"You can make your penance here, young man, at the Convent of the Missions. There are holy men who will give you all good counsel; and I will myself speak to them for you."
I was about to decline this polite intervention, when a quiet gesture from Donna Maria arrested my words, and made me accept the offer, with thanks.
Thus chatting, we reached the suburbs of Bexar, and soon entered the main street of that town. And here let me record a strange feature of the life of this land, which, although one that I soon became accustomed to, had a most singular aspect to my eyes on first acquaintance. It was a hot and sultry night of June, the air as dry and parched as of a summer day in our English climate; and we found that the whole population had their beds disposed along the streets, and were sleeping for the benefit of the cool night air,--al fresco. There was no moon, nor any lamplight, but by the glimmering stars we could see this strange encampment, which barely left a pa.s.sage in the middle for the mule-carts.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 363-18]
Some of the groups were irresistibly droll: here was an old lady, with a yellow-and-red handkerchief round her head, snoring away, while a negro wench waved a plaintan-bough to and fro to keep off the mosquitoes, which thronged the spot from the inducement of a little glimmering lamp to the Virgin over the bed. There was a thin, lantern-jawed old fellow sipping his chocolate before he resigned himself to sleep. Now and then there would be a faint scream and a muttered apology as some one, feeling his way to his nest, had fallen over the couch of a sleeper.
Mothers were nursing babies, nurses were singing others to rest; social spirits were recalling the last strains of recent convivialities; while others, less genially given, were uttering their "Carambas" in all the vindictive anger of broken slumber. Now and then a devotional att.i.tude might be detected, and even some little glimpses caught of some fair form making her toilet for the night, and throwing back her dishevelled hair to peer at the pa.s.sing strangers.
Such were the scenes that even a brief transit presented; a longer sojourn and a little more light had doubtless discovered still more singular ones.
We halted at the gate of a large, gloomy-looking building which the Friar informed me was the "Venta n.a.z.ionale," the chief inn of the town; and by dint of much knocking, and various interlocutions between Fra Miguel and a black, four stories high, the gates were at length opened.
Faint, hungry, and tired, I had hoped that we should have supped in company, and thus recompensed me for my share of the successful issue of the journey; but the Fra, giving his orders hastily, wished me an abrupt "good night," and led his niece up the narrow stairs, leaving me and my mare in the gloomy entrance, like things whose services were no longer needed.
"This may be Texan grat.i.tude, Fra Miguel," said I to myself, "but certainly you never brought it from your own country." Meanwhile the negro, after lighting the others upstairs, returned to where I was, and perhaps not impressed by any high notions of my quality, or too sleepy to think much about the matter, sat down on a stone bench, and looked very much as if about to compose himself to another doze. I was in no mood of gentleness, and so, bestowing a hearty kick upon my black "brother," I told him to show me the way to the stable at once. The answer to this somewhat rude summons was a strange one,--he gave a kind of grin that showed all his teeth, and made a species of hissing noise, like "Cheet, cheet," said rapidly,--a performance I had never witnessed before, nor, for certain reasons, have I any fancy to witness again.
"Do you hear me, black fellow?" cried I, tapping his bullet-head with the end of my heavy whip pretty much as one does a tavern-table to summon the waiter.
"Cheet, cheet, cheet," cried he again, but with redoubled energy.
"Confound your jargon," said I, angrily; "get up out of that, and lead the way to the stable." This speech I accompanied by another admonition from my foot, given, I am free to own, with all the irritable impatience of a thirty hours" fast.
The words had scarcely pa.s.sed my lips, ere the fellow sprang to his legs, and, with a cry like the scream of an infuriated beast, dashed at me. I threw out my arm as a guard, but, stooping beneath it, he plunged a knife into my side, and fled. I heard the heavy bang of the great door resound as he rushed out, and then fell to the ground, weltering in my blood!
I made a great effort to cry out, but my voice failed me; the blood ran fast from my wound, and a chill, sickening sensation crept over me, that I thought must be "death." ""T is hard to die thus," was the thought that crossed me, and it was the last effort of consciousness, ere I swooned into insensibility.
CHAPTER XXII. THE LAZARETTO OF BEXAR
Kind-hearted reader,--you who have sympathized with so many of the rubs that Fortune has dealt us; who have watched us with a benevolent interest in our warfare with an adverse destiny; who have marked our struggles, and witnessed our defeats,--will surely compa.s.sionate our sad fate when we tell you that when the curtain next rises on our drama, it presents us no longer what we had been!
