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The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

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Title: The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

Author: Gustave Aimard

Translator: Sir Lascelles Wraxall


        
Release date: July 14, 2014 [eBook #46276]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46276

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREASURE OF PEARLS: A ROMANCE OF ADVENTURES IN CALIFORNIA ***
THE TREASURE OF PEARLS

A Romance of Adventures in California

BY

GUSTAVE AIMARD


AUTHOR OF "RED TRACK," "ADVENTURERS," "PEARL OF THE ANDES"

"TRAIL HUNTER," "PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIE," &C, &C.


LONDON: J. and R. MAXWELL

MILTON HOUSE, 4, SHOE LANE E. C.

GEORGE VICKERS, ANGEL COURT, STRAND

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS


(From the Collected Works 1863-1885)




CONTENTS.


         I. THE PIECES AND THE BOARD
        II. ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE
       III. THE PIRATE'S BEQUEST
        IV. A DESERT MYSTERY
         V. THE GODSEND
        VI. ANY PORT IN A STORM
       VII. A WAKING NIGHTMARE
      VIII. "THE LITTLE JOKER"
        IX. THE WAY LAYERS
         X. THE PEARL DIVER'S PRICE
        XI. THE TWO CAPTAINS OF THE "GOLETA"
       XII. THE ROUT COMPLETE
      XIII. INTERVENTION
       XIV. THE HAUL OF MILLIONS
        XV. THE PATHFINDER'S HONOUR
       XVI. A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM
      XVII. THE PUREST OF PEARLS
     XVIII. OUT AND AWAY
       XIX. THE OLD, OLD FRIENDS
        XX. THE ANGELITO
       XXI. THE LANCERS' CHARGE
      XXII. THE PACT OF BLOOD
     XXIII. CANNON IS BROUGHT TO BEAR
      XXIV. THE UNWILLING VOLUNTEER
       XXV. THE LOYALTY OF THE APACHE
      XXVI. THE HARVEST OF THE KNIFE
     XXVII. THE TRUE CABALLERO
    XXVIII. THE BEST BAIT TO CATCH APACHES




THE TREASURE OF PEARLS




CHAPTER I.

THE PIECES AND THE BOARD.


We stand on Mexican soil. We are on the seaward skirt of its
westernmost State of Sonora, in the wild lands almost washed by the
Californian Gulf, which will be the formidable last ditch of the
unconquerable red men flying before the Star of the Empire.

Before us, the immensity of land; behind us, that of the Pacific Ocean.

O immeasurable stretches of verdure which form the ever-unknown
territory, the poetically entitled Far West, grand and attractive,
sweet and terrible, the natural trellis of so rich, beautiful, mighty,
and unkempt flora, that India has none of more vigour of production!

To an aeronaut's glance, these green and yellow plains would offer only
a vast carpet embroidered with dazzling flowers and foliage, almost as
gay and multicoloured, irregularly blocked out like the pieces of glass
in ancient church windows with the lead, by rivers torrential in the
wet season, rugged hollows of glistening quicksands and neck-deep mud
in summer, all of which blend with an unexampled brilliant azure on the
clear horizon.

It is only gradually, after the view has become inured to the
fascinating landscape, that it can make out the details: hills not to
be scorned for altitude, steep banks of rivers, and a thousand other
unforeseen impediments for the wretch fleeing from hostile animals or
fellow beings, which agreeably spoil the somewhat saddening sameness,
and are hidden completely from the general glance by the rank grass,
rich canes, and gigantic flower stalks.

Oh, for the time--the reader would find the patience--to enumerate
the charming products of this primitive nature, which shoots up and
athwart, hangs, swings, juts out, crosses, interlaces, binds, twines,
catches, encircles, and strays at random to the end of the naturalist's
investigation, describing majestic parabolas, forming grandiose
arcades, and finally completes the most splendid, aye, and sublime
spectacle that is given to any man on the footstool to admire for
superabundant contrasts, and enthralling harmonies.

The man in the balloon whom we imagine to be hovering over this mighty
picture, even higher up than the eagle of the Sierra Madre itself, who
sails in long circles above the bald-headed vulture about to descend on
a prey, which the king of the air disdains--this lofty viewer, we say,
would spy, on the afternoon when we guide the reader to these wilds
apparently unpeopled, more than one human creature wriggling like worms
in the labyrinth.

At one point some twenty men, white and yet swarthy, unlike in dress
but similarly armed to the teeth, were separately "worming" their
tortuous way, we repeat, through the _chaparral_ proper, or plantations
of the low branching live oak, as well as the gigantic ferns, mesquite,
cactus, nopal, and fruit laden shrubs, the oblong-leaved mahogany, the
bread tree, the fan-leaved abanico, the pirijao languidly swinging its
enormous golden fruit in clusters, the royal palm, devoid of foliage
along the stem, but softly nodding its high, majestically plumed head;
the guava, the banana, the intoxicating chirimoya, the cork oak, the
Peruvian tree, the war palm letting its resinous gum slowly ooze forth
to capture the silly moths, and even young snakes and lizards which
squirmed on the hardening gum like a platter of Palissy ware abruptly
galvanised into life.

These adventurers insinuated themselves through this tangle unseen and,
perhaps, unsuspected by one another, all tending to the same point,
probably the same rendezvous. A marked devil-may-care spirit, which
tempered the caution of men brought up in the desert, betokened that
they were master of the woods hereabouts, or, at least, only recognised
the Indian rovers as their contesting fellow tenants.

Elsewhere, a blundering stranger, of a fairness which startled the
pronghorn antelopes as much as a superstitious man would be at seeing a
sheeted form at midnight, tramped desperately as one who felt lost, but
nervously feared to delay whilst there was daylight, over the immense
spreads of dahlias, flaunting flowers each full of as much honey as
Hercules would care to drain at a draught, whiter than Chimborazo's
snow, or ruddier than the tiger lily's blood splashes; through thick
creepers which withered with the pressing circulation of boiling sap
like vegetable serpents around the trees, from which gorged reptiles,
not unlike these growing cords themselves, dangled, and now and then
half curled up, startling with his inexpert foot (in a boot cut and
torn by the bramble and splinters of the ironwood and lignum vitae
shattered in the _tornado_--a "twister," indeed)--animals of all sizes
and species, which leaped, flew, floundered, and crept aloof in the
chaos not unpierceable to them: forms on two, four, countless feet,
with long, broad, ample, or tiny wings, singing, calling, yelling,
howling up and down a scale of incredible extent, now softly seducing
the astray to follow, now taunting him and screaming for him to
forbear. If he were not maddened, he must have had a heart of steel.

Elsewhere still, a man was riding on a horse whose harness and
trappings smelt so strongly of the stable, that is, of human slavery,
that it alarmed the stupid, mournful-eyed bisons, the alligator as he
basked in the caking mire, the hideous iguana slothfully ascending
a wind cast trunk, that maneless lion the cougar, the panthers and
jaguars too lazy or too glutted with the night's raid to follow the
prey, the honey bear warily sniffing the flower which harboured a bee,
the sullen grizzly who looked out of a hilly den amazed at so impudent
an invader. Upon this horse, whose Spanish descent and state of born
thraldom was resented by the angry neigh of his never-lassoed brethren,
proudly careering in unnumbered _manadas_ upon endless courses, this
man was resolutely progressing, ruthlessly severing vines and floral
clumps with a splendid old broadsword, cool as only a Mexican can
remain in a felt sombrero and a voluminous blanket cloak; charging and
crushing, unless they quickened their retreat, the venomous cotejo, the
green lizard, the basilisk and tiny, yet awful, coral snakes, and never
swerving, though the tongue could almost attain what was unmuffled
of his face, the monstrous anaconda and its long, spotted kinsfolk.
This mounted Mexican took a line, not so straight as the footmen
were pursuing, which would bring him to the spot whither they were
converging.

Imagining that the one of the wayfarers who evinced an ignorance of
prairie life which made his existence each moment a greater miracle,
and that the horseman who, on the contrary, rode on as sturdily as a
postboy in a well-worn road, formed two sides of a triangle of which
the evident destination of the rider and the other Mexicans was the
final end, in about the centre of this fancied space, other human
objects of interest were visible to our aerial observer.

Toilsomely marching, one or the other of two men supporting alternately
the young girl who, singularly enough, was their companion in this
wilderness, the new trio formed a group which fluttered the almost
never-so-startled feathered inhabitants of that grove; curassows,
tanagers, noisy loros, hummingbirds as small as flies, hunting flies
as large as themselves, toucans that seemed overburdened with their
ultraliberal beaks, wood pigeons, fiery flamingoes, in striking
contrast with the black swans that clattered in the cane brake.

Behind them, in calm, contented chase, easy and active as the pretty
gray squirrels, which alone took the alarm and sprang away when he
noiselessly appeared, a shining copper-skinned Indian, with robust
limbs and graceful gait, an eye to charm and to command, moved like
a king who scorned to set his guards to punish the intruder, on his
domains, but stalked savagely onward to chastise them himself. The
plentiful scalp locks that fringed his leggings showed that he had left
many a skeleton of the paleface to bleach in the torrid sun, and that
the sex, the youth and the beauty of the gentle companion of the two
whites on whose track he so placidly proceeded, would not spare her a
single pang, far less obtain her immunity. On his Apollo-like bosom
was tattooed, in sepia and vermilion, a rattlesnake, the emblem not
merely of a tribe, but the sect of a tribe, the ring within the circle;
he belonged to the select band of the Southern Apaches, the Poison
Hatchets, initiated in the compounding of deadly salves and potent
potions, to cure the victim of which the united faculties of Europe
would be baffled. No doubt those arrows, of which the feathers bristled
in a full quiver, and his other weapons, were anointed with that venom
which makes such Indians shunned by all the prairie rovers.

Such was the panorama, sublime, enthralling and fearsome, and the
puppets which are presented to our imaginary gazer.

Leaving him to dissolve into the air whence we evolved him, we descend
to terra firma near the last party to which we directed attention.

The sun was at its zenith, which fact rendered the animation of so many
persons the more remarkable, since few are afoot in the heat of the day
in those regions.

Suddenly, with a slight hiss as of a living snake, an arrow sped
unerringly through a tuft of liquid embers, and laid low, after
one brief spasm of death, a huge dog which seemed a mongrel of
Newfoundlander and a wild wolf.

Shortly afterwards the branches which masked the poor animal's
stiffening body (on which the greedy flies began already to settle,
and towards which the tumblebugs were scrambling in their amazing
instinct), were parted by a trembling hand, and a white man
of Spanish-American extraction, showed his face streaming with
perspiration and impressed with terror and despair, to which, at the
discovery, was immediately added a profound sorrow.

"Snakebit! That is what detained Fracasador (the Breaker into Bits).
Come, arouse thee, good dog!" he said in Spanish, but instantly
perceiving the tip of the arrow shaft buried almost wholly in the broad
chest, he uttered a sigh of deep consternation, and added--

"Again the dart of death! We are still pursued by that remorseless
fiend."

Fracasador was certainly dead.

"After our horses, the dog! After the dog, ourselves! Brave Benito!
Poor Dolores, my poor child!"

He started, as the bushes rustled, but it was not an enemy who
appeared. It was the young woman whom he had named, and a youth in his
two-and-twentieth year at the farthest.

Benito was tall, well and stoutly built; his form even stylish, his
features fine and regular; his complexion seemed rather pale for a
native, from his silky hair, which came down disorderly on his square
shoulders, being of a jet black. Intelligence and unconquerable daring
shone in his large black eyes. On his visage sat a seldom seen blending
of courage, fidelity and frankness. In short, one of those men who win
at first sight, and can be trusted to the last.

Though his costume, reduced by the dilapidation of the thorns,
consisted of linen trousers caught in at the waist by a red China
crape _faja_ or sash, and a coarse "hickory" shirt, he resembled a
disguised prince, so much ease and distinction abounded in his bearing.
But, for that matter, throughout Spanish-America, it is impossible to
distinguish a noble from a common man, for they all express themselves
with the same elegance, employ language quite as nicely chosen, and
have equally courteous manners.

The girl whom he supported, almost carried in fact, was sleeping
without being fully unconscious, as happens to soldiers on a forced
march. Dolores was not over sixteen. Her beauty was exceptional, and
her modesty made her low melodious voice falter when she spoke. She was
graceful and dainty as an Andalusian. The profile so strongly resembled
that of the man who was leaning over the slain dog that it did not
require the remembrance that he had spoken of her as his child, for one
to believe that he had father and daughter under his ken.

"Don't wake her!" said the elder man, with a quick wave of the hand
to quell the other's surprise. "Let her not see the poor faithful
hound, Benito. And keep yourself, as I do, before her as a shield. The
cowardly foe to whom we owe the loss of our horses, our arms, and now
our loyal comrade is lurking in the thicket, may even--Oh, Holy Mother,
that should protect us from the heathen!--be this instant taking aim at
our poor, dear Dolores, with another missile from his accursed quiver."

"The villain!" cried Benito, darting a furious glance around. "Luckily,
she sleeps, Don José."

Indeed the elder Mexican could take the girl without awakening her out
of the other's arms, and, after a long kiss on her pure forehead, bear
her away from the dog's proximity into a covert where he laid her upon
the grass with precaution.

"Thank heaven for this sleep," said he, "it will make her temporarily
oblivious of her hunger."

Benito had taken the other's zarapé which he spread over the girl. That
blanket was their only appendage; beside the scanty covering which the
three wore, weapons, water bottle and food container, they had none.
A critical position this for the small party, weaponless and foodless
in the waste! A disarmed man is reckoned as dead in such a wild!
Struggling is impossible against the incalculable foes that either
crush a solitary adventurer by their mass, or deputize, so to say, some
such executioner as he whom we saw to have slain the dog, and we hear
to have rid the three Mexicans of their horses and equipments. The
story of how this deprivation came about is short and lamentable.




CHAPTER II.

ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE.


Don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente was the son of that General
Bustamente, twice president of the Mexican Republic. When his father,
cast down from power, was forced to flee with his family to take final
refuge at Guayaquil, the boy was only five or six years old. Suffering
with fever, which made the voyage dangerous for him, the child was
left at Guaymas in charge of a faithful adherent, who found no better
way of saving the son of the proscript from persecution than to take
him as one of his own little family up the San José Valley, where he
had a ranch. The boy remained there and grew up to the age when we
encountered him.

His rough but trusty guardian let the youth run wild, teaching him to
ride and shoot as the only needful accomplishments. Benito, falling
into the company of the remnant of purer-blooded Indians, supposed to
be the last of the original possessors of that region, relished their
vagabond life exceedingly. Not only did he spend weeks at a time in
hunts with them, with an occasional running fight with the Yaqui tribe,
and even the Apaches raiding Sonora; but, at the season for pearl
diving, accompanied them in their boats, not only in the Gulf, but down
the mainland and up the seacoast of the peninsula. La Paz he knew well,
and the Isles of Pearls were familiar in every cranny.

Now, when the news of his father's death in exile came to Benito, he
was a hunter and horseman doubled by seaman and pearl fisher, such as
that quarter of the world even seldom sees.

So little on land, both enemies and followers of the copresident lost
all trace of the son.

Moreover, in the land of revolution in permanency, the offspring of a
once ruler are personally to blame if they call dangerous attention on
themselves.

On shore, however, don Benito had noticed the daughter of a neighbour,
one don José Miranda, formerly in the navy. After a couple of years'
wedded life, the latter was left a widower with an only daughter, who
had become this charming Dolores, now slumbering under her father's
zarapé. Her education was confided to a poor sister of the captain,
who was about the only enemy young Bustamente had in his courtship.
Captain Miranda was very fond of the youth, and it was agreed ere long
that there should be a wedding at the _Noria de las Pasioneras_ (Well
house of the Passionflowers) as soon as Benito reached the age of
five-and-twenty.

But doña Maria Josefa had contrary marital projects. Her brother had so
many times talked of bestowing the bulk of his considerable fortune on
his beloved child, that the lady concluded, rightly or wrongly, that
she would be penniless when the niece married. Habituated, since a
great while back, to a very easy, not to say pampered existence at her
kinsman's expense, she beheld with terror the time coming when her host
would settle all his property on the girl, and constitute the strange
young man, who was so reserved about his origin, the steward for his
young wife. However, doña Maria Josefa was too sly and adroit to openly
oppose the paternal determination, and allow him to perceive the hate
she bore Benito and would be only too delighted to manifest.

Whenever she threw out hints of a better match for her niece than this
mysterious youth, they had fallen in deaf ears, and she fretted in
silence that boded no good prospects.

Nevertheless, some two years had known the young hearts formally
engaged without the serpent lifting her head to emit a truly alarming
hiss. At that time doña Maria Josefa introduced at her brother's a
hook-nosed gentleman, arrayed sumptuously, who rejoiced in a long name
which paraded pretensions to an illustrious lineage. This don Aníbal
Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortez so displeased Benito and Dolores,
whilst not ingratiating himself deeply with don José, that his presence
would not have been tolerated, only for the young couple hopefully
supposing that the tall and bony scion of the first conqueror of Mexico
was a flame of Dolores' duenna, and as such would wed the dragon and
take her away from the hacienda to the beautiful and boundless domains
in Spain, upon which he expatiated in a shrill voice of enthusiasm.

Don Aníbal had excellent credentials from a banker's at Guaymas,
but, somehow, the gentlemen farmers received him with cold courtesy.
Besides, it having been remarked that those who offended him met with
injury, personal, like the being waylaid, or in their property, stock
being run off or outhouses fired, there sprang up a peculiar way of
treating the stranger for which the Spanish _morgue_, that counterpart
of English phlegm, is very well suited.

All at once, Benito received word that a messenger from his mother had
arrived at Guaymas, bearing the very good news that she expected to
obtain a revocation of the sentence of banishment against the brood of
Bustamente, and then he could publicly avow his name.

He had already imparted his secret to Captain Miranda.

The messenger had grievously suffered with seasickness, and was
unable to come up the valley. Miranda counselled Benito to go to him
therefore, and besides, as the formalities attending the settlement of
his estate upon his daughter, under the marriage contract, required
such legal owls as nestled alone in the port, he volunteered to
accompany the young man. Over and above all this pleasing arrangement,
as Dolores had never seen the city, of which the five thousand
inhabitants think no little--for after all it is the finest harbour in
the Gulf of California--he proposed she should be of the party.

Another reason, which he did not confide in anyone, acted as a
spur. A neighbour had told don José that, from a communication of
his majordomo, an expert in border warfare, he believed that the
illustrious don Aníbal de Luna was not wholly above complicity with a
troop of robbers who lately infested Sonora, and caused as much dread
and more damage, forasmuch as they were intelligently directed to the
best stores of plunder as the Indians themselves. This neighbour,
though he loved doña Josefa no more cordially than anybody else, still
deemed it dutiful to prevent Captain Miranda allowing a "gentleman of
the highway" to marry into his family.

Don José felt the caution more painfully, as his sister had plainly
let him know that the famous don Aníbal was not so much her worshipper
as her niece's. He might have thanked the _salteador_ to rid his house
of the old maid, but to allow one to court his daughter was another
matter. At the same time, as of such dubious characters are made the
"colonels" who buckler up a Mexican revolutionary pretender, don José
was scarcely less coldly civil to the hidalgo, though he hastened on
the preparations to withdraw his daughter from the swoop of the bird of
rapine.

Doña Maria Josefa drew a long face at the prospect of being left alone
at the hacienda, but she was too great a dependant on her brother, and
too hypocritical to trammel the undertaking.

The party set forth, then, under good and sufficient escort. But the
very foul fiend himself appeared to have taken all doña Maria Josefa's
evil wishes in hand to carry them out, to say nothing of the baulked
don Aníbal's.

Half the escort left without returning, at a mere alarm of the _Indios
bravos_ ("hostiles") being at La Palma, and massacring and firing
farmhouses wholesale. The rest were lost in the bush, were abandoned
dead or dying; the mules and horses were "stampeded" by unseen foes;
and finally a fatal bowman slew the two horses which had borne don José
and his daughter in their futile endeavour to regain the lost track;
and, to come to the present time, their dog, of whom the instinct had
preserved them more than once from death by thirst, had been despatched
by the same relentless demon.

Still, there was the contradictory consolation which the persistent
enemy afforded by these evidences of his bloodthirsty hunt. By a
singular anomaly of the human organisation, as long as man knows his
fellows are at hand, even though they be enemies, he does not feel
utterly stripped of hope. In the depth of his heart, the vaguest of
hope sustains and encourages him, though he may not reason about it.
But as soon as all human vestiges disappear, the imperceptible human
waif on the sea, alone with nature, trembles in full revelation of his
paltriness. The colossal surroundings daunt him, and he acknowledges it
is folly to struggle with the waves that multitudinously mount up to
swamp him from all sides.

Meanwhile, no further occasion to be fearful had been shown, the sun
went down, and shot up one short gleam ere the swift darkness shrouded
the sky. The howling of wild beasts rushing out to enjoy their time of
sport could be traced from the lair to the "licks" and springs.

But our disarmed _gente perdida_, the lost ones, durst not light a
fire; had they the means to scare the wolf away, it might have afforded
a mark for the unknown archer. Don José wept as he saw his daughter,
who pretended to sleep, to give him and her lover less uneasiness. But
sleep does not come under these circumstances to them who court it.

