A Volunteer with Pike Part 31

Notwithstanding my protests against imposing upon his generosity, he insisted upon at once conducting me to a man qualified to tailor the Spanish modes. Within the next fortnight I was completely fitted out _a la Espanola_ from top to toe. But although it was the first time I had ever worn the costume, I cannot say that in the company of similarly attired Spaniards I felt ill at ease in these garments. In part at least they were well adapted to the needs of this hot, arid climate, particularly the broad-brimmed shade-hat, or sombrero. Silk stockings and Spanish breeches, b.u.t.toned down the outer seams and open below the knees, took the place of my tattered pantaloons and buffalo leggings.

For belt I wore a sash of scarlet silk, with ends dangling like a lady's drape. Above it was a waistcoat as large as the jacket was short, while the circular cloak over all gave me quite the air of an hidalgo. My one difficulty was with the stiff jack-boots upon which jangled my barbarously gaffed spurs. After months of freedom in pliant moccasins, my feet found this hard confinement barely endurable even when I was mounted.

In return for the numberless courtesies of Malgares, I was able to make part payment by practising gratis among the people. It was, at the same time, a most interesting experience to come into intimate contact with the population, from the _gachupines_, or Spaniards of Old Spain, and the native-born Spaniards, whom we call creoles, to the far more numerous _mestizos_, or mixed-bloods, and their half-brothers, the pueblo, or tame Indians.

One day I had gone up to see a patient at Atrisco, a little village next below Albuquerque. It was, as I remember, the seventh of March, exactly a month after I had left my comrades at the stockade in the valley. The Commandant, at whose house I was staying, had borrowed for me a Spanish grammar from Father Ambrosio, and I was deep in the verbs, when my host stepped into the room, with a bow and a sonorous introduction: "_Perdone, hermano!_ Present _usted_ Senor el Capitan Mun-go-meri-paike, your compatriot."

I started up, and found myself confronting--Pike!

He stared back at me, half in doubt that it could be I, so vast was the change in my appearance and health.

"John!" he exclaimed. "It cannot be!"

"Yet it is," I replied, aglow with delight.

There could be no mistaking him, if only that he still wore his scarlet fur-lined cap and blanket cloak,--though much of his dress was new, and his face presented far other than the ghastly, emaciated aspect it had worn at our parting.

But as I reached out to clasp his hand, he suddenly recalled our agreement not to recognize one another, and drew back with feigned hauteur. "Who are you, sir? I do not know you."

"'T is of no use, Montgomery!" I cried. "I cannot hide my friendship. I should call out to you though they had the garrotte at my neck. What is more, the secret is out. I have already confessed my connection with the expedition to Lieutenant Malgares, who, though a Spaniard, has proved himself a true friend. I could no longer endure the thought of concealment from him. It has not cost me his friendship; and I am prepared to risk the worst his superiors can inflict upon me."

"No, no, John!" he protested. "We shall all come through safely, and you shall win your lady."

"Ah! Alisanda! My thanks for the good wish. But you?" I demanded. "Are you and the men also prisoners in the hands of that capricious Governor?"

"Prisoners!" he repeated, dropping his hand on his sword-hilt. "Does this look like it? No! They lured us into Santa Fe with false promises.

But my men still carry their guns and ammunition. Let the tyrants so much as raise a finger against us, and we will flee to their enemies the Apaches, and lead the savages against their settlements!"

"We could do it!" I cried. "Yet first--"

"First you would go to Chihuahua; and so would I," he a.s.sented, his blue eyes twinkling. "I made a loud protest when this over-wise Governor said it was necessary for me to go south. But we are going as 'guests under constraint'--not as prisoners, please note, John. The addle-pated don did not know enough to send us packing the shortest way out of the country, to the Red River,--which, it seems, lies far to the eastward, in the Comanche nation. No! he must needs march us down through the heart of the Northern Provinces. Could we ask more?"

"Not if Salcedo sets you free."

"Sets me free? No less yourself, John!"

I shook my head dubiously. But at the moment there entered a Captain D'Almansa, whom I had met at Santa Fe, and who, I now learned, was conducting down the Lieutenant and his men to place them under the escort of Malgares. When Pike explained to him that I had been a member of the expedition, the old captain smiled knowingly. Few among the Spaniards had doubted my connection with the mad _Americanos_ after the party was brought in.

We left D'Almansa in the house, seated over a bottle of ardent spirits with my host, and went out to where the six privates who had come with the Lieutenant from the stockade were in waiting. I was rejoiced to see that, though still for the most part clad in their tatters, their rounding cheeks showed the welcome effects of Spanish hospitality, and that the ones worst frosted now hardly limped in their gait. Not one of them had been required to walk a mile since leaving the fort, horses having been provided them from the first.

It was no less affecting than amusing to see the manner in which, obedient to orders, they stared at me with an air of stolid indifference even when I came up to them with their Lieutenant. But the moment he had explained that all was discovered, they crowded about me with exclamations of joy. It was truly a happy meeting for us all, despite the uncertainty of what might befall us in the hands of the tyrannical Spanish authorities.

As soon as I had sketched my adventures, Pike, in turn, told theirs.

"For several days after you left," he began, "I spent the time in hunting, reading, and exploring the valley around the fort. But a fortnight ago, while out with Brown, we fell in with a dragoon and an Indian of the militia, who, after telling us of your arrival at Santa Fe, insisted upon following us to the fort. In the morning, after we had made them a few gifts, they started back to Santa Fe, from which place they had been sent out to spy upon us."

