It is a fact generally acknowledged throughout the American continent, that the Indian population have never yet failed to take advantage of war, revolution, or other political crises among the white settlers, to make themselves more than usually troublesome. From 1810 to 1867, Mexico went through a troublous period of rebellion and warfare; which is another way of saying that, for fifty-seven years, the Mexican Indians saw themselves at liberty to plunder and slay without the least fear of organised opposition; and judging from the account given by the German-Polish traveller, Gustav von Tempsky, they seem to have made use of their opportunity.

After three years’ residence in California, Herr von Tempsky, with an American friend, Dr. Steel, took ship from San Francisco to Mazatlan, intending to explore the southern spurs of the Sierra Madre, and to return to the States overland. This was in 1853-4, a time when the Government, such as it was, had perhaps reached the summit of its helplessness; which will explain why, on arriving at Mazatlan, the travellers found plenty of counsellors ready to confirm the advice they had heard in California: “Keep out of Mexico, if you value your lives.”

Not to be deterred by mere hearsay, the two friends hired mules and guides, and at once set out eastwards, far more anxious to escape to the highlands from the tropical heat of Mazatlan, than apprehensive of interference from Indians. Yet, as the country grew lonelier and more rugged, the mules less tractable and the guides less self-confident, the journey certainly began to lose some of the romantic charm which, from a safe distance, it had promised to possess; and when, towards nightfall of the third day’s march, a tropical thunderstorm suddenly burst upon them, and the Mexican guides announced that the nearest shelter was at a hill village ten miles distant, both the adventurers found themselves thinking wistfully of the cosy steamer which they had recently left. Those ten miles seemed like a hundred; the rain continued to fall like a cataract; a baggage-mule took to flight and had to be pursued; then the animal ridden by the doctor got his forefeet in a hole, and for some time refused to move; and, by way of a little further diversion, the guides began to quarrel among themselves as to the precise direction in which the village lay.

The end of the journey came at last, however, but not the end of their annoyances. As the drenched men came within a stone’s-throw of half a dozen feeble lights for which they had been making, they heard an excited buzz of voices, and, without warning, a dozen or more guns were fired in their direction. A baggage-mule dropped screaming from a skin wound on the shoulder, and one bullet passed so close to the doctor’s head that the broad brim of his sombrero was perforated.

“Back, everybody,” shouted one of the guides. “It is an Indian ambuscade. They are firing from shelter, and we can do nothing.”

But von Tempsky had caught the sound of something which gave him a little comfort; to wit, an expression in French from one of the shooters.

“Who are you?” he shouted in French.

The reply was in the same language. “Halt there; stay where you are and let us know your business.”

“Do you think we want to stop here to get soaked a little more?” shouted Dr. Steel, urging on his mule before his friend had had time to frame an explanation. “Come along; we guessed they were Indians, and they paid us the same compliment.”

The volley was not repeated; but a crowd of men with rifles and lanterns came scurrying to meet the little cavalcade; and, after some laughter and expressions of regret, their leader began a voluble explanation, which von Tempsky cut very short by announcing that he and his party were wet to the skin and required shelter. Thereupon they were ushered into the building whence the shots had been fired, which proved to be a tumble-down inn kept by an old Frenchman.

“We have been much beset by the Seris of late,” he said apologetically. “Three times during the past fortnight have we had the village surrounded by parties of them; and, when we heard you approach so late at night, we naturally supposed you to be Indians.”

The tavern offered little enough comfort; but provisions were plentiful, and there was a good fire where 242 clothes could be dried. The tales which the rancheros had to tell were certainly appalling. Several villages had been entirely depopulated by the savages; many inoffensive travellers had been killed, and others had escaped with the bare life. These Seri Indians were—and even now are—a fierce, intractable people, utterly different from the typical Mexican Indians, who (the Comanches and Apaches apart) are a mild, diligent, and strongly religious race. Mexico still possesses some fifty tribes of redskins, most of which are subdivisions of the very ancient Nahuatl family; but, with the exception of the three tribes just mentioned, many of these had, before von Tempsky’s time, begun to intermarry with Europeans and settle in the towns.

