The Lieutenant's prediction that the following evening should see us encamped at the foot of the Grand Peak was not borne out by the event. Notwithstanding our many days on the prairies, we were yet far from realizing the deception of distances in this high altitude and clear, dry atmosphere.
That next day we lost many hours on a large fork of the river, where the turning of the Spanish trace led us to believe that the party had set off southward. Finding that they had returned and continued their ascent of the main stream, we did likewise. This gave us but little progress for that day.
But the next morning we set out, confident that we should reach the Grand Peak within a few hours. Our astonishment was great when, after marching nearly twenty-five miles, we found ourselves at evening seemingly no nearer the mountains than at sunrise. Yet we had thought to encamp at their base that night!
The following two days we spent in hunting buffalo and jerking the meat. The marrow bones gave us a feast fit for a king,—fit even for citizens of the Republic.
The second day of our march onward, still keeping to the Spanish trace, we at last found ourselves appreciably nearing the mountains. What was not so welcome, we came upon the fresh traces of two Indians who had ascended the river very recently. Warned by this, we proceeded in the morning more than ever wary of ambuscades. There was good reason for our precautions.
Scarcely had the Lieutenant, Baroney, and myself ridden out in advance of the party, when of a sudden the interpreter sang out: "Voilà! Les sauvages!"
A moment later we also caught sight of the Indians, a number of whom were circling about us on the high ground, while others raced directly upon us out of the dense groves of cottonwoods. All were afoot; which, taken with the unmistakable cut of their hair and their red and black paint, told us all too plainly that they were a war party of Pawnees returning from an unsuccessful raid upon one of the Western tribes.
Knowing well how apt are the warriors to be evil-tempered after the humiliation of a failure to strike their enemy, I prepared to sell my life as dearly as might be. All the probabilities pointed to the supposition that the party was made up of Skidis, or Loups, and I, for one, had no desire to become a captive in their hands. It was enough to have escaped in my boyhood from the stake and fire of the Shawnees. I had no intention of now letting myself be crucified and mangled and burned as a sacrifice to the morning star by these prairie savages.
But Pike, cool as ever, restrained Baroney and myself from firing, and the Indians seemed to justify his moderation by flinging down their weapons and running to us with outstretched arms. In a moment they were all about us, in a jostling, jabbering crowd, patting and hugging us as though we had been blood kinsmen. So urgent were they with their friendly requests for us to dismount that we finally complied. On the instant an Indian was upon each horse and riding off.
Still the others held to their friendly gestures, and upon looking back, we could see the rest of their party making no less friendly demonstrations among our soldiers. We were partly reassured when we learned that the warriors were not Loups, but a party from the Grand Pawnee. But the confirmation of our surmise that they were returning from an unsuccessful raid upon the Tetans, or Ietans,—whom the Spaniards call Comanches,—caused us to fall back upon our main party and work it around to a camp in a little grove as speedily as possible.
During this man[oe]uvre more than one of our unwelcome visitors bent their bows. But the firm insistence of our gallant leader won its way with the savages. Soon all sixty were seated about us in a ring. The Lieutenant then sat down opposite their chief, with the council pipe laid out before him.
At his orders, gifts of tobacco, knives, and flints were placed beside the chief. The present was greeted with guttural cries of dissatisfaction, and the chief demanded with great insolence that we should give them a quantity of our most valuable equipage, from ammunition to blankets and kettles. To this, despite the advice and even urgent plea of Baroney, our commander firmly refused to accede.
At last, after no little grumbling and threatening, they presented us with a vessel of water, and drank and smoked with us, in token of amity. Not satisfied with this, and warned by Baroney, I kept on my feet, watching the treacherous warriors. Our wariness was justified by the contemptuous manner in which many of their number threw away their presents. When, immediately after this, we began to reload our pack horses, the entire band pressed into our midst and began to pilfer right and left.
For a time all was in the most perilous confusion, Pike and I having to mount our horses to save the very pistols in our holsters. On every side the savages were snatching articles, which the soldiers were doing their best to wrest from them.
"The rogues!" cried Pike. "Baroney, command the chief to call off his men. I'll not submit to open robbery!"
Even while Baroney interpreted the order, the chief slipped a knife from the belt of one of the privates who was turned the other way, and hid it behind his shield. Almost in the same moment he faced the Lieutenant, and flung out his hand in a gesture of injured innocence.
Baroney hastily interpreted his ironic, hypocritical reply: "The great white chief has an open hand, a good heart. It cannot be he grudges his poor red friends a few small gifts. My braves are wretched; they are needy; they hunger."
"Hungry, are they?" shouted Pike. "Then we'll give them lead to eat! Stand ready to fire, men!" He rose in his stirrups and pointed his pistol at the chief. "By the Almighty! I'll shoot the next scoundrel who touches our goods!"
I looked for an instant acceptance of the challenge. Intermingled among us as they were and so greatly superior in numbers, the savages had every advantage. In hand to hand fighting their clubs and knives and stone tomahawks would have been as efficient as our weapons, while our firearms, once emptied, would have taken us more time to reload than an Indian would require to shoot a quiverful of arrows.
For a long moment our fate hung in the balance, while the enraged pilferers gripped their weapons and glared at us with murderous hate. The tense silence was broken only by the sharp clicking of our hammers. Suddenly Sergeant Meek, far too well disciplined to fire without orders, yet unable to restrain his pugnacity, seized a brawny young warrior by the shoulder, and whirling him around like a child, sent him flying off with a tremendous kick.
"Begone, ye varmint!" he roared.
It was the last straw to the savages. Overawed by our unquailing boldness in the face of their superior numbers, they followed their staggering fellow, sullen and scowling, muttering threats, yet afraid to strike.
We waited with finger on trigger, until the last of their long file had glided beyond gunshot. Then the Lieutenant, half choking with rage, ordered us to take stock of our losses. It did not soothe him to find that the thieves had managed to make away with some thirty or forty dollars' worth of our property. Not even the ferocious Sioux and Chippewas had dared to rob him in this brazen fashion. But with only sixteen guns, all told, it was wiser for us to submit to the outrage than to imperil the expedition and perhaps lose our lives in an attempt to follow and punish the rascals.
That evening the Lieutenant and I went back and lay in wait beside our trace, thinking that the thieves might return and attempt to steal our horses. It would have been only too well in keeping with the habits of these savages, for the Pawnees are the most noted horse-thieves of all the prairie tribes. Fortunately our watch proved needless.
By noon of the day after this encounter we came to the third large southern branch of the river, immediately beyond which a fork on the north bank ran off about northwest toward the Grand Peak which we had first sighted so far out on the prairies. As the Peak now seemed only a day's journey distant, the Lieutenant decided to attempt its ascent with a small party. But first we joined in erecting a breastwork,—the first American building in all this vast wilderness; the first structure south of the Missouri and west of the Pawnee Republic to float the glorious Stars and Stripes!
Shortly after noon of the second day the Lieutenant marched for the peak with Miller, Brown, and myself.
