Part 15 (1/2)
”In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great plain the natives call _El Desierto_, known on the map as _Bolson de Mapini_, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry details.
”Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been examining--but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is, are you game for a new ranch deal?”
When I nodded an affirmative, he continued:
”Well, immediately north of the town lies a tract of 250,000 acres in the fork of the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Alamo, which is the greatest ranch bargain I ever saw. Heavily gra.s.sed, abundantly watered by its two boundary streams, the valleys thickly timbered with cottonwood, the plains dotted with mesquite and live oak, in a perfect climate, it is an ideal breeding range. And it can be bought, for what, do you think?
Fifty thousand Mexican dollars [29,000 gold] for a quarter of a million acres! Go bag it, and together we'll stock it.
”Of course you'll run some rather heavy risks--else the place would not be going so cheap--but no more than you have been taking the last five years in the Sioux country. A little bunch of Lipans are constantly on the warpath, Mescalero raiding parties drop in occasionally, and the bandits seem to need a good many _prestamos_; but all that you have been up against. Better take a pretty strong party, for the authorities thought it necessary to give me a cavalry escort from Lampasos to Musquiz and back. And, by the way, pick up a boy named George E. Thornton, Socorro, N. M., on your way south. While only a youngster, he is one of the best all-round frontiersmen I ever saw, and speaks Spanish tolerably. Had him with me in the Gallup country.”
Details were settled at breakfast, and there Gardiner resumed his journey eastward, while I took the next train for Denver. A fortnight later found me in Socorro, plodding through its sandy streets to an adobe house in the suburbs where Thornton lodged.
As I neared the door a big black dog sprang fiercely out at me to the full length of his chain, and directly thereafter the door framed an extraordinary figure. Then barely twenty-one, and downy still of lip, Thornton's gray eyes were as cold and calculating, the lines of his face as severe and even hard, his movements as deliberate and expressive of perfect self-mastery as those of any veteran of half a dozen wars. Six feet two in height, straight as a white pine, ideally coupled for great strength without sacrifice of activity, he looked altogether one of the most capable and safe men one could wish for in a sc.r.a.p; and so, later, he well proved himself.
He greeted me in carefully correct English; and while quiet, reserved, and cold of speech as of manner, the tones in which he a.s.sured me any friend of Mr. Gardiner was welcome, conveyed faint traces of cordiality that roused some hope that he might prove a more agreeable campmate than his dour mien promised. We were not long coming to terms; indeed the moment I outlined the trip contemplated, and its possible hazards, it became plain he was keen to come on any terms. To my surprise, he proposed bringing his dog, Curly. I objected that so heavy a dog would be likely to play out on our forced marches, and, anyway, would be no mortal use to us. His reply was characteristic:
”Curly goes if I go, sir; but any time you can tell me you find him a nuisance, I'll shoot him myself. I've had him four years, had him out all through Victoria's raid of the Gila, and he's a safer night guard than any ten men you can string around camp: nothing can approach he won't nail or tell you of. With Curly, a night-camp surprise is impossible.”
Whatever cross Curly represented was a mystery. Two-thirds the height and weight of a mastiff, he had the broad narrow pointed muzzle of a bear, and a s.h.a.ggy reddish-black coat that further heightened his resemblance to a cinnamon, with great gray eyes precisely the color of his master's, and as fierce. Whichever character was formed on that of the other I never learned--the man's on the dog's, or the dog's on the man's. Certain it is that not even the luckiest chance could have brought together man and beast so nearly identical in all their traits.
Both were honest, almost to a fault. Neither possessed any vice I ever could discover. Each was wholly happy only when in battle, the more desperate the encounter the happier they. Neither ever actually forced a quarrel, or failed to get in the way of one when there was the least color of an attempt to fasten one on them. And yet both were always considerate of any weaker than themselves, and quick to go to their defence. Many a time have I seen old Curly seize and throttle a big dog he caught rending a little one--as I have seen George leap to the aid of the defenceless. Each weighed carefully his kind, and found most wanting in something requisite to the winning of his confidence; and such as they did admit to familiar intimacy, man or beast, were the salt of their kind.
On the train, south-bound for San Antonio, I learned something of Thornton's history. The son of a judge of Peoria, Ill., he had until fifteen the advantage of the schools of his city. Then, possessed with a longing for a life of adventure in the West, he ran away from home, worked in various places at various tasks, until, at sixteen (in 1887) he had made his way to Socorro. Arrived there, he attached himself to a small party of prospectors going out into the Black Range, into a region then wild and hostile as Boone found Kentucky. And there for the last five years he had dwelt, ranging through the Datils and the Mogallons, prospecting whenever the frequently raiding Apaches left him and his mates time for work. Indeed, it was Thornton who discovered and first opened the Gallup coal field, and he held it until Victoria ran him out. During this time he was in eight desperate fights--the only man to escape from one of them; but out of them he came unscathed, and trained to a finish in every trick of Apache warfare.
At San Antonio we were met by Sam Cress, who for the last four years had been foreman of my Deadman Ranch. Cress was born on Powell River, Virginia, but had come to Texas as a mere lad and joined a cow outfit.
