Майн Рид
The Death Shot: A Story Retold
Chapter Sixty Six.
A scouting party
Throughout all this time, the scene of wild terror, and frenzied excitement, continues to rage around the Mission. Its walls, while echoing voices of lamentation, reverberate also the shouts of revenge.
It is some time ere the colonists can realise the full extent of the catastrophe, or be sure it is at an end. The gentlemen, who dined with Colonel Armstrong, rushing back to their own homes in fearful anticipation, there find everything, as they left it; except that their families and fellow settlers are asleep. For all this, the fear does not leave their hearts. If their houses are not aflame, as they expected to see them – if their wives and children are not butchered in cold blood – they know not how soon this may be. The Indians – for Indians they still believe them – would not have attacked so strong a settlement, unless in force sufficient to destroy it. The ruin, incomplete, may still be impending. True, the interlude of inaction is difficult to understand; only intelligible, on the supposition that the savages are awaiting an accession to their strength, before they assault the rancheria. They may at the moment be surrounding it?
Under this apprehension, the settlers are hastily, and by loud shouts, summoned from their beds. Responding to the rude arousal, they are soon out of them, and abroad; the women and children frantically screaming; the men more calm; some of them accustomed to such surprises, issuing forth armed, and ready for action.
Soon all are similarly prepared, each with gun, pistol, and knife borne upon his person.
After hearing the tale of horror brought from the Mission-building, they hold hasty council as to what they should do.
Fear for their own firesides restrains them from starting off; and some time elapse before they feel assured that the rancheria will not be attacked, and need defending.
Meanwhile, they despatch messengers to the Mission; who, approaching it cautiously, find no change there.
Colonel Armstrong is still roaming distractedly around, searching for his daughters, Dupré by his side, Hawkins and Tucker assisting in the search.
The girls not found, and the frantic father settling down to the conviction that they are gone – lost to him forever!
Oh! the cruel torture of the truth thus forced upon him! His children carried off captive, that were enough. But to such captivity! To be the associates of savages, their slaves, their worse than slaves – ah! a destiny compared with which death were desirable.
So reasons the paternal heart in this supreme moment of its affliction.
Alike, distressed is he, bereaved of his all but bride. The young Creole is well-nigh beside himself. Never has he known such bitter thoughts; the bitterest of all – a remembrance of something said to him by his betrothed that very day. A word slight but significant, relating to the half-blood, Fernand; a hint of some familiarity in the man’s behaviour towards her, not absolute boldness, but presumption: for Jessie did not tell all. Still enough to be now vividly recalled to Dupré’s memory, with all that exaggeration the circumstances are calculated to suggest to his fancy and fears. Yes; his trusted servant has betrayed him, and never did master more repent a trust, or suffer greater pain by its betrayal.
The serpent he warmed has turned and stung him, with sting so venomous as to leave little of life.
Within and around the Mission-building are other wailing voices, besides those of its owners. Many of the domestics have like cause for lamentation, some even more. Among the massacred, still stretched in their gore, one stoops over a sister; another sees his child; a wife weeps by the side of her husband, her hot tears mingling with his yet warm blood; while brother bends down to gaze into the eyes of brother, which, glassy and sightless, cannot reciprocate the sorrowing glance!
It is not the time to give way to wild grief. The occasion calls for action, quick, immediate. Colonel Armstrong commands it; Dupré urges it. Soon as their first throes of surprise and terror have subsided, despair is replaced by anger, and their thoughts turn upon retaliation.
All is clear now. Those living at the rancheria have not been molested. The savages have carried off Dupré’s silver. Despoiled of his far more precious treasure, what recks he of that? Only as telling that the object of the attacking party was robbery more than murder; though they have done both. Still it is certain, that, having achieved their end, they are gone off with no intention to renew the carnage of which all can see such sanguinary traces. Thus reasoning, the next thought is pursuit.
