The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
"It is well," interrupted Iron Shirt; "my brother the Yaqui prepares to
hurl his brothers on the pickets, whilst I and mine await at the gate.
The captain will go with the Mayo, and when the big gun is fired, we
all set to our work. It is spoken, the council is broken up."
He rose. The Yaqui bowed, accustomed already to yield immediately to
the superior ever-free Indian, and the Mexican concealed his disgust at
being overruled.
There was a brief silence, during which Diego quitted the tent, though
remaining still in view, just outside, apparently regarding the
stronghold and not listening to the chiefs.
The storm was fast approaching, for the lightning was visible, and the
thunder was borne on gusts which gave a damp feeling, though no rain
had fallen yet.
"Just the night for a surprise," remarked the Yaqui, assuming to the
best of his ability the air of one experienced in warfare.
"It is good," added the Apache, examining his weapons, conscientiously.
The Mexican looked from one to the other with diminishing hesitation.
"Good or not," said he, abruptly, "I see no harm in our taking
precautions."
The Apache paid no attention; he was fine edging his knife on a small
piece of Arkansas whetstone which he carried in a satchel at his side
among other little tools and his talismans. The Yaqui, however, looked
over at the speaker inquiringly.
"I want a few of my men to come with me. They know my ways--I know
theirs."
Juan consulted Iron Shirt with a glance and then nodded carelessly.
"Let me have Garcia before me, my alférez."
He stepped to the opening, and blew a silver whistle hanging by a chain
of the same metal around his long neck. Presently, the Mexican whom he
thus summoned came striding to his commander.
"Stefano," said the latter, loudly enough for the others to hear, "I
believe you are devoted to me?"
"I ought to be," was the answer, "for I should have been hanged three
months ago but for your honour plucking me out of the calaboose of
Concha Village. Since then I have been your trustiest lieutenant, I
take it."
"You have. Well, I am going on a forlorn hope, but a brave man thinks
nothing of risking his life when the reward is great. I am going almost
alone into the hacienda, with our Apache brothers, under the guidance
of our faithful peon yonder."
"Ah!" cried the ex-banker, incredulously.
"I shall be in the heart of the fortalice, in the gardens, where the
ladies recreate out of the reach of arrows, but not safe from the ball
from our cannon. Now, as a gallant gentleman, Stefano, do not, in
aiming at the house, fling your ball in among the dames."
"I won't, Captain, all the less likely, as I mean to aim at the
building low down. The ball will play prettily with the foundation
stone and the don's imported Spanish wines--more the pity."
"Then, if the ladies are safe," began the Mexican, relieved partly of
his fears, "there's no more to be said."
"The house is my mark, rest tranquil, your Excellency."
"Very well," sighed Pedrillo, drawing his false leg out of the hole
which he had deeply drilled in the earth in his agitation. "I no longer
have any uneasiness. Now, let me have six men for my expedition."
"You can have six rogues, who will go anywhere under the leadership of
La Chupa--"
"Stay; no, I would rather have your kinsman, Zagal, to be at their
head."
"My cousin? This is a grievous slur on a caballero to choose his
kinsman as a kind of hostage, but 'tis wartime and we must act like
warriors. Zagal shall accompany you, Captain, as you please. Have no
fear that I shall scalp him with a cannon shot," said Garcia with a
laugh. "He owes me forty odd dollars, to be paid out of our plunder of
the hacienda. Your honour is safe next him."
This arrangement completed, the captain had to go forth. He looked to a
brace of revolvers in his sword belt, to the sabre that it should play
freely, put on a _poncho_, lined with India-rubber against the rain,
and hobbled altogether from the tent. The peon guide awaited him, and
lent him his shoulder on his lame side till he had mounted his horse.
Already the Indians, to the number of fifty, were in the saddle; they
had removed everything of a light colour or that glittered, and had
chosen whole-coloured horses with a dark skin.
"Hasten down the hill," said Pedrillo, as his half a dozen rogues
galloped up into the troop, "the storm will be on us in ten minutes,
confound it! And all nocturnal excursions!"
Indeed, they were hardly out of the hollow, and mounting the slope
which gradually brought them to the level of the farmhouse, before they
were deluged with rain. Fortunately the lightning was flashing on the
other side of the pine forest, where the detachment from the besieged
were gladly sheltering themselves, and no glimmer fell upon the
cavalcade. The Apaches' bodies cast off the wet like ducks' plumage,
whilst the thick blankets of the Mexicans were as serviceable as the
chief salteador's waterproof.
The ditch was brimming with water, so much so as to be on the overflow
at one or two places where the peons bad wantonly breached it, and
the rippling of the waste water was quite noisy. Two of the Indians
swam the moat as easily as beavers, plied their hatchets dexterously
in the mud till a shelving landing place was formed, and there the
troop executed a passage. To ride up to the very stockade, of which the
height prevented even a horseman being perceived from the house, though
not from a sentinel on the enclosure, was no difficult task.
All remained as gloomy as silent. Beyond doubt, the falling rain had
pelted the watchmen into nooks.
Suddenly three figures started up under the very heads of the foremost
horses.
"Stay," said Diego, "they are peons. Yaqui?"
"Yaqui!" was the answer.
