"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 isthat!"
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 themottesor "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 feedloups(wolves) with hominy," but, "Man is a devouring wolf to his brother."
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 anounce, 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 pasowhich 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 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 oftamboresor 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 thepadrewho 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.
"Thepadreis 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 theblazing(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 for three. A couple of superior servants were just finishing the decoration with vases of spring flowers, and so deftly doing their work, that it was not any noisy blunder on their part that had aroused him. He did not like to inquire of them who were going to be his guests. Luckily, he was not long left on tenterhooks.
The door opened, and don Benito, showing himself, made way courteously for Oliver to precede him. The American was clad in a Mexican dress, jingling and shining with silver buttons, and really would have made many a black-eyed damsel's heartache at a dance in his new but not altogether unaccustomed array.
With fine forethought, Benito had arranged to take supper—or whatever name this midnight meal deserved—with his old friend and the other deliverer of his beloved daughter.
After appeasing hunger—for Gladsden's had revived, and Oregon Ol. never seemed at a loss to eat when anything was on the board—they conferred seriously.
The hacendero had made his servants and the Indians who were truly converts kiss the cross and swear to die for their master—about the only binding oath to impose on such gentry. A hundred of the least dubious were to be clad in a kind of uniform so as to look like soldiers.
"Your friend, our friend, will lead them. These North Americans have persuasive methods and a spirit which converts the timid intoguerreadores—heroes even, which we do not possess, or we should not be the yearly prey of the Comanches."
"As to leading them," said Oliver, eating a tortilla smeared with marmalade with the gusto of a schoolboy, "I shall rather git on behind them; and how they will charge when they know I shall shoot the first that turns back on my toes!"
"If this is North American persuasion," began Gladsden, laughing.
"Jest another time. In brief, don Olivero will take his five score sham soldiers out of the secret gate in thecorralwhich, by the way, you may not know, every rich landed proprietor has in order in a country of revolution; and he will go and ambush a quarter of a league away. Meanwhile, we shall establish our watches so as not to be taken by surprise. If the ambuscade be discovered, don Olivero will signal me by two rockets—red and white. If we, however, as is more likely, are first attacked, we shall notify him, in await, by sending up two rockets—white and red. Then will he lead, or follow his chivalry, and take the red rabble in the rear as they envelope my farm. They will imagine the lancers and dragoons have come from Ures or Hermosillo, and recoil on our enclosure. We will rally out, and we'll mince them up into bits as fine as that poor Matasiete was chewed by the sharks of the Gulf of California; eh, you remember him, don Jorge?"
"Decidedly! He lives in my remembrance all the more lively, because I cannot have been mistaken in my impression that I saw him only this early morning."
"Saw don Aníbal, as he called himself? Saw the gallant of my late aunt, Josefa Maria—and only this morning! Impossible! You are still dreaming!"
"My friend! As truly as your bullet creased that hooknose, I saw it at the wicket in the door of the Green Ranch Tavern. Don Matasiete, whose garland of names I cannot recall in full, was not entombed in the maw of the tintoreras, but escaped with the loss of a limb. In pleasant allusion to that disaster he is called 'The Dismembered' even now, and he is that One-leg Peter, or Pedrillo el Manco, who, it appears, revives on this frontier all the old tales of rascally doing for which, in former days, he was so famous. What's bred in the blood won't come out with the loss of a limb, you see."
"An enemy like that! So near me, and often! How, then, is it that I have never been injured by him or his band?"
"Really," answered Mr. Gladsden, perplexed, "I am at a loss to enter into the mind of such rascals. Mayhap he is reserving you for a top off to his career of scoundrelism."
The repast being ended, don Benito conducted his old and his new friend to present them to his wife and family.
Neither they nor the other ladies had been informed of the terrible disaster in suspense; and, as far as they were concerned, as well even as some of the younger gentlemen from the neighbourhood, the festival of the Angelito was still proceeding.
The hall into which the strangers were ushered by the host offered a most strange and striking aspect.
It was magnificently furnished, and gorgeously illuminated by numerous crystal chandeliers, crowded with rose wax tapers, and hung from the ceiling. The walls had been covered with rare and thick old tapestry of exquisite work. The richness of the sculptured furniture in oak, mahogany, black walnut, and ebony, surpassed in solidity anything seen abroad. The very catches, bolts, hinges, and locks, were in cut silver. The whole floor was covered with very fine palm matting, orpetate.
Two carpet covered platforms were erected, one at each end of this hall, wherein some three hundred persons were looking at the principal stage, and the sole one tenanted since, at a command from don Benito, the musicians had vacated the other, intended only for them.
This second dais was arranged as an alcove, curtained in. Religious emblems, in gold and jewels, decorated the depths. The poor little child, victim of the Apache's missiles, powdered and rouged, was propped up in a draped chair, clad in white satin and lace, and covered with flowers, many more fading blooms strewing the floor.
The mother of this grandchild of don Benito was seated near her little one.
