Confessions Of Con Cregan Part 50

Our party consisted of only four and myself; and standing, as we did, in a grove of nut-trees, were perfectly concealed from view: no sense of danger then interfered with our enjoyment of the prospect; we gazed calmly on the scene on which we looked.

"Senhor Conde," whispered one of my party, a swarthy Spaniard from the Basque, "what a foray we might make yonder! Their young men are absent; they could make no defence. Caramba! it would be rare sport."

"Conde mio!" cried a Mexican, who had once been a horse-dealer, "I see mustangs yonder worth five hundred dollars, if they are worth a cent; let us have a dash forward and carry them off."

"There is gold in that village," muttered an old Ranchero, with a white moustache; "I see sifting-sieves drying beside the stream."

And so, thought I to myself, these are the a.s.sociates who, a moment back, I dreamed were sharing my thoughts, and whose hearts, I fancied, were overflowing with softest emotions. One, indeed, had not p.r.o.nounced, and to him I turned in hope. He was a dark-eyed, sharp-featured Breton.

"And you, Claude," said I, "what are your thoughts on this matter?"

"I leave all in the hands of my captain," said he, saluting in military fashion; "but if there be a pillage, I claim the woman that is sitting on the rock yonder, with a yellow girdle round her, as mine."

I turned away in utter disappointment. The robber-spirit was the only one I had evoked, and I grew sick at heart to think of it. How is it that, in certain moods of mind, the vices we are conversant with a.s.sume a double coa.r.s.eness, and that we feel repugnance to what daily habit had seemed to have inured us?

"Is it to be, or not?" growled the Spaniard, who, having tightened his girths and examined the lock of his rifle, now stood in somewhat patient anxiety.

"Since when have we become banditti," said I, insultingly, "that we are to attack and pillage helpless women and children? Are these the lessons Halkett has taught us? Back to the camp. Let us have no more of such counsels."

"We meet nothing but scoffs and jibes when we return empty-handed,"

muttered the Spaniard. "It is seldom such an opportunity offers of a heavy booty."

"Right-about," said I, imperiously, not caring to risk my ascendency by debating the question further. They obeyed without a word; but it was easy to see that the spirit of mutiny was but sleeping. For some miles of the way a dreary silence pervaded the party. I tried all in my power to bring back our old good understanding, and erase the memory of the late altercation; but even my friend Narvasque held aloof, and seemed to side with the others. I was vexed and irritated to a degree the amount of the incident was far from warranting; nor was the fact that we were returning without any success without its influence. Moody and sad, I rode along at their head, not making any further effort to renew their confidence, when suddenly a spotted buck started from the shelter of a prairie roll, and took his way across the plain. To unsling my rifle and fire at him was the work of half a minute. My shot missed; and I heard, or thought I heard, a burst of contemptuous laughter behind me. Without turning my head, I spurred my horse to a sharp gallop, and proceeded to reload my rifle as I went. The buck had, however, got a "long start"

of me; and although my mustang had both speed and endurance, I soon saw that the chase would prove unrewarding; and, after a hot pursuit of half a mile, I pulled up and wheeled about. Where was my party? Not a trace of them was to be seen. I rode up a little slope of the prairie, and then, at a great way off, I could descry their figures as with furious speed they were hastening back in the direction of the Camanche village.

I cannot express the bitterness of the feeling that came over me.

It was no longer the sense of outraged humanity which filled my heart.

Selfishness usurped the ground altogether, and it was the injured honor of a leader whose orders had been despised. It was the affront to my authority wounded me so deeply. Then I fancied to myself their triumphant return to the camp, laden with the spoils of victory, and full of heroic stories of their own deeds; while I, the captain of the band, should have nothing to contribute but a lame narrative of misplaced compa.s.sion, which some might call by even a harsher name. Alas for weak principle! I wished myself back at their head a hundred times over. There was no atrocity that, for a minute or two, I did not feel myself capable of; I really believe that if any other course were open to me, I had never turned my steps back toward the camp. Crest-fallen and sad indeed was I as I rode forward,--now cursing the insubordinate rabble that deserted me; now inveighing against my own silly efforts to change the ferocious instincts of such natures. In my bitterness of spirit I attributed all to my foolish ambition of being "the gentleman."

What business had such a character there? or what possible link could bind him to such companionship? In my discontent, too, I fancied that these "gentlemen" traits were like studding-sails, only available in fine weather and with a fair wind, but that for the storms and squalls of life such fine-spun canvas was altogether unsuited. Is it needful I should say that I lived to discover this to be an error?

