THE LANCERS' CHARGE.
The forlorn hope started off at full gallop behind the trio, in a flight through the obscurity which was as lugubrious as fantastic. The sweet and sadly wan moonbeams stretched the cavaliers' shadows immeasurably over the land. Every detail of the landscape took gaunt aspects. The trees, waving white and grey beards of Spanish moss, and endless creepers in loops and knots, seemed spectres that were stationed to catch and hang the riders. No such headlong course could have been performed by any but such Mexican centaurs. It lasted over an hour, till Oliver reined in and called out—
"Pull up!"
"Alto! ¡Alto!" was reiterated down the line, till the column was all in quiescence on the edge of a boundless virgin forest.
"Where are we?" inquired Gladsden.
"Three leagues from the farm," answered Oliver, after the Tigrero had given him a clue. "I thought more. We have turned the main body of the insurgents, and are on their rear if they are about to fall on the big farm. I am going to cache the squad under the leaves, and go on the scout myself."
"Had you not better send one of these, who are so familiar with the country?" remonstrated the Englishman. "Your place as commander—"
"Tush! There are too many lives at stake for me to hesitate to risk mine. I kin never make by big throws onless I hev sartin news. That Old Silvano could be trusted to see all that I shall see, but he hasn't a passle (parcelle, particle, used in that sense by the Canadian French trappers) o' jedgment, and on jedgment depends the ha'r o' them Spanish in the hacienda. I do this scout," said he shortly. "If I know anything, I b'lieve it's scouting."
"Since things are so, go ahead."
Oliver alighted, gave some orders, delegated his authority to the Englishman with Silvano as his sub., and glided into the woods. Though there was no underbush, he was lost to the view almost instantly, so instinctively did he cover his body by the trunks.
During his absence, the Mexicans rode under the branches, and dozed in the saddle, with pickets thrown out upon all sides. Gladsden let himself be absorbed in his reflections, marvelling that after a brief period, he, the English gentleman of wealth, could be in the heart of an unexplored wood, on the borders of a desert, guarded by a band of men complete strangers not ten hours before, and exposed to being overwhelmed by a whole army of revolted slaves.
In the midst of his reverie, without any warning, a hand was abruptly slapped on his knee, and a jesting voice said—
"How many mile in'ard of the Land of Nod?"
"I was not asleep, Oliver," cried Gladsden, indignantly, as, however, he opened his eyes, and blinked them in a way that belied his denial.
The scout had returned and come right up to his side so stealthily that he had not been aroused. But the tiger slayer had perceived him, and was smiling slightly at the practical joke which was, also, a lesson.
"Well, what's the news?"
"Things are a good deal as I s'posed," he answered. "Thar are something like three or four thousand of the critters, and sich a rabble! Very few have firearms, and, likely enough, no powder, and, if powder, no ball, so that they will top the loading with stones and gravel and blow their blamed topknots off at the first pull. The others hev come out powerful with spears, sheep shearers divided and the blades thong'd on to poles, scythes, reaping hooks, and all kind o' things ugly to look at of which they have made we'pins. Some 'stonishing black niggers are the head men of gangs. They are in a valley there away, on a road. They have no flankers out, and no look out, for they have no idee they mout be attackted."
"So we can manoeuvre without any apprehension of being discovered, you mean, Ol.?"
"Jess so, gineral! One of them mountain howitzer our army promenades with could pepper 'em up sure from hyar."
"Where's their left?"
"On a little village half a league tharabouts."
"And their right?"
"On a little cluster of shanties that Old Silvano says is called Rancho Nuevo—nigh enough to be seen in the crack o' day from hyar."
"Can the signal rockets of the hacienda be seen from the two points you mention, and the road occupied by the mass of the rebels?"
"For why not? They are three high p'ints over the sink they are in."
"This looks promising enough."
"What! Do you think to cut up three or four thousand niggers?"
"My dear Oliver, I am sure that you have your idea in your head fully matured, and that we have nothing to do but put it into execution."
