Kitabı oku: «The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California», sayfa 13
CHAPTER XXI.
THE LANCERS' CHARGE
The forlorn hope started off at full gallop behind the trio, in a flight through the obscurity which was as lugubrious as fantastic. The sweet and sadly wan moonbeams stretched the cavaliers' shadows immeasurably over the land. Every detail of the landscape took gaunt aspects. The trees, waving white and grey beards of Spanish moss, and endless creepers in loops and knots, seemed spectres that were stationed to catch and hang the riders. No such headlong course could have been performed by any but such Mexican centaurs. It lasted over an hour, till Oliver reined in and called out —
"Pull up!"
"Alto! ¡Alto!" was reiterated down the line, till the column was all in quiescence on the edge of a boundless virgin forest.
"Where are we?" inquired Gladsden.
"Three leagues from the farm," answered Oliver, after the Tigrero had given him a clue. "I thought more. We have turned the main body of the insurgents, and are on their rear if they are about to fall on the big farm. I am going to cache the squad under the leaves, and go on the scout myself."
"Had you not better send one of these, who are so familiar with the country?" remonstrated the Englishman. "Your place as commander – "
"Tush! There are too many lives at stake for me to hesitate to risk mine. I kin never make by big throws onless I hev sartin news. That Old Silvano could be trusted to see all that I shall see, but he hasn't a passle (parcelle, particle, used in that sense by the Canadian French trappers) o' jedgment, and on jedgment depends the ha'r o' them Spanish in the hacienda. I do this scout," said he shortly. "If I know anything, I b'lieve it's scouting."
"Since things are so, go ahead."
Oliver alighted, gave some orders, delegated his authority to the Englishman with Silvano as his sub., and glided into the woods. Though there was no underbush, he was lost to the view almost instantly, so instinctively did he cover his body by the trunks.
During his absence, the Mexicans rode under the branches, and dozed in the saddle, with pickets thrown out upon all sides. Gladsden let himself be absorbed in his reflections, marvelling that after a brief period, he, the English gentleman of wealth, could be in the heart of an unexplored wood, on the borders of a desert, guarded by a band of men complete strangers not ten hours before, and exposed to being overwhelmed by a whole army of revolted slaves.
In the midst of his reverie, without any warning, a hand was abruptly slapped on his knee, and a jesting voice said —
"How many mile in'ard of the Land of Nod?"
"I was not asleep, Oliver," cried Gladsden, indignantly, as, however, he opened his eyes, and blinked them in a way that belied his denial.
The scout had returned and come right up to his side so stealthily that he had not been aroused. But the tiger slayer had perceived him, and was smiling slightly at the practical joke which was, also, a lesson.
"Well, what's the news?"
"Things are a good deal as I s'posed," he answered. "Thar are something like three or four thousand of the critters, and sich a rabble! Very few have firearms, and, likely enough, no powder, and, if powder, no ball, so that they will top the loading with stones and gravel and blow their blamed topknots off at the first pull. The others hev come out powerful with spears, sheep shearers divided and the blades thong'd on to poles, scythes, reaping hooks, and all kind o' things ugly to look at of which they have made we'pins. Some 'stonishing black niggers are the head men of gangs. They are in a valley there away, on a road. They have no flankers out, and no look out, for they have no idee they mout be attackted."
"So we can manoeuvre without any apprehension of being discovered, you mean, Ol.?"
"Jess so, gineral! One of them mountain howitzer our army promenades with could pepper 'em up sure from hyar."
"Where's their left?"
"On a little village half a league tharabouts."
"And their right?"
"On a little cluster of shanties that Old Silvano says is called Rancho Nuevo – nigh enough to be seen in the crack o' day from hyar."
"Can the signal rockets of the hacienda be seen from the two points you mention, and the road occupied by the mass of the rebels?"
"For why not? They are three high p'ints over the sink they are in."
"This looks promising enough."
"What! Do you think to cut up three or four thousand niggers?"
"My dear Oliver, I am sure that you have your idea in your head fully matured, and that we have nothing to do but put it into execution."
