Note 1. There is every prospect of these north-western tribes remaining in their present primitive state, indeed of their gradual improvement, for nothing can induce them to touch spirits. They know that the eastern Indians had been debased and conquered by the use of them, and consider an offer of a dram from an American trader as an indirect attempt upon their life and honour.
Chapter Nineteen.
In the last chapter but one, I stated that I and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican government, and every day took good care to remind us that the gibbet was to be our fate on our arrival.
Our route lay across the central deserts of Senora, until we arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande; and so afraid were they of falling in with a hostile party of Apaches, that they took long turns out of the general track, and through mountainous passes, by which we not only suffered greatly from fatigue, but were very often threatened with starvation.
It was sixty-three days before we crossed the Rio Grande at Christobal, and we had still a long journey before us. This delay, occasioned by the timidity of our guards, proved our salvation. We had been but one day on our march in the swamp after leaving Christobal, when the war-whoop pierced our ears, and a moment afterwards our party was surrounded by me hundred Apaches, who saluted us with a shower or arrows.
Our Mexican guards threw themselves down on the ground, and cried for mercy, offering ransom. I answered the war-whoop of the Apaches, representing my companions and myself as their friends, and requesting their help and protection, which were immediately given. We were once more unbound and free.
I hardly need say that this was a most agreeable change in the state of affairs; for I have no doubt that, had we arrived at our destination, we should either have been gibbeted or died (somehow or another) in prison. But if the change was satisfactory to us, it was not so to Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz, who changed their notes with their change of condition.
The scoundrels, who had amused themselves with reminding us that all we had to expect was an ignominious death, were now our devoted humble servants, cleaning and brushing their own mules for our use, holding the stirrup, and begging for our interference in their behalf with the Apaches. Such wretches did not deserve our good offices; we therefore said nothing for or against them, leaving the Apaches to act as they pleased. About a week after our liberation, the Apaches halted, as they were about to divide their force into two bands, one of which was to return home with the booty they had captured, while the other proceeded to the borders of Texas.