The Pirates of the Prairies: Adventures in the American Desert

The Spaniard listened to her as if she did not catch her meaning, and shook her head so passionately that she broke the ribbon confining her hair, which fell in thick ringlets over her white shoulders, and veiled them.

"Who are you?" she asked, impetuously, with an accent of menace and anger.

"Who am I?" Ellen replied, in a firm voice, in which a slight tinge of reproach was perceptible. "I am the woman who has just saved your life."

"And who told you I wished it to be saved?"

"In doing so, I only consulted my own heart."

"Oh, yes, I understand," the Gazelle said, ironically. "You are one of those women called in your country Quakeresses, who spend their life in preaching."

"I am nothing of the sort," Ellen said, softly. "I am a woman who suffers like yourself, and whom your misfortunes affect."

"Yes, yes," the Spaniard shrieked, as she writhed her hands despairingly, and burst into tears – "I suffer all the torments of hell."

Ellen regarded her for a moment with compassion, and walked towards her. "Do not cry, poor girl!" she said to her, mistaking the cause that made her shed tears. "You are in safety here. No one will do you any harm."

The Spaniard threw up her head haughtily.

"Nay!" she said, impetuously. "Do you fancy, then, that I am not in a condition to defend myself, were I insulted? What need have I of your protection?"

And, roughly seizing Ellen's arm, she shook her passionately as she said: —

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Answer!"

"You, who were with the bandits when they attacked this village, should know me," Ellen replied, drily.

"Yes, I know you," the Spaniard said presently, in a hoarse voice. "You are the woman whom the genius of evil brought across my path to rob me of all my happiness! I did not expect to find you here, but I am delighted at doing so, for I can at length tell you how I hate you," she added, stamping her foot passionately. "Yes, I hate you!"

Ellen, in her heart, was alarmed at the stranger's violence; she tried in vain to explain her incomprehensible words.

"You hate me!" she replied, softly. "For what reason? I do not know you. This is the first time that accident has brought us together. Up to this day, we never had any relations together, near or remote."

"Do you think so?" the Spaniard continued, with a cutting smile. "In truth," she added, "we never had any relations together. You are right, and yet I know you thoroughly. Miss Ellen, daughter of the squatter, the scalp hunter, the bandit, in a word, Red Cedar, and who dares to love Don Pablo de Zarate, as if you did not belong to an accursed race. Have I forgotten aught – are those all your titles? Answer, will you?" she said, thrusting her face, inflamed with passion, close to Ellen's, and shaking her violently by the arm.

"I am, indeed, Red Cedar's daughter," Ellen answered, coldly; "but I do not understand what you mean by your allusion to Don Pablo de Zarate."

"Do you not, innocent lamb!" the Spaniard retorted with irony.

"And supposing it were so," the American answered with some haughtiness, "what does it concern you? By what right do you cross-question me?"

"By what right?" the Spaniard said, violently, but suddenly checked herself, and, biting her lips till the blood came, she folded her hands on her breast, and, surveying Ellen with a glance full of the utmost contempt, she continued: —

"In truth, you are an angel of purity and gentleness; your life has passed calmly and softly at the hearth of honest and respectable parents, who inculcated in you at an early age all the virtues they practice so well – ah, ah! Is not that what you meant to say to me? – while I, who am an associate of brigands, who have spent my whole life on the prairie, who understand nothing of the narrow exigencies of your paltry civilisation, who have always breathed the sharp and savage air of liberty – by what right should I come to interfere in your family arrangements, and interfere in your chaste loves, whose sentimental and insipid incidents are so well regulated by feet and inches? You are right, I cannot, with my savage manner, and burning heart, cross your love, and destroy for a caprice all your combinations – I am, indeed, mad," she added, as she rudely repulsed the maiden.

She folded her arms on her chest, and leant against the wall of the hut in silence. Ellen looked at her for a while, and then said, in a soft and conciliating voice —

"I try in vain to understand your allusions, but if they refer to any fact effaced from my mind, if, under any circumstance, I may have unconsciously offended you, I am ready to offer you all the apologies you may require. Our position among these ferocious Indians is too critical for me not to try, by all means in my power, to draw more closely together the bonds of friendship between ourselves, the only representatives of the white race here, which alone can enable us to escape the snares laid for us, and resist the attacks that threaten us."

