-horses, mules, and horned cattle. Horses and mules of
American breed, and cattle whose ancestral stock has come from Tennessee
or Kentucky along with the early colonists of Texas.

And though there are no squaws or papooses in the encampment, there are
women and children that are white. A group comprising both can be seen
near its centre. It does not need the dishevelled hair and torn dresses
to show they are captives; nor yet the half-dozen savages, spear-armed,
keeping guard over them. Their drooping heads, woeful and wan
countenances, are too sure signs of their melancholy situation.

What are these captives, and who their captors? Two questions easily
answered. In a general way, the picture explains itself. The captives
are the wives and children, with sisters and grown-up daughters among
them, of Texan colonists. They are from a settlement too near the
frontier to secure itself against Indian attack. The captors are a
party of Comanches, with whom the reader has already made acquaintance;
for they are no other than the sub-tribe of Tenawas, of whom the Horned
Lizard is leader.

The time is two weeks subsequent to the attack on Hamersley's train;
and, judging by the spectacle now presented, we may conclude that the
Tenawa chief has not spent the interval in idleness. Nearly three
hundred miles lie between the place where the caravan was destroyed and
the site of the plundered settlement, whose spoils are now seen in the
possession of the savages.

Such quick work requires explanation. It is at variance with the
customs and inclinations of the prairie freebooter, who, having acquired
a booty, rarely strikes for another till the proceeds of the first be
squandered. He resembles the anaconda, which, having gorged itself,
lies torpid till the craving of a fresh appetite stirs it to renewed
activity.

Thus would it have been with the Tenawa chief and his band, but for a
circumstance of a somewhat unusual kind. As is known, the attack on the
prairie traders was not so much an affair of the Horned Lizard as his
confederate, the military commandant of Albuquerque. The summons had
come to him unexpected, and after he had planned his descent on the
Texas settlement. Sanguinary as the first affair was, it had been
short, leaving him time to carry out his original design, almost equally
tragical in its execution. Here and there, a spear standing up, with a
tuft of light-coloured hair, blood-clotted upon it