"They are mad," he said.
And he went out, followed by the priest, who turned on the threshold and pointed to heaven. The prisoners remained alone.
[CHAPTER IX.]
THE EMBASSY.
On the selfsame day that Father Seraphin went to the prison to propose an escape to the condemned, a very strange circumstance had aroused the entire population of Santa Fe. At about midday, at the moment when the inhabitants were enjoying their siesta, and the streets, calcined by the beams of a tropical sun, were completely deserted, a formidable whoop, the terrible war yell of the Comanche Indians, burst forth at the entrance of the town.
There was a general alarm, and everybody barricaded himself in his house, believing in a sudden assault of the savages. Presently an immense clamour, and cries of distress and despair uttered by a terrified population, could be heard throughout the town. Several times already the Comanches, in their periodical incursions, had come near Santa Fe, but never so closely as this time; and the remembrance of the cruelties they had practised on the hapless Spaniards who fell into their hands was still present to every mind.
In the meanwhile a few inhabitants, bolder than the rest, or having nothing to lose, proceeded with the greatest precautions toward the spot whence the shouts were heard; and a singular spectacle presented itself. A detachment of dismounted Comanche warriors, about two hundred strong, was marching in close column, flanked on either wing by two troops, each of fifty horses. About twenty paces in front caracoled Unicorn.
All these men had a martial aspect which was really remarkable: all were strangely painted, well adorned, and in their full war costume. The horsemen were loaded with all sorts of arms and ornaments: they had a bow and quiver on their backs, their guns slung and decorated with their medicine bags, and their lances in their hands. They were crowned with magnificent black and white eagle feathers, with a falling tuft. The upper part of the body, otherwise naked, was covered by a coyote skin rolled up and worn across the shoulder; their bucklers were ornamented with feathers, cloth of different colours, and human scalps. They were seated on handsome saddlecloth of panthers' skins, lined with red, which almost covered the horses' backs. According to the prairie fashion, they had no stirrups.
Unicorn brandished in his right hand the long medicine lance, the distinctive mark of the powerful "dance of the prairie dogs." It was a staff in the shape of a crook, covered with an otter skin, and decorated through its entire length with owl feathers. This talisman, which he had inherited, possessed the power of bringing under his orders all the warriors of his nation scattered over the prairies: hence on all grand occasions he never failed to carry it. He wore a shirt made of the skin of the bighorn, embroidered on the sleeves with blue flowers, and adorned on the right arm with long stripes of rolled ermine and red feathers, and on the left arm with long tresses of black hair cut from the scalps he had raised. Over his shoulders he had thrown a cloak of gazelle skin, having at each end an enormous tuft of ermine. On his forehead the chief had fastened two buffalo horns, which with the blue, red, and green paint plastered on his face, gave him a terrible aspect. His magnificent horse, a mustang full of fire, which he managed with inimitable grace and skill, was painted red in different fashions: on its legs were stripes like a zebra, and on either side the backbone were designed arrowhead, lances, beavers, tortoises, &c. The same was the case with the face and the haunches.