The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

"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 for you city folks when somebody has done you a good turn to talk of shining rewards, with the idee that you thereby put him in a lariat to folly you for the futur', but, how shu'd you! You are about wrong every time! You foun' this coon pooty nigh sweeped out of existence, for when a hunter has lost mules, fixin's, and rifle, all through them durn'd red thieves – Soo or Pawnee – he is an or'nary cuss on'y fit for the Injin boys to switch. Then you begun operations by forcing on me this harnsum shooting iron, which has made me take back all my ripping out agen new fangled machinery in firearms. It's a 'stonisher!" – and he patted the wondrous weapon affectionately. "Think o' that, a marvel in herself, and an outfit in keeping to boot, and all gift-free! It's lordly, that's what it is, though I don't pass out well in knowledge of your lords an' sich. But I am off on a false trail. As I was sayin', the man who swallers promises and who likes praise is a hireling help and never a friend or compadre."

"But I take it, we do part friends as we have journeyed, eh?" asked Mr. Gladsden, offering his hand with unhesitating trustfulness.

"You bet!" replied Oliver, grasping the hand so hastily that one could see that he would not have given any pain by delay for the world. "You were recommended to me by a gentleman whom I hold as of prime vally. I hev seen the Colonel, when we were floundering in the snows of the Sierrar, give up his rags and his last drink of coffee to a poor mixed blood teamster! Why, I'd die for that man, and that man's dog e'enamost! I am ready to die for you, as his friend. And that's why it rode rough on me to have you want to break loose at the bank of this river, and plunge alone into the yaller bellies' district. You mout as well ask me to lead a blind man safe over forty rod of rough ground to the brink of a precipice, and then let go his hand, a-saying: 'Now, let her slide, old dark-y!"

"At all events, you have fully done your task. But why do you again hint of danger? I give you my word that I have pricked up my ears – which is more than our horses have done – and yet not the slightest – "

"Go on talking, and louder," whispered Oliver, significantly.

The Englishman hardly understood, but he obeyed the sudden mysterious injunction, whilst his interrupter continued with a vast relish to puff at his pipe, of which the smoke ascended thickly, and at regular periods. Gladsden listened, and stealthily gazed around, but to no avail. He then glanced at the American, who preserved the same ease of demeanour, and smoked as for a wager, his back to the stream, from which a sound of the turbulent ripple arose; the tobacco glowed in the pipe head, and dully illumined his brooding countenance. It struck the observer, however, that Oliver's left hand was scarcely sensibly lowering upon his rifle, which, of course, was near at his side.

Suddenly, with an action as rapid as thought, that weapon was picked up and levelled at the shoulder upon a bush, very thick with foliage, about a hundred and fifty paces afar, and instantly fired. There rose a little smoke from the touchhole plate, but no shot resounded.

Instantly a dark-complexioned man in hunter's attire bounded out of the shrub with a whoop of triumph, and pointed his gun at the couple in camp. But before the Englishman could do anything, his safe conductor, whose features assumed an expression of scornfulness, pulled the trigger of the breechloader a second time, and the unfailing bullet dashed into the brain of the stranger even as he was about to shoot.

All this passed in less time than it takes to write it.

Up went the man's hands, so that his gun fell just a little before he measured his length on the ground, and curled himself up; no cry, no second spasm; he was slain straightway.

"Thought hisself a smart Aleck, I reckon," remarked the hunter, with continual contempt. "You'll crawl, sneak, and squirm no more."

"If your rifle had snapped again, you or I would have been keeled over," remarked the Englishman.

"Great Scott!"2 ejaculated the other, surprised, and laughing heartily, though not aloud. "You ain't a-going to say you were took in, too? Well, I never! It must a'been a 'tarnal choice dodge."

"What do you mean?"

