CHAPTER XXIII.
CANNON IS BROUGHT TO BEAR.
Long and patiently had the environed garrison been awaiting the tokenof well faring with the adventurers who had so daringly left thatshelter.
Only in the end of the night had the sudden, and, for the moment,inexplicable apparition of the cattle on which had been imposed thatfiery burden, seemed to reveal the operations of their friends.
The charge of the furious and panic-stricken creatures, whose hideswere singed and smoked with a nauseating odour, was unresisted bythe rebels, huddled together just out of gunshot of the farm, in theobscurity. Nevertheless, as soon as the true nature of this attack wasclear, and the more active Indians had speared those animals which hadnot broken their necks and extinguished the flames in the ditch, thealarm calmed down. It was at this juncture that don Benito, at thehead of a hundred horsemen, galloped out of the corral and executeda terrible slashing and hewing, sweeping round amid carnage, andreturning with insignificant loss. The moral effect was even greaterthan the material, for those of the insurgents who had previouslythought nothing of rushing up to the farmhouse, and firing a shot atrandom amid tipsy threats and obscene imprecations, withdrew to a safedistance, and vociferated for the self-constituted leaders to evincetheir genius.
It was as don Benito's troop returned within the defences that theyheard, to their dismay, the well-known war cry of the Apaches onlytoo recently impressed on the hearing of all, and the shout of theirnewfound robber allies.
Of Oliver, the Englishman, and their followers, no intelligencewhatever. It is only doing the master of the farm justice, as well ashis family, to say that deep distress was added to that they felt intheir plight with the fear that their daring friends had all falleninto some trap of the cunning savages now foremost in opposition.
The aurora appeared, and the whole valley was revealed, full of therebels, amongst whom was added, as well as the sixty marauders whoheld captain Pedrillo as chief, the full hundred Apaches, whose proudand domineering carriage defined them from the Yaquis born under theyoke which these had never experienced. Besides, before the heat of theday forced both besiegers and besieged to take a siesta, the alreadyenormous concourse was swollen by the last fragments of the dispersedcolumn 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 clamberedover the stockade were cut down by the horsemen inside. Twice theApaches had charged up to the walls, but, apparently, merely to testthe watchfulness of the inmates and the range of their firearms, forthey made no assault on the palisades, to pull and hack at which, oreven more to alight and clamber over, would have been ignoble in ahorse Indian.
Still no sign of the party that had sallied forth.
Successful in that sally of their own, the Mexican gentlemen wishedto retaliate on the Apaches in particular for the insult implied intheir departing from their war custom of never charging an enclosure orbuilding of any kind. But don Benito reminded them of the ladies whowould be undefended if the horsemen were cut off, and pointed to theswarms of carousing Indians blackening the rising ground, where theyhad mounted to watch the farm with lustful gaze.
Little by little, after Pedrillo and his mongrels had quieted thehatred of the revolted Yaquis for anyone who reminded them of thesuperior race, he obtained a kind of rule over their leaders, only lesspotent than that which they had promptly accorded the Apaches. IronShirt was an idol. The fact of his having but three days before sweptdown upon that same stronghold still defying their hosts, and snatchedthe 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 ofopen-eyed Yaquis wherever they strayed in the wide encampment.
The food and liquor were placed under guard; the drunkards, who wereplunged in stupor, were bundled into the hollows out of the way, thehorse thieves who had been racing about were pulled off the bare backs,and made to squat down and await orders for their superabundant energyto be more profitably expended. The weapons were served out anew, withsome discrimination as to the bearer, so that the strong were no longerpuzzled with arms for which light-handed urchins sufficed, and theyouths disembarrassed of immense spears like Goliath's, and clubs thatthe famous giant races of the Hidden Cities could alone have swung.
The women and children, too, were pushed back, and set to cookingand other menial offices, which must have bewildered them as to theadvantages of revolution.
Therefore, Oliver and his associates soon beheld the impassible barrierspread out broadly between them, and the surrounded fort became duringthe day more and more formidable by these evidences of discipline.
Happily their neighbourhood was not suspected. The column defeated onthe previous night was composed of ignorant boors, who thought not atall by day to give an intelligible account of the lancers, who, indeed,having charged them from the ambush, were not well examined in thehurry-scurry.
