A friend of mine with whom I often stopped in South-West Texas told me how, on one occasion, the Indians got two fine horses from him when there seemed absolutely no chance for them to be stolen. He had a stable made of heavy oak logs, with a stout door fastened by a strong wooden pin, which one of his grown sons drove in with a maul on this particular evening, having seen Indian signs in the neighbourhood that day. Then the settler and his sons went to sleep in the hay-loft, under the same roof, with their loaded guns beside them. Not a sound disturbed them during the night, but when morning came the stable door was open and the horses gone. The Indians had found how the door was fastened and, by steady perseverance, succeeded in working the pin out. Probably the job took them hours, but they had plenty of time.
Old frontiersmen are the most superstitious class of people in the world. They all believe in omens and portents, things that forebode death and disaster. Their lives are spent amid dangerous surroundings, and they are suspicious of everything that seems unusual or ominous, and often attach uncanny significance to things which would make no impression upon the ordinary citizen living in a peaceful community.
One of the surest signs of approaching death to the old plainsman and Indian fighter is the scream of the "death-bird." The "death-bird" is supposed to fly about at night or hover near white men or women and children to give warning of the approach of Indians, wild beasts, or other great dangers. Its cry is the most piercing, nerve-racking wail that ever smote upon human ears. There is an almost human expression in it, as though it were the scream of a woman or child in mortal fear; and there is no mistaking its note among all the other night-birds of the plains. It never warns people unless there is no possible escape by other means, and woe to the man who hears its cry and heeds it not. As far as I have been able to discover no human eye has ever looked upon this mysterious "death-bird," for it flies only on dark nights, never uttering its warning at any other time, and the folk it honours with its attentions are thrown into such a state of fear, expectancy, and dread that curiosity as to the appearance of the bird is far from their thoughts. It is supposed, however, to be an owl, black as midnight, with very long wings and a large head and mouth, which superstitious people who claim to have seen the creature declare to be strangely like the head and mouth of a human being.
Almost every old Ranger and frontiersman has a weird story to tell as to the "death-bird" having saved the life of someone or other from Indians or outlaws. Most of the stories, however, are second-hand narratives, and I found when they had been sifted down they had almost always happened to someone other than the narrator. It was extremely rare that they were personal experiences, and they generally happened in some distant part of the State at some remote time. I had been a Ranger twenty years before I met a man, in whom I had the utmost confidence, who had a personal experience to relate wherein the "death-bird" had warned him of danger and saved his life. Up to this time I had doubted the truthfulness of these stories, and scouted the idea that such a bird existed. About seven years after this my friend, in company with two other Rangers, was ambushed and killed one night by renegade Mexicans down on the Rio Grande border, and on this occasion there was no "death-bird" to save his life, so I was still a little dubious.
MR. ISAAC MOTES, WHO HERE RELATES SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING EXPERIENCES HE HAD DURING FORTY YEARS' SERVICE AS A TEXAS RANGER.
From a Photograph.
Three years later, however, I met with an adventure which removed the last vestige of doubt from my mind. In the autumn of 1880, with five other Rangers, under command of a lieutenant, I was stationed at Eagle Pass, on the Rio Grande. About the middle of November I was sent to San Antonio with important despatches for the colonel commanding. I was selected for the trip because I had the fleetest horse of any man in the force, a big black thoroughbred, for which I had paid three hundred dollars when he was only two years old, and at a time, too, when horseflesh was cheap. For three years I had ridden this horse daily on all our scouting expeditions. He had borne me safely through many dangers, and I loved him almost as if he had been a human being.
I left San Antonio on my return one morning at eleven o'clock and rode seventy miles by nine o'clock that night, arriving at the Nueces River and Turkey Creek bottoms. The weather became threatening in the afternoon, and at night dense clouds obscured the light from the stars, and as there was no moon it became so appallingly black when we entered the thick timber of the "bottoms" that I could not see an inch before my eyes, and even my horse could not find his way around the trees, bushes, and fallen timber. There was no rain, no lightning, no thunder, and no wind—simply a thick pall of clouds which seemed to rest upon the tops of the trees—while a curious soft murmuring sound seemed to come from the bottom lands. I would have stopped immediately upon reaching the timber, but I had heard that afternoon that Indians had been seen along the river within the past twenty-four hours, and I had noticed the trail of what I believed to be Indian ponies crossing my road about six o'clock. So somehow or other I felt my way through the pitch-darkness till we were perhaps three hundred yards from the edge of the Nueces bottom. Then, dismounting, I took off my saddle and, letting down my lariat, looped the end around my left wrist so that my horse could graze, and yet waken me if he got too far away. Lying down under a large live-oak with my head on the saddle, I soon went to sleep with the subdued murmuring sound still echoing in my ears. I intended to rest a few hours, until the clouds lifted, and then continue my journey to a settlement twenty miles farther on. The tree under which I lay was a very large one, and I found next morning that the top limbs were dead, the tree having been struck by lightning some years before.
I must have slept for some time, but it seemed to me my eyes had barely closed when a piercing, wailing scream in the tree above me brought me instantly to my feet—a scream so startling that it seemed to vibrate every nerve in my body. Even if I had never heard so much as a whisper as to the peculiar character of the "death-bird's" cry I should have recognised it, for never before or since have I heard such a wild, foreboding shriek. The cry was long and wailing—the first note sharp, like the crack of a six-shooter, then trailing off into a long-drawn-out, ominous wail. The bird was doubtless sitting on one of the dead limbs above me, and at the first note of alarm had flown off across the bottom, the cry becoming more weird and portentous the farther away it got.