CHAPTER XIX.

THE OLD, OLD FRIENDS.

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 an _ounce_, 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

paso_ which 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

of _tambores_ or 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 the _padre_ who 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.

"The _padre_ is 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 the _blazing_ (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 into

_guerreadores_--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 the _corral_ which, 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.