The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you mean?"

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI.

A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good boy, Uncle Al!"

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

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

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

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

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

With that they entered the tavern with steady foot.

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

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

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

Such was this palace of prairie pleasures.

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

"Warm," remarked Oliver sententiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We'll see about that,—¡Caray!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They merely overturned the solid table on its side, one end against a cask, the other against the sidewall, their backs to the rear of the den of thieves. Kneeling behind this barricade they were sure not to be surrounded, had enough elbow play, and could await the issue complacently enough. The banditti had barked their shins against the table, and recoiled on being faced by the two men, shielded from the knee to the chin, with flashing eyes between four revolver muzzles. They consulted in an undertone for a few instants.

"They see the tables are turned indeed!" observed Mr. Gladsden.

Meanwhile the cause of this disturbance, the tall varlet, had scrambled to his feet, clinging to the doorpost; he was bruised all along his body by the shock, and he came in among his fellows limping, foaming with pain and rage, and aching for revenge.

"You are pretty mates o' mine to shrink!" he sneered, "Afeard of a couple of Yankees!"

"Who's afeard?" retorted the precious crew, pushing one another.

"It looks so," went on he, with a grin of pain. "You are ten to two, and you plot and plan together when I, at least, pitched into them alone. If this be not fear it is an extreme prudence, which is its sister. Are you not bound to avenge La Gallina's death?"

"Yes, we are bound to avenge a comrade's death; but just count the shots in those pepperboxes. It is not the question of our getting killed, but of smashing those, our enemies. We're in a lump here, in the open, and they are covered. I conjecture our order of battle is very defective."

"Right he is," chorused the fellows of this orator.

"You are a flock of prairie hens! Haven't you firearms as well?"

"You won't see that they have those cursed repeating rifles also at their backs! Besides, these Yanks have longer heads than us. Ah, if the Captain were here! He knows all the tricks of the norteamericanos, and can match their cards at any game."

"That's very true; but El Manco (the Maimed) is not at hand. He is not due yet. We must do our own work—so, have at them with what heart ye may!"

"Oh, we're choking with our hearts, Valentacho; but we don't care to be shot down like buffalo."

"Well, if it comes to that—if I must show you the lead again, here! Lo! I lead; only, let's have you stick to me."

"Like wax! Lead on."

"It's understood?"

"Plain as the Creed!"

"Then forward! And death to the gabachos—curse them!" yelled the tall rogue, waving his rapier as high as the ceiling would permit.

They all rushed forward with exceeding fury.

"Take heed!" muttered Oliver; "Two shots apiece, and fire low!"

Four shots of the revolvers stretched two Mexicans on the floor never to rise again; another brace that had been "winged," removed themselves out of the room altogether, probably to find the nearest surgeon. But the fillip had been given to flagging spirits; the rogues were excited by the pistols' flash and smoke. Their rage redoubled, and they fell upon the edge of the oaken rampart and tried to chop down the two whites within.

It was a horrible medley with the firearms spitting fire in all directions, as hands were jostled and the eager ruffians interfered with one another's movements.

Acting on Oliver's advice, the two besieged men wasted no more powder. Their rampart was the higher by three or four dead bodies hanging, bent in the middle, over the edge, and, standing up now, they met the contestants' machetes with their scarcely less long hunting knives.

The robbers fairly howled with impotent rage, having never met such a provoking resistance. Valentacho was the most persistent of any. He clung to the table with one hand, trying to pull it over on its top, snarling like a wild animal, and showering blows of the cutlass on the foe too active to receive one of them save on their own blades.

"See here!" cried Oliver, "You that's so n'isy! Wasn't that first lesson good enough? Don't you know I'm keeping school here? Yes, Oregon Ol. is the schoolmaster right down hyar in Sonora, and it looks like I'll have to send you home on one e-tarnal holiday!"

The bandit ceased to yell, and, leaning forward, managed to clutch the frazada (blanket) of the speaker, which he had rolled round his left arm, more Hispanico, and drew him towards him, in order that he might, shortening his sword, stab him through and through.

"You are a liar, dog!" said he, fiercely, through his gritting teeth; "'Tis you who are about to die!"

With an upward sweep of his right hand, in which he had reversed his revolver and seized it by the barrel, Oliver dashed the coming rapier aside, and, with a downward blow of the pistol thus converted into a hammer, he visited the Mexican's skull so violently with a concussion to the brain that the outlaw let go the grasp on the blanket and of his sword, and fell back among his comrades without even a groan. No ox could have been felled more swiftly.

The defeated and horrified rabble melted away in disorder. They had had their dose. They would have been only too glad to leave the scene of combat, but for shame's sake, and the dread of their captain not finding them at this tryst.

Oliver kicked away the cask which had prevented a flank attack, stepped clear from the corpses and his defences, and quietly going up to the bar, behind which the keepers had tranquilly watched as much of the action as the smoke permitted, he said:

"Another bottle! As for you gentecilla, clear away your dead, and sit you down and clear up your glasses, too. If any man goes out without finishing his liquor to my health, I'll not leave a mouth on him if a rifle be any utility in my claws."

