Gustave Aimard
The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

CHAPTER XVI.
A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM

What a difference between this rough country, where the earth was full of pits as a prairie dogs' village, and that old European soil teeming with hotels and inns, where the wealthy traveller could count upon a smiling welcome.

Mr. Gladsden's surprise was tempered with awe. All his ideas were perturbed. His notions of the true and false were upset. His education turned against him, and the instinct of self-preservation made him greet with joy all that he had acquired now of utility in that adventurous passage in his life which he had begun to deplore, and which he took the utmost care his growing sons should never know in detail.

He congratulated himself on having been prompted not to neglect physical experience in favour of the moral, and to fill his mind with practical learning. Intelligence was an important factor, but it had to be backed up by strength and skill to be a conqueror in the desert.

If ever he had felt the European aristocrat's conceit over the Western Americans, he withdrew any injurious depreciation, for he saw clearly that this New World belonged to the clear head and strong arm, and that there was no more desirable comrade than this embodiment beside him of the Great Republic, who had supplemented his inborn powers with the savage's sharpness, strategy, and address.

In other days, he had lightly confronted similar perils from sheer ignorance of their extent; but now, drawn back into the terrible whirlpool from the metropolitan centre of refinement, he felt his heart squeezed by a sudden weight; he was no longer sure of himself as danger, hydra-headed, appeared under new, frightful and multiplied forms.

It was in vain that he sought to recover the plenitude of his judgment. Nothing but the extreme stubbornness which was his racial characteristic, enabled him to master the strange emotions which he experienced, but, if he had lacked for daring and impulse of pride not to show the white feather before a man who he esteemed near enough of his kin to constitute a judge, this determined him to impress favourably at any cost.

While he was fortifying his will, Oliver had completed the preparations for a flight, taking it for granted that his obligation was not discharged till, this time, the English gentleman owned he was perfectly safe.

They mounted, and gradually increasing the pace, went on for upwards of three hours without exchanging one syllable or tightening the rein.

They kept the source stream of the Yaqui on the north, racing through woodland where the guide eluded the branches with miraculous dexterity, and selected "lanes" through which his companion could ride, with lowered head and knees pressed in, without too much risk of an accident like Absalom's.

About ten o'clock they came out on the plain, broken with isolated wooded patches. The night was clear, warm and starry. The cold and pale spring moon shed a saddening light, confusing the ground objects, and impressing the prominences of the landscape with an aspect both fantastic and solemn.

Soon there loomed up a definite form on the horizon. A light gleamed and then glimmered in the midst of a thicket of tulipwood and magnolias. Towards this beacon Oregon Ol. directed their way.

"We are running rusty," he said, "hyar we kin ile up."

Soon the chaparral began to "hedge" away on both sides, and a rather large building gladdened the sight of the Englishman. Oliver showed no tokens of being similarly charmed.

This edifice, built of mud bricks, sunbaked, and whitened with limewash, was pierced with six mere loophole windows high up on the front; it ranked midway between the ranch and the hacienda, that is, the shanty and the grange house. Like all Mexican dwellings, it had a broad verandah sustained by pillars before the doorway, and a sodded flat roof in the Italian mode. All around it was a defiant wall in live cactus.

Altogether, as the Englishman thought, a most agreeable and picturesque habitation.

When the pair of horsemen were only a few strides away, the American pulled in a little, and, bending towards his companion at his knee, muttered:

"A regular whiskey hole I am taking you into, sir. But thar's no place else whar we kin halt for rest. Don't show disgust or astonishment at anything; let me have all 'the say,' and you kin lay high that we shell sleep as peaceably in that air den as in the best railroad hotel on the Great Pacific."

"The horses seem strong on their legs still. Why should we not press on to that village of which I perceive the roofs on the skyline, shining as if snow coated them? Is it not Fronteras?"

"Nothing of the sort! Fronteras is the other side of the water – that streak of olive green with reddish shadow. That is no town, but a village of no account, a cluster of peons' cabins around the farmhouse. The sheep dogs would have to be beaten off from springing on our horses, and the labourers don't like hereticos, anyhow. No, our safety and comfort says: Camp down hyar."

