The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

"A captive, a young girl, fair, pure; oh heaven! In the power of these demons!" groaned Gladsden.

"Don't shake the table! I've done all my uttermost: I made him think her family are already on her trail, that she's worth a huge ransom. If they've protected her so far, by the biggest of marvels in my 'sperience, why not a little longer; tell we kin git clar of this infarnal 'tanglement, and can swoop on 'em at our advantage? Daring is a prime hoss to mount, to show off afore the crowd in front of the hotel, but give me patience when I've got to hunt the red scalpers. Patience, sir! We've got fifteen shots to spare in each of our Winchesters, and the extra one in afore them; to say nothing of our five-shooters. Oh," he added, with a bitter and contemptuous look at the Mexicans, "if there was only enough manhood for one in them three, durn their greasy pelts!"

Unfortunately, granting that they overcame the Apache headmen within the four brick walls, there were many without who could set fire to the ranch and consume them like toads in a forest conflagration, while they would be as far from rescuing the invisible captive as ever.

All fell into silence again, save that the three Mexicans, nestling towards one another, ventured to converse in an undertone. The Apaches continued to imbibe and smoke their gleaming hatchet calumets. This dreary and onerous situation lasted for all of an hour after the hunter's parley with the red men, till they had finished their liquor and let their pipes die out.

The pale dawning light not merely appeared outside, but began to change the colour of the glow from the nearly exhausted lamps. At the same time the fresh morning air began battling with the fumes of spirits and tobacco.

Suddenly the similarly silent Indians on the exterior awoke. There were cautious signals exchanged; the horses, too, participated in the growing agitation, and shifted uneasily.

Two Apaches appeared at the doorway and gave an alarm to the chiefs, who had pricked up their cars, but only then deigned to rise at full length. They spoke together. All but two left the house, and almost instantly a figure draped in blankets was dragged over the sill. Flinging off the hands clutching her wrists with an indignant outburst which made the wraps to fall, the white men and the Mexicans beheld a graceful apparition unveiled.

It was quite a young girl for age, but being precocious, like all tropical creatures, a woman in development, she looked only too lovely in such a miserably unfit scene, fragile yet exuberant, with fine, tiny hands and feet, and narrow waist, black eyes, fair creamy skin and carnation lips; her very step seemed not to press the ground. In her ears and around her neck were pearls of unwonted dimensions; but it was evidently her character and her beauty which had won her the title of "La Perla Purísima."

At the same moment a distant fusillade was audible.

"Follow, and do as I do!" shouted Oliver, taking his decision with that swiftness of the prairie expert, which is, perhaps, the predominant trait that most bewilders the savages, trained to do no act without the warrant of magical manifestations.

With all possible speed he flung himself forward and dashed the Indian to the right of him as far aloof as the walls, at the same time throwing his left arm in a backhanded way around the Mexican señorita's waist so that, in drawing her forward, she was immediately pushed behind him.

Gladsden – on whom the sight of the lovely girl had had a profound effect – had also sprung forward, and not exactly imitating the hunter, pushed with his gun muzzle at a second Apache, and, whether intentionally or not, firing at the same instant, a hole was actually blown through the wretch, who leaped up in the air convulsively and so received a terrible cut of the hatchet of Tiger Cat, aimed at his slayer.

"You've made your coo'! Now kick the rest of them right clean out!" roared Oliver, stooping to avoid a pistol shot, and, in rising with a heavy stool in his hand, breaking the collarbone of the man who had shot. "Now thar, Caballeros of the bluest blood," he shouted derisively, "do something, only do something, if you want to sleep another night in your hide!"

But already the two remaining Apaches had recoiled into the doorway, encumbered with the dead body of their brother whose scalp they wished to save, and Tiger Cat alone really confronted the whites.

This seeing, Tío Camote broke the spell of terror that had converted him into a mere statue on his counter, and snatching a cutlass from between two casks, smacked the boards with it to make an encouraging noise, calling out to his aids:

"Upon them, and second those valorous foreigners!"

Tiger Cat, enraged at the captive being so swiftly snatched out of his power, levelled a gun at the poor frightened thing over Oliver's shoulder. But already Gladsden had the Apache on the flank, and being too near him to use his rifle as a club, shifted it into his left hand, and dealt the redskin a terrible fisticuff. Staggered at this unusual blow from a weapon not in Indian war practice, the chief reeled and fell into the embrace of the white hunter.

