CHAPTER V.

THE GODSEND.

The inhabitants of the wilderness, red or white, black or yellow,

obliged often to "let go of all," as our sailor friend would word it,

and "get" (as he would probably say if his foolhardy behaviour allowed

him to live long enough in that region to acquire the cant language),

and pretty suddenly too, to follow the chase or avoid an ambush, are

necessitated to abandon their plunder and traps, using these words in

their legitimate sense. As, at the same time, they have no inclination

to renounce their property, they bank it, or, as the trappers say,

_cache_ it.

The model _cache_ is thus constructed: the first thing is to spread

blankets or buffalo robes around the chosen spot for the excavation,

which is scooped out in any desirable shape with knives and flat

stones; all the extracted ground, loam, sand, or whatever its nature,

being carefully put on the spreads. When the pit is sufficiently

capacious it is lined with buffalo hides to keep out damp, and the

valuables are deposited within, even packed up in hide, if necessary.

The earth is restored and trodden down, or rammed firmly with the

rifle butts, water is sometimes sprinkled on the top to facilitate

the settling, and upon the replaced sod to prevent it dying after the

injury to its roots. All the earth left over is carried to a running

water, or scattered to the four winds, so as to make the least

evidences of the concealment vanish. The _cache_ is generally so well

hidden that only the eye of an uncommonly gifted man can discover it.

Often, then, he only chances upon one that has been opened and emptied

by the owners, who, after that, of course, were easy in their second

operation. The contents of a well-constructed _cache_ may keep half a

dozen years without spoiling.

Benito Bustamente believed he had been led to die upon a _cache_.

To a man dropping of fatigue and famine such a find was of inestimable

value. It might reasonably offer him the primary necessities of which

he was denuded, and he would be revived, literally, on being furnished

with the means to fight his way to civilisation, where otherwise he and

Dolores, always hoping the young girl had not preceded him past the

bourne, must perish.

For a few instants, propped up on both hands, in a wistful attitude,

which I never saw in a pictorial representation of a human being, but

which was recalled to me by the pose of the bloodhound in Landseer's

picture of the trail of blood, in which floats a broken plume.

A moment of suspense!

He was swayed by indefinable sensations, fascinated, so as to be

fearful of breaking the spell.

When, at length, he mastered his emotion, he did not forget the duty

of an honest man constrained to invade the property of another, though

that other might be his enemy!

Trapper law is explicit; wanton breaking into a _cache_ is punishable

by death.

So he shaped out a square of the sod with a sharp mussel shell which

he spied glistening near him, and slowly removed that piece, anxiously

quivering in the act. Other turf he removed in the same manner, more

and more sure that it was a _cache_. This preliminary over, he paused

to take breath, and to enjoy the luxury of discounting a pleasure which

came as veritable life in the midst of death.

Then he resumed a task terrible for one exhausted by privations and

loss of blood. Many times he was forced to stop, his energy giving out.

Slow went on the work; no indications of his being correct arose to

corroborate his surmise. The shell broke, but then he used the two

fragments, held in his hand with such tenacity that they seemed to be

supplementary nails. Vain as was the toil, here lay, he still believed,

the sole chance of safety; if heaven smiled on his efforts, his darling

Dolores might yet be a happy woman. So he clung to this last chance

offered by happy hazard with that energy of despair, the immense power

of Archimedes, for which nothing is impossible.

The hole, of no contemptible size, yawned blankly before him. Nothing

augured success, and, whatever the indomitable energy of the young

man's character, he felt discouragement cast a new gloom over his soul.

His eyelids, red with fever, licked up the tear that ventured to soothe

them, and his lips cracked as he pressed them together.

"At least, here I dig a grave for don José, and my poor love," he said

wildly. "It shall be deep enough to baffle the wolf!"

He renewed his tearing at the soil, when suddenly the shells snapped

off, both pieces together, and his nails also scraping something of

a different material to the earth, turned back at their jagged ends,

but not at that supreme moment giving him the pain which at another

time the same accident must have caused. Some hairs were mingled with

the earth, and a scent different from that of the freshly bared ground

intoxicated him with its musk.

Disdaining the shattered mussel shell, he used his hands as scoops, and

presently unearthed a buffalo skin.

Instead of tugging at it with greedy relish to feast on the treasure it

doubtlessly muffled, Benito drew back his hands and stared with worse

tribulation than ever.

A _cache_--yes! A full one--who knew?

Long ago it might have been pillaged. With but one movement between

him and the verification or annihilation of his hopes the Mexican

hesitated. He was frightened.

His labour under difficulties had been so great, he had cherished

so many dreams and nursed so many chimeras, that he instinctively

dreaded the seeing them swiftly to flee, and leave him falling from his

crumbling anticipations into the frightful reality that closed in upon

him with inexorable jaws.

