University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER.

It wanted an hour or two of sunset
on a lovely evening in the latter part of
September, when a single horseman
might have been seen, making his way
to the westward, across the high dry
prairie land, which lies between the
upper portion of the river Nueces and
the Bravo del Norte.

He was a small, spare man, of no
great personal power, but of a figure
which gave promise of great agility
and capability of enduring fatigue, the
most remarkable feature of which was
the extraordinary length of his arms.

His countenance, without being in
the least degree handsome, was pleasing
and expressive, with a broad and massive
forehead, a quick, clear, black eye,
a firm, well-cut mouth, and a character
of great acuteness, combined with indomitable
resolution.

His dress consisted of an Indian hunting-shirt
and leggins of buckskin, exquisitely
dressed, and adorned with
much fringe and embroidery of porcupine
quills, wrought in black upon a claret-colored
ground. His head was covered
by a high-crowned broad-leafed
hat of dark gray felt, with some heavy
silver ornaments in the band, and his
feet were protected by stout Indian moccassins.

In the wilderness, and on that frontier
especially, all men go armed, the traveller
depending on his weapons not only
for the defence but the subsistence of
his life; but the person I have described
was loaded with offensive arms
to a degree unusual even in that land
of perilous and cruel warfare.

A short, heavy English rifle, carrying
a ball of twelve to the pound, was
slung by a black leather belt across his
shoulders, the braided strap which supported
his large buffalo-horn powder
flask and bullet pouch of otter skin
crossing it on his breast. From a leather
girdle, which was buckled about his
waist, he had hung a long, straight,
two-edged sword in a steel scabbard
with a silver basket hilt on the left side,
which was counter-balanced by a long,
broad bladed hunting knife with a buck-horn
hilt, resting upon his right hip.—
There were holsters at the bow of his
large Mexican saddle, containing a pair
of fine duelling pistols with ten inch
barrels; and in addition to these, there
was suspended from the pummel a formidable
hatchet with a bright steel head
and a spike at the back, like an Indian
tomahawk, but in all respects a more
ponderous and superior instrument.

On the croupe of his horse, and attached
to the cantle of the saddle, he
carried a small valise of untanned
leather, with a superb Mexican blanket
of blue and scarlet strapped upon it,
and a large leathern bottle with a horn

drinking cup swinging from it on one
side; while to the other was fastened a
portion of the loin of a fat buck, which
had fallen in the course of the morning
by the rifle of the traveller.

The horse which carried this well
appointed rider, was a dark-brown thoroughbred
of great power and action,
at least sixteen hands in height, and apparently,
though somewhat low in flesh,
in the finest possible condition. He
was perhaps what might be termed
somewhat cross-made, but his quarters
and arm were superb, and his deep
roomy chest showed ample space for
that breathing apparatus, so essential
to speed and endurance. He had one
white foot behind, and a broad white
blaze on his face, across which there
was a large seam, evidently the scar of
a long and severe broadsword cut; in
his fore-shoulder there was another
mark as of a stab with a lance or bayonet,
and on his left quarter the traces of
three bullets or grape shot.

None of these wounds had, however,
impaired either his strength or his
speed; nor had the long day's journey
which he had performed, diminished the
pride of his high slashing action, or
quenched in the least degree the wild
and fiery light of his untamed eye.

Nothing, in fact, could be more perfect
than the whole air and appearance of
both horse and rider. Though care and
grooming were manifest in the condition
and coat of the noble animal, the
arms and accoutrements of the man
were as bright and clean as if they had
just issued from the armory; his dress
was accurately neat and in perfect order,
and was worn with a sort of jaunty
smartness that bespoke the wearer something
of a frontier dandy. His bair,
which he wore long, was nicely arranged
and hung in dark curls over
his gay-colored neckerchief; and his
close curled beard had been trimmed
recently, and by a practiced hand.

His seat in the saddle was the perfection
of grace, ease, and neatness; yet it
was evident that in spite of the almost
careless freedom of his limbs, he rode
with as much power as grace, and that
there was a world of strength in the
swelling muscles of the thigh and leg
which rested so lightly on the embossed
and ornamented saddle.

The finger which played continually
with the long-checked, heavy curb on
which he rode his charger, was as light
and delicate as a feather; and the manner
in which the animal champed on
the solid port, tossing his head, and
making the bits ring and jingle merrily,
showed that he had a fine light
mouth, and that he felt no inconvenience
from the powerful bridle.

As the day wore on towards its close,
the rider began to strain his eyes somewhat
anxiously, directing them forward
as if in search of some object which he
greatly desired to see; but still as he
crossed swell after swell of the high
and prairie land, nothing met his gaze
but one low ridge succeeding another,
rising up bare and blealt, covered only
with long coarse grass withered beneath
the fierce rays of an American
sun, and interspersed here and there
with tufts and thickets of prickly pear
and other stunted thorny bushes.