"I don't know rightly about that. In any event, I am going to execute what the army men call a divarsion. If the innymy accept it as divarting, I'm satisfied. I should give it another name, myself, but thar! Thar's no 'counting for tastes. Besides the bulk of the Yaquis, thar is a long straggling train, with the plunder, the fat, cowardly, and cunning, who are drinking and singing, and dancing like all possessed. They are coming almost dead to'rds us, and we hev no more 'n time to receive them properly. If we turn them back, scattered, they wilt not be in condition to reinforce the army. That's the first article on the bill o' fare."
He beckoned the tiger hunter to him.
"Capitano," said he, "pick out your bullwhackers, and add to them enough more to make about forty strong. Them's your cuadrilla, savvy! Thar's a right smart sprinkle of cattle straying over the plain, bewildered, whom those barbarians hev scared, some – well, into a fever. Lasso a dozen in a herd, tie up and throw down, and send one to report progress. Meanwhile, collect a heap of fat (resinous) candlewood. Cook away —cuca, cap'en!"
Silvano, delighted with his rank, and beaming with smiles to the eyebrow, soon departed with one-third or so of the little party. The rest were divided into two troops, of which the American and Gladsden took the leadership. The mufflers were removed from the hoofs as useless, and each troop was arranged in three ranks, twelve, fifteen, and eighteen in a line. Thus in order, they moved off under the trees, tall ones whose boughs only sprang out at an altitude of great degree, and parting at a silent signal, ranged themselves one each side of a track through the woodland, dignified by the title of road. They were stationed one above the other.
Two hours had passed in these dispositions.
The moon had gone down lower and lower in the heavens, till, in the end, it dropped beneath the eyeline, and opaque shadows enveloped the country and blended all objects into one mass. In the stillness of a cemetery, the two cavalcades, no longer visible to one another, awaited the forthcoming enemy.
Wild Indians detest this hour, under the influence of a belief that the soul of a warrior killed in the dark spell before dawn is doomed to dwell everlastingly in gloom; but the converted peons had had this superstition modified or obliterated altogether.
At all events, there was soon heard a confused murmur, which changed speedily into a blending of shouting, monotonous chanting, and occasional shots, while yellow flares crossed the darkest glades of the pine woods.
In twenty minutes, the vanguard of a tumultuous gathering of brown and black skinned men, women, and youths, filled the track. They were almost naked, or merely attired in fragments of clothes to which they had never been accustomed, some bearing torches, some crucibles from mines, filled with oil and coarse wicks, and others candles of great length taken from chapels.
They were allowed to pass unchallenged.
After them the more active insurgents, drunken, frenzied, hoarse, tired with a long march, but demoniacal with their features twitching in insatiable passion, surged up in a tolerable order, brandishing and clashing their weapons, mostly of the improvised nature hinted at by the scout in his description.
All of a sudden, the harsh croak of a sandhill crane was audible in the thicket to the north of the road where Oliver had posted himself. Immediately the man at the side of Gladsden imitated the clatter of the beak of the same bird clearing it of the debris of a gobbled frog, by tapping his pistol barrel on his lance shaft. The next instant there was a rush of horses to the side of the forest track, and "Viva Mejico!" resounded full throated from Oregon Ol.
"Y Libertad!" was the completion of the signal and war cry from the followers of Gladsden, as they, too, set spurs to their steeds.
"Mexico and liberty!"
Simultaneously, therefore, the two companies burst upon the column of Indians, cutting through and leaving a layer upon layer of pierced mortality like in the track of a tornado. Having crossed, they made a circuit, and, coming out on the road once more, one higher up, and the other lower down the line of the previous charges, completed the surprise of the insurgents.
"Wheel, face forward in chase!" was the next command.
In half an hour, the riders came into the rendezvous agreed upon, having effectually frightened that column, and sent the surviving members reeling and flying in panic through the woods, back whence they came.
Five only of the Mexicans were missing. The wounds received were unimportant. The horses were breathed; the cavaliers allowed to congratulate themselves and their leaders. Oliver had a devoted following now, for these Mexicans are too unused to easy triumphs not to idolise the commander who gluts them with such a feast of vanity.
