The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

But at the instant when they levelled their guns under their horses' necks, as they rode suspended on the off side in precaution of the dreaded breechloader, the sudden appearance of the Mexican, like a spider on its thread, sliding down the face of the bluff, only remarked by the Apache chief, in whose direct front the feat was performed, gave the latter a start and he uttered an outcry despite himself. The two savages, surprised in turn, suspended their shots, and all three, as well as Oliver, none slackening their headlong pace, however, gazed at the man fallen from the clouds, and after striking the soft, dry ground with a force that sent up a cloud of sand, rebounding and dashing towards them, his bright steel waving overhead and his fresh young voice shouting:

"Amigo! Friend, it is I who am here, praise to God!"

"Well, I'm durned!" roared the ranger.

But, not accustomed to let even so extreme a surprise alter any plan he had traced out, he only thought to profit by the brief but deep confusion of the enemies. With a nimbleness that perfectly revealed how assumed was his air of lassitude and despair, he sat up in the saddle and fired two shots, one to the right, one to the left, by a graceful turn of the hips which a queen of the ballet could not have surpassed, controlling his steed simply by the pressure of his knees.

Spite of the emergency, don Jorge could not repress a cry of admiration.

One of the Apaches, his horse's throat cut by the same bullet that penetrated his head beyond, fell in a heap under the side of the animal, also thrown and floundering in the death agony. The other, perforated in the eye by the lead scattering along his own gun which had split the ball, emitted a horrid scream, as he was borne, still held by the horsehair loop which detained his foot to the crupper, and which is there placed to enable the rider to hang alongside the pony, back towards the thicket, where his brains would soon be knocked out by the masterless mustang.

Iron Shirt was dismayed. He lifted his horse in order to turn and seek the covert. But already the unerring marksman was covering him, and he held his horse rearing, afraid to fire his last load with two foes before him, and to expose himself in the riding away.

"Spare him!" cried don Jorge, hoarsely, "Murderer of my father, murderer of my little son, I – I, alone, must have his life!"

"Lucky you spoke," returned Oliver, firing.

The horse of the chief, struck in the shoulder, roared with pain, so intense was the anguish whilst being tortured with the bit, wrenched its head away and fell forward, ere rolling on one side.

The Apache did not lose his command of sense at the disaster, for he leaped clear. But his shield, his lance, and his gun were flung from him, and before he could reach the latter, don Jorge had made a series of prodigious bounds, like a tiger, and placed his foot on it. The baffled Indian sprang back as rapidly and seized his spear and shield.

But instantly, careless of ammunition, and fearful lest the lance, cast as a javelin, would transfix the Mexican only armed with a sword, the hunter fired again. The spear, split in half, was left a mere stump in the redskin's feverish, quivering grasp.

"That's the style to draw teeth, I judge," remarked the American, throwing himself off his horse, and approaching the pair.

His last weapon was a machete, and this Iron Shirt, protected by his round shield, drew as he advanced on don Jorge.

"I thank you," said the latter. "Steel to steel! This is my heart's desire!"

"You are going to get a licking, chief," said Oliver, grimly, as he pulled out a corncob pipe, filled it and lit it with unshaking fingers.

"So thar ain't no 'casion to thank me for the promise which I give not to interfere. Fair play's a jewel, and you kin wear in your ear all the jewel you'll win in this hyar tussle."

The Apache wasted no breath in a rejoinder. His lips were parted only for a smile, the set grin of a man who had no hope but to inflict all the pain he could on an antagonist before he met his inevitable death. He had on his mind not only the recent striking down of his aids, but the death of others in the past and on the Sonoran plains, due to the American who had shown himself to the Apache caravan only, it was now clear, to draw off a detachment. Like the red man his hatred was insatiable, even that slaughter in which he had distinguished himself seemed no way to wipe out the final collapse on the heap of slain. But for don Benito, Oliver would have been "rubbed out!" The thought was intolerable, and, we see, all alone, he had devoted himself to harassing the Indians in their retreat, and lured away the chief. The scalp of so renowned a hunter would have been a more magnificent trophy than the herd of cattle, to show in the Apache town when the old fathers should demand their lost sons.

Meanwhile, the two men were facing one another, broadsword in hand.

For his age Jorge was endowed with unwonted powers, but his frame had not fully set, and he had an antagonist whose vigour surpassed the common, too. Nevertheless, the Mexican was not dismayed, and the hunter took care not to betray any apprehension he felt as to the result of the terrible duel. If Jorge smiled, it was because he relied on his skill and agility. On the farm he had joined in all the wrestling and knife play of the Vaqueros, and Old Silvano had passed him as a pupil to whom there was nothing more he could teach. Therefore, the youth, gifted with lofty courage and unalterable coolness, believed himself capable of struggling with advantage.

