Public-domain ebook
Tigre and Isola
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In: Historical Novels·Adventure·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #64835.
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“Nuñez Pico, after fifteen years of life upon this ranch, revisited his early home in Spain, and returned, bringing with him his only daughter, who, after her mother’s death, had been reared and educated in Seville. It is not surprising that she found little happiness in this isolated valley. She was a splendid woman, and her superiority of blood and training was at once and universally recognized by the inhabitants of this half-wild land. None of the young rancheros was bold enough to lay siege to her heart, and the ‘Lady Isola,’ as she was usually called, passed many lonely days.
“Tigre Palladis was a gambler, a robber, and many times a homicide. He was born to his estate of lawlessness. His mother was a Spanish-lndian half-blood, his father an American adventurer of the worst type, who was killed while Tigre was a babe. Possibly it was because of his father’s ignominious death that the boy always bore his mother’s name.
“The young devil grew into a marvelous physical manhood. Indeed, he was the handsomest animal I ever saw—very tall, of an exceedingly powerful build, and with a lightness and impetuosity of movement that indicated immense vital force. Dark of face and dark of heart he was, as all who knew him knew, yet there was something in his contemptuous defiance of lawful restraint, and in his measureless strength and lightning-like energy of action in emergency, that aroused enough of hero-worship in the hearts of the half-wild people of the valley to have spared him long and to have shielded him from the vengeance earned by many a desperate deed, had he not chanced to meet the Lady Isola.
“The love that flamed in his volcanic heart did not illuminate his reason. It did not counsel patience, reformation of character, abandonment of lawless ventures, and subjugation of his turbulent spirit, but seemed rather to multiply his activities and to increase the violence of his temperament. Had the lady accepted his attentions or even yielded the fine courtesy she gave to the poorest peon upon her father’s ranch, it might have been better for her and for him at the last. But she seemed both to scorn and to fear him. She would neither receive him in her home nor walk abroad when he was in the vicinity.
“I knew Nuñez Pico well. His was the loftiest soul I ever hope to find on earth. The prayer of his distressed child to be permitted to return to Spain moved him deeply, but he refused to believe that danger threatened her, and he could not bear to part with her. In the simple sincerity of his nature he sought the disturber of his home and pleaded with him to leave his daughter in peace. But the passionate idolater would give no promise and swore that his love should yield to no earthly bar.
“However, after this interview, Tigre left the valley and was heard of in Mexico. Pico believed the trouble ended. Not so the Lady Isola. It was plain that her distress was unabated. She clung to the house, not venturing into the fine garden that lay between her window and the river, forsaking her loved hammock on the wide eastern porch, and pacing the long hall with a nervous step. In her dilated eyes one could mark the panic of her soul.
“A month after Tigre’s departure I visited Pico. Never before had I seen the garden so beautiful. The intense heat of the afternoon failed at sunset, and the full moon rose in cloudless beauty beyond the crenelated wall of the Canille Mountains. The air was delicious in its clearness and serenity. So great was the temptation to escape the stifling heat, still retained by the rooms, that Isola yielded to her father’s request and mine, and came out upon the east porch and sat for an hour listening to our talk, but taking no part therein.
“The soft moonlight fell over her like a veil. It seemed more to conceal than to reveal her. It dimmed the traces of sorrow and softened the unnatural luminosity of her eyes. She was very beautiful and, as I watched her face from my position in the shadow of the great clematis vine, her expression of hopelessness and terror was almost unbearable. I was younger then than now, and, as I said, Isola Pico was very beautiful.
“Moving my seat into the light, I looked across the silent garden and little shining river to the highlands beyond. In the silvery glory the landscape came out like a cameo. The garden seemed alert and watching with a thousand eyes. Beyond the garden the slender river gleamed in its stony bed. Wasted by the Summer’s heat, it was too weak to grieve. In the lowland beyond the river a space of alfalfa ran to the first swell of the foothills. Upon the plain at the base of the rise, a great rock, deeply imbedded in the earth, and rising fifty feet above the surface, was all in shadow; but, as the moon overlooked the mountain crest, the top of the rock seemed slowly to rise from out the darkness and break into the white flood.
“This movement appeared so real and affirmative that I turned to Isola to learn if she had noticed it. She did not heed my action, but sat with her eyes fixed upon the rock with such a stare as one might have who saw the rending of the solid earth. Quickly turning, I saw that on the top of the rock a man was standing, with lifted face and folded arms. The pose was grandly pathetic. The form looked larger than human in the wan moonlight. I was about to break the silence with an exclamation, when a mighty voice, a noble baritone, came rolling across the distance, wave upon wave, bearing the burden of an old and half-forgotten love-song:
‘The God who wrought thee over-sweet In Love’s old garden long ago. Gave me the curse of wandering feet, The power to know, and only know, That even God shall not repeat The agony of loving so!’