She was a very young wife, of scarcely more years than doña Perla; of equally rare beauty, but of corpselike pallor from her vigils and sorrow, which, was rendered the more palpable by her cheeks being thickly reddened with paint. Her fixed eyes, circled with black, gazed into vacancy with wild feverishness. She tried to wear a calmly joyful smile; but often a painful spasm convulsed her features, set her lips quivering, her limbs shivering, and shook muffled sobs from her bosom.
About her were seated ladies, mostly young and fair, who were attempting not to console the poor mother, but to cheer her up, as their belief dictated.
The other guests were grouped around, chatting, smoking, and taking refreshment from sideboards.
Don Benito saw, and perhaps in a measure comprehended, the reproving, or, at least, pained look in the eyes of both the European and the American shocked at such a scene when they were so full of perturbation for the impending conflict.
"Conduct the reverend Father Serafino hither," he said to a servant.
A handsome and haughty youth, whom Mr. Gladsden recognised at once by his resemblance to his father, came up to the newcomer, and affectionately threw himself into his arms. It was don Jorge, the bereaved father, though quite a boy in Mr. Gladsden's opinion.
"Caballero," said he; "nothing but your coming, the dearest, oldest friend of my father, could have given me this moment's distraction in my grief over my firstborn. Yours was the kindness that united my father and mother. However can we repay the obligation we, their children, lie beneath?"
"By showing me as much affection as I shall do to you, Jorge, my boy. Upon my word, if I required any reward, I have it now amply, by shaking the hand of so promising a namesake."
The young mother made an effort, smiled dolefully, and let her burning hand rest in Mr. Gladsden's, while he kissed her equally heated forehead, and then threw a few of the already wilting spring flowerets upon the lap of the little corpse.
During this, Father Serafino had come into the hall. Instantly on seeing him all chatter ceased, and on every side the ladies and gentlemen respectfully saluted him.
Meanwhile, Gladsden turned sorrowfully to a lady in black and rose satin, covered with jewelry, in whom he well knew again, spite of a loss of slenderness, the graceful Dolores who had been his passenger on theLittle Joker.
Her emotion was too full for words as she clasped his proffered hand in both hers, shining with rings, among which emeralds and pearls gleamed, due to that hoard he had inherited and shared with this noble family.
They had no leisure for a conversation, as the priest, at the suggestion of the host, had slowly mounted the musicians' platform, and now said in a sympathetic but firm voice:—
"Young mother, retire now into your private apartments and there give way way to your woes. Go, and in praying forget not, together with your blessed babe, all those who are within the precincts of this house, inasmuch as an unexampled danger menaces them. And you, my sisters," he continued, addressing the other ladies, "accompany your kinswoman and friend, console her and join in her prayers. Your place is no longer here."
The young mother rose with a sudden sob, and in an instant her face was flooded with tears. Her mother stepped in between her and the dead child whereupon, as though that interposition and eclipsing of her lost treasure had broken a binding link, don Jorge's wife swooned away in the arms of her friends. They all clustered round, and she and her mother were borne away in their midst, amid softened wailing and muttered sympathy.
The rest of the guests not in the secret were overwhelmed by stupor; and, indeed, had anyone but the priest thus put an end to the important ceremony, they would have loudly protested and even hushed him up.
"My brethren," resumed he, in a clear, full voice, "hearken to my words and gather up all your courage. Throughout this entire province, the Yaqui Indians have broken their bondage. They threaten Ures and Hermosillo; already they have overswarmed I know not how many farms—those houses are smouldering, their people are stiffening after indescribable tortures! I come hither to warn our friend that Monte Tesoro is the object of the rebels' march. Tonight, the attack will come, peradventure in one short hour! Brethren, verily I bid ye not forget that the enemies who threaten ye are ferocious pagans from whom you can expect no mercy! Resist them you must, forasmuch as in resisting them you preserve the people and the habitations deeper in the land, as well as all the women and youth providentially here. Thankful am I that the heavenly Hand hath guided me hither to warn you of the wrath let loose, to cheer you in your tribulations! Hence, silenced be merriment! Cessation to all frivolous feasting! On our knees, brethren, and let us all beseech the good and merciful Power, without whom man is as naught, to make ye invincible."
It was a still more singular sight, more grand and impressive, when the gay guests knelt in that glittering hall, redolent with flowers, smoke of funeral meats, and incense, whilst the only upright thing was the baby corpse in its chair of state, seeming to smile with a blushing face, like an infant prince receiving homage.
When the Mexican gentlemen rose, their eyes were sparkling with courage, enthusiasm, and resolution.
"¡Alerta! ¡Alerta!" arose without, as the principal note and the only intelligible one in the clamour, more and more loud.
And "¡Alerta!" shouted an old majordomo, bursting into the hall with his white hair streaming. "Oh, master! The Indians approach! The revolted peons are pursuing a track of blood and fire! The pueblos, as far as the eye can reach, are ablaze. The hosts will be at our stockade in an hour! Already the patio is crowded with a throng of fugitives!"
It was overabundant confirmation of the priest's announcement.
"There is my place, amongst these unfortunates," observed he. "You do your duty in your own way, whilst I console the fugitives, heal the wounded, and pray for those who fall."
