The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
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