Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew
Date: 2009-09-29T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adventure stories

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Title: Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew

Author: Robert McReynolds

Release date: September 29, 2009 [eBook #30128]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE STRONGEST TIDE WINDS BLEW ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew, by Robert McReynolds

WHERE STRONGEST
TIDE WINDS BLEW

By

Robert McReynolds

Author of

“Thirty Years on the Frontier,” “Rodney Wilkes,”
“The Luxury of Poverty,” “A Modern Jean
Valjean,” “Facts and Fancies,” Etc.

GOWDY-SIMMONS PUBLISHING CO.

Colorado Springs, Colo.
1907

Copyright 1907
By Robert McReynolds.

To
Honorable John B. Stephen
and
his estimable wife,
from the romantic story of whose
lives, the principal incidents
of this work are taken.

Colorado City, Colorado
1907

ILLUSTRATIONS

SOUNDING THE DEPTHS | 24
WRECK OF THE SPANISH SLOOP SEVILLE. | 36
THE EARTH BEGAN TO ROCK AND REEL. | 84
THE HOME VOYAGE OF THE AVEN WAS FRAUGHT WITH ALL THE DANGERS OF THE SEA. | 148
FLIGHT OF THE TORPEDO BOAT. | 166
THE AREGUIPENA. | 212

CONTENTS

I | Under the Sword of Damocles | 9
II | In Days of Innocence | 24
III | Through Mists of the Sea | 31
IV | Graves Gave up Their Dead | 41
V | Fairest Flower of the Cordilleras | 50
VI | A Humiliating Incident | 56
VII | In the Throes of Revolution | 64
VIII | Viva Generalissimo Pierola | 72
IX | Amid the Din of Battle | 80
X | We Meet Again, Felicita | 90
XI | The Masque Ball at Tiravaya | 98
XII | Cowardly Act of a Villain | 107
XIII | Murderous Plan of the Insurgents | 115
XIV | For the Sake of Humanity | 125
XV | In Desperate Struggle for Life | 135
XVI | The Screaming Winds of Night | 143
XVII | The Barbarian Meets His Ingomar | 151
XVIII | On Sunny Seas Bound North | 159
XIX | Death Ships of the Sea | 167
XX | A Daughter of the Cherokees | 176
XXI | Carson’s Blank Pages in Life | 185
XXII | A Voice from Centuries Past | 195
XXIII | The Two Old Black Crows | 205
XXIV | The Reckless Hand of Fate | 214
XXV | Cords of Love Are Strong | 223
XXVI | When the Death Gloom Gathers | 231
XXVII | A Night of Tragedies | 240
XXVIII | From out the Shadowy Past | 249

9

Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew

I.

UNDER THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.

We built our cabin high on the slopes of the Sangre de Christo range, overlooking the broad, level San Luis Valley, in Colorado. At the rear of the cabin rose a towering cliff or rather a huge slab of rock standing edgewise more than two hundred feet high, apparently the upheaval of some mighty convulsion of nature in ages gone. Near the base of this cliff flowed a clear crystal spring.

Some hundred yards west of the cabin was the mouth of a tunnel into which we had drifted with pick, shovel and giant powder, a distance of 300 feet in five months of hard toil. A trail led from the 10 tunnel to the cabin along the mountain side, which was thickly studded with tall pines. Another trail led down the mountain slopes in a winding way to the valley, almost a mile below. Above, reaching far into the blue dome of the sky, rose the peaks of the snow-capped Sangre de Christo, glistening in the morning sunlight, which threw gaunt, fantastic shadows in cañon and deep ravine.

It was a wild, weird scene, where man, in strength and vigor, seems to imbibe a portion of the divine essence that lives, and moves, and has its being in the vast solitudes.

We struck pay rock at the first thirty feet of tunneling, so Amos’ assay showed, and the rock had gradually increased in value, week by week. Buchan would take samples of the ore every week or ten days and walk a distance of twenty-five miles to Saguache, where old man Amos, expert geologist and assayer, would for two dollars and fifty cents make out a clean printed slip with figures in red ink, showing so 11 many ounces of lead, copper, silver and gold to the ton.

The ore had not yet reached a value which would pay to ship it, but the increase of values was so steady, and Amos was so extravagantly encouraging, that we were always in buoyant expectation of rich ore. He would say, “You boys have a wonderful prospect. Keep right on with your work; it is getting richer with every stroke of your pick and you are likely to uncover a million dollar drift any day.”

Buchan would bring the assay certificate back to the cabin, where we would sit late by the light of the pine knots in the fire place and talk of the golden millions which capitalists would yet gladly pay for a half interest in the “Aberdeen.”

That was the name Buchan had given the mine, after his home town in Scotland, of which he always spoke with a fond tenderness.

Winter had come and we, John Buchan, Will Carson, and myself, had chipped in almost our last dollar and brought a wagon 12 load of flour, bacon and canned goods from Saguache to the foot of the mountains, then carried them on our backs to the cabin. We quit work on the mine for ten days and chopped firewood, which we corded at the rear of our house. All hands felt that we were as snugly housed for the winter as the big grizzly bears in their lairs among the rocks.

Snow had been falling for several days and it lay deep on the mountain slopes and in the wide expanse of the valley below. We had not had an assay for two weeks and all were anxious for another report from Amos. Buchan wanted his mail also, and he took a small bag of the rock and tramped the twenty-five miles to Saguache. It was a three days’ trip wading through the unbroken snow drifts, and it was night when he returned, weary, footsore and angry.

I can see him yet, tears trickling down his honest face, as he tried to tell something about Amos. He spoke of “the scamp, the villain, and robber,” and then 13 choked with rage. Like all Scotchmen, the more he thought of the wrong done him, the angrier he became; he would be more angry tomorrow and it would be the day after that his anger would reach the climax, and begin to subside. This was not a peculiarity of Buchan. It is a characteristic of the Scotch.

We made him a cup of coffee and seated him comfortably before the fire. When he calmed down somewhat, he explained.

“The first thing I did the next morning after reaching Saguache, was to eat breakfast, and then I took the samples of ore to Amos’ assay office. He was garrulous as usual, and said to come in two hours and he would have the certificate of the assay ready for me. When I again called he handed me the certificate and I paid him the usual two dollars and fifty cents. It showed nine dollars and ninety cents to the ton. The usual increase of ten per cent. over the last assay.

“I crossed over to the postoffice, and while waiting for my mail, I noticed the 14 snow standing ten inches high on the cap of the flue of Amos’ assay furnace. I thought, how in the deuce did he assay our ore without melting the snow on the cap of the flue? The more I thought about it the more I was mystified. I went across to his office and said, ‘Amos, I suppose you gave us the usual fire test on this ore?’ ‘Yep,’ he answered. ‘Then tell me,’ I cried, ‘how in the devil did you make the fire test without melting the snow off the cap of your furnace flue?’ ‘Too cold to melt,’ he replied.

“Then I rushed past him into the back room. The furnace was cold and the frost had gathered on the iron door. I don’t suppose there had been a fire in it for a week. I took Amos by the whiskers and told him to own up that he had not made a fire test of our ore. Then he acknowledged that he had been guessing at it all along.”

“You don’t mean there is a doubt about us having pay rock?” we yelled in a chorus.

15

“All kinds of doubt,” said Buchan. “I am told there is a suspicion that Amos gives everybody an assay showing values, where there are no values––this for the purpose of keeping up work in the district––and to those who have found values, he gives them an assay showing nothing. At the same time he gives Rayder, the Denver capitalist, a tip and he buys up the property for a song, giving Amos a fat commission for his part in the deal. The chances are that we have no more gold in our rock than there is in that jug handle.”

The news was astounding. We sat for a while by the fire like men stricken dumb. There was no doubting Buchan’s statement. Deception was no part of his nature. He was nearly twenty-six years of age, athletic, strong and quick of perception. He had seen much of the world and knew men. No, there could be no doubt; he was not mistaken.

We were heartsick. Almost our last dollar had gone to pay for the bogus assay. 16 Our golden dream of months was vanishing. Carson broke the silence.

“I will go to Saguache tomorrow. I shall pulverize that jug handle and take it to Amos; he does not know me; I shall have him assay it, and if he gives me gold values there will be trouble!”

I was awakened the next morning by the sound of a hammer. Carson was pulverizing the jug handle. After a hasty breakfast, he buckled on his cartridge belt with a Colt 44-six shooter in his holster, and was soon wading through the snow-drifts down the trail towards Saguache. I watched him through the window until he was lost to view.

The sun rose in a clear sky; the glistening peaks of the Sangre de Christo shone white against a turquoise blue; clumps of snow melted from the branches of the pines and made hollows in the smooth banks of white where they fell.

I turned to Buchan. He was tossing restlessly in his bunk.

“I would hate to be Amos if he gives 17 Carson an assay of values from that jug handle.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered incoherently. “The day of reckoning comes to all. I have seen it. I have seen the sky turn black, the waves rise mountain-high out of the sea, the earth rock and reel, the dead roll out of their coffins in the cerements of their graves, the living fall upon their faces to hide from the wrath of Almighty God! I have seen it just as Paul tells about it. I have heard the roar of the winds, seen palaces crumble and fall––like John of Patmos, I lift up my voice––I, John.”

I was at his side in a moment, and saw that he was delirious. The exertion through the snow the day before, the loss of sleep and intense anger, had made him ill. I knew of a few simple remedies at hand, and in a little while I had him sleeping soundly.

The sun became warmer as the day advanced. The snow melted on the cabin roof and froze in drooping icicles at the 18 eaves. All day I went noiselessly about the cabin, letting Buchan sleep. A premonition of impending danger crept over me. I tried to throw off the dread feeling by reading, but I could not concentrate my thoughts on the pages of the book. Strange thoughts came like they did to the man who was being taken to the guillotine and begged time of his captors to put his thoughts on paper. I thought I would write mine that day, or remember them at least, but I cannot recall them. I only know they were strange and fascinating, as if I was living another life, on another planet.

I brought in wood and water for the night. The sound of the door slamming awoke Buchan. He arose and sat by the fire, which blazed up brightly from its fresh supply of pine logs.

“Better, I see,” I observed, “but heavens you were locoed this morning! talking about the resurrection, the quaking earth, and the dead rolling out from their graves!”

19

“All true,” he said, quietly. “I have seen those things, and what has happened once may happen again.”

I was standing by the window, looking out over the snow covered San Luis valley, when even as he spoke I felt the ground tremble. There was a rush of air and the cabin became filled with a fine snow that was stifling, then a thunderous roar, and all was utter darkness.

I was choking with the snow particles. I groped to the door and opened it and felt a solid bank of snow.

I realized then that we were buried beneath a snow slide.

We worked for hours, in silence and darkness, digging our way through the snow and shoveling it back into the cabin as we tunneled toward the cliff. It was early morning when we saw the light of day.

Once in the open where we could breathe the pure air we beheld a sight that would appall the strongest heart. The great flat rock, that had stood on edge at the back of 20 the cabin, was now slanting at a sharp angle above our heads. The avalanche from near the summit of the Sangre de Christo had struck the cliff and with its incalculable tons tilted it, piling itself hundreds of feet in the depth about us. The cliff might fall at any moment and blot us out of existence.

Reaching a point of sight near the open space at the edge of the base of the cliff we could see something of the awful havoc wrought by the avalanche. Huge rocks had been loosened from their foundations and with the speed of a meteor dashed to the valley below. Great pines one hundred feet in height had been torn up by their roots and hurled down the mountain side by the tremendous weight of the avalanche.

The cliff had sheltered our cabin and saved our lives.

We cleared the snow away from the chimney and out of the cabin. Our wood was dry and we soon had a cheerful fire blazing and the tea kettle boiling. But living under that slanting cliff, from which we 21 could not escape, we felt, indeed that the sword of Damocles hung by a spider web above our heads.

When we had rested some and refreshed ourselves with coffee, we tunneled from the open space under the cliff to near the entrance of the mine, intending to live in the tunnel until the melting snows of the spring released us from our prison. But when we had tunneled through the snow to near the entrance of the mine, we found our way blocked by a debris of rock and trees which would require weeks of labor to remove. Tunnels in other directions gave us no better results, and we became resigned to our fate, returning to the cabin to while away the dreary hours until the hanging cliff above should become our grave stone.

Days of gloom and monotony came and went. We dug the snow away from our windows and tunneled a hole to the top which gave us a glare of reflected light.

Buchan had hitherto been silent as to his past life. By a few stray remarks we had 22 caught glimpses of his romantic career, but now he began relating in detail incidents of his early life in Scotland, or on the high seas, and later in Peru. His stories were so full of human interest and replete with love and romance, that I became more than ever interested in him. But my hearing was bad, and it had been getting worse since the day of the avalanche, so I prevailed upon him to write. I could read better than listen, besides he would write his better thoughts and nobler sentiments when he would not speak them.

It was writing these memoirs of his eventful life that furnished him pastime and I was employed in reading them, during the two months of our imprisonment in our snow bound cabin.

By the dim light of the window by day and the blaze of a pine log at night, he wrote upon the scraps of paper found about the cabin. As I now review the pile I find it made up of paper bags, margins of newspapers, fly leaves from a few old 23 books, and much of it on strips of a yellow window shade, also on the backs of fancy calendars with which Carson had adorned our cabin, and almost a whole chapter I find penciled finely on a pair of lady’s cuffs that were strangely out of place in a miner’s hut.

Buchan does not know that I am going to give his story to the public and I shall have to take chances and risk his displeasure. In that event I have the defence of pleading that no man has the right to withhold so good a tale from the world.

24

II.

IN DAYS OF INNOCENCE.

As I peer into the dim past that haunts the scenes of my childhood in Aberdeen, Scotland, a thousand memories troop by like the scenes of a panorama with the footlights turned low; and when I contemplate them in a meditative hour it leaves me with as lonesome a feeling as if I had listened to the old time song, “Home Sweet Home,” which I have heard a thousand times in distant climes, sometimes sung to crowded audiences at the opera, and again by the pioneer as he rattled his prairie schooner over the plains.

It is a song that never grows old and never will so long as men leave the home of their childhood, around whose hearthstones still play ghost-like, the recollections of bye-gone years, tenderly touching their sympathies as they pause for a moment in their monied pursuits in other lands.

SOUNDING THE DEPTHS

25

The old red school house on Princeton street, with the tall lank figure of Ellwood for its presiding master and who believed in and practiced the command of the Holy Writ: “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” was to me in those years of tenderness, a dismal contemplation. But Sundays had a brighter hue when Mother would dress me in full Highland suit of tartan, and adorn my cap with an eagle feather, surmounted with a brooch of the design of an arm with a dagger, bearing the motto, “We fear nae fae.” With my small claymore and buckled shoes and plaid, how proudly I would walk up to the barracks at Castle Gate, where the sentry would salute me, and give me permission to enter.

But those days had their troubles as well as pleasures. The West North street boys had a grievance against those of the East North street and one Saturday both sides met in battle array, armed with wooden 26 swords, near the North church at Queen street. After a determined resistance West North street was victorious, when someone presented us with a flag. It was a common piece of bunting, but to our young heroes it was something to be looked up to and defended with our lives before the honor of West North street should be sullied.

That banner cost us many a headache, and many a soiled suit of clothes after the usual Saturday battle. On one occasion we sallied forth as usual to the battlefield, carrying our banner, and shouting derisively at our foe. The enemy had been reinforced and after a hard struggle, they captured our flag and carried it off in triumph to East North street.

Our fellows were a crest-fallen lot, as we sat on the steps of the church looking the picture of dejection. However, a few days later, I summoned the boys to meet in an old building in Ferrier’s Lane. There were fifteen of us and we came armed with our wooden swords. After much debate 27 over the loss of our flag, a committee was appointed to notify the East North street fellows, that we were ready to offer battle, and dared them to meet us the following Saturday and bring the captured flag. They accepted the challenge. When we met again in the old building by the hazy and flickering light of a tallow candle, with upraised swords we swore to re-capture our flag, uphold the honor of our street or die in the attempt. I was chosen captain on this occasion, and never did a general rack his brain more for a plan of success than I did to win this battle. Finally I hit upon a stratagem and after school submitted it to all. It was to proceed to the usual place of battle, but at the corner of Queen street five boys were to be stationed out of sight, and when both armies met they were to rush in on their standard bearer and capture the flag. We met, and even to this day I shudder at the ferocity of that battle. Twice I was knocked down; several times our street was on the retreat when someone shouted––“Remember our oath!” and 28 then another desperate rush, and along with the charge of the five secreted ones which so surprised the East North street boys that they finally yielded, and we carried off our flag in triumph. John Taylor’s head was cut, John Ingerham’s eyes were black, my right knee cap was out of place and six or eight others were more or less wounded. The boys of East North street fared about the same. Good old Doctor Ellis living in King street witnessed the fight, but he kept my secret, for I told Mother that I was hurt in running a race.

And so those delightful days of early boyhood passed like one long summer day. But a change came. My father died and in a few months more, my loving Mother, after a lingering illness, passed away. I then left the home of my childhood to live with my older brother, James.

Although every possible kindness was shown me, there was lacking a mother’s love, a mother’s sympathy and cheering words, things that touch the tender chords of a boy’s heart. At that time I was sent 29 to the Ledingham Academy, but it was useless. The golden veil through which I had looked out on the world was lifted, the chain of love and affection broken. I saw the great ships come with their strange men from other ports of the world. I saw them unfurl their snowy sails and speed over the blue waters bound for the shores of other climes. I watched them until they were but a speck of white down on the blue horizon, and I longed to be on board––to feel the ship roll upon the billows and hear the wind whistling through the rigging, to climb aloft and view the limitless expanse of ocean and feel that I was a part of these white specters of the sea.

One day I saw in the windows of Knox & Co., a sign which read:

“Two apprentices wanted for the sea.”

