THE TWO CAPTAINS OF THE "GOLETA."
Whilst señora Bustamente was formally taking some refreshment, Gladsden summoned Ignacio.
"Lieutenant," said he, sternly, "it is a honour for me to have Madam Vázquez, the bride of Benito Vázquez, the pearl diver, to present to you."
Ignacio bowed, and darted from his widely distended eyes an enormous show of admiration at the young Mexican.
"The famous pearl fisher," murmured he; "the take will be rare and splendid now."
"This lady," continued the master, "is our passenger, you are answerable for her being treated with the utmost deference, and the greatest attention by all the crew. We'll fashion a cabin for her hereabouts. All the men are forbidden to enter here under any pretence whatever. Do'ye hear, Master Ignacio?"
"Yes."
"Then what the mischief are you staring for?"
"Ha, Señora Vázquez?" he repeated. "Surely I behold with admiration dazed eyes the incomparable daughter of the martial hacendero, don José de Miranda."
"Eh! How now, what do you know of the lady?"
"Only that she was the chosen bride of his Excellency, don Aníbal Cristobal."
"Eh? Why, of course!"
"And that illustrious scoundrel," went on the late lieutenant of banditti, with a refreshing air of morality, "after having had the poor don tracked to his death by the venomous Apache, to whom I owe my brother's loss—one to him! A thousand devils pull at him—the captain not my lamented Pepillo—after all that show of hatred to him who took the lady out of his clutches, don Aníbal will not allow the double removal unimpeded, I'll wager you a thousand ounces against one poor, old, worn dollar, of the señorita and his dear Burlonilla."
"Indeed! We'll see about that."
The speaker marked a curious mixture of fear and doubt flit across the visage of Ignacio.
Benito, seeing that he was only in the way of his young wife's settling down in her new home, and having some neglected preparations to make ashore, proposed a hasty return thither.
The captain all the less reluctantly coincided with his expressed intention, as he had a confidential message to transmit to the British vice-consul—a young Jewish gentleman on whom he believed he could rely in such an emergency as impended.
In Benito's absence, captain Gladsden took further precautions. Disliking a budding smile on the phiz of Ignacio, he ordered him below, placing Bristol Jem at the head of affairs in his stead, and charged the carpenter to hurry on his woodwork. The rest of the time was given up to completing the readiness to start.
Going on 3 p.m. the Englishman was walking the deck under an umbrella, when he perceived a boat pushing off from the wharf. It could not be Benito, in this huge shallow punt, impelled by eight oars, in the bow of which six armed men in uniform were standing, while at the stern were seated two persons in gay array.
One was a stout dame, extravagantly caparisoned; the other, a tall man in almost as brilliant and absurd an attire. The latter was not altogether unfamiliar to the captain, and he smiled in anticipation of the affair to be communicated.
Whilst the heavily laden embarkation bore down upon the cutter with a leisure which was insulting, Gladsden ordered his ensign to be dipped three times. Immediately he had the satisfaction of perceiving the flag of the British consul execute the same movement. Benito had, therefore, delivered his message, to which this courtesy was an acknowledgment.
Gladsden went below, and approaching the bulkhead, behind which doña Dolores was ensconced, whispered to her:
"Lady! I have reason to suppose that a boat is coming hither with persons on board whose intention is to seize on you and take you to land in the absence of your husband. Now, you need not worry yourself. Don't show any tokens of being here. I have answered for your protection to don Benito, and I know quite how to take care of you, as well as my craft, against all the desperadoes in the Intendencia of all Sonora."
"Oh, do so, sir!" returned the young lady, a prey to deep emotion, spite of the Englishman's confident and jesting accent, "And we shall bless you! Out of the little window I, too, have espied the skiff coming; and I have recognised my aunt and the pretender to my hand. I would rather die than fall into their hands! Oh, why—oh, why is not Benito here?"
"Don't be under any uneasiness," reiterated the other; "I shall keep my pledge to your husband. Only, I say again, keep perdue, and do not reveal your presence by any noise."
"I promise to obey you, sir Captain. You are a really good man! Heaven will benefit you for the protection you accord me. I shall go on praying for you and myself!"
"Very well; so pluck up, Señorita, and soon the fun will be over!"
He remounted to the deck. He glanced over the bay, and went to the stem with his marine glass, looking over the oncoming "scow" contemptuously to view the shore near the consul's habitation. A longboat, manned by twelve oarsmen, and carrying the English flag at the stern, was seen to quit the pier and steer for the Burlonilla, making good time.
The port was "getting lively."
Though things were going on nicely enough, Gladsden did not mean to be taken unawares, and, not to be blamed for neglecting to take any precaution, he had a cutlass and a brace of boarding pistols laid handily on the sliding cover of the companionway. In those waters one never knows how matters may turn out, and, to prevent the turning out being unpleasant, a man is easiest when thoroughly on his guard.
Though the English representative's boat had left the shore some time after the native one, it was not slow in overhauling it, outstripping it without deigning to hail it or otherwise notice it, and ran alongside the Little Joker on the seaward side, while the other boat was rather far away.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Lyons," said Gladsden, receiving the deputy-consul, warmly.
"Yes, here I am, Captain. You can do anything you like with me, you know. Only, as your messenger was in a hurry to be off, I am very little informed upon passing matters, and I may be able to act better in your interest if you acquaint me how things stand and move."
Gladsden briefly told the story.
"Is that all!" exclaimed deputy-consul Lyons, laughing finely, as Jews do. "Don't you be alarmed, but let me deal with this fellow. The friend of don Stefano must be a suspicious character, and that he is the chief of the in-country night marchers, and also the doer of little piracies with this same brigantine does not, therefore, startle me. But your visitors are hailing you. You might receive them with that bulldog sweetness of demeanour which characterise us British," he went on, smiling shyly. "Before all, put away those weapons, quite useless. The affair will finish with more of a display of brass than steel or lead."
"I will hope so, though it's a thing of indifference," replied the master of the Little Joker. "Anyway, I rely on you."
"That's the best."
So the cabin boy removed the weapons, while his captain, accompanied by the British sub-consul, strode to the gangway thrown open in the low waist, arriving just in time to offer his hand to the lady passenger of the shallop. Behind her the drolly accoutred sham Chilian commodore scrambled aboard.
Doña Josefa de Miranda was of elephantine form, with her hair, neck, ears, and arms literally laden with gems, gold eagles, and Mexican coins, pierced and strung in the shape of collars and bracelets. A thousand dollar China crape shawl showed all its florid pattern in embroidery, spread on her broad shoulder. A figured muslin dress, much too short, was caught in at what she probably flattered herself was a waist, by a sash sprinkled with precious stones. A profusion of costly rings shone on her gloved hands. It was manifest that don José de Miranda in his flight had left some valuables which his kinswoman had forestalled the executors in securing.
Nothing could be more repulsive in its uncomeliness than the swarthy lineaments of this corpulent being, whose carping physiognomy and small glistening coffee coloured eyes wore an expression of indescribable spitefulness.