Instead of reaching the foot of the peak by nightfall, as we had expected, we were compelled to camp under a cedar tree, out on the bleak prairie. Severe as was the cold, we felt still greater discomfort from the lack of water. Again we marched for the great mountain, in the fond expectation of encamping that night upon its summit. Instead, we hardly reached the base of the lofty rise. Fortunately we there found a number of springs, and succeeded in killing two buffaloes.
Still untaught by experience, we foolishly left our blankets and all other than a pocketful of provision at our bivouac, and set off up the mountain at dawn, assured that we could reach the top by noon and descend again by nightfall. Almost at the start I brought down a deer of a species unknown to us, it being larger than the ordinary animal, and its ears much like those of a mule. The carcass was flayed without delay, and the skin hung well up in a pitch-pine, together with the saddle.
Made impatient by the delay, we began our climb with a will, determined to reach the summit even earlier than we had planned. In this, however, we were to be most sadly disappointed. After clambering up the steep slopes and precipices all day without arriving at the crest, we were forced to take refuge for the night in a cave. While preparing to creep into this cheerless shelter, our discomfort over the utter lack of blankets, food, and water was for the moment forgotten in the curious sensation of standing under a clear sky and gazing at a snowstorm far below us down the mountain.
Morning found us half famished with thirst and hunger and bruised by our rocky beds, but we needed no urging to resume our laborious ascent. The view from our lofty mountain side was the grandest I had ever seen. Above us arched the translucent sky in an illimitable dome of purest sapphire, rimmed before our upturned eyes by gaunt, jagged rocks and fields of dazzling snow. Behind and below us the vast desert of prairies stretched away to east and north and south, far beyond the reach of human eye, its tawny surface closely overhung by a sea of billowy white clouds. Far to the south, at least a hundred miles distant, we noted in particular a vast double, or twin, peak, which stood out from and overtopped the heights of the front range even as our Grand Peak dwarfed its neighbors.
But we did not linger long to gaze at this sublime prospect. Though our thermometer here registered well below zero, we struggled on upward through the waist-deep snow to the first of the summits which rose before us. An hour found us close upon what we took to be the goal of our efforts.
At last, panting from our exertions and the rarity of the air, we floundered up the final rise to the crest. In this wild, scrambling rush Brown dropped to the rear, while the Lieutenant, though physically the least robust of the party, forged ahead even of myself, upborne by his zealous spirit. He, the leader of the expedition, should be—must be—the first to set foot upon the summit of the Grand Peak!
With a final rally of his wiry strength, he uttered a shout and dashed up over the thin, hard-crusted snow of the summit to the crest,—only to stop short and stand staring off beyond, in bitter disappointment.
"Look!" he cried. "The Grand Peak!"
"The Grand Peak!" I shouted back, too excited to perceive the import of his tone and bearing. "The Grand Peak! We'll name it for you,—for the first American to sight it; the first to mount its crest; the first—"
My exultant cry died away on my lips. I halted and stood gaping in speechless amazement at the peak that loomed skyward over beyond the lesser height we had mounted. What we had taken for the Grand Peak was no more than a satellite that had masked the Titan from our view! As we gazed from our hard-won crest, there uprose before us, grander than ever, the vast bulk of the mighty mountain, its sublime summit glittering with eternal snows. But the nearest ridge of its stupendous pyramidal base was yet a full sixteen miles distant!
I turned and shouted the discovery to Miller and Brown, who toiled up beside us to stare at the awesome beauty of the Peak in dull wonderment.
At last Pike regained his usual firm composure.
"We will begin the return march," he ordered, without betraying a trace of his keen disappointment either in look or voice.
"Send them back," I replied, nodding toward Brown and Miller. "Let us go on and make the attempt alone."
"My thanks to you, John!" he exclaimed. "But it would be madness, sheer madness. Through these snows we could not reach the base of the Peak short of a day's march; and look at that ascent! I doubt if any man could scale those heights."
"Not at this season. Yet, if you give the word to make the attempt—"
"No!" he rejoined. "Without food, and clad as we are in summer wear, no! It is enough to have ascended this peak, without our being so mad as to attempt the impossible."
"Then the sooner we reach the plain, the better," I said, pointing to the mountain side behind us.
While we had stood viewing the indescribable grandeur and sublimity of the Peak and the snow-clad sierras which stretched away in savage majesty to north and south of their mighty chieftain, the clouds below us were rolling upwards, were enveloping the entire mountain upon which we stood. Fearful of being lost in a snowstorm upon these bleak heights, we descended rapidly down a cleft, and regained our bivouac at the foot of the mountain just as the snow began to fall.
Here we found our blankets and other camp equipment as we had left them. But the ravens had robbed us of all our food, other than an unstripped fragment of the deer's ribs. Though one of the men had killed a partridge during our descent, the bird and the lean deer bones together formed a scant enough meal for four men who had not eaten in two days.
About noon the next day we shot two buffaloes, upon whose flesh we gorged ourselves like Indians, and I, for one, am convinced that we had well earned the full meal.
In the valley, all up and down the creek, we found many old Comanche camps, but the Indians had undoubtedly gone south for the Winter.
The next day brought us back to our little stockade on the Arkansas.
Many even of our Western-bred officers would have considered themselves justified in lying about camp for at least a day after such a trip. Not so Pike. Toward noon of the next day, which was the last of November, our entire party marched on up the main stream, in the thick of a heavy snowstorm.
We had at last come to the real hardships of our voyage. Within the week two or three of the men suffered frosted feet. The temperature fell to nearly twenty degrees below zero, so that even I felt the cold keenly through my hunting clothes, while the Lieutenant and the others, clad only in their cotton wear, suffered still more from the stinging frost.
Yet, despite all the troubles and hardships of ourselves and our half-starved horses, we held to our explorations, day after day, killing an occasional buffalo or deer, and gradually working our way into the midst of the mighty mountains, northward and westward behind the Grand Peak, along what we thought to be the Spanish trace. At last we came to a large stream, which, to our astonishment, ran to the northeast. Though against all our previous theories, we were forced to believe that this must be the river La Platte. Ascending the stream in a northwesterly direction, all alike suffering greatly from the cold of these high valleys, we passed signs of an immense encampment of Indians. But we saw no more of the Spanish trace, or rather of the Indian trace which we had followed into the mountains, thinking it to be the Spanish.
Turning back upon our own trace some little distance, we crossed over a pass in the mountains to the southwest, and descending a small stream, came upon what we thought to be the upper waters of the Red River. Here, while our wretched, famished beasts were recruiting themselves upon a favorable bit of pasture land, the Lieutenant marched with a small party to explore upstream. At the same time Baroney and I marched down the river, our mission being to kill game for the others, who were to follow us in a day or two.
It was not, however, until three days later, on Christmas Eve, that our party found itself reunited in one camp. After two days of unsuccessful hunting, Baroney and I had at last killed four buffaloes, and young Sparks had shot four more. In view of the fact that we had all been for two days without food, the meeting brought us great happiness.
