Overland Tales Part 27

Dona Inez, who understood English, smiled a good-humored, but expressive smile; noticing which, Mrs. Jenny supplemented, without the least resentment: "And, besides, he wasn't at home to try. He started out this morning with Blake, and Goodwin, and old Pedrillo."

"To look for the Hidden Mine of the Padres? Oh, the foolish, foolish boy! Had I known how determined he was to go, I should not have left him last night. Will he never stop dreaming and chasing after shadows?"

Cousin Will was full twenty years his brother's senior; and it was, perhaps, the recollection of the almost fatherly love he had always shown for the younger brother that made Mrs. Jenny suddenly, when Dona Inez had left the room, fling her hat on the floor, herself on the lounge, and give way to the tears that had gathered in her heart all day. Cousin Will knew her too well to offer a single word of comfort or consolation; but when her convulsive sobs had ceased at last, he told her, in answer to her quick, impatient questions, all he knew of the letter, its contents and consequences.

In the old archives of Tucson, to which Ray, by virtue of his office, had access, he thought he had found sufficient proof of the existence of the old silver ledge, and sufficiently clear advices of its location, to warrant him in making a search for it. Fully aware of the many dangers to which any party he might organize for that purpose would be exposed, he had long hesitated--hesitated, too, partly on account of his wife's violent opposition, and partly because there were few, whom he would select, willing to go with him, where hundreds had already perished from the Indian's arrow and the want of food and water. Three days ago, the letter from Margaret had found its way to him. She was not long for this world, she said, and, poor and in distress--abandoned by her husband, who had been beggared by the war--she pleaded that Ray should care for the two children she must leave to the cold charity of strangers, if she died.

"What will you do about it?" his brother had asked. And then Ray had unfolded to him what the brother called one of his day-dreams. He would find the mine, load Jenny with the treasures its discovery would bring, and send her back to the States, to find Margaret, or the children (if she were dead), while he remained behind to develop and finally dispose of the mine, before joining his wife. He knew what Jenny had undergone in this country, for his sake; he knew how well she loved him, and he trusted that, with her n.o.ble instincts, she would aid him in carrying out his projects in regard to Margaret and her children--neither of whom he ever intended to see.

Since she had once given way to softer feelings, Jenny's better self arose against the hard, cruel spirit that had prompted her to turn from all of Ray's attempts at kindly explanation. Bitterly she regretted the harsh words she had uttered when her eyes first fell on that miserable letter; and, like serpent's fangs, the words she had called after him on parting, struck again and again into her own bleeding heart. Restlessly she tossed on her bed all night--the first to discover the approach of a band of Apaches, from the uneasy stamping and the frightened wickering of the mules--she was the only one who insisted that Tucson's bark could be heard among the gang of _coyotes_ that made night hideous with their howls. With the first gleam of the coming day she was up; and, in spite of all her brother-in-law could say, in spite of the suspicious footprints that marked the ground in the neighborhood of the mule-_corral_, she started for home, alone and unprotected, as she had come the night before.

The gorgeous sunrise had no charm for her; unheeding, her eye pa.s.sed over the landscape, that was like the smile of a fair, false woman--soft and alluring to the eye--a bright mask only, veiling death and destruction from those who were blinded by it. When near the town, a small, ragged-looking object came ambling swiftly toward her.

"What--Tucson?" and then, apostrophizing the dog, who crouched in the sand at her feet with a pitiful whine: "You mean little deserter!

Couldn't you hold out as long as your master? And I know your master has not come back yet." Nor _had_ he--though she entered the house with an insane hope that she might meet the grave eyes peering out from the gloom of the darkened hall. After another sharp reprimand, she prepared Tucson's breakfast from a part of her own; and then flew into a pa.s.sion and drove the dog from the house, because, instead of tasting a mouthful, he insisted on dragging her to the door by the dress-skirt, and barking and howling in turn, when she refused to come.

Later in the morning, when she had occasion to go "down town" for something, she recounted how the dog had shrunk from the fatigues of the prospecting-trip, and had returned to his comfortable quarters at home.

"But I drove him from the house; and I guess he has gone to overtake his master now--I don't see him around any more."

He _had_ gone to overtake his master--but not alone. The dog's strange bearing had excited suspicion--here, where people are always on the alert for danger and evil of all kinds. Before the sun was well up, a little band of well-armed citizens was on the trail that Oray Granville and his friends had travelled but the day before.