Close to her escort, captain Gladsden undoubtedly recognised the scarred hook nose, hatchet face, and lank figure of his gambling opponent. It was the same grotesque uniform which had been donned to astonish the natives at the supper table of don Stefano.
When this precious pair came in upon the deck of the Little Joker, the armed men attempted to follow. But Mr. Holdfast—whose enforced stay in the fort, penniless, scornfully used by the Guaymasians, had filled him with terrible detestation of all Mexicans in general, and Western ones in particular—gleefully obeyed his orders by bidding them keep their distance. At once the corporal seemed indisposed to bow to this injunction, and seized the Turk's head at the end of the rope guard of the gangplank, thus railed to assist the lady, the first officer, without losing an atom of his habitual coolness, shoved the skiff head off so roughly with his foot as to make the soldier lose his balance and fall between the two gunnels into the water. This, to the laughter of the seamen, who cherish an animosity towards soldiers, and, furthermore, against the armed police, always seeking an excuse to be manifested. Luckily, the soldier had kept his hold of the main ropes, and hung long enough to be lifted up into the boat to the disapproval, if a certain splash of a tail in the water not remote, signified anything, of a shark which had immediately prepared to sup on him instead of the cook's waste.
Meanwhile, without deigning to attach the least interest to this suggestive episode, the massive dame, giving the new master of the brigantine a lofty look, used her most cutting tone to demand, haughtily, if she were addressing the commander of the bark.
"Yes, madam," replied Gladsden, bowing stiffly, "for which recent coming into possession I am happy, because it procures me the honour of receiving on my deck as weighty a personage as your ladyship appears to be. To whom have I the favour of speaking?"
The proud woman announced herself, sonorously, as "Doña Maria Josefa Dolores Miranda y Pedrosa y Saltabadil de la Cruz de Carbaneillo y Merlusa." The hearer bowed deeply at each bead on the string, darting a look aslant as if he feared the little brigantine was rather top-heavy with all these names. Then she pointed to her companion, who had been eyeing the ship's new crew with an annoyed face which was diverting enough to anyone in the secret of his interest, like an exhibition of a curious wild beast.
"This is—for you need save yourself the trouble to name an old acquaintance—Don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro Almagro de Cortes," took up the gibing captain, with a wink for the consulary assistant. "It is rather crushing, besides, your ladyship, to have here a descendant of three of the conquerors."
Don Aníbal was curling his moustache to keep his countenance. His native impudence was oozing out at every pore.
"This gentleman," proceeded the important lady, "is my son-in-law, hence his accompanying me."
"Your daughter must be a happy woman to be the mate of so brilliant an officer, an admiral, at least, I suppose?"
"Well, the alliance will not come off for a little spell, within these four-and-twenty hours, sir. To conduce to that beneficent result, you see me here."
"I am fully aware, Señorita," returned Gladsden, getting tired of keeping up the chaff, "that I would never have boasted the possession of this craft but for don Aníbal, but, in compensation, I hardly believe he comes to me to be furnished with a wife, unfortunately, unless it be the gunner's daughter, to which alliance he is heartily welcome to my consent. I am afraid he will go away a bachelor for all the marriageable young ladies here."
It is lamentable to record that the sailors, who had been bandying verbal bonbons with the soldiers, chafing on the shallop, raised a laugh at the expense of Don Aníbal, who perfectly well understood, in his other part of pirate, that to marry the gunner's daughter, is to be bound, face down, on a cannon and there undergo a flogging. So he drew himself up with a savage gleam in the eyes:
"Mind what you say, or I will have you to know that I am very rich, and otherwise of good position. It will be easy for me to make you repent any insolence to me or my friend. So, take my caution for it, you had better be respectful, and not forget whom you are addressing."
Gladsden slapped the Panama on his head which he had so far held in hand.
"If it comes to that, ma'am," he said, "you must allow me to remark, with all the respect that you claim, and which I will show you inasmuch as you are of the gentle sex, and for that reason solely, that you are labouring under an error. You don't seem fairly to know whom you are talking to! I am the captain and owner of this goleta, and, moreover, I am a foreigner. My deck is the same thing as a piece of the country under the colours of which I sail. However grand you may be over there, on land, your power falls pretty flat on these planks. I have the honour to present to you the deputy of Her Britannic Majesty's Consul who will bear me out in my observation."
CHAPTER XII.
THE ROUT COMPLETE.
At this declaration of the modern "Ego civis Romanus," captain Matasiete rather stepped behind the woman than otherwise, as a wary warrior chooses a cotton bale for breastwork when bullets are likely to fly.
"Tut, tut, tut! What is all this farrago to me? In plain words, I come for my daughter whom you took off shore and have on this, I am afraid, piratical craft. I summon you to restore my child straightway, or I'll give you a tough bird to pick!"
Gladsden impudently looked from her to the salteador and then back again, as if he were in doubt which was "the old bird" she offered for plucking.
"And you will have me to deal with my fresh hand at ship ruling, Señor," cried don Aníbal at last, having edged over, to the gangway, and seeing the skiff drawn near enough for the soldiers, eager for the fray under the taunts of the seamen, to haply clamber on board to his aid.
The boatmen, whom he knew something of, and who might have numbered more than one of the former crew of the Little Joker, could be relied on to back up the musketeers, he believed.
"My young Captain, if you play the resistant, hang me if I shall not bring you to reason and decorate a shark's tooth with fragments of your hide! Even yet, you do not know of what I am capable! Rayo de Dios. Mind yourself! Patience is not one of my virtues!"
The consul intimated to Gladsden that there was no necessity of an outbreak of temper, as, while the brigantine's crew could lay out the soldiers comfortably in a twinkling, his own boat's crew could eat up the skiff's propelling force without salt.
"Will you answer me, sir," resumed the stout lady.
"Señorita," Gladsden responded, with all the self-possession possible, "I do not know what you are driving at. I have nothing to do with your bucket of tar—I mean your family affairs, and I do not want to dip into it. If your kinswoman has left your agreeable society, I daresay she had her grounds of action. It is no lookout of mine, and I shall keep my fingers clear of it, I tell you. Whether you go around rummaging for her or not, I shall pay no heed, so long as you do not flounce about my ship, hardly of your burthen for such carasolling, telling me your troubles. As for this gentleman," he went on, spinning round so fiercely on Master Matasiete, with the new log line of nominatives, "I warn him charitably that if he does not stick his long cabbage cutter between his legs and scuttle off instanter, I will hurl him, his names and titles, his long nose and long moustache, clean over the side to regale the harbour scavenger. This little programme being clearly laid down, I rather think you twain had better drop back into your boat."
He thereupon turned his back on my lady as if to give his men the order. She retreated a step, but, turning as red in the gills as a turkey-cock, blurted out—
"Stay, stay, master Captain. You shall not slide out of it thus. I have an order of the secretary of the colonel governor to take my dear child back from any place whatever."
"Suppose you are good enough to let me inspect this warrant, madam?" said Mr. Lyons, quietly.
"I have no objections. You are not a boor. Your residence here has civilised you. Is it not perfectly in order?"
