The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
dreaded the seeing them swiftly to flee, and leave him falling from his
crumbling anticipations into the frightful reality that closed in upon
him with inexorable jaws.
In the end, determined to do or die, for to that it had truly come,
Benito's trembling hands buried themselves in the buffalo robe,
clutched it irresistibly and hauled it up into his palpitating bosom.
His haggard eyes swam with joyful gush of many tears, so that he could
not see the sky to which he had raised them in gratitude.
Benito had fallen on a hunter's and trapper's store. Not only were
there traps and springes of several sorts, weapons, powder horns,
bullet bags, shot moulds, leaden bars, horse caparisons, hide for
lassoes, but eatables in hermetically sealed tins of modern make, not
then familiar to Mexicans, and liquor in bottles protected by homemade
wicker and leather plaiting.
He was stretching out his hands ravenously to the bottles and a role
of jerked beef, when it seemed to him that the voice of the Unseen
prompted him with "God! Thank God!" and repeating the words in a voice
unintelligible from stifling emotions, he fairly swooned across the pit
as if to defend it with his poor, worn, hard-tried body.
His face was serene when he unclosed his eyes anew. Soberly, by a great
control, he ate of some tinned meat and the crackers and swallowed as
slowly some cognac. The latter filled him with fire, and he could have
leaped into a treetop and crowed defiance to the vultures which were
sailing overhead as if baulked of their prey.
In that momentary calmness, he felt so strong and so rejoiced in
his self-command that his spirit seemed to spurn its casket. But
instantly, with the blood careering anew, the wound in his shoulder
smarted furiously, and all down that arm and up to his neck he felt a
strange and novel sensation; it was as if molten lead was in the veins,
scorching and making heavy the limb.
"The arrow! I am poisoned!" he muttered. "Oh, is this windfall come
merely to embitter my death?"
That taste of liquor made his mouth water, and there was suggested to
him by the sight of the brandy bottle that here was the remedy which
the wisest frontiersman and medicine man would have prescribed. He put
the cognac to his lips, and emptied the bottle.
Almost instantly he felt an aching in every pore away and beyond
that of the wound; his brain appeared to swell to bursting its cell,
and howling himself hoarse, he thought--though, in reality, his
inarticulate cries were strangled in his throat--he rolled upon the
ground, too weak to dance upon his feet, as he imagined he was doing.
This intoxication left him abruptly, and he fell insensible. But for
his stertorous breathing, which finally became regular and gentle, he
was as a corpse beside the greedy grave.
He woke up, lame in every bone, but clear-eyed, and the ringing in his
head abated. Either the remedy had succeeded, or constitution, for he
was able to set about his task with surprising vigour.
Thereupon, he chose out of the store a pair of revolvers, their
cartridges in quantity, two powder horns and bullets to fit the finest
rifle, a bowie knife and a cutlass, and a length of leather thong to
make a lasso, and a spade for the grave of don José, filled a game bag
with matches in metal boxes, sewing materials, and other odds and ends
for the traveller. Tobacco, too, he took, and was looking for paper to
make cigarettes, when a small book met his eyes.
It was stamped in gold, "London, Liverpool, and West State of Mexico
Agnas Caparrosas Mining Company." It was an account book of the company
--one of those enterprises to which, he had heard, his father had lent
a favourable attention. A pencil was attached to the book; he wrote on
a blank page the list of all the articles he took, signing:
"Require the payment of me.--I, BENITO VÁZQUEZ DE BUSTAMENTE."
As quickly as he could he replaced what he did not wish to be burdened
with, made the concealment good, and swept the grass with two buffalo
skins, which he had also taken for clothing. This duty of a thankful
and honourable man being accomplished, he darted back to where he
had left Dolores with a free and easy movement, of which he had not
believed himself ever again to be capable only a short time before.
He was amazed that a little food and spirit had restored him, and began
to fear the reaction.
His wits remained clear. He remembered very distinctly indeed his
confrontation of the savage who had been blasted as by a heavenly
thunderbolt. He was not surprised when he found that redskin where he
had rolled him. But what was his pain when he saw no trace of Dolores
but the same fragment of her dress which Gladsden was, soon after, also
to behold!
Sounds in the chaparral which reminded him of the four-footed
scavengers in rivalry of the carrion birds that circled above, urged
him to ply the spade, and he piously laid don José to his final rest.
Then, his rifle loaded, his frame fortified by the refreshment which
he took at intervals on his march, he went forward in the trail which
the abductor of the Mexican's daughter had been unable, so burdened, to
avoid making manifest, all his emotions, even gratitude to the chief,
set aside for the desire of vengeance on the remorseless foes to whom
he owed so many and distressful losses, and on whom he had not yet been
enabled to inflict any reprisal.
"Let me but overtake him, or them," thought he, "before the tempest
obliterates this track with its deluge, and I will flesh this sword, or
essay this new rifle on his vile carcass!"
CHAPTER VI.
ANY PORT IN A STORM.
Gladsden was groping along when he perceived the thorn thicket
changing into a prairie, only slightly interspersed with scrub. At the
same time, though underfoot, the scene cleared, the indications of
atmospheric perturbation increased in number and in ominous importance.
