by G. A. Henty
“It is a nuisance,” the other said, heartily. “Of course, Allen is a very good fellow, but one can’t have any larks as one could have if we were together.”
“Well, there are not many larks to be had here, at any rate, Tom. It is about the dullest place I ever landed at. It is a regular Mexican town, and except that they do have, I suppose, sometimes, dances and that sort of thing, there is really nothing to be done when one does go ashore, and the whole place stinks of hides. Even if one could get away for a day there is no temptation to ride about that desert-looking country, with the sun burning down on one; no one but a salamander could stand it. They are about the roughest-looking lot I ever saw in the town. Everyone has got something to do with hides one way or the other. They have either come in with them from the country, or they pack them in the warehouses, or they ship them. That and mining seem the only two things going on, and the miners, with their red shirts and pistols and knives, look even a rougher lot than the others. I took my pistol when last I went ashore; I will lend it you this evening.”
“Oh, I don’t want a pistol, Tom; there is no chance of my getting into a row.”
“Oh, it is just as well to carry one, Dick, when you know that everyone else has got one about him somewhere, and a considerable number of them are drunk; it is just as well to take one. You know, it is small, and goes in my breast pocket.”
“I will take my stick, the one I bought at San Francisco; it has got an ounce of lead in the knob. I would rather have that than a pistol any day.”
However, as Dick was standing with the second officer at the top of the gangway, Tom Haldane, as he passed by, slipped the pistol into his hand and then walked on. Dick thrust it into his pocket, and then descended the ladder. It was almost dark now.
“I have two or three places to go to, Preston, and do not know how long I shall be detained. It is just nine o’clock now. Suppose you meet me here at the boat at half-past ten. It will be pleasanter for you to stroll about by yourself than to be waiting about outside houses for me.”
“Very well, sir. I don’t think there is much to see in the town, but I will take a bit of a stroll outside. It is cool and pleasant after the heat of the day.”
They walked together to the first house that Mr. Allen had to visit; then Dick strolled on by himself. The place abounded with wine-shops. Through the open doors the sound of the strumming of mandolins, snatches of Spanish song, and occasionally voices raised in dispute or anger, came out. Dick felt no inclination to enter any of them. Had his chum been with him he might have looked in for a few minutes for the fun of the thing, but alone he would be the object of remark, and might perhaps get involved in a quarrel. Besides the freshness of the air was so pleasant that he felt disposed for a walk, for the moon was shining brightly, the stars seemed to hang from the skies, and after having been pent up in the ship for the last four days it was pleasant to stretch the limbs in a brisk walk. In ten minutes he was outside the town, and followed the road for half an hour.
“It is a comfort,” he said to himself, “to have got rid of the smell of hides. If ever cholera comes this way I should think it would make a clean sweep of San Diego.”
Turning, he walked leisurely back; he entered the town, and had gone but a hundred yards or two when he heard a shout, followed by a pistol shot, and then, in English, a cry for help.
He dashed down the street toward a group of people who, he could see in the moonlight, were engaged in a sharp struggle. One man was defending himself against four, and the oaths and exclamations of these showed that they were Mexicans. Just as he reached them the man they were attacking was struck down, and two of his assailants threw themselves upon him.
Dick rushed upon the men, and felled one with a sweeping blow of his stick. The other man who was standing up sprang at him, knife in hand, with a savage oath.
So quick was the action that he was upon Dick before he had time to strike a blow with his stick. He threw up his left arm to guard his head, but received a severe gash on the shoulders. At the same moment he struck out with his right, full into the face of the Mexican, who, as he staggered back, fell across the three men on the ground. Dick seized the opportunity to draw his pistol, dropping his stick as he did so, as his left arm was disabled. It was a double-barreled pistol and as the three natives rose and rushed at him, he shot the first. The other two sprang at him and he received a blow that almost paralyzed him. He staggered against the wall, but had strength to raise his arm and fire again, just as the man was about to repeat his blow; he fell forward on his face, and his other assailant took to his heels. A moment later Dick himself sank to the ground.
