Kitabı oku: «The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California», sayfa 2

At last, stumbling, groping, he fell, only to crawl a little way, then, a slight mound opposing his hands and knees, he rolled upon it. His head appeared to have been cleared by the Mazeppa-like course, and he was, at least, conscious of the raised grass reminding him of a funeral mound.

"A grave!" he breathed, dashing the sweat out of his eyes, "Yes, a grave here will the last of the Bustamentes die!"

He stretched out at full length, he folded his arms, one of them palsied already, and was beginning to pray, when his tone changed to joy, or at least, profound hopefulness. He fell over on his side, then rose to his knees, ran his band over the mound eagerly, and cried:

"God of mercy, deceive me not! The grave I coveted, is it not a cache? Thank God!"

CHAPTER III.
THE PIRATE'S BEQUEST

The wanderer whose careless progress through the brake sufficiently clearly revealed that he was a stranger of a bold heart and contempt for customs different from his own, was, in fact, one of those Englishmen who seem born to illustrate, in the nature of exceptions, the formal character of his race.

Left an orphan in the fetters of a trustee who forgot he had ever been young, and showed no sympathy with his charge, George Frederick Gladsden had broken his bondage and run away from school at the age of twelve. Reaching a Scotch port, after a long tramp, he shipped as boy on a herring fisher, and so made his novitiate with Neptune. After that initiation, very severe, he chose to become a sailor of that irregular kind which is known as the pier head jumping. That is to say, instead of duly entering on a vessel and book at the office in broad daylight, "George" would lounge on the wharf till the very moment of her casting off. Then, of course, the captain is happy to take anybody in the least nautical or even able-bodied, who offers himself in lieu of one of the regularly engaged mariners detained by accident, debt, or drink. By this means Gladsden's trustee and kinsfolk could never prevent him going wheresoever he willed, and it pleased this briny Arab to keep his whereabouts a mystery, though, to amuse himself and annoy his guardian, he would send him a letter from some dreadfully out-of-the-way port, just to show he did exist, and to prevent the estate being locked up or diverted under the law.

Meanwhile, the young roaming Englishman became so thorough a proficient in the honourable calling, and had so much courage and intelligence that, even in the merchant service, where the prizes are few and hotly fought for, he must have obtained a supportable, if not a brilliant position.

Unfortunately for himself he had an execrably fitful head, and was the declared foe of Draconian discipline. If there had been pirates on the seas he might even have joined them, only then to have enjoyed a delightful existence of "Jack his own master."

Quarrelling with his latest skipper, a seal hunter, on the Lower Californian coast, that Spaniard, rather alarmed at the turbulent mate, was relieved when he accepted the offer of an Hermosillo planter to become his manager, and not only broke the engagement between them, but presented Gladsden with some dollars and his gun on their parting. The Englishman promised well up in the country, but the fowl in the swamp allured him into hunting trips with some Indians, and he turned such a vagabond that the indolent Sonoran came to the conclusion that, as the skipper of the seal fur cruiser had warned him, he had contracted with a maniac.

One day, Gladsden and the Indians, turning their backs on the San Miguel swamps, wandered off, the Englishman cared not whither. His dusky comrades were soon displeased by his careless march, and a little later, disgusted by his even resenting their counsels for him to take precautions, since, not only were there other Indians "out," but one of the most notorious salteadores who had ever troubled any part of unquiet Mexico was overawing the whole of the tract between the San Miguel and the San José. To which the mad Englishman replied, with a calmness which startled the red men, though masters of self-repression, that such daring traits aroused in him a lively curiosity, and the strongest desire to face this very famous Matasiete, "the Slayer of Seven," the terror of Sonora.

Seeing this obstinacy, our sly Yaquis solved the perplexity by abandoning their burr one morning whilst he was still sleeping, and leaving him only his gun and what powder and ball he carried. His horse and other property they removed with them lest, in his folly, he should only turn the valuables over to the redskins not of their tribe, or the Mexican depredators.

For all of his maritime knowledge which helps the student of sky and weather on land, Gladsden was in a quandary when thus thrown on his own devices. As, however, he never wrangled with himself, he took up his solitary march without any self-communing, and followed the impulse of the moment.

Fortunately, game never failed him, and though the only flavouring was gunpowder, the fare had not palled upon him up to his coming within our circle of vision.

He was "loping" along, very like a sated wolf, listless, when he unexpectedly, and by the purest chance, spied the gleaming body of an Indian, stealing before him amongst the foliage, always in the thickest parts.

