They are encamped in two parties. There are two bands, the Apache and Navajo. The latter is much the smaller, and rests farther off from our position.
We hear them cutting and chopping with their tomahawks among the thickets at the foot of the mountain. We can see them carrying faggots out upon the plain, piling them together, and setting them on fire.
Many fires are soon blazing brightly. The savages squat around them, cooking their suppers. We can see the paint glittering on their faces and naked breasts. They are of many hues. Some are red, as though they were smeared with blood. Some appear of a jetty blackness. Some black on one side of the face, and red or white on the other. Some are mottled like hounds, and some striped and chequered. Their cheeks and breasts are tattooed with the forms of animals: wolves, panthers, bears, buffaloes, and other hideous devices, plainly discernible under the blaze of the pine-wood fires. Some have a red hand painted on their bosoms, and not a few exhibit as their device the death’s head and cross-bones!
All these are their coats of arms, symbolical of the “medicine” of the wearer; adopted, no doubt, from like silly fancies to those which put the crest upon the carriage, on the lackey’s button, or the brass seal stamp of the merchant’s clerk.
There is vanity in the wilderness. In savage as in civilised life there is a “snobdom.”
What do we see? Bright helmets, brazen and steel, with nodding plumes of the ostrich! These upon savages! Whence came these?
From the cuirassiers of Chihuahua. Poor devils! They were roughly handled upon one occasion by these savage lancers.
We see the red meat spluttering over the fires upon spits of willow rods. We see the Indians fling the pinon nuts into the cinders, and then draw them forth again, parched and smoking. We see them light their claystone pipes, and send forth clouds of blue vapour. We see them gesticulate as they relate their red adventures to one another. We hear them shout, and chatter, and laugh like mountebanks. How unlike the forest Indian!
For two hours we watch their movements, and listen to their voices. Then the horse-guard is detailed, and marches off to the caballada; and the Indians, one after another, spread their skins, roll themselves in their blankets, and sleep.
The fires cease to blaze; but by the moonlight we can distinguish the prostrate bodies of the savages. White objects are moving among them. They are dogs prowling after the débris of their supper. These run from point to point, snarling at one another, and barking at the coyotes that sneak around the skirts of the camp.