Outrunning The Dogs!

Howdy folks, greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in a series about the Wild West and the incredible story of an 11 year old German boy, Hermann, who was captured by an Apache war party from his family's farm in 1870 in Central Texas.

He's now 17 years old at this point in the story and has become a full blown warrior who hates and fears the White man. And in fact, has taken many a scalp.

He had to leave the Apache and has been a member of the Comanche tribe for a year or so.

Yesterday's post

In the last post I talked about Hermann's knowledge and experience with courtship and marriage in the two tribes he'd been with.

Today's story

The range of territory that the Southern Plains Indians considered their hunting grounds was vast; covering Texas, Northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska and part of Colorado.

Most of the time they were in West Texas though. The incident that happened on today's post looked similar to this landscape with bluffs in the distance.

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Settlers, farmers, merchants, ranchers, soldiers and Texas Rangers were thick everywhere they went so it was increasingly difficult to relax and stay safe.

On the other hand, they loved raiding and stealing horses so there were many more opportunities for those activities.

Also, they swore to fight and kill the enemy(all whites) and the enemy was everywhere.

One day Hermann went on a raid with two of his friends, Watsacatova and Esatema. For some reason they were on foot but had a pack mule loaded with their supplies on which they took turns riding.

Here's a pack mule that was probably similar except I doubt if their's was loaded with sticks. I'm sure they had blankets, ammunition, some cookware.

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They saw a camp of white men in front of them with a thicket just North of the camp so they decided to sneak up on the camp and attack them from that thicket. The only problem was, it was open country between them and the camp.

However, there was a ravine that ran in front of the camp over to the thicket that they needed to enter. So they tied they mule up and started making their way to the thicket in that ravine when suddenly a wagon leading a saddled horse came rolling up on them.

Armed to the teeth

Hermann's trio was well armed not only with bows and arrows but also his friends had rifles and he had a good pistol with a hundred cartridges. Seeing that they would be discovered in a few moments they opened fire on the wagon.

The three white boys jumped out of the wagon and one of them mounted the horse and raced off toward the camp. The other two got back in the wagon, whipped those horses and headed for the camp also.

Hermann and them waited for a couple minutes to see what would happen next. They soon saw about a dozen armed men heading towards them...with bloodhounds!

Bloodhounds have been used all over the world for centuries because of their incredible ability to track the scent of people.

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The dogs give chase

The three started running. Esatema was a slim, fast runner so he outran Hermann and Watsacatova, who was overweight and laboring hard.

They were running for the bluffs. At times the pace would slow down and then the dogs would get close to them and they'd get inspired again. It went that way until they'd gone about six miles. Watsacatova finally got to the point of giving up the run.

He told Hermann "Don't leave me. Let us stop and fight. I can't run anymore." But as luck would have it, they had reached the bluff. Plus Watsacatova got inspired once more when they heard horse hoofs.

In one last push the ran up the bluff and on the other side was thick bushes, thickets and underbrush and trees.

Watsacatova gets scalped by a bush!

All three of them plunged into the brush, rolling down the steep sloap through the vines and bushes.

As he was rolling down the hill Watscatova's long pony-tail got caught in the branches but his body kept moving. It pulled a large patch of hair out of his head. In fact, it looked just like he'd been scalped!

The dogs came in after them but without their masters they seemed to be quite less excited. The horses had to ride around the long way. I'm not sure the dogs wanted to catch them that bad.

Lots of times dogs love to give chase but don't really want to tangle with what they were chasing once they catch them. And Hermann's boys still had their guns.

Coming through that brush they ran into a river, which they joyfully dove into and it carried them many miles downstream and they were safe because the dogs lost their scent.

They were exhausted but amazed that they were able to outrun dogs for six miles. That was an incredible feat!

When it's a life or death situation you can dig deep and find speed and strength and inspiration you didn't know you had. Even if you're overweight! (Hopefully someone found their mule because they never went back there).

In the next post Hermann's adventure continues.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

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