"Beautifully inscribed, madam," replied the pro-consul; "only that writ does not run here!"
"Why not, pray?" she exclaimed, haughtily, bridling up at the implied slight to Mexico.
"Simply because the Port Governor himself has no right to issue search warrants for foreign vessels, even though the application is backed up by so noted a banker as don Stefano Garcia. In the first place, your complaint ought to have been laid before me—from the moment an Englishman is accused. I would have then opened an inquiry, and if it appeared proper that the British shipping in port should be examined I would have so advised Colonel Fontoro, and my chancellor would have been charged to accompany you in the investigation. I do not say that, on account of the somewhat slow movements of that peculiar creature, the 'red tape worm,'" he added, smiling softly, "all these indispensable regulations would not have tried your ladyship's patience, but, I believe, our office is credited with more celerity than your own government houses. At all events, as the forms have been ignored, this order has no value. I also think you had better retire, for this captain, as he notified you very kindly, has the right to tumble you neck and crop over the board, and what little I know of him makes it certain that he will not hesitate to carry out his warning if either of you continue obstinately to stay here contrary to his will!"
It is impossible to depict the rage which swayed the stout woman as she heard this speech, in a firm voice and peremptory tone. She flew out against the speaker, the captain and all the grinning crew, to the Chinese cook and cabin boy themselves, with all the strongest insults and threats in her resonant Castilian tongue, to which had been added the native additions not found in dictionaries of the Spanish Academy, which glanced off blunted from the frigid Englishman, however.
The prudent captain of salteadores and pirates, as the case might be, took care not to intervene while under don Jorge Federico's eye. His own wandered after he had secured an open way to retreat, and he managed, unseen by the others, to exchange a glance with Ignacio, whose head just peeped up out of the fore hatch, where he was ensconced.
"This is all very well," cried the enormous virago at last, "I do withdraw because you are all in the plot against me, and I have no power, poor little weak woman (afeniquita) that I am to enforce my rights! But I'll spend half my fortune to punish this outrage. Oh, that the guns of the island would blow you over the little stars if you seek to escape me. We shall meet again, you puppy; come, Don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro y Amalgro de Cortes, follow me. I have taken a vow that you shall be my son-in-law; and you shall wear that title though it cost me my own name."
"You are not likely to lose yours by marriage," observed Mr. Gladsden, accompanying her to the side opening. "At least, I'll back that opinion roundly."
"Vulgar buffoon!" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders till her jewels jingled like a head mule's bells. "Come, dear Don Aníbal; let us leave this Indian canoe. I repeat that you shall be the husband of my daughter."
The Mexican had stepped into the boat, spite of the rule to give place to the dame, and omitted to offer his hand, as a fresh arrival shocked his sight. It was Benito Vázquez Bustamente, coming off with his baggage in a shore boat, managed by a couple of Indians, one young enough to be the grandchild of the other. Both had those bloodshot eyes which are the living tokens of a life as a pearl diver.
"You may bestow your daughter on whom you like," interposed the young Mexican, at one spring impatiently clearing the shallop and the ducking heads of the startled soldiers, and alighting between the robber captain and that of the Burlonilla, who seemed about to step into the flat boat and cuff the Mexican even there. "But doña Dolores is only your niece, and you lie after the most shameful pattern when you pretend to the honour of being her mother."
This unexpected address so dumbfounded the huge señora, that she almost fell back upon the soldier, and would have done so only that the prick of a bayonet, "peaking up," broke into her absence of mind, due to the consternation.
Amid a roar of laughter as she floundered upon the nearly crushed soldier, trying to right her upon her feet, the shallop was pushed off, and the Indians of Benito aiding the movement and from it glancing to the brigantine's side, their little boat took its place, and began to discharge the baggage which the pearl diver had collected to make his wife's voyage more comfortable.
A little while after the deputy-consul, thanked warmly by all parties concerned, entered his longboat, and was rapidly transported to land, even before the infuriated don Aníbal and the lady whom he had so feebly cavaliered arrived at the pier side. It seemed to him, as he glanced amusedly into it, that a strange face had been added to the crew, but his attention was immediately diverted by smoke beyond the breakwater, denoting the coming of a steamer, and he forbore to increase the humiliation of the two Mexicans by dwelling on them.
Not a quarter of an hour afterwards, as the steamer was signalled, and showing her private emblem, was telegraphed to don Stefano Garcia as the Casta Susana, of Acapulco, direct from the Sandwich Islands, consigned to him, the goleta left the port, speeding under all sail, right through the steamer's trailing smoke.
For one second this vapour eclipsed the Burlonilla, which seeing, Matasiete standing on the pier head beside the baffled señora Maria Josefa, remarked:
"There is nothing under canvas that can take that craft; but I will have a try at it with steam. Will you come?"
"Anywhere!" cried the vindictive sister of don José de Miranda, "Anywhere, if revenge only flourishes there."
"I think," muttered Ignacio to himself behind this worthy pair, "that don Jorge Federico had far better have left me first officer of the Burlonilla. At the same rank on board of the Casta Susana, methinks I shall handle my brother's pearls before he does."
CHAPTER XIII.
INTERVENTION.
The Burlonilla proved herself commendably swift. Had she been even a faster sailer, captain Gladsden would have never dreamt of going out to sea with a view of eluding anyone curious about the movements of the eccentric young Englishman, after the disappearance of Ignacio being reported to him. Search high and low, not a trace of the rogue. Spite of the sharks at Guaymas, capitán don Jorge was so convinced that the lieutenant of bandoleros was inevitably fated to adorn the gallows, that he believed the rogue had reached land, or, as the vice-consul could have given him a pointer, been taken into the scow of his famous colleagues.
Without being aware that the steamer was at the command of those who could be accounted his enemies, and would be sent in pursuit, or, rather better to say, since Ignacio was the pilot, would strive to anticipate him, the captain made all haste for the spot indicated on Pepillo's plans.
Since Ignacio had but a vague surmise to go upon, the Burlonilla passed Point St. Miguel without anything hostile arising, and soon cast anchor at the second of the islets, in a chain which were named after the knots in the rope girdle of St. Francis. But the seafarers, men supremely practical, who do not fetch their similes from afar, had also preferred to take the protuberances for a likeness to the knots in a logline, call them, Las Señales de la Cordonera de San Francisco. The good mission priests might protest, but the laws of the Medes and Persians are easily effaceable as compared with a name down on a sea chart.
Between the mainland, where a dreary haze hinted of the smoke of sleeping volcanoes in the rocky ridge of the peninsula of old California, and the string of isles, the brigantine was made secure by stem and stern.
The mainland was rugged, and apparently admirably abundant with vegetation.
There were giant palmettos tossing their feathery tops to every cat's-paw, in isolated clumps, among a verdant screen of varied trees.
Alas, for the trickiness of Dame Nature. That luxuriance was superficial, the verdancy that of worthless shrubs, cactus, and prickly pear, briar, vine and beach, plum, thorn apple and Dead Sea fruit. Behind that illusive foliage, sand, lava, stones, dust, formed the melancholy waste in which the scanty, wild creatures live in perpetual madness, induced by chronic thirst. Without irrigation, Lower California is an Arabia Petrae.
