Chapter Eleven
The planter’s family assembled in the sala were about to begin breakfast, when it was discovered that one of its members was missing.
Henry was the absent one.
“Very strange Henry not being here to his breakfast! Where can the boy be?” asked his father, for the fourth time, in that tone of mild conjecture that scarce calls for reply.
None was made by either of the other two guests at the table.
“Surely he is not in bed till this hour? No-no – he never lies so late. He may be in his room? It is just possible. Pluto!”
He called Pluto, the sable coachee, and ordered him to go to Henry’s sleeping-room and, if he was there, tell him they were half through with breakfast.
“He’s not there, Master Woodley.”
“You have been to his room?”
“I haven’t been to the room itself; but I’ve been to the stable, to look after Master Henry’s horse. That old horse is not there; nor hasn’t been all of this morning. No horse there, no saddle, no bridle; and of course no Master Henry.”
“It don’t follow that Master Henry himself is not in his room. Go instantly, and see!”
“There’s something strange in all this,” pursued the planter, as Pluto shuffled out of the sala. “Henry from home; and at night too. Where can he have gone? I can’t think of any one he would be visiting at such unseasonable hours!”
“Why is Henry still absent?” reflected the young Creole. “I’ve sat up all night waiting for him. He must have overtaken Maurice, and they have fraternised. I hope so; even though the tavern may have been the scene of their reconciliation.”
Her reflections were interrupted by the reappearance of Pluto; whose important air proclaimed him the bearer of eventful tidings.
In a voice that betrayed a large measure of emotion Pluto told the planter that Henry wasn’t in his room but his horse was there – at the gate.
“Ah, Master Woodley,” added he, “I fear that the old horse has lost his rider! Come to the gate and see for yourself.”
Not only the planter himself, but his daughter and nephew, hastily forsaking their seats, and preceded by the sable coachman, made their way to the outside gate of the hacienda.
A sight was there awaiting them, inspired all three with the most terrible apprehensions.
A negro man – one of the field slaves of the plantation – stood holding a horse, that was saddled and bridled. The animal was snorting and stamping the ground, as if but lately escaped from some scene of excitement, in which he had been compelled to take part. He was speckled with dark spots that were all of the colour of coagulated blood.
The horse came from the prairies. The negro had caught him, on the outside plain, as, with the bridle trailing among his feet, he was instinctively straying towards the hacienda.
All present knew him to be the horse of Henry Poindexter. And the dark red spots on which they were distractedly gazing had spurted from the veins of Henry Poindexter. They had no other thought.
***
Hastily construing the sinister evidence, the half-frantic father leaped into the bloody saddle, and galloped direct for the Fort.
Calhoun, upon his own horse, followed close after.
The news soon spread abroad. Rapid riders carried it up and down the river, to the remotest plantations of the settlement.
Henry Poindexter – the noble generous youth who had not an enemy in all Texas! Who but Indians could have spilled such innocent blood? Only the Comanches could have been so cruel?
Among the horsemen, who came quickly together on the parade ground of Port Inge, no one doubted that the Comanches had done the deed. It was simply a question of how, when, and where.
These were the questions discussed by the mixed council of settlers and soldiers, presided over by the commandant of the For.
It was decided that the searchers should proceed in a body. A proposal to separate the command into several parties, and proceed in different directions, met with little favour from any one.
The direction still remained the subject of discussion.
What direction had been last taken by the man who was supposed to be murdered? Who last saw Henry Poindexter?
His father had last seen his son at the supper table; and supposed him to have gone thence to his bed.
The answer of Calhoun was less direct, and, perhaps, less satisfactory. He had conversed with his cousin at a later hour, and had bidden him good night, under the impression that he was retiring to his room.
While the inquiry was going on, light came in from a quartet hitherto unthought of. The landlord of the Rough and Ready, who had come uncalled to the council, after forcing his way through the crowd, proclaimed himself willing to communicate some facts worth their hearing – in short, the very facts they were trying to find out: when Henry Poindexter had been last seen, and what the direction he had taken.
Oberdoffer’s testimony was to the effect: that Maurice the mustanger – who had been staying at his hotel ever since his fight with Captain Calhoun – had that night ridden out at a late hour, as he had done for several nights before.
He had returned to the hotel at a still later hour; and finding it open, had done that which he had not done for a long time before – demanded his bill, and to Old Duffer’s astonishment settled every cent of it!
Where he had procured the money God only knew, or why he left the hotel in such a hurry.
What had all this to do with the question before the council? Much indeed. About twenty minutes after the mustanger had taken his departure from the hotel, Henry Poindexter knocked at the door, and inquired after Mr Maurice Gerald; on being told the latter was gone, as also the time, and probable direction he had taken, the young gentleman rode off at a quick pace, as if with the intention of overtaking him.
The information, though containing several points but ill understood, furnished a sort of clue to the direction the expeditionary party ought to take. If the missing man had gone off with Maurice the mustanger, or after him, he should be looked for on the road the latter himself would be likely to have taken.
Did any one know where the horse-hunter had his home?
No one could state the exact locality; though there were several who believed it was somewhere among the head-waters of the Nueces, on a creek called the “Alamo.”