At first all the guides except Jago, the leader, flatly refused to go any farther, on hearing these gruesome stories; but when, on the next day, a dozen of the rancheros offered to accompany the party as far as Durango, on condition that they would combine with them against any Indians they might meet, the grumbling ceased; for no one was averse to getting a shot at the men who, at one time or other, had robbed every one of them of friend or property. Von Tempsky and Steel were nothing loth, either; the one came from a country where persecution and death were everyday matters; while the other had roughed it for five-and-twenty years, first in the backwoods and latterly at the Californian diggings, where it was a case of “a word and a blow—and the blow first.”

For a day or two no sign of Indians was observed, and despite the irregularity of the road and the alarming prevalence of rattlesnakes, the journey was not 243 unpleasant. But on the third afternoon, as the guide Jago was seeking to point out from a distance the village where the company was to pass the night, he uttered a horrified exclamation, and made the sign of the cross. At the same moment an angry hubbub arose from the group of rancheros.

“What is it? What are they all looking at?” inquired von Tempsky.

“Smoke; and plenty of it,” said the doctor, who was shading his eyes with his hands.

“Ay; smoke,” said Jago, who spoke English quite well. “They have burnt another village. Let us go forward quickly, SeÑors.”

An hour’s sharp riding brought them to what, a day earlier, had been a fertile settlement or rancho, but which was now nothing but a pile of smouldering wood-ashes, round about which lay fully fifty corpses of men, women, and children. At the sight, both guides and rancheros went almost mad with indignation; and von Tempsky himself was eager to press on immediately in pursuit of the wretches who had been guilty of such relentless slaughter. It was then that the more phlegmatic Yankee doctor showed the rest the value of a cool and calculating head.

“See here, boys,” he said in his best Spanish, when he could make his voice heard above the howls and oaths of vengeance; “I reckon a redskin’s a redskin, whether he hails from here or ’way north. I’d got no quarrel with these particular vermin, till I saw this. Now I fought Indians before some of you were born; and I’ll do it again if you’ll let me. But there’ll have to be none of this tear-away sort of game that some of 244 you are after. Will you make me captain? You can soon turn me out of it again if you’re not satisfied.”

The rancheros wavered for a moment. Why obey a perfect stranger, who knew neither the country nor the Seris? But the look of simple honesty, yet of bull-dog determination and pluck, in the man’s face, gave confidence even to the most hesitating.

“Very good, SeÑor Doctor; we will obey you.”

“They mean they’ll try, poor fellows,” said Steel, in English, to von Tempsky. “They don’t know what discipline is.”

By his orders, mules and horses were ungirthed, and while he, Jago, and the oldest of the rancheros made a careful examination of the first mile of the track left by the murderers, the others lay down to rest and eat.

“They have crossed the ridge,” said Steel when he rejoined his fellow-traveller. “We’ll all of us take four hours’ rest now. It’ll be no real delay. Those rascals are fifty miles away by this time, as like as not; perhaps a hundred, for these poor souls have been dead a good many hours. We needn’t worry; we shall come up with them later; or with more like them, who’ll have to pay for this picnic.”

The doctor was probably not exaggerating the distance covered by the Seris. The youngsters of the tribe were put on a horse as soon as they could straddle him; their only toys were bows and arrows, and the generally Spartan upbringing which all underwent enabled them to ride or march or fight for a whole day without food or rest. Large bodies of Seris or Comanches would move a hundred and thirty miles in a day.

Stifling their impatience as well as they could, the avenging party waited till the four hours had expired; then all set off on their mountain climb, though darkness would be coming on almost immediately. Half a mile from the top of the ridge, von Tempsky was seen to spring from his saddle and make a dash at some dark object that lay in the shelter of a rock. Before he had reached it, however, a scuffling, clattering sound arose near him, and a horse, saddled but riderless, struggled to his feet. The others halted.

“Show a light some of you; I’ve got him,” shouted von Tempsky. “But—why, the man’s dead!”

