"Gambusinos," said he, in a low voice.
"Bandits?" whispered I, misconceiving the word.
"Not quite," rejoined he, laughing; "though, I"ve no doubt, ready to raise a dollar that way if any one could be found in these wild parts a little richer than themselves;" with this, he commended me to a sound sleep, and the words were scarcely spoken ere I obeyed the summons.
Before day broke, I was aroused by the noise of approaching departure; the band were strapping on knapsacks, slinging muskets, and making other preparations for the march; Halkett, as their captain, carrying nothing beyond his weapons, and in his air and manner a.s.suming all the importance of command.
The "Lepero," as I was called, was ordered to follow the column at about a hundred paces to the rear; but as I was spared all burden, in compa.s.sion to my weak state, I readily compounded for this invidious position, by the benefits it conferred. A rude meal of rye-bread and cold venison, with some coffee, made our breakfast, and away we started; our path lying through the vast prairie I have already spoken of.
As during my state of "quarantine," which lasted seven entire days, we continued to march along over a dreary tract of monotonous desolation,--nothing varying the dull uniformity of each day"s journey, save the chance sight of a distant herd of buffaloes, the faint traces of an Indian war-party, or the blackened embers of a bivouac,--I will not weary my readers by dwelling on my own reflections as I plodded on: enough, when I say they were oftener sad than otherwise. The uncertainty regarding the object of my fellow-travellers hara.s.sed my mind by a thousand odd conjectures. It was clear they were not merchants, neither could they be hunters, still less a "war-party,"--one of those marauding bands which on the Texan frontier of Mexico levy "black-mail" upon the villagers, on the plea of a pretended protection against the Indians.
Although well armed, neither their weapons, their discipline, nor, still less, their numbers, argued in favor of this suspicion. What they could possibly be, then, was an insurmountable puzzle to me. I knew they were called Gambusinos,--nothing more. Supposing that some of my readers may not be wiser than I then was, let me take this opportunity, while traversing the prairie, to say in a few words what they were.
The Gambusinos are the gold-seekers of the New World,--a cla.s.s who, in number and importance, divide society with the "Vaqueros," the cattle-dealers, into two almost equal sections. Too poor to become possessors of mines, without capital for enterprise on a larger scale, they form bands of wandering discoverers, traversing the least-known districts of the Sonora, and spending years of life in the wildest recesses of the Rocky Mountains. a.s.sociating together generally from circ.u.mstances purely accidental, they form little communities, subject to distinct laws; and however turbulent and rebellious under ordinary control, beneath the sway of the self-chosen leaders they are reputed to be submissive and obedient.
Their skill is, as may be judged, rude as their habits, they rarely carry their researches to any depth beneath the surface; some general rules are all their guidance, and these are easily acquired. They are all familiar with the fact that the streams which descend from the Rocky Mountains, either towards the Atlantic or Pacific, carry in their autumnal floods vast ma.s.ses of earth, which form deposits in the plains; that these deposits are often charged with precious ores, and sometimes contain great pieces of pure gold. They know, besides, that the quartz rock is the usual bed where the precious metals are found, and that these rocks form spurs from the large mountains, easily known, because they are never clothed by vegetation, and called in their phraseology "Crestones."
A sharp short stroke of the "barreta," the iron-shod staff of the Gambusino, soon shivers the rock where treasure is suspected; and, the fragments being submitted to the action of a strong fire, the existence of gold is at once tested. Often the mere stroke of the barreta will display the shining l.u.s.tre of the metal without more to do. Such is, for the most part, the extent of their skill.
There are, of course, gradations even here; and some will distinguish themselves above their fellows in the detection of profitable sources and rich "crestones," while others rarely rise above the rank of mere "washers,"--men employed to sift the sands and deposits of the rivers in which the chief product is gold-dust.
Such, then, is the life of a "Gambusino." In this pursuit he traverses the vast continent of South America from east to west, crossing torrents, scaling cliffs, descending precipices, braving hunger, thirst, heat, and snow, encountering hostile Indians and the not less terrible bands of rival adventurers, contesting for existence with the wild animals of the desert, and generally at last paying with his life the price of his daring intrepidity. Few, indeed, are ever seen as old men among their native villages; nearly all have found their last rest beneath the scorching sand of the prairie.
