They filled up and drank with a gusto that proved they had overcome the counsels of their wise men not to let the firewater be their tempter. They resumed smoking and the puffs crossed one another in the dreariest silence. Yet this silence was more appalling than the riot of the late brawlers in the Green Ranch.
These Apache chiefs were attired much like their leader and resembled him in build, being picked warriors, or rather, more probably, chiefs who had attained rank for fighting and marauding alone. They were large men for Apaches, and but for their legs being bowed by life on horseback from boyhood up, would have overtopped six feet. They were well built too, and their features not ignoble, though rapacity moulded the prominent traits, as well as could be ascertained beneath the streaks of grey, blue, yellow and red plastered on in accordance with laws or convention, in what space was left by a prodigious smearing with the war colour in preeminence, black. As there were no signs of mourning, they had so far been perfectly successful in their incursion into Sonora, and had not lost a man. Their large dark eyes, deep and gloomy, sparkled now and anon with cunning.
Taking one as an example, he wore his hair gathered up so as to form a kind of pad on the top of his head, a very good idea for defence; some pendent plaits were not his own hair and had buffalo hair twined in them, too; to each was hung at the end some little charm, pebble fangs, precious stone in the rough, gold or silver nugget, and so on. A long line of eagle and vulture feathers, varied in hue, possibly dyed, stood up on his head and out from him right down his back, whence the line flowed free quite to his neck. Through the actual topknot, a long eagle feather, in special signification of commandership, was stuck slantingly. This one in particular whom we are depicting, had mounted a pair of buffalo horns adorned with ribbons and human hair, very fair or bleached, not unlike the headgear of the ancient Britons. Being out on the warpath, he had laid aside collar of claws, porcupine quills and teeth, and bracelets, so that the war jacket of deerskin, beautifully dressed, gathered in at the waist by a simple thong, looked plain indeed. His buckskin breeches were ornamented with embroidery, and his stockings of American make were decorated similarly by the patient squaws. His moccasins were bright with beadwork and quite clear of entanglement, though it seemed otherwise, from the artfully arranged knee knot of dangling feathers and animal tails.
For weapons they had the tomahawk pipe of bronze, and scalping knife, one or two bows and arrows, the lustre of the black strings showing human hair was twisted in them as a trophy; the guns were not very good, being cast-off army pieces, for which they had powder horns and bullet bags, quite old fashioned. Their spears were left without; they had rawhide whips hanging by a loop to the wrist, and ornamented usefully with a war whistle for the issue of commands, more clearly sounded and distantly heard than by voice, a system known among the Southern Indians from time out of mind though only of recent years adopted by European armies.
Strange and picturesque to the Englishman, though their odour of smoke and rancid grease and horses would have been less unendurable in the open air, Gladsden owned that they were manly fellows enough who inspired reasonable respect and almost consideration.
Unfortunately for appearances, whatever their nation may have been in ancient days, now these Apaches are about the most plundering, murderous, ferocious rovers of the Southwest, especially hating all the whites. Liars and thieves, they are a scourge who must be crushed out by the civilisation to which they will not truly bow the knee.
Whilst these unpleasant guests smoked and drank, our friends pretended to doze. Camote would have liked to have shut up shop; but he was not the man, with only two assistants, to undertake to clear out the horde before he retired to his virtuous pillow. The mere prospective of a wrangle with these ugly customers made his hair imprudently rise like a cockatoo's crest. He sat up on his counter, with dangling legs that swung in concord with his agitation, with folded arms to look undaunted, but not losing sight of the reds. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and gulped large draughts of pulque by way of consolation and to nourish his patience.
Meanwhile the night advanced; the stars were paling away in the celestial depths, and the moon "downing." It was nearly three in the morning, and yet the humbler Indians and the numerous horses without hardly betrayed their proximity by a sound. For upwards of three hours the Apaches had gone on smoking and imbibing without their hard heads giving way or any tongue being loosened.
All of a sudden the chief, who wore the odd diadem of horns, shook the ashes out of his pipe on his left thumbnail, and spoke in a loud enough voice, though he still stared into vacancy. At the words, the American ranger started slightly, opened his eyes fully, and in a measure made a nod of courtesy.
"My brother the Ocelot," said the chief, "seems to be pretty much worn out to sleep so soundly. Were his eyes not sealed with sleep, he must have taken notice that a friend has come into the lodge of the 'Spanish Dog,' and has seated himself not far from the Hunter of the North, along with several braves of his grand nation."