A Volunteer with Pike Part 49

"Permit me to see the rosary," she said.

I drew the bitter-sweet gift from my bosom and handed it over to her. To my surprise, she began to examine the beads with a minute scrutiny, feeling and shaking each in turn as she pa.s.sed it along the cord.

Whatever she had thought to discover, she found nothing. At the last she took up the little crucifix and turned it over in her slender hand.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, holding it closer to her sparkling eyes. "Her name is Alisanda Vallois."

"Alisanda Vallois," I repeated, wondering at the remark.

"A. V.--Alisanda Vallois. You have planned for a meeting in August?"

"No, senora. We did not plan. I have heard of no such plan."

"_Santa Maria!_ Men are so stupid!" she rejoined. "Look, there is your message: 'A V--AUG'! What ever else can that mean than Alisanda Vallois, in August?"

"What?" I cried, half mad with delight. "But where?--what place, senora?

Tell me where!"

She laughed at my blindness. "Where, senor? You ask that? What did she call this gift--the exact words?"

"_La vera cruz!_" Even as the words pa.s.sed my lips, the truth flashed upon me. I had indeed been stupid--blind!--blind not to have seen those faintly scratched letters on the gold; stupid not to have joined the symbolism of the gift to her words, "_La Vera Cruz_"!

I kissed the senora's hand with a fervor which, I trust, did not disturb the peace of mind of Captain Ugarte. Later she undertook to send to the care of Dona Dolores a message which, for the sake of precaution, I restricted to the one line:--

"_La vera cruz_ is my guide and comforter."

Despite so joyful a revelation to glorify our stay at San Antonio, I felt no regrets when another week saw us started on to the north and east for Nacogdoches, the most eastward of the Spanish _presidios_ in Texas.

The second day beyond that place we crossed the Sabine, and were left by our Spanish escort, being in the neutral zone.

On the afternoon of July the first we at last arrived at Natchitoches, only fifteen days short of a full year since we had departed on our long and eventful journey from Belle Fontaine.

Such greeting as we received from our officers at the fort may be better imagined than expressed. And not the least of my joys upon this happy occasion was that of hearing my brave and resolute friend hailed by his fellows, not as Lieutenant, but as Captain! We were alike astonished and gratified to learn that he had been ent.i.tled to that advanced rank since the twelfth of the preceding August. What was more, his services had been most handsomely noticed to Congress by President Jefferson.

As the Captain had arrived at the journey's end outworn and in miserable health, I restrained myself to remain with him long enough to a.s.sist in arranging the great ma.s.s of notes which, to the exultant delight of our countrymen, we brought to view by filing off the barrels of the six muskets.

There would have been no end to the questions of the officers of the fort had not Pike intimated that discretion required silence with regard to all the important details until after he had made his report to General Wilkinson and the Secretary of War. The doughty General, we were informed, had hurried east to Richmond some weeks past, to take part in the trial of Colonel Burr and Harmon Blennerha.s.set for treason.

But as to the facts of the great case, I observed that our countrymen were decidedly circ.u.mspect in their statements; for it seems that the General himself was accused by his numerous enemies of complicity in the alleged treasonous conspiracy. Captain--I write the word with pride--Captain Pike was highly indignant at this attempt to implicate the friend and patron who had so helped him in his career. But I, remembering what I had learned from Burr and from the General himself, and above all considering that hideous charge by the aide Medina, had the greatest difficulty in giving the pa.s.sive a.s.sent of silence when my friend said that he would include my respects in his letter to the General.

Truth to tell, having now the possibility of again meeting and of winning my lady, I was extremely desirous for a commission in the Army.

It was an ambition which the Captain and I had frequently discussed since our departure from Chihuahua, and which he told me he intended to call to the attention not only of General Wilkinson but of the Secretary of War, General Dearborn.

I need hardly say that we had also discussed, in confidence, my plans for a voyage to Vera Cruz. But as he knew even less about the sea than myself, he could only commend my intention of applying for a.s.sistance to Mr. Daniel Clark, and insist upon my leaving him as soon as his health was a little improved and the notes partly arranged.

At last my growing impatience and anxiety forced me to bend to his urging. We parted, with more than brotherly regard and affection, in the fond expectation of rejoining each other within a few months as brothers in arms. His last words were an a.s.surance that he could obtain me a captaincy, and a heart-felt wish that I might succeed in my venture.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

IMPRESSED

It was a wearisome journey by river and forest and swamp to New Orleans in the swelter of the July heat, but I pushed on by horse and boat to the mosquito-and-fever-plagued city of the delta. Having long since become hardened to the torments of the Southern insect pests and to the dangers of ague, dengue, and yellow jack, I endured the first with resignation and braved the last without a qualm.

