Confessions Of Con Cregan Part 52

I nodded a.s.sent.

"And understand what you hear?"

I nodded again.

"Listen to me, then, attentively, for I have but a short time to stay, and have much to tell you. And, first of all, do you wish to escape from hence?"

"Do I wish it!" cried I; and in the sudden burst, long dried-up sources of emotion opened out afresh, and the heavy tears rolled down my cheeks.

"Are you willing to incur the danger of attempting it?"

"Ay, this instant!"

"If so, the means await you. I want a letter conveyed to a certain person in the town of Guajuaqualla, which is about two hundred miles distant."

"In which direction?" asked I.

"You shall see the map for yourself; here it is," said she, giving me a small package which contained a map and a mariner's compa.s.s. "I only know that the path lies over the prairie and by the banks of a branch of the Red River. There are villages and farmhouses when you have reached that region."

"And how am I to do so, unmolested, Senhora? A foot-traveller on the prairie must be overtaken at once."

"You shall be well mounted on a mustang worth a thousand dollars; but ride him without spurring. If he bring you safe to Guajuaqualla he has paid his price." She then proceeded to a detail which showed how well and maturely every minute circ.u.mstance had been weighed and considered.

The greatest difficulty lay in the fact that no water was to be met with nearer than eighty miles, which distance I should be compelled to compa.s.s on the first day. If this were a serious obstacle on one side, on the other it relieved me of all apprehension of being captured after the first forty or fifty miles were accomplished, since my pursuers would scarcely venture farther.

The Senhora had provided for everything. My dress, which would have proclaimed me as a runaway "settler," was to be exchanged for the gay attire of a Mexican horse-dealer,--a green velvet jacket and hose, all slashed and decorated with jingling silver b.u.t.tons, pistols, sabre, and rifle to suit.

The mustang, whose saddle was to be fitted with the usual accompaniment of portmanteau and cloak, was also to have the leathern purse of the "craft," with its ma.s.sive silver lock, and a goodly ballast of doubloons within. Two days' provisions and a gourd of brandy, completed an equipment which to my eyes was more than the wealth of an empire.

"Are you content?" asked she, as she finished the catalogue.

I seized her hand, and kissed it with a warm devotion.

"Now for the reverse of the medal. You may be overtaken; pursuit is almost certain,--it may be successful; if so, you must tear the letter I shall give you to fragments so small that all detection of its contents may be impossible. Sell your life dearly; this I counsel you, since a horrible death would be reserved for you if taken prisoner. Above all, don't betray me."

"I swear it," said I, solemnly, as I held up my hand in evidence of the oath.

"Should you, however, escaping all peril, reach Guajuaqualla in safety, you will deliver this letter to the Senhor Estavan Olares, a well-known banker of that town. He will present you with any reward you think sufficient for your services, the peril of which cannot be estimated beforehand. This done,--and here, mark me! I expect your perfect fidelity,--all tie is severed between us. You are never to speak of me so long as I live; nor, if by any sun of Fortune we should chance to meet again in life, are you to recognize me. You need be at no loss for the reasons of this request: the position in which I am here placed--the ignominy of an unjust sentence, as great as the shame of the heaviest guilt--will tell you why I stipulate for this. Are we agreed?"

"We are. When do I set out?"

"To-morrow by daybreak; leave this a little before your usual time, pa.s.s out of the village, and, taking the path that skirts the beech wood, make for the Indian ground,--you know the spot. At the cedar-tree close to that you will find your horse all ready,--the letter is here." Now for the first time her voice trembled slightly, and for an instant or two she seemed irresolute. "My mind is sometimes so shaken by suffering," said she, "that I scarcely dare to trust its guidance; and even now I feel as if the confidence I am about to place in an utter stranger, in an--"

"Outcast, you would say," said I, finishing what she faltered at.

"Do not fear, then, one humbled as I have been can take offence at an epithet."

