“All right; mount,” cried the doctor. “We’ll have a look at them, anyway.”
They had not gone more than a few hundred yards, when the new-comers caught sight of them riding down the incline; they reined up and, waving their lances, greeted them with jubilant shouts.
“Well—of all the scraggy-looking donkey-drivers!” exclaimed Steel in an aside, as they came up with the “lancers.” There were about eighty of them, all more or less in rags, each man armed with a lance, a very rusty sabre, and a carbine. In their midst, two men held their lances aloft, each spear-point being decorated with the head of an Indian. The men were hearty-looking, happy-go-lucky ruffians, brave as need be, but woefully undisciplined, and out of gear generally. After one glance at them, von Tempsky no longer wondered that many an Englishman, Irishman, Scot, or Yankee who would think himself lucky if he ever rose to the rank of sergeant, at home, could here become a field-marshal or an admiral in half an hour. For the Mexico of those days was, like the southern republics, a happy hunting-ground for foreign soldiers of fortune.
“And they send these fellows to put down an Indian rising!” he muttered to the doctor; adding aloud, in Spanish: “Is that all you have killed? Who is your officer?”
The lancers grinned. No; they had killed at least thirty, out of some two hundred. Officer? H’m! Nobody was quite sure. The two men with the heads 247 were supposed to be something in that line; but really they couldn’t say for certain.
“All right; pray go on. I and my troop will follow you,” said Steel.
There was one advantage in having fallen in with these ragamuffins; two at least of their number were half-bloods, with eyes like hawks for a trail; and this put an end to all doubt as to the way which must be followed now that the plain was reached. Some of the lancers had more terrible tales of the Indians to add to what the travellers already knew. A priest and a farmer had been murdered two days before; and, only that morning, three ladies had been found speared to death near an estancia (farm).
The track wound in serpentine fashion, now skirting a town, now going straight through a rancho whence the occupants had fled. By late afternoon the pursuers were within half a dozen miles of Durango; but here the track—more visible than ever now, in the long grass to which they had come—broke away at an obtuse angle, towards the more hilly ground on their right. The doctor pulled up, and he and von Tempsky began to confer with the soldiers. Horses and mules and men were all jaded, urged Steel; and the trail might lead them on through another all-night journey; and to no purpose. Why not ride for the town, take a short rest, and beat up recruits?
The question was being argued and re-argued, when a series of whistles, followed by one concerted and unearthly yell, proceeded from the hills; and, like a pack of wolves, the Indians for whom they had been hunting came charging down the slope; full three hundred of 248 them, stark naked, their bodies painted scarlet and black, their hair and their horses decked with feathers. Steel looked glumly at his own little army. Oh for a couple of dozen well-armed men who had learned the virtues of obedience and combination!
“You lancers prepare to receive their charge,” he shouted; and motioned to his own men to draw off and be ready to attack the Seris in the rear. He was obeyed indifferently; further urged by von Tempsky and Jago, the guides and rancheros were wheeling slowly northwards; but the lancers were evidently more than half minded to charge wholesale at the oncoming savages.