"Hold on, Jack!" said the wounded man in a low voice; "come here, quick! The infernal fool has shot me through the shoulder! I'm bleeding badly."
The ruffian dropped his bar, as I judged by the sound, and turned to drag his leader out of range of the door. Now was the time for a bold move. Hitherto I had acted on the defensive; but every thing depended on following up the advantage. Removing the brace from the door, I made an opening sufficient to get a glimpse of the two men. The stout fellow, Jack, was stooping down, dragging the other toward the corner of the house. I fired again. The ball was too low; it missed his body, but must have shattered his wrist; for, with a horrible oath, he dropped his burden, and staggered back a few paces writhing with pain, his hand covered with blood. Before I could get another shot he darted behind the house. At the same time the Colonel rose on his knee, turned quickly, and fired. The ball whizzed by my head and struck the door. While I was trying to get a shot at him in return, he jumped to his feet and staggered out of range. I thought it best now to rest satisfied with my success so far, and again retired to my position behind the door.
For the next ten or fifteen minutes I could hear, from time to time, the smothered imprecations of the wounded ruffians, but after this there was a dead silence. I heard nothing more. They had either gone or were lying in wait near by, supposing I would come out. This uncertainty caused me considerable anxiety, for I dared not abandon my gloomy retreat. Two or three hours must have passed in this way, during which I was constantly on the guard; but not the slightest indication of the presence of the enemy was perceptible.
Two nights had nearly passed, during which I had not closed my eyes in sleep. The perpetual strain of mind and the fatigue of travel were beginning to tell. I felt faint and drowsy. During the whole terrible ordeal of this night I had not dared to sit down. But now my legs refused to support me any longer. I groped my way toward a corner of the room to lie down. Some soft mass on the ground caused me to stumble. I threw out my hands and fell. What was it that sent such a thrill of horror through every fibre? A dead body lay in my embrace—cold, mutilated, and clotted with blood!
It has been my fortune, during a long career of travel in foreign lands, to see death in many forms. I do not profess to be exempt from the weakness common to most men—a natural dread of that undiscovered region toward which we are all traveling. But I never had any peculiar repugnance to the presence of dead men. What are they, after all, but inanimate clay? The living are to be feared—not the dead, who sleep the sleep that knows no waking. Not this—not the sudden contact with a corpse; not simply the cold and blood-clotted face over which I passed my hand was it that caused me to recoil with such a thrill of horror. It was the solution of a dread mystery. There, in a pool of clotted gore, lay the corpse of a murdered man. No need was there to conjecture who were his murderers.
I rose up, thoroughly aroused from my drowsiness. It was probable others had shared the fate of this man. If so, their bodies must be near at hand. I was afraid to open the door to let in the light, for, bad as it was to be shut up in a dark room with the victim or victims of a cruel murder, it was worse to incur the risk of a similar fate by exposing myself. After somewhat recovering my composure I groped about, and soon discovered that three other bodies were lying in the room: one on a bed—a woman with her throat cut from ear to ear—and two smaller bodies on the floor near by—children perhaps eight or ten years old, but so mutilated that it was difficult to tell what they were. Their limbs were almost denuded of flesh, and their faces and bodies were torn into shapeless masses. This must have been the finishing work of the animal—a coyote no doubt—that had startled me with a growl, and broken through the window after I had first closed the door. I could also now account for the strange manner in which the mule had snuffed the air, and his unconquerable terror in approaching the house.
Only a few articles of furniture were in the room—a bed, two or three broken stools, a frying-pan, coffee-pot, and a few other cooking utensils, thrown in a heap near the fireplace. There was no other room; nor was there any back entrance, as I had at first apprehended.
It was a gloomy place enough to spend a night in, but there was no help for it. I certainly had less fear of the dead than of the living. It could not be over two or three hours till morning; and it was not likely the two men, who were seeking my life, would lurk about the premises much longer, if they had not long since taken their departure, which seemed the most probable.
I knelt down and commended my soul to God; then stretched myself across the brace against the door, and, despite the presence of death, fell fast asleep. It was broad daylight when I awoke. The sun's earliest rays were pouring into the room through the little window and the cracks of the door. A ghastly spectacle was revealed—a ghastly array of room-mates lying stiff and stark before me.
From the general appearance of the dead bodies I judged them to be an emigrant family from some of the Western States. They had probably taken up a temporary residence in the old adobe hut after crossing the plains by the southern route, and must have had money or property of some kind to have inspired the cupidity of their murderers. The man was apparently fifty years of age; his skull was split completely open, and his brains scattered out upon the earthen floor. The woman was doubtless his wife. Her clothes were torn partly from her body, and her head was cut nearly off from her shoulders; besides which, her skull was fractured with some dull instrument, and several ghastly wounds disfigured her person. The bedclothes were saturated with blood, now clotted by the parching heat. The two children had evidently been cut down by the blows of an axe. Their heads were literally shattered to fragments. What the murderers had failed to accomplish in mutilating the bodies had been completed by some ravenous beast of prey—the same, no doubt, already mentioned.