The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

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,