As yet the other settlers are at the rancheria, clinging to their own hearths, in fear of a fresh attack, only a few having come up to the Mission, to be shocked at what they see there.
But enough for Dupré’s purpose; which receives the sanction of Colonel Armstrong, as also that of the hunters, Hawkins and Tucker.
It is decided not to wait till all can be ready; but for a select party to start off at once, in the capacity of scouts; these to take up the trail of the savages, and send back their report to those coming after.
To this Colonel Armstrong not only gives consent, but deems it the most prudent course, and likeliest to secure success. Despite his anxious impatience, the strategy of the old soldier tells him, that careless haste may defeat its chances.
In fine, a scouting party is dispatched, Hawkins at its head as guide, the Creole commanding.
Armstrong himself remains behind, to organise the main body of settlers getting ready for pursuit.
Chapter Sixty Seven.
A straying traveller
A man on horseback making his way through a wood. Not on road, or trodden path, or trace of any kind. For it is a tract of virgin forest, in which settler’s axe has never sounded, rarely traversed by ridden horse; still more rarely by pedestrian.
He, now passing through it, rides as fast as the thick standing trunks, and tangle of undergrowth will allow. The darkness also obstructs him; for it is night. Withal he advances rapidly, though cautiously; at intervals glancing back, at longer ones, delaying to listen, with chin upon his shoulder.
His behaviour shows fear; so, too, his face. Here and there the moonbeams shining through breaks in the foliage, reveal upon his features bewilderment, as well as terror. By their light he is guiding his course, though he does not seem sure of it. The only thing appearing certain is, that he fears something behind, and is fleeing from it.
Once he pauses, longer than usual; and, holding his horse in check, sits listening attentively. While thus halted, he hears a noise, which he knows to be the ripple of a river. It seems oddly to affect him, calling forth an exclamation, which shows he is dissatisfied with the sound.
“Am I never to get away from it? I’ve been over an hour straying about here, and there’s the thing still – not a quarter of a mile off, and timber thick as ever. I thought that last shoot would have taken me out of it. I must have turned somewhere. No help for it, but try again.”
Making a half-face round, he heads his horse in a direction opposite to that from which comes the sound of the water. He has done so repeatedly, as oft straying back towards the stream. It is evident he has no wish to go any nearer; but a strong desire to get away from it.
This time he is successful. The new direction followed a half-mile further shows him clear sky ahead, and in a few minutes more he is at the forest’s outmost edge. Before him stretches an expanse of plain altogether treeless, but clothed with tall grass, whose culms stirred by the night breeze, and silvered by the moonbeams, sway to and fro, like the soft tremulous wavelets of a tropic sea; myriads of fire-flies prinkling among the spikes, and emitting a gleam, as phosphorescent medusae, make the resemblance complete.
The retreating horseman has no such comparison in his thoughts, nor any time to contemplate Nature. The troubled expression in his eyes, tells he is in no mood for it. His glance is not given to the grass, nor the brilliant “lightning bugs,” but to a dark belt discernible beyond, apparently a tract of timber, similar to that he has just traversed. More carefully scrutinised, it is seen to be rocks, not trees; in short a continuous line of cliff, forming the boundary of the bottom-land.
He viewing it, well knows what it is, and intends proceeding on to it. He only stays to take bearings for a particular place, at which he evidently aims. His muttered words specify the point.
“The gulch must be to the right. I’ve gone up-river all the while. Confound the crooked luck! It may throw me behind them going back; and how am I to find my way over the big plain! If I get strayed there – Ha! I see the pass now; yon sharp shoulder of rock – its there.”
Once more setting his horse in motion, he makes for the point thus identified. Not now in zig-zags, or slowly – as when working his way through the timber – but in a straight tail-on-end gallop, fast as the animal can go.
