The Lone Ranche

Hamersley nodded assent.

“In that hovel he was born. His father was what we call a pelado– a poor devil, with scarce a coat to his back. Himself the same, but something worse. He has left in his native place a record of crimes well known, with others more than suspected. In short, he is, as I have told you, a robber. No doubt you wonder that such a man should be an officer in our army. That is because you are ignorant of the state of our service – our society as well. It is but the result of constantly recurring changes in our political system. Still you may feel surprise at his holding this commission, with the patriotic party – the pure one – in power, as it now is. That might be inexplicable even to myself, since I know that he will be traitor to our cause when convenient to him. But I also know the explanation. There is a power, even when the party exercising it is not in the ascendant – an influence that works by sap and secrecy. It is that of our hierarchy. Gil Uraga is one of its tools, since it exactly suits his low instincts and treacherous training. Whenever the day is ripe for a fresh pronunciamento against our liberties – if we are so unfortunate as to have one – he will be amongst the foremost of the traitors. Carrai! I can think of him only with disgust and loathing. Would you believe it, señor, that this fellow, now that epaulettes have been set on his shoulders – placed there for some vile service – has the audacity to aspire to the hand of my sister? Adela Miranda standing in bridal robes by the side of Gil Uraga! I would rather see her in her shroud!”

Hamersley’s bosom heaved up as he listened to the last words, and with emotion almost equalling that which excited his host. He had just been thinking about the portrait upon the wall, and how beautiful the original must be. Now hearing her name coupled with that of the ruffian whose blow he had felt, and whose blood he had spilled, he almost regretted not having ended that duel by killing his adversary outright.

“But surely, Colonel Miranda,” he said at length, “there could be no danger of such an event as that you speak of?”

“Never, so long as I live. But, amigo, as you have learnt, this is a strange land – a country of quick changes. I am here to-day, commanding in this district, with power, I may almost say, over the lives of all around me. To-morrow I may be a fugitive, or dead. If the latter, where is she, my poor sister, going to find the arm that could protect her?”

Again the breast of Hamersley heaved in a convulsive manner. Strange as it might appear, the words of his newly-made friend seemed like an appeal to him. And it is just possible some such thought was in the mind of the Mexican colonel. In the strong man by his side he saw the type of a race who can protect; just such an oak as he would wish to see his sister extend her arms tendril-like around, and cling on to for life.

Hamersley could not help having vague and varied misgivings; yet among them was one purpose he had already spoken of – a determination to return to Albuquerque.

“I am sure to be back here,” he said, as if the promise was meant to tranquillise the apprehensions of the colonel. Then, changing to a more careless tone, he added, —

“I cannot come by the spring caravans; there would not be time enough to make my arrangements. But there is a more southern route, lately discovered, that can be travelled at any season. Perhaps I may try that. In any case, I shall write you by the trains leaving the States in the spring, so that you may know when to expect me. And if, Colonel Miranda,” he added, after a short reflective pause, in which his countenance assumed a new and graver form of expression, “if any political trouble, such as you speak of, should occur, and you may find it necessary to flee from your own land, I need not tell you that in mine you will find a friend and a home. After what has happened here, you may depend upon the first being true, and the second hospitable, however humble.”

On that subject there was no further exchange of speech. The two individuals, so oddly as accidentally introduced, flung aside the stumps of their cigars; and, clasping hands, stood regarding one another with the gaze of a sincere, unspeakable friendship.

Next morning saw the Kentuckian riding away from Albuquerque towards the capital of New Mexico, an escort of dragoons accompanying him, sent by the Mexican colonel as a protection against marauding Indians.

But all along the road, and for months after, he was haunted with the memory of that sweet face seen upon the sola wall; and instead of laughing at himself for having fallen in love with a portrait, he but longed to return, and look upon its original – chafing under an apprehension, with which the parting words of his New Mexican host had painfully inspired him.

Chapter Four.