"I don't know rightly about that. In any event, I am going to execute what the army men call a divarsion. If the innymy accept it as divarting, I'm satisfied. I should give it another name, myself, but thar! Thar's no 'counting for tastes. Besides the bulk of the Yaquis, thar is a long straggling train, with the plunder, the fat, cowardly, and cunning, who are drinking and singing, and dancing like all possessed. They are coming almost dead to'rds us, and we hev no more 'n time to receive them properly. If we turn them back, scattered, they wilt not be in condition to reinforce the army. That's the first article on the bill o' fare."
He beckoned the tiger hunter to him.
"Capitano," said he, "pick out your bullwhackers, and add to them enough more to make about forty strong. Them's your cuadrilla, savvy! Thar's a right smart sprinkle of cattle straying over the plain, bewildered, whom those barbarians hev scared, some—well, into a fever. Lasso a dozen in a herd, tie up and throw down, and send one to report progress. Meanwhile, collect a heap of fat (resinous) candlewood. Cook away—cuca, cap'en!"
Silvano, delighted with his rank, and beaming with smiles to the eyebrow, soon departed with one-third or so of the little party. The rest were divided into two troops, of which the American and Gladsden took the leadership. The mufflers were removed from the hoofs as useless, and each troop was arranged in three ranks, twelve, fifteen, and eighteen in a line. Thus in order, they moved off under the trees, tall ones whose boughs only sprang out at an altitude of great degree, and parting at a silent signal, ranged themselves one each side of a track through the woodland, dignified by the title of road. They were stationed one above the other.
Two hours had passed in these dispositions.
The moon had gone down lower and lower in the heavens, till, in the end, it dropped beneath the eyeline, and opaque shadows enveloped the country and blended all objects into one mass. In the stillness of a cemetery, the two cavalcades, no longer visible to one another, awaited the forthcoming enemy.
Wild Indians detest this hour, under the influence of a belief that the soul of a warrior killed in the dark spell before dawn is doomed to dwell everlastingly in gloom; but the converted peons had had this superstition modified or obliterated altogether.
At all events, there was soon heard a confused murmur, which changed speedily into a blending of shouting, monotonous chanting, and occasional shots, while yellow flares crossed the darkest glades of the pine woods.
In twenty minutes, the vanguard of a tumultuous gathering of brown and black skinned men, women, and youths, filled the track. They were almost naked, or merely attired in fragments of clothes to which they had never been accustomed, some bearing torches, some crucibles from mines, filled with oil and coarse wicks, and others candles of great length taken from chapels.
They were allowed to pass unchallenged.
After them the more active insurgents, drunken, frenzied, hoarse, tired with a long march, but demoniacal with their features twitching in insatiable passion, surged up in a tolerable order, brandishing and clashing their weapons, mostly of the improvised nature hinted at by the scout in his description.
All of a sudden, the harsh croak of a sandhill crane was audible in the thicket to the north of the road where Oliver had posted himself. Immediately the man at the side of Gladsden imitated the clatter of the beak of the same bird clearing it of the debris of a gobbled frog, by tapping his pistol barrel on his lance shaft. The next instant there was a rush of horses to the side of the forest track, and "Viva Mejico!" resounded full throated from Oregon Ol.
"Y Libertad!" was the completion of the signal and war cry from the followers of Gladsden, as they, too, set spurs to their steeds.
"Mexico and liberty!"
Simultaneously, therefore, the two companies burst upon the column of Indians, cutting through and leaving a layer upon layer of pierced mortality like in the track of a tornado. Having crossed, they made a circuit, and, coming out on the road once more, one higher up, and the other lower down the line of the previous charges, completed the surprise of the insurgents.
"Wheel, face forward in chase!" was the next command.
In half an hour, the riders came into the rendezvous agreed upon, having effectually frightened that column, and sent the surviving members reeling and flying in panic through the woods, back whence they came.
Five only of the Mexicans were missing. The wounds received were unimportant. The horses were breathed; the cavaliers allowed to congratulate themselves and their leaders. Oliver had a devoted following now, for these Mexicans are too unused to easy triumphs not to idolise the commander who gluts them with such a feast of vanity.