The collected horsemen rode off, slowly groping, to the appointed place on the open ground where Silvano and the herders were to have secured the semi-wild cattle. It was a little less dark, the false dawn, in fact, and thus Gladsden, though not so accustomed to the night marching as the rest, could see the horsemen of the Tigrero forming a wide circle; in the centre were several strange objects, writhing and beckoning to the stars. They were long-horned, thin, wiry cattle, of the breed of old which never will fatten in Mexican pastures, fleet as antelopes, savage as tigers. By dexterous casts of the lariat, they had been roped, hurled to the ground, and secured there, heels in the air. They were daunted but disdained to bow, mutely protesting by glaring eyes, full of congested blood, and twitching of the tails. A little way off, a heap of resinous wood was formed.
"Prime!" ejaculated the hunter, perceiving all this almost as clearly as by day. "Don Benny shall give you a silver medal, old coon."
He issued instructions which were forthwith carried out with delighted comprehension. The cattle were allowed to rise, but still held, half choked and much hampered with the leather ropes, whilst some active hands bound fat branches to their long horns, so that they soon assumed an apologetic appearance of stags adorned with magnificent antlers, which was amusing. Overcoming their humiliation on being anew on all fours, the beasts began to chafe. Bushes of prickly nopals were made for attaching to the animals' tails and hind quarters, like the pendent goads to the bulls in the arena.
When the cattle were finally supplied with these prickles and the wooden headgear, they were released of their trammels, and driven forward before a crescent shaped formation of the horsemen, increasing the pace perforce in order to keep up with them. Presently, the sparks which had been applied to rags round the gummy wood, were fanned into perceptible flames. By the time these living candelabra and their remorseless goaders saw the hill of the hacienda loom up, the frightened cattle were adorned with long streamers of flame. But as they were broadened out into a line, one beside another, there was no scare to make them turn back, and their only instinctive hope was to continue their mad charge.
A deep hubbub as of bees around the hive was audible over and above the bellowing of these fiery cattle, and a vivid glare seemed to encircle the hacienda.
All at once, a yellow streak rose up in the sky, and a white star shone over the buildings and enclosures, and the multitude surging up against the pickets. Then the sky was striped luminously once more, but, this time, a rosy glare surrounded a red star.
"Now we come whooping!" shouted Oliver, participating, like even the Englishman, in the excitement of this frantic race at the heels of the terrified bearers of the flames, forming a line of fire of continuous aspect to the Yaquis in the hollow. "Level your lance – no! Draw rein! Draw rein! And swerve to the left! What in thunder is that cry behind us – on the sword hand? Great Jehosaphat! whar the Old Harry have they sprung up from! Apaches, by the living thingumbob! Apaches!"
In plain earnest, the "hugh-ug-hugh!" of the Apaches rang out of the pine forest, with an intonation of joy as if the sight of the rockets and the disclosures thereby of the farm which had already been their mark for massacre and pillage, had delighted them beyond control.
Then was heard, too, in a voice quite as gleeful and fiendish, the vociferation of a number of white men, in Spanish and in English.
"¡Viva! The Rustlers! Los Ruidores of Captain Pedrillo forever!"
"The Rustlers!" repeated Oregon Ol., in perfect stupefaction. "Open your airth and swaller me! The 'Pache' and the skunks they exchanged shots with – that shed their blood – 'malgamated, by gum! Take me into a gully an' bury me! I'm licked!"
Meanwhile, not having the reasons for a halt that had checked the Mexicans in the very commencement of a charge, the cattle infuriated with the falling sparks from the wood beginning to become detached from their horns, and blinded with the smarting smoke, tore down the incline into the very vale where the Yaquis were crowded. Certainly their onset would create a consternation, preventing any attention being bestowed upon Oliver's little party, as it obeyed his earnest injunction and wheeled off into an island of trees.
In ten minutes, as the dawn grew upon the scene, they could very well discern, boldly emerging from the piney woods, not only some of the stragglers of the column the Mexicans had discomfited, but two bodies of mounted men, together over their own number, whom Oliver recognised as the Apaches and the banditti, whom they had left at daggers drawn, or, more exactly, at long shots with each other.
To explain this unparalleled occurrence in border records, the union of two hostile forces in brotherly ties for active operation, we must turn back a few pages.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PACT OF BLOOD
Behind the fugitives, the rattle of dropping shots had gone on for an hour so that Oregon Oliver's prophecy of the possible duration of such skirmishing bid fair to be verified.
The Indians mode of warfare is to force a retrograde movement by the gradual concentration of fire, and at the moment a retreat is begun, whatever the cause – strategetic or from pure weakness or cowardice – a charge is made by the best warriors in a body, whooping and brandishing their weapons.