"Whoopee," he cried, "I hev the varmint in my hug. Shut the door, you dog-goned greasers, and pile every mortal thing agen it!"

He hugged the chief so tightly that his breastbone cracked, and his arms, pinioned to his side, were numbed to the very finger, so that he let the smoking gun drop.

"Just pick his we'pins out of his girdle, and mind that pison hatchet pipe, the least scratch means death!" said the ranger.

The Mexicans, inspired by this successful skirmish, had banged the solid door to, and added a table and three full barrels to its fastenings.

"Pooty!" exclaimed the man from Oregon at last drawing breath. "Let me have a yard or two of leather rope, d'ye hyar?" raising his voice, as there was a rising din without and a chopping on the door.

Presently the chief was securely bound and flung down on the ground where he was attached to the ring of a trapdoor leading to a small wine vault, or rather cave into which, to presume from the air of them, the three Mexicans would have liked to creep.

The external noise ceased. There were but two or three sharp whistles of command, and a gentle creeping away of the troop, as it were.

"Some enemy of theirs exchanged shots with their pickets," interpreted Oliver, "and as he is in force and resolutely coming on, they have gone into 'cover.' If they are the pirates of the prairie, we are no better off than before, but we are 'all hunk,' quite safe, sereno, missee," he said, turning kindly to the young girl, "if they are Mexican soldiers or your friends."

She had joined her hands fervently; then, at the mention of friends, more clearly comprehending her comparative safety, she uttered her thanks in a torrent of eloquence, and the sweetest voice in the world. All the time of her speaking, stray shots punctuated her flow of gratitude, so to say. Undoubtedly Oliver was right; some foes of the Apaches were giving them quite enough occupation to prevent them attempting to learn the fate even of their principal chief.

"Yes, they are my friends, my father, too, oh, I am sure my father is at the head of them!" cried the young girl, forgetting all her captivity, and its ignominies in her revulsion to joy. "Open the door to them."

"Stop! Nothing of the sort," interposed the hunter, peremptorily. "Those are not the old muskets of peons, nor the captured French rifles of the Mexican soldiery. Bide! Bide and we shall bimeby sec about welcoming our deliverers."

And whilst Gladsden sought to console the little beauty whose face had become gloomy again, the hunter began to scold the Mexicans for their cowardice.

"But," observed Gladsden, more and more perplexed as he examined the young lady, "La Perla Purísima, while very charming, is not a name. Pray who are you, Señorita?"

"But," said she with a pout, "La Perla is my name, the truth, whilst Purísima is the flattery. I was christened La Perla from the main incident in my father's early life – "

"Indeed, indeed! And your father?"

"You are, insooth, a stranger, Señor, not to recognise the daughter of the very richest hacendero and proprietor in all Upper Sonora. I am, Señor, Perla Dolores de Bustamente y Miranda!"

"Dolores!" roared our Englishman, with the delightful leap of the puzzled brain when a solution is afforded. "Why I knew you all along by the likeness to your mother!"

And enfolding her in his arms he gave her an affectionate embrace, only a little less painful than that which had rendered the Tiger Cat hors de combat, and kissed her on both cheeks, whilst to her further astonishment, tears streamed from his eyes.

"Dolores! My dear little girl," continued Mr. Gladsden, when he could speak tolerably calmly, "Did you never hear your father and mother mention an Englishman? But there, I am sure they put my name into your prayers, when you were yet in your cradle!"

"The Englishman! Oh, the English caballero!" cried the daughter of the pearl fisher, clapping her hands together in enthusiastic glee. "Yes, don Jorge Federico."

"George, it is! How trippingly my name comes off your honey tongue."

"That is easily accounted for, Señor, as it is my brother's."

"What! You have a brother! And they named their boy after me! Well, upon my soul! Here, you Oliver, if you don't take back your general denunciation of the Mexican race, we are no longer friends. At least, gratitude is not so ephemeral among them. So, don Benito never has forgotten his old comrade?"

The young lady touched the pearls in her ear and at her neck significantly to imply that the story of the filibuster's treasure was one familiar to her.

