An hour’s sharp riding brought them to what, a day earlier, had been a fertile settlement or rancho, but which was now nothing but a pile of smouldering wood-ashes, round about which lay fully fifty corpses of men, women, and children. At the sight, both guides and rancheros went almost mad with indignation; and von Tempsky himself was eager to press on immediately in pursuit of the wretches who had been guilty of such relentless slaughter. It was then that the more phlegmatic Yankee doctor showed the rest the value of a cool and calculating head.
“See here, boys,” he said in his best Spanish, when he could make his voice heard above the howls and oaths of vengeance; “I reckon a redskin’s a redskin, whether he hails from here or ’way north. I’d got no quarrel with these particular vermin, till I saw this. Now I fought Indians before some of you were born; and I’ll do it again if you’ll let me. But there’ll have to be none of this tear-away sort of game that some of 244 you are after. Will you make me captain? You can soon turn me out of it again if you’re not satisfied.”
The rancheros wavered for a moment. Why obey a perfect stranger, who knew neither the country nor the Seris? But the look of simple honesty, yet of bull-dog determination and pluck, in the man’s face, gave confidence even to the most hesitating.
“Very good, Señor Doctor; we will obey you.”
“They mean they’ll try, poor fellows,” said Steel, in English, to von Tempsky. “They don’t know what discipline is.”
By his orders, mules and horses were ungirthed, and while he, Jago, and the oldest of the rancheros made a careful examination of the first mile of the track left by the murderers, the others lay down to rest and eat.
“They have crossed the ridge,” said Steel when he rejoined his fellow-traveller. “We’ll all of us take four hours’ rest now. It’ll be no real delay. Those rascals are fifty miles away by this time, as like as not; perhaps a hundred, for these poor souls have been dead a good many hours. We needn’t worry; we shall come up with them later; or with more like them, who’ll have to pay for this picnic.”
The doctor was probably not exaggerating the distance covered by the Seris. The youngsters of the tribe were put on a horse as soon as they could straddle him; their only toys were bows and arrows, and the generally Spartan upbringing which all underwent enabled them to ride or march or fight for a whole day without food or rest. Large bodies of Seris or Comanches would move a hundred and thirty miles in a day.
Stifling their impatience as well as they could, the avenging party waited till the four hours had expired; then all set off on their mountain climb, though darkness would be coming on almost immediately. Half a mile from the top of the ridge, von Tempsky was seen to spring from his saddle and make a dash at some dark object that lay in the shelter of a rock. Before he had reached it, however, a scuffling, clattering sound arose near him, and a horse, saddled but riderless, struggled to his feet. The others halted.