"What are they waiting for?" queried Mr. Gladsden, impatiently. "Surelynot for more reinforcements, when they are already a hundred to one!"
"That's the answer," said the white hunter. "Yon long string of nakedcopperskins dragging that shining object at their tail."
"A cannon?"
"Yes! Two shots o' that and thar will be a hole in the farmhouse that aherd of buffalo might traverse. Good night to our hidalgo if they getthat piece trained on the house. When a bullet hits those grey blocks,hewn out of the volcano pumice stone, it will crumble like glass, andno two ways about it. The _casa_ is a case."
"And can we do nothing, absolutely nothing? Can we not even pierce thatmultitude, 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 theresk o' dying, that's a man's talk, and you can volunteer to come alongwith me."
"Come along with you, Oliver?"
"Yes. If that cannon fires twice into that house, I tell 'ee, thar'llbe nothing but the worst kind of smashed fruit that ever figgered in anold 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 hesgone 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 theenterprise, the better it bids to quiet my blood, which is at boilingpoint."
"You'll hev' all the despiritness you want," answered the Oregonian.
Then, turning to the Mexicans, who had waited the conclusion of theirdialogue 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 stickevery red nigger till you are right up to the house, if your heartbacks your breastbone so far. And mark! Your government offers twohundred and fifty dollars for Injin scalps, and you kin have my sharethis trip, and welkim!"
His speech was received with enthusiasm, notably the peroration. Heillustrated his intention to make scalps by throwing off his uniformcoat, cutting his shirtsleeves off at the shoulder, and removing thespurs which he had donned for the ride. Then he took up a handful oflive oak leaves, bruised them, and dyed his bared arms, neck and facewith the juice to a brown hue. At his suggestion, the Englishman lefthis 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 biggun? 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 anunbroken mass. These who elsewhere completed an environment of thehacienda were in groups, which changed position at fancy, and were lesswarlike than the main body. The rear was left to a natural
guard; theinaccessibility of the hill, where, too, a barranca, or deep chasm,with perpendicular sides, caused by a torrent suddenly cutting itsway to a subterranean reservoir, almost at right angles, divided theincline.
The watch, as is common with a sudden gathering, was nobody's business.
The Apaches and the Mexican half-breeds, self-constituted chiefs, werenow scattered among the Yaquis, teaching the handling of weapons andpromising them all manner of delights when the farm should be captured.
Oregon Ol. and his associate struck from the wood which concealed theircompanions, away at first from the valley, but on arriving fairly uponthe north side, they advanced parallel with its crest, every now andthen perceiving a flag waving on top of the hacienda. The ground wasso rough that they had alternations of leaps and creeps over obstaclesof which the hunter made light, but which delayed the Englishman. Onreaching the gorge, the former paused to admit of the other coming up.
"Thar's our route," said the hunter, pointing down into this opentunnel and along its incline upward, "We kin settle down to a longscramble, but all the way thar'll be no alarms; those rum soakershaven't a good eye among the heap."
"That is the more gratifying, as there are enough of them to convert usinto a pair of pincushions with their arrows."
Nevertheless, he could not help a shiver of repugnance to adventuringat such a risk.
"I do not say we could do it by night, for down thar the twilightallers 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 stainingwith red oxides every part of their remaining attire and exposed skinwhich would not favour the supposition to a chance observer that theywere Indians floundering in the abyss where they had blundered duringintoxication. They were armed only with knives and revolvers, but eachcarried one of the rockets.
They proceeded to descend the steep up and down side with all theprecaution requisite. Difficult was not the word for their task, fornone but a maniac or a lover or such as these staking all on thechance of being infinite service to their fellows, would have hazardedthemselves.
The descent was a series of slides, checked by dwarf shrubs and rocksof all imaginable forms, cut, ground, polished, jagged by the waterand sand; now and then, without any warnings, there were cracks andholes three or four yards wide at the remote bottom of which wasto be heard a melancholy soughing and roaring as of raging demonsor oppressed souls. Out of several, a thick, noisome, warm vapoursluggishly oozed. Once, when they had hardly succeeded in crossing apart of which the rim was of crumbling sand, Oliver had made a remarkon the judiciousness of his comrade awaiting him there, but the answerwas so stern and impregnated with such resolution that he never againremonstrated.
