The Lone Ranch

The Lone Ranch
A Tale of the Staked Plain
By Captain Mayne Reid
CHAPTER ONE.
A TALE OF THE STAKED PLAIN.
"HATS OFF!"
Within the city of Chihuahua, metropolis of the northern provinces of
Mexico--for the most part built of mud--standing in the midst of vast
barren plains, o'ertopped by bold porphyritic mountains--plains with a
population sparse as their timber--in the old city of Chihuahua lies the
first scene of our story.
Less than twenty thousand people dwell within the walls of this North
Mexican metropolis, and in the country surrounding it a like limited
number.
Once they were thicker on the soil; but the tomahawk of the Comanche
and the spear of the Apache have thinned off the descendants of the
Conquistadores, until country houses stand at wide distances apart,
with more than an equal number of ruins between.
Yet this same city of Chihuahua challenges weird and wonderful
memories. At the mention of its name springs up a host of strange
records, the souvenirs of a frontier life altogether different from that
wreathed round the history of Anglo-American borderland. It recalls
the cowled monk with his cross, and the soldier close following with
his sword; the old mission-house, with its church and garrison beside it;
the fierce savage lured from a roving life, and changed into a toiling
peon, afterwards to revolt against a system of slavery that even religion

failed to make endurable; the neophyte turning his hand against his
priestly instructor, equally his oppressor; revolt followed by a deluge of
blood, with ruinous devastation, until the walls of both mission and
military cuartel are left tenantless, and the redskin has returned to his
roving.
Such a history has had the city of Chihuahua and the settlements in its
neighbourhood. Nor is the latter portion of it all a chronicle of the olden
time. Much of it belongs to modern days; ay, similar scenes are
transpiring even now. But a few years ago a stranger entering its gates
would have seen nailed overhead, and whisked to and fro by the wind,
some scores of objects similar to one another, and resembling tufts of
hair, long, trailing, and black, as if taken from the manes or tails of
horses. But it came not thence; it was human hair; and the patches of
skin that served to keep the bunches together had been stripped from
human skulls! They were scalps--the scalps of Indians, showing that
the Comanche and Apache savages had not had it all their own way.
Beside them could be seen other elevated objects of auricle shape, set
in rows or circles like a festooning of child peppers strung up for
preservation. No doubt their procurement had drawn tears from the
eyes of those whose heads had furnished them, for they were human
ears!
These ghastly souvenirs were the bounty warrants of a band whose
deeds have been already chronicled by this same pen. They were the
trophies of "Scalp Hunters"--vouchers for the number of Indians they
had killed.
They were there less than a quarter of a century ago, waving in the dry
wind that sweeps over the plains of Chihuahua. For aught the writer
knows, they may be there still; or, if not the same, others of like gory
record replacing or supplementing them.
It is not with the "Scalp Hunters" we have now to do--only with the city
of Chihuahua. And not much with it either. A single scene occurring in
its streets is all of Chihuahuaense life to be depicted in this tale.

It was the spectacle of a religious procession--a thing far from
uncommon in Chihuahua or any other Mexican town; on the contrary,
so common that at least weekly the like may be witnessed. This was
one of the grandest, representing the story of the Crucifixion. Citizens
of all classes assisted at the ceremony, the soldiery also taking part in it.
The clergy, of course, both secular and regular, were its chief supports
and propagators. To them it brought bread, and if not butter-- since
there is none in Chihuahua--it added to their incomes and influence, by
the sale of leaden crosses, images of the Virgin Mother, and the
numerous sisterhood of saints. In the funcion figured the usual
Scripture characters:--The Redeemer conducted to the place of Passion;
the crucifix, borne on the shoulders of a brawny, brown-skinned Simon;
Pilate the oppressor; Judas the betrayer--in short, every prominent
personage spoken of as having been present on that occasion when the
Son of Man suffered for our sins.
There is, or was then, an American hotel in Chihuahua, or at least one
conducted in the American fashion, though only a mere posada.
Among its guests was a gentleman, stranger to the town, as the country.
His dress and general appearance bespoke him from the