The Headless Horseman Part 12

"Another snake, yer hanner! Och! be me sowl! a far wickeder sarpent than the wan Misther Stump killed. It's bit me all over the breast. I feel the place burnin' where it crawled across me, just as if the horse-sh.o.e.r at Ballyballagh had scorched me wid a rid-hot iron!"

"Durn ye for a stinkin' skunk!" shouted Zeb Stump, with his blanket about his shoulder, quite filling the doorway. "Ye've twicest spiled my night's sleep, ye Irish fool! 'Scuse me, Mister Gerald! Thur air fools in all countries, I reck'n, 'Merican as well as Irish--but this hyur follerer o' yourn air the durndest o' the kind iver I kim acrost.

Dog-goned if I see how we air to get any sleep the night, 'less we drownd _him_ in the crik fust!"

"Och! Misther Stump dear, don't talk that way. I sware to yez both there's another snake. I'm shure it's in the kyabin yit. It's only a minute since I feeled it creepin' over me."

"You must ha' been dreemin?" rejoined the hunter, in a more complacent tone, and speaking half interrogatively. "I tell ye no snake in Texas will cross a hosshair rope. The tother 'un must ha' been inside the house afore ye laid the laryitt roun' it. 'Taint likely there keel ha'

been two on 'em. We kin soon settle that by sarchin'."

"Oh, murdher! Luk hare!" cried the Galwegian, pulling off his s.h.i.+rt and laying bare his breast. "Thare's the riptoile's track, right acra.s.s over me ribs! Didn't I tell yez there was another snake? O blissed Mother, what will become av me? It feels like a strake av fire!"

"Snake!" exclaimed Stump, stepping up to the affrighted Irishman, and holding the candle close to his skin. "Snake i'deed! By the 'tarnal airthquake, it air no snake! It air wuss than that!"

"Worse than a snake?" shouted Phelim in dismay. "Worse, yez say, Misther Stump? Div yez mane that it's dangerous?"

"Wal, it mout be, an it moutn't. Thet ere 'll depend on whether I kin find somethin' 'bout hyur, an find it soon. Ef I don't, then, Mister Pheelum, I won't answer--"

"Oh, Misther Stump, don't say thare's danger!"

"What is it?" demanded Maurice, as his eyes rested upon a reddish line running diagonally across the breast of his follower, and which looked as if traced by the point of a hot spindle. "What is it, anyhow?" he repeated with increasing anxiety, as he observed the serious look with which the hunter regarded the strange marking. "I never saw the like before. Is it something to be alarmed about?"

"All o' thet, Mister Gerald," replied Stump, motioning Maurice outside the hut, and speaking to him in a whisper, so as not to be overheard by Phelim.

"But what is it?" eagerly asked the mustanger. "_It air the crawl o'

the pisen centipede_."

"The poison centipede! Has it bitten him?"

"No, I hardly think it hez. But it don't need thet. The _crawl_ o'

itself air enuf to kill him!"

"Merciful Heaven! you don't mean that?"

"I do, Mister Gerald. I've seed more 'an one good fellur go under wi'

that same sort o' a stripe acrost his skin. If thur ain't somethin'

done, an thet soon, he'll fust get into a ragin' fever, an then he'll go out o' his senses, jest as if the bite o' a mad dog had gin him the hydrophoby. It air no use frightenin' him howsomdever, till I sees what I kin do. Thur's a yarb, or rayther it air a plant, as grows in these parts. Ef I kin find it handy, there'll be no defeequilty in curin' o'

him. But as the cussed lack wud hev it, the moon hez sneaked out o'

sight; an I kin only get the yarb by gropin'. I know there air plenty o' it up on the bluff; an ef you'll go back inside, an keep the fellur quiet, I'll see what kin be done. I won't be gone but a minute."

The whispered colloquy, and the fact of the speakers having gone outside to carry it on, instead of tranquillising the fears of Phelim, had by this time augmented them to an extreme degree: and just as the old hunter, bent upon his herborising errand, disappeared in the darkness, he came rus.h.i.+ng forth from the hut, howling more piteously than ever.

