The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier

by Edgar Beecher Bronson

And right there, all about the "sink" of the Alamo, where the last drops of the stream sank into the thirsty sands, the bottom was covered thick with fresh moccasin tracks, and in a little opening in the bush near to the sink smouldered the embers of that morning's camp-fire of a band of Lipans. Apparently we were in for it and seriously debated a retreat. Our position could not be worse. Tomas told us that the trail of the Lipans led straight up the valley, and for eight miles the cañon was never more than three hundred yards wide, and often no more than fifty, with almost perpendicular walls rising on either side two hundred or more feet in height, so nearly perpendicular that we would for the entire distance be in range from the bordering cliff crests, while any enemy there ambushed would be so safely covered they could follow our route and pick us off at their leisure. To be sure, the brush along the stream afforded some shelter, but no real protection. However, out now nearly fifty miles from Musquiz and well into the country we had come to see, we pushed ahead. Cress, Thornton, and Manuel prowling afoot through the brush a hundred yards in advance, Crawford, Tomas and myself bringing up the rear with the horses. And so we advanced for nearly half a mile when the Lipan trail turned east, toward Musquiz, up a crevice in the cliff a goat would have no easy time ascending. Thus we were led to argue that the Lipans had left their camp before discovering our approach, and by this time were probably miles away to the east.

Mounting, therefore, we made the beat pace our pack animals could stand up through the eight miles of the narrows, riding well apart from each other, the only safeguard we could take, all craning our necks for view of the cliff crests ahead of us. But no living thing showed save a few deer and coyotes, and two mountain lions that, alarmed by our clattering pace, slipped past us back down the gorge. When at last we reached the end of the narrows and the cañon broadened to a width of several hundred yards, all but fifty or seventy-five yards of the belt of timber lining the stream along the south wall being comparatively level grassy bunch land, nearly devoid of cover, we congratulated ourselves that we had not been scared into a retreat.

Keen to put as much distance as we could between us and the Lipans, we travelled on up the cañon at a sharp trot, keeping well to its middle, until about 5 p.m., when we reached a point where it widened into a broad bay, nearly seven hundred yards from crest to crest, with a dense thicket of mesquite trees near its centre that made fine shelter and an excellent point of defence for a night camp. The stream hugged the east wall of the cañon, where it had carved out a tortuous bed perhaps one hundred and fifty yards wide, and so deep below the bench we occupied that only the tops of tall cottonwoods were visible from the thicket.

While the rest of us were busy unsaddling and unpacking, Thornton slung all our canteens over his shoulder, and started for the stream. But no sooner had he disappeared below the edge of the bench, a scant two hundred yards from our camp, before a rapid rifle fire opened which, while we knew it must proceed from his direction, echoed back from one cliff wall to the other until it appeared like an attack on our position from all sides, while the echoes multiplied to the volume of cannon fire at the sound of each shot. Indeed, never have I heard such thunderous, crashing, ear-splitting gun-detonations except on one other occasion, when aboard the British battle ship Invincible and in her six-inch gun battery while a salute was being fired.

Frightened by the fire, one of our pack horses stampeded down the cañon. Sending Manuel in pursuit, and leaving Tomas at the camp, Crawford, Cress, and I ran for the break of benchland, to reach and aid Thornton. Nearing it, all three dropped flat, and crawled to its edge, just in time to see George make a neat snap shot at a Lipan midway of a flying leap over a log, and drop him dead. Old George was standing quietly on the lower slope of the bench just above the timber, while the shots from eight or ten Lipan rifles were raining all about him! The Lipans lay in the timber only one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards away, and it was a miracle they did not get him. Instantly Cress and Crawford slipped back out of range, made a detour that brought them to the bench edge within fifty yards of the Lipans' position, and opened on them a cross fire, while I lay above George and shelled away at the smoke of their discharge, for not one showed a head after George potted the jumper. Five minutes after Cress and Crawford opened on them, the Lipan fire ceased entirely. For an hour we scouted along the bank trying to locate them, but apparently they had withdrawn.

Then, while the others covered us, George and I slipped through the bush to investigate his kill, and found a great gaunt old warrior at least sixty years old, wrinkled of face as if he might be a hundred, but sound of teeth and coal-black of hair as a youth, his face and body scarred in nearly a score of places from bullet and machete wounds,—the sign manual writ indelibly on his war-worn frame by many a doughty enemy. We carried him to the bench crest, Crawford fetched a spade and we dug a grave and buried him with his weapons laid upon his breast, as his own people would have buried him, and then we fired across his grave the final salute he obviously so well had earned.

More than he would have done for us? Yes, I dare say. But then our points of view were different. Throughout his long life a terror to all whites he doubtless had been; upon us he was stealthily slipping, ruthless as a tiger; but then he and his tribesmen and lands had so long been prey to the greed of white invaders of his domain that it is hard to blame him for fighting, according to the traditions of his race, to the death.

Lying in camp within the thicket that night, naturally without a fire, Thornton made it plain that his voluntary start for water was providentially timed. He told us that, while descending the slope to the timber, he saw the head of a little column of Indians, stealing up the valley through the brush, saw them before they saw him; but just as he saw them, he slipped on some pebbles and nearly fell, making a noise that attracted their attention. Instantly they slid into cover, and opened fire on him.

Asked by me why he himself had not sought cover, George answered, "No show to get one except by keeping out in the open on the high ground, and I wanted one!"

It was plain the Lipans had sighted us when too late to lay an ambush for us in the narrows, had made a short cut through the hills and dropped down into the stream bed with the plan to attack us at our night camp. Evidently they had not expected us to camp so early, and were jogging easily along through the brush, for once off their guard. But for George's chance start for the stream, nothing but faithful old Curly's perpetual watchfulness could have saved us from a bad mix-up that night. Already it had been so well proved that we could safely trust Curly to guard us against surprise, we slept soundly through the night, without disturbance of any sort.