The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas. Фредерик Марриет

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СКАЧАТЬ our possession of which the enemy was ignorant The first assault was gallantly conducted, and every one of the loopholes was choked with their balls and arrows. On they advanced, in a close and thick body, with ladders and torches, yelling like a million of demons. When at the distance of sixty yards, we poured upon them the contents of our two guns; they were heavily loaded with grape-shot, and produced a most terrible effect. The enemy did not retreat; raising their war-whoop, on they rushed with a determination truly heroical.

      The guns were again fired, and also the whole of our musketry, after which a party of forty of our men made a sortie. This last charge was sudden and irresistible; the enemy fled in every direction, leaving behind their dead and wounded. That evening we received a reinforcement of thirty-eight men from the settlement, with a large supply of buffalo meat and twenty fine young fat colts. This was a great comfort to us, as, for several days we had been obliged to live upon our dried fish.

      During seven days we saw nothing of the enemy; but our scouts scoured in every direction, and our long-boat surprised, in a bay opposite George Point, thirty-six large boats, in which the Callapoos had come from their territory. The boats were destroyed, and their keepers scalped. As the heat was very intense, we resolved not to confine ourselves any more within the walls of the Post; we formed a spacious camp, to the east of the block-house, with breastworks of uncommon strength. This plan probably saved us from some contagious disease; indeed, the bad smell of the dried fish, and the rarefied air in the building, had already begun to affect many of our men, especially the wounded.

      At the end of a week our enemy reappeared, silent and determined. They had returned for revenge or for death; the struggle was to be a fearful one. They encamped in the little open prairie on the other side of the river, and mustered about six hundred men.

      The first war-party had overthrown and dispersed the Bonnaxes, as they were on their way to join the Flat-heads; and the former tribe not being able to effect the intended junction, threw itself among the Cayuses and Nez-percés. These three combined nations, after a desultory warfare, gave way before the second war-party; and the Bonnaxes, being now rendered desperate by their losses and the certainty that they would be exterminated if the Shoshones should conquer, joined the Callapoos and Umbiquas, to make one more attack upon our little garrison.

      Nothing could have saved us, had the Flat-heads held out any longer; but the Black-feet, their irreconcilable enemies, seizing the opportunity, had entered their territory. They sued to us for peace, and then detachments from both war-parties hastened to our help. Of this we were apprised by our runners; and having previously concerted measures with my father, I started alone to meet these detachments, in the passes of the Mineral Mountains. The returning warriors were seven hundred strong, and had not lost more than thirteen men in their two expeditions; they divided into three bands, and succeeded, without discovery, in surrounding the prairie in which the enemy were encamped; an Indian was then sent to cross the river, a few miles to the east, and carry a message to my father.

      The moon rose at one in the morning. It was arranged that, two hours before its rising, the garrison of the block-house, which had already suffered a great deal, during four days of a close siege, were to let off the fireworks that I had received from the Mexicans at Monterey, and to watch well the shore on their side of the river; for we were to fall upon the enemy during their surprise, occasioned by such an unusual display. All happened as was intended. At the first rocket, the Bonnaxes, Callapoos, and Umbiquas were on the alert; but astonishment and admiration very soon succeeded their fear of surprise, which they knew could not be attempted from their opponents in front. The bombs burst, the wheels threw their large circles of coloured sparks, and the savages gazed in silent admiration. But their astonishment was followed by fear of supernatural agency; confusion spread among them, and their silence was at last broken by hundreds of loud voices! The moment had now come; the two Shoshone war-parties rushed upon their terrified victims, and an hour afterwards, when the moon rose and shone above the prairie, its mild beams were cast upon four hundred corpses. The whole of the Bonnax and Umbiqua party were entirely destroyed. The Callapoos suffered but little, having dispersed, and run towards the sea-shore at the beginning of the affray.

      Thus ended the great league against the Shoshones, which tradition will speak of in ages yet to come. But these stirring events were followed by a severe loss to me. My father, aged as he was, had shown a great deal of activity during the last assault, and he had undergone much privation and fatigue: his high spirit sustained him to the very last of the struggle; but when all was over, and the reports of the rifles no longer whizzed to his ears, his strength gave way, and, ten days after the last conflict, he died of old age, fatigue, and grief. On the borders of the Pacific Ocean, a few miles inland, I have raised his grave. The wild flowers that grow upon it are fed by the clear waters of the Nú elejé sha wako, and the whole tribe of the Shoshones will long watch over the tomb of the Pale-face from a distant land, who was once their instructor and their friend.

      As for my two friends, Gabriel and Roche, they had been both seriously wounded, and it was a long time before they were recovered.

      We passed the remainder of the summer in building castles in the air for the future, and at last agreed to go to Monterey to pass the winter. Fate, however, ordered otherwise, and a succession of adventures, the current of which I could not oppose, forced me through many wild scenes and countries, which I have yet to describe.

      CHAPTER XI

      At the beginning of the fall, a few months after my father's death, I and my two comrades, Gabriel and Roche, were hunting in the rolling prairies of the South, on the eastern shores of the Buona Ventura. One evening we were in high spirits, having had good sport. My two friends had entered upon a theme which they could never exhaust, one pleasantly narrating the wonders and sights of Paris, the other describing with his true native eloquence the beauties of his country, and repeating the old local Irish legends, which appeared to me quaint and highly poetical.

      Of a sudden we were surrounded by a party of sixty Arrapahoes; of course, resistance or flight was useless. Our captors, however, treated us with honour, contenting themselves with watching us closely and preventing our escape. They knew who we were, and though my horse, saddle, and rifle were in themselves a booty for any chief, nothing was taken on us. I addressed the chief, whom I knew:

      "What have I done to the Morning Star of the Arrapahoes, that I should be taken and watched like a sheep of the Watchinangoes?"

      The chief smiled and put his hand upon my shoulders. "The Arrapahoes," said he, "love the young Owato Wanisha and his pale-faced brothers, for they are great warriors, and can beat their enemies with beautiful blue fires from the heavens. The Arrapahoes know all; they are a wise people. They will take Owato Wanisha to their own tribe that he may show his skill to them, and make them warriors. He shall be fed with the fattest and sweetest dogs. He will become a great warrior among the Arrapahoes. So wish our prophets. I obey the will of the prophets and of the nation."

      "But," answered I, "my Manitou will not hear me if I am a slave. The Pale-face Manitou has ears only for free warriors. He will not lend me his fires unless space and time be my own."

      The chief interrupted me:–"Owato Wanisha is not a slave, nor can he be one. He is with his good friends, who will watch over him, light his fire, spread their finest blankets in his tent, and fill it with the best game of the prairie. His friends love the young chief, but he must not escape from them, else the evil spirit would make the young Arrapahoes drunk as a beastly Crow, and excite them in their folly to kill the Pale-faces."

      As nothing could be attempted for the present, we submitted to our fate, and were conducted by a long and dreary journey to the eastern shores of the Rio Colorado of the West, until at last we arrived at one of the numerous and beautiful villages of the Arrapahoes. There we passed the winter in a kind of honourable captivity. An attempt to escape would have been the signal of our death, or, at least, of a harsh captivity. We were surrounded by vast sandy deserts, inhabited, by the Clubs (Piuses), a cruel СКАЧАТЬ