A Pronunciamento

A little less than a quarter of a century ago the Navajo Indians were the terror of the New Mexican settlements. It was no uncommon thing for them to charge into the streets of a town, shoot down or spear the citizens, plunder the shops, and seize upon such women as they wanted, carrying these captives to their far-off fastnesses in the land of Navajoa.

In the canon de Chelley these savages had their headquarters, with the temple and estufa, where the sacred fire of Moctezuma was never permitted to go out; and there, in times past, when Mexico was misruled by the tyrant Santa Anna, might have been seen scores of white women, captives to the Navajo nation, women well born and tenderly brought up, torn from their homes on the Rio del Norte, and forced to become the wives of their red-skinned captors – oftener their concubines and slaves. White children, too, in like manner, growing up among the children of their despoilers; on reaching manhood to forget all the ties of kindred, with the liens of civilised life – in short, to be as much savages as those who had adopted them.

At no period was this despoliation more rife than in the time of which we write. It had reached its climax of horrors, day after day recurring, when Colonel Miranda became military commandant of the district of Albuquerque; until not only this town, but Santa Fé, the capital of the province itself, was menaced with destruction by the red marauders. Not alone the Navajoes on the west, but the Apaches on the south, and the Comanches who peopled the plains to the east, made intermittent and frequent forays upon the towns and villages lying along the renowned Rio del Norte. There were no longer any outlying settlements or isolated plantations. The grand haciendas, as the humble ranchos, were alike lain in ruins. In the walled town alone was there safety for the white inhabitants of Nuevo Mexico, or for those Indians, termed mansos, converted to Christianity, and leagued with them in the pursuits of civilisation. And, indeed, not much safety either within towns – even in Albuquerque itself.

Imbued with a spirit of patriotism, Colonel Miranda, in taking charge of the district – his native place, as already known – determined on doing his best to protect it from further spoliation; and for this purpose had appealed to the central government to give him an increase to the forces under his command.

It came in the shape of a squadron of lancers from Chihuahua, whose garrison only spared them on their being replaced by a troop of like strength, sent on from the capital of the country.

It was not very pleasant to the commandant of Albuquerque to see Captain Gil Uraga in command of the subsidy thus granted him. But the lancer officer met him in a friendly manner, professing cordiality, apparently forgetful of their duelling feud, and, at least outwardly, showing the submission due to the difference of their rank.

Engaged in frequent affairs with the Indians, and expeditions in pursuit of them, for a while things seemed to go smoothly enough.

But as Adela Miranda had now returned home, and was residing with her brother, in the interludes of tranquillity he could not help having some concern for her. He was well aware of Uraga’s aspirations; and, though loathing the very sight of the man, he was, nevertheless, compelled to tolerate his companionship to a certain extent, and could not well deny him the entrée of his house.

At first the subordinate bore himself with becoming meekness. Mock humility it was, and soon so proved itself. For, as the days passed, rumours reached the distant department of New Mexico that the old tyrant Santa Anna was again returning to power. And, in proportion as these gained strength, so increased Gil Uraga’s confidence in himself, till at length he assumed an air of effrontery – almost insolence – towards his superior officer; and towards the sister, in the interviews he was permitted with her, a manner significantly corresponding.

These were few, and still less frequent, as his brusque behaviour began to manifest itself. Observing it, Colonel Miranda at length came to the determination that the lancer captain should no longer enter into his house – at least, by invitation. Any future relations between them must be in the strict execution of their respective military duties.

“Yes, sister,” he said, one afternoon, as Adela was buckling on his sword-belt, and helping to equip him for the evening parade, “Uraga must come here no more. I well understand the cause of his contumacious behaviour. The priest party is again getting the ascendency. If they succeed, heaven help poor Mexico. And, I may add, heaven help us!”

Drawing the girl to his bosom with a fond affectionate embrace, he gave her a brother’s kiss. Then, striding forth, he sprang upon a saddled horse held in waiting, and rode off to parade his troops on the plaza of Albuquerque.

A ten minutes’ trot brought him into their presence. They were not drawn up in line, or other formation, to receive him. On the contrary, as he approached the cuartel, he saw strange sights, and heard sounds corresponding. Everything was in confusion – soldiers rushing to and fro, uttering seditious cries. Among these were “Viva Santa Anna!”