Well for Jenny that her eye never caught the meaning of the looks thrown on her as she pa.s.sed through the straggling streets back to her own home; well for her that the soft-voiced _senoras_, who came to her in the dusk of the evening, could check the word of sympathy that rose from the heart to the lip. Ah, me!

And in Jenny's voice there was a new tone; a new light was in her eye, and--a new greeting in her heart for Cousin Ray. If he would only come soon! Of course, he could not return for a day or two; perhaps not for a week; but when he did come--

"Petra," said Jenny, "you must play me Oray's favorite air to-night"--and she hastened to the corner where the harp of the girl, who was a pet of Mrs. Jenny's, and Ray's too, was generally kept.

"No, _senora_--no; not this night," remonstrated the girl. "The wind howls so dismally--and there is no moon in the sky; and then, you know, I cannot sing."

Petra was whimsical, and what she said was true: the wind pa.s.sed with a low, sobbing sound through the bare, wide hall, and swept up to the door, where it shook the lock as with living fingers.

Mrs. Jenny drew back the curtain and laughed.

"In our country, people don't like to own that they're moon-struck; but you are right--the night is black as ink, and--why--there is quite a company coming up the hill toward us, with lights and torches. Going to the governor's house, probably; but who can they be?"

"We can slip out of the back-door, directly, and look over to the house: then the men cannot say that we have undue curiosity," suggested Anita, desperately; and Mrs. Jenny dropped the curtain.

Petra's blanched face drooped low, over a book she had s.n.a.t.c.hed up from the table; and Anita's hands were clasped in a silent prayer to the Holy Virgin. But the train came nearer, and--"Hark! they stop here--at this door--it is Ray--Cousin Ray!" And Jenny was on the threshold--where half a dozen gloomy, earnest faces met her gaze.

There was a horse there, too--stamping with a half-frightened motion, and a low, s.h.i.+vering neigh; and as she sprang forward with a shriek--a terrified question rising unconsciously to her lips--a dog flew at her with an angry howl, tearing at her garments, and making frantic efforts to prevent her touching the motionless form on the back of the horse.

To Jenny's ear the dog's wild yells spoke terribly plain her own cruel "Never--never--never!" but among the men there was a hasty murmur that the beast had gone mad, from running so long without food and water.

There was a flash and a sharp report--Tucson's career had come to a close. And Jenny lay fainting in the arms of the sobbing women.

_A BIT OF "EARLY CALIFORNIA."_

That many strange and wonderful things happened in early times in California, is so trite a saying that I hardly dare repeat it. As my story, however, is neither harrowing nor sentimental, I hope I may venture to bring it before the reader.

Long before the great Overland Railroad was built, there entered one day one of the largest mercantile establishments in San Francisco a handsome, athletic man, whose fresh, kindly face showed a record of barely five-and-twenty years, and whose slender fingers belied the iron strength with which he could hold and tighten the threads forming the net into which malefactors are said, sooner or later, always to run. If he _was_ a detective officer, he had friends, because he had a warm heart; and in spite of all the dark phases of life that were brought to his notice every day, he had not learned to disbelieve in the bright side, or the better instincts of humanity.

The chief clerk of this establishment was Captain Herbert's (the detective officer's) most intimate friend, and he had come to bid him good-bye--perchance to charge him to guard the "fatherless and the widowed," should the trip on which he was about to start out end disastrously to him. "Early Californians" realized, better than any other cla.s.s of people, the uncertainty of life--particularly with those who had to cope with the desperadoes of that time; and the captain intended to start out as usual--with the determination to do or to die.

"By-the-by," said young Taylor, laughing, to the senior partner of the firm, studying the morning paper in the counting-room, "Mr. McDonald has been silent for so long that I think it would be a good job, and an economical one, to commission the captain to hunt up the junior partner of this firm, at the same time, and bring him in with the absconding cattle-agent."

The old gentleman took off his gla.s.ses, and folded the paper.

"Yes; it's time Harry was home. I'm really getting uneasy about him.

They may have tempted him with the prospect of a whole string of wives as he pa.s.sed through Salt Lake--whereas here he can have only one."

"Give me his _carte-de-visite_, or the color of his hair and eyes, height, breadth, and weight, and I'll bring him, sure!" laughed the captain.

"Thank you kindly, captain; but I don't know whether Mr. McDonald would appreciate your kind attentions; particularly," continued the old gentleman, "if enhanced by those little steel bracelets you bring into requisition sometimes."

