The Treasure of Pearls 9 – Wraxall · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Treasure of Pearls 9The Way Layers
18
Literature · Romance
The Treasure of Pearls 9
The Way Layers
WraxallEnglish
"What do I say to that offer?" returned Gladsden; "That it is a queer one, not to say a mad one! Señor, I am morally certain that you would lose your ship."
"You mean, you refuse," triumphantly, whilst the auditors smiled flatteringly on their leader for having "bluffed" the foreigner.
"Oh, no, since you insist on it," replied the latter, coldly, though he felt his heart contract within him; "but since I have set out to show I can play cards, I'll sell you the present turn up for ten thousand!"
"Don't! Don't do anything of the sort!" interrupted the host, turning pale. "I'll give you fifteen thousand for it myself!"
"Thank you; but now, since an outsider has intervened, I must stick to it myself."
"You are very right," remarked Captain Matasiete, with a scowl and an angry glance at the banker; "for it is the right one."
Gladsden had tossed the card down without looking at it.
"Cinco de Basto!" exclaimed all the lookers-on in the one voice. "Prodigious! What a splendid game!"
"You were right, right along, about your luck--at cards!" observed don Aníbal, with the most genial smile he could beam with. "The Little Joker is yours."
Gladsden had truly won, for there was the requisite card before him. He had been inwardly persuaded when he vaunted so boldly that he was bound to lose, and had only accepted his mortal enemy's challenge out of recklessness. The emotion he experienced in payment of his false glory was so deep for a couple of moments that he was like one stunned, and stared, still, with no possibility to get out a word.
In that brief interval the banker had conferred with the bandit-gambler, and to some purpose, moreover, for the latter loudly set to felicitating the Englishman on his continued good fortune; and, as at the end of his speech don Stefano put before him the corner of a sheet of paper, on which he had hastily written some lines, he went on to say:
"Gaming debts must be settled in four-and-twenty hours. Here is the transfer of my property in the Chilian goleta, the Little Joker, as she floats at this moment, with all she holds, in consideration of the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, which I hereby acknowledge, before all this honourable company, to have received!"
As Gladsden, from the tone and the railing glances of more than one hearer of this pretty little presentation speech, conceived no doubt whatever that he would never be let set foot on the deck of the Burlonilla, even if he reached Guaymas intact, he made no to-do about accepting the paper, and merely faltered a simple remonstrance at what he had said being taken too seriously.
"Oh, don't be scrupulous," said don Stefano, with a kind of pride in his friend, "the sum which our Chilian gentleman has lost against you, though apparently no joking matter, is nothing to him in reality. I know something of his pecuniary standing, and I assure you, if he will pardon the breach of banking confidence, that don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro y Pizarro de Cortes has not suffered the least injury in purse!"
He hardly had the title pat himself, but nobody noticed the error, or cared to correct it.
It was, perhaps, pardonable in the loser, after all the fine words, to be glum, but a mournfulness infested the entire assembly, and the few gentlemen whom Gladsden charitably looked upon as innocent neighbours, merchants, or planters, oozed away gradually. Then the remainder, in more probability the allies or sworn adherents of the salteador leader, went forth in a mass.
The banker offered to house the English guest till morning, and he pretended to accept the offer, which had the result of precipitating the farewell of don Aníbal, alias Matasiete. Thereupon, alone with don Stefano, the Englishman refused a nightcap of French brandy, and as his servant, a man engaged at Guaymas, had entered to receive his orders for the night, he seemed suddenly to have gone right round to the other point of the compass, and said resolutely:
"Ruben, we are going at once back to town. While I come down and wait at the gate, bring the mules!"
Don Stefano began a courteous remonstrance, but the Englishman, after having stood undaunted among a score of bandits, was not going to be prevailed on by one single opponent. So he smiled knowingly, and replied,
"I never sleep in the house of a friend, or in a strange bed. I have infallibly the nightmare--one of those bad sleeps, my dear banker, when a man fires off his revolver, and lays about him with the leg of a table so as to inflict damages that would make your quickest accountant sit up overnight to reckon. You had better let me go."
Don Stefano still mumbled something.
"Perhaps I shall overtake our dear don Aníbal on the road, and if we do meet the chances are that the time will be short for the rest of the way to him, for I want to make myself very agreeable to your honourable friend."
There was a mighty muster of servants, though it was better than three in the morning, at the door, and Gladsden who saw that the two mules were coming round in the courtyard, in charge of his faithful man, seriously contemplated seizing don Stefano by the collar and holding him as a buckler, whilst he cowed the domestics with his revolver and rushed for the saddle. But his host made no sign, and so the Englishman mounted and rode out into the road without any bar.
He reasoned, therefore, that he would be attacked on the highway by the bandits on their return to cut his throat in the villa, since don Stefano's servitors were above the business.
