Well recommended to General Treviño from kinsmen of his wife, who was a daughter of General Ord of our army, he gave me a letter to Captain Abran de la Garza, commanding at Musquiz, directing him to furnish me any cavalry escort or supplies I might ask for, and the following day we started north from Lampasos on our one-hundred-mile march to Musquiz.
The first two days of the journey, for fully sixty miles, we travelled across the lands of Don Patricio Milmo, who thirty years earlier had arrived in Monterey, a bare-handed Irish lad, as Patrick Miles. Through thrift, cunning trading, and a diplomatic marriage into one of the most powerful families of the city, he had oreid his name and gilded the prospects of his progeny, for he had become the richest merchant of Monterey and the largest landholder of the state.
On this march north Curly's value was well demonstrated. The first two nights I divided our little party into four watches, so that one man should always be awake, and on the qui vive. But it took us no more than these two nights to discover that Curly was a better guard than all of us put together. Throughout the noon and early evening camp he slept, but as soon as we were in our blankets he was on the alert, and nothing could move near the camp that he did not tell us of it in low growls, delivered at the ear of one or another of the sleepers. However, nothing happened on the journey up, save at the camp just north of Progreso, where some of the villagers tried slip up on our horses toward midnight, and Curly's growls kept them off. Their trails about our camp were plain in the morning. The evening of the third day we reached Musquiz, one of the oldest towns of the northern border, nestled at the foot of a tall sierra amid wide fields of sugar cane, irrigated by the clear, sweet waters of the Sabinas.
At eight o'clock the next morning I called on Captain Abran de la
Garza, the Comandante, to present my letter from General Treviño.
Like the monarch of all he surveyed, he received me in his bed-chamber. As soon as I entered, it became apparent the Captain was a sportsman as well as a soldier.
The room was perhaps thirty by twenty feet in size. Midway of the north wall stood a rude writing table on which were a few official papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering a tall, gaunt cadaverous frame was plainly outlined. From the headpost of the cot dangled a sword and two pistols. And to every bed, table, stand, and chair was hobbled a gamecock—a rarely high-bred lot by their looks, that joined in saluting my entrance with a volley of questioning crows! It was, I fancy, altogether the most startling reception visitor ever had.
In a momentary pause in the crowing, there issued from a throat riven and deep-seamed from frequent floodings with fiery torrents of mescal, and out of lungs perpetually surcharged with cigarette smoke, a hoarse croaking, but friendly toned, "Buenos dias, señor. Sirvase tomar un asiento. Aqui tiene vd su casa!" and peering more closely into the dusky corner, I beheld a great face, lean to emaciation, dominated by a magnificent Roman nose with two great dark eyes sunk so deep on either side of its base they must forever remain strangers to one another. The nose supported a splendid breadth of high forehead, which was crowned with a shock of coal-black hair, while the jaws were bearded to the eyes. It was the face of an ascetic Crusader, sensualized in a measure by years of isolated frontier service and its attendant vices and degeneration, but still a face full of the noble melancholy of a Quixote.
Propping himself on a great bony knot of an elbow, the Captain made polite inquiry respecting my journey, and then asked in what could he serve me. But when I had explained that I wanted to meet the owner of the Santa Rosa Ranch, and contemplated going out to see it, it was only to learn, to my great disappointment, that it had been sold the week previous to two Scotchmen. Fancy! in a country visited by foreigners, as a rule, not so often as once a year.
Nor was I consoled when, noting my obvious chagrin, the Captain sought to lighten the blow by saying: "But, my dear sir, this is indeed evidence God is guarding you. That ranch has been a legacy of contention and feud for generations. Besides, what good could you get of it? Its nearest line to the town is six miles distant, and no life or property would be safe there a fortnight. Far the best cattle ranch in this section, a fourth of it irrigable, and as fine sugar-cane land as one could find, do you fancy it would be tenantless as when God first made it if safe for occupancy? Why, my dear sir, within the last six months Juan Gaian's Lipans have killed no less than seventy of our townsmen, some in their fields, some in the very suburbs of the town, while Mescaleros are raiding a little lower down the river, and Nicanor Rascon is apt to sweep down any day with his bandidos and plunder strong boxes and stores. It is with shame I admit it, for I, Don Abran, am responsible for the peace and safety of this district. But, mil demonios! what can I do with one troop of cavalry against bandits ruthless as savages, and savages cunning as bandits?
