Night of the Cougar

by Len Levinson

  Victorio was of average height for a warrior, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and his physique had become broader in recent years. Bestrewn with stolen necklaces and bracelets, he brandished a stolen revolver as he charged down a carpeted hallway, passing potted plants and unlit torches affixed to walls. He stopped beside a door, pressed his back to the wall, reached to the side, turned the knob, and a blast of buckshot splintered the varnished planks. If Victorio had been standing in front of the door, he would have been killed.

  He removed the hat, held it in front of the door, and another shot fired, shredding the hat. The explosion echoed down the corridor, as Victorio threw his shoulder against the door. It cracked apart, he leapt into the room, saw the double barrel of the shotgun from behind a cabinet, and rapid-fired as he advanced. The bullets pierced the cabinet easily, he heard a groan, the shotgun fell to the floor. Victorio stepped forward, aiming the pistol at the Mexican whom he found crumpled behind the cabinet, wearing fine clothing stained with blood.

  Victorio pulled his victim to the side and let him fall to the floor, then went through his pockets, finding coins, a notebook, but no pistol or ammunition, and that's what Victorio wanted most of all.

  Something compelled him to glance at the face of the dead Mexican, and afterward he wished that he'd kept on marauding, because the Mexican appeared oddly familiar. Victorio felt uneasy as he looked at the shape of eyes, nose, mouth, and cheekbones. Then Victorio rushed to a dresser, found a round mirror in a gold frame, lay it beside the dead Mexican, and studied both images.

  He was revolted to notice a strong resemblance between himself and the Mexican. Is this coincidence, he asked himself, or are the rumors true? The Mexicanos told a legend that Victorio had been one of them, captured as a child by the Apaches, but Victorio had discounted the theory because Mexicans could not imagine a pure Apache being as clever and brave as Victorio.

  Yet Victorio knew that Mexican babies were captured, adopted, and raised according to; the Lifeway. There were many resemblances between Mexicans and Indians, due to intermarriage over the centuries. Victorio held his dark hand before the young man's pale cheeks.

  Are the Mexicanos my people too? he wondered. Victorio had been raised by an uncle, now dead. He had been told his true parents were killed by the Nakai-yes when he had been small. But even if I was born a Nakai-yes, I repudiate them for the crimes they have committed against the People. Because no matter what my distant ancestry might have been, I am a warrior and subchief of the Mimbrenos, and nothing can change that fact.

  His sharp ears detected a faint scraping sound from the closet. Victorio yanked the doorknob, aimed his pistol into the clothing, and heard a terrified female bleat. Thrusting the clothes aside, he saw a young woman in a long white gown cowering in the corner, a candlestick in her hand, trembling uncontrollably, tears streaming down her cheeks. Victorio stared at her because her facial characteristics were similar to those of the man on the floor. Reaching forward abruptly, he tore the candlestick out of her hand, then grabbed the front of her nightgown and dragged her into the light of the bedroom, where he compared her to the face on the floor.

  Her lips trembled because she expected to be murdered at any moment. In addition, she was half insane, because one moment she'd been sleeping, and next thing she knew her family had been massacred. Her name was Constanza Azcarraga, daughter of the great caudillo, and she was tall, slender, with shoulder-length dark brown hair and sensuous lips. Faced with incomprehensible violence, all she could do was lower her eyes and recite softly, “Hail Mary, full of grace—the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

  She's beautiful, thought Victorio, who always maintained an eye for the ladies. But is it because I see myself in her? Victorio wondered if he had been stolen from such a hacienda as a baby. He had been fighting Mexicanos so long, he had learned their language, so he said "Venga,” motioning with his chin to the door.

  She stared at him, fantastic in his stolen jewelry, and she recognized that it had belonged to her mother, who now lay dead somewhere in the hacienda. Constanza proceeded to the hallway, where slaughtered servants sprawled about, blood staining the rug. The Mexican princess knew what Apaches did to captive women, they made them into slaves, or forced them to marry a warrior. She wished she'd had the good sense to shoot herself, but the onslaught had been too sudden. She tried to remember Saint Barbara, whose head had been chopped off because she refused to surrender her faith. Then she recalled Psalm 7:

  Oh Lord, my God, in thee do I trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me lest they tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces.