Hence he was rather relieved than startled, about an hour before sunrise, when he heard a couple of gunshots not far ahead of him and his man. The latter was so frightened, or so much of an accomplice in the ambush, that he belabored his mule, turned and vanished in the darkness, increasing his speed with a shout of terror as there rushed after him a horseman who had just passed Gladsden with the dizzy rapidity of a meteor, screaming, "Muerte, hombre--murder ahead man!"
Pretty well on the alert, and his eyes quite accustomed to the darkness, to say nothing of the night breeze off the sea having blown away the last trace of the long stay in the heated room, Gladsden divined that the fugitive had been mistaken for himself, and had been fired upon by his own chosen assassins.
There was a clump of trees ahead, from around which the fleeing cavalier had come. On the instant, Gladsden imagined a trick. He flung himself off his mule, to whose flank he applied a stroke of his whip, which started it off not leisurely, and lay down, half across the road. He had his revolver ready in his hand. There was a yellow stripe in his riding cloak, which made him tolerably distinguishable in the gloom.
Way layers have good eyes. Two men, advancing on foot, speedily spied this stumbling block, and were so flattered by that evidence, as they conceived it, to the goodness of their aim, that they forbore to delay to recharge their guns which they carried easily "at the trail." One of them was more eager than the other to examine the prey, and threw himself before the second. Gladsden judged this an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one bullet, on the expectation of the missile perforating the foremost and then burying itself in his comrade. He waited only long enough to see his teeth gleaming in a savage and gleeful smile, and pulled the trigger.
The robber uttered a scream of pain and surprise, and fell back upon his mate, who instinctively pushed him aside so that he measured his length in the deep water cart furrows. The other, paralysed with fear, was not at all disenchanted by seeing the supposed victim of their double shots rise and present the revolver of which one chamber had furnished a quietus to his friend, whilst he said, having seen the man's face in the flash--
"Good morning, Master Ignacio, otherwise the lieutenant of our dear acquaintance, don String of names, chief of the bandoleros, and skipper of the Little Joker. If you will just give me the address of your sister, so that I can deliver your last dying message, and that of your dear brother, Pepillo, I shall require nothing further before I rid me of your company!"
Ignacio gave a howl of rage which exemplified the reason for his nickname of "the Mountain Cat," at facing the avowed witness of his brother's decease, the probable slayer, but the revolver daunted him, and the allusion to his sister riveted him to the spot, so that he did not budge, even so much as an eye, to look at his companion who gave a last groan in the rut.
As Mr. Gladsden had no notion of ever again bestowing so much of his time on this nocturnal cavalier, he now designed to inform him about the inheritance of his brother bandit. With a quick transition of feeling, the hearer ejaculated a prayer, luckily short, and springing on the speaker dragged him into the thicket at the roadside.
"Oh, gentleman!" he cried, "You must not be seen by the others. They line the road to the town. You will surely be killed even running the gauntlet, though we believed you would be stifled in your own bedroom at don Stefano's, but you shall not be harmed now! I swear it!" he added vehemently. "You are under the charge of the Saints; your escape from our bullets showed that!"
Gladsden did not trouble just then to undeceive him in his conceit about the horseman who had drawn the fire of the ambuscade.
"Come! You are not so bad a fellow, I grant!"
"And you are a brave heart, Señor. I watched you close while you played the captain disguised."
"Oh, were you there? Now well, I won't say fraternal love would make you help me, but there is a prospect of a bushel of pearls, for your sister, the orphans, and yourself, and, in faith--as you would say--I honestly believe you had better be my safe guide to the port! What say you?"
"It's a bargain, Señor. Besides--" (here he could not help laughing heartily, though in a low tone) "with me you can trick that humbug, the captain, lovely!"
"In what way? Will he not burst with vexation if I slip past his dogs unhurt?"
"He will with disappointment when you sail away in the Burlonilla."
"I believe that."
"And that you may do, with my help, if we are on the alert! I am the chief officer of that barque."
"Which is no more Chilian than you are an honest man."
"Pardon me, Señor! I am honest on occasion, and I will deliver you up the ship if I may still retain my post aboard."
"It strikes me, man, that it is you who are making conditions."
But the Englishman, who realised all the danger of his situation, had not used an angry tone. The bold and merry rogue accordingly proceeded.
"¡Caramba! What is there strange in that? I save your life; you safeguard my neck! Besides, on land, here, I am not afraid of our judges; but on the sea, if the American naval officers catch us, I have always counted it as certain that I should hang!"
"I am with you there!"
"Let me go with you, there, Señor! I will not only pilot you to the town, but do so on the cutter, and take you to the pearl store, surely, steadfastly, under your honour's direction!"
"Your cool impudence is much to my taste. See, day is peeping. Lead on! And if we reach the town without having to burn powder or take the edge off a knife, you have excellent hopes of being my lieutenant on the cocky little craft."
"She's a beauty! But, silence! They come, and will tread on poor Ricardo; so, away!"
