Читать книгу Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace (Illustrated Edition) - John Crittenden Duval - Страница 16
ОглавлениеLED OUT FOR EXECUTION—SAVED AT THE LAST MOMENT—A NEW MOTHER AND A NEW HOME—COMANCHE IN LUCK AGAIN—“LOBO-LUSTI-HADJO.”
My guard led me out into a sort of square between the lodges, in which all the Indians belonging to the encampment—men, women, and children—were assembled, and proceeded to bind me hand and foot to a post firmly fixed in the ground. I was convinced then what my fate was to be, especially when I looked around and saw the terrible preparations that had been made for the ceremony of burning a prisoner at the stake. Near me there was a great heap of dry wood, and a fire burning, and twenty or thirty grim warriors stood around, painted and blacked up in the most fantastic way, with their tomahawks and scalping-knives in their hands, who, I supposed, were to act as my executioners.
When they had fastened me securely to the stake, the chief to whom I had surrendered rose up from a sort of platform, on which he had been sitting, and made a speech to the crowd. He spoke in his own language, and of course I could understand but little of what he said, but it seemed to me he was telling them how the white people had encroached upon them, and stolen from them their hunting-grounds, and driven them farther and farther into the wilderness, and that it was a good deed to burn every one of the hated race that fell into their hands. After he had finished speaking, the painted warriors formed a ring, and while one of them heaped up the dry wood on all sides of me as high as my waist, the balance danced around me, singing the “death-song” and brandishing their tomahawks and knives.
I thought, sure enough, my time had come, and I tried to summon up courage enough to meet my fate like a man. I don’t know how far I would have succeeded in this, for just at this moment the old squaw I had seen in the lodge rushed through the crowd of painted warriors, and began to throw the wood from around me, all the time talking and gesticulating in the wildest manner. One of the warriors seized her and put her out of the ring by main force, but she addressed herself to the crowd, and made them a regular set speech, during which she every now and then turned and pointed toward me. I was satisfied that for some cause, I knew not what, the old squaw was doing her best to save me from burning at the stake, and it is hardly necessary to say I wished her success from the bottom of my heart. The crowd listened to her in silence for some time, when some began, as I thought, to applaud her, and others to cry out against her; but it seems that she at last brought over the majority to her side, for after a great deal of jabbering, a number of women rushed in between the warriors and untied me from the stake in a moment, and handed me over to the old squaw for safe-keeping; and somehow, though I had understood but little of all that had been said on either side for or against me, I knew that I was saved, at least for the time. I felt as much relieved in my mind as when I drew the “white bean” at the city of Saltillo.
I learned afterward that the old squaw had lost one of her sons in a fight with some of the neighboring tribes, and that she had set up a claim to me, according to the Indian custom in such cases, as a substitute. But the Indians, I suppose, were bent on having a little fun, in which I was to play the part of frog, and they the pelters, and, as you have seen, it was only by the “skin of her teeth” that she came out winner at the last quarter stretch. But I was very glad, I can tell you, that their frolic was stopped in this way, for I hadn’t the least ambition to perform the part they intended for me in the ceremony.
My adopted mother conducted me to her lodge, patted me on the head, and sang another “bumble-bee ditty” over me, to all of which I made no objection, as I was very glad to get off from being roasted alive on any terms. She then, as I supposed, made signs to me to “consider myself at home,” and “as one of the family” from that time. In a little while afterward, some squaws brought me my gun and all my equipments, even to my Mexican gourd, and gave them to me. Even Comanche was hunted up and brought to the lodge, and delivered up to me as a part of my property. Poor Comanche had seen a rough time, as well as myself, since we were separated. He was half starved, and looked as if he had been beaten unmercifully by every urchin in the encampment. He was real glad to see me again, and I “made myself at home” at once by giving him all the cold victuals I could find about the premises.
The old squaw, my mother now, had one son still living with her, “Lobo-lusti-hadjo,” or the “Black Wolf,” and of course, according to the Indian laws, he was now my brother, and, Indian though he was, he proved a brother to me as long as I lived with the tribe, which was about three months; and when I left, it was with his knowledge, and he did all that he could to aid me in effecting my escape. I have met with few men anywhere that I liked better than Black Wolf. He was a man of good natural sense, and as brave as the bravest, and there was nothing cruel or bloodthirsty in his disposition, and, what is very unusual among the Indians, he was much attached to his old mother, and did everything he could to make her comfortable in her old age.
I might lengthen out my story a good deal by telling of all that occurred to me while I was with these Indians—how I went with them upon their buffalo hunts, and once upon a “foray” with them into Mexico, where I acquired a considerable reputation as a promising young warrior in a hard fight we had there with the Mexican rancheros, etc.,—but I am afraid I should grow tiresome, and for this reason, I will bring this part of my story to an end as soon as possible.
The old chief to whom I surrendered in the first instance, for some cause had taken a great liking to me, and offered me his sister for a wife, and a home in his own wigwam; but I preferred staying with Black Wolf and his old mother, for, in fact, the chief’s sister wasn’t as attractive as some women I have seen. She was tall and raw-boned, and her cheeks looked like a couple of small pack-saddles, and her finger nails were as long as a catamount’s claws, and not overly clean at that, and I had no doubt she could have used them just as well “on a pinch”—at least that was my private opinion, though I did not tell the chief so.
When I had been about two months with the tribe, I learned to speak their language pretty well, and Black Wolf never tired of asking me questions about the “white people,” and their big canoes, steamboats, railroads, etc., for he had heard about all these things at the trading posts he had occasionally visited. I told him that the white people were so numerous that they had many “permanent camps” in which there were forty, fifty, and a hundred thousand inhabitants, and one in which there was more than half a million.
He said he knew they were a powerful people, but he had no idea before that their number was so great. But he said what I had told him about them confirmed him in the opinion he had had for a long time, that the white people would gradually spread over the whole country, from ocean to ocean, and that the day would soon come when there would be nothing left to show that the Indians had once occupied all this vast territory, except here and there a little mound built over their graves, or a stone arrow-head, ploughed up by the white people where they had once hunted the buffalo or the grisly bear. And as his reason for thinking so, he related to me the following legend, which he said had been told him by his father when he was a little boy.