"Oh! but if I only had horses! Those devils take remounts when they like from the remoudas of ranchers, but I, carajo! I am always limited to my troop allotment.
"Burn a hundred candles to the Virgin, amigo mio, as a thank offering for your deliverance, and wait and see what happens to the Scotchmen; and while waiting, it will be my great pleasure to show you some of the grandest cock-fighting you ever saw. Look at them! Beauties, are they not? Purest blood in all Mexico! Kept me poor four years getting them together! But now! Ah! now, it will not be long till they win me ranches and remoudas!
"Ah! me. Time was not so very long ago when Abran de la Garza was called the most dashing jefe de tropa in the service, when señoritas fell to him as alamo leaves shower down to autumn winds; when pride consumed him, and ambition for a Division was burning in his brain. But now this demon of a frontier has scorched and driven him till naught remains to him but the chance of an occasional fruitless skirmish, his thirst for mescal, his greed for aguilas, and his cocks to win them! But, señor, bet no money against them, for it would grieve me to win from a stranger introduced by my General."
Then, with a grave nod of friendly warning, he turned an affectionate gaze upon his pets. Meantime, as if conscious of his pride in them, the cocks were boastfully crowing paeans to their own victories, past and to come, in shrill and ill-timed but uninterrupted concert, bronze wings flapping, crimson crests truculently tossing insolent challenge for all comers.
With the one plan of my trip completely smashed, I felt too much upset to continue the interview, and excused myself. But after a forenoon spent alone beside the broad and swift current the Sabinas was pouring past me, gazing at the dim blue mountain-crests in the west that I had learned marked its source, the irresistible call to penetrate the unknown impressed and then possessed me so completely that, at our midday breakfast, I announced to the Captain I had decided to follow the river to its head, and pass thence into the desert for a thirty-days' circle to the north and west.
"But, valga nu Dios, man," he objected, "I have no force I can spare for sufficient time to give you adequate escort for such a journey. It would be madness to undertake it with less than fifty men. I am responsible to my General for your safety, and cannot sanction it. Beyond the Alamo Cañon the only waters are in isolated springs in the plains and in natural rain-fall tanks along the mountain crests, known to none except the Indians and Tomas Alvarez, an old half-breed Kickapoo long attached to my command as scout, who ranged that country years ago with his tribe, and who guides my troop on such short scouts as we have been able to make beyond the Alamo, and—"
"Pardon," I ventured to interrupt, "that will do nicely; give me Alvarez and one good trustworthy soldier, and we'll make the circle without trouble."
"Six of you! Why, you'd never get twenty miles out of town in that direction. I can't permit it."
"Pardon again, Don Abran," I broke in, "but we have for years been accustomed to move in small parties through country that held a hundred times more hostiles than you have here, and you can trust us to take care of ourselves. Go we shall in any event, without your men if you withhold them."
"Well, well, hijo mio," he responded, "if you are bound to go, we will see. Only I shall write my General that I have sought to restrain you."