Indeed, only those who have undergone the horror of a night in the
untamed forest can imagine its poignancy. Lugubrious phantoms people
the glades, the wild beasts intone a devilish concert, the limbs of
trees seem to be animated into semblances of the really awakened
serpents, whose scales can be heard gliding with a slime softened hush
over the bending boughs. None but the experienced can reckon how many
ages are compressed in one second of this gruesome "fix," a nightmare
of the wakeful, during which the racked mind finds a distorted relish
in picturing the most monstrous lucubrations, particularly when the
faint yet tantalised appetite sets the brain palpitating with delirium.

After enduring this strain for some hours of the gloom, hope or
mere instinct of self-preservation caused Benito to suggest, as one
acquainted with hunters expedients, that the shelter existed by the
increasing danger of their position on the ground, was upon the summit
of a huge broken cottonwood tree. He assisted don José to mount to the
top, which he found tolerably solid, spite of wet and solar rot, passed
him up poor Dolores, and stood on guard at the base. He meant to have
kept awake, or, rather, had not the least idea that he should go off to
sleep, but famine had passed its acute stage, and fatigue collaborated
with it to lull him. The last look he gave upwards showed him vaguely,
like a St. Simon Stylites, the elder Mexican on the broad summit of
the stump, his daughter reclining on the bed of pith at his feet. Don
José was then praying, his face turned to the east, where no doubt he
trusted to behold a less unhappy sun than had last scorched them.

Suddenly don Benito started: something like a hot snake had run down
his cheek and buried itself in his bosom. At almost the same instant,
whilst he was awakening fully, a smart sting in the left shoulder,
preceded by a hissing, short and angry, made the young man utter an
exclamation rather in rage than pain.

The sun had risen; at least, he could see about him and be warmed
and vivified a little, through a fresh day commenced of intolerable
torments.

As he looked up, the repetition of the sensation of the reptile gliding
adown his face, but less warm and more slow this time, caused him to
apply his hand to the line traversed. He withdrew it speedily, and in
disgust--his fingers were smeared with blood!

"Oh, Don José!" he ejaculated. "Dolores, dear!"

Stupefied, speechless, like a statue, the girl upon the natural
pedestal was supporting the lifeless body of the old Mexican. An arrow
was broken off in his temple, and his beard, roughly sprouted out and
white with this week of hardship, was flooded with the blackening blood
of which Benito in his post below had received the drip.

The young man stared fiercely around, and instantly perceiving
something on the move in the thicket, sprang up the tree.

At the same time aimed at him to redeem the marksman for his first
failure, which had lodged the shaft in the young Mexican's shoulder
instead of his head or his heart; a second projectile of the same
description whizzed into the gap between his legs, opened by his leap,
and smote a knot so violently as to shiver into a dozen splinters.

Unable for want of strength to keep his hold, the youthful Mexican
slipped down to the ground. Then, facing about in frenzy of
indignation, as being so badgered by the unknown, he called out
savagely:

"Coward! Confront the last of your victims, if you have a drop of manly
blood!"

Because he had concluded his last shot serious, or from disdain for his
antagonist, or sheer recklessness--for it is not likely that a savage
so far forgot his training as to let such a white man's taunt sting him
into the imprudence--the Indian who had dogged the unfortunate trio
stalked out of the underwood, and only ceased his advance when a lance
length from the desperate man who had invoked him.

"_¡Presente!_" he said in Spanish, with a hoarse chuckle, as in one
glance he saw the insensible young female form beside the dead Mexican,
and don Benito's weak condition.

Indeed, the latter, instead of carrying out his implied threat,
tottered back and leaned against the cottonwood, just under one arrow,
and with the other shattered shaft bristling at his shoulder.

The red man chose to interpret this movement as a flattery for his
warlike appearance, for he smiled contentedly, and, drawing his long
knife, cried holding up three fingers of his left hand:

"La Garra de Rapina--the Claw of Rapine--will now take his harvest for
thrice five days' toil."

Benito sought to summon his failing powers, but a mist seemed to
spring up and becloud his gaze, through which he less and less clearly
saw the Indian's slow and cruel approach. Nevertheless, he was about
to make a snatch at hazard for the steel that rose over his bosom,
when a flash of fire from a gun so near that he almost saw the hither
extremity blind the redskin, preceded a shot that crashed through the
latter's skull. Benito, unable to check his own leap, received the
dead yet convulsed body in his arms, and the shock hurled him to the
ground. Neither rose! One was dead; the other within an ace of the same
impassable portals. It seemed to him, as he lost consciousness, that
there was a struggle in the brush.

When Benito reopened his eyes he believed all had been a dream, but,
on gazing anxiously about him, he saw the dead Indian by his side.
Above him, too, when he rose on his knees by an effort, the two silent
witnesses of his miraculous deliverance were still recumbent.

No trace of another living soul; nevertheless, the Indian's weapons had
all disappeared.

Suddenly, as he lifted himself to his feet, aching all over as if he
had been bastinadoed on every accessible place, he heard Dolores moan.
She was animated by the acute racking of hunger.

He gasped, "Food! Food for her!" and reeled to the greenest spot, where
he began to tear up the earth with his nails. At length he dislodged a
little stem of yucca, the somewhat tasty root which yields a species of
maniac.

When he returned to the tree, Dolores, horrified at seeing her father's
blood, had fallen off the tree top, rather than climbed down, and was
too insensible to hear his appeals. He dragged the Indian's body partly
aside, for to do so wholly was too weighty a task, and heaped leaves
over the other portion. He placed the root in Dolores' passive hands,
and was about to repeat his hoarse babble of hope, which he did not
feel at heart, when abruptly the arrow wound in his shoulder gave a
sharp, deep, scorching sensation, which filled him from head to sole
with fever and awe.

"Oh, heavens!" he groaned. "The arrow was poisoned! I shall die in
madness! I shall, perhaps, tear her, my dear Dolores, in my blind,
ungovernable rage!"

So feels the man whom hydrophobia has seized upon, as the latest
promptings of reason bid him hie aloof from his endangered fellows.

Benito laid his glances about him wildly; his recently dull eyes blazed
till his very features, already earthy, lit up, and he howled;

"Welcome, death! But anywhere save here!"

He trampled on the Indian corpse in his flight, and plunged into the
thorns as if bent on rending himself to shreds. He must have rushed
madly on for half an hour, the venom firing his thinned blood till
his veins ran flames, but as the wound on his left side affected that
portion of the frame disproportionately, he described a circle, and in
the end had almost returned to the spot where Dolores still rested in a
swoon.

At last, stumbling, groping, he fell, only to crawl a little way, then,
a slight mound opposing his hands and knees, he rolled upon it. His
head appeared to have been cleared by the Mazeppa-like course, and he
was, at least, conscious of the raised grass reminding him of a funeral
mound.

"A grave!" he breathed, dashing the sweat out of his eyes, "Yes, a
grave here will the last of the Bustamentes die!"

He stretched out at full length, he folded his arms, one of them
palsied already, and was beginning to pray, when his tone changed to
joy, or at least, profound hopefulness. He fell over on his side, then
rose to his knees, ran his band over the mound eagerly, and cried:

"God of mercy, deceive me not! The grave I coveted, is it not a
_cache?_ Thank God!"




CHAPTER III.

THE PIRATE'S BEQUEST.


The wanderer whose careless progress through the brake sufficiently
clearly revealed that he was a stranger of a bold heart and contempt
for customs different from his own, was, in fact, one of those
Englishmen who seem born to illustrate, in the nature of exceptions,
the formal character of his race.

Left an orphan in the fetters of a trustee who forgot he had ever
been young, and showed no sympathy with his charge, George Frederick
Gladsden had broken his bondage and run away from school at the age of
twelve. Reaching a Scotch port, after a long tramp, he shipped as boy
on a herring fisher, and so made his novitiate with Neptune. After that
initiation, very severe, he chose to become a sailor of that irregular
kind which is known as the _pier head jumping_. That is to say, instead
of duly entering on a vessel and book at the office in broad daylight,
"George" would lounge on the wharf till the very moment of her casting
off. Then, of course, the captain is happy to take anybody in the least
nautical or even able-bodied, who offers himself in lieu of one of
the regularly engaged mariners detained by accident, debt, or drink.
By this means Gladsden's trustee and kinsfolk could never prevent him
going wheresoever he willed, and it pleased this briny Arab to keep his
whereabouts a mystery, though, to amuse himself and annoy his guardian,
he would send him a letter from some dreadfully out-of-the-way port,
just to show he did exist, and to prevent the estate being locked up or
diverted under the law.

Meanwhile, the young roaming Englishman became so thorough a proficient
in the honourable calling, and had so much courage and intelligence
that, even in the merchant service, where the prizes are few and hotly
fought for, he must have obtained a supportable, if not a brilliant
position.

Unfortunately for himself he had an execrably fitful head, and was the
declared foe of Draconian discipline. If there had been pirates on
the seas he might even have joined them, only then to have enjoyed a
delightful existence of "Jack his own master."

Quarrelling with his latest skipper, a seal hunter, on the Lower
Californian coast, that Spaniard, rather alarmed at the turbulent mate,
was relieved when he accepted the offer of an Hermosillo planter to
become his manager, and not only broke the engagement between them,
but presented Gladsden with some dollars and his gun on their parting.
The Englishman promised well up in the country, but the fowl in the
swamp allured him into hunting trips with some Indians, and he turned
such a vagabond that the indolent Sonoran came to the conclusion
that, as the skipper of the seal fur cruiser had warned him, he had
contracted with a maniac.

One day, Gladsden and the Indians, turning their backs on the San
Miguel swamps, wandered off, the Englishman cared not whither. His
dusky comrades were soon displeased by his careless march, and a little
later, disgusted by his even resenting their counsels for him to take
precautions, since, not only were there other Indians "out," but one
of the most notorious salteadores who had ever troubled any part of
unquiet Mexico was overawing the whole of the tract between the San
Miguel and the San José. To which the mad Englishman replied, with a
calmness which startled the red men, though masters of self-repression,
that such daring traits aroused in him a lively curiosity, and the
strongest desire to face this very famous Matasiete, "the Slayer of
Seven," the terror of Sonora.

Seeing this obstinacy, our sly Yaquis solved the perplexity by
abandoning their burr one morning whilst he was still sleeping, and
leaving him only his gun and what powder and ball he carried. His horse
and other property they removed with them lest, in his folly, he should
only turn the valuables over to the redskins not of their tribe, or the
Mexican depredators.

For all of his maritime knowledge which helps the student of sky and
weather on land, Gladsden was in a quandary when thus thrown on his own
devices. As, however, he never wrangled with himself, he took up his
solitary march without any self-communing, and followed the impulse of
the moment.

Fortunately, game never failed him, and though the only flavouring was
gunpowder, the fare had not palled upon him up to his coming within our
circle of vision.

He was "loping" along, very like a sated wolf, listless, when he
unexpectedly, and by the purest chance, spied the gleaming body of an
Indian, stealing before him amongst the foliage, always in the thickest
parts.

His resolve awakening to give the Yaquis a lecture, with cuts of the
ramrod, upon the "Fault of Abandoning a Hunting Companion in the
Desert," he quickened his pace, but almost immediately perceived that
the savage was another guess sort of a bird, one more likely, armed for
war as he was, and determined of aspect as ever was a brave, to deal
out punishment than receive it unrequitingly.

In fact, the fierce, hungry, set face of the pursuer of the Mexican
protectors of doña Dolores would have sufficed to impress even a more
nonchalant person than our Englishman.

"Mischief in the wind," thought he.

And as a white man on seeing a man of another hue on the trail, at once
believes that the object of the chase is one of his own colour, he
turned to, and, having no other intentions to overrule, began to dog
the slayer of don José de Miranda as successfully and closely as he was
following the Mexicans. It was not to be expected that the foreigner
did not make blunders in this manhunt, so novel to him, but his very
incaution or missteps actually helped him, for the savage, unable to
believe that a man would dream of breaking a twig noisily in a wild
perhaps not devoid of certain enemies, attributed the two or three
alarming sounds in his rear to animals, from whom he had nothing to
dread.

In brief, Gladsden arrived at the halting place of the Mexicans in time
to see poor Benito make his stand, and hear the savage, as he disclosed
himself, utter the arrogant "_Presente_" as he bared his knife to
complete his triple tragedy.

The Englishman saw there was a flutter of a woman's dress that appealed
to his gallantry, the blood splashes from don José on the stump,
and the valiant but weak port of don Benito. He feared that to jump
towards the Apache would not stay that ugly knife, so he lifted the gun
which was Captain Saone's parting gift, and sent a bullet through the
warrior's head.

As quickly upon the echoes of the report, as if it had been a signal,
and, for that matter, the two men who bounded upon the marksman had
been afraid to "tackle" him whilst his firearm was "full"--a standing
item in prairie fighting--the Englishman was set upon by a man on
either side. Spite of his strength he was hurled off his feet, and
secured with a lariat and gagged with moss, all with a celerity
which proved that he had been overcome by bandits of no despicable
experience. When he was perfectly incapacitated from more than winking,
as one of the fellows remarked in a whisper, that facetious rogue
warily proceeded to inspect the result of the shot.

It had so laudably obeyed its impulsion, that the Mexican, after
one look at the Indian, felicitated himself on not having been so
precipitate as to draw that bullet on himself.

The spot was quiet, Benito, clotted red smearing his shoulder, seemed
as lifeless as the red man. The young girl and her father, whose blood
reddened her ragged dress, were equally among the lifeless, to all
cursory examination.

The Mexican picked up the weapons of the Indian, said: "A lone
Chiricahua Apache!" as he spurned the body out of wantonness, and
returned to his comrades.

"The captain will be gratified, Farruco," said he, pushing the Indian's
weapons within his sash; "there they all lie, in a heap, the don, the
daughter and their young companion, with the Chiricahua who was hired
to dog them to the death, slain by our chalky faced long shot here."

"If we cut his throat, Pepillo, then we shall make a clearance of the
whole cluster," returned Farruco, complacently, even laying his hand on
the buckhorn haft of a knife.

"A word to that! You are always for taking the crowning pleasure of a
running down! Am I to have no thanks even for having saved you from
running your hasty head against this heretic's gun? A thousand demons
shall not rob me of my prey! You have already grabbed his gun! I will
have the cutting of his throat."

The silenced object of this very pretty growing dispute looked up
calmly, but sufficiently interested, be sure, out of his gray eyes.

"One moment, let us throw dice for the pleasure!"

"Nonsense! We all know the top heaviness of your dice."

The other duly laughed at this allusion to a vantage which is not
always accepted as a compliment.

"Let us draw leaves--long or short!"

"I agree, Pepillo; there's a bayonet palm at your elbow."

The Mexican turned to gather a couple of leaves of different length,
when the captive saw the face of his comrade shine with a hellish
joy. Noiseless he drew out the Indian's tomahawk from his belt and in
another second he would have buried it in the back of the unsuspecting
bandit. The monstrous fondness for cruelty which impelled this wanton
murder was so repugnant to the Englishman that he, bound too tightly
for any other movement, rolled himself, by working his elbow and knee,
right against the feet thrown forward of the traitor. The shock was not
enough to make the blow fully miscarry, but the axe only cleft the
wretch's collarbone, glancing the flesh to one side along it on partial
withdrawal with an agony imparted which made the recipient yell. He
flung himself round, and drawing his knife at the same inappreciable
second of time, broke through the other's guard with the hatchet, and
buried the blade in his heart so forcibly that the hilt drove his
breath out of his lungs with a loud sound. Farruco pitched over upon
the Englishman, and died before he had ceased his groan of despair.

The wounded outlaw sat himself down, without any but self-concern, to
attend to his wound, to which he applied a dressing of chewed leaves.
Then studying the scene, he suddenly became conscious that the movement
of the loglike form of the prisoner between his assassin's legs had
saved his life, if, always granted, it were a curable wound.

Without a word, like a man who fears to hesitate in his formation
of a good but novel whim, lest he revokes its realisation to remain
consistent with his daily and worse nature, Pepillo, without wiping the
fatal knife, severed the leather thongs around Gladsden.

"One good turn," said he, sententiously, as becomes a Spaniard,
but prudently setting his foot on the gun of which the captive was
despoiled.

"Yes, he meant to split your skull, that's all," remarked the latter,
sitting up and chafing his limbs to restore the circulation. "He was a
pirate; and you have only anticipated his suspension at a yardarm."

Pepillo paid no attention to him. He had picked up the Indian's
hatchet, and seemed to be regarding with an antiquarian zeal the design
traced in an idle moment or two, now and then, with the hunting knife.
Then, contracting his brow more in terror than in pain, and turning
pale in the same increasing dread rather than from loss of blood, he
ejaculated:

"The villain! The assassin! It is a copper bronze hatchet! I am
poisoned! I shall die of lockjaw!" Then, noting the incredulous
expression of the bystander, who had, however, been sufficiently
sympathetic as to rise to his throbbing feet and lean towards the
sufferer, "I tell you, Pagan, that the Indian was one of the _Apaches
Emponzoñadores_--the sect of the Poison Hatchets, and I am--the Lord
and my patron saint forgive me--a dead man!"

Gladsden looked at the tomahawk, and, after the man's utterance,
thought the metal head gave out a sinister gleam. Then, recalling all
he ever knew of copper poisoning, he said:

"Let me attend to the cut," in a tone which made the sufferer see that
he was taken as the victim of terror rather more than mortal pain.

Still, as the gash was beyond his simple remedy, the Indian cataplasm
which should have allayed the fiery feeling which even augmented from
the first, Pepillo yielded to his late enemy like a child, with that
compliance of the Latin races under mortal injury.

A seafarer knows much about cuts, and so, at the first glance after
removing the herb poultice, Gladsden recognised that the cut, clean in
infliction, was aggravated shockingly.

"You see!" cried the Mexican, triumphantly, as far as the victory
over the other's disbelief was concerned, but with acute agony at his
certainty being confirmed; "Am I not a lost man?"

"In that case," replied the Englishman, taking up his gun and charging
it methodically out of Farruco's powder horn as the nearest, "I will go
and see about the wearer of that woman's dress whom I caught a glimpse
of yonder, when you and your mate all but anticipated my shot at that
screeching savage."

"Don't leave me!"

"But I must! Gallantry, my dear ex-captor."

"Leave me not!" reiterated Pepillo, who had supported himself with his
gun whilst the Englishman had looked at his hurt, "For the sake of my
widow and four little ones."

"A bandit with a family," observed Gladsden. "This is curious."

"Yes; who know not of my mode of life," appealed the salteador, falling
into a seated position and clasping his hands. "By the rules of our
band--for I am one of the Caballeros de la Noche, of Matasiete--all my
goods fall in to the gang! But my wife--my Angela! My little ones--my
angelitos! Have still more compassion, you greatly noble American of
the North, and hear my _viva voce_ testament in their behalf."

"Go on," was the reply. "Considering where the commissioner to take
oaths--who is only an Englishman, by the way, and no American of the
Northern States--where he has his office opened, and the improbability
of his traversing a wilderness of poisonous vermin of all descriptions
to file your testament, it is a pure formality. However," he added,
the while the dying robber divided his time between a disjointed
supplication and wrestlings against a pain that convulsed him severely
at intervals more and more closely recurrent, "will away your 'bacca
box and your knife and sash. I'll do my best to carry them to the
legatees."

"Listen to me," said Pepillo solemnly, and beckoning him to approach.
His voice was singular in sound; his features contorted, his clayey,
pale face streaming with cold, thick perspiration. "I have not always
been a ranger of the prairie. I was a sailor, like you are, as I caught
in your speech. Do you know the islands on the other coast of the Gulf
of California?"

"I have only sailed round to Guaymas."

"I will draw you the chart. Due north from Cantador Island I have a
treasure. Laugh not, raise no brow in derision. In coin, and emeralds,
gold, silver, and pearls, I have over a million dollars."

"Nonsense!"

"I am the last of the band of Colonel Dartois the Filibuster, and I
tell you I am the sole treasurer of the crew."

The Englishman was not acquainted with that adventurer, of much
notoriety in his day on the Pacific Coast, but the tone of the dying
man was sincere.

"Be quick, then, thou dying one, to give the clue," said he as if
convinced, whether so or not.




CHAPTER IV.

A DESERT MYSTERY.


Upon this enjoinder of so eminently practical a nature, and thoroughly
aware of the necessity of haste, the fallen Mexican rapidly drew with
his ramrod end, upon a space of earth smoothed by his foot in its
deerskin boot, like an antique tablet under the stylus, a map--rude,
but, to a navigator, plain and ample.

"At this point," said he, "a sunken reef trends north and south, with
a break at a little bow a quarter mile from the black rock that juts
out all but flush with its ripple. Deep water in 'the pot,' and there
we anchored to ride to a submerged buoy, so that the cankerworm would
not attack the metal or the borer the wood--a chest, bound with yellow
metal. If it shall have broke away, its weight would only have sunk it
deep in the oyster bed, all the shells there smashed to powdery scales
by the drags. A diver will find it for you, then."

"Now, swear to me!" he went on, forcing his weakening voice to keep
an even tenor. "Swear that one-half the contents of that hiding place
shall be Ignacio Santamaria's, my brother-in-law's, who will give
enough to his sister, my Angela. And the rest--be it yours, brave and
Christian heart."