CHAPTER II
Dick’s Escape
When Dick opened his eyes it was broad daylight. He was lying in a barely furnished room. A surgeon was leaning over him bandaging his wounds, while on the other side of the bed stood three red-shirted men, whose rough beards and belts with bowie knives and pistols showed them to be miners. One of them had his face strapped up and his arm in a sling. An exclamation of satisfaction burst from him as Dick’s eyes opened.
“That is right, lad. You will do now. It has been touch and go with you all night. My life aint no pertik’lar value to nobody, but such as it is you have saved it. But I won’t talk of that now. Which ship do you belong to? We will let them know at once.”
“The Northampton,” Dick said in a whisper.
“All right; don’t you talk any more. We will get your friends here in no time.”
But when Mr. Allen came ashore Dick was again unconscious. The mate fetched two more surgeons, who, after conferring with the first, were all of opinion that although he might possibly recover from his wounds, weeks would elapse before he would be convalescent. Before night fever had set in, and it was a fortnight before he was again conscious of what was passing round him. He looked feebly round the room. One of the red-shirted men was attending to a pot over a charcoal fire. Turning his head he saw, standing looking out of the window, his friend Tom Haldane.
“Halloa, Tom,” he said, in a whisper, which, however, reached the midshipman’s ears. He turned sharply round, and hurried to the bedside.
“Thank God, Dick, you are conscious again. Don’t try to talk, old fellow; drink this lemonade, and then shut your eyes again.”
Dick tried to raise his hand to take the glass, but, to his surprise, found he was unable to do so. Tom, however, put it to his lips and poured it down his throat. It was cool and pleasant, and with a sigh of relief he again closed his eyes, and went off into a quiet sleep.
When he awoke it was evening; the window was open, and the fresh air came in, making the lamp on the table flicker.
“How do you feel now, old man?” Tom asked.
“I feel all right,” he said, “but I am wonderfully weak. I suppose I must have lost a lot of blood. Has the skipper given you leave to stop with me for the night?”
Tom nodded. “I will tell you all about it in the morning, Dick. There is some chicken broth Dave has been cooking for you. You must try and drink a bowl of it, and then by to-morrow morning you will be feeling like a giant.”
Dick laughed feebly. “It will be some time before there is much of a giant about me. Tom; but I feel as if I could drink some broth.”
The next morning Dick woke feeling decidedly stronger. “Raise me up and put some pillows behind me, Tom. It is horrid being fed from a spoon, lying on one’s back.”
The man called Dave, and Tom, lifted him up as he wished, and then the latter fed him with the broth, in which some bread had been crumbled.
“Now, then,” Dick said, when he had finished; “let us hear what the old man said. I suppose he was in a tremendous rage?”
“That he was! a brute!”
“Why, there is my chest. What has he sent that ashore for? I should think I could be taken on board again to-day.”
“You won’t be taken on board the Northampton,” Tom said, “for by this time she is down somewhere near Cape
Horn.”
“Eh!” Dick exclaimed in astonishment. “Why, how long have I been here?”
“A fortnight to-day, Dick.”
Dick was too surprised to make any remark for some time.
“But if the Northampton has gone, how is it that you are here, Tom?”
“Simply because she has gone without me, Dick. The old man was in a furious rage when he heard in the morning what had happened to you. Of course, we were in a great stew—I mean the third mate and myself—when Allen came off at twelve o’clock without you, after waiting an hour and a half at the wharf for you to turn up. We all felt sure that something must have happened, or you would never have been all that time late. There was a row between Allen and the skipper the first thing in the morning. Allen wanted to go ashore to make inquiries about you, and the old man would not let him, and said that no doubt you had deserted, but that if you came on board again he would have you put in irons.
