Once I thought I could see a
man in it, but it was a fancy; or perhaps the soul of the thing,
watching from its hiding-place for a prey which it might seize upon.
Happily it was dark, very dark, and being in a hollow along the banks,
we could not be perceived; and the dreadful thing passed.
"The Caddoes uttered a loud scream of fear and agony, their hearts were
melted. We said nothing, for we were Comanches and warriors; and yet I
felt strange, and was fixed to where I stood. A man is but a man, and
even a Red-skin cannot struggle with a spirit. The scream of the
Caddoes, however, frightened the monster; its flanks opened and
discharged some tremendous Anim Tekis (thunders) on the village. I heard
the crashing of the logs, the splitting of the hides covering the
lodges, and when the smoke was all gone, it left a smell of powder; the
monster was far, far off and there was no trace of it left, except the
moans of the wounded and the lamentation of the squaws among
the Caddoes.
"I and my young men soon recovered our senses; we entered the village,
burnt everything, and killed the warriors. They would not fight; but as
they were thieves, we destroyed them. We returned to our own villages,
every one of us with many scalps, and since that time the Caddoes have
never been a nation; they wander from north to south, and from east to
west; they have huts made with the bark of trees, or they take shelter
in the burrows of the prairie dogs, with the owls and the snakes; but
they have no lodges, no wigwams, no villages.
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