"Gentlemen," cried don Benito, "I assume command of my faithful tenantry, and I swear that the revolted redskins shall find my body the next barrier behind my hacienda walls."
"Courage and hope!" said Father Serafino.
Mr. Gladsden rose to go with the American in his sortie, since he had not sufficient acquaintance with Spanish to carry on conversation with the besieged, strangers all to him as well.
"Since we are still to travel in a team," said Oliver, gladdened by this arrangement, "put yourself inside a uniform like me. They've made me a brigadier general, at the least," he added, facetiously admiring himself in a well gold-laced coat.
Whilst the Englishman was apparelling himself in much such another suit, he continued:—
"Thar hev been six score men picked out for my band. The don says these hev had a brush with the smoke skins, and with wild cats, and can be relied on. I don't vally them a dollar per ton myself, Hows'ever, we shan't be shot by them in the back, as they are only trusted with long sticking poles, being rigged out aslancers—about all theheroeswe shall find them, I opine."
"The lance is the Mexican national weapon," remarked Mr. Gladsden.
"I trust more to a dozen cowpunchers among 'em—thevaquerosdo know how to swing the lasso, and that's a fact. Are you ready?"
"Your lieutenant is ready, Captain."
"Call me 'colonel.' They are all captains in my squad, I b'lieve. You have come out a full-grown shiner. I feel like the big dog with a new brass collar—how's your feel, too?"
In plain words, the pair looked a handsome and portentous couple in their metamorphosis into Mexican officers. On going out they found don Benito in the vestibule. He, too, had donned an old, but carefully preserved, brilliant costume of his father's as President-General, and was as the sun to a star in his superior effulgence beside them. A black servant was holding a golden salver, with a decanter and glasses rimmed with gold, at his elbow, grinning with awe and admiration at his master being so superbly caparisoned.
"A parting cup," said the hacendero, "and away! We have no time for coquetting."
"A loving cup," said Gladsden, tasting the cup, whilst Oliver refused his.
"I have head enough as it is," he remarked, in excuse. "You are drefful good, I will say that; but I am not overly grasping for liquor when thar is a monstracious kickin' out in prospect. After the slaying of the wild cattle, don, then I am 'on' for my share o' the b'ar steaks and honey."
On going out into the courtyard they at once perceived the great change. All the bonfires were beaten out, song and dance had been hushed, and the gates were closed and barricaded. In the gloom could only be distinguished the shadowy sentinels watching immovably in the loops and gaps in the wall, and at peepholes in the palisades. As Monte Tesoro was an eminence, these vigiladores could see fairly over the whole plain. Oliver pointed out that, to both east and west, there was a ruddy, tawny tinge.
"Villages burning. The enemy is coming on."
They crossed one immense corral, and then a still larger enclosure, wherein the hundred and twenty sham lancers were awaiting, each man standing by his horse, the bridle in the left hand, ready to vault into the saddle like real troopers. Two peons held a couple of very fine animals, completely harnessed and decked out, of which they presented the reins to Oliver and the Englishman.
Don Benito paused. With him were several of the elders of his guests; all wore grave expressions. Everyone was armed.
"Out!" said he.
He stepped over to the stockade, scrutinising it attentively for a space, then, stooping a trifle, he bore his weight on one particular pile, whereupon, all of a sudden, a piece of the palisade opened widely, like the secret door that it was, quite noiselessly, and left a broad gangway. Oliver waved his hand, signifying "come on!" and held up three fingers, meaning "three at a time!"—sign language being universal on the border where so many tongues are intermixed. The horsemen passed him in review, three abreast, each leading his mount.
As, strangely enough, the hoofs drew no sound whatever from contact with the soil, Mr. Gladsden stooped and examined the feet of his own steed, upon which act all the enigma was solved. Like the old wars man he was, Oliver had hinted that he wanted his troop with muffled hoofs, and the delicate trick over which King Lear was ecstatic, had been performed by swathing them in strips of blanket around cotton wool pads.
The Englishman was the very last to march forth, still shaking the hands of don Benito and his young namesake.
"Go with God!" said the sire, fervently; "You hold our fate in your brave hands. You alone can save us."
"Keep up your spirits," was the rejoinder. "That friend of mine is no common man, and, in any case, we are going to do our best. If I never return, mind, as that scrap of writing I dashed off, records, I leave my sons especially to you as a second father, and to you, Jorge, as an elder brother."
As he mounted, and moved on to join his comrades, the secret door swung to, and all dissolution of continuity in the barrier disappeared.
There was a ditch to leap, and its sloping front to slide down. There the squadron formed. Oliver had taken to his side the oldesttigrero, or "vermin" eradicator of the farm, as his pilot.
"Follow!" said the American, curtly, between this hunter and Gladsden, "By threes, follow!"