To the Alamo, then, did they determine upon proceeding in quest of the missing man, or his dead body – perhaps, also, to find that of Maurice the mustanger; and, at the same time, avenge upon the savage assassins two murders instead of one.
***
Notwithstanding its number, the expedition pursued its way with considerable caution.
There was reason. The Indians were upon the war-trail. Scouts were sent out in advance; and professed “trackers” employed to pick up, and interpret the “sign.”
Shortly after entering an opening, through which passes a path that leads to the Alamo, one of the trackers, Spangler, was seen standing by the edge of the thicket, as if waiting to announce some recently discovered fact.
“What is it?” demanded the major, spurring ahead of the others, and riding up to the tracker. “Sign?”
Spangler answered that there were plenty of them. He pointed to the tracks of two horses that had gone up the opening, and come back again. He said he hadn’t been far enough up the opening to make out what it meant– only far enough to know that a man had been murdered. Though he hadn’t seen a dead body, not even a hair of the head.
“What then?” asked the major.
“Blood, a regular pool of it. Come and see for yourself. But, “continued the scout in a muttered undertone, “if you wish me to follow up the sign as it ought to be done, you’ll order the others to stay back.”
About fifty yards further on, Spangler stopped, and the major had a chance to get evidence of the trackers’ words. There was a big pool of blood on ground.
“Whose do you think it is, Spangler?”
“That of the man we’re in search of – the son of the old gentleman down there. That’s why I didn’t wish him to come forward. We need to find out how the young fellow has come to be thrown in his tracks. That’s what is puzzling me.”
“How! by the Indians, of course? The Comanches have done it?”
Spangler didn’t think so. If the Indians had been here, there would be forty horse-tracks instead of four, and they’re made by only two horses. Both these were ridden by white men. One set of the tracks has been made by a mustang, though it was a big one. The other is the hoof of an American horse.
“We must follow up the tracks of the horses, after they started from this. There’s nothing more to be learnt here. We may as well go back, major. Am I to tell Mr Poindexter?”
“You are convinced that his son is the man who has been murdered?”
“Oh, no; not so much as that comes to. Only convinced that the horse the old gentleman is now riding is one of the two that’s been over this ground last night – the States horse I feel sure. I have compared the tracks; and if young Poindexter was the man who was on his back, I fear there’s not much chance for the poor fellow.”
“Have you any suspicion as to who the other may be?”
“Not a spark, major. If it hadn’t been for the tale of Old Duffer I’d never have thought of Maurice the mustanger. True, it’s the track of a shod mustang; but I don’t know it to be his. Surely it can’t be? The young Irishman isn’t the man to stand nonsense from nobody; but he is not the one to do a deed like this – that is, if it’s been cold-blooded killing”
“I think as you about that.”
“As to the disappearance of the dead body – for them two quarts of blood could only have come out of a body that’s now dead. We must follow the trail, however; and maybe it’ll fetch us to some sensible conclusion.”
***
The party soon after came up with the tracker, waiting to conduct them along a fresh trail.
In his own mind Spangler had determined the character of the animal whose footmarks he was following. He knew it to be a mustang – the same whose hoof-mark he had seen deeply indented in a sod saturated with human blood.
The tracks went not direct; but here and there zigzagging; occasionally turning upon themselves in short curves; then forward for a stretch; as if the mustang was either not mounted, or its rider was asleep in the saddle!
Spangler did not know what to think. He was mystified more than ever. A spectacle that soon afterwards came under his eyes – simultaneously seen by every individual of the party – so far from solving the mystery, had the effect of rendering it yet more inexplicable.
When a man is seen mounted on a horse’s back, seated firmly in the saddle, with limbs astride in the stirrups, body erect, and hand holding the rein – in short, everything in air and attitude required of a rider; when, on closer scrutiny, it is observed: that there is something wanting to complete the idea of a perfect equestrian; and, on still closer scrutiny, that this something is the head, it would be strange if the spectacle did not startle the beholder, terrifying him to the very core of his heart.
And this very sight came before their eyes; causing them simultaneously to rein up. The eyes of all were turned in the same direction, their gaze intently fixed on what was either a horseman without the head, or the best counterfeit that could have been contrived.
What was it?
There could be heard only mutterings, expressive of surprise and terror. No one even offered a conjecture.
Was it a phantom? Surely it could not be human?
“It is old Nick upon horseback!” cried a fearless frontiersman, who would scarce have quailed to encounter his Satanic majesty even in that guise. “It’s the devil himself.”
The boisterous laugh which succeeded the profane utterance of the reckless speaker, while it only added to the awe of his less courageous comrades, appeared to produce an effect on the headless horseman. Wheeling suddenly round – his horse at the same time sending forth a scream that caused either the earth or the atmosphere to tremble – he commenced galloping away.
Answer the following questions:
1) Who was absent at breakfast? Why?
2) What did the planter’s family see at the gate? Why did it “inspire all three with the most terrible apprehensions”?
3) Who was thought to be the murderer of Henry Poindexter?
4) What had happened in the hotel according to its owner’s account? Where did the expedition head for?
5) Why was Spangler sure that somebody had been killed?
6) Whose tracks did Spangler find? What conclusion did he draw?
7) What did the party see? Why did it scare them?
