The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

"The soldiers! The soldiers from Ures!" screamed the Yaquis in the hollow. "Look out for yourselves! The lancers are coming!"

On seeing them in confusion, and shrinking back from all sides so as to form a serried mass under the walls of the hacienda, don Benito and don Jorge, each at the head of a troop, dashed out of the corral at the main portal and the secret one, and executed a dreadful double charge to the cry of "Down with the rebels!"

The shock of the pretended lancers and the hacendero's followers on opposite sides of the insurgents' agitated ranks, occasioned a combat; but when the horsemen, with spear or cutlass, were intermingled with the footmen, it became slaughter. Neither side craved for mercy, and they fought as only men can fight who were either masters who feared to lose the upper hand of subjects, or slaves who were seeking reprisals for wrongs inflicted on anterior generations.

Whenever the swaying of the mob brought a mass near the hacienda or its stockade, all the defenders within, to whom were added the women, armed with obsolete firearms, musketry, and blunderbusses, fired upon them, and added not inconsiderably to the dismay and butchery.

In the interval, on the summit of the hill, where the smoke still lingered from the explosions, the salteadores had sought to punish the rocket dischargers, whom they had perceived in the rocks and under the pine stumps. It is true that the Englishman had most imprudently stood up in order to see what really was the extent of the damage done. The Apaches, at a word from Iron Shirt, had descended the hill towards the hacienda, rallying their own comrades preparatory to a prudent drawing off with all the livestock which might be added to their previously collected droves. They considered the battle lost to them on seeing the immovable Yaquis struck with panic, an emotion which extended with marvellous rapidity even to those on the other side of the farm, entirely unaffected by actual danger.

Stunned by the cannon report, a noise too great of its kind to have ever come within their experience, the banditti's horses were found to be unmanageable, and they had alighted, all but their maimed leader, whose steed was less incapable of guidance, to punish the authors of the disaster which had turned the tide.

Three times they made a rush at the natural bulwarks in full belief that they could hurl the paltry opposition over, a-down the ravine; but each time their retreat was marked by a line of corpses. So near a mark was fatal to the heavy thirty-eight calibre repeaters.

"This is the second time you are running agen this snag," taunted the hunter, with that bitter loquacity common to him and Indians in the fever of combat, "but come on agen! Bless you, that's on'y an appetiser to the pie to foller! Thar's roast ribs the next dish! Come and sweep the platter – only two tender chickens left, and plenty of gravy! Do come now, while the offer is open! Did any gentleman say, 'Mercy!' Well, I'm not sparing white skunks today! P'raps you're only drawing our fire – loafing round tell we haven't a cartridge left! Yes, do walk up for a grapple and a hug – we are only the worst kickers you ever seen, that's all."

All this sarcasm was echoed by Pedrillo; his fury was indescribable, to say nothing of the effects of the native brandy which had been given him as a remedy after his prostration under the fear of death. When he recognised the Englishman, all the pent up rage of fifteen years inspired him, and his absent leg ached again as lively as when it had been torn off by the shark. The gringo, who had sunk his ship, after having run away with his bride and his cruiser; who had taken the treasure which the law of robbers assigned to the captain in good part; this impudent spoilsport again had marred the consummation of vengeance upon his fellow foe, don Benito. He cast all prudence aside; he himself advanced with his surviving men prominently.

"We'll bury them in the dry arroyo!" he yelled, foaming at the mouth, and his wooden leg beating the horse's shoulder in his feverish convulsions. "Down with them."

What was their surprise to see the two men leap disdainfully over their breastwork, and stride towards the eight or ten Mexicans with revolver and knife in hand, spurning the dead and wounded due to the same well-plied weapons.