The forlorn hope started off at full gallop behind the trio, in a flight through the obscurity which was as lugubrious as fantastic. The sweet and sadly wan moonbeams stretched the cavaliers' shadows immeasurably over the land. Every detail of the landscape took gaunt aspects. The trees, waving white and grey beards of Spanish moss, and endless creepers in loops and knots, seemed spectres that were stationed to catch and hang the riders. No such headlong course could have been performed by any but such Mexican centaurs. It lasted over an hour, till Oliver reined in and called out—
"Pull up!"
"Alto! ¡Alto!" was reiterated down the line, till the column was all in quiescence on the edge of a boundless virgin forest.
"Where are we?" inquired Gladsden.
"Three leagues from the farm," answered Oliver, after the Tigrero had given him a clue. "I thought more. We have turned the main body of the insurgents, and are on their rear if they are about to fall on the big farm. I am going to cache the squad under the leaves, and go on the scout myself."
"Had you not better send one of these, who are so familiar with the country?" remonstrated the Englishman. "Your place as commander—"
"Tush! There are too many lives at stake for me to hesitate to risk mine. I kin never make by big throws onless I hev sartin news. That Old Silvano could be trusted to see all that I shall see, but he hasn't a passle (parcelle, particle, used in that sense by the Canadian French trappers) o' jedgment, and on jedgment depends the ha'r o' them Spanish in the hacienda. I do this scout," said he shortly. "If I know anything, I b'lieve it's scouting."
"Since things are so, go ahead."
Oliver alighted, gave some orders, delegated his authority to the Englishman with Silvano as his sub., and glided into the woods. Though there was no underbush, he was lost to the view almost instantly, so instinctively did he cover his body by the trunks.
During his absence, the Mexicans rode under the branches, and dozed in the saddle, with pickets thrown out upon all sides. Gladsden let himself be absorbed in his reflections, marvelling that after a brief period, he, the English gentleman of wealth, could be in the heart of an unexplored wood, on the borders of a desert, guarded by a band of men complete strangers not ten hours before, and exposed to being overwhelmed by a whole army of revolted slaves.
In the midst of his reverie, without any warning, a hand was abruptly slapped on his knee, and a jesting voice said—
"How many mile in'ard of the Land of Nod?"
"I was not asleep, Oliver," cried Gladsden, indignantly, as, however, he opened his eyes, and blinked them in a way that belied his denial.
The scout had returned and come right up to his side so stealthily that he had not been aroused. But the tiger slayer had perceived him, and was smiling slightly at the practical joke which was, also, a lesson.
"Well, what's the news?"
"Things are a good deal as I s'posed," he answered. "Thar are something like three or four thousand of the critters, and sich a rabble! Very few have firearms, and, likely enough, no powder, and, if powder, no ball, so that they will top the loading with stones and gravel and blow their blamed topknots off at the first pull. The others hev come out powerful with spears, sheep shearers divided and the blades thong'd on to poles, scythes, reaping hooks, and all kind o' things ugly to look at of which they have made we'pins. Some 'stonishing black niggers are the head men of gangs. They are in a valley there away, on a road. They have no flankers out, and no look out, for they have no idee they mout beattackted."
"So we can manoeuvre without any apprehension of being discovered, you mean, Ol.?"
"Jess so, gineral! One of them mountain howitzer our army promenades with could pepper 'em up sure from hyar."
"Where's their left?"
"On a little village half a league tharabouts."
"And their right?"
"On a little cluster of shanties that Old Silvano says is called Rancho Nuevo—nigh enough to be seen in the crack o' day from hyar."
"Can the signal rockets of the hacienda be seen from the two points you mention, and the road occupied by the mass of the rebels?"
"For why not? They are three high p'ints over the sink they are in."
"This looks promising enough."
"What! Do you think to cut up three or four thousand niggers?"
"My dear Oliver, I am sure that you have your idea in your head fully matured, and that we have nothing to do but put it into execution."
"I don't know rightly about that. In any event, I am going to execute what the army men call a divarsion. If the innymy accept it as divarting, I'm satisfied. I should give it another name, myself, but thar! Thar's no 'counting for tastes. Besides the bulk of the Yaquis, thar is a long straggling train, with the plunder, the fat, cowardly, and cunning, who are drinking and singing,anddancing like all possessed. They are coming almost dead to'rds us, and we hev no more 'n time to receive them properly. If we turn them back, scattered, they wilt not be in condition to reinforce the army. That's the first article on the bill o' fare."
He beckoned the tiger hunter to him.
"Capitano," said he, "pick out your bullwhackers, and add to them enough more to make about forty strong. Them's yourcuadrilla, savvy! Thar's a right smart sprinkle of cattle straying over the plain, bewildered, whom those barbarians hev scared, some—well, into a fever. Lasso a dozen in a herd, tie up and throw down, and send one to report progress. Meanwhile, collect a heap of fat (resinous) candlewood. Cook away—cuca, cap'en!"
Silvano, delighted with his rank, and beaming with smiles to the eyebrow, soon departed with one-third or so of the little party. The rest were divided into two troops, of which the American and Gladsden took the leadership. The mufflers were removed from the hoofs as useless, and each troop was arranged in three ranks, twelve, fifteen, and eighteen in a line. Thus in order, they moved off under the trees, tall ones whose boughs only sprang out at an altitude of great degree, and parting at a silent signal, ranged themselves one each side of a track through the woodland, dignified by the title of road. They were stationed one above the other.
