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The Red Track: A Story of Social Life in Mexico
PREFACE
The present volume of GUSTAVE AIMARD's works is a continuation of the "Indian Chief," and conclusion of the series comprising that work, the "Gold Seekers," and the "Tiger Slayer."
At the present moment, when we are engaged in a war with Mexico, I feel assured that the extraordinary and startling descriptions given in this volume of the social condition and mode of life in the capital of that country will be read with universal gratification; for I can assert confidently that; no previous writer has ever produced such a graphic and truthful account of a city with which the illustrated papers will soon make us thoroughly acquainted.
If a further recommendation be needed, it will be found in the fact that the present volume appears in an English garb before being introduced to French readers. GUSTAVE AIMARD is so gratified with the reception his works have found in this country, through my poor assistance, that he has considered he could not supply a better proof of his thankfulness than by permitting his English readers to enjoy, on this occasion, the first fruits of his versatile and clever pen. This is a compliment which, I trust, will be duly appreciated; for, as to the merits of the work itself, I have not the slightest doubt. Readers may imagine it impossible for GUSTAVE AIMARD to surpass his previous triumphs in the wildly romantic, or that he could invent anything equal to the "Prairie Flower," a work which I venture to affirm, to be the finest Indian tale ever yet written, in spite of the great authors who have preceded AIMARD; but I ask my reader's special admiration for the "RED TRACK," because in it our favourite author strikes out a new path, and displays versatility which puts to the blush those bilious critics – few in number – I grant, among the multitude of encouraging reviewers, who have ventured an opinion that GUSTAVE AIMARD can only write about Indian life, or, in point of fact, that he is merely a hunter describing his own experiences under a transparent disguise.
Well, be it so, I accept the assertion. GUSTAVE AIMARD is but a hunter; he has seen nought but uncivilized life; he has spent years among savages, and has returned to his own country to try and grow Europeanized again. What then? The very objection is a proof of his veracity; and I am fully of the conviction that every story he has told us is true. It is not reasonable to suppose that a man who has spent the greater part of his life in hunting the wild animals of America – who has been an adopted son of the most powerful Indian tribes – who has for years never known what the morrow would bring forth, should sit down to invent. The storehouse of his mind is too amply filled with marvels for him to take that needless trouble, and he simply repeats on paper the tales which in olden limes he picked up at the camp fires, or heard during his wanderings with the wood rangers.
And it is as such that I wish GUSTAVE AIMARD to be judged by English readers. His eminent quality is truth. He is a man who could not set down a falsehood, no matter what the bribe might be, he has lived through the incidents he describes, and has brought back to Europe the adventures of a chequered life. He does not attempt to fascinate his readers by a complicated plot. He does not possess the marvellous invention of a Cooper, who, after a slight acquaintance with a few powerless Indians, wrote books which all admirers of the English language peruse. But GUSTAVE AIMARD possesses a higher quality, in the fact that he only notes down incidents which he has seen, or which he has received on undoubted evidence from his companions.
The present is the twelfth volume of GUSTAVE AIMARD's works to which. I have put my name; and, with the exception of a few captious criticisms whose motive may be read between the lines, the great body of the British Press has greeted our joints efforts with the heartiest applause. The success of this series has been unparalleled in the annals of cheap literature. Day by day the number of readers increases, and the publication of each successive volume creates an excitement which cannot fail to be most gratifying to the publishers.
To please all parties, the proprietors of AIMARD's copyrights have projected an Illustrated Series, to which I would invite most earnest attention. Although by this time I am saturated with Indian life, I confess that I never thoroughly understood it till I saw the engravings after a Zwecker, a Huard, and a Corbould. The artists have carefully studied their subjects, and gone to the fountain-head for information; and the result is, that they have produced a series of works which only need to be seen to be appreciated. The last volume illustrated is "The Freebooters," which was entirely intrusted to Mr. Corbould, and though I do not wish for a moment to depreciate the other artists, I felt, on seeing the illustrations, that GUSTAVE AIMARD was worthily interpreted. All I can urge upon readers is, that they should judge for themselves.
To wind up this unusually long Preface, into which honest admiration for the author has alone induced me, I wish to say that it affords me an ever-recurring delight to introduce GUSTAVE AIMARD's works to English readers, while it causes me an extra pleasure, on this occasion, to be enabled to repeat that the present volume appears on this side of the Channel before it has been introduced to French readers. And, knowing as I do the number of editions through which AIMARD's books pass in his own native land, I can appreciate the sacrifice he has made on this occasion at its full value.
DRAYTON TERRACE, WEST BROMPTON,
March, 1862.
CHAPTER I.
THE SIERRA OF THE WIND RIVER
The Rocky Mountains form an almost impassable barrier between California and the United States, properly so called; their formidable defiles, their rude valleys, and the vast western plains, watered by rapid streams, are even to the present day almost unknown to the American adventurers, and are rarely visited by the intrepid and daring Canadian trappers.
The majestic mountain range called the Sierra of the Wind River, especially offers a grand and striking picture, as it raises to the skies its white and snow-clad peaks, which extend indefinitely in a north-western direction, until they appear on the horizon like a white cloud, although the experienced eye of the trapper recognizes in this cloud the scarped outline of the Yellowstone Mountains.
The Sierra of the Wind River is one of the most remarkable of the Rocky Mountain range; it forms, so to speak, an immense plateau, thirty leagues long, by ten or twelve in width, commanded by scarped peaks, crowned with eternal snows, and having at their base narrow and deep valleys filled with springs, streams, and rock-bound lakes. These magnificent reservoirs give rise to some of the mighty rivers which, after running for hundreds of miles through a picturesque territory, become on one side the affluents of the Missouri, on the other of the Columbia, and bear the tribute of their waters to the two oceans.
In the stories of the wood rangers and trappers, the Sierra of the Wind River is justly renowned for its frightful gorges, and the wild country in its vicinity frequently serves as a refuge to the pirates of the prairie, and has been, many a time and oft, the scene of obstinate struggles between the white men and the Indians.
Toward the end of June, 1854, a well-mounted traveller, carefully wrapped up in the thick folds of a zarapé, raised to his eyes, was following one of the most precipitous slopes of the Sierra of the Wind River, at no great distance from the source of the Green River, that great western Colorado which pours its waters into the Gulf of California.
It was about seven in the evening: the traveller rode along, shivering from the effects of an icy wind which whistled mournfully through the canyons. All around had assumed a saddening aspect in the vacillating moonbeams. He rode on without hearing the footfall of his horse, as it fell on the winding sheet of snow that covered the landscape; at times the capricious windings of the track he was following compelled him to pass through thickets, whose branches, bent by the weight of snow, stood out before him like gigantic skeletons, and struck each other after he had passed with a sullen snap.
The traveller continued his journey, looking
