Chapter 3

The wanderer whose careless progress through the brake sufficiently
clearly revealed that he was a stranger of a bold heart and contempt
for customs different from his own, was, in fact, one of those
Englishmen who seem born to illustrate, in the nature of exceptions,
the formal character of his race.

Left an orphan in the fetters of a trustee who forgot he had ever
been young, and showed no sympathy with his charge, George Frederick
Gladsden had broken his bondage and run away from school at the age of
twelve. Reaching a Scotch port, after a long tramp, he shipped as boy
on a herring fisher, and so made his novitiate with Neptune. After that
initiation, very severe, he chose to become a sailor of that irregular
kind which is known as the _pier head jumping_. That is to say, instead
of duly entering on a vessel and book at the office in broad daylight,
"George" would lounge on the wharf till the very moment of her casting
off. Then, of course, the captain is happy to take anybody in the least
nautical or even able-bodied, who offers himself in lieu of one of
the regularly engaged mariners detained by accident, debt, or drink.
By this means Gladsden's trustee and kinsfolk could never prevent him
going wheresoever he willed, and it pleased this briny Arab to keep his
whereabouts a mystery, though, to amuse himself and annoy his guardian,
he would send him a letter from some dreadfully out-of-the-way port,
just to show he did exist, and to prevent the estate being locked up or
diverted under the law.

Meanwhile, the young roaming Englishman became so thorough a proficient
in the honourable calling, and had so much courage and intelligence
that, even in the merchant service, where the prizes are few and hotly
fought for, he must have obtained a supportable, if not a brilliant
position.

Unfortunately for himself he had an execrably fitful head, and was the
declared foe of Draconian discipline. If there had been pirates on
the seas he might even have joined them, only then to have enjoyed a
delightful existence of "Jack his own master."

Quarrelling with his latest skipper, a seal hunter, on the Lower
Californian coast, that Spaniard, rather alarmed at the turbulent mate,
was relieved when he accepted the offer of an Hermosillo planter to
become his manager, and not only broke the engagement between them,
but presented Gladsden with some dollars and his gun on their parting.
The Englishman promised well up in the country, but the fowl in the
swamp allured him into hunting trips with some Indians, and he turned
such a vagabond that the indolent Sonoran came to the conclusion
that, as the skipper of the seal fur cruiser had warned him, he had
contracted with a maniac.

One day, Gladsden and the Indians, turning their backs on the San
Miguel swamps, wandered off, the Englishman cared not whither. His
dusky comrades were soon displeased by his careless march, and a little
later, disgusted by his even resenting their counsels for him to take
precautions, since, not only were there other Indians "out," but one
of the most notorious salteadores who had ever troubled any part of
unquiet Mexico was overawing the whole of the tract between the San
Miguel and the San José. To which the mad Englishman replied, with a
calmness which startled the red men, though masters of self-repression,
that such daring traits aroused in him a lively curiosity, and the
strongest desire to face this very famous Matasiete, "the Slayer of
Seven," the terror of Sonora.

Seeing this obstinacy, our sly Yaquis solved the perplexity by
abandoning their burr one morning whilst he was still sleeping, and
leaving him only his gun and what powder and ball he carried. His horse
and other property they removed with them lest, in his folly, he should
only turn the valuables over to the redskins not of their tribe, or the
Mexican depredators.

For all of his maritime knowledge which helps the student of sky and
weather on land, Gladsden was in a quandary when thus thrown on his own
devices. As, however, he never wrangled with himself, he took up his
solitary march without any self-communing, and followed the impulse of
the moment.

Fortunately, game never failed him, and though the only flavouring was
gunpowder, the fare had not palled upon him up to his coming within our
circle of vision.

He was "loping" along, very like a sated wolf, listless, 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
screeching savage."

"Don't leave me!"

"But I must! Gallantry, my dear ex-captor."

"Leave me not!" reiterated Pepillo, who had supported himself with his
gun whilst the Englishman had looked at his hurt, "For the sake of my
widow and four little ones."

"A bandit with a family," observed Gladsden. "This is curious."

"Yes; who know not of my mode of life," appealed the salteador, falling
into a seated position and clasping his hands. "By the rules of our
band--for I am one of the Caballeros de la Noche, of Matasiete--all my
goods fall in to the gang! But my wife--my Angela! My little ones--my
angelitos! Have still more compassion, you greatly noble American of
the North, and hear my _viva voce_ testament in their behalf."

"Go on," was the reply. "Considering where the commissioner to take
oaths--who is only an Englishman, by the way, and no American of the
Northern States--where he has his office opened, and the improbability
of his traversing a wilderness of poisonous vermin of all descriptions
to file your testament, it is a pure formality. However," he added,
the while the dying robber divided his time between a disjointed
supplication and wrestlings against a pain that convulsed him severely
at intervals more and more closely recurrent, "will away your 'bacca
box and your knife and sash. I'll do my best to carry them to the
legatees."

"Listen to me," said Pepillo solemnly, and beckoning him to approach.
His voice was singular in sound; his features contorted, his clayey,
pale face streaming with cold, thick perspiration. "I have not always
been a ranger of the prairie. I was a sailor, like you are, as I caught
in your speech. Do you know the islands on the other coast of the Gulf
of California?"

"I have only sailed round to Guaymas."

"I will draw you the chart. Due north from Cantador Island I have a
treasure. Laugh not, raise no brow in derision. In coin, and emeralds,
gold, silver, and pearls, I have over a million dollars."

"Nonsense!"

"I am the last of the band of Colonel Dartois the Filibuster, and I
tell you I am the sole treasurer of the crew."

The Englishman was not acquainted with that adventurer, of much
notoriety in his day on the Pacific Coast, but the tone of the dying
man was sincere.

"Be quick, then, thou dying one, to give the clue," said he as if
convinced, whether so or not.