The Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace by John C. Duval

Author:John C. Duval
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781629148526
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

* His horse.

* Killed.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WALLACE SURPRISES A PARTY OF INDIANS WHO WERE MAKING THEMSELVES “COMFORTABLE” NEAR HIS RANCH.

INDIANS are sometimes monstrous impudent, and will run the greatest risks without anything to gain by it. Would you believe, that not more than six months ago a party of five Tonkawa warriors came within half a mile of my ranch, and in broad daylight killed one of my fattest “mavericks,” pitched their camp, and set in for a general jollification?

It happened that morning that Tom Jones, Bill Decker, Jeff Bonds, and myself were out looking after the stock, when all at once Jeff remarked that he smelt meat roasting on the coals. I then turned up my nose to windward and smelt it too as plainly as I ever whiffed fried middling of a frosty morning with the breeze dead ahead, when I’ve been coming into camp after a three-hours’ hunt before breakfast. Talk about your “Hostetter’s Bitters,” and your “patent tonics!” the best tonic I know of is a three-hours’ hunt among the hills on a frosty morning. It gives a fellow an appetite that nothing less than a “mule and a hamper of greens” can satisfy.

Well, as I was saying, just as soon as I smelt roasted meat, I knew there were Indians about, although the last place I should have looked, if I had been hunting for them, would have been the vicinity of my ranch. Still, I was certain they were there somewhere, for wolves, and panthers, and catamounts, and other varmints, you see, always take their meat raw; so I told the boys to keep quiet and get down and fasten their horses. We then recapped our guns and revolvers, and cautiously crept along through the bushes until we discovered the Indians, not more than fifty yards from us, where they were making themselves as much at home and as comfortable around their fire as if they were in the mountains about the head of the Guadalupe River, which is undoubtedly the roughest little scope of country to be found in the State of Texas.

I whispered to Jeff, who was nearest to me:

“Well, don’t this beat you? Did you ever know such impudence before in your life? To kill one of my fattest ‘mavericks’ and barbecue it in broad daylight, within half a mile of my ranch! Well, if I don’t let ’em know I am the landlord of these ‘diggins’ yet, and bring in a bill for the entertainment they have had, you may call me ‘short stock,’ if I am six feet three in my stockings!”

All this time the Indians never suspected we were near them. There was one big fellow among them, who must have been six feet two or three inches high in his stockings, (though of course he never had on a pair in his life,) and he was making himself very prominent around the fire, broiling the fat steaks of my “maverick” upon the coals, and turning and basting the joints

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