Con Cregan, the light-hearted vagrant, paddling his lone canoe down life"s stream in joyous merriment, himself sufficing to himself, his eyes ever upward as his hopes were onward, his crest an eagle"s, and his motto "higher," was no more. He had gone,--vanished, been dissipated into thin air; and in his place there sat, too weak to walk, a poor emaciated creature, with shaven head and shrunken limbs, a very wreck of humanity, pale, sallow, and miser-able as fever and flannel could paint him.
Yes, gentle reader, under the shade of a dwarf fig-tree, in the Leper Hospital of Bexar, I sat, attired in a whole suit of flannel, of a pale, brown tint, looking like a faded flea, all my gay spirits fled, and my very ident.i.ty merged into the simple fact that I was known as "Convalescent, No. 303,"--an announcement which, for memory"s sake, perhaps, was stamped upon the front of my nightcap.
Few people are fortunate enough not to remember the strange jumble of true and false, the incoherent tissue of fact and fancy, which a.s.sails the first moments of recovery from illness. It is a pitiable period, with its thronging thoughts, all too weighty for the light brain that should bear them. You follow your ideas like an ill-mounted horseman in a hunt; no sooner have you caught a glimpse of the game than it is lost again; on you go, wearied by the pace, but never cheered by success; often tumbling into a slough, missing your way, and mistaking the object of pursuit: such are the casualties in either case, and they are not enviable ones.
Now, lest I should seem to be a character of all others I detest, a grumbler without cause, let me ask the reader to sit beside me for a few seconds on this bench, and look with me at the prospect around him.
Yonder, that large white building, with grated windows, jail-like and sad, is the Leper Hospital of Bexar, an inst.i.tution originally intended for the sick of that one malady, but, under the impression of its being contagious, generously extended to those laboring under any other disease. The lepers are that host who sit in groups upon the gra.s.s, at cards or dice, or walk in little knots of two and three. Their shambling gait and crippled figures,--the terrible evidence of their malady,--twisted limbs, contorted into every horrible variety of lameness, hands with deficient fingers, faces without noses, are the ordinary symbols. The voices, too, are either husky and unnatural, or reduced to a thin, reedy treble, like the wail of an infant. Worse than all, far more awful to contemplate, to him exposed to such companionship, their minds would appear more diseased than even their bodies: some evincing this aberration by traits of ungovernable pa.s.sion, some by the querulous irritability of peevish childhood, and some by the fatuous vacuity of idiocy; and here am I gazing upon all this, and speculating, by the aid of a little bit of broken looking-gla.s.s, how long it is probable that I shall retain the "regulation" number of the human features.
Ah, you gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, may smile at such miseries; but let me tell you that however impertinent you might deem him who told you "to follow your nose," the impossibility of compliance is a yet heavier infliction; and it was with a trembling eagerness that, each morning as I awoke, I consulted the map of my face, to be sure that I was master of each geographical feature.
While all who may break a leg or cut a blood-vessel are reckoned fit subjects to expose to the risk of this contagion, the most guarded measures are adopted to protect the world without the walls from every risk. Not only is every leper denied access to his friends and family, but even written communication is refused him, while sentinels are stationed at short intervals around the grounds, with orders to fire upon any who should attempt an escape.
Here then was I in a jail, with the danger of a horrible disease superadded. Algebraically, my case stood thus: letting the letter P represent a prison, L the leprosy, and N my nose, P + L--N being equal to any given number of deaths by torture. Such was my case, such my situation; while of the past, by what chain of events I came to be thus a prisoner, I knew nothing. A little memoir at the head of my bed set forth that I was "a case of punctured wound in the thorax," with several accessory advantages, not over intelligible by my ignorance, but which I guessed to imply, that if the doctor didn"t finish me off at once, there was every chance of my slipping away by a lingering malady,--some one of those "chest affections" that make the fortunes of doctors, but are seldom so profitable to the patients. One fact was, however, very suggestive. It was above four months since the date of my admission to the hospital,--a circ.u.mstance that vouched for the gravity of my illness, as well as showing what a number of events might have occurred in the interval.
Four months! and where was Donna Maria now? Had she forgotten me,--forgotten the terrible scene on the Collorado; forgotten the starlit night in the forest? Had they left me, without any interest in my future,--deserted me, wounded, perhaps dying?--a sad return for the services I had rendered them! That Fra Miguel should have done this, would have caused me no surprise; but the Senhora,--she who sprang by a bound into intimacy with me, and called me "brother"! Alas! if this were so, what faith could be placed in woman?