"What news?"
"Nothing."
"Where is the gate I found, and which I cannot surely lay my hand upon
now in the wet?"
"Here."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE LOYALTY OF THE APACHE.
"This is the gate," said the Mayo Indian, touching the palisades. "See,
it moves at a pressure. Now, who comes?"
The captain shuddered, he knew not why, as the secret piece in the
stockade yawned ajar.
"We await," said Iron Shirt, laconically, pointing to his followers,
who were huddling up against the long wall, and taking advantage of
every irregularity in its line.
"You await? Here?" cried the robber, astounded, "You never mean to
say you are not going to accompany me now that you see the way is
unimpeded?"
"Here we await," replied the Apache, firmly, "till we hear the war cry
of the Foe-to-all-Men. When the Legless Man sends up the whoop for
reinforcements, the Apaches will dash in and succour him."
"But, chief--"
"The chief has spoken, and his tongue is tired of talk."
"Well, if it is no avail remonstrating with the great warrior," replied
Pedrillo, grumbling to himself, "hang him for an obstinate red devil!
On, come on," he added, to his own five men and their corporal, as
reluctant as himself, on seeing the Apaches leave them to their own
valour, and he pushed them before him roughly with his horse's shoulder.
The Mexicans had all dismounted, not having his reason for keeping
in the saddle, and noiselessly stole in at the opening after the
redskinned pilot.
The little party was within the corral.
"To mark the place of this gate," said the salteador, "two of you
remain here."
"Good," said Diego, who pushed the gate shut, whereupon so neatly was
it contrived that, particularly in such absence of light, the joining
place of the edges was not perceptible.
"Deuce take you--what's that for?" cried the robber, suspiciously.
"Not to arouse observations if a keen eye follows the line of the
fences," replied the Mayo. "Your men plainly denote the spot, if we
must retreat."
"That is true," rejoined the valiant captain, but not in a tone of
assurance, whilst his men looked downhearted at one another, and
enviously at the couple left behind.
However, with the Apaches at hand, a retreat without striking a blow
would probably have caused a dispute which would have imperilled their
unholy alliance; and had as the prospect was, at least the Mexicans
might show a fellow countryman quarter, while the Indians would surely
not spare the turncoat whites.
After all, so far the smoothness of the entry promised fairly, and to
have to do with twenty gentlewomen was no formidable matter.
"On!" said he, impatiently, twitching up his wooden leg so that it
seemed to point the way.
They crossed the enclosure, and reached the second wall without a
challenge, over a ground eight inches deep in water, in the depressions
caused by horses' hoofs, and rude cartwheels.
Diego scrambled up the pickets like a cat. He almost instantly dropped
down, and said, in an ordinary tone--
"Not a head along the wall far or near."
"They have drawn in their sentries," said Zagal, a quick-eyed,
nimble half-breed, "or they have fallen back under the verandah for
protection. It's quite right of them. I would not put a dog out this
weather."
"Bah," returned the captain, eager to believe the coast was clear of
sharpshooters, and well defended by his waterproof, "war dogs should
disregard the rain. As I cannot leap my horse over those pikes, suppose
you find the gate."
The Mayo had already groped along the corral, and unexpectedly the
gate was opened by him. With a few strokes of his knife he had cut the
rawhide thongs that served as fastenings and were relaxed by the wet.
"Let two of you stay here," said Pedrillo, before following the others
through.
Then he pushed his horse between the main post and the gate held half
open by Diego.
He and his three trusty rogues were before the house, which loomed up
large at the end of the long, wide enclosure.
The thunder was dying away, and the swishing of the rain in the puddles
and against the palisades seemed lessening in intensity. Certainly, the
sentries were removed, and the building was silent as a mausoleum.
Nevertheless, they durst not directly cross the open spaces, but
skirted the stockade until they could move forward in the cover of
outbuildings which favoured a zigzag advance.
In this manner they attained a brick wall, where Diego halted them with
his uplifted hand.
"The garden," he whispered.
By all these movements an hour and a half had elapsed. They were so
close to the house that the windows were seen to be outlined here and
there by the glow around the edges of the sashes and, through insect
protectors of gauze, from subdued lights within.
All seemed asleep.
"We might have taken the hacienda," observed Captain Pedrillo, vexedly.
"But those poltroon redskins hung back."
"Nay," replied the Mayo, shaking his head. "They are on their guard
within, never fear. There is only one weak point, and that I am showing
to your honour."
With his knife, the Indian's tool of all work, he severed the wooden
bolt of a door in the wall, and burst it open from a hasp within by a
steady pressure of the shoulder. He drew on one side, after pushing it
open, in respect. The glimpse within was purely of a black den where
wet vines and nodding plants glistened dully of the pouring shower.
"Thank you," said the captain, "for myself and band. But just you go in
and scout about first. So far we have done a deed of daring; to run our
heads into the wolf's very jaws smacks of rashness."
Diego plunged into the doorway in a cautious manner.
"What do you think of all this, Zagal?" inquired the Mexican chief
quickly.
"That we ought to have carried fifty pounds of that blasting powder
each man, and we could have blown the hacienda into mud pies! What a
chance to miss!"
"Very true," said the captain, pretending to see the venture in the