I went in and told them I wanted to become a sailor. About this time another lad about one year older than myself came in on the same errand. An old gentleman, after surveying us both for some moments, remarked that in his opinion we were too 30 young, but told us to wait a few minutes as Captain McKenzie would be in soon.

When Captain McKenzie came in he asked us if it was with the consent of our parents that we made application. Being answered in the affirmative by James Mitchell, the other boy, I answered that my father and mother were dead, but my brother would sign the necessary papers.

31

III.

THROUGH MISTS OF THE SEA.

Captain McKenzie sprang from his berth in the wildest excitement. A moment before a low voice called “Captain,” at his state room door. “Who is there?” he asked. “Donovan,” came the guarded reply. “Captain, the mate has conspired with the crew to mutiny and your throat will be cut in an hour.”

James Mitchell and I were apprentices on board the bark “Aven of Aberdeen.” My brother James having reluctantly consented that I should follow the fortunes of the sea, signed the indenture papers.

The brig was bound for Archangel, Russia, and we had on board a large amount of specie and plate, the private fortunes of a Russian Jew returning to his native land after many years of success as a merchant in Alexandria. Our berth was near 32 the captain’s, and Mitchell had heard the warning given by Donovan. He was out of his berth in an instant and gave me to understand there was mutiny aboard. Together we entered the captain’s cabin.

The Jew was apprised of the situation. It was the intention of the mate and crew to murder him and the Captain and put the vessel about for a piratical cruise in the Indian Ocean. They were a motley gang of foreigners, low bred and capable of any crime when led by a man like the mate, fresh from a career of lawlessness on the China coast.

The Jew was the most abject picture of terror I ever saw. His hands trembled and he shook like a man in a chill. He wanted to hide, but that was useless. Captain McKenzie armed himself with a belaying pin. He placed one in the hands of each of us boys and bade us follow him in silence. We cautiously went on deck and we found the helm deserted, and the mate and the entire crew sitting together and drinking in the fore part of the ship.

33

Captain McKenzie sprang into their midst and with one blow from the pin killed the mate. This subdued the others and they slunk away to their duties. The captain then called the men in front of him and after ordering Donovan to the helm, told them he was done with them and that their future conduct would determine their fate. At the same time he threatened to kill the first man that manifested a mutinous disposition, or dared to cross a given line on the deck without his permission. He then ordered the mate’s body overboard and told the men to return to their duties.

The Captain and Donovan took turns at the helm, while Mitchell or I was stationed as a lookout to give instant warning of any suspicious movements on the part of the crew. For more than a week we stood to our posts of duty, when one morning we sailed into the smooth waters of the port of Archangel, weary and exhausted from the intense nervous strain and loss of sleep.

The Captain notified the British consul 34 and a file of soldiers came on board and arrested the crew. Six of them were afterwards sent to prison for life.

The home voyage of the Aven was fraught with all the dangers of the sea. We had secured another crew in Archangel but their seamanship was bad. When a sudden storm would strike us it required herculean efforts on the part of the captain and Donovan to prevent the ship from being driven ashore on the rocks.

Snow was falling and a wintry wind dashed the waves over our decks and coated the bulwarks with a mail of ice. Sleet and snow clung to the rigging, making every effort to handle the ship a hazardous one. For three days we battled against the elements and then we came in contact with ice floes. Once our position was so perilous that the Captain ordered the boats provisioned and ready to be lowered when the vessel should be crushed in the ice. By skillful maneuvering we escaped from the ice floes and had a pleasant day or two in smoother seas.

35

It was night and I was standing by the taffrail, when suddenly a giant specter seemed to come up from out of the sea, bearing directly down upon us. Her great lantern swung in a glow in a fog, by which I discerned moving objects.

“Collision! Collision!” I shouted at the top of my voice. The cry was taken up by the sailors, and ere it had died away there was the crashing of timbers, falling spars and the shouts of men.

We had been struck a glancing blow abaft midships but the damage was not serious enough to sink us. The other vessel, which proved to be the brig “Rapid,” belonging to the same company at Aberdeen, stood off until its crew ascertained the extent of our damage, then sailed away in the darkness.

A month’s delay on the docks at Aberdeen repairing damages, and we were again on the high seas bound for the ports of South America.

When off the West Indies the sky suddenly became overcast, and we were soon 36 overtaken by a hurricane. The captain saw it coming and prepared for it, yet when it took the ship it roared and laid her down so that I thought she would never get up again. All that day and night we had heavy squalls, and by morning the gale was still increasing. Birds of sea and land came on board. Driven by the winds, they dashed themselves down upon the deck without offering to stir until picked up, and when let go they would not leave the ship, but endeavored to hide from the wind. By ten o’clock at night the storm had spent its fury, and when I went to my bunk I found it full of water. With the straining of the ship, the seams had begun to leak. I was surprised to note among the ship’s crew that the most swaggering, swearing bullies in fine weather were now the most meek and mild-mannered of men when death was staring them in the face.

WRECK OF THE SPANISH SLOOP SEVILLE. (Page 30)

37

Then followed days when the sea was smooth as glass. Our white sails hung idly beneath the scorching skies. Sea weed floated on the oily surface, as, day by day, we lay seemingly motionless on the bosom of the deep. The moon rose out of a phosphorescent sea and cast its long golden gleams on the azure blue, while the stars shone like isles of light in the sky. There was a dread in the infinite spaces about. Again, there was scurrying, fleecy clouds and our ship was scudding before the breeze.

When I awoke one morning, we were lying at anchor in the harbor of Buenos Ayres. While unloading cargo, the Captain desiring to go ashore, I was taken in the boat along with two of the seamen. After getting to the wharf, the Captain said: “I expect you fellows to employ your time cleaning that boat; it will be five o’clock before I return.” After he had gone, one of the sailors said to his mate, “We will leave Spriggings (meaning me) to clean the boat, and we will go to shore.” After they were gone, I concluded that I had been imposed upon and I left the boat and went into the city, having no intention of deserting the vessel at 38 that time. In my wanderings in the strange city, and not knowing a word of Spanish, I lost my way. Finally, when I returned to the wharf, the boat was gone. It was late when I was picked up by a policeman and turned over to an Englishman, who kindly took me to his home for the night. The next morning I returned to the Aven and received a reprimand.

A few days later we weighed anchor for Valparaiso. The sky was overcast and the sea was rolling high off the Patagonian coast, when we heard signal guns of distress. Captain McKenzie changed the course of the ship and we soon came in view of the Spanish sloop Seville going to pieces on the rocks. Her bow was lifted high, while the waves were breaking over her stern. Her sails were in shreds, and a dozen sailors clung to the rigging. We lowered the life-boat, and after hours of battle with wind and wave, rescued the crew. They were in an exhausted and famished condition, having been for almost three days without food or water. They 39 were given every kindly attention by our officers and crew.

We saw the dark, jagged, rugged bluffs and steeps of Staten and Terra del Fuego. We rounded Cape St. John, amid tempestuous gales and giant seas of the polar regions. We lost sight of the land, reefed the sails close down and then bid defiance to the storm. Strange sea birds shrieked their dismal cries, while dull leaden skies added to the gloom. We cleared Cape Horn in safety and were soon sailing over the smooth seas of the south Pacific Ocean beneath the Southern Cross.

“Sail ho!” cried the lookout. All eyes were turned to the leeward. A stately ship, under full sail, had suddenly appeared, bearing down upon us. She came silently, the water splitting in foam at her bows. We could see the crew working about her decks, but no sound came from the spectre. All at once we noticed her hull and sails were transparent. We could see through them to the ocean beyond.

It was only a mirage of the sea, but to 40 our crew it was the spectre of the Flying Dutchman––a phantom ship had crossed our bow.

Once in port, no more would we walk the deck of the Aven of Aberdeen. She had seen a ghost.

41

IV.

GRAVES GAVE UP THEIR DEAD.

I was in the streets of Arica, Peru, when the earth began to rock and reel. Buildings surged and fell, with a crashing noise. The dust rose dense, and darkened the sky. The earth gaped and swallowed up many of the people fleeing to the hills back of the town. I followed to an elevation where an awful sight met the terror-stricken populace. The hills of Arica had for centuries been the burying grounds of the ancient Agmaras, a race of Indians who ages ago it seems were fishermen. The convulsions of the earth threw to the surface hundreds of the dried bodies of the Indians, still wrapped in their coarse garments, the nature of the soil had prevented decay. When the people beheld this they believed the world had come to an end, and they threw themselves on their faces praying for mercy.

42

There was a thunderous roar from the sea, growing louder and louder as each moment of terror sped on, and then, with one mighty crash, a tidal wave fifty feet high,––the aftermath of the earthquake––struck the shore, bearing upon its crest the U. S. Battleship Wateree, one German and two British vessels, leaving them stranded far inland. A sailor from the Wateree was in a boat, and as he was swept past his vessel he waved the Stars and Stripes in farewell to his comrades on board.

The shocks had ceased and the storm that followed had spent its fury, when the pall of night came over the stricken city. Human wolves crept from their hiding places and began their work of prowling amid the ruins and robbing the dead. All night long they held high carnival amid the scenes of terror and desolation.

Through it all I had been a silent, bewildered spectator. I had fled to the hills only because others did, for I could speak but little of the language of the country. I was among the graves when morning 43 dawned and I heard a voice in my own language. Going to the spot I found a man with a sprained ankle fighting away a thief. I seized a rock and he ran. I aided the injured man to a place of safety, where we remained for several days until a conveyance took us back to town.

The man whom I had helped was John L. Thorndike, an American, well known in Peru and all over South America, as having built the highest standard-gauge railway in the world, and a man who at once became my warmest friend.

But to return to my ship. When the Aven of Aberdeen reached Valparaiso, the mate and a number of sailors immediately deserted the vessel in a boat. The Captain saw them leaving but was powerless to stop them. That night John Mitchell and I stood watch alone. There being no boat it did not occur to them that we would attempt to escape, but about midnight Mitchell said to me, “Spriggings, I dare you to run away.”

44

“I’ll take the dare,” I said, “but how will we get ashore?”

“We’ll launch one of the hatches,” he replied.

It was no sooner said than we tied a rope around one of the heavy hatches, and bearing it to the side of the ship, we lowered it noiselessly into the water, then let ourselves down the rope and by holding to the hatch, one on either side, we safely swam ashore.

We avoided the business streets of Valparaiso and made our way to the country, where we hid in a grove until night. We were without money, our clothes were such as we wore at sea, night was coming on, we were hungry and with no place to sleep. Our only thought had been to escape from the Aven, for we had imbibed the superstition of sailors, and nothing could induce us to remain aboard that vessel since the phantom ship had crossed our bow.

I saw a light in a farmhouse in the distance and on our approach the inmates were aroused by the barking of their dog. 45 The man was a typical Chilean, short and stout. He looked curiously at us and by signs Mitchell made him understand that we were hungry. He entered the house and returned with his wife and two children. Mitchell repeated his signs and the woman went inside and returned with a cup of milk, which we drank greedily. The man then beckoned us inside where we had a supper of meat, bread and coffee. They collected a number of sheep skins, gave us two mats for covering, and we slept soundly.

The next morning we helped the man in his garden, drew water for the cattle and made ourselves useful in other ways. I went almost every day for two weeks to the summit of the hill where I had seen a splendid view of the bay, to see if the Aven was still in port. One day I saw her spread her sails and I watched her until she was but a speck on the horizon.

Our host by this time, I think, knew we had run away, for on one occasion he followed me when I making my observation, 46 but if he suspected anything he never took any steps to have us arrested, and in fact treated us with great kindness. When we left he gave us a large package of food and some clean stockings and shirts which his wife had made for us.

It was nightfall when we entered Valparaiso. Near the plaza Victoria we paused before an English boarding house sign. As we stood looking, a middle-aged man came out and asked us our business. Before we could reply he said: “I bet you are the two boys from the Aven.” Our frightened looks told him we were. He invited us in and gave us supper.

We soon learned to our dismay that this man was the notorious Cockney Spider, keeper of a runaway sailor’s boarding house. At night Cockney would start out to some vessel in the bay of Valparaiso, everything having been pre-arranged, take off those sailors desiring to runaway, secrete them in the house and when opportunity offered, ship them again. The amount of bounty paid by ships short of 47 men was often large, and as Cockney always arranged to have poor runaways deep in debt for board and lodging, the sailor on being re-shipped was worse off, and Cockney the gainer. He often took desperate chances in stealing sailors, as the coast guard and other officials were sharp. Many in that traffic were captured, but Cockney always escaped.

After we spent the night in his home he asked me if I could write. Replying in the affirmative, I was installed as chief book-keeper of the notorious runaway sailor boarding house. My duties were to register the sailors brought to the house, keep a record of their meals, charge so much a night for lodging, and present their bill when they were ready to leave. I held the position for two weeks, when one night Cockney came home intoxicated and told me that he had shipped Mitchell that night on a French bark. A sailor gave me a sly wink and whispered, “Your turn will come next, he intends to ship you on a whaler.” My experience with the ice on the Aven 48 had given me a horror of frozen seas, and that night I stole away from the boarding house.

I was in dread of Cockney Spider, and, in my determination to escape, I became a stowaway on a coast steamer and landed at Arica, with a few dollars in my pocket, paid to me by Spider.

When I arrived at Mollendo in company with Mr. John L. Thorndike, he introduced me to Mr. Hill, his general manager, as his “boy protector” and told him to give me employment and see that I was well provided for.

In a short while I was in the railway shops, learning the trade of machinist, and later I was engineer on the railroad running from the sea port of Mollendo to Arequipa, more than one hundred miles in the interior. The city is situated in a beautiful and fertile valley in the heart of the Andes. The majestic volcanic mountain Misti some miles away rises nearly four miles above the sea and smoke still issues from its crater.

49

I had lately been transferred from the shops in Mollendo to Arequipa, when, hearing fabulous stories of rich gold finds in the Andes, and being imbued with an adventurous spirit, I resolved to try my fortune in the new El Dorado.

50

V.

FAIREST FLOWER OF THE CORDILLERAS.

I was in the heart of the Cordilleras, weary, footsore and alone. I was descending a rocky cliff a few hundred feet from a plateau, while the thunders roared with terrific crash. The rain fell in sheets, plunging in wild fury in cataracts down the mountain side. There was desolation and terror unutterable. I leaned close to a shelving rock, and as I thought of once happy days in Aberdeen, of the love bestowed upon me by my dear mother––gone forever from this world––my own condition, now a homeless wanderer in a foreign land, perhaps to soon meet death and my body be devoured by condors, I laid my head on my arms and wept bitterly.

I am not superstitious, neither do I believe that my condition at that time caused my mind to wander; a peaceful calm came 51 over me; it seemed as if some loving one was near, fear vanished, and I looked up but beheld nothing. The storm raged with even greater fury. I walked and even began to sing the “Garb of Old Gaul.” I ignored the elements in their war and had almost reached the plateau when the storm ceased and the sun suddenly appeared. Calm and warmth came from what a few minutes before had seemed death and destruction.

A sudden turn in the trail and I beheld a child seated beneath the thick, spreading branches of a tree, her white apron filled with alpine flowers. “How came she here,” I wondered. Her dark bright eyes gazed questioningly into mine, eyes through which one could see the childish spirit and feel the witchery of her magic look; her raven locks fell in clusters over her fair temples and ended in ringlets about her shoulders; on her cheeks were the glowing tints of youth and health. As I spoke she rose and handed me a flower of delicate tint. I gallantly pinned it on the 52 lapel of my coat, which won from her a pleasing look and smile. I could speak a little Spanish and she seemed to understand that I was going her way. Together we walked along the trail. Her childish grace appealed to me. A spirit of infinite goodness seemed to radiate from within and stirred my noblest impulses. A feeling of content settled upon me.

Near by, I saw some Indian huts and the tambo or tavern where Frank Dunn and I had stopped on our way to Puno. The child ran ahead, leaving me to follow.

The first sight of Puno had satisfied me that we had come to the most desolate spot in the world, Nature’s remains seemed to have been brought there and left without burial. The ground was thickly covered with a short, wild grass and appeared to be the natural dwelling place of the alpacas and wild vicunas.

I had been in Puno but a few days when I was offered work on board one of the 53 steamers, but I longed again for Arequipa and friends. Dunn had secured work on one of the steamers and refused to return. I thought this was hard, as it was my money that had helped him from the time he left Arequipa until he secured employment. My money was almost gone, but I had gone to the Amaras market and bought what edibles I needed, and without hesitation had started alone to return to Arequipa, over those fearful heights and dread solitudes of the Cordilleras, when I found her.

When we were entering the tambo an elderly gentleman and the Indian host were speaking in Spanish, and even from my limited knowledge of the language I knew they were talking about me.

No doubt but my appearance in the heart of the Cordilleras wet, forlorn looking and alone aroused his sympathy. After a difficult attempt at opening a conversation, the beautiful child I had met looking on all the time, I was given to understand that he desired me to eat with them. Of course 54 I consented, but I did not do justice to the meal as the dark eyes of the young girl were constantly upon me.

The gentleman gave me his name, Julian Maldonado, and that of his daughter, Felicita Maldonado. He was a well-to-do merchant of elderly years. I learned that his wife was dead and that their home was in Lima. The servants made me a bed in the room adjacent to my host. The next morning I was aroused by one of them who said his master wanted to see me. I went to him and after telling him I was on my way to Arequipa, and when there I would be among my friends, he offered to purchase a mule for me, but the only one to be had was lame. However, I told him I was young and would soon reach my destination. Felicita then came in and announced breakfast, after which the mules were packed and, everything being in readiness, we bade each other good-bye. Felicita came toward me, and as she extended her hand in her childish fashion, she placed in 55 my own a Peruvian twenty-dollar gold piece, saying: “Adios mi amigo.”

I was almost speechless. I started forward to return the money, but I had to retain it, as they quickly mounted and were gone before I could master my feelings.