Yet I cannot say that Christmas Day, which we spent in camp, smoking and drying our meat, was as merry as it might have been. The contrast with all our previous experiences of that holiday was far too sombre. Some of the men even drew unfavorable comparisons between this and the past year, when they were at the head of the Mississippi. Though then in a still colder climate and among the fierce Chippewas, they had at least enjoyed far better food and shelter. As for our present food, though now for the first time in weeks we had an abundant supply, it was limited to the one item of meat, which we must eat without so much as a pinch of salt. Our summery clothes were rent and tattered; many of our blankets torn up for stockings; our outer footwear reduced to clumsy moccasins of raw buffalo hide.
To these physical privations was added the consciousness of the grim fact that between us and the nearest of our far-distant frontier settlements lay all the mountain wilderness we had traversed, and more than seven hundred miles of desert plains. Yet, taken all in all, we managed to spend the day in fairly good cheer, despite the snow which came whirling down upon us.
On the afternoon of the next day we marched down to where the mountains closed in on the river valley. From here on, each succeeding day until the fifth of January found our way rougher and more difficult. The valley became ever deeper and narrower, so that we had to cross and recross the river repeatedly, our horses frequently falling upon the ice. Even harder upon them were their no less frequent slips among the rocks of the banks.
Much to my relief, I was not required to witness the sufferings of the poor beasts coming down through the worst of that terrible canyon. On New Year's Day Brown and I were sent ahead to hunt. Within the first few hours we had the good fortune to bring down a huge-horned mountain ram. Leaving this in our path for the others to skin and dress, we struggled on down the ever-narrowing valley all that day and the next without sighting any other game.
On the third of January we found ourselves fighting our way along in the gloomy depths of a cleft that wound and twisted through the very bowels of the mountains. The bottom of this tremendous gorge was almost filled with the foaming, roaring torrent of the river, while on either side the cliffs towered skyward in sheer, precipitous precipices, thousands of feet high. Never before had I seen or heard of such a terrific chasm, and may I never again be caught in its like!
Leaping and slipping over the icy rocks beside the furious rapids and falls, and creeping along the narrow ledges of ice that here and there rimmed the less torrential stretches of the stream, we at last gained a spot where a little ravine ran up through the face of the precipice. We saw that it was impossible for us to descend that gloomy gorge even a few yards farther. The icy waters of the roaring cascades swept the bed of the chasm from wall to wall.
Yet to ascend the side cleft seemed no less beyond our power. The water, running down from above earlier in the season, had coated the rocky surface from top to bottom with an unbroken slide of ice. It seemed outright madness to attempt that dizzy ascent. However, a man never knows what he can do until he has tried. We set to, I with my tomahawk and Brown with his axe, and by cutting footholds, turn about, in the ice of the ravine's bottom, we slowly worked our way up the giddy rise. Again and again we came near to slipping and so plunging headlong down that glassy slide. After the first hundred feet, we dared no longer look back below, for fear of being overcome with dizziness. Yet at last we came to easier climbing, and, scaling the side of the ravine, found ourselves safe on the mountain ridge, far above the river and its cavernous gorge.
Here we soon killed a deer, and leaving the greater part of the carcass for our companions, pushed on another day across the mountains. We had at last sighted the prairies from our lofty heights, when, pressed by hunger, I was so ill advised as to eat some of the berries we found hanging to the bushes. As a result I suffered such vertigo that I was compelled to lie quiet in camp. But Brown put in the time very well by killing no less than six deer.
Early in the forenoon of the sixth, as we hastened down out of the mountains, we again came within earshot of the torrential river of the gorge. Drawn by the sound, we scrambled around the point of an out-jutting ridge, and found ourselves on the river bank where it flowed from the gorge. It was not the first time I had stood on that selfsame spot.
"Good God!" I groaned. "After all our toil, and only this!"
"You may well say it, John," echoed a melancholy voice from beneath the cliff upstream.
"Montgomery!" I cried. "You here?"
He appeared from around a big rock, sad and dejected; but at sight of my companion, instantly assumed a look of unbending resolve.
"We scattered," he explained, as I grasped his hand. "The others took the horses up out of the gorge by the least difficult of the side ravines. I followed your trace down into the midst of that awesome cleft and up the icy ascent. But I lost the trace on the mountain top, and so came on down here—"
"To find that, after all our toil and privation, it is not the Red River!" I cried.
"Ah, well, it is something to have rounded the headwaters of the Arkansas," he replied. He turned to Brown: "You will find two of your fellows downstream at the old camp. Join them, and see what the three of you can do toward killing meat against the coming of the others."
"Aye, sir!" responded Brown, with ready salute.
He was striding off when I interrupted: "Wait! Montgomery, he has six deer already hung."
"Good! The more the better! Fetch the other lads, Brown, and bring in your game. If you see more deer, do what you can to bring them in too."
Brown saluted the second time, and started off at a dogtrot.
I looked inquiringly into the Lieutenant's darkening face and thought I read his purpose. "If any of the horses come through alive, they will nevertheless be too outworn for farther travel within many weeks. You propose to go into winter quarters?"
"No!" he answered almost angrily.
"Yet the horses?" I argued.
"Poor beasts!" he sighed. "Would that I might put them out of their misery—such of their number as the men may bring alive out of that rocky waste! Yet we cannot spare them, and the fewer the survivors, the greater our need to cherish them. We will build a stockade, and leave the beasts here in the charge of two or three of the men."
"Leave them! And what of ourselves?"
"We will go on in search of the Red River."
"Afoot? In midwinter?"
"Southward. There must be passes over the mountains to the southwest,—passes leading over into the warmer valleys. All reports agree that the Spanish settlements enjoy a mild climate."
"The Spanish settlements!" I cried. "You would head for the Spanish settlements! Give the word, Montgomery; the sooner the better. Ho, for Nuevo Mexico and my lady!"
He shook his head soberly. "It is well you are not in command, John, else I fear you would have even less chance than now of winning your way to your lady. It is a desperate move we are about to undertake."
I smiled. "Can anything be more desperate than our present situation?"
"We must leave the horses to recuperate," he replied. "With the horses we must leave a guard. Two men will be as many as we can spare. They must have a stockade for defence should they be attacked by Indians or Spaniards."
"Come!" I exclaimed. "Only show me the place, an axe, and a grove of pines. I will have your stockade well under way by nightfall."
He took me at my word, and at once led the way downstream to the site of our last camp on the river before we struck off into the mountains behind the Grand Peak. On the way we met Brown and his two companions, going to fetch his deer. We borrowed from them two of their axes, and, arriving at the camp, at once set about felling pines.
Before nightfall we were rejoined by Brown's party and two others, the latter bringing in four sadly disabled horses. The least wearied of the men were at once sent back in search of the remaining parties, carrying a plentiful supply of deer meat to supply those who might be famished. To make a long story short, the ninth of January saw the last member of the expedition in camp, safe and sound, with a loss all told of only four horses.
To hunt down a sufficient store of game and complete the blockhouse for Baroney and Smith, the two men detailed to stay in charge of the bruised and half-famished beasts, occupied the party a full five days. But between times in helping and directing the others, Pike and I managed to take several observations to determine the latitude and longitude of the camp. I also spent much time copying the records of all our courses and distances up to the time of our entry into the mountains, and in elaborating my own notes on the mineralogy, etc., of the vast rocky ranges traversed by us.