The Spaniard's face had gradually lost the hateful and wicked expression that disfigured it, and her features had become calmer. Now that she had reflected, she repented the imprudent words she had uttered on the first outburst of passion. She would have liked to recall her secret; still she hoped that it was not too late to do so; and with that craft innate in woman, and which renders her so dangerous under certain circumstances, she resolved to deceive her companion, and efface from her mind the bad impression which her foolish words must have left there.

Hence it was with a smile, and in her softest voice, that she answered the American —

"You are good-hearted; I am not worthy of the attention you have paid me, or of the gentle words you address to me, after what I dared to say to you. But I am more unfortunate than wicked. Abandoned when a child, and adopted by the bandits with whom you saw me, the first sounds that struck my ear were cries of death, the first light I saw was the glare of incendiary fires. My life has been passed in the desert, far from the towns, where people learn to grow better. I am an impetuous and obstinate girl; but, believe me, my heart is good; I can appreciate a kindness, and remember it. Alas! A girl in my position is more to be pitied than blamed."

"Poor child!" Ellen said, with involuntary emotion, "So young, and already so unhappy."

"Oh, yes, most unhappy," the Spaniard went on; "I never knew the sweetness of a mother's caresses, and the only family I have had is composed of the brigands, who accompanied the Apaches when they attacked you."

The girls remained seated side by side, with their arms intertwined and head on each other's shoulder, like two timid doves. They talked for a long time, describing their past life. Ellen, with the candour and frankness that formed the basis of her character, allowed her companion to draw from her all her secrets, harmless as they were, not perceiving that the dangerous woman who held her beneath the charm of her blandishments, continually excited her to confidence, while herself maintaining the utmost reserve.

The hours passed thus rapidly, nearly the whole night slipped away in their confessions, which did not terminate till sleep, which never surrenders its sway over young and animated people, closed the drooping eyelids of the American girl.

The Spaniard did not sleep; when the other maiden's head fell on her chest she raised it cautiously, and laid it delicately on the skins and furs arranged to act as a bed; then, by the flickering and uncertain light of the pinewood torch fixed in the ground, which lit up the hut, she gazed long and attentively on the squatter's daughter.

Her face had lost its placid mask and assumed an expression of hatred of which such lovely features would have been thought incapable; with frowning brow, clenched teeth, and pallid cheeks, as she stood before the maiden, she might have been taken for the genius of evil, preparing to seize the victim which it holds fascinated and gasping beneath its deadly glance.

"Yes," she said, in a hollow voice, "this woman is lovely; she has all needed to be beloved by a man. She told me the truth – he loves her! And I," she added, with a movement of rage, "why does he not love me? I am lovely too – more lovely than this one, perhaps. How is it that he has been at least twenty times in my presence, and his heart has never been warmed by the fire that flashed from my eyes? Whence comes it that he has never noticed me, that all my advances to make him love me have remained futile, and that he has never thought of anyone but the woman lying asleep there, who is in my power, and whom I could kill if I pleased?"

While uttering these words she had drawn from her girdle a small stiletto, with a blade sharp as the tongue of a cascabel.

"No!" she added, after a moment's reflection, "No, it is not thus that she must die! She would not suffer enough. Oh, no! I mean her to endure all the sufferings that are lacerating me. Jealousy shall torture her heart as it has done mine for so long. Voto a Dios! I will avenge myself as a Spanish woman should do. If he despise me, if he will not love me, neither of us shall have him; we shall both suffer, and her torture will alleviate mine. Oh! Oh!" she said, with a smile, as she walked round the sleeping girl with the muffled tread of a wild beast; "fair-haired girl, with lily complexion, your cheeks covered with the velvety down of a peach, will ere long be as pale as mine, and your eyes, red with fever, will no longer find tears to soothe them."

She bent over Ellen, attentively listened to her regular breathing, and certain that she was plunged in a deep sleep, she walked toward the curtain door of the hut, raised it cautiously, and after looking around her in the obscurity, feeling assured by the calmness that surrounded her, she stepped over the body of Curumilla, who was lying across the door, and started off hurriedly, but with such light steps that the most practised ear could not have noticed the sound.