The cowed mob obeyed the double order grudgingly but faithfully. The smoke was wafted out and up the hole in the roof, which was the chimney, and a little order reigned in the barroom. But still the landlord did not believe it healthy to make his appearance, though his place was surely here. The two visitors took their seats at another table, almost in the midst of the prairie depredators, but no one interrupted their conversation this time, and the other customers, without conferring with one another, soon glided out of the Rancho Verde, and finally all had disappeared.

"We've a clean ship, Oliver," said Mr. Gladsden; "our merry associates have vacated this hall of rosy light."

"We kin histe in our nightcaps, then," replied the guide. "With such a gap made in One-leg's band, always provided it is his cuadrilla, we need not fear they will come in the night to serenade us. By the way, that endless fellow has left his guitar. Shall I play something skippy?"

"You can play what you please," returned the Englishman. "Only I vote for a dance tune. It is my belief that we shall not want for dancers."

Indeed, there was a clatter of horses' hoofs, without.

"Correct you air, Injin!" said Oliver, lending his ear interestedly. "Put fresh cartridges in! There seems an agreement by all hands that we shall not be let sleep in peace this night!"

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PUREST OF PEARLS.

By the noise of the cavalcade it could be calculated to be numerous.

Uncle Sweet Potato, who had so completely kept to himself whilst the scuffle had lasted, now appeared suddenly at the ranch door, with the alacrity of a man close to whose rear a red-hot branding iron was being approached. At the same time, the riders stopped their horses there.

Tío Camote had closed the thick door smartly, and held a colloquy through a small wicket in its centre, in a language which was not known to Mr. Gladsden. On the other hand, Oliver had started as the dialogue progressed, and bending towards his companion, said in his ear:

"Indians! Hostile Indians, Apaches!—Mimbres Apaches!" he concluded, as the speech revealed more and more particularities. "All men—they are 'bad'—I can smell they are charcoal'd—blackened for war! I tell 'er what, mighty slim chance but in strategem agen sich a powerful squad to whop. That's the voice of an old acquaintance—big chief—ah, he's head chief now! We hev swapped hosses, an' we've exchanged shots, but never draw'd blood, an' we may be considered neutrals on Spanish territory, but all the same, be on your guard. That fool is too much afeard on 'em not to let 'em in. Our hosses are not worth a red cent's purchase apiece, wuss luck! Those 'Paches are as fond of hoss flesh as a Spanish gal of peanut candy. Still, if in a wuss squeeze than afore, you reckon on me pulling you out clean."

"I am puzzled again. Is the Indian a friend or foe?"

"Both or neither. But, lor', in the wildest parts, I have gone to sleep with my heels to the same fire as my deadliest enemy, and woke up—well, I still live. It's 'cordin' to sarkimstances; and this here is a pertickler sarkimstance—crammed with liveliness to the lid, like a tin o' them Italian sprats."

"Serious! Worse than before."

"Jess so. But don't show any surprise; keep your tongue out of the tongue fire, and don't gainsay me in any way."

"I'm your puppet again."

"You'll not repent it."

"I am convinced of that."

"Hush, right thar! He's going to let them in. And they're big fool Injin enough to git off their hosses, wharon they'm as easy of movement as an eagle, and come down to common ground, whar they waddle like geese. These hoss Ingins are no beauties, seen so, hobbling up to a bar in a doggery, but they air fond o'white man's pison, and no two ways about that."

Indeed, Camote, who probably was not insured and preferred running the risk of being butchered in his house to being certainly baked when it should be fired over his head for his resistance to the command to open, bowed in the chiefs of the new customers' party, and their bodyguard.

These six or eight red men silently placed themselves on the floor by one of the tables in a squatting position near the door, pulled out every man a tomahawk pipe which they filled with morrichee, or sacred tobacco, which proved that they were members of an upper class, past masters in the council lodges, lit up and set to smoking, without any observations, though the pools of blood, and the shattered and bullet perforated furniture, revealed that there had recently been a disturbance there. They even betrayed no token of having perceived the two other persons at their table, and the men behind the bar, who were exchanging dubious, uneasy glances, whilst they felt gooseflesh under their scalp.

But the American knew that a secret, quick glance had "counted" them, for he whispered:

"We're reckoned up, and they don't stomach our looks. Tell 'ee, sir, they don't like close shooting and tough chawing."

After a few moments, one of the Indians smote the table with his hatchet pipe. Tío Camote ran over to the spot, with the most obsequious of hotelkeepers' smiles on his lips.

"Heap big drink!"

"Mezcal!" uttered the savages.

"Sí, sí, sí, Señor Camicho" (for cacique, Aztec for chieftain), was the celeritous answer, as the ranchero hastened to set half a dozen bottles of spirit and some horn cups on the bench, to be nearer their reach than the table, before them.

They filled up and drank with a gusto that proved they had overcome the counsels of their wise men not to let the firewater be their tempter. They resumed smoking and the puffs crossed one another in the dreariest silence. Yet this silence was more appalling than the riot of the late brawlers in the Green Ranch.