"No great witchcraft. Look here! This man here's a half-breed – Apache and Mexican, I judge. Well, he's been dogging us ever so long, mayhap from The Pass. Anyhow, I thought he got over the water by the False Ford, by the devil's luck, and, anyhow again, I see him lodge himself right plum' centre in that bush. Cou'dn't sight him thar no more nor a fat dog in an Injin village. But I was fixed in the fact that thar he lay, aiming at me or you. So, to fetch him out slick, I resarved some 'bacca smoke in my mouth, and when I clicked my nail on the breech, I just let the smoke blow off's if it come out of the gun, d'ye see? Lor, how the idiot was sucked in, I reckon! He riz up a-whooping his triumph over the old Oregonian, a-thinking me without a load in! So I had a right fa'r shot."

He went up to his victim and turned out his pockets, and transferred his arms to his girdle.

"He's half Apache and half greaser, as I opined," he pronounced on coming back. "So it would puzzle a Supreme Court lawyer to tell whether he is scouting on account o' copper colour or yaller belly. Jest bit the horses, sir. In either case we must file ahead, an' not let his gang catch on to us. Thar's Tiger Cat and his Apaches on the war path, I heerd, and Oneleg Pedrillo, the champion this-side rustler, never smokes the pipe of peace. I am saying nothing, make your notch, of the loafers who may have followed us, full of the prospect of a rich haul, for I rally b'lieve thar's an impression at The Pass that you are an English Prince of the blood r'yal examining the United States to see how far South you want to annex it to Canada, though you ain't out with a four-mule team."

Mr. Gladsden did not laugh at the rhodomontade, while preparing the steeds.

The sight of the corpse, so lately a vigorous man springing out of cover to take his life, had in one little instant made him comprehend on what dangerous ground he groped his, perhaps, henceforth hourly threatened way.

CHAPTER XVI.

A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM

What a difference between this rough country, where the earth was full of pits as a prairie dogs' village, and that old European soil teeming with hotels and inns, where the wealthy traveller could count upon a smiling welcome.

Mr. Gladsden's surprise was tempered with awe. All his ideas were perturbed. His notions of the true and false were upset. His education turned against him, and the instinct of self-preservation made him greet with joy all that he had acquired now of utility in that adventurous passage in his life which he had begun to deplore, and which he took the utmost care his growing sons should never know in detail.

He congratulated himself on having been prompted not to neglect physical experience in favour of the moral, and to fill his mind with practical learning. Intelligence was an important factor, but it had to be backed up by strength and skill to be a conqueror in the desert.

If ever he had felt the European aristocrat's conceit over the Western Americans, he withdrew any injurious depreciation, for he saw clearly that this New World belonged to the clear head and strong arm, and that there was no more desirable comrade than this embodiment beside him of the Great Republic, who had supplemented his inborn powers with the savage's sharpness, strategy, and address.

In other days, he had lightly confronted similar perils from sheer ignorance of their extent; but now, drawn back into the terrible whirlpool from the metropolitan centre of refinement, he felt his heart squeezed by a sudden weight; he was no longer sure of himself as danger, hydra-headed, appeared under new, frightful and multiplied forms.

It was in vain that he sought to recover the plenitude of his judgment. Nothing but the extreme stubbornness which was his racial characteristic, enabled him to master the strange emotions which he experienced, but, if he had lacked for daring and impulse of pride not to show the white feather before a man who he esteemed near enough of his kin to constitute a judge, this determined him to impress favourably at any cost.

While he was fortifying his will, Oliver had completed the preparations for a flight, taking it for granted that his obligation was not discharged till, this time, the English gentleman owned he was perfectly safe.

They mounted, and gradually increasing the pace, went on for upwards of three hours without exchanging one syllable or tightening the rein.

They kept the source stream of the Yaqui on the north, racing through woodland where the guide eluded the branches with miraculous dexterity, and selected "lanes" through which his companion could ride, with lowered head and knees pressed in, without too much risk of an accident like Absalom's.

About ten o'clock they came out on the plain, broken with isolated wooded patches. The night was clear, warm and starry. The cold and pale spring moon shed a saddening light, confusing the ground objects, and impressing the prominences of the landscape with an aspect both fantastic and solemn.

Soon there loomed up a definite form on the horizon. A light gleamed and then glimmered in the midst of a thicket of tulipwood and magnolias. Towards this beacon Oregon Ol. directed their way.

