The Trapper's Daughter: A Story of the Rocky Mountains. Gustave Aimard
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farewell!"
After this funeral oration, the squatter gave his comrades a signal, bowed once again to Stanapat, and started at a gallop, followed by the other pirates. When their allies were out of sight, the Apaches began the funeral ceremony, which had been interrupted by the conversation between their chief and the pirate. Stanapat ordered the corpse to be washed, the face painted of various colours, while the other Indians surrounded it, bewailing. Some, whose grief was more powerful or exaggerated, made incisions in their arms, or chopped off a joint of one of the left hand fingers, in sign of morning. When all was ready, the sachem placed himself by the head of the corpse, and addressing the company, said:
"Why do you weep? Why do you lament? See, I do not weep; I, his oldest and most devoted friend. He has gone to the other land, the Wacondah has recalled him; but if we cannot bring him back among us, our duty is to avenge him. The palefaces have lulled him, we will kill as many palefaces as we can, in order that they may accompany him, and wait on him, and that he may enter the presence of the Wacondah as a great warrior should appear. Death to the palefaces!"
"Death to the palefaces!" the Indians shouted, brandishing their weapons.
The chief turned his head away, and a smile of contempt curled his thin lips at this enthusiastic explosion. But this, smile lasted no longer than a lightning flash. Reassuming at once, the Indian stoicism, Stanapat, with all the decorum customary on such occasions, clothed the body in the richest robes to be found, and the handsomest blankets. The corpse was then placed in a sitting posture, in the grave dug for it, whose bottom and sides had been lined with wood; a whip, weapons, and some other articles were added, then the earth was thrown in, and the whole covered with heavy stones so that the coyotes could not pull out the body. This duty accomplished, at a signal from their chief the Apaches remounted their horses, and started at a gallop on the road leading to Bloodson's teocali, thinking no more of the comrade from whom they had separated for ever, than if he had never existed.
The Apaches marched for three days; at the evening of the fourth, after a fatiguing day across the sands, they halted at about a league from the Rio Gila, in a thick wood, where they hid themselves. So soon as the encampment was formed, Stanapat sent off scouts in various directions, to discover whether the other war parties of the allied nations were near, and to try and discover at the same time Red Cedar's trail.
When the sentinels were posted, for several warlike tribes of the Far West guard themselves with great care when on the war trail, Stanapat visited all the posts, and prepared to listen to the reports of the scouts, several of whom had already returned. The three first Indians whom he questioned, announced but little of importance; they had discovered nothing.
"Good," said the chief; "the night is dark, my young men have moles' eyes; tomorrow, at sunrise, they will see more clearly; they can sleep this night. At daybreak, they will start again, and perhaps discover something."
He made a signal with his hand to dismiss the scouts, who bowed respectfully to the chief, and retired in silence. Only one remained impassive and motionless, as if the words had not been addressed to him as well as to the others. Stanapat turned and looked at him for some seconds.
"My son, the Swift Elk, did not hear me doubtless," he said; "he can rejoin his comrades."
"The Elk heard his father," the Indian replied, coolly.
"Then why does he remain?"
"Because he has not told what he saw, and what he saw is important to the chief."
"Wah!" said Stanapat, "And what has my son seen which his brothers did not discover?"
"The warriors were seeking in another direction, that is why they did not perceive the trail."
"And my son has found one?"
Swift Elk bowed his head in affirmation.
"I await my son's explanation," the chief went on.
"The palefaces are two bowshot lengths from my father's camp," the Indian answered laconically.
"Oh! Oh!" the chief said doubtfully; "That seems to me too much."
"Will my father see?"
"I will see," Stanapat said as he rose.
"If my father will follow me, he will soon see."
"Let us go."
The two Indians started. Swift Elk led the sachem through the wood, and on reaching the river bank, he showed him a short distance off a rock, whose black outline rose silent and gloomy over the Gila.
"They are there," he said, stretching out his arm in the direction of the rock.
"My son has seen them."
"I have seen them."
"That is the Rock of Mad Buffalo, if I am not mistaken."
"Yes," the Indian answered.
"The position will be difficult to carry," the sachem muttered, as he carefully examined the rock.
This place was called the rock or hill of Mad Buffalo, which name it indeed still bears, for the following reasons. The Comanches had, some fifty years ago, a famous chief who rendered his tribe the most warlike and redoubtable of all in the Far West. This chief, who was called the Mad Buffalo, was not only a great warrior, but also a great politician. By the aid of sundry poisons, but especially of arsenic, which he purchased of the white traders for furs, he had succeeded, by killing all those who opposed him, in inspiring all his subjects with an unbounded superstitious terror. When he felt that death was at hand, and understood that his last hour had arrived, he indicated the spot he had selected for his sepulchre.
It was a pyramidal column of granite and sand about four hundred and fifty feet in height. This pillar commands for a long distance the course of the river which washes its base and which, after making numberless windings in the plain, comes back close to it again. Mad Buffalo ordered that his tomb should be erected on the top of this hill, where he had been accustomed to go and sit. His last wishes were carried out with that fidelity the Indians display in such matters. His body was placed at the top of the hill, mounted on his finest steed, and over both a mound was formed. A pole stuck in the tomb bore the banner of the chief, and the numerous scalps which he had raised from his enemies in action.
Hence the mountain of Mad Buffalo is an object of veneration for the Indians, and when a redskin is going to follow the war trail for the first time, he strengthens his courage by gazing on the enchanted hill which contains the skeleton of the Indian warrior and his steed.
The chief carefully examined the hill: it was, in truth, a formidable position. The whites had rendered it even stronger, as far as was possible, by cutting down the tallest trees they found, and forming thick palisades lined with pointed stakes and defended by a ditch eighteen feet in width. Thus protected, the hill had been converted into a real impregnable fortress, unless regularly besieged.
Stanapat re-entered the wood, followed by his comrade, and went back to the bivouac.
"Is the chief satisfied with his son?" the Indian tasked ere he retired.
"My son has the eyes of a tapir; nothing escapes him."
Swift Elk smiled proudly as he bowed.
"Does my son," the chief continued, in an insinuating voice, "know the palefaces who are entrenched on the hill of Mad Buffalo?"
"Swift Elk knows them."
"Wah!" said the sachem; "my son is not mistaken; he has recognised the trail?"
"Swift Elk is never mistaken," the Indian answered in a firm voice; "he is a renowned warrior."
"My brother is right; he can speak."
"The pale chief who occupies the Rock of Mad Buffalo is the great white hunter whom the Comanches have adopted, and who is called Koutonepi."
Stanapat could not check a movement of surprise.
"Wah!" he exclaimed; "Can it be possible? My son is positively sure that Koutonepi is entrenched on the top of the hill?"
"Sure," the Indian said without hesitation.
The chief made Swift Elk a sign to retire, and, letting