These Apache chiefs were attired much like their leader and resembled him in build, being picked warriors, or rather, more probably, chiefs who had attained rank for fighting and marauding alone. They were large men for Apaches, and but for their legs being bowed by life on horseback from boyhood up, would have overtopped six feet. They were well built too, and their features not ignoble, though rapacity moulded the prominent traits, as well as could be ascertained beneath the streaks of grey, blue, yellow and red plastered on in accordance with laws or convention, in what space was left by a prodigious smearing with the war colour in preeminence, black. As there were no signs of mourning, they had so far been perfectly successful in their incursion into Sonora, and had not lost a man. Their large dark eyes, deep and gloomy, sparkled now and anon with cunning.

Taking one as an example, he wore his hair gathered up so as to form a kind of pad on the top of his head, a very good idea for defence; some pendent plaits were not his own hair and had buffalo hair twined in them, too; to each was hung at the end some little charm, pebble fangs, precious stone in the rough, gold or silver nugget, and so on. A long line of eagle and vulture feathers, varied in hue, possibly dyed, stood up on his head and out from him right down his back, whence the line flowed free quite to his neck. Through the actual topknot, a long eagle feather, in special signification of commandership, was stuck slantingly. This one in particular whom we are depicting, had mounted a pair of buffalo horns adorned with ribbons and human hair, very fair or bleached, not unlike the headgear of the ancient Britons. Being out on the warpath, he had laid aside collar of claws, porcupine quills and teeth, and bracelets, so that the war jacket of deerskin, beautifully dressed, gathered in at the waist by a simple thong, looked plain indeed. His buckskin breeches were ornamented with embroidery, and his stockings of American make were decorated similarly by the patient squaws. His moccasins were bright with beadwork and quite clear of entanglement, though it seemed otherwise, from the artfully arranged knee knot of dangling feathers and animal tails.

For weapons they had the tomahawk pipe of bronze, and scalping knife, one or two bows and arrows, the lustre of the black strings showing human hair was twisted in them as a trophy; the guns were not very good, being cast-off army pieces, for which they had powder horns and bullet bags, quite old fashioned. Their spears were left without; they had rawhide whips hanging by a loop to the wrist, and ornamented usefully with a war whistle for the issue of commands, more clearly sounded and distantly heard than by voice, a system known among the Southern Indians from time out of mind though only of recent years adopted by European armies.

Strange and picturesque to the Englishman, though their odour of smoke and rancid grease and horses would have been less unendurable in the open air, Gladsden owned that they were manly fellows enough who inspired reasonable respect and almost consideration.

Unfortunately for appearances, whatever their nation may have been in ancient days, now these Apaches are about the most plundering, murderous, ferocious rovers of the Southwest, especially hating all the whites. Liars and thieves, they are a scourge who must be crushed out by the civilisation to which they will not truly bow the knee.

Whilst these unpleasant guests smoked and drank, our friends pretended to doze. Camote would have liked to have shut up shop; but he was not the man, with only two assistants, to undertake to clear out the horde before he retired to his virtuous pillow. The mere prospective of a wrangle with these ugly customers made his hair imprudently rise like a cockatoo's crest. He sat up on his counter, with dangling legs that swung in concord with his agitation, with folded arms to look undaunted, but not losing sight of the reds. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and gulped large draughts of pulque by way of consolation and to nourish his patience.

Meanwhile the night advanced; the stars were paling away in the celestial depths, and the moon "downing." It was nearly three in the morning, and yet the humbler Indians and the numerous horses without hardly betrayed their proximity by a sound. For upwards of three hours the Apaches had gone on smoking and imbibing without their hard heads giving way or any tongue being loosened.

All of a sudden the chief, who wore the odd diadem of horns, shook the ashes out of his pipe on his left thumbnail, and spoke in a loud enough voice, though he still stared into vacancy. At the words, the American ranger started slightly, opened his eyes fully, and in a measure made a nod of courtesy.

"My brother the Ocelot," said the chief, "seems to be pretty much worn out to sleep so soundly. Were his eyes not sealed with sleep, he must have taken notice that a friend has come into the lodge of the 'Spanish Dog,' and has seated himself not far from the Hunter of the North, along with several braves of his grand nation."

"Resting the sight ain't sleeping, not by a long heap! No, Tiger Cat, the Ocelot never owns on to being wore out, I opine. If the Ocelot wa'n't staring at the chiefs, 'tis jest 'cause he has seen 'em, most on 'em, afore now, ginerally when thar was smoke in the air, blood drops as plenty as rain up North, and ha'r in rich plenty—you could stuff a buffalo hide plump out. The Ocelot knows his place in this part of the kentry—he don't shove his claws into no chief's mush and milk. He sort o' keeps low till a question aimed at him, hits him fa'r and squar'; that's the kind of ginuine Ocelot, this Ocelot air."

"Wagh! The hunter speaks well," remarked the Apache, wagging his head with apparent satisfaction, "there's no split in his tongue. Bueno—good!"

"No, sir! 'Tis a straight, whole, single tongue."

"The Wacondah has opened a slit in his bosom for the smoke of his heart to steal forth pure. His sayings fall sweet and soft on the ear of the Mimbres Apaches, for they are the words of a friend. Let the Ocelot talk on. It is so long since the Mimbres heard the music of his voice that the papoose that was at the back of the squaw now stands alone, so high,"—making an imaginary line in the air with a wave of the pipe hatchet,—"and plays at shooting with bow and arrow at the dogs. But his whole heart has not sprung forward to shake hands with his brother. His face is carved out of white flint. Is there no smile? Is he not glad to see the best warriors on the Apache roving ground? Is he not surprised to see them here?"

