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

CHAPTER XVII.
THE PUREST OF PEARLS

By the noise of the cavalcade it could be calculated to be numerous.

Uncle Sweet Potato, who had so completely kept to himself whilst the scuffle had lasted, now appeared suddenly at the ranch door, with the alacrity of a man close to whose rear a red-hot branding iron was being approached. At the same time, the riders stopped their horses there.

Tío Camote had closed the thick door smartly, and held a colloquy through a small wicket in its centre, in a language which was not known to Mr. Gladsden. On the other hand, Oliver had started as the dialogue progressed, and bending towards his companion, said in his ear:

"Indians! Hostile Indians, Apaches! —Mimbres Apaches!" he concluded, as the speech revealed more and more particularities. "All men – they are 'bad' – I can smell they are charcoal'd – blackened for war! I tell 'er what, mighty slim chance but in strategem agen sich a powerful squad to whop. That's the voice of an old acquaintance – big chief – ah, he's head chief now! We hev swapped hosses, an' we've exchanged shots, but never draw'd blood, an' we may be considered neutrals on Spanish territory, but all the same, be on your guard. That fool is too much afeard on 'em not to let 'em in. Our hosses are not worth a red cent's purchase apiece, wuss luck! Those 'Paches are as fond of hoss flesh as a Spanish gal of peanut candy. Still, if in a wuss squeeze than afore, you reckon on me pulling you out clean."

"I am puzzled again. Is the Indian a friend or foe?"

"Both or neither. But, lor', in the wildest parts, I have gone to sleep with my heels to the same fire as my deadliest enemy, and woke up – well, I still live. It's 'cordin' to sarkimstances; and this here is a pertickler sarkimstance – crammed with liveliness to the lid, like a tin o' them Italian sprats."

"Serious! Worse than before."

"Jess so. But don't show any surprise; keep your tongue out of the tongue fire, and don't gainsay me in any way."

"I'm your puppet again."

"You'll not repent it."

"I am convinced of that."

"Hush, right thar! He's going to let them in. And they're big fool Injin enough to git off their hosses, wharon they'm as easy of movement as an eagle, and come down to common ground, whar they waddle like geese. These hoss Ingins are no beauties, seen so, hobbling up to a bar in a doggery, but they air fond o'white man's pison, and no two ways about that."

Indeed, Camote, who probably was not insured and preferred running the risk of being butchered in his house to being certainly baked when it should be fired over his head for his resistance to the command to open, bowed in the chiefs of the new customers' party, and their bodyguard.

These six or eight red men silently placed themselves on the floor by one of the tables in a squatting position near the door, pulled out every man a tomahawk pipe which they filled with morrichee, or sacred tobacco, which proved that they were members of an upper class, past masters in the council lodges, lit up and set to smoking, without any observations, though the pools of blood, and the shattered and bullet perforated furniture, revealed that there had recently been a disturbance there. They even betrayed no token of having perceived the two other persons at their table, and the men behind the bar, who were exchanging dubious, uneasy glances, whilst they felt gooseflesh under their scalp.

But the American knew that a secret, quick glance had "counted" them, for he whispered:

"We're reckoned up, and they don't stomach our looks. Tell 'ee, sir, they don't like close shooting and tough chawing."

After a few moments, one of the Indians smote the table with his hatchet pipe. Tío Camote ran over to the spot, with the most obsequious of hotelkeepers' smiles on his lips.

"Heap big drink!"

"Mezcal!" uttered the savages.

"Sí, sí, sí, Señor Camicho" (for cacique, Aztec for chieftain), was the celeritous answer, as the ranchero hastened to set half a dozen bottles of spirit and some horn cups on the bench, to be nearer their reach than the table, before them.

They filled up and drank with a gusto that proved they had overcome the counsels of their wise men not to let the firewater be their tempter. They resumed smoking and the puffs crossed one another in the dreariest silence. Yet this silence was more appalling than the riot of the late brawlers in the Green Ranch.