Twenty-four hours later the captain was hurrying, as fast as the stage-horses could run, to Salt Lake City, where, it was surmised, the dishonest cattle-agent would be found. A few hours' vigorous hunt convinced the captain that the object of his search was not there--circ.u.mstances pointing backward to one of the smaller places he had pa.s.sed on his journey thither;--and the next stage that left had the captain for its occupant again. The only other pa.s.senger beside the captain and his one man, was a rather slender, well-built person, who, like himself and a.s.sistant, had both hands full, literally, to keep from being buried by the sides of bacon with which the stage was filled almost to overflowing.

When night set in, the coats of the captain and his man, and the woollen s.h.i.+rt of their travelling companion, seemed all to have been made of the same material, thanks to the equalizing gloss which the tumbling sides of bacon had spread over everything; but they fought the pork as valiantly as ever true-believing Israelite had done. There was little rest for them through the night, and no sleep; the treacherous bacon-sides, that had been closely packed to serve as pillows, would unexpectedly slip away from under their weary heads; and the bacon barricades, laboriously built, would descend like an avalanche of blows and hard knocks, when left unguarded by the drowsy travellers.

Luckily the bacon was left, the next morning, at a little town where it was wanted more than in the stage coach; and the captain, who had pa.s.sed nothing on the road without casting on it at least half of his keen, official eye, gathered enough information here to feel confident of finding his game in one of the little new places springing up on the mail-line in Nevada. They reached the place next day at nightfall--it was near the border of California--and the captain saw at a glance that it would be warm work to cage any of the ill-favored birds who flocked about this place. Warm work it would have been under any circ.u.mstances: but made more difficult by the fact that the man in question had absconded from his employers in British Columbia somewhere, had merely pa.s.sed through San Francisco with his plunder--some thirty-six thousand dollars--and could have defied all the law officers in California, if they came, as the captain did, with only the commission of the victimized cattle-owner, but without the authority that the existing relations between British Columbia and the United States made necessary.

Among the gamblers and roughs loafing about the hotel, the captain's quick eye had soon lighted on the right man; and after quietly taking his supper with his companions, he proceeded to arrest him. Of course there was an outcry and a hubbub among the patrons of this hotel, and the captain, who knew where his customer came from, gave the guilty man to understand that lynching a man who was no better than a horse-thief, was nothing unusual in California and Nevada; but that if he, the prisoner, would promise to remain quietly up-stairs in the room with the captain's man, he himself would go back into the bar-room and try to persuade the people to desist from carrying out any horrible plans they might have formed. The prisoner seemed to feel weak in the knees; asked permission to lie down, and sadly but gently extended his hands to the alluring steel wristlets which the captain persuasively held out.

Returning to the bar-room, the latter singled out the head bully, approached him confidentially, and whispered that on him he must depend for a.s.sistance in keeping his obstreperous prisoner from breaking away; that he himself and his a.s.sistant were so tired out with a three-nights'

ride and the fruitless chase, that they could hardly keep their eyes open; and that after seeing the landlord he would return and consult how they had best manage to keep their man safe.

From there the captain went straight to the room of the stranger who had come in the stage with him; to him he told all the circ.u.mstances of the case, and asked for his help. He was not mistaken in the man; and the stranger at once expressed his determination to aid the side of the law and the right. Proceeding together to the room of the prisoner, the captain's a.s.sistant was instructed to procure, as secretly as possible, a conveyance for himself, the stranger, and the prisoner, to the next town--already in California--some thirty miles away. Then there were more dark fears expressed concerning mobs and lawless proceedings, and hints thrown out, suggestive of the contempt in which horse-thieves and the like were held, and a clump of trees was spoken of, that stood close by the hotel and had been found convenient for hanging purposes before this. The stranger was left to guard the prisoner, and the captain made his way to the bar-room, where he was examined in the most friendly and patronizing manner, concerning "that little affair;" how much money the man had taken, whether the captain had yet recovered it, and what he meant to do next. Not a cent of the money had been recovered as yet, the captain said (with thirty-five thousand dollars neatly tucked away about his person), but he hoped that with good help--winking at the most ill-favored among them--he would get both the man and his money safely into California. He was not sparing in treats, and had the crowd drink the health and success of everybody and everything he could think of, till at last, apparently overpowered with sleep, he beckoned the rowdy he had spoken to before to one side. Familiarly tapping him on the shoulder, he said, trustingly:

"Now, old fellow, remember, I depend on you, should any of these rascals here make an attempt to a.s.sist my man in getting away from me. I'm tired to death, and if you'd sit up for an hour or two longer, while I take a short nap, I'd take it as a great kindness. At all events, I shall handcuff my prisoner and myself together, so that he cannot leave the bed without my knowledge."