It was some time before his master could get him tranquillised, and then only by a.s.suring him--on a faith not very firm--that there was not the slightest danger.

A few seconds after this had been accomplished, Zeb Stump reappeared in the doorway, with a countenance that produced a pleasant change in the feelings of those inside. His confident air and att.i.tude proclaimed, as plainly as words could have done, that he had discovered that of which he had gone in search--the "yarb." In his right hand he held a number of oval shaped objects of dark green colour--all of them bristling with sharp spines, set over the surface in equidistant cl.u.s.ters. Maurice recognised the leaves of a plant well known to him--the _oregano_ cactus.

"Don't be skeeart, Mister Pheelum!" said the old hunter, in a consolatory tone, as he stepped across the threshold. "Thur's nothin'

to fear now. I hev got the bolsum as 'll draw the burnin' out o' yur blood, quicker 'an flame ud scorch a feather. Stop yur yellin', man!

Ye've rousted every bird an beast, an creepin' thing too, I reckon, out o' thar slumbers, for more an twenty mile up an down the crik. Ef you go on at that grist much longer, ye'll bring the k.u.manchees out o' thur mountains, an that 'ud be wuss mayhap than the crawl o' this hunderd-legged critter. Mister Gerald, you git riddy a bandige, whiles I purpares the powltiss."

Drawing his knife from its sheath, the hunter first lopped off the spines; and then, removing the outside skin, he split the thick succulent leaves of the cactus into slices of about an eighth of an inch in thickness. These he spread contiguously upon a strip of clean cotton stuff already prepared by the mustanger; and then, with the ability of a hunter, laid the "powltiss," as he termed it, along the inflamed line, which he declared to have been made by the claws of the centipede, but which in reality was caused by the injection of venom from its poison-charged mandibles, a thousand times inserted into the flesh of the sleeper!

The application of the _oregano_ was almost instantaneous in its effect.

The acrid juice of the plant, producing a counter poison, killed that which had been secreted by the animal; and the patient, relieved from further apprehension, and soothed by the sweet confidence of security-- stronger from reaction--soon fell off into a profound and restorative slumber.

After searching for the centipede and failing to find it--for this hideous reptile, known in Mexico as the _alacran_, unlike the rattlesnake, has no fear of crossing a _cabriesto_--the improvised physician strode silently out of the cabin; and, once more committing himself to his gra.s.sy couch, slept undisturbed till the morning.

At the earliest hour of daybreak all three were astir--Phelim having recovered both from his fright and his fever. Having made their matutinal meal upon the _debris_ of the roast turkey, they hastened to take their departure from the hut. The quondam stable-boy of Ballyballagh, a.s.sisted by the Texan hunter, prepared the wild steeds for transport across the plains--by stringing them securely together--while Maurice looked after his own horse and the spotted mare. More especially did he expend his time upon the beautiful captive--carefully combing out her mane and tail, and removing from her glossy coat the stains that told of the severe chase she had cost him before her proud neck yielded to the constraint of his lazo.

"Durn it, man!" exclaimed Zeb, as, with some surprise, he stood watching the movements of the mustanger, "ye needn't ha' been hef so purtickler!

Wudley Pointdexter ain't the man as 'll go back from a barg'in. Ye'll git the two hunderd dollars, sure as my name air Zeblun Stump; an dog-gone my cats, ef the maar ain't worth every red cent o' the money!"

Maurice heard the remarks without making reply; but the half suppressed smile playing around his lips told that the Kentuckian had altogether misconstrued the motive for his a.s.siduous grooming.

In less than an hour after, the mustanger was on the march, mounted on his blood-bay, and leading the spotted mare at the end of his lazo; while the captive _cavallada_, under the guidance of the Galwegian groom, went trooping at a brisk pace over the plain.

Zeb Stump, astride his "ole maar," could only keep up by a constant hammering with his heels; and Tara, picking his steps through the spinous _mezquite_ gra.s.s, trotted listlessly in the rear.

The hut, with its skin-door closed against animal intruders, was left to take care of itself; its silent solitude, for a time, to be disturbed only by the hooting of the horned owl, the scream of the cougar, or the howl-bark of the hungering coyote.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE FRONTIER FORT.