These Apache chiefs were attired much like their leader and resembled him in build, being picked warriors, or rather, more probably, chiefs who had attained rank for fighting and marauding alone. They were large men for Apaches, and but for their legs being bowed by life on horseback from boyhood up, would have overtopped six feet. They were well built too, and their features not ignoble, though rapacity moulded the prominent traits, as well as could be ascertained beneath the streaks of grey, blue, yellow and red plastered on in accordance with laws or convention, in what space was left by a prodigious smearing with the war colour in preeminence, black. As there were no signs of mourning, they had so far been perfectly successful in their incursion into Sonora, and had not lost a man. Their large dark eyes, deep and gloomy, sparkled now and anon with cunning.

Taking one as an example, he wore his hair gathered up so as to form a kind of pad on the top of his head, a very good idea for defence; some pendent plaits were not his own hair and had buffalo hair twined in them, too; to each was hung at the end some little charm, pebble fangs, precious stone in the rough, gold or silver nugget, and so on. A long line of eagle and vulture feathers, varied in hue, possibly dyed, stood up on his head and out from him right down his back, whence the line flowed free quite to his neck. Through the actual topknot, a long eagle feather, in special signification of commandership, was stuck slantingly. This one in particular whom we are depicting, had mounted a pair of buffalo horns adorned with ribbons and human hair, very fair or bleached, not unlike the headgear of the ancient Britons. Being out on the warpath, he had laid aside collar of claws, porcupine quills and teeth, and bracelets, so that the war jacket of deerskin, beautifully dressed, gathered in at the waist by a simple thong, looked plain indeed. His buckskin breeches were ornamented with embroidery, and his stockings of American make were decorated similarly by the patient squaws. His moccasins were bright with beadwork and quite clear of entanglement, though it seemed otherwise, from the artfully arranged knee knot of dangling feathers and animal tails.

For weapons they had the tomahawk pipe of bronze, and scalping knife, one or two bows and arrows, the lustre of the black strings showing human hair was twisted in them as a trophy; the guns were not very good, being cast-off army pieces, for which they had powder horns and bullet bags, quite old fashioned. Their spears were left without; they had rawhide whips hanging by a loop to the wrist, and ornamented usefully with a war whistle for the issue of commands, more clearly sounded and distantly heard than by voice, a system known among the Southern Indians from time out of mind though only of recent years adopted by European armies.

Strange and picturesque to the Englishman, though their odour of smoke and rancid grease and horses would have been less unendurable in the open air, Gladsden owned that they were manly fellows enough who inspired reasonable respect and almost consideration.

Unfortunately for appearances, whatever their nation may have been in ancient days, now these Apaches are about the most plundering, murderous, ferocious rovers of the Southwest, especially hating all the whites. Liars and thieves, they are a scourge who must be crushed out by the civilisation to which they will not truly bow the knee.

Whilst these unpleasant guests smoked and drank, our friends pretended to doze. Camote would have liked to have shut up shop; but he was not the man, with only two assistants, to undertake to clear out the horde before he retired to his virtuous pillow. The mere prospective of a wrangle with these ugly customers made his hair imprudently rise like a cockatoo's crest. He sat up on his counter, with dangling legs that swung in concord with his agitation, with folded arms to look undaunted, but not losing sight of the reds. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and gulped large draughts of pulque by way of consolation and to nourish his patience.

Meanwhile the night advanced; the stars were paling away in the celestial depths, and the moon "downing." It was nearly three in the morning, and yet the humbler Indians and the numerous horses without hardly betrayed their proximity by a sound. For upwards of three hours the Apaches had gone on smoking and imbibing without their hard heads giving way or any tongue being loosened.

All of a sudden the chief, who wore the odd diadem of horns, shook the ashes out of his pipe on his left thumbnail, and spoke in a loud enough voice, though he still stared into vacancy. At the words, the American ranger started slightly, opened his eyes fully, and in a measure made a nod of courtesy.