“Well, there was a regular row going on when a boat came off with a man in a red shirt, who I know now is one of Dave’s partners, and said that you were desperately wounded, and that the Spanish doctor they had called in thought that you would die. So then the old man couldn’t help Allen’s going ashore. Of course, he could do nothing, as you were insensible, but he got two other surgeons. Their opinion was that you would not get over it, but that if you did it would be a long time first. When Allen got back there was another row. He wanted to have you brought on board. The captain said that as you had chosen to mix yourself up in a row on shore, you might die on shore for anything he cared. Then I asked for leave to stay with you when the vessel sailed, and got sworn at for my pains. In the afternoon I filled up your chest chockfull with as many of my things as I could get into it, and sent it ashore. By the next night we had got all the cargo on board, and were to sail by the next morning, and I lowered myself down and swam ashore.
“Allen had told me exactly where you were lying, so I came here at once and told Dave who I was, and why I had come ashore, and as soon as it was light he took me round to the room the other two had. The captain came ashore in the morning and stormed and raved at the Consul’s, but he had better have kept on board. I told our friends here all about it, and as he went back to the boat again one of them pitched into him, and gave him such a tremendous licking that I hear he had to be carried on board. As soon as he got on board the Northampton sailed, so you see here we both are. I have written off to your father and mine, giving them a full account of the whole affair, and saying what a brute Collet had been on the whole voyage. They will be sure to lay the letters before the firm, and as Allen and Smith will, when they are questioned, speak out pretty straight, you may be sure the old man and his friend, the first mate, will have to look for a berth somewhere else.”
“It is awfully good of you to have come ashore to nurse me, Tom.”
“Bosh! Why, I have got away from the Northampton. I found, too, that as far as nursing was concerned I might as well have stayed on board, for Dave here and his two mates have, one or other of them, been with you night and day, and they could not have taken more care of you if they had been women. Still I have been very glad to be here, though till three days ago there seemed very little hope of your pulling through it. Now you have talked enough, or rather, I have talked enough, Dick; and you had better turn over and get another sleep.”
CHAPTER III
The Gold-Seekers
Two days later the lad was able to sit up in bed and to enter upon a discussion as to the future with Tom and the miner. It was begun by the latter.
“I suppose you will be taking the first ship back as soon as you are strong enough?” he said.
“I don’t know, Dave; now I am here I should certainly like a run ashore for a few weeks and to see something of the country. We have got twenty pounds between us; that will last for some time. I should think we could get a passage back without having to pay on this side for it, and if there was any difficulty about it, we could work our way back; but Tom agrees with me, we should like to see something of the country first.
“I suppose in another fortnight I shall be all right again; but there is the doctor to pay. I don’t know what their charges are here, but I expect his bill will be a pretty long one. You had better tell him to-day that we have not got a great deal of cash between us, and that as I only want building up now, he need not come again.”
“Don’t you trouble yourself about that,” Dave growled. “You don’t suppose that when you have got yourself cut and sliced about in helping me you are going to have any trouble about doctors? We have got a tidy lot at present amongst us, and what is ours is yourn. We were going to set off among the hills a day or two after the time we had that trouble; only, of course, that stopped it all.”
“Please don’t stop on my account,” Dick said. “I shall get on very well now, and I was saying to Tom, as soon as I can get about we will go off somewhere among the hills; for one might just as well be lying in an oven as here. If you will tell us where you and your mates are working, we might find our way there, and get a job. We are both pretty strong, you know—that is to say, when we are well—and we have often said that we should like to try our luck gold-mining.”
“We aint agoing till you are strong enough to get about,” Dave said; “so it is no use saying any more about that. Then, if you want to do some mining, we will put you in the way of it; but we are going on a long expedition, which may last months, and from which, as like as not, we shall never come back again. However, we can easy enough take you with us for a bit and drop you at one of the mining camps, and stop there with you till you get accustomed to it, or work for a few months with you if you like. Time is not of much consequence to us.”