Whether he was only fostering a delusion, or accepting a commission
that would enrich him, Gladsden nodded assent.

"But, swear!"

"I give you my word, as an English gentleman," said he, obstinately.

"I am content."

"And what is there stowed there away?" with a smile of his former
discredit, "Copper bolts?"

"Pearls! The choicest from Carmen Island to Acapulco."

"Well, that sounds natural enough. The next thing is, where shall I
find your brother Ignacio and the rest of the family, Master Pepillo
Santamaria?"

Poignant anguish rendered the other unconscious of external matter
for a period; he clutched his head with both hands as if to prevent
the bones flying asunder, then recovering his senses, as the paroxysm
quitted him, he said:

"You have not far to go for my brother. As for the dear ones, they are
at the old town of Guaymas. My brother is here--"

"Here! The devil!" looking round and falling on guard.

"At the Mound Tower." He pointed with a wavering finger to the
northeast. "Not two hours' ride, our rendezvous--a robber's
rendezvous--but have no fear! Ignacio is second of the band,--remember,
his sister's fortune is at stake! Call him out from among the crew--the
signal, our private signal, two meows of the catamount--Ignacio is
known as the _Gato de montes_, mark! Have mercy! Remember the pearls!
My wife--my little angels! Pity!"

Gladsden averted his gaze not to witness an agony which he could not
stay relieve or bid cease. When he looked on Pepillo again, he was dead.

As it threatened to come on dark, not only by the disappearance of the
sun, but by a storm, which the seaman divined, rather than perceived
in progress, he bent a silver coin, so as to make a species of pencil,
with the point at the double, and using some cigarette paper, copied
off, "in silver point," the map which the dead pirate, _cum_ pearl
fisher, _plus_ highwayman, had designed on the ground bedewed with his
blood. Whilst so employed, the Englishman repeated to himself, like a
scholar beating a lesson into his brain, the instructions connected
with this singular testament.

Recalling his intention before the robber's appeal had distracted him,
Gladsden, gun in hand, marched with a determination not to be cried
"halt!" to again, towards the huge cottonwood stump, by which he marked
the scene of the Mexican standing at bay against the Apache.

The latter's remains were there, a fresh made grave (covered with
stones and brambles to prevent the attack of the quadrupedal ghouls
to which the luckless red man was consigned, in most probability),
concealed don José de Miranda from the searcher's eyes. A fragment of
Dolores' attire was all that prevented Gladsden from supposing he had
been the prey of an illusion as to a woman having also occupied that
natural pedestal. To complete the puzzle a spade of North American make
was carelessly lying by the fresh mound.

"Hilli-ho! Ahoy there!" cried the Englishman, fortified against fear
of the bandits by the claim he had upon the lieutenant of the band,
and caring not a jot for Indians or others, since he had his gun in
shooting order.

But save the mocking of birds there was no rejoinder.

Afar he heard thunder, though.

"A mound tower must be prominent," he mused, "and this thicket in a
torrent rain and a tornado is worse accommodation than the toughest
highwayman must accord the bearer of an inheritance. I'll make for the
Mound Tower, and implore señor don El Sostenedor, of the most glorious
robber chief What's-his-name, for a corner of his stronghold, a chunk
of deer's meat, and a swig of pulque."

He returned to the two dead men, loaded his belt with such of their
weapons as completed, not to say replete, a portable arsenal, which an
Albanian janissary would have envied, and, with the same heedlessness
as to southwestern travelling precautions which had heretofore
distinguished him, stepped manfully away from the haunt of murder. Ere
he had taken half a dozen strides, he heard many a soft padded foot
in the bushes; the volunteer sextons of the prairie were flocking to
entomb the dead in their unscrupulous maw.

The thunder boomed more audible, and the eagle screamed defiance over
the lonely adventurer's head.




CHAPTER V.

THE GODSEND.


The inhabitants of the wilderness, red or white, black or yellow,
obliged often to "let go of all," as our sailor friend would word it,
and "get" (as he would probably say if his foolhardy behaviour allowed
him to live long enough in that region to acquire the cant language),
and pretty suddenly too, to follow the chase or avoid an ambush, are
necessitated to abandon their plunder and traps, using these words in
their legitimate sense. As, at the same time, they have no inclination
to renounce their property, they bank it, or, as the trappers say,
_cache_ it.

The model _cache_ is thus constructed: the first thing is to spread
blankets or buffalo robes around the chosen spot for the excavation,
which is scooped out in any desirable shape with knives and flat
stones; all the extracted ground, loam, sand, or whatever its nature,
being carefully put on the spreads. When the pit is sufficiently
capacious it is lined with buffalo hides to keep out damp, and the
valuables are deposited within, even packed up in hide, if necessary.
The earth is restored and trodden down, or rammed firmly with the
rifle butts, water is sometimes sprinkled on the top to facilitate
the settling, and upon the replaced sod to prevent it dying after the
injury to its roots. All the earth left over is carried to a running
water, or scattered to the four winds, so as to make the least
evidences of the concealment vanish. The _cache_ is generally so well
hidden that only the eye of an uncommonly gifted man can discover it.
Often, then, he only chances upon one that has been opened and emptied
by the owners, who, after that, of course, were easy in their second
operation. The contents of a well-constructed _cache_ may keep half a
dozen years without spoiling.

Benito Bustamente believed he had been led to die upon a _cache_.

To a man dropping of fatigue and famine such a find was of inestimable
value. It might reasonably offer him the primary necessities of which
he was denuded, and he would be revived, literally, on being furnished
with the means to fight his way to civilisation, where otherwise he and
Dolores, always hoping the young girl had not preceded him past the
bourne, must perish.

For a few instants, propped up on both hands, in a wistful attitude,
which I never saw in a pictorial representation of a human being, but
which was recalled to me by the pose of the bloodhound in Landseer's
picture of the trail of blood, in which floats a broken plume.

A moment of suspense!

He was swayed by indefinable sensations, fascinated, so as to be
fearful of breaking the spell.

When, at length, he mastered his emotion, he did not forget the duty
of an honest man constrained to invade the property of another, though
that other might be his enemy!

Trapper law is explicit; wanton breaking into a _cache_ is punishable
by death.

So he shaped out a square of the sod with a sharp mussel shell which
he spied glistening near him, and slowly removed that piece, anxiously
quivering in the act. Other turf he removed in the same manner, more
and more sure that it was a _cache_. This preliminary over, he paused
to take breath, and to enjoy the luxury of discounting a pleasure which
came as veritable life in the midst of death.

Then he resumed a task terrible for one exhausted by privations and
loss of blood. Many times he was forced to stop, his energy giving out.

Slow went on the work; no indications of his being correct arose to
corroborate his surmise. The shell broke, but then he used the two
fragments, held in his hand with such tenacity that they seemed to be
supplementary nails. Vain as was the toil, here lay, he still believed,
the sole chance of safety; if heaven smiled on his efforts, his darling
Dolores might yet be a happy woman. So he clung to this last chance
offered by happy hazard with that energy of despair, the immense power
of Archimedes, for which nothing is impossible.

The hole, of no contemptible size, yawned blankly before him. Nothing
augured success, and, whatever the indomitable energy of the young
man's character, he felt discouragement cast a new gloom over his soul.
His eyelids, red with fever, licked up the tear that ventured to soothe
them, and his lips cracked as he pressed them together.

"At least, here I dig a grave for don José, and my poor love," he said
wildly. "It shall be deep enough to baffle the wolf!"

He renewed his tearing at the soil, when suddenly the shells snapped
off, both pieces together, and his nails also scraping something of
a different material to the earth, turned back at their jagged ends,
but not at that supreme moment giving him the pain which at another
time the same accident must have caused. Some hairs were mingled with
the earth, and a scent different from that of the freshly bared ground
intoxicated him with its musk.

Disdaining the shattered mussel shell, he used his hands as scoops, and
presently unearthed a buffalo skin.

Instead of tugging at it with greedy relish to feast on the treasure it
doubtlessly muffled, Benito drew back his hands and stared with worse
tribulation than ever.

A _cache_--yes! A full one--who knew?

Long ago it might have been pillaged. With but one movement between
him and the verification or annihilation of his hopes the Mexican
hesitated. He was frightened.

His labour under difficulties had been so great, he had cherished
so many dreams and nursed so many chimeras, that he instinctively
dreaded the seeing them swiftly to flee, and leave him falling from his
crumbling anticipations into the frightful reality that closed in upon
him with inexorable jaws.

In the end, determined to do or die, for to that it had truly come,
Benito's trembling hands buried themselves in the buffalo robe,
clutched it irresistibly and hauled it up into his palpitating bosom.
His haggard eyes swam with joyful gush of many tears, so that he could
not see the sky to which he had raised them in gratitude.

Benito had fallen on a hunter's and trapper's store. Not only were
there traps and springes of several sorts, weapons, powder horns,
bullet bags, shot moulds, leaden bars, horse caparisons, hide for
lassoes, but eatables in hermetically sealed tins of modern make, not
then familiar to Mexicans, and liquor in bottles protected by homemade
wicker and leather plaiting.

He was stretching out his hands ravenously to the bottles and a role
of jerked beef, when it seemed to him that the voice of the Unseen
prompted him with "God! Thank God!" and repeating the words in a voice
unintelligible from stifling emotions, he fairly swooned across the pit
as if to defend it with his poor, worn, hard-tried body.

His face was serene when he unclosed his eyes anew. Soberly, by a great
control, he ate of some tinned meat and the crackers and swallowed as
slowly some cognac. The latter filled him with fire, and he could have
leaped into a treetop and crowed defiance to the vultures which were
sailing overhead as if baulked of their prey.

In that momentary calmness, he felt so strong and so rejoiced in
his self-command that his spirit seemed to spurn its casket. But
instantly, with the blood careering anew, the wound in his shoulder
smarted furiously, and all down that arm and up to his neck he felt a
strange and novel sensation; it was as if molten lead was in the veins,
scorching and making heavy the limb.

"The arrow! I am poisoned!" he muttered. "Oh, is this windfall come
merely to embitter my death?"

That taste of liquor made his mouth water, and there was suggested to
him by the sight of the brandy bottle that here was the remedy which
the wisest frontiersman and medicine man would have prescribed. He put
the cognac to his lips, and emptied the bottle.

Almost instantly he felt an aching in every pore away and beyond
that of the wound; his brain appeared to swell to bursting its cell,
and howling himself hoarse, he thought--though, in reality, his
inarticulate cries were strangled in his throat--he rolled upon the
ground, too weak to dance upon his feet, as he imagined he was doing.

This intoxication left him abruptly, and he fell insensible. But for
his stertorous breathing, which finally became regular and gentle, he
was as a corpse beside the greedy grave.

He woke up, lame in every bone, but clear-eyed, and the ringing in his
head abated. Either the remedy had succeeded, or constitution, for he
was able to set about his task with surprising vigour.

Thereupon, he chose out of the store a pair of revolvers, their
cartridges in quantity, two powder horns and bullets to fit the finest
rifle, a bowie knife and a cutlass, and a length of leather thong to
make a lasso, and a spade for the grave of don José, filled a game bag
with matches in metal boxes, sewing materials, and other odds and ends
for the traveller. Tobacco, too, he took, and was looking for paper to
make cigarettes, when a small book met his eyes.

It was stamped in gold, "London, Liverpool, and West State of Mexico
Agnas Caparrosas Mining Company." It was an account book of the company
--one of those enterprises to which, he had heard, his father had lent
a favourable attention. A pencil was attached to the book; he wrote on
a blank page the list of all the articles he took, signing:

"Require the payment of me.--I, BENITO VÁZQUEZ DE BUSTAMENTE."

As quickly as he could he replaced what he did not wish to be burdened
with, made the concealment good, and swept the grass with two buffalo
skins, which he had also taken for clothing. This duty of a thankful
and honourable man being accomplished, he darted back to where he
had left Dolores with a free and easy movement, of which he had not
believed himself ever again to be capable only a short time before.

He was amazed that a little food and spirit had restored him, and began
to fear the reaction.

His wits remained clear. He remembered very distinctly indeed his
confrontation of the savage who had been blasted as by a heavenly
thunderbolt. He was not surprised when he found that redskin where he
had rolled him. But what was his pain when he saw no trace of Dolores
but the same fragment of her dress which Gladsden was, soon after, also
to behold!

Sounds in the chaparral which reminded him of the four-footed
scavengers in rivalry of the carrion birds that circled above, urged
him to ply the spade, and he piously laid don José to his final rest.

Then, his rifle loaded, his frame fortified by the refreshment which
he took at intervals on his march, he went forward in the trail which
the abductor of the Mexican's daughter had been unable, so burdened, to
avoid making manifest, all his emotions, even gratitude to the chief,
set aside for the desire of vengeance on the remorseless foes to whom
he owed so many and distressful losses, and on whom he had not yet been
enabled to inflict any reprisal.

"Let me but overtake him, or them," thought he, "before the tempest
obliterates this track with its deluge, and I will flesh this sword, or
essay this new rifle on his vile carcass!"




CHAPTER VI.

ANY PORT IN A STORM.


Gladsden was groping along when he perceived the thorn thicket
changing into a prairie, only slightly interspersed with scrub. At the
same time, though underfoot, the scene cleared, the indications of
atmospheric perturbation increased in number and in ominous importance.
Already the material man triumphed over the romantic one, and our
Englishman thought considerably better of a solid refuge from the
tempest than to come up with the abductor of the Mexican girl. Spite of
its sinister aspect, therefore, his eyes were delighted when he saw,
outlined against the northeastern sky, sullenly blackening, a curiously
shaped tower. In a civilised country he would have ignobly supposed it
a factory shaft.

He knew nothing whatever about this pillar of sunbaked bricks, some
fifty feet in altitude, and, we repeat, cared nothing for the monument
from any point of view but its qualities as a shelter.

Nevertheless, an archaeologist would have given a fortune to have
studied this Nameless Tower, for the aboriginal held it too sacred
for mention in common parlance. It was slightly pyramidal; the north
side, not quite the true meridian, presented a right angle, presumably
to breast and divide the wind of winter prevalent at its erection,
while the rest was rounded trimly. The excellence of the work was
better shown in the cement, not mud, or ground gypsum, having resisted
the weather and particularly the sandy winds themselves, though they
had worn the _dobies_ (_adobes_, sun dried bricks) away deeply in
places, without making airholes through. There was nothing like a
window or depression save these natural pits, until the view reached
the ragged top, where a sort of lantern or cupola, so far as a few
vestiges indicated, had once crowned the edifice; there the floor of
this disappeared chamber had become the roof, and an orifice, perhaps
a loophole enlarged by rot, yawned like a deep set eye beside an arm
of metal terminating in a hook. Presumably the column was a priest's
watchtower, where a sacred fire was preserved in peace times to
imitate the sun. It is known, the ancient Mexicans adored the sun.
A beacon, too, in war times, for the fire and smoke signal code of
the American Indians is too complete to have been the invention of
yesterday. The entrance at the base cut in the rock utilised for nearly
all the foundation. Once blocked up, the watcher, remote from lances,
slingshots, and bowshots, could count the besiegers on this plain, and
telegraph their number to his friends at a distance. The metal arm may
have suspended a pulley block and rope by which provisions and even an
assistant could be hauled up to him.

The natives avoid the tower and its proximity. The white rovers deem
it uncanny, and, having no curiosity to gratify, also leave the spot
untroubled.

Gladsden regarded the tall mass with some uneasiness as he approached
sufficiently near to measure its dimensions and examine the emblems
stained, rather than painted, on the alabaster base stone. A colossal
half human, half bovine head, armed with terrible horns, and showing
long angular teeth in a ferocious grin, was prominent among these
designs.

All was so still that he hesitated to wake the echoes with a more or
less tolerable imitation of the wildcat, to which no response came,
or if from a distance such was raised, the approaching thunderpeals
overcame it.

He boldly plunged into the doorless passage, the way to which had been
to a more wary man suspiciously free from brambles.

A smell of smoke, and even of tobacco smoke, he thought, overcame that
of damp earth.

The only light was that which the doorway admitted, but several plates
of mica, backed rudely with metal, which time and damp had tarnished,
made the interior a little less sombre by their dull reflections. A
ladder of wood, all the fastenings of rawhide, could be distinguished
climbing like a twin snake up the wall; on high a grayish eye seemed to
look unwinkingly down: it was the light oozing in at the gap at the top.

There were red streaks on the wall: paintings in red pipe clay
partially effaced, or mementoes of slaughter, just as the spectator
chose to believe or fancy.

At the moment, the intruder was chiefly interested in the charcoal
under his feet, almost warm, certainly so fresh that he concluded that
others than he chose it for a refuge under stress of weather, no doubt
Master Pepillo's congeners.

Less courageous, he would have shrunk away without pondering over the
nature of his predecessors, possibly regular hosts of this lugubrious
domicile of owl and vulture.

Convinced that he was, for the time being, the sole tenant, Gladsden
resolved, however, to explore the portion unrevealed. To his hands
and feet the ladder presented no obstacle, and he ran up the rough
rattlings swiftly, spite of fatigue. It brought him into a species of
manhole under the roof, close to the gap, and yet shielded from its
draft by a jutting piece of wall.

"This will do," thought he, finding it dry and clean; "I will kill
a brace of birds frightened into stupidity by the oncoming storm,
roast them on that charcoal, and bring them up here for supper. If
the robbers surprise me, I will maintain that I was merely killing
time before the arrival of lieutenant Ignacio, and claim that
gentleman's friendship by reason of my charge from his brother. If I
am interrupted, I shall pull up the ladder, in trust that it will come
free, and sleep here, safe from prowling beasts and serpents."

Suddenly gloom fell on all the landscape, as if a mighty hand had
eclipsed the waning sun. The air was very much more thick and
oppressive, and there were innumerable though faint crepitations like
feeble snappings of electricity. To take the game he spoke of, before
the rainfall drowned them out of their nests, it was needful to hasten.
But he had not descended three rounds of the ladder, before he stopped
all of a piece. From every side, there was the sound of an arrival
of men, both on foot and ahorse. Instinctively he drew himself up,
arranged his form on the floor so as to project only his forehead and
eyes over the ledge where ended the means of ascension, and stared
below.

A number of persons, congratulating themselves on their reunion loudly
with the hyperbolic phrases of the Spanish ceremony of greeting,
clattered into the tower. Presently a light was struck, and a roaring
fire kindled. As the shaft thus became the chimney, Gladsden was forced
to cough, though he smothered the sound as much as possible, hoped, as
did the man who lighted the damp wood, that it would lose no time in
burning up clearly.

When he could protrude his face over the peephole again, he beheld a
dozen persons, swarthy, robust, richly clad as the prairie rovers,
or cattle thieves, armed to the teeth. Cruel of eye, malignant and
ferocious, he judged it highly imprudent to make their acquaintance,
unless Ignacio was the introducer.

Before very many sentences were uttered, every syllable of which came
to his ears direct, the overhearer was not allowed to cherish any error
as to their profession. They were the Gentlemen of the Night, the road
robbers, the scourges of Sonora, belonging to the squad (_cuadrilla_)
of Matasiete, "the Slayer of Seven."

The gestures of the Mexicans grew animated as they sat around the fire,
or leaned against the wall, which the gleams showed to be painted by
the Indians; now and then they clapped their unwashed but jewelled
hands to their weapons--at which moments the witness earnestly prayed
that they would join in a free fight and kill everyone to the last.
They were wrangling over the division of spoil, and perhaps the plunder
would have cost additional lives to those of its original proprietors,
when the advent of someone in authority caused the dispute to cease. It
was their captain.

He was not the heroic figure that Gladsden had imagined fit to rule
such desperadoes. He was tall, but lean, don Quixote with Punch's nose
and chin, rather the fox than the wolf, and though his features were
set stern and his voice was savage, doubts might be conceived as to his
own reliance on his bullying mode of government.

"At your differences again," he cried in a sharp voice, which now and
then ran up shrill and high, spite of himself, more to the resemblance
of the puppet show hero than ever. "_¡Caray!_ Why can't you pull
together like honourable gentlemen of the prairie?"

Two of the brigands began an explanation which their leader cut short
by replying to the less ruffianly of the two:

"Silence! I'll not be bothered by a single word! _¡Viva Dios!_ Here you
are hugging the fire like herders broiling a steak, without a thought
of our common safety. I have had to post sentries myself, and even they
grumbled at such important duty, just because there is a barrel of
water coming down. I tell you I heard a shot in the thicket, which was
not from any of our guns."

Another of the gang spoke up, with whom he judged it meet to argue. It
is due to the estimable captain Matasiete to say that the debater in
question was picking a fragment of buffalo beef out of a huge hollow
grinder, with an unpleasant long knife.

"It is true, Ricardo, that the red men do never approach the Owl Tower;
but what is that? Someday our secret haunt will be surprised and the
Yaquis will fall on us for profaning the old pile. Where is Ignacio?
Where is the lieutenant, I say?"

Neither he nor his brother had arrived, that was the answer, to Mr.
Gladsden's chagrin.

"Then will they get their boots choked with rain," remarked the
commander of these precious rogues, comfortably installing himself at
the fire, in the very manner which he had disapproved of in his men.
There was a flash of lightning. The thunder roared round the tower,
which bravely met the precursor shower, though it was of a drenching
nature to justify the repugnance of the salteadores to standing
sentinel in the open, whilst their luckier comrades enjoyed the shelter
and the fire.

