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Updated: September 26, 2025
Asked by me why he himself had not sought cover, George answered, "No show to get one except by keeping out in the open on the high ground, and I wanted one!" It was plain the Lipans had sighted us when too late to lay an ambush for us in the narrows, had made a short cut through the hills and dropped down into the stream bed with the plan to attack us at our night camp.
They seem to have come into Kansas and Nebraska, at a date relatively remote, from Mexico, and are allied with the Lipans and Tonkaways of that region. The Tonkaways regard the Pawnees, who also have a wolf tribe, as a long-separated branch of their race. If, then, they are of Mexican origin, we might expect to find traces of Aztec ritual among the Pawnees.
The latter route Tomas strongly opposed as too dangerous. Twelve miles from where we lay it entered the range, and for fifteen miles followed terrible rough cañons wherein, every step of the way, we should be right in the heart of the recent range of the Lipans, and where every turn offered chance of a perfect ambush.
All the clauses of our charter have been broken, and now your Congress has decreed that we shall have only one soldier to every five hundred inhabitants and that all the rest of us shall be disarmed. How are we, in a wild country, to protect ourselves from the Comanches, Lipans and other Indians who roam everywhere, robbing and murdering?"
Ah, they still think they have us!" The last remark was drawn by a shout and another spatter of shots. Two or three bullets struck alarmingly close, and they increased the speed of their horses, while the Lipans urged their ponies to their best. "They're too eager," said Obed. "It's time to give them a hint that their company is not wanted."
Tomas told us that the trail of the Lipans led straight up the valley, and for eight miles the cañon was never more than three hundred yards wide, and often no more than fifty, with almost perpendicular walls rising on either side two hundred or more feet in height, so nearly perpendicular that we would for the entire distance be in range from the bordering cliff crests, while any enemy there ambushed would be so safely covered they could follow our route and pick us off at their leisure.
The yucca and the mesquite turned into oak. They passed through large groves and they hoped that they might soon enter a great forest in which they could hide their trail wholly from the Lipans. They crossed two considerable streams, knee deep on the horses, and then they entered the forest for which they had hoped so much. It was of oaks without much undergrowth and the ground was hilly.
So I remained at Fort Clark three days in duress, and never had a prisoner of war more hospitable entertainment. Texas overflows with abundant provisions, if they only had French cooks. After a toilsome and dangerous march through Lipans and Commanches we arrived on the upper Rio Grande, at El Paso, in time to spend the Fourth of July.
"If we didn't burn their noble Lipan faces then I'm mightily mistaken," said Obed, as he too began to reload his rifle. "A charge that is not pressed home is no charge at all. Hark, what is that?" There was a sudden crash of rifle shots in the forest, the long whining whoop of the Lipans and then hard upon it a deep hoarse cheer. "White men!" exclaimed Ned. "And Texans!" said Obed.
Both he and Ned were splendid marksmen, and if the chase were a success for the Lipans there would also be a bitter fight at the end of it. Now he and Ned ceased to talk, the sun blazed down on the plain, and on sped the chase, hour after hour. The hours of the afternoon trailed slowly away, one by one.
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