When finally we started on our next desperate venture, it was with hearts far lighter than backs. I was overjoyed at the thought that I was at last to march toward the Spanish settlements—and Alisanda! The others had their own good reasons to be pleased. Ignorant of what lay before us, we were alike happy in the thought that our faces were now turned southward, and gladly shouldered our heavy packs for the march.
Each one of us carried a forty-five pound load, made up of Indian presents, tools, ammunition, and scientific instruments. To this were added our weapons and other necessary equipage and a small quantity of half-dried meat, bringing our burdens up to an average weight of seventy pounds. Some packed a few pounds more, some less, each according to his strength. Our leader was among those who carried more. As for myself, being the biggest man of the party, I found that I could make shift to start off with a hundredweight.
Thus, as we thought, well provided for our trip, we struck out boldly over a ridge and southwardly up a valley which lay behind the front, or easternmost range of mountains. We had taken to calling these the Blue Mountains, for though at this season they were where barren hardly less snow-clad than the stupendous sierra to the westward of them, the pine-clad ridges of their slopes, no matter how far distant, appeared colored a clear dark blue, without a trace of haze.
At the beginning of our journey the White Sierra stood so far to the westward, and our course lay up a winding stream through such hilly country that we did not sight their towering peaks until the morning of the fourth day. After this they remained always in view, for the range trended to the east of south in such manner as gradually to approach the front range, or Blue Mountains, which trended south and seemingly a little to the west.
Meantime on the second day, the Lieutenant, Sparks and myself had the good fortune each to bring down a deer. Deceived by this seeming abundance of game, we added little of the fresh meat to our already over-heavy loads, and some of the men even threw away what remained of the dried meat in their packs. Far better had we cast away our Indian trinkets, and even the greater part of our tools!
Within half a day the very last of our food was exhausted, and as no more game was seen, we at once found ourselves face to face with famine. To add to our distress, in crossing over the valley toward the White Mountains two days later, to reach a belt of woods, we had to wade the creek, and the cold coming on extreme, the feet of nine of the men were severely frozen before we could get fuel and warm ourselves. We did what we could to draw out the frost with snow-chafing, but in several instances the injury had gone beyond that remedy.
Our camp that night was in truth a most miserable one. Not an ounce of food had we eaten in nearly two days, and though we had an abundance of pitch-pine for fuel, this meant only that we were free to crouch before the fires, in our thin tatters, and roast one side, while the other was pierced by the terrible frost. Hungry, exhausted, and shivering, we huddled about the fires, even those who were suffering the least being hardly able to obtain a few hours of broken sleep.
It was all too evident that we must soon find food, or perish of starvation in this fearful mountain wilderness. At dawn Pike and I took our rifles and set out, aware that the lives of all depended upon the success of our hunt.
Spurred on though we were by this dreadful necessity, our wide circuits through the pine groves and around the hills brought us no sight of any game throughout that dreary day. At last, near nightfall, we came upon a gaunt old buffalo bull, and stalked him with extreme care. But though we succeeded in creeping within range and wounding him three times, our aim was so unsteady that none of our balls reached a vital spot. He made off and escaped us.
Bitterly disappointed, and weary from our long hunt, we sought shelter in a group of rocks, and spent a sleepless night, without food or fire. Neither of us had the heart to go into camp and tell our starving companions of our failure.
The long hours of midwinter frost and darkness at last drew to an end, and, half dead from cold and hunger, we set off again, in the first gray light of dawn.
After hours of searching, we sighted a small drove of buffalo. Immediately we circled about to get down the wind from them, and, by creeping on all fours nearly a mile through the snow, stalked within fair range of the nearest. By this time, however, we were both so faint and quivering from starvation and over-exertion that neither of us could hold his gun steady. Again and again we fired and reloaded, the stupid beasts standing all unconcerned at the report of our guns, though we repeatedly hit the nearer members of their band. With muskets we could surely have soon brought down one or more, if only from their loss of blood. But the tiny wound made by a rifle ball is of little effect unless a vital part is pierced.
In the end we must have succeeded by a chance shot. But while we were yet blazing away as fast as we could load and fire, one of the herd chanced to drift around to where a flaw in the wind bore our scent to his sensitive nostrils. In an instant he had alarmed the herd, and all raced off, snorting with fear, the wounded running no less swiftly than their fellows. To follow such a stampede was useless. Once started, the animals would run for hours.
We staggered to our feet and gazed after the fleeing herd in utter despair.
"It is the end!" I groaned—"the end! We have lost our last chance!"
"We are outspent!" murmured my companion. "We can do no more! My poor lads! faithful ever to their rash leader! To think that I have led them into this death-trap!"
"They are men!" I cried in bitter anger. "What is death to men?—even this hideous agony of hunger? We can bear that. But to die now—my God!—that I should die before seeing her!—my Alisanda!"
"No! not now!" He turned upon me with a flicker of feverish resolve in his hollow, bloodshot eyes. "Not now, not here! We are not cowards to give up the struggle while we can yet drag ourselves along."
"As well here as a few paces farther on," I muttered.
He dragged at my arm to rouse me from the black stupor of mind and body into which I was fast sinking. "John! think of her!" he cried. "You'll not give up! Keep fighting, for her sake, keep fighting, lad!"
"For her sake," I whispered. I caught at his clutching hand and sought to rally from that benumbing stupor. "For her sake!"
"And I—for the sake of those—who await the return of husband and father!" he panted. "Come! We'll fight—to the last!"
Death alone might conquer that indomitable spirit! We staggered on through the bleak wild, our eyes inflamed and half blinded by the snow, peering about in vain search for game. We did not turn back. To return to camp empty-handed would have been the bitterest of mockeries, supposing we could have found strength to go so far.... We staggered on, but we were upon the verge; we had all but reached the utmost limit of human endurance. For four days we had marched over broken ground and through the snowdrifts in this midwinter cold—four days without food! Even Pike's iron resolve could not force his wasted muscles to perform miracles.
I found myself dulling even to the thought of Alisanda. The end was close upon us. A darkness was gathering about me. We were upon the verge of exhaustion. Several times Pike fell, half fainting, and presently I also began to stumble and sink down at the slightest misstep. Certain that we were about to perish, we bent every effort to reach the nearest trees, reeling and staggering like drunken men, or crawling, between times, when we found ourselves unable to stand.
Half stunned by one of my falls, I lay outstretched, gasping and quivering, when I heard Pike utter a stifled cry. I strained my head about, and to my astonishment saw that he was on his feet and running forward. Staring beyond, over a snowdrift, I caught sight of a little herd of buffaloes advancing at an angle to our course. For a little my strength came back as had my friend's. Staggering up, I tottered after him. By the most fortunate of chances, the wind was in our favor, so that the dull-sighted beasts came on without heeding us.
Pike had already gained a clump of cedar trees. Resting the long barrel of his rifle across one of the low branches, he took quick aim and fired. The shot struck the young cow which was at the head of the herd. She stopped short. The others, sighting us, wheeled and made off at their lumbering gallop. But to our amazement and joy, the wounded animal stood as if dazed. I rested my rifle across a limb, and managed to give the beast a second wound. A moment later Pike flung out his ramrod and fired his second shot. The cow wheeled half about, and moved slowly off to the left.