  Beneath her ecclesiastical calm, Constanza was terrified. Warriors studied her appreciatively as she made her way to the yard, where horses, mules, guns, clothing, and blankets were gathered. She stood among the merchandise, hands clasped together, eyes closed, praying for forgiveness of her sins, although she was a virgin and had led a relatively blameless life. Attired in her thin cotton gown, she felt naked in front of them.

  Then she lowered her head and mourned for her dead family, feeling like collapsing onto the ground, but she was the daughter of a proud caudillo, descended from the Spanish nobility. The warriors worked swiftly, stuffing booty into saddlebags, which they tied to their stolen packhorses. Strange notes wafted on the morning air as Geronimo attempted to play the parlor piano. Mangas Coloradas sat upon his horse and said nothing, a living symbol of resistance to the Nakai-yes.

  Victorio selected a fine chestnut mare, led it to Constanza, and said in Spanish, “Climb on.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” she asked.

  “Do not worry—I shall not kill you, I do not think.”

  “May I take my boots?”

  Victorio realized he should have slaughtered her at first sight, but she might be a distant cousin or niece. “I will get them for you.” He returned to the mansion, wondering who had enslaved whom. In the parlor, Geronimo continued to touch the piano's keys. “I wish I could bring this with us,” he said. “But it is so heavy.”

  Victorio climbed the stairs, marveling at the construction of the house. What minds they have, to conceive of such wickiups, he thought. Unfortunately, those same minds have committed atrocities against the People.

  He found her room, stepped over her dead brother, opened the closet, found her frilly dresses, inhaled her perfume. He took a cowhide skirt, cotton shirt, and black leather vest, plus a wide-brimmed hat and pair of sturdy boots. Tossing them onto a sheet, he made a makeshift bag, tossed it over his shoulder, then carried it outside.

  Meanwhile, the others torched the hacienda and outbuildings, forcing Geronimo to leave the piano. Victorio dropped the bag at Constanza's feet, then caught another glimpse of himself as her servant, which embarrassed him. “Hurry,” he told her brusquely.

  She wanted to spit in his eye, but her home was going up in smoke, her parents and brother cremated, and no longer did she have servants. Hands trembling, she buckled on the cowhide skirt as smoke poured out the windows of the mansion, flames engulfed curtains, and deadly orange fingers reached barrels of lamp oil in the basement. Constanza's mouth was set in a thin line as her family was consumed by flames.

  “Move out!” shouted Chief Mangas Coloradas.

  The Apaches, with their solitary captive, proceeded toward the open range, while from behind, crackling flames swallowed the buildings, sending long black trails of smoke into the sky. The Apaches sang victory songs, their voices rising into the sky, merging with other sounds emitted by the great Northern American continent as the sun dropped toward the horizon.

  Nine hundred miles to the northeast, a party of travelers stopped on a remote Texas plain, headed for the gold fields of Colorado Territory. They were a carpenter, a welldigger, and a college professor, plus a former whaling man from New Bedford, Massachusetts, and a blacksmith from Memphis, Tennessee. The latter had brought his fiddle and played
while the others cooked bacon and beans. It had been a long day, many miles and much hardship lay ahead, but the hope of untold riches drove them onward.

  During the summer of 1858, the new El Dorado was the Colorado Rockies, where a Georgian named William Green Russell had panned nuggets out of the South Platte River. As the Apache wars attained new intensity in northern Mexico, streams of argonauts headed west across the United States, hoping to find the great mother lode.

  The Texas travelers sat around their campfire, dreaming of marble palaces filled with naked dancing women and wondering if Comanches were watching them, because occasionally a party of miners would be murdered, robbed, and mutilated. They maintained modern weaponry close at hand, knowing they wouldn't stand a chance against a tribe of hatchet-wielding Injuns, but were willing to risk even their lives in the quest for unimaginable wealth.