Already the material man triumphed over the romantic one, and our
Englishman thought considerably better of a solid refuge from the
tempest than to come up with the abductor of the Mexican girl. Spite of
its sinister aspect, therefore, his eyes were delighted when he saw,
outlined against the northeastern sky, sullenly blackening, a curiously
shaped tower. In a civilised country he would have ignobly supposed it
a factory shaft.
He knew nothing whatever about this pillar of sunbaked bricks, some
fifty feet in altitude, and, we repeat, cared nothing for the monument
from any point of view but its qualities as a shelter.
Nevertheless, an archaeologist would have given a fortune to have
studied this Nameless Tower, for the aboriginal held it too sacred
for mention in common parlance. It was slightly pyramidal; the north
side, not quite the true meridian, presented a right angle, presumably
to breast and divide the wind of winter prevalent at its erection,
while the rest was rounded trimly. The excellence of the work was
better shown in the cement, not mud, or ground gypsum, having resisted
the weather and particularly the sandy winds themselves, though they
had worn the _dobies_ (_adobes_, sun dried bricks) away deeply in
places, without making airholes through. There was nothing like a
window or depression save these natural pits, until the view reached
the ragged top, where a sort of lantern or cupola, so far as a few
vestiges indicated, had once crowned the edifice; there the floor of
this disappeared chamber had become the roof, and an orifice, perhaps
a loophole enlarged by rot, yawned like a deep set eye beside an arm
of metal terminating in a hook. Presumably the column was a priest's
watchtower, where a sacred fire was preserved in peace times to
imitate the sun. It is known, the ancient Mexicans adored the sun.
A beacon, too, in war times, for the fire and smoke signal code of
the American Indians is too complete to have been the invention of
yesterday. The entrance at the base cut in the rock utilised for nearly
all the foundation. Once blocked up, the watcher, remote from lances,
slingshots, and bowshots, could count the besiegers on this plain, and
telegraph their number to his friends at a distance. The metal arm may
have suspended a pulley block and rope by which provisions and even an
assistant could be hauled up to him.
The natives avoid the tower and its proximity. The white rovers deem
it uncanny, and, having no curiosity to gratify, also leave the spot
untroubled.
Gladsden regarded the tall mass with some uneasiness as he approached
sufficiently near to measure its dimensions and examine the emblems
stained, rather than painted, on the alabaster base stone. A colossal
half human, half bovine head, armed with terrible horns, and showing
long angular teeth in a ferocious grin, was prominent among these
designs.
All was so still that he hesitated to wake the echoes with a more or
less tolerable imitation of the wildcat, to which no response came,
or if from a distance such was raised, the approaching thunderpeals
overcame it.
He boldly plunged into the doorless passage, the way to which had been
to a more wary man suspiciously free from brambles.
A smell of smoke, and even of tobacco smoke, he thought, overcame that
of damp earth.
The only light was that which the doorway admitted, but several plates
of mica, backed rudely with metal, which time and damp had tarnished,
made the interior a little less sombre by their dull reflections. A
ladder of wood, all the fastenings of rawhide, could be distinguished
climbing like a twin snake up the wall; on high a grayish eye seemed to
look unwinkingly down: it was the light oozing in at the gap at the top.
There were red streaks on the wall: paintings in red pipe clay
partially effaced, or mementoes of slaughter, just as the spectator
chose to believe or fancy.
At the moment, the intruder was chiefly interested in the charcoal
under his feet, almost warm, certainly so fresh that he concluded that
others than he chose it for a refuge under stress of weather, no doubt
Master Pepillo's congeners.
Less courageous, he would have shrunk away without pondering over the
nature of his predecessors, possibly regular hosts of this lugubrious
domicile of owl and vulture.
Convinced that he was, for the time being, the sole tenant, Gladsden
resolved, however, to explore the portion unrevealed. To his hands
and feet the ladder presented no obstacle, and he ran up the rough
rattlings swiftly, spite of fatigue. It brought him into a species of
manhole under the roof, close to the gap, and yet shielded from its
draft by a jutting piece of wall.
"This will do," thought he, finding it dry and clean; "I will kill
a brace of birds frightened into stupidity by the oncoming storm,
roast them on that charcoal, and bring them up here for supper. If
the robbers surprise me, I will maintain that I was merely killing
time before the arrival of lieutenant Ignacio, and claim that
gentleman's friendship by reason of my charge from his brother. If I
am interrupted, I shall pull up the ladder, in trust that it will come
free, and sleep here, safe from prowling beasts and serpents."
Suddenly gloom fell on all the landscape, as if a mighty hand had
eclipsed the waning sun. The air was very much more thick and
oppressive, and there were innumerable though faint crepitations like
feeble snappings of electricity. To take the game he spoke of, before
the rainfall drowned them out of their nests, it was needful to hasten.
But he had not descended three rounds of the ladder, before he stopped
all of a piece. From every side, there was the sound of an arrival
of men, both on foot and ahorse. Instinctively he drew himself up,
arranged his form on the floor so as to project only his forehead and