Near by a half score of soldiers are grouped around a bivouac fire, some broiling bits of meat on sapling spits, others smoking corn-husk cigarettes, all gaily chatting. One is some fifty paces apart, under a spreading tree, keeping guard over two prisoners, who, with legs lashed and hands pinioned, lie prostrate upon the ground.
As the soldiers are in the uniform of Mexican lancers, it is needless to say they belong to the troop of Colonel Uraga. Superfluous to add that the two prisoners under the tree are Don Valerian Miranda and the doctor.
Uraga himself is not visible, nor his adjutant, Roblez. They are inside the conical hut, the square one being occupied by Adela and her maid.
After crossing the Pecos, Uraga separated his troop into two parties. For some time he has sent the main body, under command of his alferez, direct to Albuquerque, himself and the adjutant turning north with the captives and a few files as escort and guard. Having kept along the bank of the Pecos till reaching the Alamo, he turned up the creek, and is now en bivouac in its bottom, some ten miles above the confluence of the streams.
A pretty spot has he selected for the site of his encampment. A verdant mead, dotted with groves of leafy alamo trees, that reflect their shadows upon crystal runlets silently coursing beneath, suddenly flashing into the open light like a band of silver lace as it bisects a glade green with gramma grass. A landscape not all woodland or meadow, but having also a mountain aspect, for the basaltic cliffs that on both sides bound the valley bottom rise hundreds of feet high, standing scarce two hundred yards apart, grimly frowning at each other, like giant warriors about to begin battle, while the tall stems of the pitahaya projecting above might be likened to poised spears.
It is a scene at once soft and sublime—an Eden of angels beset by a serried phalanx of fiends; below, sweetly smiling; above, darkly frowning and weirdly picturesque. A wilderness, with all its charms, uninhabited; no house in sight; no domestic hearth or chimney towering over it; no smoke, save that curling aloft from the fire lately kindled in the soldiers’ camp. Beasts and birds are its only habitual denizens; its groves the chosen perching place of sweet songsters; its openings the range of the prong-horn antelope and black-tailed deer; while soaring above, or seated on prominent points of the precipice, may be seen the caracara, the buzzard, and bald-headed eagle.
Uraga has pitched his tents in an open glade of about ten acres in superficial extent, and nearly circular in shape, lying within the embrace of an umbrageous wood, the trees being mostly cotton woods of large dimensions. Through its midst the streamlet meanders above, issuing out of the timber, and below again entering it.
On one side the bluffs are visible, rising darkly above the tree-tops, and in the concavity underneath stand the tents, close to the timber edge, though a hundred paces apart from each other. The troop horses, secured by their trail-ropes, are browsing by the bank of the stream; and above, perched upon the summit of the cliff, a flock of black vultures sun themselves with out-spread wings, now and then uttering an ominous croak as they crane their necks to scan what is passing underneath.
Had Uraga been influenced by a sense of sylvan beauty, he could not have chosen a spot more suitable for his camping-place.
Scenic effect has nought to do with his halting there. On the contrary, he has turned up the Alamo, and is bivouacking on its bank, for a purpose so atrocious that no one would give credit to it unacquainted with the military life of Mexico in the days of the Dictator Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. This purpose is declared in a dialogue between the lancer colonel and his lieutenant, occurring inside the conical tent shortly after its being set up.