CANNON IS BROUGHT TO BEAR.
Long and patiently had the environed garrison been awaiting the token
of well faring with the adventurers who had so daringly left that
shelter.
Only in the end of the night had the sudden, and, for the moment,
inexplicable apparition of the cattle on which had been imposed that
fiery burden, seemed to reveal the operations of their friends.
The charge of the furious and panic-stricken creatures, whose hides
were singed and smoked with a nauseating odour, was unresisted by
the rebels, huddled together just out of gunshot of the farm, in the
obscurity. Nevertheless, as soon as the true nature of this attack was
clear, and the more active Indians had speared those animals which had
not broken their necks and extinguished the flames in the ditch, the
alarm calmed down. It was at this juncture that don Benito, at the
head of a hundred horsemen, galloped out of the corral and executed
a terrible slashing and hewing, sweeping round amid carnage, and
returning with insignificant loss. The moral effect was even greater
than the material, for those of the insurgents who had previously
thought nothing of rushing up to the farmhouse, and firing a shot at
random amid tipsy threats and obscene imprecations, withdrew to a safe
distance, and vociferated for the self-constituted leaders to evince
their genius.
It was as don Benito's troop returned within the defences that they
heard, to their dismay, the well-known war cry of the Apaches only
too recently impressed on the hearing of all, and the shout of their
newfound robber allies.
Of Oliver, the Englishman, and their followers, no intelligence
whatever. It is only doing the master of the farm justice, as well as
his family, to say that deep distress was added to that they felt in
their plight with the fear that their daring friends had all fallen
into some trap of the cunning savages now foremost in opposition.
The aurora appeared, and the whole valley was revealed, full of the
rebels, amongst whom was added, as well as the sixty marauders who
held captain Pedrillo as chief, the full hundred Apaches, whose proud
and domineering carriage defined them from the Yaquis born under the
yoke which these had never experienced. Besides, before the heat of the
day forced both besiegers and besieged to take a siesta, the already
enormous concourse was swollen by the last fragments of the dispersed
column finding their way thither, burdened with plunder.
All the morning had passed in rash and irregular attacks on the houses,
but when they were not repulsed, the few score Indians who clambered
over the stockade were cut down by the horsemen inside. Twice the
Apaches had charged up to the walls, but, apparently, merely to test
the watchfulness of the inmates and the range of their firearms, for
they made no assault on the palisades, to pull and hack at which, or
even more to alight and clamber over, would have been ignoble in a
horse Indian.
Still no sign of the party that had sallied forth.
Successful in that sally of their own, the Mexican gentlemen wished
to retaliate on the Apaches in particular for the insult implied in
their departing from their war custom of never charging an enclosure or
building of any kind. But don Benito reminded them of the ladies who
would be undefended if the horsemen were cut off, and pointed to the
swarms of carousing Indians blackening the rising ground, where they
had mounted to watch the farm with lustful gaze.
Little by little, after Pedrillo and his mongrels had quieted the
hatred of the revolted Yaquis for anyone who reminded them of the
superior race, he obtained a kind of rule over their leaders, only less
potent than that which they had promptly accorded the Apaches. Iron
Shirt was an idol. The fact of his having but three days before swept
down upon that same stronghold still defying their hosts, and snatched
the proprietor's daughter and the cream of the horses merrily away,
sufficed to make each of these warriors to be followed by a tag-rag of
open-eyed Yaquis wherever they strayed in the wide encampment.
The food and liquor were placed under guard; the drunkards, who were
plunged in stupor, were bundled into the hollows out of the way, the
horse thieves who had been racing about were pulled off the bare backs,
and made to squat down and await orders for their superabundant energy
to be more profitably expended. The weapons were served out anew, with
some discrimination as to the bearer, so that the strong were no longer
puzzled with arms for which light-handed urchins sufficed, and the
youths disembarrassed of immense spears like Goliath's, and clubs that
the famous giant races of the Hidden Cities could alone have swung.
The women and children, too, were pushed back, and set to cooking
and other menial offices, which must have bewildered them as to the
advantages of revolution.
Therefore, Oliver and his associates soon beheld the impassible barrier
spread out broadly between them, and the surrounded fort became during
the day more and more formidable by these evidences of discipline.
Happily their neighbourhood was not suspected. The column defeated on
the previous night was composed of ignorant boors, who thought not at
all by day to give an intelligible account of the lancers, who, indeed,
having charged them from the ambush, were not well examined in the
hurry-scurry.
"What are they waiting for?" queried Mr. Gladsden, impatiently. "Surely
not for more reinforcements, when they are already a hundred to one!"
"That's the answer," said the white hunter. "Yon long string of naked
copperskins dragging that shining object at their tail."
"A cannon?"
