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

  CHAPTER II.

  ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE.

  Don Benito Vazquez de Bustamente was the son of that GeneralBustamente, twice president of the Mexican Republic. When his father,cast down from power, was forced to flee with his family to take finalrefuge at Guayaquil, the boy was only five or six years old. Sufferingwith fever, which made the voyage dangerous for him, the child wasleft at Guaymas in charge of a faithful adherent, who found no betterway of saving the son of the proscript from persecution than to takehim as one of his own little family up the San Jose Valley, where hehad a ranch. The boy remained there and grew up to the age when weencountered him.

  His rough but trusty guardian let the youth run wild, teaching him toride and shoot as the only needful accomplishments. Benito, fallinginto the company of the remnant of purer-blooded Indians, supposed tobe the last of the original possessors of that region, relished theirvagabond life exceedingly. Not only did he spend weeks at a time inhunts with them, with an occasional running fight with the Yaqui tribe,and even the Apaches raiding Sonora; but, at the season for pearldiving, accompanied them in their boats, not only in the Gulf, but downthe mainland and up the seacoast of the peninsula. La Paz he knew well,and the Isles of Pearls were familiar in every cranny.

  Now, when the news of his father's death in exile came to Benito, hewas a hunter and horseman doubled by seaman and pearl fisher, such asthat quarter of the world even seldom sees.

  So little on land, both enemies and followers of the copresident lostall trace of the son.

  Moreover, in the land of revolution in permanency, the offspring of aonce ruler are personally to blame if they call dangerous attention onthemselves.

  On shore, however, don Benito had noticed the daughter of a neighbour,one don Jose Miranda, formerly in the navy. After a couple of years'wedded life, the latter was left a widower with an only daughter, whohad become this charming Dolores, now slumbering under her father'szarape. Her education was confided to a poor sister of the captain,who was about the only enemy young Bustamente had in his courtship.Captain Miranda was very fond of the youth, and it was agreed ere longthat there should be a wedding at the _Noria de las Pasioneras_ (Wellhouse of the Passionflowers) as soon as Benito reached the age offive-and-twenty.

  But dona Maria Josefa had contrary marital projects. Her brother had somany times talked of bestowing the bulk of his considerable fortune onhis beloved child, that the lady concluded, rightly or wrongly, thatshe would be penniless when the niece married. Habituated, since agreat while back, to a very easy, not to say pampered existence at herkinsman's expense, she beheld with terror the time coming when her hostwould settle all his property on the girl, and constitute the strangeyoung man, who was so reserved about his origin, the steward for hisyoung wife. However, dona Maria Josefa was too sly and adroit to openlyoppose the paternal determination, and allow him to perceive the hateshe bore Benito and would be only too delighted to manifest.

  Whenever she threw out hints of a better match for her niece than thismysterious youth, they had fallen in deaf ears, and she fretted insilence that boded no good prospects.

  Nevertheless, some two years had known the young hearts formallyengaged without the serpent lifting her head to emit a truly alarminghiss. At that time dona Maria Josefa introduced at her brother's ahook-nosed gentleman, arrayed sumptuously, who rejoiced in a long namewhich paraded pretensions to an illustrious lineage. This don AnibalCristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortez so displeased Benito and Dolores,whilst not ingratiating himself deeply with don Jose, that his presencewould not have been tolerated, only for the young couple hopefullysupposing that the tall and bony scion of the first conqueror of Mexicowas a flame of Dolores' duenna, and as such would wed the dragon andtake her away from the hacienda to the beautiful and boundless domainsin Spain, upon which he expatiated in a shrill voice of enthusiasm.

  Don Anibal had excellent credentials from a banker's at Guaymas,but, somehow, the gentlemen farmers received him with cold courtesy.Besides, it having been remarked that those who offended him met withinjury, personal, like the being waylaid, or in their property, stockbeing run off or outhouses fired, there sprang up a peculiar way oftreating the stranger for which the Spanish _morgue_, that counterpartof English phlegm, is very well suited.

  All at once, Benito received word that a messenger from his mother hadarrived at Guaymas, bearing the very good news that she expected toobtain a revocation of the sentence of banishment against the brood ofBustamente, and then he could publicly avow his name.

  He had already imparted his secret to Captain Miranda.

  The messenger had grievously suffered with seasickness, and wasunable to come up the valley. Miranda counselled Benito to go to himtherefore, and besides, as the formalities attending the settlement ofhis estate upon his daughter, under the marriage contract, requiredsuch legal owls as nestled alone in the port, he volunteered toaccompany the young man. Over and above all this pleasing arrangement,as Dolores had never seen the city, of which the five thousandinhabitants think no little--for after all it is the finest harbour inthe Gulf of California--he proposed she should be of the party.

  Another reason, which he did not confide in anyone, acted as aspur. A neighbour had told don Jose that, from a communication ofhis majordomo, an expert in border warfare, he believed that theillustrious don Anibal de Luna was not wholly above complicity with atroop of robbers who lately infested Sonora, and caused as much dreadand more damage, forasmuch as they were intelligently directed to thebest stores of plunder as the Indians themselves. This neighbour,though he loved dona Josefa no more cordially than anybody else, stilldeemed it dutiful to prevent Captain Miranda allowing a "gentleman ofthe highway" to marry into his family.

