The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
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."
"Oh, you air Mr. Rough-on-the-Herdsman, you air?" hissed Oregon Oliver,
tightening a hug which the grizzly would not have disdained to borrow.
"Well, Mr. Death-to-the-Cowboys, how like you that? You've 'rubbed out'
three solitary trappers, ha' you? How's that for a rub?--And that,
and, still again, that!" And hurling the wretch to the earth under the
curveting mustangs' unshod hoofs, he nearly beat the last breath out
of his wretched and bleeding body. In a moment he rose, this time not
ashamed to tear away the reeking scalp of the Indian who had in his
boasts touched on a painful chord.
"I bet my life," muttered he, seizing a horse by the nostrils, and
dragging his head down irresistibly, "that señor Murder-the-Vaqueros
will wipe out no more lone trappers, durn his carcass--would he were
roasting alongside his chief! Innyhow, he can't fall, scalpless, in
among his brethren in the happy hunting grounds!"
All three were mounted now, a task which would have been far more
difficult only for the horses which Mr. Gladsden had selected being
by chance stolen from the Mexicans, and, hence, rather pleased than
alarmed at instinctively recognising hands more familiar than their
last masters'.
The two Apache boys were crawling away for refuge in the corral cactus;
thence to recover from the blows, and hurl insults and stones.
In a glance, Oliver saw their only chance was to run the gauntlet
between the burning house and those of the Apache's rearguard, who had
already stopped, ceased to pepper the hidden bandits, and looked back
towards the horses in such wild agitation.
"_Hep-la!_" cried Oliver to the herd, applying his heavy hand to the
rump of the two or three that were within reach, "And away! _'Vantay!_
(advance) Git!"
The horses preceded the three, but the latter's mounts participated
in the fever of escape, all the more as the heat, the smell, and the
flames of the Green Ranch had struck their olfactory and visual organs
with that terrifying influence of fire upon the equine race.
"Let 'em rip!" cried the hunter; "They'll not shoot in the midst, lest
they hurt a hoss. They're outrageous fond of horses, these 'Pach!"
As the furious cavalcade trampled by the Ranch door, the Englishman
fired a hurried shot within. Immediately, the chant of the Apache,
which was audible above the crackling and hissing of the flames, ceased
short.
"You are a good old hoss!" ejaculated Oliver, who divined the humanity
which prompted the merciful bullet, though incapable of such foolish
leniency, or, at least, inexcusable waste of ammunition himself. "He
desarved all he was gitting; but, na'theless, it's better you had it
off your conscience. He's a green gilly," he added, under his breath,
eyeing his pupil approvingly; "but for sand--you bet thar's a heap of
sand, thar. If it war writing paper from hyar to his sprouting ground,
jest take him up by the heel and sprinkle him out over the hull spread,
and there'd be enough to cover an old bull on the last squar' foot!
He's made of grit, he is _that!_"
On the roof of the building they had perceived the blanched faces of
the two bartenders. There they lay, after having been pursued up the
gap in the ceiling by the fiery tongues, afraid to move, and so attract
the Apache's view.
As for Camote, he had vanished into a nook no doubt planned for some
such eventuality, deep enough to require digging out.
As soon as the fugitives were surely out of range, first of the Apaches
and, then, of the bandits, sufficiently engaged by the latter to bestow
no more than a couple of random shots on the adventurers, they began to
pull rein hard. While actually looking back, there was nothing to see
but the column of flame and blue smoke from the Green Ranch. But after
having resumed their course, they heard a dull boom, like a cannon
report, of which the muzzle was in a cave.
"The heavy mud roof has fallen in," remarked Oliver; "the chiefs scalp
is safe, and the spreeing den of the Sonora bandoleros will never house
them no more."
When the horses they rode were cured of their panic by kindly
"horse-talk" of which the hunter was profuse, and when the rattle of
the stampeded troop had died away utterly, the commonly dense stillness
of the wilderness fell upon all around.
"Those niggers will go on yelling and pelting one another till their
powder gives out," remarked Oliver. "There'll be scarcely half a dozen
strokes to count, but, however, blood has been spilt, and so while they
are scrimmaging we can canter on."
Thus reassured, doña Perla smiled again. In a few words she acquainted
the hunter with such landmarks around her father's estate as to enable
him to direct their course as straight as the _mottes_ or "islands"
of woodland in the prairie permitted. But if the Mexican lady and the
Englishman argued well of the profound solitude, the Oregonian did not
lay aside his watchfulness. Leading the van, three horse lengths, his
rifle across the saddlebow, bent forward so that the animal's head
shielded his bosom, and his eyes peered over the ears, he retained all
that wariness demanded in Northern Mexico, where the axiom reigns:
_Homo homine lupus_, not to be translated as it was done by an
excellent trapper friend of the author's, a squawman who had wedded an
Indian woman and so became an ally of the tribe:--"Don't feed _loups_
(wolves) with hominy," but, "Man is a devouring wolf to his brother."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE OLD, OLD FRIENDS.