"You are one of our saints, Señor?"

"Sit down, on my knee! Heaven bless you; I have children of my own, too! And tell me all about your home, your excellent parents, and your good, brave, handsome brother. I'll wager a fortune he is brave and handsome."

"Hush!" interrupted the hunter. "Draw the girl out of a line with that wicket in the door. Someone has ridden right up to it, jingling with we'pins. More war talk!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

OUT AND AWAY

At this same instant a bang on the oak from a large pistol butt – so high up that it revealed it was held in the hand of a giant or a man on horseback, who had his reasons for not dismounting – fairly shook the massive door.

"Landlord, go challenge the newcomer," said Oliver.

Tío Camote, however reluctant, was forced to obey. A second blow quickened his step, and he even smiled as if the peculiarity of its stroke were a well-known signal. He, therefore, opened the trap pretty trustfully.

A long hooknose, scarred in the middle, and a pair of gleaming eyes in a rather bloated face appeared at the little square hole.

"It is I, the captain," said a harsh voice with a shrill twang, testily. "We have brushed the brown skins afar, and we want refreshment."

"The captain," cried Sweet Potato, falling back.

"Well," said Oliver, "who's the captain?"

"Pedrillo! El Manco!" breathed the innkeeper, in awe.

"Speak up, you ass!"

"Captain Pedrillo el Manco," repeated the bar tender.

"Oh, One-leg Pete," said the hunter, with as much scorn as they displayed apprehension and respect. "Don't let me see e'en a one of ye touch that door."

He turned to Gladsden and the young Mexican, who was pale again, but courageous.

"You hev seen that the 'Paches even kin spare a young woman of beauty when their greed is keen. But, I tell 'ee, sir, I would rather all was back where we began to play the game, and yon helpless redskin up in arms afore us, than have this poor lady in the power of that villain who waits without, and is likely to wait till doomsday before I let him in. He's cruel, merciless, wuss than a Digger Injin, and words can paint no blacker! But he is a fool! He thinks he and his herd have driven away the Poison Hatchets when their first chief is here! If the Injin will forgive this humiliation, which I doubt, hang me but I'll cut his thongs, set him on his feet agen, and we'll charge this scum of the brimstone pot between us and the Apaches."

"First, let those greasers know that if they breathe a signal to their kindred thieves, you will silence the spokesman forever."

"One moment," said Gladsden. "This captain with the seared hooknose? Tell me more of him. In the same way that this young lady's face called up the figures of the past most sweet in my memory, that peculiar phiz reminded me of the most disagreeable scoundrel I ever came athwart the foot of. What's he like?"

"A hardened man-devil. He lost a leg, so that he always sticks in the saddle."

"A leg gone! How, how?"

"Chawed off by an alligator in some Texan bieyoo (bayou), so they give out."

"I have it! It is an old acquaintance! Only, he lost his leg by a shark bite, I presume."

"All's one. Well, if you ever knew him, then you knew the biggest scamp unhung! And now keep those cowards silent. If we do not answer the bandit, he will think Camote was pushed forward as a decoy by some Apaches within hyar, and will be dumfounded."

After a pause the knocking at the door of the ranch was resumed, but as in one of the pauses, the angry solicitor of admission heard the "hee, hee, ha, yah," of an Indian song, due to the imitative skill of Oregon Oliver, he withdrew.

Taking advantage of this lull in the attack on the portals, the hunter went back to the prostrate Indian chief, who had been chewing a bitter cud, and squatted down on his hams in the Indian mode, at his head.

"Now, then, Cat, what have you got on your notched stick (record) to tell off?"

The Apache looked up out of his indifferent and impassible demeanour.

"The white ranger is a great chief," said he. "Not many would have snatched the pearl from among the head chiefs of the Poison Hatchets, whose slightest blow is death. I say, he is a warrior. He has come to hear me sing my death song; not to gabble to him like an old squaw. I am ready to begin."

"Partly you're correct, chief. I am not come to chatter like the mockingbird. But I prefer hearing your song of triumph to that of death and mourning. Have you heard the voice of the wolf-with-the-leg-off at the door of this mud lodge? Do you not know the voice of that dog, the captain of Salteadores?"

"Yes, the Tiger Cat has killed many of the foxes that follow that ladrón (thief), by walking upon them!" answered the Apache disdainfully.

