CHAPTER II.

ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE.

Don Benito Vázquez de Bustamente was the son of that General
Bustamente, twice president of the Mexican Republic. When his father,
cast down from power, was forced to flee with his family to take final
refuge at Guayaquil, the boy was only five or six years old. Suffering
with fever, which made the voyage dangerous for him, the child was
left at Guaymas in charge of a faithful adherent, who found no better
way of saving the son of the proscript from persecution than to take
him as one of his own little family up the San José Valley, where he
had a ranch. The boy remained there and grew up to the age when we
encountered him.

His rough but trusty guardian let the youth run wild, teaching him to
ride and shoot as the only needful accomplishments. Benito, falling
into the company of the remnant of purer-blooded Indians, supposed to
be the last of the original possessors of that region, relished their
vagabond life exceedingly. Not only did he spend weeks at a time in
hunts with them, with an occasional running fight with the Yaqui tribe,
and even the Apaches raiding Sonora; but, at the season for pearl
diving, accompanied them in their boats, not only in the Gulf, but down
the mainland and up the seacoast of the peninsula. La Paz he knew well,
and the Isles of Pearls were familiar in every cranny.

Now, when the news of his father’s death in exile came to Benito, he
was a hunter and horseman doubled by seaman and pearl fisher, such as
that quarter of the world even seldom sees.

So little on land, both enemies and followers of the copresident lost
all trace of the son.

Moreover, in the land of revolution in permanency, the offspring of a
once ruler are personally to blame if they call dangerous attention on
themselves.

On shore, however, don Benito had noticed the daughter of a neighbour,
one don José Miranda, formerly in the navy. After a couple of years’
wedded life, the latter was left a widower with an only daughter, who
had become this charming Dolores, now slumbering under her father’s
zarapé. Her education was confided to a poor sister of the captain,
who was about the only enemy young Bustamente had in his courtship.
Captain Miranda was very fond of the youth, and it was agreed ere long
that there should be a wedding at the _Noria de las Pasioneras_ (Well
house of the Passionflowers) as soon as Benito reached the age of
five-and-twenty.

But doña Maria Josefa had contrary marital projects. Her brother had so
many times talked of bestowing the bulk of his considerable fortune on
his beloved child, that the lady concluded, rightly or wrongly, that
she would be penniless when the niece married. Habituated, since a
great while back, to a very easy, not to say pampered existence at her
kinsman’s expense, she beheld with terror the time coming when her host
would settle all his property on the girl, and constitute the strange
young man, who was so reserved about his origin, the steward for his
young wife. However, doña Maria Josefa was too sly and adroit to openly
oppose the paternal determination, and allow him to perceive the hate
she bore Benito and would be only too delighted to manifest.

Whenever she threw out hints of a better match for her niece than this
mysterious youth, they had fallen in deaf ears, and she fretted in
silence that boded no good prospects.

Nevertheless, some two years had known the young hearts formally
engaged without the serpent lifting her head to emit a truly alarming
hiss. At that time doña Maria Josefa introduced at her brother’s a
hook-nosed gentleman, arrayed sumptuously, who rejoiced in a long name
which paraded pretensions to an illustrious lineage. This don Aníbal
Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortez so displeased Benito and Dolores,
whilst not ingratiating himself deeply with don José, that his presence
would not have been tolerated, only for the young couple hopefully
supposing that the tall and bony scion of the first conqueror of Mexico
was a flame of Dolores’ duenna, and as such would wed the dragon and
take her away from the hacienda to the beautiful and boundless domains
in Spain, upon which he expatiated in a shrill voice of enthusiasm.

Don Aníbal had excellent credentials from a banker’s at Guaymas,
but, somehow, the gentlemen farmers received him with cold courtesy.
Besides, it having been remarked that those who offended him met with
injury, personal, like the being waylaid, or in their property, stock
being run off or outhouses fired, there sprang up a peculiar way of
treating the stranger for which the Spanish _morgue_, that counterpart
of English phlegm, is very well suited.

All at once, Benito received word that a messenger from his mother had
arrived at Guaymas, bearing the very good news that she expected to
obtain a revocation of the sentence of banishment against the brood of
Bustamente, and then he could publicly avow his name.

He had already imparted his secret to Captain Miranda.

The messenger had grievously suffered with seasickness, and was
unable to come up the valley. Miranda counselled Benito to go to him
therefore, and besides, as the formalities attending the settlement of
his estate upon his daughter, under the marriage contract, required
such legal owls as nestled alone in the port, he volunteered to
accompany the young man. Over and above all this pleasing arrangement,
as Dolores had never seen the city, of which the five thousand
inhabitants think no little–for after all it is the finest harbour in
the Gulf of California–he proposed she should be of the party.

Another reason, which he did not confide in anyone, acted as a
spur. A neighbour had told don José that, from a communication of
his majordomo, an expert in border warfare, he believed that the
illustrious don Aníbal de Luna was not wholly above complicity with a
troop of robbers who lately infested Sonora, and caused as much dread
and more damage, forasmuch as they were intelligently directed to the
best stores of plunder as the Indians themselves. This neighbour,
though he loved doña Josefa no more cordially than anybody else, still
deemed it dutiful to prevent Captain Miranda allowing a “gentleman of
the highway” to marry into his family.