Two hours had passed in these dispositions.
The moon had gone down lower and lower in the heavens, till, in the end, it dropped beneath the eyeline, and opaque shadows enveloped the country and blended all objects into one mass. In the stillness of a cemetery, the two cavalcades, no longer visible to one another, awaited the forthcoming enemy.
Wild Indians detest this hour, under the influence of a belief that the soul of a warrior killed in the dark spell before dawn is doomed to dwell everlastingly in gloom; but the converted peons had had this superstition modified or obliterated altogether.
At all events, there was soon heard a confused murmur, which changed speedily into a blending of shouting, monotonous chanting, and occasional shots, while yellow flares crossed the darkest glades of the pine woods.
In twenty minutes, the vanguard of a tumultuous gathering of brown and black skinned men, women, and youths, filled the track. They were almost naked, or merely attired in fragments of clothes to which they had never been accustomed, some bearing torches, some crucibles from mines, filled with oil and coarse wicks, and others candles of great length taken from chapels.
They were allowed to pass unchallenged.
After them the more active insurgents, drunken, frenzied, hoarse, tired with a long march, but demoniacal with their features twitching in insatiable passion, surged up in a tolerable order, brandishing and clashing their weapons, mostly of the improvised nature hinted at by the scout in his description.
All of a sudden, the harsh croak of a sandhill crane was audible in the thicket to the north of the road where Oliver had posted himself. Immediately the man at the side of Gladsden imitated the clatter of the beak of the same bird clearing it of the debris of a gobbled frog, by tapping his pistol barrel on his lance shaft. The next instant there was a rush of horses to the side of the forest track, and "Viva Mejico!" resounded full throated from Oregon Ol.
"Y Libertad!" was the completion of the signal and war cry from the followers of Gladsden, as they, too, set spurs to their steeds.
"Mexico and liberty!"
Simultaneously, therefore, the two companies burst upon the column of Indians, cutting through and leaving a layer upon layer of pierced mortality like in the track of a tornado. Having crossed, they made a circuit, and, coming out on the road once more, one higher up, and the other lower down the line of the previous charges, completed the surprise of the insurgents.
"Wheel, face forward in chase!" was the next command.
In half an hour, the riders came into the rendezvous agreed upon, having effectually frightened that column, and sent the surviving members reeling and flying in panic through the woods, back whence they came.
Five only of the Mexicans were missing. The wounds received were unimportant. The horses were breathed; the cavaliers allowed to congratulate themselves and their leaders. Oliver had a devoted following now, for these Mexicans are too unused to easy triumphs not to idolise the commander who gluts them with such a feast of vanity.
The collected horsemen rode off, slowly groping, to the appointed place on the open ground where Silvano and the herders were to have secured the semi-wild cattle. It was a little less dark, the false dawn, in fact, and thus Gladsden, though not so accustomed to the night marching as the rest, could see the horsemen of the Tigrero forming a wide circle; in the centre were several strange objects, writhing and beckoning to the stars. They were long-horned, thin, wiry cattle, of the breed of old which never will fatten in Mexican pastures, fleet as antelopes, savage as tigers. By dexterous casts of the lariat, they had been roped, hurled to the ground, and secured there, heels in the air. They were daunted but disdained to bow, mutely protesting by glaring eyes, full of congested blood, and twitching of the tails. A little way off, a heap of resinous wood was formed.
"Prime!" ejaculated the hunter, perceiving all this almost as clearly as by day. "Don Benny shall give you a silver medal, old coon."
He issued instructions which were forthwith carried out with delighted comprehension. The cattle were allowed to rise, but still held, half choked and much hampered with the leather ropes, whilst some active hands bound fat branches to their long horns, so that they soon assumed an apologetic appearance of stags adorned with magnificent antlers, which was amusing. Overcoming their humiliation on being anew on all fours, the beasts began to chafe. Bushes of prickly nopals were made for attaching to the animals' tails and hind quarters, like the pendent goads to the bulls in the arena.
When the cattle were finally supplied with these prickles and the wooden headgear, they were released of their trammels, and driven forward before a crescent shaped formation of the horsemen, increasing the pace perforce in order to keep up with them. Presently, the sparks which had been applied to rags round the gummy wood, were fanned into perceptible flames. By the time these living candelabra and their remorseless goaders saw the hill of the hacienda loom up, the frightened cattle were adorned with long streamers of flame. But as they were broadened out into a line, one beside another, there was no scare to make them turn back, and their only instinctive hope was to continue their mad charge.
A deep hubbub as of bees around the hive was audible over and above the bellowing of these fiery cattle, and a vivid glare seemed to encircle the hacienda.
All at once, a yellow streak rose up in the sky, and a white star shone over the buildings and enclosures, and the multitude surging up against the pickets. Then the sky was striped luminously once more, but, this time, a rosy glare surrounded a red star.