His resolve awakening to give the Yaquis a lecture, with cuts of the ramrod, upon the "Fault of Abandoning a Hunting Companion in the Desert," he quickened his pace, but almost immediately perceived that the savage was another guess sort of a bird, one more likely, armed for war as he was, and determined of aspect as ever was a brave, to deal out punishment than receive it unrequitingly.

In fact, the fierce, hungry, set face of the pursuer of the Mexican protectors of doña Dolores would have sufficed to impress even a more nonchalant person than our Englishman.

"Mischief in the wind," thought he.

And as a white man on seeing a man of another hue on the trail, at once believes that the object of the chase is one of his own colour, he turned to, and, having no other intentions to overrule, began to dog the slayer of don José de Miranda as successfully and closely as he was following the Mexicans. It was not to be expected that the foreigner did not make blunders in this manhunt, so novel to him, but his very incaution or missteps actually helped him, for the savage, unable to believe that a man would dream of breaking a twig noisily in a wild perhaps not devoid of certain enemies, attributed the two or three alarming sounds in his rear to animals, from whom he had nothing to dread.

In brief, Gladsden arrived at the halting place of the Mexicans in time to see poor Benito make his stand, and hear the savage, as he disclosed himself, utter the arrogant "Presente" as he bared his knife to complete his triple tragedy.

The Englishman saw there was a flutter of a woman's dress that appealed to his gallantry, the blood splashes from don José on the stump, and the valiant but weak port of don Benito. He feared that to jump towards the Apache would not stay that ugly knife, so he lifted the gun which was Captain Saone's parting gift, and sent a bullet through the warrior's head.

As quickly upon the echoes of the report, as if it had been a signal, and, for that matter, the two men who bounded upon the marksman had been afraid to "tackle" him whilst his firearm was "full" – a standing item in prairie fighting – the Englishman was set upon by a man on either side. Spite of his strength he was hurled off his feet, and secured with a lariat and gagged with moss, all with a celerity which proved that he had been overcome by bandits of no despicable experience. When he was perfectly incapacitated from more than winking, as one of the fellows remarked in a whisper, that facetious rogue warily proceeded to inspect the result of the shot.

It had so laudably obeyed its impulsion, that the Mexican, after one look at the Indian, felicitated himself on not having been so precipitate as to draw that bullet on himself.

The spot was quiet, Benito, clotted red smearing his shoulder, seemed as lifeless as the red man. The young girl and her father, whose blood reddened her ragged dress, were equally among the lifeless, to all cursory examination.

The Mexican picked up the weapons of the Indian, said: "A lone Chiricahua Apache!" as he spurned the body out of wantonness, and returned to his comrades.

"The captain will be gratified, Farruco," said he, pushing the Indian's weapons within his sash; "there they all lie, in a heap, the don, the daughter and their young companion, with the Chiricahua who was hired to dog them to the death, slain by our chalky faced long shot here."

"If we cut his throat, Pepillo, then we shall make a clearance of the whole cluster," returned Farruco, complacently, even laying his hand on the buckhorn haft of a knife.

"A word to that! You are always for taking the crowning pleasure of a running down! Am I to have no thanks even for having saved you from running your hasty head against this heretic's gun? A thousand demons shall not rob me of my prey! You have already grabbed his gun! I will have the cutting of his throat."

The silenced object of this very pretty growing dispute looked up calmly, but sufficiently interested, be sure, out of his gray eyes.

"One moment, let us throw dice for the pleasure!"

"Nonsense! We all know the top heaviness of your dice."

The other duly laughed at this allusion to a vantage which is not always accepted as a compliment.

"Let us draw leaves – long or short!"

"I agree, Pepillo; there's a bayonet palm at your elbow."

The Mexican turned to gather a couple of leaves of different length, when the captive saw the face of his comrade shine with a hellish joy. Noiseless he drew out the Indian's tomahawk from his belt and in another second he would have buried it in the back of the unsuspecting bandit. The monstrous fondness for cruelty which impelled this wanton murder was so repugnant to the Englishman that he, bound too tightly for any other movement, rolled himself, by working his elbow and knee, right against the feet thrown forward of the traitor. The shock was not enough to make the blow fully miscarry, but the axe only cleft the wretch's collarbone, glancing the flesh to one side along it on partial withdrawal with an agony imparted which made the recipient yell. He flung himself round, and drawing his knife at the same inappreciable second of time, broke through the other's guard with the hatchet, and buried the blade in his heart so forcibly that the hilt drove his breath out of his lungs with a loud sound. Farruco pitched over upon the Englishman, and died before he had ceased his groan of despair.