"Considering, chief," returned Oregon O., nudging with his knee that of the Englishman under the table, quite imperceptibly, "considering the Ocelot knew the Apaches were 'warm' round here, and that a call was down in the programme of the dance, the Ocelot has no grounds for opening his eyes any wider."

"U-wagh!" ejaculated the chief, evincing some astonishment himself, "The Apache chiefs were expected by the great pale hunter?"

"They jess was," answered the other laconcially.

"Arrrh!" sighed the Indian with pretended awe and an insinuating smile. "The hunter has met the Book medicine men (preachers, missionaries) in the land of the beaver and white bear—he has been initiated into their lodge—he has a heap big medicine, he knows everything."

"The chief is making merry, he is no longer straight with his friend. Whether I carry good or bad medicine, it don't help me much in this nick, as my brother ought to know."

"The Tiger Cat has been 'playing—,' with the Spaniards!" said the Apache, with an emphasis on the English word he used, which caused the hotelkeeper to shrink, "And a cloud has settled on his mind. He cannot make out what the white hunter is driving at. He looks. He see Nada—nothing."

"If one of them stirs a finger towards me, shoot into the mass," whispered Oliver, rising leisurely, to his comrade.

He left the table, and strode up to the Indians, among whom he stopped, his back to the edge of the table they disdained, leaning on his rifle, of which the beauty and value (for a breechloader is a miracle to their eyes) made their nervous tongues lick their thin upper lip and thick lower one like a snake when the game is presented.

"See here, chief," said he, "the Ocelot has hearing as fine as they make 'em, and the faintest sounds tell their story in his ear. Did I not know you and your cavalyada were down to'rds the Smoking Mountain, and have I not heard the amble of those mules out thar, a-toting a litter between them? In that litter is a white woman. I'm atter her, for her family's sake—what's the price of the captive?"

The Indians exchanged a look of amazement, but they were not disconcerted. Indeed, Tiger Cat answered without wincing:

"Who can make (dead) meat of the white hunter? Beside the Ocelot, the Tiger Cat is a prairie cricket."

"Speak out plain, then, chief. If you have the woman along with you, guarded by your soldiers (the young warriors) so carefully, it is to claim much price. What's the figure?"

"The Ocelot has all the wit of the palefaces, all the cunning of the red men. The Tiger Cat does not debate. He has a captive of worth—ay, 'the purest of pearl' is worth her weight in dressed buffalo robes. But the prize is his. Why should the Ocelot hunger for the prey of the Tiger Cat?"

"You'll jess let me back out about now, chief," said Oregon Oliver, negligently. "If we cannot trade, we'll take the back paths apart from one another, and no bad blood."

He half turned as if to go away, but not without a glance of sympathy in bitterness at the certainly strange palanquin, draped with Navajo waterproof blankets, suspended elastically between two mules, now visible to him without.

But the wily redskin was evidently perplexed. The guides who have intimate relations with the United States army always are looked upon peculiarly by the Indians who have been thrashed by the blue cape coats. He detained the hunter by gently plucking at his blanket.

"The Ocelot bounds away too quickly," he observed, as if offended. "Has anger flamed up between us brothers?"

"Ne'er a flame," replied the other, who was far from seeking a quarrel just then and there, with such overpowering odds in his disfavour, "but when we can't trade, let's sleep on it; we'll see it sure 'nuff, how the dicker promises."

"The white hunter has a stranger friend with him," remarked the Apache, with the abrupt change of conversation which is natural to men of no great conversational powers, and perhaps to let his interlocutor see that the previous subject was exhausted; "he is no hunter; I daresay he is a chief of many gold buttons."

He alluded to the quantity of eagle buttons which adorn the uniform of the United States officers, who, of course, dress up as if for parade, in "talks" with the savages.

"You are out thar', chief; he is no friend of mine, no military ossifer; only some traveller coming over the mountains to get into Greaser land."

"And you are his guide?"

"Who says so?"

"The Tiger Cat's eyes are sharp; he sees what goes on over the prairie and plains. Did not the hunter's ten-shoot gun (he could express only so many units by twice throwing up his extended hand) speak, and some mixed blooded dog bite the river bank?"

"It is so! I struck a coup (French Canadian hunter word for a stroke of war, a blow). It's nothing to crow over; it's nothing to cache. When a mosquito stings, you slap, don't you? Same when a mestizo buzzes close; you can have his topknot as much as you like. But why," added he, repeating the other's phrase, "why does the Tiger Cat hanker after the Ocelot's dead?"

"The Tiger Cat kills his own game. What he says, he says to let the paleface hunter see that he has eyes upon the land and the river. Now," he concluded, releasing the flap of the blanket, "my brother can go, and sleep, if he be ready to drop."

Oliver went back to his seat, carelessly enough to all appearances.

"What's that about a woman," inquired Mr. Gladsden, eagerly in a low voice.