"Now we come whooping!" shouted Oliver, participating, like even the Englishman, in the excitement of this frantic race at the heels of the terrified bearers of the flames, forming a line of fire of continuous aspect to the Yaquis in the hollow. "Level your lance—no! Draw rein! Draw rein! And swerve to the left! What in thunder is that cry behind us—on the sword hand? Great Jehosaphat! whar the Old Harry havetheysprung up from! Apaches, by the living thingumbob! Apaches!"
In plain earnest, the "hugh-ug-hugh!" of the Apaches rang out of the pine forest, with an intonation of joy as if the sight of the rockets and the disclosures thereby of the farm which had already been their mark for massacre and pillage, had delighted them beyond control.
Then was heard, too, in a voice quite as gleeful and fiendish, the vociferation of a number of white men, in Spanish and in English.
"¡Viva!The Rustlers!Los Ruidoresof Captain Pedrillo forever!"
"The Rustlers!" repeated Oregon Ol., in perfect stupefaction. "Open your airth and swaller me! The 'Pache' and the skunks they exchanged shots with—that shed their blood—'malgamated, by gum! Take me into a gully an' bury me! I'm licked!"
Meanwhile, not having the reasons for a halt that had checked the Mexicans in the very commencement of a charge, the cattle infuriated with the falling sparks from the wood beginning to become detached from their horns, and blinded with the smarting smoke, tore down the incline into the very vale where the Yaquis were crowded. Certainly their onset would create a consternation, preventing any attention being bestowed upon Oliver's little party, as it obeyed his earnest injunction and wheeled off into an island of trees.
In ten minutes, as the dawn grew upon the scene, they could very well discern, boldly emerging from the piney woods, not only some of the stragglers of the column the Mexicans had discomfited, but two bodies of mounted men, together over their own number, whom Oliver recognised as the Apaches and the banditti, whom they had left at daggers drawn, or, more exactly, at long shots with each other.
To explain this unparalleled occurrence in border records, the union of two hostile forces in brotherly ties for active operation, we must turn back a few pages.
Behind the fugitives, the rattle of dropping shots had gone on for an hour so that Oregon Oliver's prophecy of the possible duration of such skirmishing bid fair to be verified.
The Indians mode of warfare is to force a retrograde movement by the gradual concentration of fire, and at the moment a retreat is begun, whatever the cause—strategetic or from pure weakness or cowardice—a charge is made by the best warriors in a body, whooping and brandishing their weapons.
Knowing something of how resistless was such a rush, our old acquaintance Don Aníbal,aliasThe Slayer of Seven, was in no humour for awaiting one. Already, from the glimpse he had of the young Mexican girl borne away among the stampeded horses, his desire for retaliation on don Benito had inspired him with a novel idea; he hoped, against all precedent, to unite the Apaches with him in the same purpose.
It was, indeed, our old acquaintance, the reader will see, perfectly unscrupulous by what means he obtained his ends.
The miracle to which he owed the preservation of his rascally life had been a lesson only for the time being.
When, plunging off the islet into the Gulf in order to elude the infuriated husband of doña Dolores, the pirate was swimming for an offing, he became the aim of more than one shark. Twice he escaped being swallowed more or less in the maw of the most swift, for each time he had swerved on one side as it blindly turned back downward for the terrible bite. But, when so near the shore as to hope for full immunity from this living danger at least, one of the tintoreras, fearless of the shoaling water, flew forward like a flash of lightning, and, amid an eddy of the churning water, poor Matasiete was seized by the leg, and suffered the anguish of its being torn from half the thigh. His scream was stifled as he was dragged down, and when he arose, he was cast upon the strand. With the strength of infernal pain and the madness of despair he not only dragged himself up under cover of the mangroves, but twisted his cravat as a tourniquet around the severed limb. Then he fainted away.
It was not until the morning that the pearl fishers were attracted to him by his piteous groans. They had been so generously paid by Mr. Gladsden after his securing the treasure that they took great care of the dismembered Mexican, believing him one of the brigantine crew, in which belief he took heed not to disturb them in his rare lucid moments. They rewarded themselves by stripping him and cutting off his silver buttons, and after a few weeks, changing their fishing ground, left him in their best hut. Fever had gone, but he was as weak as a child, and for some months seemed able only to crawl about. Thus he had ample time for repentance even of so long a career of guilt.
He was penitent in his helplessness, and had such a man as Father Serafino encountered him then, he might never have recurred to his former life. But no one came near the crippled hermit but sea otter hunters, and pearl and whale fishers, and they were rough, unsympathetic souls, who only landed to buy, or take by force, the vegetables which he raised.
In this way, chained to the spot by his loss of limb, with the perpetual presence of the reef where that treasure had been drawn up, to embitter his thoughts and his dreams, Matasiete nursed projects of vengeance, not merely against the Englishman and don Benito, but against all human kind.
At last, nearly four years in this almost solitary existence having passed, and his little hoard of earnings by the supply of green meat to the whalers swelling out so that he feared he would be robbed, he took advantage of the offer of an officer of a British man-of-war, surveying the Gulf, to transport him to Guaymas.
