Redskin and Cow-Boy: A Tale of the Western Plains

There was a pause for a minute, and then Perez ran out.

"Domingo cannot open the door," he said. "They are moving the furniture against it, and the handle won't turn; he says there must be something wrong there."

"Fool! What occasion is there to say that, as if anyone could not see there was something wrong. Ah! here come the torches. Search all round the terrace, and ask whoever is on guard at the gate whether he has heard anything. We will see about breaking down the door afterwards."

There was a pause, and then the men came back again.

"There is no one on the terrace. Nobody has been through the gate."

Then there was a sudden, sharp exclamation. "See here, Vargas, there is a hole here. The bricks have been cut through." A fresh volley of oaths burst out, and then the man in authority gave his orders.

"Perez, do you and Martinez take your post here. Whether there is one or half a dozen inside they can only crawl out one at a time. You have only got to fire at the first head you see. The rest come inside and break open the door. We will soon settle with them."

"That is much better than I expected," the doctor said. "We have gained nearly five minutes. Now let them come as soon as they like. Bill, will you stop at this end and guard this cushion. When the fight begins they may try to push it aside and fire through at us. Let the upper end lean back a little against this chair. Yes, like that. Now, you see, you can look down, and if you see a hand trying to push the cushion aside, put a bullet through it; don't attend to us unless we are badly pressed and call for you."

There was now a furious onslaught made on the door from the outside, heavy blows being struck upon it with axes and crowbars.

"Now, Sim, you may as well speak to them a little," the doctor said. "When you have emptied your Colt, I will have a turn while you are loading."

The noise of the blows was a sufficient indication to Sim where the men wielding the weapons were standing. He had already recharged the two chambers he had emptied, and now, steadily and deliberately, he fired six shots through the panels of the door, and the yells and oaths told him that some of them had taken effect. There was a pause for a moment, and then the assault recommenced. The wood gave way beneath the axes and the door began to splinter, while a number of shots were fired from the outside. The doctor, however, was stooping low, and the others stood outside the line of fire, while Bill at his end was kneeling by the cushion. The doctor's revolver answered the shots, and when he had emptied his pistol Hugh took his place. By the furious shouts and cries without there was no doubt the fire was doing execution.

But the door was nearly yielding, and, just as Hugh began to fire, one of the panels was burst in. The lock, too, had now given, the piece of wood he had jammed into it having fallen out. The Mexicans, however, were unable to force their way in owing to the steady fire of the besieged, who had extinguished their candles, and had the advantage of catching sight of their opponents through the open door, by the light of the torches without. The besieged shifted their places after each shot, so that the Mexicans fired almost at random.

For ten minutes the fight had raged, when there was a sudden shout, followed by a discharge of firearms without. A cheer broke from the defenders of the room, and a cry of despair and fury from the Mexicans. The attack on the door ceased instantly, but a desperate struggle raged in the courtyard. This went on for three or four minutes, when the Mexicans shouted for mercy and the firing ceased. Then Don Ramon's voice was heard to call, "Where are you? Are you all safe?" There was a shout in reply. Then the furniture was pulled away and the splintered door removed, and as Don Ramon entered, his daughters, who had remained quietly in the corner while the fight went on, rushed into his arms.

The success of the surprise had been complete. The man on guard at the gate had left his post to take part in the struggle going on in the house, and the officer in command of the troops had gained the terrace unobserved. He at once surrounded the house, and the two men outside the opening had been shot down at the same moment that he, with a dozen of his men, rushed into the courtyard and attacked the Mexicans. None of these had escaped. Eighteen had fallen in the house, four had been killed outside, and twelve had thrown down their arms, and were now lying bound hand and foot in charge of the troops.

No sooner had Don Ramon assured himself that his daughters were safe and uninjured, than he turned to their rescuers and poured out his hearty thanks. They were not quite uninjured. Bill had escaped without a wound: Don Carlos was bleeding from a pistol ball which had grazed his cheek: Sim Howlett's right hand was disabled by a ball which had taken off his middle finger, and ploughed its way through the flesh of the forearm; Hugh had a bullet in the shoulder: the doctor's wound was the only serious one, he having been hit just above the hip. One of the soldiers had been killed, and five wounded while fighting in the court-yard. Leaving Don Ramon and his son to question the girls as to what had befallen them, and to tell them how their rescue had been brought about, the others went outside.

