CHAPTER NINETEEN.
THE DEPARTURE OF THE PLUNDERERS.
On the day after the capture of the caravan the Indians, having consumed all the whisky found in the waggons, and become comparatively sober, prepared to move off.
The captured goods, made up into convenient parcels, were placed upon mules and spare horses.

Of both they had plenty, having come prepared for such a sequel to their onslaught upon the traders.
The warriors, having given interment to their dead comrades, leaving the scalped and mutilated corpses of the white men to the vultures and wolves, mounted and marched off.
Before leaving the scene of their sanguinary exploit, they had drawn the waggons into a close clump and set fire to them, partly from a wanton instinct of destruction, partly from the pleasure of beholding a great bonfire, but also with some thoughts that it might be as well thus to blot out all the traces of a tragedy for which the Americans--of whom even these freebooters felt dread--might some day call them to account.
They did not all go together, but separated into two parties on the spot where they had passed the night.

They were parties, however, of very unequal size, one of them numbering only four individuals.
The other, which constituted the main body of the plunderers, was the band of the Tenawa Comanchey, under their chief, Horned Lizard.

These last turned eastward, struck off towards the head waters of the Big Witches, upon which and its tributaries lie their customary roving grounds.
The lesser party went off in almost the opposite direction, south-westerly, leaving the Llano Estacado on their left, and journeying on, crossed the Rio Pecos at a point below and outside the farthest frontier settlement of New Mexico towards the prairies.

Then, shaping their course nearly due south, they skirted the spurs of the Sierra Blanca, that in this latitude extend eastward almost to the Pecos.
On arriving near the place known as Gran Quivira--where once stood a prosperous Spanish town, devoted to gathering gold, now only a ruin, scarcely traceable, and altogether without record--they again changed their course, almost zigzagging back in a north-westerly direction.
They were making towards a depression seen in the Sierra Blanca, as if with the intention to cross the mountains toward the valley of the Del Norte.