"Yes! Two shots o' that and thar will be a hole in the farmhouse that a
herd of buffalo might traverse. Good night to our hidalgo if they get
that piece trained on the house. When a bullet hits those grey blocks,
hewn out of the volcano pumice stone, it will crumble like glass, and
no two ways about it. The _casa_ is a case."
"And can we do nothing, absolutely nothing? Can we not even pierce that
multitude, and enter among our friends and die with them."
"Well, I like a gentleman that has boys in the tender leaf still,
a-talking of dying anywhar's and so airly yit. Ef you hanker to run the
resk o' dying, that's a man's talk, and you can volunteer to come along
with me."
"Come along with you, Oliver?"
"Yes. If that cannon fires twice into that house, I tell 'ee, thar'll
be nothing but the worst kind of smashed fruit that ever figgered in an
old aunty's preserve pots. They may fire her off once, but not twice,
if I hev' the right sort of luck in my idee. I think this sport hes
gone quite far enough."
By this time Mr. Gladsden had become reconciled to Oliver having
"idees."
"I am with you," he simply said, "and the more desperate the
enterprise, the better it bids to quiet my blood, which is at boiling
point."
"You'll hev' all the despiritness you want," answered the Oregonian.
Then, turning to the Mexicans, who had waited the conclusion of their
dialogue restlessly, he continued:
"Whar's them skyrockets? Hand 'em here, Silvano. Keep close as you hev'
done all along. When you see those fireworks cavorting (curvetting)
around that big camp right smart, you sail in down the hill and stick
every red nigger till you are right up to the house, if your heart
backs your breastbone so far. And mark! Your government offers two
hundred and fifty dollars for Injin scalps, and you kin have my share
this trip, and welkim!"
His speech was received with enthusiasm, notably the peroration. He
illustrated his intention to make scalps by throwing off his uniform
coat, cutting his shirtsleeves off at the shoulder, and removing the
spurs which he had donned for the ride. Then he took up a handful of
live oak leaves, bruised them, and dyed his bared arms, neck and face
with the juice to a brown hue. At his suggestion, the Englishman left
his arms free and disguised his fairness of hue in the same manner.
"Do you see that rising ground up which they are toiling with that big
gun? That's our aim. Come on!"
"In the midst of them?"
"Plum centre."
Which was all the reply the query elicited.
The Yaquis occupied the further side of a long valley, almost in an
unbroken mass. These who elsewhere completed an environment of the
hacienda were in groups, which changed position at fancy, and were less
warlike than the main body. The rear was left to a natural guard; the
inaccessibility of the hill, where, too, a barranca, or deep chasm,
with perpendicular sides, caused by a torrent suddenly cutting its
way to a subterranean reservoir, almost at right angles, divided the
incline.
The watch, as is common with a sudden gathering, was nobody's business.
The Apaches and the Mexican half-breeds, self-constituted chiefs, were
now scattered among the Yaquis, teaching the handling of weapons and
promising them all manner of delights when the farm should be captured.
Oregon Ol. and his associate struck from the wood which concealed their
companions, away at first from the valley, but on arriving fairly upon
the north side, they advanced parallel with its crest, every now and
then perceiving a flag waving on top of the hacienda. The ground was
so rough that they had alternations of leaps and creeps over obstacles
of which the hunter made light, but which delayed the Englishman. On
reaching the gorge, the former paused to admit of the other coming up.
"Thar's our route," said the hunter, pointing down into this open
tunnel and along its incline upward, "We kin settle down to a long
scramble, but all the way thar'll be no alarms; those rum soakers
haven't a good eye among the heap."
"That is the more gratifying, as there are enough of them to convert us
into a pair of pincushions with their arrows."
Nevertheless, he could not help a shiver of repugnance to adventuring
at such a risk.
"I do not say we could do it by night, for down thar the twilight
allers dwells, save whar the line of sun glare travels at the bottom.
But thar is no other road."
They spent a few moments in further disguise, removing or staining
with red oxides every part of their remaining attire and exposed skin
which would not favour the supposition to a chance observer that they
were Indians floundering in the abyss where they had blundered during
intoxication. They were armed only with knives and revolvers, but each
carried one of the rockets.
They proceeded to descend the steep up and down side with all the
precaution requisite. Difficult was not the word for their task, for
none but a maniac or a lover or such as these staking all on the
chance of being infinite service to their fellows, would have hazarded
themselves.
The descent was a series of slides, checked by dwarf shrubs and rocks
of all imaginable forms, cut, ground, polished, jagged by the water
and sand; now and then, without any warnings, there were cracks and
holes three or four yards wide at the remote bottom of which was
to be heard a melancholy soughing and roaring as of raging demons
or oppressed souls. Out of several, a thick, noisome, warm vapour
sluggishly oozed. Once, when they had hardly succeeded in crossing a
part of which the rim was of crumbling sand, Oliver had made a remark
on the judiciousness of his comrade awaiting him there, but the answer
was so stern and impregnated with such resolution that he never again
remonstrated.