"We are running rusty," he said, "hyar we kin ile up."

Soon the chaparral began to "hedge" away on both sides, and a rather large building gladdened the sight of the Englishman. Oliver showed no tokens of being similarly charmed.

This edifice, built of mud bricks, sunbaked, and whitened with limewash, was pierced with six mere loophole windows high up on the front; it ranked midway between the ranch and the hacienda, that is, the shanty and the grange house. Like all Mexican dwellings, it had a broad verandah sustained by pillars before the doorway, and a sodded flat roof in the Italian mode. All around it was a defiant wall in live cactus.

Altogether, as the Englishman thought, a most agreeable and picturesque habitation.

When the pair of horsemen were only a few strides away, the American pulled in a little, and, bending towards his companion at his knee, muttered:

"A regular whiskey hole I am taking you into, sir. But thar's no place else whar we kin halt for rest. Don't show disgust or astonishment at anything; let me have all 'the say,' and you kin lay high that we shell sleep as peaceably in that air den as in the best railroad hotel on the Great Pacific."

"The horses seem strong on their legs still. Why should we not press on to that village of which I perceive the roofs on the skyline, shining as if snow coated them? Is it not Fronteras?"

"Nothing of the sort! Fronteras is the other side of the water – that streak of olive green with reddish shadow. That is no town, but a village of no account, a cluster of peons' cabins around the farmhouse. The sheep dogs would have to be beaten off from springing on our horses, and the labourers don't like hereticos, anyhow. No, our safety and comfort says: Camp down hyar."

"Nuther item: we have twice crossed a warm, broad trail of Apaches, I calc'late, over a hundred strong, smelling like p'ison of war paint, and I go into cover when thar air so heavy odds. Yes, this child do. Yonder hacienda is called that of the Ojo Agotado, the exhausted spring, or we plainsmen and mountain men say: 'the Gi'n-out.' We shall not be received frien'ly thar. I say agen. Here, though, I can rely on being taken in cheerily, for the host would have lost his ears only I came along by the oak tree where he had been nailed up by them – little friskiness on the part of the ragamuffin warriors of One-leg Pedrillo's gang. Don't you fret; the Rancho Verde will house us, and you pertickler, first-chop, as the Chinee says."

"I do not understand, but I am wholly in your hands."

"That's the best place to put yourself. You kin offer me a testimonial in a gold frame hereafter."

They moved on once more at a good pace. As they approached their goal the light of guidance seemed to spread out. Soon they could make out that an immense glare flamed from the open portals as from a crater, and they heard singing, whistling on war whistles, shouts, wild laughter, all jumbled up with the shrill twang of a guitar, of which the far from harmonious notes blended more or less satisfactorily with the rumble of a tambourine.

"Having a jamboree," said the hunter, drawing rein at the blazing doorway.

"Some unfort'nat' has lost his ducats. Uncle's swarming with robbers tonight."

The ground was hard as flint, and the clatter of the horses' hoofs had attracted to the mudsill (for the doorstep was embedded in the earth of the floor) a stout knave of some forty years, with a sullen eye, a ferocious mien, and cars as tattered as a fighting dog's. His peculiar complexion, yellowish, and muddy, and oily hair, denoted him to be no regular blooded white. This burly rogue, stiffly standing in the entrance, eyed the strangers sullenly without speaking.

The American uttered the religious greeting customary among the Mexicans, to which the regular counter speech was grumblingly accorded, and, alighting, he subjoined:

"Well, Tío Camote (Uncle Sweet-potato), hosquillo as ever! Ay, even more gloomy! But how much longer air you going to keep an old companyero at the head of his nag? Don't you see with half an eye that my pard. an' me have rattled along as if your granddad Old Horny was at our hosses' tails, and that we want food and sleep as much as they do to bury their muzzles in oats?"

"Why!" ejaculated the individual, who, by the rule of contrary which pervades the popular idea of fun, had been nicknamed "Sweet Potato," "Heaven forgive me, but, as true as I am a sinner, we have here Señor Don Olivero. Just overlook my not having recognised your señory at the first peep."