Upon every other subject than that of treasure-seeking, their minds were a perfect blank. For _them_, the varied resources of a land abounding in the products of every clime, had no attraction. On the contrary, the soil which grew the maize, indigo, cotton, the sugar-cane, coffee, the olive, and the vine, seemed sterile and barren, since in such regions no _gold_ was ever found. The wondrous fertility of that series of terraces which, on the Andes, unite the fruits of the torrid zone with the lichens of the icy North, had no value in the estimation of men who acknowledged but one wealth, and recognized but one idol. _Their_ hearts turned from the glorious vegetation of this rich garden to the dry courses of the torrents that fissure the Cordilleras, or the stony gorges that intersect the Rocky Mountains.
The life of wild and varied adventure, too, that they led was a.s.sociated with these deserted and trackless wastes. To them, civilization presented an aspect of slavish subjection and dull uniformity; while in the very vicissitudes of their successes there was the excitement of gambling: rich to-day, they vowed a lamp of solid gold to the "Virgin,"--to-morrow, in beggary, they braved the terrors of sacrilege to steal from the very altar they had themselves decorated. What strange and wondrous narratives did they recount as we wandered over that swelling prairie!
Many avowed that their own misdeeds had first driven them to the life of the deserts; and one who had lived for years a prisoner among the Choctaws confessed that his heart still lingered with the time when he had sat as a chief beside the war-fire, and planned stratagems against the tribe of the rival p.a.w.nees. To men of hardy and energetic temperament, recklessness has an immense fascination. Life is so often in peril, they cease to care much for whatever endangers it; and thus, through all their stories, the one feeling ever predominated,--a careless indifference to every risk coupled with a most resolute conduct in time of danger.
I soon managed to make myself a favorite with this motley a.s.semblage; my natural apt.i.tude to pick up language, aided by what I already knew of French and German, a.s.sisted me to a knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese; while from a "half-breed" I acquired a sufficiency of the Indian dialect in use throughout the Lower Prairies. I was fleet of foot, besides being a good shot with the rifle,--qualities of more request among my companions than many gifts of a more brilliant order; and, lastly, my skill in cookery, which I derived from my education on board the "Firefly," won me high esteem and much honor. My life was therefore far from unpleasant. The monotony of the tract over which we marched was more than compensated for by the marvellous tales that beguiled the way.
One only drawback existed on my happiness; and yet that was sufficient to embitter many a lonely hour of the night, and cast a shade over many a joyous hour of the day. I am almost ashamed to confess what that source of sorrow was, the more as, perhaps, my kind reader will already fancy he has antic.i.p.ated my grief, and say, "It was the remembrance of Donna Maria; the memory of _her_ I was never to see more." Alas, no! It was a feeling far more selfish than this afflicted me. The plain fact is, I was called "The Lepero." By no other name would my companions know or acknowledge me. It was thus they first addressed me, and so they would not take the trouble to change my appellation. Not that, indeed, I dared to insinuate a wish upon the subject; such a hint would have been too bold a stroke to hazard in a company where one was called "Brise-ses-fers," another, "Colpo-di-Sangue," a third, "Teufel"s Blut,"
and so on.
It was to no purpose that I appeared in all the vigor of health and strength. I might outrun the wildest bull of the buffalo herd; I might spring upon the half-trained "mustang," and outstrip the antelope in her flight; I might climb the wall-like surface of a cliff, and rob the eagle of her young: but when I came back, the cry of welcome that met me was, "Bravo, Lepero!" And thus did I bear about with me the horrid badge of that dreary time when I dwelt within the Lazaretto of Bexar.
The very fact that the name was not used in terms of scoff or reproach increased the measure of its injury. It called for no reply on my part; it summoned no energy of resistance; it was, as it were, a simple recognition of certain qualities that distinguished me and made up my ident.i.ty; and at last, to such an extent did it work upon my imagination that I yielded myself up to the delusion that I was all that they styled me,--an outcast and a leper! When this conviction settled down on my mind, I ceased to fret as before, but a gloomy depression gained possession of me, uncheered save by the one hope that my life should not be entirely spent among my present a.s.sociates, and that I should yet be known as something else than "The Lepero."