  After the meal, the travelers prepared blankets for the night, and some said silent prayers, while others offered their final burps of the day. The campsite became silent, except for a chorus of insects, the cry of night birds and coyotes howling in far-off caves. The gold bugs were tired, content, and hopeful as they drifted to slumber, but suddenly arose with weapons in their hands.

  Something moved not far away, making barely audible animal sounds. The would-be miners glanced at each other fearfully, because it could be a family of bears. The carpenter's name was Randy, and as a former soldier had become unofficial leader of the group. “Let's git ready fer trouble,” he said.

  The men dressed quickly, gathered ammunition, and formed a defensive line, rifles pointing in the direction of the sound. Something large crawled toward them, growling or crying deep in its throat, hidden by foliage. The miners entered the thicket, then heard an almost inaudible, “Please . . . help . . . me.”

  They surrounded a human body wearing rags and covered with blood and gashes. Grimes the welldigger dropped to his knees and said in astonishment, “It's a woman.”

  “Help ...” she uttered.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Water . . .”

  They rolled her onto her back, and in her delirium, Esther wondered if they were going to continue raping her, but instead one said, “Let's carry ‘er back to camp.”

  They gathered her arms, supported her bottom, and gently walked with her to the dying embers of their fire, where they laid her on a blanket, and wet her lips with water from a canteen. “Looks like somebody been beatin’ on her,” said Jeb, the whaling man.

  “She's lucky to be alive,” added Charlie, the blacksmith. “What'll we do?”

  Randy shrugged. “Guess we'll have to go back.”

  Gold bugs hated detours from the mother lode, but Esther had got lucky at last. Perhaps it was their Sunday school classes, or memories of mothers and sisters, but they bathed her in warm water, gave her beef broth, and next morning, carried her back to Austin.

  On July 9, 1858, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the so-called Little Giant, arrived in Chicago on his private railway car to kick off his reelection campaign. He and his beautiful young wife, the former Adele Cutts, were greeted by a one-hundred-fifty-gun salute, fireworks, a brass band, and multitudes of supporters.

  Senator Douglas, forty-five, was broad-chested, with long, shaggy black hair, his face round and somewhat squashed-looking, his every gesture expressing strength, determination, and fighting courage. No grubby backstreet politician, he was one of the most famous and wealthiest senators in the land, leader of the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party known as Young America. Whatever he lacked in aesthetic appeal was made up by his wife, who had an oval pretty face and chestnut curls, said to be one of the most fascinating women in Washington, grandniece of Dolley Madison.

  The distinguished senator and his elegant wife rode in an open barouche to the Tremont Hotel, where he intended to deliver a speech later that day from the Lake Street balcony. In his luxurious suite of rooms, Senator Douglas shook hands, slapped backs, and made promises he could not keep, in the grand tradition of electoral politics. Everyone expected him to run for the White House in 1860.

  But all was not well in the Douglas reelection campaign, because he, a Democrat, was at war with the Democrat Buchanan administration over slavery in Kansas-Nebraska Territory, the hottest issue in national politics. Douglas had advanced the much-discussed and debated doctrine of popular sovereignty, which called for citizens of a territory to vote slavery up or down, thereby removing it from Washington politicking, but the Buchanan administration had refused Kansans a referendum on slavery, and instead backed a proslavery document known as the Lecompton Constitution, in order to appease the solid South.

  Douglas had voted against Lecompton, and the Buchanan administration vowed revenge. They had found a Democrat to oppose him, Sidney Breese, chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, and poured huge sums into his campaign, hoping to draw votes from Douglas, even if it threw the election to Douglas's Republican opponent, a former Whig ex-Congressman and lawyer from Springfield named Abraham Lincoln.