"My brother the Ocelot," said the chief, "seems to be pretty much worn out to sleep so soundly. Were his eyes not sealed with sleep, he must have taken notice that a friend has come into the lodge of the 'Spanish Dog,' and has seated himself not far from the Hunter of the North, along with several braves of his grand nation."

"Resting the sight ain't sleeping, not by a long heap! No, Tiger Cat, the Ocelot never owns on to being wore out, I opine. If the Ocelot wa'n't staring at the chiefs, 'tis jest 'cause he has seen 'em, most on 'em, afore now, ginerally when thar was smoke in the air, blood drops as plenty as rain up North, and ha'r in rich plenty – you could stuff a buffalo hide plump out. The Ocelot knows his place in this part of the kentry – he don't shove his claws into no chief's mush and milk. He sort o' keeps low till a question aimed at him, hits him fa'r and squar'; that's the kind of ginuine Ocelot, this Ocelot air."

"Wagh! The hunter speaks well," remarked the Apache, wagging his head with apparent satisfaction, "there's no split in his tongue. Bueno– good!"

"No, sir! 'Tis a straight, whole, single tongue."

"The Wacondah has opened a slit in his bosom for the smoke of his heart to steal forth pure. His sayings fall sweet and soft on the ear of the Mimbres Apaches, for they are the words of a friend. Let the Ocelot talk on. It is so long since the Mimbres heard the music of his voice that the papoose that was at the back of the squaw now stands alone, so high," – making an imaginary line in the air with a wave of the pipe hatchet, – "and plays at shooting with bow and arrow at the dogs. But his whole heart has not sprung forward to shake hands with his brother. His face is carved out of white flint. Is there no smile? Is he not glad to see the best warriors on the Apache roving ground? Is he not surprised to see them here?"

"Considering, chief," returned Oregon O., nudging with his knee that of the Englishman under the table, quite imperceptibly, "considering the Ocelot knew the Apaches were 'warm' round here, and that a call was down in the programme of the dance, the Ocelot has no grounds for opening his eyes any wider."

"U-wagh!" ejaculated the chief, evincing some astonishment himself, "The Apache chiefs were expected by the great pale hunter?"

"They jess was," answered the other laconcially.

"Arrrh!" sighed the Indian with pretended awe and an insinuating smile. "The hunter has met the Book medicine men (preachers, missionaries) in the land of the beaver and white bear – he has been initiated into their lodge – he has a heap big medicine, he knows everything."

"The chief is making merry, he is no longer straight with his friend. Whether I carry good or bad medicine, it don't help me much in this nick, as my brother ought to know."

"The Tiger Cat has been 'playing – ,' with the Spaniards!" said the Apache, with an emphasis on the English word he used, which caused the hotelkeeper to shrink, "And a cloud has settled on his mind. He cannot make out what the white hunter is driving at. He looks. He see Nada– nothing."

"If one of them stirs a finger towards me, shoot into the mass," whispered Oliver, rising leisurely, to his comrade.

He left the table, and strode up to the Indians, among whom he stopped, his back to the edge of the table they disdained, leaning on his rifle, of which the beauty and value (for a breechloader is a miracle to their eyes) made their nervous tongues lick their thin upper lip and thick lower one like a snake when the game is presented.

"See here, chief," said he, "the Ocelot has hearing as fine as they make 'em, and the faintest sounds tell their story in his ear. Did I not know you and your cavalyada were down to'rds the Smoking Mountain, and have I not heard the amble of those mules out thar, a-toting a litter between them? In that litter is a white woman. I'm atter her, for her family's sake – what's the price of the captive?"

The Indians exchanged a look of amazement, but they were not disconcerted. Indeed, Tiger Cat answered without wincing:

"Who can make (dead) meat of the white hunter? Beside the Ocelot, the Tiger Cat is a prairie cricket."

"Speak out plain, then, chief. If you have the woman along with you, guarded by your soldiers (the young warriors) so carefully, it is to claim much price. What's the figure?"

"The Ocelot has all the wit of the palefaces, all the cunning of the red men. The Tiger Cat does not debate. He has a captive of worth – ay, 'the purest of pearl' is worth her weight in dressed buffalo robes. But the prize is his. Why should the Ocelot hunger for the prey of the Tiger Cat?"