To reach the camp ere nightfall, I was obliged to ride fast, and the quick stride of my "half-breed" did more to rally my spirits than all my philosophizings.

The slight breeze of sunset was blowing over the prairie, when I came in sight of the skirting of nut-wood which sheltered the camp to the "south'ard." It was like home, somehow, that spot. The return to it each evening had given it that character, and one's instincts are invariably at work to make subst.i.tutes for all the "prestiges" that tell of family and friends. I experienced the feeling strongly now, as I entered the wood and spurred my nag onward, impatient to catch a glimpse at the watch-fires. As I issued from the copse, and looked up towards the little table-land where the camp used to stand, I saw nothing that spoke of my friends. There were no fires; not a figure moved on the spot. I pressed eagerly forward to ascertain the reason, my mind full of its own explanation of the fact, in which, I own it, fears were already blending. Perhaps they had removed somewhat higher up the stream; perhaps the Camanches had been there, and a battle had been fought; perhaps--But why continue? Already I stood upon the spreading surface of tableland, and was nearing the spot where all our huts were built, and now a deep, booming noise filled my ears,--a hollow, cavernous sound, like the sea surging within some rocky cave. I listened; it grew fuller and louder, or seemed to do so, and I could mark sounds that resembled the crashing of timber and the splintering of rocks.

My suspense had now risen to torture, and my poor mustang, equally frightened as myself, refused to move a step, but stood with his ears flattened back, fore-legs extended, and protruded nostril, sniffing, in a very paroxysm of fright.

I dismounted, and, fastening his head to his fore-leg, in Mexican fashion, advanced on foot. Each step I made brought me nearer to the sounds, which now I perceived were those of a fast-rolling river. A horrid dread shot through my heart, my senses reeled as it struck me; but with an effort I sprang forward, and there, deep below me, in a boiling ocean of foam, rolled the river along the channel which we had succeeded in damming up, on the mountain side, and in whose dry bed all our labors had been followed. In an instant the whole truth revealed itself before me: the stream, swollen by the rain falling in the distant mountains, had overborne the barrier, and, descending with all its force, had carried away village, mines, and every trace of the ill-fated "Expedition." The very trees that grew along the banks were at first undermined, and then swept away, and might be seen waving their great branches above the flood, and then disappearing forever, like gigantic figures struggling in the agony of drowning. The rude smelting-house, built of heavy stones and ma.s.ses of rock, had been carried down with the rest. Trees whose huge size attested ages of growth reeled with the shock that shook the earth beside them, and seemed to tremble at their own coming destiny.

The inundation continued to increase at each instant, and more than once the "yellowest" waves compelled me to retire. This it was which first led me to despair of my poor comrades, since I inferred that the torrent had burst its barrier only a short s.p.a.ce before my arrival; and as the sunset was the hour when all the gold discovered during the day was washed, before being deposited in the smelting-house, I conjectured that my companions were overtaken at that moment by the descending flood, and that none had escaped destruction.

However the sad event took place, I never saw any of them after; and although I tracked the stream for miles, and spent the entire of two days in search of them, I did not discover one trace of the luckless expedition. So changed had everything become--such a terrible alteration had the scene undergone--that whenever I awoke from a sleep, short and broken as my feverish thoughts would make it, it was with difficulty I could believe that this was once the "Camp;" that where that swollen and angry torrent rolled, had been the dry, gravelly bed where joyous parties labored; that beneath those cedars, where now the young alligator stirred the muddy slime, we used to sit and chat in pleasant companionship; that human joys and pa.s.sions and hopes once lived and flourished in that little s.p.a.ce where ruin and desolation had now set their marks, and where the weariest traveller would not linger, so sorrow-struck and sad was every feature of the scene.

Poor Halkett was uppermost in my thoughts,--his remembrance of his old mother, his plans for her future happiness and comfort, formed, doubtless, many a long year before, and only realized to be dashed forever! How many a wanderer and outcast, doubtless, like him, have sunk into unhonored graves in far-away lands, and of whom no trace exists, and who are cla.s.sed among the worthless and the heartless of their families; and yet, if we had record of them, we might learn, perhaps, how thoughts of home--of some dear mother, of some kind sister, of some brother who had been more than father--had spirited them on to deeds of daring and privation, and how, in all the terrible conflict of danger in which their days were spent, one bright hope, of returning home at last, glittered like a light-ship on a lonely sea, and shed a radiance when all around was dark and dreary.