Knowing something of how resistless was such a rush, our old acquaintance Don Aníbal, alias The Slayer of Seven, was in no humour for awaiting one. Already, from the glimpse he had of the young Mexican girl borne away among the stampeded horses, his desire for retaliation on don Benito had inspired him with a novel idea; he hoped, against all precedent, to unite the Apaches with him in the same purpose.
It was, indeed, our old acquaintance, the reader will see, perfectly unscrupulous by what means he obtained his ends.
The miracle to which he owed the preservation of his rascally life had been a lesson only for the time being.
When, plunging off the islet into the Gulf in order to elude the infuriated husband of doña Dolores, the pirate was swimming for an offing, he became the aim of more than one shark. Twice he escaped being swallowed more or less in the maw of the most swift, for each time he had swerved on one side as it blindly turned back downward for the terrible bite. But, when so near the shore as to hope for full immunity from this living danger at least, one of the tintoreras, fearless of the shoaling water, flew forward like a flash of lightning, and, amid an eddy of the churning water, poor Matasiete was seized by the leg, and suffered the anguish of its being torn from half the thigh. His scream was stifled as he was dragged down, and when he arose, he was cast upon the strand. With the strength of infernal pain and the madness of despair he not only dragged himself up under cover of the mangroves, but twisted his cravat as a tourniquet around the severed limb. Then he fainted away.
It was not until the morning that the pearl fishers were attracted to him by his piteous groans. They had been so generously paid by Mr. Gladsden after his securing the treasure that they took great care of the dismembered Mexican, believing him one of the brigantine crew, in which belief he took heed not to disturb them in his rare lucid moments. They rewarded themselves by stripping him and cutting off his silver buttons, and after a few weeks, changing their fishing ground, left him in their best hut. Fever had gone, but he was as weak as a child, and for some months seemed able only to crawl about. Thus he had ample time for repentance even of so long a career of guilt.
He was penitent in his helplessness, and had such a man as Father Serafino encountered him then, he might never have recurred to his former life. But no one came near the crippled hermit but sea otter hunters, and pearl and whale fishers, and they were rough, unsympathetic souls, who only landed to buy, or take by force, the vegetables which he raised.
In this way, chained to the spot by his loss of limb, with the perpetual presence of the reef where that treasure had been drawn up, to embitter his thoughts and his dreams, Matasiete nursed projects of vengeance, not merely against the Englishman and don Benito, but against all human kind.
At last, nearly four years in this almost solitary existence having passed, and his little hoard of earnings by the supply of green meat to the whalers swelling out so that he feared he would be robbed, he took advantage of the offer of an officer of a British man-of-war, surveying the Gulf, to transport him to Guaymas.
People and things had changed there; the prospect of the railways connecting the port with the United States and Mexico City had galvanised it into a life he had never known before. Most of his associates had disappeared; but he found Don Stefano Garcia humbly "clerking it" in a merchant's, and very reticent about a fortnight in the chain gang, which punishment he had undergone for some little playfulness in his banking business.
Wary, tenacious, exacting, the returned salteador fastened himself upon the clerk and blackmailed him almost daily, spending the extorted money in the sailors' drinking dens. At last, seeing that his Old Man of the Sea was doomed to be his destruction, Garcia made an effort, gave the robber a large sum of money once for all, and started him for the northern interior. The former rover of the Sierras had expressed a desire to resume the old life of freedom, tempered with depredation and debauchery.
Soon, indeed, to the nucleus of a few chosen scoundrels with whom he had beguiled the intervals between revels and card play in the Guaymas groggeries, with stories of the merry life on the prairies, the captain added the floating scum of Upper Sonora. But this time he did not hesitate to venture into New Mexico and run off cattle from the American settlers. Thus he acquired a wider fame than before, and on both sides of the border the One-legged Rustler had a price set on his head.
About a year before, he had an accession to his band in the person of no less than the ex-banker, don Stefano Garcia. That estimable gentleman, from forgery to forgery, had contrived to bring the credulous foreign firm that employed him to bankruptcy, and, well supplied with funds, thus shamefully acquired, was encountered by his old associate gambling it away in the Green Ranch. They were scandalous rogues, born to travel in harness, and Garcia at once stepped into the lieutenancy of the formidable band. Too corpulent to be agile, except in the dance, in which he excelled like most Mexicans, he preferred to win by astuteness, and was no more daring when his neck was concerned than El Manco himself.