“That is awfully good of you, Dave,” Tom said, “but as you have lost more than a fortnight at present, and I suppose it will be another fortnight before Dick is strong enough to travel, it isn’t fair on you; and perhaps you might be able to introduce us to some men going up to the hills—that is, if you think that we could not go with you on this expedition you talk of.”
“That won’t be a job for young hands,” Dave said. “It will be a mighty long journey over a terrible rough country, where one’s life will be always in one’s hands, where one’s eyes will always be on the lookout for an enemy, and one will know that any moment, night or day, one may hear the war yell of the Indians. We are going into the heart of Arizona, to places where not half-a-dozen white men, even counting Mexicans as white men, have ever set foot; at least, where not half-a-dozen have ever come back alive from, though maybe there are hundreds who have tried.”
“Then I suppose you are going to look for some very rich mine, Dave?”
“That is so; I will tell you how it came about, and queerly enough, it wur pretty well the same way as your friend and me came together. My mates and me were coming down from the hills when we heard a shot fired in a wood ahead of us. It wasn’t none of our business, but we went on at a trot, thinking as how some white men had been attacked by greasers.”
“What are greasers?” Tom asked.
Dave laughed.
“A greaser is just a Mexican. Why they call them so I don’t know; but that has been their name always as long as I came in the country. Well, we ran down and came sudden upon two greasers who were kneeling by a man lying in the road, and seemed to be searching his pockets. We let fly with our Colts; one of them was knocked over, and the other bolted. Then we went to look at the man in the road; he wur a greaser too. He had been shot dead. ‘I wonder what they shot him for?’ says I. ‘Maybe it is a private quarrel; maybe he had struck it rich, and has got a lot of gold in his belt. We may as well look; it is no use leaving it for that skunk that bolted to come back for.’ He had got about twenty ounces in his belt, and we shifted it into our bag, and were just going on when ’Zekel—that is one of my mates—said, ‘I know this cuss, Dave; it’s the chap that lived in that village close to where we were working six months ago; the
y said he had been fossicking all over Arizona, and that he was the only one who ever came back out of a party who went to locate a wonderful rich spot it was said he knew of.
“‘He tried over and over again to get up another party, but no one would try after that first failure. We may just as well search him all over; it may be he has got a plan of the place somewhere about him, and it is like enough those fellows have killed him on the chance of finding it.’
“So we searched him pretty thorough, and at last we found a paper sewn up in the collar of his jacket. Sure enough it was a plan. We did not examine it then, for someone might have come along, and we might have been accused of the chap’s murder; so I shoved it into the inside pocket of my shirt, and we went on. We looked at it that night; there was several marks on it and names, one of which we had heard of, though we had never been so far in the Indian country. Well, as you may guess, we had some big talks over it, and at last we reckoned we would have a try to find it.
“We had been lucky, and had struck it rich at the last place we had been at, and we agreed, instead of spending our money in a spree or at the monte tables, we would fit out an expedition and try it. Now I believe that attack was made on me to try and get that piece of paper. The chap who bolted may like enough have hid himself and watched us, and may have seen us find it and me take charge of it. We thought more than once since we came down here that we were being dogged by a greaser, but we never thought about the paper. That evening I had been out by myself, which I did not often do, for we in general went about together, and was going back along that street, and was pretty nigh home, when someone said in Spanish, ‘That is the fellow,’ and then five men jumped out with knives in their hands. I had just time to whip out my six-shooter and fire once. One fellow went down, but at the same moment I got a clip across my wrist with a knife, and down went the pistol. Then I got a slice across the head, and another on the shoulder, and down I went. Two of them threw themselves on me, and I shammed dead, knowing that if I moved it was all over with me. One of them shoved his hand in my trousers pockets, and the other tore my shirt open. I heard a sudden row, a blow, and the fall of a body; then one of them came tumbling down on the top of us and knocked the two fellows over, then they jumped up, and I heard your pistol crack twice and two falls, and as I got up on to my feet to lend a hand I saw one of the fellows bolting down the street, running off in another direction. That was the one, I think, that came down on the top of us.
