CHAPTER V.
AMONG THE BUSHES.
The Texan rangers had arrived just in time to see the finish of a very fine race. They had not actually seen Red Wolf win it, but they were in no doubt as to why his pursuers made such a frantic dash into the chaparral.
"Not after the Comanches!" shouted Bowie. "Into the cover and find the Lipans! Charge!"
They went in at a point that was nearer than were Great Bear and his braves, to the spot where the Lipans worked their unintentional ambush. They heard all that whooping, and the stillness which followed it did not puzzle old Indian fighters.
"There's been a sharp brush."
"Those were scalp-whoops."
"We're in for it, boys. Shoot quick if you've got to, but hold your fire to the last minute. There are none too many of us."
Those were their orders, but there was no shooting to be done right away.
Hardly had Bowie pulled in, calling a halt, in some doubt as to which path, if any, it was best for him to follow, before a sorrel mustang came out in an opening before him, somewhat as if he had been dropped like an acorn from one of the scrub oaks.
"Red Wolf!" exclaimed Bowie. "Where is Castro?"
"Big Knife, come!" replied Red Wolf, pointing rapidly. "Castro there. Great Bear there. Heap Comanches. Young chief take hair! Ugh!"
He was holding up, with intense pride, his proof that he had been a victor in a single-handed fight. To the mind of any man of Bowie's experience it was entirely correct, and he said so.
"All right," he told his young friend. "Go ahead. Be a chief some day. Now I must see your father short order. Go ahead."
It was but a few minutes after that that the Lipan chief and Big Knife were shaking hands, but their questions and answers were few.
"Glad I got here before things were any worse," said Bowie. "I can make Great Bear pretend to give it up as soon as he knows I'm here."
"Ugh!" replied Castro. "Great Bear heap lie. Say go home. Then kill horse to catch Lipan."
"Just so," said Bowie. "Of course he will. Chief, hear old friend. Do as I say."
"Ugh!" came back assentingly. "Big Knife talk. Chief hear."
"I'll keep him back while you get a good start," said Bowie. "But do you and your braves ride for the Rio Grande. Ride fast. Get back to your lodges by that way. I'll follow to-morrow with a squad."
"Ugh!" said Castro, doubtfully. "No go to lodge now. Rio long water. Where wait for Big Knife? Bravo there, along river."
"I don't exactly know just where to say," began Bowie.
"Hacienda Dolores!" sounded gruffly out of one of the bushes near them. "Across the river. Tetzcatl."
Castro almost set free a whoop in his surprise, but he checked it in time, and only exclaimed,—
"Black Panther hide deep. Good. No let Comanche see him. How Big Knife find hacienda?"
"All right," said Bowie. "I know. It's the abandoned ranch on the other side. Pretty good buildings, too. Just as good a place as any, if I can get there with a whole skin. Reckon I can."
"Red Wolf lead horse to hacienda for Big Knife," said his father; but the voice from the bushes added, "Tetzcatl."
"That's it," said Bowie. "I'll get there. You and the youngster meet me and my men at about this place to-morrow any time I can get here. Say it 'll probably be toward noon. Now I must have a talk with Great Bear."
A chorus of friendly grunts responded to him from the Lipans who had gathered around, and they seemed to follow his instructions at once. Even Red Wolf and his pony had already disappeared.
There was a bugle among the varied outfit of the rangers, and now it was unslung by its bearer. He really knew what to do with it. As the band of white men rode cautiously forward in the direction given them, the martial music sounded again and again at short intervals. It was an announcement to the Comanches that they had more than Lipans to deal with, and it was also a plain invitation to a parley.
Just how many red foemen he might have in front of him Great Bear did not know. Neither had he any count of the white riflemen, but their presence settled his mind.
"Great Bear no fight Texan now!" was his immediate declaration to his warriors. "Heap fool Big Knife. Put him in Alamo. No see through wall. Then find Castro in bushes. No let Lipan get away."
His next business, therefore, was to ride forward, with a cunning semblance of friendly frankness, to talk with Bowie and send him back to the fort, leaving the bushes clear of rifles. Not even then did the rangers expose themselves unduly, and Great Bear knew that he was covered by more than one unerring marksman while he was shaking hands so heartily.
"Heap friend," he said. "Great Bear glad Texan come. Glad to see Big Knife. Lipan kill Comanche. Gone now."