The man swore a thousand oaths that he'd see the captain out of this, and then returned to his companions--to plot the release of the thieving cattle-agent, who, he felt certain, still had the stolen money about him. Tired out and sleepy, the captain certainly was; and, after barricading the door with as much noise as possible (having previously nailed boards across the window with a great deal of hammering), he lay down, and was soon in a sound sleep. Sometime after midnight he was aroused by loud, heavy blows on the door. Of course, the captain knew who was there, and what they wanted, just as well as though each member of the rowdy delegation had sent in a card with name and object of the visit engraved thereon. After considerable parleying, and some "b.l.o.o.d.y"

threats, the barricade was slowly removed, the door opened, and the captain discovered, admiring a very handsome six-shooter in his hands.

His confidential friend, the bully from the bar-room, was spokesman of the gang; and, after some hard staring and harder swearing, the truth dawned on the minds of these worthies, and they withdrew from the room to search the rest of the house before taking farther measures.

The captain resumed his broken slumbers, never dreaming that they would carry proceedings any farther; but next morning, seated on the stage beside the driver, he saw on the road the wreck of a turn-out, and grouped about it a number of the would-be liberators of the night before. They had "raised" a team somewhere, and had started in pursuit of the fat prize, hoping to outwit and outride justice for once. The night being dark and their heads very light, they had run full tilt against a tree in the road, which had the effect of killing one horse, stunning the other, and scattering the inmates of the wagon indiscriminately over the ground. Bully No. 1, and two stars of lesser magnitude, insisted on mounting the stage; and, on arriving at the next town, the captain, fearing that the local authorities would interfere on the representation of these men, had his prisoner on the road again before they had time to take any steps, either legal or illegal.

The horror of the prisoner can be imagined when he learned that these terrible men, who were trying to get him out of the captain's hands in order to mete out justice on their own account, were actually pursuing him--probably with a rope ready to slip around his neck at the first opportunity. He earnestly besought his protectors not to abandon him; for the captain had told him that he had no right to hold him as prisoner, and should have none until certain formalities had been gone through with in San Francisco.

On they flew--without rest--still pursued by the three roughs, who seemed to have gotten their s.p.u.n.k up when they found that the captain was determined to escape from them with the man and the money they wanted so much. At last Sacramento was reached, and with it the highest pitch of danger. The prisoner was informed that the men were still following him, and that they would probably make an attempt to take him on the way from the hotel to the boat that was to carry them to San Francisco. All this was strictly true. Captain Herbert had only omitted to mention the fact that there would be among the number of captors a member of the Sacramento police, to which both the roughs had applied, setting forth that the man was illegally restrained of his liberty, etc.

The prisoner shook in his boots, and probably wished in his heart that he was safely back in British Columbia, with the cattle unsold, and his employer unrobbed. What was to be done? Time was flying, and he _must_ be gotten on to that boat, or he might never see San Francisco; so feared the captain as well as his prisoner.

Again it was the intrepid stranger and travelling companion who came to the rescue. The captain's plan was "hatched" and carried out in a very little while. With a pair of handcuffs clasped on his wrists, and his arms securely tied behind, the obliging stranger was led to the boat by the hard-hearted captain, who handled this free-will prisoner very roughly--while the guilty cattle-agent was slinking along with unfettered hands by the side of the captain's a.s.sistant, to whom he "stuck closer than a brother." Just as the captain was hustling his prisoner on to the gang-plank, a policeman stepped from the crowd, laid his hand on the man's shoulder, and, amid the cheering of the roughs and the angry protestations of the captain, led him to the office of the nearest justice. The _bona fide_ prisoner in the meantime slipped unnoticed on board, and was taken out of the cold, and kindly cared for on reaching San Francisco, by the proper authorities, who had been summoned to meet the boat, by a telegram from the captain.

An excited crowd had gathered around the door of the office into which the stranger had been brought. The intense disgust of the roughs can be better imagined than described when their eyes and ears convinced them, very much against their will, that their benevolent purposes could not be carried out, and that _this_ "prisoner at the bar" had never absconded with anybody's money. They listened in dogged silence to the man's declaration that, far from being restrained of his liberty, he had come with the captain "just for fun," and had worn the handcuffs because they were just an easy fit.

"And what is your name!" thundered the enraged justice.

"Henry Fitzpatrick," was the quiet reply, "merchant, from San Francisco.