The bandits slackened their pace, but the mounted leader, still continuing, advanced beyond them. They resumed their charge. But already that separation had resolved Gladsden. Forgetting that he had been enjoined to keep side by side with the American as long as they faced the Rustlers, and, when the chance-medley came, to stand back to back with him, he sprang quickly onward. The now frightened Pedrillo aimed at him a terrible sweeping blow of a long sword, such another as the hapless guitarero had employed in the tavern. And, though Gladsden parried it partially with his knife, the glancing blade cleft his left shoulder. Stung by the pain, the Englishman dropped the knife out of the hand, already benumbed by the cut, and seizing the protruding wooden leg of the luckless Terror of the Border, applied himself with such extraordinary vigour to tearing the wretch out of the saddle, that leg, man or saddle, was bound to come. It was the leg gave way at its straps, while Pedrillo was howling with agony and clinging to the saddlebow, leaning with all his might contrariwise to the tug. On the unexpected release, the captain fell heavily over the horse and lay senseless on the ground, which he had reached headfirst. Gladsden caught the flying reins, and bounded upon the steed; as it flew forward in fright, two of the salteadores were shouldered aside, and the captain trodden upon by the hinder hoof; but he made no move, never so much as groaned, he had died as much from fright as anguish. This magnificent feat of arms, if the seizure of the nether limb could be so denominated, completely demoralised the robbers.

But some of the most courageous Yaquis, and an Apache who had lost a kinsman in the explosion as well as a war pony, which he more or less greatly prized, saw the white men victorious and the Rustlers about to fly, with a deeper chagrin and enmity. They collected, by a common impulse, and hemmed in the pair. At their first shot, Gladsden was unhorsed, the animal falling dead under him; had it not reared at the smart of an arrow, the succeeding missiles, which entered its breast, must have riddled the rider. He and the American once more stood together with only that warm carcase as their buckler to some thirty foes.

Neither hugged any delusion as to the future. It was materially impossible that with their cartridges all spent, they could successfully resist so many inveterate foes, who, too, would, at any moment, be reinforced without stint from the Yaquis on the hill.

Indeed, thereupon commenced, with the rush of the Indians, one of those unequal contests which are common on the border, and which, when a worthy poet shall arise, will show posterity at what a waste of gallant hearts civilisation has executed its conquests.

Mute, sombre, back to back so closely that the penetrating lance would have spitted the pair, never recoiling so much as a hand's breadth, plying the hunting knife for the one, and the sword of Pedrillo in his victor's grasp for the other, the unflinching couple, like a Janus animated, held out against the ever-onsetting foe.

Any other enemies must have been impressed with admiration.

Their bared arms were hacked and slit; the left of Gladsden hung disabled; but, on that side, Oliver's formidable right hand was performing miracles of valour and dexterity enough for both. They streamed with blood, which matted their locks and soaked their clothes, dangling in tatters through which their fair skin momently gleamed in glaring contrast with that of their dusky foes until dyed ruddy like the rest.

"How goes it, pard.?" queried Oliver, in a kind of lull in the rain of cuts, and blows, and thrusts which nothing but the very frenzy of the Indians, each to deal the stroke, prevented being fatal a hundred times. "I'm gitting my second wind myself and can go on carving till morning!"

There was no response to the jest; but the Oregonian felt the firm body that had been ever so long a rock of support, slowly weighing upon him. Then, alarmed for the very first time, or rather instantly inspired with sympathy and wild indignation at the injustice of so brave a man succumbing under the blows of such ignoble creatures, he lifted his voice as an appeal to the rectifier of such abuses, in his restricted mind:

"Cuss ye, for a heap of dirty niggers!" he vociferated. "Six at a time we'd have butchered you up harnsum! Whoop-ho! Will no one of the colour of a white man let us have ten minutes to recruit; when we'll thrash them all agen, honest Injin!"

A deep, hoarse laugh at the speech, not at all understood, was the reply.

But a cry of terror was elsewhere audible.

"Something's coming, my cahooter (partner)," said Oliver, redoubling his gigantic sweeps of the buffalo-butchering knife. "And never more was a friend welcome! Don't you lose your grip yet!"

Indeed, without being able to discern the features of the knot of combatants on the hill, under the blue canopy of floating smoke, all silent since the two whites had exhausted their ammunition, and the close ring of their assailants forbade their employing firearms, don Benito and his son, with a score of best riders, had taken the cow path and somehow climbed the incline. Coming upon the crest at a little distance from the barranca, they formed column, four abreast, and raced to the spot of the hand-to-hand struggle.

"Viva Mexico!" was their continuous war cry, with the ancient "Rally around Spain!"