There was silence within the tower: the bandits, drawing a little aloof
from their chief, in respect or lack of sympathy, prepared supper,
priced their property with a view of staking it in card play, or, as
far as two or three were concerned, lounged at the door, watching
the ground smoke after the wetting, and glancing tauntingly at their
brothers on guard, who shone with moisture in the chance ray from the
glorious fire.

The extreme heat around Gladsden, his fatigue and a dulness engendered
by the recent strain on his faculties, forced his eyes to close now and
then, and he was about falling into a torpor, when a commotion below
aroused him.

A man, clanking his huge spurs to rid them of mud and rotten leaves,
drenched almost through his blanket, splashed to the waist, his
tough leather breeches scored by wait-a-bit thorns, swearing at the
dog's weather, wringing out his hair, for he had lost his hat--this
individual, hailed amicably as "our dear Ignacio," but heedless of
the welcome in his vexation and a species of alarm, pushed aside his
comrades flocking round him, and, saluting the captain, basking in the
fire beams, said reproachfully:

"My brother not here? Then ill fares him! There are strangers in the
chaparral!"

"Strangers!" all the voices exclaimed, whilst weapons clattered their
scabbards.

From only this transient glance at don Ignacio, the Englishman made up
his mind that he would not trust him with his life.




CHAPTER VII.

A WAKING NIGHTMARE.


"Aye, strangers, and no jokers! But to my tale. Captain, in the first
place your Indian hireling has done his work well. He slew the don--the
youngster, I opine--and, as for the damsel, why I have had her on my
arm this half hour, till the storm forced me to _cache_ her!"

"Aha! Good!" said the captain, rubbing his hands on his nearly roasted
knees. "Albeit, I am sorry that the girl escaped. I'd as lief marry the
aunt to obtain the Miranda Hacienda, as wed the lass and be saddled
with the old lady."

"Well, she's next to dead. The Apache worried them sore, so that they
have had no food."

"And he? Did you _pay_ him, as I suggested?"

"I followed him up to administer the dose of lead, but I was
anticipated. Some strangers, I tell you, are roaming the desert, and
blew a tunnel through his head."

"And Pepillo?" questioned Ricardo.

"Either lying perdu till the storm abates, or gratified with the same
pill. It is a deuce of a heavy gun to carry a bullet so large and so
true."

"An American rifle?" queried the captain, uneasily, whilst Gladsden,
patting his gun silently, so conveyed to it the flattering fear with
which its prowess had inspired the depredators.

"It is this way," went on Ignacio, who saw that all eyes were bent on
him. "I struck the broad trail of the don and the Apache. I heard a
shot of an unknown piece, so I alighted, hoppled my mule, and, making a
circuit, entered the thicket afoot, going slow because of my spurs."

"Soon I came to a sort of glade, where a big tree stump stands. There
the Indian had sent an arrow through don José, and there the unknown
had sent a heavy bullet through him. All was quiet. No sign of the
young man, their guide. But the señorita, the heiress, lay as one dead
at the stump. I felt no pulse. Her eyes were closed. I took her up and
made for my mule, but, either I had missed my mark or had strayed.
No mule. Then, believing he would come here, since he has a sneaking
affection for your horses, captain, I tried to carry the girl on my own
way hither. She was light as a feather, but the thorns are a veritable
net to catch hummingbirds, and then, again, the storm about to break!
Faith, I hid her in a hollow tree, and hastened on. But I was overtaken
by the rain, and am as tattered as a _lepero_!"

"And Pepillo?"

"He was never born to be drowned in the deluge upon us," answered
lieutenant Ignacio, with no superabundance of fraternal affection, as
he sat at the fire, and overhauled the rent raiment. "We will fish for
him and the girl, in the day."

"But if she was spent, she will die of starvation," remarked Matasiete,
with a spark of humanity or of affection.

"Pshaw! As you say, you can, in the character of don Aníbal de Luna,
marry the old lady and so obtain the property; besides, I left my flask
of _aguardiente_ (firewater, or whiskey) in her cold pit, and that's
meat and drink, eh, gentlemen?"

A silence ensued, the others having nodded a double tribute to his
gallantry and the potency of raw spirits.

"I do not like the young man being out of your view," said Matasiete,
who had a small, carping spirit, "If he should not meet Pepillo and
Farruco--"

"Crawled off with an arrow in him to die in the bushes," was the reply.
"That Apache is one of the poisoners, you know, and nothing that will
not cure a rattlesnake bite, will subdue the venom of his wounds. A
good riddance whoever perforated his skull! And here's his health,"
holding up a horn of spirits on high as though he divined the actual
whereabouts of the avenger of don José de Miranda.

"There is Farruco still to come in," said the captain, yawning.

"Pah! He's under a stone like an iguana! If he eludes the rain as
cleverly as he does the leaden hail when we attack a caravan, methinks
he will turn up in the day as dry as the core of a miser's heart."

Meanwhile, the storm, which had but inadequately manifested its power
in the heralding blow and pour, now swept across the plain and buffeted
the tower. It began to rock, and the sentries, who set discipline at
defiance and had come into the shelter, were half afraid that they
had not taken the wiser course. Whatever their terror below, that of
Gladsden would have been more justifiable, for the loose stones atop
were moved at each gust, and some fell, both within and without. The
prospect of the lightning bolt flinging him scathed to the death, amid
ruins, upon the knot of robbers, was quite within reasonable surmise.

He wrapped his gun up beside him, so that its steel should not attract
the flame that seemed, when it played within his nook, to linger upon
him, and expected the worst between the two perils.

All at once, splitting the rolling thunder in its higher key, a
frightened voice cried out, "The horses! There is a stampede!"

Notwithstanding the pouring rain, half a dozen of the bandits rushed
out. But almost instantly returning, they gladly reported that the
agitation among the horses was caused, not so much by their fright at
the lightning, as by the mad gambols of Ignacio's mule, which, running
into the group tethered on the leeward of the tower, was plying tooth
and hoof in order to range himself near the horse to which he had taken
one of those devoted fancies not uncommon among the hybrids. Instead of
their forming a mass, rounded in shape, their tails outward, to meet
the rain, they half encircled the tower, accommodating themselves to
the wind, which was shifting to the southeast.

"The old tower holds firm," said Ignacio, his mouth full of beef, as he
plied a needle and fine deer's sinew for thread in the reparation of
his leggings.

"Only the gale shakes out a tooth of the old hag's head," said his
neighbour, on whom sundry fragments of the crumble had fallen.

"Ha!" ejaculated don Matasiete, abruptly, as he clapped his long hand
to his head, and then clutched the object which had struck him there,
and then rolled into the ashes. He had pulled it forth with amazing
alacrity. "Since when has this tower been built with cartridges?"

"What!" was the general cry, as all, like the speaker, looked upward.

"I tell you that this fell on my head. If it rains more of the like we
must dash out the fire, or we'll be blown higher than the eagle flies!"

Every man had drawn a weapon. Their ignorance of meteorology might be
great or little, but cartridges do not come with Mexican rain often
enough to be calmly accepted without an inquisition.

"The strangers!" cried the captain, prudently backing towards the wall
at the point furthest from the ladder's end. "Have they come in among
us?"

"Stuff! What man in his lightness of heart would leap thus into the
wolf's throat?"

"That's all very well put, Ricardo," rejoined the leader. "But they may
have preceded you, and not known that this is our lair. Just climb up
and see if, by any chance, we are receiving uninvited guests."

Ricardo, who was singled out, was a burly rogue, but he did not accept
this order. On the contrary he made a wry face and thrust his cheek
out with his tongue, which signified "go and do it yourself." This
incipient mutiny was clearly contagious, for all the bandits returned
their commander's interrogative look with another, defiant, stupid, or
complacent, pursuant to their natures.

Any child could have drawn the inference that the quarter whence
cartridges were showered might logically be expected to furnish a gun
or two. The figurative language of the western man ranking a packet of
lead and ball, or arrows, as the case varies of its being a white or
a red man who sends the message, as an equivalent for a challenge to
mortal combat--each bandit so interpreted the accident.

"Poltroons!" cried Matasiete. "Is there room, save on the platform
itself, for a troop of men? And would one man stand amid the lightning
on this rocking tower top! I tell you, if there is a man there it will
be in the nook where the ladder is suspended. One man! Well, where are
my brave fighting cocks now?"

One man, armed with such a gun as that cartridge of unusual calibre
promised, could very easily defend even that despicable nook against a
whole coop of gamecocks. So the hesitation to climb the ladder rather
augmented than diminished.

"Poltroons, eh?" observed Ignacio, to whom the incident perhaps came in
harmony with some project of his own. "If it is nothing uncommon to go
and see what owl has alighted in the tower top--an owl whose eggs are
cartridges, by the way--why don't you show your superior courage? Show
your hardly-too-often-distinguished daring, Captain, by going up and
wringing the neck of the fowl of evil omen yourself."

"G--go myself?" repeated Matasiete, whilst the robbers grinned more or
less audibly.

"Yes, go yourself," returned the impudent lieutenant, "the more
particularly as now that you have no impediment to seize the property
of don José de Miranda, you are going to marry richly and settle
down as a farming gentleman, and will have no more opportunities of
exhibiting your gallantry. Yes, go yourself! And, moreover, be quick
about it, or the strangers, whoever they may be, may come down in
impatience at your neglect of your duty of host and demand an account
of your reluctant hospitality, face to beard, themselves."

Matasiete did not number that defect among his of the sanguine dog
who perpetually lets go the substance to snap at the shadow. Whatever
the brilliancy of the prospect of obtaining the estate of Miranda, at
present that of losing the command of the salteadores was more at hand.
Besides, best knowing what valuables were sewn up in the hem of his
dress, or contained in his money belt, in case, by robbers' law, judged
a coward, and kicked out from their punctilious midst, stripped to the
skin, this property would be lost to him, the captain made an effort.

"Then I will show you that I never set a command which I would not have
executed myself!" spoken with a tremor, but loudly, to daunt the object
aimed at above. "I will mount, and not a cartridge, but the corpse
of anyone who has ventured to pry into our secrets, will shortly come
hustling down among ye!"

He made one bound to the ladder, put his knife between his teeth,
to prevent them chattering as much as to have the blade handy, and
ascended briskly with his long legs at the start.

It would be unjust to say that Gladsden, who had heard all this scene,
without caring to lean over and witness it lest the gleam of his eyes,
reflecting the fire rays, should betray him and draw a pistol shot, was
daunted by either the words of the redoubtable robber or his approach.
Any one man, or two or three, come to that, caused him no apprehension,
for he had all the advantages of position. But, after repulsing them,
how could he hope to hold out a long time without food or drink?

An idea of subterfuge had struck him, which was only feasible to a
seaman.

We observed that Matasiete had mounted the ladder briskly "at the
start." It is true. But, when he had some twenty feet yet of the ascent
to make, his action grew less commendable. He even framed an address,
in appeal, to be uttered in a whisper only loud enough for the unknown
occupant of the turret niche, full of promises or threats if he would
only keep quiet, and allow the investigator to return uninjured and
state there was an absence of ground for the alarm he had himself
unfortunately originated.

In the meantime the Englishman, attributing the slowness of this
upcomer's movement to his cowardice, believed he would be only too glad
to find no occasion for his long stay at the top of the ladder.

So he thrust his head out of the gap before mentioned, and examined the
metal arm socketed in the wall. It was not iron, but bronze, full three
feet long to the hook, a little thicker than the thumb. It was planted
solidly in a horizontal direction.

Without further reflection, hearing the respiration of captain
Matasiete, who had been goaded on by the whisperings ascending of his
men beginning to criticise his halt, Gladsden noiselessly pushed his
legs out, bent forward, seized the bronze bar with both hands with that
grip which enables the sailor to defy the squall to dislodge him from
the yard, and hung stiffly at arm's length over the void.

If the Mexican saw him in looking out of the window by one of the
less frequent electrical flashes, he intended to kick him under the
jaw, reenter, convert the body into a rampart, and fight whilst there
was a shot in the barrel, or till he had a chance to claim Ignacio's
safeguard. The lieutenant could but be grateful to a man who removed
his superior in his favour, and, moreover, brought him a fortune.

He had no more than assumed this trying position, being drenched to the
skin at the very first instant of exposure, before Matasiete at last,
with many misgivings pulling at his toes, lifted his head above the
flooring, and, with indescribable joy, saw there was no one there.

"Well, Captain?" was the half-ironical inquiry from below.

"There is no one, you asses!" was the polite reply, in a gleeful tone.

Gladsden sighed in relief as deep as the captain's.

"Stand from under!" added the latter, putting his knife in its sheath.
"I am coming down."

The Englishman was saved!

He prepared to return within his nook. The imminent danger was over.
The rain was unpleasant, and the uneasiness of horses beneath him,
which he heard whinnying as if they scented him, as was probable,
offered the chance of exciting the curiosity of a Mexican, who would
infallibly descry him if he looked up outside. So he wished to cut
short the feeling of fatigue which already attacked his wrists and
shoulders. But, at the first movement, what he believed a mere fancy
was confirmed as fact: the bar was set with an unalterable firmness
which spoke volumes for the mason of old, but the metal, in which too
much copper had been alloyed, or deteriorated by the weather, was
slowly bending, arching over the abyss!

No time was there to spare. He began by shifting his grip, moving one
hand inwards and bringing the outer up to it, to overcome the curve
in the rod. He looked to the socket to make sure that it still held,
when his anxious eyes met another pair in the very gap. They were the
Mexican robber's!

Matasiete had smelt the powder, at least, he had, in a final and idle
sweeping round of the visual ray, perceived the gun of the Englishman,
which he had, nevertheless, concealed with unusual and creditable care
in the angle of floor and wall.

Now, Matasiete placidly leaning on the sill of the window, so to call
it, fixed his ferocious eyes on Gladsden, gleaming with delight at
having so complete a chance to avenge on another his companions' taunts
of cowardice.

"The owl!" he said ironically.

"You devil!" returned Gladsden, in English, for in such critical
moments a man does not display his linguistical acquirements.

Devil, indeed! Matasiete drew his knife and slowly leaned outward in
order to slash the poor wretch's fingers to anticipate their relaxing
the grasp on the overdrooping bar.

The other made an offer to let go with one hand in the hope to get
at a pistol to blow out the fiend's brains at a snap shot, but the
impossibility of the feat was immediately so impressed upon him, that
he grasped with a double hold once more in deeper desperation.

"Oh! Any death but this waking nightmare!" he ejaculated, as a kind of
prayer.

Before his fingers should be pinched by his own weight, between the
metal and the brickwork, he thought, by a final spurt of strength, to
leap up and seize the grinning demon.

"No, you don't!" cried the captain, guessing his aim, and leaning well
out over him, gleaming steel in hand, "Thou shalt die like a dog."

He lifted his arm to strike. Gladsden shuddered in his anguish--his
grasp did not relax, rather was it cramped, but he was thrust by his
body coming sidewise to the wall, from that direction, and slid thus
perforce to the end of the bar downwards. He closed his eyes not to
see the knife and fiendish eyes, not to hear the devilish laugh, when
a sharp shot resounded below, a bullet shrieked beside his tingling
ear, and louder than the cry which the feeling of falling through space
wrung from the brave man, seemed the shriek of captain Matasiete,
"creased" through the prominent nose.

Gladsden descended, like a rock loosened from a sierra summit, upon the
plain below. Instead of the solid earth, however, he fell upon a warm
yielding substance--the backs of a couple of horses. Clutching the mane
of one at random--not the one on which he had landed, and of which he
all but broke the back and so left paralysed--he was instantly carried
away by the frightened steed.

Behind him, as he was borne helter-skelter over the prairie, converted
into a shallow lake, he heard the clamour of the Mexicans startled
by the shot, and later by a stampede in reality of their horses. It
seemed to him, stunned in a measure though he was, that in the thick of
the swarm of quadrupeds madly in flight like his own, but in another
direction, there was a figure, black and bowing its head between its
steed's ears, with a white object across the saddlebow.

But it was a mere glimpse! A new Mazeppa, he went careering on an
unchained thunderbolt over the prairie, whilst the old Tower quivered
in a fresh onset of the tempest.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE "LITTLE JOKER."


There rode a charming little sailing vessel in Guaymas Port. It flew
the Chilian flag, was about a hundred and twenty tons register, and was
named _La Burlonilla_, or "Little Joker," which might be interpreted
innocently, or as a tacit allusion to the pea used in "thimblerig."
She was so coquettish, so fine of run, so light and buoyant, and
yet carried a good spread of sail, that the experienced Gladsden
reckoned she would do her twelve knots an hour without shipping enough
water to drown the purser's cat. But there seemed to be some mystery
attending the ownership. The shipkeeper allowed no one to inspect her
closely, far less to board her, even threatening our Englishman with
a blunderbuss. He heard at the Heaven-and-Liberty Tavern that she
was consigned to don Stefano Garcia, kinsman of the general Garcia,
mixed up with the intrigues of Santa Anna, a rich merchant-banker, and
hide dealer. It was easy to make his acquaintance by constituting him
his banker, for a remittance of a goodly amount which came on, _via_
New York and Mexico, just when he most wanted funds to enable him to
ascertain what truth dwelt in Pepillo's story.

Besides, as an old resident of Sonora, he was just the man to help him
to find the relict of the _bandolero_ of captain Matasiete, though the
reason for this search he took care not to impart to señor Garcia.

With an affability which was even noticeably extreme, don Stefano
accepted the double trust, and begged his new client to come out to his
villa soon and dine with him--a pleasant habitude with bankers all the
world over.

Gladsden accepted the invitation. During the dinner--not bad for the
place--the guest learnt that the goleta commanded a fancy price, say,
twenty thousand dollars, and then would only be sold--not hired--if the
owner, a capricious Chilian, rejoicing in the numerous and sonorous
appellatives of don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortes, had
not changed his intention of living upland on an estate which would
shortly become his through a marital alliance.

After the repast, five or six friends of the host came in, and among
them the bearer of the long titles, just taxing our pen again.

In token of pretensions to be regarded as an unofficial, but all the
more important representative of Chili, this dignitary wore a rich
costume trimmed with gold, an immense cocked hat, after the style
borne by Nelson's enemies who were admirals at Trafalgar, bullion
epaulettes that covered his upper arms, high boots coming up over
the knee, not to mention a colossal sabre. Under this accoutrement,
nevertheless, Gladsden thought no stranger was displayed; and, in
fact, before he spoke, he recognised the individual who had grinned
at him, like Quasimodo at Claude Frollo, dangling from the cathedral
turret, out of the gaplike window of the Indian tower. The master of
the _Little Joker_, the Chilian agent, was the captain of the Upper
Sonora ravagers--Matasiete himself. The crease across his nose was an
additional token.

Spite of his emotion, the Englishman hoped he had not betrayed the
act of quick identification, all the more as don Aníbal, etc., making
no sign of recognition, turned to chatting with the others without
paying the foreigner any more heed. From a glance which he intercepted
between the banker and the pretended Chilian, Gladsden was soon of
the impression that there was a complete understanding there. He even
jumped to the conclusion that the stranger in the Heaven-and-Liberty
Tavern had been instructed to volunteer the hint that had caused our
ever imprudent Briton to form acquaintance with the robber's banker.

"They are a deeper set than I imagined," thought he. "The rogue is a
pirate on land and sea. When there is no revolution in Mexico, and the
authorities attend a little to police matters, our salteador takes a
summersault aboard his dainty craft, and goes slaving, pirating, or, at
the least, pearl fishing. If these guests are out of the same cask, by
George! I am going to pass a pleasant evening!"

But there arose no question of the sale of the _Burlonilla_, or of
anything connected with business. That was put off till the morrow,
after the Spanish-American custom.

But there did come up a topic of general interest--gaming. The
American-Hispanics are inveterate gamblers; it is their dominant
passion. After having chatted and drank, amid the consumption of
innumerable cigars, someone proposed a _monte_, a suggestion thrown out
only to be caught at a bound with enthusiasm.

Other friends of don Stefano had dropped in, so that the Englishman
found more than a corporal's guard arrayed against him. The collection
now was composed of upwards of a score.

A table happened to have the orthodox green cloth upon it, where the
social "tiger" is prone to roam: new cards, sealed, of course, were
brought in, and the sport began.

Without being positively a player, Mr. Gladsden had the blood in his
veins of his grandfather, who was a noted card player, a contemporary
of Fox and Selwyn. Besides, he understood that he might offend if he
stood aloof.

The stakes were, at the outset, moderate, but gradually swelling, they
soon attained staggering proportions, some of the points running up
to a hundred and even a hundred and fifty ounces. The consequence was
that in less than a couple of hours almost all the tilters were cleaned
out, and had to become mere lookers-on. At midnight chance--if it were
chance--arranged it that only two players were facing each other: don
Aníbal of the Cortes Family, as he called himself at present, and Mr.
Gladsden. The gallery, as the surrounding bystanders of a game are
styled, cooped the pair in so that the European could not easily have
withdrawn. All the time the master of the goleta had been a loser, and
the Englishman having been luck favoured, was on the contrary supplied
with considerable funds, which elicited many a covetous glance.

"Why!" ejaculated the pretended Chilian, with admirably feigned
surprise, "We two are left facing one another."

