he was only a few paces from the soldier, John Davis stopped and raised his hand to his hat.

"Ave Maria Purísima!" he said.

"Sin pecado concebida!" the dragoon answered, imitating the American's gesture.

"Santas tardes!" the new comer went on.

"Dios les da a Vm buenas!" the other immediately answered.

These necessary formulas of every meeting exhausted, the ice was broken, and the acquaintance made.

"Dismount, Caballero," the dragoon said; "the heat is stifling on the prairie; I have here a famous shade, and in this little pot cecina, with red harico beans and pimento, which I think you will like, if you do me the honour to share my repast."

"I readily accept your flattering invitation, Caballero," the American answered with a smile; "the more readily because I confess to you that I am literally starving, and, moreover, exhausted with fatigue."

"Caray! In that case I congratulate myself on the fortunate accident that occasions our meeting, so pray dismount without further delay."

"I am going to do so."

The American at once got off his horse, removed the bit, and the noble animal immediately joined its companion, while its master fell to the ground by the dragoon's side, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"You seem to have made a long ride, Caballero?" the soldier said.

"Yes," the American answered, "I have been on horseback for ten hours, not to mention that I spent the morning in fighting."

"Cristo! You have had hard work of it."

"You may say so without any risk of telling an untruth; for, on the word of a hunter, I never had such a tough job."

"You are a hunter?"

"At your service."

"A fine profession," the soldier said with a sigh; "I have been one too."

"And you regret it?"

"Daily."

"I can understand that. Once a man has tasted the joys of desert life, he always wishes to return to it."

"Alas, that is true."

"Why did you give it up then, since you liked it so much?"

"Ah, why!" the soldier said; "through love."

"What do you mean?"

"Yes, a child with whom I was so foolish as to fall in love, and who persuaded me to enlist."

"Oh, hang it!"

"Yes, and I had scarce put on my uniform, when she told me she was mistaken about me: that, thus dressed, I was much uglier than she could have supposed; in short, she left me in the lurch to run after an arriero."

The American could not refrain from laughing at this singular story.

"It is sad, is it not?" the soldier continued.

"Very sad," John Davis answered, trying in vain to regain his gravity.

"What would you have?" the soldier added gloomily; "the world is only one huge deception. But," he added with a sudden change of his tone, "I fancy our dinner is ready – I smell something which warns me that it is time to take off the pot."

As John Davis had naturally no objection to offer to this resolution of the soldier, the latter at once carried it into effect; the pot was taken off the fire and placed before the two guests, who began such a vigorous attack, that it was soon empty, in spite of its decent capacity.

This excellent meal was washed down with a few mouthfuls of Catalonian refino, with which the soldier appeared amply provided.

All was terminated with the indispensable cigarette, that obligato complement of every Hispano-American meal, and the two men, revived by the good food with which they had lined their stomachs, were soon in an excellent condition to open their hearts to each other.

"You seem to me a man of caution, Caballero," the American remarked, as he puffed out an immense mouthful of smoke, part of which came from his mouth, and part from his nostrils.

"It is a reminiscence of my old hunter's trade. Soldiers generally are not nearly so careful as I am."

"The more I observe you," John Davis went on, "the more extraordinary does it appear to me that you should have consented to take up a profession so badly paid as that of a soldier."

"What would you have? It is fatality, and then the impossibility of sending the uniform to the deuce. However, I hope to be made a Cabo before the year's out."

"That is a fine position, as I have heard; the pay must be good."

"It would not be bad, if we received it."

"What do you mean?"

"It seems that the government is not rich."

"Then, you give it credit?"

"We are obliged to do so."

"Hang it! but forgive me for asking you all these questions, which must appear to you indiscreet."

"Not at all; we are talking as friends."

"How do you live?"

"Well, we have casualties."

"What may they be?"

"Do you not know?"

"Indeed, I do not."

"I will explain."

"You will cause me pleasure."

"Sometimes our Captain or General entrusts us with a mission."

"Very good."

"This mission is paid for separately; the more dangerous it is, the larger the amount."

"Still on credit?"

"No, hang it; in advance."

"That is better. And have you many of these missions?"

"Frequently, especially during a pronunciamento."

"Yes, but for nearly a year no General has pronounced."

"Unluckily."

"Then you are quite dry?"

"Not quite."

"You have had missions?"

"I have one at this moment."

"Well paid?"

"Decently."

"Would there be any harm in asking how much?"

"Not at all; I have received twenty-five ounces."

"Cristo! that is a nice sum. The mission must be a dangerous one to be paid so highly."

"It is not without peril."

"Hum! In that case take care."

"Thank you, but I run no heavy risk; I have only to deliver a letter."