"A guess of mine that hit to the centre spot. Those red devils have something in a hoss-barrow of which they are taking pertickler care, and they wouldn't show her up here, so I guessed it war a captive. Now, the captive they spare and tender 'so fash' (fashion), you bet yer life, she's something first quality and all the hair on. Besides, you hear him call her 'La Perla Purísima,' and that's the name you don't hear every Spanish gal wear. Though, I will say this for them, that where I durn a Mexican man half a hundred times for bad gifts, I bless a Mexican female critter once at least. The one's a tough knot, not wuth the burning, and won't make saddletree, picket peg, or good arrow-wood, but the gals, most offen, is good stuff, and I'm a-telling you."

"A captive, a young girl, fair, pure; oh heaven! In the power of these demons!" groaned Gladsden.

"Don't shake the table! I've done all my uttermost: I made him think her family are already on her trail, that she's worth a huge ransom. If they've protected her so far, by the biggest of marvels in my 'sperience, why not a little longer; tell we kin git clar of this infarnal 'tanglement, and can swoop on 'em at our advantage? Daring is a prime hoss to mount, to show off afore the crowd in front of the hotel, but give me patience when I've got to hunt the red scalpers. Patience, sir! We've got fifteen shots to spare in each of our Winchesters, and the extra one in afore them; to say nothing of our five-shooters. Oh," he added, with a bitter and contemptuous look at the Mexicans, "if there was only enough manhood for one in them three, durn their greasy pelts!"

Unfortunately, granting that they overcame the Apache headmen within the four brick walls, there were many without who could set fire to the ranch and consume them like toads in a forest conflagration, while they would be as far from rescuing the invisible captive as ever.

All fell into silence again, save that the three Mexicans, nestling towards one another, ventured to converse in an undertone. The Apaches continued to imbibe and smoke their gleaming hatchet calumets. This dreary and onerous situation lasted for all of an hour after the hunter's parley with the red men, till they had finished their liquor and let their pipes die out.

The pale dawning light not merely appeared outside, but began to change the colour of the glow from the nearly exhausted lamps. At the same time the fresh morning air began battling with the fumes of spirits and tobacco.

Suddenly the similarly silent Indians on the exterior awoke. There were cautious signals exchanged; the horses, too, participated in the growing agitation, and shifted uneasily.

Two Apaches appeared at the doorway and gave an alarm to the chiefs, who had pricked up their cars, but only then deigned to rise at full length. They spoke together. All but two left the house, and almost instantly a figure draped in blankets was dragged over the sill. Flinging off the hands clutching her wrists with an indignant outburst which made the wraps to fall, the white men and the Mexicans beheld a graceful apparition unveiled.

It was quite a young girl for age, but being precocious, like all tropical creatures, a woman in development, she looked only too lovely in such a miserably unfit scene, fragile yet exuberant, with fine, tiny hands and feet, and narrow waist, black eyes, fair creamy skin and carnation lips; her very step seemed not to press the ground. In her ears and around her neck were pearls of unwonted dimensions; but it was evidently her character and her beauty which had won her the title of "La Perla Purísima."

At the same moment a distant fusillade was audible.

"Follow, and do as I do!" shouted Oliver, taking his decision with that swiftness of the prairie expert, which is, perhaps, the predominant trait that most bewilders the savages, trained to do no act without the warrant of magical manifestations.

With all possible speed he flung himself forward and dashed the Indian to the right of him as far aloof as the walls, at the same time throwing his left arm in a backhanded way around the Mexican señorita's waist so that, in drawing her forward, she was immediately pushed behind him.

Gladsden—on whom the sight of the lovely girl had had a profound effect—had also sprung forward, and not exactly imitating the hunter, pushed with his gun muzzle at a second Apache, and, whether intentionally or not, firing at the same instant, a hole was actually blown through the wretch, who leaped up in the air convulsively and so received a terrible cut of the hatchet of Tiger Cat, aimed at his slayer.

"You've made your coo'! Now kick the rest of them right clean out!" roared Oliver, stooping to avoid a pistol shot, and, in rising with a heavy stool in his hand, breaking the collarbone of the man who had shot. "Now thar, Caballeros of the bluest blood," he shouted derisively, "do something, only do something, if you want to sleep another night in your hide!"

But already the two remaining Apaches had recoiled into the doorway, encumbered with the dead body of their brother whose scalp they wished to save, and Tiger Cat alone really confronted the whites.

This seeing, Tío Camote broke the spell of terror that had converted him into a mere statue on his counter, and snatching a cutlass from between two casks, smacked the boards with it to make an encouraging noise, calling out to his aids:

"Upon them, and second those valorous foreigners!"

Tiger Cat, enraged at the captive being so swiftly snatched out of his power, levelled a gun at the poor frightened thing over Oliver's shoulder. But already Gladsden had the Apache on the flank, and being too near him to use his rifle as a club, shifted it into his left hand, and dealt the redskin a terrible fisticuff. Staggered at this unusual blow from a weapon not in Indian war practice, the chief reeled and fell into the embrace of the white hunter.

"Whoopee," he cried, "I hev the varmint in my hug. Shut the door, you dog-goned greasers, and pile every mortal thing agen it!"