The Indian warrior had taken on himself the duty of watching over the two women. When the scalp dance was ended he returned to install himself at the spot he had selected, and, in spite of the remarks of Valentine and Don Pablo, who assured him that they were in safety, and it was unnecessary for him to remain there, nothing could make him give up his resolution.

Phlegmatically shaking his head at his friend's remarks, he took off his buffalo robe without any further response; he stretched it on the ground, and lay down on it, wishing them good night with a brief but peremptory nod. The others, seeing the Araucano's immoveable resolve, philosophically went away, shaking their heads.

Curumilla was not asleep – not one of the Spanish girl's movements escaped him; and she had scarce gone ten yards when he was already on her trail, watching her carefully. Why he did so he was himself ignorant; but a secret foreboding warned him to follow the stranger, and try to learn for what reason, instead of sleeping, she traversed at so late an hour the camp in which she was a prisoner, and where she consequently exposed herself to come in contact at each step with a ferocious enemy, who would have killed her with delight.

The reason that made her brave so imminent a danger must be very powerful, and that reason the Indian chief determined on knowing.

The girl had difficulty in finding her way through this inextricable labyrinth of huts and tents, against which she stumbled at every step. The night was dark; the moon, veiled under a dense mass of clouds, only displayed its sickly disc at lengthened intervals; not a star gleamed in the sky.

At times the girl halted on her journey, stretching forth her hand to listen to any suspicious sound, or else returned hurriedly on her footsteps, turning in the same circle, while careful not to go far from Ellen's hut.

It was evident to Curumilla that the prisoner was seeking, though unable to find, a tent that contained the person she wished to speak with. At length, despairing probably of ever succeeding in this search of which she did not hold the thread, the girl stopped and imitated twice the snapping bark of the white coyote of the Far West. This signal, for it was evidently one, succeeded better than she expected, for two similar barks, uttered at points diametrically opposed, answered her almost immediately. The girl hesitated for a second; a dark flush passed over her face, but recovering at once, she repeated the signal.

Two men appeared simultaneously at her side – one, who seemed to rise out of the ground, was Red Cedar, the second, Pedro Sandoval.

"Heaven be praised!" the Spaniard said, as he pressed the girl's hand, "You are saved, Niña, and I fear nothing more now. Canarios! You may flatter yourself with having caused me a terrible fright."

"Here I am," said Red Cedar; "can I be of any service to you? We are ambushed a few steps from here, with two hundred Apaches; speak, what is to be done?"

"Nothing at present," the Gazelle said, as she returned the pressure of her two friends' hands. "After our ill success of this evening, any attempt would be premature, and fail. At daybreak, from what I have heard, the Comanches will set out to take up your trail. Do not let their war party out of sight. It is possible that I may require your help on the way; but till then do not show yourself; act with the greatest prudence, and before all try to keep your enemies in ignorance of your movements."

"You have no other recommendations to give me?"

"None; so retire; the Indians will soon wake up, and it would not be well for you if they surprised you."

"I obey."

"Above all, do what I told you."

"That is agreed," Red Cedar repeated.

He glided into the gloom and disappeared among the tents. Curumilla was inclined to follow him and kill him as he fled; but after a short hesitation he allowed him to escape.

"It is now your turn," the Gazelle continued, addressing Sandoval; "I have a service to ask of you."

"A service, Niña; say rather an order to give me; do you not know that I am happy to please you in everything?"

"I am aware of it, and feel grateful to you, Pedro; but this time what I have to ask of you is so important and so serious, that, in spite of myself, I hesitate to tell you what I expect from you."

"Speak without fear, my child, and whatever it may be, I swear to you to do it."

"Even if the life of a person were at stake?" she said, with a bright and fixed glance, resembling that of a wild beast.

"All the worse for him: I would kill him."

"Without hesitation?"

"Yes. Has anyone insulted you, my child? If so, point him out to me, that you may be the sooner avenged."

"What I would ask of you is worse than killing a man."