It was he who earnestly approved his superior's idea of stopping the desultory fighting and becoming friends with the Apaches. For one knew as well as the other that they were wolves whose hide would cost dear, and then be worthless.
The Apaches, as we have elsewhere remarked, are about the most ferocious and barbarous nation in the great Southwest. Neither Sioux nor Pawnees attain their perfection in cruelty, and they are matchless as the Comanches in horse stealing.
They are tyrants of the wilderness, in short, who see no life worth living without murder, pillage, torture, and conflagrations. They make no nice distinctions in attacking any beings, white, red, or mixed blood, merely out of an implacable hatred for those born beyond their pale. It is said that when other supply of foemen fall short, they will quarrel among themselves and cross knives in the council lodge itself for the sheer relish of bloodshedding.
Such were the demons to whom the Mexican Ishmael wanted to propose a temporary alliance to attack and carry by storm the hacienda of don Benito de Bustamente.
All at once, therefore, Captain Pedrillo bid one of his men sound a bugle in imitation of the notes of the cry used by the Apaches for "cease firing!" and, immediately, one of his lieutenants, risking his life, sprang from behind a tree towards the red man, waving a blanket in a peculiar manner which kept it flat but undulating in the air, whilst he shouted "Paz– peace!" As a rule, such overtures are disregarded by Indians in combat, but the incertitude about their beloved chief made them accept it. Their missiles were no longer heard whistling, and, in a few minutes spent in consultation, one of the subchiefs leaped into the clear ground, and waved a white buffalo robe.
With bravado, in order to indicate that fear had nothing to do with this offering and assent to the truce, both parties showed themselves.
On the one side, more than a hundred red men appeared, bristling with spears and arrows held on the bow, or displaying guns and hatchets. On the other, upon an earthwork hastily thrown up with knives, the ruffians presented themselves, to the number of sixty at least enveloped in their zarapés, coiled up to protect vital parts of the body, their heads shaded with sombreros, or capped with skins of animals, still showing their teeth and claws; their guns and their machetes gleamed brightly. Both seemed tough morsels, and though the Indians uttered no comments on the parade, their glances among themselves expressed the same sentiment of admiration which the Mexicans muttered.
The alférez and the Apache chief slowly advanced, step for step, so as to meet midway between the lines; as they came on nearer and nearer, they threw down weapon after weapon so as, at last, when they stood within arm's length, to be totally disarmed, in all appearance. No doubt both had a concealed knife, for treachery is always suspected in prairie warfare.
When they actually met, and the Mexican spokesman had repeated his mission to propose peace, on the grounds that there was no quarrel between the noble Apaches and the bandits, who were in no way connected with those infernal North American heretics who had intruded within the Rancho Verde, the Indian made a sign to his friends. Instantly, in a majestic manner, several chiefs came forward towards him, a movement imitated by Pedrillo and his subleaders, and soon the two groups were facing one another.
Profoundly distrustful, though no weapons were visible, both parties fully aware of the rascality of either, the Apaches nevertheless recognised that the pair of fugitives who had slain their chief after beating the Rustlers in the barroom, and were speeding away on re-stolen horses, were no friends of the Mexicans. The proposal, therefore, that the two forces should unite in their mutual hate for the strangers, by whose deeds both suffered, was congenial. Always repulsed when they attacked the fortified houses of the rich farmers, the Indians hoped for better results if they were aided by men accustomed to fight on foot and to manage a siege.
Consequently, not ten minutes of explanation had passed before the half dozen principals were seated in a circle in the centre of the clearing before the smoking ruins of Tío Camote's luckless hostelry, with the calumet circulating for a council.
One little detail had been promptly debated and settled; apart from the bloodshed due to Mr. Gladsden and his hunter guide, five of the Apaches had been slain by Mexican bullets, while only three of the bandits had lost their lives in the skirmish. Now, inasmuch as the code "a life for a life," rules the savage practice, the Rustlers owed two lives to the Apaches, who could not, with a debt of blood unpaid, enter into alliance with the debtors.