Don José felt the caution more painfully, as his sister had plainly
let him know that the famous don Aníbal was not so much her worshipper
as her niece’s. He might have thanked the _salteador_ to rid his house
of the old maid, but to allow one to court his daughter was another
matter. At the same time, as of such dubious characters are made the
“colonels” who buckler up a Mexican revolutionary pretender, don José
was scarcely less coldly civil to the hidalgo, though he hastened on
the preparations to withdraw his daughter from the swoop of the bird of
rapine.

Doña Maria Josefa drew a long face at the prospect of being left alone
at the hacienda, but she was too great a dependant on her brother, and
too hypocritical to trammel the undertaking.

The party set forth, then, under good and sufficient escort. But the
very foul fiend himself appeared to have taken all doña Maria Josefa’s
evil wishes in hand to carry them out, to say nothing of the baulked
don Aníbal’s.

Half the escort left without returning, at a mere alarm of the _Indios
bravos_ (“hostiles”) being at La Palma, and massacring and firing
farmhouses wholesale. The rest were lost in the bush, were abandoned
dead or dying; the mules and horses were “stampeded” by unseen foes;
and finally a fatal bowman slew the two horses which had borne don José
and his daughter in their futile endeavour to regain the lost track;
and, to come to the present time, their dog, of whom the instinct had
preserved them more than once from death by thirst, had been despatched
by the same relentless demon.

Still, there was the contradictory consolation which the persistent
enemy afforded by these evidences of his bloodthirsty hunt. By a
singular anomaly of the human organisation, as long as man knows his
fellows are at hand, even though they be enemies, he does not feel
utterly stripped of hope. In the depth of his heart, the vaguest of
hope sustains and encourages him, though he may not reason about it.
But as soon as all human vestiges disappear, the imperceptible human
waif on the sea, alone with nature, trembles in full revelation of his
paltriness. The colossal surroundings daunt him, and he acknowledges it
is folly to struggle with the waves that multitudinously mount up to
swamp him from all sides.

Meanwhile, no further occasion to be fearful had been shown, the sun
went down, and shot up one short gleam ere the swift darkness shrouded
the sky. The howling of wild beasts rushing out to enjoy their time of
sport could be traced from the lair to the “licks” and springs.

But our disarmed _gente perdida_, the lost ones, durst not light a
fire; had they the means to scare the wolf away, it might have afforded
a mark for the unknown archer. Don José wept as he saw his daughter,
who pretended to sleep, to give him and her lover less uneasiness. But
sleep does not come under these circumstances to them who court it.

Indeed, only those who have undergone the horror of a night in the
untamed forest can imagine its poignancy. Lugubrious phantoms people
the glades, the wild beasts intone a devilish concert, the limbs of
trees seem to be animated into semblances of the really awakened
serpents, whose scales can be heard gliding with a slime softened hush
over the bending boughs. None but the experienced can reckon how many
ages are compressed in one second of this gruesome “fix,” a nightmare
of the wakeful, during which the racked mind finds a distorted relish
in picturing the most monstrous lucubrations, particularly when the
faint yet tantalised appetite sets the brain palpitating with delirium.

After enduring this strain for some hours of the gloom, hope or
mere instinct of self-preservation caused Benito to suggest, as one
acquainted with hunters expedients, that the shelter existed by the
increasing danger of their position on the ground, was upon the summit
of a huge broken cottonwood tree. He assisted don José to mount to the
top, which he found tolerably solid, spite of wet and solar rot, passed
him up poor Dolores, and stood on guard at the base. He meant to have
kept awake, or, rather, had not the least idea that he should go off to
sleep, but famine had passed its acute stage, and fatigue collaborated
with it to lull him. The last look he gave upwards showed him vaguely,
like a St. Simon Stylites, the elder Mexican on the broad summit of
the stump, his daughter reclining on the bed of pith at his feet. Don
José was then praying, his face turned to the east, where no doubt he
trusted to behold a less unhappy sun than had last scorched them.

Suddenly don Benito started: something like a hot snake had run down
his cheek and buried itself in his bosom. At almost the same instant,
whilst he was awakening fully, a smart sting in the left shoulder,
preceded by a hissing, short and angry, made the young man utter an
exclamation rather in rage than pain.

The sun had risen; at least, he could see about him and be warmed
and vivified a little, through a fresh day commenced of intolerable
torments.

As he looked up, the repetition of the sensation of the reptile gliding
adown his face, but less warm and more slow this time, caused him to
apply his hand to the line traversed. He withdrew it speedily, and in
disgust–his fingers were smeared with blood!

“Oh, Don José!” he ejaculated. “Dolores, dear!”

Stupefied, speechless, like a statue, the girl upon the natural
pedestal was supporting the lifeless body of the old Mexican. An arrow
was broken off in his temple, and his beard, roughly sprouted out and
white with this week of hardship, was flooded with the blackening blood
of which Benito in his post below had received the drip.