"So we are!" returned Mr. Gladsden, thinking, with all the possible
mischances, he was more agreeably placed here _vis-à-vis_ with the
gentleman of the night, than clinging on a bar outside the top of a
tower fifty feet high.

"Shall we two go it alone, Captain?"

"I was just going to ask the favour, Captain."

The other "captain" nodded and grinned under his long hook nose, to the
banker and others at hand, as much as to say, "Now I have my gentleman
precisely in the corner I have been driving him to."

It was the Englishman's turn to cut.

"How's the play?" he inquired.

"Will you venture all?" the highwayman leader returned in a mocking way.

"Why should I not? You have so far afforded me so much hearty
entertainment that I am entirely at your disposal."

Don Aníbal made a grimace not unlike that when the marvellous shot had
allowed the last speaker to drop out of the swing of his _navaja_.

"Even in case I risk the whole heap?" resumed Matasiete, laying his
long fingers out on the pillar of gold coin before him.

"As your lordship desires, though it is a mistake."

"How so?"

"Because I am in luck's way lately," returned Mr. Gladsden,
significantly. "You always lose pitted against me."

"Do you really think that run will last?"

"I am willing to wager on it," was the reply, in the determined tone of
an Englishman to whom, indeed, a bet is the _ultima ratio_.

"_¡Caray!_" exclaimed the arch-bandit, piqued, "Your remark decides me,
all goes on the _dos de espadas_, two of spades. Is it a go?"

The Spanish-Americans are fine players, they lose or gain ever so large
sums without wincing. As the spectators uttered a cry of admiration for
him who was more or less their lion, Gladsden resolved to prove that he
could gamble as well as the best of them.

"Señor Don Aníbal, you'll excuse the rest," he said, impudently, like a
man who pretty well knew that he had not a friend in the crowd, as he
presented his adversary, in all senses of the word, with the cards; "do
you mind shuffling them yourself?"

"What for, Señor?" holding his hands away.

"Oh, it is not merely because I believe you _good at shuffling_, but
because things are getting serious, and it is important after all that
has taken place between us that you should be convinced that I play
fair, and that nothing but my better fortune thwarts you."

Don Stefano turned pale; several of the guests whispered to one
another, probably seeing that twenty to one on a ground of their
own choosing was rather contrary to the character of a blue-blooded
caballero. One of them even lifted up his voice, saying:

"He acts like a perfect gentleman."

Gladsden bowed to him, though he fully believed he recognised in him
the suggester on a memorable occasion that the author of the death of
the late Pepillo Santa Maria should be roasted alive.

Captain de Luna also bowed, but to his opponent, took the cards,
shuffled them, and presented them with grace. Gladsden laid the cards
on the board, and turning to no one in particular, said:

"Do me the honour to cut them, Señor."

Someone obeyed the request, and the English player began to deal. A
deathlike stillness reigned at once as by enchantment in the drawing
room so well peopled. Spite of their villainy, the spectators of the
coolness of the Englishman alone in the tiger's lair were impressed by
it in his favour, and, though the most of them, such as appertained
directly to Matasiete's band, at least, would have fallen on him
without reluctance on the road back to Guaymas, here they registered
a vow to let him have a good show of fun for his money without
interference.

Don Aníbal had staked on the two of spades; the other sought to produce
the five of clubs (_cinco de Bastos_) to win; in other words, that card
ought to come out of the pack to him before his adversary received the
one he called to appear. But after quite twenty of the parallelograms
of pasteboard had been thrown on the table one after another, neither
of the two cards designated had appeared; but everyone felt they were
on the nick.

At the moment when Gladsden was about to show the face of a card
between his fingers, the captain of banditti, and of the so-called
Chilian cutter, checked his action, saying--

"Stay half a minute, please."

"What's your pleasure?"

"Perhaps to give you one. Did not I hear don Stefano say something
about your looking out to buy a pleasure vessel?"

"I even thought that I might make a yacht of--"

"Of the goleta in the port, of the _Burlonilla_--of my vessel?"

"There is no other worth a biscuit, certainly! Why the question now?"
inquired the European with some surprise.

"I tell you what; if you will consent, I will add the _Little Joker_,
all standing, to my pile, against twenty-five thousand dollars. What do
you say to that proposition?"




CHAPTER IX.

THE WAY LAYERS.


"What do I say to that offer?" returned Gladsden; "That it is a queer
one, not to say a mad one! Señor, I am morally certain that you would
lose your ship."

"You mean, you refuse," triumphantly, whilst the auditors smiled
flatteringly on their leader for having "bluffed" the foreigner.

"Oh, no, since you insist on it," replied the latter, coldly, though he
felt his heart contract within him; "but since I have set out to show I
can play cards, I'll sell you the present turn up for ten thousand!"

"Don't! Don't do anything of the sort!" interrupted the host, turning
pale. "I'll give you fifteen thousand for it myself!"

"Thank you; but now, since an outsider has intervened, I must stick to
it myself."

"You are very right," remarked Captain Matasiete, with a scowl and an
angry glance at the banker; "for it is the right one."

Gladsden had tossed the card down without looking at it.

"Cinco de Basto!" exclaimed all the lookers-on in the one voice.
"Prodigious! What a splendid game!"

"You were right, right along, about your luck--_at cards_!" observed
don Aníbal, with the most genial smile he could beam with. "The _Little
Joker_ is yours."

Gladsden had truly won, for there was the requisite card before him. He
had been inwardly persuaded when he vaunted so boldly that he was bound
to lose, and had only accepted his mortal enemy's challenge out of
recklessness. The emotion he experienced in payment of his false glory
was so deep for a couple of moments that he was like one stunned, and
stared, still, with no possibility to get out a word.

In that brief interval the banker had conferred with the
bandit-gambler, and to some purpose, moreover, for the latter loudly
set to felicitating the Englishman on his continued good fortune; and,
as at the end of his speech don Stefano put before him the corner of a
sheet of paper, on which he had hastily written some lines, he went on
to say:

"Gaming debts must be settled in four-and-twenty hours. Here is the
transfer of my property in the Chilian goleta, the _Little Joker_, as
she floats at this moment, with all she holds, in consideration of the
sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, which I hereby acknowledge, before
all this honourable company, to have received!"

As Gladsden, from the tone and the railing glances of more than one
hearer of this pretty little presentation speech, conceived no doubt
whatever that he would never be let set foot on the deck of the
_Burlonilla_, even if he reached Guaymas intact, he made no to-do about
accepting the paper, and merely faltered a simple remonstrance at what
he had said being taken too seriously.

"Oh, don't be scrupulous," said don Stefano, with a kind of pride in
his friend, "the sum which our Chilian gentleman has lost against you,
though apparently no joking matter, is nothing to him in reality. I
know something of his pecuniary standing, and I assure you, if he will
pardon the breach of banking confidence, that don Aníbal Cristobal de
Luna y Almagro y Pizarro de Cortes has not suffered the least injury in
purse!"

He hardly had the title pat himself, but nobody noticed the error, or
cared to correct it.

It was, perhaps, pardonable in the loser, after all the fine words, to
be glum, but a mournfulness infested the entire assembly, and the few
gentlemen whom Gladsden charitably looked upon as innocent neighbours,
merchants, or planters, oozed away gradually. Then the remainder, in
more probability the allies or sworn adherents of the salteador leader,
went forth in a mass.

The banker offered to house the English guest till morning, and he
pretended to accept the offer, which had the result of precipitating
the farewell of don Aníbal, _alias_ Matasiete. Thereupon, alone with
don Stefano, the Englishman refused a nightcap of French brandy, and
as his servant, a man engaged at Guaymas, had entered to receive his
orders for the night, he seemed suddenly to have gone right round to
the other point of the compass, and said resolutely:

"Ruben, we are going at once back to town. While I come down and wait
at the gate, bring the mules!"

Don Stefano began a courteous remonstrance, but the Englishman, after
having stood undaunted among a score of bandits, was not going to
be prevailed on by one single opponent. So he smiled knowingly, and
replied,

"I never sleep in the house of a friend, or in a strange bed. I have
infallibly the nightmare--one of those bad sleeps, my dear banker, when
a man fires off his revolver, and lays about him with the leg of a
table so as to inflict damages that would make your quickest accountant
sit up overnight to reckon. You had better let me go."

Don Stefano still mumbled something.

"Perhaps I shall overtake our dear don Aníbal on the road, and if we do
meet the chances are that the time will be short for the rest of the
way to him, for I want to make myself very agreeable to your honourable
friend."

There was a mighty muster of servants, though it was better than three
in the morning, at the door, and Gladsden who saw that the two mules
were coming round in the courtyard, in charge of his faithful man,
seriously contemplated seizing don Stefano by the collar and holding
him as a buckler, whilst he cowed the domestics with his revolver and
rushed for the saddle. But his host made no sign, and so the Englishman
mounted and rode out into the road without any bar.

He reasoned, therefore, that he would be attacked on the highway by
the bandits on their return to cut his throat in the villa, since don
Stefano's servitors were above the business.

Hence he was rather relieved than startled, about an hour before
sunrise, when he heard a couple of gunshots not far ahead of him and
his man. The latter was so frightened, or so much of an accomplice in
the ambush, that he belabored his mule, turned and vanished in the
darkness, increasing his speed with a shout of terror as there rushed
after him a horseman who had just passed Gladsden with the dizzy
rapidity of a meteor, screaming, "_Muerte, hombre_--murder ahead man!"

Pretty well on the alert, and his eyes quite accustomed to the
darkness, to say nothing of the night breeze off the sea having blown
away the last trace of the long stay in the heated room, Gladsden
divined that the fugitive had been mistaken for himself, and had been
fired upon by his own chosen assassins.

There was a clump of trees ahead, from around which the fleeing
cavalier had come. On the instant, Gladsden imagined a trick. He flung
himself off his mule, to whose flank he applied a stroke of his whip,
which started it off not leisurely, and lay down, half across the road.
He had his revolver ready in his hand. There was a yellow stripe in his
riding cloak, which made him tolerably distinguishable in the gloom.

Way layers have good eyes. Two men, advancing on foot, speedily spied
this stumbling block, and were so flattered by that evidence, as they
conceived it, to the goodness of their aim, that they forbore to delay
to recharge their guns which they carried easily "at the trail."
One of them was more eager than the other to examine the prey, and
threw himself before the second. Gladsden judged this an excellent
opportunity to kill two birds with one bullet, on the expectation of
the missile perforating the foremost and then burying itself in his
comrade. He waited only long enough to see his teeth gleaming in a
savage and gleeful smile, and pulled the trigger.

The robber uttered a scream of pain and surprise, and fell back upon
his mate, who instinctively pushed him aside so that he measured his
length in the deep water cart furrows. The other, paralysed with fear,
was not at all disenchanted by seeing the supposed victim of their
double shots rise and present the revolver of which one chamber had
furnished a quietus to his friend, whilst he said, having seen the
man's face in the flash--

"Good morning, Master Ignacio, otherwise the lieutenant of our dear
acquaintance, don String of names, chief of the bandoleros, and skipper
of the _Little Joker_. If you will just give me the address of your
sister, so that I can deliver your last dying message, and that of
your dear brother, Pepillo, I shall require nothing further before I
rid me of your company!"

Ignacio gave a howl of rage which exemplified the reason for his
nickname of "the Mountain Cat," at facing the avowed witness of his
brother's decease, the probable slayer, but the revolver daunted him,
and the allusion to his sister riveted him to the spot, so that he did
not budge, even so much as an eye, to look at his companion who gave a
last groan in the rut.

As Mr. Gladsden had no notion of ever again bestowing so much of his
time on this nocturnal cavalier, he now designed to inform him about
the inheritance of his brother bandit. With a quick transition of
feeling, the hearer ejaculated a prayer, luckily short, and springing
on the speaker dragged him into the thicket at the roadside.

"Oh, gentleman!" he cried, "You must not be seen by the others. They
line the road to the town. You will surely be killed even running the
gauntlet, though we believed you would be stifled in your own bedroom
at don Stefano's, but you shall not be harmed now! I swear it!" he
added vehemently. "You are under the charge of the Saints; your escape
from our bullets showed that!"

Gladsden did not trouble just then to undeceive him in his conceit
about the horseman who had drawn the fire of the ambuscade.

"Come! You are not so bad a fellow, I grant!"

"And you are a brave heart, Señor. I watched you close while you played
the captain disguised."

"Oh, were you there? Now well, I won't say fraternal love would make
you help me, but there is a prospect of a bushel of pearls, for your
sister, the orphans, and yourself, and, in faith--as you would say--I
honestly believe you had better be my safe guide to the port! What say
you?"

"It's a bargain, Señor. Besides--" (here he could not help laughing
heartily, though in a low tone) "with me you can trick that humbug, the
captain, lovely!"

"In what way? Will he not burst with vexation if I slip past his dogs
unhurt?"

"He will with disappointment when you sail away in the _Burlonilla_."

"I believe that."

"And that you may do, with my help, if we are on the alert! I am the
chief officer of that barque."

"Which is no more Chilian than you are an honest man."

"Pardon me, Señor! I am honest on occasion, and I will deliver you up
the ship if I may still retain my post aboard."

"It strikes me, man, that it is you who are making conditions."

But the Englishman, who realised all the danger of his situation, had
not used an angry tone. The bold and merry rogue accordingly proceeded.

"¡Caramba! What is there strange in that? I save your life; you
safeguard my neck! Besides, on land, here, I am not afraid of our
judges; but on the sea, if the American naval officers catch us, I have
always counted it as certain that I should hang!"

"I am with you there!"

"Let me go with you, there, Señor! I will not only pilot you to the
town, but do so on the cutter, and take you to the pearl store, surely,
steadfastly, under your honour's direction!"

"Your cool impudence is much to my taste. See, day is peeping. Lead on!
And if we reach the town without having to burn powder or take the edge
off a knife, you have excellent hopes of being my lieutenant on the
cocky little craft."

"She's a beauty! But, silence! They come, and will tread on poor
Ricardo; so, away!"




CHAPTER X.

THE PEARL DIVER'S PRICE.


However placid our adventurous Englishman might seem to be, he was a
man, like another, to be dazzled by the play of his fancy, rendering
almost palpable to his mind all the jewelled dreams of _The Arabian
Nights_, where pearls and other sea gems play so brilliant a part, and
are measured out in bushels by the heroes of those prodigious tales.

Now that he owned a fleet vessel, nothing seemed easier than to realise
all these visions, and to succeed in obtaining the treasure indicated
by Pepillo, so that, like another Aladdin, his fortune would enable him
to eclipse even the dons of the European stock exchanges.

The first thing had been to obtain indisputable command of the ship. So
he went to the port governor, a military man, who was incorruptible,
and would, he could see, stand no nonsense from the robber chief and
his more or less public allies; Colonel Fontoro stamped the transfer
paper of the late owner of the _Burlonilla_, and authorised captain
Gladsden to defend his property against all illegal claimants.

There were a score of American or English sailors knocking about at
the port. Gladsden selected eight, added a North American Negro as a
colour line, a Chinaman for cook, a Karnak to help in the diving, and a
Valparaisan boy for the cabin. Ignacio he allowed to be his lieutenant
"on trial," but protected himself by giving the second mate, Jem
Holdfast, a Bristol man, a sealed order to take command in event of his
absence for twenty-four hours without notice, or the American acting
suspiciously.

There was a lack of the most important desideratum in his peculiar
quest, pearl divers; Ignacio did not pretend to be expert, like
his brother-in-law had been, spite of overmuch assurance in most
pretensions, and the Karnak was doubtful.

As those waters were wont to have furnished a bountiful harvest of
pearls to Spain--up to 1530 from the conquest, a million dollars worth
had been sent home officially, heaven only knowing what supplement
the tyrants had smuggled to the Jews of Barcelona, Cadiz, Lisbon,
and Oporto--Gladsden cherished the hope that he would pick up some
Indian, versed by innate inheritance, skilful and strong, if not any
too honest. Though the pearl fishery on the West Coast was practically
exhausted in the seventeenth century, still a few essay it "for their
own hand." It is not impossible that notable pearls are still picked
up, and secretly disposed of, as only the other day (1883, to be exact)
one was found in the Bay of Panama, so large as to rank among the few
celebrated gems of historical note.

The search for a diver was fruitless to Gladsden. The Indians, no
doubt, scented a little coolie catching in the wind, where so rakish a
vessel was concerned, and had no inclination to be carried to Ceylon
and set to work at coffee planting during an engagement of 99 years.

Besides, with so ugly an enemy, the captain of _bandoleros_ hatching a
scheme to recover his property, with which don Jorge Federico was more
and more delighted, so that he wondered it had ever been valued at only
twenty thousand dollars, he ought already to have sailed. He determined
to weigh, therefore, spite of his unsupplied want, obeying the rude
alternative.

On the eve, while the men were putting the finishing touches to the
seagoing trim, while captain Gladsden was in the cabin, lolling back in
a Windsor (Connecticut) chair, smoking and seeing Gladsden Hall rising
in a vast estate of new purchase like Chatsworth itself, the South
American page came to the doorsill, and announced the arrival alongside
of a strange gentleman, with the last provisions of fresh vegetables
and water.

Gladsden was in no good humour at the interruption, especially as he
conjectured that the newcomer was an emissary of the ex-skipper of the
pretty cotter. He was, therefore, about to rejoin that the cabin boy
and the uninvited caller might go to Hades in company, when the party
mentioned, probably of an impatient temperament, or too pressed by the
urgency of his case to stand on ceremony, caught the boy by the waist
belt, tossed him aside, and, leaping into the cabin, said as easily as
one could imagine and with a winning smile:--

"Be good enough to overlook the manner of my arrival, sir Captain, but
I _must_ speak with you."

Without any invitation he sat himself down on a locker, and pulling out
tobacco and paper from his sash at the waist, proceeded to roll up a
cigarette.

Rather taken aback by this abrupt intrusion, the Englishman took a long
stare at the speaker, who did not show in the least that the attention
was burdensome. Then he smiled, with a reflection which he did not
care just then to express. When the cigarette was made and lit, the
stranger, half hiding his handsome young face in a cloud of smoke,
leant towards his compulsory host with a somewhat mocking air, and
began:--

"Señor Capitán, I am of the opinion that, though you should reckon me
up by the hour together in the comprehensive style you are doing, that
would in no way enlighten you as to who I am."

"That is just where you are out, my friend," returned Gladsden, with
some Triumph. "It is I who know more about you than you do of me, or
rather it is you who are more in my debt than ever I hope I shall be in
yours."

It was the turn for the young Mexican to evince surprise, but he bore
the shock very well.

"There is an error, sir," he responded, after reflecting, whilst he
regarded the frank, hardy features over against him, repaying his
mocking air with a derisive expression which was full of fun, though.
"I have never seen you before."

"That is true, perhaps. At the time when we were face to face there was
the ugly head of a red Indian thrust between, a head, by the way, in
which I lodged a bullet, thanks to which your hair remains on yours."

"Oh!" exclaimed Benito Bustamente, in a gush of joy and amazement.
"Was it you whose shot rang in my ear like the voice of a delivering
archangel when that murderous savage's knife was hovering over my heart
in order to precipitate the death which his envenomed darts had failed
to inflict? How can I thank you?"

He sprang forward, let the cigar fly from his fine teeth, and seizing
the Englishman's hand, carried it effusively to his lips.

"Well, there, have done, do stop it, my good fellow!" said the other,
embarrassed, "I am heartily glad I saved the life of so graceful a
caballero, and more. I cannot say now, particularly, if your present
errand has anything to do with the occurrence which culminated in
placing you, mighty pale and 'gone' looking, at the mercy of that
scalping fiend."

"Something to do with it? All, all!" cried Benito.

They exchanged stories. When the Mexican explained how his despair had
goaded him into taking up the trail of Dolores, though ill fitted to
combat a horde of ruffians, the Englishman stayed him.

"I was on the same track," said he, "how singular! We might have fallen
foul of one another, and had a pretty mincing and slashing duet in the
thicket, that stormy night. Well, such a fatal blunder was not in the
books."

"Thank heaven! To proceed," went on Benito; "I found Dolores sheltered
from the rain in a hollow tree. She was like the dead, speechless,
inflexible, cold; but fortunately I carried the means of resuscitating
her. When she had been so revivified, I left her to await my return
with the steed I proposed stealing from a frightened herd which could
be seen by the lightning glare around the base of that Mound Tower. The
robbers were within the pile, I could move bodily; to my amazement, I
spied, on looking up, a man suspended as by a thread from the top of
the cylinder of brick. There, in another part, I recognised another
visage, hideous, demoniacally grinning, hovering over this doomed
wretch. A knife soon glittered in the hand of the cruel scoundrel. I
knew the peculiar profile, the thin lips, the chin and hooknose nearly
meeting. It was don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna, as he called himself,
the visitor at don José's, suspected then to be affiliated to the
salteador. I hesitated not a moment. I could not stay your fall, Señor,
but I was bound to revenge it, I fired with the untried gun, which
handsomely did its work, and the scream of don Aníbal, whose beauty I
had marred, was my reward and an alarm to his gang. But I had time to
select a horse, stampede the others, gallop to Dolores' refuge, place
her on the saddlebow, and flee round the terrified animals over the
prairie. When our flight became slower by fatigue, I lassoed a second
horse for Dolores, and we two rode easily on to Guaymas."