Roll on, relentless Time. Felicita, fairest flower of the Cordilleras, we shall meet again, when love’s young dream shall awaken amid the clash of arms and tragedies!

Nine days later I arrived in Arequipa, sick, footsore and weary. My friends had sent out searching parties believing that I had been murdered. Their astonishment was great when they found where I had been and that I had spent many nights alone amid the dangers of the mountains. Many were the admonitions I received from older heads.

I laughed at their words, and when I thought of the beautiful Felicita, I dreamed of love and felt an indescribable content with my surroundings and all the world.

56

VI.

A HUMILIATING INCIDENT.

There was a night riot in the streets of Ilo, knives gleamed in ruffian hands, curses and blasphemy fell from sodden lips. Shots were fired in the thick of the struggling mass, as the mob crowded in frenzy about some central figure. The crowd from behind pressed forward and Thompson and I were carried along by the crush of humanity, until of necessity we began to fight our way out. We had partially succeeded, when we were surrounded by soldiers. At sight of the soldiers the crowd began to disperse, but unfortunately for us it was too late, besides we had nothing to do with the riot, and thought we had nothing to fear.

The officer stepped up and placed Thompson and I under arrest. We were searched, but no arms were found on us. 57 However, we were marched away to jail and our feet placed in iron bars, fastened with a heavy lock, which compelled us to lie on our backs.

The next morning an officer appeared and I notified him that I was a British subject, and resented such treatment. He told me that I was held for attempted murder. Thompson was also under the same charge. An Italian had been shot and would probably die. I demanded an immediate trial. Several officers of the railway came and endeavored to set us free, but their efforts were of no avail. There was no British consul nearer than Arica, about two days travel by steamer, and no means for communicating with him until the steamer arrived from the north.

Our prison was an old wooden structure, and only one guard was over us. The officer and his men had quarters some distance away. It was our intention to ask the soldier on guard for a drink of water about midnight, when Thompson would overpower him and take his keys. A small 58 boat was to be in readiness at a certain place. Our plan was, after obtaining the keys, to put the soldier in the stocks and walk out, all of which could easily have been accomplished, as the soldier was but a small ignorant half-breed Indian. It was Sunday night and we had decided to put our plan in operation, when––imagine our surprise––an officer informed us to get ready to take the train for Moquequa.

We were accompanied by an officer and six men. I asked the officer what the removal was for, and he said our trial was to be held and it was necessary for us to be present. I asked permission to speak with the engineer, which was given. I told him I dreaded being taken into the interior, as we would be away from our friends, and begged him when we came to a certain grade along the line to increase the speed and I would jump off. I was familiar with that part of the country, knew I could secure a horse and go to Mollendo or Arequipa. I knew also that the officer and his men had never been on a train, and it would 59 be impossible for them to give chase.

But we were again doomed to disappointment. The engineer feared to carry out the plan and instead of increasing speed, went slower than usual.

On our arrival at Moquequa we were marched through the streets, to my great humiliation, as I knew many people in the town. Numbers of them came and offered their sympathy. To our great indignation we were thrown into a cell with six other prisoners convicted of murder, and a more ugly, villainous and desperate-looking lot of characters would have been hard to find anywhere. No attention had been paid to my remonstrance, when an hour later a gentleman, whom I had favored, presented himself. After I told him the circumstances of our detention he said he would send a lawyer to defend us. In the meantime he arranged with a hotel keeper to send us regular meals, also mattresses and blankets.

The day following I had many visitors, some drawn by curiosity and others by 60 sympathy and good will. The latter were profuse in their attentions. When a lawyer appeared, I related to him the details of our arrest. I did the talking, as Thompson could not speak the language, while I was becoming quite proficient in it. Upon leaving, the lawyer promised to have us free in eight days at most.

I passed away the dreary time pacing that prison cell. It was about twenty feet long and twelve feet wide, and contained nothing but stone walls and floor, with a heavy iron-grated window which looked out on the plaza. A bottle of wine came with each meal, instead of coffee, and I shared it with the criminals in our cell. In this way I soon won their good will, and as they had all been convicted of murder, they did not hesitate to tell me of their horrible crimes.

There is no capital punishment in Peru. Sentence for life, in that country, means about fifteen years, and seldom do they serve that length of time. Usually a revolution releases them. At such times insurgents 61 invariably break open the prisons and liberate the convicts, which happened to these prisoners a few months later. We were visited daily by my lawyer and finally were told that four hundred dollars would be required for our liberation.

“Liberate us and I will give you the money,” was my answer.

Next day I bid adieu to my undesirable residence and companions; Thompson had no money and I paid all. After purchasing new clothes and receiving the congratulations of friends, we boarded the train for Ilo. Mr. Hill returned from Lima that day and after learning of the indignities inflicted upon me, told his officials that they should have notified the British consul and compelled the Peruvian authorities to pay, instead of taking my money.

I returned to work in the shops, and three weeks afterward one of the office clerks came in breathless and told me I was to be arrested again along with Thompson. The papers would be down from 62 Moquequa that night and tomorrow morning they would come for us.

I was furious when I realized that we were again facing punishment for a crime of which we were innocent and I determined to resist arrest, and leave Ilo.

I went to the office of the secretary of the railroad, and after a long consultation, it was agreed to have three of Mr. Hill’s best horses in readiness at midnight. One of the hostlers was to accompany us and when we reached Tambo, Thompson and I would take the train for Arequipa.

I went to my room, packed my clothes, carefully loaded two revolvers and placed my trunk and other articles of value in the hands of my friends, with orders to send them to Arequipa after the sensation of my escape was over. After supper, to allay any suspicion the authorities might have, I strolled along the wharf, went into a billiard hall and actually played a game of billiards with the captain of the guard, who I have no doubt had the order to arrest me in his pocket. Thompson had gone 63 to his room. I followed thirty minutes later, and at precisely twelve o’clock, I sallied out of the house by the rear, and met Thompson at the agreed place on the beach.

The night was dark, and everything being in readiness, we mounted and rode through the town dressed like natives. We soon gained the highway leading to Tambo and after being well clear of Ilo, we put our horses to their best. We rode the fifty-five miles to Tambo, over a rugged and mountainous country and caught the train for Arequipa, arriving that night after an absence for me of two years.

64

VII.

IN THE THROES OF REVOLUTION.

The railroad had now been extended from Arequipa to Puno. A revolution had broken out and insurgents were cutting the telegraph wires.

I was engineer on a combination locomotive and coach and as this locomotive will be in the scene of more than one tragedy, I will describe it. It was specially designed for the president and officers of the road, weighing only eight tons. On the same frame with the engine, in fact, a part of it, was built a beautiful black walnut coach, with a seating capacity of from twelve to eighteen persons. It had two side doors and one in front, which, when opened, communicated with the engineer. There were windows hung with beautiful damask curtains, the carpets were of rich velvet, and a center table and several cupboards under the seats completed the furnishings. 65 It was in reality a palace on wheels, named The Arequipena, meaning a native of Arequipa. I mention the design of the combination engine-car for the reason that, on a duplicate of The Arequipena, later occurred one of the most perilous and tragic events of my life.

The stretch of road from Julica to Cabanillas was level and straight, except about two miles from Cabanillas station, where a heavy side cut and sharp curve was the only obstruction to the view for miles. I was going at the rate of forty miles an hour, when, on nearing this curve, I beheld a large Rogers locomotive with a train of coaches coming toward me. I cannot describe the thoughts that went through my brain––there was a terrific crash––flying debris––a hissing of steam––mingled with the groans of the wounded and dying.

I was thrown out of the way of the wreck and near the edge of a river, and when I regained my senses a priest was bending over me, bathing my forehead. I gradually realized what had happened and 66 went to my engine. There was scarcely a vestige left of The Little Arequipena, only a piece of the boiler and two pairs of driving wheels. The shock was so great that the little coach was hurled over the other engine, which was not damaged much.

I saw several persons bending over some one, and, on going closer, found William Cuthbert, our traveling engineer, stretched on the ground dying. Five soldiers were dead beneath the ruins. One officer, with his legs broken in two places, begged that others be cared for first. The road-master was in agony, his lower limbs frightfully burned by escaping steam; all the others were more or less seriously injured, except myself. When relief came our dead and wounded were taken to Arequipa.

We had been sent out to repair the wires, and orders had come to me that we should be given the right of way. The engineer who collided with me told me that the commander of the government forces had ordered our superintendent to furnish transportation 67 for his troops to Puno at once, and when informed that it would be impossible to send a train until we were heard from, he threatened to place the superintendent in jail unless his orders were complied with. No one on the other train was hurt. They had six coaches full of soldiers, the priest who assisted me being among them.

The day after our arrival at Arequipa the funeral of William Cuthbert took place. The procession was the largest that I had ever witnessed at any funeral in Arequipa, natives as well as foreigners taking part.

It was a long time before I recovered from the shock, not alone of the collision, but the death of William Cuthbert who always had been ready to befriend me and who had given me much valuable information. He lies buried in the cemetery at Arequipa, in a vault. A marble slab was erected to his memory.

The general manager sent for me one day to come to his office in Arequipa, and after talking over the cause of the collision, 68 I told him that I considered him to blame for allowing any engine and train to go out without knowing first where we were, and that it would have been better to have gone to prison, that if he had been sent there the American government would have demanded his freedom, and he would have been honored. As it stood, he was to a certain extent responsible for that dreadful affair. After some more words I left the office, realizing that I had incurred the displeasure of the head officer. I concluded to leave, which I was sorry to do, as I looked upon Arequipa as my only home.

I visited Valparaiso and again met Cockney Spider. He was still at his old business, conducting a runaway sailors’ boarding house. A few weeks later found me in Panama, an engineer on the Panama and Aspinwall railroad. The climate, I believe, is the most wretched in the world, and tropical vegetation grows the rankest. In a few months I was stricken with the yellow fever, but thanks to my robust constitution 69 I soon recovered. About this time I met an official of the government railway at Ilo, who desired me to return and accept a position as engineer on the road. I told him of my troubles in that town with the officials. He met me soon afterwards, with a contract duly drawn up for eighteen months’ service and a guarantee that I should not be molested by any petty official.

When I arrived at Ilo, imagine my surprise to find that the man who rowed me ashore was the Italian who caused my arrest. He offered to shake hands but I refused. When I went to the hotel many of my old native friends came to see me, and informed me that after I had left they discovered the person who did the shooting. It was done by one of their own number, who managed to get away.

It was very gratifying to thus have my innocence established, but it did not recompense for the time I had spent in jail and the loss of money.

I had been running a train out of Ilo 70 about a month, when one night I was invited to a “wake.” Having never attended one, I accepted the invitation. At one end of the room stood a large table, and upon it the body of a child two years old. On its head was a wreath of flowers. The child was dressed in white; in its tiny hands was a bouquet of flowers; the feet were encased in small white slippers; lighted candles surrounded the body. At either end of the table were several old women, who were employed by the family as mourners, and they kept up a continual low moaning sound. Occasionally they would stop to partake of wine, and start again, more dismal than ever. The room was large and on each side were seated ladies and gentlemen talking and laughing and seemingly enjoying themselves. The parents of the dead child appeared to have surpassed the expectations of their friends and made a great success of the “wake.”

There is a custom in Peru that when several persons are gathered together there is constant drinking. A large bottle of 71 wine or whiskey is placed on the table with one glass. A lady or gentleman will fill the glass and drink to the health of some one present. It is bad form to leave any liquor in the glass, so it is always drained, refilled and presented to the one whose health has been drunk. It is an insult to refuse to drink, after one has drank to your health and the person accepting the glass drinks to the health of some one else. In this manner the glass is constantly on the move. On this occasion, the wine was on the table with the corpse.

About one o’clock in the morning not seeing any disposition on the part of the guests to retire, I bade our friends good night.

I had barely reached the street when I heard firing and saw people running. Suddenly there came a volley of musketry, and a woman dropped dead a few feet in front of me. Almost immediately the streets were deserted, but I could hear the cries of “Vivia Pierola,” and I knew another revolution had broken out.

72

VIII.

VIVA GENERALISSIMO PIEROLA.

I did not do anything for the woman. Shot through the heart, she was past all aid. I made a dash into a by-street, intending to reach the station, get my engine ready and go to Ilo to prevent the insurgents from using the road to transport their troops. But I ran into an officer’s arms before I had gone a block. He had been looking for me all night, and told me I was his prisoner. I was to be taken before Senor Pierola. Meantime I was to be treated with every consideration, the officer paying for breakfast and cigars, and insisting on my drinking some ale which he had taken as a contraband of war.

It was some time before we could get near the great leader of the revolution, the approaches to his house being crowded with people. Ladies were prominent 73 among the crowd, carrying flowers and declaring their deliverer had come to make Peru the greatest nation on the Pacific.

After the officer presented me Pierola asked me if I spoke Spanish. Upon being answered in the affirmative, he asked my name, nationality and how long I had been employed by the Peruvian government; all of which being answered to his satisfaction, he asked me if I would work for him, and if I would, in the event of his being victorious, I should be appointed to take charge of the Ilo and Moquequa railways. He only wanted me to convey troops down the valley, take up some of the rails to prevent the government troops from using the line, and then before he retreated to another position which he would fortify, to dismantle the engine and hide the parts, so that in case the government troops should come to Moquequa the engine would be of no service to them.

I replied that I was a British subject, and that if I were to do what he requested of me, and should be taken prisoner by the 74 government, and the fact became known that I had taken part, I would be unable to claim the protection of my government. He agreed that that was true, but he would insure against that by sending a few troops with me, and it would look as if force was compelling me to do what, which without force, I would not have done.

I finally agreed, and after giving my word that I would not attempt to escape, received orders to take the engine, as a squad of soldiers would accompany me, and at a certain place along the line which they would designate, the rails would be torn up. We started that afternoon.

We carried two flat cars to load the rails on. About forty miles from Moquequa we discovered another train coming toward us, but upon our nearer approach they backed off rapidly. It was a party of government troops sent out to ascertain whether the road was clear in order to bring up their main body. Our company then took up rails and made the road dangerous in ten different places. We blew 75 up a small wooden bridge with giant powder.

The officer in charge made frequent stops in the valley and levied a tribute of money on all the wine merchants he could find. They usually gave, as they knew too well the consequence of refusing. Those who hid away found, on their return, their wine presses and vaults in ruins.

On our return to Moquequa, I was ordered to disable the engine, which I did by taking off both valve stems and driving rods. The officer hid them and that was the last I ever saw of them. We attended a dance which lasted all night, and drank much wine in anticipation of the success of the revolution. It was a gala night. There was dancing and music in nearly all the houses.

In the early morning bugles, drums and other instruments began making a hideous noise, officers were commanding men to form ranks, horses, mules and donkeys were running hither and thither, and dogs were barking. Here and there were 76 groups of men learning to load their rifles, others endeavoring to parry and thrust with cutlasses and making fierce swings at an imaginary government soldier. Louder and hoarser came the call of the officers, but their commands were lost on the motley crowd. After several hours the officers succeeded in getting the men into some kind of marching order.

I turned to a store to buy some cigars, when I heard someone calling, and turning I beheld three of my fellow prisoners that a few months before were in jail convicted of murder. One straightened out his hand to me, but I did not take it. I asked them how they escaped; it was the old story. The insurgents needed recruits and they were liberated on condition that they fight for Pierola.

Such was Peru, and such it is today. Instead of the people supporting the government, the government supports the people, and when all its favors become exhausted, then some one arises and proclaims himself president, organizes a band of thieves and 77 murderers, and endeavors to gain control.

There have been exceptions, when an indignant people, who have been trodden to such an extent that it seems a revolution is the only means of righting their wrongs; but nine out of ten are the work of an ambitious man who wants to become ruler.

I asked the ex-convicts where the other three were who had been confined with them. Two had died and the other was with the troops. They begged for money and I gave them a dollar each, and after profusely thanking me they left to follow the rear guard of Pierola’s scoundrels.

After purchasing my cigars, I followed the main body of troops with my escort of twenty soldiers, to keep guard over me, as arranged with General Pierola. Our destination was Torato, thirty miles from Moquequa. The road led over passes and wound around mountain sides, and from several points of vantage I could see the army on the march, with General Pierola and a priest by his side in the lead. The priest was there to inspire courage in those 78 who might waver. The army numbered six hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry, many of whom did not know the duties of a soldier.

On arriving at Torato, I secured quarters for myself and escort at the expense of the insurgent general. A month passed in wine drinking and dancing. There were gay festivities every night, lasting sometimes until late the next morning, the officers seldom seeing their men. Instead of drilling them, they spent their time telling how they were going to annihilate the government troops. Some little fortifying had been done, but the natural surroundings were sufficient to prevent a prudent attack. One day the news came that the government troops were advancing and then some little work was done to prepare for battle.

The day before the battle, I told General Pierola I had no objections to following him to the battlefield, but in consideration of being a non-combatant, I asked the privilege of selecting my own course, giving 79 him my word of honor that I would not make any attempt to escape. He was satisfied and gave me a pass allowing the freedom I desired. The next day the cry arose that the government troops were only six miles away. There was hurrying to and fro with no discipline. The priest accomplished more by his cross than all the officers. There was a babel of voices. All were trying to give commands. Suddenly heavy firing was heard, the outpost had become engaged at last.

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IX.

AMID THE DIN OF BATTLE.

The main body of the insurgent troops began to move to the front, headed by General Pierola and the priest marching to the most unearthly music I ever heard. Women were conspicuous and cheered as the men marched past. “Viva Pierola!” was heard on all sides.

Then came an order to double quick. The outposts were driven in a short distance, and the enemy was in a valley, surrounded on both sides by a chain of hills with a huge mountain in the background. When I saw the position of the government troops, I was satisfied they would be defeated and the battle become a rout. There were two regiments of infantry and one of cavalry in the valley. Pierola stationed his troops on each side of the pass and in front, reserving his cavalry. In a short time the engagement became general. The 81 priest encouraged the insurgents by displaying the cross. He was a courageous fellow, always to be found in places of danger. I mounted a huge boulder and could easily see all that was going on. The government troops would waver and fall back, and again they would renew the attempt to scale the hillsides, which was impossible as long as the insurgents held their position.

