"I do. They are our Mexican lancers. There; do you not hear their bugle?"

A faint note or two from some bra.s.s instrument was carried to them by the wind.

"All right; mount," cried the doctor. "We'll have a look at them, anyway."

They had not gone more than a few hundred yards, when the new-comers caught sight of them riding down the incline; they reined up and, waving their lances, greeted them with jubilant shouts.

"Well--of all the scraggy-looking donkey-drivers!" exclaimed Steel in an aside, as they came up with the "lancers." There were about eighty of them, all more or less in rags, each man armed with a lance, a very rusty sabre, and a carbine. In their midst, two men held their lances aloft, each spear-point being decorated with the head of an Indian.

The men were hearty-looking, happy-go-lucky ruffians, brave as need be, but woefully undisciplined, and out of gear generally. After one glance at them, von Tempsky no longer wondered that many an Englishman, Irishman, Scot, or Yankee who would think himself lucky if he ever rose to the rank of sergeant, at home, could here become a field-marshal or an admiral in half an hour. For the Mexico of those days was, like the southern republics, a happy hunting-ground for foreign soldiers of fortune.

"And they send _these_ fellows to put down an Indian rising!" he muttered to the doctor; adding aloud, in Spanish: "Is that all you have killed? Who is your officer?"

The lancers grinned. No; they had killed at least thirty, out of some two hundred. Officer? H'm! n.o.body was quite sure. The two men with the heads were _supposed_ to be something in that line; but really they couldn't say for certain.

"All right; pray go on. I and my troop will follow you," said Steel.

There was one advantage in having fallen in with these ragam.u.f.fins; two at least of their number were half-bloods, with eyes like hawks for a trail; and this put an end to all doubt as to the way which must be followed now that the plain was reached. Some of the lancers had more terrible tales of the Indians to add to what the travellers already knew. A priest and a farmer had been murdered two days before; and, only that morning, three ladies had been found speared to death near an _estancia_ (farm).

The track wound in serpentine fashion, now skirting a town, now going straight through a _rancho_ whence the occupants had fled. By late afternoon the pursuers were within half a dozen miles of Durango; but here the track--more visible than ever now, in the long gra.s.s to which they had come--broke away at an obtuse angle, towards the more hilly ground on their right. The doctor pulled up, and he and von Tempsky began to confer with the soldiers. Horses and mules and men were all jaded, urged Steel; and the trail might lead them on through another all-night journey; and to no purpose. Why not ride for the town, take a short rest, and beat up recruits?

The question was being argued and re-argued, when a series of whistles, followed by one concerted and unearthly yell, proceeded from the hills; and, like a pack of wolves, the Indians for whom they had been hunting came charging down the slope; full three hundred of them, stark naked, their bodies painted scarlet and black, their hair and their horses decked with feathers. Steel looked glumly at his own little army. Oh for a couple of dozen well-armed men who had learned the virtues of obedience and combination!

"You lancers prepare to receive their charge," he shouted; and motioned to his own men to draw off and be ready to attack the Seris in the rear. He was obeyed indifferently; further urged by von Tempsky and Jago, the guides and _rancheros_ were wheeling slowly northwards; but the lancers were evidently more than half minded to charge wholesale at the oncoming savages.

It is proverbial that the greater the pain or the danger or the suspense, the more readily a man finds time to notice minute detail that has little or nothing to do with the matter in hand. Steel observed, on this occasion--though the yelling mob was within thirty yards of him--that apparently not a man of them was under six feet in height; that every man sat his horse as though he were a part of it, and that each carried a spear, bow, and quiver, and also a trumpery-looking round shield, studded with bits of bra.s.s, sh.e.l.l, and looking-gla.s.s. As he had half antic.i.p.ated, the savages suddenly changed their tactics on reaching the hill foot, and wheeled sharply towards the smaller force.

"Lancers, charge, the moment our volley's fired," shouted the doctor.

"Fire!--Charge! _Charge_, you thick-headed clod-hoppers, can't you?--O Lord!" His voice died away in a disheartened little groan.

For the lancers might so easily have had it all their own way; at least twenty redskins had fallen before the carbines of the _rancheros_, and clearly the rest were surprised and confused. Yet there sat these intelligent lancers, their spears in rest, calmly unslinging their carbines for a volley that was quite as likely to hurt their own side as the enemy.