But as Gladsden had no intention to settle, he was content with the alluring, if deceptive, face of the country.
The first real annoyance was to find a small colony of Indian mongrels, painfully carrying on the re-raking up of the shells of the abandoned pearl fishery grounds. Their huts were picturesquely perched on rocks, the leafy roofs ornamented with gallinasos, fowls, more than half wild, which indolently hunted for food in the natural thatch of palm and brush. These born pearl fishers had been there so long, that they had laid out little gardens for ground and bush, fruit and vegetables, defended by live cactus. Above patches of sugarcane glowed the golden globes of orange and citron, amid deep green leaves.
As don Jorge Federico de Gladsden had come, not to scrape oyster shells, but to haul up a mass of pearls in a submerged box without desiring prying eyes to witness the operation, he allowed Benito to get the observers out of the way by simply hiring the whole settlement to go fishing at another point of the broken reef. From the brigantine they could be seen, without their being able to watch the peculiar fishing in which her crew were about to engage.
Fishing for pearls is a much more dangerous and difficult operation than is generally supposed.
Each of the several piraguas, or pirogues, or dugout canoes, as you please, had two men, stripped for diving, save an apology for bathing drawers, girded on by a rope. This retains to the left side a leather sheath for a heavy knife, not less than eighteen inches long and three fingers wide, sharp as a razor, intended to battle with the sharks and stripe backs, pez manta, a kind of galvanic ray of which the mere contact paralyses the victim.
The worst kind of shark, the tintorera, that is to say, "the dyer," promenades the Pacific where human beings congregate, and comes up the Gulf. One of the headlands on the east coast is named after this terror of the pearl divers. The tintorera owes its cognomen to a singular peculiarity, which reveals his presence providentially to afar off. Pores around his muzzle exude a luminous, gluey matter, which spreads over the entire body and gives him a glowworm like effulgence. Over and above this, the animal is next to blind, and consequently cannot go by sight alone to any point desirable. While, too, other sharks, to seize their prey, simply turn over on their sides, señor el Tintorera has to roll belly up completely.
When there are any such squaloid around the fishing place, no day passes without there being "knots to untie," between the divers and the tintoreras, as well as the pez mantas, and, almost always, the men only cut clear after horrible struggles.
When the diver takes his "header," his fellow paddles the skiff forward so as to accompany the plunger's diagonal immersion, whilst his rise is, on the contrary, vertical. This is done to pick up the swimmer at the very identical instant of his reaching the surface, his left arm laden with oysters and his lungs eager to catch air. Then he climbs in, takes the paddle, and manages similarly whilst his mate does the diving.
Good divers go very deep, the most famous can touch bottom at twelve and even fifteen fathoms, and can stay under for seven or nine minutes, but these are rare, the majority not surpassing four and five minutes, which is very pretty. The mated divers keep on by turns until they have brought up the requisite quantity of oysters. Their gains are miserable, and those whom captain Gladsden engaged were delighted to get a dollar a dozen. Many a shell has to be opened before any pearls are found; ten or twelve per cent is a good proportion for the enriched ones, and then again, many pearls are far from valuable. The basis of the estimation is the orient, as much as to say the lustre of the concentric layers, the "water," the roundness, and the size. Those worth a couple of thousand dollars are found on the South American coast, and still more seldom in "the Sea of Cortes," where we now are.
Whilst the hired Indians were engaged at this submarine toil, Benito and the two red men, old acquaintances of his, who would not have engaged themselves to another master, were searching the water at the side of the brigantine first, and latter, farther and farther away, accompanied by the yawl, two men pulling so that the two red men could rest calmly till they relieved the Mexican at the watery work.
For a time there was a growing belief that Ignacio's brother had lied, or that the chest had been burst by the waters churned up by the temporal, as is named the terrible wind, the West Coast counterpart for "the Norther" of Texas, or, at the best, moved it away into deep water. But Benito and his copper acolytes were expert in judging the aquatic "signs," and soon pronounced that the bluish tint that denoted a pearl oyster bed, showed a bright bar from a break in its continuity. The chest had dragged, but was not lost. Within an hour, all three divers being down at once, the old Indian came up and uttered a joyous shout on expelling his breath. He had a fragment of tarry rope. Next, Benito struck the trail, and came up crying, as soon as he could speak, that he had discovered the chest, the buoys had been eaten away by marine creatures on the tooth of time, and the treasure coffer had sunk, crushing into an oyster bed. The wounded oysters had exuded their pearly fluid and coated the strange object beautifully, and the shellfish had settled on it, but there it was in its lustrous and lovely mantle.
The yawl returned to the brigantine with this good news. It was coming on dark, so that nothing could be done till morning, but make ready a drag and hauling and lifting tackle, the hooks of which the chief diver and his aides undertook to attach, as confidently as others would work on dry land in open air.
Doña Dolores, whom, as a young bride, her husband had allowed to indulge in all her caprices—and heaven knows a Mexican girl, liberated by wedlock, so to say, paradoxically, has an infinity of tastes to gratify—had indulged in too much sweetmeat to have been a good sailor. As a consequence she was glad of the suggestion of Gladsden that, during the anchorage, she should remain on shore in the best hut of the little settlement. With the things landed from the Burlonilla the haquel (little hut) was made tolerable lodgings—a relief to the confinement of the brigantine's cabin.
The night was lovely, after a glorious sunset, when the reflections of the sublime play of orange and vermilion suggested why the early navigators were led to call those upper waters of the Gulf the Red Sea (Mar Rojo), rather than because the united streams of the Gila and Colorado pours, dyed with iron and copper, into the clearer blue.
In the deep, deep sky the stars glittered like diamonds of more than mortal polish. There was a mingling of air off the peninsula fragrant with wild flowers, of air off the Gulf, of tempered briny billows bumping the rocks of Cape St. Lucas, and of hot, dry breath from the mainland, rich with a honey like sweetness that cloyed. All was still, all was lonely, and the sole cry, at long intervals, was that of the lean coyote, stealing over the sands and mingling his starlight shadow with those of the giant cacti, shaped like colossal men brandishing maces and clubs, as he curiously regarded the brigantine. If a slight breeze ran along the shore it almost musically clattered the oysters clustered on rushes and mangroves, standing part submerged. Behind them the mesquite and acacia, and back of all the sparse woods on the rising slope: beyond that peaks well apart.
Once in the night watch the lookout reported a red fire gleam southwards like a fallen star quenching itself in the Gulf, and twice smoke was espied in the same quarter.
They knew it not, but it was Matasiete, after a search of San Luis Gonzales Bay by daytime, pushing the steamer into the shoals around the Islands of San Luis and Cantador. The double incentives of revenge and greed made the amphibious rascal excessively daring.
In the morning, therefore, Gladsden coming on deck early to have a tub in the brackish water drawn for his ultra-English custom, himself beheld the chaste Susana, full steam on, steering for the knots of the log line of St. Francis, and, logically, for himself.