There was a strange happening just when success seemed assured. The insurgent cavalry had taken no part up to this time, as both sides of the valley had been actively engaged. The insurgents along the pass were running short of ammunition. An order was sent to the captain of the cavalry to send a company back to Torato and assist in hurrying up supplies. There was a brief cessation of hostilities. I could plainly see the government troops carrying their dead and wounded to the rear, but still holding their position. When another charge was made to take the heights, the firing again became general. 82 Suddenly arose the cry, “They come! They come!” Firing along the sides of the pass ceased, and I looked in amazement. Evidently, something was wrong. The insurgents were throwing away their arms and running. There was a cloud of dust in the direction of Torato, and I could easily distinguish a company of cavalry, which I knew was the company sent to hurry up the ammunition. The insurgents saw them and imagined that the government cavalry had succeeded in getting to their rear. The panic became a rout. In vain did Pierola plead, as he threw himself in front of his demoralized men, in vain did the priest hold his crucifix on high, threatening and pleading, but no persuasion could stop those runaway cowards. The government troops realized something was wrong, and began to scale the heights. Still, if the cavalry which had done no fighting, could have been led to the side of the pass, the day would still have been with Pierola, and probably the stampede would have been checked. But unfortunately for the would-be 83 president, there was no one in command capable of meeting the emergency.

I became excited, and snatching a cutlass from the hand of a retreating soldier, threw myself in front of a column in a vain endeavor to stop them, but they ran over me like so many sheep. Terror had lent them wings of flight and deprived them of reason. By this time the government infantry had reached the plateau and was forming into companies. Their cavalry had seized the heights and the day was lost.

I saw General Pierola shake hands with the priest and leave the field. The priest mounted and he, too, was gone. The ground was strewn with arms; even the discordant musical instruments were discarded.

Thus an army of revolutionists, who, a few hours before paraded through the streets of Torato, cheered by fair women, and shouting “Viva Pierola,” had won a battle by natural surroundings and lost it by their cowardice. I, too, thought it was 84 time to retreat, as my escort of twenty soldiers had long since disappeared. I rode to Torato.

Along the way I overtook straggling bands of insurgents going into town to hide, while others were scaling the tallest mountains. I went to my quarters, and soon the town was surrounded.

The next morning about two hundred insurgents were captured. The others were hid in some mysterious way and the commanding officer of the government troops was made to believe that the main body of the insurgents was in the mountains.

I sought the general of the government troops to inform him of my presence. He replied that he knew of my being a prisoner, and asked me to return to Moquequa at once and help to get the railway in operation to convey his troops and prisoners.

I was glad no other questions were put to me, and after pleading with the general for my kind host who had treated me with great kindness in Torato, and who was not in sympathy with the revolutionists, he agreed to exempt him from the payment of money levied on nearly all the inhabitants.

THE EARTH BEGAN TO ROCK AND REEL. (Page 33)

Soon after this a troop ship arrived in Ilo to convey prisoners and escort to Lima. I felt sorry for the prisoners. Many of them recognized me and kept calling, “Don Juan, please try and help us,” but of course I was powerless to do anything for them. I was glad when they were aboard the transport for I felt miserable in the midst of so much suffering. But I knew they would not suffer long. Another revolution would set them free.

The railroad was again in running order and everything progressing smoothly when one morning at breakfast I was informed that Pierola had broken out again. This time his party had, by means unknown, captured the Peruvian ironclad ram, Huascar. He must have been aided by the officers, or at least one of them who declared in his favor. Howbeit, he had possession. The Peruvian fleet was sent in pursuit, but as the Huascar was the most powerful vessel of the fleet, they had to give her up.

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The fortunes of Pierola were brighter now than ever. He could, with the exception of Callao, have entire command and control of all the sea ports along the coast. But unfortunately for him, he began to stop the British mail, and later the French mail on the high seas, his object being to intercept mail for the Peruvian government.

The British government dispatched H. M. S. Amythist and the Shah to compel him to surrender, the Huascar having had full sway along the coast for a month.

The Huascar finally made her appearance in the port of Ilo, and almost immediately the Amythist and Shah hove in sight. I had a good view from the beach and saw a boat lowered from the Shah and pull directly to the Huascar, I supposed for the purpose of demanding her surrender. However, if that was the object, it failed, for upon the return of the boat to the Shah, the Amythist cleared for action.

The afternoon was calm; not a ripple on the ocean. The Huascar was nearest the 86 shore, less than a mile from where I stood. The Shah was over a mile distant seaward. A signal flashed from the Shah and the Amythist steamed toward the Huascar. The Amythist was a wooden corvette, equipped with twin screws. The Shah was a commerce destroyer. Neither vessel was a match for the modern ironclad Huascar.

Suddenly a shot came from the Shah. The flag and pole at the stern of the Huascar dropped overboard. The Huascar, equipped with a revolving turret, sent a shot at the Amythist, but it went wide of its mark. The Amythist circled and sent a broadside full on the Huascar, every shot taking effect. With the aid of a glass I could see the decks of the Amythist plainly from my position on a huge rock. The British sailors, stripped to the waist, cutlass in hand, stood eagerly awaiting orders. The gunners’ crews were engaged in firing rapidly. The Huascar replied by slow but heavy reports from her turret. The object of the British was to disable the Huascar’s 87 turret, and they succeeded by directing all shots against it.

The Huascar, finding she could not effect the enemy by shots, turned to ram her. The Amythist, being equipped with twin screws, awaited the Huascar and when within a short distance ran alongside and poured her whole broadside on the rebel. That was the last act before the Huascar surrendered.

I was aboard the Huascar a few months afterward at Mollendo and she presented a most dilapidated appearance.

Thus again was General Pierola frustrated, and by a British wooden vessel against a crack ironclad of Peru. Pierola escaped as usual, and the Huascar was turned over to the Peruvian government.

A few days after the Amythist-Huascar battle I discovered the people of Ilo were cold and distant towards me, and I soon learned the cause. Although they were in favor of the existing government, they did not relish the idea of their people being beaten by the British. I could not condemn 88 the acts of my own country and I felt it would be better to leave Ilo, which I did, little dreaming of the exciting events which were soon to follow.

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X.

WE MEET AGAIN, FELICITA.

The theater of Arequipa was ablaze with lights. The youth and beauty had assembled to follow the fortunes of the Count de Monte Christo. I was seated in the dress circle listening to the weird warlike strains of Spanish music, when my eyes fell upon the occupants of a box. A beautiful girl, half hidden by the rich draperies, was talking with an aristocratic looking old gentleman, while by their side sat a young man, dark-browed and sinister looking. I arose and entered the box from the side door. “Don Julian Maldonado, I am delighted to meet you,” I said, “I am the boy you befriended some years ago in the Cordilleras.”

He took my hand delightedly and bade me be seated, offering me a chair between himself and daughter. Don Julian whispered 90 to me not to make myself known to Felicita to see if she would recognize me. All this was amusing to Don Julian, but somewhat embarrassing to me, seated, as I was, between them, and trying to carry on a conversation with him. The expression of wonderment in Felicita’s beautiful eyes was disconcerting to say the least. It was evident she did not remember me. And yet how could she be expected to. She was a child of only nine years when we first met, and who now, seven years later found me unexpected and unannounced sitting beside her in a theater.

Laughingly I turned to her and asked if she did not recognize me, explaining that the reason her father had not presented me was that we had met seven years ago.

While I was speaking she was looking earnestly at me, but when I recalled their journey to La Paz she appeared dubious and asked if I was the young lad she met near Puno and if it was possible that I had grown to manhood and learned to speak Spanish? When I reassured her, the look 91 of astonishment gave way to an exclamation of joy.

The play was forgotten. We only talked of our first meeting. She asked if I was staying in Arequipa and on learning that I was, promised that we should meet again, as her father had decided to remain there for some time. I was delighted but felt somewhat disturbed because of the young man in the box with her. When I began to talk to Felicita he moved his seat farther away. The Peruvians are the acme of politeness.

The play being over, I assisted Felicita with her wraps. Her father then introduced me to Don Rodrigo Garcia, a fellow traveller whom they had met on their journey from Cusco to Arequipa.

I was not particularly well pleased with the young man. First impressions sometimes give rise to doubt and distrust. It was so with me in this instance. Don Julian insisted on my going home with them. I walked with Felicita on one side and Don Julian on the other, Don Rodrigo 92 walking just ahead of me. Their home was on Calle Mercaderes, one of the prettiest squares of the city. Like most Peruvian homes, the house was of adobe with flat roof and partitions of plastered cane. It contained six rooms. In the windows were heavy iron bars, like all houses of the better class. They were very serviceable, for Spanish lovers do their courting between the window bars. The girl sits beside the window and her wooer stands in the street; the parents sometimes invite him in. Should he request the company of the girl to the play or to any entertainment, the invitation must include the whole family. This custom in the larger cities is dying out, but in the inland cities it is still adhered to.

Arriving at the door, I bade Felicita and her father good night with the assurance that I would dine with them the next day. Don Rodrigo also was invited. His hotel was on my way and I accompanied him. He was splendid company, and after reaching his hotel I accepted his invitation to a 93 light lunch. Afterwards we enjoyed a cigar and some rich old wine, but still I could not overcome the aversion I first formed for him.

The following day, long before the appointed time for dinner, I was dressed and ready. Chico, a half-breed Indian, whom I had rendered a service one time when he was being set upon by some of his own people, and who afterwards slept in my passage way, had my boots polished and horse carefully groomed. He was a faithful servant. He would find out where I went and quietly follow, and after the manner of his race, would lie down in some obscure place in perfect contentment and wait for me. I arrived at the home of Don Julian at the appointed time, and found the father and daughter awaiting me. A few moments later, Don Rodrigo arrived and we were seated in the parlor facing the street. It was splendidly appointed. Although the exterior of many Peruvian residences appear shabby, the interior presents a far different appearance.

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I requested Felicita to play for us and time passed quickly. Dinner being called I took the liberty of escorting Felicita to the table and was given the place beside her. The Indian servants between courses, kept our glasses filled. Felicita did not take wine, and when dinner was over retired, leaving us to enjoy our cigars and liquor. We afterwards adjourned to the parlor, where I gave my friends an account of my life since our first meeting. I could see that Don Rodrigo took every opportunity to make light of my narrative.

I did not allude to being in Ilo during the Amythist and Huascar affair, but after I had given my friends a brief account of myself, Don Rodrigo asked me my nationality. I told him I was Scottish. He then asked me what I thought of the Huascar affair, hoping no doubt to belittle my standing with Don Julian. I replied that I had given it very little thought, and moreover considered it a question for both governments to settle, and was satisfied that everything would be adjusted amicably.

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My reply seemed to annoy him, as he doubtless thought I would commit myself, and take the part of the British. He arose, and pleading a press of business, begged permission to retire. He shook hands with Don Julian and daughter, but merely bowed to me. I was glad he was gone.

Never before had I been so happy as now, in Felicita’s presence. For the first time since leaving home this was the only pleasure I had known. Felicita sang some pretty Spanish ballads to the music of her guitar and I went home that night with a lightness of heart I had not experienced for a long time.

My duties not requiring me to be away from Arequipa often, much of my time was spent with Felicita. Together we would ride horseback over the picturesque valley, with its olive and orange groves and along shaded avenues of palms, with pebbly brooks of crystal waters on either side. The pure air and semi-tropical skies stimulated our buoyant spirits, and made these the halcyon days of my existence. My first 96 dreams of love when we met in the Cordilleras were now a blissful reality.

I saw little of Don Rodrigo in the weeks that followed and was seldom in the company of my comrades. Once a week I would join them at the club, but aside from that I was always to be found at Don Julian’s home.

Months sped by in sweet content as the world took on a more roseate hue and the future presented an alluring picture.

I met Don Rodrigo on the street one day and as he nodded slightly I noticed an evil look in his eyes. On returning to my room late that night something glistened in the moonlight on my door. I struck a match, a blood red heart was traced on the panel, and in the center stuck a dagger. What did it mean?

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XI.

THE MASQUE BALL AT TIRAVAYA.

It was the night of the annual masque ball at Tiravaya, a summer resort a few miles from Arequipa. The hall was crowded with dancers; many gentlemen were in Cavalier costume, with swords clanking at their sides. Others were in helmets, gorglet and breastplate, to represent Pizarro’s conquerors of Peru. Many of the ladies wore quaint costumes and rich attire of the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, while a few were attired in grotesque costumes. Felicita was dressed as a princess of the court of the ancient Incas, with a head dress of the rich plumage of tropic birds. I was dressed in the Highland garb of Scotland.

I soon discovered Felicita by the rosebud in her hair. We took part in the grand march and in nearly all the dances. The soft strains of the music and the gayety 98 of the picturesque throng in the brilliantly lighted room made the hours pass quickly and it was soon time for unmasking. After the general greeting was over, we proceeded to the dining room where an elegant repast was served. The supper being finished, the music struck up again as the wine was being served. Just then I observed Rodrigo for the first time, and noticed that he was intently watching me. I called Felicita’s attention to him and she seemed to be frightened. She wanted to return home, but I assured her there was no danger; we were among friends. She replied that I was not familiar with Spanish hatred, and that he would sooner or later insult me. I had known for more than three months, that he had proposed to Felicita and been refused. I also knew he was a gambler and lived on his chances at the faro table. Being an expert and without any sense of honor, even to one of that profession, he was seldom unsuccessful. I had never mentioned to Don Julian or Felicita his manner of life.

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An American, who unfortunately got under the influence of wine, proposed a toast to Peru, to which we all responded by raising our glasses. Another toast was given to the United States which received a similar response. Toast followed toast in quick succession. I merely raised my glass as I had no desire to drink any more, and knowing the long distance before me, I was on the point of calling for Chico to have our horses in readiness, when I heard my name called and found that I was requested to make a speech. I arose and congratulated the company present for the pleasant time we had passed, and the happy manner in which everything had been conducted by our host. All rose and gave him three cheers.

Don Rodrigo then stepped to the center between both tables, and asked everyone present who denounced the British government for its action in the Huascar affair, to stand up. I knew the insult was meant for me. I refused to stand, as also did two of my British friends. After they were 100 seated Felicita again pleaded with me to leave, but I could not do so with honor then, and had I done so, I would have been held in contempt afterwards. Don Rodrigo came to where I was seated and addressing himself to me said:

“I observe that you refuse to condemn the action of the British government. Of course you are a Britisher, but I must say that the action of your government was of the most cowardly nature, and anyone who upholds such actions deserves the name of coward; in fact, anyone who allows himself to be ruled by the Queen of Great Britain must be anything but a brave man.”

I cannot describe the thoughts that ran through my brain. I stood like one paralyzed. I could neither move nor speak, but I was conscious that everyone was looking at me and seemed to enjoy my discomfiture. Felicita placed both hands on my right arm and looked pleadingly in my face. I could see everything quite plainly, but I was bereft of all powers. Then by a valiant 101 effort I recovered myself. Bending down, I told Felicita to remain and not be alarmed.

I arose and went to where Don Rodrigo stood. I was calm and collected. “Don Rodrigo,” I said, “I came here by invitation, and when I accepted had no thought of being insulted. Neither do I believe that our host or the gentlemen present intended that I should be. You have without provocation on my part, insulted my Queen and called her subjects cowards. The country that gave me birth never produced cowards and I want to convince you that I am not an exception.” With this I dealt him a terrific blow in the face.

He fell heavily to the floor and all was confusion. Men leaped on tables and chairs. Cries of “Down with the foreigner!” were heard on every side. Then my British friends came over to where I stood, one of they saying, “Good, Jack, the coward deserved it! Let us stand side by side and show them how the Queen’s subjects can defend themselves!”

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I can see him now, his auburn hair disarranged and partially hanging over his forehead, his blue eyes sparkling with indignation, his right hand holding a revolver. The other said, “There are only three of us but we will show them how Britishers can fight,” at the same time drawing his Colt’s. I had also pulled my gun, anticipating the worst, when the American drew near and said: “Jack, I know nothing of your Queen or country; I am an American, but you did right, and what I would do under similar circumstances. I will stand by you, although we have little chance against such odds.”

By this time Don Rodrigo had been assisted to his feet, blood all over his face. The uproar ceased for a few minutes, as the crowd was without a leader. The blow had told with effect––two front teeth were gone and both eyes were discolored, caused, I think, by him coming in contact with the floor. In a few moments cries of “Down with the foreigner,” again commenced. We knew it threatened our lives, but when they 103 looked down the barrels of four revolvers they knew it also threatened some of their lives.

Springing on a chair, I asked them to listen to me. I told them that the quarrel they had witnessed had been sought by Don Rodrigo against me; and I asked why others should suffer? Let him finish his quarrel with me now or at any other time he chose––I would always meet him, and surely gentlemen such as I knew them to be would not so far forget themselves as to endeavor to overcome us, who had never done them harm?

This appeal was effective. Don Rodrigo had been washed, and never did I see a face with such devilish and malignant expression. I was young and strong, with quite a knowledge of the art of self defense, and I watched him very closely lest he should draw a knife.

Presently he said that he would be the judge of time and place and manner of meeting me, and that I would yet remember Don Rodrigo Garcia. I did not answer 104 and he walked out of the hall. I drank several glasses of wine with those who, but a few moments before, were crying for revenge. I found Chico near me, and could hardly refrain from laughing when I discovered that he had armed himself before leaving Arequipa with a great navy revolver he found in my room. I am satisfied had an attack been made on us, Chico would have done his part, provided he had found a way to use the revolver. I am satisfied he never saw one before he came to Arequipa.

