The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
over to the farms of Bella Vista and the Palmero, to inquire news,
one only returned," this in a still lower tone so that the girl
could not possibly overhear, "the outbreakers had carried them by
storm--massacred every living creature and danced round the blazing
buildings, one of those pagan dances whose memories I had hoped we had
banished from their darkened brains. The surviving brother, hiding in
the thicket till he could secure a stray horse, heard their council
swear to destroy the white man and all his works throughout Sonora and
retreat to the Northern Deserts to live free and wild in the abominable
practices of their ancestors. They talked even of attacking Ures, and
said all the Indians in the pueblos would join them. What will the
hundred soldiers at Ures do? I tell you, gentlemen, such is the general
situation."
"It's a tight nip," agreed Oliver.
"Terrible!" added the Englishman, shuddering to think of the poor
father, his friend, ignorant still of the happy fate of his child, and
exposed to the overwhelming storm of the revolted serfs.
"It is good and bad, too," resumed the priest, "that the neighbours and
kinsmen of don Benito will be flocking there to celebrate the ascension
to heaven of his grandchild. Good, that so many heads of family should
be under one roof, but bad that their own homes should be without
commanders at such an emergency."
"The Indians," said Oliver authoritatively, "will move in a mass, for
they have not been trained as individual warriors; hence they will
attack this house, which contains all they hate, their masters. My vote
is: on to don Benito's!"
The priest bowed at this utterance of a man of warfare. The English
gentleman approved, if only out of eagerness to place doña Perla in her
mother's arms.
"I'll show you the way!" said Father Serafino, smiting his mule with
his slipper. "On to the Hacienda of Monte Tesoro, then."
"The Treasure Hill!" Don Benito had erected his chief farmhouse as a
memorial of the haul in the Gulf of California.
They tailed away at once in a new order; the mule leading at a good
pace, spite of the obscurity which little impeded one very familiar
with the ground, bringing up the rear, ever and anon looking steadily
behind him.
It was the middle of the night, amid falling raindrops of great size,
that the little troop beheld the loopholed walls of an enclosure round
the grounds of an imposing mansion rise up into view. All the gates and
doors were wide open, and every window blazed with light. A number of
peons, brandishing torches, rushed out to welcome those they took to be
belated guests. But as soon as the illumination fell upon the beauteous
face of the daughter of the proprietor, they sent up a ringing shout
which revealed how deeply endeared was that master and all his kith and
kin.
The farmhouse itself was engirt, and all its approaches encumbered
by at least a hundred shanties (_chozas_) and mud brick cabins, of
miserable aspect, scattered at haphazard, and used for the abodes
of the house servants and farm labourers. At the present juncture,
though, the misery was gilded, since every hut glowed with light, and
out of the doorways poured the jingling of tambourines, the banging
of _tambores_ or drums, and laughter; songs and shouts mingled with
the tinkling and strumming of stringed instruments, in wild, thrilling
native waltzes.
Though there were women and children squatting and sprawling in the
clear space between the cabins, mounted peons, swinging flambeaux, were
racing to and fro, at the risk of trampling on them.
On triumphantly and joyously entering the courtyard (_patio_), the
strangers beheld a no less singular and picturesque spectacle.
Around great piles of burning wood, which would have roasted mastodons,
whole trees being required to feed them, a multitude were revelling,
swilling, and cramming, whilst a few in tatters, Indians as their
complexion showed, were pacing the ancient steps, which so scandalised
Father Serafino, and which were the ceremonial performances of the
Yaquis, perhaps as old as the creed he so sturdily supported.
Through this carousing throng, spite of the spell which the
announcement of the recovery of the maiden by the reverend father
exercised tolerably potently, the horsemen made but new progress.
By the time they arrived at the wide portals, these were choked up by
a party of gentlemen, in the front of whom, even had he not called out
his daughter's name with indescribable joy, the Englishman recognised
his former shipmate.
Yes, truly, the well-preserved gentleman who embraced La Perla was
none other than our don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente, son of the
General-President of Mexico, now proprietor of Monte Tesoro and many
another estate as rich, the pearl diver of old.
When the hacendero looked on the group behind his daughter, glancing
affectionately at the _padre_ who was so close and old an acquaintance,
and curiously and not very kindly at the American whose position he
recognised, and whose buckskin frock was stained with blood from the
fresh lank scalp thrust into his belt until he should have time to cure
it, and comb out the clotted hair into fringe for ornament, he finally
rested his gaze as if spellbound on the fair complexioned European.
"Papa," said the Purest of Pearls, suddenly remembering that she stood
in the place of a mistress of ceremonies, "I have the happiness to
present to you the oldest of your friends, to whom I owe, as you have
often told me, the bliss of being rich, with my mama. I now present
him, too, as having reappeared in our world after many years--mine own
lifetime, in faith, in order to save my life!"
"Don Jorge!" shouted the Mexican, rushing forward and, not to be
repelled by an attempt only to clasp his hand, enfolding the bashful
Briton in a powerful embrace.