"To the point, then. If I free you hand and foot, will you lend us your hand to help us shake the ground clear of these varmint? I'll give you a revolver to boot! And, more, you shall have one of these broken guns (the repeating rifles which bend at the barrel end) which speaks all one's fingers times hand-running, with ammunition to feed her up as long as you run buffalo on the plains."

It was an enormous bribe. But the Apache was true to his wounded pride, and his inveterate hatred of the whites.

"The warriors that swing the poison hatchets," he replied, "lie wait in all the thickets around about the forest. In a little while they will fall on the Spanish, and then they will hear their chief singing his death song, mingled with their whoop of triumph."

"All right," said the other, rising. "I thought it neighbourly to give you a chance. Sing away to your own pitch pipe."

He went over to Gladsden, who leant on the counter, whilst doña Perla, on the other side of the room, contemplated the scene curiously. The discovery that one of the strangers was the hero of her childhood's romance, had filled her with complete confidence, and she thought no more of prayer.

"Tiger Cat is a stubborn knot," said Oliver. "I can't squeeze anything out'n him. He's never spared anyone, and when we quit this house I propose to set fire to it over his head. He has burned many a Christian alive, and it's sauce for the goose to roast him, too."

He said this so naturally that Gladsden knew he was not threatening wantonly, and so firmly that he forbore to argue with him.

"I am quite right in saying that the Apaches will never leave this place till they know the fate of their chief. They will soon attack the robbers. When they close we will sally out, trust to luck to seize three hosses for ourselves and the little doña, or to reach cover. At the last moment, since Tío Camote has been false and useless to me, I shall broach a cask or two, which will make a glorious bonfire, and the Apaches will only have their chief in a puchero (stew), with mezcal sauce!"

Nature now clamoured for sleep and food. Oliver seemed able to do without the former, but he never refused solid sustenance when available, like all the wanderers whose life is an irregular alternation of feasts and fasts.

Camote produced some sausage and corn cakes, as well as deer meat, of which doña Perla partook. Gladsden and she dozed off, neither of them heeding the continual popping of shots at long range between the Apaches and the robbers. At about eleven o'clock, when the heat was perceptible in the closed-in room without large windows or other proper vent than the narrow smoke hole aloft, Oliver made a sign for attention. The landlord was eating and drinking noisily near the Apache prisoner, tantalising him with all a coward's cruelty. His two aids had disappeared under the counter, asleep deeply, if their mellifluous nasal breathing afforded a sure indication.

At the back of the ranch there was audible a scratching at the ground. Some living thing was trying to burrow into the house. At the same time the fusillade of the Indians assumed a more regular form. Under cover of the guns the bowmen had advanced, and the twang of the string once or twice came to the ear to prove that they had pushed on near the dwelling.

It was provoking to see nothing of the skirmish, protracted vexatiously, like all such warfare.

Suddenly Oliver took up a large empty cask and placed it on the counter.

"Keep watch thar, whar the critter is boring, and blow out the brains of any head that presents itself, for we have none but enemies hyar."

He jumped on the counter, clambered upon the barrels, and with his hunting knife proceeded to make a gap in the roof. When the sky appeared there, he enlarged the hole and venturesomely pulled himself up through it, crawling down on the flat roof. It was composed of sods, among which stray seeds had sprouted.

All the field, hitherto one of conjecture, was exposed to his experienced view. After one sweep of his vision, he came down to the floor, and relieved Gladsden's anxiety which had sprung up the moment he was left entirely alone for the first time since they quitted El Paso.

"They are all at hide-and-seek," he said, with a chuckle. "They do not make the bark fly (cut the skin) once in a twenty shoots! It's tie and tie in such shooting – why did their pap trust them with firearms? Ne'erless, the 'Pach air working to get into the ranch, and they will rush the greasers back. One-leg has ridden off and hidden, I guess. I can't see his hoss nowhar. As for the cattle of the Ingins, they are in two caballadoes – one yonder a good piece, and t'other nearer at hand. We kin strike for them with some chance. There's on'y young men guarding them – and we're good for six a piece sich! Wrap the little señorita up thick, mind, so she may not be hurted by a flying bullet, and we'll shine out galorious when we make our break out. When I say 'Out!' out we git!"

