United States or Tokelau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We made no scruples of deserting our late masters, and, spurring our gallant steeds, we soon found that our unconscious liberators were a party of officers bound from Monterey or Santa Fe, escorted by two-and-twenty Apaches and some twelve or fifteen families of Ciboleros. I knew the officers, and was very glad to have intelligence from California.
This pass, though long known to the trappers and ciboleros of New Mexico, had only just come into notice as a road to the Pacific; but, being one of the most central and direct, it had already been tried both by Californian and Mormon emigrants, and found practicable for waggons.
There were a dozen detailed for this first race, young men of all classes, who were, or fancied themselves, "crack" riders. There were rancheros in their picturesque attire, smart arrieros, miners from the hills, townsmen, hacendados of the valley, vaqueros from the grazing-farms, and ciboleros, whose home is for the most part on the wide prairies.
The cries of a whole family, with children of all sizes, in bitter agony, can alone represent the concert of terrible sounds; and we must go to South Mexico to find its horrid equal in a troop of howling monkeys. About a week after the fiesta of Saint John, a small party of ciboleros was seen crossing the Pecos, at the ford of the "Bosque Redondo."
Antonio, on first perceiving the object, called his master's attention to it, and both now gazed over the box of the carreta, scanning it as well as the grey light would permit them. As this became brighter, the object was seen more distinctly, while at each moment the curiosity of the ciboleros increased.
In earlier times one of these routes was known as the "Spanish Trail," from Santa Fe to San Antonio de Bexar, of Texas; and lest travellers should lose their way, several points were marked with "palos," or stakes. Hence the name it has received. The Llano Estacado is now rarely travelled, except by the ciboleros, or Mexican buffalo-hunters, and "Comancheros," or Indian traders.
They were ciboleros, vaqueros, rancheros, monteros; men who in their frequent association with the mountain men, the Gallic and Saxon hunters from the eastern plains, had acquired a degree of daring which by no means belongs to their own race. They were the chivalry of the Mexican frontier. They smoked cigaritas, rolling them between their fingers in husks of maize.
"Now if we can find one who could either follow this fellow or track him but there's the difficulty. We are badly off for a good tracker. There is not one in the whole troop." "There are other ciboleros and hunters in the valley. Why not procure one of them?" "True, we might there are none of them over well disposed to the outlaw so it is said.
They bent down, and turned over the body to examine it. The savage was in full war-costume that is, naked to the waist, and painted over the breast and face so as to render him as frightful as possible: but what struck the ciboleros as most significant was the costume of his head! This was close shaven over the temples and behind the ears.
All seem obedient to his orders; all move with military promptness at his word or nod. Beyond doubt, it is the Red-Hand and his followers, who for crimes and cold-blooded atrocities are noted as he. A dreaded band, long known to the traders of Santa Fe to the ciboleros from the Taos Valley to the trappers of the Arkansas and Platte.
Word Of The Day