The wounded outlaw sat himself down, without any but self-concern, to attend to his wound, to which he applied a dressing of chewed leaves. Then studying the scene, he suddenly became conscious that the movement of the loglike form of the prisoner between his assassin's legs had saved his life, if, always granted, it were a curable wound.

Without a word, like a man who fears to hesitate in his formation of a good but novel whim, lest he revokes its realisation to remain consistent with his daily and worse nature, Pepillo, without wiping the fatal knife, severed the leather thongs around Gladsden.

"One good turn," said he, sententiously, as becomes a Spaniard, but prudently setting his foot on the gun of which the captive was despoiled.

"Yes, he meant to split your skull, that's all," remarked the latter, sitting up and chafing his limbs to restore the circulation. "He was a pirate; and you have only anticipated his suspension at a yardarm."

Pepillo paid no attention to him. He had picked up the Indian's hatchet, and seemed to be regarding with an antiquarian zeal the design traced in an idle moment or two, now and then, with the hunting knife. Then, contracting his brow more in terror than in pain, and turning pale in the same increasing dread rather than from loss of blood, he ejaculated:

"The villain! The assassin! It is a copper bronze hatchet! I am poisoned! I shall die of lockjaw!" Then, noting the incredulous expression of the bystander, who had, however, been sufficiently sympathetic as to rise to his throbbing feet and lean towards the sufferer, "I tell you, Pagan, that the Indian was one of the Apaches Emponzoñadores– the sect of the Poison Hatchets, and I am – the Lord and my patron saint forgive me – a dead man!"

Gladsden looked at the tomahawk, and, after the man's utterance, thought the metal head gave out a sinister gleam. Then, recalling all he ever knew of copper poisoning, he said:

"Let me attend to the cut," in a tone which made the sufferer see that he was taken as the victim of terror rather more than mortal pain.

Still, as the gash was beyond his simple remedy, the Indian cataplasm which should have allayed the fiery feeling which even augmented from the first, Pepillo yielded to his late enemy like a child, with that compliance of the Latin races under mortal injury.

A seafarer knows much about cuts, and so, at the first glance after removing the herb poultice, Gladsden recognised that the cut, clean in infliction, was aggravated shockingly.

"You see!" cried the Mexican, triumphantly, as far as the victory over the other's disbelief was concerned, but with acute agony at his certainty being confirmed; "Am I not a lost man?"

"In that case," replied the Englishman, taking up his gun and charging it methodically out of Farruco's powder horn as the nearest, "I will go and see about the wearer of that woman's dress whom I caught a glimpse of yonder, when you and your mate all but anticipated my shot at that screeching savage."

"Don't leave me!"

"But I must! Gallantry, my dear ex-captor."

"Leave me not!" reiterated Pepillo, who had supported himself with his gun whilst the Englishman had looked at his hurt, "For the sake of my widow and four little ones."

"A bandit with a family," observed Gladsden. "This is curious."

"Yes; who know not of my mode of life," appealed the salteador, falling into a seated position and clasping his hands. "By the rules of our band – for I am one of the Caballeros de la Noche, of Matasiete – all my goods fall in to the gang! But my wife – my Angela! My little ones – my angelitos! Have still more compassion, you greatly noble American of the North, and hear my viva voce testament in their behalf."

"Go on," was the reply. "Considering where the commissioner to take oaths – who is only an Englishman, by the way, and no American of the Northern States – where he has his office opened, and the improbability of his traversing a wilderness of poisonous vermin of all descriptions to file your testament, it is a pure formality. However," he added, the while the dying robber divided his time between a disjointed supplication and wrestlings against a pain that convulsed him severely at intervals more and more closely recurrent, "will away your 'bacca box and your knife and sash. I'll do my best to carry them to the legatees."

"Listen to me," said Pepillo solemnly, and beckoning him to approach. His voice was singular in sound; his features contorted, his clayey, pale face streaming with cold, thick perspiration. "I have not always been a ranger of the prairie. I was a sailor, like you are, as I caught in your speech. Do you know the islands on the other coast of the Gulf of California?"

"I have only sailed round to Guaymas."

"I will draw you the chart. Due north from Cantador Island I have a treasure. Laugh not, raise no brow in derision. In coin, and emeralds, gold, silver, and pearls, I have over a million dollars."

"Nonsense!"

"I am the last of the band of Colonel Dartois the Filibuster, and I tell you I am the sole treasurer of the crew."

The Englishman was not acquainted with that adventurer, of much notoriety in his day on the Pacific Coast, but the tone of the dying man was sincere.

"Be quick, then, thou dying one, to give the clue," said he as if convinced, whether so or not.