I had already poured a double charge of powder down my rifle barrel. Upon this I drove home a ball without stopping to patch it, and dashing the pan full of priming, took hasty aim behind the animal's shoulder. By good chance the ball struck her to the heart. Yet even when she fell we kept our places, hastily reloading our rifles. Not until she had lain for some moments with outstretched head did we venture to advance, for even a desperately wounded beast is apt to leap up and make off at sight of the hunters.
Our hunger and exhaustion were so great that, once beside our kill, we could not even wait to devour the raw flesh, but slashed open a vein in the neck and drank the warm blood. Nothing could have revived us more quickly. Before many minutes we were strong enough to set about the dressing of our game. As we worked, we devoured bits of meat, which eased our famished stomachs and added yet more to our slowly returning strength. By nightfall we had managed to butcher the carcass, and loading ourselves with as much of the meat as we could carry, we staggered off in search of the camp.
When at last we sighted the welcome blaze of the fires and dragged ourselves into camp, it was past midnight. Neither of us could have gone another furlong. As we threw off our loads and sank down beside the fire, Pike was seized with so severe a vertigo that it was some time before he could sense the joyful greetings of our camp-mates.
Even before they caught sight of the burdens we bore, the brave sufferers had hailed our approach with heroic cheerfulness. Now, with every mouthful of frozen meat, our leader recovered from his dizziness, and generous strips of steak sizzling on the green-wood spits, the spirits of all rose even to the pitch of merriment. Desperate as was still our situation, it yet seemed like paradise after the anguish of body and mind through which we had passed.
No men, I venture to say, ever bore pain and privation and hardship with more heroic fortitude than was shown by these poor fellows. All but three had been compelled to endure the agony of their frozen feet, in addition to the pangs of starvation, and the sad truth that these injuries went beyond a mere frosting was all too evident in the morning, when, upon examining the men, I found that two of them, at the best, would have to give up their packs and hobble along with the aid of crutches. As for Dougherty and Sparks, both were too disabled to march at all.
But I will dwell no more in detail upon our sufferings in that terrible valley of frost and famine. Enough said that, after bringing in the remainder of the meat for Sparks and Dougherty, we left them and struggled onward in search of a pass. To linger in camp with our disabled comrades would have meant certain death to all. But many among us wept at the parting, for few believed we should ever return.
Indeed, having eaten in one scant meal all the meat we had found heart to take from the injured men, we again suffered a famine, this time of three days' duration. It was then, for the first and only time during all our privations, that one of the men murmured openly. So evident was it that his outcry had been wrung from him by anguish and despair that the Lieutenant, instead of shooting him down in his tracks in accordance with the usual rigor of military discipline, chose to pretend that he had not heard the mutinous words. A few hours later we were the second time saved from starvation by a fortunate kill of buffalo, and it was then, after we had feasted to repletion around a roaring camp-fire, that Pike called the mutineer before him and reproved the repentant man for his conduct.
At this camp we left the greater part of the meat of the four buffaloes killed, in the charge of Hugh Menaugh, one of the two men who, aside from Sparks and Dougherty, had suffered the worst from the frost. This time, however, meat being so abundant, we did not fail to take with us on our onward march enough of provisions to last us for several days.
Though recuperated by two days of feasting,—for we had lingered that length of time with Menaugh,—our first march out of his camp proved one of the very hardest we had yet made. We were by now near the top of a high plateau, where the travelling was even more difficult than in the lower valley; yet we could discover no break in the white barrier, which, despite our high altitude, still towered up many hundred feet above us.
It was almost nightfall, and Pike and I—as usual in the lead breaking a way through the drifts for the others—were beginning to look about for a favorable camp-site, when, topping a knoll, we found ourselves staring down upon a little stream whose course ran to the westward.
"Look!" I shouted. "A pass! That brook flows to the mountains—into the mountains!"
"It may twist about again to south and east. We have reached the top of a divide," cautioned Pike.
"No, no! it cannot be!" I cried, wild with delight. "I see a cleft in the mountain side! The sun dazzles our eyes, but look beneath, in the shadow."
"Thank God!" he sighed. "It is a cleft! It must be that the stream flows through the mountains. If only we can find a way down its bed!"
"We can—we must!" I wheeled about to the weary men. "Hurrah, lads! Stiffen your knees! We've found our pass! Another day will see us beyond the mountains!"
The brave fellows answered with a ringing cheer. Drooping heads straightened; tottering steps gave place to firm, eager strides. Buoyed up by renewed hope, we hurried down the hillside and along the stream bank until in the gathering twilight we could see with certainty where the stream wound its way into the mountain cleft. Assured of this all-important fact, we made our bivouac in a grove of pines, and settled down to the happiest night we had known in weeks.
Bright and early in the morning we broke camp and trudged along through the snow, down the bank of the creek. Soon we found ourselves within the flanking shoulders of the mountains, descending a gorge that was walled on either side with almost sheer cliffs. I should speak of these precipices as stupendous had I not first seen the terrific chasm of the far narrower and deeper gorge of the Arkansas.
To our vast relief, the bed of the pass proved to be broad and open throughout, being clear even of blocking snowdrifts. That it was habitually open was evident from the number of trees we found painted with Indian signs, clear proof that this was one of the accustomed paths of the roaming savages of the Far West. What most astonished us was the length of the gorge, which wound and twisted its way through the heart of the White Mountains in seemingly endless extent.
At last, after we had marched downward for twelve or fourteen miles, a sudden turn unmasked to our gaze a view that brought us up short in our tracks, with cries of astonishment and delight. Instead of the narrow mountain valley that we had expected to open before us, there burst upon our vision the panorama of a vast park-like country, dotted with scattered woods and groves, through which meandered numerous branching streams whose main trunk flowed to the southward. It was many miles across to the mountain range which bounded the western side of this beautiful valley.
Pike was the first among us to find his voice. "Men," he said simply, "we have won free. The worst is now behind us. This Western country is far lower than the plateau on the east side. It must be less cold; see the wide stretches of open ground. There must be game—"
"Ay! look!" I said, pointing to a multitude of black dots drifting across a snowy hillside. "Deer! a herd!"
"An' more on 'em to yan side, sir!" sang out one of the men.
"No more fear of famine!" exulted Pike. "We're safe at last!"
"But how as to savages?" I rejoined. "I see no smoke; yet in a country so abounding in game—"
"Say rather, the Spaniards, John."
"What! You surely do not think—Yet that main stream runs southward. All the accounts tell how the Rio Grande del Norte flows from the north down through the Province of Nuevo Mexico. Montgomery! can it be—"
He checked me with a gesture. But the twinkle in his eyes belied the soberness of his answer: "We have crossed the mountains in search of the Red River. Who among us can swear that yonder stream is not the Red?"
"Yet I, for one, am ready to wager it is the Rio Grande!" I cried. "The Rio Grande! Only think what that means to us—to me! I have only to descend its banks to the Spanish settlements—"
"To land in a Spanish gaol!" he rejoined. "No, John; it is for the Red River we have been seeking, and the Red River it shall be, at the least until we have built a stockade and brought up all the members of our party."