He hugged the chief so tightly that his breastbone cracked, and his arms, pinioned to his side, were numbed to the very finger, so that he let the smoking gun drop.

"Just pick his we'pins out of his girdle, and mind that pison hatchet pipe, the least scratch means death!" said the ranger.

The Mexicans, inspired by this successful skirmish, had banged the solid door to, and added a table and three full barrels to its fastenings.

"Pooty!" exclaimed the man from Oregon at last drawing breath. "Let me have a yard or two of leather rope, d'ye hyar?" raising his voice, as there was a rising din without and a chopping on the door.

Presently the chief was securely bound and flung down on the ground where he was attached to the ring of a trapdoor leading to a small wine vault, or rather cave into which, to presume from the air of them, the three Mexicans would have liked to creep.

The external noise ceased. There were but two or three sharp whistles of command, and a gentle creeping away of the troop, as it were.

"Some enemy of theirs exchanged shots with their pickets," interpreted Oliver, "and as he is in force and resolutely coming on, they have gone into 'cover.' If they are the pirates of the prairie, we are no better off than before, but we are 'all hunk,' quite safe, sereno, missee," he said, turning kindly to the young girl, "if they are Mexican soldiers or your friends."

She had joined her hands fervently; then, at the mention of friends, more clearly comprehending her comparative safety, she uttered her thanks in a torrent of eloquence, and the sweetest voice in the world. All the time of her speaking, stray shots punctuated her flow of gratitude, so to say. Undoubtedly Oliver was right; some foes of the Apaches were giving them quite enough occupation to prevent them attempting to learn the fate even of their principal chief.

"Yes, they are my friends, my father, too, oh, I am sure my father is at the head of them!" cried the young girl, forgetting all her captivity, and its ignominies in her revulsion to joy. "Open the door to them."

"Stop! Nothing of the sort," interposed the hunter, peremptorily. "Those are not the old muskets of peons, nor the captured French rifles of the Mexican soldiery. Bide! Bide and we shall bimeby sec about welcoming our deliverers."

And whilst Gladsden sought to console the little beauty whose face had become gloomy again, the hunter began to scold the Mexicans for their cowardice.

"But," observed Gladsden, more and more perplexed as he examined the young lady, "La Perla Purísima, while very charming, is not a name. Pray who are you, Señorita?"

"But," said she with a pout, "La Perla is my name, the truth, whilst Purísima is the flattery. I was christened La Perla from the main incident in my father's early life—"

"Indeed, indeed! And your father?"

"You are, insooth, a stranger, Señor, not to recognise the daughter of the very richest hacendero and proprietor in all Upper Sonora. I am, Señor, Perla Dolores de Bustamente y Miranda!"

"Dolores!" roared our Englishman, with the delightful leap of the puzzled brain when a solution is afforded. "Why I knew you all along by the likeness to your mother!"

And enfolding her in his arms he gave her an affectionate embrace, only a little less painful than that which had rendered the Tiger Cat hors de combat, and kissed her on both cheeks, whilst to her further astonishment, tears streamed from his eyes.

"Dolores! My dear little girl," continued Mr. Gladsden, when he could speak tolerably calmly, "Did you never hear your father and mother mention an Englishman? But there, I am sure they put my name into your prayers, when you were yet in your cradle!"

"The Englishman! Oh, the English caballero!" cried the daughter of the pearl fisher, clapping her hands together in enthusiastic glee. "Yes, don Jorge Federico."

"George, it is! How trippingly my name comes off your honey tongue."

"That is easily accounted for, Señor, as it is my brother's."

"What! You have a brother! And they named their boy after me! Well, upon my soul! Here, you Oliver, if you don't take back your general denunciation of the Mexican race, we are no longer friends. At least, gratitude is not so ephemeral among them. So, don Benito never has forgotten his old comrade?"

The young lady touched the pearls in her ear and at her neck significantly to imply that the story of the filibuster's treasure was one familiar to her.

"You are one of our saints, Señor?"

"Sit down, on my knee! Heaven bless you; I have children of my own, too! And tell me all about your home, your excellent parents, and your good, brave, handsome brother. I'll wager a fortune he is brave and handsome."

"Hush!" interrupted the hunter. "Draw the girl out of a line with that wicket in the door. Someone has ridden right up to it, jingling with we'pins. More war talk!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

OUT AND AWAY.

At this same instant a bang on the oak from a large pistol butt—so high up that it revealed it was held in the hand of a giant or a man on horseback, who had his reasons for not dismounting—fairly shook the massive door.

"Landlord, go challenge the newcomer," said Oliver.

Tío Camote, however reluctant, was forced to obey. A second blow quickened his step, and he even smiled as if the peculiarity of its stroke were a well-known signal. He, therefore, opened the trap pretty trustfully.

A long hooknose, scarred in the middle, and a pair of gleaming eyes in a rather bloated face appeared at the little square hole.

"It is I, the captain," said a harsh voice with a shrill twang, testily. "We have brushed the brown skins afar, and we want refreshment."

"The captain," cried Sweet Potato, falling back.

"Well," said Oliver, "who's the captain?"

"Pedrillo! El Manco!" breathed the innkeeper, in awe.