"I do not understand you."

"I wish – you understand me clearly, my dear Pedro? – I wish that on the road we should escape – "

"If it is only that, it is easy."

"Perhaps so! But that is not all."

"I am listening."

"When we escape, you must carry off and take with us the girl to whom you entrusted me last evening."

"What the deuce would you do with her?" the pirate exclaimed, astonished at this singular proposition, which he was far from expecting.

"That is my business," the Gazelle answered rudely.

"Of course, still it seems to me – "

"After all, why should I not tell you? There is, I think, in a country a long distance from here, a savage and ferocious race called the Sioux?"

"Yes, and they are precious scoundrels, I can assure you, señorita; but I do not see what connection there is – "

"You shall see," she sharply interrupted him. "I wish that the girl you carry off tomorrow shall be handed over as a slave to the Sioux."

This proposition was so monstrous, that Pedro Sandoval could not refrain from a glance of stupefaction at the young Spaniard.

"You have heard me," she continued.

"Yes, but I should prefer killing her: it would be sooner done, and the poor girl would suffer less."

"Ah, you pity her!" she said with a demoniac smile; "the fate I reserve for her, then is very atrocious? Well, that is exactly what I want; she must live and suffer for a long time."

"This woman must have terribly insulted you?"

"More than I can tell you."

"Reflect on the horrible punishment to which you condemn her."

"All my reflections are made," the girl replied in a sharp voice; "I insist on it."

The Pirate hung his head silently.

"Will you obey me?" she asked.

"I must, for am I not your slave?"

She smiled proudly.

"Take care, Niña! I know not what has happened between this girl and yourself, but I am conscious that vengeance often produces very bitter fruits, Perhaps you will repent hereafter what you do today?"

"What matter? I shall be avenged. That thought will render me strong, and give me the courage to suffer."

"Then, you are quite resolved?"

"Irrevocably."

"I will obey."

"Thanks, my kind father," she said, eagerly; "thanks for your devotion."

"Do not thank me," the Pirate said, sadly; "perhaps you will curse me some day."

"Oh, never!"

"May Heaven grant it!"

With these words, the accomplices separated.

Pedro re-entered the tent allotted to him, while the Gazelle rejoined Ellen, who was still sleeping her untroubled sleep, smiling at the pleasant dreams that lulled her.

Curumilla lay down again at the entrance of the lodge.

CHAPTER XXVII

SHAW

We have said that Doña Clara had disappeared.

At the moment when the struggle was most obstinate, Valentine, taking Doña Clara in his arms, leaped from the top of the lodge on which he had hitherto been fighting, intrusted the maiden to Shaw, and rushed back into the fight at the head of the Comanches, who, recovering from the terror caused by the unforeseen attack of their implacable foes the Apaches, gradually assembled to the powerful war cry of their chief, Pethonista.

"Watch over her," Valentine said to Red Cedar's son; "watch over her, and, whatever may happen, save her."

Shaw took the maiden in his powerful arms, threw her over his shoulder, and with flashing eye and quivering lip, he brandished his axe, that fearful squatter's instrument he never laid aside, and rushed head foremost among the Apaches, resolved to die or break the human barrier that rose menacingly before him.

Like a boar at bay, he dashed madly forward, felling and trampling mercilessly on all who attempted to bar his progress. A living catapult, he advanced step by step over a pile of corpses, incessantly dropping his axe, which he raised again dripping with blood. He had only one thought left – to save Doña Clara or die!

In vain did the Apaches collect around him; like an implacable reaper, he cut them down as ripe corn, while laughing that dry and hoarse grin, a nervous contraction which affects a man who has reached the last stage of rage or madness.

In fact, at this moment, Shaw was no longer a man, but a demon. Trampling over the quivering bodies that fell beneath the terrible blows of his axe, feeling the body of her for whose safety he fought trembling on his shoulder, he struggled without stopping in his impossible task, but resolved to cut a hole, at all risks, through the human wall constantly arising before him.

Shaw was a man of tried courage, long habituated to fighting, and pitiless to the redskins. But alone, on this night, only illumined by the blood-red hue of the fire, and confined in a fatal circle, he felt a great fear involuntarily coming over him; he breathed with difficulty, his teeth were clenched, an icy perspiration ran down his body, and he felt on the point of succumbing.