"You would defy the Spaniards!" I exclaimed.
"We will at least put ourselves into a position of defence before seeking to communicate with them."
"But a stockade on Spanish territory?"
"A small party should be conceded the right to provide against the attacks of savages. Besides, we have wandered far into a region unknown to us. If this is the Red River, our side of the stream lies within the boundaries of Louisiana Territory."
I nodded my understanding of his position. "You are right. We have a very fair argument, and can present it to Don Spaniard quite favorably—from behind the walls of a stockade."
"Or without any walls, sir!" put in Sergeant Meek. "Even with this dwindled squad, sir, give us a bunch of trees or scrub, and we'd stand off a troop of Spanish dragoons, or my name's not Meek."
"Small doubt of that, you old fire-eater!" rejoined the Lieutenant. "It's harder to keep you in hand than it will be to whip any enemy we are like to find in this region."
The men all chuckled appreciatively at the joke.
"But just a little brush to liven us up, sir!" pleaded Meek.
"That may come, all too soon! Yet it is not our game. We did not come here to fight the Spaniards, any more than we ascended the Mississippi to fight Sioux and Chippewas and British fur-traders. No. Bear in mind that this is a peaceful expedition. So far am I from desiring a hostile encounter with the Spaniards, it is by no means certain that I could bring myself to refuse an invitation to visit their settlements, should they tender us their hospitality."
Again catching the twinkle in his blue eyes, I exclaimed impulsively: "True! why not? Why not march on down the Rio Grande without delay?"
He shook his head. "Hold hard, John. You forget that this is supposedly the Red River. Also you forget your own observation as to how much more convincing is an argument when made from behind a fortification, and," his voice sobered, "you forget those whom we must first rescue."
"God forgive me!" I cried. "That I should for a moment lose thought of those poor lads! Give me a detail, if no more than a single man. I will go back at once and fetch them."
"No," he replied. "We are still weak; you could not bear them through the drifts, and they cannot walk as yet. We must first build a stockade yonder in the valley. They had food enough to last many days. In good time I will send back a detachment to the Arkansas for the pack train. The injured lads can be brought through on horseback."
"I will go now!"
"You will go with us," he commanded. "If, as is possible, we have come within measurable distance of the Spanish settlements, we must establish a fort without delay. It is imperative. I need every man of you."
When the Lieutenant spoke in that tone, there was nothing to do but obey. I turned on my heel and swung away down the pass, all the more eager to advance, since I might not turn back.
To advance! The word thrilled me throughout every fibre of my being. To advance! Well enough was it for Pike to express doubts—to talk solemnly of the Red River. He had to bear in mind the problem of diplomatic explanations to the Spaniards. But as for myself, I rejoiced in the conviction that the stream before us was in truth the Spanish River of the North; that within the distance of a few days' journey southward lay the upper Spanish settlements, beyond which, somewhere in the interior of New Spain, lay Chihuahua, the seat of government for the northern provinces, and the goal of my love-quest! I no longer doubted, I knew! We had crossed the Sangre de Cristo! I had passed the Barrier!
Small wonder was it that I chafed during the many days which yet intervened before I was free to fare away on the road which led toward my lady! First of all came our check at the west base of the mountains, where a vast line of sand hills blocked our advance into the valley and compelled us to skirt along some distance to the south before we could march out toward the river. It took yet two more days for us to reach the main stream and cross over, up one of its tributaries, to a favorable site for our stockade.
The first few days of February we spent in hunting and in hewing down cottonwood trees for the stockade. Of buffalo we saw no sign in the valley, but succeeded in killing a few deer, and sighted such vast droves that the last thought of famine was dispelled.
As soon as we had made some progress on the fort, I pressed the Lieutenant to permit me to return for our comrades on the back track. But he, knowing the keenness of my desire to be off southward, positively forbade my returning, and instead detailed Corporal Jackson and four men to bring in Sparks, Dougherty, and Menaugh, together with the four packs we had been forced to leave behind. Baroney and Smith, we thought, could wait on the Arkansas until later, when the horses should have had more time to regain strength.
It had been arranged that Jackson and his men should leave on the afternoon of the seventh. But I did not linger to see them start. Making hasty preparation, I marched in the opposite direction at sunrise of the same day. The parting with my fellows in the midst of this remote and unknown wilderness affected me deeply. Despite all our sharing of famine and toil and bitter cold, I had not before realized the warmth of attachment between us. The men crowded around to grasp my hand and wish me Godspeed, and one and all swore that if I came to harm among the Spaniards, they would follow their commander to the death in his effort to avenge me.
After this Pike walked out with me half a mile or so on my way, where we could say our farewells in private, and none might see the tears which would come despite our efforts at calmness. By now he was quite convinced that I was going to my death.
"Farewell, my friend, my companion!" he exclaimed, wringing my hand. "God keep you from harm!"
"Wish me more than that, Montgomery," I protested.
"Ah, more—more, with all my heart!" he cried. "God grant you win your way to your lady—that you win her sweet self!"
"My thanks, dear friend!" I choked, gripping him by the shoulders. "We talk of patriotism; but I know, and you know, it is for her sake alone I am putting my neck into the noose."
"No, no," he rejoined. "It is not alone love, it is duty as well that calls you. And I fear the worst. Would that I might even now dissuade you from the attempt!"
"Dissuade me?—now? I should go, even though I felt as sure as you do that the outcome will be the garrotte or a blank wall and a firing squad. No; what grieves me most is the thought that we may never again meet. I hope to win my way to Chihuahua; I must win my way to—her! But can I then leave New Spain? Never one of Nolan's men has come home."
"It may chance that you will wish to stay, John."
"No, not even for her sake, unless—" I hesitated—"unless the Spanish creoles rise and throw off the rule of Old Spain."
"A revolution? That would be a grand opening for you!" His eyes flashed with militant fire, only to darken again with grief. "But the people of New Spain are too dispirited to revolt. If you linger in that tyrannical land, it will be as a prisoner in one of their foul gaols—or worse!"
"For her I'd risk the worst a thousand times over! Take cheer! They will never suspect me as a spy. The Le Lande claim will carry me through."
"God grant it!" he cried.
I gave his hand a last grip. "Farewell for a long time, my friend! That you may not waste thought over the chance of my return, I confess that I have resolved to go to my lady, whatever may befall."
"Then you will not come back even if they rebuff you at the upper settlements?"
"I have crossed the Barrier. Now I go to Chihuahua."
"Farewell; God keep you!" he repeated.
A final glance at the little log fort, with its shallow moat, bristling, staked abatis, and loopholed walls, above which floated our glorious banner, then I tore myself from him, and started off on my solitary journey.
Having meat enough to last me some time, I did not stop to hunt, but continued on at my best pace, southwest and then more nearly south. Mid-morning of the second day I came upon a pair of the ugliest Indians I had ever seen. Fortunately they were not so stupid as their swarthy, flat faces made them appear. After no little sign talk, I at last overcame their fear of me, and by an offer of a few trinkets, gained their assent to take me into the Spanish settlements.