"Speak up, you ass!"

"Captain Pedrillo el Manco," repeated the bar tender.

"Oh, One-leg Pete," said the hunter, with as much scorn as they displayed apprehension and respect. "Don't let me see e'en a one of ye touch that door."

He turned to Gladsden and the young Mexican, who was pale again, but courageous.

"You hev seen that the 'Paches even kin spare a young woman of beauty when their greed is keen. But, I tell 'ee, sir, I would rather all was back where we began to play the game, and yon helpless redskin up in arms afore us, than have this poor lady in the power of that villain who waits without, and is likely to wait till doomsday before I let him in. He's cruel, merciless, wuss than a Digger Injin, and words can paint no blacker! But he is a fool! He thinks he and his herd have driven away the Poison Hatchets when their first chief is here! If the Injin will forgive this humiliation, which I doubt, hang me but I'll cut his thongs, set him on his feet agen, and we'll charge this scum of the brimstone pot between us and the Apaches."

"First, let those greasers know that if they breathe a signal to their kindred thieves, you will silence the spokesman forever."

"One moment," said Gladsden. "This captain with the seared hooknose? Tell me more of him. In the same way that this young lady's face called up the figures of the past most sweet in my memory, that peculiar phiz reminded me of the most disagreeable scoundrel I ever came athwart the foot of. What's he like?"

"A hardened man-devil. He lost a leg, so that he always sticks in the saddle."

"A leg gone! How, how?"

"Chawed off by an alligator in some Texan bieyoo (bayou), so they give out."

"I have it! It is an old acquaintance! Only, he lost his leg by a shark bite, I presume."

"All's one. Well, if you ever knew him, then you knew the biggest scamp unhung! And now keep those cowards silent. If we do not answer the bandit, he will think Camote was pushed forward as a decoy by some Apaches within hyar, and will be dumfounded."

After a pause the knocking at the door of the ranch was resumed, but as in one of the pauses, the angry solicitor of admission heard the "hee, hee, ha, yah," of an Indian song, due to the imitative skill of Oregon Oliver, he withdrew.

Taking advantage of this lull in the attack on the portals, the hunter went back to the prostrate Indian chief, who had been chewing a bitter cud, and squatted down on his hams in the Indian mode, at his head.

"Now, then, Cat, what have you got on your notched stick (record) to tell off?"

The Apache looked up out of his indifferent and impassible demeanour.

"The white ranger is a great chief," said he. "Not many would have snatched the pearl from among the head chiefs of the Poison Hatchets, whose slightest blow is death. I say, he is a warrior. He has come to hear me sing my death song; not to gabble to him like an old squaw. I am ready to begin."

"Partly you're correct, chief. I am not come to chatter like the mockingbird. But I prefer hearing your song of triumph to that of death and mourning. Have you heard the voice of the wolf-with-the-leg-off at the door of this mud lodge? Do you not know the voice of that dog, the captain of Salteadores?"

"Yes, the Tiger Cat has killed many of the foxes that follow that ladrón (thief), by walking upon them!" answered the Apache disdainfully.

"To the point, then. If I free you hand and foot, will you lend us your hand to help us shake the ground clear of these varmint? I'll give you a revolver to boot! And, more, you shall have one of these broken guns (the repeating rifles which bend at the barrel end) which speaks all one's fingers times hand-running, with ammunition to feed her up as long as you run buffalo on the plains."

It was an enormous bribe. But the Apache was true to his wounded pride, and his inveterate hatred of the whites.

"The warriors that swing the poison hatchets," he replied, "lie wait in all the thickets around about the forest. In a little while they will fall on the Spanish, and then they will hear their chief singing his death song, mingled with their whoop of triumph."

"All right," said the other, rising. "I thought it neighbourly to give you a chance. Sing away to your own pitch pipe."

He went over to Gladsden, who leant on the counter, whilst doña Perla, on the other side of the room, contemplated the scene curiously. The discovery that one of the strangers was the hero of her childhood's romance, had filled her with complete confidence, and she thought no more of prayer.

"Tiger Cat is a stubborn knot," said Oliver. "I can't squeeze anything out'n him. He's never spared anyone, and when we quit this house I propose to set fire to it over his head. He has burned many a Christian alive, and it's sauce for the goose to roast him, too."

He said this so naturally that Gladsden knew he was not threatening wantonly, and so firmly that he forbore to argue with him.

"I am quite right in saying that the Apaches will never leave this place till they know the fate of their chief. They will soon attack the robbers. When they close we will sally out, trust to luck to seize three hosses for ourselves and the little doña, or to reach cover. At the last moment, since Tío Camote has been false and useless to me, I shall broach a cask or two, which will make a glorious bonfire, and the Apaches will only have their chief in a puchero (stew), with mezcal sauce!"

Nature now clamoured for sleep and food. Oliver seemed able to do without the former, but he never refused solid sustenance when available, like all the wanderers whose life is an irregular alternation of feasts and fasts.

