"Well; now what was it?" he asked, breaking into a laugh as the men, uttering exclamations of relief, rested on their paddles and wiped their brows.

"Hornets!"

"_Hornets?_"

"You laugh, Senor. G.o.d help us if they had followed us. Did you not hear their murmurings? Some fiend-begotten monkey had disturbed their nest; 'tis to be hoped he has got his reward. Two of my brothers were stung to death last year in less than a minute by a swarm of them; and there is a man of our tribe who is stone-blind through them."

Asuncion is, to-day, a town of only forty-five thousand inhabitants, and had not then half that number. With the exception of W. P.

Robertson and a few other bold traders, Charles Mansfield was probably the only Englishman who had then set foot inside it. He made it his head-quarters for the next two and a half months, and, during that time, made various excursions into the Gran Chaco.

On one occasion he joined a party of Indians who were going out there deer-hunting; and, though there was nothing specially new to him in their methods, he was enabled to examine the country under favourable circ.u.mstances. No doubt there was something in the report of its inhabitants being dangerous; for the men with him were hardy, fearless fellows, well used to bearing arms; and even these would not attempt to reach the more distant of the inhabited regions.

To him the hunting was more wearisome than agreeable, for it consisted mainly in crawling along on hands and knees mile after mile--so it seemed--till the sportsmen were within bowshot of a herd, which promptly fled before a single arrow could be launched at them. The crawling began again, and in course of time another or the same herd was reached, and these fled at the first discharge of arrows. The carcases were collected and hidden, and the creeping was begun afresh, but no more herds were overtaken. Then the Indians had recourse to a very common though unsportsmanlike dodge; they concealed themselves, shortly before sundown, by a river where, as the wind was, the deer would not scent them when they came down their usual path to the water. But, further disappointment, a thunderstorm came on, the deer spent the night under the trees, and the Indians went home disgusted.

With the practical eye of a real philanthropist, Mr. Mansfield noted all the advantages of this great and fertile hunting-ground--or as much of it as he was able to see. He returned to England full of a great project for colonising the Chaco and educating the Indians--a scheme which was never carried out. For, only a few months later, while he was performing a chemical experiment, a naphtha-still ignited; and, while pluckily trying to throw it into the street to save the house from catching fire, he sustained injuries which caused his death, at the early age of thirty-six.

CHAPTER XIX

AMONG THE SERIS OF MEXICO

It is a fact generally acknowledged throughout the American continent, that the Indian population have never yet failed to take advantage of war, revolution, or other political crises among the white settlers, to make themselves more than usually troublesome. From 1810 to 1867, Mexico went through a troublous period of rebellion and warfare; which is another way of saying that, for fifty-seven years, the Mexican Indians saw themselves at liberty to plunder and slay without the least fear of organised opposition; and judging from the account given by the German-Polish traveller, Gustav von Tempsky, they seem to have made use of their opportunity.

After three years' residence in California, Herr von Tempsky, with an American friend, Dr. Steel, took ship from San Francisco to Mazatlan, intending to explore the southern spurs of the Sierra Madre, and to return to the States overland. This was in 1853-4, a time when the Government, such as it was, had perhaps reached the summit of its helplessness; which will explain why, on arriving at Mazatlan, the travellers found plenty of counsellors ready to confirm the advice they had heard in California: "Keep out of Mexico, if you value your lives."

Not to be deterred by mere hearsay, the two friends hired mules and guides, and at once set out eastwards, far more anxious to escape to the highlands from the tropical heat of Mazatlan, than apprehensive of interference from Indians. Yet, as the country grew lonelier and more rugged, the mules less tractable and the guides less self-confident, the journey certainly began to lose some of the romantic charm which, from a safe distance, it had promised to possess; and when, towards nightfall of the third day's march, a tropical thunderstorm suddenly burst upon them, and the Mexican guides announced that the nearest shelter was at a hill village ten miles distant, both the adventurers found themselves thinking wistfully of the cosy steamer which they had recently left. Those ten miles seemed like a hundred; the rain continued to fall like a cataract; a baggage-mule took to flight and had to be pursued; then the animal ridden by the doctor got his forefeet in a hole, and for some time refused to move; and, by way of a little further diversion, the guides began to quarrel among themselves as to the precise direction in which the village lay.

The end of the journey came at last, however, but not the end of their annoyances. As the drenched men came within a stone's-throw of half a dozen feeble lights for which they had been making, they heard an excited buzz of voices, and, without warning, a dozen or more guns were fired in their direction. A baggage-mule dropped screaming from a skin wound on the shoulder, and one bullet pa.s.sed so close to the doctor's head that the broad brim of his _sombrero_ was perforated.

"Back, everybody," shouted one of the guides. "It is an Indian ambuscade. They are firing from shelter, and we can do nothing."

But von Tempsky had caught the sound of something which gave him a little comfort; to wit, an expression in French from one of the shooters.

"Who are you?" he shouted in French.

The reply was in the same language. "Halt there; stay where you are and let us know your business."

"Do you think we want to stop here to get soaked a little more?"

shouted Dr. Steel, urging on his mule before his friend had had time to frame an explanation. "Come along; we guessed they were Indians, and they paid us the same compliment."

The volley was not repeated; but a crowd of men with rifles and lanterns came scurrying to meet the little cavalcade; and, after some laughter and expressions of regret, their leader began a voluble explanation, which von Tempsky cut very short by announcing that he and his party were wet to the skin and required shelter. Thereupon they were ushered into the building whence the shots had been fired, which proved to be a tumble-down inn kept by an old Frenchman.