People and things had changed there; the prospect of the railways connecting the port with the United States and Mexico City had galvanised it into a life he had never known before. Most of his associates had disappeared; but he found Don Stefano Garcia humbly "clerking it" in a merchant's, and very reticent about a fortnight in the chain gang, which punishment he had undergone for some little playfulness in his banking business.
Wary, tenacious, exacting, the returned salteador fastened himself upon the clerk and blackmailed him almost daily, spending the extorted money in the sailors' drinking dens. At last, seeing that his Old Man of the Sea was doomed to be his destruction, Garcia made an effort, gave the robber a large sum of money once for all, and started him for the northern interior. The former rover of the Sierras had expressed a desire to resume the old life of freedom, tempered with depredation and debauchery.
Soon, indeed, to the nucleus of a few chosen scoundrels with whom he had beguiled the intervals between revels and card play in the Guaymas groggeries, with stories of the merry life on the prairies, the captain added the floating scum of Upper Sonora. But this time he did not hesitate to venture into New Mexico and run off cattle from the American settlers. Thus he acquired a wider fame than before, and on both sides of the border the One-legged Rustler had a price set on his head.
About a year before, he had an accession to his band in the person of no less than the ex-banker, don Stefano Garcia. That estimable gentleman, from forgery to forgery, had contrived to bring the credulous foreign firm that employed him to bankruptcy, and, well supplied with funds, thus shamefully acquired, was encountered by his old associate gambling it away in the Green Ranch. They were scandalous rogues, born to travel in harness, and Garcia at once stepped into the lieutenancy of the formidable band. Too corpulent to be agile, except in the dance, in which he excelled like most Mexicans, he preferred to win by astuteness, and was no more daring when his neck was concerned than El Manco himself.
It was he who earnestly approved his superior's idea of stopping the desultory fighting and becoming friends with the Apaches. For one knew as well as the other that they were wolves whose hide would cost dear, and then be worthless.
The Apaches, as we have elsewhere remarked, are about the most ferocious and barbarous nation in the great Southwest. Neither Sioux nor Pawnees attain their perfection in cruelty, and they are matchless as the Comanches in horse stealing.
They are tyrants of the wilderness, in short, who see no life worth living without murder, pillage, torture, and conflagrations. They make no nice distinctions in attacking any beings, white, red, or mixed blood, merely out of an implacable hatred for those born beyond their pale. It is said that when other supply of foemen fall short, they will quarrel among themselves and cross knives in the council lodge itself for the sheer relish of bloodshedding.
Such were the demons to whom the Mexican Ishmael wanted to propose a temporary alliance to attack and carry by storm the hacienda of don Benito de Bustamente.
All at once, therefore, Captain Pedrillo bid one of his men sound a bugle in imitation of the notes of the cry used by the Apaches for "cease firing!" and, immediately, one of his lieutenants, risking his life, sprang from behind a tree towards the red man, waving a blanket in a peculiar manner which kept it flat but undulating in the air, whilst he shouted "Paz—peace!" As a rule, such overtures are disregarded by Indians in combat, but the incertitude about their beloved chief made them accept it. Their missiles were no longer heard whistling, and, in a few minutes spent in consultation, one of the subchiefs leaped into the clear ground, and waved a white buffalo robe.
With bravado, in order to indicate that fear had nothing to do with this offering and assent to the truce, both parties showed themselves.
On the one side, more than a hundred red men appeared, bristling with spears and arrows held on the bow, or displaying guns and hatchets. On the other, upon an earthwork hastily thrown up with knives, the ruffians presented themselves, to the number of sixty at least enveloped in their zarapés, coiled up to protect vital parts of the body, their heads shaded withsombreros, or capped with skins of animals, still showing their teeth and claws; their guns and their machetes gleamed brightly. Both seemed tough morsels, and though the Indians uttered no comments on the parade, their glances among themselves expressed the same sentiment of admiration which the Mexicans muttered.
Thealférezand the Apache chief slowly advanced, step for step, so as to meet midway between the lines; as they came on nearer and nearer, they threw down weapon after weapon so as, at last, when they stood within arm's length, to be totally disarmed, in all appearance. No doubt both had a concealed knife, for treachery is always suspected in prairie warfare.
When they actually met, and the Mexican spokesman had repeated his mission to propose peace, on the grounds that there was no quarrel between the noble Apaches and the bandits, who were in no way connected with those infernal North American heretics who had intruded within the Rancho Verde, the Indian made a sign to his friends. Instantly, in a majestic manner, several chiefs came forward towards him, a movement imitated by Pedrillo and his subleaders, and soon the two groups were facing one another.
Profoundly distrustful, though no weapons were visible, both parties fully aware of the rascality of either, the Apaches nevertheless recognised that the pair of fugitives who had slain their chief after beating the Rustlers in the barroom, and were speeding away on re-stolen horses, were no friends of the Mexicans. The proposal, therefore, that the two forces should unite in their mutual hate for the strangers, by whose deeds both suffered, was congenial. Always repulsed when they attacked the fortified houses of the rich farmers, the Indians hoped for better results if they were aided by men accustomed to fight on foot and to manage a siege.