And now under the bright moonbeams it may be time to take a closer survey of the hastening horseman. In garb he is Indian, from the mocassins on his feet to the fillet of stained feathers surmounting his head. But the colour of his skin contradicts the idea of his being an aboriginal. His face shows white, but with some smut upon it, like that of a chimney-sweep negligently cleansed. And his features are Caucasian, not ill-favoured, except in their sinister expression; for they are the features of Richard Darke.
Knowing it is he, it will be equally understood that the San Saba is the stream whose sough is so dissonant in his ears, as also, why he is so anxious to put a wide space between himself and its waters. On its bank he has heard a name, and caught sight of him bearing it – the man of all others he has most fear. The backwoodsman who tracked him in the forests of Mississippi, now trailing him upon the prairies of Texas, Simeon Woodley ever pursuing him! If in terror he has been retreating through the trees, not less does he glide over the open ground. Though going in a gallop, every now and then, as before, he keeps slewing round in the saddle and gazing back with apprehensiveness, in fear he may see forms issuing from the timber’s edge, and coming on after.
None appear, however; and, at length, arriving by the bluffs base, he draws up under its shadow, darker now, for clouds are beginning to dapple the sky, making the moon’s light intermittent. Again, he appears uncertain about the direction he should take; and seated in his saddle, looks inquiringly along the façade of the cliff, scrutinising its outline.
Not long before his scrutiny is rewarded. A dark disc of triangular shape, the apex inverted, proclaims a break in the escarpment. It is the embouchure of a ravine, in short the pass he has been searching for, the same already known to the reader. Straight towards it he rides, with the confidence of one who has climbed it before. In like manner he enters between its grim jaws, and spurs his horse up the slope under the shadow of rocks overhanging right and left. He is some twenty minutes in reaching its summit, on the edge of the upland plain. There he emerges into moonlight; for Luna has again looked out.
Seated in his saddle he takes a survey of the bottom-land below. Afar off, he can distinguish the dark belt of timber, fringing the river on both sides, with here and there a reach of water between, glistening in the moon’s soft light like molten silver. His eyes rest not on this, but stray over the open meadow, land in quest of something there.
There is nothing to fix his glance, and he now feels safe, for the first time since starting on that prolonged retreat.
Drawing a free breath he says, soliloquising: —
“No good my going farther now. Besides I don’t know the trail, not a foot farther. No help for it but stay here till Borlasse and the boys come up. They can’t be much longer, unless they’ve had a fight to detain them; which I don’t think at all likely, after what the half-blood told us. In any case some of them will be this way. Great God! To think of Sime Woodley being here! And after me, sure, for the killing of Clancy! Heywood, too, and Harkness along with them! How is that, I wonder? Can they have met my old jailer on the way, and brought him back to help in tracing me? What the devil does it all mean? It looks as if the very Fates were conspiring for my destruction.
“And who the fellow that laid hold of my horse? So like Clancy! I could swear ’twas he, if I wasn’t sure of having settled him. If ever gun-bullet gave a man his quietus, mine did him. The breath was out of his body before I left him.
“Sime Woodley’s after me, sure! Damn the ugly brute of a backwoodsman! He seems to have been created for the special purpose of pursuing me?
“And she in my power, to let her so slackly go again! I may never have another such chance. She’ll get safe back to the settlements, there to make mock of me! What a simpleton I’ve been to let her go alive! I should have driven my knife into her. Why didn’t I do it? Ach!”
As he utters the harsh exclamation there is blackness on his brow, and chagrin in his glance; a look, such as Satan may have cast back at Paradise on being expelled from it.
With assumed resignation, he continues: —
“No good my grieving over it now. Regrets won’t get her back. There may be another opportunity yet. If I live there shall be, though it cost me all my life to bring it about.”
Another pause spent reflecting what he ought to do next. He has still some fear of being followed by Sime Woodley. Endeavouring to dismiss it, he mutters: —
“’Tisn’t at all likely they’d find the way up here. They appeared to be afoot. I saw no horses. They might have them for all that. But they can’t tell which way I took through the timber, and anyhow couldn’t track me till after daylight. Before then Borlasse will certainly be along. Just possible he may come across Woodley and his lot. They’ll be sure to make for the Mission, and take the road up t’other side. A good chance of our fellows encountering them, unless that begging fool, Bosley, has let all out. Maybe they killed him on the spot? I didn’t hear the end of it, and hope they have.”