It would have been hard to lose the prize just when he had verified its existence, as well as one may believe in a pig—we mean a pearl in a poke.
The Burlonilla floated two guns and a swivel, and no deficiency of small arms. The steamer had four ports, and canvas covered objects, one at bow and one at stern, were no doubt the complement of her armament. She came down to within two cables' length of the anchorage of the goleta, blowing off steam noisily, not to say threateningly, and there let her both bower chains run out. A kedge and hawser, let from the stern, enabled her numerous crew to moor her so that her broadside overawed the little brigantine. Before this manoeuvre, Gladsden was fain to believe it was only one of the smugglers which often run up the Gulf and await the result of the negotiation of the consignees and the port officers before returning to Guaymas or elsewhere, and discharging a cargo on which, thus, the Exchequer of Mexico is neatly defrauded and the public deficit is kept from lessening.
With his glass captain Gladsden had recognised as the officer on the steamer deck none other than the double traitor Ignacio. It needed nothing more to understand that the newcomer would stick at nothing on this desolate coast where the ship duel would have no seconds or interferers.
He was ordering Mr. Holdfast, after having pointed out the Mexican to him, to hurry all hands over breakfast with a little intimation that some of them would dine in paradise if they did not beat off the unwelcome visitor.
Suddenly the old Indian tutor and friend of Benito pointed shoreward. The canoe of the pearl diver was putting off with him and doña Dolores. Instantly, being a little nearer, and seeing the same sight, there was a bustle on the quarterdeck of the Susana, and there appeared in gorgeous array, even eclipsing that of the Chilian representative in which he had last been admired, the celebrated don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HAUL OF MILLIONS.
Soon a cutter was lowered, in which the Mexican got, with the radiant Ignacio as his coxswain, and four oarsmen, while the moment it started in pursuit, or as matters stood then, for the encounter of Benito's little piragua, doña Maria Josefa de Miranda hoisted herself up the stairs and lumbered to the side of the steamer to gloat over the proceeding.
Gladsden saw that, though he had a boat got ready, the canoe must be met before he could intervene, to say nothing of the probability of a volley from the bow of the Casta Susana checking his attempt in mid career. If, besides, the pearl diver ran himself ashore, encumbered with the young lady, he was almost sure to fall among the mesquite brush under the pistols of the salteador and his lieutenant.
It was no question till the young Mexican and his wife were out of peril, of attacking the formidable steamer.
Benito's red ally, who had whispered to his grandson and drawn a nod of comprehension from the latter, had stripped himself, as did the youth, for diving. All other eves were on the chase. They slipped over the low board unnoticed, opposite the Casta Susana, and as silently took to the water and swam away. It looked as if they deemed the impending combat hopeless, and, like the rat, quitted the surely defeated ship.
In the meantime, poor Benito, recognising with whom he had to deal, was plying the paddle manfully, whilst Dolores, falling on her knees in the canoe, set ardently to praying, her hands clasped, and her eyes on the profound sky. All at once, without giving a warning to the girl, so that she was shaken in her devotions, Benito turned the pirogue somewhat, evaded the Susamalis boat, and went straight to a little rocky islet of some height, well covered with rushes and other vegetation. It would mask him from the Casta Susana's crew, though leaving that vessel between him and his friends. Possibly, he had no other aim than to deposit Dolores thereon, and stand in defence of her against all comers.
The Mexicans began to cheer their captain, whose boat, clumsily turned, resumed the hunt.
Very little could be seen now of the chase from the low-lying goleta, and though Gladsden recklessly climbed up the rigging to get a view over the thronged deck of the steamer, soon the piragua and the cutter were veiled by the islet from all the spectators, friends and foes.
"Every man to the boats!" cried the Englishman. "Arm to the teeth, and, cook, all the matches and tar; we'll board that beast of a smoky tub," appealing to the seamen's hatred of a steamer to fire their energy, "take her or leave her a prey to the flames! Every man, active and idlers, away!"
There was, indeed, a very fair prospect of the Casta Susana being taken by surprise, so enwrapt was the attention of all the people of the Mexican, taking the cue of doña Maria Josefa, with interest and anxiety.
But the coup de main never came off. Halfway to the target, Gladsden was startled to see her, previously riding, doubly secured, so stiffly, nod, and begin to rock, then cant at such an incline whilst settling down slowly, as to cause the Mexicans to catch hold of every near object.
A great outcry arose.
It was repeated with anguish, as the careering continued as if a giant hand was rolling her over. Then the black faces of the stokers and engineer were seen as they came climbing up on deck to add themselves to the no less terrified crew. The steamer's deck was at a slope of forty-five, everybody clinging to the uppermost gunwale, save the unlucky ones who had rolled to the down scuppers, in among the rubbish which a Mexican captain allows to encumber his upper planks. The swaying cannon above threatened to break loose and crush these struggling wretches to marmalade, whilst their vis-à-vis, bursting the port lids, ran out to the carriages and kissed the agitated water. Poor Maria Josefa, grasping a sailor round the body whilst he hung on the taut guy of the reeling smoke pipe, hovered over the knot of writhing, fighting men trying to get a footing on a surface every moment changing its centre of gravity.
At that direful instant the boat of Gladsden was slightly pulled down on the opposite side to the steamer, and two dark heads succeeded two pair of red arms, abruptly seizing the gunwale by chin and hands. In the mouths of both were the formidable navajas, "gapped" by recent rough usage and pointless.
"You, Diego? And young Diego?" cried the captain, assisting them on board.
"Yes; you see um steamer go down, and you see um pirates go up pretty soon dam quick! Old Diego and young Diego play swordfish—we scuttle the steamer, see?"
In fact an ominous hissing seemed to indicate that the water rising within the steamer, well on her side now, was menacing a blow up of the boilers. The engineer and his mate fully foresaw this, and were scrambling into a boat, jammed of its fall in the blocks.
"Heaven guard us!" was the shout on the ill-fated steamer. Some forty men were seen preparing to launch the boats, or even leap into the water, when a louder scream, though from one pair of lungs, was audible over the clamour. Doña Maria Josefa, with the sailor on whom she would not relax her grasp, had rolled like a ball across the perpendicular decks, bounded over the bulwarks, now washed by the water, and splashed out of sight.
As if her plunge had been arranged for the eliciting of a salute, pistol shots from the rock islet announced that the pirates and Benito were at firing range.
There was chaos.
The hissing steam, the splitting vessel, the straining yards and masts, the knocking about of everything loose within the half-flooded hull, the exclamations of the men in the water, some of whom mounted on the drift, shouted out "shark!" no pen can do justice to, and to the critical situation which doña Maria was the most prominent object, the centre, the feminine hub of a wheel of frantic men.
The Englishman took the only course, however risky, towards desperadoes who might not appreciate humanity. He rowed to the spot, reached the centre, and after nearly capsizing the boat, dragged the woman safe to the stern sheets. The heavy mass lay there, inert as a stranded porpoise.
