Chapter Fifty Two.
Massacre without mercy.
Pass to the scene outside, than which none more tragical in the history of Texan colonisation.
No need to tell who the Indians are that have shown their faces at the dining-room door, shutting and locking it. They are those seen by Hawkins and Tucker—the same Dupré’s traitorous servant has conducted through the gap in the garden wall; whence, after making seizure of the girls, they continued on to the house, the half-blood at their head.
Under his guidance they passed through the cattle corral, and into the inner court. Till entering this they were not observed. Then the negro lad, sent in search of Fernand, seeing them, rushed back for the refectory.
With all his haste, as already known, too late in giving the alarm. Half-a-dozen of the foremost, following, were at the dining-room door almost soon as he, while others proceeding to the front entrance, closed the great gate, to prevent any one escaping that way.
In the courtyard ensues a scene, horrible to behold. The domestics frightened, screaming, rushing to and fro, are struck down with tomahawks, impaled upon spears, or hacked and stabbed with long-bladed knives. At least a half-score of these unhappy creatures fall in the fearful slaughter. Indiscriminate as to age or sex: for men, women, and children are among its victims.
Their shrieks, and piteous appeals, are alike disregarded. One after another they are struck, or hewn down, like saplings by the macheté. A scene of red carnage, resembling a saturnalia of demons, doing murder!
Short as terrible; in less than ten minutes after its commencement it is all over. The victims have succumbed, their bleeding bodies lie along the pavement. Only those domestics have escaped, who preserved enough presence of mind to get inside rooms, and barricade the doors behind them.
They are not followed; for despite the red murder already done, the action ensuing, tells of only robbery intended.
This evident from the way the savages now go to work. Instead of attempting to reach those they have imprisoned within the dining-room, they place two of their number to stand guard by its door; another pair going on to the gate entrance. These steps taken, the rest, with Fernand still conducting, hurry along the corridor, towards a room which opens at one of its angles. It is the chamber Dupré has chosen for his sleeping apartment, and where he has deposited his treasure. Inside it his cash, at least fifty thousand dollars, most of it in silver, packed in stout boxes.
Fernand carries the key, which he inserts into its lock. The door flies open, and the half-blood enters, closely followed by those who appear all Indians. They go in with the eagerness of tigers springing upon prey, or more like the stealthiness of cats.
Soon they come out again, each bearing a box, of diminutive size, but weight sufficient to test his strength.
Laying these down, they re-enter the room, and return from it similarly loaded.
And so they go and come, carrying out the little boxes, until nearly a score are deposited upon the pavement of the courtyard.
The abstraction of the specie completed, the sentries set by the dining-room door, as also those sent to guard the entrance-gate, are called off; and the band becomes reunited by the treasure, as vultures around a carcass.
Some words are exchanged in undertone. Then each, laying hold of a box—there is one each for nearly all of them—and poising it upon his shoulders, strides off out of the courtyard.
Silently, and in single file, they pass across the cattle corral, on into the garden, down the central walk, and out through the gap by which they came in.
Then on to the glade where they have left their horses.
These they remount, after balancing the boxes upon their saddle-bows, and there securing them with trail-ropes.
Soon as in the saddle they move silently, but quickly away; the half-blood going along with them.
He, too, has a horse, the best in the troop—taken from the stable of the master he has so basely betrayed, so pitilessly plundered.
And that master at the moment nearly mad! Raging frantically around the room where they are left confined, nearly all the others frantic as he. For scarce any of them who has not like reason.
In the darkness groping, confusedly straying over the floor, stunned and stupified, they reel like drunken men; as they come in contact tremblingly interrogating one another as to what can have occurred.
By the silence outside it would seem as if everybody were murdered, massacred—coloured servants within the house, colonists without—all!
And what of Colonel Armstrong’s own daughters? To their father it is a period of dread suspense—an agony indescribable. Much longer continued it would drive him mad. Perhaps he is saved from insanity by anger—by thoughts of vengeance, and the hope of living to accomplish it.
While mutually interrogating, one starts the suggestion that the whole affair may be a travestie—a freak of the younger, and more frolicksome members of the colonist fraternity. Notwithstanding its improbability, the idea takes, and is entertained, as drowning men catch at straws.
Only for an instant. The thing is too serious, affecting personages of too much importance, to be so trifled with. There are none in the settlement who would dare attempt such practical joking with its chief—the stern old soldier, Armstrong. Besides, the sounds heard outside were not those of mirth, mocking its opposite. The shouts and shrieks had the true ring of terror, and the accents of despair.
No. It could not be anything of a merrymaking, but what they at first supposed it—a tragedy.
Their rage returns, and they think only of revenge. As before, but to feel their impotence. The door, again tried, with all their united strength, refuses to stir from its hinges. As easily might they move the walls. The window railings alike resist their efforts; and they at length leave off, despairingly scattering through the room.
One alone remains, clinging to the window bars. It is Hawkins. He stays not with any hope of being able to wrench them off. He has already tested the strength of his arms, and found it insufficient. It is that of his lungs he now is determined to exert, and does so, shouting at the highest pitch of his voice.
Not that he thinks there is any chance of its being heard at the rancheria, nearly a half-mile off, with a grove of thick timber intervening. Besides, at that late hour the settlers will be asleep.
But in the grove between, and nearer, he knows there is a tent; and inside it a man who will be awake, if not dead—his comrade, Cris Tucker.
In the hope Cris may still be in the land of the living, Hawkins leans against the window bars and, projecting his face outward, as far as the jawbones will allow, he gives utterance to a series of shouts, interlarded with exclamations, that in the ears of a sober Puritan would have sounded terribly profane.