  Don Jose felt the caution more painfully, as his sister had plainlylet him know that the famous don Anibal was not so much her worshipperas her niece's. He might have thanked the _salteador_ to rid his houseof the old maid, but to allow one to court his daughter was anothermatter. At the same time, as of such dubious characters are made the"colonels" who buckler up a Mexican revolutionary pretender, don Josewas scarcely less coldly civil to the hidalgo, though he hastened onthe preparations to withdraw his daughter from the swoop of the bird ofrapine.

  Dona Maria Josefa drew a long face at the prospect of being left aloneat the hacienda, but she was too great a dependant on her brother, andtoo hypocritical to trammel the undertaking.

  The party set forth, then, under good and sufficient escort. But thevery foul fiend himself appeared to have taken all dona Maria Josefa'sevil wishes in hand to carry them out, to say nothing of the baulkeddon Anibal's.

  Half the escort left without returning, at a mere alarm of the _Indiosbravos_ ("hostiles") being at La Palma, and massacring and firingfarmhouses wholesale. The rest were lost in the bush, were abandoneddead or dying; the mules and horses were "stampeded" by unseen foes;and finally a fatal bowman slew the two horses which had borne don Joseand his daughter in their futile endeavour to regain the lost track;and, to come to the present time, their dog, of whom the instinct hadpreserved them more than once from death by thirst, had been despatchedby the same relentless demon.

  Still, there was the contradictory consolation which the persistentenemy afforded by these evidences of his bloodthirsty hunt. By asingular anomaly of the human organisation, as long as man knows hisfellows are at hand, even though they be enemies, he does not feelutterly stripped of hope. In the depth of his heart, the vaguest ofhope sustains and encourages him, though he may not reason about it.But as soon as all human vestiges disappear, the imperceptible humanwaif on the sea, alone with nature, trembles in full revelation of hispaltriness. The colossal surroundings daunt him, and he acknowledges itis folly to struggle with the waves that multitudinously mount up toswamp him from all sides.

  Meanwhile, no further occasion to be fearful had been shown, the sunwent down, and shot up one short gleam ere the swift darkness shroudedthe sky. The howling of wild beasts rushing out to enjoy their
time ofsport could be traced from the lair to the "licks" and springs.

  But our disarmed _gente perdida_, the lost ones, durst not light afire; had they the means to scare the wolf away, it might have affordeda mark for the unknown archer. Don Jose wept as he saw his daughter,who pretended to sleep, to give him and her lover less uneasiness. Butsleep does not come under these circumstances to them who court it.

  Indeed, only those who have undergone the horror of a night in theuntamed forest can imagine its poignancy. Lugubrious phantoms peoplethe glades, the wild beasts intone a devilish concert, the limbs oftrees seem to be animated into semblances of the really awakenedserpents, whose scales can be heard gliding with a slime softened hushover the bending boughs. None but the experienced can reckon how manyages are compressed in one second of this gruesome "fix," a nightmareof the wakeful, during which the racked mind finds a distorted relishin picturing the most monstrous lucubrations, particularly when thefaint yet tantalised appetite sets the brain palpitating with delirium.

  After enduring this strain for some hours of the gloom, hope ormere instinct of self-preservation caused Benito to suggest, as oneacquainted with hunters expedients, that the shelter existed by theincreasing danger of their position on the ground, was upon the summitof a huge broken cottonwood tree. He assisted don Jose to mount to thetop, which he found tolerably solid, spite of wet and solar rot, passedhim up poor Dolores, and stood on guard at the base. He meant to havekept awake, or, rather, had not the least idea that he should go off tosleep, but famine had passed its acute stage, and fatigue collaboratedwith it to lull him. The last look he gave upwards showed him vaguely,like a St. Simon Stylites, the elder Mexican on the broad summit ofthe stump, his daughter reclining on the bed of pith at his feet. DonJose was then praying, his face turned to the east, where no doubt hetrusted to behold a less unhappy sun than had last scorched them.

  Suddenly don Benito started: something like a hot snake had run downhis cheek and buried itself in his bosom. At almost the same instant,whilst he was awakening fully, a smart sting in the left shoulder,preceded by a hissing, short and angry, made the young man utter anexclamation rather in rage than pain.

  The sun had risen; at least, he could see about him and be warmedand vivified a little, through a fresh day commenced of intolerabletorments.

  As he looked up, the repetition of the sensation of the reptile glidingadown his face, but less warm and more slow this time, caused him toapply his hand to the line traversed. He withdrew it speedily, and indisgust--his fingers were smeared with blood!

  "Oh, Don Jose!" he ejaculated. "Dolores, dear!"

  Stupefied, speechless, like a statue, the girl upon the naturalpedestal was supporting the lifeless body of the old Mexican. An arrowwas broken off in his temple, and his beard, roughly sprouted out andwhite with this week of hardship, was flooded with the blackening bloodof which Benito in his post below had received the drip.