Shrieks, and the disappearance of men in the water, of whom no further traces were yielded up but the ruddy bubbles which marked a shark's wake, incited the Burlonilla's crew to greater speed in their rescue. But they would have been swamped by the concourse of frightened men, whom not even the presentation of a cutlass or loaded pistol kept off; luckily the steamer had finished her going down, having attained the level which was her altered draught, while the compressed air buoyed her. The Mexicans, seeing her deck become almost level, climbed upon her in dread of the tintorera. Gladsden left these to count their missing, whilst he conveyed his cargo, as prisoners, to his vessel, where they were secured. He had the swivel trained for precaution on the unfortunate Casta Susana, smokeless, fireless, waterlogged, and retraced his course with a circuit to avoid the disabled foes, so as to bear the too long delayed succour to his young friends.
Benito had run the canoe up a little cleft in the rocks, shoaled her on a stretch of sand, taken out Dolores and placed her in a grotto. Before her he rolled a stone, as a breakwater, gave her his revolver, and stood on guard only with the pearl diver's knife, which, however, he well knew how to swing and thrust, as well as cast—a siring enabling this latter trick to be executed without the knife being lost.
Urged madly on by Matasiete, the noise on the other side of the islet on his ship puzzling him, and giving him an earnest desire to wipe out the present vexation and return to his post, the boat stove itself on the rock. The water was not deep, the men could leap from stone to stone or wade. The waders, two in number, trod on a stingray or an electric fish, for they were heard to groan and seen to fall palsied in their tracks.
The rest confronted Benito. He drew their fire, expressly to prevent a shot being directed at his wife, and then met their charge in a mass. As the mob enveloped him, Dolores fired the revolver twice, more at random than with careful aim. One shot told, for a seaman left the struggle to go on of itself, whilst he reeled aloof, and tumbled off the rock into the water. Two more Benito gave a quantum of steel to Ignacio and his commander were left alone to quell the dangerous young Mexican. So far they had not been able to use their firearms without the hazard of injuring their own. They drew off to fire with deliberation, when the young wife, whose head had cleared after her first shot, and who was made a heroine by seeing that the life of her beloved perhaps rested on the true flight of the little globes of lead in the revolver, let fly at Ignacio, whose backbone was broken by the two shots. As he fell in a heap, the salteador chief, aghast at being so quickly placed solitary before his foeman, wheeled round and fired at the smoke oozing out of the young woman's cave. She screamed, for a fragment of stone, cut off by the bullet, had fallen on her neck, and she believed she was killed, supporting the delusion by swooning away. Receiving no reply, therefore, to his heartrending call, Benito flew at the murderer with so awful a countenance and so menacing a flourish of the blood-smeared knife, that Matasiete did not pause to try to raise his name to Mata-ocho, "the slayer of eight." He backed, and then plunged into the bush.
"¡Hola, cobarde!" cried Benito, but the other made no reply.
There was a crashing of the bush wood, a splash, and all was silence. The young Mexican heard his name behind him in a faint voice, and renouncing vengeance at the appeal of love, went quickly to his wife. Dame Dolores required nothing but his presence as a proof of his safety to be recovered of her fright.
After making certain that the assailants were incapable of mischief, the two who had been stunned by the fish surrendering with as much alacrity as their confused senses permitted, the couple had the satisfaction of being hailed from the boat of Gladsden.
It is regrettable to say that the latter, in his concentration of thoughts upon the rescue of his friends, was deaf to his oarsmen beguiling the time as they shot by the wreck, by supplying the words to the notes of the key bugle in the hands of their shipkeeper. He was playing a song popular at the period of the outbreak of the Gold Fever in California, of which the chorus runs someway thus—applicably, the singers fancied, to the situation:
"Oh, oh, Susannah! don't you cry for me. I'm going to Califomy with my washbowl on my knee."
The young couple were gaily taken off the islet, though the two Mexicans were left there to regain their clearness of wits, whilst a prolonged search was made all around it for the lost leader. The islet did not contain him, there was little likelihood that he had gained the mainland, though a sanguinary streak gave reason to the supposition that he had at least essayed to do so. No doubt of it, he had been devoured by a tintorera, unscrupulous about entombing the pretended scion of three of the great conquerors of Spanish America. It must be confessed that this tragic end caused no chagrin to the crew and extra force of Guaymas riffraff who acted as marines on board the Casta Susana. They blamed him for the whole of the disaster, and it was a good thing for his consort in the expedition, doña Maria Josefa de Miranda, that she was remote from the crew, exceedingly spiteful since they had escaped a watery or a shagreen bound grave.
That lady had been completely changed in character by her bath in the Gulf, a magic wrought by Pacific water which may recommend it in the future to the lovers of peaceful married life vexed by an irritating aunt. She showed herself quite kind towards the pair, and blamed the late don Aníbal for all her persecution.
Ignacio and his master having kept to themselves and carried away with them the secret lure which had decoyed the Casta Susana to lay her ribs on the knots of the logline reef, the Mexicans displayed no desire to linger. They filled their boats with provisions, loaded a raft to be towed with other articles, and, the weather being fine, started off to Whale Channel, intending to cross and coast along till picked up. The peninsula was too sterile to afford so large a party any hope of successful land marches to reach inhabitants. To have done with them: they had to cut the raft adrift off Tiburón, and, parting company, the three boats separately reached the port whence they sailed—having had to live on tortoise and even cayman—en route.
Long before their arrival, Gladsden's vessel had transported Dolores, her husband, and their aunt, fully reconciled, to Guaymas, where—as their marriage had been so informally and unceremoniously performed by a friendly priest—Father Serafino—they received the grand nuptial benediction in the presence of a numerous assembly of the best society, among whom Captain Gladsden had the honour of signing his name as witness. It is needless to say that don Stefano Garcia, in considerable trepidation—walking like a cat on hot cinders, as the proverb goes—did not attend the ceremony.
Before the wrecked men of the Casta Susana came to port the treasure of pearls had been divided. There were other valuable stones, notably emeralds, but the pearls were worthy all of Pepillo's eulogy; there were perfect ones for shape and other qualities—the pears, the globes, the flatcrown (tympani, or kettledrum shaped, as the ancient said), in short, the choicest specimens imaginable of "the Pinnic stone."
Don Benito agreed to maintain the family of Pepillo and a sweetheart of Ignacio out of his half share, amounting, as valued by Mr. Lyons (who had his racial genius for estimating precious stones), to £150,000, well overrunning Pepillo's rough casting up. Both he and Gladsden placed a large sum in the bishop's hands for almsgiving; they contributed towards the breakwater and so on, and then separated, each in his own way to enjoy the filibuster's hoard, originally accumulated to revolutionise Lower California as a preliminary to annexing it to the United States.
Captain Gladsden sailed to San Francisco, where he disposed of the Little Joker, and of some of the pearls, and travelled overland to take steamship for England.
Don Benito accompanied his wife back to her paternal estate, which was to be their happy home.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PATHFINDER'S HONOUR.
Here might the author stop, and, in sooth, he was going to write the words "The End," glad that the episode of the pearl fisher had, at least, the happy finis so desired by the novel reader; but my editor,[1] who was smoking a cigar at my elbow, in my sanctum, and who had been interested enough in what I was dashing off to follow the lines over my shoulder, checked my hand abruptly.