There were no symptoms of verdure
or rich vegetation on this arid and barren
tract; no traces of any water whether
in the shape of streamlet, pool, or
fountain; all was dry, burned, and yellow,
almost as the scorched sands of the
Arabian desert. Neither were there
any signs of animal life in this ungenial
and treeless waste; no birds sprang up
from the thick grass before the feet of
the gallant horse; no deer or antelope
was seen bounding away across the skyline
of the near horizon; no hum of insect
life reached the ear of the rider, as
he passed steadily and rapidly onward.

At length, when the sun was no longer
above three times the width of his
own disc from the level line of the lowest
plain, he set his spurs to his horse,
and put him from the high slashing trot
which he had bitherto maintained, into
a long slinging gallop, which carried
him over the ground at the rate of some
sixteen miles the hour.

After he had ridden at this rate for
thirty or forty minutes, he reached the
brow of one of the low rolling waves of
earth, which constitute the surface of
the prairie, and thence saw the land
falling away in a long gentle slope for
some six miles toward the west, at
which distance it was bounded by a
long continuous line of dark blue
forest, with here and there the twinkling

flash of some great body of water
shimmering out in the level sunbeams
from among the gigantic trees which
fringed its margin.

An exclamation of pleasure in the
English tongue, though spoken with a
slightly foreign accent, escaped from
the lips of the rider; and the horse
tossed his head and snuffed the air with
his broad distended nostrils, as if he inhaled
the pleasant freshness of the
stream upon the evening wind. They
did not, however, relax their speed in
consequence of the pleasure arising
from that long desired view, but if anything
hastened more swiftly forward to
the spot which promised to both horse
and man repose and refreshment after
the toils of the long and weary day.

A short half hour brought them to
the forest just as the sun was setting;
and nothing can be conceived in nature
more lovely than the scenery of
that green wilderness. For about a
mile in width, on either side of the
grand, majestic river, the earth was
covered with the freshest and richest
greensward, as tender in its hues, and
as soft and elastic to the foot as the
finest English lawn. The whole of
this vast meadow was thickly set with
gigantic trees; live-oaks with their
deep evergreen foliage, and oaks of
every species, grown to a size of trunk
and spread of limb which we can barely
conceive, accustomed as we are to
the less luxuriant vegetation of the
northern forests. For the most part,
this belt of noble timber was completely
free from underwood, the trees
standing so far apart as to admit the
manœuvring of a regiment of horse
between their huge and massy bolls;
but in some places there were dense
thickets of bay, wild peach, and holly,
all matted and interwined with enormous
vines and creepers of every description,
so as to defy the entrance of
any intruder larger than a rabbit or a
rat into their green recesses. And
over all was spread the eternal canopy
of fresh, dark foliage, perpetually renewed,
and sheltering the moist soil
beneath it with an unchanged vault of
living greenery.

Through this wild paradise the mighty
river rolled its pellucid waves, rapid, and
deep, and strong, and as transparent as
the purest crystal.

Beautiful as was the picture in itself,
its loveliness was yet enhanced a thousand
fold by the contrast it presented to
the arid and burning plains, almost destitute
of vegetation, over which the way
of the traveller had lain; and the almost
intolerable glare, with which the
unclouded sun had scourged the head
of both horse and rider during the live-long
day.

Galloping his horse joyously over the
rich green turf the traveller soon reached
the river, at a spot where it was bordered
by a little beach or margin of
pure white sand, as firm and almost as
hard as marble; and, riding into the
clear cool water, till it laved the heaving
flanks of his charger, he suffered it
to drink long and deep of the pure beverage,
which had not touched its thirsty
lips since the early morning.

This duty done, he returned to the
shore, and selecting an oak tree of about
two feet in girth, around which the grass
grew unusually tall and luxuriant, he
tethered his trusty companion to its
stem by the lasso, or cord of plaited
hide which was coiled at his saddle
bow, allowing him a range of some
twenty yards in circumference,—removed
the heavy bit and ponderous saddle;
and not till then applied himself
to satisfy the urgency of his own thirst,
with water from the river slightly mingled
with the contents of the good leathern
bottle.

Having drank freely, he again returned
to the care of his horse which
he rubbed down carefully, washing its
eyes and nostrils, pulling its ears, chafing
its clean bony legs till they were
perfectly free from moisture, whether
of sweat or of the river water which had
bathed them so recently.

