V
A SIEGE AND AN AMBUSCADE
We continued to watch long and anxiously the slowly rolling log. Not aglimpse of the motive power could be obtained, but it ground andcrushed its way along with ominous certainty, straight in ourdirection.
Just as I had come to the conclusion that assistance could not arrivein time, the log stopped. I looked through my glass and saw the cause.
"Sergeant," I exclaimed, "the log has struck a rock! Open the door anddraw a bead on it! Don't let a man leap over it to remove the stone!Corporal, guard the east window!"
The sergeant stood ready at the open door. All the efforts of theprostrate men behind the log had no effect, except to swing the endfarthest from the obstacle slightly ahead.
"There seems to be nothing for them to do but to remove the stone.Keep a sharp eye on the log, sergeant!"
I had hardly spoken when a sudden discharge of rifles ran irregularlyalong the length of the log, and under cover of the fire and smoke astalwart warrior leaped over, raised the stone, and had borne itnearly to the top, when Sergeant Cunningham's rifle spoke sharply.
The stone dropped on our side; the Indian fell forward, with his armsextended towards his friends, who pulled him over the log, and he wasscreened from our sight. The volley of the Navajos did us no harm.
Corporal Frank replenished the fire on our roof from time to time, andour vigilant watch went on. At last the sergeant, who still stood atthe open door, exclaimed, "Lieutenant, the stone is moving! It'sdropping into the ground!"
"It's gone, and here comes our fate," I said. "They must have dugunder the log with their knives and sunk the stone."
"Yes, sir, and they're safe to reach the cabin door and roast us out."
"If there were two or three more stones in the way, sergeant, thedelay they would cause might serve us until help comes."
"I'll run out there with one, Mr. Duncan," said Frank.
"No, laddie," replied the sergeant, "that's a duty for me. I'll drop acouple there in a minute."
"And when you return, sergeant, I will drop two more," said I.
We went quickly to work to carry out our plan. The corporal once moremended the fire, and then we selected from the loose rubbish which hadbeen torn from the top of the chimney several large-sized stones.
Removing his shoes, the sergeant, with my assistance, raised two bigstones to his breast, and stood in the doorway with them claspedfirmly in his arms. I took the revolvers in my hands, whispered theword, and he started out at a rapid walk, setting his feet downcarefully and without noise. He dropped the stones, one before theother, without attracting attention, and regained the cabin without ashot being fired on either side.
Now it was my turn, and I went beyond the place where he had droppedhis last stone.
At that instant an alarm was shouted from the distant wood, and anIndian raised his head above the log and fired. The bullet struck thefalling rock, and sent a shower of stinging splinters into my face. Iturned and fled.
With the discharge of the Indian's rifle Sergeant Cunningham andCorporal Frank opened a rapid fusillade with the revolvers, whichsuccessfully covered my retreat to the cabin; but we knew that ourlast chance at stone-dropping was past.
Several terribly long hours had crept past since we saw Vic turn thebutte on her errand to the valleys. Judging by the time it had takenthe Navajos to bore a tunnel under their log and undermine the firsttrigging-stone, we estimated that two more hours must pass before thefour obstructions we had placed in their way could be removed, unlessthey took some more speedy method.
It was quite nine miles to camp, and the dog could easily reach it inabout an hour. If she had arrived, help should by this time be fairlyon the way; but if she had been killed by the besiegers before shereached the north end of the butte, or had been torn in pieces by thewolves!
Should the log once reach our door, we could not hope to do more thanmake the price of our lives dear to the enemy.
While the sergeant and I stood at the door and window, speculating inno very hopeful vein over these probabilities, there came a scratch atthe eastern door. Frank was at the window on that side, and, startledby the sound, he called to us, "I'm afraid an Indian has sneaked up onus, sir."
Again the scratching was heard, this time accompanied by a familiarwhine, which presently swelled into a low bark.
"Oh, Mr. Duncan, it's Vic! It's Vic!" shouted the boy, and, springingto the door, he flung it wide open.
In trotted Vic, and, coming up to me, she dropped a stick at my feetbearing the words: "In the collar, as before."
It took some little time for Corporal Frank to secure the messenger.She capered about the room, licked our hands and faces, jumped up tothe noses of the ponies, and behaved as if she was conscious ofhaving performed a great feat and was overjoyed to have returnedsafely.
But Vic surrendered to the boy at last, and, submitting her neck forinspection, he found attached to her collar a letter which read asfollows:
"CAMP AT LOS VALLES GRANDES.
"_November 20, 1863_.
"Lieutenant,--Message received, and the messenger fed. Corporal Coffey and eight men leave here at 10.15 P.M.
"JAMES MULLIGAN, _Sergeant_."
"Come here, little doggie," said Sergeant Cunningham. "If we get outof this, the company shall pay for a silver collar and a medal ofhonor for the finest dog in the army."