Jago dismounted, and, striking a light, revealed the pallid face of a Mexican, who lay with an arrow through his back. Von Tempsky, who had been the only one of the riders to notice the recumbent figure, had imagined it to be that of an Indian spy or sentinel, and had at once made a grab at his throat, only to find the body stiff and quite cold.

“One more score against them,” cried the doctor. “Ride on.”

They travelled all night and till long after daybreak, without meeting or seeing anyone; and at length Steel called another halt for a few hours. Presently, as he and von Tempsky sat chatting, the latter drew his attention to a body of mounted men riding slowly across their projected path, a couple of miles away.

“We’ve got them this time,” said Steel, jumping up.

“Those are not Indians, SeÑor,” said Jago.

“Tch! Look at their spears, man.”

“I do. They are our Mexican lancers. There; do you not hear their bugle?”

A faint note or two from some brass instrument was carried to them by the wind.

“All right; mount,” cried the doctor. “We’ll have a look at them, anyway.”

They had not gone more than a few hundred yards, when the new-comers caught sight of them riding down the incline; they reined up and, waving their lances, greeted them with jubilant shouts.

“Well—of all the scraggy-looking donkey-drivers!” exclaimed Steel in an aside, as they came up with the “lancers.” There were about eighty of them, all more or less in rags, each man armed with a lance, a very rusty sabre, and a carbine. In their midst, two men held their lances aloft, each spear-point being decorated with the head of an Indian. The men were hearty-looking, happy-go-lucky ruffians, brave as need be, but woefully undisciplined, and out of gear generally. After one glance at them, von Tempsky no longer wondered that many an Englishman, Irishman, Scot, or Yankee who would think himself lucky if he ever rose to the rank of sergeant, at home, could here become a field-marshal or an admiral in half an hour. For the Mexico of those days was, like the southern republics, a happy hunting-ground for foreign soldiers of fortune.

“And they send these fellows to put down an Indian rising!” he muttered to the doctor; adding aloud, in Spanish: “Is that all you have killed? Who is your officer?”

The lancers grinned. No; they had killed at least thirty, out of some two hundred. Officer? H’m! Nobody was quite sure. The two men with the heads 247 were supposed to be something in that line; but really they couldn’t say for certain.

“All right; pray go on. I and my troop will follow you,” said Steel.

There was one advantage in having fallen in with these ragamuffins; two at least of their number were half-bloods, with eyes like hawks for a trail; and this put an end to all doubt as to the way which must be followed now that the plain was reached. Some of the lancers had more terrible tales of the Indians to add to what the travellers already knew. A priest and a farmer had been murdered two days before; and, only that morning, three ladies had been found speared to death near an estancia (farm).

The track wound in serpentine fashion, now skirting a town, now going straight through a rancho whence the occupants had fled. By late afternoon the pursuers were within half a dozen miles of Durango; but here the track—more visible than ever now, in the long grass to which they had come—broke away at an obtuse angle, towards the more hilly ground on their right. The doctor pulled up, and he and von Tempsky began to confer with the soldiers. Horses and mules and men were all jaded, urged Steel; and the trail might lead them on through another all-night journey; and to no purpose. Why not ride for the town, take a short rest, and beat up recruits?

The question was being argued and re-argued, when a series of whistles, followed by one concerted and unearthly yell, proceeded from the hills; and, like a pack of wolves, the Indians for whom they had been hunting came charging down the slope; full three hundred of 248 them, stark naked, their bodies painted scarlet and black, their hair and their horses decked with feathers. Steel looked glumly at his own little army. Oh for a couple of dozen well-armed men who had learned the virtues of obedience and combination!

“You lancers prepare to receive their charge,” he shouted; and motioned to his own men to draw off and be ready to attack the Seris in the rear. He was obeyed indifferently; further urged by von Tempsky and Jago, the guides and rancheros were wheeling slowly northwards; but the lancers were evidently more than half minded to charge wholesale at the oncoming savages.