In the end, determined to do or die, for to that it had truly come,

Benito's trembling hands buried themselves in the buffalo robe,

clutched it irresistibly and hauled it up into his palpitating bosom.

His haggard eyes swam with joyful gush of many tears, so that he could

not see the sky to which he had raised them in gratitude.

Benito had fallen on a hunter's and trapper's store. Not only were

there traps and springes of several sorts, weapons, powder horns,

bullet bags, shot moulds, leaden bars, horse caparisons, hide for

lassoes, but eatables in hermetically sealed tins of modern make, not

then familiar to Mexicans, and liquor in bottles protected by homemade

wicker and leather plaiting.

He was stretching out his hands ravenously to the bottles and a role

of jerked beef, when it seemed to him that the voice of the Unseen

prompted him with "God! Thank God!" and repeating the words in a voice

unintelligible from stifling emotions, he fairly swooned across the pit

as if to defend it with his poor, worn, hard-tried body.

His face was serene when he unclosed his eyes anew. Soberly, by a great

control, he ate of some tinned meat and the crackers and swallowed as

slowly some cognac. The latter filled him with fire, and he could have

leaped into a treetop and crowed defiance to the vultures which were

sailing overhead as if baulked of their prey.

In that momentary calmness, he felt so strong and so rejoiced in

his self-command that his spirit seemed to spurn its casket. But

instantly, with the blood careering anew, the wound in his shoulder

smarted furiously, and all down that arm and up to his neck he felt a

strange and novel sensation; it was as if molten lead was in the veins,

scorching and making heavy the limb.

"The arrow! I am poisoned!" he muttered. "Oh, is this windfall come

merely to embitter my death?"

That taste of liquor made his mouth water, and there was suggested to

him by the sight of the brandy bottle that here was the remedy which

the wisest frontiersman and medicine man would have prescribed. He put

the cognac to his lips, and emptied the bottle.

Almost instantly he felt an aching in every pore away and beyond

that of the wound; his brain appeared to swell to bursting its cell,

and howling himself hoarse, he thought--though, in reality, his

inarticulate cries were strangled in his throat--he rolled upon the

ground, too weak to dance upon his feet, as he imagined he was doing.

This intoxication left him abruptly, and he fell insensible. But for

his stertorous breathing, which finally became regular and gentle, he

was as a corpse beside the greedy grave.

He woke up, lame in every bone, but clear-eyed, and the ringing in his

head abated. Either the remedy had succeeded, or constitution, for he

was able to set about his task with surprising vigour.

Thereupon, he chose out of the store a pair of revolvers, their

cartridges in quantity, two powder horns and bullets to fit the finest

rifle, a bowie knife and a cutlass, and a length of leather thong to

make a lasso, and a spade for the grave of don José, filled a game bag

with matches in metal boxes, sewing materials, and other odds and ends

for the traveller. Tobacco, too, he took, and was looking for paper to

make cigarettes, when a small book met his eyes.

It was stamped in gold, "London, Liverpool, and West State of Mexico

Agnas Caparrosas Mining Company." It was an account book of the company

--one of those enterprises to which, he had heard, his father had lent

a favourable attention. A pencil was attached to the book; he wrote on

a blank page the list of all the articles he took, signing:

"Require the payment of me.--I, BENITO VÁZQUEZ DE BUSTAMENTE."

As quickly as he could he replaced what he did not wish to be burdened

with, made the concealment good, and swept the grass with two buffalo

skins, which he had also taken for clothing. This duty of a thankful

and honourable man being accomplished, he darted back to where he

had left Dolores with a free and easy movement, of which he had not

believed himself ever again to be capable only a short time before.

He was amazed that a little food and spirit had restored him, and began

to fear the reaction.

His wits remained clear. He remembered very distinctly indeed his

confrontation of the savage who had been blasted as by a heavenly

thunderbolt. He was not surprised when he found that redskin where he

had rolled him. But what was his pain when he saw no trace of Dolores

but the same fragment of her dress which Gladsden was, soon after, also

to behold!

Sounds in the chaparral which reminded him of the four-footed

scavengers in rivalry of the carrion birds that circled above, urged

him to ply the spade, and he piously laid don José to his final rest.

Then, his rifle loaded, his frame fortified by the refreshment which

he took at intervals on his march, he went forward in the trail which

the abductor of the Mexican's daughter had been unable, so burdened, to

avoid making manifest, all his emotions, even gratitude to the chief,

set aside for the desire of vengeance on the remorseless foes to whom

he owed so many and distressful losses, and on whom he had not yet been

enabled to inflict any reprisal.

"Let me but overtake him, or them," thought he, "before the tempest

obliterates this track with its deluge, and I will flesh this sword, or

essay this new rifle on his vile carcass!"