I told him to get the horses ready and my friends remained near to prevent any treachery. However, we were not molested on the way home. Felicita begged me to watch Don Rodrigo. “I know,” she said, “that man’s nature. He will watch you always, and while he will not attack you alone, he will pay others to inflict some injury on you.”

Don Julian was waiting and had hot cocoa ready for us. We both concluded that we would better tell him what had happened lest he hear a wrong version 105 from others. They were determined that I should spend the remainder of the night in their house, but I concluded it would appear cowardly. So, I bade them good night and, with Chico following, perfectly happy over the few dollars I had given him, I reached home in safety.

I thought much about the affair at Tiravaya and determined to watch Don Rodrigo closely. A week later Don Julian informed me he was going to Aacna on business. He would be gone several days, but Felicita would stay here. Fatal mistake.

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XII.

COWARDLY ACT OF A VILLAIN.

“Don Juan! Ah, Don Juan! Something dreadful! Felicita!” cried Chico as he burst into my room breathless near midnight.

“What is it?” I demanded, “quick, I say,” but he could only gasp “Felicita!”

I hurried to the stable and saddled my horse, Chico following. We rode with all haste to the home of Don Julian. Everything was in uproar. The Indian servants moaned and cried, and pointed in the direction of the road leading to the cemetery. Thither I rode, fast as my horse could run. It was a lonely road, with few houses by the wayside and those were mostly Indian huts. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning, no one to be seen––on and on I went. I could see a dark outline of what I thought must be a vehicle of some kind. As carriages are seldom used in Arequipa, 107 I concluded that this must be bearing Felicita away. I drove the spurs harder and leaned forward, peering into the darkness. I was gaining rapidly. I was certain now that it was Felicita, for they were driving at full speed. I never thought how I was to rescue her, my whole purpose being to catch up with that villain. Just then the moon shone bright from behind a cloud and lighted up the scene. The occupants of the carriage now knew they were being pursued, and they stopped. I could plainly see two men unhitch two horses from behind the carriage. They took Felicita from the carriage and were forcing her to mount when, suddenly, her horse became unmanageable, and she fell to the ground. By this time I was close upon them, and called to Felicita to be brave, but the poor girl never heard me, for she was unconscious. Don Rodrigo stopped, as if determined to resist me. Would to God he had! But he put spurs to his horse and fled. I shot at him, but as the distance was great, and the light uncertain, the bullet went wide of the 108 mark. I soon forgot him on reaching Felicita, as she lay with an ugly cut on her head caused by striking the carriage step when she fell. There lay my child-friend, unconscious. She was dressed for retiring, her other clothes being in the carriage. My first impulse was to pursue the accursed scoundrel and avenge the insult to Felicita, but I could not leave her there. I took her in my arms and carried her to a near-by Indian hut where, after some parley with the poor, superstitious Indians, the door was opened, and I laid my burden on some sheepskins on the floor. Her hands were cold and she appeared to be dead.

By this time, Chico arrived and brought her clothes from the carriage. I staunched the flow of blood with my handkerchief, while Chico prepared some hot native liquor, which I put to her lips. After a time, she opened her eyes, but did not know me. I called and called her name, but it was long before consciousness returned. When she did recognize me, a look of love and happiness passed over her face. I would 109 not let her speak, but told her that when she was taken home, she could tell me all. The carriage driver had long since made his escape, so I had sent to Arequipa and had a closed carriage brought, in which I took her home.

Time dragged wearily until the return of her father. I remained by her side and with the assistance of the Indian servants, made her as comfortable as possible. I had been without sleep so long that I had gone into the parlor and laid down. I had just awakened from a sleep when Don Julian entered. Poor old man, he was overcome with grief. He knew all, Felicita had told him. From him I learned how the abduction had taken place. About 11 o’clock at night, Don Rodrigo had entered the bedroom and before she realized what was being done, Felicita had been carried to the carriage in waiting. Leaving her in charge of the driver, Don Rodrigo returned for her clothes. No sooner was his back turned than she screamed. This attracted the attention of Chico, who had been enjoying a 110 visit with Don Julian’s Indian servants in the kitchen. He had run at full speed to inform me.

It was the opinion of Don Julian that Don Rodrigo had intended taking the child to some remote Indian habitation in the mountains, and demanding a ransom for her.

This was a plausible theory, for besides getting revenge for Felicita refusing his hand in marriage, he would be able to extort money from Don Julian, and also avenge his fancied wrongs at my hands.

The following day Felicita was still weak and nervous. The doctor advised that she be taken to the sea coast for a time. She protested, saying she was getting stronger, but I knew she was only saying it to cheer her father and myself. I could plainly see her condition was precarious. After a long consultation with the doctors, Don Julian decided he would take her to Truxillo, their former home. After considerable pleading, she consented to go. I was to follow when she recovered.

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I accompanied them and their Indian servants aboard the steamer and remained aboard the little ferry boat, waving my handkerchief until they faded into the distance. I returned ashore, and although I had not been in Mollendo for some time, I had no desire to see my friends. I wanted to be alone.

Weeks of dreary waiting followed. I was not myself. Anxiously I looked for a letter and with trembling hands I broke the seal. The letter was dated Lima, and read: “Don Juan, I am crazy. Felicita is dead. Will write you all, when I am composed. Julian.”

Never was human being more distracted than I. Absenting myself from everybody night after night in deep ravines and valleys, among the lofty mountains that surrounded Arequipa, I wandered. Many an Indian no doubt looked upon me with superstitious awe, walking without caring whither I went, like one demented. A second letter came stating that the death of Felicita was caused by a terrible cold she 112 had contracted and the nervous shock suffered on the night of the abduction. Like his first, Don Julian’s letter was brief. He said: “I will let you know where she is buried in my next, and I think I will not be long after her.”

I concluded to go to Lima, but another letter, dated Truxillo, stated that he had left Lima and would bury Felicita in Truxillo. I received no more missives. To go to Lima was useless, to go to Truxillo and perhaps not find him there, would not accomplish anything so I decided to wait until I heard further news. I scarcely know how I passed my time. Night after night I would go up town, play billiards and visit the drinking places, always with the hope that I would meet Don Rodrigo.

I intended, when I heard from Don Julian to make a trip to Truxillo, visit the last resting place of Felicita, and perhaps remain in Lima, away from scenes that reminded me of the only happy time in my existence, and its tragic ending. But circumstances 113 over which I had no control changed my plans.

One night, as I was sitting alone in my room, a boy handed me a telegram. It was from the general manager of the railroad, saying to report at his office at once and bring all the engine runners with me, and to enjoin absolute secrecy on the part of the men. I did as requested, and now begins one of the most exciting adventures of my life.

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XIII.

MURDEROUS PLAN OF THE INSURGENTS.

On my arrival at the manager’s office, I found him in consultation with the Prefecto of Arequipa and the General in command of the regular army. I was informed that another revolution was about to be attempted in Peru in favor of General Pierola.

The General said he had a valuable package which must be delivered to the Prefecto of Puno, that in the event the package was captured it would ruin all their plans. Would I undertake to deliver it for the government? I turned to the general manager and, speaking to him in English, said: “There is some mystery connected with this. Before I pledge myself to do this, it will be necessary to have a clear understanding.” He repeated my request to the General, who informed me that a 115 secret message had come over the wires that a revolution had broken out again, and this time the insurgents had taken possession of several points to prevent the government troops from reaching Puno; that the package I was to take was a notice to the Prefecto of Puno, for himself and those in favor of the government, to proceed to a designated place, where the government troops would arrive, and march by stages to Puno.

I realized the danger connected with this undertaking and accepted the responsibility with some trepidation. A generous reward awaited me if I succeeded, but it was understood in accepting the perilous message, no instructions were to be given me; that I was to use my own judgment and, if danger threatened the package, to destroy it before it should be captured.

The little Arequipena had long since been rebuilt, and I at once proceeded to put her in readiness for the journey. Manuel, my fireman, was a native of Arequipa, a powerfully built and sturdy fellow. He 116 had been much among the British and American railway men and could understand English.

After leaving orders as to the time of starting, I called on an English friend and confided my mission. I asked him, in event of my death, to write to my relatives in Scotland, giving the details. He did everything in his power to dissuade me, but I told him his talk was idle. No use, I had made up my mind. Upon seeing the Arequipena ready, the men in the shops questioned me, but I evaded their questions.

I went to the office of the general manager and he gave me the package, unaddressed, done up securely, and sealed with red wax. I placed it in the inside pocket of my vest. The manager asked me to be careful with myself. He would much rather I should not go, but in my state of mind, I was only too glad to get my thoughts off the sad remembrance of Felicita’s fate.

I left Arequipa at ten o’clock that night, cautiously and silently leaving the station. I arrived at Puno the following evening 117 and lay over at Juliaca Junction a few hours. At this point the station master asked me where I was going. I replied that I had orders for Puno. Leaving Juliaca, I arrived at Puno at exactly five o’clock. I blew the whistle for the station. I noticed that it was crowded with people, but saw no one I would suspect of being a revolutionist. I put the engine in the shed, and then went and washed up. I hid the package in a secure place, where it was impossible for anyone to find it, as I had planned to go to the hotel, eat supper and then learn my chances for getting to the Prefecto, before I took the package from its hiding place. The station of Puno, like all terminal stations of the Arequipa railway, was fenced in by corrugated iron, about eight feet high, and it was necessary to go through the station outlet, which was only opened on the arrival and departure of trains, or another outlet guarded by a dog and night watchman. I went out by the small gate, familiarly bidding the watchman good evening. This gate only 118 employes had the right to use. I walked up town to the hotel Inca. I met several gentlemen who knew me and asked one to play a game of billiards before supper. No one seemed to think that my coming was anything more than the usual routine of railway business.

After darkness, I lit a cigar and strolled down the street where the Prefecto lived. I observed the sentry at the front entrance and upon close observation, I found that the rear of the house could be approached by a little back street connecting with a small alleyway by means of which the house could be entered from the front.

I retraced my steps to the station but did not go near the gate. I went around to the engine shed, where an opening had been made by the boys so they could get to their rooms when out late nights and avoid answering the questions of the watchman. When I reached the Arequipena, the wipers were cleaning her. I spoke to the foreman, and getting the package, went out the same way, no one noticing my departure. Then 119 going through, the narrow street I went up the small alley and, seeing no one, presented myself at the main entrance of the Prefecto’s house. Here the sentry barred my passage and demanded the password. I told him to call the officer of the guard, and when he appeared I explained that I had important business with Senor Prefecto, and desired to see him personally.

“Who are you?”

“The Senor Prefecto will answer that question,” I replied.

I had folded the package and hid it in the lining of my overcoat which I had thrown over my arm. The officer withdrew for a few minutes, but soon returned and allowed me to pass the sentry. Halting in front of a large door, a signal was given and it was opened by another officer. I was ushered in, and from there into an adjoining room, where I was told to wait.

Presently there came in a priest, then an officer with side arms, and last Senor Prefecto, who asked me the nature of my business. I replied that I had a message for 120 the Prefecto, which could be imparted to him alone. When my errand was communicated to him, he could do as he chose.

There was much hesitation before my request for a private audience was granted, but on being searched, overcoat and all, the Senor Prefecto finally agreed to see me alone. When the others had retired, I took the package from the lining of my overcoat and gave it to him.

I watched him closely as he read the contents. His face became blanched, and his hands shook in abject fear, although nothing else could have been expected from him, as he was an arrant coward.

After reading the document, he called the others. He handed it to the priest, who asked where I came from. I told him. Then he wanted to know if anyone had seen me enter here, and whether the arrival of the Arequipena was known. I told him I thought no one would pay any attention to the arrival of the train but would consider it the ordinary routine railway business. A consultation was held, and 121 after they found that I knew the contents of the message I had brought, they admitted me to their council. They asked me to get the Arequipena ready, and they and the principal officers would flee to Arequipa. I told them that such a course could not be pursued, as all the telegraph offices were in the hands of the insurgents, and that our departure would become known, the engine surrounded and all taken prisoners. They agreed it would be impossible to escape that way, and decided that about midnight they would escape on horseback. Just then an officer arrived and reported that the insurgents had taken possession of the station, and two engines, one being the regular passenger. One of the engine runners had been taken prisoner. Their spy had reported that it was their intention to take both engines and several coaches loaded with soldiers and arms; also, large quantities of powder had been put on the Arequipena for the purpose of destroying Sumbay bridge––to prevent the passage of government troops.

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I was forgotten for the time being, their fear for their own safety outweighing all other considerations. Another officer came in and breathlessly added the climax. The regiment of regulars had joined the insurgents!

I was now doing some rapid thinking. If Sumbay bridge was destroyed and the fact not known in Arequipa, the government troops would come along and, with the engine crew, be hurled into eternity. The bridge being about one hundred and seventy-five feet high and six hundred feet long and on a curve with deep cuts on either side and a heavy down grade, it would be impossible for any train to stop, unless warned beforehand.

This was the murderous scheme of the insurgents.

I learned it was the intention of the insurgents to proceed to Vincocaya in the morning, destroy as they went along, the telegraph offices, wait at Vincocaya until the arrival of the regular passenger train from Arequipa and then proceed to Sumbay 123 bridge. They evidently had calculated with a great deal of precision, and if their plans carried, victory would certainly be theirs.

All these things were filling me with apprehension. I knew I would be captured, but how could I save the bridge? I was determined to try at all hazards.

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XIV.

FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY.

“This document calls for the payment of $10,000, and guarantees you life employment by the government of Peru, provided you save the Sumbay bridge,” said the prefecto as he handed me a paper duly witnessed by the priest.

“No, Senor, I cannot accept it,” I replied. “I will do my duty for the sake of humanity. It is part of my plan to be captured by the insurgents and should that paper be found on my person, I would be shot as a spy. If I succeed you can reward me.”

I left the Prefecto and his party, wishing them a safe journey, and sauntered carelessly back to the Inca hotel. I entered smoking a cigar and wearing a look of unconcern, pretended I was not aware of any revolutionary movement. There were several 125 men playing billiards in the parlors. I took a chair and sat down to watch the players. About 11 o’clock I asked to be shown to my room, and retired, knowing full well that I had been watched by a citizen of Puno since my entrance to the hotel, and I was satisfied I would soon be taken prisoner.

About 2 o’clock in the morning, I was awakened from a restless sleep by the entrance of twelve men armed with bare swords and revolvers. They were all talking at once. I sat up in bed and appeared to be amazed. The leader requested me to dress and accompany him. The streets were lined with people shouting the old familiar cry, “Viva Pierola,” as I was marched in the center of this crowd. The cry resounded down street after street. The city was wild with excitement. The escape of the Prefecto was on every lip, as we turned at a street corner and to the station. We had great difficulty in obtaining entrance, but a passage was cleared and I was ushered into the presence of the leader 126 of the revolutionary forces. He was about fifty years of age, some six feet in heighth, and powerfully built, but with a countenance far from pleasing.

With little ceremony, I was notified to get the Arequipena ready to depart from the station at 7 o’clock in the morning. The principal officers would go with her, I was told, and the regular train would follow with the troops.

I replied that as a British subject it would be impossible for me to comply, unless force was used; that I protested against this high-handed proceeding. I did this so that, in the future, no one could accuse me of aiding the rebels willingly. He replied that he did not care for the British government, that I would do as I was told or suffer the consequences. They then escorted me to the engine house, where I found my fireman Manuel already a prisoner; also Beaumont, the other engineer, and his fireman.

After getting the engine ready, I requested the officer in charge to allow us to 127 procure something to eat. His permission was given, then another procession marched through the streets to the hotel, where the rebel guards stood over us at breakfast.

The Arequipena was ready. Behind were the passenger engine and five coaches, which rebel troops were already entering. At breakfast I had managed to get a few words with Beaumont.

As the Arequipena was to go ahead, I would endeavor to get the officers out to eat at Vincocaya. I would give a signal for him to uncouple his engine and follow at full speed. It would be impossible to stop him and they would be at the mercy of the government troops, which would leave that afternoon, according to the instructions given the Prefecto of Puno from Arequipa.

The officers came aboard the little Arequipena and loaded on several barrels of powder, picks and shovels to destroy the abutments of the bridge.

There were eleven officers who came 128 aboard the coach, when to my surprise, I beheld along with three soldiers, Don Rodrigo Garcia, who was to guard me. I cannot describe my feelings. I know I am not a coward, but I was taken with a shock of nervousness. It was not of long duration. Indignation took the place of fear, but I realized how formidable a task I had undertaken to save Sumbay bridge. Howbeit, I determined more than ever to succeed, and the knowledge of that man being near me, gave me renewed courage.

Before starting he hissed to me: “Don Juan, we meet again.”

I did not answer. It was all I could do to keep from attacking him despite the disadvantage I was at. The thought of the bridge, however, restrained any hasty action.

We left the station with the troop train closely following. According to orders, our first stop would be at Juliaca station. I knew that when we reached there the telegraph office would be destroyed. Telegraph communication was cut off between Juliaca 129 station and Puno. Nearing the station, we stopped to take water from a tank. I asked permission from the leader to allow my fireman to go and draw some oil, explaining that I had none and it was necessary, that his going there would not create suspicion, and it would save much time. I was greatly surprised when he consented. I took a small piece of paper and wrote the following in English: “Van Buren, I am coming with rebels to destroy Sumbay bridge. Hurry up troops. Buchan.” After writing, I read aloud in Spanish: “Procure from Senor Southers, the station master, two quarts of engine oil for the Arequipena.” I handed it to Manuel who understood my meaning. He took the engine cans and walked to the office.

My heart beat rapidly. I fairly held my breath. Would he be able to see Southers before I took water? Would Southers understand my meaning and get the message off before we arrived at the platform and find the office destroyed? I delayed taking water as long as possible, then pulled slowly 130 down the track to the platform. The moment we stopped, the officers rushed in the telegraph office and disconnected the instruments from the wires. Don Rodrigo and his three soldiers never left me for a moment, which made me suspect that my every movement would be closely watched.