The collected horsemen rode off, slowly groping, to the appointed place on the open ground where Silvano and the herders were to have secured the semi-wild cattle. It was a little less dark, the false dawn, in fact, and thus Gladsden, though not so accustomed to the night marching as the rest, could see the horsemen of the Tigrero forming a wide circle; in the centre were several strange objects, writhing and beckoning to the stars. They were long-horned, thin, wiry cattle, of the breed of old which never will fatten in Mexican pastures, fleet as antelopes, savage as tigers. By dexterous casts of the lariat, they had been roped, hurled to the ground, and secured there, heels in the air. They were daunted but disdained to bow, mutely protesting by glaring eyes, full of congested blood, and twitching of the tails. A little way off, a heap of resinous wood was formed.
"Prime!" ejaculated the hunter, perceiving all this almost as clearly as by day. "Don Benny shall give you a silver medal, old coon."
He issued instructions which were forthwith carried out with delighted comprehension. The cattle were allowed to rise, but still held, half choked and much hampered with the leather ropes, whilst some active hands bound fat branches to their long horns, so that they soon assumed an apologetic appearance of stags adorned with magnificent antlers, which was amusing. Overcoming their humiliation on being anew on all fours, the beasts began to chafe. Bushes of prickly nopals were made for attaching to the animals' tails and hind quarters, like the pendent goads to the bulls in the arena.
When the cattle were finally supplied with these prickles and the wooden headgear, they were released of their trammels, and driven forward before a crescent shaped formation of the horsemen, increasing the pace perforce in order to keep up with them. Presently, the sparks which had been applied to rags round the gummy wood, were fanned into perceptible flames. By the time these living candelabra and their remorseless goaders saw the hill of the hacienda loom up, the frightened cattle were adorned with long streamers of flame. But as they were broadened out into a line, one beside another, there was no scare to make them turn back, and their only instinctive hope was to continue their mad charge.
A deep hubbub as of bees around the hive was audible over and above the bellowing of these fiery cattle, and a vivid glare seemed to encircle the hacienda.
All at once, a yellow streak rose up in the sky, and a white star shone over the buildings and enclosures, and the multitude surging up against the pickets. Then the sky was striped luminously once more, but, this time, a rosy glare surrounded a red star.
"Now we come whooping!" shouted Oliver, participating, like even the Englishman, in the excitement of this frantic race at the heels of the terrified bearers of the flames, forming a line of fire of continuous aspect to the Yaquis in the hollow. "Level your lance—no! Draw rein! Draw rein! And swerve to the left! What in thunder is that cry behind us—on the sword hand? Great Jehosaphat! whar the Old Harry have they sprung up from! Apaches, by the living thingumbob! Apaches!"
In plain earnest, the "hugh-ug-hugh!" of the Apaches rang out of the pine forest, with an intonation of joy as if the sight of the rockets and the disclosures thereby of the farm which had already been their mark for massacre and pillage, had delighted them beyond control.
Then was heard, too, in a voice quite as gleeful and fiendish, the vociferation of a number of white men, in Spanish and in English.
"¡Viva! The Rustlers! Los Ruidores of Captain Pedrillo forever!"
"The Rustlers!" repeated Oregon Ol., in perfect stupefaction. "Open your airth and swaller me! The 'Pache' and the skunks they exchanged shots with—that shed their blood—'malgamated, by gum! Take me into a gully an' bury me! I'm licked!"
Meanwhile, not having the reasons for a halt that had checked the Mexicans in the very commencement of a charge, the cattle infuriated with the falling sparks from the wood beginning to become detached from their horns, and blinded with the smarting smoke, tore down the incline into the very vale where the Yaquis were crowded. Certainly their onset would create a consternation, preventing any attention being bestowed upon Oliver's little party, as it obeyed his earnest injunction and wheeled off into an island of trees.
In ten minutes, as the dawn grew upon the scene, they could very well discern, boldly emerging from the piney woods, not only some of the stragglers of the column the Mexicans had discomfited, but two bodies of mounted men, together over their own number, whom Oliver recognised as the Apaches and the banditti, whom they had left at daggers drawn, or, more exactly, at long shots with each other.
To explain this unparalleled occurrence in border records, the union of two hostile forces in brotherly ties for active operation, we must turn back a few pages.