"Nor is it one such as I am who have the right to confer it," said she, wiping the heavy drops from her eyes. "Good-bye forever!--since, if you keep your pledge, we are never to meet again." She gave me her hand, which I kissed twice, and then, turning away, she pa.s.sed into the house; and before I even knew that she was gone, I was standing alone in the garden, wondering if what had just occurred could be real.

If my journey was not without incident and adventure, neither were they of a character which it is necessary I should inflict upon my reader, who doubtless ere this has felt all the wearisome monotony of prairie life, by reflection. Enough that I say, after an interesting mistake of the "trail" which led me above a hundred miles astray! I crossed the Conchos River within a week, and reached Chihuahua, a city of considerable size, and far more pretensions than any I had yet seen in the "Far West."

Built on the narrow gorge of two abrupt mountains, the little town consists of one great straggling street, which occupies each side of a torrent that descends in a great tumbling ma.s.s of foam and spray along its rocky course. It was the time of the monthly market, or fair, when I arrived, and the streets were crowded with peasants and muleteers in every imaginable costume. The houses were mostly built with projecting balconies, from which gay-colored carpets and bright draperies hung down, while female figures sat lounging and smoking their cigarettes above. The aspect of the place was at once picturesque and novel. Great wooden wagons of melons and cuc.u.mbers, nuts, casks of olive-oil and wine; bales of bright scarlet cloth, in the dye of which they excel; pottery ware; droves of mustangs, fresh caught and capering in all their native wildness; flocks of white goats from the Cerzo Gorde, whose wool is almost as fine as the Llama's; piles of firearms from Birmingham and Liege, around which groups of admiring Indians were always gathered; parroquets and scarlet jays, in cages; richly ornamented housings for mule teams; bra.s.s-mounted saddles and a ma.s.s of other articles littered and blocked up the way so that all pa.s.sage was extremely difficult.

Before I approached the city, I had been canva.s.sing with myself how best I might escape from the prying inquisitiveness to which every stranger is exposed on entering a new community. I might have spared myself the trouble, for I found that I was perfectly unnoticed in the motley throng with which I mingled.

My strong-boned, high-bred mustang, indeed, called forth many a compliment as I rode past; but none had any eye, nor even a word, for the rider. At last, as I was approaching the inn, I beheld a small knot of men whose dress and looks were not unfamiliar to me; and in a moment after, I remembered that they were the Yankee horse-dealers I had met with at Austin, some years before. As time had changed me far more than them, I trusted to escape recognition, not being by any means desirous of renewing the acquaintance. I ought to say that, besides my Mexican costume, I wore a very imposing pair of black moustaches and beard, the growth of two years at "La Noria," so that detection was not very easy.

While I was endeavoring to push my way between two huge hampers of tomatoes and lemons, one of this group, whom I at once recognized as Seth Chiseller, laid his hand on my beast's shoulder and said, in Spanish, "The mustang is for sale?"

"No, Senhor," said I, with a true Mexican flourish, "he and all mine stand at your disposal, but I would not sell him."

Not heeding much the hackneyed courtesy of my speech, he pa.s.sed his hands along the animal's legs, feeling his tendons and grasping his neat pasterns. Then, proceeding to the hocks, he examined them carefully; after which he stepped a pace or two backwards, the better to survey him, when he said, "Move him along in a gentle trot."

"Excuse me, Senhor, I came here to buy, not to sell. This animal I do not mean to part with."

"Not if I were to offer you five hundred dollars?" said he, still staring at the beast.

"Not if you were to say a thousand, Senhor," said I, haughtily; "and now pray let me pa.s.s into the court, for we are both in need of refreshment."

"He an't no Mexican, that 'ere chap," whispered one of the group to Chiseller.

"He sits more like a Texan," muttered another.

"He'll be the devil, or a Choctaw outright, but Seth will have his beast out of him," said another, with a laugh; and with this the group opened to leave me a free pa.s.sage into the inn-yard.