"You'll jess let me back out about now, chief," said Oregon Oliver, negligently. "If we cannot trade, we'll take the back paths apart from one another, and no bad blood."

He half turned as if to go away, but not without a glance of sympathy in bitterness at the certainly strange palanquin, draped with Navajo waterproof blankets, suspended elastically between two mules, now visible to him without.

But the wily redskin was evidently perplexed. The guides who have intimate relations with the United States army always are looked upon peculiarly by the Indians who have been thrashed by the blue cape coats. He detained the hunter by gently plucking at his blanket.

"The Ocelot bounds away too quickly," he observed, as if offended. "Has anger flamed up between us brothers?"

"Ne'er a flame," replied the other, who was far from seeking a quarrel just then and there, with such overpowering odds in his disfavour, "but when we can't trade, let's sleep on it; we'll see it sure 'nuff, how the dicker promises."

"The white hunter has a stranger friend with him," remarked the Apache, with the abrupt change of conversation which is natural to men of no great conversational powers, and perhaps to let his interlocutor see that the previous subject was exhausted; "he is no hunter; I daresay he is a chief of many gold buttons."

He alluded to the quantity of eagle buttons which adorn the uniform of the United States officers, who, of course, dress up as if for parade, in "talks" with the savages.

"You are out thar', chief; he is no friend of mine, no military ossifer; only some traveller coming over the mountains to get into Greaser land."

"And you are his guide?"

"Who says so?"

"The Tiger Cat's eyes are sharp; he sees what goes on over the prairie and plains. Did not the hunter's ten-shoot gun (he could express only so many units by twice throwing up his extended hand) speak, and some mixed blooded dog bite the river bank?"

"It is so! I struck a coup (French Canadian hunter word for a stroke of war, a blow). It's nothing to crow over; it's nothing to cache. When a mosquito stings, you slap, don't you? Same when a mestizo buzzes close; you can have his topknot as much as you like. But why," added he, repeating the other's phrase, "why does the Tiger Cat hanker after the Ocelot's dead?"

"The Tiger Cat kills his own game. What he says, he says to let the paleface hunter see that he has eyes upon the land and the river. Now," he concluded, releasing the flap of the blanket, "my brother can go, and sleep, if he be ready to drop."

Oliver went back to his seat, carelessly enough to all appearances.

"What's that about a woman," inquired Mr. Gladsden, eagerly in a low voice.

"A guess of mine that hit to the centre spot. Those red devils have something in a hoss-barrow of which they are taking pertickler care, and they wouldn't show her up here, so I guessed it war a captive. Now, the captive they spare and tender 'so fash' (fashion), you bet yer life, she's something first quality and all the hair on. Besides, you hear him call her 'La Perla Purísima,' and that's the name you don't hear every Spanish gal wear. Though, I will say this for them, that where I durn a Mexican man half a hundred times for bad gifts, I bless a Mexican female critter once at least. The one's a tough knot, not wuth the burning, and won't make saddletree, picket peg, or good arrow-wood, but the gals, most offen, is good stuff, and I'm a-telling you."

"A captive, a young girl, fair, pure; oh heaven! In the power of these demons!" groaned Gladsden.

"Don't shake the table! I've done all my uttermost: I made him think her family are already on her trail, that she's worth a huge ransom. If they've protected her so far, by the biggest of marvels in my 'sperience, why not a little longer; tell we kin git clar of this infarnal 'tanglement, and can swoop on 'em at our advantage? Daring is a prime hoss to mount, to show off afore the crowd in front of the hotel, but give me patience when I've got to hunt the red scalpers. Patience, sir! We've got fifteen shots to spare in each of our Winchesters, and the extra one in afore them; to say nothing of our five-shooters. Oh," he added, with a bitter and contemptuous look at the Mexicans, "if there was only enough manhood for one in them three, durn their greasy pelts!"

