The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
appeared. It was the young woman whom he had named, and a youth in his
two-and-twentieth year at the farthest.
Benito was tall, well and stoutly built; his form even stylish, his
features fine and regular; his complexion seemed rather pale for a
native, from his silky hair, which came down disorderly on his square
shoulders, being of a jet black. Intelligence and unconquerable daring
shone in his large black eyes. On his visage sat a seldom seen blending
of courage, fidelity and frankness. In short, one of those men who win
at first sight, and can be trusted to the last.
Though his costume, reduced by the dilapidation of the thorns,
consisted of linen trousers caught in at the waist by a red China
crape _faja_ or sash, and a coarse "hickory" shirt, he resembled a
disguised prince, so much ease and distinction abounded in his bearing.
But, for that matter, throughout Spanish-America, it is impossible to
distinguish a noble from a common man, for they all express themselves
with the same elegance, employ language quite as nicely chosen, and
have equally courteous manners.
The girl whom he supported, almost carried in fact, was sleeping
without being fully unconscious, as happens to soldiers on a forced
march. Dolores was not over sixteen. Her beauty was exceptional, and
her modesty made her low melodious voice falter when she spoke. She was
graceful and dainty as an Andalusian. The profile so strongly resembled
that of the man who was leaning over the slain dog that it did not
require the remembrance that he had spoken of her as his child, for one
to believe that he had father and daughter under his ken.
"Don't wake her!" said the elder man, with a quick wave of the hand
to quell the other's surprise. "Let her not see the poor faithful
hound, Benito. And keep yourself, as I do, before her as a shield. The
cowardly foe to whom we owe the loss of our horses, our arms, and now
our loyal comrade is lurking in the thicket, may even--Oh, Holy Mother,
that should protect us from the heathen!--be this instant taking aim at
our poor, dear Dolores, with another missile from his accursed quiver."
"The villain!" cried Benito, darting a furious glance around. "Luckily,
she sleeps, Don José."
Indeed the elder Mexican could take the girl without awakening her out
of the other's arms, and, after a long kiss on her pure forehead, bear
her away from the dog's proximity into a covert where he laid her upon
the grass with precaution.
"Thank heaven for this sleep," said he, "it will make her temporarily
oblivious of her hunger."
Benito had taken the other's zarapé which he spread over the girl. That
blanket was their only appendage; beside the scanty covering which the
three wore, weapons, water bottle and food container, they had none.
A critical position this for the small party, weaponless and foodless
in the waste! A disarmed man is reckoned as dead in such a wild!
Struggling is impossible against the incalculable foes that either
crush a solitary adventurer by their mass, or deputize, so to say, some
such executioner as he whom we saw to have slain the dog, and we hear
to have rid the three Mexicans of their horses and equipments. The
story of how this deprivation came about is short and lamentable.
CHAPTER II.
ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE.
Don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente was the son of that General
Bustamente, twice president of the Mexican Republic. When his father,
cast down from power, was forced to flee with his family to take final
refuge at Guayaquil, the boy was only five or six years old. Suffering
with fever, which made the voyage dangerous for him, the child was
left at Guaymas in charge of a faithful adherent, who found no better
way of saving the son of the proscript from persecution than to take
him as one of his own little family up the San José Valley, where he
had a ranch. The boy remained there and grew up to the age when we
encountered him.
His rough but trusty guardian let the youth run wild, teaching him to
ride and shoot as the only needful accomplishments. Benito, falling
into the company of the remnant of purer-blooded Indians, supposed to
be the last of the original possessors of that region, relished their
vagabond life exceedingly. Not only did he spend weeks at a time in
hunts with them, with an occasional running fight with the Yaqui tribe,
and even the Apaches raiding Sonora; but, at the season for pearl
diving, accompanied them in their boats, not only in the Gulf, but down
the mainland and up the seacoast of the peninsula. La Paz he knew well,
and the Isles of Pearls were familiar in every cranny.
Now, when the news of his father's death in exile came to Benito, he
was a hunter and horseman doubled by seaman and pearl fisher, such as
that quarter of the world even seldom sees.
So little on land, both enemies and followers of the copresident lost
all trace of the son.
Moreover, in the land of revolution in permanency, the offspring of a
once ruler are personally to blame if they call dangerous attention on
themselves.
On shore, however, don Benito had noticed the daughter of a neighbour,
one don José Miranda, formerly in the navy. After a couple of years'
wedded life, the latter was left a widower with an only daughter, who
had become this charming Dolores, now slumbering under her father's
zarapé. Her education was confided to a poor sister of the captain,
who was about the only enemy young Bustamente had in his courtship.
Captain Miranda was very fond of the youth, and it was agreed ere long
that there should be a wedding at the _Noria de las Pasioneras_ (Well
house of the Passionflowers) as soon as Benito reached the age of
five-and-twenty.
