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The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas

Chapter Twenty Nine.
El Coyote at Home

Calhoun took his departure from the breakfast-table, almost as abruptly as his cousin; but, on leaving the sala instead of returning to his own chamber, he sallied forth from the house.

Still suffering from wounds but half healed, he was nevertheless sufficiently convalescent to go abroad – into the garden, to the stables, the corrals – anywhere around the house.

On the present occasion, his excursion was intended to conduct him to a more distant point. As if under the stimulus of what had turned up in the conversation – or perhaps by the contents of the letter that had been read – his feebleness seemed for the time to have forsaken him; and, vigorously plying his crutch, he proceeded up the river in the direction of Fort Inge.

In a barren tract of land, that lay about half way between the hacienda and the Fort – and that did not appear to belong to any one – he arrived at the terminus of his limping expedition. There was a grove of mezquit, with, some larger trees shading it; and in the midst of this, a rude hovel of “wattle and dab,” known in South-Western Texas as a jacalé.

It was the domicile of Miguel Diaz, the Mexican mustanger – a lair appropriate to the semi-savage who had earned for himself the distinctive appellation of El Coyote (“Prairie Wolf.”)

It was not always that the wolf could be found in his den – for his jacalé deserved no better description. It was but his occasional sleeping-place; during those intervals of inactivity when, by the disposal of a drove of captured mustangs, he could afford to stay for a time within the limits of the settlement, indulging in such gross pleasures as its proximity afforded.

Calhoun was fortunate in finding him at home; though not quite so fortunate as to find him in a state of sobriety. He was not exactly intoxicated – having, after a prolonged spell of sleep, partially recovered from this, the habitual condition of his existence.

“H’la ñor!” he exclaimed in his provincial patois, slurring the salutation, as his visitor darkened the door of the jacalé. “P’r Dios! Who’d have expected to see you? Sientese! Be seated. Take a chair. There’s one. A chair! Ha! ha! ha!”

The laugh was called up at contemplation of that which he had facetiously termed a chair. It was the skull of a mustang, intended to serve as such; and which, with another similar piece, a rude table of cleft yucca-tree, and a couch of cane reeds, upon which the owner of the jacalé was reclining, constituted the sole furniture of Miguel Diaz’s dwelling.

Calhoun, fatigued with his halting promenade, accepted the invitation of his host, and sate down upon the horse-skull.

He did not permit much time to pass, before entering upon the object of his errand.

“Señor Diaz!” said he, “I have come for – ”

“Señor Americano!” exclaimed the half-drunken horse-hunter, cutting short the explanation, “why waste words upon that? Carrambo! I know well enough for what you’ve come. You want me to wipe out that devilish Irlandes!”

“Well!”

“Well; I promised you I would do it, for five hundred pesos– at the proper time and opportunity. I will. Miguel Diaz never played false to his promise. But the time’s not come, ñor capitan; nor yet the opportunity, Carajo! To kill a man outright requires skill. It can’t be done – even on the prairies – without danger of detection; and if detected, ha! what chance for me? You forget, ñor capitan, that I’m a Mexican. If I were of your people, I might slay Don Mauricio; and get clear on the score of its being a quarrel. Maldita! With us Mexicans it is different. If we stick our macheté into a man so as to let out his life’s blood, it is called murder; and you Americanos, with your stupid juries of twelve honest men, would pronounce it so: ay, and hang a poor fellow for it. Chingaro! I can’t risk that. I hate the Irlandes as much as you; but I’m not going to chop off my nose to spite my own face. I must wait for the time, and the chance —carrai, the time and the chance.”

“Both are come!” exclaimed the tempter, bending earnestly towards the bravo. “You said you could easily do it, if there was any Indian trouble going on?”

“Of course I said so. If there was that – ”

“You have not heard the news, then?”

“What news?”

“That the Comanches are starting on the war trail.”

“Carajo!” exclaimed El Coyote, springing up from his couch of reeds, and exhibiting all the activity of his namesake, when roused by the scent of prey. “Santissima Virgen! Do you speak the truth, ñor capitan?”

“Neither more nor less. The news has just reached the Fort. I have it on the best authority – the officer in command.”

“In that case,” answered the Mexican reflecting! – “in that case, Don Mauricio may die. The Comanches can kill him. Ha! ha! ha!”

“You are sure of it?”

“I should be surer, if his scalp were worth a thousand dollars, instead of five hundred.”

“It is worth that sum.”

“What sum?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“You promise it?”

“I do.”

“Then the Comanches shall scalp him, ñor capitan. You may return to Casa del Corvo, and go to sleep with confidence that whenever the opportunity arrives, your enemy will lose his hair. You understand?”

“I do.”

“Get ready your thousand pesos.”

“They wait your acceptance.”

“Carajo! I shall earn them in a trice. Adios! Adios!”