“Viva el General Armijo!”

“Viva el Coronel Uraga!”

Beyond doubt it was a pronunciamento. The old regime under which Colonel Miranda held authority was passing away, and a new one about to be initiated.

Drawing his sword and putting spur to his horse, he dashed in among the disaffected men.

A few of the faithful ran up, and ranged themselves by his side.

Then commenced a struggle, with shouting, shooting, sabring, and lance-thrusts. Several fell – some dead, some only disabled; among the last, Colonel Miranda himself, gravely wounded.

In ten minutes it was all over; and the commandant of Albuquerque, no longer commanding, lay lodged in the garrison carcel; Captain Gil Uraga, now colonel, replacing him as the supreme military officer of the district.

While all around ran the rumour that Don Antonio Lopes de Santa Anna was once more master of Mexico; his satellite, Manuel Armijo, again Governor of Santa Fé.

Chapter Five.

“Why comes he not?”

“What delays Valerian? What can be keeping him?”

These questions came from Adela Miranda, on the evening of that same day, standing in the door of her brother’s house, with eyes bent along the road leading to Albuquerque. Valerian was her brother’s baptismal name, and it was about his absence she was anxious.

For this she had reasons – more than one. Though still only a young girl, she quite understood the political situation of the Mexican Republic; at all times shifting, of late more critical than usual. In her brother’s confidence, she had been kept posted up in all that transpired in the capital, as also the district over which he held military command, and knew the danger of which he was himself apprehensive – every day drawing nigher and nigher.

Shortly after his leaving her she had heard shots, with a distant murmur of voices, in the direction of the town. From the azolea, to which she had ascended, she could note these noises more distinctly, but fancied them to be salutes, vivas, and cheers. Still, there was nothing much in that. It might be some jubilation of the soldiery at the ordinary evening parade; and, remembering that the day was a fiesta, she thought less of it.

But, as night drew down, and her brother had not returned, she began to feel some slight apprehension. He had promised to be back for a dinner that was long since due – a repast she had herself prepared, more sumptuous than common on account of the saint’s day. This was it that elicited the anxious self-asked interrogatories.

After giving utterance to them, she paced backward and forward; now standing in the portal and gazing along the road; now returning to the sola de comida, to look upon the table, with cloth spread, wines decantered, fruits and flowers on the épergne – all but the dishes that waited serving till Valerian should show himself.

To look on something besides – a portrait that hung upon the wall, underneath her own. It was a small thing – a mere photographic carte-de-visite. But it was the likeness of one who had a large place in her brother’s heart, if not in her own. In hers, how could it? It was the photograph of a man she had never seen – Frank Hamersley. He had left it with Colonel Miranda, as a souvenir of their short but friendly intercourse.

Did Colonel Miranda’s sister regard it in that light? She could not in any other. Still, as she gazed upon it, a thought was passing through her mind somewhat different from a sentiment of simple friendship. Her brother had told her all – the circumstances that led to his acquaintance with Hamersley; of the duel, and in what a knightly manner the Kentuckian had carried himself; adding his own commentaries in a very flattering fashion. This, of itself, had been enough to pique curiosity in a young girl, just escaped from her convent school; but added to the outward semblance of the stranger, by the sun made lustrous – so lustrous inwardly – Adela Miranda was moved by something more than curiosity. As she stood regarding the likeness of Frank Hamersley she felt very much as he had done looking at hers – in love with one only known by portrait and repute.

In such there is nothing strange nor new. Many a reader of this tale could speak of a similar experience.

While gazing on the carte-de-visite she was roused from the sweet reverie it had called up by hearing footsteps outside. Someone coming in through the saggan.

“Valerian at last!”

The steps sounded as if the man making them were in a hurry. So should her brother be, having so long delayed his return.

She glided out to meet him with an interrogatory on her lips.

“Valerian?” – this suddenly changing to the exclamation, “Madre de Dios! ’Tis not my brother!”