"Nuther item: we have twice crossed a warm, broad trail of Apaches, I calc'late, over a hundred strong, smelling like p'ison of war paint, and I go into cover when thar air so heavy odds. Yes, this child do. Yonder hacienda is called that of the Ojo Agotado, the exhausted spring, or we plainsmen and mountain men say: 'the Gi'n-out.' We shall not be received frien'ly thar. I say agen. Here, though, I can rely on being taken in cheerily, for the host would have lost his ears only I came along by the oak tree where he had been nailed up by them – little friskiness on the part of the ragamuffin warriors of One-leg Pedrillo's gang. Don't you fret; the Rancho Verde will house us, and you pertickler, first-chop, as the Chinee says."

"I do not understand, but I am wholly in your hands."

"That's the best place to put yourself. You kin offer me a testimonial in a gold frame hereafter."

They moved on once more at a good pace. As they approached their goal the light of guidance seemed to spread out. Soon they could make out that an immense glare flamed from the open portals as from a crater, and they heard singing, whistling on war whistles, shouts, wild laughter, all jumbled up with the shrill twang of a guitar, of which the far from harmonious notes blended more or less satisfactorily with the rumble of a tambourine.

"Having a jamboree," said the hunter, drawing rein at the blazing doorway.

"Some unfort'nat' has lost his ducats. Uncle's swarming with robbers tonight."

The ground was hard as flint, and the clatter of the horses' hoofs had attracted to the mudsill (for the doorstep was embedded in the earth of the floor) a stout knave of some forty years, with a sullen eye, a ferocious mien, and cars as tattered as a fighting dog's. His peculiar complexion, yellowish, and muddy, and oily hair, denoted him to be no regular blooded white. This burly rogue, stiffly standing in the entrance, eyed the strangers sullenly without speaking.

The American uttered the religious greeting customary among the Mexicans, to which the regular counter speech was grumblingly accorded, and, alighting, he subjoined:

"Well, Tío Camote (Uncle Sweet-potato), hosquillo as ever! Ay, even more gloomy! But how much longer air you going to keep an old companyero at the head of his nag? Don't you see with half an eye that my pard. an' me have rattled along as if your granddad Old Horny was at our hosses' tails, and that we want food and sleep as much as they do to bury their muzzles in oats?"

"Why!" ejaculated the individual, who, by the rule of contrary which pervades the popular idea of fun, had been nicknamed "Sweet Potato," "Heaven forgive me, but, as true as I am a sinner, we have here Señor Don Olivero. Just overlook my not having recognised your señory at the first peep."

"So I will, Aluino, – so I will! Only get the animals into the stables right smart."

"Like a shot, Señor," said the changed man with alacrity, and taking both bridles with no more pride than a hostler.

"Half a minute, uncle," interposed the hunter, taking him by one of the split cars playfully, and yet with significance. "I want you to keep in mind, Potato of Sweetness," he continued, "that your brother trusts the intire consarn to you, – cattle, harness, bags, and inn'ards, – the whole consarn, you savey?"

"Yo sabe," was the reply, tranquilly made, but the half-breed made a wry face which did not beautify its everyday expression.

"Now, that's talking. You know me right down to my boots. So, git you gone, but don't go to sleep, for I have something to talk about."

"In ten minutes I shall be at your señorship's orders."

"Good boy, Uncle Al!"

The hotelkeeper went away grumbling louder and louder, with the horses for the corral (enclosure).

"Stick your pistols in your belt, and follow me. You air going to see no end of a curious circus," resumed Oliver to his companion. "Keep cool, and a little swagger does no harm. These here tough men and rough men must think you no tenderfoot; I rayther guess they'll figger me up first pop, as raised right hyar on the plantation."

"I hope you'll be content with me," returned Mr. Gladsden; "I have made up my mind. I am not going to back out, but sail right over the bar, whatever the quantity of broken glass."

He laughed quietly, and assumed the bearing which he believed he had worn at the time he was clad in red flannel shirt and corduroy trousers tucked into cowhide boots when up the country, not a thousand miles from that spot, fifteen years before.

"That looks the ticket. I believe we are going to see some fun."

With that they entered the tavern with steady foot.

