The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

  CHAPTER V.

  THE GODSEND.

  The inhabitants of the wilderness, red or white, black or yellow,obliged often to "let go of all," as our sailor friend would word it,and "get" (as he would probably say if his foolhardy behaviour allowedhim to live long enough in that region to acquire the cant language),and pretty suddenly too, to follow the chase or avoid an ambush, arenecessitated to abandon their plunder and traps, using these words intheir legitimate sense. As, at the same time, they have no inclinationto renounce their property, they bank it, or, as the trappers say,_cache_ it.

  The model _cache_ is thus constructed: the first thing is to spreadblankets or buffalo robes around the chosen spot for the excavation,which is scooped out in any desirable shape with knives and flatstones; all the extracted ground, loam, sand, or whatever its nature,being carefully put on the spreads. When the pit is sufficientlycapacious it is lined with buffalo hides to keep out damp, and thevaluables are deposited within, even packed up in hide, if necessary.The earth is restored and trodden down, or rammed firmly with therifle butts, water is sometimes sprinkled on the top to facilitatethe settling, and upon the replaced sod to prevent it dying after theinjury to its roots. All the earth left over is carried to a runningwater, or scattered to the four winds, so as to make the leastevidences of the concealment vanish. The _cache_ is generally so wellhidden that only the eye of an uncommonly gifted man can discover it.Often, then, he only chances upon one that has been opened and emptiedby the owners, who, after that, of course, were easy in their secondoperation. The contents of a well-constructed _cache_ may keep half adozen years without spoiling.

  Benito Bustamente believed he had been led to die upon a _cache_.

  To a man dropping of fatigue and famine such a find was of inestimablevalue. It might reasonably offer him the primary necessities of whichhe was denuded, and he would be revived, literally, on being furnishedwith the means to fight his way to civilisation, where otherwise he andDolores, always hoping the young girl had not preceded him past thebourne, must perish.

  For a few instants, propped up on both hands, in a wistful attitude,which I never saw in a pictorial representation of a human being, butwhich was recalled to me by the pose of the bloodhound in Landseer'spicture of the trail of blood, in which floats a broken plume.

  A moment of suspense!

  He was swayed by indefinable sensations, fascinated, so as to befearful of breaking the spell.

  When, at length, he mastered his emotion, he did not forget the dutyof an honest man constrained to invade the property of another, thoughthat other might be his enemy!

  Trapper law is explicit; wanton breaking into a _cache_ is punishableby death.

  So he shaped out a square of the sod with a sharp mussel shell whichhe spied glistening near him, and slowly removed that piece, anxiouslyquivering in the act. Other turf he removed in the same manner, moreand more sure that it was a _cache_. This preliminary over, he pausedto take breath, and to enjoy the luxury of discounting a pleasure whichcame as veritable life in the midst of death.

  Then he resumed a task terrible for one exhausted by privations andloss of blood. Many times he was forced to stop, his energy giving out.

  Slow went on the work; no indications of his being correct arose tocorroborate his surmise. The shell broke, but then he used the twofragments, held in his hand with such tenacity that they seemed to besupplementary nails. Vain as was the toil, here lay, he still believed,the sole chance of safety; if heaven smiled on his efforts, his darlingDolores might yet be a happy woman. So he clung to this last chanceoffered by happy hazard with that energy of despair, the immense powerof Archimedes, for which nothing is impossible.

  The hole, of no contemptible size, yawned blankly before him. Nothingaugured success, and, whatever the indomitable energy of the youngman's character, he felt discouragement cast a new gloom over his soul.His eyelids, red with fever, licked up the tear that ventured to soothethem, and his lips cracked as he pressed them together.

  "At least, here I dig a grave for don Jose, and my poor love," he saidwildly. "It shall be deep enough to baffle the wolf!"

  He renewed his tearing at the soil, when suddenly the shells snappedoff, both pieces together, and his nails also scraping something ofa different material to the earth, turned back at their jagged ends,but not at that supreme moment giving him the pain which at anothertime the same accident must have caused. Some hairs were mingled withthe earth, and a scent different from that of the freshly bared groundintoxicated him with its musk.

  Disdaining the shattered mussel shell, he used his hands as scoops, andpresently unearthed a buffalo skin.

  Instead of tugging at it with greedy relish to feast on the treasure itdoubtlessly muffled, Benito drew back his hands and stared with worsetribulation than ever.

  A _cache_--yes! A full one--who knew?

  Long ago it might have been pillaged. With but one movement betweenhim and the verification or annihilation of his hopes the Mexicanhesitated. He was frightened.

  His labour under difficulties had been so great, he had cherishedso many dreams and nursed so many chimeras, that he instinctivelydreaded the seeing them swiftly to flee, and leave him falling from hiscrumbling anticipations into the frightful reality that closed in uponhim with inexorable jaws.