"So I will, Aluino, – so I will! Only get the animals into the stables right smart."

"Like a shot, Señor," said the changed man with alacrity, and taking both bridles with no more pride than a hostler.

"Half a minute, uncle," interposed the hunter, taking him by one of the split cars playfully, and yet with significance. "I want you to keep in mind, Potato of Sweetness," he continued, "that your brother trusts the intire consarn to you, – cattle, harness, bags, and inn'ards, – the whole consarn, you savey?"

"Yo sabe," was the reply, tranquilly made, but the half-breed made a wry face which did not beautify its everyday expression.

"Now, that's talking. You know me right down to my boots. So, git you gone, but don't go to sleep, for I have something to talk about."

"In ten minutes I shall be at your señorship's orders."

"Good boy, Uncle Al!"

The hotelkeeper went away grumbling louder and louder, with the horses for the corral (enclosure).

"Stick your pistols in your belt, and follow me. You air going to see no end of a curious circus," resumed Oliver to his companion. "Keep cool, and a little swagger does no harm. These here tough men and rough men must think you no tenderfoot; I rayther guess they'll figger me up first pop, as raised right hyar on the plantation."

"I hope you'll be content with me," returned Mr. Gladsden; "I have made up my mind. I am not going to back out, but sail right over the bar, whatever the quantity of broken glass."

He laughed quietly, and assumed the bearing which he believed he had worn at the time he was clad in red flannel shirt and corduroy trousers tucked into cowhide boots when up the country, not a thousand miles from that spot, fifteen years before.

"That looks the ticket. I believe we are going to see some fun."

With that they entered the tavern with steady foot.

The uproar that hailed their entrance seemed louder than before. Neither of them, however, was affected by the malevolent greeting, but strode to a heavy table, hewn into shape with the broad axe, where they installed themselves, and proceeded to take a disdainful survey of the patrons of the drinking den. For their part they devoured the intruders with most ravenous eyes.

A pen dipped in vitriol would not adequately describe this vile haunt of all the scum of the border. The dozen guests were men of all mixed castes and hues, with hangdog faces and in squalid rags. They were sodden already with the coarse liquor. The muddy, smoky, ignoble room was furnished with massive benches, stools, and tables, soaked with blood and spilt beverages. The bar had two 'tenders, men as sturdy as Camote himself, who carried pistols in hip pockets and long knives in sheaths at the back of their necks, more as if they were besieged behind the counter than anything else, so precious was the poison they served out. Their patrons sang, shouted, yelled, quarrelled, all through thick cigar smoke, played with greasy cards and yellowed dice, whilst one resumed pulling at his heaca's homemade strings. The gamblers, however, pulled out handfuls of gold and silver from the secret pouches in their bedraggled and tattered garments, worn from choice of slovenliness.

The scene was illumined by several smoky wicks swimming like decaying serpents in as foul green oil, in open lamps as antique in fashion as those now and again dug up in Old Spain. Each man had his own bottle, and the aguardiente, tepache, rum, and Californian wine, labelled falsely "Catalonia," flowed so profusely that someone was gurgling at them constantly.

Such was this palace of prairie pleasures.

The arrival of strangers had considerable effect. Far from benevolent squints, we repeat, were directed upon them fixedly, while murmurs of evil augury began to be heard. The objects of this growing ill feeling replied by the most complete indifference to the provocations which were more and more emphasized.

"Warm," remarked Oliver sententiously.

"We are in a hot box," rejoined Mr. Gladsden.

"Yes, I reckoned it would be a mixed lot, 'stead o' which, they are all of a gang. All the honest ruffians have been cleared out."

As Camote did not hasten in, Oliver rose, went up to the counter, threw down a dollar, took up a bottle at hazard, spite of the nearer bar 'tender's scowls, and returned. He clapped it on the table, knocked off the ring of glass round the mouth and its cork a-flying, with a dexterous cut of the back of his knife, and poured out brimmers of wine for himself and his friend in the pannikin which, like a gold prospector, he always carried at his waist, and in the silver mounted cup cover of Mr. Gladsden's brandy pistol.