The "star-spangled banner" suspended above Fort Inge, as it flouts forth from its tall staff, flings its fitful shadow over a scene of strange and original interest.

It is a picture of pure frontier life--which perhaps only the pencil of the younger Vernet could truthfully portray--half military, half civilian--half savage, half civilised--mottled with figures of men whose complexions, costumes, and callings, proclaim them appertaining to the extremes of both, and every possible gradation between.

Even the _mise-en-scene_--the Fort itself--is of this _miscegenous_ character. That star-spangled banner waves not over bastions and battlements; it flings no shadow over casemate or covered way, fosse, scarpment, or glacis--scarce anything that appertains to a fortress. A rude stockade, constructed out of trunks of _algarobia_, enclosing shed-stabling for two hundred horses; outside this a half-score of buildings of the plainest architectural style--some of them mere huts of "wattle and daub"--_jacales_--the biggest a barrack; behind it the hospital, the stores of the commissary, and quartermaster; on one side the guardhouse; and on the other, more pretentiously placed, the messroom and officers' quarters; all plain in their appearance-- plastered and whitewashed with the lime plentifully found on the Leona-- all neat and clean, as becomes a cantonment of troops wearing the uniform of a great civilised nation. Such is Fort Inge.

At a short distance off another group of houses meets the eye--nearly, if not quite, as imposing as the cl.u.s.ter above described bearing the name of "The Fort." They are just outside the shadow of the flag, though under its protection--for to it are they indebted for their origin and existence. They are the germ of the village that universally springs up in the proximity of an American military post--in all probability, and at no very remote period, to become a town--perhaps a great city.

At present their occupants are a sutler, whose store contains "knick-knacks" not cla.s.sed among commissariat rations; an hotel-keeper whose bar-room, with white sanded floor and shelves sparkling with prismatic gla.s.s, tempts the idler to step in; a brace of gamblers whose rival tables of _faro_ and _monte_ extract from the pockets of the soldiers most part of their pay; a score of dark-eyed senoritas of questionable reputation; a like number of hunters, teamsters, _mustangers_, and nondescripts--such as const.i.tute in all countries the hangers-on of a military cantonment, or the followers of a camp.

The houses in the occupancy of this motley corporation have been "sited"

with some design. Perhaps they are the property of a single speculator.

They stand around a "square," where, instead of lamp-posts or statues, may be seen the decaying trunk of a cypress, or the bushy form of a hackberry rising out of a _tapis_ of trodden gra.s.s.

The Leona--at this point a mere rivulet--glides past in the rear both of fort and village. To the front extends a level plain, green as verdure can make it--in the distance darkened by a bordering of woods, in which post-oaks and pecans, live oaks and elms, struggle for existence with spinous plants of cactus and anona; with scores of creepers, climbers, and parasites almost unknown to the botanist. To the south and east along the banks of the stream, you see scattered houses: the homesteads of plantations; some of them rude and of recent construction, with a few of more pretentious style, and evidently of older origin. One of these last particularly attracts the attention: a structure of superior size-- with flat roof, surmounted by a crenelled parapet--whose white walls show conspicuously against the green background of forest with which it is half encircled. It is the hacienda of _Casa del Corvo_.

Turning your eye northward, you behold a curious isolated eminence--a gigantic cone of rocks--rising several hundred feet above the level of the plain; and beyond, in dim distance, a waving horizontal line indicating the outlines of the Guadalupe mountains--the outstanding spurs of that elevated and almost untrodden plateau, the _Llano Estacado_.

Look aloft! You behold a sky, half sapphire, half turquoise; by day, showing no other spot than the orb of its golden G.o.d; by night, studded with stars that appear clipped from clear steel, and a moon whose well-defined disc outs.h.i.+nes the effulgence of silver.

Look below--at that hour when moon and stars have disappeared, and the land-wind arrives from Matagorda Bay, laden with the fragrance of flowers; when it strikes the starry flag, unfolding it to the eye of the morn--then look below, and behold the picture that should have been painted by the pencil of Vernet--too varied and vivid, too plentiful in shapes, costumes, and colouring, to be sketched by the pen.