The uproar that hailed their entrance seemed louder than before. Neither of them, however, was affected by the malevolent greeting, but strode to a heavy table, hewn into shape with the broad axe, where they installed themselves, and proceeded to take a disdainful survey of the patrons of the drinking den. For their part they devoured the intruders with most ravenous eyes.

A pen dipped in vitriol would not adequately describe this vile haunt of all the scum of the border. The dozen guests were men of all mixed castes and hues, with hangdog faces and in squalid rags. They were sodden already with the coarse liquor. The muddy, smoky, ignoble room was furnished with massive benches, stools, and tables, soaked with blood and spilt beverages. The bar had two 'tenders, men as sturdy as Camote himself, who carried pistols in hip pockets and long knives in sheaths at the back of their necks, more as if they were besieged behind the counter than anything else, so precious was the poison they served out. Their patrons sang, shouted, yelled, quarrelled, all through thick cigar smoke, played with greasy cards and yellowed dice, whilst one resumed pulling at his heaca's homemade strings. The gamblers, however, pulled out handfuls of gold and silver from the secret pouches in their bedraggled and tattered garments, worn from choice of slovenliness.

The scene was illumined by several smoky wicks swimming like decaying serpents in as foul green oil, in open lamps as antique in fashion as those now and again dug up in Old Spain. Each man had his own bottle, and the aguardiente, tepache, rum, and Californian wine, labelled falsely "Catalonia," flowed so profusely that someone was gurgling at them constantly.

Such was this palace of prairie pleasures.

The arrival of strangers had considerable effect. Far from benevolent squints, we repeat, were directed upon them fixedly, while murmurs of evil augury began to be heard. The objects of this growing ill feeling replied by the most complete indifference to the provocations which were more and more emphasized.

"Warm," remarked Oliver sententiously.

"We are in a hot box," rejoined Mr. Gladsden.

"Yes, I reckoned it would be a mixed lot, 'stead o' which, they are all of a gang. All the honest ruffians have been cleared out."

As Camote did not hasten in, Oliver rose, went up to the counter, threw down a dollar, took up a bottle at hazard, spite of the nearer bar 'tender's scowls, and returned. He clapped it on the table, knocked off the ring of glass round the mouth and its cork a-flying, with a dexterous cut of the back of his knife, and poured out brimmers of wine for himself and his friend in the pannikin which, like a gold prospector, he always carried at his waist, and in the silver mounted cup cover of Mr. Gladsden's brandy pistol.

"Here's to well-out-of-this!" he murmured in English.

"I concur," added Gladsden heartily, and they drank.

"The music is over. The dance is going to begin," said Oliver, putting his tin cup up in place.

Indeed, the guitar, so noisy, was silenced. The player, a tall, haggard, lengthened rascal, who seemed to have been once hanged and pulled out by the feet, suspended the instrument carefully up on the walls and advanced in a swaggering way towards the latest comers, his hat outrageously cocked on one side, as much to cover a patch whence a portion of the scalp had been removed as to look rakish, resting one fist upon his bony, prominent hip, and the other hand on the steel hilt of a very fine old rapier of enormous length. On gazing most closely at Oliver, who happened to be the nearer to him, when he stopped in an insolent attitude, he remarked the additional pistol and knife in his belt acquired by right of conquest from the spy whom he had shot, and, after a moment's hesitation, his colour coming again more deeply, he cried, ex abrupto:

"Flames of purgatory! Gentlemen, I never knew of greater impudence than for you to present yourselves, after having murdered my brother-in-arms La Gallina."

"Caballero, what do you mean by that?" returned the American, as much surprised as all the auditors by this denunciation.

"Do you think I do not recognise the Chicken heart's pistol of two shots, by the handle nicked with cuts for the men he has slain? Was it not mine first, and did we not exchange firearms when we became sworn comrades in life to death?"

"Caballero," said the hunter again, with killing politeness, "I believe I did shoot some skunk that came prowling round me at suppertime. But, the fact is, I hate to be riled when I am eating, or drinking, and I'll put a bullet out of the same barrel into anyone who repeats the annoyance. You hear me?"