"Great Bear lie a heap," returned Bowie, coldly. "Said he would go home to his lodge. Break word. Stay and fight Lipan."
"Ugh!" returned Great Bear, insolently. "Great Bear chief! What for Big Knife ride in bushes? Hunt Lipan dog? Take Castro hair? Shut mouth. No talk hard. Go to fort. Go sleep!"
"Heap bad talk," said Bowie, with steady firmness. "Great Bear is in a trap. Better get out. Lose all his braves. This isn't your land. Go to lodge."
The chief again spoke boastfully, and Bowie became argumentative. One of his present objects was to use up time in talk, and he was quite willing to stir Great Bear's vanity to all sorts of assertions of the right and power of himself and his tribe to fight their enemies wherever they could be found.
He was succeeding very well, and every minute was of importance to the Lipans, who were now threading their southward way through the chaparral with all the speed they could reasonably make. With the sun overhead to guide by, they could dispense with a compass. Here and there, moreover, some of them, who seemed to have been there before, found marks upon tree-trunks and branches which may have meant more to their eyes than to those of other people.
"Great Bear is a great chief," said Bowie, at last, looking at the subtle Comanche steadily. "He has talked enough. What does he say? Will he fight now, or will he go to his lodge?—Bugle, ready!"
The bugler raised to his lips his hollow twist of brass, but a storm of "Ughs" broke out among the Comanche warriors.
Most of them had been near enough to hear the conversation. They were on dangerous ground and were becoming altogether willing to get out of it. At this moment they saw rifles cocked and half lifted. They knew that every white man before them was a dead shot, and none of them felt any desire to hear a bugle blow or a rifle crack.
The chief himself considered that he had talked long enough, and that he had been sufficiently insolent to preserve his dignity. He could therefore pretend to yield the required point.
"Good!" he replied. "Great chief go. Big Knife ride to fort. Lipan dogs run away. Save hair. Comanches take all some day. Not now. Texan heap friend. Shut mouth. Ugh!"
He offered his hand, and Bowie took it, but after that he and his rangers sat upon their horses in grim, menacing silence, while the Comanche warriors rode out of the chaparral. They did so glumly enough, for they had been outwitted and they had lost some of their best braves.
"Now, men," said Bowie, "it was touch and go. They were too many for us if it was a fight. We're out of it this time, but they won't forget or forgive it."
"You bet they won't," replied a ranger; "but I had a sure bead on Great Bear's throat medal, and he knew it. He'd ha' jumped jest once."
"Back to the Alamo," said Bowie. "We must make good time."
Away they went, and in an instant the appearance of military discipline had vanished. The leader and his hard-fighting comrades were once more fellow-frontiersmen rather than "soldiers." Differences of rank, indeed, were but faintly marked upon the dress or trappings of any of them.
There were no epaulets or sashes, but at no moment of time could an observer have been in doubt as to who was in command. The roughest and freest spoken of them all showed marked deference whenever he addressed or even came near to the man whom Great Bear himself, with all his pride, had acknowledged to be his superior.
"Jim," said Bowie to a tall horseman who was at his side when they came out into the open prairie, "have you made up your mind to go with me into Chihuahua?"
"Go!" exclaimed Jim. "Why, colonel, I ain't enlisted. Travis can't stop me. Of course I'll go. Wouldn't miss it for a pile. It 'll be as good as a spree."
So said more than one of the other rangers when opportunity came to ask them the same question. To each the romantic legend of the hidden treasures of the Aztec kings had been mentioned confidentially. No doubt it acted as a bait, but every way as attractive, apparently, was the prospect of a raid into Mexico, a prolonged hunting and scouting expedition, and a fair chance for brushes with Bravo's lancers.
"A Comanche or Lipan is worth two of 'em," they said, "and one American's worth four. We shall outnumber any lot of Greasers we're at all likely to run against."
There was a great deal too much of arrogance and overbearing self-confidence among the men of the Texas border, and at no distant day they were to pay for it bitterly.
They had gone and the chaparral seemed to be deserted, but it was not entirely without inhabitants.
"Tetzcatl!"
"Ugh! Red Wolf!"
There they sat, once more confronting each other, the young Lipan on his pony and the old tiger on his mule.