"True!" I broke in. "Allencaster must have suspected from the first that my party of hunters was no less than the American expedition. I have learned that Senor Lisa sent word from St. Louis of the expedition's plans, to the Spanish authorities in Texas. All the Northern Provinces have been on the lookout for us for months, and Malgares has told me that the real purpose of his great expedition was either to capture us or to turn us back."

"That I have myself learned," replied Pike. "Well, they have us now. May they have joy of their find! But to return. The same day that the spies left, Jackson and his party came in with Menaugh. But poor Sparks and Dougherty, alas! neither had been able to take a dozen steps, and the others could not bear them through those deep drifts."

"Good G.o.d!" I cried. "They left their comrades again, in that terrible valley, famished, crippled, sick! Had I but gone--!"

"No, John, they are not famished, nor are they sick. Jackson found them well nourished. The gangrene had not spread. They will recover. You yourself said they would recover if the disease did not spread in this time. Jackson restocked them with meat, and within three days after his return Meek and Miller volunteered for a second rescue-party. As their orders were to go first for Baroney and Smith and the horses, there can be no doubt that this time our poor lads will be brought in."

"Then they are not at the fort?" I asked.

"I cannot say. They had not yet come in when the Spanish dragoons came to lure us away. But you know the obstinacy and combativeness of Meek.

_He_ will bring them in. Yes, by now they must be over the mountains and on their way to Santa Fe, guided by the Spaniards left at the fort for that purpose. Allencaster has promised to send them after us as soon as they can march. By the way, he has complimented you with the return of your rifle and pistols. As I positively refused to be disarmed, the diplomatic supposition is that we need our weapons to provide against attacks of the Apaches."

"Your papers?" I inquired, "all those invaluable charts and journals?"

He gave me a rueful look. "The enemy have them trapped in my little paper trunk, most of them. When we first came into Santa Fe all the more valuable ones were concealed in the clothes of these lads." He shook his head sadly at the six privates. "But the over-hospitable ladies plied them so freely with wine and ardent spirits that I feared some of the papers might be lost during their tipsy antics. So I returned to the trunk all except your copy of my courses. Immediately afterwards the trunk was seized, and is now in the charge of our escort."

"They may be returned," I argued.

He shook his head.

"You say they lured you into Santa Fe?"

"Upon the report of his spies, Allencaster sent out a force of a hundred men, under pretence that the Yutah Indians were about to attack us.

They were extremely courteous, and invited me to come into Santa Fe, stating that the Governor wished to know our reasons for entering his territories. When I had expressed our strategic supposition that we were on the Red River, and they had explained that these were the waters of the Rio del Norte, I at once hauled down our flag and agreed to accompany them.

"As with yourself, Allencaster was at first exceedingly haughty to me.

But after I had expressed my opinion of their invasion of our territories, and stated that I had come in merely to be directed how to find the Red River, that my party might follow it down to Natchitoches, he mellowed exceedingly. I believe the old fox thought he was playing me a sly trick in thus sending us south through the heart of his country."

"He will be hoist by his own petard!" I cried. "Papers or no papers, Salcedo is bound to free you at least, and you have a fine memory. My fate will not affect the splendid advantages which will accrue to our country from this blunder of the dons."

"Your fate?" he demanded.

"I am now a spy confessed. But enough of that when we reach Chihuahua!

Until then we shall have no cause for complaint. We go under the escort of Malgares, than whom there is no truer gentleman under the sky."

Pike shook his head doubtfully.

But the next day I had the great pleasure of introducing him to Malgares, who promptly talked himself into the Lieutenant's good graces, and entertained us that evening by ordering a _fandango_ to be danced in our honor by the prettiest girls of the vicinity.

Of our southward journey, which we began on the ninth of March, I will mention only that the first stage alone carried us some three hundred and fifty miles down the valley of the Rio del Norte, to El Paso. The most prominent features of this trip were a notorious arid desert called the Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of the Dead Man, which we avoided by a long detour, and two ranges of mountains to the eastward of the river,--the glittering, snow-clad Sierra Blanca and the Sierra de los Organos,--in whose fastnesses lurk the murderous Apaches, said by Spaniards to be the most terrible of all Indians.

The second day south of El Paso we had to toil across a region of shifting sand hills similar to those at the west end of our pa.s.s through the Sangre de Cristo. The stop that evening was made at the Presidio of Carrazal, where, for the first time since our meetings with Governor Allencaster, we were received without the effusive hospitality to which we had become accustomed. When Malgares introduced us to the Commandant, the latter bowed with utmost coolness, and muttered in Spanish an ungracious statement to the effect that Malgares was welcome to his quarters, but that _los hereticos_ could lodge themselves, together with their privates of infantry, in the common hovel provided for travellers.

Malgares bowed his grandest. "_Perdone_, senor!" he replied. "I could not bring myself to trouble your hospitality. What is good enough for my friends is good enough for me."

Such was Malgares's stateliness of manner that the Commandant, although his superior officer, was bowing in most apologetic fashion before our friend had ceased speaking.

"_Perdone, hermano!_" he murmured. "I erred most deplorably in imagining that _los senores Americanos_ came as persons under constraint. _Con permiso_, I hasten to rectify my error by urging them to honor my humble abode with their presence."

"I fear that the Senor Commandant will have to excuse _los Americanos_,"

I said.