“Santissima Virgen!” exclaimed the profane ruffian, as his visitor limped out of sight. “What a magnificent fluke of fortune! A perfect chiripé. A thousand dollars for killing the man I intended to kill on my own account, without charging anybody a single claco for the deed!

“The Comanches upon the war trail! Chingaro! can it be true? If so, I must look up my old disguise – gone to neglect through these three long years of accursed peace. Viva la guerra de los Indios! Success to the pantomime of the prairies!”

Chapter Thirty.
A Sagittary Correspondence

Louise Poindexter, passionately addicted to the sports termed “manly,” could scarce have overlooked archery.

She had not. The how, and its adjunct the arrow, were in her hands as toys which she could control to her will.

She had been instructed in their manège by the Houma Indians; a remnant of whom – the last descendants of a once powerful tribe – may still be encountered upon the “coast” of the Mississippi, in the proximity of Point Coupé and the bayou Atchafalaya.

For a long time her bow had lain unbent – unpacked, indeed, ever since it had formed part of the paraphernalia brought overland in the waggon train. Since her arrival at Casa del Corvo she had found no occasion to use the weapon of Diana; and her beautiful bow of Osage-orange wood, and quiver of plumed arrows, had lain neglected in the lumber-room.

There came a time when they were taken forth, and honoured with some attention. It was shortly after that scene at the breakfast table; when she had received the paternal command to discontinue her equestrian excursions.

To this she had yielded implicit obedience, even beyond what was intended: since not only had she given up riding out alone, but declined to do so in company.

The spotted mustang stood listless in its stall, or pranced frantically around the corral; wondering why its spine was no longer crossed, or its ribs compressed, by that strange caparison, that more than aught else reminded it of its captivity.

It was not neglected, however. Though no more mounted by its fair mistress, it was the object of her daily – almost hourly – solicitude. The best corn in the granaderias of Casa del Corvo was selected, the most nutritions grass that grows upon the lavanna – the gramma– furnished for its manger; while for drink it had the cool crystal water from the current of the Leona.

Pluto took delight in grooming it; and, under his currycomb and brushes, its coat had attained a gloss which rivalled that upon Pluto’s own sable skin.

While not engaged attending upon her pet, Miss Poindexter divided the residue of her time between indoor duties and archery. The latter she appeared to have selected as the substitute for that pastime of which she was so passionately fond, and in which she was now denied indulgence.

The scene of her sagittary performances was the garden, with its adjacent shrubbery – an extensive enclosure, three sides of which were fenced in by the river itself, curving round it like the shoe of a racehorse, the fourth being a straight line traced by the rearward wall of the hacienda.

Within this circumference a garden, with ornamental grounds, had been laid out, in times long gone by – as might have been told by many ancient exotics seen standing over it. Even the statues spoke of a past age – not only in their decay, but in the personages they were intended to represent. Equally did they betray the chisel of the Spanish sculptor. Among them you might see commemorated the figure and features of the great Condé; of the Campeador; of Ferdinand and his energetic queen; of the discoverer of the American world; of its two chief conquistadores– Cortez and Pizarro; and of her, alike famous for her beauty and devotion, the Mexican Malinché.

It was not amidst these sculptured stones that Louise Poindexter practised her feats of archery; though more than once might she have been seen standing before the statue of Malinché, and scanning the voluptuous outline of the Indian maiden’s form; not with any severe thought of scorn, that this dark-skinned daughter of Eve had succumbed to such a conqueror as Cortez.

The young creole felt, in her secret heart, that she had no right to throw a stone at that statue. To one less famed than Cortez – though in her estimation equally deserving of fame – she had surrendered what the great conquistador had won from Marina – her heart of hearts.

In her excursions with the bow, which were of diurnal occurrence, she strayed not among the statues. Her game was not there to be found; but under the shadow of tall trees that, keeping the curve of the river, formed a semicircular grove between it and the garden. Most of these trees were of indigenous growth – wild Chinas, mulberries, and pecâns – that in the laying out of the grounds had been permitted to remain where Nature, perhaps some centuries ago, had scattered their seed.

It was under the leafy canopy of these fair forest trees the young Creole delighted to sit – or stray along the edge of the pellucid river, that rolled dreamily by.

Here she was free to be alone; which of late appeared to be her preference. Her father, in his sternest mood, could not have denied her so slight a privilege. If there was danger upon the outside prairie, there could be none within the garden – enclosed, as it was, by a river broad and deep, and a wall that could not have been scaled without the aid of a thirty-round ladder. So far from objecting to this solitary strolling, the planter appeared something more than satisfied that his daughter had taken to these tranquil habits; and the suspicions which he had conceived – not altogether without a cause – were becoming gradually dismissed from his mind.

