I made no response to Garey’s last speech, but rode forward as fast as my horse could carry me.
A brace of minutes brought me up to the rancho; and there I beheld a spectacle that caused the blood to curdle in my veins.
Chapter Fifty Five.
A Cruel Proscription.
The open space in front of the hovel was occupied by a group of women—most of them young girls. There were six or seven; I did not count them. There were two or three men, Mexicans, mixed up in the group. Rube was in their midst, endeavouring in his broken Spanish to give them consolation and assurance of safety. Poor victims! they needed both.
The women were half-naked—some of them simply en chemise. Their long black hair fell loosely over their shoulders, looking tossed, wet, and draggly. There was blood upon it; there was blood upon their cheeks in seams half dried, but still dropping. The same horrid red mottled their necks and bosoms, and there was blood upon the hands that had wiped them. A red-brown blotch appeared upon the foreheads of all. In the moonlight, it looked as if the skin had been burnt.
I rode closer to one, and examined it: it was a brand—the fire-stamp of red-hot iron. The skin around was scarlet; but in the midst of this halo of inflammation I could distinguish, from their darker hue, the outlines of the two letters I wore upon my button—the well-known “U.S.”
She who was nearest me raised her hands, and tossing back from her cheeks the thick clustered hair, cried out—