In vain I sought information on these points from those around me. My Spanish was not the very purest Castilian, it is true; but here, another and greater obstacle to knowledge existed: no one cared anything for the past, and very little for the future; the last event that held a place in their memory was the day of their admission, the fell malady was the centre round which all thoughts revolved, and I was regarded as a kind of visionary, when asking about circ.u.mstances that occurred before I entered the hospital. There were vague and shadowy rumors about me and my adventure,--so much I could find out; but whatever these were, scarcely two agreed on,--not one cared. Some said I had killed a priest; others averred it was a negro; a few opined that I had done both; and an old mulatto woman, with a face like a target, the bull"s-eye being represented by where the nose ought to be, related a more connected narrative about my having stolen a horse, and being overtaken by a negro slave of the owner, who rescued the animal and stabbed _me_.
All the stories tallied in one particular, which was in representing me as a fellow of the most desperate character and determination, and who cared as little for shedding blood as spilling water,--traits, I am bound to acknowledge, which never appeared to lower me in general esteem. Of course, all inquiries as to my horse, poor Charry, my precious saddle-bags, my rifle, my bowie-knife, and my "Harper"s-ferry,"
would have proved less than useless,--actually absurd. The patients would have reckoned such questions as little vagaries of mental wandering, and the servants of the house never replied to anything.
My next anxiety was, when I should be at liberty? The doctor, when I asked him, gave a peculiar grin, and said, "We cannot spare you, amigo; we shall want to look at your pericardium one of these days. _I_ say it is perforated; Don Emanuel says not. Time will tell who "s right."
"You mean when I"m dead, Senhor, of course?" cried I, not fancying the chance of resolving the difficulties by being carved alive.
"Of course I do," said he. "Yours is a very instructive case; and I shall take care that your heart and a portion of the left lung be.
carefully injected, and preserved in the museum."
"May you live a thousand years!" said I, bowing my grat.i.tude, while a chill crept over me that I thought I should have fainted.
I have already mentioned that sentries were placed at intervals round the walls to prevent escape,--a precaution which, were one to judge from the desolate and crippled condition of the inmates, savored of over care. A few were able to crawl along upon crutches, the majority were utterly helpless, while the most active were only capable of creeping up the bank which formed the boundary of the grounds, to look down into the moat beneath,--a descent of some twenty feet, but which, to imaginations such as theirs, was a gulf like the crater of a volcano.
Whenever a little group, then, would station themselves on the "heights," as they were called, and gaze timidly into the depths below, the guards, far from dispersing them, saw that no better lesson could be administered than what their own fears suggested, and prudently left them to the admonitions of their terrors. I remembered this fact, and resolved to profit by it. If death were to be my lot, it could not come anywhere with more horrors than here; so that, happen what might, I resolved to make an effort at escape. The sentry"s bullet had few terrors for one who saw himself surrounded by such objects of suffering and misery, and who daily expected to be one of their number. Were the leap to kill me,--a circ.u.mstance that in my weak and wounded condition I judged far from unlikely,--it was only antic.i.p.ating a few days; and what days were they!
Such were my calculations, made calmly and with reflection. Not that I was weary of life; were the world but open to me, I felt I should resume all my former zest in its sayings and doings,--nay, I even fancied that the season of privation would give a higher color to my enjoyment of it; and I know that the teachings of adversity are not the least useful accessories of him whose wits must point the road to fortune. True is it, the emergencies of life evoke the faculties and develop the resources, as the storm and the shipwreck display the hardy mariner. Who knows, Con, but good luck may creep in even through a punctured wound in the thorax!
As the day closed, the patients were always recalled by a bell, and patrol parties of soldiers went round to see if by accident any yet lingered without the walls. The performance of duty was, however, most slovenly, since, as I have already said, escape never occurred to those whose apathy of mind and infirmity of body had made them indifferent to everything. I lingered, then, in a distant alley as the evening began to fall, and when the bell rung out its dismal summons, I trembled to think--was it the last time I should ever hear it! It was a strange thrill of mingled hope and terror; Where should I be the next evening at that hour? Free, and at liberty,--a wanderer wherever fancy might lead me, or the occupant of some narrow bed beneath the earth, sleeping the sleep that knows no waking? And, if so, who could less easily be missed than he who had neither friend, nor family, nor fortune. I felt that my departure, like that of some insignificant guest, would meet notice from none: not one to ask what became of him? when did he leave us? to whom did he say farewell?
If there was something unspeakably sad in the solitude of such a fate, there was that also which nerved the heart by a sense of Self-sufficiency,--the very brother of Independence; and this thought gave me courage as I looked over the gra.s.sy embankment, and peered into the gloomy fosse, which now, in the indistinct light, seemed far deeper than ever. A low, marshy tract, undrained and uninhabitable, surrounded the "Lazaretto" for miles; and if this insalubrious neighborhood a.s.sisted in keeping up the malaria of fever, it compensated, on the other hand, by interposing an unpopulated district between the sick and the healthy.