It is proverbial that the greater the pain or the danger or the suspense, the more readily a man finds time to notice minute detail that has little or nothing to do with the matter in hand. Steel observed, on this occasion—though the yelling mob was within thirty yards of him—that apparently not a man of them was under six feet in height; that every man sat his horse as though he were a part of it, and that each carried a spear, bow, and quiver, and also a trumpery-looking round shield, studded with bits of brass, shell, and looking-glass. As he had half anticipated, the savages suddenly changed their tactics on reaching the hill foot, and wheeled sharply towards the smaller force.

“Lancers, charge, the moment our volley’s fired,” shouted the doctor. “Fire!—Charge! Charge, you thick-headed clod-hoppers, can’t you?—O Lord!” His voice died away in a disheartened little groan.

For the lancers might so easily have had it all their own way; at least twenty redskins had fallen before 249 the carbines of the rancheros, and clearly the rest were surprised and confused. Yet there sat these intelligent lancers, their spears in rest, calmly unslinging their carbines for a volley that was quite as likely to hurt their own side as the enemy.

“Can’t be helped now,” said the doctor to his followers. “Blaze away at them as best you can.”

There were no quick-firing magazine-rifles in those days, and with the exception of von Tempsky and Steel, who had each a couple of revolvers, every man was armed with a muzzle-loader; but necessity had long been the mother of invention with the rancheros, as with the trappers and the Gauchos. Wads were dispensed with; a generous pinch of powder was thrown into the barrel, and each man had his mouth full of bullets, ready to spit one after the powder; a cap was hastily stuck on the pin and everyone was ready for another volley. But even as it was fired, a shower of arrows was launched at each troop, and many a man dropped forward in his saddle. Already the boot was on the other leg; it was the whites who were confused now, while the Indians had recovered their coolness; and, with a discord of howls, they swiftly separated into two parts, one preparing to charge at each white division.

“Pull yourselves together!”—“Die like men!” cried Steel and von Tempsky respectively, as, abandoning their bridles and with a revolver in each hand, they rode straight to meet the charge; while one half of the lancers fled, and the other half sought to cut a way through their assailants and rejoin the rancheros.

The doctor fired off six shots into the front rank as 250 the two forces met, and four Indians fell dead; but his own mule dropped under him, transfixed by a spear.

“Here you are; mount,” bawled von Tempsky in his ear, just when, in imagination, he was already being trampled down by the Indians’ horses.

The ready-witted Pole had sent a bullet into the head of the redskin nearest him, and as he fell, had caught the bridle of his horse. The old backwoodsman, active as a cat, sprang to the horse’s back, and the next moment was emptying his second revolver into the faces of the enemy. Meanwhile, the lancers fought furiously but spasmodically. Their lances could not avail them against the war-hatchets of the savages; and while one half clubbed their carbines, the other made but fruitless play with their sabres, seeking at the same time to drown the howls of the Indians with their own.

But suddenly, when the fight was at its hottest, and when the issue was very much in the balance, a cry of dismay broke from one batch of redskins, who, pointing towards Durango, began to wheel round with the obvious intention of taking flight.

“Help is coming,” cried Jago encouragingly; and, looking back for an instant, Steel saw about forty men, splendidly mounted, and coming up at a gallop from the direction of the town. The second division of the enemy followed the example of the first, and turned to flee. The forty strangers, without uttering a word as they swept past, dashed in pursuit, firing while still at the gallop. It was vain for the Indians to goad their tired horses; those of the rescuing party were fresh. 251 Before they had gone a mile they were overtaken, and Steel, who had followed as best he could, heard a voice cry in English:

“No quarter; they don’t deserve mercy. If we take prisoners, the Mexicans will torture them to death.”

In a few minutes there was not an Indian left alive; every man of the fugitives had fallen before the ceaseless shower of bullets poured into their ranks by the strangers.

The very sort of men for whom Steel had been longing had come; forty of the Texan mounted militia, who had been sent down-country to treat for mules, had put themselves at the disposal of the Durango police for the suppression of the Indian hordes; and on this, as on subsequent occasions, the punishment which they served out was so terrible that the redskins fled south and east, or hid in the hills, and for a year or two, at least, little was heard of their attacking either travellers or homesteads.