To us the prevailing local fears seemed absurd. Admittedly there were only sixteen of the Lipans then left, men, women, and children, their chief, Juan Galan, the son by a Lipan squaw, of the father of Garza Galan, then the leading merchant of the town, and later a distinguished Governor of his State. Originally a powerful tribe occupying both banks of the lower Rio Grando to the south of the Comanches, in their wars with Texans and Mexicans the Lipans had dwindled until only this handful remained. Three years earlier the entire band had been captured after a desperate fight, and removed by the Mexican authorities to a small reservation five hundred miles southwest of Musquiz. But at the end of two years, as soon as the guard over them relaxed, indomitable as Dull Knife and his Cheyennes in their desperate fight (in 1879) to regain their northern highland home, Juan Galan and his pathetically small following jumped their reservation and dodged and fought their way back to the Musquiz Mountains; and there for the last ten months, constantly harassed and harassing, they had been fighting for the right to die among the hills they loved. To the natives they were blood-thirsty wolves, beasts to be exterminated; to an impartial onlooker they were a heroic band courting death in a splendid last fight for fatherland. Their bold deeds would fill a book. Even in this town of fifteen hundred people guarded by a troop of cavalry, no one ventured out at night except from the most pressing necessity; and of the seventy killed by them since their return, nearly a third were macheted in the streets of Musquiz during Juan Galan's night raids on the town.
The most effective work against them was done by a band of about a hundred Seminole-negro half-breeds, to whom the Government had made a grant of four square leagues twenty-five miles west of Musquiz, on the Nacimiento. Come originally out of the Indian territory in the United States, where the Seminoles had cross-bred with their negro slaves, this same band a few years earlier had been most efficient scouts for our own troops at Fort dark, and other border garrisons, and it was this record that led the Mexican Government to seek and lodge them on the Nacimiento, as a buffer against the Lipans.
That night arrangements for our trip were concluded: the Captain consented to furnish me old Tomas Alvarez and a young soldier named Manuel, but only on condition that he himself should escort us, with fifty men of his troop, one day's march up the river, which would carry us beyond the recent range of the Lipans. So early the next morning we marched out westward, passing the last house a half-mile outside the centre of the town, along a dim, little-travelled trail that followed the river to the Seminole village on the Nacimiento. The day's journey was without incident, other than our amusement at what seemed to us the Captain's overzealous caution in keeping scouts out ahead and to right and left of the column, and in posting sentries about our night camp.
The following morning, a Sunday, after much good advice, the kindly Captain bade us a reluctant farewell, and led his troops down-river toward home, while our little party of six headed westward up-river. Near noon we sighted the Seminole village, and shortly entered it, a close cluster of low jacals built of poles and mud. Odd it looked, as we entered, a deserted village, no living thing in sight but a few dogs. Thus our surprise was all the greater when, nearing the farther edge of the village, our ears were greeted with the familiar strains of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," issuing from a large jacal which we soon learned was the Seminole church. Fancy it! the last thing one could have dreamed of! An honest old Methodist hymn sung in English by several score devout worshippers in the heart of Mexico, on the very dead line between savagery and civilization, and at that, sung by a people all savage on one side of their ancestry and semi-savage on the other.
Before the singing of the hymn was finished, startled by the barking of their dogs, out of the low doorway sprang half a dozen men, strapping big fellows,—one, the chief, bent half double with age,—all heavily armed. The moment they saw we were Americans we were most cordially received, and even urged to stop a few days with them, and give them news of the Texas border. But for this we had no time; and after a short visit—for which the congregation adjourned service—we filled our canteens, let our horses drink their fill at the great Nacimiento spring that burst forth a veritable young river from beneath a low bluff beside the town, and struck out westward for Alamo Cañon. Our afternoon march gave us little concern, for our route lay across rolling, lightly timbered uplands that offered little opportunity for ambush. That night we made a "dry camp" on the divide, preferring to approach the Alamo in daylight.
Having struck camp before dawn the next morning, by noon we saw ahead of us a great gorge dividing the mountain we were approaching—great in its height, but of a scant fifty yards in breadth, perpendicular of sides, a narrow line of brush and timber creeping down along its bottom, but stopping just short of the open plains. Scouting was useless. If there were any Indians about, we certainly had been seen, and they lay in ambush for us in a place of their own choosing. We must have water, and to get it must enter the cañon. So straight into the timber that filled the mouth of the gorge we rode at a run, riding a few paces apart to avoid the possible potting of our little bunch, and a hundred yards within the outer fringe of timber we reached the water our animals so badly needed.