"Oh, viva anything in the way of a 'Co,'" muttered Oliver, receiving his spent and insensible friend on his arm, and depositing him behind the horse's body at his feet. "You're like the sogers, you've come when the Injins took the scalps."

Happily the attackers turned at this fresh incident.

Opening out so as to allow the hind ranks to rush forward and form a line with the rest, the cavalry fell upon the Indians, and sabred them in the first dash past. As soon as they could wheel, which was done on the edge of the barranca by sharp reining in and spinning round whilst the horse's fore hoofs were in air, they returned at full speed. But, already, the Yaquis had renounced their wish to finish with the two whites and fled, flinging away their weapons not to encumber their flight.

Alone, wounded, but stubborn, the Apache kneeling, took aim with his envenomed hatchet at the head of Oregon Oliver, intending to cast it ere he should be trampled under the Mexicans. The hunter could do nothing, his brain swam, his eyes closed with their last vision comprising the exultant visage of the malicious red man; his knife slipped out of his gore-smeared and stiffening hand; he reeled, and then, like a giant pine uprooted by a "norther," fell upon the body of his comrade as if to be his shield to the very last. There was just a moan, like a puma's that had defended its cub to the death.

At the same instant, the tomahawk whizzed forward and would have infallibly fleshed itself in him ere he finally rested; but Benito had buried his spurs in his steed, which took a prodigious leap. The hatchet gashed the Mexican's leg, even as he stooped forward and drove his reeking blade to the cross hilt in the bosom of the redskin.

Don Jorge dismounted, and hastened to lift up the two white men, one after the other, and force some brandy down their throats. Meanwhile two of their friends had ridden after his father, who was seen to have lost control of his steed.

A silence fell on the hill, broken only by moans of the wounded and calls for water.

All at once there rose a loud cheering at the farmhouse; on its roof the ladies had collected and were waving scarves and veils. And, as an explanation, there was shortly wafted over the valley the music of a cavalry band, strong in brass and kettledrum, playing a lively Arragonese jota. The gay notes grated on the nerves of the Mexicans on the hill, collected round the sad group of the two whites and don Benito, whom they had assisted off his horse.

"The dragoons from the town," observed one of the party. "That crowns the day. In an hour there will not be one Yaqui within view of a telescope."

In fact, the valley was already strewn with plunder, and the dead and the wounded not capable of flight, but of living Indians hardly a hundred. The revolt was over. Then the field was again animated after this transient desertion, for Father Serafino, with peons carrying handbarrows, came forth to attend to the wounded. Upon improvised litters of lances, the European, Oliver, and Benito, all mute and quiet for want of strength, were tenderly transported down the hill and up into the hacienda hall.

The little hero of the Angelito was displaced from his throne, the decorations removed, and the room became a hospital. The ladies had assumed a simple dress befitting their suddenly imposed duty, and were obeying the orders of the father, who had a knowledge of surgery, like all missionaries.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE TRUE CABALLERO

Four days after the defeat of the insurgents, in his own bedroom of the Hacienda of the Monte Tesoro, don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente lay extended on the couch, pale and weak. His dulled eyes were half shut, and only at long intervals did they let gleams of consciousness escape. Near him were kneeling his daughter and his wife; their daughter-in-law being too ill from her loss and the emotion of the conflict in which all dear to her were involved, to participate in this additional scene of sorrow.

Sad and silent, don Jorge, Oliver, and the English gentleman, the latter's arm in a sling, and both the paler from profuse bloodletting, stood by the bedside. At an altar reared in the room, Father Serafino was just finishing prayers, to which the servants of the estate, kneeling in the corridors, had fervently responded.

At length the prostrate don seemed to revive, for his cheeks were tinged with fugitive purple, and his opening eyes were clear.