At last the centre of the trough was attained.
But here the chaos of sand, shrubs, and rocks, became next toinextricable, and to proceed up through the hindrances, varying eachinstant in material but not in degree, would have been pronouncedsimply 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, thoughtnothing of his hands and knees exposed to the adamantine sands andthe harsh catclaw bushes that would have frightened the half-nakedsavages, and if ofttimes he was compelled to retrace his steps when hehad ventured into a non-egress, it was only the better to resume hisunwearied way.
"I'm no hog," growled he once, when he paused to suck a more thanusually deep briar scratch which he believed poisonous, "and I knowwhen 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 gorgewhere the sky glowed the more gorgeously by contrast, "night must notcatch us no farther up, and agen," sniffing like an old sailor, "ain'tthar rain in the air?"
"I am stifled with the sulphur reeking out of these cracks," returnedhis companion; "on this roof of Old Nick's kitchen, I really am notaware 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 absorbedin picking the course and caring for his own safety, the hunter foundtime, not merely to caution his comrade, but to intervene at momentsof peril. This constant attention in safekeeping once even almost ledto his losing his life or limbs, for in choosing for himself the widerpart of a crack, the edge gave way altogether, and but for Gladsdenclutching by the side, with a little fold of the skin, too, in thegrasp, the hunter must have fallen within the crust.
"Thank'ee, pard.!" observed the guide, wincing comically; "That timeyou grabbed flesh and ha'r. A little more of sich a grip, an' you'dhev' 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 thewhole effort had been spent in scaling the anfractuosities at whicha mountain sheep would have baulked, they had at all events ascendedthe barranca and were under the centre of the part of the hill wherethe Yaquis had dragged an old forty-pounder, brought over by theconquerors, and for long rusting at some farm in the neighbourhood.Their rejoicing at the accomplishment of their work coincided soclosely with that of the two white men that the latter smiled to be soindirectly cheered.
Stopping to take breath, they looked back with relief and pride at thehorrible gulfy path which they had overcome, darkening into blacknesswith the failing light.
Whilst the cannon was placed on some logs so that it could be trainedon the hacienda, to the level of which this hill almost rose,the Yaquis were silent, so interested were they in the operationsuperintended by Lieutenant Garcia, inflated into abnormal pomposity bybecoming the cynosure.
"Up!" said Oliver in this silence.
They had the abrupt side to climb when they would be beside the amateurartillerists. After what they had overcome this affair was merely oneof time. The brink of the barranca was armed by stony mounds and thewrecks of half a dozen pines of the giant species, which must have beenan imposing sight for miles around before the lightning or the tempestshattered them. Ensconced in this natural barricade, not more thanthree hundred feet from the nearest of the foe, they could easily takethe repose they deserved, whilst studying the scene and the actors.
On their front, to the right, the hacienda and its corrals, intowhich they could gaze across the gully; farther away the forest wherethe Mexican detachment lay. Beside them, the hill covered with theinsurgents, and more and still more of them in the vales. Disseminatedthus, they seemed a veritable swarm of locusts, such as covers theplains of Arizona and Colorado.
They recognised without difficulty Captain Pedrillo on his horse, withhis wooden leg sticking out and twitching free of the stirrup; theApache chiefs, knowing nothing about ordnance, left the Mexicans tomanage the loading of the cannon with blasting powder. A pile of thepowder cans, some partly open and some altogether stove in and lidless,with all the carelessness of the inexperienced, stood near the pieceon its wooden frame; at that distance the Englishman could even seethe brand on the tins of the sun in glory of the Rayo del Sol MiningCompany, from the works of which, by Regulus Pueblo, they had beentaken by its truant ore carriers.
Darkness fell, deeper than usually, which confirmed Oliver in hisforecast as to a tempest approaching, but the peons worked on at theclumsy pedestal of the cannon by the flare of torches.
Seeing that the piece would surely be in place, Captain Pedrillo, IronShirt, and the Apache subchiefs went into a large tent on the browof the hill. It was open on the face towards the hacienda above, andconsequently they were no longer visible to the two adventurers, whocould see only the guard of Indians at the same point.