And right there, all about the "sink" of the Alamo, where the last drops of the stream sank into the thirsty sands, the bottom was covered thick with fresh moccasin tracks, and in a little opening in the bush near to the sink smouldered the embers of that morning's camp-fire of a band of Lipans. Apparently we were in for it and seriously debated a retreat. Our position could not be worse. Tomas told us that the trail of the Lipans led straight up the valley, and for eight miles the cañon was never more than three hundred yards wide, and often no more than fifty, with almost perpendicular walls rising on either side two hundred or more feet in height, so nearly perpendicular that we would for the entire distance be in range from the bordering cliff crests, while any enemy there ambushed would be so safely covered they could follow our route and pick us off at their leisure. To be sure, the brush along the stream afforded some shelter, but no real protection. However, out now nearly fifty miles from Musquiz and well into the country we had come to see, we pushed ahead. Cress, Thornton, and Manuel prowling afoot through the brush a hundred yards in advance, Crawford, Tomas and myself bringing up the rear with the horses. And so we advanced for nearly half a mile when the Lipan trail turned east, toward Musquiz, up a crevice in the cliff a goat would have no easy time ascending. Thus we were led to argue that the Lipans had left their camp before discovering our approach, and by this time were probably miles away to the east.
Mounting, therefore, we made the beat pace our pack animals could stand up through the eight miles of the narrows, riding well apart from each other, the only safeguard we could take, all craning our necks for view of the cliff crests ahead of us. But no living thing showed save a few deer and coyotes, and two mountain lions that, alarmed by our clattering pace, slipped past us back down the gorge. When at last we reached the end of the narrows and the cañon broadened to a width of several hundred yards, all but fifty or seventy-five yards of the belt of timber lining the stream along the south wall being comparatively level grassy bunch land, nearly devoid of cover, we congratulated ourselves that we had not been scared into a retreat.
Keen to put as much distance as we could between us and the Lipans, we travelled on up the cañon at a sharp trot, keeping well to its middle, until about 5 p.m., when we reached a point where it widened into a broad bay, nearly seven hundred yards from crest to crest, with a dense thicket of mesquite trees near its centre that made fine s
helter and an excellent point of defence for a night camp. The stream hugged the east wall of the cañon, where it had carved out a tortuous bed perhaps one hundred and fifty yards wide, and so deep below the bench we occupied that only the tops of tall cottonwoods were visible from the thicket.
While the rest of us were busy unsaddling and unpacking, Thornton slung all our canteens over his shoulder, and started for the stream. But no sooner had he disappeared below the edge of the bench, a scant two hundred yards from our camp, before a rapid rifle fire opened which, while we knew it must proceed from his direction, echoed back from one cliff wall to the other until it appeared like an attack on our position from all sides, while the echoes multiplied to the volume of cannon fire at the sound of each shot. Indeed, never have I heard such thunderous, crashing, ear-splitting gun-detonations except on one other occasion, when aboard the British battle ship Invincible and in her six-inch gun battery while a salute was being fired.
Frightened by the fire, one of our pack horses stampeded down the cañon. Sending Manuel in pursuit, and leaving Tomas at the camp, Crawford, Cress, and I ran for the break of benchland, to reach and aid Thornton. Nearing it, all three dropped flat, and crawled to its edge, just in time to see George make a neat snap shot at a Lipan midway of a flying leap over a log, and drop him dead. Old George was standing quietly on the lower slope of the bench just above the timber, while the shots from eight or ten Lipan rifles were raining all about him! The Lipans lay in the timber only one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards away, and it was a miracle they did not get him. Instantly Cress and Crawford slipped back out of range, made a detour that brought them to the bench edge within fifty yards of the Lipans' position, and opened on them a cross fire, while I lay above George and shelled away at the smoke of their discharge, for not one showed a head after George potted the jumper. Five minutes after Cress and Crawford opened on them, the Lipan fire ceased entirely. For an hour we scouted along the bank trying to locate them, but apparently they had withdrawn.
The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Page 15