"Weeping? Why do you weep?" he asked of his wife, who was sobbing, her head muffled in her black lace rebozo, "If my life has not been long, it comprises more years of unalloyed bliss than most men enjoy. This day, the Giver of all those boons calleth me unto Him. His will be done! Have I not been permitted to struggle against the poison which, twice menacing my life, only this time overcomes me, so slowly that my affairs are in order, I can thank those who contributed to the victory which has saved Sonora from a deluge of blood and fire, and I can bid you all farewell until we shall meet anew, never to part again, in the ever-during felicity above. Yea, truly," went on don Benito, with increased fervour, "heaven has been kinder and more merciful than I merited, since not only has it preserved all those who lie closest on my bosom, but my final farewells can be made them with a clear voice, and my latest hour is cheered with the presence of the friend so cherished of my early years. He came in time to save my darling – and, with his valorous companion, to save us all. Embrace me, my friend," he continued, to Gladsden, as he extended his arms with an effort, "to thee I owe all those long, long happy days which have been mine on this oft dolorous earth."

Gladsden ran his sound arm round him, and held him up against his bosom for a moment. Both of them had tears in their eyes. Then he lowered him gently back upon the pillow. For upwards of an hour still he spoke with them, encouraging, consoling, and preparing them as much as possible for the painful separation. Suddenly he sat up, with his eyes loftily directed, and in a clear voice they heard him call out —

"Lord God of my fathers, as I have borne myself like them, as a Christian gentleman of the pure strain, receive my soul!" and fell, like a log, dead.

All were kneeling now, and many a sob broke forth, with echoes, along the corridor, out to the very patio where the faithful peons mourned.

Two days afterwards, the American hunter, repulsing any reward but a watch from doña Perla, a silver mounted revolver from her brother, and an Indian scarf, enriched with pearls, inwrought by doña Dolores, the donor, for display on holidays, or "for a sweetheart" (at which he smiled), started, jauntily as ever, on the best horse on the farm of Treasure Hill to return to the American army posts.

"Not a mossle of fear," he replied to Gladsden at his stirrups to the last moment, "did you not hear that Apache, whom don Benito slashed, call me 'Comes-Whooping-with-Fire' – a good enough Injin name to keep this big chief clear of bruises till the next fall buffalo surround. You'll hev' a letter from me in the Frisco post office by the time you git round to Californy."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE BEST BAIT TO CATCH APACHES

The farewell to the American was still "warm," when don Jorge, spite of his grief, begged Mr. Gladsden to await his return, as he felt bound to "go up the country" to make sure the rebellion was over. He had spoken in such a matter-of-fact way that the Englishman shared with his wife and sister, and don Benito's widow, much wonder at his absence being protracted. To have clearly known the reason, and to see him again, they would have been compelled to follow him to the very border of Sonora and Arizona.

The Sierra de Pájaros, a broken side piece of the Sierra Madre, may be said to divide on its double water shed the feeders of the Yaqui River and the San Pedro, which courses north and west to supply the Gila. It has the most picturesque and striking aspect of any mountains in those regions, of old forests and cloud-capped peaks. Under the majestic bluffs, the ruins of ancient Spanish settlements crumble away, and the mysterious Pimas Indians prowl.

Nothing so rests the sight and rejoices the heart of wayworn adventurers, saddened and wearied by the sandy and salty plains, as these verdant heights. Almost ignored, and perhaps not mapped down in ordinary atlases, this Sierra preserves to this very day its primeval wildness; only very few "traces," formed more often by wild beasts than woodsmen, vaguely and widely apart appears in the brush. Very hard to penetrate, and then to move about in with certainty, none but Indians and hunters care to have anything to do with its mazes.

Nevertheless, not far from the Cascade of the Cave, a solitary hunter was tranquilly making a meal. It was don Jorge. In Europe, things are different, for we are astonished at a soldier making a good meal before the battle, and a condemned criminal regaling on the eve of execution. Nevertheless, the care of the body is logical and conforms to natural laws. If joy or grief is allowed to cut the appetite short, the physique weakens, and the mind being counteracted upon, again deters the body, and illness, if not death, is the consequence of this deplorable folly. I prefer the hunter's habit.

Don Jorge finished his ration, and proceeded to smoke cigarettes, in a lounging attitude, which recreation he certainly deserved if only to remark the tired state of three excellent horses, which were picketed near him, and which, alternately shifted on and off from whilst in gallop (a fact not remarkable among Mexicans), had borne him almost without check to this remote spot.