The sight of the creole city, with our glorious flag afloat above the bold little forts, St. Louis and St. Charles, filled me with joy and a sense of accomplishment. This marked my point of departure in the crossing of the Gulf, which alone, I hoped, now separated me from my lady. Though, even with the influx of our native-born Americans since the annexation, the city could claim only nine thousand inhabitants, the amount of its trade and s.h.i.+pping was enormous. Among the scores and hundreds of sea-going craft which lay moored along the wharfs and the levees or swung at anchor in the stream, I felt certain I should find one to bear me to Vera Cruz.

Of all the merchants of the city, I knew that few if any stood so well with the Spanish authorities in the New World or carried on so extensive a trade with the Spanish colonies as my acquaintance, Mr. Daniel Clark.

Accordingly I waited upon him the evening of my arrival, and stated my keen desire to obtain pa.s.sage to Vera Cruz.

He took occasion to congratulate me on my share in the expedition, a general account of which had come to him, I suspect through secret sources of communication with the Spaniards. He, however, shook his head over my request for advice and a.s.sistance, until, in desperation, I confessed that the object of my intended voyage was to meet the lady to whom I was betrothed.

"Why did you not tell me that at the first, sir?" he snapped. "I set you down for an agent of that double-dealing scoundrel and traitor James Wilkinson."

"Mr. Clark," I replied, "General Wilkinson will, I presume, be subjected to the searching cross-examination of the counsel for Colonel Burr.

Personally I have little liking for the General, and have so expressed myself in the past. But for the present I think it only just to him, as to Colonel Burr, to await the publication of the facts of this deplorable scandal and the verdict of the trial."

"Ay, ay! You can take a dispa.s.sionate view, doctor. You have not shared in all the heat and tumult of this last year. Very well. Be as nonpartisan as you wish, just so you do not join in the hounding of honorable men who chanced to show courtesies to that misguided dreamer, Burr."

"Sir, I have no other thought, no other object in life that I can consider until I have returned this to my lady," I said, showing him the rosary.

He turned to his portfolio, and at once wrote a letter in a neat, clerky hand. Having folded and addressed it, he handed it to me unsealed.

"Present that to Monsieur Lafitte. You will find his sloop, the _Siren_, somewhere along the water front. Wait. Are you in funds?"

"Enough for the present, sir. But this Monsieur Lafitte--he sails for Vera Cruz?"

"I have written him that you wish to land in that port. He bears papers from me which will enable you to effect a landing and a stay of a few weeks. Should you need funds to carry you through with your venture in that city, this letter will enable you to draw upon Captain Lafitte for a hundred doubloons."

I sought to express my grat.i.tude, but he cut me short, and rang for his mulatto boy to show me out. As it was by now past nine o'clock and a dark, cloudy evening, I returned to my hotel for the night.

But sunrise found me down in the midst of the hurly-burly and confusion of the water front. Such a scene was never known elsewhere than here in the port of the Father of Waters. Rowdy rivermen from the Ohio and Mississippi settlements, and no less rowdy seamen from the four quarters of the globe, lewd women and dock workmen, black and white, swarthy creole merchants and weather-beaten s.h.i.+p's officers,--all jostling and hurrying about wharf and levee in the cool of the early morning.

Upon starting to inquire, I discovered that it was not so simple a matter to find the sloop _Siren_ as I had imagined. The slaves and creoles were polite in their replies, the sailors and rivermen gruff, but all alike expressed their inability to enlighten me.

At last I accosted at a venture a splendidly built gentleman of about my own age and breadth but a full two inches taller.

"Monsieur," I said, noting his black hair and French features, "your pardon, but I am in search of the schooner _Siren_, Captain Lafitte."

"Ah," he replied, eying me with a polite yet penetrating gaze. "May I request you to name your business with Captain Lafitte?"

"Sir," I answered, bowing, "my business with Monsieur Lafitte is private. If you cannot favor me with the location of the _Siren_--"

"If I cannot favor you with that, I can at least with the location of Jean Lafitte," he said, bowing in turn. "Monsieur, permit me to introduce myself as Jean Lafitte, at your service."

"Monsieur, your servant, Dr. John H. Robinson, with a letter from Monsieur Daniel Clark," I responded.