"We have been much beset by the Seris of late," he said apologetically.

"Three times during the past fortnight have we had the village surrounded by parties of them; and, when we heard you approach so late at night, we naturally supposed you to be Indians."

The tavern offered little enough comfort; but provisions were plentiful, and there was a good fire where clothes could be dried.

The tales which the _rancheros_ had to tell were certainly appalling.

Several villages had been entirely depopulated by the savages; many inoffensive travellers had been killed, and others had escaped with the bare life. These Seri Indians were--and even now are--a fierce, intractable people, utterly different from the typical Mexican Indians, who (the Comanches and Apaches apart) are a mild, diligent, and strongly religious race. Mexico still possesses some fifty tribes of redskins, most of which are subdivisions of the very ancient Nahuatl family; but, with the exception of the three tribes just mentioned, many of these had, before von Tempsky's time, begun to intermarry with Europeans and settle in the towns.

At first all the guides except Jago, the leader, flatly refused to go any farther, on hearing these gruesome stories; but when, on the next day, a dozen of the _rancheros_ offered to accompany the party as far as Durango, on condition that they would combine with them against any Indians they might meet, the grumbling ceased; for no one was averse to getting a shot at the men who, at one time or other, had robbed every one of them of friend or property. Von Tempsky and Steel were nothing loth, either; the one came from a country where persecution and death were everyday matters; while the other had roughed it for five-and-twenty years, first in the backwoods and latterly at the Californian diggings, where it was a case of "a word and a blow--and the blow first."

For a day or two no sign of Indians was observed, and despite the irregularity of the road and the alarming prevalence of rattlesnakes, the journey was not unpleasant. But on the third afternoon, as the guide Jago was seeking to point out from a distance the village where the company was to pa.s.s the night, he uttered a horrified exclamation, and made the sign of the cross. At the same moment an angry hubbub arose from the group of _rancheros_.

"What is it? What are they all looking at?" inquired von Tempsky.

"Smoke; and plenty of it," said the doctor, who was shading his eyes with his hands.

"Ay; smoke," said Jago, who spoke English quite well. "They have burnt another village. Let us go forward quickly, Senors."

An hour's sharp riding brought them to what, a day earlier, had been a fertile settlement or _rancho_, but which was now nothing but a pile of smouldering wood-ashes, round about which lay fully fifty corpses of men, women, and children. At the sight, both guides and _rancheros_ went almost mad with indignation; and von Tempsky himself was eager to press on immediately in pursuit of the wretches who had been guilty of such relentless slaughter. It was then that the more phlegmatic Yankee doctor showed the rest the value of a cool and calculating head.

"See here, boys," he said in his best Spanish, when he could make his voice heard above the howls and oaths of vengeance; "I reckon a redskin's a redskin, whether he hails from here or 'way north. _I'd_ got no quarrel with these particular vermin, till I saw _this_. Now I fought Indians before some of you were born; and I'll do it again if you'll let me. But there'll have to be none of this tear-away sort of game that some of you are after. Will you make me captain? You can soon turn me out of it again if you're not satisfied."

The _rancheros_ wavered for a moment. Why obey a perfect stranger, who knew neither the country nor the Seris? But the look of simple honesty, yet of bull-dog determination and pluck, in the man's face, gave confidence even to the most hesitating.

"Very good, Senor Doctor; we will obey you."

"They mean they'll _try_, poor fellows," said Steel, in English, to von Tempsky. "They don't know what discipline is."

By his orders, mules and horses were ungirthed, and while he, Jago, and the oldest of the _rancheros_ made a careful examination of the first mile of the track left by the murderers, the others lay down to rest and eat.

"They have crossed the ridge," said Steel when he rejoined his fellow-traveller. "We'll all of us take four hours' rest now. It'll be no real delay. Those rascals are fifty miles away by this time, as like as not; perhaps a hundred, for these poor souls have been dead a good many hours. We needn't worry; we shall come up with them later; or with more like them, who'll have to pay for this picnic."

The doctor was probably not exaggerating the distance covered by the Seris. The youngsters of the tribe were put on a horse as soon as they could straddle him; their only toys were bows and arrows, and the generally Spartan upbringing which all underwent enabled them to ride or march or fight for a whole day without food or rest. Large bodies of Seris or Comanches would move a hundred and thirty miles in a day.

Stifling their impatience as well as they could, the avenging party waited till the four hours had expired; then all set off on their mountain climb, though darkness would be coming on almost immediately.

Half a mile from the top of the ridge, von Tempsky was seen to spring from his saddle and make a dash at some dark object that lay in the shelter of a rock. Before he had reached it, however, a scuffling, clattering sound arose near him, and a horse, saddled but riderless, struggled to his feet. The others halted.

"Show a light some of you; I've got him," shouted von Tempsky.

"But--why, the man's dead!"

Jago dismounted, and, striking a light, revealed the pallid face of a Mexican, who lay with an arrow through his back. Von Tempsky, who had been the only one of the riders to notice the rec.u.mbent figure, had imagined it to be that of an Indian spy or sentinel, and had at once made a grab at his throat, only to find the body stiff and quite cold.

"One more score against them," cried the doctor. "Ride on."

They travelled all night and till long after daybreak, without meeting or seeing anyone; and at length Steel called another halt for a few hours. Presently, as he and von Tempsky sat chatting, the latter drew his attention to a body of mounted men riding slowly across their projected path, a couple of miles away.

"We've got them this time," said Steel, jumping up.

"Those are not Indians, Senor," said Jago.

"Tch! Look at their spears, man."