For the night they took me to a camp in the woods where their women were waiting. Being unacquainted with the customs of these savages,—who I afterwards learned were Yutahs,—I passed the night without sleep, for fear of treachery. But whether because of my rifle and pistols, or owing to their treaty with the Spanish whites, my ugly guides made no attempt to attack me. Next morning we set out upon our way to Agua Caliente, the first of the Spanish towns, which we reached mid-afternoon of the same day.
It was with the keenest of emotions that I first made out what I took to be the mud-wall stockade, or rampart, of this northernmost of the Spanish settlements. At last I had arrived at the inhabited parts of New Spain,—I was about to venture into the midst of our secretly, if not openly, hostile Spanish neighbors. For all I knew, the long-threatened war might have broken out months past; it might now be raging with utmost fury. Yet even the thought of this far from improbable situation did not cause me to waver for an instant. I needs must go on in search of my lady, though a thousand Spaniards lined the road with guns loaded and primed to shoot me down.
As we drew near the town gate, one of the tame Indians of the place ran in with the news of my coming. I stopped, and was in the midst of paying over the agreed articles to my guides, when a bewhiskered Spanish corporal and a squad of dragoons came charging out as if to ride me down. Some held their long lances levelled at my breast; others, who had rushed off without their lances, flourished the short rifles which they callescopettes; while one man had only his big horse pistol. All, however, carried their thick leather shields, which it seems the soldiers in these parts bear as a protection against the arrows of the savages.
Greatly to my relief, I soon perceived that all this display of weapons and horsemanship was intended rather as a greeting than a menace. As they replaced their lances in the sockets and brought their curvetting mounts to a stand, the corporal saluted me in a most hospitable manner. At this, having good reasons for concealing what little knowledge of Spanish I possessed, I demanded, in French, to be taken before the commanding officer of the place. Whether or not the fellow understood my words, he sprang off courteously beside me, and made a sign for me to accompany him into the town. The others took his horse in lead, and followed us at a few paces.
As we passed the gate, I perceived that what I had taken for a great stockade of unbaked mud brick was in fact no other than the rear walls of a continuous row of houses, built in the form of a hollow square, and with inward-facing doors. The town was thus of itself a most effectual fortification against the savages of this region, the walls of the houses extending up above the flat roofs so as to form a convenient parapet for the defenders against the arrows and even the guns of their assailants. Very few of these Southwest Indians, however, possess firearms, and as they also lack scaling ladders, it does not detract from the effectiveness of the defence that none of the houses is above a story in height. This last was also true of the rows of like buildings laid off in streets within the square.
At the time, however, I had little opportunity to observe either this Moorish architecture, which the Spaniards brought with them from Old Spain, or the curious appearance of the tame Indians, who made up the majority of the town's inhabitants. The corporal at once led me into the presence of the commandant, who, finding that I claimed to be of French blood, expressed himself in French as vastly astonished at the presence of an American in this remote region, particularly in view of the season.
Before we had finished our interview, I was no less astonished to learn that I was not the first American to arrive in the country. This does not refer to the French creole Le Lande, who had settled between here and Santa Fe and had done so well with his stolen goods that he was already known as arico. Something over a year before our coming, one of our daring Western fur-hunters named Pursley, an American by blood as well as allegiance, had traversed the prairies from the Missouri, and falling in with a great party of Kyoways and Comanches near our Grand Peak, had come down with them to the Spanish settlements.
I received this account while dining with the commandant, he being so hospitable as to invite me to his table, notwithstanding my tattered and wretched appearance. But first, having learned my ostensible reason for coming to New Mexico, he had sent off a soldier, post-haste, with despatches to Governor Allencaster at Santa Fe.
After weeks and months of dieting on the flesh of wild game, much of the time without salt, and even longer without so much as corn to vary the monotony, it was only with the greatest effort that I could restrain myself from gluttonizing on my host's fierychili con carne, his hot corn-cakes and beans, his delicious chocolate anddulces. All the time he was repeating polite apologies for the meagreness of his fare. To me it was no less than a banquet, and I feasted until prudence forced me to deny myself another mouthful.
That night, for the first time in seven months, I slept upon a mattress, which, according to the custom of New Spain, was laid upon the floor. The nearest approach to a bedstead in this benighted land is a bench-like bank of mud brick along the wall, in some of the houses. Chairs and divans are none too plentiful, even in the homes of the cultured rich, the people in general preferring to recline or to sit Turk-fashion upon mats or mattresses laid along the floor.
Early in the morning I was informed that an escort was in waiting to guide me to Santa Fe. The kindness of the commandant in providing me with numerous articles of civilized comfort induced me to accede without protest to his politely worded hint that it would be better for me to leave behind my weapons and ammunition, which he promised to send on in a few days.
Having given myself singly into the hands of the Spanish, I knew that diplomacy was now my sole resource, the thought of a resort to force being sheer madness.
During the journey to Santa Fe, while stopping over at the town of San Juan, where I was treated with the utmost warmth of hospitality, I was able to inform myself as to the prosperous condition of the trader Le Lande, who had married and settled in the vicinity. But my apprehensions as to my reception by the Governor of this remote province prevented me from taking as deep an interest either in that rascal or in the strange customs and appearance of these Mexican people as I should have felt in easier circumstances.
Unlike Agua Caliente and some of the other small settlements we had passed, I found Santa Fe a town widely scattered in the outskirts. Many of the low adobe buildings which made up the bulk of the place stood each in its tiny patch of field, which, early as was the season, the people were beginning to cultivate with their rude ploughs and mattocks. Within these suburbs, however, the houses crowded closer and closer together, until they were for the most part separated only by streets that were no less narrow and crooked than dirty. A more striking difference between this two-century-old settlement and the ones up-country was the presence of the two huge adobe churches which towered among the hovels, all the more imposing for the contrast. Their windows, like those of the better houses, were glazed with sheets of thin, transparent talc.
I was at once taken past the rectangle of the soldiers' barracks to the great open court, or plaza, in the midst of the town, where we came to the house of the Governor. By this time I and my escort were surrounded by a number ofmestizosand tame Indians, all of whom, however, drew away when we entered the palace through an open, brick-paved portico, or shed. After the plainness of the exterior, I was astonished by the ornate furnishings of the rooms within, whose limed walls were hung with bright-figured drapes and whose floors of beaten clay were spread with skin rugs.
Little time was given me to wonder at what to my unaccustomed eyes seemed most magnificent decorations. I was quickly shown on into a large apartment, at the upper end of which sat a sallow-faced, corpulent Spanish don. I had no need to look at the secretary and the other attendants grouped about his high chair to realize that I was in the presence of Don Joachin Allencaster. The harshness of his glance as I was led before him was enough of proof; for until now, all whom I had met, even to the most ignorant and dogmatic of the priests, had treated me with the deference of true hospitality.
Not until this moment had I fully realized the wretchedness of my appearance. Though the kindness of the commandant at Agua Caliente had provided me with a bath and a cotton shirt, I still wore my tattered buckskins; upon my head was my old coonskin cap, which had been half singed by a fall in the fire; my limbs and feet were clad in moccasins and leggings of fresh buffalo hide, the raw surface outward; while about my shoulders my unkempt hair fell down in loose and shaggy locks, as barbarous as the eight months' beard upon my lean, starved face.
