The Guerilla Chief, and Other Tales

The riderless horse was roused, and could not be approached unless by a ruse, or after being run down.

I could think of no trick beyond that of stealing upon the mustang through some trees near which he had stopped, and I rode towards them.

It was to no purpose. The animal having the advantage in position, could see me as I advanced up the acclivity. Before I had got half way to the trees, it turned tail towards me; and, uttering a shrill scream, disappeared over the crest of the ridge.

Giving Moro a touch of the spur, I hastened on to the spot lately occupied by the escapado.

On reaching the summit I saw the mustang once more, but at a rather discouraging distance. It had made good use of the short time it had been out of sight – being now nearly half a mile off, and still going down the slope, which declined in the direction of the Rio del Plan.

I hesitated to follow. The pursuit might carry me far into the heart of the country, and away from the main road. My time was precious. I had orders to report at head-quarters at an early hour of the evening. Cavalry were at that time scarce in the American army; and even my “irregulars” might be required for some duty. I had not much discretionary control as to my movements; and, with these reflections crossing my mind, I determined to return to my troop.

Rather should I say, I was about determining to do so, when a circumstance occurred that decided me to go on.

As I sat in my saddle, watching the fugitive mustang – expecting it soon to disappear into the woods at the bottom of the hill, all of a sudden the animal came to a halt, and, turning around and tossing its head high in the air, once more gave utterance to a shrill “whigher.”

There was something in the neighing of the creature, as well as the movement that accompanied it, that seemed to say, “Come after me if you dare!”

At all events, I interpreted it as a challenge of this kind, and, in the excitement of the moment, I determined to accept it.

I was influenced, also, by the presence of my comrades, who were watching me from below.

Duty should have determined me to ride back to them, and resume our interrupted march; but the chagrin which I should have felt in so easily abandoning a project I had taken up with such a show of determination, outweighed my sense of duty; and, without further delay, I launched myself down the slope in pursuit of the fugitive horse.

As I drew near, the animal started off again; but, instead of taking to the timber – as I expected it would have done – it kept along the edge of the wood, in a south-easterly direction.

This was just what I wanted. I believed that on open ground – in a fair tail-on-end chase – I could overtake either it or any other mustang in Mexico; and my hope was that it might give me a fair chance without taking to cover.

Although I had hunted its wild congeners on the prairies of Texas, it proved the swiftest thing in mustang shape I had ever followed, and I soon began to doubt my capacity to overtake it.

After I had ridden more than a mile along the edge of the forest timber, the creature seemed as far ahead of me as ever! I was fast losing faith in the fleetness of Moro; for I knew that he had been going at top speed all the time, while the mustang appeared to have preserved the distance with which it had started.

“It has heels equal to yours, Moro,” I said mutteringly to my own horse. “It will be a question of bottom between you.”

Was Moro stung by my reproach? He seemed so. Perhaps my thoughts were his? At all events I could feel him perceptibly mending his pace; and perceived, moreover, that he was at last gaining ground upon the fugitive.

There was a natural reason for this, though I did not think of it at the moment. The first mile of the chase had been down hill – so much the worse for Moro. He was a true Arab; his ancestors had been denizens of the great plains of the Sahara – a race of steeds famed for fleetness on the level course. The mustang, on the contrary, was by birth and habits a mountaineer; and either up-hill or down hill would have been the track of his selection.

Going down the slope, he had maintained his distance, or nearly so; but now that the chase led along a level tract of country, he was losing it length by length – so perceptibly, that I began to grope around the pommel of my saddle, to assure myself of the readiness of my lazo.

Perhaps another mile was passed over in the chase, without any change taking place; except that I saw myself constantly closing in towards the heels of the riderless horse. Then a change did occur, and one altogether unexpected: the mustang suddenly disappeared from my sight!

Story 1, Chapter XIX

The Captor Captured

There was nothing mysterious in the disappearance of the fugitive. It had simply made a turn to the right, and plunged, as I thought, into the forest, along the edge of which I had been hitherto pursuing it.

I declined taking the diagonal direction. By doing so I might have headed the mustang; but I feared that the timber might mislead me, and I should lose the animal altogether.

I kept on, therefore, to the point where it had entered the wood.

On reaching this point, I perceived that I had been mistaken. The mustang had not entered the timber at all, but had turned into a sort of alley, or opening, among the trees – along which it was still going in full gallop, as when last seen.

