He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and, if but half of what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to blench upon the desert sands.
He was about twelve miles front his comrades, when, turning round a small hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small stream glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was the river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but just as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows. A band of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he struggled bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as he was, before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people.
Such was the origin of the Santa Fé trade, and such are the liabilities which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West.
Chapter Fourteen.
Time passed away, till I and my companions were heartily tired of our inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety. So one day we determined that we would start alone, and return to the settlement by a different road. We left Santa Fé and rode towards the north, and it was not until we had passed Taos, the last Mexican settlement, that we became ourselves again and recovered our good spirits. Gabriel knew the road; our number was too small not to find plenty to eat, and as to the hostile Indians, it was a chance we were willing enough to encounter. A few days after we had quitted Santa Fé, and when in the neighbourhood of the Spanish Peaks, and about thirty degrees north latitude, we fell in with a numerous party of the Comanches.
It was the first time we had seen them in a body, and it was a grand sight. Gallant horsemen they were, and well mounted. They were out upon an expedition against the Pawnee (see Note one) Loups, and they behaved to us with the greatest kindness and hospitality. The chief knew Gabriel, and invited us to go in company with them to their place of encampment. The chief was a tall, fine fellow, and with beautiful symmetry of figure. He spoke Spanish well, and the conversation was carried on in that tongue until the evening, when I addressed him in Shoshone, which beautiful dialect is common to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, and related to him the circumstances of our captivity on the shores of the Colorado of the West. As I told my story the chief was mute with astonishment, until at last, throwing aside the usual Indian decorum, he grasped me firmly by the hand. He knew I was neither a Yankee nor a Mexican, and swore that for my sake every Canadian or Frenchman falling in their power should be treated as a friend. After our meal, we sat comfortably round the fires, and listened to several speeches and traditions of the warriors.
One point struck me forcibly during my conversation with that noble warrior. According to his version, the Comanches were in the beginning very partial to the Texians, as they were brave, and some of them generous. But he said, that afterwards, as they increased their numbers and established their power, they became a rascally people, cowards and murderers. One circumstance above all fired the blood of the Comanches, and since that time it has been and will be with them a war of extinction against the Texians.
An old Comanche, with a daughter, had separated himself from their tribe. He was a chief, but he had been unfortunate; and being sick, he retired to San Antonio to try the skill of the treat Pale-face medecin. His daughter was a noble and handsome girl of eighteen, and she had not been long in the place before she attracted the attention of a certain doctor, a young man from Kentucky, who had been tried for murder in the States. He was the greatest scoundrel in the world, but being a desperate character, he was feared, and, of course, courted by his fellow Texians.