All the easy a.s.surance I could put on did not convince myself that my fears were not written in my face as I rode forward. To be sure, I did swagger to the top of my bent; and as I flung myself from the saddle, I made my rifle, my bra.s.s scabbard, my sabretache, and my spurs perform a crash that drew many a dark eye to the windows, and set many a fan fluttering in attractive coquetry.

"What a handsome Caballero! how graceful and well-looking!" I thought I could read in their flashing glances; and how pleasant was such an imaginary _amende_ for the neglect I had suffered hitherto.

Having commended my beast to the hands of the ostler, I entered the inn with all the swaggering a.s.surance of my supposed calling, but, in good earnest, with anything but an easy heart at the vicinity of Seth and his followers. The public room into which I pa.s.sed was crowded with the dealers of the fair in busy and noisy discussion of their several bargains; and had I been perfectly free of all personal anxieties, the study of their various countenances, costumes, and manners had been most amusing, combining as they did every strange nationality,--from the pale-faced, hatchet-featured New Englander to the full-eyed, swarthy descendant of old Spain. The mongrel Frenchman of New Orleans, with the half-breed of the prairies, more savage in feature than the p.a.w.nee himself, the shining negro, the sallow Yankee, the Jew from the Havannah, and the buccaneer-like sailor who commanded his sloop and accompanied him as a species of body-guard,--were all studies in their way and full of subject for after-thought.

In this motley a.s.semblage it may easily be conceived that I mingled unnoticed, and sat down to my mess of "frijoles with garlic" without even a pa.s.sing observation. As I ate on, however, I was far from pleased by remarking that Seth and another had taken their seats at a table right opposite, and kept their eyes full on me with what in better society had been a most impudent stare. I affected not to perceive this, and even treated myself to a flask of French wine, with the air of a man revelling in undisturbed enjoyment. But all the rich bouquet, all the delicious flavor, were lost upon me; the sense of some impending danger overpowered all else; and let me look which way I would, Seth and his buff-leather jacket, his high boots, immense spurs, and enormous horse-pistols rose up before me like a vision.

I read in the changeful expression of his features the struggle between doubt and conviction as to whether he had seen me before. I saw what was pa.s.sing in his mind, and I tried a thousand little arts and devices to mystify him. If I drank my wine, I always threw out the last drops of each gla.s.s upon the floor; when I smoked, I rolled my cigar between my palms, and patted and squeezed it in genuine Mexican fashion. I turned up the points of my moustache like a true hidalgo, and played Spaniard to the very top of my bent.

Not only did these airs seem not to throw him off the scent, but I remarked that he eyed me more suspiciously, and often conversed in whispers with his companion. My anxiety had now increased to a sense of fever, and I saw that if nothing else should do so, agitation alone would betray me. I accordingly arose, and called the waiter to show me to a room.

It was not without difficulty that one could be had, and that was a miserable little cell, whitewashed, and with no other furniture than a mattress and two chairs. At least, however, I was alone; I was relieved from the basilisk glances of that confounded horse-dealer, and I threw myself down on my mattress in comparative ease of mind, when suddenly I heard a smart tap at the door, and a voice called out, with a very Yankee accent, "I say, friend, I want a word with you."

I replied, in Spanish, that if any one wanted me, they must wait till I had taken my "siesta."

"Take your siesta another time, and open your door at once; or mayhap I 'll do it myself!"

"Well, sir," said I, as I threw it open, and feigning a look of angry indignation, the better to conceal my fear, "what is so very urgently the matter that a traveller cannot take his rest, without being disturbed in this fashion?"

"Hoity-toity! what a pucker you're in, boy!" said he, shutting the door behind him; "and we old friends too!"

"When or where have we ever met before?" asked I, boldly.

"For the 'where,'--it was up at Austin, in Texas; for the 'when,'--something like three years bygone."