ADVENTURES ON THE FRONTIERS OF TEXAS AND MEXICO. No. II. BY CHARLES WINTER FIELD. EVENTS now taking place in the region of Texas and Mexico, the peculiar position of our Government toward those countries, and the near prospect-if not of a long war-of numerous fierce skirmishes at least, among the strange mixture of wild Indians, Mexicans, negroes, half-breeds, Spaniards, and Americans, inhabiting that region-united with the singular magnificence and freshness of the vast scenery-combine to form a field, at this time, of equal attraction to the sketcher and interest to the American reader. Some years ago-five or sixwe were occupied, as our readers know, in certain graceless and long wanderings through those parts of the world. The incidents and characters we encountered are still entirely fresh in our memory; and as they are completely illustrative of the present condition of things through all that country, we have resolved to throw together a connected series of sketches, comprising the sum of our experience. If they prove as interesting to the reader as the recollection of them has always been to us, it will be sufficient. In the course of them we design to present a full view of the scenery-both mountain and prairie-the character of Texan civilization and especially the nature of the strangely mingled population of Mexico, and the wild tribes-Comanches and others-that have thoroughly maintained their savage independence among the Cordilleras and the immense deserts at their bases. We would add that some passages have been before published in an ephemeral form-but nothing was ever finished. We intend now to present the whole connectedly and in order The commencement may be found in a sketch, in the March No. of the American Review, introducing ourself and the reader to that reckless and curious brotherhood, the Bexar Rangers. We propose now-in a gossiping way we have-to follow up that "First Day with the Rangers" with succeeding incidents covering a whole week. After the affair with Gonzalese-as there seemed to be nothing else on hand-I concluded to go back alone to the Rancho of Col. P, who lived about eighteen miles east of Bexar, and spend a few days with him. As we did not mention this personage before, it will be well enough now to make known who he was. The Col. was an old acquaintance. Far away in our callow boyhood we remember him as among the oldest sons of a family, as remarkably prolific as vicious, and which occupies a not inconspicuous place in the annals of Southern Kentucky, (we propose to do full justice to them at some future time.) Our earliest recollection of him is as a gawky, large-limbed, and awkward youth, with sandy hair, a pimpled face, and excessively shy of "the girls." We next remember to have heard some confused story about a love affair of his, with a sly, but extremely plain and prudish young maiden-portionless withal. This last was a sin not to be forgiven by the merciless father-and the youth disappeared very mysteriously, not to be heard of for several years. We next remember him as an athletic "whiskerando," just "returned from his wars," with wild stories of strange and marvelous romance. Many a time in the twilight we sat upon the steps of his father's mansion, and listened in breathless eagerness to his curious tales!--for all about Mexicans and Southron Indians was vague to us then. Much of our restless passion for adventure took its origin, and grew into our life, under the stimuli of these strange stories of his. Now that I found myself, after infinite vicissitudes, approaching the house of this man who had exerted so strong an influence upon my boyish imagination, (for he returned again to Texas, and for nearly twenty years had maintained his position upon its extremest frontier, ) I found myself unconsciously recurring to the childish conjurations his recitals had called up. What fantastic images were they which then filled my fancy, of a country where such scenes could occur-of a people capable of deeds So savage as he described! I recalled those pictures vividly enough now, for here was the reality to contrast them with. The lights and shadows were strong and deep, in good earnest, which had composed them--and it was amusing to compare them with the truth around me. Then I had before me a dim twilight region of desolate plains, rocks gaping in ravines, and piled in shaggy hills, with dark gaunt figures, bloody and fierce, gliding to and fro; while the red gleam of fire showed now and then the work of death they reveled in, lighting up the hideous grin and grotesque action of their ferocious joy and now, I could not help smiling, as I lifted my eyes to look around upon as beaming and cheerful a landscape as ever the clear sunlight flooded. It was the very ideal of harmonious repose silence audible in beauty-where all the pulsings of great Nature seemed to be chordant with, and led by the loud throb of our own hearts. Though it was January, the scene was surprisingly pleasant; the rolling prairie I traversed was relieved of monotony by little islands, or motts, as they are called, of the evergreen liveoak, scattered clustering here and there. The grass, though slightly browned, was just sufficiently so to afford a sober contrast to the intense glistening green of the oak leaves, whose tints were heightened by the silvery frost-work of long moss, which set them off. The air was of that peculiar transparency Italy boasts, and seemed to be light itself, not a medium-while through it the herds of deer, though a mile off, were defined with startling minuteness, even to the detail of their careless repose, or the gestures of surprise in the pricked ear and quick stamp of a fine foot upon the sod, and hasty grouping, as the stranger came