  In the end, determined to do or die, for to that it had truly come,Benito's trembling hands buried themselves in the buffalo robe,clutched it irresistibly and hauled it up into his palpitating bosom.His haggard eyes swam with joyful gush of many tears, so that he couldnot see the sky to which he had raised them in gratitude.

  Benito had fallen on a hunter's and trapper's store. Not only werethere traps and springes of several sorts, weapons, powder horns,bullet bags, shot moulds, leaden bars, horse caparisons, hide forlassoes, but eatables in hermetically sealed tins of modern make, notthen familiar to Mexicans, and liquor in bottles protected by homemadewicker and leather plaiting.

  He was stretching out his hands ravenously to the bottles and a roleof jerked beef, when it seemed to him that the voice of the Unseenprompted him with "God! Thank God!" and repeating the words in a voiceunintelligible from stifling emotions, he fairly swooned across the pitas if to defend it with his poor, worn, hard-tried body.

  His face was serene when he unclosed his eyes anew. Soberly, by a greatcontrol, he ate of some tinned meat and the crackers and swallowed asslowly some cognac. The latter filled him with fire, and he could haveleaped into a treetop and crowed defiance to the vultures which weresailing overhead as if baulked of their prey.

  In that momentary calmness, he felt so strong and so rejoiced inhis self-command that his spirit seemed to spurn its casket. Butinstantly, with the blood careering anew, the wound in his shouldersmarted furiously, and all down that arm and up to his neck he felt astrange and novel sensation; it was as if molten lead was in the veins,scorching and making heavy the limb.

  "The arrow! I am poisoned!" he muttered. "Oh, is this windfall comemerely to embitter my death?"

  That taste of liquor made his mouth water, and there was suggested tohim by the sight of the brandy bottle that here was the remedy whichthe wisest frontiersman and medicine man would have prescribed. He putthe cognac to his lips, and emptied the bottle.

  Almost instantly he felt an aching in every pore away and beyondthat of the wound; his brain appeared to swell to bursting its cell,and howling himself hoarse, he thought--though, in reality, hisinarticulate cries were strangled in his throat--he rolled upon theground, too weak to dance upon his feet, as he imagined he was doing.

  This intoxication left him abruptly, and he fell insensible. But forhis stertorous breathing, which finally became regular and gentle, hewas as a corpse beside the greedy grave.

  He woke up, lame in every bone, but clear-eyed, and the ringing in hishead abated. Either the remedy had succeeded, or constitution, for hewas able to set about his task with surprising vigour.

  Thereupon, he chose out of the store a pair of revol
vers, theircartridges in quantity, two powder horns and bullets to fit the finestrifle, a bowie knife and a cutlass, and a length of leather thong tomake a lasso, and a spade for the grave of don Jose, filled a game bagwith matches in metal boxes, sewing materials, and other odds and endsfor the traveller. Tobacco, too, he took, and was looking for paper tomake cigarettes, when a small book met his eyes.

  It was stamped in gold, "London, Liverpool, and West State of MexicoAgnas Caparrosas Mining Company." It was an account book of the company--one of those enterprises to which, he had heard, his father had lenta favourable attention. A pencil was attached to the book; he wrote ona blank page the list of all the articles he took, signing:

  "Require the payment of me.--I, BENITO VAZQUEZ DE BUSTAMENTE."

  As quickly as he could he replaced what he did not wish to be burdenedwith, made the concealment good, and swept the grass with two buffaloskins, which he had also taken for clothing. This duty of a thankfuland honourable man being accomplished, he darted back to where hehad left Dolores with a free and easy movement, of which he had notbelieved himself ever again to be capable only a short time before.

  He was amazed that a little food and spirit had restored him, and beganto fear the reaction.

  His wits remained clear. He remembered very distinctly indeed hisconfrontation of the savage who had been blasted as by a heavenlythunderbolt. He was not surprised when he found that redskin where hehad rolled him. But what was his pain when he saw no trace of Doloresbut the same fragment of her dress which Gladsden was, soon after, alsoto behold!

  Sounds in the chaparral which reminded him of the four-footedscavengers in rivalry of the carrion birds that circled above, urgedhim to ply the spade, and he piously laid don Jose to his final rest.

  Then, his rifle loaded, his frame fortified by the refreshment whichhe took at intervals on his march, he went forward in the trail whichthe abductor of the Mexican's daughter had been unable, so burdened, toavoid making manifest, all his emotions, even gratitude to the chief,set aside for the desire of vengeance on the remorseless foes to whomhe owed so many and distressful losses, and on whom he had not yet beenenabled to inflict any reprisal.

  "Let me but overtake him, or them," thought he, "before the tempestobliterates this track with its deluge, and I will flesh this sword, oressay this new rifle on his vile carcass!"