No investigation of the desert which his eyrie commanded, had answered his expectations, and he was soon after his third cigarette deep in a slumber pierna suelta, or with legs at ease, as his countrymen say.

There was not a breath in the air; the heat was overpowering, so that the birds were sleeping with heads under the wing, and the wild beasts could almost be heard panting and lolling out their tongues in their lairs.

Only one continuous sound disturbed the profound calm, and that was the noise of those infinitely little beings which never, anywhere, cease to accomplish their mysterious missions.

Two hours thus passed, with don Jorge slumbering, his face hidden by his handkerchief and sombrero to keep off the sun and the gnats, of which myriads played catch-who-can with the sand flies.

All of a sudden the horses, which had stopped grazing and had been motionless with lowered heads, as if also taking a nap, shuddered all over, and abruptly tossed their manes and pointed their ears. With their fineness of hearing they were aware of some suspicious sounds. One of them, whose lariat allowed the approach, stalked up to his master and uttered a soft and plaintive whinny, as if demanding help. However soundly a ranger sleeps, he must be able to wake up immediately and with all his senses clear, and the son of don Benito did so at once. The next moment, turning over on his breast, too wary to rise on his feet, he had his rifle in hand, ready for action.

Listening and staring was of no avail. There was nothing far or near to justify the animals in their still evident fears.

It might be a jaguar or a grizzly only that they scented, if not a hostile man, but, in any case, don Jorge took his safeguards. He hid his horses in the brush, and, crawling to the very brink of the bluff, scrutinised the plain, his finger on the trigger, his ears well opened.

But a quarter of an hour passed, whilst he remained as if moulded out of the clay and merely drying there.

But unexpectedly a tiny black spot under a shining speck which ever accompanied it, flashed on the view afar out of a straggling timberland. Soon the watcher could be sure it was a mounted man, his rifle gleaming, speeding towards him in the maddest haste. He had been clearing obstacles or bursting through them without any daintiness as to his garments, for they were torn by the thorns into tatters, and no doubt the swaying from side to side was as much weakness from loss of blood as the mere dodging to avoid a pursuer's missiles. No one else was perceptible to the young Mexican; but there must have been enemies in the woodland, running along parallel with the fugitive, for, turning without an anticipatory gesture, and stopping his horse with a terrible tug of the Mexican bit, he fired two shots into the cover, bent low, and rode on once more.

"'Tis a white man," observed don Jorge, knitting his brow, "a hunter! Oh, my gracious saint!" he ejaculated, at the height of amazement and pain, "It is none other than don Olivero! I thought he had taken the regular route for the Pass, whilst the Apaches, with our stock, struck off for this trail, and they have met him! I do not need that plumed head to recognise he is the prey of the Apaches now."

He sprang up, regardless of being spied now, and quickly but comprehensively studied the scene.

Oregon Oliver's last two shots had galled the Indians into unusual daring. Three of them, on excellent horses, which the young hacendero might have known as his own, left the wood and sought to keep the hunter in the open, whilst gradually bearing down upon him. As they flanked him it was not easy for him to escape falling victim to one of the three when they saw fit to stop and fire or even risk a snap shot in mid-career.

The Mexican's rifle would not carry that distance. To mount and ride as far around as the steepness of the mountain sides compelled was equally as nugatory.

Instantly a new idea struck him, and he was carrying it out. Drawing his cutlass he severed the lariats of all three horses close to the picket pin, unfastened the other ends at the hobbled hoofs, and spliced the three into one long rope. Securing the last loop round a basalt column which a whale's rush would not have shaken, he flung the loose coils over the edge of the cliff, and, ere the end had fallen into the perpendicular, his machete between his teeth, the brave quick-witted youth was sliding down into the abyss.

There were some twenty feet to drop at the last thong, but he had remarked the crumbling sandstone to be a soft bed and he let go without a pause.

Meanwhile, the American swinging about like a drunken man, seemed in a despairing state. Either his ammunition was exhausted at last, or his only hope was to reserve his final cartridge for the hand-to-hand encounter, but a matter of moments.

The emboldened Apaches, at a signal from Iron Shirt, who formed the point of the angle of which they were the opening ends, and of which the hunted white marked the closing base's centre, began closing in.