But doña Maria Josefa had contrary marital projects. Her brother had so
many times talked of bestowing the bulk of his considerable fortune on
his beloved child, that the lady concluded, rightly or wrongly, that
she would be penniless when the niece married. Habituated, since a
great while back, to a very easy, not to say pampered existence at her
kinsman's expense, she beheld with terror the time coming when her host
would settle all his property on the girl, and constitute the strange
young man, who was so reserved about his origin, the steward for his
young wife. However, doña Maria Josefa was too sly and adroit to openly
oppose the paternal determination, and allow him to perceive the hate
she bore Benito and would be only too delighted to manifest.
Whenever she threw out hints of a better match for her niece than this
mysterious youth, they had fallen in deaf ears, and she fretted in
silence that boded no good prospects.
Nevertheless, some two years had known the young hearts formally
engaged without the serpent lifting her head to emit a truly alarming
hiss. At that time doña Maria Josefa introduced at her brother's a
hook-nosed gentleman, arrayed sumptuously, who rejoiced in a long name
which paraded pretensions to an illustrious lineage. This don Aníbal
Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortez so displeased Benito and Dolores,
whilst not ingratiating himself deeply with don José, that his presence
would not have been tolerated, only for the young couple hopefully
supposing that the tall and bony scion of the first conqueror of Mexico
was a flame of Dolores' duenna, and as such would wed the dragon and
take her away from the hacienda to the beautiful and boundless domains
in Spain, upon which he expatiated in a shrill voice of enthusiasm.
Don Aníbal had excellent credentials from a banker's at Guaymas,
but, somehow, the gentlemen farmers received him with cold courtesy.
Besides, it having been remarked that those who offended him met with
injury, personal, like the being waylaid, or in their property, stock
being run off or outhouses fired, there sprang up a peculiar way of
treating the stranger for which the Spanish _morgue_, that counterpart
of English phlegm, is very well suited.
All at once, Benito received word that a messenger from his mother had
arrived at Guaymas, bearing the very good news that she expected to
obtain a revocation of the sentence of banishment against the brood of
Bustamente, and then he could publicly avow his name.
He had already imparted his secret to Captain Miranda.
The messenger had grievously suffered with seasickness, and was
unable to come up the valley. Miranda counselled Benito to go to him
therefore, and besides, as the formalities attending the settlement of
his estate upon his daughter, under the marriage contract, required
such legal owls as nestled alone in the port, he volunteered to
accompany the young man. Over and above all this pleasing arrangement,
as Dolores had never seen the city, of which the five thousand
inhabitants think no little--for after all it is the finest harbour in
the Gulf of California--he proposed she should be of the party.
Another reason, which he did not confide in anyone, acted as a
spur. A neighbour had told don José that, from a communication of
his majordomo, an expert in border warfare, he believed that the
illustrious don Aníbal de Luna was not wholly above complicity with a
troop of robbers who lately infested Sonora, and caused as much dread
and more damage, forasmuch as they were intelligently directed to the
best stores of plunder as the Indians themselves. This neighbour,
though he loved doña Josefa no more cordially than anybody else, still
deemed it dutiful to prevent Captain Miranda allowing a "gentleman of
the highway" to marry into his family.
Don José felt the caution more painfully, as his sister had plainly
let him know that the famous don Aníbal was not so much her worshipper
as her niece's. He might have thanked the _salteador_ to rid his house
of the old maid, but to allow one to court his daughter was another
matter. At the same time, as of such dubious characters are made the
"colonels" who buckler up a Mexican revolutionary pretender, don José
was scarcely less coldly civil to the hidalgo, though he hastened on
the preparations to withdraw his daughter from the swoop of the bird of
rapine.
Doña Maria Josefa drew a long face at the prospect of being left alone
at the hacienda, but she was too great a dependant on her brother, and
too hypocritical to trammel the undertaking.
The party set forth, then, under good and sufficient escort. But the
very foul fiend himself appeared to have taken all doña Maria Josefa's
evil wishes in hand to carry them out, to say nothing of the baulked
don Aníbal's.
Half the escort left without returning, at a mere alarm of the _Indios
bravos_ ("hostiles") being at La Palma, and massacring and firing
farmhouses wholesale. The rest were lost in the bush, were abandoned
dead or dying; the mules and horses were "stampeded" by unseen foes;
and finally a fatal bowman slew the two horses which had borne don José
and his daughter in their futile endeavour to regain the lost track;
and, to come to the present time, their dog, of whom the instinct had
preserved them more than once from death by thirst, had been despatched
by the same relentless demon.
Still, there was the contradictory consolation which the persistent
enemy afforded by these evidences of his bloodthirsty hunt. By a
singular anomaly of the human organisation, as long as man knows his
fellows are at hand, even though they be enemies, he does not feel
utterly stripped of hope. In the depth of his heart, the vaguest of
hope sustains and encourages him, though he may not reason about it.
But as soon as all human vestiges disappear, the imperceptible human
waif on the sea, alone with nature, trembles in full revelation of his
paltriness. The colossal surroundings daunt him, and he acknowledges it
is folly to struggle with the waves that multitudinously mount up to
swamp him from all sides.