"Shoot me!" cried the bandit in a furious voice, as he drew the long blade. "A thousand demons."

"Yes, you! Right away too, you candidate for the gallows," rejoined the hunter, rising.

"We'll see about that, – ¡Caray!"

"I guess you won't see much of it, though the principal body consarned!"

Already the hunter had jumped forward to seize the fellow by the neck and the sword belt; he raised the bag of bones as easily as if he had been a toy balloon, and getting him "on the swing," by an irresistible motion, forced him to fly twenty feet aloof.

"Excuse me not telling you, gentlemen, your friend was coming," he remarked, sarcastically.

The bandit almost flattened against the doorpost, and fell senseless just outside the opening, only his long arms within.

"Some folks air so dull, a man's obleeged to give them a warning," added the Oregonian, resuming his seat.

This feat had been executed so quickly that the spectators remained motionless with amazement; but on their anger enlivening them they sprang up, every man of them, and rushed towards the strangers with drawn swords and knives, yelling for blood and death.

The very brutality and causelessness of this fresh attack made it the more mortal and savage. These drunken vagrants were too much on their guard against each other, and, besides, knew their own opponents' abilities too well to fight among themselves, so that to fall upon strangers was always deemed more profitable. It was not, therefore, so much to avenge their fallen comrades as to obey the sanguinary instincts which the rudely fabricated alcohol had inflamed, that they renewed this charge. They cared very little whether Gallina or his blood companion had been killed by the men before them, they fought merely for the pleasure of bloodspilling. Such a conflict of twelve to two was one of those merry byplays which varied the joys of debauchery, and would afford them foundation for bragging at the refreshment bar during the fandango. These men, moreover, being mongrels, hated the pure whites inveterately, and to exterminate them would be an excessive pleasure.

But as such barroom squabbles are common occurrences in the life of a hunter, always incurred by him when he comes to the outposts of civilisation, they did not daunt Oregon Oliver in the slightest degree. The storm he had raised by the summary correction of the spoil-feast did not make him blench. No more was his companion appalled. The present peril had transformed the gentleman. His features beamed with that glow of battle which irradiates the pages of Froissart when he speaks of the English knights travelling as far as Spain to war in fratricidal struggles which in no way really interested them. He even smiled, and aided his associate with charming readiness in his defensive preparations. These were neither long nor difficult to carry out.

They merely overturned the solid table on its side, one end against a cask, the other against the sidewall, their backs to the rear of the den of thieves. Kneeling behind this barricade they were sure not to be surrounded, had enough elbow play, and could await the issue complacently enough. The banditti had barked their shins against the table, and recoiled on being faced by the two men, shielded from the knee to the chin, with flashing eyes between four revolver muzzles. They consulted in an undertone for a few instants.

"They see the tables are turned indeed!" observed Mr. Gladsden.

Meanwhile the cause of this disturbance, the tall varlet, had scrambled to his feet, clinging to the doorpost; he was bruised all along his body by the shock, and he came in among his fellows limping, foaming with pain and rage, and aching for revenge.

"You are pretty mates o' mine to shrink!" he sneered, "Afeard of a couple of Yankees!"

"Who's afeard?" retorted the precious crew, pushing one another.

"It looks so," went on he, with a grin of pain. "You are ten to two, and you plot and plan together when I, at least, pitched into them alone. If this be not fear it is an extreme prudence, which is its sister. Are you not bound to avenge La Gallina's death?"

"Yes, we are bound to avenge a comrade's death; but just count the shots in those pepperboxes. It is not the question of our getting killed, but of smashing those, our enemies. We're in a lump here, in the open, and they are covered. I conjecture our order of battle is very defective."

"Right he is," chorused the fellows of this orator.

"You are a flock of prairie hens! Haven't you firearms as well?"

"You won't see that they have those cursed repeating rifles also at their backs! Besides, these Yanks have longer heads than us. Ah, if the Captain were here! He knows all the tricks of the norteamericanos, and can match their cards at any game."

"That's very true; but El Manco (the Maimed) is not at hand. He is not due yet. We must do our own work – so, have at them with what heart ye may!"

"Oh, we're choking with our hearts, Valentacho; but we don't care to be shot down like buffalo."