"Can't be helped now," said the doctor to his followers. "Blaze away at them as best you can."

There were no quick-firing magazine-rifles in those days, and with the exception of von Tempsky and Steel, who had each a couple of revolvers, every man was armed with a muzzle-loader; but necessity had long been the mother of invention with the _rancheros_, as with the trappers and the Gauchos. Wads were dispensed with; a generous pinch of powder was thrown into the barrel, and each man had his mouth full of bullets, ready to spit one after the powder; a cap was hastily stuck on the pin and everyone was ready for another volley. But even as it was fired, a shower of arrows was launched at each troop, and many a man dropped forward in his saddle. Already the boot was on the other leg; it was the whites who were confused now, while the Indians had recovered their coolness; and, with a discord of howls, they swiftly separated into two parts, one preparing to charge at each white division.

"Pull yourselves together!"--"Die like men!" cried Steel and von Tempsky respectively, as, abandoning their bridles and with a revolver in each hand, they rode straight to meet the charge; while one half of the lancers fled, and the other half sought to cut a way through their a.s.sailants and rejoin the _rancheros_.

The doctor fired off six shots into the front rank as the two forces met, and four Indians fell dead; but his own mule dropped under him, transfixed by a spear.

"Here you are; mount," bawled von Tempsky in his ear, just when, in imagination, he was already being trampled down by the Indians'

horses.

The ready-witted Pole had sent a bullet into the head of the redskin nearest him, and as he fell, had caught the bridle of his horse. The old backwoodsman, active as a cat, sprang to the horse's back, and the next moment was emptying his second revolver into the faces of the enemy. Meanwhile, the lancers fought furiously but spasmodically.

Their lances could not avail them against the war-hatchets of the savages; and while one half clubbed their carbines, the other made but fruitless play with their sabres, seeking at the same time to drown the howls of the Indians with their own.

But suddenly, when the fight was at its hottest, and when the issue was very much in the balance, a cry of dismay broke from one batch of redskins, who, pointing towards Durango, began to wheel round with the obvious intention of taking flight.

"Help is coming," cried Jago encouragingly; and, looking back for an instant, Steel saw about forty men, splendidly mounted, and coming up at a gallop from the direction of the town. The second division of the enemy followed the example of the first, and turned to flee. The forty strangers, without uttering a word as they swept past, dashed in pursuit, firing while still at the gallop. It was vain for the Indians to goad their tired horses; those of the rescuing party were fresh.

Before they had gone a mile they were overtaken, and Steel, who had followed as best he could, heard a voice cry in English:

"No quarter; they don't deserve mercy. If we take prisoners, the Mexicans will torture them to death."

In a few minutes there was not an Indian left alive; every man of the fugitives had fallen before the ceaseless shower of bullets poured into their ranks by the strangers.

The very sort of men for whom Steel had been longing had come; forty of the Texan mounted militia, who had been sent down-country to treat for mules, had put themselves at the disposal of the Durango police for the suppression of the Indian hordes; and on this, as on subsequent occasions, the punishment which they served out was so terrible that the redskins fled south and east, or hid in the hills, and for a year or two, at least, little was heard of their attacking either travellers or homesteads.

CHAPTER XX

A HOLIDAY AMONG THE OJIBEWAS

We have already spoken, in Chapter VIII, of the Algonquin branch of the red race. This vast family, comprising Ojibewas, Shawnees, Crees, Araphoes, Blackfeet, etc., once owned practically the whole of South Canada, as well as the eastern portion of the States as far down as Kentucky. The territory peculiar to the Ojibewas ran in a rough curve from Saratoga to Winnipeg, and round about the lake district; but as the construction of the railway from New York to Montreal seemed to establish the definite claim of the white men, the Indians retreated farther north, some taking service under the farmers, or settling down to farm for themselves; others wandering in what was left of the prairie and forest land, and turning an occasional dishonest penny by robbing unprotected travellers.

When Charles Richard Weld made his tour from Boston into and through Southern Canada in 1854, only a part of the railway was made, and the greater portion of the journey had to be accomplished by coach, by canoe, or on horseback. Mr. Weld (who must not be confused with Isaac Weld, the explorer, his half-brother) was a barrister and literary man, in whom a close personal friendship with many great travellers, including Sir John Barrow and Sir John Franklin, had bred a strong ambition to see the world and make discoveries on his own account. But a busy man, who adds to his other duties the secretaryship of the Royal Society, must perforce stay at home, and it was not till 1850, when he was a man of thirty-seven, that he saw his way to travelling; and that only by devoting the long vacation of each year to visiting some special quarter of the globe.