"Let's have a blaze, lieutenant." Sim said. "Most of us want dressing a bit, and the doctor is hit very hard. Let us make a good big fire out here on the terrace, then we shall see what we are doing. We were in a smother of gunpowder smoke inside."

The officer gave an order, and the soldiers fetched out billets of wood from the store and piled them on the fire on the terrace, and soon a broad sheet of flame leaped up.

"Now, then, let us look at the wounds." Sim went on. "Let us lift you up and make you a little comfortable, doctor. I am afraid that there is no doing anything with you till we get you down to the town. All you have got to do is to lie quiet."

"And drink, Sim."

"Ay, and drink. I am as thirsty myself as if I had been lost on an alkali plain. Bill, will you get us some drink, plenty of water, with just a drop of spirit in it; there is sure to be plenty in the house somewhere."

Royce soon returned with a large jar of cold water and a bottle of spirits.

"Only a few drops of spirits. Sim, if you don't want to get inflammation in that hand of yours."

"What had I better do for it, doctor?"

"Well, it will be better to have that stump of the middle finger taken out altogether. I could do it for you if I could stand and had a knife of the right shape here. As it is, you can't do better than wrap your hand up in plenty of cloths, and keep them wet, and then put your arm in a sling. What's yours, Lightning?"

"I am hit in the shoulder, doctor. I don't think that it is bleeding now."

"Well, you had better get Bill to bathe it in hot water, then lay a plug of cotton over the hole, and bandage it up; the doctor at the fort will get the ball out for you as soon as you get down there. He is a good man, they say, and, anyhow, he gets plenty of practice with pistol wounds at El Paso."

Royce did his best for his two friends. Then they all sat quietly talking until the young officer came out from the house.

"We have been searching it from top to bottom," he said. "There is a lot of booty stored away. I want you to have a look at the two leaders of these scoundrels; they have both been shot. Don Ramon said that he believed they were the murderers of his son, and that two of you might recognize them if they were, as you did a horse trade with them."

Hugh and Royce followed him to the other side of the house, where the bodies of the brigands who had fallen had been brought out and laid down. Two soldiers brought torches.

"I have no doubt whatever that these are the men," Hugh said after examining the bodies of the two leaders, who were placed at a short distance from the rest.

"Them's the fellows," Royce said positively, "I could swear to them anywhere."

"They are notorious scoundrels," the officer said, "and have for years been the scourge of New Mexico. They were away, for a time, two years ago. We had made the place so hot for them that they had to quit. We learned that from some of their gang whom we caught. They were away nearly a year; at least they were quiet. I suppose they carried on their games down in Texas, till they had to leave there too; and then thinking the affair had blown over they returned here. There has been a reward of ten thousand dollars for their capture anytime for the last five years. Properly that ought to be divided between you, as it is entirely your doing that they have been caught; but as the reward says death or capture, I suppose my men will have to share it with you."

"That is right enough," Sim Howlett said. "It will give us three or four hundred dollars apiece, and that don't make a bad week's work anyhow. When are you thinking of starting back, lieutenant, and what are you going to do with this house here?"

"I shall set fire to the house after we have got everything out of it. I guess it has been a den of brigands for the last ten years. I have sent four men down to keep guard at the mouth of the valley, and I expect we shall get all their horses in the morning. They must be somewhere about here. The prisoners will ride their own, and that will leave us twenty or more for carrying down the best part of the plunder. There is a lot of wine and other things that they have carried off from the haciendas that they plundered. I will send those down in carts with an escort of four of my men."

"Then I think we had better get a bed in one of the carts, and send my mate here down upon it. He has got a bullet somewhere in the hip, and won't be able to sit a horse."

"We will send him off the first thing in the morning," the officer said. "There is one of my own wounded to send down that way too."

"I will go with them as nurse," Sim said. "Get the cart to go straight through without a halt, lieutenant. The sooner my mate is in the hands of your doctor the better."

"I will see about it now," the lieutenant said; "no time shall be lost. I will send a sergeant and four men down to the village at once to requisition a cart and bring it here. It will be much better for them travelling at night. I will tell the men I send as escort to get hold of another cart in the morning and send them straight on."

"Thank you, lieutenant. That will be the best plan by far."

Don Ramon now came out from the house, and joined the group.