  Citizens gathered on Lake Street while windows and rooftops of surrounding buildings were filled with eager faces, cannons fired, and fireworks illuminated the scene. The band played “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as the door to the balcony opened. Adele Cutts Douglas stepped out, moving as gracefully as a dancer to the front of the platform, accompanied by her husband, who was shorter then she, with his robust torso and comically abbreviated legs.

  Crowds spilled toward the perimeters of light, rockets streaked across the sky, and the multitudes roared as the renowned senator held up his arms in recognition of their acclaim. He had no doubt that he could defeat Lincoln in a two-man race, but Breese was the joker who could spoil the game. While waiting politely for applause to diminish, Senator Douglas examined the crowd, seeing many young ambitious up-and-coming fellows such as himself, the future of America.

  As the astute politician's eyes roved the gathering, he spotted his Republican adversary, Abe Lincoln, about midway back, tallest man in sight, wearing a stovepipe hat and a quizzical expression. Their eyes met, and both acknowledged silently that they competed in a grueling contest, but Lincoln was so little known, and the Republican party so new, no one gave him much of a chance against the renowned Senator Douglas.

  The last notes of applause ended and the final strains of music dissipated in the summer breeze, as the Little Giant raised his leonine head. “Ladies and gentleman,” he said, “I stand before you this evening on behalf of an important principle: the right of a free people to decide for themselves what kind of society they wish to have!”

  He then reiterated his doctrine of popular sovereignty, which relied on votes of citizens, rather than Washington politics, to settle the slavery issue. “My life for many years has been devoted to this ideal,” he explained. “I stand unequivocally for the right of free people to form and adopt their fundamental laws, and to manage and regulate their internal affairs and domestic institutions.”

  Senator Douglas next launched an attack on the Buchanan Administration, calling its policy toward Kansas-Nebraska Territory a “fraud,” and receiving a loud round of applause, because many Americans were disgusted with President Ten Cent Jimmy Buchanan's high-handed tactics in Kansas.

  Next, the Little Giant turned his argument against his main obstacle in the senate race, the Republican Abe Lincoln, and carefully drew the line between himself and Lincoln. “It is no answer,” he proclaimed, “for my opponent to say that slavery is evil and hence should not be tolerated. I say to you that we must allow people to decide for themselves whether slavery is good or evil. Diversity, dissimilarity, and variety in all our local and domestic institutions are the greatest safeguards of our liberties!

  “My opponent has further stated that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand,’ but I say to you that this house has stood divided between slavery and free soil for more than three score years, and will be standing long after Mr. Lincoln's calumny has been forgott
en!”

  Stephen Douglas needed to prove he wasn't a rabble-rousing abolitionist, so he told them in no uncertain terms: “In my opinion this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine. I do not support Negro equality, political or social, or in any other respect whatever.”

  Throughout his speech, the Little Giant's eyes returned to Long Abe Lincoln, the former backwoodsmen's deeply lined face immobile, arms crossed, mentally preparing his rejoinder.

  Next night Abe Lincoln spoke from the same Lake Street balcony to a much smaller crowd. He was six foot four, ungainly, born in a log cabin, a former rail-splitter and flatboatman, veteran of the Black Hawk War, now a prominent Springfield lawyer. He began with the accusation that Douglas deliberately had misinterpreted his “house divided” speech, because his words at the Republican state convention only had been a prediction, not a wish. Next he restated his belief that slavery should be left alone where it presently existed in the South, but declared his unequivocal opposition to its spread to new territories, and ridiculed Senator Douglas's popular sovereignty.

  Standing in the gaslight, Abe Lincoln proclaimed, “The argument of Senator Douglas is the same as the serpent who says, ‘You work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.’ If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery on any creature. All I ask for the Negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. My friends, let us turn this government into the channel where the trainers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us discard the quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior . . . and unite as one people throughout this land!”

  The people applauded politely at the end of Abe Lincoln's speech, but it wasn't like the praise given Senator Douglas. Long Abe knew that he faced an uphill struggle against a well-financed popular incumbent, but intended to place the truth before the common people and let them decide.