Between seven and eight o'clock in the evening the two guardsmen of
La Perla Purísima were still riding with her in a somewhat melancholy
mood. They had even feared her indications were wrong, particularly as
they had met none of their native woodcutters, employed by the Mission
of San Fernando, or of the hacienda of the young lady's father, at
the magnificent remuneration of half a dozen dollars per month, the
insignificant rations in supplement being not worth considering. As a
consequence the loan of an _ounce_, which vast amount they never dream
of repaying, constitutes them serfs for life. Whatever the causes, not
one of these slaves appeared in the land, where a carrion crow or two,
that evidence of a settled county, now and then was visible, having
perceived even so far away the battlefield contested by border ruffians
and the Indian raiders.
"Queer," remarked Oliver, shaking his head, and redoubling his
precautions, whilst relaxing the pace for the same reasons, though they
stood in need of food and rest at the earliest moment.
Their horses, too, which the Indians had ridden with that recklessness
to their manner born, were suffering from thirst and enforced fast.
It came on dark, too, "a nigger of a night," grumbled the hunter, and
not a star in the sky. Thick clouds, charged with electricity, coursed
overhead like antelopes in fright, urged by a gale that increased
continually, and the rumble of far-off thunder warned them that a storm
was imminent and shelter needful.
Still they rode on, doggedly, step by step, or rather, _paso entre
paso_ which is the Spanish for intermingling steps, taken, indeed,
by the horses shrinking together hoof locked and trying to "hump up"
their backs in alarm, when suddenly the pioneer's mount, lifting its
hanging head and wagging its ears briskly, uttered a derisive neigh. So
does the noble animal often express his lordly contempt for the humble
by-brother, the mule.
Indeed, not far aside on the northeast or left, they heard the quick
amble of some quadruped. In a few instants there appeared a shadow,
which approached with a daring or simplicity which perplexed the
hunter, already grasping his gun.
The hail of the oncomer was in Spanish, a religious greeting
appropriate to the vesper hour, to which, involuntarily and through
well-schooled habit, the sweet fresh voice of the Mexican maiden
straightway responded.
"It is Father Serafino," she added in explanation. "Our Lady of
Guadalupe be thanked!" The name vaguely struck the Englishman as
familiar, once upon a time, and he extended his hand to check the
movement of Oliver, despite the recognition, to be wholly in readiness
to fire.
Meanwhile the priest, for it was one, bestriding a fine Spanish mule of
unusual size and docility, had come up.
As well as the murkiness would allow one to discern, he was a man
of about fifty, but his broad brow was smooth as a youth's; sweet
intelligence dwelt in the blue eyes which were shaded by long lashes
under brown brows regularly traced. His face was perfectly cleanly
shaven, and his long hair, only slightly threaded with silver, came
down on his shoulders, and framed an oval visage. His voice was
melodious, but not devoid of manliness. Altogether, the attractive and
sterling man was a worthy successor of the brothers who accompanied the
mailclad knights in their inroads from Mexico to San Francisco. His
simple costume was composed of a black gown buttoned all the way and
gathered in by a broad band; his sombrero had been lost in his ride,
made in haste.
This same precipitation impelled him to be brief in his story and in
his congratulations to the señorita for having been saved from the
spoilers.
"Though there will be great joy at the house," he said, "there will
still remain mourning, my daughter."
"My father! My mother!"
"All these are well, and so your brother, but he and his wife and they
all in grief--an arrow, at random, entered an upper window and slew
the babe in its cradle. The will of heaven be done in all things! The
little angel, at least, will not be exposed to the horrors which I fear
still are poised ere soon descending."
He closed his sentence with so sad an air that all gazed at him, afraid
to question.
"Yea, terrible events are in preparation, of which the swoop of the
Apaches on the farm and the taking away of the heiress form no adequate
examples. At least, when they strike, they fly, and are gone like the
hawk. But a danger on the very hearth is arising. In short, friends of
my little daughter here, listen; the Yaqui Indians, the Christians,
the converts, the semi-civilised, whom we employ throughout Sonora as
peons, field hands or labourers, have seen in the too often successful
raids of the wild brethren active slurs on their tameness. The ease
with which this last band of Apaches overcame the servants of don
Benito has set them plotting, I know, to revolt against him, and
against other masters, alas, not so kind, fair and punctual in payment
of their pittance as your father, my poor child."
"Of them, who is going to be uneasy, father?" responded La Perla, with
the confident, arrogant smile of the daughter of the ruling race. "Have
not these poor dogs many a time in my young life, brooded, ay, and
yelped of an attack, but between the menace and its execution, what a
distance!"
"That is the saying of a child, gentlemen," continued Father Serafino.
"She mistakes this time. Acknowledging the good Indians to have been
treated badly of late, they are out of patience. They are in active
rebellion. All the Indians who were on our Mission have disappeared.
Last night," he added in a whisper, "of my two brothers who went