The third day broke, and still found me lingering beside the fatal torrent, not only without meeting with any of my former comrades, but even of that party who had returned to the Indian village not one came back. In humble imitation of prairie habit, I erected a little cross on the spot, and with my penknife inscribed poor Halkett's name. This done, I led my horse slowly away through the tangled underwood till I reached the open plain, then I struck out in a gallop, and rode in the direction where the sun was setting.

The mere detail of personal adventures, in which the traits of character or the ever-varying aspects of human nature find no place, must always prove wearisome. The most "hair-breadth 'scapes" require for their interest the play of pa.s.sions and emotions; and in this wise the perils of the lonely traveller amid the deserts of the Far West could not vie in interest with the slightest incident of domestic life, wherein human cares and hopes and joys are mingled up.

I will not longer trespa.s.s on the indulgence of any one who has accompanied me so far, by lingering over the accidents of my prairie life, nor tell by what chances I escaped death in some of its most appalling forms. The "Choctaw," the jaguar, the spotted leopard of the jungle, the cayman of the sand lakes, had each in turn marked me for its prey, and yet, preserved from every peril, I succeeded in reaching the little village of "La Noria," or the "Well," which occupies one of the opening gorges of the Rocky Mountains, at the outskirts of which some of the inhabitants found me asleep, with clothing reduced to very rags, nothing remaining of all my equipment save my rifle and a little canvas pouch of ammunition.

My entertainers were miners, whose extreme poverty and privation would have been inexplicable, had I not learned that the settlement was formed exclusively of convicts, who had either been pardoned during the term of their sentence, or, having completed their time, preferred pa.s.sing the remainder of their lives in exile. As a "billet of conduct" was necessary to all who settled at the village, the inhabitants, with a very few exceptions, were peaceable, quiet, and inoffensive; and of the less well disposed, a rigidly severe police took the most effective charge.

Had there been any way of disposing of me, I should not have been suffered to remain; but as there was no "parish" to which they could "send me on," nor any distinct fund upon which to charge me, I was retained in a spirit of rude compa.s.sion, for which, had it even been ruder, I had been grateful. The "Gobernador" of the settlement was an old Mexican officer of Santa Anna's staff called Salezar, and whose "promotion" was a kind of penalty imposed upon him for his robberies and extortions in the commissariat of the army. He was not altogether unworthy of the trust, since it was a.s.serted that there never was a convict vice nor iniquity in which he was not thoroughly versed, nor could any scheme be hatched, the clew to which his dark ingenuity could not discover.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 414-69]

I was summoned before him on the day of my arrival, and certainly a greater contrast could not have been desired than was the bravery of his costume to the rags of mine. A Spanish hat and feathers, such as is only seen upon the stage, surmounted his great red and carbuncled face; a pair of fiery red moustaches, twisted into two complete circles, with a tail out of them like an eccentric "Q;" a sky-blue jacket covered with silver b.u.t.tons; tight pantaloons of the same color; and Hessian boots,--made up the chief details of a figure whose unwieldy size the tightness of the dress did not by any means set off to advantage. He wore besides a quant.i.ty of daggers, pistols, and stilettos suspended around his person, and a huge Barcelona blade hung by two silver chains from his side, the rattle and jingle of which, as he spoke, appeared to give him the most lively pleasure. I was ordered to stand before a table at which he sat, with a kind of secretary at his side, while he interrogated me as to who I was, whence I came, the object of my journey, and so forth. My account of myself was given in the very briefest way I could devise,--totally devoid of all coloring or exaggeration, and, _for me_, with a most singular avoidance of the romantic; and yet, to my utter discomfiture, from the very announcement of my name, down to the last incident of my journey, he characterized every statement by the very short and emphatic word "a lie," desiring the secretary to record the same in his "Ledger," as his own firm conviction; "and add," said he, solemnly, "that the fellow is a spy from the States of North America,--that he probably belonged to some exploring party into our frontier,--and that he will most certainly be hanged whenever the smallest offence is proved against him." These benign words were most royally spoken, and I made my acknowledgments for them by taking off my tattered and greasy cap and, with a most urbane bow, wishing him health and happiness for half a century to come, to p.r.o.nounce similar blessings upon many others.

The bystanders did look, I confess, somewhat terrified at my impromptu courtesy; but Salezar, upon whom my rags, and my grotesque appearance generally, produced a rather amusing effect, laughed heartily, and bade them give me something to eat. The order, simple and intelligible as it was, at least to me, seemed to evoke the strangest signs of surprise and astonishment, and not unreasonably; for, as I afterwards came to know, no Lazarus eat of the crumbs which fell from this "rich man's table,"

while from the poor herd of the settlers not a crust nor a parched pea could be expected, as they were fed by rations so scantily doled out as barely to support life. The order to feed me was therefore issued pretty much in the same spirit which made Marie Antoinette recommend the starving people to eat "brioche." As no one was to be found, however, bold enough to express a doubt as to the facility of the measure, I was led away in silence.