Unfortunately, granting that they overcame the Apache headmen within the four brick walls, there were many without who could set fire to the ranch and consume them like toads in a forest conflagration, while they would be as far from rescuing the invisible captive as ever.

All fell into silence again, save that the three Mexicans, nestling towards one another, ventured to converse in an undertone. The Apaches continued to imbibe and smoke their gleaming hatchet calumets. This dreary and onerous situation lasted for all of an hour after the hunter's parley with the red men, till they had finished their liquor and let their pipes die out.

The pale dawning light not merely appeared outside, but began to change the colour of the glow from the nearly exhausted lamps. At the same time the fresh morning air began battling with the fumes of spirits and tobacco.

Suddenly the similarly silent Indians on the exterior awoke. There were cautious signals exchanged; the horses, too, participated in the growing agitation, and shifted uneasily.

Two Apaches appeared at the doorway and gave an alarm to the chiefs, who had pricked up their cars, but only then deigned to rise at full length. They spoke together. All but two left the house, and almost instantly a figure draped in blankets was dragged over the sill. Flinging off the hands clutching her wrists with an indignant outburst which made the wraps to fall, the white men and the Mexicans beheld a graceful apparition unveiled.

It was quite a young girl for age, but being precocious, like all tropical creatures, a woman in development, she looked only too lovely in such a miserably unfit scene, fragile yet exuberant, with fine, tiny hands and feet, and narrow waist, black eyes, fair creamy skin and carnation lips; her very step seemed not to press the ground. In her ears and around her neck were pearls of unwonted dimensions; but it was evidently her character and her beauty which had won her the title of "La Perla Purísima."

At the same moment a distant fusillade was audible.

"Follow, and do as I do!" shouted Oliver, taking his decision with that swiftness of the prairie expert, which is, perhaps, the predominant trait that most bewilders the savages, trained to do no act without the warrant of magical manifestations.

With all possible speed he flung himself forward and dashed the Indian to the right of him as far aloof as the walls, at the same time throwing his left arm in a backhanded way around the Mexican señorita's waist so that, in drawing her forward, she was immediately pushed behind him.

Gladsden – on whom the sight of the lovely girl had had a profound effect – had also sprung forward, and not exactly imitating the hunter, pushed with his gun muzzle at a second Apache, and, whether intentionally or not, firing at the same instant, a hole was actually blown through the wretch, who leaped up in the air convulsively and so received a terrible cut of the hatchet of Tiger Cat, aimed at his slayer.

"You've made your coo'! Now kick the rest of them right clean out!" roared Oliver, stooping to avoid a pistol shot, and, in rising with a heavy stool in his hand, breaking the collarbone of the man who had shot. "Now thar, Caballeros of the bluest blood," he shouted derisively, "do something, only do something, if you want to sleep another night in your hide!"

But already the two remaining Apaches had recoiled into the doorway, encumbered with the dead body of their brother whose scalp they wished to save, and Tiger Cat alone really confronted the whites.

This seeing, Tío Camote broke the spell of terror that had converted him into a mere statue on his counter, and snatching a cutlass from between two casks, smacked the boards with it to make an encouraging noise, calling out to his aids:

"Upon them, and second those valorous foreigners!"

Tiger Cat, enraged at the captive being so swiftly snatched out of his power, levelled a gun at the poor frightened thing over Oliver's shoulder. But already Gladsden had the Apache on the flank, and being too near him to use his rifle as a club, shifted it into his left hand, and dealt the redskin a terrible fisticuff. Staggered at this unusual blow from a weapon not in Indian war practice, the chief reeled and fell into the embrace of the white hunter.

"Whoopee," he cried, "I hev the varmint in my hug. Shut the door, you dog-goned greasers, and pile every mortal thing agen it!"

He hugged the chief so tightly that his breastbone cracked, and his arms, pinioned to his side, were numbed to the very finger, so that he let the smoking gun drop.

"Just pick his we'pins out of his girdle, and mind that pison hatchet pipe, the least scratch means death!" said the ranger.

