The field being won, the whites, too, beat a quick retreat to the house where they were domiciled, and where they had left their rifles. Without their trusty weapons they felt, indeed, unarmed; and not knowing how the affair just over would be followed up, lost no time in making preparations for defense. However, after great blustering on the part of the prefecto, who, accompanied by a posse comitatus of "Greasers," proceeded to the house, and demanded the surrender of all concerned in the affair—which proposition was received with a yell of derision—the business was compounded by the mountaineers promising to give sundry dollars to the friends of two of the Mexicans who died during the night of their wounds, and to pay for a certain amount of masses to be sung for the repose of their souls in purgatory. Thus the affair blew over; but for several days the mountaineers never showed themselves in the streets of Fernandez without their rifles on their shoulders, and refrained from attending fandangos for the present, and until the excitement had cooled down.
A bitter feeling, however, existed on the part of the men; and one or two offers of a matrimonial nature were rejected by the papas of certain ladies who had been wooed by some of the white hunters, and their hands formally demanded from their respective padres.
'La Bonté had been rather smitten with the charms of one Dolores Salazar—a buxom lass, more than three parts Indian in her blood, but confessedly the beauty of the Vale of Taos. She, by dint of eye, and of nameless acts of elaborate coquetry, with which the sex so universally bait their traps, whether in the salons of Belgravia or the rancherias of New Mexico, contrived to make considerable havoc in the heart of our mountaineer; and when once Dolores saw she had made an impression, she followed up her advantage with all the arts the most civilized of her sex could use when fishing for a husband.
La Bonté, however, was too old a hunter to be easily caught; and before committing himself, he sought the advice of his tried companion, Killbuck. Taking him to a retired spot without the village, he drew out his pipe and charged it—seated himself cross-legged on the ground, and with Indian gravity, composed himself for a "talk."
"Ho, Killbuck!" he began, touching the ground with the bowl of his pipe, and then turning the stem upwards for medicine—"Hyar's a child feels squamptious-like, and, nigh upon gone beaver, he is—Wagh!"
"Wagh!" exclaimed Killbuck, all attention.
"Old hoss," continued the other, "thar's no use câching anyhow what a nigger feels—so hyar's to put out. You're good for beaver I know; at deer or buffler, or darned Red Injun either, you're some. Now that's a fact. Off-hand, or with a rest, you make'em come. You knows the sign of Injuns slick—Blackfoot or Sioux, Pawnee or Burntwood, Teton, Rapaho, Shian, or Shoshonée, Yutah, Piyutah, or Yamhareek—their trail's as plain as writin', old hoss, to you."
"Wagh!" grunted Killbuck, blushing bronze at all these compliments.
"Your sight ain't bad. Elks is elk; black-tailed deer ain't white-tails; and b'ar is b'ar to you, and nothin' else, a long mile off and more."
"Wa-agh!"