These dreary wastes, pathless and untrodden, were a kind of fabulous region among the patients for all kind of horrors, peopled, as the fancy of each dictated, by the spirits of departed "Leperos," by venomous serpents and cobras, or by escaped galley-slaves, who led a life of rapine and murder. The flitting jack-o"-lantern that often skimmed along the surface, the wild cry of the plover, the dreary night wind sighing over miles of plain, aided these superst.i.tions, and convinced many whose stubborn incredulity demanded corroboration from the senses. As for myself, if very far from crediting the tales I had so often listened to, the theme left its character of gloom upon my mind, and it was with a cold shudder that I strained my eyes over the wide distance, from which a heavy exhalation was already rising. Determined to derive comfort from every source, I bethought me that the misty fog would a.s.sist my concealment, as if it were worth while to pursue me through a region impregnated with all the vapors of disease! The bell had ceased, the bang of the great iron wicket had resounded, and all was still. I hesitated, I know not why: a moment before, my mind was made up; and now, it seemed like self-destruction to go on! Here was life! a sad and terrible existence, truly; but was the dark grave better? or, if it were, had I the right to make the choice? This was a subtlety that had not occurred till now. The dull tramp of the patrol routed my musings, as in quick time a party advanced up the alley towards me. They were not visible from the darkness, but the distance could not be great, and already I could hear the corporal urging them forward, as the mists were rising, and a deadly fog gathering over the earth. Any longer delay now, and my project must be abandoned forever, seeing that my lingering outside the walls would expose me to close surveillance for the future.
I arose suddenly, and advanced to the very edge of the cliff: would that I could only have scanned the depth below, and seen where I was about to go! Alas! darkness was on all; a foot beneath where I stood, all was black and undistinguishable.
The patrol were now about thirty paces from me; another instant, and I should be taken! I clasped my hands together convulsively, and, with drawn-in breath and clenched lips, I bent my knees to spring. Alas, they would not! my strength failed me at this last moment, and instead of a leap, my limbs relaxed, and, tottering under me, gave way. I lost my balance, and fell over the cliff! Grasping the gra.s.sy surface with the energy of despair, I tore tufts of long gra.s.s and fern as I fell down--down--down--till consciousness left me, to be rallied again into life by a terrible "squash" into a reedy swamp at the bottom. Up to my waist in duck-weed and muddy water, I soon felt, however, that I had sustained no other injury than a shock,--nay, even fancied that the concussion had braced my nerves; and as I looked up at the dark ma.s.s of wall above me, I knew that my fall must have been terrific.
Neither my bodily energy nor my habiliments favored me in escaping from this ditch; but I did rescue myself at last, and then, remembering that I must reach some place of refuge before day broke, I set out over the moor, my only pilotage being the occasionally looking back at the lights of the hospital, and, in sailor-fashion, using them as my point of departure. When creeping along the walks of the Lazaretto, I was barely able to move; and now, such a good ally is a strong "will," I stepped out boldly and manfully.
As I walked on, the night cleared, a light fresh breeze dissipated the vapor, and refreshed me as I went, while overhead, myriads of bright stars shone out, and served to guide me on the trackless waste. If I often felt fatigue stealing over me, a thought of the Lazaretto and its fearful inmates nerved me to new efforts. Sometimes so possessed did I become with these fears that I actually increased my speed to a run, and thus, exerting myself to the very utmost, I made immense progress, and ere day began to break, found myself at the margin of the moor, and the entrance to a dense forest, which I remembered often to have seen of a clear evening from the garden of the Lazaretto. With what grat.i.tude did I accept that leafy shade, which seemed to promise me its refuge! I threw my arms around a tree, in the ecstasy of my delight, and felt that now indeed I had gained a haven of rest and safety. By good fortune, too, I came upon a pathway: a small piece of board nailed to a tree bore the name of a village; but this I could not read in the half light; still, it was enough that I was sure of a beaten track, and could not be lost in the dense intricacies of a pine-forest.
The change of scene encouraged me to renewed exertion. And I began to feel that, so far from experiencing fatigue, each mile I travelled supplied me with greater energy, and that my strength rose each hour as I left the Lazaretto farther behind me.
"Ah, Con, my boy, fortune has not taken leave of you yet!" said I, as I discovered that my severe exercise, far from being injurious, as I had feared, was already bringing back the glow of health to my frame, and spirit to my heart.