The fireman came down the platform, both engine oil cans in his hands. I asked him if he had seen Southers. He replied that he had and that everything was all right. I received the oil and looked at him. His look told plainly that the message was sent. I felt that a heavy load had been lifted and breathed freer. I looked at Don Rodrigo. I was satisfied that in a short time we would meet in a struggle that would be the final one between us.

After the office had been destroyed we started again, the troop train always close behind us. We stopped at Cabanillas, Maravillas and Santa Lucia and carried away their telegraph instruments; then we ran direct to Vincocaya. Arriving there the telegraph office suffered like the others. I 131 pulled down in front of the hotel, then told the officers that the passenger train was due in an hour, and that it would be impossible to proceed until its arrival. I showed him the time card to satisfy him I was telling the truth, and remarked that advantage might be taken of the time by having supper. Accordingly all of them, left the Arequipena except Don Rodrigo and the three soldiers. The officers left their arms in the little coach. Now was the time to act. Should I fail now, no other chance would present itself, for, after the arrival of the passenger train, the only stop would be at Sumbay bridge, when it would be too late. I figured that, after Van Buren had received my message from Juliaca the troops could not possibly arrive at Sumbay bridge before eight o’clock that night. It was four o’clock when we reached Vincocaya and the passenger would be leaving Sumbay station. Pucacancha was another station between Sumbay and Vincocaya. The grade being 160 feet to the mile, the train makes very slow time between 132 Sumbay and Pucacancha. It was my only hope to succeed in getting to Pucacancha before the arrival of the passenger train.

I was nervous. I got off the engine, then called to Manuel to hand me another oil can. I spoke to him in English to have everything ready. I was going to run away with the engine––would he assist me? This I asked while I was pretending to oil the engine, and I had to trust largely to Manuel’s intuition, as he knew but little English. He returned to the engine and raised a full head of steam. I noticed Don Rodrigo watching me from one of the side doors of the coach. I climbed back on the engine and put away the oil can, when Rodrigo said with a significant tone: “My time will soon come when I can avenge the insult I received at Tiravaya.”

I did not answer. I knew his meaning. When my services were no longer required, he would, with his cowardly instinct, devise a means to kill me. The three soldiers were a fair sample of the poor ignorant 133 Peruvians. They were armed with breech-loading rifles of French pattern, bayonets fixed. After Rodrigo had muttered his threat, he went into the little coach, sitting directly behind me, and could, by his position, observe every move I made. Manuel was standing on the left watching me. Although I had endeavored to make him understand, he was not aware of my plans. I looked back and saw the troop train taking water at the tank. I looked at Manuel, and he understood “the time had come.”

With my left hand, I threw the throttle wide open and with my right blew the signal agreed upon. With a prayer to God I threw myself upon the nearest soldier.

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XV.

IN DESPERATE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

Don Rodrigo and his soldiers were surprised. I dealt the one nearest me a terrific blow in the face. Don Rodrigo raised his hand to fire. I knocked his gun from his hand. The other soldier thrust at me with his bayonet, inflicting a severe scalp wound, which along with another thrust at me with his bayonet in my left arm, gave him time to recover. I struck the soldier in the face, and knocked him to the floor. The other was coming at me, when Manuel, armed with a shovel, brought it down with terrific force on his head.

By this time the engine was going at lightning speed, having reached a down grade of 160 feet to the mile. The throttle was wide open. I knew we would soon reach some sharp curves and if the speed was not checked, the engine would jump 135 the track. I called to Manuel to shut off the steam, and apply the brakes. At this time I was struggling with Don Rodrigo for life or death. We had clinched one another. I spoke once.

“Recuerdo Felicita,” I hissed in his ear.

He did not speak. He was never a physical match for me, but at this moment he seemed endowed with superhuman strength. His face took on the awful look of desperation, that comes to men when death seems near at hand. His lithe body struggled to be free of my grasp. He tried to trip me and just then the engine rounded a sharp curve causing him to stagger. The side door of the coach was open. For a moment he vainly tried to catch hold of something, and then, with a shriek upon his lips, fell from the speeding coach.

The struggle had lasted but a short time, but it had seemed to me hours. Manuel bandaged my head and arm. The two soldiers remained perfectly passive, suffering from severe blows. The one felled by Manuel was still unconscious.

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We were within three miles of Pucacancha, rounding a sharp curve, when I looked back and exclaimed: “My God, Manuel, the troop train is coming!” My blood almost froze, but realizing that this was no time for fright, I determined to master the situation.

I knew the two soldiers would not attempt to molest us. They had learned a lesson. I looked at my watch. In five minutes the passenger, if on time, would be at Pucacancha. The troop train could not reach there for fifteen minutes, because at all obscure places it would have to go slow for fear of meeting obstructions on the track.

I reached Pucacancha, stopping far enough back to allow the passenger to pull up and back on the side track. The siding had only one switch, chiefly used for ballast for the road bed. I looked anxiously for the passenger. Seconds dragged like hours. Would she never come? There was a curve not far from the station, and the passenger could not be seen until it almost 137 reached it. I listened. I could hear the low tremulous noise of the rails, a puff of black smoke went up from behind the curve––at last it was in view, engine No. 8. On seeing me the engineer came to a sudden stop. I hurriedly told him what to do. He was to back onto the siding and let me pass, then pull out and follow me back to Pampa de Avieras, where I told him the government troops would surely be. Our plans were quickly executed. I determined that should the troop train come before I could get by the passenger, Manuel and I would desert the Arequipena, start her back with a full head of steam, and cause a collision. No doubt there would have been loss of life, but it would have given an opportunity to escape by going on the passenger train.

Dobbie, the engineer, succeeded well in backing into the clear. Not seeing the troop train, I ran with a hammer and spike when he left the switch with the Arequipena ahead of him and spiked the track. Just then the troop train came in sight. I 138 hurriedly boarded the Arequipena and started, Dobbie backing up at fast as he could.

There were several officers on the engine of the troop train, and when they saw us they compelled the engineer to increase his speed, with the result he could not check his train in time to stop it from running into the switch. His engine jumped the track half burying itself in the ground.

We arrived at Pampa de Avieras and the government troops came thirty minutes later. I was beginning to get weak from loss of blood. My left arm seemed to be a dead weight, and the muscles were painful and swollen. The people from the passenger train crowded about me and did everything in their power to relieve my suffering. The soldier who had been struck with the shovel came out of his stupor.

I was lying in the coach of the Arequipena, when the commanding officer of the government troops came to see me. After detailing the story to him, I turned over fourteen rifles, ten revolvers, and seven 139 swords, all the cartridges and barrels of powder, together with the three soldiers whom I pleaded for, stating that compulsion was the cause of their joining the insurgents. I insisted on their hurrying to Sumbay bridge, although I told him they did not have anything now with which to destroy the bridge. However, they could post their troops should they arrive first and be in position to command the approaches. After leaving me, he ordered his troops forward.

I was getting weaker and weaker. At last orders came to go to Arequipa with the Arequipena. The station master telegraphed to have a doctor ready for me on my arrival. It was nearly forty miles from Pampa de Avieras to Arequipa, mostly down grade. I had to give the engine up to Manuel, as the pain in my arm became so intense I had to lie down. The station at Arequipa was crowded back to the street, the news having been telegraphed by the officer in command of the government troops. I could hear cries of “Viva 140 Juancita!” that being my name in Spanish.

The people in Arequipa were loyal to the existing government. The general manager met me with the doctor. His eyes were full of tears when he saw me. I presented a horrible and bloody appearance, the wound in my head still bleeding, my left arm in a sling and my clothes almost in rags.

I was carried from the coach by four of my friends to my room where the faithful Chico had everything prepared. Cries of “Viva Juancita!” rent the air from the time I left the coach until the doctor requested silence. Manuel was taken home by his friends. The poor people, ignorant of the revolution, but knowing by the demonstration that something unusual had happened, realized that he had done something deserving recognition.

My friends grouped about with tear-dimmed eyes, and warmly pressed my hand. Chico, looking at me with a most sympathetic expression on his Indian features, 141 did not restrain his tears. For days I tossed in pain and delirium.

One day when the general manager came, he told me that another engineer who had taken out the Arequipena to repair the telegraph, came up with a body of the insurgents who were going to surrender, but they intended to kill him first thinking he was I. Only the timely interposition of one who knew him, saved his life. The insurgents had got their engine back on the track after much time and labor, but it was damaged and as they were out of water, they gave up hope of winning their cause.

The train bearing the government troops stopped when within a few miles of Vincocaya, where they picked up the body of Don Rodrigo Garcia and buried it near the track. He would have exulted over my death, but I cannot say that I felt any satisfaction because he was dead. It only brought sad memories of the past.

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XVI.

THE SCREAMING WINDS OF NIGHT.

I sat on the broad balcony of the British consulate at Mollendo, looking out over the blue waters of the Pacific. The soft breeze from the south seas imparted the glow of health. How proud I felt with the knowledge that no one dared insult me beneath the blue and crimson folds that waved above. Safe from the assassin’s knife at the hands of some of Pierola’s men, of whom I had been warned, I felt a certain refuge beneath the ensign of my country.

“Don Juan, does that make me a Britisher, too?” asked Manuel, pointing to the flag above.

“Yes, it protects you too. Pierola’s men do not dare to harm us here.”

“Praised be the Virgin,” replied Manuel, crossing himself.

The great bells of the cathedral tolled 143 out a funeral knell as a solemn procession marched to a transport ship. They were dust covered, haggard men, with a hunted look, chained in pairs. On either side marched a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Pierola’s men were being taken to Lima.

I arose from the balcony and went inside. They had to pass under the balcony of the British consulate to reach the wharf. I did not care to witness their misery and so remained indoors until their departure. The revolution over, there was nothing now to fear; Manuel packed my belongings and we returned to Arequipa.

The general manager requested me to take care of the shops of Vincocaya. It would enable me to be quiet and recover from my wounds, as there was nothing to do but to see that the work was kept going. Meanwhile the excitement of the revolution would die out.

Vincocaya is situated high in the Andes, above timber line, a desolate and dreary waste of rock and crag, where wild winds 144 scream among the cliffs in the blackness of the night, as though a thousand imprisoned Joshuas were reaching upward for that sun which will stand still no more over the plains of Ajalon. Leaden clouds drift like winding sheets among the peaks and hover like a pall over cañon and deep ravine. The grave of Don Rodrigo was but a few miles distant, but I never visited it. There have been times when I regretted not stretching forth my hand to save him, but at the time, with a most violent hatred of the man and the many injuries I had received from him, and the attempt to save the bridge foremost in my mind, I found excuse for lack of the finer feelings. And, too, what would it benefit had he been saved? His life was spent in debauchery, the gambling table and plots to overthrow any government where a leader in opposition to the ruling power would promise him a political office.

Deep down in my heart I felt the weight of the past; those shrieking winds of the night were the responsive echoes of my 145 soul for the loved and lost. Was it upon this planet or upon some distant sphere that we two had met and loved and builded hopes as high as the lofty peaks that now entombed me––hope and love that may have been breathed in the morning of the world when the spirit of God dwelt within us––hope that existed before the wrathful change that shattered all and turned an Eden into blackness and despair?

Days, weeks and months passed. Often I would spend hours in the wild solitudes hunting the vicuna and alpaca, or in some gloomy cañon communing with myself. Within my spirit I could hear an undertone, “Why cast thyself on waters wild, believing that God is gone, that love is dead and Nature spurns her child?” So, from my grief, I arose at length to feel new life returning. New hopes and ambitions sprang forth in my soul that had so keenly felt God’s chastening rod.

A year had passed. I was in Arequipa. Chico had my room ready and my friends gave me a splendid banquet in one of the 146 largest restaurants in the city. In all ages the world has had two ways of doing honor to a man. One is by parade, the other by setting him down to a banquet table and making speeches about him until they overcrowd his emotions and leave him limp and speechless. I had to pass through this ordeal. The Prefectos of Arequipa and Puno, the Commanding General of the Government troops, the manager and officials of the railway and a host of friends of lesser note, but none the less loyal hearts, crowded the banquet room. They feasted, drank wine, sang songs and made speeches to me and about me that were enough to have satisfied the vanity of a survivor of Thermopylae. At the close, the Prefecto of Puno arose, and after saying things that were loudly applauded, presented me with ten thousand dollars not as a gift, but as something I had justly earned. He was followed by the general manager of the railroad, who said his company desired to show their appreciation of my conduct in the Sumbay bridge affair, and on their behalf 147 he presented me with two thousand dollars. Manuel, too, came in for his share of honors and praise. He was presented with five hundred dollars by the Prefecto of Puno and two hundred dollars by the company––more money than he had ever seen in his life, or ever hoped to possess. Deserving fellow, his eyes streamed with tears of joy and gratitude when he received the money which would now enable him to own a comfortable home. His pleasure was even greater the next day, when I gave him one thousand dollars.

THE HOME VOYAGE OF THE AVEN WAS FRAUGHT WITH ALL THE DANGERS OF THE SEA. (Page 26)

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A month later, and Arequipa was wild with excitement. War had been declared by Chile against allied Peru and Bolivia. It was a sad blow, as Peru had been extremely prosperous and was rapidly forging ahead in the commerce of the world. I had concluded to leave the country and seek some other field, when a call was made to the railroad men to assist the government to convey troops from the interior to the coast. I responded and was sent to Santa Rosa on the proposed railway to Cusco, the ancient capital of Peru. Here a great number of Indians were huddled together to be sent to Arequipa, and drilled and sent to the coast. They were abject and disconsolate. The priests were calling on them to be brave and return victorious. These people had never seen the ocean and had never lived in an altitude of less than two miles. There was much suffering in store for them under the tropic sun of the coast. I asked an officer if he thought these men would make good soldiers. He replied with an air of great importance, and looking quite serious, that he had received word that the Chilean navy was coming to bombard Mollendo, and it was his intention to instruct the Indians in the use of the rifle. When the ships came near enough, he would station his men among the rocks and shoot the sailors off the decks. This, too, with flint lock rifles––a sample of the calibre of the Peruvian officer of the interior and his unfortunate Indian soldiers.

After getting to the head of the Tambo 149 valley, I proceeded to Mollendo and found a terrible state of affairs. Everyone was expecting the Chilean fleet; men and women were carrying their household goods to the mountains. At sight of every ship on the horizon, whether sailing vessel or steamer, a cry would go forth––“They come––they come!” The greatest confusion prevailed. There was no organization, no discipline; everybody for himself, and all running at the cry of––“They come!”

One morning about ten o’clock the hostile fleet did come.

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XVII.

THE BARBARIAN MEETS HIS INGOMAR.

A heavy fog was clearing from the sea, when from out of the mist rose the black hull and conning tower of the Cochrane. The senior officers of the flagship stood grouped on the starboard rail. The wind changed suddenly to the west, and, as it changed, it rolled up patches of the fog and revealed the black hull and conning tower of the Enlado. A heavy cloud of smoke poured from their funnels; decks cleared for action when they should put into practice the desperate objects of their existence.

A boat was lowered from the flagship and rowed to the wharf of Mollendo by sturdy Chileans, while an officer bore a message to the Prefecto for all noncombatants to leave the city, as bombardment would begin in an hour.

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As the boat was leaving, it was fired upon. Then the ear-splitting reports which followed showed how the flagship took this breach of the rules of war. There was the rushing swishing sound, the terrifying screech of projectiles passing through the air, followed by terrific explosions and the crash of falling buildings.

In the city, pandemonium reigned. Men and women with blanched faces, were fleeing to the hills. Others threw themselves upon the ground, too terror-stricken to move. I heard a voice at my elbow calling in English. It was the voice of a woman, young and fair. “This way,” said I, and we hurried toward the massive rock from whose summit I had watched the battle of the Huascar and Amythist two years before.

“We are safe now,” I said, as we stood behind the thousands of tons of granite, “safe as if we were behind the rock of Gibraltar.”

“Oh, mother, sister and Mr. Robinson––heaven help them at this hour!” she exclaimed. 152 A shell struck a stone building and exploded by impact; fragments screamed like a panther in the air.

The young woman’s face was blanched to a death-like pallor, but she was calm, and, kneeling by my side, she asked God to help us. Aloud she prayed, a beautiful, impressive prayer, one that must have gone straight to the throne of heaven and received its answer, for soon the wind shifted and those belching volcanoes of the sea were curtained by the fog; the firing ceased.

We hurried to her home amid scenes of desolation and confusion. Her family was safe and, to my surprise, the Mr. Robinson she had spoken of was an employe of our railway, who had but lately arrived from the United States and to whom I had been introduced a few days before.

The bombardment was now over, but the human wolves began to sack the city. Fire was raging in some quarters and burned far into the night. It lit the streets with a lurid glare; its red light fell upon motionless 153 figures in the dust, and scurrying forms, bent beneath their weight of plunder.

Mr. Robinson was anxious to send his family to Arequipa, and I lent them all possible assistance, receiving their heartfelt thanks. They were in a strange land, not even knowing the language of the country. Hattie, the young woman I had met, was the sister-in-law of Mr. Robinson. Mrs. Robinson and her mother, an aged woman, were disappointed with Peru and were glad to get away from the theatre of war.

I met the Indian soldiers the next day, and the officer commanding was very indignant at his superior for not allowing him to go to the rocks at Mollendo and pick off the gunners from the battle ships, with flint lock rifles.

I was a frequent visitor at the home of the Robinson family in Arequipa, with whom I had now become well acquainted. It was strange to my ears to hear them all talk English, for seldom had I heard my own language spoken by women. The old 154 lady was one of those quiet, sweet, motherly women. Once introduced to her, it seemed one had always known her. The whole family was the happiest and most cheerful I had ever met. Hattie Judson became school teacher to the English and American children in Arequipa, and her gentle ways soon won the hearts of all. I enjoyed taking her to the theatre and other places of amusement, because of her bright conversation and high ideals. From her I began to catch a glimpse of the nobler things of life, things that to me, being but poorly educated and in a foreign land, had been denied. She was a sweet singer and an excellent performer on the piano, and somehow when she sang I was able to understand the soul-reaching depths of the melody.