With this barbarous reflection he discontinues his soliloquy, bethinking himself, how he may best pass the time till his comrades come on. At first he designs alighting, and lying down: for he has been many hours in the saddle, and feels fatigued. But just as he is about to dismount, it occurs to him the place is not a proper one. Around the summit of the pass, the plain is without a stick of timber, not even a bush to give shade or concealment, and of this last he now begins to recognise the need. For, all at once, he recalls a conversation with Borlasse, in which mention was made of Sime Woodley; the robber telling of his having been in Texas before, and out upon the San Saba – the very place where now seen! Therefore, the backwoodsman will be acquainted with the locality, and may strike for the trail he has himself taken. He remembers Sime’s reputation as a tracker; he no longer feels safe. In the confusion of his senses, his fancy exaggerates his fears, and he almost dreads to look back across the bottom-land.
Thus apprehensive, he turns his eyes towards the plain, in search of a better place for his temporary bivouac, or at all events a safer one. He sees it. To the right, and some two or three hundred yards off is a motte of timber, standing solitary on the otherwise treeless expanse. It is the grove of black-jacks, where Hawkins and Tucker halted that same afternoon.
“The very place!” says Richard Darke to himself, after scrutinising it. “There I’ll be safe every way; can see without being seen. It commands a view of the pass, and, if the moon keep clear, I’ll be able to tell who comes up, whether friends or foes.”
Saying this, he makes for the motte.
Reaching it, he dismounts, and, drawing the rein over his horse’s head, leads the animal in among the trees.
At a short distance from the grove’s edge is a glade. In this he makes stop, and secures the horse, by looping the bridle around a branch.
He has a tin canteen hanging over the horn of his saddle, which he lifts off. It is a large one, – capable of holding a half-gallon. It is three parts full, not of water, but of whisky. The fourth part he has drunk during the day, and earlier hours of the night, to give him courage for the part he had to play. He now drinks to drown his chagrin at having played it so badly. Cursing his crooked luck, as he calls it, he takes a swig of the whisky, and then steps back to the place where he entered among the black-jacks. There taking stand, he awaits the coming of his confederates.
He keeps his eyes upon the summit of the pass. They cannot come up without his seeing them, much less go on over the plain.
They must arrive soon, else he will not be able to see them. For he has brought the canteen along, and, raising it repeatedly to his lips, his sight is becoming obscured, the equilibrium of his body endangered.
As the vessel grows lighter, so does his head; while his limbs refuse to support the weight of his body, which oscillates from side to side.
At length, with an indistinct perception of inability to sustain himself erect, and a belief he would feel better in a recumbent attitude, he gropes his way back to the glade, where, staggering about for a while, he at length settles down, dead drunk. In ten seconds he is asleep, in slumber so profound, that a cannon shot – even the voice of Simeon Woodley – would scarce awake him.
Chapter Sixty Eight.
“Brasfort.”
“Brasfort has caught scent!”
The speech comes from one of two men making their way through a wood, the same across which Richard Darke has just retreated. But they are not retreating as he; on the contrary pursuing, himself the object of their pursuit. For they two men are Charles Clancy, and Jupiter.
They are mounted, Clancy on his horse – a splendid animal – the mulatto astride the mule.
The hound is with them, not now trotting idly after, but in front, with nose to the earth. They are on Darke’s trail. The animal has just struck, and is following it, though not fast. For a strap around its neck, with a cord attached, and held in Clancy’s hand, keeps it in check, while another buckled about its jaws hinders it from giving tongue. Both precautions show Clancy’s determination to take pains with the game he is pursuing, and not again give it a chance to get away. Twice has his mother’s murderer escaped him. It will not be so a third time.