"Here's to well-out-of-this!" he murmured in English.

"I concur," added Gladsden heartily, and they drank.

"The music is over. The dance is going to begin," said Oliver, putting his tin cup up in place.

Indeed, the guitar, so noisy, was silenced. The player, a tall, haggard, lengthened rascal, who seemed to have been once hanged and pulled out by the feet, suspended the instrument carefully up on the walls and advanced in a swaggering way towards the latest comers, his hat outrageously cocked on one side, as much to cover a patch whence a portion of the scalp had been removed as to look rakish, resting one fist upon his bony, prominent hip, and the other hand on the steel hilt of a very fine old rapier of enormous length. On gazing most closely at Oliver, who happened to be the nearer to him, when he stopped in an insolent attitude, he remarked the additional pistol and knife in his belt acquired by right of conquest from the spy whom he had shot, and, after a moment's hesitation, his colour coming again more deeply, he cried, ex abrupto:

"Flames of purgatory! Gentlemen, I never knew of greater impudence than for you to present yourselves, after having murdered my brother-in-arms La Gallina."

"Caballero, what do you mean by that?" returned the American, as much surprised as all the auditors by this denunciation.

"Do you think I do not recognise the Chicken heart's pistol of two shots, by the handle nicked with cuts for the men he has slain? Was it not mine first, and did we not exchange firearms when we became sworn comrades in life to death?"

"Caballero," said the hunter again, with killing politeness, "I believe I did shoot some skunk that came prowling round me at suppertime. But, the fact is, I hate to be riled when I am eating, or drinking, and I'll put a bullet out of the same barrel into anyone who repeats the annoyance. You hear me?"

"Shoot me!" cried the bandit in a furious voice, as he drew the long blade. "A thousand demons."

"Yes, you! Right away too, you candidate for the gallows," rejoined the hunter, rising.

"We'll see about that, – ¡Caray!"

"I guess you won't see much of it, though the principal body consarned!"

Already the hunter had jumped forward to seize the fellow by the neck and the sword belt; he raised the bag of bones as easily as if he had been a toy balloon, and getting him "on the swing," by an irresistible motion, forced him to fly twenty feet aloof.

"Excuse me not telling you, gentlemen, your friend was coming," he remarked, sarcastically.

The bandit almost flattened against the doorpost, and fell senseless just outside the opening, only his long arms within.

"Some folks air so dull, a man's obleeged to give them a warning," added the Oregonian, resuming his seat.

This feat had been executed so quickly that the spectators remained motionless with amazement; but on their anger enlivening them they sprang up, every man of them, and rushed towards the strangers with drawn swords and knives, yelling for blood and death.

The very brutality and causelessness of this fresh attack made it the more mortal and savage. These drunken vagrants were too much on their guard against each other, and, besides, knew their own opponents' abilities too well to fight among themselves, so that to fall upon strangers was always deemed more profitable. It was not, therefore, so much to avenge their fallen comrades as to obey the sanguinary instincts which the rudely fabricated alcohol had inflamed, that they renewed this charge. They cared very little whether Gallina or his blood companion had been killed by the men before them, they fought merely for the pleasure of bloodspilling. Such a conflict of twelve to two was one of those merry byplays which varied the joys of debauchery, and would afford them foundation for bragging at the refreshment bar during the fandango. These men, moreover, being mongrels, hated the pure whites inveterately, and to exterminate them would be an excessive pleasure.

But as such barroom squabbles are common occurrences in the life of a hunter, always incurred by him when he comes to the outposts of civilisation, they did not daunt Oregon Oliver in the slightest degree. The storm he had raised by the summary correction of the spoil-feast did not make him blench. No more was his companion appalled. The present peril had transformed the gentleman. His features beamed with that glow of battle which irradiates the pages of Froissart when he speaks of the English knights travelling as far as Spain to war in fratricidal struggles which in no way really interested them. He even smiled, and aided his associate with charming readiness in his defensive preparations. These were neither long nor difficult to carry out.