There was company at the house one night, when I heard her sing for the first time “Coming Thro’ the Rye.” My soul floated back to Bonnie Scotland, as when a boy I saw the waving fields of grain, the cows in the barnyard, and the lassies coming 155 down the path from school; my mother with the willow basket, bringing in the clothes from the line, and father smoking his pipe by the well––scenes that nevermore would return.

In our walks in the shaded dells of the mountains, she often told me of the United States, the habits and customs of the people––how ambitions and aspirations were rewarded when accompanied by virtue and industry. Of the history of Peru she knew far more than I. It was interesting to hear from her lips the strange stories of the conquering Pizzaro hosts, whose mailed heels had once trod the ground we walked, and clanked the knell of a fallen empire.

My school had been the school of adversity. I had grown up with men who knew or cared little for the finer sensibilities. I felt that her standards of life were superior to mine. Her loyalty to God and holy charity toward the humblest soul, bent my spirit to profound respect. She was one who could see all there was of good in mankind and could measure the product of 156 one’s powers and give them impulse and direction. In my soul I bowed to the fair graces of her character. Each day we met I found in her some new wealth of noble thoughts that created higher ideals in my own untutored mind.

As time went on, fiercer rose the maddening cries of war. I felt the hot blood surge in my veins and I longed to be at the front, amid the roar of cannon and the clash of arms.

We were walking in a grove beneath the swift glimmer of the tropical twilight, when I told her that I felt it my duty to fight for the land that had been the home of my youth for so many years, and showed her a letter in which I was offered an officer’s commission on the Huascar. She laid her hand on my arm and said, “There are nobler things in life than the shedding of the blood of fellow men. The youth of the world goes out to fight for the empty glory of another’s crown. It is not on the field of carnage that greatest honors are won, but in the nobler, more peaceful pursuits of 157 life, doing good and becoming leaders of men and preventing war, that one wins the royal diadem of him who said, ‘peace on earth, good will to men.’”

As she spoke in earnest eloquence, I could have knelt and worshipped her. Her delicate cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were filled with tears.

No words of love had yet been spoken, but the Barbarian knew and felt that he had met his Ingomar.

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XVIII.

ON SUNNY SEAS BOUND NORTH.

I met Mr. Robinson on the street one day, bleeding from a wound on his face. He said that Mr. Wood, superintendent of our railway, had struck him. Two of Mr. Wood’s children were attending Miss Judson’s school, and on account of the official position of their father, behaved in an ugly manner. Miss Judson made complaint to the school board, which exasperated Mr. Wood and he demanded her resignation. This the board would not permit. He called Mr. Robinson to his office and dismissed him from the service of the company. Being requested by Mr. Robinson to give his reasons for his dismissal, he struck him.

I was angry to think a young man would so brutally use a man of Mr. Robinson’s age, and, too, in a strange country. Before I could restrain myself I demanded his reason 159 for striking Mr. Robinson. Mr. Wood replied in a haughty manner that he was not accustomed to account for his acts. I replied: “Perhaps not, but when one of your position and age so far forgets himself as to strike an old man, any respect you may be entitled to is dispelled by your cowardly act.”

For a moment it looked serious. He raised his hand as if to strike me. I said: “Mr. Wood, if you attempt to go any farther I will certainly be a far different antagonist than Mr. Robinson, and teach you that some of your acts, at least, will be rewarded in a manner not to your liking.” He knew he had gone too far, and said in a quieter tone, that he did not consider the affair any of my business.

“Mr. Robinson is an American; let his countrymen investigate this matter. I will deal with them.”

“Mr. Wood,” I replied, “I hope the time will never come when a Briton will so far forget his duty as not to go to the assistance 160 of any family, irrespective of nationality.”

At this moment some other shop men came in, loud in their denunciation of Mr. Wood. There is something that binds a Britisher and an American when they are away from their respective countries, and among strangers. On many occasions I have seen the Britisher and American argue and even quarrel over the merits of their countries but when serious trouble arose, all jealousies would be cast aside, and each one would endeavor to outdo the other in kindness.

That night an indignation meeting was held in a large building formerly used as a storeroom. The employes all knew the reason of Mr. Wood’s attack on Mr. Robinson. Although the majority of them were working under Mr. Wood, they felt the indignity inflicted on Mr. Robinson was an insult to them all, most of them having children attending the school.

From the beginning of the school, Mr. Wood had tried to dominate it. This was 161 another reason for the employes’ grievances and, chief of all, they were now being paid in the depreciated currency of the country. The meeting was conducted in a quiet business manner. The sentiment was to strike until Mr. Wood was removed from office.

I told the men that that would be an injustice, as the general manager was in Lima and we had no one to appeal to. Therefore we should continue to work until we could communicate with him. This appeal had the desired effect, as all could see the injury our strike would inflict on the railway.

I was then selected as the representative of the employes to go to Lima and lay the matter before the general manager. I was about to start when I was handed a note from the superintendent, saying that my services were no longer required. I replied that I would receive my orders from his superior and proceeded on my journey.

At Lima I succeeded in reinstating Mr. Robinson, and shortly after my return to 162 Arequipa, Mrs. Robinson died. Grief at the injury inflicted upon her husband and a feeling of friendlessness in a foreign land, had hastened her end. Another indignation meeting was held and Mr. Wood was dismissed from the service of the company. Mr. Robinson became despondent and after a few months decided to leave the country.

The war with Chile was still on. The Peruvian army suffered defeat after defeat. Her navy had made some show of success at first, but not after the terrible fight between the Huascar, and two Chile ironclads, in which the Peruvians lost. The currency of the country became practically worthless. My accumulation of years was almost swept away.

Mr. Robinson decided to return to their home in San Louis Obispo, California, and about this time I received an offer from the Peruvian government to bring a torpedo boat from Panama to Mollendo. The Robinson family were going north on the steamer which would carry me to Panama. On leaving, our friends gave us a splendid 163 banquet and assembled at the station to bid us farewell. Poor Chico, I can see him yet, waving his old red handkerchief with his right hand, his left covering his eyes.

When the ship moved out of the port, I stood on the deck with Hattie. Mr. Robinson and the aged mother stood near us looking upon the scene amid a flood of tears. The memory of their dead they were leaving behind, was no doubt uppermost in their minds.

I looked upon the mountains we were just leaving until they were a mere speck. I intended to perform one last service for Peru, for, however much I had suffered, it was my boyhood’s home, the only home I had had since leaving my native shores.

We were a week making the voyage from Mollendo to Panama. The weather was fine and the sea was smooth. I was in company with Hattie much of the time. In her gentle way, she sought to dissuade me from the perilous undertaking with the torpedo boat. But when I reminded her of my duty 164 to Peru she said no more. I could see, however, she was pained at the thought.

The north bound steamer had gone when we arrived at Panama and the Robinsons would have to wait ten days, which compelled them to stay at the hotel in that sultry city.

After visiting the Peruvian consul, who had been notified of my mission by his government, I learned that a Chilean cruiser was watching the torpedo boat and it was decided to await a dark night when we could escape from Panama harbor. Meantime I stopped at the same hotel with the Robinsons. I made several trips around the bay to test the speed of the boat and was satisfied we could outrun the cruiser, but somehow I began to dread the venture. The full force of this feeling dawned on me when I realized I was in love with Hattie.

The day was drawing near for their departure, when Hattie and I were seated on the veranda of the hotel, looking out over the Pacific. The afternoon wore away, the 165 sun began to set in the dense blue haze of the tropic ocean, the great cathedral bells pealed out the hour of eight, the night birds screeched from out the palms, and still we sat in the glow of the twilight, talking of our past and future.

The streets became silent and even some stars had faded from the skies and the ceaseless roar of the surf beating upon the sands was music, when she promised to be my wife.

FLIGHT OF THE TORPEDO BOAT. (Page 158)

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XIX.

DEATH SHIPS OF THE SEA.

A thick fog rose from the sea, as we stole away in the darkness with the torpedo boat. We had no distinguishing lights and every sound was muffled. Even the funnels were protected against the tell-tale sparks of soft coal. The spume of the sea fell over our forward deck in flecks, and the waves splashed at our bow. The harbor lights of Panama shone in a glow of sickly yellow.

An officer stood by the hooded binnacle, watching our course by the faint glow of a tiny lamp. The bulldog engines, which I was working, were speeding us at 17 knots an hour and we were headed for Mollendo. We had no armament. That was sent to the Peruvian government by other means and our only defense against the Chilean cruiser was a clean pair of heels.

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Suddenly, the eye of a search-light opened, and sent a long gleam of yellow into the fog. It swung around and rested for a moment on the column of smoke trailing from our funnels and changed its color from a black to a fiery red. It rested there a moment, then closed and all was darkness. The tumult was deafening. The hissing rush of projectiles, as they struck the water and exploded by impact, or shrieked in ricochet overhead.

The brave officer at the binnacle fell to the deck, his mangled body a quivering mass. One funnel was struck midway and cut in twain as though by a sharpened blade. Fire darted up from the half funnel, and showed the cruiser’s gunners the correctness of their aim. It lit our deck with its glare and showed the bodies of two others on the forward deck bathed in blood. Another officer coolly took his place at the binnacle and directed a change in the course of the boat.

The spurting jets of fire from our broken funnel gleamed in the fog, like a beacon 168 light to those on board the gaunt black monster of the seas, in pursuit of his prey. A hunted thing on the black waves, we crowded on every ounce of steam throughout the watches of the night.

With the morning came the blaze of the tropic sun. It drove the fog off the sea and showed us the hull of the cruiser, looming up out of the purple mist. Steadily, we held our course, with steam up to the danger line. By noon we had gained a little, and again, with the approach of night, the fog began to rise and soon enveloped us in its grey cloak. But that beacon light from our funnel shone hateful as its spurting jets flashed signals to the enemy in pursuit.

Another night passed, and, when the fog lifted again, there was the vampire even nearer than before.

The nervous strain was telling on our crew. The day before we joked and laughed––we would outrun him yet in the night. We would have; but for the glare from that funnel. We might have stolen into some 169 cove and let him pass us in the dark, but for that. He did not waste shot anymore, we were going his way. He could afford to wait. The third day the crew was worn and silent. They had the look of desperation in their faces, as they threw furtive glances back at the spectre, the Ship of Death––The Black Coffin––we called him now.

At high noon, we met an American warship. His crew crowded to his decks and gave cheer after cheer in sympathy for our desperate plight. The big greyhound of the sea was chasing the rabbit he had bitten and maimed, and the sympathy was with the weak. By night the nervous strain had become almost a frenzy. Then to add to our peril, the coal in the bunkers was running low. Something must happen in our favor soon. Our signal still flashed from the half funnel––our signal of distress––and by midnight we called it our funeral candle. The sky was clear now and the stars were shining. We could see lights flash now and then through the haze 170 of the sea. When morning came there he was big, black, hideous––still in our wake.

Coal for eight more hours only. Surely something would happen; help must come, out of the sea, out of the sky, out of somewhere, only it must come. The sea was smooth; not a ship could be seen on the horizon. All on board were in restless anxiety. Only coal for three more hours.

We were now off Ecuador. The officer in command called the crew.

“We shall have to surrender the boat,” he said.

The assistant engineer, two stokers and myself, all of us British, shouted “Never! We are not here to lay in a Chilean prison and perhaps be shot! We beach the boat!” Our emphasis was our drawn revolvers.

Without a word, the officer headed the boat for the shore. We gathered up a few edibles and when we grounded the boat, swam to the beach. The officer lingered for some time after all were ashore, then hurried over her sides and made his escape. The Chilean cruiser launched her 171 boat, eight sailors to each side of rowlocks, an ensign and a party of marines. They rowed rapidly to the torpedo boat and half of them climbed on board, when her sides parted and a terrific flame shot upward, bearing the bodies of a dozen men. The officer had lit the fuse that did the work.

Ten days afterwards the two stokers, assistant engineer and myself, footsore and ragged, went on board the British mail steamer at Guayáquil and presented ourselves to the gruff old captain.

“Get below in the stoke-hole and black up,” he said, “the Chilean government offers five thousand dollars reward for each of you. If we are searched you are stokers.”

Meanwhile, on board another ship far to the north were aching hearts. Hattie’s aged mother fell ill when two days out from Panama and the next day she passed away. Rules required that the body be buried at sea. It was a solemn group that assembled at the ship’s gangway, while all that 172 was mortal of the aged mother rested on a plank, one end of which was held by a sailor. Slowly the chaplain read the beautiful service. The ship was stopped. Not a sound was heard and the midnight moon was hidden by clouds. “Therefore we commit this body to the deep,” was pronounced. The plank was raised and the body was swallowed up in the cavernous depths of the ocean.

Hattie leaned upon the arm of Mr. Robinson, who tenderly escorted her to the cabin when the rites were over. To her the world was gloomy and desolate, her sister but recently buried in far away Arequipa and the mother now in the sea. With a fortitude beyond her years the Christian girl bore bravely her deep sorrows, trusting in Him “who doeth all things well.” When the ship reached the open roadstead of Port Harford, and she again landed on the shores of her native California, she went to her former home––a vine-clad cottage in San Louis Obispo.

It was here I found her some weeks after 173 I assumed the role of stoker on the British mail steamer. Mr. Robinson had gone to his former home in Missouri, but Hattie was protected by relatives. We talked of our coming marriage. It was not possible at that time. I had lost so much money by exchange from the paper currency of Peru to the gold of California, that I needed time to replenish my almost depleted purse. We decided that we would wait one year, meanwhile I would go to Arizona and run an engine on the railroad east of Tuscon.

It made my heart glad to be in a country once more where my own language was spoken and among people whose customs were like unto that of my native land. There was no prejudice toward me on account of my foreign birth, such as I had often encountered in Peru. The hand of fellowship was extended in this broad free land of the United States, where the greatness of men is measured almost by merit alone.

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What surprised me at first was the absence of soldiers until I came to understand the peace-loving disposition of the people, and learned that in the hour of the country’s need, all men became her defenders.

It was one of those balmy afternoons, so characteristic of southern California, when Hattie and I were seated in a park overlooking the beautiful Los Ossis valley. Our plans were made for the future, and I was to leave that night for Arizona. It was the tender parting of man and woman whose lives had been seared by the hot irons of adversity, and each felt that the other was the one and all upon this planet.

Here Buchan’s narrative was broken short. He was writing the last chapter on a pair of ladies’ dainty cuffs, when he stopped and listened. He arose to his feet. “Do you know,” he said, “I thought a moment ago I heard something––her voice.”

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XX.

A DAUGHTER OF THE CHEROKEES.

Mary Greenwater was not the ugly, coarse-featured woman that many squaws are. She possessed many of the fine features of her white sisters. She had been well educated at the Carlisle Indian school, and had traveled much. While, with other Cherokee Indians, she drew her annuities from the government, yet she was known to be the wealthiest woman of the tribe. She was lavish in the expenditure of money. Her home in the Cherokee hills was elaborately furnished with the richest of carpets and furniture; even a grand piano adorned her parlor. But with all its costly appointments, the house was a wilderness of disorder. Like other of her race, she despised anything akin to neatness. Her dresses were gaudy in color and extravagant in style. Pearl necklaces, diamond 176 brooches and rings were worn on all occasions. She owned fine carriages and many spirited horses. As a horsewoman, she was an expert and as a pistol shot she was accounted the best in the Cherokee nation. Her servants were the half-breed Indian Negroes to whom her word was as absolute a law as any Caliph ever possessed over a tribe. She was accustomed to command, and if disobeyed she enforced her orders at the point of the revolver she always carried.

The source of Mary Greenwater’s wealth was a mystery. Those of her tribe gave themselves no concern about it, but the matter was a subject of much comment among the few white men in the territory. Mercer, a young man of adventurous spirit, hearing of her fabulous wealth, sought her hand in marriage. After the wedding, he used all his arts to wring from her the secret of her riches. Once when she started on one of her lone journeys to the hills of the Grand River, he attempted to follow and that was the last ever seen or heard of 177 him. That the woman possessed the secret of a vast amount of lost treasure was evident, as she spent many Spanish gold coins of ancient date as months rolled on, and this induced Grim, a farm hand, to marry her. She elevated him from a menial position, to overseer of her ranch. She gave him money, which he recklessly spent at the faro tables at the Garrison. When she refused to further indulge him in his reckless expenditures, he, like Mercer, attempted to follow her on her journey to the Grand River hills one night. He was missed by his companions who went in numbers to search for him, taking an Indian guide. They were led in an opposite direction from the way he went and his fate remained a mystery, until many months later his body was found in the Grand River, with a bullet in the brain.

Two years after the death of Grim, Carson and a negro were hunting in the Grand River country and were encamped one night in the hills. While seated beside their campfire, they heard a cry of distress. 178 Upon going to the spot, they found a lone Indian woman pinioned beneath her pony, which had stepped into a wolf hole and broke its leg. The woman was badly injured and they carried her to their campfire and made her comfortable. The next day they constructed a rude litter and carried her twenty miles to a place where she could receive medical attention.

The woman was Mary Greenwater, and this was, perhaps, the first act of kindness she had ever received.

A certain escapade at the close of Carson’s college days had caused him to migrate to the West, where, like many others, he became a soldier of fortune, drifting whither the strongest tide wind blew. When Mary Greenwater recovered she sought him, and in her gratitude made him the overseer of her ranch at a princely salary.