They are trailing in darkness, else he would not need assistance from the dog. For it is only a short while since his separation from the party that went on to the Mission. Soon as getting into their saddles, Clancy and his faithful follower struck into the timber, at the point where Darke was seen to enter, and they are now fairly on his tracks. In the obscurity they cannot see them; but the behaviour of the hound tells they are there.
“Yes; Brasfort’s on it now,” says Clancy, calling the animal by a name long ago bestowed upon it.
“He’s on it strong, Jupe. I can tell by the way he tugs upon the string.”
“All right, Masser Charle. Give him plenty head. Let him well out. Guess we can keep up with him. An’ the sooner we overtake the nigger whipper, the better it be for us, an’ the worser for him. Pity you let him go. If you’d ’lowed Mass Woodley to shoot down his hoss – ”
“Never mind about that. You’ll see himself shot down ere long, or – ”
“Or what, masser?”
“Me!”
“Lor forbid! If I ever see that, there’s another goes down long side you; either the slave-catcher or the slave.”
“Thanks, my brave fellow! I know you mean it. But now to our work; and let us be silent. He may not have gone far, and’s still skulking in this tract of timber. If so, he stands a chance to hear us. Speak only in a whisper.”
Thus instructed, Jupe makes a gesture to signify compliance; Clancy turning his attention to the hound.
By this, Brasfort is all eagerness, as can be told by the quick vibration of his tail, and spasmodic action of the body. A sound also proceeds from his lips, an attempt at baying; which, but for the confining muzzle would make the forest echoes ring around. Stopped by this his note can be heard only a short distance off, not far enough for them to have any fear. If they but get so near the man they are in chase of, they will surely overtake him.
In confidence the trackers keep on; but obstructed by the close standing trunks, with thick underwood between, they make but slow progress. They are more than an hour in getting across the timbered tract; a distance that should not have taken quarter the time.
At length, arriving on its edge, they make stop; Clancy drawing back the dog. Looking across the plain he sees that, which tells him the instinct of the animal will be no longer needed – at least for a time.
The moon, shining upon the meadow grass, shows a list differently shaded; where the tall culms have been bent down and crushed by the hoof of some heavy quadruped, that has made its way amidst them. And recently too, as Clancy, skilled in tracking, can tell; knowing, also, it is the track of Dick Darke’s horse.
“You see it?” he says, pointing to the lighter shaded line. “That’s the assassin’s trail. He’s gone out here, and straight across the bottom. He’s made for the bluff yonder. From this he’s been putting his animal to speed; gone in a gallop, as the stretch between the tracks show. He may go that way, or any other, ’twill make no difference in the end. He fancies himself clever, but for all his cleverness he’ll not escape me now.”
“I hope not, Masser Charle; an’ don’t think he will; don’t see how he can.”
“He can’t.”
For some time Clancy is silent, apparently absorbed in serious reflection. At length, he says to his follower: —
“Jupe, my boy, in your time you have suffered much yourself, and should know something of what it is to feel vengeful. But not a vengeance like mine. That you can’t understand, and perhaps may think me cruel.”
“You, Masser Charle!”
“I don’t remember ever having done a harsh thing in my life, or hurt to anyone not deserving it.”
“I am sure you never did, masser.”
“My dealing with this man may seem an exception. For sure as I live, I’ll kill him, or he shall kill me.”
“There’d be no cruelty in that. He deserve die, if ever man did.”
“He shall. I’ve sworn it – you know when and where. My poor mother sent to an untimely grave! Her spirit seems now speaking to me – urging me to keep my oath. Let us on!”
They spur out into the moonlight, and off over the open plain, the hound no longer in the lead. His nose is not needed now. The slot of Darke’s galloping horse is so conspicuous they can clearly see it, though going fast as did he.
Half an hour at this rapid pace, and they are again under shadow. It is that of the bluff, so dark they can no longer make out the hoof-marks of the retreating horseman.