It was while journeying northwards on this railway that he encountered his first real "sight," which was a prairie-fire: a swiftly-moving ma.s.s of flame and smoke that rolled almost up to the very rails, making the occupants of the cars feel as though they were in an oven.

The fire raged for a good many days, for long after Weld had left the railroad and transferred himself to the coach for Lake George, he could still see the smoke and flare in the distance.

The major part of the coach-route lay along a plank road, bounded on either side by miles of monotonous prairie, or by dark patches of pine-wood, where squirrels, deer, and red foxes abounded. The "coach"

was an open arrangement--a _char-a-bancs_, in fact; and Mr. Weld's travelling companions consisted of three farmers, a couple of French trappers, a wheezy old Irishwoman and her two granddaughters. On the last stage of the journey, when they were within a few miles of the lake-sh.o.r.e, the Englishman's attention was attracted by the driver to a dark ma.s.s that was moving rapidly through the long gra.s.s, towards the road.

"Injuns; see em?"

About a score of Ojibewas in full war-dress were riding at the top of their speed, with the apparent intention of cutting off the vehicle.

"Well; I suppose they won't hurt _us_?" said Weld.

The coachman whipped up his horses. "I reckon they hadn't better."

As n.o.body seemed in the least alarmed, the tourist watched the approach of the Indians rather with interest than with anxiety.

Nevertheless, as the redskins, on coming within a hundred yards, suddenly set up an inharmonious howling, and brandished spears or tomahawks, he thought it time to produce and examine his revolver.

Just then the horses were pulled up short, and the driver took from beneath his feet a very workmanlike double-barrelled gun; and, looking round him, Weld saw that the other men were doing the same; while even the old woman and the two girls, albeit without a sign of undue excitement, had each brought out a revolver from her reticule.

"That's the way to let 'em have it," said the driver, having fired off both barrels at the advancing mob. Before a second gun could be fired, the whole troop had wheeled about, and were riding away as quickly as they had come. The coachman reloaded as though nothing unusual had happened, put away his rifle, and started the horses again.

"Biggest cowards on the yearth," he mumbled to Weld. "That was only a couple o' charges o' birdshot I give 'em. Bless ye, we know 'em by heart now. Years ago they'd put-up a mail, and tomahawk everybody; but nowadays they seem to run away as soon as they see a gun. If there'd only been you an' me, or n.o.body but women, they'd ha' tried to bluff _something_ out of us, if 'twas only a keg o' spirits, or a bit of tobacker; but half a dozen men'll frighten the lives out of 'em. One time o' day they'd send a charge of arrows first; but they're shy of that if they see any rifles waiting for 'em."

This was Weld's first and only experience of an Indian a.s.sault, for the few wild tribes with which he came in contact were quite disorganised, had lost confidence in their traditional weapons of war, and had as yet a wholesome horror of gunpowder. But this absence of hostilities enabled him to get a good insight into Ojibewa forest and river life, and afforded him plenty of interesting adventure where hunting was concerned. At the lake-side inn, where he stayed for a few days, the host invited him to attend an Ojibewa rattlesnake-hunt, a form of sport of which he had never before heard.

"What weapons must I take?" he asked before starting.

"Oh, nothing. Put a gun (revolver) in your pocket if you like," was the careless reply.

A small party of redskins were squatting outside the inn, and seeing that the two white men were ready to accompany them, they led the way to a hilly and well-wooded spot, just on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the lake. Weld noticed that the only arms carried by them were a knife and a long, slender stick, and from all he had heard of the terrible rattlesnake, this appeared a poor equipment indeed wherewith to kill reptiles which might be any length up to eight or even ten feet. Being prepared for a very great deal of wariness and of elaborate preliminary on the part of the Indians, he was, of course, _not_ prepared for the entire absence of such preliminary. One of the hunters who walked beside him stooped unconcernedly, picked up a strip of something, gave it a shake, and put it in his game-bag.

"_He_ always seems to find the first one," remarked the innkeeper.