With a sharklike grin, the worthy Captain Pedrillo removed this difficulty.
"There are four of my men, Chief Iron Shirt," said he, leaning towards the successor of Tiger Cat, "rank weeds, unruly, who have secreted unfair shares of plunder, and who contemplate desertion to go to Ures, and, perhaps, betray me and their valiant comrades to the police. I will arrange, on our march, to send them away as a detached scouting party, and your young men may take and wear their scalps at their girdles. Four scalps for two lives! Applaud my generosity!"
"It is a bargain," said the Apaches, grimly enjoying the joke.
Iron Shirt was a notorious villain, having twice at least mingled with the Cheyennes and passed himself off for one of them in order to obtain from the United States agent arms and ammunition which he meant, even as he received them with protestations of lip service, to essay upon the very official who gave them. Hence he was the man particularly to appreciate double-dealing and applaud it when he was not the dupe. He derived his singular but veritable appellation – for he is like other characters in our narrative, a figure in border annals – not from his ever wearing a shirt of mail, but from his good fortune in escaping body wounds. He attributed it to his "medicine," but the white hunters thought him very dexterous in the use of the small shield which Indian cavalry carry, and which, while not defying a rifle ball, will fend off an arrow and stop a revolver bullet.
The pipe of council went twice around the ring, till Pedrillo spoke again from his elevated perch on the horse, the others squatting in the Indian fashion.
"My Apache brothers are great warriors," he said, "so I am wishful to prove my esteem for them by having them join me, or taking me and my band in conjunction with them," changing the form of offer on seeing the Indian wince in wounded pride, "to make complete the successful coup which they have already struck at the hacienda of the Treasure Hill. This time, my red brothers will return to their villages, not merely with a few horses and one paleface girl, but with a long train of mules packed with booty and fifty women to sew their clothes, fetch water and cook their meals. The scalps are of no value to us, and they will be the Apaches' prize! As for the plunder of the rich farm, we divide it fairly between us. What does the chief say?"
Each of the Apaches answered in order of rank "it is good! The chief says we will fall on the hacienda in concert, and the plunder will be equally shared among the warriors."
The settlement of details was made whilst this favourable decision upon the preliminaries was carried to the subordinates, interestedly awaiting. General satisfaction was manifested, but the wary bandits and red men took care not to mingle or fraternize, save with arms at hand, even where several recognised acquaintances and hailed them cordially.
There was no doubt, as happens with more important treaty makers in Europe, each contracting party reserved in secret the right to keep none of the pledges given and to seize the spoil the moment he felt strong enough to defy the consequences of such treachery.
Meanwhile, Pedrillo called for a keg of spirits saved from the wreck of the ranch, and all drank to cement the negotiation.
Tío Camote had emerged from his retreat, and his two bartenders, more frightened than hurt when the roof collapsed with them, saw the unburnt stores of his tavern shared between the allies, as a commencement of their active brotherhood, without too much resentment. Forced to enlist actively among the banditti lest the rear guard of the Apaches immolated him on the smouldering ruins, where their greatest chief was inextricably buried to appease his manes, Uncle Sweet Potato still wondered that he lived and breathed with his head thatched as nature provided. As for his assistants, they were highwaymen when out of a situation, and they entered the ranks again under Pedrillo's colours without demur.
Just before sunset, the troops, united in sentiment though divided, as independently pursuing their respective purposes in a parallel course solely by accident, took up the ride towards Monte Tesoro. As they had no doubt that the fugitives would be lodged, for Doña Perla's sake, in her father's house, they had no reason to try to overtake them.
The first interruption to the rapid progress of the two troops, and at the same time the first intimation they had of the revolt of the peons, was their riding into the midst of the column shattered by the sham lancers of Oregon Oliver. The severed portions of this column, like one of those fabulous serpents which had the power of healing its wounds, and joining its segments, had rallied into one mass. The leaders were hesitating on the course to take when the Mexicans appeared, and they feared a renewal of the disaster. Fortunately, before the panic was revived, the Apaches delighted them, for they saw friends in men of their colour if not of their race. An understanding was soon arrived at. Needless to say, Pedrillo and Garcia congratulated themselves on having such allies, and the prospect of overcoming not merely the farm of don Benito, but of many another, made their faces radiant with smiles.