Falling would have been death. He would have immediately disappeared under the avalanche of ferocious Indians yelling around him.

This discouragement did not last so long as a lightning flash. The young man, sustained by that hope which springs eternal in the human breast, as well as by his love for Doña Clara, prepared to continue the unequal contest.

Bounding like a jaguar, he hurled himself into the thick of the fight. This contest of a single man against a swarm of enemies had something grand and startling about it. Shaw, as if under the influence of a horrible nightmare, struggled in vain against the incessantly renewed cloud of foemen; in him every feeling of self had vanished, he no longer reflected, his life had become entirely physical, his movements were automatic, his arms rose and fell with the rigid regularity of a pendulum.

He had managed, without knowing how, to clear the fortifications of the village; at a few paces from him the Gila flowed silently on, and appeared to him in the moonlight like an immense silver ribbon. Could he reach the river, he was saved; but there is a limit which human strength, however great it may be, cannot go beyond, and Shaw felt that he was reaching this limit.

He took an anxious glance around; Apaches hemmed him in on all sides! He uttered a sigh, for he thought that he was about to die. At this solemn moment, when all was about to fail him, a final shriek burst from his chest. A cry of agony and despair, of terrifying meaning, and re-echoed for a second far and wide, so that it drowned all the battle sounds; it was the parting protest of a man who at length confesses himself conquered by fatality, and who, before succumbing, summons his fellow men to his aid, or implores the succour of Heaven.

A cry answered his! Shaw, astonished, unable to count on a miracle, as his friends were too far off and themselves too busy to help him, fancied himself the victim of a dream or hallucination; still, collecting all his strength, feeling hope well up again in his heart, he gave vent to a more startling shout than the former.

"Courage!"

This time, it was not echo that answered him.

Courage! This word alone was borne on the wings of the wind, weak as a sigh, and, in spite of the horrible yells of the Apaches, was distinctly heard by Shaw.

In moments of frenzy, or when a man is at bay, the senses acquire a perfection for which it is impossible otherwise to account. Like the giant Antæus, Shaw drew himself up, and seemed restored to that life which was on the point of leaving him. He redoubled his blows on his innumerable enemies, and at length succeeded in breaking through the barrier they opposed to him.

Several horsemen appeared galloping over the plain; shots illumined the darkness with their transient flash, and men, or rather demons, rushed suddenly on the throng of the Apaches, and commenced a frightful carnage. The redskins, surprised by their unexpected attack, rushed toward the village, uttering yells of terror: their prey had escaped them.

Shaw had fought bravely and firm as a rock up to the last moment; but when his enemies disappeared, he sank to the ground in a state of unconsciousness.

How long did he remain in this state? He could not say: but when he recovered his senses it was night. He fancied at first, that only a few hours had elapsed since the terrible struggle he had undergone, and he looked inquiringly around him. He was lying by a fire in the centre of a clearing; Doña Clara was a few paces from him, weak and pale as a spectre.

Shaw uttered a cry of surprise and terror on recognising the men who surrounded him, and who had probably saved him by answering his final shout. They were his two brothers, Fray Ambrosio, Andrés Garote, and a dozen Gambusinos.

By what strange accident had he rejoined his comrades at the moment when he had so great interest in shunning them? What evil chance had brought them across his path?

The young man let his head sink on his chest, and fell into a sad and gloomy reverie. His comrades, lying like him by the fire, maintained the most obstinate silence, and did not seem at all eager to cross-question him.

We will take advantage of the momentary respite allowed Shaw, to explain what had taken place on the island since we quitted it to follow Doña Clara, Ellen, and the two Canadian hunters.

Until sunrise no one perceived the flight of the girls. At breakfast, Nathan and Sutter, amazed at not seeing their sister appear, ventured on entering the hut of branches that served as shelter to the two females, and then all was explained. They went in a furious rage to Fray Ambrosio to tell him what had happened, and the monk completed the news they gave him by announcing in his turn the flight of Eagle-wing, Dick, and Harry.