The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California. Gustave Aimard
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when he unexpectedly, and by the purest chance, spied the gleaming body of an Indian, stealing before him amongst the foliage, always in the thickest parts.
His resolve awakening to give the Yaquis a lecture, with cuts of the ramrod, upon the "Fault of Abandoning a Hunting Companion in the Desert," he quickened his pace, but almost immediately perceived that the savage was another guess sort of a bird, one more likely, armed for war as he was, and determined of aspect as ever was a brave, to deal out punishment than receive it unrequitingly.
In fact, the fierce, hungry, set face of the pursuer of the Mexican protectors of doña Dolores would have sufficed to impress even a more nonchalant person than our Englishman.
"Mischief in the wind," thought he.
And as a white man on seeing a man of another hue on the trail, at once believes that the object of the chase is one of his own colour, he turned to, and, having no other intentions to overrule, began to dog the slayer of don José de Miranda as successfully and closely as he was following the Mexicans. It was not to be expected that the foreigner did not make blunders in this manhunt, so novel to him, but his very incaution or missteps actually helped him, for the savage, unable to believe that a man would dream of breaking a twig noisily in a wild perhaps not devoid of certain enemies, attributed the two or three alarming sounds in his rear to animals, from whom he had nothing to dread.
In brief, Gladsden arrived at the halting place of the Mexicans in time to see poor Benito make his stand, and hear the savage, as he disclosed himself, utter the arrogant "Presente" as he bared his knife to complete his triple tragedy.
The Englishman saw there was a flutter of a woman's dress that appealed to his gallantry, the blood splashes from don José on the stump, and the valiant but weak port of don Benito. He feared that to jump towards the Apache would not stay that ugly knife, so he lifted the gun which was Captain Saone's parting gift, and sent a bullet through the warrior's head.
As quickly upon the echoes of the report, as if it had been a signal, and, for that matter, the two men who bounded upon the marksman had been afraid to "tackle" him whilst his firearm was "full" – a standing item in prairie fighting – the Englishman was set upon by a man on either side. Spite of his strength he was hurled off his feet, and secured with a lariat and gagged with moss, all with a celerity which proved that he had been overcome by bandits of no despicable experience. When he was perfectly incapacitated from more than winking, as one of the fellows remarked in a whisper, that facetious rogue warily proceeded to inspect the result of the shot.
It had so laudably obeyed its impulsion, that the Mexican, after one look at the Indian, felicitated himself on not having been so precipitate as to draw that bullet on himself.
The spot was quiet, Benito, clotted red smearing his shoulder, seemed as lifeless as the red man. The young girl and her father, whose blood reddened her ragged dress, were equally among the lifeless, to all cursory examination.
The Mexican picked up the weapons of the Indian, said: "A lone Chiricahua Apache!" as he spurned the body out of wantonness, and returned to his comrades.
"The captain will be gratified, Farruco," said he, pushing the Indian's weapons within his sash; "there they all lie, in a heap, the don, the daughter and their young companion, with the Chiricahua who was hired to dog them to the death, slain by our chalky faced long shot here."
"If we cut his throat, Pepillo, then we shall make a clearance of the whole cluster," returned Farruco, complacently, even laying his hand on the buckhorn haft of a knife.
"A word to that! You are always for taking the crowning pleasure of a running down! Am I to have no thanks even for having saved you from running your hasty head against this heretic's gun? A thousand demons shall not rob me of my prey! You have already grabbed his gun! I will have the cutting of his throat."
The silenced object of this very pretty growing dispute looked up calmly, but sufficiently interested, be sure, out of his gray eyes.
"One moment, let us throw dice for the pleasure!"
"Nonsense! We all know the top heaviness of your dice."
The other duly laughed at this allusion to a vantage which is not always accepted as a compliment.
"Let us draw leaves – long or short!"
"I agree, Pepillo; there's a bayonet palm at your elbow."
The Mexican turned to gather a couple of leaves of different length, when the captive saw the face of his comrade shine with a hellish joy. Noiseless he drew out the Indian's tomahawk from his belt and in another second he would have buried it in the back of the unsuspecting bandit. The monstrous fondness for cruelty which impelled this wanton murder was so repugnant to the Englishman that he, bound too tightly for any other movement, rolled himself, by working his elbow and knee, right against the feet thrown forward of the traitor. The shock was not enough to make the blow fully miscarry, but the axe only cleft the wretch's collarbone, glancing the flesh to one side along it on partial withdrawal with an agony imparted which made the recipient yell. He flung himself round, and drawing his knife at the same inappreciable second of time, broke through the other's guard with the hatchet, and buried the blade in his heart so forcibly that the hilt drove his breath out of his lungs with a loud sound. Farruco pitched over upon the Englishman, and died before he had ceased his groan of despair.
The wounded outlaw sat himself down, without any but self-concern, to attend to his wound, to which he applied a dressing of chewed leaves. Then studying the scene, he suddenly became conscious that the movement of the loglike form of the prisoner between his assassin's legs had saved his life, if, always granted, it were a curable wound.
Without a word, like a man who fears to hesitate in his formation of a good but novel whim, lest he revokes its realisation to remain consistent with his daily and worse nature, Pepillo, without wiping the fatal knife, severed the leather thongs around Gladsden.
"One good turn," said he, sententiously, as becomes a Spaniard, but prudently setting his foot on the gun of which the captive was despoiled.
"Yes, he meant to split your skull, that's all," remarked the latter, sitting up and chafing his limbs to restore the circulation. "He was a pirate; and you have only anticipated his suspension at a yardarm."
Pepillo paid no attention to him. He had picked up the Indian's hatchet, and seemed to be regarding with an antiquarian zeal the design traced in an idle moment or two, now and then, with the hunting knife. Then, contracting his brow more in terror than in pain, and turning pale in the same increasing dread rather than from loss of blood, he ejaculated:
"The villain! The assassin! It is a copper bronze hatchet! I am poisoned! I shall die of lockjaw!" Then, noting the incredulous expression of the bystander, who had, however, been sufficiently sympathetic as to rise to his throbbing feet and lean towards the sufferer, "I tell you, Pagan, that the Indian was one of the Apaches Emponzoñadores– the sect of the Poison Hatchets, and I am – the Lord and my patron saint forgive me – a dead man!"
Gladsden looked at the tomahawk, and, after the man's utterance, thought the metal head gave out a sinister gleam. Then, recalling all he ever knew of copper poisoning, he said:
"Let me attend to the cut," in a tone which made the sufferer see that he was taken as the victim of terror rather more than mortal pain.
Still, as the gash was beyond his simple remedy, the Indian cataplasm which should have allayed the fiery feeling which even augmented from the first, Pepillo yielded to his late enemy like a child, with that compliance of the Latin races under mortal injury.
A seafarer knows much about cuts, and so, at the first glance after removing the herb poultice, Gladsden recognised that the cut, clean in infliction, was aggravated shockingly.
"You see!" cried the Mexican, triumphantly, as far as the victory over the other's disbelief was concerned, but with acute agony at his certainty being confirmed; "Am I not a lost man?"
"In that case," replied the Englishman, taking up his gun and charging it methodically out of Farruco's powder horn as the nearest, "I will go and see about the wearer of that woman's dress whom I caught a glimpse of yonder, when you and your mate all but anticipated my shot at that