It was not, but a man pale and breathless – a peon of the establishment – who, on seeing her, gasped out, —

“Señorita! I bring sad news. There’s been a mutiny at the cuartel – a pronunciamento. The rebels have had it all their own way, and I am sorry to tell you that the colonel, your brother – ”

“What of him? Speak! Is he – ”

“Not killed, nina; only wounded, and a prisoner.”

Adela Miranda did not swoon nor faint. She was not of the nervous kind. Nurtured amid dangers, most of her life accustomed to alarms from Indian incursions, as well as revolutionary risings, she remained calm.

She dispatched messengers to the town, secretly, one after another; and, while awaiting their reports, knelt before an image of the Virgin, and prayed.

Up till midnight her couriers went, and came. Then one who was more than a messenger – her brother himself!

As already reported to her, he was wounded, and came accompanied by the surgeon of the garrison, a friend. They arrived at the house in hot haste, as if pursued.

And they were so, as she soon after learnt.

There was just time for Colonel Miranda to select the most cherished of his penates; pack them on a recua of mules, then mount, and make away.

They had scarce cleared the premises when the myrmidons of the new commandant, led by the man himself, rode up and took possession of the place.

By this time, and by good luck, the ruffian was intoxicated – so drunk he could scarce comprehend what was passing around him. It seemed like a dream to him to be told that Colonel Miranda had got clear away; a more horrid one to hear that she whom he designed for a victim had escaped from his clutches.

When morning dawned, and in soberer mood he listened to the reports of those sent in pursuit – all telling the same tale of non-success – he raved like one in a frenzy of madness. For the escape of the late Commandant of Albuquerque had robbed him of two things – to him the sweetest in life – one, revenge on the man he heartily hated; the other, possession of the woman he passionately loved.

Chapter Six.

Surrounded

A plain of pure sand, glaring red-yellow under the first rays of the rising sun; towards the east and west apparently illimitable, but interrupted northward by a chain of table-topped hills, and along its southern edge by a continuous cliff, rising wall-like to the height of several hundred feet, and trending each way beyond the verge of vision.

About half-distance between this prolonged escarpment and the outlying hills six large “Conestoga” waggons, locked tongue and tail together, enclosing a lozenge-shaped or elliptical space – a corral– inside which are fifteen men and five horses.

Only ten of the men are living; the other five are dead, their bodies lying a-stretch between the wheels of the waggons. Three of the horses have succumbed to the same fate.

Outside are many dead mules; several still attached to the protruding poles, that have broken as their bodies fell crashing across them. Fragments of leather straps and cast gearing tell of others that have torn loose, and scoured off from the perilous spot.

Inside and all around are traces of a struggle – the ground scored and furrowed by the hoofs of horses, and the booted feet of men, with here and there little rivulets and pools of blood. This, fast filtering into the sand, shows freshly spilled – some of it still smoking.

All the signs tell of recent conflict. And so should they, since it is still going on, or only suspended to recommence a new scene of the strife, which promises to be yet more terrible and sanguinary than that already terminated.

A tragedy easy of explanation. There is no question about why the waggons have been stopped, or how the men, mules, and horses came to be killed. Distant about three hundred yards upon the sandy plain are other men and horses, to the number of near two hundred. Their half-naked bodies of bronze colour, fantastically marked with devices in chalk-white, charcoal-black, and vermillion red – their buckskin breech-clouts and leggings, with plumes sticking tuft-like above their crowns – all these insignia show them to be Indians.

It is a predatory band of the red pirates, who have attacked a travelling party of whites – no new spectacle on the prairies.

They have made the first onslaught, which was intended to stampede the caravan, and at once capture it. This was done before daybreak. Foiled in the attempt, they are now laying siege to it, having surrounded it on all sides at a distance just beyond range of the rifles of those besieged. Their line forms the circumference of a circle of which the waggon clump is the centre. It is not very regularly preserved, but ever changing, ever in motion, like some vast constricting serpent that has thrown its body into a grand coil around its victim, to close when ready to give the fatal squeeze.

In this case the victim appears to have no hope of escape – no alternative but to succumb.

