Swift orders rang along the charging column, but the solitary Indian wheeled out of their way, still making friendly signs, while over the swells of the prairie came the wild riders of whom he was evidently telling.
To him no more attention could be given just then, for there were more Comanches arriving than Bowie had believed at all likely. They had travelled faster and in better condition than he had calculated, and fully a third of Great Bear"s warriors were within reaching distance.
It was a tremendous surprise all around. The fast-gathering braves had expected to close in upon a mere handful of tired-out Texans. The lancers had counted upon a brush with a small war-party of Lipans.
Here the two forces were, however, face to face, altogether too near to escape a collision, unless one side or both should lose courage and run away.
Red Wolf had lashed his mustang to its best speed in wheeling from between the combatants, and he barely succeeded, for the Comanches were careering in various directions. It was not their custom to charge in close column.
"Ugh!" said the boy warrior. "Heap fool Comanche. See Great Bear."
The great war-chief was indeed among his men, as cool as ever in spite of the surprise. He had his best braves with him, and they greatly outnumbered the Mexicans. The latter, indeed, rather than the red men, had stumbled into a bad place. They were brave enough, but the Comanches have been called by army officers "the best light cavalry in the world." Not one of them turned to follow Red Wolf any farther, and he did not wait to be followed. He looked behind him only to catch a fleeting view of a terribly confused skirmish. Both sides carried lances. At close quarters, the bows and arrows of the red men were even better weapons than were such firearms as were carried by the cavalry. It certainly took less time to load a bow-string than it did to put a charge into a horse-pistol or a carbine.
The Mexicans were fighting well, Red Wolf could take note of that.
What he did not see was the fact that they were going down very fast and that more Comanches were arriving. The one idea in his mind was to overtake his friends.
The river! The great, muddy Rio Grande! Here it was, with not a sign of Colonel Bowie"s party upon its desolate bank.
Red Wolf halted in something like dismay, but it was no time for hesitation. His friends could not have gone down southward. Their errand would lead them up the river. He must hunt for them in that direction. Whether he should ever reach them or not was a difficult question, as his first glance across the river told him. It was not so much the flag on the hacienda. He was not afraid of a flag. But the river was shallow and fordable at this point, and a party of lancers had already made its way well out from the farther sh.o.r.e. They, as well as he, could hear the rattling reports and the fierce whooping from the battle that was going on, and they were making as much haste as the muddy bottom permitted. They uttered loud shouts when they caught sight of the one "brave" on the bank, and they fired shot after shot at him, but he was out of range of the short, smooth-bore carbines they were firing. He answered them with a yell of derision and rode on.
"Ugh!" he said. "Heap Mexican! All lose hair. Great Bear come."
Even a Lipan boy could feel more exultation than anything else over the idea that one enemy of his tribe was doing much harm to another. As an Indian, moreover, he could be proud of the prowess of a chief like Great Bear, almost as great a man, in his estimation, as Big Knife or as Castro.
It was a hot skirmish, but it was a short one. Half the lancers were down, but their charge had carried them through the unsteady swarm of their enemies. All that were left were keeping well together and were galloping toward the river, followed by flights of arrows. They would have been more closely followed by wild hors.e.m.e.n but for the fact that the Comanche ponies were at the end of a long, tiresome "push," while the animals of the cavalry were fresh. There was no such thing as catching up with them, and they reached the bank just as their comrades from the opposite sh.o.r.e were wading out.
There were loud shouts of explanation. There were signals to and from the hacienda, but all that could be done was to recross the river.
After all, Red Wolf had not won any glory, but his enemies had once more suffered severely in trying to get hold of him.
CHAPTER XII.
THE HORSE-THIEVES AND THE STAMPEDE.
"Boys," said Colonel Bowie, sitting upon his panting horse and looking back down the river, "they saw us. I don"t think we could make another run. Dismount!"
They were barely a mile and a half above the point where they had struck the Rio Grande, but it was time to give their horses a rest and to consider the situation. They had halted on the brow of a bluff, and they were looking in all directions. Not a man of them could guess from what quarter their next disaster might come.
"Big Knife wait," replied the Lipan chief. "Castro go back for Red Wolf."