"My dear old Benito!" and the Englishman could say not a word in
surplus.
"Gentlemen," said the hacendero, turning to his countrymen, without
caring to conceal the tears of delight upon his black moustache and
beard, "I have the signal honour to introduce to you the noblest heart
that ever beat in the breast of a man! My friend of friends, don Jorge
Federico Gladsden."
Every head was politely bent.
"The honour falls on me," observed Gladsden. "As for the rescue of
your child, it was a providential casualty that brought her across
my path--the rest is all the work of this keen, resolute, prompt and
fearless American whom I, too, call my friend in the same full sense in
which don Benito uses it towards your humble servant."
So saying, he caught hold of the hand of the hunter and squeezed it so
heartily that the latter quite forgot a little rising pain at having
been rather unjustly omitted in the young lady's presentation.
"And now," said the master, "let me lead you to my wife, and my son and
daughter, whom, unfortunately, we cannot relieve of grief at their loss
as you have done of his parents, by the restoration of our treasured
one."
"Your son! How time flies!" murmured Gladsden, "Though, for the matter
of that, I have a couple of torments of my own. Only, less fortunate
than you, my friend, I lost their mother long ago."
They had entered the house, where a silence ran before them and seemed
gradually to begin to diminish the merrymaking clamour.
"Yes," said the priest, with a sigh, "time is fleeting and death cometh
as swiftly, and who of us can be certain of having ample opportunity to
accomplish his duty--the task which heaven sets unto him?"
The solemnity of the accent deepened a gloom already befalling the
guests.
"The _padre_ is right," broke in Oregon Oliver, whose impatience at
the loss of time in ceremony was augmenting, "jest let out that you
are coming to save the house from the scalper and pison hatchets! What
you've had was the _blazing_ (marking a tree with a chop to denote it
chosen for felling), the next call, the murderous minded Apaches mean
to fell the trunk from the topmost switch to the lowest bough."
All the gentlemen withdrew into a side room, where the priest imparted
his tragic intelligence. There was terrible anxiety, since the farming
gentlemen had left their homesteads at the mercy of their peons thus
denounced as treacherous.
"Well, Señores caballeros," said Benito, "since you look to me, I say
with our norteamericano (Oliver) that, under such circumstances, the
determination we are driven into is the best, I have four hundred peons
on this farm. Of the lot, I can rely on three hundred, for one reason
and another. I know the bulk of them as I do my own children. Against
the hundred, or near a hundred and fifty, since some off strange
plantations have flocked here, ostensibly for the junketing, we can pit
my gentlemen friends, our relations. Each of them is the value of five
or six wild Indians. You see, gentlemen, I rate you very low! Now you
require rest, a change of dress--."
"No, no," said the Englishman and his guide with one breath.
"Pardon me, a short rest is requisite. By that time I shall have made
my preparation, and then we may put the finishing touches on our plan
of battle."
"And doña Dolores?" queried Mr. Gladsden.
"My daughter has gone to inform her that we have the honour and
pleasure, at last," he said, reproachfully, "to see under the roof
always bound to shelter him, our foremost of friends and benefactors.
After your repose, doña Dolores will have the honour to receive you."
The Englishman and his companion were led away separately by servants
bearing silver lamps. The former was conducted through several
corridors into a chamber, where the steward ordered another massive
silver lamp on a table to be lit. Whilst a third peon held the lamp
up on high, the other two noiselessly and rapidly prepared a bath of
rosewater in the next room. During their preparations, two others
arrived in haste with a choice of clothes, the underlinen very fine,
and from the first Paris houses.
Meanwhile Gladsden looked about him.
The room was quite large, having two small windows and one glazed door
-opening into a garden. On the whitened walls were pictures in gold
frames, such as are painted in a mechanical way for Northern dealers
to send in quantity to New Orleans, Santa Fe, and Mexico, for sale by
torchlight. They represented, after good and popular masters, scenes of
religion, battle, hunting, history, &c, and were hung without order. At
all events, they regaled the sight by their vivid colour. In one corner
was a folding sleeping chair, on which were thrown splendid skins and
furs and fine blankets, to be arranged as the sleeper fancied. The
furniture was completed by a massive mahogany centre table, a square
table against the wall near the chairbed, two openwork armchairs, and
some Indian wickerwork footstools. There was a pedestal of marble for a
religious image, but the statue had been removed to figure in the hall
devoted to the ceremony of the Angelito.
Whatever the English guest had said against his need for repose when
danger threatened, he had no sooner returned from his bath in fresh
habiliments, to find on the table a tasteful spread of preserved fruit,
smoking chocolate of fine savour and much thickness, and light pastry,
to say nothing of some cold turkey and ham with golden hued corn bread,
then he did not blame his host for the insistence on overruling him.
Lighting a cigarette, he reclined on the couch-chair, and soon sank
into a blessed state of physical enjoyment less and less appreciated,
of course, as his overtasked brain and frame lent themselves gratefully
to slumber.
When he awoke, a couple of hours only thence, he saw the table again
covered with eatables, but a great deal more substantial. It was laid