The prairie over which we travelled never varied in aspect save with the changing hours of the day. The same dreary swell, the same yellowish gra.s.s, the same scathed and scorched cedars, the same hazy outlines of distant mountains that we saw yesterday, rose before us again to-day, as we knew they would on the morrow,--till at last our minds took the reflection of the scene, and we journeyed along, weary, silent, and footsore. It was curious enough to mark how this depression exhibited itself upon different nationalities. The Saxon became silent and thoughtful, with only a slight dash of more than ordinary care upon his features, the Italian grew peevish and irritable, the Spaniard was careless and neglectful, while the Frenchman became downright vicious in the wayward excesses of his spiteful humor. Upon the half-breeds, two of whom were our guides, no change was ever perceptible. Too long accustomed to the life of the prairie to feel its influence as peculiar, they plodded on, the whole faculties bent upon one fact,--the discovery of the Chihuahua trail, from which our new track was to diverge in a direction nearly due west.
Our march, no longer enlivened by merry stories or exciting narratives, had become wearisome in the extreme. The heavy fogs of the night and the great mist which arose at sunset prevented all possibility of tracing the path, which often required the greatest skill to detect, so that we were obliged to travel during the sultriest hours of the day, without a particle of shade, our feet scorched by the hot sands, and our heads constantly exposed to the risk of sunstroke. Water, too, became each day more difficult to obtain; the signs by which our guides discovered its vicinity seemed, to to me, at least, little short of miraculous; and yet if by any chance they made a mistake, the anger of the party rose so near to mutiny that nothing short of Halkett"s own authority could restore order. Save in these altercations, without which rarely a day pa.s.sed over, little was spoken; each trudged along either lost in vacuity or buried in his own thoughts.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE PLACER
As for myself, my dreamy temperament aided me greatly. I could build castles forever; and certainly there was no lack of ground here for the foundation. Sometimes I fancied myself suddenly become the possessor of immense riches, with which I should found a new colony in the very remotest regions of the West. I pictured to myself the village of my workmen, surrounded with its patches of cultivation in the midst of universal barrenness; the smiling aspect of civilized life in the very centre of barbarism; the smelting furnaces, the mills, the great refining factories, of which I had heard so much, all rose to my imagination, and my own princely abode looking down upon these evidences of my wealth.
Then, I fancied the influences of education diffusing themselves among the young, who grew up with tastes and habits so different from those of their fathers. How pursuits of refinement by degrees mingled themselves with daily requirements, till at last the silent forests would echo with the exciting strains of music, or the murmuring rivulet at nightfall would be accompanied by the recited verses of poetry.
The primitive simplicity of such a life as I then pictured was a perfect fascination; and when wearied with thinking of it by day, as I dropped asleep at night the thoughts would haunt my dreams unceasingly.
This castle-building temperament--which is, after all, nothing but hope engaged practically--may, when pushed too far, make a man dreamy, speculative, and visionary, but if restrained within any reasonable limits, cannot fail to support the courage in many an hour of trial, and nerve the heart against many a sore infliction. I know how it kept me up when others of very different thews and sinews were falling around me.
Independently of this advantage, another and a greater one accompanied it. These self-created visions, however they may represent a man in a situation of greatness or power, always do so to exhibit him dispensing--what he imagines at least to be--the virtues of such a station! No one, I trust, ever fancied himself a monarch for the sake of all the cruelties he might inflict, and all the tyrannies he might practise; so that, in reality, this "sparring against Fortune with the gloves on" is admirable practice, if it be nothing else.
It was on the seventeenth day of our wanderings that the guide announced that we had struck into the Chihuahua "trail"; and although to our eyes nothing unusual or strange presented itself, Hermose exhibited signs of unmistakable pride and self-esteem. As I looked around me on the unvarying aspect of earth and sky, I could not help remembering my disappointment on a former occasion, when I heard of the "Banks of Newfoundland," and fancied that the Chihuahua trail might have some such unseen existence as the redoubtable "Banks" aforesaid, which, however familiar to codfish, are seldom visited by Christians.