"Well, if it comes to that – if I must show you the lead again, here! Lo! I lead; only, let's have you stick to me."

"Like wax! Lead on."

"It's understood?"

"Plain as the Creed!"

"Then forward! And death to the gabachos – curse them!" yelled the tall rogue, waving his rapier as high as the ceiling would permit.

They all rushed forward with exceeding fury.

"Take heed!" muttered Oliver; "Two shots apiece, and fire low!"

Four shots of the revolvers stretched two Mexicans on the floor never to rise again; another brace that had been "winged," removed themselves out of the room altogether, probably to find the nearest surgeon. But the fillip had been given to flagging spirits; the rogues were excited by the pistols' flash and smoke. Their rage redoubled, and they fell upon the edge of the oaken rampart and tried to chop down the two whites within.

It was a horrible medley with the firearms spitting fire in all directions, as hands were jostled and the eager ruffians interfered with one another's movements.

Acting on Oliver's advice, the two besieged men wasted no more powder. Their rampart was the higher by three or four dead bodies hanging, bent in the middle, over the edge, and, standing up now, they met the contestants' machetes with their scarcely less long hunting knives.

The robbers fairly howled with impotent rage, having never met such a provoking resistance. Valentacho was the most persistent of any. He clung to the table with one hand, trying to pull it over on its top, snarling like a wild animal, and showering blows of the cutlass on the foe too active to receive one of them save on their own blades.

"See here!" cried Oliver, "You that's so n'isy! Wasn't that first lesson good enough? Don't you know I'm keeping school here? Yes, Oregon Ol. is the schoolmaster right down hyar in Sonora, and it looks like I'll have to send you home on one e-tarnal holiday!"

The bandit ceased to yell, and, leaning forward, managed to clutch the frazada (blanket) of the speaker, which he had rolled round his left arm, more Hispanico, and drew him towards him, in order that he might, shortening his sword, stab him through and through.

"You are a liar, dog!" said he, fiercely, through his gritting teeth; "'Tis you who are about to die!"

With an upward sweep of his right hand, in which he had reversed his revolver and seized it by the barrel, Oliver dashed the coming rapier aside, and, with a downward blow of the pistol thus converted into a hammer, he visited the Mexican's skull so violently with a concussion to the brain that the outlaw let go the grasp on the blanket and of his sword, and fell back among his comrades without even a groan. No ox could have been felled more swiftly.

The defeated and horrified rabble melted away in disorder. They had had their dose. They would have been only too glad to leave the scene of combat, but for shame's sake, and the dread of their captain not finding them at this tryst.

Oliver kicked away the cask which had prevented a flank attack, stepped clear from the corpses and his defences, and quietly going up to the bar, behind which the keepers had tranquilly watched as much of the action as the smoke permitted, he said:

"Another bottle! As for you gentecilla, clear away your dead, and sit you down and clear up your glasses, too. If any man goes out without finishing his liquor to my health, I'll not leave a mouth on him if a rifle be any utility in my claws."

The cowed mob obeyed the double order grudgingly but faithfully. The smoke was wafted out and up the hole in the roof, which was the chimney, and a little order reigned in the barroom. But still the landlord did not believe it healthy to make his appearance, though his place was surely here. The two visitors took their seats at another table, almost in the midst of the prairie depredators, but no one interrupted their conversation this time, and the other customers, without conferring with one another, soon glided out of the Rancho Verde, and finally all had disappeared.

"We've a clean ship, Oliver," said Mr. Gladsden; "our merry associates have vacated this hall of rosy light."

"We kin histe in our nightcaps, then," replied the guide. "With such a gap made in One-leg's band, always provided it is his cuadrilla, we need not fear they will come in the night to serenade us. By the way, that endless fellow has left his guitar. Shall I play something skippy?"

"You can play what you please," returned the Englishman. "Only I vote for a dance tune. It is my belief that we shall not want for dancers."

Indeed, there was a clatter of horses' hoofs, without.

"Correct you air, Injin!" said Oliver, lending his ear interestedly. "Put fresh cartridges in! There seems an agreement by all hands that we shall not be let sleep in peace this night!"