EATEN BY THE WOLVES.
61
and the marks of ravenous teeth scratched in white lines across the skull; here, the bare ribs ;, there, the legs torn from their sockets and stripped of flesh, except one on which a stocking still remained; and when it was pulled off, there was the pale foot • with its livid nails, entire—and the flaxen hair, clotted into locks, as the bloody brutes had shaken its tangles from their fangs, clung about the bones and to the shrubs around, whose broken twigs and red stains bore witness to the wild struggle that had so dismembered it.
I was absolutely sickened by the horrid sight, and even the rude men around me were subdued and touched; even the Colonel's voice sank into low tones of something like sadness, as he ordered a Mexican to bring a mattock ; and we went reverently to work according to his directions, to gather up the scattered fragments and heap them together for the grave. By turns we took the mattock and silently dug away at the rude hole. That he was an American boy was all we knew, and this was enough for our sympathies. That he had been killed by the Comanches we were convinced from parts of his clothing, in which we could discover plainly the cut of a lance head, and this was enough to occupy u*with stern thoughts of vengeance.                 *
The hasty grave was finished, and the bones laid decently in such order as we could info it, and the dirt, wet with his own blood, thrown in upon them. Dust to dust, poor boy I yours was a hideous fate indeed ! We then collected logs from every direction, and heaped them in a great pile upon the grave, to keep the wolves from digging the bones up with their paws, and turned to go back—all parties more thoroughly sobered than I should have thought it possible for such men to be.
A Mexican from the madam's rancho, and on foot, here joined us; he told us that the Comanches had done a great deal of mischief before they reached us. In addition to a number of other murders, they had come suddenly upon a man by the name of Black, who lived some twenty miles off, when he was ploughing in the field. He was holding the plough-handles, while his son, about thirteen years of age, drove the oxen. The Indians were nearly on him before he saw them. He seized his little son by the hand and ran for life towards the house, where his rifle was.