While the Englishman arranged the blankets and buffalo hides of the fallen Apaches as bucklers about doña Perla, the hunter went to the back of the room where the scratching had changed to the scooping out of earth; a piece of stone had been substituted for the scalp knife.

Oliver, though time was so precious, waited patiently at the edge of the floor and walls. At last, the earth of the former moved as if a mole was making its tunnel, and then a brown hand emerged from the crumbling clods of packed mud. On that hand the hunter's knife descended and severed two fingers as it was instantly withdrawn. The savage had the immense self-control not to utter a sound of pain, in shame at having put his hand so incautiously into the trap.

"He will trouble no more," said Oliver, wiping the knife on the leg of Uncle Potato's breeches as the nearest rag. "At least not before we will git out of the way to receive him."

He went across the room, and, this time, removing the barricade, boldly applied his eye to the wicket.

"Now's the time," said he, instantly.

In fact a volley and the hustling of darts and arrows passed the very door, followed by a rush of softly shod feet as the Apaches at last charged the Mexicans.

"Out!" shouted Oliver, flinging the door open. "And you come, too, unless you like to be boiled in your own spirits."

For with one kick beating in a full cask, he fired the pouring alcohol with the nearest lamp, and pushed Gladsden and the daughter of don Benito out of the door. A vast sheet of flame rose in their rear, and while Camote leaped through it, a fearful explosion in that circumscribed apartment denoted that another cask had burst, and was contributing to the flames. The innkeeper's assistants were unable to pass the burning fluid, and their appeals for help made the pinioned warrior smile with fiendish glee.

He began his death song in a strong voice, though the blazing liquor, red, violet, and blue, gradually rolled towards him in his helpless state, with little or no smoke to muffle the rays.

Through half a dozen stragglers the three fugitives made their way, the hunter literally bearing them down before his rush, whilst the Englishman was as little impeded by half carrying the Mexican maiden on his left arm. However, the cluster of horses was reached, held in the usual manner by all the bridles being passed over one, which two youthful warriors, who had probably never fleshed the scalping knife, were chafing at being detained there to hold. Besides them a stalwart Indian, whose flattened features hinted at the admixture of African blood, was on guard. Luckily he had fired all but his last shot in the skirmishing, and he had only one arrow left in hand. With that he sprang forward to meet the flying trio, using it as a stabbing weapon.

Generously renouncing the use of his firearms, with that sometimes imprudent pride of the Caucasian who loves to win at fair play, the hunter flew at him with merely his own steel blade.

Whilst Gladsden smote the two striplings to the right and left, and was choosing two of the startled and frightened horses for the girl and himself, Oliver was engaged in a terrible, deadly, and pitiless combat with his sworn enemy. They had grappled one another with veritable hooks of steel, and sought mutually to overthrow and stab. Their eyes flashed fire, they wasted their breath in taunts and revelations of the many deeds of mischief and death which they had respectively wrought among their opposing people, till their bated breath came but feebly through their grinding teeth. But for their speech in broken accents, they were scarcely human – mere wild beasts bent on rending and tearing one another till "the heart was bare."

"Oh, you air Mr. Rough-on-the-Herdsman, you air?" hissed Oregon Oliver, tightening a hug which the grizzly would not have disdained to borrow. "Well, Mr. Death-to-the-Cowboys, how like you that? You've 'rubbed out' three solitary trappers, ha' you? How's that for a rub? – And that, and, still again, that!" And hurling the wretch to the earth under the curveting mustangs' unshod hoofs, he nearly beat the last breath out of his wretched and bleeding body. In a moment he rose, this time not ashamed to tear away the reeking scalp of the Indian who had in his boasts touched on a painful chord.

"I bet my life," muttered he, seizing a horse by the nostrils, and dragging his head down irresistibly, "that señor Murder-the-Vaqueros will wipe out no more lone trappers, durn his carcass – would he were roasting alongside his chief! Innyhow, he can't fall, scalpless, in among his brethren in the happy hunting grounds!"

All three were mounted now, a task which would have been far more difficult only for the horses which Mr. Gladsden had selected being by chance stolen from the Mexicans, and, hence, rather pleased than alarmed at instinctively recognising hands more familiar than their last masters'.