Scalp Camp was christened this camp, of April 25 and 26, at the Agua de Tomaso or Thomas Spring, latitude 35° 13′ 08″, longitude 116° 23′ 28″, on the Old Spanish Trail in the northern part of the San Bernardino Desert, southeastern California. Ahead upon the trail was the camping-spot of the Archilette, where had been made the attack upon the caravan camp. Thither by forced march proceeded the company. The Mexican Fuentes informed that the first stretch awaiting was a dry journey of forty or fifty miles. To avoid the heat of day the company pushed on at once, as the sun was setting. While northeastwardly they travelled, by the warm moonlight were revealed to them many white skeletons of horses and mules, strewn along the way; and this was the sign of a dry jornada. Forty-three miles were put behind ere halt was made, before dawn, at a salty, swampy place, illy fitted to refresh. The moon had sunk; but here also the light of dawn disclosed skeletons of animals which had perished from weakness.
On the morning of April 29 they were traversing[277] a singularly silent, blasted country of blackish ridges and twisted, squat, repulsive cactus.
“The Archilette is just beyond, se?or capitan,” directed Fuentes.
With eyes and ears alert the advance quickened their pace. From a low ridge of bare rocks Fuentes pointed to a spot of brush and greenness in a sandy basin before.
“That is it,” he said.
“Come, boys!” urged the lieutenant. “Charge it.” And down at a gallop, rifles and carbines ready, they galloped—the lieutenant on his gray Sacramento keeping the front, Kit racing him hard, Godey and Tabeau and Talbot and Jacob, eager Oliver and anxious Fuentes and little Pablo, and all, thudding to overtake.
But the spring of the Archilette lay unresponsive, seemingly without life. Only, before a willow lean-to which had been a shelter was the mutilated body of Pablo’s father, the Hernandez, with both legs and one arm missing. He had stood stanch in defence of his wife. Near by, in another willow lean-to, was the body of Santiago Giacome, a powerful frame, also pierced with arrows. The savages long had departed, and they must have borne with them the mother of Pablo and the wife of Fuentes.
While the party were sorrowfully regarding, out from the bushes crept a small Mexican lap-dog—suddenly, with glad yelps to leap upon Pablo’s legs and[278] lick his hand. The Hernandez dog he was; and not having been noted by the Indians he had remained in lonely vigil here, at this dreadful place, watching and waiting. How glad he was to see Pablo his young master! Pablo picked him up, and carrying him walked along wailing, distracted:
“Mi padre! Mi madre! Ay, mi padre y mi madre! (My father! My mother! Oh, my father and my mother!)”
Fuentes wrapped his head in his serape, thus to mourn.
None in the company wished to stay here, but there was no other camping-spot, and the animals must have water. The lieutenant wrote upon a piece of paper a brief story of the tragedy, and by a cleft stick planted it so that the approaching caravan might know what had befallen their comrades. The Archilette was renamed Hernandez Spring—Agua de Hernandez. It is in extreme Southwestern Nevada.
The march was waxing cruelly severe upon the animals. By water and grass were they grudgingly nourished, but by the rocks of the innumerable ridges were their hoofs cut to the quick. Mule and horse dropped daily. When they died by pain and exhaustion, or must be shot, Fuentes the Mexican quickly cut off mane and tail for hair bridles, saddle-girths, etc.
Amidst increasing hills, abloom with cacti and acacia, and over a low snowy mountain into another skeleton-strewn dry jornada, of almost sixty miles,[279] rode the Frémont and Carson men. By chewing the acid sour dock, and by sucking at the pulpy bisnaga cactus known to Fuentes the Mexican, they moistened their thirst; until at midnight the California mules, breaking into a run, gave warning of water scented more than a mile before. This was the Rio de los Angeles, or River of the Angels, tributary to the Virgin River which itself flows south into the canyoned Colorado.
Upon the bluffy bank of the Rio de los Angeles, to-day styled only the Muddy River, must camp be pitched. At daybreak Indians swarmed down. With the first sight of them, frightened Pablo and his little dog ran to hide in a tent and Fuentes the man exclaimed, in furious Spanish:
“There they are! The murderers! The same people who killed at the Archilette! Curses on them!”
A bare-footed, bare-skinned, under-sized tribe they were, ill-looking, their hair tied in a knot atop their sharp, restless-eyed faces. Many of them carried hooked sticks, with which they hauled out lizards and other vermin from holes, to cook them and eat them. All the men bore the long, stout desert bow, and wore a quiver bristling with thirty or forty arrows fitted to points of volcanic glass, or obsidian.
Every Indian who would enter the lines of the camp was told to leave his bow and arrows outside; but defying the orders an old chief and several companions[280] forced their way in, bow in one hand, two or three arrows ready in the other, and quiver at back.
“Vamose! Puk-a-chee! Get out! Outside!” were volleyed at him the cries; and he impudently put his fingers in his ears, as sign that he could not hear.
Gazing about the camp, he counted on his fingers the inmates—including a mule that was being shod! He counted twenty-two.
“Why, there are none of you,” he jeered. “But of us——” and he pointed to the hills and mountains, “there are many, many.” He pointed to the rifles, of which he appeared to think little. “You have those.” He twanged his bow. “We have these!”
Up sprang Kit Carson, who had been sitting near. His tanned face was white-hot, his grayish eyes flamed bright blue. The filthy Indian’s contemptuous, ignorant words had stung him to the quick. He was the Kit Carson of the Kiowa fight, at the wagon-train corral on the Santa Fé Trail. Not since then had Oliver witnessed him so angry.
He had cocked his rifle; with one hand he clenched it, and the other hand he shook under the Indian’s nose.
“Don’t say that, old man!” he bade, in short, stern tone. “Don’t say that, unless you want to die.”
He spoke in English; and the old chief recoiled, his eyes darting the venom of a snake’s, as if he understood.
Oliver stepped forward, ready to help the man he[281] loved. Through the camp sped the click of gun-locks.
“Steady, Kit,” now warned the lieutenant, alarmed. “We’re avoiding trouble, remember. He’s only an ignorant Digger.”
“No Injun, Digger or not, can come into camp whar I am an’ talk that way. We’re boss in this camp; it’s our camp,” declaimed Kit, still angry. “They can insult us from outside, ’cause that air Injun way; but if we once get to letting ’em in, with arms, they’ll massacree us, sure. This ought to be stopped right at the start, captain.” And again he applied himself to the hateful old chief. “Get out! Go!” Pointing, with stamp of foot, while he relaxed not his glare, Kit Carson at that moment looked to Oliver as fancy once had painted him—eight feet tall and four broad.
Slightly wilting, but defiant, the old chief and his squad reluctantly slunk away.
“Well,” commented the lieutenant, when all breathed easier, “that old fellow was nearer his end than he ever will be again until he meets it.”
Several horses and mules had been left behind, on the trail, to be brought along, later, after they had rested. Thomas Fitzpatrick, who had gone back after them, now reported that they had been killed by the Indians, cut up, and the fragments spread upon the brush, to cur............