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Descending on to the llano, we found it intersected by deep and narrow gorges; following along the level, narrow ridge, surrounded by ravines on every side, except the one from which we had approached, we presently descended, along its flank, the bank of the deepest of these barrancas.
Oh, it is charming! and if I were to have my way, it should never come to an end. But why do you talk of leaving this place? Do you suppose the troubles are over, and we can return safely? I don't wish to go there, brother. After what has happened, I hate New Mexico, and would prefer staying in the Llano Estacado." "I have no thought of going back to New Mexico." "Where, then, brother?"
We spent two hours and a half in crossing the Llano del Retama, which appears like an immense sea of sand. Notwithstanding the elevation of this site, the centigrade thermometer rose in the shade toward sunset, to 13.8 degrees, or 3.7 degrees higher than toward noon at Monte Verde. This augmentation of heat could be attributed only to the reverberation from the ground, and the extent of the plain.
The girl is a brown-skinned Indian, evidently a domestic; and so also two of the four men. The other two are white, and of pronouncedly Spanish features. One is an oldish man, greyheaded, thin-faced, and wearing spectacles. In a great city he would be taken for a savant, though difficult to tell what he may be, seen in the Llano Estacado surrounded by a desert.
His coins are much prized by the indians for necklaces and earrings, and even at Tehuantepec we had seen women wearing his little gold pieces in their ears. As it was, we made it with great difficulty in two, our mule Chontal apparently being completely worn out. We crossed the llano, passed through patches of pines, and then came out upon a terrible country of limestone hills.
The sun was just rising when Quanah Parker, Little Robe, and White Shield led more than eight hundred Comanches and Kiowas in the first charge upon the four buildings which stood at the edge of the Llano Estacado, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest settlement. The Shadler boys were slain in their wagon at that onslaught.
At this pace they all go, only at intervals drawing in to a walk, to breathe their blown steeds for a fresh spurt. Even after night has descended they continue on, a clear moonlight enabling them to lift the trail. As next morning's sun breaks over the Llano Estacado they descend its western slope into the valley of the Rio Pecos.
A fair exchange between the brothers of the bride; each equally quick to fall in love with the sister of the other. On the sterile Llano Estacado it took scarce a minute for the dark Mexican maiden to subdue the heart of Hamersley. Almost as soon, in the fertile State of Kentucky, has his bright-skinned, blonde-haired sister made conquest of the Mexican Colonel.
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.
The road wound astonishingly, and at one point, coming out upon a hog's-back ridge, we found that we had actually made a loop, and stood directly above where we had been some time before. Near sunset, we reached the summit, and looked down upon the little town of Ixtapa, upon a high llano below, and seeming to be a half-hour's ride distant.
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