The Scalp Hunters Read online

  Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

  The Scalp Hunters, A Romance of Northern Mexico, by Captain Mayne Reid.

  ________________________________________________________________________This is very much in the cowboys and Indians genre, and there can be nodoubt that the author knew exactly what he was writing about, and hadlived through similar experiences.

  It was quite a hard book to transcribe, though the copy used was niceand clean, because of the very large number of Mexican-Spanish words andphrases. There was also a great deal of speech by people whose grammarand words were supposed to indicate a lower education. Hence it wasnot at all easy to present the book as the author would have liked, butwe think that at last we have got it just about right.

  On writing this book Reid had the general public in mind. It was oneof his first. It was not until later that he adopted a more peacefulstyle and wrote for a boy readership, saying that in those books therewas not a single passage that a boy could not read aloud to his motheror his sister. This book falls just outside that scope.

  ________________________________________________________________________THE SCALP HUNTERS, A ROMANCE OF NORTHERN MEXICO, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  THE WILD WEST.

  Unroll the world's map, and look upon the great northern continent ofAmerica. Away to the wild west, away toward the setting sun, awaybeyond many a far meridian, let your eyes wander. Rest them wheregolden rivers rise among peaks that carry the eternal snow. Rest themthere.

  You are looking upon a land whose features are un-furrowed by humanhands, still bearing the marks of the Almighty mould, as upon themorning of creation; a region whose every object wears the impress ofGod's image. His ambient spirit lives in the silent grandeur of itsmountains, and speaks in the roar of its mighty rivers: a regionredolent of romance, rich in the reality of adventure.

  Follow me, with the eye of your mind, through scenes of wild beauty, ofsavage sublimity.

  I stand in an open plain. I turn my face to the north, to the south, tothe east, and to the west; and on all sides behold the blue circle ofthe heavens girdling around me. Nor rock, nor tree, breaks the ring ofthe horizon. What covers the broad expanse between? Wood? water?grass? No; flowers. As far as my eye can range, it rests only onflowers, on beautiful flowers!

  I am looking as on a tinted map, an enamelled picture brilliant withevery hue of the prism.

  Yonder is golden yellow, where the helianthus turns her dial-like faceto the sun. Yonder, scarlet, where the malva erects its red banner.Here is a parterre of the purple monarda, there the euphorbia sheds itssilver leaf. Yonder the orange predominates in the showy flowers of theasclepia; and beyond, the eye roams over the pink blossoms of thecleome.

  The breeze stirs them. Millions of corollas are waving their gaudystandards. The tall stalks of the helianthus bend and rise in longundulations, like billows on a golden sea.

  They are at rest again. The air is filled with odours sweet as theperfumes of Araby or Ind. Myriads of insects flap their gay wings:flowers of themselves. The bee-birds skirr around, glancing like straysunbeams; or, poised on whirring wings, drink from the nectared cups;and the wild bee, with laden limbs, clings among the honeyed pistils, orleaves for his far hive with a song of joy.

  Who planted these flowers? Who hath woven them into these picturedparterres? Nature. It is her richest mantle, richer in its hues thanthe scarfs of Cashmere.

  This is the "weed prairie." It is misnamed. It is "the garden of God."

  The scene is changed. I am in a plain as before, with the unbrokenhorizon circling around me. What do I behold? Flowers? No; there isnot a flower in sight, but one vast expanse of living verdure. Fromnorth to south, from east to west, stretches the prairie meadow, greenas an emerald, and smooth as the surface of a sleeping lake.

  The wind is upon its bosom, sweeping the silken blades. They are inmotion; and the verdure is dappled into lighter and darker shades, asthe shadows of summer clouds flitting across the sun.

  The eye wanders without resistance. Perchance it encounters the darkhirsute forms of the buffalo, or traces the tiny outlines of theantelope. Perchance it follows, in pleased wonder, the far-wild gallopof a snow-white steed.

  This is the "grass prairie," the boundless pasture of the bison.

  The scene changes. The earth is no longer level, but treeless andverdant as ever. Its surface exhibits a succession of parallelundulations, here and there swelling into smooth round hills. It iscovered with a soft turf of brilliant greenness. These undulationsremind one of the ocean after a mighty storm, when the crisped foam hasdied upon the waves, and the big swell comes bowling in. They look asthough they had once been such waves, that by an omnipotent mandate hadbeen transformed to earth and suddenly stood still.

  This is the "rolling prairie."

  Again the scene changes. I am among greenswards and bright flowers; butthe view is broken by groves and clumps of copse-wood. The frondage isvaried, its tints are vivid, its outlines soft and graceful. As I moveforward, new landscapes open up continuously: views park-like andpicturesque. Gangs of buffalo, herds of antelope, and droves of wildhorses, mottle the far vistas. Turkeys run into the coppice, andpheasants whirr up from the path.