"If that detail marches at the regulation gait of three miles anhour," I said, "it should be here by a quarter-past one, and it is nowa quarter to twelve."
My anxiety over our prospects was so great I neglected to show propergratitude to our devoted messenger.
"The men will do better than that, sir, if they keep on the road. Thetrouble will be in finding this trail. They have never been thisway."
"I think the junction of this and the hot-springs trail cannot be farfrom here. Let's take a shot at that log every three minutes from nowon, and the noise may attract our friends."
We began firing at once, aiming at the under side of the log where ittouched the earth. I am confident this must have sent some sand andgravel into the eyes of the rollers, if it did no other damage.
Two of the trigging-stones we had dropped were soon undermined andsunk, and the log had stopped at the third, less than a hundred yardsaway. As it came on, the sergeant climbed to the top of the chimney,and shortly afterwards returned with the report that he had seen theprostrate body of a warrior revealed beyond--good evidence that hisfirst shot had been fatal. If the next two stones should be as rapidlyremoved as the others, we feared the Indians would reach us, unlessthe rescuing party prevented, at about half-past twelve.
Marked by our periodical shots at the log, the time hurried all toorapidly on, the Indians slowly and surely approaching the cabin.
The third stone disappeared, and the log moved with a louder gratingover the gravelly soil to the fourth and last obstacle, about thirtyyards away, and paused.
"I believe, lieutenant," said Cunningham, "I could hit those fellows'legs now from the chimney."
"All right, sergeant. Close your door and go up and try it," Ireplied. "A redskin with a broken leg can do us as little injury asone with a broken head."
The words were hardly spoken and the sergeant had barely reached thefireplace, when, as if in anticipation of this movement, two figuresleaped over the end of the log nearest the perpendicular rock, ran tothe corner formed by the cabin and the wall, and by the aid of thedovetailed ends of the logs clambered quickly to the roof. I sent ashot at them, but it had no effect.
No sooner had they reached the roof than they threw the flaming brandsand coal of our bonfire down the chimney, where they broke intofragments and rolled over the floor, setting fire to the scatteredstraw and plumes.
Busy putting stops into the windows, and fastening them and the doors,we could do nothing to extinguish the fire before it got well underway.
A blanket was thrown over the top of the chimney to
prevent a draught,and soon the whole interior was thick with stifling smoke.
The horses plunged frantically, sending the fire in every direction.Our eyes began to smart painfully, and we felt ourselves suffocatingand choking in the thick and poisonous atmosphere.
To remain in the house was to be burned alive; to leave it was toperish, perhaps, in a still more horrible way. Just as I was on thebrink of despair, the sergeant gasped rather than spoke:
"They are here, lieutenant. Hark! Hark!"
Ping! Ping! We heard the sound of rifle-shots, accompanied by a good,honest, Anglo-Saxon cheer. Was there ever sweeter music?
The war-whoops ceased, the blanket was quickly withdrawn from thechimney-top, and two thuds on the east side of the cabin showed theIndians had left the roof. A general scurrying of feet and other thudsdown the perpendicular wall back of the spring were evidence that thebesiegers were in full and demoralized flight.
We threw the doors open, and our friends rushed in, and before agreeting was uttered feet and butts of rifles were sweeping brands andstraw into the fireplace, and the roaring draught was fast clearingthe air.
Before I had fairly recovered my sight, and while still engaged inwiping away the tears the smoke had excited to copious flow, I heard asobbing voice near me say:
"Oh, Franky, brother, if it had not been for dear little Vicky whatwould have happened to you?"
Blinking my eyes open, I saw the boy corporals with their right armsabout each other's neck, holding their Spencers by the muzzles intheir left hands.
"Why, Henry," I said, "you did not make that march with the men?"
"Couldn't keep him back, sir," answered Corporal Coffey. "Said hisplace was with his brother. Made the march like a man, and fired thefirst shot when we turned the bluff."
We shook hands all round, and then went out to see whether the volleysof the rescuing party had inflicted any punishment upon the Navajos.Two dead Indians lay near the cabin, and farther away the one thathad fallen when attempting to remove the obstacle before the log.There were traces of others having been wounded.
A fire was promptly kindled outside the cabin, and we sat about it fora time to rest and enjoy a lunch. The horses had been somewhat singedabout the legs, but were not disabled. An hour afterwards SergeantCunningham placed Corporal Henry on his pony, Chiquita, and we startedfor the valleys.
At daybreak the day after we left Jemez we reached camp, and on theevening of the same day the detachment we had left behind for a restalso arrived, without adventure on the march. Cordova and his son atonce set out on the trail of the Navajos, whom we reported to be inpossession of their animals, to ascertain why they were in ourvicinity.
