Gustave Aimard - The Treasure of Pearls - A Romance of Adventures in California

Instead of tugging at it with greedy relish to feast on the treasure it doubtlessly muffled, Benito drew back his hands and stared with worse tribulation than ever.

A cache – yes! A full one – who knew?

Long ago it might have been pillaged. With but one movement between him and the verification or annihilation of his hopes the Mexican hesitated. He was frightened.

His labour under difficulties had been so great, he had cherished so many dreams and nursed so many chimeras, that he instinctively dreaded the seeing them swiftly to flee, and leave him falling from his crumbling anticipations into the frightful reality that closed in upon him with inexorable jaws.

In the end, determined to do or die, for to that it had truly come, Benito's trembling hands buried themselves in the buffalo robe, clutched it irresistibly and hauled it up into his palpitating bosom. His haggard eyes swam with joyful gush of many tears, so that he could not see the sky to which he had raised them in gratitude.

Benito had fallen on a hunter's and trapper's store. Not only were there traps and springes of several sorts, weapons, powder horns, bullet bags, shot moulds, leaden bars, horse caparisons, hide for lassoes, but eatables in hermetically sealed tins of modern make, not then familiar to Mexicans, and liquor in bottles protected by homemade wicker and leather plaiting.

He was stretching out his hands ravenously to the bottles and a role of jerked beef, when it seemed to him that the voice of the Unseen prompted him with "God! Thank God!" and repeating the words in a voice unintelligible from stifling emotions, he fairly swooned across the pit as if to defend it with his poor, worn, hard-tried body.

His face was serene when he unclosed his eyes anew. Soberly, by a great control, he ate of some tinned meat and the crackers and swallowed as slowly some cognac. The latter filled him with fire, and he could have leaped into a treetop and crowed defiance to the vultures which were sailing overhead as if baulked of their prey.

In that momentary calmness, he felt so strong and so rejoiced in his self-command that his spirit seemed to spurn its casket. But instantly, with the blood careering anew, the wound in his shoulder smarted furiously, and all down that arm and up to his neck he felt a strange and novel sensation; it was as if molten lead was in the veins, scorching and making heavy the limb.

"The arrow! I am poisoned!" he muttered. "Oh, is this windfall come merely to embitter my death?"

That taste of liquor made his mouth water, and there was suggested to him by the sight of the brandy bottle that here was the remedy which the wisest frontiersman and medicine man would have prescribed. He put the cognac to his lips, and emptied the bottle.

Almost instantly he felt an aching in every pore away and beyond that of the wound; his brain appeared to swell to bursting its cell, and howling himself hoarse, he thought – though, in reality, his inarticulate cries were strangled in his throat – he rolled upon the ground, too weak to dance upon his feet, as he imagined he was doing.

This intoxication left him abruptly, and he fell insensible. But for his stertorous breathing, which finally became regular and gentle, he was as a corpse beside the greedy grave.

He woke up, lame in every bone, but clear-eyed, and the ringing in his head abated. Either the remedy had succeeded, or constitution, for he was able to set about his task with surprising vigour.

Thereupon, he chose out of the store a pair of revolvers, their cartridges in quantity, two powder horns and bullets to fit the finest rifle, a bowie knife and a cutlass, and a length of leather thong to make a lasso, and a spade for the grave of don José, filled a game bag with matches in metal boxes, sewing materials, and other odds and ends for the traveller. Tobacco, too, he took, and was looking for paper to make cigarettes, when a small book met his eyes.

It was stamped in gold, "London, Liverpool, and West State of Mexico Agnas Caparrosas Mining Company." It was an account book of the company – one of those enterprises to which, he had heard, his father had lent a favourable attention. A pencil was attached to the book; he wrote on a blank page the list of all the articles he took, signing:

"Require the payment of me. – I, BENITO VÁZQUEZ DE BUSTAMENTE."

As quickly as he could he replaced what he did not wish to be burdened with, made the concealment good, and swept the grass with two buffalo skins, which he had also taken for clothing. This duty of a thankful and honourable man being accomplished, he darted back to where he had left Dolores with a free and easy movement, of which he had not believed himself ever again to be capable only a short time before.

He was amazed that a little food and spirit had restored him, and began to fear the reaction.

His wits remained clear. He remembered very distinctly indeed his confrontation of the savage who had been blasted as by a heavenly thunderbolt. He was not surprised when he found that redskin where he had rolled him. But what was his pain when he saw no trace of Dolores but the same fragment of her dress which Gladsden was, soon after, also to behold!

Sounds in the chaparral which reminded him of the four-footed scavengers in rivalry of the carrion birds that circled above, urged him to ply the spade, and he piously laid don José to his final rest.

Then, his rifle loaded, his frame fortified by the refreshment which he took at intervals on his march, he went forward in the trail which the abductor of the Mexican's daughter had been unable, so burdened, to avoid making manifest, all his emotions, even gratitude to the chief, set aside for the desire of vengeance on the remorseless foes to whom he owed so many and distressful losses, and on whom he had not yet been enabled to inflict any reprisal.

"Let me but overtake him, or them," thought he, "before the tempest obliterates this track with its deluge, and I will flesh this sword, or essay this new rifle on his vile carcass!"

Gladsden was groping along when he perceived the thorn thicket changing into a prairie, only slightly interspersed with scrub. At the same time, though underfoot, the scene cleared, the indications of atmospheric perturbation increased in number and in ominous importance. Already the material man triumphed over the romantic one, and our Englishman thought considerably better of a solid refuge from the tempest than to come up with the abductor of the Mexican girl. Spite of its sinister aspect, therefore, his eyes were delighted when he saw, outlined against the northeastern sky, sullenly blackening, a curiously shaped tower. In a civilised country he would have ignobly supposed it a factory shaft.

He knew nothing whatever about this pillar of sunbaked bricks, some fifty feet in altitude, and, we repeat, cared nothing for the monument from any point of view but its qualities as a shelter.

Nevertheless, an archaeologist would have given a fortune to have studied this Nameless Tower, for the aboriginal held it too sacred for mention in common parlance. It was slightly pyramidal; the north side, not quite the true meridian, presented a right angle, presumably to breast and divide the wind of winter prevalent at its erection, while the rest was rounded trimly. The excellence of the work was better shown in the cement, not mud, or ground gypsum, having resisted the weather and particularly the sandy winds themselves, though they had worn the dobies ( adobes , sun dried bricks) away deeply in places, without making airholes through. There was nothing like a window or depression save these natural pits, until the view reached the ragged top, where a sort of lantern or cupola, so far as a few vestiges indicated, had once crowned the edifice; there the floor of this disappeared chamber had become the roof, and an orifice, perhaps a loophole enlarged by rot, yawned like a deep set eye beside an arm of metal terminating in a hook. Presumably the column was a priest's watchtower, where a sacred fire was preserved in peace times to imitate the sun. It is known, the ancient Mexicans adored the sun. A beacon, too, in war times, for the fire and smoke signal code of the American Indians is too complete to have been the invention of yesterday. The entrance at the base cut in the rock utilised for nearly all the foundation. Once blocked up, the watcher, remote from lances, slingshots, and bowshots, could count the besiegers on this plain, and telegraph their number to his friends at a distance. The metal arm may have suspended a pulley block and rope by which provisions and even an assistant could be hauled up to him.