The young man stared fiercely around, and instantly perceiving
something on the move in the thicket, sprang up the tree.

At the same time aimed at him to redeem the marksman for his first
failure, which had lodged the shaft in the young Mexican’s shoulder
instead of his head or his heart; a second projectile of the same
description whizzed into the gap between his legs, opened by his leap,
and smote a knot so violently as to shiver into a dozen splinters.

Unable for want of strength to keep his hold, the youthful Mexican
slipped down to the ground. Then, facing about in frenzy of
indignation, as being so badgered by the unknown, he called out
savagely:

“Coward! Confront the last of your victims, if you have a drop of manly
blood!”

Because he had concluded his last shot serious, or from disdain for his
antagonist, or sheer recklessness–for it is not likely that a savage
so far forgot his training as to let such a white man’s taunt sting him
into the imprudence–the Indian who had dogged the unfortunate trio
stalked out of the underwood, and only ceased his advance when a lance
length from the desperate man who had invoked him.

“_¡Presente!_” he said in Spanish, with a hoarse chuckle, as in one
glance he saw the insensible young female form beside the dead Mexican,
and don Benito’s weak condition.

Indeed, the latter, instead of carrying out his implied threat,
tottered back and leaned against the cottonwood, just under one arrow,
and with the other shattered shaft bristling at his shoulder.

The red man chose to interpret this movement as a flattery for his
warlike appearance, for he smiled contentedly, and, drawing his long
knife, cried holding up three fingers of his left hand:

“La Garra de Rapina–the Claw of Rapine–will now take his harvest for
thrice five days’ toil.”

Benito sought to summon his failing powers, but a mist seemed to
spring up and becloud his gaze, through which he less and less clearly
saw the Indian’s slow and cruel approach. Nevertheless, he was about
to make a snatch at hazard for the steel that rose over his bosom,
when a flash of fire from a gun so near that he almost saw the hither
extremity blind the redskin, preceded a shot that crashed through the
latter’s skull. Benito, unable to check his own leap, received the
dead yet convulsed body in his arms, and the shock hurled him to the
ground. Neither rose! One was dead; the other within an ace of the same
impassable portals. It seemed to him, as he lost consciousness, that
there was a struggle in the brush.

When Benito reopened his eyes he believed all had been a dream, but,
on gazing anxiously about him, he saw the dead Indian by his side.
Above him, too, when he rose on his knees by an effort, the two silent
witnesses of his miraculous deliverance were still recumbent.

No trace of another living soul; nevertheless, the Indian’s weapons had
all disappeared.

Suddenly, as he lifted himself to his feet, aching all over as if he
had been bastinadoed on every accessible place, he heard Dolores moan.
She was animated by the acute racking of hunger.

He gasped, “Food! Food for her!” and reeled to the greenest spot, where
he began to tear up the earth with his nails. At length he dislodged a
little stem of yucca, the somewhat tasty root which yields a species of
maniac.

When he returned to the tree, Dolores, horrified at seeing her father’s
blood, had fallen off the tree top, rather than climbed down, and was
too insensible to hear his appeals. He dragged the Indian’s body partly
aside, for to do so wholly was too weighty a task, and heaped leaves
over the other portion. He placed the root in Dolores’ passive hands,
and was about to repeat his hoarse babble of hope, which he did not
feel at heart, when abruptly the arrow wound in his shoulder gave a
sharp, deep, scorching sensation, which filled him from head to sole
with fever and awe.

“Oh, heavens!” he groaned. “The arrow was poisoned! I shall die in
madness! I shall, perhaps, tear her, my dear Dolores, in my blind,
ungovernable rage!”

So feels the man whom hydrophobia has seized upon, as the latest
promptings of reason bid him hie aloof from his endangered fellows.

Benito laid his glances about him wildly; his recently dull eyes blazed
till his very features, already earthy, lit up, and he howled;

“Welcome, death! But anywhere save here!”

He trampled on the Indian corpse in his flight, and plunged into the
thorns as if bent on rending himself to shreds. He must have rushed
madly on for half an hour, the venom firing his thinned blood till
his veins ran flames, but as the wound on his left side affected that
portion of the frame disproportionately, he described a circle, and in
the end had almost returned to the spot where Dolores still rested in a
swoon.

At last, stumbling, groping, he fell, only to crawl a little way, then,
a slight mound opposing his hands and knees, he rolled upon it. His
head appeared to have been cleared by the Mazeppa-like course, and he
was, at least, conscious of the raised grass reminding him of a funeral
mound.

“A grave!” he breathed, dashing the sweat out of his eyes, “Yes, a
grave here will the last of the Bustamentes die!”

He stretched out at full length, he folded his arms, one of them
palsied already, and was beginning to pray, when his tone changed to
joy, or at least, profound hopefulness. He fell over on his side, then
rose to his knees, ran his band over the mound eagerly, and cried:

“God of mercy, deceive me not! The grave I coveted, is it not a
_cache?_ Thank God!”