The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California Read online

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  THE TREASURE OF PEARLS

  A Romance of Adventures in California

  BY

  GUSTAVE AIMARD

  AUTHOR OF "RED TRACK," "ADVENTURERS," "PEARL OF THE ANDES"

  "TRAIL HUNTER," "PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIE," &C, &C.

  LONDON: J. and R. MAXWELL

  MILTON HOUSE, 4, SHOE LANE E. C.

  GEORGE VICKERS, ANGEL COURT, STRAND

  AND ALL BOOKSELLERS

  (From the Collected Works 1863-1885)

  CONTENTS.

  I. THE PIECES AND THE BOARD II. ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE III. THE PIRATE'S BEQUEST IV. A DESERT MYSTERY V. THE GODSEND VI. ANY PORT IN A STORM VII. A WAKING NIGHTMARE VIII. "THE LITTLE JOKER" IX. THE WAY LAYERS X. THE PEARL DIVER'S PRICE XI. THE TWO CAPTAINS OF THE "GOLETA" XII. THE ROUT COMPLETE XIII. INTERVENTION XIV. THE HAUL OF MILLIONS XV. THE PATHFINDER'S HONOUR XVI. A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM XVII. THE PUREST OF PEARLS XVIII. OUT AND AWAY XIX. THE OLD, OLD FRIENDS XX. THE ANGELITO XXI. THE LANCERS' CHARGE XXII. THE PACT OF BLOOD XXIII. CANNON IS BROUGHT TO BEAR XXIV. THE UNWILLING VOLUNTEER XXV. THE LOYALTY OF THE APACHE XXVI. THE HARVEST OF THE KNIFE XXVII. THE TRUE CABALLERO XXVIII. THE BEST BAIT TO CATCH APACHES

  THE TREASURE OF PEARLS

  CHAPTER I.

  THE PIECES AND THE BOARD.

  We stand on Mexican soil. We are on the seaward skirt of itswesternmost State of Sonora, in the wild lands almost washed by theCalifornian Gulf, which will be the formidable last ditch of theunconquerable red men flying before the Star of the Empire.

  Before us, the immensity of land; behind us, that of the Pacific Ocean.

  O immeasurable stretches of verdure which form the ever-unknownterritory, the poetically entitled Far West, grand and attractive,sweet and terrible, the natural trellis of so rich, beautiful, mighty,and unkempt flora, that India has none of more vigour of production!

  To an aeronaut's glance, these green and yellow plains would offer onlya vast carpet embroidered with dazzling flowers and foliage, almost asgay and multicoloured, irregularly blocked out like the pieces of glassin ancient church windows with the lead, by rivers torrential in thewet season, rugged hollows of glistening quicksands and neck-deep mudin summer, all of which blend with an unexampled brilliant azure on theclear horizon.

  It is only gradually, after the view has become inured to thefascinating landscape, that it can make out the details: hills not tobe scorned for altitude, steep banks of rivers, and a thousand otherunforeseen impediments for the wretch fleeing from hostile animals orfellow beings, which agreeably spoil the somewhat saddening sameness,and are hidden completely from the general glance by the rank grass,rich canes, and gigantic flower stalks.

  Oh, for the time--the reader would find the patience--to enumeratethe charming products of this primitive nature, which shoots up andathwart, hangs, swings, juts out, crosses, interlaces, binds, twines,catches, encircles, and strays at random to the end of the naturalist'sinvestigation, describing majestic parabolas, forming grandiosearcades, and finally completes the most splendid, aye, and sublimespectacle that is given to any man on the footstool to admire forsuperabundant contrasts, and enthralling harmonies.

  The man in the balloon whom we imagine to be hovering over this mightypicture, even higher up than the eagle of the Sierra Madre itself, whosails in long circles above the bald-headed vulture about to descend ona prey, which the king of the air disdains--this lofty viewer, we say,would spy, on the afternoon when we guide the reader to these wildsapparently unpeopled, more than one human creature wriggling like wormsin the labyrinth.

  At one point some twenty men, white and yet swarthy, unlike in dressbut similarly armed to the teeth, were separately "worming" theirtortuous way, we repeat, through the _chaparral_ proper, or plantationsof the low branching live oak, as well as the gigantic ferns, mesquite,cactus, nopal, and fruit laden shrubs, the oblong-leaved mahogany, thebread tree, the fan-leaved abanico, the pirijao languidly swinging itsenormous golden fruit in clusters, the royal palm, devoid of foliagealong the stem, but softly nodding its high, majestically plumed head;the guava, the banana, the intoxicating chirimoya, the cork oak, thePeruvian tree, the war palm letting its resinous gum slowly ooze forthto capture the silly moths, and even young snakes and lizards whichsquirmed on the hardening gum like a platter of Palissy ware abruptlygalvanised into life.