Then, after polishing his accoutrements,
as if for parade, he hung his
rifle and his broadsword from the fork
of a stunted oak tree, collecting some
dry leaves and branches, and, striking
a light from the ready flint and steel,
soon had a clear bright fire glancing
and flashing in a sheltered nook surrounded
on all sides but one, that where
his horse was tethered, by a dense and
impenetrable thicket of bays, prickly
pear, and holly.

Within a few minutes half a dozen
twigs, fixed in the ground about the
blazing fire, supported as many steaks
of fat venison, each with a biscuit under
it imbibing the delieious gravy, and a
second with salt and pepper; all which
unusual dainties were supplied from
the small valise of the provident and
epicurean frontiersman.

While his supper was cooking thus,
and sending forth rich and unwonted
odors through the forest, our traveller
had prepared his simple couch, spreading
his handsome poncho on the deep
herbage, with his saddle arranged for
his pillow, immediately under the tree
from which he had suspended his gun
and sabre—his pistols, the locks and
coppercaps of which he carefully inspected,
and his tomahawk being laid
ready to his had beside it—his good-knife
never left his girdle—so that if
aroused from his slumbers by any
sound of peril, he might spring to his
feet armed at once, and prepared for
any fortune.

All the precautions which he took
were but the ordinary accidents—as a
painter would term them—of the life of
a frontiersman; but the nieety of his
arrangements, the neatness of his dress,
the extreme pains which he took with
his horse and arms, and above all the
unusual fare, the biscuits and condiments,
the leathern bottle, filled not
with rum or whiskey but with fine
Xeres wine, betokened tastes and habitudes
more cultivated, perhaps manners
more refined, than would be ordinarily
expected from the rover of the Texan
wilderness.

To render it, however, more apparent
than this that our traveller's condition
in life, and his acquirements, were
superior to the opinion men would naturally
form from his dress, and from
the place in which we find him, as he
cast himself down on the soft green-sward
near the fire, and ran his fingers
through the long rich curls from which
he had removed his hat, he began to
hum an air from a favorite opera, while
he inspected with a curious eye the approaching
end of his culinary preparations.

If, however, he had hoped to enjoy
his coming meal and his night's repose
without interruption, he had reckoned
without his host; for at the same instant
in which his charger ceased from
feeding, snuffed the air eagerly, and
uttered a low whining, the traveller
started to his feet and listened anxiously
for a moment, although there were
no sounds which could have been distinguished
by any human ear unsharpened
by the necessities and habits of a
woodman's life.

Satisfied apparently that something
was at hand, which might mean mischief,
he quietly took up his pistols and
thrust them into his girdle, reached
down his rifle from the branch on
which it hung, loosened his woodknife
in its scabbard, and passed the handle
of his hatchet through a loop in his
sword-belt, so that the head rested in
a sort of fold or pocket in the leather,
evidently prepared for its reception, and
the haft lay close on his left thigh.

The broadsword he entirely neglected,
as if it were a weapon of no utility
in the struggle which he expected, one,
perhaps, which he bore only as a horseman's
arm, and which might be
held to imply that he acted at times in
company with others, and those disciplined
horsemen.

These preparations made, silently,
promptly, yet deliberately, he stooped
and laid his ear to the ground; nor did
he raise himself to his full height for
several minutes. “Two, four, six,
eight”—he muttered to himself at intervals—“yes,
there are eight of them!
By heaven, it is too great odds—yet I
had fain halt here, for Emperor has had
a hard day of it—” he paused a moment
as if in doubt, then quickly replaced
his bits in the charger's mouth,
and the saddle on his back, and hung
his broadsword and blanket on the pummel;
but he did not unfasten the lasso,
nor did his compressed lip, flashing eye,
and curled nostril, show any disposition
to abandon his position and his supper.

Again he laid his ear to the ground
and listened. “Yes, there are eight of
them, sure enough,” he again muttered;
and then after a pause, he added, “but
two of them are mules, I think; and they
are coming right down hitherward.”

Then he looked to his rifle-lock, and
cocked his piece. “Unless they turn
aside when they reach the timber, they
will be on me in five minutes; and, if

they know the forest, they will not turn,
that's certain; for here's the only place
where you can find hard bottom to ride
in and out of the old Bravo, for ten
miles up and down.”

He paused from his soliloquy, listened
again, and then a smile crept across
his intelligent face. “Bah!” he said.
“I have disquieted myself for nothing—
they are dragoon horses: I can tell their
managed pace; though, what the devil
brings dragoons hither, the devil himself
best knows.” Then he hung up his
arms as before; again removed saddle
and bridle from his horse, threw down
his pistols and his hatchet on the grass,
and, instead of concealing himself in
ambush, unarmed except his woodknife,
stepped quite at his ease forth from the
covert of his thicket, and strode boldly
forward to meet the new-comers.