CHAPTER IV.
A DESERT MYSTERY

Upon this enjoinder of so eminently practical a nature, and thoroughly aware of the necessity of haste, the fallen Mexican rapidly drew with his ramrod end, upon a space of earth smoothed by his foot in its deerskin boot, like an antique tablet under the stylus, a map – rude, but, to a navigator, plain and ample.

"At this point," said he, "a sunken reef trends north and south, with a break at a little bow a quarter mile from the black rock that juts out all but flush with its ripple. Deep water in 'the pot,' and there we anchored to ride to a submerged buoy, so that the cankerworm would not attack the metal or the borer the wood – a chest, bound with yellow metal. If it shall have broke away, its weight would only have sunk it deep in the oyster bed, all the shells there smashed to powdery scales by the drags. A diver will find it for you, then."

"Now, swear to me!" he went on, forcing his weakening voice to keep an even tenor. "Swear that one-half the contents of that hiding place shall be Ignacio Santamaria's, my brother-in-law's, who will give enough to his sister, my Angela. And the rest – be it yours, brave and Christian heart."

Whether he was only fostering a delusion, or accepting a commission that would enrich him, Gladsden nodded assent.

"But, swear!"

"I give you my word, as an English gentleman," said he, obstinately.

"I am content."

"And what is there stowed there away?" with a smile of his former discredit, "Copper bolts?"

"Pearls! The choicest from Carmen Island to Acapulco."

"Well, that sounds natural enough. The next thing is, where shall I find your brother Ignacio and the rest of the family, Master Pepillo Santamaria?"

Poignant anguish rendered the other unconscious of external matter for a period; he clutched his head with both hands as if to prevent the bones flying asunder, then recovering his senses, as the paroxysm quitted him, he said:

"You have not far to go for my brother. As for the dear ones, they are at the old town of Guaymas. My brother is here – "

"Here! The devil!" looking round and falling on guard.

"At the Mound Tower." He pointed with a wavering finger to the northeast. "Not two hours' ride, our rendezvous – a robber's rendezvous – but have no fear! Ignacio is second of the band, – remember, his sister's fortune is at stake! Call him out from among the crew – the signal, our private signal, two meows of the catamount – Ignacio is known as the Gato de montes, mark! Have mercy! Remember the pearls! My wife – my little angels! Pity!"

Gladsden averted his gaze not to witness an agony which he could not stay relieve or bid cease. When he looked on Pepillo again, he was dead.

As it threatened to come on dark, not only by the disappearance of the sun, but by a storm, which the seaman divined, rather than perceived in progress, he bent a silver coin, so as to make a species of pencil, with the point at the double, and using some cigarette paper, copied off, "in silver point," the map which the dead pirate, cum pearl fisher, plus highwayman, had designed on the ground bedewed with his blood. Whilst so employed, the Englishman repeated to himself, like a scholar beating a lesson into his brain, the instructions connected with this singular testament.

Recalling his intention before the robber's appeal had distracted him, Gladsden, gun in hand, marched with a determination not to be cried "halt!" to again, towards the huge cottonwood stump, by which he marked the scene of the Mexican standing at bay against the Apache.

The latter's remains were there, a fresh made grave (covered with stones and brambles to prevent the attack of the quadrupedal ghouls to which the luckless red man was consigned, in most probability), concealed don José de Miranda from the searcher's eyes. A fragment of Dolores' attire was all that prevented Gladsden from supposing he had been the prey of an illusion as to a woman having also occupied that natural pedestal. To complete the puzzle a spade of North American make was carelessly lying by the fresh mound.

"Hilli-ho! Ahoy there!" cried the Englishman, fortified against fear of the bandits by the claim he had upon the lieutenant of the band, and caring not a jot for Indians or others, since he had his gun in shooting order.

But save the mocking of birds there was no rejoinder.

Afar he heard thunder, though.

"A mound tower must be prominent," he mused, "and this thicket in a torrent rain and a tornado is worse accommodation than the toughest highwayman must accord the bearer of an inheritance. I'll make for the Mound Tower, and implore señor don El Sostenedor, of the most glorious robber chief What's-his-name, for a corner of his stronghold, a chunk of deer's meat, and a swig of pulque."

He returned to the two dead men, loaded his belt with such of their weapons as completed, not to say replete, a portable arsenal, which an Albanian janissary would have envied, and, with the same heedlessness as to southwestern travelling precautions which had heretofore distinguished him, stepped manfully away from the haunt of murder. Ere he had taken half a dozen strides, he heard many a soft padded foot in the bushes; the volunteer sextons of the prairie were flocking to entomb the dead in their unscrupulous maw.

The thunder boomed more audible, and the eagle screamed defiance over the lonely adventurer's head.