Майн Рид
The Free Lances: A Romance of the Mexican Valley
Chapter Sixty One
Conclusion
About a month after in San Augustin a small two-masted vessel – a goleta – might have been observed standing on tacks off the coast of Oaxaca, as if working against the land wind to make to the mouth of Rio Tecoyama – a stream which runs into the Pacific near the south-western corner of that State. Only sharp eyes could have seen the schooner; for it was night, and the night was a very dark one. There were eyes sharply on the lookout for her, however, anxiously scanning the horizon to leeward, some of them through glasses. On an elevated spot among the mangroves, by the river’s mouth, a party was assembled, in all about a score individuals. They were mostly men, though not exclusively; three female figures being distinguishable, as forming part of the group. Two of them had the air, and wore the dress, of ladies, somewhat torn and travel-stained; the third was in the guise of a maid-servant attending them. They were the Condesa Almonté the Don Luisa Valverde, and her ever faithful Pepita.
Among the men were six with whom the reader has acquaintance. Don Ignacio, Kearney, Rock, Rivas, José, and he who had been major-domo in the old monastery, baptismally named Gregorio. Most of the others, undescribed, had also spent some time in the establishment with the monks while playing the part of Free Lances. They were, in fact, a remnant of the band – now broken up and dispersed.
But why! When last seen it looked as though their day of triumph had come, or was at all events near. So would it have been but for a betrayal, through which the pronunciamento had miscarried, or rather did not come off. The Dictator, well informed about it – further warned by what occurred at San Augustin – had poured troops over the Sierras into Oaxaca in force sufficient to awe the leaders of the intended insurrection. It was but by the breadth of a hair that his late Cabinet Minister, and those who accompanied him, were able to escape to the sequestered spot where we find them on the shore of the South Sea. To Alvarez, chief of the Pintos, or “spotted Indians,” were they indebted for safe conduct thither; he himself having adroitly kept clear of all compromise consequent on that grito unraised. Furthermore, he had promised to provide them with a vessel in which they might escape out of the country; and it was for this they were now on the lookout.
When Ruperto Rivas, gazing through that same telescope he had given Florence Kearney to make survey of the valley of Mexico, cried out, “La goleta!” every eye around him brightened, every heart beat joyously.
Still more rejoiced were they when, after an hour’s tacking against the land breeze, the goleta got inside the estuary of the stream, and working up, brought to by the edge of the mangroves.
Unencumbered with heavy baggage, they were all soon aboard, and in three days after debarked at the port of Panama. Thence crossing the Isthmus to Chagres, another sea-going craft carried them on to the city, where they need no longer live in fear of Mexico’s despot.
Back to his old quarters in New Orleans had Don Ignacio repaired; again under the ban of proscription, his estates sequestrated as before. So, too, those of the Condesa Almonté.
But not for all time, believed they. They lived in hope of a restoration.
Nor were they disappointed; for it came. The pronunciamento delayed was at length proclaimed, and carried to a successful issue. Once again throughout the land of Anahuac had arisen a “grito,” its battle cry “Patria y Libertad!” so earnestly and loudly shouted as to drive the Dictator from his mock throne; sending him, as several times before, to seek safety in a foreign land.
Nor were the “Free Lances” unrepresented in this revolutionary struggle; instead, they played an important part in it. Ere it broke out, they who had fled the country re-entered it over the Texan border, and rejoining their brethren, became once more ranged under the leadership of Captain Ruperto Rivas, with Florence Kearney as his lieutenant, and Cris Rock a sort of attaché to the band, but a valuable adjunct to its fighting force.
Swords returned to their scabbards, bugles no longer sounding war signals, it remains out to speak of an episode of more peaceful and pleasanter nature, which occurred at a later period, and not so very long after. The place was inside the Grand Cathedral of Mexico, at whose altar, surrounded by a throng of the land’s élite, bells ringing, and organ music vibrating on the air, stood three couples, waiting to be wedded.
And wedded they were! Don Ruperto Rivas to the Condesa Almonté, Florence Kearney to the Doña Luisa Valverde, and – José to Pepita.
Happy they, and happy also one who was but a witness of the ceremony, having a better view of it than most of the spectators, from being the head and shoulders taller than any. Need we say this towering personage was the big Tejano? Cris looked on delightedly, proud of his comrade and protégé, with the beautiful bride he had won and was wedding. For all it failed to shake his own faith in single blessedness. In his eyes there was no bride so beautiful as the “Land of the Lone Star,” no wife so dear as its wild “purairas.” And to them after a time he returned, oft around the camp-fire entertaining his companions of the chase with an account of his adventures in the Mexican valley – how he had there figured in the various rôles of jail-bird, scavenger, friar, and last of all as one of the Free Lances.