As a kind of chivalrous signal, the Indian slapped his shield resonantly.

They mutually advanced till their forward feet almost touched. For a moment their blades clashed and then the red man, shouting with savage joy, delivered a terrific cut. But the air alone was severed, the agile Mexican having shifted his position with great celerity. Their first encounter was merely a test of one another's style, on which would be founded the passage of arms itself. They fell to it anew, but this time also, don Jorge showed incredible quickness; he eluded the blows, parried them or fenced them off with all that dexterity which a Mexican should exhibit in the management of a weapon which is to him what the navaja is to the Spanish peasant. With giddy rapidity he spun round the savage; and when he got a cut in, as the phraseology of such sport has it, it was a telling one. The shield, however tough the buffalo hide, could not long resist such hearty strokes; sliced off into tissue thinness, cleft, gaping wider and wider with its own tension, Iron Shirt suddenly cast it at the young man to bewilder him and at the same time darted forward. But the Mexican, who uses his blanket sometimes in just the same way as a blind, is taught to keep his eyes on his opponent's, and the ferocious gleam in the Apache's had warned him; he received the charge firmly; parried the cut with excellent precision, though the rush brought the two heaving breasts in contact, and as the Indian receded, lest he should be grappled, he struck in turn. The blow, from the handle turning in the grasp a little paralysed by the late ward, came flat on the savage's shoulder and, diverted upwards, removed his car as clean as if done by a surgeon. Iron Shirt yelled with fury.

"You will never more hear an infant wail, pierced by your coward arrows!" hissed don Jorge, leaning forward. "Come again, and I will sunder the other!"

More hideously than before this third meeting ensued. No longer so much on the defensive and aggressive, but bent on leaving his mark, the Mexican gave two cuts for the other's each one. All of them left a bleeding trace. One would have concluded that he meant to hack the redskin's surface into a chessboard. The slashed face of the Apache had lost human semblance; the gashes already were swollen, and his eyes were sealing with blood; he groaned with tantalised rage, however, more than pain, whilst the Mexican, anticipating his victory ever since he had made mincemeat of the buckler, redoubled his hail of steel. Now it was the Apache chief who only stood on guard.

"There!" cried don Jorge, taking his cutlass in both hands, and pressing forward so that their knees knocked, "That is to avenge my father!"

On receiving this irresistible chopping blow, which beat down his jagged edged blade, Iron Shirt lifted up a yell of spite and despair. The steel cleft through all, top knot, frontal bone and brow, and, opening his arms, he reeled, half turning, and fell without a stir on the blood-besprinkled sands, the machete left in the wound, so inextricably had it been driven there.

Oliver approached, and at the same time bending over the stiffening body and patting the panting conqueror on the shoulder, he said:

"Ef them doggoned 'Paches was to have seen this fight they would not cross into Mexico for a year, I reckon. You've fout him squar' and fa'r, a riggler stand-up fight, and you're a credit to the father, whose wiping out don't count one for them red niggers now, nohow."

They sat down there to rest, and Oliver related his adventure.

"Ef I on'y had had an idee that the old man's loss preyed upon you in that sor o' way we mout ha' got up some pootier trick o' war! But you've sarved him A-one and you are entitled to his scalp to hang over your fireplace."

Rejecting this trophy, and only despoiling the Indian chief of his weapons, and adding to the prize those of the other Apaches, whose hair the hunter had no scruples to remove, they climbed the mountain to the horses which came at the hacendero's calls. After spending some hours together in conversation, which they promised to renew, "who knows when?" as the Spaniards say – they parted, Oliver resuming his route.

When don Jorge returned home, his revenge sated, he found the English gentleman, who then broke away with a great effort from the entreaties of the rich widow and her family. He felt the need of loneliness on the ocean to take the edge off his acute sorrow. But the memory, thus mournfully renewed, of his youthful friendship, so fatally cut short, dwells piously cherished in "the heart of heart," and there will flourish till he, too, reposes his adventurous body in the grave.

However, as an author may anticipate as well as record, we may be allowed to suggest that there is nothing contrary to logic in the hope that, if ever doña Perla and her mother act on Mr. Gladsden's urgent invitation, often renewed by letter, for them to visit him in England, the Gladsden juniors will have to draw lots for the Mexican heiress. Sure is it that they will find nowhere a happier choice, be it for wealth, beauty, or rare goodness, than in this true "Treasure of Pearls."

1

Of the Paris weekly newspaper in which this romance had delighted the insatiable reader.

2

Gen. Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 1812, and that with Mexico, is an idol in the American Walhalla. His name becomes an invocation only partially playfully used by the frontier army officers, their men, and the hunters.