"Por Dios!" exclaimed His Excellency. Having doubtless been informed in the despatches that I claimed to be a Frenchman, he addressed me in that language: "Sacre!You have come here, the second American in two years, to spy upon my province!"
"Your Excellency," I replied, "I had thought the Commandant of Agua Caliente wrote you regarding the purpose of my visit to New Spain. As to this Pursley, if it is to him you refer as my fellow spy, I had never before so much as heard of the man until told at Agua Caliente. The Commandant can tell you how astonished I was when he informed me of Pursley's exploit in penetrating the wilderness. For my part, I should surmise that he is no more than one of our venturesome fur-hunters. But if you insist upon your suspicions, why not include Baptiste Le Lande with us in a trio of spies?"
Throughout this the Governor had continued to regard me with great austerity. Quite unmoved by my attempt at lightness, he now signed to his secretary, and spoke to me in a most peremptory tone: "Your papers, fellow!"
I drew out the documents relating to the Le Lande claim and handed them over to the secretary. His Excellency demanded their purport, which I gave as clearly and briefly as my French would permit.
"We shall see," he commented, when I ended my account. "Your papers will be examined, and I will send for Le Lande. Meantime you will consider yourself under arrest. You will be given quarters in the rooms assigned for officers in confinement, but you are at liberty within the bounds of the town, if accompanied by your guard."
With this, he appointed a corporal of the regular dragoons to attend upon me both as guard and waiter, and I was promptly led out. During the short delay which followed, I had no cause to complain of my treatment. The corporal proved a most accommodating servant, and my meals were sent to me from His Excellency's own table. In addition, the hospitality of the leading people of Santa Fe was so cordial that I should have enjoyed greatly the two days I had to wait, had it not been for my fears that the Governor might detain me for an indefinite period, or send me eastward out of the province, into the country of the Comanches.
When, therefore, he again called me before him, and stated that he had inquired and found that Le Lande was incapable of discharging the claim presented by me, I declared boldly that I knew this to be a mistake, and that it appeared to me His Excellency was seeking to shelter a refugee debtor of my country, in violation of the treaties between Spain and the United States.
"Look to it, Your Excellency!" I concluded, with all the heat and indignation I could affect. "Look to it! This is no light matter. The man is an outright thief, and the treaty rights of Monsieur Morrison are clear. I insist upon the payment of this claim. If I cannot obtain justice of Your Excellency, I will appeal to the Governor-General."
This last stirred him out of the daze of astonishment into which he had been thrown by the audacity of my heated protest. Governors of Spanish provinces are not accustomed to being bearded by their inferiors in rank, much less by lone foreigners suspected of espionage. But at my mention of his superior, he found his voice.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, and I marked the change in his tone. "Madre de Dios!You would go to Chihuahua?"
"No offence to Your Excellency," I hastened to protest, affecting to believe him alarmed for himself. "It may well be that your authority is so limited that you cannot satisfy my claim. My complaint against your refusal will be purely formal. In truth, I prefer to have the decision of the Governor-General, if only to obtain a precedent in the adjudication of similar claims which may be presented in other provinces under his rule."
"Por Dios!You wish to go to Chihuahua!" he repeated. I believe he would have been less amazed had I urged him to let me go to the gallows. "To Chihuahua! to Salcedo!" he murmured.
"Why not, Your Excellency?" I inquired.
His sallow cheeks darkened with a sudden return of his suspicions, and he sought to transfix me with his glance.
"Caramba!" he muttered. "Tell me clearly how you came across all that vast desert. You came from the northward. Did you then cross the mountains?"
I described briefly that terrible march south and west from the Grand Peak. He listened with growing wonderment.
"Poder de Dios!It is impossible!" he cried. "Malgares has told me of that gigantic peak and the sierra you crossed. It is not possible! The Sangre de Cristo, and in midwinter—afoot!"
"Yet it is true, Your Excellency."
Again his eye sought to pierce me with its suspicious stare.
"Your party?" he demanded. "You have spoken of hunters. Who are they?—and where?"
Having now some of the details of Pursley's adventures to copy, I told a connected tale of having accompanied some Osages from St. Louis to the Pawnee country, in search of the recreant Le Lande, when, learning of his flight to New Mexico, I had wandered westward with a small party of hunters to the Grand Peak and then southwest over the mountains, until we came to what was supposed to be the Red River, where my companions had stopped to hunt.
At the end of my recital, he sat for some moments studying me. Then, with a most disconcerting suddenness: "Señor, you will honor me with your presence at table."
He rose at the words, and leaving all the others gaping, conducted me down a corridor to his dining-room. It was now high noon, and we found the table already spread for the midday meal, which is the principal repast of the day among the Spaniards in Mexico.
A plate was laid for myself opposite His Excellency's, and we sat down in civilized fashion to a meal which would have graced the table of the richest Spanish creole in all Louisiana. There were trout from the neighboring streams, a variety of meats and fowl, good wheaten bread altogether unlike the unappetizing corntortillasof the commonfolk, chocolate anddulces, fine raisins from the Paso del Norte, and a bottle or two of most excellent wine.
Throughout our repast His Excellency addressed himself to me as one gentleman to another, so that I found myself continually in a stress of excitement between apprehension and hope. Our conversation was for the most part directed to European topics, dwelling much, as must every discussion of transatlantic affairs, upon the career of that most marvellous of men, the Emperor of the French.
But with the wine and thecigarros, His Excellency seemed to recollect for the first time the small but none the less important affairs of our own personal concern.
"I begin to be convinced, señor physician, that you are indeed a man of genteel breeding," he said. "If, however, you will pardon the remark, I have grave doubt whether a Frenchman of your education would commit so many errors in the use of his native language."
I smiled. "Mon Dieu!Your Excellency, we of St. Louis have not the facilities for visitingla belleFrance possessed by our fellow creoles of New Orleans. It is a century or more since my ancestors came to the New World."
"And you have dwelt much among the Anglo-Americans," he insinuated.
"It is true," I replied with candor. "I obtained my diploma as a physician from the college of Columbia in the city of New York."
He stiffened with a sudden return of austerity. "Señor, I no longer doubt that you are acaballero—a gentleman. I will not press you to confess your ulterior motive in coming into the domains of His Most Catholic Majesty. Yet, if you carry secret documents (I am disinclined to have you searched), I ask you to give me your word whether or not you carry such despatches."
"Your Excellency," I answered, "I give you my word that I do not. The documents I handed over into Your Excellency's keeping were all I brought with me."
"Satanas!" he cried, his face flushing with sudden violent anger. "Such duplicity! Such treachery!"
"If you will be so kind as to explain, señor," I said with unaffected astonishment.
"You hold to it?Carrajo!How then of the packet in your bosom?"
"That?" I exclaimed, at once perceiving the cause of his continued suspicion. Some one had spied upon me and seen the packet. I reached my hand into my hunting-shirt, only to hesitate and draw it out again, empty. It seemed a profanation to expose my treasures to his gaze.