"The evening star will rise straight above our heads to-night," said Hermose,--and he was correct; our path lay exactly in the very line with that bright orb. The confidence inspired by this prediction increased as we found that an occasional p.r.i.c.kly pear-tree now presented itself, with, here and there, a dwarf-box or an acacia. As night closed in, we found ourselves on the skirt of what seemed a dense wood, bordered by the course of a dried-up torrent. A great wide "streak" of rocks and stones attested the force and extent of that river when filled by the mountain streams, but which now trickled along among the pebbles with scarcely strength enough to force its way. Hermose proceeded for some distance down into the bed of the torrent, and returned with a handful of sand and clay, which he presented to Halkett, saying, "The rains have not been heavy enough; this is last year"s earth."
Few as were the words, they conveyed to me an immense impression of his skill, who, in a few grains of sand taken at random, could distinguish the deposits of one year from those of another.
"How does it look, Halkett?" cried one.
"Is it heavy?" asked another.
"It is worthless," said Halkett, throwing the earth from him. "But we are on the right track, lads, for all that; there "s always gold where the green snake frequents."
It was a mystery at the time to me how Halkett knew of the serpent"s vicinity; for although I looked eagerly around me, I saw no trace of one.
"I vow he"s a-sarchin" for the Coppernose," said a Yankee, as he laughed heartily at my ignorance.
"Do you see that bird there upon the bough of the cedar-tree?" said Halkett. "That"s the "Choyero;" and wherever he"s found, the Coppernose is never far off." The mystery was soon explained in this wise: the "Choyero" is in the habit of enveloping himself in the leaves of a certain p.r.i.c.kly cactus called "Choya," with which armor he attacks the largest of these green serpents, and always successfully,--the strong, th.o.r.n.y spines of the plant invariably inflicting death-wounds upon the snake. Some a.s.serted that the bird only attacked the snake during his season of torpor, but others stoutly averred that the Choyero was a match for any Coppernose in his perfect vigor.
The approach of the long-sought-for "Placer" was celebrated by an extra allowance of rum, and the party conversed till a late hour of the night, with a degree of animation they had not exhibited for a long time previous. Stories of the "washings" resumed their sway,--strange, wild narratives, the chief interest in which, however striking at the time, lay in the manner of those who related them, and were themselves the actors. They nearly all turned upon some incident of gambling, and were strong ill.u.s.trations of how completely the love of gain can co-exist with a temperament utterly wasteful and reckless, while both can render a man totally indifferent to every feeling of friendship. There was mention, by chance, of a certain Narvasque, who had been the comrade of many of the party.
"He is dead," cried one.
"Caramba!" cried another, "that is scarcely true; they told me he was at the Austin fair this fall."
"You may rely on it he"s dead," said the first, "for I know it; he died on the Sacramento, and in this wise. We had had a two months" run of luck at the Crestones of Bacuachez,--such fortune as I only hope we may soon see again; none of your filthy wash and sieve work, nor any splintering of a steel barreta on a flint-rock, but light digging along the stream, and turning up such ma.s.ses of the real shining metal as would make your heart leap to look at,--lumps of thirty,--thirty-five,--ay, forty pounds."
"There, there, Harispe!" said an old fellow, with a long pipe of sugar-cane, "if we are to swallow what"s a-comin", don"t choke us just now."