After all he might have been misinformed? The tongue of scandal takes delight in torturing; and he may have been chosen as one of its victims? Or, perhaps, it was but a casual thing – the encounter of which he had been told, between his daughter and Maurice the mustanger? They may have met by accident in the chapparal? She could not well pass, without speaking to, the man who had twice rescued her from a dread danger. There might have been nothing in it, beyond the simple acknowledgment of her gratitude?

It looked well that she had, with such willingness, consented to relinquish her rides. It was but little in keeping with her usual custom, when crossed. Obedience to that particular command could not have been irksome; and argued innocence uncontaminated, virtue still intact.

So reasoned the fond father; who, beyond conjecture, was not permitted to scrutinise too closely the character of his child. In other lands, or in a different class of society, he might possibly have asked direct questions, and required direct answers to them. This is not the method upon the Mississippi; where a son of ten years old – a daughter of less than fifteen – would rebel against such scrutiny, and call it inquisition.

Still less might Woodley Poindexter strain the statutes of parental authority – the father of a Creole belle – for years used to that proud homage whose incense often stills, or altogether destroys, the simpler affections of the heart.

Though her father, and by law her controller, he knew to what a short length his power might extend, if exerted in opposition to her will. He was, therefore, satisfied with her late act of obedience – rejoiced to find that instead of continuing her reckless rides upon the prairie, she now contented herself within the range of the garden – with bow and arrow slaying the small birds that were so unlucky as to come under her aim.

Father of fifty years old, why reason in this foolish fashion? Have you forgotten your own youth – the thoughts that then inspired you – the deceits you practised under such inspiration – the counterfeits you assumed – the “stories” you told to cloak what, after all, may have been the noblest impulse of your nature?

The father of the fair Louise appeared to have become oblivious to recollections of this kind: for his early life was not without facts to have furnished them. They must have been forgotten, else he would have taken occasion to follow his daughter into the garden, and observe her – himself unobserved – while disporting herself in the shrubbery that bordered the river bank.

By doing so, he would have discovered that her disposition was not so cruel as may have been supposed. Instead of transfixing the innocent birds that fluttered in such foolish confidence around her, her greatest feat in archery appeared to be the impaling of a piece of paper upon the point of her arrow, and sending the shaft thus charged across the river, to fall harmlessly into a thicket on the opposite side.

He would have witnessed an exhibition still more singular. He would have seen the arrow thus spent – after a short interval, as if dissatisfied with the place into which it had been shot, and desirous of returning to the fair hand whence it had taken its departure – come back into the garden with the same, or a similar piece of paper, transfixed upon its shaft!

The thing might have appeared mysterious – even supernatural – to an observer unacquainted with the spirit and mechanism of that abnormal phenomenon. There was no observer of it save the two individuals who alternately bent the bow, shooting with a single arrow; and by them it was understood.

“Love laughs at locksmiths.” The old adage is scarce suited to Texas, where lock-making is an unknown trade.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” expresses pretty much the same sentiment, appropriate to all time and every place. Never was it more correctly illustrated than in that exchange of bow-shots across the channel of the Leona.

Louise Poindexter had the will; Maurice Gerald had suggested the way.

Chapter Thirty One.
A Stream Cleverly Crossed

The sagittary correspondence could not last for long. They are but lukewarm lovers who can content themselves with a dialogue carried on at bowshot distance. Hearts brimful of passion must beat and burn together – in close proximity – each feeling the pulsation of the other. “If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this!”

Maurice Gerald was not the man – nor Louise Poindexter the woman – to shun such a consummation.

It came to pass: not under the tell-tale light of the sun, but in the lone hour of midnight, when but the stars could have been witnesses of their social dereliction.

Twice had they stood together in that garden grove – twice had they exchanged love vows – under the steel-grey light of the stars; and a third interview had been arranged between them.

Little suspected the proud planter – perhaps prouder of his daughter than anything else he possessed – that she was daily engaged in an act of rebellion – the wildest against which parental authority may pronounce itself.

His own daughter – his only daughter – of the best blood of Southern aristocracy; beautiful, accomplished, everything to secure him a splendid alliance – holding nightly assignation with a horse-hunter!

Could he have but dreamt it when slumbering upon his soft couch, the dream would have startled him from his sleep like the call of the eternal trumpet!

He had no suspicion – not the slightest. The thing was too improbable – too monstrous, to have given cause for one. Its very monstrosity would have disarmed him, had the thought been suggested.

He had been pleased at his daughter’s compliance with his late injunctions; though he would have preferred her obeying them to the letter, and riding out in company with her brother or cousin – which she still declined to do. This, however, he did not insist upon. He could well concede so much to her caprice: since her staying at home could be no disadvantage to the cause that had prompted him to the stern counsel.

Her ready obedience had almost influenced him to regret the prohibition. Walking in confidence by day, and sleeping in security by night, he fancied, it might be recalled.