"It is true that a letter – " the American carelessly remarked.

"Oh! this one is more important than you fancy it."

"Nonsense!"

"On my honour it is, for it concerns some millions of dollars."

"What is that you say?" John Davis exclaimed with an involuntary start.

Since his meeting with the soldier, the hunter had quietly worked to get him to reveal the reason that brought him into these parts, for the presence of a single dragoon on the desert seemed to him queer, and for good reason; hence it was with great pleasure that he saw him fall into the trap set for him.

"Yes," the soldier continued, "General Rubio, whose asistente I am, has sent me as an express to meet Captain Melendez, who at this moment is escorting a conducta de plata."

"Do you mean that really?"

"Do I not tell you that I have the letter about me?"

"That is true; but for what purpose does the General write to the Captain?"

The soldier looked for a moment cunningly at the hunter, and then suddenly changed his tone.

"Will you play fair?" he asked him, as he looked him full in the face.

The hunter smiled.

"Good," the soldier continued; "I see that we can understand one another."

"Why not? those are the conditions that suit Caballeros."

"Then, we play fair?"

"That is agreed."

"Confess that you would like to know the contents of this letter."

"Through simple curiosity, I swear to you."

"Of course! I felt assured of that. Well, it only depends on yourself to know them."

"I will not take long then; let me hear your conditions."

"They are simple."

"Tell me them for all that."

"Look at me carefully; do you not recognize me?"

"On my honour, I do not."

"That proves to me that I have a better memory than you."

"It is possible."

"I recognize you."

"You may have seen me somewhere."

"Very likely, but that is of little consequence; the main point is that I should know who you are."

"Oh, a simple hunter."

"Yes, and an intimate friend of the Jaguar."

"What!" the hunter exclaimed with a start of surprise.

"Do not be frightened at such a trifle: answer me simply; is it so or not?"

"It is true; I do not see why I should hide the fact from you."

"You would be wrong if you did. Where is the Jaguar at this moment?"

"I do not know."

"That is to say, you will not tell me."

"You have guessed it."

"Good. Could you tell me, if I wished you to lead me to him?"

"I see no reason to prevent it, if the affair is worth your while."

"Have I not told you that it related to millions?"

"You did, but you did not prove it."

"And you wish me to give you that proof?"

"Nothing else."

"That is rather difficult."

"No, it is not."

"How so?"

"Hang it, I am a good fellow; I only want to cover my responsibility; show me the letter, I ask no more."

"And that will satisfy you?"

"Yes, because I know the General's handwriting."

"Oh, in that case, it is all right," and drawing a large envelope from his breast, he said as he showed it to the American, though without loosing his hold, "Look!"

The latter looked at it closely for some minutes.

"It is really the General's handwriting," the soldier continued.

"Yes,"

"Now, do you consent to lead me to the Jaguar?"

"Whenever you like."

"At once then."

"Very good."

The two men rose by mutual agreement, put the bits in their horses' mouths, leaped into their saddles, and left at a gallop the spot which for several hours had afforded them such pleasant shade.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BARGAIN

The two adventurers rode gaily side by side, telling one another the news of the desert, that is to say, hunting exploits, and skirmishes with the Indians, and conversing about the political events which for some months past had attained a certain gravity and alarming importance for the Mexican government.

But, while thus talking, asking each other questions, the answers to which they did not wait to hear, their conversation had no other object save to conceal the secret preoccupation that agitated them.

In their previous discussion, each had tried to overreach the other, trying to draw out secrets, the hunter manoeuvring to lead the soldier to an act of treachery, the latter asking no better than to sell himself, and acting in accordance with his wishes; the result of the trial was that they had found themselves of equal force, and each had obtained the result he wanted.

But this was no longer the question with them; like all crafty men, success, instead of satisfying them, had given birth in their minds to a multitude of suspicions. John Davis asked himself what cause had led the dragoon to betray his party so easily, without stipulating beforehand for important advantages for himself.

For everything is paid for in America, and infamy especially commands a high price.

On his side, the dragoon found that the hunter put faith in his statements very easily, and, in spite of his comrade's affectionate manner, the nearer he approached the camp of the border rifles, the more his uneasiness increased; for he was beginning to fear lest he had gone head first into a snare, and had trusted too imprudently to a man whose reputation was far from reassuring him.

Such was the state of mind in which the two men stood to each other, scarce an hour after leaving the spot where they had met so accidentally.

Still, each carefully hid his apprehensions in his heart; nothing was visible on the exterior; on the contrary, they redoubled their politeness and obsequiousness toward each other, behaving rather like brothers delighted to have met after a long separation, than as men who two hours previously spoke together for the first time.