"Boy heap fool," said Tetzcatl. "Comanches in chaparral. Castro gone."
"Ugh!" said Red Wolf. "See one Comanche ride away. Keep arrow."
Tetzcatl's eyes were angry. Part of his disappointment had been the renewal of the feud between the tribes. He had hoped for their joint help in working out his own revenges. Nevertheless he now listened to a further explanation, and learned that a noted Comanche warrior had no use for bow or lance just then, because of an arrow that was yet sticking through his right arm above the elbow. Red Wolf could not follow him, but he had captured a dropped lance, which he was now somewhat boastfully exhibiting.
"Boy go now," said Tetzcatl. "Tell Castro, Texans gone to the fort."
"No! no!" replied Red Wolf. "Big Knife say wait. Tetzcatl wait. Hide in bushes."
No further persuasion was attempted by the old Tlascalan, although he did not conceal his preference for being without young company.
"Come," said Red Wolf. "No stay. Heap eat. Where water?"
That seemed a useless question to be asked in such a place, but there were secrets of the chaparral which were unknown to the red men of the plains. This was not their hunting-ground and never had been so. Moreover, there had been local changes and wide bush-growths during the years which had elapsed since the tribes of the Guadalupe and Nueces River country had been exterminated.
Less than half an hour of brisk riding brought Tetzcatl and his companion to the hiding-place of one of those secrets of the chaparral.
"Whoop!" burst from Red Wolf. "Old lodge. Heap water. Great medicine. Tetzcatl white head. Know heap!"
Except for its being there, unknown to almost everybody, there was nothing to be seen that could be called remarkable. There were some tumbling walls of adobe, or sunburned brick, of no great extent or number, near the margin of a bright-looking pond. There might be two acres of water, but no rill could be seen running into it. One that ran out, feebly, on the farther side, shortly disappeared in the sandy soil. Red Wolf knew, for he at once rode to investigate.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed, when he reached the bit of marsh where the tiny rivulet ended. "Dead water."
A deer sprang out of a covert at the border of the marsh, but Red Wolf's bow had been all the while in his hand, ready for instant use. The bowstring twanged, the arrow sped, and in a moment more a thrust of a lance followed.
"Heap meat," said the young hunter, as he sprang to the ground and tethered his mustang.
He did not have to cut up his game unaided. Tetzcatl came to join him with his heavy machete already out, and he proved himself an expert butcher.
"Good!" said Red Wolf. "Where go now? Heap fire tell Comanche."
"Come," said Tetzcatl, slinging the venison across his mule, but he said no more about what he intended doing.
They rode back to the pond and around it to the southerly side. Here, scattered over several acres of open, grassy ground, were the ruins, none of them more than one-story buildings. At one place, near the middle of them, there remained almost a complete house, roofed over. Into this, leaving his mule at the door, Tetzcatl led the way. On the floor in a corner smouldered the embers of a fire, suggesting that he had been there before, on that very day. Fragments of dry wood lay near, and were at once thrown on to make a blaze, in spite of the remonstrances of Red Wolf.
"Smoke tell Comanche," he said, as the blue vapor began to curl out at an opening in the shattered roof.
"No!" replied Tetzcatl. "Small smoke. Much wind. Comanches are a great way off."
Red Wolf had to give it up, and he was very ready to enjoy broiled venison.
The best part of his unexpected good luck, however, was the water. The deer had been a sudden arrival truly, but deer were plentiful in Texas in those days. They were to be met with at any time, but a pond in a desert was quite another affair.
The riding and the fighting and the after-lurking among the bushes had consumed the day. The sun was going down when the two cooks in the adobe turned away from their dinner and carefully covered their fire-embers. The mule and the mustang had also been doing very well upon the grass of the clearing. Everything was peaceful, even comfortable, therefore, when Red Wolf remarked to Tetzcatl, "Dark come. Heap sleep. Ugh!"
"Bueno!" he replied. "Boy sleep. Old man too old."
With thorough-going Indian caution, however, the son of Castro did not think of sleeping in any house, to be found there, perhaps, by his enemies. He took his pony with him and went in among the bushes. Then he tied the sorrel securely, but left him to whatever might be coming. As for himself, no other young wolf hunted for a more perfect cover before consenting to shut his eyes. Then, indeed, it was quickly proved that the toughest kind of red Indian boy could be completely tired out.