For a time they are stayed, while once more leashing the hound, and setting it upon the scent.
Brasfort lifts it with renewed spirit; and, keeping in advance, conducts them to an opening in the wall of rock. It is the entrance to a gorge going upward. They can perceive a trodden path, upon which are the hoof-prints of many horses, apparently an hundred of them.
Clancy dismounts to examine them. He takes note, that they are of horses unshod; though there are some with the iron on. Most of them are fresh, among others of older date. Those recently made have the convexity of the hoof turned towards the river. Whoever rode these horses came down the gorge, and kept on for the crossing. He has no doubt, but that they are the same, whose tracks were observed in the slough, and at the ford – now known to have been made by the freebooters. As these have come down the glen, in all likelihood they will go up it in return.
The thought should deter him from proceeding farther in that direction.
But it does not. He is urged on by his oath – by a determination to keep it at all cost. He fancies Darke cannot be far ahead, and trusts to overtaking, and settling the affair, before his confederates come up.
Reflecting thus, he enters the ravine, and commences ascending its slope, Jupiter and Brasfort following.
On reaching the upland plain, they have a different light around, from that below on the bottom-land. The moon is clouded over, but her silvery sheen is replaced by a gloaming of grey. There are streaks of bluish colour, rose tinted, along the horizon’s edge. It is the dawn, for day is just breaking.
At first Clancy is gratified by a sight, so oft gladdening hearts. Daylight will assist him in his search.
Soon, he thinks otherwise. Sweeping his eyes over the upland plain, he sees it is sterile and treeless. A thin skirting of timber runs along the bluff edge; but elsewhere all is open, except a solitary grove at no great distance off.
The rendezvous of the robbers would not be there, but more likely on the other side of the arid expanse. Noting a trail which leads outwards, he suspects the pursued man to have taken it. But to follow in full daylight may not only defeat all chance of overtaking him, but expose them to the danger of capture by the freebooters coming in behind.
Clancy casts his eye across the plain, then back towards the bottom-land. He begins to repent his imprudence in having ventured up the pass. But now to descend might be more dangerous than to stay. There is danger either way, and in every direction. So thinking, he says:
“I fear, Jupe, we’ve been going too fast, and it may be too far. If we encounter these desperadoes, I needn’t tell you we’ll be in trouble. What ought we to do, think you?”
“Well Masser Charle, I don’t jest know. I’se a stranger on these Texas prairies. If ’twar in a Massissip swamp, I might be better able to advise. Hyar I’se all in a quandairy.”
“If we go back we may meet them in the teeth. Besides, I shan’t – can’t now. I must keep on, till I’ve set eyes on Dick Darke.”
“Well, Masser Charle, s’pose we lie hid durin’ the day, an’ track him after night? The ole dog sure take up the scent for good twenty-four hours to come. There’s a bunch of trees out yonner, that’ll give us a hidin’ place; an’ if the thieves go past this way, we sure see ’em. They no see us there.”
“But if they go past, it will be all over. I could have little hope of finding him alone. Along with them he would – ”
Clancy speaks as if in soliloquy.
Abruptly changing tone, he continues: —
“No, Jupe; we must go on, now. I’ll take the risk, if you’re not afraid to follow me.”
“Masser Charle, I ain’t afraid. I’se told you I follow you anywhere – to death if you need me die. I’se tell you that over again.”
“And again thanks, my faithful friend! We won’t talk of death, till we’ve come up with Dick Darke. Then you shall see it one way or other. He, or I, hasn’t many hours to live. Come, Brasfort! you’re wanted once more.”
Saying this, he lets the hound ahead, still keeping hold of the cord.
Before long, Brasfort shows signs that he has again caught scent. His ears crisp up, while his whole body quivers along the spinal column from neck to tail. There is a streak of the bloodhound in the animal; and never did dog of this kind make after a man, who more deserved hunting by a hound.