Consequently, not ten minutes of explanation had passed before the half dozen principals were seated in a circle in the centre of the clearing before the smoking ruins of Tío Camote's luckless hostelry, with the calumet circulating for a council.
One little detail had been promptly debated and settled; apart from the bloodshed due to Mr. Gladsden and his hunter guide, five of the Apaches had been slain by Mexican bullets, while only three of the bandits had lost their lives in the skirmish. Now, inasmuch as the code "a life for a life," rules the savage practice, the Rustlers owed two lives to the Apaches, who could not, with a debt of blood unpaid, enter into alliance with the debtors.
With a sharklike grin, the worthy Captain Pedrillo removed this difficulty.
"There are four of my men, Chief Iron Shirt," said he, leaning towards the successor of Tiger Cat, "rank weeds, unruly, who have secreted unfair shares of plunder, and who contemplate desertion to go to Ures, and, perhaps, betray me and their valiant comrades to the police. I will arrange, on our march, to send them away as a detached scouting party, and your young men may take and wear their scalps at their girdles. Four scalps for two lives! Applaud my generosity!"
"It is a bargain," said the Apaches, grimly enjoying the joke.
Iron Shirt was a notorious villain, having twice at least mingled with the Cheyennes and passed himself off for one of them in order to obtain from the United States agent arms and ammunition which he meant, even as he received them with protestations of lip service, to essay upon the very official who gave them. Hence he was the man particularly to appreciate double-dealing and applaud it when he was not the dupe. He derived his singular but veritable appellation—for he is like other characters in our narrative, a figure in border annals—not from his ever wearing a shirt of mail, but from his good fortune in escaping body wounds. He attributed it to his "medicine," but the white hunters thought him very dexterous in the use of the small shield which Indian cavalry carry, and which, while not defying a rifle ball, will fend off an arrow and stop a revolver bullet.
The pipe of council went twice around the ring, till Pedrillo spoke again from his elevated perch on the horse, the others squatting in the Indian fashion.
"My Apache brothers are great warriors," he said, "so I am wishful to prove my esteem for them by having them join me, or taking me and my band in conjunction with them," changing the form of offer on seeing the Indian wince in wounded pride, "to make complete the successfulcoupwhich they have already struck at the hacienda of the Treasure Hill. This time, my red brothers will return to their villages, not merely with a few horses and one paleface girl, but with a long train of mules packed with booty and fifty women to sew their clothes, fetch water and cook their meals. The scalps are of no value to us, and they will be the Apaches' prize! As for the plunder of the rich farm, we divide it fairly between us. What does the chief say?"
Each of the Apaches answered in order of rank "it is good! The chief says we will fall on the hacienda in concert, and the plunder will be equally shared among the warriors."
The settlement of details was made whilst this favourable decision upon the preliminaries was carried to the subordinates, interestedly awaiting. General satisfaction was manifested, but the wary bandits and red men took care not to mingle or fraternize, save with arms at hand, even where several recognised acquaintances and hailed them cordially.
There was no doubt, as happens with more important treaty makers in Europe, each contracting party reserved in secret the right to keep none of the pledges given and to seize the spoil the moment he felt strong enough to defy the consequences of such treachery.
Meanwhile, Pedrillo called for a keg of spirits saved from the wreck of the ranch, and all drank to cement the negotiation.
Tío Camote had emerged from his retreat, and his two bartenders, more frightened than hurt when the roof collapsed with them, saw the unburnt stores of his tavern shared between the allies, as a commencement of their active brotherhood, without too much resentment. Forced to enlist actively among the banditti lest the rear guard of the Apaches immolated him on the smouldering ruins, where their greatest chief was inextricably buried to appease his manes, Uncle Sweet Potato still wondered that he lived and breathed with his head thatched as nature provided. As for his assistants, they were highwaymen when out of a situation, and they entered the ranks again under Pedrillo's colours without demur.
Just before sunset, the troops, united in sentiment though divided, as independently pursuing their respective purposes in a parallel course solely by accident, took up the ride towards Monte Tesoro. As they had no doubt that the fugitives would be lodged, for Doña Perla's sake, in her father's house, they had no reason to try to overtake them.
The first interruption to the rapid progress of the two troops, and at the same time the first intimation they had of the revolt of the peons, was their riding into the midst of the column shattered by the sham lancers of Oregon Oliver. The severed portions of this column, like one of those fabulous serpents which had the power of healing its wounds, and joining its segments, had rallied into one mass. The leaders were hesitating on the course to take when the Mexicans appeared, and they feared a renewal of the disaster. Fortunately, before the panic was revived, the Apaches delighted them, for they saw friends in men of their colour if not of their race. An understanding was soon arrived at. Needless to say, Pedrillo and Garcia congratulated themselves on having such allies, and the prospect of overcoming not merely the farm of don Benito, but of many another, made their faces radiant with smiles.