  The young man stared fiercely around, and instantly perceivingsomething on the move in the thicket, sprang up the tree.

  At the same time aimed at him to redeem the marksman for his firstfailure, which had lodged the shaft in the young Mexican's shoulderinstead of his head or his heart; a second projectile of the samedescription whizzed into the gap between his legs, opened by his leap,and smote a knot so violently as to shiver into a dozen splinters.

  Unable for want of strength to keep his hold, the youthful Mexicanslipped down to the ground. Then, facing about in frenzy ofindignation, as being so badgered by the unknown, he called outsavagely:

  "Coward! Confront the last of your victims, if you have a drop of manlyblood!"

  Because he had concluded his last shot serious, or from disdain for hisantagonist, or sheer recklessness--for it is not likely that a savageso far forgot his training as to let such a white man's taunt sting himinto the imprudence--the Indian who had dogged the unfortunate triostalked out of the underwood, and only ceased his advance when a lancelength from the desperate man who had invoked him.

  "_iPresente!_" he said in Spanish, with a hoarse chuckle, as in oneglance he saw the insensible young female form beside the dead Mexican,and don Benito's weak condition.

  Indeed, the latter, instead of carrying out his implied threat,tottered back and leaned against the cottonwood, just under one arrow,and with the other shattered shaft bristling at his shoulder.

  The red man chose to interpret this movement as a flattery for hiswarlike appearance, for he smiled contentedly, and, drawing his longknife, cried holding up three fingers of his left hand:

  "La Garra de Rapina--the Claw of Rapine--will now take his harvest forthrice five days' toil."

  Benito sought to summon his failing powers, but a mist seemed tospring up and becloud his gaze, through which he less and less clearlysaw the Indian's slow and cruel approach. Nevertheless, he was aboutto make a snatch at hazard for the steel that rose over his bosom,when a flash of fire from a gun so near that he almost saw the hitherextremity blind the redskin, preceded a shot that crashed through thelatter's skull. Benito, unable to check his own leap, received thedead yet convulsed body in his arms, and the shock hurled him to theground. Neither rose! One was dead; the other within an ace of the sameimpassable portals. It seemed to him, as he lost consciousness, thatthere was a struggle in the brush.

  When Benito reopened his eyes he believed all had been a dream, but,on gazing anxiously about him, he saw the dead Indian by his side.Above him, too, when he rose on his knees by an effort, the two silentwitnesses of his miraculous deliverance were still recumbent.

  No trace of another living soul; nevertheless, the Indian's weapons hadall disappeared.

  Suddenly, as he lifted himself to his feet, aching all over as if hehad been bastinadoed on every accessible place, he heard Dolores moan.She was animated by the acute racking of hunger.

  He gasped, "Food! Food for her!" and reeled to the greenest spot, wherehe began to tear up the earth with his nails. At length he dislodged alittle stem of yucca, the somewhat tasty root which yields a species ofmaniac.

  When he returned to the tree, Dolores, horrified at seeing her father'sblood, had fallen off the tree top, rather than climbed down, and wastoo insensible to hear his appeals. He dragged the Indian's body partlyaside, for to do so wholly was too weighty a task, and heaped leavesover the other portion. He placed the root in Dolores' passive hands,and was about to repeat his hoarse babble of hope, which he did notfeel at heart, when abruptly the arrow wound in his shoulder gave asharp, deep, scorching sensation, which filled him from head to solewith fever and awe.

  "Oh, heavens!" he groaned. "The arrow was poisoned! I shall die inmadness! I shall, perhaps, tear her, my dear Dolores, in my blind,ungovernable rage!"

  So feels the man whom hydrophobia has seized upon, as the latestpromptings of reason bid him hie aloof from his endangered fellows.

  Benito laid his glances about him wildly; his recently dull eyes blazedtill his very features, already earthy, lit up, and he howled;

  "Welcome, death! But anywhere save here!"

  He trampled on the Indian corpse in his flight, and plunged into thethorns as if bent on rending himself to shreds. He must have rushedmadly on for half an hour, the venom firing his thinned blood tillhis veins ran flames, but as the wound on his left side affected thatportion of the frame disproportionately, he described a circle, and inthe end had almost returned to the spot where Dolores still rested in aswoon.

  At last, stumbling, groping, he fell, only to crawl a little way, then,a slight mound opposing his hands and knees, he rolled upon it. Hishead appeared to have been cleared by the Mazeppa-like course, and hewas, at least, conscious of the raised grass reminding him of a funeralmound.

  "A grave!" he breathed, dashing the sweat out of his eyes, "Yes, agrave here will the last of the Bustamentes die!"

  He stretched out at full length, he folded his arms, one of thempalsied already, and was beginning to pray, when his tone changed tojoy, or at least, profound hopefulne
ss. He fell over on his side, thenrose to his knees, ran his band over the mound eagerly, and cried:

  "God of mercy, deceive me not! The grave I coveted, is it not a_cache?_ Thank God!"