The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
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.
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.
[1] Of the Paris weekly newspaper in which this romance had delighted
the insatiable reader.
[2] Gen. Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 1812, and that with
Mexico, is an idol in the American Walhalla. His name becomes an
invocation only partially playfully used by the frontier army officers,
their men, and the hunters.
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