“When the refrain was reached I was thrilled as the singer substituted another name for the one written in the old song, and the night was stirred by a burst of passionate melody that will haunt my memory while I live:
‘Isola! Love, I love thee! Isola! Hear my cry! The skies are black above me! Love me, or bid me die! Isola! Isola! Love me, or let me die!’
“As the wonderful voice held the last word at the top of the register without a quaver, the lady arose, stood unsteadily for a moment, then turned and walked proudly to the hallway and disappeared within. Nuñez Pico rose and, without a word, followed his daughter.
“That night I could not sleep, and near morning left my room and paced the garden walks until daybreak. Then, drawn by curiosity, I crossed the river and came to the great rock at the foot of the rise. Here I found the trace of a horse, coming and going, and, behind the rock, evidence that the horse had stood there for many hours.
“The Lady Isola came to the breakfast the following morning without a tear-stain upon her face, her features set and cold. The look in her proud eyes seemed to say: ‘My hours of terror are done! I am master of myself!’
“She moved about the house, the porches and the garden as freely as of old, but with a different manner. Then it was with the languorous grace of one in love with idleness; now she moved with the proud militancy of one who asserts dominion and defies aggression. I was glad of the changed mien, and so, I think, was Pico.
“When on that evening she passed me, going down into the garden, she seemed to have grown taller, so martial was her carriage. I sat long in the gathering dusk with little note of passing time, when suddenly, a woman’s shriek, clear, high and long-drawn, rose from the garden, followed almost instantly by the thunder of galloping hoofs upon the stony bed of the river, a plash of water, the muffled sound of a falling earth-bank, and then the lessening throb of flying feet that died upon the night.
“The shriek, the rush of the trampling feet through the garden, the vault of the steed over the adobe wall, and the uproar of the steel-shod hoofs upon the stones of the river-bed did not occupy five seconds, and before I could leap from the porch and rush through the garden shrubbery the beat of the retreating feet sounded faint and far.
“The aroused household acted with desperate energy. Swift messengers called the assistance of all the neighboring rancheros. The cinching of saddle-girths, the clank of arms, the trampling of impatient horses, the sharp orders of Pico, and the headlong incoming of horsemen from the outer night, told of stern preparation that boded ill for the frenzied abductor.
“But before the pursuit could be taken up the storm came over the Obsidian Hills and broke upon the valley with lightning, thunder, roaring wind and such a downpour of rain that within half an hour the river could not be crossed except by a detour of many miles, and then only by leading our horses singly upon a frail swinging bridge intended only for pedestrians. However, the cloudburst passed as quickly as it came, and the trail was taken before midnight. Despite the obliterating effects of the storm, the trace was easy to follow, for one had joined us whose fame as a tracker in mountain and desert was supreme in Arizona and Mexico, and when Cady rode out, taking the trail at a gallop, all were content to follow blindly.
“None questioned his skill, nor his coolness and courage in the hour of conflict. All had heard stories of his almost miraculous feats in the following of horse-thieves and marauding Indians to their ruin, but few, I think, were prepared for the ease and certainty with which this man-hunter carried the trail at a speed as high as we dared urge our horses, over flinty mesas, up slopes of broken lava, through thorny fields of cactus and sage-brush, across a succession of lateral ravines that now, for the first time in many years, brought down to the river a hundred roaring streams, and on across scrub and chaparral, to the south, toward the outlaw’s hoped-for refuge in the mountains of Mexico.
“It was a wild ride and there were thirty wild men riding. Pico, half crazed by the horror of his daughter’s possible fate, urging on with brief, inflammatory appeals the already excessive ardor of the pursuers; Cady, silent and alert, rode a rod or two in advance, followed by Kenneth, Pico’s foreman, a gigantic Scotchman, a violent man of great physical power and energy. I rode with Pico when the exigencies of the trail permitted. The others followed as best they could keep the pace.
“At sunrise we were thirty miles south of the Pico ranch and upon the high mesa two miles east of the river. Here the trail entered, but did not cross, a deep and rough ravine that ran at right angles to the course hitherto taken by the fleeing desperado. Cady plunged without hesitation down the steep bank and clung to the lessening trace over bare spaces of slab stone, clean-washed by the storm, and across acres of boulder-covered bars, until the portal of the canyon was reached, where the storms of ages had cut a narrow channel to the river. Before this rock-walled gateway Cady halted, leaped from his horse and waited until all had come up.
“‘Dismount, men!’ he said, ‘The beast is at bay.’
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