The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

continuing, advanced beyond them. They resumed their charge. But already that separation had resolved Gladsden. Forgetting that he had been enjoined to keep side by side with the American as long as they faced the Rustlers, and, when the chance-medley came, to stand back to back with him, he sprang quickly onward. The now frightened Pedrillo aimed at him a terrible sweeping blow of a long sword, such another as the hapless _guitarero_ had employed in the tavern. And, though Gladsden parried it partially with his knife, the glancing blade cleft his left shoulder. Stung by the pain, the Englishman dropped the knife out of the hand, already benumbed by the cut, and seizing the protruding wooden leg of the luckless Terror of the Border, applied himself with such extraordinary vigour to tearing the wretch out of the saddle, that leg, man or saddle, was bound to come. It was the leg gave way at its straps, while Pedrillo was howling with agony and clinging to the saddlebow, leaning with all his might contrariwise to the tug. On the unexpected release, the captain fell heavily over the horse and lay senseless on the ground, which he had reached headfirst. Gladsden caught the flying reins, and bounded upon the steed; as it flew forward in fright, two of the salteadores were shouldered aside, and the captain trodden upon by the hinder hoof; but he made no move, never so much as groaned, he had died as much from fright as anguish. This magnificent feat of _arms_, if the seizure of the nether limb could be so denominated, completely demoralised the robbers. But some of the most courageous Yaquis, and an Apache who had lost a kinsman in the explosion as well as a war pony, which he more or less greatly prized, saw the white men victorious and the Rustlers about to fly, with a deeper chagrin and enmity. They collected, by a common impulse, and hemmed in the pair. At their first shot, Gladsden was unhorsed, the animal falling dead under him; had it not reared at the smart of an arrow, the succeeding missiles, which entered its breast, must have riddled the rider. He and the American once more stood together with only that warm carcase as their buckler to some thirty foes. Neither hugged any delusion as to the future. It was materially impossible that with their cartridges all spent, they could successfully resist so many inveterate foes, who, too, would, at any moment, be reinforced without stint from the Yaquis on the hill. Indeed, thereupon commenced, with the rush of the Indians, one of those unequal contests which are common on the border, and which, when a worthy poet shall arise, will show posterity at what a waste of gallant hearts civilisation has executed its conquests. Mute, sombre, back to back so closely that the penetrating lance would have spitted the pair, never recoiling so much as a hand's breadth, plying the hunting knife for the one, and the sword of Pedrillo in his victor's grasp for the other, the unflinching couple, like a Janus animated, held out against the ever-onsetting foe. Any other enemies must have been impressed with admiration. Their bared arms were hacked and slit; the left of Gladsden hung disabled; but, on that side, Oliver's formidable right hand was performing miracles of valour and dexterity enough for both. They streamed with blood, which matted their locks and soaked their clothes, dangling in tatters through which their fair skin momently gleamed in glaring contrast with that of their dusky foes until dyed ruddy like the rest. "How goes it, pard.?" queried Oliver, in a kind of lull in the rain of cuts, and blows, and thrusts which nothing but the very frenzy of the Indians, each to deal the stroke, prevented being fatal a hundred times. "I'm gitting my second wind myself and can go on carving till morning!" There was no response to the jest; but the Oregonian felt the firm body that had been ever so long a rock of support, slowly weighing upon him. Then, alarmed for the very first time, or rather instantly inspired with sympathy and wild indignation at the injustice of so brave a man succumbing under the blows of such ignoble creatures, he lifted his voice as an appeal to the rectifier of such abuses, in his restricted mind: "Cuss ye, for a heap of dirty niggers!" he vociferated. "Six at a time we'd have butchered you up harnsum! Whoop-ho! Will no one of the colour of a white man let us have ten minutes to recruit; when we'll thrash them all agen, honest Injin!" A deep, hoarse laugh at the speech, not at all understood, was the reply. But a cry of terror was elsewhere audible. "Something's coming, my _cahooter_ (partner)," said Oliver, redoubling his gigantic sweeps of the buffalo-butchering knife. "And never more was a friend welcome! Don't you lose your grip yet!" Indeed, without being able to discern the features of the knot of combatants on the hill, under the blue canopy of floating smoke, all silent since the two whites had exhausted their ammunition, and the close ring of their assailants forbade their employing firearms, don Benito and his son, with a score of best riders, had taken the cow path and somehow climbed the incline. Coming upon the crest at a little distance from the barranca, they formed column, four abreast, and raced to the spot of the hand-to-hand struggle. "Viva Mexico!" was their continuous war cry, with the ancient "Rally around Spain!" "Oh, _viva_ anything in the way of a 'Co,'" muttered Oliver, receiving his spent and insensible friend on his arm, and depositing him behind the horse's body at his feet. "You're like the sogers, you've come when the Injins took the scalps." Happily the attackers turned at this fresh incident. Opening out so as to allow the hind ranks to rush forward and form a line with the rest, the cavalry fell upon the Indians, and sabred