in view. The tall snowy cranes gesticulated, with lithe thin necks, their wonder, and stalked with slow stately steps toward each other; seeming, as they clustered on the ridge of the prairie undulations, to be weaving strange figures against the sky, with their restless necks crossing, as they ejaculated their odd solemn croak. The sand-rats, their tails stuck straight in the air with fright, shot into their burrows, and then turned round, poking their striped noses out to peep. The little grass-sparrow flitted with a sharp chirp before me, while the sagacious hawk, which had been floating over head all the morning, watching till I should frighten up these little gentry, would dip, with a quick sigh of wings, at the doubly-frighted wretch, which would drop like a stone in the long grass. This calm life-it was delicious! The many pleasant sights and pleasant sounds-the bright and gay repose of being-they sunk into and pervaded my whole life with an exquisite sense of joy and peace. Nature's God, in this most glorious woof "Of the garment that we know him by," stood revealed in everything, "From the small breath Of all new buds unfolding-from the meaning Of Jove's large eyebrow, to the tender greening Of April meadows," here was a holy revelation that filled me with love and worship. I could not realize that this soft picture had ever been, or could ever be, defaced by those harsh discords the fatal spirit of humanity carries with it always. But a little time was to illustrate to my experience that, indeed, "we know not what a day may bring forth"-that even in this wide merry sunshine, in these cool delightful shadows, Death and Fear could show their ghastly faces-that, " alternating Elysian brightness with deep and dreadful night,"* life everywhere, in cities and on plains, whirls on the same. This man whose house I was approaching, was to exhibit to me a new phase of character. Nurtured in high civilization, he had abjured the brotherhood of community as tame and sickly, wedding himself, body and soul, to strife. So strangely had the unnatural circumstances of his position operated upon his temper, that life itself was no longer a pleasant consciousness to him, without the eternal necessity of struggling with death in a hundred forms, and the half savage exultation of the thought that he purchased, from hour to hour, his right to live, with his own prompt heart and steady arm. I myself had begun to feel something of that haughty swelling of the veins-that answering of the heart, in hot surges to the brow-which familiarity with danger, and the necessity of self-reliance produces; and I felt a sort of yearning to trace in this man, whom I remembered with the freshness of my own years upon him, the stern lines of these new feelings, legitimately hardened and deepened by the habit of many years. The faint trail I had been following now brought me suddenly upon rather a fine scene-a "Bottom Prairie," as it is termed, sloped from the last undulation of the upland, on which I stood, down to the banks of the San Antonio river. The musquit-grass, covering this basin, was a fresher green than the upland grass; * Chorus of the Angels in Goethe's "Faust." while the musquit-timber, a gnarled and scrubby growth, differed much from the grand live-oak, and was destitute of moss. Facing me, and on the immediate bank of the river, were three stockade-houses, or small " Ranchos." I rode up to the middle one, conscious that there was something about it, I could not tell what, that attracted me as bearing a more American air. I was not disappointed; a white man came to the door. It could be no one but Col. P.; but how greatly altered. As I climbed the five or six blocks which served for mounting the picket, and advanced to his door, I had time for a good look, and to recall the past. This man was a thickset, uncouthly-gaited, burlylooking monster; a great brush of fiery hair standing out "horrent" above a face, the skin of which seemed now to be one entire freckle, except where the paler seam of a large scar marked it across the cheek. His eye, a whitey-gray, was cordial enough in its expression, and so was the bear-squeeze of his huge hand; but there was a peculiarity about his lips I instantly noticed-they were so stiff and double as to render it impossible for him to smile, and the abortive grin he got up conveyed no expression of pleasantness, but only served to show great yellow teeth, and reminded me of a mastiff over a bone. All my life long, I have felt an instinctive aversion to men who laugh in pain! from whom joy comes forth in travail! There was no time for analyzing instincts; for, as soon as I made myself known, the Colonel dragged me into the house, pouring out a string of his sort of welcomes -exclamations of surprise, and questions "What the devil brought you all the way out here by yourself? You've chawed the apron-string like a wolf's cub, I see, and cut! I thought, my youngster, when you used to sit with your chops stretched, listening to me that time I went in to the States, you meant to give the old ones trouble some day! Didn't come all the way by yourself?" looking fixedly at me. "Didn't you see the Comanches? wan't you scared some? Rubbed off the gooseberry by this time! done chawing sallad, aint you? But what brought you here? cut a stick, eh! left in a jiffy" "No, no!" said I; old fellow, stop! and I'll tell you. It was that same love of deviltry and dislike of the babyisms of home which sent you afloat in the first instance, that has sent me here now! I came to see some fun! I am sick of the tame way they live in Kentucky!" 