An expedition like that the count was preparing was no easy thing to organise, especially with the scanty resources he had at his disposal; for he only obtained vague promises from his partners, and was forced to seek in himself the means for satisfying all.
The rich placer which Belhumeur and Eagle-head pointed out to him had been worked in the time of the Spanish monarchy; but since the declaration of independence, carelessness and disorder having taken the place of the energy displayed by the Castilians, the Indians soon expelled the miners: the placer had, therefore, been temporarily abandoned. Then gradually the Apaches and Comanches, growing bolder as they perceived the weakness of the white men, advanced and recaptured vast territories, on which they established themselves permanently, knowing that the Mexicans would never attempt to drive them out. In this way the placer to which we allude, formerly situated in the possessions of New Spain, was now surrounded by Indian territory, and to reach it it was necessary to wage a mortal contest with the two most dangerous nations of the desert, the Apaches and Comanches, who would under no pretext suffer the invasion of their frontiers by the whites, but would defend their ground inch by inch against them.
The Mexican government had only authorised the formation of the mining company founded by the count on the express condition that the miners, organised as a military force, should pursue the Indians, attack them whenever they came up with them, and definitively expel them from the territory they had usurped since the proclamation of independence. The count had accepted a rough and almost impossible mission: any other in his place would have backed out and refused to accept such terms. But Count Louis was a man in a thousand, gifted with a rare energy, which obstacles only rendered greater. And then, personally, what did he care for the issue of the affair? It was not wealth, but death, he sought; still he did not wish to fall till he had given his comrades that wealth he had promised them, and rescued them from the stings of adverse fortune.
He accepted the conditions, then, but not blindly, ambitiously, or egotistically. He accepted them as a man of heart, who sacrifices himself for an idea, and for the general happiness; and who, while recognising the almost insurmountable difficulties that oppose the success of his noble projects, hopes to succeed in overcoming them by his courage, perseverance, and abnegation.
The energy, patience, and intelligence which the count had displayed during the two months since his parting with Valentine, no one but himself could have told. One of the clauses in his contract with the suspicious and shifting Mexican government obliged him not to take more than three hundred men with him. The President of the Republic, General Arista, doubtlessly feared the invasion and conquest of Mexico by the French, had they been four hundred in number.
These wretched conditions are so ridiculous, that they would be incredible were they not rigorously true. We could, if we pleased, write down here the words uttered in the Senate of Mexico, in which this fear of invasion is distinctly expressed.
The count, in order to dissipate all doubts on this head, and, above all, not to arouse suspicions, decided on only taking two hundred and sixty men instead of three hundred.
But this company, destined to traverse a country swarming with obstinate enemies, compelled during the journey to fight perhaps several times a day, constrained in this desolate country to supply its own wants (for it had no help to expect anywhere), must receive a powerful organisation.
This was what the count thought of first.
Those persons who have never worn that heavy harness called a military tunic cannot form even a distant idea of the thousand difficulties of detail which arise at every step in the complete organisation of a company, so that the service may be done properly, and the soldier not suffer needlessly.