Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/14

29, 1861.] “The vengeance has come!—it has come upon him, m’m! It has come now!”

The girl was indeed terrified, and it was with difficulty that she could bring out the words.

Terror is contagious, and Mrs. Lygon clutched at the arm of Henderson, and faintly demanded her meaning.

“They are in the empty house together, Mrs. Lygon!—there will be murder, if it has not been done already!”

“Who?—who are, girl?—speak.”

“Adair, m’m, and Mr. Urquhart has rushed in to him. There will be murder now, if ever in this world!”

crossing the Red River at the little village of Preston, twenty-five miles south of the fort—at which point the settlements finally ceased, and a quasi-civilisation was succeeded by utter barbarism—the route of the expedition took a south-west direction over a vast undulating plain covered with a rank herbage of coarse stubble-like grass, interspersed with mimosas and various brilliant but scentless flowers peculiar to the prairies. In the occasional hollows, which had uniformly a southern determination towards the Trinity River, thickets of vines heavy with grapes, wild-plum, and cotton-trees, fringed the beds of trivial streams, generally dried up by the fierce heat of summer, or existent only in pools, stagnant or trampled into loathsome mire by preceding detachments. Two remarkable tracts, twenty miles wide, but extending hundreds of miles in a meridional direction, were successively traversed. These, which are known to trappers, hunters, and frontier-folk, as the Cross-Timbers, being characterised by a singular regularity of outline, have originated a theory that, at some remote period, they were planted by the hand of man. Beyond, the country rose continuously, its monotonous aspect being varied toward the Brazos River by occasional copses of stunted oaks and thickets of the musquit, a thorny acacia, perhaps identical with that which yields the arabic gum of commerce. The only visible dwellers in the wilderness were a few shy grouse, or prairie-fowl, and wary deer, that foiled all the craft of the inexperienced hunter; innumerable rattlesnakes, whose friendliness to man was evinced by a disagreeable habit of insinuating themselves into the folds of the blanket in which he slumbered and by clustering around his watch-fire; and legions of famished prairie-wolves that, though absolutely undiscoverable by day, rushed forth at dark from mysterious retreats to prowl around the camp, and startle the weary traveller with fiendish cries.

The transit of this inhospitable region was effected with as much consideration for the convenience of the soldiery as was consistent with military discipline, and with that discreet caution suggested by the undoubted proximity of savage enemies. For various incidents apparently trivial—smouldering embers, an incautious footstep, a discarded moccassin, the morning dew brushed from the grass—assumed a strange significance to experienced eyes, as indicative of continuous observation by vigilant and ubiquitous foes, eager to profit by any inadvertence or intermission of watchfulness, but far too wary rashly to expose themselves to the grape and canister wherewith the brass howitzers were prudentially loaded.

Réveillée beat ordinarily at three, ere yet the stars had paled. Within five minutes after that, the soldiers thus abruptly startled from repose had assumed their attire, buckled on their accoutrements, and stacked arms by companies between the lines of tents in the temporary encampment. Ten minutes later, the knapsacks had been packed and the tents rolled up. A quarter of an hour sufficed to arrange these and the scanty baggage of the officers in the waggons of the respective companies. This having been effected, the force sat down on the dewy grass, and, by the light of a few candle-ends stuck here and there amid the wild-flowers, drank their hot coffee and ate their biscuit in moody or sleepy silence. Meanwhile, amid a tempest of whip-crackings and polyglot vituperation of refractory mules, the loaded waggons successively passed away from the careless eyes of the reclining soldiery into the vague obscurity of the prairie, over which the train extended in a continuous line two miles in length. Then, faint streaks of grey on the horizon heralding the advancing dawn, the drums beat the Assembly, the companies fell in, assumed their arms, and, marching in succession by the flank, pressed onward in a dark column to take the advance of the expectant train, leaving beside the expiring watchfires of the abandoned camp empty whiskey-bottles and greasy playing-cards strayed from their packs as indices of the advance of civilisation.

The brisk motion quickening their blood, the cool morning air exhilarating their sense, and the advent of daylight imparting confidence to their steps, the soldiers soon shook off the languor which had oppressed them at starting, and, dismissing from their thoughts all other anxieties but that as to the character of the next evening’s camp, lighted their short pipes, and, cheered by the fragrant fumes and interested by the rapid changes of scene consequent upon their advance, jogged easily on, whiling away the hours as they best might with uncouth jests and naive speculations on what was strange around them. But in this, as in the journey of life, those most gay and confident at morn become grave and sad enough ere even. Those seemingly best qualified for effort evinced in general least endurance; for not thews and sinews, but constancy and tenacity of purpose, render man truly strong. Hour succeeded hour, and when the sun was in the zenith, and the canteens were exhausted one by one, the weaker and less resolute strayed from the ranks amid the jeers of their firmer comrades, and either limped dejectedly after the column, or, intentionally lingering in the rear until overtaken by the advancing train, crawled furtively into the waggon of some friendly teamster, soon, however, to be ignominiously ejected by inflexible authorities; for none were allowed the privilege of entering the train but the sick and the cooks of companies