66 "Like you all the better! Fudge! who'd live on pap always? Give you man's meat here: rough country, rough doings, but it does make men! We live, sure enough, here! No sickening squirts can come out here! Lord! what would a spindle-leg strapped thing, coateed and cloth'd, do here, where we have a skrimmage every week? First Mexicans, then Indians, come on. Brush the YellowBellies. Then the Copperheads come sneaking down: they kill my horses, the villains! kill my hogs. Just about rows enough going on to keep a man's blood up, and practice plumb. Get the green out of your eye as quick as you can, and I'll make a good shot of you. We call it good shooting when they don't kick! Did a sweet thing the other day, over yonder by some deep gullies. Had missed a hog every week or so-suspected some of those straggling thieves of Mexicans. Was sitting at the door one evening, fixin' up "sixshooter," and I saw a streak of smoke over there among the trees. Thinks I, maybe that's another hog. So I traveled over there, Indian fashion; and there they were two ragged Yellow-Bellies-happy as lords, while they cut up my white sow. Their fire was right on the edge of the gully, and they looked like two monkeys in a tickling match, they were so happy. Thinks I, mighty pleasant surprise I'll give you. Bang! One tumbled over stiff-for I hit the back of his head; and the other-I must have laughed out loud, it was done so quick! Did you ever see a turtle slide off a slick rock where he had been sunning? or a spring-frog take the mud? I tell you it was nothing to the way that Mexican flirted himself off the bank into the gully. It beat all the quick figuring I ever saw. By the time I got there he was out of sight, for these gullies are fifty feet, some of 'em, and very twistifying. I took the flint and steel out of the dead one's pocket they never have any thing else worth taking; kicked out the chunks, and took up my hog, and left him there for the wolves." So he rattled on, stringing incident upon incident of his wild life with a ferocious sort of gusto, that-full of the spirit of such scenes as I imagined 1 was—I could not help acknowledging to myself a sort of cold revulsion creeping upon me-a chill shudder, as 1 recognized in his rattling, rambling talk, the character of incidents which were to make up the ideal of "fun" I had foolishly risked so much to realize. There was brutality rather than the expected romance in it all. But as dinner now made its appearance, I had no leisure for further cogitation. I had made the plunge, and "sink or swim, live or die," came back to me from schoolboy days. Our frontier meal of beef, sauced with appetite and the "grease" of fried pork, and seasoned to scalding heat with red pepper, with milk to neutralize its blistering effects upon our throats, and thin Mexican cakes, called "Tortillias," was brought in by the Col.'s Mexican "woman." She was his fifth-for he only kept them so long as it suited his most autocratic pleasure-and was rather pretty, with Indian features, olive complexion, and coarse black hair; her large black eye wearing that bright animal flash upon the iris peculiar to the lower orders of Southern women. She seemed very good-natured and humble, and obeyed her despot as though she were a part of the "joints and motives" of his body, and equally subject to his will. Two Peons-the lowest grade of Mexican population, and slaves to the right of life and limb-made up what remained of the household, except an old crone, mother of the "woman," whom I had scarcely noticed, crouched with those same animal eyes, undimmed, gleaming from a dark corner of the room. They all waited at a respectful distance until we got through; and straightway, before we were fairly seated in the other room-I on a buffalo robe, the Colonel on a stool-the tongues of the quartette were suddenly loosed in a torrent of gibberish; the key-note carried in a loud, insolent tone, by one of the Peons, a little, shriveled, sharp-faced knave, whom I had noticed with difficulty restraining himself in our presence. The Colonel told me the fellow was 66 bragging." "He's the greatest coward that ever bent grass," said he; but he can brag the knot off a musquit limb, and that's tough a little! But it's the way with all the Yellow-Bellies; they beat the world bragging, and let their women whip 'em." We took a look at the premises. They were surrounded by a high picket-fence of musquit logs, set on end as close as the timber would permit-including a cow-pen-and all about two acres. The house, a long square, built as the fence, except a plaster of moss and mud filling the interstices, and a covering of bulrushes. The Colonel said his was like all the other small Ranchos of the country-of which there were two in view, above and below us; one inhabited by a common "Ranchero," with his forty or fifty hangers-on, the other by a young American Renegade, who, though he had once been respectable, the Colonel thought had disgraced himself, as he indignantly expressed it, by marrying a dirty drab of a Mexican woman. Marry 'em, indeed! To disgrace the name of Texan, and his family, by marrying the creatures!" "Good," said I, "Colonel; the holy Catholic Church had nothing to do in banns and fees between you and your five women, 1 66 suppose? ?" Church, indeed! I trouble the pudding-paunched priests occasionally for a little black mail,' when they happen in my way, but never about women." "Frontier morals, Colonel ?" "Yes!" (with one of those stiff grins,) "we do as we dare' here, and six-shooter is my license, certificate, and deed. I learned farther, that about a mile and a half up the river on the other side, was the Rancho of Madame Cavillo, on a much grander scale than these. "She is the most perfect old she-devil," said the Colonel, "that everyou heard of. There isn't a man or woman old enough in the whole country to more than guess at her age. She looks like an apple left on the tree all winter, in the face; but I tell you, the Mexicans fear her worse than they do the priests, She's got the fire of seven thunder-snags in her yet-isn't afraid of anything but priests, and is very rich. She has seven thousand head of cattle and horses-nobody can tell how much land—and about five hundred Peons about her. She hates me, and is afraid of me, too. She's gone now to Confessional across the Rio Grande she does this once a-year to wash the blood off. She takes two or three hundred men for a guard. I think she will be back in a day or two, and she will give a grand Fandango-always does this when she returns. 