"Whilst I was carried away, heaven knows how far, luckily I fell in
with a couple of decent fellows, professional protectors of the cattle
from vermin, and they conducted me to the post, also whither they were
bearing their pelts. What a strange meeting! So your idea of humanity
was to shoot close to the ear of a man suspended fifty feet on high, so
as to startle him into the drop!" laughing. "Well, shake hands again,"
continued Gladsden, extending his hand.

"But you are alive?"

"I agree with you there. But if I had not fallen on something so soft
as a couple of horses, one of which obligingly bolted and took me out
of the robbers' camp, I should have been a pancake. All this thanks to
your _humanity_!"

Benito hardly understood this kind of jesting; but the ways of the
Anglo-Saxon are often incomprehensible to the Southern American, and he
did not stop to require an elucidation.

"We are quits, then; that is manifest!" said he.

"Which means we are both, with the very natural proneness of each man,
to overrate his vital value infinitely, under ceaseless obligation to
one another. What can I do for you?"

"Captain, you have been beating up Guaymas for a pearl fisher--a
diver of the rare old sort, who could go deeper and stay under longer
than the degenerate descendants of that almost forgotten man-fish
Miguelillo, of Tehuantepec, who, in 1620 or so, dived an incredible
number of fathoms, and brought up the 'Queen of the Gulf,' which
precious pearl, worthy of being called a 'Cleopatrina,' and dissolved
in an Imperator's cup, was, up to a few years ago, the largest gem in
the coronet of Our Lady in Saragossa Cathedral!"

"My learned friend, I want a diver, indeed. Only I mean to fish in
bulk; that is, draw up at one scoop a mass of pearls!"

"Did you never hear the men about the port mention one Benito Vázquez,
of the Upper Gulf?" went on the Mexican, without reference to this
announcement.

"Well, several did say that the person you name was the very man I was
feeling for. But no one had seen him for some time back."

"Benito Vázquez is Benito de Bustamente! Fond of the seas, acquainted
with an old Indian, one of the many who assert a descent from the early
kings, I know almost every inch of water, far below the surface, too,
from the mouth of the Gila to Cape Palmo. I am that diver!"

"Famous diver," said Gladsden. "My dear fellow, you will make my
expedition a short and surely successful one. You are the very man I
want. I won't say now, engage with me at a sum; but come, point out the
spot I seek, help me to drag up the sunken treasure, and as I live, I
shall turn my head whilst you dip with your cap into the chest."

"Are you speaking seriously, Captain?" demanded Benito, not surprised
at the sudden friendship he had excited, that not being an unexampled
event.

"Most seriously."

"Then our bargain is made. The conditions lie thus: ask me whatsoever
you will, my Englishman, and I will do my best to gratify it. On your
part, let me be accompanied on the voyage by my wife, doña Dolores de
Miranda."

"Is that all! Delighted to turn myself out of my cabin for the young
lady."

"Afterwards you will land me and her where I indicate."

"Right, but about your remuneration?"

"Not a seed of a pearl. I shall consider myself sufficiently rewarded,
if you loyally keep this arrangement, on which depends the happiness of
all my life."

"Señor Benito Vázquez de Bustamente," said Gladsden, rising and gravely
holding out his hand. "I read in some old newspaper which beguiled the
dreary watch, that your father, in resigning the Presidency of these
Mexican States, said: He retired with nothing but his family, whom
he would rear to be like himself, content with the grand but simple
ambition to be _good Mexicans_. You are worthy your father, who must
have been a fine gentleman! And I tell you, one such Mexican suffices
to make me reckon very little in the opposing balance a thousand
mongrels like that don Aníbal, the robber chief, and his citizen
allies. Bring the young lady aboard--she shall be the Queen of the Sea
here, my very sister!"

"By my soul!" cried the young Mexican: "You have a gallant heart, and I
anticipated little less from a seaman and an Englishman! So, the lady
is alongside at this very moment, in the dugout that I paddled out in,
awaiting the result of my pleading."

"Enough, the young lady shall have a stateroom, and even a sitting
room apart, for the carpenter can soon knock up a partition here.
No one but you and I, if I may be considered a guest now and then,
may enter there, and I never without you. It is needless to say that
Madam Bustamente shall be treated on my ship with all the respectful
consideration which is her due."

"Then the sooner we are off soundings the better. Both of us have
active enemies ashore."

"Not while my flag covers you. The fiery flag of England is one that
grasping fingers have been burnt again afore now, Señor. Now let's
bless the ship with the presence within her bulwarks of your life
companion, let's have her here."

Benito shook the generous foreigner's hand cordially, ran up the
companionway and vanished for a short moment, after which he returned,
preceding Dolores. She had even sooner and more completely than her
young mate recovered from the privations of the desert, and grief at
the loss of her only parent. Her beauty was exhilarating, and Gladsden
was really enchanted at her salutation, so fraught with modesty and
grace. Her soft, harmonious voice fluttered faintly in her answer to
his welcoming address, but she was soon encouraged to the top of her
heart, and even laughed at having been fearful up to then.

To think they were in some sort old friends; that this indolent captain
had been on the trail of her abductor, and had besides visited with
condign punishment the assassin of her father. It was as good as her
brightest dreams.




CHAPTER XI.

THE TWO CAPTAINS OF THE "GOLETA."


Whilst señora Bustamente was formally taking some refreshment, Gladsden
summoned Ignacio.

"Lieutenant," said he, sternly, "it is a honour for me to have Madam
Vázquez, the bride of Benito Vázquez, the pearl diver, to present to
you."

Ignacio bowed, and darted from his widely distended eyes an enormous
show of admiration at the young Mexican.

"The famous pearl fisher," murmured he; "the take will be rare and
splendid now."

"This lady," continued the master, "is our passenger, you are
answerable for her being treated with the utmost deference, and the
greatest attention by all the crew. We'll fashion a cabin for her
hereabouts. All the men are forbidden to enter here under any pretence
whatever. Do'ye hear, Master Ignacio?"

"Yes."

"Then what the mischief are you staring for?"

"Ha, Señora Vázquez?" he repeated. "Surely I behold with admiration
dazed eyes the incomparable daughter of the martial hacendero, don José
de Miranda."

"Eh! How now, what do you know of the lady?"

"Only that she was the chosen bride of his Excellency, don Aníbal
Cristobal."

"Eh? Why, of course!"

"And that illustrious scoundrel," went on the late lieutenant of
banditti, with a refreshing air of morality, "after having had the
poor don tracked to his death by the venomous Apache, to whom I owe my
brother's loss--one to him! A thousand devils pull at him--the captain
not my lamented Pepillo--after all that show of hatred to him who took
the lady out of his clutches, don Aníbal will not allow the double
removal unimpeded, I'll wager you a thousand ounces against one poor,
old, worn dollar, of the señorita and his dear _Burlonilla_."

"Indeed! We'll see about that."

The speaker marked a curious mixture of fear and doubt flit across the
visage of Ignacio.

Benito, seeing that he was only in the way of his young wife's settling
down in her new home, and having some neglected preparations to make
ashore, proposed a hasty return thither.

The captain all the less reluctantly coincided with his expressed
intention, as he had a confidential message to transmit to the British
vice-consul--a young Jewish gentleman on whom he believed he could rely
in such an emergency as impended.

In Benito's absence, captain Gladsden took further precautions.
Disliking a budding smile on the phiz of Ignacio, he ordered him below,
placing Bristol Jem at the head of affairs in his stead, and charged
the carpenter to hurry on his woodwork. The rest of the time was given
up to completing the readiness to start.

Going on 3 p.m. the Englishman was walking the deck under an umbrella,
when he perceived a boat pushing off from the wharf. It could not be
Benito, in this huge shallow punt, impelled by eight oars, in the bow
of which six armed men in uniform were standing, while at the stern
were seated two persons in gay array.

One was a stout dame, extravagantly caparisoned; the other, a tall
man in almost as brilliant and absurd an attire. The latter was not
altogether unfamiliar to the captain, and he smiled in anticipation of
the affair to be communicated.

Whilst the heavily laden embarkation bore down upon the cutter with a
leisure which was insulting, Gladsden ordered his ensign to be dipped
three times. Immediately he had the satisfaction of perceiving the flag
of the British consul execute the same movement. Benito had, therefore,
delivered his message, to which this courtesy was an acknowledgment.

Gladsden went below, and approaching the bulkhead, behind which doña
Dolores was ensconced, whispered to her:

"Lady! I have reason to suppose that a boat is coming hither with
persons on board whose intention is to seize on you and take you
to land in the absence of your husband. Now, you need not worry
yourself. Don't show any tokens of being here. I have answered for your
protection to don Benito, and I know quite how to take care of you, as
well as my craft, against all the desperadoes in the Intendencia of all
Sonora."

"Oh, do so, sir!" returned the young lady, a prey to deep emotion,
spite of the Englishman's confident and jesting accent, "And we shall
bless you! Out of the little window I, too, have espied the skiff
coming; and I have recognised my aunt and the pretender to my hand. I
would rather die than fall into their hands! Oh, why--oh, why is not
Benito here?"

"Don't be under any uneasiness," reiterated the other; "I shall keep my
pledge to your husband. Only, I say again, keep _perdue_, and do not
reveal your presence by any noise."

"I promise to obey you, sir Captain. You are a really good man! Heaven
will benefit you for the protection you accord me. I shall go on
praying for you and myself!"

"Very well; so pluck up, Señorita, and soon the fun will be over!"

He remounted to the deck. He glanced over the bay, and went to the stem
with his marine glass, looking over the oncoming "scow" contemptuously
to view the shore near the consul's habitation. A longboat, manned by
twelve oarsmen, and carrying the English flag at the stern, was seen to
quit the pier and steer for the _Burlonilla_, making good time.

The port was "getting lively."

Though things were going on nicely enough, Gladsden did not mean to
be taken unawares, and, not to be blamed for neglecting to take any
precaution, he had a cutlass and a brace of boarding pistols laid
handily on the sliding cover of the companionway. In those waters one
never knows how matters may turn out, and, to prevent the turning out
being unpleasant, a man is easiest when thoroughly on his guard.

Though the English representative's boat had left the shore some time
after the native one, it was not slow in overhauling it, outstripping
it without deigning to hail it or otherwise notice it, and ran
alongside the _Little Joker_ on the seaward side, while the other boat
was rather far away.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Lyons," said Gladsden, receiving the
deputy-consul, warmly.

"Yes, here I am, Captain. You can do anything you like with me, you
know. Only, as your messenger was in a hurry to be off, I am very
little informed upon passing matters, and I may be able to act better
in your interest if you acquaint me how things stand and move."

Gladsden briefly told the story.

"Is that all!" exclaimed deputy-consul Lyons, laughing finely, as Jews
do. "Don't you be alarmed, but let me deal with this fellow. The friend
of don Stefano must be a suspicious character, and that he is the chief
of the in-country night marchers, and also the doer of little piracies
with this same brigantine does not, therefore, startle me. But your
visitors are hailing you. You might receive them with that bulldog
sweetness of demeanour which characterise us British," he went on,
smiling shyly. "Before all, put away those weapons, quite useless. The
affair will finish with more of a display of brass than steel or lead."

"I will hope so, though it's a thing of indifference," replied the
master of the _Little Joker_. "Anyway, I rely on you."

"That's the best."

So the cabin boy removed the weapons, while his captain, accompanied by
the British sub-consul, strode to the gangway thrown open in the low
waist, arriving just in time to offer his hand to the lady passenger
of the shallop. Behind her the drolly accoutred sham Chilian commodore
scrambled aboard.

Doña Josefa de Miranda was of elephantine form, with her hair, neck,
ears, and arms literally laden with gems, gold eagles, and Mexican
coins, pierced and strung in the shape of collars and bracelets. A
thousand dollar China crape shawl showed all its florid pattern in
embroidery, spread on her broad shoulder. A figured muslin dress, much
too short, was caught in at what she probably flattered herself was a
waist, by a sash sprinkled with precious stones. A profusion of costly
rings shone on her gloved hands. It was manifest that don José de
Miranda in his flight had left some valuables which his kinswoman had
forestalled the executors in securing.

Nothing could be more repulsive in its uncomeliness than the swarthy
lineaments of this corpulent being, whose carping physiognomy and small
glistening coffee coloured eyes wore an expression of indescribable
spitefulness.

Close to her escort, captain Gladsden undoubtedly recognised the
scarred hook nose, hatchet face, and lank figure of his gambling
opponent. It was the same grotesque uniform which had been donned to
astonish the natives at the supper table of don Stefano.

When this precious pair came in upon the deck of the _Little Joker_,
the armed men attempted to follow. But Mr. Holdfast--whose enforced
stay in the fort, penniless, scornfully used by the Guaymasians, had
filled him with terrible detestation of all Mexicans in general, and
Western ones in particular--gleefully obeyed his orders by bidding
them keep their distance. At once the corporal seemed indisposed to
bow to this injunction, and seized the Turk's head at the end of the
rope guard of the gangplank, thus railed to assist the lady, the first
officer, without losing an atom of his habitual coolness, shoved the
skiff head off so roughly with his foot as to make the soldier lose his
balance and fall between the two gunnels into the water. This, to the
laughter of the seamen, who cherish an animosity towards soldiers, and,
furthermore, against the armed police, always seeking an excuse to be
manifested. Luckily, the soldier had kept his hold of the main ropes,
and hung long enough to be lifted up into the boat to the disapproval,
if a certain splash of a tail in the water not remote, signified
anything, of a shark which had immediately prepared to sup on him
instead of the cook's waste.

Meanwhile, without deigning to attach the least interest to this
suggestive episode, the massive dame, giving the new master of the
brigantine a lofty look, used her most cutting tone to demand,
haughtily, if she were addressing the commander of the bark.

"Yes, madam," replied Gladsden, bowing stiffly, "for which recent
coming into possession I am happy, because it procures me the honour of
receiving on my deck as weighty a personage as your ladyship appears to
be. To whom have I the favour of speaking?"

The proud woman announced herself, sonorously, as "Doña Maria Josefa
Dolores Miranda y Pedrosa y Saltabadil de la Cruz de Carbaneillo y
Merlusa." The hearer bowed deeply at each bead on the string, darting a
look aslant as if he feared the little brigantine was rather top-heavy
with all these names. Then she pointed to her companion, who had been
eyeing the ship's new crew with an annoyed face which was diverting
enough to anyone in the secret of his interest, like an exhibition of a
curious wild beast.

"This is--for you need save yourself the trouble to name an old
acquaintance--Don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro Almagro de
Cortes," took up the gibing captain, with a wink for the consulary
assistant. "It is rather crushing, besides, your ladyship, to have here
a descendant of three of the conquerors."

Don Aníbal was curling his moustache to keep his countenance. His
native impudence was oozing out at every pore.

"This gentleman," proceeded the important lady, "is my son-in-law,
hence his accompanying me."

"Your daughter must be a happy woman to be the mate of so brilliant an
officer, an admiral, at least, I suppose?"

"Well, the alliance will not come off for a little spell, within these
four-and-twenty hours, sir. To conduce to that beneficent result, you
see me here."

"I am fully aware, Señorita," returned Gladsden, getting tired of
keeping up the chaff, "that I would never have boasted the possession
of this craft but for don Aníbal, but, in compensation, I hardly
believe he comes to me to be furnished with a wife, unfortunately,
unless it be the _gunner's daughter_, to which alliance he is heartily
welcome to my consent. I am afraid he will go away a bachelor for all
the marriageable young ladies here."

It is lamentable to record that the sailors, who had been bandying
verbal bonbons with the soldiers, chafing on the shallop, raised a
laugh at the expense of Don Aníbal, who perfectly well understood, in
his other part of pirate, that to marry the gunner's daughter, is to be
bound, face down, on a cannon and there undergo a flogging. So he drew
himself up with a savage gleam in the eyes:

"Mind what you say, or I will have you to know that I am very rich, and
otherwise of good position. It will be easy for me to make you repent
any insolence to me or my friend. So, take my caution for it, you had
better be respectful, and not forget whom you are addressing."

Gladsden slapped the Panama on his head which he had so far held in
hand.

"If it comes to that, ma'am," he said, "you must allow me to remark,
with all the respect that you claim, and which I will show you inasmuch
as you are of the gentle sex, and for that reason solely, that you are
labouring under an error. You don't seem fairly to know whom you are
talking to! I am the captain and owner of this goleta, and, moreover,
I am a foreigner. My deck is the same thing as a piece of the country
under the colours of which I sail. However grand you may be over there,
on land, your power falls pretty flat on these planks. I have the
honour to present to you the deputy of Her Britannic Majesty's Consul
who will bear me out in my observation."




CHAPTER XII.

THE ROUT COMPLETE.


At this declaration of the modern "_Ego civis Romanus_," captain
Matasiete rather stepped behind the woman than otherwise, as a wary
warrior chooses a cotton bale for breastwork when bullets are likely to
fly.

"Tut, tut, tut! What is all this farrago to me? In plain words, I come
for my daughter whom you took off shore and have on this, I am afraid,
piratical craft. I summon you to restore my child straightway, or I'll
give you a tough bird to pick!"

Gladsden impudently looked from her to the salteador and then back
again, as if he were in doubt which was "the old bird" she offered for
plucking.

"And you will have me to deal with my fresh hand at ship ruling,
Señor," cried don Aníbal at last, having edged over, to the gangway,
and seeing the skiff drawn near enough for the soldiers, eager for the
fray under the taunts of the seamen, to haply clamber on board to his
aid.

The boatmen, whom he knew something of, and who might have numbered
more than one of the former crew of the _Little Joker_, could be relied
on to back up the musketeers, he believed.

"My young Captain, if you play the resistant, hang me if I shall not
bring you to reason and decorate a shark's tooth with fragments of your
hide! Even yet, you do not know of what I am capable! _Rayo de Dios_.
Mind yourself! Patience is not one of my virtues!"

The consul intimated to Gladsden that there was no necessity of an
outbreak of temper, as, while the brigantine's crew could lay out the
soldiers comfortably in a twinkling, his own boat's crew could eat up
the skiff's propelling force without salt.

"Will you answer me, sir," resumed the stout lady.

"Señorita," Gladsden responded, with all the self-possession possible,
"I do not know what you are driving at. I have nothing to do with
your bucket of tar--I mean your family affairs, and I do not want to
dip into it. If your kinswoman has left your agreeable society, I
daresay she had her grounds of action. It is no lookout of mine, and
I shall keep my fingers clear of it, I tell you. Whether you go around
rummaging for her or not, I shall pay no heed, so long as you do not
flounce about my ship, hardly of your burthen for such carasolling,
telling me your troubles. As for this gentleman," he went on, spinning
round so fiercely on Master Matasiete, with the new log line of
nominatives, "I warn him charitably that if he does not stick his long
cabbage cutter between his legs and scuttle off _instanter_, I will
hurl him, his names and titles, his long nose and long moustache, clean
over the side to regale the harbour scavenger. This little programme
being clearly laid down, I rather think you twain had better drop back
into your boat."

He thereupon turned his back on my lady as if to give his men the
order. She retreated a step, but, turning as red in the gills as a
turkey-cock, blurted out--

"Stay, stay, master Captain. You shall not slide out of it thus. I have
an order of the secretary of the colonel governor to take my dear child
back from any place whatever."

"Suppose you are good enough to let me inspect this warrant, madam?"
said Mr. Lyons, quietly.

"I have no objections. _You_ are not a boor. Your residence here has
civilised _you_. Is it not perfectly in order?"

"Beautifully inscribed, madam," replied the pro-consul; "only that writ
does not run here!"

"Why not, pray?" she exclaimed, haughtily, bridling up at the implied
slight to Mexico.

"Simply because the Port Governor himself has no right to issue search
warrants for foreign vessels, even though the application is backed
up by so noted a banker as don Stefano Garcia. In the first place,
your complaint ought to have been laid before me--from the moment
an Englishman is accused. I would have then opened an inquiry, and
if it appeared proper that the British shipping in port should be
examined I would have so advised Colonel Fontoro, and my chancellor
would have been charged to accompany you in the investigation. I
do not say that, on account of the somewhat slow movements of that
peculiar creature, the 'red tape worm,'" he added, smiling softly, "all
these indispensable regulations would not have tried your ladyship's
patience, but, I believe, our office is credited with more celerity
than your own government houses. At all events, as the forms have been
ignored, this order has no value. I also think you had better retire,
for this captain, as he notified you very kindly, has the right to
tumble you neck and crop over the board, and what little I know of him
makes it certain that he will not hesitate to carry out his warning if
either of you continue obstinately to stay here contrary to his will!"

It is impossible to depict the rage which swayed the stout woman as
she heard this speech, in a firm voice and peremptory tone. She flew
out against the speaker, the captain and all the grinning crew, to the
Chinese cook and cabin boy themselves, with all the strongest insults
and threats in her resonant Castilian tongue, to which had been added
the native additions not found in dictionaries of the Spanish Academy,
which glanced off blunted from the frigid Englishman, however.

The prudent captain of salteadores and pirates, as the case might
be, took care not to intervene while under don Jorge Federico's eye.
His own wandered after he had secured an open way to retreat, and he
managed, unseen by the others, to exchange a glance with Ignacio, whose
head just peeped up out of the fore hatch, where he was ensconced.