"Guess not!" exclaimed Jim Cheyne. "Colonel, if thar isn"t that thar old cuss Tetzcatl on his mule."
Here he came, plodding along as calmly as ever, but there was very little news that he could tell them. He could not even explain the presence of General Bravo"s regiment of lancers.
"The general said, at the Alamo, that he was going after the Apaches,"
remarked the colonel, "but here he is."
"Whoop!" rang out from the lower ground easterly. "Who-o-o-oop!"
"Red Wolf!" exclaimed Castro. "Boy no lose hair! Ugh! Heap young brave!"
On he came, and there was no one following him. How could he have escaped? He tried to tell how when he reached them, but before he had finished his story of the Comanches and the lancers Tetzcatl turned his mule toward the river.
"_Bueno!_" he said. "We can cross here. The lancers are busy. So are the Comanches. The Lipans are on the other side and we can find them.
Come!"
"All right!" shouted Bowie. "Forward! Boys, Great Bear is our best hold just now. He got in just in the nick of time."
The chief himself had not said so, nor had the beaten lancers. Both sides of that fight had been severely surprised.
It seemed to the Comanches that their long chase had reached a stopping-place, and what to do next they could not say, except to rest their horses. As for the lancers, what was left of the fighting party was now safe at the hacienda.
The Texans had no choice but to follow their white-headed guide. Not one of them heard him say, as his mule waded into the river,--
"_Bueno_! The Comanches got them. It is a great satisfaction. I will take the Texans into the mountains and give them to Huitzilopochtli.
They shall go down to him when he calls for them. The G.o.ds are hungry."
There had, indeed, been vast changes in the manner and amount of worship paid them since the landing of Cortez. There had been a time of fanatical devotion before that, when from twenty thousand to fifty thousand human victims had been sacrificed annually to the terrible divinities of the Mexicans. The scattered remnants of the old, dark tribes, who still clung to their heathenish faith, might be as ready as their fathers had been to offer sacrifices, but the offerings were not so easily to be provided.
"The days have been too many," grumbled Tetzcatl, "in which not one Spaniard stood before the altar. We have had to give them mission men, women, children. They shall have six white men from the North."
Those Mexican Indians who, from time to time, had nominally accepted the religion brought to them by the missionaries of the Church of Rome were not to be cla.s.sed as Spaniards exactly, but they would answer as less valuable subst.i.tutes. Perhaps they were really as available for sacrificial purposes as had been the yearly prisoners of war, entirely unconverted heathen, who had been slaughtered at the _teocallis_, or idol temples, before any Spaniards were to be had.
Altogether ignorant of the religious fate intended for them, the Texans gained the southerly bank of the river, but their guide did not pause there. He spurred his mule, waved his hand to them, and pushed onward.
He was upon ground that he knew, and their weary day"s journey ended in a dense forest, where they could believe themselves safe, for the time, from their enemies.
"Night come," said Castro to his son. "Red Wolf go see Mexicans. No take horse."
"Ugh!" replied the young warrior. "Find lancers. See hacienda. Where great chief go?"
"Castro find Comanches," replied his father. "Big Knife keep camp.
Tetzcatl hunt Lipans. Texan sleep."
It was a time for vigorous scouting, but the condition of the horses required that the scouts should use their own legs. No one went out at once, however. After a hearty supper they all lay down for a while.
All but Tetzcatl. n.o.body could say just at what moment the old Tlascalan disappeared, leaving his mule behind him.
"Boys," remarked Joe, "we"re all here and we ain"t corked up, but thar isn"t a blamed thing we can do. It"s been a pretty tough kind of spree far as we"ve gone."
"Wall, ye-es," drawled Jim Cheyne, "and thar"s no tellin" what "ll turn up next."
"Jesso," came from another ranger, "and we needn"t crow loud. Thar wouldn"t ha" been a head o" ha"r left among us if it hadn"t been for that cub o" Castro"s; he"s a buster."
"So"s his dad," remarked Jim; "but whar are they now?"
He was looking, as he spoke, at the spot where he had seen them spread their blankets. Those were there, but neither a young Lipan nor an old one.
"They ain"t in this camp," said Joe, after a wider search. "Gone visitin"?"