He had really grown up in the Cross Timbers of the Palo Pinto, where, in those years, any who survived were past masters not only of the weird ways and long hours and outlaw broncos, but also of the cunning strategy of the Kiowas and Comanches who in that time were raiding ranches and settlements every ”light of the moon.” Cress was then twenty-five--just my age--and one of the rare type of men who actually hate and dread a fight, but where necessary, go into it with a jest and come out of it with a laugh, as jolly a camp-mate and as steady a stayer as I ever knew. Charlie Crawford, a half-breed Mexican, taken on for his fluency in Spanish, completed our outfit. Two mornings later the Mexican National Express dropped us at the Lampasos depot about daylight, from which we made our way over a mile of dusty road winding through mesquite thickets to the Hotel Diligencia, on the main plaza.
A norther was blowing that chilled us to the marrow, and of course, according to usual Mexican custom, not a room in the hotel was heated.
The best the little Italian proprietor could do for us was a pan of charcoal that warmed nothing beyond our finger tips. As soon as the sun rose, we squatted along the east wall of the hotel and there s.h.i.+vered until Providence or his own necessity brought past us a peon driving a burro loaded with mesquite roots. We bought this wood and dumped it in the central patio of the hotel and there lighted a campfire that made us tolerably comfortable until breakfast.
Ignorant then of Mexico and its customs, I had fancied that when a proper hour arrived for a call on the _Alcalde_, Don Nemecio Garcia, I should have a chance to warm myself properly and had charitably asked my three mates to accompany me on the visit. But when at ten o'clock Don Nemecio received us in his office, we found him tramping up and down the room, wrapped in the warm folds of an ample cloak; his neck and face swathed in m.u.f.flers to the eyes, arctics on his feet, and no stove or fireplace in the room. As leading merchant of the town, he soon supplied us with provisions and various articles, and with four saddle and three pack horses for our journey.
The next day, while my men were busy arranging our camp outfit, I took train for Monterey to get a letter from General Trevino, commanding the Department of Coahuila, to the _comandante_ of the garrison at Musquiz.
On this short forenoon's journey I had my first taste of the disordered state of the country.
About ten o'clock our train stopped at the depot of Villaldama, where I observed six _guardias aduaneras_ (customs guards) removing the packs from a dozen mules, and transferring them to the baggage car. Just as this work was nearing completion, a band of fourteen _contradistas_ dashed up out of the surrounding chaparral, dropped off their horses, and opened at thirty yards a deadly fire on the guards. With others in the smoker, next behind the baggage car, I had a fine view of the battle, but a part of the time we were directly in the line of fire, for four of our car windows were smashed by bullets, and many bullets were buried in the car body. Such encounters between guards and smugglers in Mexico were always a fight to the death, for under the law the guards received one-half the value of their captures, while of course the smugglers stood to win or lose all.
As soon as fire opened, the guards jumped for the best cover available, and put up the best fight they could. But the odds were hopelessly against them. In five minutes it was all over. Three of the guards lay dead, one was crippled, and the other two were in flight. To be sure two of the smugglers were bowled over, dead, and two badly wounded, but the remaining ten were not long in repossessing themselves of their goods; and when our train pulled out, the baggage car riddled with bullets till it looked like a sieve, the ten were hurriedly repacking their mules for flight west to the Sierras. Later I learned that early that morning the guards had caught the _conducta_ with only two men in charge, who had shrewdly skipped and scattered to gather the party that arrived just in time to save their plunder.
Mexican import duties in those days were so enormous that very many of the best people then living along the border engaged regularly in smuggling, as the most profitable enterprise offering. American hams, I remember, were then sixty cents a pound, and everything else in proportion. Even in the city of Monterey, stores that displayed on their open shelves little but native products, had warehouses where you could buy (at three times their value in the States) almost any American or European goods you wanted.
Well recommended to General Trevino from kinsmen of his wife, who was a daughter of General Ord of our army, he gave me a letter to Captain Abran de la Garza, commanding at Musquiz, directing him to furnish me any cavalry escort or supplies I might ask for, and the following day we started north from Lampasos on our one-hundred-mile march to Musquiz.
The first two days of the journey, for fully sixty miles, we travelled across the lands of Don Patricio Milmo, who thirty years earlier had arrived in Monterey, a bare-handed Irish lad, as Patrick Miles.
Through thrift, cunning trading, and a diplomatic marriage into one of the most powerful families of the city, he had oreid his name and gilded the prospects of his progeny, for he had become the richest merchant of Monterey and the largest landholder of the state.
On this march north Curly's value was well demonstrated. The first two nights I divided our little party into four watches, so that one man should always be awake, and on the _qui vive_. But it took us no more than these two nights to discover that Curly was a better guard than all of us put together. Throughout the noon and early evening camp he slept, but as soon as we were in our blankets he was on the alert, and nothing could move near the camp that he did not tell us of it in low growls, delivered at the ear of one or another of the sleepers.
However, nothing happened on the journey up, save at the camp just north of Progreso, where some of the villagers tried slip up on our horses toward midnight, and Curly's growls kept them off. Their trails about our camp were plain in the morning. The evening of the third day we reached Musquiz, one of the oldest towns of the northern border, nestled at the foot of a tall sierra amid wide fields of sugar cane, irrigated by the clear, sweet waters of the Sabinas.
At eight o'clock the next morning I called on Captain Abran de la Garza, the _Comandante_, to present my letter from General Trevino.