"In the name of my children, their mother, and myself, I thank you most deeply, señors, for the noble way in which you have risked your lives for their rescue. Had it not been for you, God knows whether I should have seen my daughters again, for I know that no oaths would have bound those villains, and that when they had obtained the ransom they would never have let my daughters free to give information that would have led to their capture. I shall always be your debtor, and the only drawback to my pleasure is that three of you have been wounded."

"The doctor here is the only one wounded seriously," Sim Howlett said. "My hand and arm will soon heal up, and the loss of a finger is no great odds anyway. I don't suppose Lightning's shoulder will turn out worse than my arm. As for the doctor, he is hit hard, but he has been hit hard so many times, and has pulled through it, that I hope for the best."

"Señor Hugh," Don Ramon said, "it was indeed a fortunate day for me when I questioned you concerning my son's horse, for it was to your advice and to your enlisting your friends on my behalf that I owe it chiefly that my daughters are with me this evening. I must leave it to their mother to thank you as you deserve."

Two hours later the doctor and one of the wounded soldiers were placed on a bed laid at the bottom of a cart, and started under the escort of two soldiers, Sim Howlett accompanying them. As the girls had expressed the greatest disinclination to remain in the house where they had been prisoners and where so much blood had just been shed, they with the rest of the party returned with a sergeant and six soldiers carrying torches up the valley to the wood, where the horses had been left. Here two fires were soon blazing, and the girls were not long before they were asleep, wrapped in blankets that had been brought up from the house.

The following morning Hugh and Royce handed over their horses for the use of the girls, who were both accomplished horsewomen, and, mounting the horses of Sim and the doctor, they started with Don Ramon, his son, and daughters. Fifteen miles before they got to El Paso they passed the cart with the wounded men, and Hugh said he would ride into the fort to ensure the doctor being there when they arrived. Royce and he accompanied Don Ramon and his party to the gate of the hacienda, which they reached just at sunset. The Mexican was warm in his entreaties to Hugh to become his guest until his wound was healed, but he declined this on the ground that he should be well cared for at the fort, and should have the surgeon always at hand.

"I shall be over the first thing in the morning to see you," Don Carlos said. "I shall want my own face strapped up, and I warn you if the doctor says you can be moved I shall bring you back with me."

Royce accompanied Hugh to the fort. The commandant was highly gratified when he heard of the complete success of the expedition, and still more so when he learned that the two notorious brigands for whom he and his troopers had so often searched in vain were among the killed. Hugh was at once accommodated in the hospital, and the surgeon proceeded to examine his wound. It was so inflamed and swollen with the long ride, he said, that no attempt could be made at present to extract the ball, and rest and quiet were absolutely necessary. Two hours later the cart arrived. The doctor was laid in a bed near that of Hugh, the third bed in the ward being allotted to Sim Howlett. The doctor's wound was pronounced by the surgeon to be a very serious one.

It was some days before, under the influence of poultices and embrocations, the inflammation subsided sufficiently for a search to be made for the bullet in Hugh's shoulder. The surgeon, however, was then successful in finding it imbedded in the flesh behind the shoulder-bone, and, having found its position, he cut it out from behind. After this Hugh's progress was rapid, and in a week he was out of bed with his arm in a sling. The doctor, contrary to the surgeon's expectations, also made fair progress. The bullet could not be found, and the surgeon, after one or two ineffectual attempts, decided that it would be better to allow it to remain where it was. The stump of Sim's finger was removed the morning after he came in, and the wound had almost completely healed by the time that Hugh was enabled to leave the hospital, a month after entering it.

Don Ramon and his son had ridden over every day to inquire after the invalids, and had seen that they were provided with every possible luxury, and he carried off Hugh to the hacienda as soon as the surgeon gave his consent to his making a short journey in the carriage. Donna Maria received him as warmly as if he had been a son of her own, and he had the greatest difficulty in persuading her that he did not require to be treated as an invalid, and was perfectly capable of doing everything for himself.

For a fortnight he lived a life of luxurious idleness, doing absolutely nothing beyond going over in the carriage every day to see how the doctor was going on. Hugh saw that he was not maintaining the progress that he had at first made. He had but little fever or pain, but he lay quiet and silent, and seemed incapable of making any effort whatever. Sim Howlett was very anxious about his comrade.