The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

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.