At last the centre of the trough was attained.
But here the chaos of sand, shrubs, and rocks, became next to
inextricable, and to proceed up through the hindrances, varying each
instant in material but not in degree, would have been pronounced
simply preposterous by the most exacting.
Nevertheless, Oliver was a man whom nothing could stop in his purpose,
for he twined in and out, crawled as supple as a serpent, thought
nothing of his hands and knees exposed to the adamantine sands and
the harsh catclaw bushes that would have frightened the half-naked
savages, and if ofttimes he was compelled to retrace his steps when he
had ventured into a non-egress, it was only the better to resume his
unwearied way.
"I'm no hog," growled he once, when he paused to suck a more than
usually deep briar scratch which he believed poisonous, "and I know
when I hev' my fill o' sich 'snaking,' but it's got to be did.
Besides," looking up from the semiobscurity to the top of the gorge
where the sky glowed the more gorgeously by contrast, "night must not
catch us no farther up, and agen," sniffing like an old sailor, "ain't
thar rain in the air?"
"I am stifled with the sulphur reeking out of these cracks," returned
his companion; "on this roof of Old Nick's kitchen, I really am not
aware I have a nose upon me for weather scenting."
Oliver grunted as a kind of quiet laugh, and on he scrambled.
At the same time that one would have deemed all his faculties absorbed
in picking the course and caring for his own safety, the hunter found
time, not merely to caution his comrade, but to intervene at moments
of peril. This constant attention in safekeeping once even almost led
to his losing his life or limbs, for in choosing for himself the wider
part of a crack, the edge gave way altogether, and but for Gladsden
clutching by the side, with a little fold of the skin, too, in the
grasp, the hunter must have fallen within the crust.
"Thank'ee, pard.!" observed the guide, wincing comically; "That time
you grabbed flesh and ha'r. A little more of sich a grip, an' you'd
hev' had to leave me behind, sot here; on my hind legs, a-howling!"
At last, after nearly twice the three hours assigned too rashly for the
whole effort had been spent in scaling the anfractuosities at which
a mountain sheep would have baulked, they had at all events ascended
the barranca and were under the centre of the part of the hill where
the Yaquis had dragged an old forty-pounder, brought over by the
conquerors, and for long rusting at some farm in the neighbourhood.
Their rejoicing at the accomplishment of their work coincided so
closely with that of the two white men that the latter smiled to be so
indirectly cheered.
Stopping to take breath, they looked back with relief and pride at the
horrible gulfy path which they had overcome, darkening into blackness
with the failing light.
Whilst the cannon was placed on some logs so that it could be trained
on the hacienda, to the level of which this hill almost rose,
the Yaquis were silent, so interested were they in the operation
superintended by Lieutenant Garcia, inflated into abnormal pomposity by
becoming the cynosure.
"Up!" said Oliver in this silence.
They had the abrupt side to climb when they would be beside the amateur
artillerists. After what they had overcome this affair was merely one
of time. The brink of the barranca was armed by stony mounds and the
wrecks of half a dozen pines of the giant species, which must have been
an imposing sight for miles around before the lightning or the tempest
shattered them. Ensconced in this natural barricade, not more than
three hundred feet from the nearest of the foe, they could easily take
the repose they deserved, whilst studying the scene and the actors.
On their front, to the right, the hacienda and its corrals, into
which they could gaze across the gully; farther away the forest where
the Mexican detachment lay. Beside them, the hill covered with the
insurgents, and more and still more of them in the vales. Disseminated
thus, they seemed a veritable swarm of locusts, such as covers the
plains of Arizona and Colorado.
They recognised without difficulty Captain Pedrillo on his horse, with
his wooden leg sticking out and twitching free of the stirrup; the
Apache chiefs, knowing nothing about ordnance, left the Mexicans to
manage the loading of the cannon with blasting powder. A pile of the
powder cans, some partly open and some altogether stove in and lidless,
with all the carelessness of the inexperienced, stood near the piece
on its wooden frame; at that distance the Englishman could even see
the brand on the tins of the sun in glory of the Rayo del Sol Mining
Company, from the works of which, by Regulus Pueblo, they had been
taken by its truant ore carriers.
Darkness fell, deeper than usually, which confirmed Oliver in his
forecast as to a tempest approaching, but the peons worked on at the
clumsy pedestal of the cannon by the flare of torches.
Seeing that the piece would surely be in place, Captain Pedrillo, Iron
Shirt, and the Apache subchiefs went into a large tent on the brow
of the hill. It was open on the face towards the hacienda above, and
consequently they were no longer visible to the two adventurers, who
could see only the guard of Indians at the same point.