There is something unspeakably calming in the solitude of a forest, unlike the lone sensations inspired by the sea or the prairie; the feeling is one of peaceful quietude. The tempered sunlight stealing through the leaves and boughs entangled; the giant trunks that tell of centuries ago; the short, smooth, mossy turf through which the tiny rivulet runs without a channel; the little vistas opening like alleys, or ending in some shady nook, bower-like and retired,--fill the mind with a myriad of pleasant fancies. Instead of wandering forth over the immensity of s.p.a.ce, as when contemplating the great ocean or the desert, the heart here falls back upon itself, and is satisfied with the little world around it.
Such were my reveries as I lay down beneath a tree, at first to muse, and then to sleep; and such a sleep as only a weary foot-traveller knows, who, stretched under the shade of a spreading tree, lies dreamless and lost. It must have been late ere I awoke; the sunlight came slanting obliquely through the leaves, and bespoke the decline of day. I rose. At first my limbs were stiff and rigid, and my sensations those of debility; but after a little time my strength came back, and I strode along freely. Continuing the path, I came, after about three hours" fast walking, to a little open spot in the wood, where the remains of a hut and the charred fragments of firewood indicated a bivouac. Some morsels of black bread strewn about, and a stray piece of dried venison, argued that the party who had left them had but recently quitted the spot. Very grateful for the negligent abundance of their waste, I sat down, and, by the aid of a little spring,--the reason, probably, of the selection of the spot for a halt,--made a capital supper, some chestnuts that had fallen from the trees furnishing a delicious dessert. Night was fast closing in, and I resolved on pa.s.sing it where I was, the shelter of the little hut being too tempting a refuge to relinquish easily. The next morning I started early, my mind fully satisfied that I was preceded by some foot party, the path not admitting of any other, with whom, by exertion, I should be perhaps able to come up. I walked from day to dawn with scarcely an interval of rest, but, although the tracks of many feet showed me my conjecture was right, I did not succeed in overtaking them. Towards evening I again came upon their bivouac-ground, which was even more abundantly provided than the preceding one. They appeared to have killed a buck; and though having roasted an entire side, had contented themselves with some steaks off the quarter. Upon this I feasted luxuriously, securing a sufficient provision to last me for the next two or three days.
In this way I continued to travel for eight entire days, each successive one hoping to overtake the party in advance, and, if disappointed in this expectation, well pleased with the good luck that had supplied me so far with food, and made my journey safe and pleasant; for it was both. A single beast of prey I never met with, nor even a serpent larger than the common green snake, which is neither venomous nor bold; and as for pleasure, I was free. Was not that alone happiness for him who had been a prisoner among the "Leperos" of Bexar?
On the ninth day of my wandering, certain unmistakable signs indicated that I was approaching the verge of the forest: the gra.s.s became deeper, the wood less dense; the undergrowth, too, showed the influence of winds and currents of air. These, only appreciable by him who has watched with anxious eyes every little change in the aspect of Nature, became at last evident to the least observant in the thickened bark and the twisted branches of the trees, on which the storms of winter were directed.
Shall I own it? My heart grew heavy at these signs, boding, as they did, another change of scene. And to what? Perhaps the bleak prairie, stretching away in dreary desolation! Perhaps some such tract of swampy moor, where forests once had stood, but now, lying in mere waste of rottenness and corruption; "clearings," as they are called, the little intervals which hard industry plants amid universal wildness, I could not hope for, since I had often heard that no settlers ever selected these places, to which access by water was difficult, and the roads few and bad. What, then, was to come next? Not the sea-coast,--_that_ must be miles away to the eastward; not the chain of the Rocky Mountains,--they lay equally far to the west.
While yet revolving these thoughts, I reached the verge of the wood; and suddenly, and without anything which might apprise me of this singular change, I found myself standing on the verge of a great bluff of land overlooking an apparently boundless plain. The sight thus unexpectedly presented of a vast prairie--for such it was--was overwhelming in its intense interest. My position, from a height of some seven or eight hundred feet, gave me an uninterrupted view over miles and miles of surface. Towards the far west, a ridge of rugged mountains could be seen; but to the south and east, a low flat horizon bounded the distance. The surface of this great tract was covered for a short s.p.a.ce by dry cedars, apparently killed by a recent fire; beyond that, a tall, rank gra.s.s grew, through which I could trace something like a road. This was, as I afterwards learned, a buffalo-trail, these animals frequently marching in close column when in search of water. The sun was setting as I looked, and gilded the whole vast picture with its yellow glory; but as it sunk beneath the horizon, and permitted a clearer view of the scene, I could perceive that everything--trees, gra.s.s, earth itself--presented one uniform dry, burnt-up appearance.