"This is all very well," cried the enormous virago at last, "I do
withdraw because you are all in the plot against me, and I have no
power, poor little weak woman (_afeniquita_) that I am to enforce my
rights! But I'll spend half my fortune to punish this outrage. Oh, that
the guns of the island would blow you over the little stars if you
seek to escape me. We shall meet again, you puppy; come, Don Aníbal
Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro y Amalgro de Cortes, follow me. I have
taken a vow that you shall be my son-in-law; and you shall wear that
title though it cost me my own name."

"You are not likely to lose yours by marriage," observed Mr. Gladsden,
accompanying her to the side opening. "At least, I'll back that opinion
roundly."

"Vulgar buffoon!" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders till her
jewels jingled like a head mule's bells. "Come, dear Don Aníbal; let us
leave this Indian canoe. I repeat that you shall be the husband of my
daughter."

The Mexican had stepped into the boat, spite of the rule to give
place to the dame, and omitted to offer his hand, as a fresh arrival
shocked his sight. It was Benito Vázquez Bustamente, coming off with
his baggage in a shore boat, managed by a couple of Indians, one young
enough to be the grandchild of the other. Both had those bloodshot eyes
which are the living tokens of a life as a pearl diver.

"You may bestow _your_ daughter on whom you like," interposed the young
Mexican, at one spring impatiently clearing the shallop and the ducking
heads of the startled soldiers, and alighting between the robber
captain and that of the _Burlonilla_, who seemed about to step into
the flat boat and cuff the Mexican even there. "But doña Dolores is
only your niece, and you lie after the most shameful pattern when you
pretend to the honour of being her mother."

This unexpected address so dumbfounded the huge señora, that she almost
fell back upon the soldier, and would have done so only that the prick
of a bayonet, "peaking up," broke into her absence of mind, due to the
consternation.

Amid a roar of laughter as she floundered upon the nearly crushed
soldier, trying to right her upon her feet, the shallop was pushed off,
and the Indians of Benito aiding the movement and from it glancing to
the brigantine's side, their little boat took its place, and began to
discharge the baggage which the pearl diver had collected to make his
wife's voyage more comfortable.

A little while after the deputy-consul, thanked warmly by all parties
concerned, entered his longboat, and was rapidly transported to land,
even before the infuriated don Aníbal and the lady whom he had so
feebly cavaliered arrived at the pier side. It seemed to him, as he
glanced amusedly into it, that a strange face had been added to the
crew, but his attention was immediately diverted by smoke beyond
the breakwater, denoting the coming of a steamer, and he forbore to
increase the humiliation of the two Mexicans by dwelling on them.

Not a quarter of an hour afterwards, as the steamer was signalled,
and showing her private emblem, was telegraphed to don Stefano Garcia
as the _Casta Susana_, of Acapulco, direct from the Sandwich Islands,
consigned to him, the goleta left the port, speeding under all sail,
right through the steamer's trailing smoke.

For one second this vapour eclipsed the _Burlonilla_, which seeing,
Matasiete standing on the pier head beside the baffled señora Maria
Josefa, remarked:

"There is nothing under canvas that can take that craft; but I will
have a try at it with steam. Will you come?"

"Anywhere!" cried the vindictive sister of don José de Miranda,
"Anywhere, if revenge only flourishes there."

"I think," muttered Ignacio to himself behind this worthy pair, "that
don Jorge Federico had far better have left me first officer of the
Burlonilla. At the same rank on board of the _Casta Susana_, methinks I
shall handle my brother's pearls before he does."




CHAPTER XIII.

INTERVENTION.


The _Burlonilla_ proved herself commendably swift. Had she been even a
faster sailer, captain Gladsden would have never dreamt of going out to
sea with a view of eluding anyone curious about the movements of the
eccentric young Englishman, after the disappearance of Ignacio being
reported to him. Search high and low, not a trace of the rogue. Spite
of the sharks at Guaymas, capitán don Jorge was so convinced that the
lieutenant of bandoleros was inevitably fated to adorn the gallows,
that he believed the rogue had reached land, or, as the vice-consul
could have given him a pointer, been taken into the scow of his famous
colleagues.

Without being aware that the steamer was at the command of those who
could be accounted his enemies, and would be sent in pursuit, or,
rather better to say, since Ignacio was the pilot, would strive to
anticipate him, the captain made all haste for the spot indicated on
Pepillo's plans.

Since Ignacio had but a vague surmise to go upon, the _Burlonilla_
passed Point St. Miguel without anything hostile arising, and soon
cast anchor at the second of the islets, in a chain which were named
after the knots in the rope girdle of St. Francis. But the seafarers,
men supremely practical, who do not fetch their similes from afar, had
also preferred to take the protuberances for a likeness to the knots in
a logline, call them, _Las Señales de la Cordonera de San Francisco_.
The good mission priests might protest, but the laws of the Medes and
Persians are easily effaceable as compared with a name down on a sea
chart.

Between the mainland, where a dreary haze hinted of the smoke of
sleeping volcanoes in the rocky ridge of the peninsula of old
California, and the string of isles, the brigantine was made secure by
stem and stern.

The mainland was rugged, and apparently admirably abundant with
vegetation.

There were giant palmettos tossing their feathery tops to every
cat's-paw, in isolated clumps, among a verdant screen of varied trees.

Alas, for the trickiness of Dame Nature. That luxuriance was
superficial, the verdancy that of worthless shrubs, cactus, and
prickly pear, briar, vine and beach, plum, thorn apple and Dead Sea
fruit. Behind that illusive foliage, sand, lava, stones, dust, formed
the melancholy waste in which the scanty, wild creatures live in
perpetual madness, induced by chronic thirst. Without irrigation, Lower
California is an Arabia Petrae.

But as Gladsden had no intention to settle, he was content with the
alluring, if deceptive, face of the country.

The first real annoyance was to find a small colony of Indian mongrels,
painfully carrying on the re-raking up of the shells of the abandoned
pearl fishery grounds. Their huts were picturesquely perched on rocks,
the leafy roofs ornamented with _gallinasos_, fowls, more than half
wild, which indolently hunted for food in the natural thatch of palm
and brush. These born pearl fishers had been there so long, that they
had laid out little gardens for ground and bush, fruit and vegetables,
defended by live cactus. Above patches of sugarcane glowed the golden
globes of orange and citron, amid deep green leaves.

As don Jorge Federico de Gladsden had come, not to scrape oyster
shells, but to haul up a mass of pearls in a submerged box without
desiring prying eyes to witness the operation, he allowed Benito to
get the observers out of the way by simply hiring the whole settlement
to go fishing at another point of the broken reef. From the brigantine
they could be seen, without their being able to watch the peculiar
fishing in which her crew were about to engage.

Fishing for pearls is a much more dangerous and difficult operation
than is generally supposed.

Each of the several _piraguas_, or pirogues, or dugout canoes, as you
please, had two men, stripped for diving, save an apology for bathing
drawers, girded on by a rope. This retains to the left side a leather
sheath for a heavy knife, not less than eighteen inches long and three
fingers wide, sharp as a razor, intended to battle with the sharks and
stripe backs, _pez manta_, a kind of galvanic ray of which the mere
contact paralyses the victim.

The worst kind of shark, the _tintorera_, that is to say, "the dyer,"
promenades the Pacific where human beings congregate, and comes up the
Gulf. One of the headlands on the east coast is named after this terror
of the pearl divers. The _tintorera_ owes its cognomen to a singular
peculiarity, which reveals his presence providentially to afar off.
Pores around his muzzle exude a luminous, gluey matter, which spreads
over the entire body and gives him a glowworm like effulgence. Over and
above this, the animal is next to blind, and consequently cannot go by
sight alone to any point desirable. While, too, other sharks, to seize
their prey, simply turn over on their sides, señor el Tintorera has to
roll belly up completely.

When there are any such _squaloid_ around the fishing place, no day
passes without there being "knots to untie," between the divers and the
tintoreras, as well as the _pez mantas_, and, almost always, the men
only cut clear after horrible struggles.

When the diver takes his "header," his fellow paddles the skiff forward
so as to accompany the plunger's diagonal immersion, whilst his rise
is, on the contrary, vertical. This is done to pick up the swimmer at
the very identical instant of his reaching the surface, his left arm
laden with oysters and his lungs eager to catch air. Then he climbs in,
takes the paddle, and manages similarly whilst his mate does the diving.

Good divers go very deep, the most famous can touch bottom at twelve
and even fifteen fathoms, and can stay under for seven or nine minutes,
but these are rare, the majority not surpassing four and five minutes,
which is very pretty. The mated divers keep on by turns until they
have brought up the requisite quantity of oysters. Their gains are
miserable, and those whom captain Gladsden engaged were delighted to
get a dollar a dozen. Many a shell has to be opened before any pearls
are found; ten or twelve per cent is a good proportion for the enriched
ones, and then again, many pearls are far from valuable. The basis
of the estimation is the orient, as much as to say the lustre of the
concentric layers, the "water," the roundness, and the size. Those
worth a couple of thousand dollars are found on the South American
coast, and still more seldom in "the Sea of Cortes," where we now are.

Whilst the hired Indians were engaged at this submarine toil, Benito
and the two red men, old acquaintances of his, who would not have
engaged themselves to another master, were searching the water at the
side of the brigantine first, and latter, farther and farther away,
accompanied by the yawl, two men pulling so that the two red men could
rest calmly till they relieved the Mexican at the watery work.

For a time there was a growing belief that Ignacio's brother had lied,
or that the chest had been burst by the waters churned up by the
_temporal_, as is named the terrible wind, the West Coast counterpart
for "the Norther" of Texas, or, at the best, moved it away into deep
water. But Benito and his copper acolytes were expert in judging the
aquatic "signs," and soon pronounced that the bluish tint that denoted
a pearl oyster bed, showed a bright bar from a break in its continuity.
The chest had dragged, but was not lost. Within an hour, all three
divers being down at once, the old Indian came up and uttered a joyous
shout on expelling his breath. He had a fragment of tarry rope. Next,
Benito struck the trail, and came up crying, as soon as he could speak,
that he had discovered the chest, the buoys had been eaten away by
marine creatures on the tooth of time, and the treasure coffer had
sunk, crushing into an oyster bed. The wounded oysters had exuded
their pearly fluid and coated the strange object beautifully, and the
shellfish had settled on it, but there it was in its lustrous and
lovely mantle.

The yawl returned to the brigantine with this good news. It was coming
on dark, so that nothing could be done till morning, but make ready a
drag and hauling and lifting tackle, the hooks of which the chief diver
and his aides undertook to attach, as confidently as others would work
on dry land in open air.

Doña Dolores, whom, as a young bride, her husband had allowed to
indulge in all her caprices--and heaven knows a Mexican girl, liberated
by wedlock, so to say, paradoxically, has an infinity of tastes to
gratify--had indulged in too much sweetmeat to have been a good sailor.
As a consequence she was glad of the suggestion of Gladsden that,
during the anchorage, she should remain on shore in the best hut of
the little settlement. With the things landed from the _Burlonilla_
the _haquel_ (little hut) was made tolerable lodgings--a relief to the
confinement of the brigantine's cabin.

The night was lovely, after a glorious sunset, when the reflections
of the sublime play of orange and vermilion suggested why the early
navigators were led to call those upper waters of the Gulf the Red Sea
(_Mar Rojo_), rather than because the united streams of the Gila and
Colorado pours, dyed with iron and copper, into the clearer blue.

In the deep, deep sky the stars glittered like diamonds of more than
mortal polish. There was a mingling of air off the peninsula fragrant
with wild flowers, of air off the Gulf, of tempered briny billows
bumping the rocks of Cape St. Lucas, and of hot, dry breath from the
mainland, rich with a honey like sweetness that cloyed. All was still,
all was lonely, and the sole cry, at long intervals, was that of the
lean coyote, stealing over the sands and mingling his starlight shadow
with those of the giant cacti, shaped like colossal men brandishing
maces and clubs, as he curiously regarded the brigantine. If a slight
breeze ran along the shore it almost musically clattered the oysters
clustered on rushes and mangroves, standing part submerged. Behind them
the mesquite and acacia, and back of all the sparse woods on the rising
slope: beyond that peaks well apart.

Once in the night watch the lookout reported a red fire gleam
southwards like a fallen star quenching itself in the Gulf, and twice
smoke was espied in the same quarter.

They knew it not, but it was Matasiete, after a search of San Luis
Gonzales Bay by daytime, pushing the steamer into the shoals around the
Islands of San Luis and Cantador. The double incentives of revenge and
greed made the amphibious rascal excessively daring.

In the morning, therefore, Gladsden coming on deck early to have a
tub in the brackish water drawn for his ultra-English custom, himself
beheld the chaste _Susana_, full steam on, steering for the knots of
the log line of St. Francis, and, logically, for himself.

It would have been hard to lose the prize just when he had verified its
existence, as well as one may believe in a pig--we mean a pearl in a
poke.

The _Burlonilla_ floated two guns and a swivel, and no deficiency of
small arms. The steamer had four ports, and canvas covered objects, one
at bow and one at stern, were no doubt the complement of her armament.
She came down to within two cables' length of the anchorage of the
goleta, blowing off steam noisily, not to say threateningly, and there
let her both bower chains run out. A kedge and hawser, let from the
stern, enabled her numerous crew to moor her so that her broadside
overawed the little brigantine. Before this manoeuvre, Gladsden was
fain to believe it was only one of the smugglers which often run up the
Gulf and await the result of the negotiation of the consignees and the
port officers before returning to Guaymas or elsewhere, and discharging
a cargo on which, thus, the Exchequer of Mexico is neatly defrauded and
the public deficit is kept from lessening.

With his glass captain Gladsden had recognised as the officer on the
steamer deck none other than the double traitor Ignacio. It needed
nothing more to understand that the newcomer would stick at nothing
on this desolate coast where the ship duel would have no seconds or
interferers.

He was ordering Mr. Holdfast, after having pointed out the Mexican
to him, to hurry all hands over breakfast with a little intimation
that some of them would dine in paradise if they did not beat off the
unwelcome visitor.

Suddenly the old Indian tutor and friend of Benito pointed shoreward.
The canoe of the pearl diver was putting off with him and doña Dolores.
Instantly, being a little nearer, and seeing the same sight, there was
a bustle on the quarterdeck of the _Susana_, and there appeared in
gorgeous array, even eclipsing that of the Chilian representative in
which he had last been admired, the celebrated don Aníbal Cristobal de
Luna.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE HAUL OF MILLIONS.


Soon a cutter was lowered, in which the Mexican got, with the radiant
Ignacio as his coxswain, and four oarsmen, while the moment it started
in pursuit, or as matters stood then, for the encounter of Benito's
little piragua, doña Maria Josefa de Miranda hoisted herself up the
stairs and lumbered to the side of the steamer to gloat over the
proceeding.

Gladsden saw that, though he had a boat got ready, the canoe must be
met before he could intervene, to say nothing of the probability of a
volley from the bow of the _Casta Susana_ checking his attempt in mid
career. If, besides, the pearl diver ran himself ashore, encumbered
with the young lady, he was almost sure to fall among the mesquite
brush under the pistols of the salteador and his lieutenant.

It was no question till the young Mexican and his wife were out of
peril, of attacking the formidable steamer.

Benito's red ally, who had whispered to his grandson and drawn a nod of
comprehension from the latter, had stripped himself, as did the youth,
for diving. All other eves were on the chase. They slipped over the
low board unnoticed, opposite the _Casta Susana_, and as silently took
to the water and swam away. It looked as if they deemed the impending
combat hopeless, and, like the rat, quitted the surely defeated ship.

In the meantime, poor Benito, recognising with whom he had to deal,
was plying the paddle manfully, whilst Dolores, falling on her knees
in the canoe, set ardently to praying, her hands clasped, and her
eyes on the profound sky. All at once, without giving a warning to
the girl, so that she was shaken in her devotions, Benito turned the
pirogue somewhat, evaded the Susamalis boat, and went straight to a
little rocky islet of some height, well covered with rushes and other
vegetation. It would mask him from the _Casta Susana's_ crew, though
leaving that vessel between him and his friends. Possibly, he had no
other aim than to deposit Dolores thereon, and stand in defence of her
against all comers.

The Mexicans began to cheer their captain, whose boat, clumsily turned,
resumed the hunt.

Very little could be seen now of the chase from the low-lying goleta,
and though Gladsden recklessly climbed up the rigging to get a view
over the thronged deck of the steamer, soon the piragua and the cutter
were veiled by the islet from all the spectators, friends and foes.

"Every man to the boats!" cried the Englishman. "Arm to the teeth, and,
cook, all the matches and tar; we'll board that beast of a smoky tub,"
appealing to the seamen's hatred of a steamer to fire their energy,
"take her or leave her a prey to the flames! Every man, active and
idlers, away!"

There was, indeed, a very fair prospect of the _Casta Susana_ being
taken by surprise, so enwrapt was the attention of all the people of
the Mexican, taking the cue of doña Maria Josefa, with interest and
anxiety.

But the _coup de main_ never came off. Halfway to the target, Gladsden
was startled to see her, previously riding, doubly secured, so stiffly,
nod, and begin to rock, then cant at such an incline whilst settling
down slowly, as to cause the Mexicans to catch hold of every near
object.

A great outcry arose.

It was repeated with anguish, as the careering continued as if a giant
hand was rolling her over. Then the black faces of the stokers and
engineer were seen as they came climbing up on deck to add themselves
to the no less terrified crew. The steamer's deck was at a slope
of forty-five, everybody clinging to the uppermost gunwale, save
the unlucky ones who had rolled to the down scuppers, in among the
rubbish which a Mexican captain allows to encumber his upper planks.
The swaying cannon above threatened to break loose and crush these
struggling wretches to marmalade, whilst their _vis-à-vis_, bursting
the port lids, ran out to the carriages and kissed the agitated water.
Poor Maria Josefa, grasping a sailor round the body whilst he hung
on the taut guy of the reeling smoke pipe, hovered over the knot of
writhing, fighting men trying to get a footing on a surface every
moment changing its centre of gravity.

At that direful instant the boat of Gladsden was slightly pulled down
on the opposite side to the steamer, and two dark heads succeeded two
pair of red arms, abruptly seizing the gunwale by chin and hands. In
the mouths of both were the formidable _navajas_, "gapped" by recent
rough usage and pointless.

"You, Diego? And young Diego?" cried the captain, assisting them on
board.

"Yes; you see um steamer go down, and you see um pirates go up pretty
soon dam quick! Old Diego and young Diego play swordfish--we scuttle
the steamer, see?"

In fact an ominous hissing seemed to indicate that the water rising
within the steamer, well on her side now, was menacing a blow up of
the boilers. The engineer and his mate fully foresaw this, and were
scrambling into a boat, jammed of its fall in the blocks.

"Heaven guard us!" was the shout on the ill-fated steamer. Some forty
men were seen preparing to launch the boats, or even leap into the
water, when a louder scream, though from one pair of lungs, was audible
over the clamour. Doña Maria Josefa, with the sailor on whom she would
not relax her grasp, had rolled like a ball across the perpendicular
decks, bounded over the bulwarks, now washed by the water, and splashed
out of sight.

As if her plunge had been arranged for the eliciting of a salute,
pistol shots from the rock islet announced that the pirates and Benito
were at firing range.

There was chaos.

The hissing steam, the splitting vessel, the straining yards and masts,
the knocking about of everything loose within the half-flooded hull,
the exclamations of the men in the water, some of whom mounted on
the drift, shouted out "shark!" no pen can do justice to, and to the
critical situation which doña Maria was the most prominent object, the
centre, the feminine hub of a wheel of frantic men.

The Englishman took the only course, however risky, towards desperadoes
who might not appreciate humanity. He rowed to the spot, reached the
centre, and after nearly capsizing the boat, dragged the woman safe
to the stern sheets. The heavy mass lay there, inert as a stranded
porpoise.

Shrieks, and the disappearance of men in the water, of whom no further
traces were yielded up but the ruddy bubbles which marked a shark's
wake, incited the _Burlonilla's_ crew to greater speed in their rescue.
But they would have been swamped by the concourse of frightened men,
whom not even the presentation of a cutlass or loaded pistol kept off;
luckily the steamer had finished her going down, having attained the
level which was her altered draught, while the compressed air buoyed
her. The Mexicans, seeing her deck become almost level, climbed upon
her in dread of the tintorera. Gladsden left these to count their
missing, whilst he conveyed his cargo, as prisoners, to his vessel,
where they were secured. He had the swivel trained for precaution on
the unfortunate _Casta Susana_, smokeless, fireless, waterlogged, and
retraced his course with a circuit to avoid the disabled foes, so as to
bear the too long delayed succour to his young friends.

Benito had run the canoe up a little cleft in the rocks, shoaled her on
a stretch of sand, taken out Dolores and placed her in a grotto. Before
her he rolled a stone, as a breakwater, gave her his revolver, and
stood on guard only with the pearl diver's knife, which, however, he
well knew how to swing and thrust, as well as cast--a siring enabling
this latter trick to be executed without the knife being lost.

Urged madly on by Matasiete, the noise on the other side of the islet
on his ship puzzling him, and giving him an earnest desire to wipe out
the present vexation and return to his post, the boat stove itself on
the rock. The water was not deep, the men could leap from stone to
stone or wade. The waders, two in number, trod on a stingray or an
electric fish, for they were heard to groan and seen to fall palsied in
their tracks.