  These adventurers insinuated themselves through this tangle unseen and,perhaps, unsuspected by one another, all tending to the same point,probably the same rendezvous. A marked devil-may-care spirit, whichtempered the caution of men brought up in the desert, betokened thatthey were master of the woods hereabouts, or, at least, only recognisedthe Indian rovers as their contesting fellow tenants.

  Elsewhere, a blundering stranger, of a fairness which startled thepronghorn antelopes as much as a superstitious man would be at seeing asheeted form at midnight, tramped desperately as one who felt lost, butnervously feared to delay whilst there was daylight, over the immensespreads of dahlias, flaunting flowers each full of as much honey asHercules would care to drain at a draught, whiter than Chimborazo'ssnow, or ruddier than the tiger lily's blood splashes; through thickcreepers which withered with the pressing circulation of boiling saplike vegetable serpents around the trees, from which gorged reptiles,not unlike these growing cords themselves, dangled, and now and thenhalf curled up, startling with his inexpert foot (in a boot cut andtorn by the bramble and splinters of the ironwood and lignum vitaeshattered in the _tornado_--a "twister," indeed)--animals of all sizesand species, which leaped, flew, floundered, and crept aloof in thechaos not unpierceable to them: forms on two, four, countless feet,with long, broad, ample, or tiny wings, singing, calling, yelling,howling up and down a scale of incredible extent, now softly seducingthe astray to follow, now taunting him and screaming for him toforbear. If he were not maddened, he must have had a heart of steel.

  Elsewhere still, a man was riding on a horse whose harness andtrappings smelt so strongly of the stable, that is, of human slavery,that it alarmed the stupid, mournful-eyed bisons, the alligator as hebasked in the caking mire, the hideous iguana slothfully ascendinga wind cast trunk, that maneless lion the cougar, the panthers andjaguars too lazy or too glutted with the night's raid to follow theprey, the honey bear warily sniffing the flower which harboured a bee,the sullen grizzly who looked out of a hilly den amazed at so impudentan invader. Upon this horse, whose Spanish descent and state of bornthraldom was resented by the angry neigh of his never-lassoed brethren,proudly careering in unnumbered _manadas_ upon endless courses, thisman was resolutely progressing, ruthlessly severing vines and floralclumps with a splendid old broadsword, cool as only a Mexican canremain in a felt sombrero and a voluminous blanket cloak; charging andcrushing, unless they quickened their retreat, the venomous cotejo, thegreen lizard, the basilisk and tiny, yet awful, coral snakes, and neverswerving, though the tongue could almost attain what was unmuffledof his face, the monstrous anaconda and its long, spotted kinsfolk.This mounted Mexican took a line, not so straight as the footmenwere pursuing, which would bring him to the spot whither they wereconverging.

  Imagining that the one of the wayfarers who evinced an ignorance ofprairie life which made his existence each moment a greater miracle,and that the horseman who, on the contrary, rode on as sturdily as apostboy in a well-worn road, formed
two sides of a triangle of whichthe evident destination of the rider and the other Mexicans was thefinal end, in about the centre of this fancied space, other humanobjects of interest were visible to our aerial observer.

  Toilsomely marching, one or the other of two men supporting alternatelythe young girl who, singularly enough, was their companion in thiswilderness, the new trio formed a group which fluttered the almostnever-so-startled feathered inhabitants of that grove; curassows,tanagers, noisy loros, hummingbirds as small as flies, hunting fliesas large as themselves, toucans that seemed overburdened with theirultraliberal beaks, wood pigeons, fiery flamingoes, in strikingcontrast with the black swans that clattered in the cane brake.

  Behind them, in calm, contented chase, easy and active as the prettygray squirrels, which alone took the alarm and sprang away when henoiselessly appeared, a shining copper-skinned Indian, with robustlimbs and graceful gait, an eye to charm and to command, moved likea king who scorned to set his guards to punish the intruder, on hisdomains, but stalked savagely onward to chastise them himself. Theplentiful scalp locks that fringed his leggings showed that he had leftmany a skeleton of the paleface to bleach in the torrid sun, and thatthe sex, the youth and the beauty of the gentle companion of the twowhites on whose track he so placidly proceeded, would not spare her asingle pang, far less obtain her immunity. On his Apollo-like bosomwas tattooed, in sepia and vermilion, a rattlesnake, the emblem notmerely of a tribe, but the sect of a tribe, the ring within the circle;he belonged to the select band of the Southern Apaches, the PoisonHatchets, initiated in the compounding of deadly salves and potentpotions, to cure the victim of which the united faculties of Europewould be baffled. No doubt those arrows, of which the feathers bristledin a full quiver, and his other weapons, were anointed with that venomwhich makes such Indians shunned by all the prairie rovers.

