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Updated: April 30, 2025
With Cress too ill to travel, the next morning I left Crawford to care for him, bade farewell to good old Don Abran, and started for Lampasos with Thornton and Curly. We nooned at Santa Cruz, a big sheep ranch midway between Musquiz and Progreso, leaving there about two o'clock.
"Yes," I answered, "I spent several weeks in the State last Winter." "And how did you like it?" she asked. "Well, I must say I found rather too many thrills there for comfort," I replied. And when I mentioned affair on the sierra south of Musquiz, she broke in with: "Indeed! And you are the crazy gringo Don Abran tried to stop from going into the desert!
The evening of the third day we reached Musquiz, one of the oldest towns of the northern border, nestled at the foot of a tall sierra amid wide fields of sugar cane, irrigated by the clear, sweet waters of the Sabinas. At eight o'clock the next morning I called on Captain Abran de la Garza, the Comandante, to present my letter from General Treviño.
"In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great plain the natives call El Desierto, known on the map as Bolson de Mapini, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and Mescaleros.
Better take a pretty strong party, for the authorities thought it necessary to give me a cavalry escort from Lampasos to Musquiz and back. And, by the way, pick up a boy named George E. Thornton, Socorro, N. M., on your way south. While only a youngster, he is one of the best all-round frontiersmen I ever saw, and speaks Spanish tolerably. Had him with me in the Gallup country."
And so we advanced for nearly half a mile when the Lipan trail turned east, toward Musquiz, up a crevice in the cliff a goat would have no easy time ascending. Thus we were led to argue that the Lipans had left their camp before discovering our approach, and by this time were probably miles away to the east.
Finally, late one night of the fourth week, we reached a little spring called Zacate, out in the open plain only about thirty miles south of Musquiz.
And why had they not flanked us! Careful scouting soon showed they had retired in a body down the trail we must follow to reach Musquiz, as for nearly three miles the descent was as rough and difficult as the ascent had been.
To be sure, the brush along the stream afforded some shelter, but no real protection. However, out now nearly fifty miles from Musquiz and well into the country we had come to see, we pushed ahead. Cress, Thornton, and Manuel prowling afoot through the brush a hundred yards in advance, Crawford, Tomas and myself bringing up the rear with the horses.
But between us and only five miles south of the town stretched a tall range through which Tomas knew of only two passes practicable for horsemen; one, to the west, via the Alamo, the route we had come, would involve a journey of eighty miles, while by the other, an old Indian and smugglers' trail crossing the summit directly south of Musquiz, we could make the town in thirty-two miles.
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