It was one of those nights known only to a southern sky, when the full round moon rolls clear across a canopy of sapphire; when the mountains have no mist, and look as though you could lay your hand upon them; when the wind is hushed, and the broad leaves of the tropical trees droop motionless from their boughs; themselves silent as if listening to the concert of singular sounds carried on in their midst, and in which mingle the voices of living creatures belonging to every department of animated nature – beast, bird, reptile, and insect.

Such a night was it, as you would select for a stroll in company with the being – the one and only being – who, by the mysterious dictation of Nature, has entwined herself around your heart – a night upon which you feel a wayward longing to have white arms entwined around your neck, and bright eyes before your face, with that voluptuous gleaming that can only be felt to perfection under the mystic light of the moon.

It was long after the infantry drum had beaten tattoo, and the cavalry bugle sounded the signal for the garrison of Fort Inge to go to bed – in fact it was much nearer the hour of midnight – when a horseman rode away from the door of Oberdoffer’s hotel; and, taking the down-river road, was soon lost to the sight of the latest loiterer who might have been strolling through the streets of the village.

It is already known, that this road passed the hacienda of Casa del Corvo, at some distance from the house, and on the opposite side of the river. It is also known that at the same place it traversed a stretch of open prairie, with only a piece of copsewood midway between two extensive tracts of chapparal.

This clump of isolated timber, known in prairie parlance as a “motte” or “island” of timber, stood by the side of the road, along which the horseman had continued, after taking his departure from the village.

On reaching the copse he dismounted; led his horse in among the underwood; “hitched” him, by looping his bridle rein around the topmost twigs of an elastic bough; then detaching a long rope of twisted horsehair from the “horn” of his saddle, and inserting his arm into its coil, he glided out to the edge of the “island,” on that side that lay towards the hacienda.

Before forsaking the shadow of the copse, he cast a glance towards the sky, and at the moon sailing supremely over it. It was a glance of inquiry, ending in a look of chagrin, with some muttered phrases that rendered it more emphatic.

“No use waiting for that beauty to go to bed? She’s made up her mind, she won’t go home till morning – ha! ha!”

The droll conceit, which has so oft amused the nocturnal inebriate of great cities, appeared to produce a like affect upon the night patroller of the prairie; and for a moment the shadow, late darkening his brow, disappeared. It returned anon; as he stood gazing across the open space that separated him from the river bottom – beyond which lay the hacienda of Casa del Corvo, clearly outlined upon the opposite bluff, “If there should be any one stirring about the place? It’s not likely at this hour; unless it be the owner of a bad conscience who can’t sleep. Troth! there’s one such within those walls. If he be abroad there’s a good chance of his seeing me on the open ground; not that I should care a straw, if it were only myself to be compromised. By Saint Patrick, I see no alternative but risk it! It’s no use waiting upon the moon, deuce take her! She don’t go down for hours; and there’s not the sign of a cloud. It won’t do to keep her waiting. No; I must chance it in the clear light. Here goes?”

Saying this, with a swift but stealthy step, the dismounted horseman glided across the treeless tract, and soon readied the escarpment of the cliff, that formed the second height of land rising above the channel of the Leona.

He did not stay ten seconds in this conspicuous situation; but by a path that zigzagged down the bluff – and with which he appeared familiar – he descended to the river “bottom.”

In an instant after he stood upon the bank; at the convexity of the river’s bend, and directly opposite the spot where a skiff was moored, under the sombre shadow of a gigantic cotton-tree.

For a short while he stood gazing across the stream, with a glance that told of scrutiny. He was scanning the shrubbery on the other side; in the endeavour to make out, whether any one was concealed beneath its shadow.

Becoming satisfied that no one was there, he raised the loop-end of his lazo – for it was this he carried over his arm – and giving it half a dozen whirls in the air, cast it across the stream.

The noose settled over the cutwater of the skiff; and closing around the stem, enabled him to tow the tiny craft to the side on which he stood.

Stepping in, he took hold of a pair of oars that lay along the planking at the bottom; and, placing them between the thole-pins, pulled the boat back to its moorings.

Leaping out, he secured it as it had been before, against the drift of the current; and then, taking stand under the shadow of the cotton-tree, he appeared to await either a signal, or the appearance of some one, expected by appointment.

His manoeuvres up to this moment, had they been observed, might have rendered him amenable to the suspicion that he was a housebreaker, about to “crack the crib” of Casa del Corvo.

The phrases that fell from his lips, however, could they have been heard, would have absolved him of any such vile or vulgar intention. It is true he had designs upon the hacienda; but these did not contemplate either its cash, plate, or jewellery – if we except the most precious jewel it contained – the mistress of the mansion herself.

It is scarce necessary to say, that the man who had hidden his horse in the “motte,” and so cleverly effected the crossing of the stream, was Maurice the mustanger.