Camp Gossip.
It was but a short-lived light—a passing gleam—and soon again fell the shadow, dark as ever. Strive as I might, I could not cast the load that weighed upon my bosom; reason as I would, I could not account for its heaviness.
It was natural that a parting like ours should produce pain, and misgivings as to the future. My life was to be staked in the lottery of war; I might fall on the field of fight; I might perish by camp-pestilence—a foe that in the campaign kills more soldiers than sword or shot—the many perils of flood and field were before me, and it was natural I should regard the future with a degree of doubtfulness.
But it was not the contemplation of all these dangers that filled me with such a terrible foreboding. Strange to say, I had a forecast that I should survive them. It was almost a conviction, yet it failed to comfort me, for it comprehended not the safety of Isolina. No—but the contrary. Along with it came the presentiment, that we should never meet again.
Once or twice, as this dread feeling became most acute, I reined up my horse, half resolved to gallop back; but again the wild idea passed from me, and I continued irresolutely on.
Something of prudence, too, now restrained me from returning: it would no longer have been safe to go back to the rancheria. As we issued from the piazza, we could hear distant jeering, and cries of “Mueran los Tejanos!” It was with difficulty I could restrain the rangers from turning to take vengeance. One, the worse for mezcal, had loitered behind—under the influence of the drink fancying himself secure. Him the pelados had “bonneted,” and otherwise maltreated. They would have murdered him outright; but that some of them, more prudent than their fellows, had counselled the mob to let him go—alleging that the Tejanos were yet “too near, and might come back.”
Again I had strife with my men: they would have returned and fired the place, had I permitted them. Fortunately, he who had been ill-treated was a good-for-nothing fellow—scarcely worth the sympathy of his comrades—and I was well satisfied at his having received a lesson. It might be useful, and was much needed, for “straggling” was one of the ranger-crimes most difficult to cure.
Along the road, we saw signs of a guerrilla. Shots were fired at us from a hill; but a party sent to the place encountered no one. Horse-tracks were observed, and once a brace of mounted men were seen galloping away over a distant slope. It might be the band of Ijurra, and doubtless it was so; but we fancied at the time that Canales himself was near; and as an encounter with his large and well-organised force would be a very different affair from a skirmish with the other, we felt the necessity of advancing with caution.
The prospect of a “fight” with this noted partisan created quite an excitement in the ranks. To have captured Canales—the “Chapparal Fox,” as the Texans termed him—or to have made conquest of his band, would have been esteemed a feat of grand consequence—only inferior in importance to a pitched battle, or the taking of “Game-leg” (Santa Anna) himself.
I confess that to me the idea of measuring strength with the famed guerrillero was at that moment rife with charms; and the excitement derived from the hope of meeting him, for a while abstracted my mind from its painful bodings.