them in the first dash past. As soon as they could wheel, which was done on the edge of the barranca by sharp reining in and spinning round whilst the horse's fore hoofs were in air, they returned at full speed. But, already, the Yaquis had renounced their wish to finish with the two whites and fled, flinging away their weapons not to encumber their flight. Alone, wounded, but stubborn, the Apache kneeling, took aim with his envenomed hatchet at the head of Oregon Oliver, intending to cast it ere he should be trampled under the Mexicans. The hunter could do nothing, his brain swam, his eyes closed with their last vision comprising the exultant visage of the malicious red man; his knife slipped out of his gore-smeared and stiffening hand; he reeled, and then, like a giant pine uprooted by a "norther," fell upon the body of his comrade as if to be his shield to the very last. There was just a moan, like a puma's that had defended its cub to the death. At the same instant, the tomahawk whizzed forward and would have infallibly fleshed itself in him ere he finally rested; but Benito had buried his spurs in his steed, which took a prodigious leap. The hatchet gashed the Mexican's leg, even as he stooped forward and drove his reeking blade to the cross hilt in the bosom of the redskin. Don Jorge dismounted, and hastened to lift up the two white men, one after the other, and force some brandy down their throats. Meanwhile two of their friends had ridden after his father, who was seen to have lost control of his steed. A silence fell on the hill, broken only by moans of the wounded and calls for water. All at once there rose a loud cheering at the farmhouse; on its roof the ladies had collected and were waving scarves and veils. And, as an explanation, there was shortly wafted over the valley the music of a cavalry band, strong in brass and kettledrum, playing a lively _Arragonese jota_. The gay notes grated on the nerves of the Mexicans on the hill, collected round the sad group of the two whites and don Benito, whom they had assisted off his horse. "The dragoons from the town," observed one of the party. "That crowns the day. In an hour there will not be one Yaqui within view of a telescope." In fact, the valley was already strewn with plunder, and the dead and the wounded not capable of flight, but of living Indians hardly a hundred. The revolt was over. Then the field was again animated after this transient desertion, for Father Serafino, with peons carrying handbarrows, came forth to attend to the wounded. Upon improvised litters of lances, the European, Oliver, and Benito, all mute and quiet for want of strength, were tenderly transported down the hill and up into the hacienda hall. The little hero of the Angelito was displaced from his throne, the decorations removed, and the room became a hospital. The ladies had assumed a simple dress befitting their suddenly imposed duty, and were obeying the orders of the father, who had a knowledge of surgery, like all missionaries. CHAPTER XXVII. THE TRUE CABALLERO. Four days after the defeat of the insurgents, in his own bedroom of the Hacienda of the Monte Tesoro, don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente lay extended on the couch, pale and weak. His dulled eyes were half shut, and only at long intervals did they let gleams of consciousness escape. Near him were kneeling his daughter and his wife; their daughter-in-law being too ill from her loss and the emotion of the conflict in which all dear to her were involved, to participate in this additional scene of sorrow. Sad and silent, don Jorge, Oliver, and the English gentleman, the latter's arm in a sling, and both the paler from profuse bloodletting, stood by the bedside. At an altar reared in the room, Father Serafino was just finishing prayers, to which the servants of the estate, kneeling in the corridors, had fervently responded. At length the prostrate don seemed to revive, for his cheeks were tinged with fugitive purple, and his opening eyes were clear. "Weeping? Why do you weep?" he asked of his wife, who was sobbing, her head muffled in her black lace _rebozo_, "If my life has not been long, it comprises more years of unalloyed bliss than most men enjoy. This day, the Giver of all those boons calleth me unto Him. His will be done! Have I not been permitted to struggle against the poison which, twice menacing my life, only this time overcomes me, so slowly that my affairs are in order, I can thank those who contributed to the victory which has saved Sonora from a deluge of blood and fire, and I can bid you all farewell until we shall meet anew, never to part again, in the ever-during felicity above. Yea, truly," went on don Benito, with increased fervour, "heaven has been kinder and more merciful than I merited, since not only has it preserved all those who lie closest on my bosom, but my final farewells can be made them with a clear voice, and my latest hour is cheered with the presence of the friend so cherished of my early years. He came in time to save my darling--and, with his valorous companion, to save us all. Embrace me, my friend," he continued, to Gladsden, as he extended his arms with an effort, "to thee I owe all those long, long happy days which have been mine on this oft dolorous earth." Gladsden ran his sound arm round him, and held him up against his bosom for a moment. Both of them had tears in their eyes. Then he lowered him gently back upon the pillow. For upwards of an hour still he spoke with them, encouraging, consoling, and preparing them as much as possible for the painful separation. Suddenly he sat up, with his eyes loftily directed, and in a clear voice they heard him call out-- "Lord God of my fathers, as I have borne myself like them, as a Christian gentleman of the pure strain, receive my soul!" and fell, like a log, dead.