After four days' scouting the Mexicans returned with the informationthat they found the Indians had left their camp on the Jemez roadafter their defeat. They had struck straight through the hills for theRio Grande, where they joined the main body, the same which hadattacked us the day after our arrival in the valleys, and which hadrecently made several successful raids on the flocks and herds nearPena Blanca and Galisteo.
It was the guide's opinion that the party which had besieged me in thecabin had been to the valleys to see what chance there was of runningcaptured stock through there. Their report must have been favorable,for Cordova said a detachment of forty-seven Navajos was now encampedin Los Vallecitos, apparently intending to pass us the following nightwith a large number of cattle, horses, mules, and sheep.
I began at once to make preparations to retake the stolen stock and tocapture the Navajos.
That the Navajos, if they were watching our movements, might notsurmise we knew of their presence near us, I ordered the scoutingparty and huntsmen not to go out next morning, and all the men to keepwithin the limits of the parade.
The next evening I marched all the company, except the guard,including the boy corporals, by way of the reserved trail into thevalley of St. Anthony, and entered La Puerta from the western end.This was done for fear some advance-guard of the redmen might witnessour movement if we went by the usual way, and because so large a partymight leave a trail visible to the keenly observant enemy even bystarlight, and there would be moonlight before we could cross thevalley.
It was my intention to make an ambush in La Puerta. In the narrowestpart of that canon, where it was barely fifty yards wide, the wallsrose perpendicularly on each side. A hundred yards east and west ofthis narrowest portion of the pass were good places of concealment. Iplaced Sergeant Cunningham and thirteen men at the western end, andtook as many and the boys with me to the eastern.
The sergeant was instructed to keep his men perfectly quiet until thehead of the herd had passed their place of concealment, and then,under cover of the noise made by the moving animals, to slip down intothe canon, and when the rear of the herd came up make a dash acrossthe front of the Indians and begin firing, taking care not to hit us.
For myself, I intended to drop into the pass with my detachment whenthe Navajo rear had passed, deploy, and bag the whole party and thebooty.
It was a long and tiresome wait before the raiders appeared. The menhad been told that they might sleep, and many of them had availedthemselves of the permission.
The moon rose soon after ten o'clock, and made our surroundingsplainly visible in the rarefied atmosphere peculiar to the arid regionof the plains and Rockies. I sat on a bowlder and watched through thetedious hours until three o'clock, when Corporal Frank approached fromthe direction of the place where his brother was sleeping.
"What sound is that, Mr. Duncan?" he whispered.
I listened intently, and presently heard the distant bleating ofsheep, and soon after the deeper low of an ox.
"The Indians must be approaching," I replied. "You may stir up themen. Be careful that no noise is made."
I continued to listen, and after a long time noticed a sound like therushing of wind in a pine forest. It was the myriad feet of thecoming flocks and herds, hurrying along the grassy valley. The menbegan to assemble about me, all preserving perfect silence, listeningfor the approaching Indians.
Another half-hour passed, and over a roll in the surface of thevalley, revealed against the sky, looking many times their actual sizein the uncertain perspective, appeared two tall figures, whose nearerapproach showed to be mounted Indians piloting the captured stock,which followed close behind.
"Corporal Henry," I said, "drop carefully down into the trail andskirt closely along the wall until you come to Sergeant Cunningham'sposition, and tell him the Indians are close by. Tell him also toallow the two Indians in advance to pass unmolested."
I sent this order by the younger boy because I suspected he wasfeeling that Corporal Frank's expedition to Jemez, with the adventuresof the return trip, had given him a certain prominence to be envied. Imeant Henry should divide honors with his brother hereafter.
The little corporal silently disappeared beneath the wall, and a fewminutes afterwards the two Indians entered the defile, and the goatsand sheep, which had been spread widely over the open valley,scampered, crowded, and overleaped one another as they closed into thenarrow way. There seemed to be fully two thousand of them,intermingled with a motley herd of horses, mules, asses, and kine ofall sizes and descriptions, numbering three hundred or more, alldriven by a party of seventy-three Indians.
The cattle-thieves were evidently congratulating themselves uponhaving run the gantlet of the military camp and being out of danger,for they had abandoned the traditional reserve of the Indian race, andwere talking loudly and hilariously as they passed my wing of theambuscade. The Indians fell completely into the trap, and they and thecattle with them were captured without any difficulty.
During the winter our supply of grain ran short, and I sent a party,with the Cordovas as guides, to Jemez. They were unable to get throughthe snow, and the elder Cordova was so badly frost-bitten that inspite of all we could do he died in the camp.
Then I went with a larger party, and was successful. On June 1storders came to brea
k up the camp, and on the 9th the accumulatedstores of nineteen months' occupation were packed, and with a train often wagons we set out for Santa Fe.