  Such was the panorama, sublime, enthralling and fearsome, and thepuppets which are presented to our imaginary gazer.

  Leaving him to dissolve into the air whence we evolved him, we descendto terra firma near the last party to which we directed attention.

  The sun was at its zenith, which fact rendered the animation of so manypersons the more remarkable, since few are afoot in the heat of the dayin those regions.

  Suddenly, with a slight hiss as of a living snake, an arrow spedunerringly through a tuft of liquid embers, and laid low, afterone brief spasm of death, a huge dog which seemed a mongrel ofNewfoundlander and a wild wolf.

  Shortly afterwards the branches which masked the poor animal'sstiffening body (on which the greedy flies began already to settle,and towards which the tumblebugs were scrambling in their amazinginstinct), were parted by a trembling hand, and a white manof Spanish-American extraction, showed his face streaming withperspiration and impressed with terror and despair, to which, at thediscovery, was immediately added a profound sorrow.

  "Snakebit! That is what detained Fracasador (the Breaker into Bits).Come, arouse thee, good dog!" he said in Spanish, but instantlyperceiving the tip of the arrow shaft buried almost wholly in the broadchest, he uttered a sigh of deep consternation, and added--

  "Again the dart of death! We are still pursued by that remorselessfiend."

  Fracasador was certainly dead.

  "After our horses, the dog! After the dog, ourselves! Brave Benito!Poor Dolores, my poor child!"

  He started, as the bushes rustled, but it was not an enemy whoappeared. It was the young woman whom he had named, and a youth in histwo-and-twentieth year at the farthest.

  Benito was tall, well and stoutly built; his form even stylish, hisfeatures fine and regular; his complexion seemed rather pale for anative, from his silky hair, which came down disorderly on his squareshoulders, being of a jet black. Intelligence and unconquerable daringshone in his large black eyes. On his visage sat a seldom seen blendingof courage, fidelity and frankness. In short, one of those men who winat first sight, and can be trusted to the last.

  Though his costume, reduced by the dilapidation of the thorns,consisted of linen trousers caught in at the waist by a red Chinacrape _faja_ or sash, and a coarse "hickory" shirt, he resembled adisguised prince, so much ease and distinction abounded in his bearing.But, for that matter, throughout Spanish-America, it is impossible todistinguish a noble from a common man, for they all express themselveswith the same elegance, employ language quite as nicely chosen, andhave equally courteous manners.

  The girl whom he supported, almost carried in fact, was sleepingwithout being fully unconscious, as happens to soldiers on a forcedmarch. Dolores was not over sixteen. Her beauty was exceptional, andher modesty made her low melodious voice falter when she spoke. She wasgraceful and dainty as an Andalusian. The profile so strongly resembledthat of the man who was leaning over the slain dog that it did notrequire the remembrance that he had spoken of her as his child, for oneto believe that he had father and daughter under his ken.

  "Don't wake her!" said the elder man, with a quick wave of the handto quell the other's surprise. "Let her not see the poor faithfulhound, Benito. And keep yourself, as I do, before her as a shield. Thecowardly foe to whom we owe the loss of our horses, our arms, and nowour loyal comrade is lurking in the thicket, may even--Oh, Holy Mother,that should protect us from the heathen!--be this instant taking aim atour poor, dear Dolores, with another missile from his accursed quiver."

  "The villain!" cried Benito, darting a furious glance around. "Luckily,she sleeps, Don Jose."

  Indeed the elder Mexican could take the girl without awakening her outof the other's arms, and, after a long kiss on her pure forehead, bearher away from the dog's proximity into a covert where he laid her uponthe grass with precaution.

  "Thank heaven for this sleep," said he, "it will make her temporarilyoblivious of her hunger."

  Benito had taken the other's zarape which he spread over the girl. Thatblanket was their only appendage; beside the scanty covering which thethree wore, weapons, water bottle and food container, they had none.A critical position this for the small party, weaponless and foodlessin the waste! A disarmed man is reckoned as dead in such a wild!Struggling is impossible against the incalculable foes that eithercrush a solitary adventurer by their mass, or deputize, so to say, somesuch executioner as he whom we saw to have slain the dog, and we hearto have rid the three Mexicans of their horses and equipments. Thestory of how this deprivation came about is short and lamentable.