That the men sheltered behind the waggons have not “gone under” at the first onslaught is significative of their character. Of a surety they are not common emigrants, crossing the prairies on their way to a new home. Had they been so, they could not have “corralled” their unwieldy vehicles with such promptitude; for they had started from their night camp, and the attack was made while the train was in motion – advantage being taken of their slow drag through the soft, yielding sand. And had they been but ordinary emigrants they would not have stood so stoutly on the defence, and shown such an array of dead enemies around them. For among the savages outside can be seen at least a score of lifeless forms lying prostrate upon the plain.

For the time, there is a suspension of hostilities. The red men, disappointed by the failure of their first charge, have retreated back to a safe distance. The death-dealing bullets of the whites, of which they have had fatal proof, hold them there.

But the pause is not likely to be for long, as their gestures indicate. On one side of the circle a body of them clumped together hold counsel. Others gallop around it, bearing orders and instructions that evidently relate to a changed plan of attack. With so much blood before their eyes, and the bodies of their slain comrades, it is not likely they will retire from the ground. In their shouts there is a ring of resolved vengeance, which promises a speedy renewal of the attack.

“Who do you think they are?” asks Frank Hamersley, the proprietor of the assaulted caravan. “Are they Comanches, Walt?”

“Yis, Kimanch,” answers the individual thus addressed; “an’ the wust kind o’ Kimanch. They’re a band o’ the cowardly Tenawas. I kin tell by thar bows. Don’t ye see that thar’s two bends in ’em?”

“I do.”

“Wal, that’s the sort o’ bow the Tenawas carry – same’s the Apash.”

“The Indians on this route were reported friendly. Why have they attacked us, I wonder?”

“Injuns ain’t niver friendly – not Tenawas. They’ve been riled considerably of late by the Texans on the Trinity. Besides, I reck’n I kin guess another reezun. It’s owin’ to some whites as crossed this way last year. Thar war a scrimmage atween them and the redskins, in the which some squaws got kilt – I mout say murdered. Thar war some Mexikins along wi’ the whites, an’ it war them that did it. An’ now we’ve got to pay for their cussed crooked conduk.”

“What’s best for us to do?”

“Thar’s no best, I’m afeerd. I kin see no chance ’cept to fight it out to the bitter eend. Thar’s no mercy in them yells – ne’er a morsel o’ it.”

“What do they intend doing next, think you?”

“Jest yet ’taint easy to tell. Thar’s somethin’ on foot among ’em – some darned Injun trick. Clar as I kin see, that big chief wi’ the red cross on his ribs, air him they call the Horned Lizard; an’ ef it be, thar ain’t a cunniner coon on all this contynent. He’s sharp enough to contrive some tight trap for us. The dose we’ve gin the skunks may keep ’em off for a while – not long, I reck’n. Darnation! Thar’s five o’ our fellows wiped out already. It looks ugly, an’ like enuf we’ve all got to go under.”

“Don’t you think our best way will be to make a dash for it, and try to cut through them. If we stay here they’ll starve us out. We haven’t water enough in the waggons to give us a drink apiece.”

“I know all that, an’ hev thort o’ ’t. But you forget about our hosses. Thar’s only two left alive – yours and myen. All the rest air shot or stampedoed. Thurfor, but two o’ us would stand a chance o’ gettin’ clar, an’ it slim enough.”

“You are right, Walt; I did not think of that I won’t forsake the men, even if assured of my own safety – never!”

“Nobody as knows you, Frank Hamersley, need be tolt that.”

“Boys!” cries out Hamersley, in a voice that can be heard all through the corral; “I needn’t tell you that we’re in a fix, and a bad one. There’s no help for us but to fight it out. And if we must die, let us die together.”

A response from eight voices coming from different sides – for those watching the movements of the enemy are posted round the enclosure – tells there is not a craven among them. Though only teamsters, they are truly courageous men – most of them natives of Kentucky and Tennessee.

“In any case,” continues the owner of the caravan, “we must hold our ground till night. In the darkness there may be some chance of our being able to steal past them.”