[The Lone Ranche by Captain Mayne Reid]@TWC D-Link bookThe Lone Ranche CHAPTER ONE 2/9
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.
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