1 shall have fun, if this cursed nephew of her's Agatone, doesn't return." His expression of gossiping good-humor, changed to one of singular ferocity as he mentioned that name. 66 Suspecting something in the wind, I inquired further. "Who is this Agatone?" He commands a band of fifty or sixty cut-throats, who are always stealing and murdering from here to the Rio Grande. The little shriveled villain! (from between his set teeth) I owe him a few good turns. He has been trying a long time to assassinate me-ha! ha! ha!" And he doubled himself down in a sort of spasm in bringing forth this rasping laugh. Ha ha ha! it would have done yer stomach good to see me pick one of his men off that bluff!" pointing as he spoke to the steep bluff bank on the other side of the river. "It was a good shot! I was standing somewhere about here: you see the villains swam over during the night, and lay upon their bellies behind the low thorn bushes you see there at the bottom of the yard, waiting until I should come out in the morning. It happened I went to a Fandango that night and danced until nearly day; so as I did not make my appearance, about ten o'clock they began to think I was not at home, and concluded to leave; just as they were jumping in to swim, my woman came to the door and saw them—she came yelling in to me. I had just awoke-sprang out with sixshooter in my hand-by the time I got here, one of them had reached the top, saw me and dodged. The other was scrambling in a hurry, catching, as he climbed, at the vines that hung over the bluff's edge-I let drive at him! ha! ha! it was beautiful to see him first spring up-then let go-and kicking against the bluff spring right off in the air. Lord! what a yell he gave-and such a pretty face he made, I see it now turned towards me wrinkled with fright and hate as he went down into the water! Ooh!" sucking in his breath, "it was delicious! if it had only been Agatone, I should have fainted!" slapping me with a heavy hand, in his ecstacy, upon the shoulder "My boy, ain't such things worth living for? ha!" I can't say my assent to the Colonel's idea of the "greatest happiness principle," was quite so much from the heart as he could have desired, but he pleased me; the excitement of loathing while I studied such a monster, from the very novelty of the thing, had a strange charm for me. This soul-moving relish of his in talking of death-this dwelling with fond appetite upon the revolting detail of cold murders, filled me with something like that restless half-pleasant awe, the ghost-stories, the "raw-head-and-bloody-bones" of winternight legends, used to bring to my childhood. It was perfectly new to me and a stonishing, and 1 determined to study this man, and see more of the circum stances which could have so ossified his nature. After supper, he recurred for the first time to old association and mutual friends. Here I was again stump'd, for my reading and experience heretofore had taught me, and I certainly expected to find it realized in this case-" that no man, however monstrous the development of his passions, however hardened and distorted, would be found insensible to the gentle memories of innocence and childhood;" that these" ever loved, fresh and gentle wooers, these spring airs of the desert past would always find in the scathed soil some germ with life enough to wake into bloom." I had always clung by this, for it is a pretty and hopeful sentiment-but in this man I could see not the slightest emotion, while I eagerly tried to call it out, in dwelling upon homestead scenes-on a mother, sisters, faithful friends-ay! even an old love-and there I hoped I saw some lighting up, but it was faint: the same coarse, careless tone being resumed, in an instant, after a slight quaver of what might have been called tenderness. Had there been any necessity for the man's acting a part with me, I should not have been surprised at this insensibility, but there was not the slightest; he never dreamt of "acting" in his life he was too stolid and hard for that, and indeed evidently wearied of the subject, he turned off and brought out the darling of his heart, "six-shooter," and then all his soul came into his manner at once, as he dilated upon her merits-the wonderful feats accomplished by her in his hands and those of others. Soon after, in spite of all the novelty and excitement of the circumstances I found myself surrounded by, I was coiled upon my buffalo-robe and sound asleep.* The next day the Texan came out to join us. He had waited to hear some positive news of the negro boy whose escape we have spoken of. Some Mexican Traders came in, who reported him safe enough on the other side of the Rio Grande. The Texan had never seen a Comanche fight, though familiar enough with fights of every other character. He looked forward to one as to the pleasant realization of a long anticipated joy, and even the savor of the smoking dinner the "woman" had prepared, seemed only to share his attention while he eagerly questioned the Colonel as to the pro * See "First day with the Rangers," in the March number. |