"What does an old trapper know of the diggin"s?" said Harispe, contemptuously. ""T is a bee-huntin" and a birds"-nestin" you ought to be. Smash my ribs! if he ever saw goold, except on the breast of a gooldfinch." Having silenced his adversary, he resumed:--
"We were all rich by the time we reached Aranchez. But what use is metal? One can"t eat it, nor drink it, nor even sleep on"t; and the fellows up there had got as much as we had ourselves. Everything cost twenty--no, but two hundred and twenty times its value! I used to cut a goold b.u.t.ton off my coat every morning for a day"s grub, so that we had to make ourselves a kind of log-hut outside the village, and try to vittal ourselves as best we could. There war n"t much savin" in that plan neither, for we drank brandy all day long, and it cost half an ounce of goold every bottle of it! Then we stayed up all night and played brag, and it was that finished Narvasque. He was a-betting with Shem Avery, and Shem, who felt he was in for a run of luck, layed it on a bit heavy like; and the end o" it was, he won all Narvasque"s two months" diggin"s, all to a twenty-eight "ouncer" that he would n"t bet for anybody,--no, nor let any one see where he hid it. Shem had his heart on that lump, and said, "I "ll go fifty ounces against your lump, Narvasque;" and the other did n"t take it at first, but up he gets and leaves the hut. "Honor bright," said he, "no man follows me." They all gave their words, and he went out a short distance into the wood, where he had a sheep"s heart hanging near a rock, in the centre of which he had concealed his treasure. He was n"t three yards from the spot, when a great spotted snake darts through the long gra.s.s, and, making a spring at the piece of meat, bolts it and away! Narvasque followed into the deep jungle, unarmed as he was; there a deadly combat must have ensued, for when his cries aroused us, as we sat within the hut, we found him bitten on every part of the body, and so near death that he had only time to tell how it happened, when he expired."
"And the snake?" cried several, in a breath.
"He got clear away; we gave chase for four days after him in vain. But a fellow with as much spare cash about him must have come to bad ere now."
"The Injians has ripped him open afore this, depend on"t," said another. "There "s scarce a snake of any size hasn"t an emerald or splice of gold in him."
"There"s more gold lies hidden by fellows that have never lived, or come back to claim it, than ye know of," said the old trapper; "and that"s the kind of "Placer" _I"d_ like to chance upon, already washed and smelted."
"They talk of martyrs!" said a tall, sallow Spaniard, who had been educated for a priest: "let me tell you that those Injians, ay, even the negroes, have endured as much torture for their gold as ever did zealot for his faith. There was a fellow in my father"s time up at Guajuaqualla, who, it was said, had concealed immense treasures, not only of gold, but gems, emeralds, diamonds, and rubies: well, he not only refused all offers from the Gobernador of the mines to share the booty, but he suffered his toes to be taken off by the smelting nippers, rather than make a confession. Then they tried him with what the miners call a "nest-egg," that is, a piece of gold heated almost red, and inserted into the spine of the back; but it was all to no use, he never spoke a word."
"I heard of him; that was a n.i.g.g.e.r called Crick," cried another.
As for me, I heard no more. The sound of that name, which brought up the memory of my night at Anticosti and all its terrors, filled my heart, besides, with a strange swelling of hope, vague and ill-defined, it is true, but which somehow opened a vision of future wealth and greatness before me. The name, coupled with the place, Guajuaqualla, left no doubt upon my mind that they were talking of no other than the Black Boatswain himself. If I burned to ask a hundred questions about him, a prudent forbearance held me back. I knew that of all men living, none are so much given to suspicion and mistrust as the Gambusinos. The frauds and deceits eternally in practice among them, the constant concealments of treasure, the affected desertion of rich "Placers," in order to return to them later and alone,--these and many like artifices suggest a universal want of confidence which is ever at work to trace motives or attribute intentions for every chance word or accidental expression. I retained my curiosity therefore; but from that hour forward, the negro and his hidden gold were ever before me. It mattered not where I was, in what companionship, or how engaged. One figure occupied the foreground of every picture. If my waking thoughts represented him exactly as I saw him at Anticosti, my sleeping fancies filled up a whole history of his life. I pictured him a slave in the "Barrac.o.o.ns" of his native land, heavily ironed and chained. I saw him on board the slaver, with bent-down head and crippled limbs, crouching between the decks. I followed him to the slave-market and the sugar plantation. I witnessed his sufferings, his sorrows, and his vengeance. I tracked him as he fled to the woods, with the deep-mouthed bloodhounds behind him; and I stood breathless while they struggled in deadly conflict, till, pale, bleeding, and mangled, the slave laid them dead at his feet, and tottered onward to stanch his wounds with the red gum of the liana.
Then came an indistinct interval; and when I saw him next, it was as a gold-washer in the dark stream of the "Rio Nero," his distorted limbs and mangled flesh showing through what sufferings he had pa.s.sed.