Camote produced some sausage and corn cakes, as well as deer meat, of which doña Perla partook. Gladsden and she dozed off, neither of them heeding the continual popping of shots at long range between the Apaches and the robbers. At about eleven o'clock, when the heat was perceptible in the closed-in room without large windows or other proper vent than the narrow smoke hole aloft, Oliver made a sign for attention. The landlord was eating and drinking noisily near the Apache prisoner, tantalising him with all a coward's cruelty. His two aids had disappeared under the counter, asleep deeply, if their mellifluous nasal breathing afforded a sure indication.

At the back of the ranch there was audible a scratching at the ground. Some living thing was trying to burrow into the house. At the same time the fusillade of the Indians assumed a more regular form. Under cover of the guns the bowmen had advanced, and the twang of the string once or twice came to the ear to prove that they had pushed on near the dwelling.

It was provoking to see nothing of the skirmish, protracted vexatiously, like all such warfare.

Suddenly Oliver took up a large empty cask and placed it on the counter.

"Keep watch thar, whar the critter is boring, and blow out the brains of any head that presents itself, for we have none but enemies hyar."

He jumped on the counter, clambered upon the barrels, and with his hunting knife proceeded to make a gap in the roof. When the sky appeared there, he enlarged the hole and venturesomely pulled himself up through it, crawling down on the flat roof. It was composed of sods, among which stray seeds had sprouted.

All the field, hitherto one of conjecture, was exposed to his experienced view. After one sweep of his vision, he came down to the floor, and relieved Gladsden's anxiety which had sprung up the moment he was left entirely alone for the first time since they quitted El Paso.

"They are all at hide-and-seek," he said, with a chuckle. "They do not make the bark fly (cut the skin) once in a twenty shoots! It's tie and tie in such shooting—why did their pap trust them with firearms? Ne'erless, the 'Pach air working to get into the ranch, and they will rush the greasers back. One-leg has ridden off and hidden, I guess. I can't see his hoss nowhar. As for the cattle of the Ingins, they are in two caballadoes—one yonder a good piece, and t'other nearer at hand. We kin strike for them with some chance. There's on'y young men guarding them—and we're good for six a piece sich! Wrap the little señorita up thick, mind, so she may not be hurted by a flying bullet, and we'll shine out galorious when we make our break out. When I say 'Out!' out we git!"

While the Englishman arranged the blankets and buffalo hides of the fallen Apaches as bucklers about doña Perla, the hunter went to the back of the room where the scratching had changed to the scooping out of earth; a piece of stone had been substituted for the scalp knife.

Oliver, though time was so precious, waited patiently at the edge of the floor and walls. At last, the earth of the former moved as if a mole was making its tunnel, and then a brown hand emerged from the crumbling clods of packed mud. On that hand the hunter's knife descended and severed two fingers as it was instantly withdrawn. The savage had the immense self-control not to utter a sound of pain, in shame at having put his hand so incautiously into the trap.

"He will trouble no more," said Oliver, wiping the knife on the leg of Uncle Potato's breeches as the nearest rag. "At least not before we will git out of the way to receive him."

He went across the room, and, this time, removing the barricade, boldly applied his eye to the wicket.

"Now's the time," said he, instantly.

In fact a volley and the hustling of darts and arrows passed the very door, followed by a rush of softly shod feet as the Apaches at last charged the Mexicans.

"Out!" shouted Oliver, flinging the door open. "And you come, too, unless you like to be boiled in your own spirits."

For with one kick beating in a full cask, he fired the pouring alcohol with the nearest lamp, and pushed Gladsden and the daughter of don Benito out of the door. A vast sheet of flame rose in their rear, and while Camote leaped through it, a fearful explosion in that circumscribed apartment denoted that another cask had burst, and was contributing to the flames. The innkeeper's assistants were unable to pass the burning fluid, and their appeals for help made the pinioned warrior smile with fiendish glee.

He began his death song in a strong voice, though the blazing liquor, red, violet, and blue, gradually rolled towards him in his helpless state, with little or no smoke to muffle the rays.

Through half a dozen stragglers the three fugitives made their way, the hunter literally bearing them down before his rush, whilst the Englishman was as little impeded by half carrying the Mexican maiden on his left arm. However, the cluster of horses was reached, held in the usual manner by all the bridles being passed over one, which two youthful warriors, who had probably never fleshed the scalping knife, were chafing at being detained there to hold. Besides them a stalwart Indian, whose flattened features hinted at the admixture of African blood, was on guard. Luckily he had fired all but his last shot in the skirmishing, and he had only one arrow left in hand. With that he sprang forward to meet the flying trio, using it as a stabbing weapon.

Generously renouncing the use of his firearms, with that sometimes imprudent pride of the Caucasian who loves to win at fair play, the hunter flew at him with merely his own steel blade.

Whilst Gladsden smote the two striplings to the right and left, and was choosing two of the startled and frightened horses for the girl and himself, Oliver was engaged in a terrible, deadly, and pitiless combat with his sworn enemy. They had grappled one another with veritable hooks of steel, and sought mutually to overthrow and stab. Their eyes flashed fire, they wasted their breath in taunts and revelations of the many deeds of mischief and death which they had respectively wrought among their opposing people, till their bated breath came but feebly through their grinding teeth. But for their speech in broken accents, they were scarcely human—mere wild beasts bent on rending and tearing one another till "the heart was bare."