A very animated little discussion arose in the street as to what I was to get, where to have it, and who to give it,--difficulties which none seemed able to solve by any explanation save the usual Mexican one of "Quien sabe?" or "Who knows?"--having uttered which in accents of very convincing embarra.s.sment, each went his way, leaving me standing with an old mule-driver, the only one who had not delivered himself of this speech.

Now, it chanced that the well from which the village derived its name of "La Noria" had originally been worked by two mules, who having died off, their places were supplied by two miserable a.s.ses of the prairie breed,--creatures not much bigger than sheep, and scarcely stronger.

These wretched beasts had been for years past stimulated to their daily labor by the a.s.siduous persecutions of a fierce English bull-dog, who with bark and bite made their lives a very pretty martyrdom. Either worn-out by his unremitting exertions, or that a.s.ses' flesh (of which, from their hocks and hind quarters generally, he freely partook) disagreed with him, the animal sickened and died, leaving the poor Mulero to his own unaided devices to drive the donkeys round the charmed circle. I believe that he did all that mere man was capable of,--in fact, in everything save using his teeth he imitated closely the practices of the ill.u.s.trious defunct. But a.s.ses though they were, they soon discovered that the "great motive principle" was wanting, and betook themselves to a far easier and more congenial mode of doing the day's work.

Now, the Mulero was a man of thought and reflection, and it occurred to him that if a.s.ses, however inadequately, could yet, in some sort, perform the functions of mules, there was no reason why a man, even a very poor-looking and ragged one, should not replace a bull-dog. There was that hungry, half-starved look about me, too, that vouched my temper would not be of the sweetest; and he eyed me with the glance of a connoisseur. At last Mijo--for such was he called--made the proposal to me in all form, explaining that my predecessor had had his rations allowed him like a colonist, and was ent.i.tled to sleep under cover at the house of his former mistress, La Senhora Dias, "who," he added, with a sly wink, "was my countrywoman." Well knowing a Mexican never boggles at a lie, no matter how broad and palpable, I took no notice of what I at once concluded to be impossible, but proceeded to inquire as to the precise functions I might be expected to perform in my canine capacity.

"A mere nothing," said he, with a shrug of his shoulders; "we harness the beasts at daybreak,--say three o'clock; by eight the water is all up; then you can sleep or amuse yourself till four of the afternoon, when the Commandante Salezar likes to have cool water for his bath,--that only takes an hour; then you are free again till night closes in."

"And what then?" asked I, impatiently.

"You have your rounds at night."

"My rounds! where, and what for?"

"Against the prairie wolves, that now and then are daring enough to come down into the very settlement, and carry off kids and lambs,--ay, and sometimes don't stop there."

He winked with a terrible significance at the last words.

"So, then, I am not only to bark at the a.s.ses all day, but I am to bay the wolves by night?" said I, half indignantly.

"Lupo did it," responded he, with a nod.

"_He_ was a dog, Senhor Mijo," said I.

"Ah, that he was!" added he, in a tone very different from my remark, accompanying it with a most disparaging glance at my ragged habiliments.

I read the whole meaning of the look at once, and hung my head, abashed at the disparaging comparison.

He waited patiently for my reply, and, perceiving that I was still silent, he said, "Well, is it a bargain?"

"Agreed," said I, with a sigh; and wondering if Fortune had yet any lower depths in store for me, I followed him to his hut. Mijo proceeded to acquaint me with all the details of my office, and also certain peculiarities of the two beasts for whose especial misery I was engaged.

If compa.s.sion could have entered into my nature, it might have moved me at sight of them. Their haunches and hocks were notched and scored with the marks of teeth, while their tails were a series of round b.a.l.l.s, like certain old-fashioned bell-ropes, the result of days of suffering.

"I am so accustomed to the name, I must call you 'Lupo,'" said Mijo; "you have no objection?"

"Not in the least," said I; "if a 'dog in office,' why not a dog in name?"

That same day I was conducted to the "Tienda del Gato," the shop of "The Cat," at the sign of which animal La Senhora Dias resided. It was a small cottage at the very extremity of the village, in a somewhat pretty garden; and here a kind of canteen was held, at which the settlers procured cigars, brandy, and other like luxuries, in exchange for their "tickets of labor."