"Here, here!" he cried, as "The End" was on the point of flowing from my pen. "Do you mean to tell us that you know nothing more of Benito Vázquez, his bride and his friends?"
"But I do," I answered with a sigh, for a sad memory had been revived by the unexpected inquiry. "But may I not leave the Pearl fisher rich on his hacienda in Sonora?"
"No," said my editor. "Why should you stop here? As long as you do know something more about him, the tale is not told. Our readers, who have become enwrapt in your hero—I may almost say your two heroes—will be charmed, I warrant, to learn all they can further."
"Now, do you really think," I inquired, hesitatingly, "that this continuation will not bore?"
"Far from that, since it will complete the opening. I must acknowledge that your finish struck me as pulling up short. To conclude with, 'And so they were wed, and all lived happy ever after,' is to be met with in every novel and romance."
"Have your own way," I answered, "since you wish more, my dear friend, I shall go on and give you the completion required, which, this time, you may make up your mind to it will not be rounded off at the altar. Only I would like everyone to know that you, and you alone, insisted upon having it so."
"Very well," he said, laughing; "scribble away! I am sure we shall be the gainers!"
And now, dear readers, having protected myself as regards you all, I continue the story with the hope that the conclusion will interest you as much as, I understand, the foregoing has pleased you.
Mr. Gladsden went to England to imitate his friend and comrade by sacrificing to Hymen.
He married, and had two sons. They were still young when he lost their beloved mother, and ere long, in accordance with that very contra-French custom of keeping the children in leading strings which pushes the British boy into life beyond the home, they dwelt remote from him at school. He was, therefore, a lonely man. Politics had no attraction to one still active, fox hunting was tame after his American experience, and yachting was baby play to a genuine mariner.
Gladsden had already shown his remembrance of Mexico by investing heavily in its Western Railway, and hence he was confidently approached by the promoters of that link which should make it fully transcontinental, and by the later projectors, who sought to establish the line between Guaymas and that running down through the wild lands to Santa Fe, El Paso, Topeka, and thus binding the cactus country to that of wheat, corn, and cattle.
From joining the board of the latter companies to volunteering to go out and investigate the causes of a prodigious slowness in building the line was an affair of short duration. Mr. Gladsden's offer was gladly accepted, and he started with alacrity, which proved how deep had been his longing to break away from social trammels.
This time he proceeded overland from New York, and finally surveyed the route of the Great Southern Pacific Railway as far as El Paso. There a chance speech overheard in the Continental House, which enclosed a reference to the rich land proprietor, don Benito de Bustamente, changed his purpose to proceed still westwardly. He engaged a guide and horses, and was, at the beginning of May, traversing the Sierra de las Animas, or Mountains of All Souls.
On the twenty-fifth of that month, going on four of the afternoon, a time clearly indicated by the disproportionately long shadows of the trees on the sandy soil of the savannah, and the coppery red colour of the sun, which appeared like a fiery disc at the level of the lowermost branches, we see Gladsden and his guide mounted on native horses. The superior wore for old acquaintance sake the costume of Mexican rancheros, and his attendant the picturesque and typical garb of the hunter of the West. They were both armed to the teeth, as a matter of course, for, in this quarter, all honest men are exposed to the three heads of the Southwestern Cerberus: that of the "rustlers," or white desperadoes; of the bandoleros, or Mexican thieves; and of the wild Indians, none of them uniting with either of the others, but true Ishmaels.
It was remarkable that the prairie guide, however, had acceded to the progress of improvement in firearms, in lieu of the long and heavy rifle so celebrated along the backbone of the continent in the hands of the trapper and hunter, this man carried, like his employer, a finely finished Winchester breech-loading and repeating rifle, much stronger and larger than the general pattern.
The pair had just emerged from an immense forest of cedar, which had never yet known the woodman's threat, though doomed ere long to feed a locomotive engine's furnace, and were glad to cry halt at the skirts of the covert. Then they trotted down to a pretty stream, which was one of the sources of the Yaqui River, and bending so far to the westward as to make an inexperienced explorer fancy it had something to do rather with the San Miguel.
Indeed, the woodsman examined the muddy waters with serious heed for a long time, and executed some mental calculations in that wonderful untaught trigonometry of the frontiersman. Then, stopping his broncho by a scarcely perceptible pressure of his knees, he bent gracefully towards his employer, and said, as he smiled good-humouredly:
"Hyar you hev it, Mr. Gladsden; this ar the safe ford, though the melting snow has set the sink pits filling, of which I war speaking this noonday."
"Quite certain, eh, Oliver?" remarked the English gentleman.
"I wish I was as sartin sure I shell die with my har on," was the other's laughing answer, showing magnificent teeth for a man of fifty, which hard biscuit and harder deer meat, with plenty of "chaw" in it, seemed nowise to have impaired. "Anybody but me mout go askew, but I have known all these tracks (he meant 'tracts,' for it was a trackless wild, in plain truth), now an' agen, off an' on, for over fifteen year."
"Pray overlook my offensive persistency, Oliver; but I cannot help observing that I do not see any of the sites by which, according to my informants at The Pass, I was to learn the exact position of a crossing line in a treacherous stream. And I have been a sailor, too, and accustomed to go any course, if I have reasonable bearings laid down and visible."
"Oh, I never mind your being cornered, sir," went on the other, still merry; "they forgot to tell you the distances in mapping out the pints. You cannot see the Chinapa Peak even from here. But it's all one, Mr. Gladsden; here is the point of the Yaqui. Yonder, I can see the smoke of a pueblo—the village they call Fronteras, as they do half a dozen such places within a crow's fly along the borderland. That reddish haze is over the Río Bravo, whence we came. Now, to reach the road to Arispe, you cross and you keep dead ahead, and you must strike it."
"Well, I must say, Oliver, that since I have had the pleasure of a journey at your side, all your information has been as credible as gospel. It is a long while since I was in the wilderness; but I did have a taste of it once, and I am confident that on more than one occasion already you have diverged from the apparently true course to save me from something unpleasant. I conjecture my equipment, on which I had no reason to spare money, excited the cupidity of some of the loafers at El Paso, and that we were followed."
"Right you are! And I threw them out clean twice. And a couple of times more, thar hev been injin 'signs' hot as cayenne. That's jest why I say you had best git over the water now, rather than wait any longer, though there will be less fear o' your hoss being carried off his hoofs."
"Fifteen years ago, my friend," said Gladsden, who had not failed to remark mentally, how little the speaker had dwelt on the cares he had already exercised to preserve his charge from the "hostiles," white and red, "I should have been so reckless as to say—since I should like our having a parting meal together—let us sit here and eat away! But I have no right to expose your life to peril, even if I had not two boys at home for whom mine is still desirable. So, if you do not object, let me show you that I have learnt prudence from your continual exercise of it, and that our repast shall take place on the farther side of this shallow, frothing, dirty-hued river."
"Nothing hinders me," answered the hunter. "Have things your own way. Let us hie over before sundown."
