The reply was in the same language. “Halt there; stay where you are and let us know your business.”
“Do you think we want to stop here to get soaked a little more?” shouted Dr. Steel, urging on his mule before his friend had had time to frame an explanation. “Come along; we guessed they were Indians, and they paid us the same compliment.”
The volley was not repeated; but a crowd of men with rifles and lanterns came scurrying to meet the little cavalcade; and, after some laughter and expressions of regret, their leader began a voluble explanation, which von Tempsky cut very short by announcing that he and his party were wet to the skin and required shelter. Thereupon they were ushered into the building whence the shots had been fired, which proved to be a tumble-down inn kept by an old Frenchman.
“We have been much beset by the Seris of late,” he said apologetically. “Three times during the past fortnight have we had the village surrounded by parties of them; and, when we heard you approach so late at night, we naturally supposed you to be Indians.”
The tavern offered little enough comfort; but provisions were plentiful, and there was a good fire where 242 clothes could be dried. The tales which the rancheros had to tell were certainly appalling. Several villages had been entirely depopulated by the savages; many inoffensive travellers had been killed, and others had escaped with the bare life. These Seri Indians were—and even now are—a fierce, intractable people, utterly different from the typical Mexican Indians, who (the Comanches and Apaches apart) are a mild, diligent, and strongly religious race. Mexico still possesses some fifty tribes of redskins, most of which are subdivisions of the very ancient Nahuatl family; but, with the exception of the three tribes just mentioned, many of these had, before von Tempsky’s time, begun to intermarry with Europeans and settle in the towns.
At first all the guides except Jago, the leader, flatly refused to go any farther, on hearing these gruesome stories; but when, on the next day, a dozen of the rancheros offered to accompany the party as far as Durango, on condition that they would combine with them against any Indians they might meet, the grumbling ceased; for no one was averse to getting a shot at the men who, at one time or other, had robbed every one of them of friend or property. Von Tempsky and Steel were nothing loth, either; the one came from a country where persecution and death were everyday matters; while the other had roughed it for five-and-twenty years, first in the backwoods and latterly at the Californian diggings, where it was a case of “a word and a blow—and the blow first.”
For a day or two no sign of Indians was observed, and despite the irregularity of the road and the alarming prevalence of rattlesnakes, the journey was not 243 unpleasant. But on the third afternoon, as the guide Jago was seeking to point out from a distance the village where the company was to pass the night, he uttered a horrified exclamation, and made the sign of the cross. At the same moment an angry hubbub arose from the group of rancheros.
“What is it? What are they all looking at?” inquired von Tempsky.
“Smoke; and plenty of it,” said the doctor, who was shading his eyes with his hands.
“Ay; smoke,” said Jago, who spoke English quite well. “They have burnt another village. Let us go forward quickly, Señors.”