  Where are the owners of these lands, of these flocks and fowls? Whereare the houses, the palaces, that should appertain to these lordlyparks? I look forward, expecting to see the turrets of tall mansionsspring up over the groves. But no. For hundreds of miles around nochimney sends forth its smoke. Although with a cultivated aspect, thisregion is only trodden by the moccasined foot of the hunter, and hisenemy, the Red Indian.

  These are the _mottes_--the "islands" of the prairie sea.

  I am in the deep forest. It is night, and the log fire throws out itsvermilion glare, painting the objects that surround our bivouac. Hugetrunks stand thickly around us; and massive limbs, grey and giant-like,stretch out and over. I notice the bark. It is cracked, and clings inbroad scales crisping outward. Long snake-like parasites creep fromtree to tree, coiling the trunks as though they were serpents, and wouldcrush them! There are no leaves overhead. They have ripened andfallen; but the white Spanish moss, festooned along the branches, hangsweeping down like the drapery of a deathbed.

  Prostrate trunks, yards in diameter and half-decayed, lie along theground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities where the porcupine andopossum have taken shelter from the cold.

  My comrades, wrapped in their blankets, and stretched upon the deadleaves, have gone to sleep. They lie with their feet to the fire, andtheir heads resting in the hollow of their saddles. The horses,standing around a tree, and tied to its lower branches, seem also tosleep. I am awake and listening. The wind is high up, whistling amongthe twigs and causing the long white streamers to oscillate. It uttersa wild and melancholy music. There are few other sounds, for it iswinter, and the tree-frog and cicada are silent. I hear the cracklingknots in the fire, the rustling of dry leaves swirled up by a straygust, the "coo-whoo-a" of the white owl, the bark of the raccoon, and,at intervals, the dismal howling of wolves. These are the nocturnalvoices of the winter forest. They are savage sounds; yet there is achord in my bosom that vibrates under their influence, and my spirit istinged with romance as I lie and listen.

  The forest in autumn; still bearing its full frondage. The leavesresemble flowers, so bright are their hues. They are red and yellow,and golden and brown. The woods are warm and glorious now, and thebirds flutter among the laden branches. The eye wanders delighted downlong vistas and over sunlit glades. It is caught by the flashing ofgaudy plumage, the golden green of the paroquet, the blue of the jay,and the orange wing of the oriole. The red-bird flutt
ers lower down inthe coppice of green pawpaws, or amidst the amber leaflets of thebeechen thicket. Hundreds of tiny wings flit through the openings,twinkling in the sun like the glancing of gems.

  The air is filled with music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of thesquirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, andthe constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringingtogether. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth hismimic note, as though he would shame all other songsters into silence.

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  I am in a country of brown barren earth and broken outlines. There arerocks and clefts and patches of sterile soil. Strange vegetable formsgrow in the clefts and hang over the rocks. Others are spheroidal inshape, resting upon the surface of the parched earth. Others risevertically to a great height, like carved and fluted columns. Somethrow out branches, crooked, shaggy branches, with hirsute oval leaves.Yet there is a homogeneousness about all these vegetable forms, in theircolour, in their fruit and flowers, that proclaims them of one family.They are cacti. It is a forest of the Mexican nopal. Another singularplant is here. It throws out long, thorny leaves that curve downward.It is the agave, the far-famed mezcal-plant of Mexico. Here and there,mingling with the cacti, are trees of acacia and mezquite, the denizensof the desert-land. No bright object relieves the eye; no bird poursits melody into the ear. The lonely owl flaps away into the impassablethicket, the rattlesnake glides under its scanty shade, and the coyoteskulks through its silent glades.

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  I have climbed mountain after mountain, and still I behold peaks soaringfar above, crowned with the snow that never melts. I stand uponbeetling cliffs, and look into chasms that yawn beneath, sleeping in thesilence of desolation. Great fragments have fallen into them, and liepiled one upon another. Others hang threatening over, as if waiting forsome concussion of the atmosphere to hurl them from their balance. Darkprecipices frown me into fear, and my head reels with a dizzy faintness.I hold by the pine-tree shaft, or the angle of the firmer rock.

  Above, and below, and around me, are mountains piled on mountains inchaotic confusion. Some are bald and bleak; others exhibit traces ofvegetation in the dark needles of the pine and cedar, whose stuntedforms half-grow, half-hang from the cliffs. Here, a cone-shaped peaksoars up till it is lost in snow and clouds. There, a ridge elevatesits sharp outline against the sky; while along its side, lie hugeboulders of granite, as though they had been hurled from the hands ofTitan giants!

  A fearful monster, the grizzly bear, drags his body along the highridges; the carcajou squats upon the projecting rock, waiting the elkthat must pass to the water below; and the bighorn bounds from crag tocrag in search of his shy mate. Along the pine branch the bald buzzardwhets his filthy beak; and the war-eagle, soaring over all, cuts sharplyagainst the blue field of the heavens.

  These are the Rocky Mountains, the American Andes, the colossalvertebras of the continent!

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  Such are the aspects of the wild west; such is the scenery of our drama.

  Let us raise the curtain, and bring on the characters.