The rest confronted Benito. He drew their fire, expressly to prevent
a shot being directed at his wife, and then met their charge in a
mass. As the mob enveloped him, Dolores fired the revolver twice, more
at random than with careful aim. One shot told, for a seaman left
the struggle to go on of itself, whilst he reeled aloof, and tumbled
off the rock into the water. Two more Benito gave a quantum of steel
to Ignacio and his commander were left alone to quell the dangerous
young Mexican. So far they had not been able to use their firearms
without the hazard of injuring their own. They drew off to fire with
deliberation, when the young wife, whose head had cleared after her
first shot, and who was made a heroine by seeing that the life of her
beloved perhaps rested on the true flight of the little globes of lead
in the revolver, let fly at Ignacio, whose backbone was broken by the
two shots. As he fell in a heap, the salteador chief, aghast at being
so quickly placed solitary before his foeman, wheeled round and fired
at the smoke oozing out of the young woman's cave. She screamed, for a
fragment of stone, cut off by the bullet, had fallen on her neck, and
she believed she was killed, supporting the delusion by swooning away.
Receiving no reply, therefore, to his heartrending call, Benito flew at
the murderer with so awful a countenance and so menacing a flourish of
the blood-smeared knife, that Matasiete did not pause to try to raise
his name to _Mata-ocho_, "the slayer of eight." He backed, and then
plunged into the bush.

"¡Hola, cobarde!" cried Benito, but the other made no reply.

There was a crashing of the bush wood, a splash, and all was silence.
The young Mexican heard his name behind him in a faint voice, and
renouncing vengeance at the appeal of love, went quickly to his wife.
Dame Dolores required nothing but his presence as a proof of his safety
to be recovered of her fright.

After making certain that the assailants were incapable of mischief,
the two who had been stunned by the fish surrendering with as much
alacrity as their confused senses permitted, the couple had the
satisfaction of being hailed from the boat of Gladsden.

It is regrettable to say that the latter, in his concentration of
thoughts upon the rescue of his friends, was deaf to his oarsmen
beguiling the time as they shot by the wreck, by supplying the words
to the notes of the key bugle in the hands of their shipkeeper. He was
playing a song popular at the period of the outbreak of the Gold Fever
in California, of which the chorus runs someway thus--applicably, the
singers fancied, to the situation:

"Oh, oh, _Susannah!_ don't you cry for me. I'm going to Califomy with
my washbowl on my knee."

The young couple were gaily taken off the islet, though the two
Mexicans were left there to regain their clearness of wits, whilst a
prolonged search was made all around it for the lost leader. The islet
did not contain him, there was little likelihood that he had gained the
mainland, though a sanguinary streak gave reason to the supposition
that he had at least essayed to do so. No doubt of it, he had been
devoured by a tintorera, unscrupulous about entombing the pretended
scion of three of the great conquerors of Spanish America. It must be
confessed that this tragic end caused no chagrin to the crew and extra
force of Guaymas riffraff who acted as marines on board the _Casta
Susana_. They blamed him for the whole of the disaster, and it was a
good thing for his consort in the expedition, doña Maria Josefa de
Miranda, that she was remote from the crew, exceedingly spiteful since
they had escaped a watery or a shagreen bound grave.

That lady had been completely changed in character by her bath in the
Gulf, a magic wrought by _Pacific_ water which may recommend it in the
future to the lovers of peaceful married life vexed by an irritating
aunt. She showed herself quite kind towards the pair, and blamed the
late don Aníbal for all her persecution.

Ignacio and his master having kept to themselves and carried away with
them the secret lure which had decoyed the _Casta Susana_ to lay her
ribs on the knots of the logline reef, the Mexicans displayed no desire
to linger. They filled their boats with provisions, loaded a raft to
be towed with other articles, and, the weather being fine, started off
to Whale Channel, intending to cross and coast along till picked up.
The peninsula was too sterile to afford so large a party any hope of
successful land marches to reach inhabitants. To have done with them:
they had to cut the raft adrift off Tiburón, and, parting company, the
three boats separately reached the port whence they sailed--having had
to live on tortoise and even cayman--_en route_.

Long before their arrival, Gladsden's vessel had transported Dolores,
her husband, and their aunt, fully reconciled, to Guaymas, where--as
their marriage had been so informally and unceremoniously performed by
a friendly priest--Father Serafino--they received the grand nuptial
benediction in the presence of a numerous assembly of the best society,
among whom Captain Gladsden had the honour of signing his name as
witness. It is needless to say that don Stefano Garcia, in considerable
trepidation--walking like a cat on hot cinders, as the proverb
goes--did not attend the ceremony.

Before the wrecked men of the _Casta Susana_ came to port the treasure
of pearls had been divided. There were other valuable stones, notably
emeralds, but the pearls were worthy all of Pepillo's eulogy; there
were perfect ones for shape and other qualities--the pears, the globes,
the flatcrown (tympani, or kettledrum shaped, as the ancient said), in
short, the choicest specimens imaginable of "the Pinnic stone."

Don Benito agreed to maintain the family of Pepillo and a sweetheart
of Ignacio out of his half share, amounting, as valued by Mr. Lyons
(who had his racial genius for estimating precious stones), to
£150,000, well overrunning Pepillo's rough casting up. Both he and
Gladsden placed a large sum in the bishop's hands for almsgiving; they
contributed towards the breakwater and so on, and then separated, each
in his own way to enjoy the filibuster's hoard, originally accumulated
to revolutionise Lower California as a preliminary to annexing it to
the United States.

Captain Gladsden sailed to San Francisco, where he disposed of the
_Little Joker_, and of some of the pearls, and travelled overland to
take steamship for England.

Don Benito accompanied his wife back to her paternal estate, which was
to be their happy home.




CHAPTER XV.

THE PATHFINDER'S HONOUR.


Here might the author stop, and, in sooth, he was going to write
the words "The End," glad that the episode of the pearl fisher had,
at least, the happy _finis_ so desired by the novel reader; but my
editor,[1] who was smoking a cigar at my elbow, in my sanctum, and who
had been interested enough in what I was dashing off to follow the
lines over my shoulder, checked my hand abruptly.

"Here, here!" he cried, as "The End" was on the point of flowing from
my pen. "Do you mean to tell us that you know nothing more of Benito
Vázquez, his bride and his friends?"

"But I do," I answered with a sigh, for a sad memory had been revived
by the unexpected inquiry. "But may I not leave the Pearl fisher rich
on his _hacienda_ in Sonora?"

"No," said my editor. "Why should you stop here? As long as you do know
something more about him, the tale is not told. Our readers, who have
become enwrapt in your hero--I may almost say your two heroes--will be
charmed, I warrant, to learn all they can further."

"Now, do you really think," I inquired, hesitatingly, "that this
continuation will not bore?"

"Far from that, since it will complete the opening. I must acknowledge
that your finish struck me as pulling up short. To conclude with, 'And
so they were wed, and all lived happy ever after,' is to be met with in
every novel and romance."

"Have your own way," I answered, "since you wish more, my dear friend,
I shall go on and give you the completion required, which, this time,
you may make up your mind to it will not be rounded off at the altar.
Only I would like everyone to know that you, and you alone, insisted
upon having it so."

"Very well," he said, laughing; "scribble away! I am sure we shall be
the gainers!"

And now, dear readers, having protected myself as regards you all, I
continue the story with the hope that the conclusion will interest you
as much as, I understand, the foregoing has pleased you.

Mr. Gladsden went to England to imitate his friend and comrade by
sacrificing to Hymen.

He married, and had two sons. They were still young when he lost
their beloved mother, and ere long, in accordance with that very
contra-French custom of keeping the children in leading strings which
pushes the British boy into life beyond the home, they dwelt remote
from him at school. He was, therefore, a lonely man. Politics had no
attraction to one still active, fox hunting was tame after his American
experience, and yachting was baby play to a genuine mariner.

Gladsden had already shown his remembrance of Mexico by investing
heavily in its Western Railway, and hence he was confidently
approached by the promoters of that link which should make it fully
transcontinental, and by the later projectors, who sought to establish
the line between Guaymas and that running down through the wild lands
to Santa Fe, El Paso, Topeka, and thus binding the cactus country to
that of wheat, corn, and cattle.

From joining the board of the latter companies to volunteering to go
out and investigate the causes of a prodigious slowness in building the
line was an affair of short duration. Mr. Gladsden's offer was gladly
accepted, and he started with alacrity, which proved how deep had been
his longing to break away from social trammels.

This time he proceeded overland from New York, and finally surveyed the
route of the Great Southern Pacific Railway as far as El Paso. There
a chance speech overheard in the Continental House, which enclosed
a reference to the rich land proprietor, don Benito de Bustamente,
changed his purpose to proceed still westwardly. He engaged a guide and
horses, and was, at the beginning of May, traversing the Sierra de las
Animas, or Mountains of All Souls.

On the twenty-fifth of that month, going on four of the afternoon, a
time clearly indicated by the disproportionately long shadows of the
trees on the sandy soil of the _savannah_, and the coppery red colour
of the sun, which appeared like a fiery disc at the level of the
lowermost branches, we see Gladsden and his guide mounted on native
horses. The superior wore for old acquaintance sake the costume of
Mexican rancheros, and his attendant the picturesque and typical garb
of the hunter of the West. They were both armed to the teeth, as a
matter of course, for, in this quarter, all honest men are exposed to
the three heads of the Southwestern Cerberus: that of the "rustlers,"
or white desperadoes; of the _bandoleros_, or Mexican thieves; and of
the wild Indians, none of them uniting with either of the others, but
true Ishmaels.

It was remarkable that the prairie guide, however, had acceded to the
progress of improvement in firearms, in lieu of the long and heavy
rifle so celebrated along the backbone of the continent in the hands of
the trapper and hunter, this man carried, like his employer, a finely
finished Winchester breech-loading and repeating rifle, much stronger
and larger than the general pattern.

The pair had just emerged from an immense forest of cedar, which had
never yet known the woodman's threat, though doomed ere long to feed a
locomotive engine's furnace, and were glad to cry halt at the skirts of
the covert. Then they trotted down to a pretty stream, which was one of
the sources of the Yaqui River, and bending so far to the westward as
to make an inexperienced explorer fancy it had something to do rather
with the San Miguel.

Indeed, the woodsman examined the muddy waters with serious heed for
a long time, and executed some mental calculations in that wonderful
untaught trigonometry of the frontiersman. Then, stopping his _broncho_
by a scarcely perceptible pressure of his knees, he bent gracefully
towards his employer, and said, as he smiled good-humouredly:

"Hyar you hev it, Mr. Gladsden; this ar the safe ford, though the
melting snow has set the sink pits filling, of which I war speaking
this noonday."

"Quite certain, eh, Oliver?" remarked the English gentleman.

"I wish I was as sartin sure I shell die with my har on," was the
other's laughing answer, showing magnificent teeth for a man of fifty,
which hard biscuit and harder deer meat, with plenty of "chaw" in
it, seemed nowise to have impaired. "Anybody but me mout go askew,
but I have known all these _tracks_ (he meant 'tracts,' for it was a
trackless wild, in plain truth), now an' agen, off an' on, for over
fifteen year."

"Pray overlook my offensive persistency, Oliver; but I cannot help
observing that I do not see any of the sites by which, according to my
informants at The Pass, I was to learn the exact position of a crossing
line in a treacherous stream. And I have been a sailor, too, and
accustomed to go any course, if I have reasonable bearings laid down
and visible."

"Oh, I never mind your being cornered, sir," went on the other, still
merry; "they forgot to tell you the distances in mapping out the pints.
You cannot see the Chinapa Peak even from here. But it's all one, Mr.
Gladsden; here is the point of the Yaqui. Yonder, I can see the smoke
of a _pueblo_--the village they call Fronteras, as they do half a dozen
such places within a crow's fly along the borderland. That reddish
haze is over the Río Bravo, whence we came. Now, to reach the road to
Arispe, you cross and you keep dead ahead, and you must strike it."

"Well, I must say, Oliver, that since I have had the pleasure of a
journey at your side, all your information has been as credible as
gospel. It is a long while since I was in the wilderness; but I did
have a taste of it once, and I am confident that on more than one
occasion already you have diverged from the apparently true course to
save me from something unpleasant. I conjecture my equipment, on which
I had no reason to spare money, excited the cupidity of some of the
loafers at El Paso, and that we were followed."

"Right you are! And I threw them out clean twice. And a couple of times
more, thar hev been injin 'signs' hot as cayenne. That's jest why I
say you had best git over the water now, rather than wait any longer,
though there will be less fear o' your hoss being carried off his
hoofs."

"Fifteen years ago, my friend," said Gladsden, who had not failed to
remark mentally, how little the speaker had dwelt on the cares he had
already exercised to preserve his charge from the "hostiles," white and
red, "I should have been so reckless as to say--since I should like our
having a parting meal together--let us sit here and eat away! But I
have no right to expose your life to peril, even if I had not two boys
at home for whom mine is still desirable. So, if you do not object, let
me show you that I have learnt prudence from your continual exercise of
it, and that our repast shall take place on the farther side of this
shallow, frothing, dirty-hued river."

"Nothing hinders me," answered the hunter. "Have things your own way.
Let us hie over before sundown."

He looked to the mustang's already terribly tight girths, shortening
the stirrup straps and caught up some of the trappings which dangled in
the Mexican style.

"Thar we 'do' the river," he said, pointing, "follow me step by step.
I ought to go before, but your saddleback is high, and you must triple
your blanket across your shoulders and neck, in case of a shot. If we
are fired on from the rear do not turn but fall flat on the horse's
neck. If we are fired on from your side, return the shot at anything
moving in the froth. If from my side, I'll deal with that. Leave your
hoss free to step in the steps of mine, for the crossing line is very
narrer, the bottom one mass of holes and quicksands, and the current
rushes like lightning where it does have free play; there is, moreover,
a gulf below with rapids that grind granite like chalk. The least
imprudence will send us, hoss and cavalyers, rolling along like Canady
thistle balls in a breeze. You hev your caution--no fooling, mark!"

All the hunter guide's mirthfulness had vanished, and the stern tone
made Mr. Gladsden start. We know he was incontestably brave, and that
he had gone through some such perils as now confronted him; but the
advance of civilisation in the southwest had given him an impression
that his former adventures were things of an irrecoverable past.

However, there was no time to meditate, for his guide had pushed his
horse into the water; and the other immediately followed it. They, too,
seemed imbued with consciousness of the situation being perilous, for,
though thirsty, they did not attempt to moisten their muzzles, albeit
the bridles, as Oliver directed, were slackened and the cruel Mexican
bits ceased their tyranny.

The passage was performed without accident, and soon the pair were on
the further bank in about the only break in a ragged, steep ledge.

"Hyar we kin stake out," said the guide, "and await moonrise for our
'forking off.' Meanwhile, that feast, if you still air set on it, sir."

They dismounted, the hunter went and drew water for the horses in an
india rubber saddle bag, whilst the Englishman lifted off a huge double
sack from the back of his saddle, which is called the _alforjas_, and
took out a deer ham and a plover already cooked, a piece of Dutch
cheese so hard as almost to turn the knife, some green fruit, bananas,
guavas, and chirimoyas which they had picked on the way to eat as a
kind of salad, and lastly, some army biscuit.

By the time the guide had completed his duties, the spread was laid.
A very sober man, as most of these borderers are except when they
'break out' and indulge in a week's heavy and uninterrupted drinking,
much as seamen of 'temperance ships' do after a rough voyage, Oliver
merely added as much brandy, of which they had a couple of flasks full,
as would settle the mud in the water freshly drawn. They both drew
knives as sharp as their appetites, and fell on the victuals without
losing breath in a further word in addition to a brief but feeling
grace which the Englishman uttered, and to which the American, whom
the innovation reminded of the same religious practice, vague from its
early occurrence in his life, said a hearty "Amen."

We take the moment, when this agreeable occupation rewards them both
for a long, fatiguing ride, to trace their portraits.

Gladsden had become a trifle portlier, and had lost his sunburns. He
was less quick to move, but more irresistible in action than ever. In
brief, the hussar was now a heavy cavalrist, whom even these few weeks
in the Southwest had improved in mind, wind, and limb. His sight was
dimmer, but he had no need of glasses to shoot well and straight.

His companion was a man apparently in the prime of life, but he must
have been twenty years older than the three decades which seemed, to
the casual observer, to sit so lightly on his broad shoulders. He was
rather tall than medium, and the absence of superfluous flesh, and the
unusual length of his limbs would make him look like a giant among the
small statured Mexicans and squat horse Indians, mostly bowlegged. His
neck was short and muscular, and, thus, his head had a small aspect,
like Hercules; the features were cold if not stern, and his cast of
countenance was devoid of muscular play, except when one of his merry
moods was on him. Vigour and rigour distinguished him on active duty.

Under a broad forehead, his somewhat deep set eyes, crowned with
bushy brows, were of a changeable nature, for, while almost blue when
he was calm, anger caused them to become dull brown, and they could
dart flashes like those of felines, they were very movable and were
continually examining things around, save when he was addressing
anyone, whereupon they were straight, frank, and steadfast. His long
brown hair, saturated with bear's grease--for your frontiersman has a
sneaking respect for the toilet--and hence almost black, streamed long
and freely out from beneath a homemade hat of mountain sheep wool and
covered his shoulders.

His two names denoted the extent of his ranging ground, for he was
generally known among his own race as "Oregon Ol.," and by the Indians
of the Mexican border as "the Ocelot," that being the wild cat of the
Mexicans (Ocelolt, in Aztec), a trifle less than the jaguar, but,
muscularly speaking, very powerful and no joke for ferocious courage.

In the same way as this well-known guide possessed several names, he
could boast various reputations. The United States Army officers wrote
him down as kindly, never downhearted in sun or snow, skilful, honest
to a button's worth, disinterested, knowing woodcraft thoroughly,
always ready, aye, even to help a friend out of pocket, canteen, or
with his wits, bold to temerity when boldness was the best card,
"reliable," and sticking to his man, friend or foe, to the last gasp.

For the redskins, Oliver was quite other game: he inspired
superstitious terror blended with admiration; no one ever succeeded in
contests of cunning with him; implacable towards anyone who sought to
injure or even annoy him, he would pursue the molester or molesters,
one or many, to their final hiding place, cutting off stragglers,
reducing the band like a man devouring a bunch of grapes, one by one,
and knifing the last at his lone campfire. "That will teach them,"
he would say, when reproached by new coming dragoon officers, at the
forts, who thought it unseemly for a white man to decorate his leggings
with human hair like the reds. He meant that his punishment was to
save, by its recital filling the Indians with dread, many another white
man on the debatable ground, brother hunter, comrade trapper, emigrant,
settler, pioneer, railway prospector.

We say "brother" hunter and "comrade" trapper, for Oregon Oliver only
_shot_ animals; to him, any other means of obtaining fur and feather
would have been ignoble.

Up to some five years back he had been in the habit of transmitting
money, acquired by the sale of peltries, by piloting wealthy foreigners
over the hunting grounds in fashion, and by schooling army officers
in frontier warfare, to some relation in the Eastern States, who had
succeeded his parents as the embodiment of the ideal of home; but death
having removed this claim, as he generously conceived it to be, upon
his purse, he had no need to toil as formerly he did, and he led an
easy life, following for the most part his own sweet free will, over
the ten thousand miles which separate Southern America from the Polar
Seas.

These two men, as opposite in nature and station as well could be, had
made acquaintance in the most natural manner.

Mr. Gladsden wanted a guide into Sonora, and the colonel at Fort
Fillmore, with whom he had been quail shooting, had recommended "the
champion guide."

Once on the road to Arispe, studded with hamlets, all of them, perhaps,
increased in importance since Gladsden's previous stay in Sonora, a
conductor was superfluous. At least he was under that impression.

Hunters never dally with a meal; a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes
at the most suffice, then, if there be more time to spare, there is a
chat amid tobacco smoke. Thus acted our two adventurers.

The rest of the provender was restored to the alforjas, and Oliver
filled a sweet corncob pipe, whilst Mr. Gladsden selected an excellent
regalia in a prettily carved Guayaquil wood box. As soon as they were
both under a cloud, they mused for a while in silence.

When the English gentleman broke this stillness, it was in the
heartiest tone of good fellowship. It was to pay a compliment again
upon the experienced guide and genial companion.

"All right," said the man from Oregon, "you are doing me justice: I hev
done my level best. As long as all turns out well, and you have no dirt
to cast on me, thar's no bone splinters in my meat."

"Oliver, you _are_ a thorough white man," went on Mr. Gladsden,
uttering the _acme_ of western flattery, "all but the liver, and I'd
eat that of the rogue I ever caught defaming you or your class!"

It was a savage way of putting it, which was not unfitting the scene.

"At home with a shoal of old servants about me, I would not lie down
with the confidence that I feel in the desert beside you."

"You are painting it on mighty thick," was the caustic answer,
"but you do not know enough of me to see that I am not any
meet-every-next-minute kind of critter. Young in years, I was then
aged by tussle and bustle. So, drop this flattery right thar which I
shed, like a wild duck the spray of a waterfall. I hev carried out my
engagement to a T, and that's all said and done."

"Stop a bit! I shall send you out some special present from England
yet, over and above the mere pay. You have a rough mind, mate," said
Mr. Gladsden, laughing.

"Not a jot, no! I am a plain man. It is all very well 

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