He looked to the mustang's already terribly tight girths, shortening the stirrup straps and caught up some of the trappings which dangled in the Mexican style.
"Thar we 'do' the river," he said, pointing, "follow me step by step. I ought to go before, but your saddleback is high, and you must triple your blanket across your shoulders and neck, in case of a shot. If we are fired on from the rear do not turn but fall flat on the horse's neck. If we are fired on from your side, return the shot at anything moving in the froth. If from my side, I'll deal with that. Leave your hoss free to step in the steps of mine, for the crossing line is very narrer, the bottom one mass of holes and quicksands, and the current rushes like lightning where it does have free play; there is, moreover, a gulf below with rapids that grind granite like chalk. The least imprudence will send us, hoss and cavalyers, rolling along like Canady thistle balls in a breeze. You hev your caution—no fooling, mark!"
All the hunter guide's mirthfulness had vanished, and the stern tone made Mr. Gladsden start. We know he was incontestably brave, and that he had gone through some such perils as now confronted him; but the advance of civilisation in the southwest had given him an impression that his former adventures were things of an irrecoverable past.
However, there was no time to meditate, for his guide had pushed his horse into the water; and the other immediately followed it. They, too, seemed imbued with consciousness of the situation being perilous, for, though thirsty, they did not attempt to moisten their muzzles, albeit the bridles, as Oliver directed, were slackened and the cruel Mexican bits ceased their tyranny.
The passage was performed without accident, and soon the pair were on the further bank in about the only break in a ragged, steep ledge.
"Hyar we kin stake out," said the guide, "and await moonrise for our 'forking off.' Meanwhile, that feast, if you still air set on it, sir."
They dismounted, the hunter went and drew water for the horses in an india rubber saddle bag, whilst the Englishman lifted off a huge double sack from the back of his saddle, which is called the alforjas, and took out a deer ham and a plover already cooked, a piece of Dutch cheese so hard as almost to turn the knife, some green fruit, bananas, guavas, and chirimoyas which they had picked on the way to eat as a kind of salad, and lastly, some army biscuit.
By the time the guide had completed his duties, the spread was laid. A very sober man, as most of these borderers are except when they 'break out' and indulge in a week's heavy and uninterrupted drinking, much as seamen of 'temperance ships' do after a rough voyage, Oliver merely added as much brandy, of which they had a couple of flasks full, as would settle the mud in the water freshly drawn. They both drew knives as sharp as their appetites, and fell on the victuals without losing breath in a further word in addition to a brief but feeling grace which the Englishman uttered, and to which the American, whom the innovation reminded of the same religious practice, vague from its early occurrence in his life, said a hearty "Amen."
We take the moment, when this agreeable occupation rewards them both for a long, fatiguing ride, to trace their portraits.
Gladsden had become a trifle portlier, and had lost his sunburns. He was less quick to move, but more irresistible in action than ever. In brief, the hussar was now a heavy cavalrist, whom even these few weeks in the Southwest had improved in mind, wind, and limb. His sight was dimmer, but he had no need of glasses to shoot well and straight.
His companion was a man apparently in the prime of life, but he must have been twenty years older than the three decades which seemed, to the casual observer, to sit so lightly on his broad shoulders. He was rather tall than medium, and the absence of superfluous flesh, and the unusual length of his limbs would make him look like a giant among the small statured Mexicans and squat horse Indians, mostly bowlegged. His neck was short and muscular, and, thus, his head had a small aspect, like Hercules; the features were cold if not stern, and his cast of countenance was devoid of muscular play, except when one of his merry moods was on him. Vigour and rigour distinguished him on active duty.
Under a broad forehead, his somewhat deep set eyes, crowned with bushy brows, were of a changeable nature, for, while almost blue when he was calm, anger caused them to become dull brown, and they could dart flashes like those of felines, they were very movable and were continually examining things around, save when he was addressing anyone, whereupon they were straight, frank, and steadfast. His long brown hair, saturated with bear's grease—for your frontiersman has a sneaking respect for the toilet—and hence almost black, streamed long and freely out from beneath a homemade hat of mountain sheep wool and covered his shoulders.
His two names denoted the extent of his ranging ground, for he was generally known among his own race as "Oregon Ol.," and by the Indians of the Mexican border as "the Ocelot," that being the wild cat of the Mexicans (Ocelolt, in Aztec), a trifle less than the jaguar, but, muscularly speaking, very powerful and no joke for ferocious courage.
In the same way as this well-known guide possessed several names, he could boast various reputations. The United States Army officers wrote him down as kindly, never downhearted in sun or snow, skilful, honest to a button's worth, disinterested, knowing woodcraft thoroughly, always ready, aye, even to help a friend out of pocket, canteen, or with his wits, bold to temerity when boldness was the best card, "reliable," and sticking to his man, friend or foe, to the last gasp.
For the redskins, Oliver was quite other game: he inspired superstitious terror blended with admiration; no one ever succeeded in contests of cunning with him; implacable towards anyone who sought to injure or even annoy him, he would pursue the molester or molesters, one or many, to their final hiding place, cutting off stragglers, reducing the band like a man devouring a bunch of grapes, one by one, and knifing the last at his lone campfire. "That will teach them," he would say, when reproached by new coming dragoon officers, at the forts, who thought it unseemly for a white man to decorate his leggings with human hair like the reds. He meant that his punishment was to save, by its recital filling the Indians with dread, many another white man on the debatable ground, brother hunter, comrade trapper, emigrant, settler, pioneer, railway prospector.
We say "brother" hunter and "comrade" trapper, for Oregon Oliver only shot animals; to him, any other means of obtaining fur and feather would have been ignoble.
Up to some five years back he had been in the habit of transmitting money, acquired by the sale of peltries, by piloting wealthy foreigners over the hunting grounds in fashion, and by schooling army officers in frontier warfare, to some relation in the Eastern States, who had succeeded his parents as the embodiment of the ideal of home; but death having removed this claim, as he generously conceived it to be, upon his purse, he had no need to toil as formerly he did, and he led an easy life, following for the most part his own sweet free will, over the ten thousand miles which separate Southern America from the Polar Seas.
These two men, as opposite in nature and station as well could be, had made acquaintance in the most natural manner.
Mr. Gladsden wanted a guide into Sonora, and the colonel at Fort Fillmore, with whom he had been quail shooting, had recommended "the champion guide."
Once on the road to Arispe, studded with hamlets, all of them, perhaps, increased in importance since Gladsden's previous stay in Sonora, a conductor was superfluous. At least he was under that impression.
Hunters never dally with a meal; a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes at the most suffice, then, if there be more time to spare, there is a chat amid tobacco smoke. Thus acted our two adventurers.
The rest of the provender was restored to the alforjas, and Oliver filled a sweet corncob pipe, whilst Mr. Gladsden selected an excellent regalia in a prettily carved Guayaquil wood box. As soon as they were both under a cloud, they mused for a while in silence.
When the English gentleman broke this stillness, it was in the heartiest tone of good fellowship. It was to pay a compliment again upon the experienced guide and genial companion.
"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.