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To relieve our horses, which are constantly giving out from exhaustion, the grass being insufficient for their sustenance while performing labour, the entire battalion, officers and men, were ordered to march on foot, turning their horses, with the saddles and bridles upon them, into the general caballada, to be driven along by the horse-guard. The day has been drizzly, cold, and disagreeable.
Many horses gave out as usual, and were left, from inability to travel. Our caballada is diminishing rapidly. Distance 10 miles. December 10. Our march has been on the main beaten trail, dry and hard, and over a comparatively level country. We passed the mission of San Miguel about three o'clock, and encamped in a grove of large oak timber, three or four miles south of it.
The other captives, along with the great caballada, had arrived before us; and we saw the plundered cattle scattered over the plain. As we approached the town, we were met by crowds of women and children, far more than we had seen on our former visit. These were guests, who had come in from other villages of the Navajoes that lay farther to the north.
"Ya-as," said Pete. "Here comes your caballada. Likely looking horses, Jack." "A leetle thin," said Carr. He took six nose-bags, already filled, and fed his wagon stock. Bobby pulled the saddle from the Nan-ná pony, tied him to a bush, and gave him breakfast from his own small morral. Then he sidled toward the fire. "Bobby, come over here," said Bobby's father. "This is your stepuncle Pete."
Droves had been seen upon our route, at great distances off: for these are the shyest and wildest of all animals. A caballada may have passed through the gorge, on their way to the upper valley? There was nothing improbable in this.
The horse he had pointed out was lassoed out of the caballada and brought up, and our comrade's thongs were taken off. The Indians had no fear of his escaping. They knew that they could soon overtake such a steed as the spotted mustang; moreover, there was a picket constantly kept at each entrance of the valley.
The horse-guard only, out by the caballada, stood leaning upon his rifle, silent and watchful. Resting my head in the hollow of my saddle, I lay down by the fire. Seguin was near me with his daughter. The Mexican girls and the Indian captives lay clustered over the ground, wrapped in their tilmas and striped blankets. They were all asleep, or seemed so.
Being of the party which performed rear-guard duty to-day, with orders to bring in all stragglers, we did not leave camp until several hours after the main body had left. The horses of the caballada and the pack-animals were continually giving out and refusing to proceed.
For two hours we watch their movements, and listen to their voices. Then the horse-guard is detailed, and marches off to the caballada; and the Indians, one after another, spread their skins, roll themselves in their blankets, and sleep. The fires cease to blaze; but by the moonlight we can distinguish the prostrate bodies of the savages. White objects are moving among them.
O. Larkin, Esq., late U.S. Consul in California, by a party of Californians, and of an engagement between the same Californians and a party of Americans escorting a caballada of 400 horses to Colonel Fremont's camp in Monterey. In this affair three Americans were killed, viz.: Capt. Burroughs, Capt. Foster, and Mr. Eames, late of St. Louis, Mo.
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