The Mexicans, inspired by this successful skirmish, had banged the solid door to, and added a table and three full barrels to its fastenings.

"Pooty!" exclaimed the man from Oregon at last drawing breath. "Let me have a yard or two of leather rope, d'ye hyar?" raising his voice, as there was a rising din without and a chopping on the door.

Presently the chief was securely bound and flung down on the ground where he was attached to the ring of a trapdoor leading to a small wine vault, or rather cave into which, to presume from the air of them, the three Mexicans would have liked to creep.

The external noise ceased. There were but two or three sharp whistles of command, and a gentle creeping away of the troop, as it were.

"Some enemy of theirs exchanged shots with their pickets," interpreted Oliver, "and as he is in force and resolutely coming on, they have gone into 'cover.' If they are the pirates of the prairie, we are no better off than before, but we are 'all hunk,' quite safe, sereno, missee," he said, turning kindly to the young girl, "if they are Mexican soldiers or your friends."

She had joined her hands fervently; then, at the mention of friends, more clearly comprehending her comparative safety, she uttered her thanks in a torrent of eloquence, and the sweetest voice in the world. All the time of her speaking, stray shots punctuated her flow of gratitude, so to say. Undoubtedly Oliver was right; some foes of the Apaches were giving them quite enough occupation to prevent them attempting to learn the fate even of their principal chief.

"Yes, they are my friends, my father, too, oh, I am sure my father is at the head of them!" cried the young girl, forgetting all her captivity, and its ignominies in her revulsion to joy. "Open the door to them."

"Stop! Nothing of the sort," interposed the hunter, peremptorily. "Those are not the old muskets of peons, nor the captured French rifles of the Mexican soldiery. Bide! Bide and we shall bimeby sec about welcoming our deliverers."

And whilst Gladsden sought to console the little beauty whose face had become gloomy again, the hunter began to scold the Mexicans for their cowardice.

"But," observed Gladsden, more and more perplexed as he examined the young lady, "La Perla Purísima, while very charming, is not a name. Pray who are you, Señorita?"

"But," said she with a pout, "La Perla is my name, the truth, whilst Purísima is the flattery. I was christened La Perla from the main incident in my father's early life – "

"Indeed, indeed! And your father?"

"You are, insooth, a stranger, Señor, not to recognise the daughter of the very richest hacendero and proprietor in all Upper Sonora. I am, Señor, Perla Dolores de Bustamente y Miranda!"

"Dolores!" roared our Englishman, with the delightful leap of the puzzled brain when a solution is afforded. "Why I knew you all along by the likeness to your mother!"

And enfolding her in his arms he gave her an affectionate embrace, only a little less painful than that which had rendered the Tiger Cat hors de combat, and kissed her on both cheeks, whilst to her further astonishment, tears streamed from his eyes.

"Dolores! My dear little girl," continued Mr. Gladsden, when he could speak tolerably calmly, "Did you never hear your father and mother mention an Englishman? But there, I am sure they put my name into your prayers, when you were yet in your cradle!"

"The Englishman! Oh, the English caballero!" cried the daughter of the pearl fisher, clapping her hands together in enthusiastic glee. "Yes, don Jorge Federico."

"George, it is! How trippingly my name comes off your honey tongue."

"That is easily accounted for, Señor, as it is my brother's."

"What! You have a brother! And they named their boy after me! Well, upon my soul! Here, you Oliver, if you don't take back your general denunciation of the Mexican race, we are no longer friends. At least, gratitude is not so ephemeral among them. So, don Benito never has forgotten his old comrade?"

The young lady touched the pearls in her ear and at her neck significantly to imply that the story of the filibuster's treasure was one familiar to her.

"You are one of our saints, Señor?"

"Sit down, on my knee! Heaven bless you; I have children of my own, too! And tell me all about your home, your excellent parents, and your good, brave, handsome brother. I'll wager a fortune he is brave and handsome."

"Hush!" interrupted the hunter. "Draw the girl out of a line with that wicket in the door. Someone has ridden right up to it, jingling with we'pins. More war talk!"