I hesitated not to follow. I was by this time too much excited to think of consequences. Moro’s spirit was, like my own, roused to a pitch closely bordering upon the reckless; and on we went through the forest aisle – that appeared to grow gloomier the farther we penetrated under its shadows.

It was a forest of silk-cotton trees – as I could tell by the flossy down that lay scattered along the ground; but while noting this, I saw something else of far greater significance – something, in fact, that seemed to whisper to me, “You are riding fast, but you may be riding too far.”

The thing that suggested this thought was an observation I made at the moment. Though going at full gallop along what appeared to be a natural avenue between the trees, I could not help perceiving that the ground under my horse’s feet was thickly imprinted with tracks. They were the hoof-prints of horses that, not long before, must have passed over it, going in the same direction as myself I might have taken them for a wild herd – the cavallada belonging to some grazing hacienda – of which there were more than one among the half-prairie chapparals that surrounded me; but this conjecture was nipped in the bud, on my perceiving among the tracks more than one set made by horses, that had been handled by the herradero.

I knew that shod horses were rarely or never found in the grazing cavallada; and therefore the large troop that had preceded me through the forest opening, must have had saddles upon their backs, and men bestriding them.

I had gone a good way into the timber before arriving at this conclusion.

I need not say that it affected my further advance. The horsemen who had trodden the track before me must be enemies; they could not be friends. I was now full three miles from the main road – leading from Vera Cruz to Jalapa – and I knew that no troop of our cavalry had left it.

Besides, the shod-tracks I saw were those of mustangs, or Mexican horses – so much smaller in their circumference than those of the American horse, that I could note the difference, even in the glance allowed by the rapidity of my onward gallop.

Mexican cavalry must have passed over the ground, perhaps in retreat from the field of Cerro Gordo; but even so, they might not have proceeded far, since they could have but little fear of our following them in that crosscountry direction.

I was beginning to repent of my recklessness. Already my bridle-rein was, by a half-mechanical effort on my part, perceptibly becoming tighter along the neck of my steed, when the chase that had lured me so far, presented an aspect to seduce me still further.

I had been observing for some time that the mustang, although without a bridle in its mouth, carried one upon the pommel of its saddle. The reins were hanging in a loose coil over the “horn.”

This half explained to me why the animal had been going across country without a rider. Had it been bridled, I should have concluded that it had left its owner upon the field of Cerro Gordo, or parted with him in the hot pursuit succeeding that action.

But a bridle suspended from the saddle-bow – with bit, curb, and head-piece attached – forbade the conjecture; at the same time suggesting another: that the mustang must have made its escape from some temporary halting-place, where, like our own horses at Corral Falso, it had been unbridled to “bait.”

It was not this conjecture that influenced me to continue the chase; but the fact that the bridle-reins, suspended over the saddle-horn, had begun to trail among the animal’s feet, and promised, ere long, to prove an impediment to its flight. It was my observation of this that lured me on.

Chance, not prowess, was likely to give me the victory. But what mattered it, so long as there would be no one to witness the event?

My comrades would not know how I had effected the capture; and, instead of returning to them empty-handed – crest-fallen with chagrin – I should ride back in triumph; and so should Moro, the steel-grey mustang following at his heels.

Inspired by this pleasant anticipation, I once more struck the spur into the flank of my brave steed, which needed not such prompting. It was merely mechanical. Perhaps Moro knew as much, and forgave me for the unnecessary infliction.

Quite unnecessary, as it proved; for, at the very instant I was causing it, the riderless mustang, just as I had been wishing and expecting, became entangled in its trailing bridle, and rolled headlong upon the grass.

Before it could recover its legs, Moro was snorting by its side; and Moro’s rider, having forsaken his own steed, had looped the lazo around its neck, and secured it as a captive.

I was not left much time to congratulate myself on my good luck; for, in truth, it was luck, and only that, to which I had been indebted for the capture of the mustang.

Having secured the animal, as I supposed to a certainty, I was proceeding to re-insert its own bit between its teeth, in order the more easily to lead it along with me on the return journey to Corral Falso.

I was even full of self-gratulation – chuckling over the conquest I had accomplished – anticipating one of those pleasant little triumphs one feels on having performed a feat, however trifling, under the eyes of one’s everyday associates.

I believed I should have nothing more to do than attach the captured mustang to the ring of my saddle-tree, remount my own steed, and ride back to the “false enclosure.”

The “cup” was at my lips; I had forgotten the “slip.”