In course of time they were married by the ancient Indian ceremony of the Fastest Horse. When the days of feasting were over, and Mary Greenwater’s relatives 179 had returned to their cabins richer by a number of ponies, Mary told Carson a wondrous story of how, many summers ago, when her grandfather was a boy, a Spanish caravan came from Santa Fe and was besieged in the Grand river hills for many days, and of how, finding that they would eventually be starved to death if they remained, the travelers had hidden their possessions among the lime rocks and undertaken to cut their way through the Indian hordes to a place of safety. Her grandfather had found the hiding place of the treasure and had kept it a profound secret from all except herself, to whom he told it only when he began to sing his death song.

Mary Greenwater swore to Carson that the hiding place of the Spanish treasure would never be known except to one other member of her tribe, and then not until after her death. She told him there were valuable papers which she knew none of her people could ever use, and which she later gave to Carson.

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The documents were discolored and the ink faded and this much Carson was able to decipher: “Jean Maldonado visited a far distant country north of Santa Fe––a wide valley through which flowed a stream, along the banks were bushes that bore fruit like unto those of Spain––in the valley were herds of oxen of the bigness and color of our bulls––their horns are not so great––they have a great bunch upon their fore shoulders and more hair on the forepart than on the hindpart; they have a horse’s mane upon their backbone and much hair and very long from the knees downward––they have great tufts of hair hanging from their foreheads and it seemeth they have beards––they push with their horns––they overtake and kill a horse––finally it is a fierce beast of countenance and form of body––we feared these beasts and stayed near the mountains named the Sangre de Christo.... Climbed the mountain to a great flat rock that stood on end like a platter.... Jean Maldonado, commander of an expedition reached this 181 place 1750.... The mine yielded much gold in a rock like white china––Babtiste beat it out with––Mattheo returned from Santa Fe with more donkeys––loaded donkeys with much unbeaten rock––returned to Santa Fe”––

Here the ink was so faded that nothing more could be made of the manuscript. The accompanying map was more perfect. The tracings showed the mountain ranges. It had been drawn almost with the precision of an engineer. The route from Santa Fe through the mountain passes was clearly shown; there were marks of each day’s stops. Where the map showed the end of the journey there was the rude drawing of a cliff set on edge and below it was marked “Gold.”

Carson pondered over the quaint document for many days. The Indian marriage with Mary Greenwater had become a matter of regret. While the woman loved him, yet her love was like a new bowie knife, to be handled with care. He decided to leave the Grand River country 182 and bide his time until Mary Greenwater should make one of her long visits to the hills. One night he mounted the best horse on the ranch and driving thirty others ahead of him, set out for Colorado. On the way he sold most of the horses to ranchmen and cattlemen and netted a neat sum.

When Mary Greenwater returned and found her spouse had vanished, her fury knew no bounds. Ordinarily the Indian squaw might be deserted by her lord and she would stoically accept her fate. Mary might have done so had she not been spoiled by being educated at Carlisle. Her savage blood grew hot for revenge. She made another trip to the Grand river hills, presumably for a larger amount of money, placed her affairs in the hands of her Indian-Negro servants, and started on the trail of Carson, believing she would have no trouble in overtaking a man driving that many head of horses. Meanwhile the fall rains set in and the shallow rivers of the plains became raging torrents. But to 183 a woman of Mary Greenwater’s determined character, these things were obstacles only for the time being. Her heart was bad and her love of revenge strong.

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XXI.

CARSON’S BLANK PAGES IN LIFE.

When Carson left the cabin he followed the winding trail that led to the valley below. The road to Saguache showed the hoofprints of a prospector’s outfit, and the marks of a sleigh leading to Del Norte. The glare of the sun on the reflected snow was blinding and he drew his hat down over his eyes. He was thinking of his worthless life since leaving college. Once he had builded lofty hopes of future doings in the world, but he had allowed himself to drift; his ship of fate had gone wherever the strongest tide wind carried. He saw now that he might have marked out some honorable career and piloted his course toward it. Others of his class in college were in a fair way to make their mark in the world. Why was it not so with him? It was born in him, as it had 185 been in his father, to choose the wild life of the frontier in preference to holding the presidency of a bank in Atlanta. He felt that the world in its wildest freedom was his for his pleasure. The cords of restraint which society demanded were to him the fetters of a tyrant ruler, and so, as Sampson broke the green withes which bound him, Carson broke the laws of society––nay civilization, and married a squaw according to the ceremony of her people. He repented the act to some extent, and then cast his cares aside, with the comforting knowledge that the world was too busy a place for people to give themselves much concern over his affairs. Long ago he realized that if he threw himself into the swirl of humanity and allowed himself to become a part of its motives and its emotions, that it would require a herculean effort to attain a position where he could look over the heads of other men. That position, he argued, was not worth the life-long effort required. Withal, he could not bring himself to quite understand 186 why he had married Mary Greenwater, unless that she possessed some occult power and gained control over forces of his nature which he did not understand. True, there was but little or no obligation to the ceremony. It held good in the Cherokee Indian nation, that government within a government. Outside that limited space of ground it was null and void. He was a free man under the laws of his own government. Yet that act, of his own creation, somehow seemed to stand over him like a Frankenstein with an uplifted axe.

The snow was deep, and as he plodded along with these thoughts running through his mind, he heard a cry. Glancing backwards he saw a horse drawing a sleigh, plunging madly down the road. The reins were held by a woman, frantically urging the horse forward. Some distance behind four huge mountain lions were in hot pursuit, their heavy bodies crouching and springing forward many feet at a leap. Carson took in the situation at a glance and, raising his hand as a signal to the girl 187 in the sleigh to rein in, he sprang into the vehicle as she passed. The momentary pause had given the beasts a chance to gain, when, drawing his revolver, he fired at the foremost and sent it rolling in the snow. Another shot and a second lion paused with a mighty roar. At this the other two turned and fled in the opposite direction.

Carson now took the reins and stopped the horse. The animal was trembling with fright, while the girl was calm but pale.

“Rather a close shave, eh, Sis?”

“Truly,” she replied, “how fortunate you were here. I was driving to Del Norte when I met the lions. They were gamboling in the snow like kittens. When I turned Bess, they pursued. I want the one you have just killed, I want to have him mounted to remember today,––and––and––you.”

“By all means, Miss, you shall have it, but where are you going now?”

“Back to Saguache after this fright. Poor Old Bess could not have stood the 188 race much farther. See how she trembles. I am the niece of Mr. Amos. My name is Annie Amos. I have friends in Del Norte, whom I intended to visit. I shall wait now until I have an escort.”

“Ah––my name is Carson––Jack Carson. I was going to Saguache to see Mr. Amos, the assayer, to have him test a jug handle,––er, that is, to have the jug handle test him. I don’t mean that; I mean our mine is named the Jug Handle, I will get it right after awhile, and I want him to make a test of the ore.”

“Confound it,” he thought as he turned the horse, “I haven’t the sense of a jackrabbit to make a break like that.”

One of the lions lay pawing the snow in its death struggle and as Carson came near, it reared itself as if to make one last leap. Its eyes gleamed in savage yellow, foam fell in flecks from its mouth, while a tiny stream of crimson stained the snow. Carson’s weapon spit fire and the creature rolled over motionless. He dragged the carcass to the end of the sleigh and, lifting 189 it upon the edge of the box, made it fast.

“If you are going to Saguache to see my uncle, I fear you will be disappointed as he left this morning for an absence of several days.”

“That does not matter as I have other business anyway. Most any time will do, as I am in town quite often. We would better not drive so fast. Your horse is in a foam.”

Carson was fast becoming interested in the girl at his side. Her calm poise, after the exciting adventures with the mountain lions, surprised him. Other women would have been hysterical, but here by his side sat a girl not yet out of her teens, as calm and collected as a veteran soldier after the battle. And Amos, the man he was going to see and intended to kill if he proved to be the villain he suspected him to be, was her uncle.

The white billows rose rank on rank on the distant mountains, while the snow of the valley shrunk visibly away, leaving the grey rocks naked and protuberant.

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The newly-made acquaintances chatted gaily as the horse jogged along.

“I was thinking of your remark awhile ago,” said Carson, “that you would go to Del Norte tomorrow if you had an escort, and as I have some time to idle away it would give me pleasure to drive you over.”

“It would give me equal pleasure to have you do so,” she replied with admirable frankness, “that is, if you are going there anyway.”

“I may need to purchase some new implements with which to work the Aberdeen––I mean the Jug Handle mine,” he explained. “I have heard of a new drill they are working over there and it may be just the thing for the formation we are now in.”

“I see,” said the girl, as a mischievous smile flitted about her lips, “and I am very glad you will accompany me. I shall make you acquainted with some of my very dear friends.”

Carson was forgetting his millions in the mine and letting his mind wander to the expected joys of entertaining and being 191 entertained by people of real worth once more. He felt returning pride, and then the thought of the Frankenstein with the uplifted axe made him groan inwardly. But pshaw! she did not know––never would know, and what people do not know will not hurt them, he reasoned.

He felt an increasing admiration for the girl beside him. They were alone in the wide expanse of valley and had known each other only an hour, yet this girl was willing to trust to his honor and manhood. And be it said for Carson, as it may be said for thousands of other men on the American frontier, he would have yielded his life rather than betray that sacred trust. Instances like this are common in the West.

As they drove down the main street of Saguache, the passers looked curiously at the pair in the sleigh and at the dead lion strapped behind. When they stopped in front of the postoffice, a crowd gathered around the sleigh. A supple figure edged through the crowd and addressed the girl:

“Kill it all by yourself, Annie?”

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The familiarity with which he spoke nettled the girl, and she turned her head without answering. The supple figure felt the rebuff and all the more because others noticed it. He stood his ground, however, until Carson returned and when he saw his face he quickly drew out of sight.

“Tomorrow at seven,” said Carson, as he bade her good-bye at her house.

Carson went to his hotel with a lighter heart than he had had for months. He lit a cigar and sat by the window, then felt for something in his pocket, and threw it in the wood-box. “There are other jug handles,” he said to himself.

He walked the streets aimlessly until supper. He retired early and tried to sleep, but his thoughts ran wild on the events of the day. He could think of no one except Annie. It was still early in the night, when he arose from a restless bed and went out on the streets. Lights blazed from the Lone Tree saloon, and as he entered he saw a crowd about the faro table. The sudden exclamations of many voices 193 told that some one was winning heavily. He pressed forward through the crowd and saw the form of a woman. When she partially turned her face, he felt his heart give a great throb, and he fled into the street.

The remainder of the night he walked through the crunching snow, while the silent stars seemed to gaze with tearful eyes upon him in this, the greatest misery he had ever known. He walked several miles out of town to avoid meeting anyone he knew and then presented himself at the Amos residence.

“I believe it is seven o’clock, Miss Annie,” he said, when she answered his call.

“Yes, and I am ready,” was the cheerful answer.

194

XXII.

A VOICE FROM CENTURIES PAST.

Buchan was ready to throw the lever of his engine and roll out of Tucson, when a messenger handed him a packet bearing the postmark of Peru. The missive showed signs of age, and, having traveled much, had reached its destination at last. He tossed it into his tool box and an hour later when speeding over the scorched deserts of Arizona, he opened the packet. The letter was dated at Truxillo and read:

“Dear Don Juan––I have been ill for many months, and I feel that my end is drawing nigh, but before I go I want to do something for you. I have heard how Don Rodrigo so justly met his end, and with this knowledge I die easier. You are young and strong, with a long life of usefulness ahead, and I feel that in entrusting to you a family secret, I am only doing that which 195 I would have done had Felicita lived. She was the last of our house and the heritage of our family belonged to her. As it is, I make you my heir to the valuable papers handed down to me from my ancestors. May they prove to you a blessing. Would that I had more to give you. May the blessings of the Virgin ever rest upon you.

“Julian.”

Accompanying the letter was a parchment scroll, dated Lima, 1752. It read:

“I, Jean Maldonado, do write of my extraordinary adventures in Nueva Espanola, wherein I was duly appointed the Commander of an expedition to the land of Quivera, in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, in the service of his excellency, the viceroy of Santa Fe. A barbarian told us he would lead us unto a land to the far north, where shops blazed with jewels and common cooking vessels were made of gold; that the metal was so common as to be of no value. The king of this city took his noonday meals beneath a golden canopy, 196 hung with tinkling silver bells. There was a sea upon which this king rode in a canoe, which would carry twenty horses. Upon its prow was an idol of beaten gold. The canoe was fitted with sumptuous cushions, upon which the monarch took his siestas, to the music made by dancing maidens with bells and castanets. Fish as large as horses abounded, and sweet fruit bigger than a soldier’s helmet grew upon the trees. The monarch who ruled over this land was long-bearded, white-haired, and wore robes of bright-hued, rich stuffs, and slept in a garden where trees were hung with a thousand bells, which made exquisite music when shaken by the wind. And this king worshipped the golden image of a woman, the Queen of Heaven, and ate from gold and silver bowls, of which the dais he sat upon was made. He spoke with vast assurance and said he would conduct us thither whenever we should follow.

“We journeyed northward many leagues over mountains and came to a wide valley 197 watered by a stream. Farther on were high mountains and we named them Sangre de Christo and marked three mountains ‘Spanish Peaks’ on our map, that we might not miss our way. One day a pious soldier saw the barbarian with his face in a pool of water, talking with the devil. After that we were suspicious. After many days’ journey we found the city, but alas, it was mud huts, and the only metal was a copper plate around the old chief’s neck and by which he sat great store. There were no golden vessels, no image of the Virgin, no golden dais and no silver bells.

“The wicked barbarian then said he had led us into the desert to die. Our soldiers were wroth and I ordered him hanged on a considerable tree, to let him know there was a God in heaven and a King in Spain.

“We turned our steps backward after we had set up a cross, and journeyed into the valley. Now there were many oxen come into the valley of the figure and color of our bulls, but their horns were not so 198 great. They had a great bunch upon their fore shoulders and more hair upon their fore parts than on their hind parts. They had a horse’s mane upon their backbone and much hair from the knees downward. They had great tufts of hair hanging from their foreheads and it seemeth that they had beards, because of the great store of hair at their chins and throats. In some respects they resembled a lion, and in some others the camel. They pushed with their horns, and they overtook and killed horses. Finally, it was a foul and fierce beast of countenance.

“We have stayed close to the mountains where we could flee to the rocks if they pursued us. We were crossing the mountain, when we came upon a spring near unto a huge cliff that sat on the edge like a platter. We camped here many days until the bulls left the valley. Some distance from the rock like a platter, Casteanda found gold in a white rock, which we did beat up and saved much pure gold. Casteanda journeyed to Santa Fe and returned 199 with more donkeys, and we loaded upon them much unbeaten rock. We all then journeyed back to Santa Fe, for the barbarians were angry at our intrusion and we went in haste, leaving more gold in the white rock than would load a ship’s boat. I cut in the rock, high up, the words:

“‘Jean Maldonado.
“‘Commander of an Expedition, reached this place, 1750.’

“All this, so that the subjects of Spain might know this country belonged to His Majesty.

“We journeyed back to Santa Fe after many days of hardships and we found a new Viceroy had been appointed and he demanded our gold. This we were loath to give up, and after selling it to a trader for the coin of the realm, we started across the country for New Orleans, knowing well not to go south for the new Viceroy would pursue us and take the gold.

“We journeyed along the banks of a considerable river by night and hid ourselves by day. We saw many thousands of ferocious 200 bulls grazing, and when they ran the noise was like thunder and it made us afraid. We crossed many rivers and finally came to a country of wooded hills where the Barbarians were thick and ferocious.

“The Barbarians pursued us and we hid our gold and records in a cave and rolled a stone over the hole and fled. They killed nearly all of our expedition and our mules. Baptiste was sorely wounded in the breast with an arrow and notwithstanding we bled him copiously, he died.

“The treatment given us by the Barbarians irritated us exceedingly and we fell upon them with swords when they were not in great numbers.

“We came to a river whose waters were red, like unto the color of the tiles on the houses of Seville, and after journeying along its banks for many nights, we came unto the River of the Holy Ghost, which DeSoto discovered and here we found safety.

“While all these things were new in my 201 mind I made another map in order that I might take another expedition to the mine when the Viceroy grew rich from the spoils of office and would trouble us no more. But he did write unto the people of Spain that I would be hanged upon my return to Santa Fe, therefore I desisted in returning. Being extremely irritated at his conduct I sought my fortune in Peru, until such time when he should be called to heaven, which call even now, in my old age, has not yet been made, over which misfortune I have sorely grieved.”

Accompanying this document was a map with the Sangre de Christo range, the Spanish Peaks, the River, Valley and flat cliff on edge, plainly marked. The distance from Santa Fe and the mountain passes was clearly indicated.

A month later Buchan was transferred on a run out of Santa Fe where the hand of Fate and Chance again took part. He received a letter from Mr. Robinson who had joined a surveying party and had fallen ill at Saguache. The letter implored 202 him to come, if he ever expected to see him alive. True to his old time friendship, he lost no time in reaching his bedside. Mr. Robinson lingered a few weeks and died. This was more sad news for Hattie in her far-away home, amid the Santa Lucia mountains. She alone remained of the happy family who had gone to Arequipa with fond hopes for the future beneath those sunny skies.

I, the writer, had been with Carson a few days before prospecting in the Sangre de Christo mountains, when by chance we rested at the spring beside the peculiar shaped cliff. I noticed that Carson was interested in the surroundings, but I thought nothing of it at the time. The formation of the cliff appealed to my fancy, and I chanced to mention it to Buchan one day when he became excited and asked to be shown its whereabouts.

Together with Carson we visited the spot. Being an old prospector, I soon discovered formations that looked like pay ore. My years of experience in these 203 mountains had taught me that a man might work a lifetime and gain nothing, and again from the outcroppings of a stone at grass roots he might develop a mine worth a million dollars.

Carson and Buchan were sanguine over our prospects, too much so, I thought, for men who had no experience in mining.

I located the claim so as to include the cliff and spring and when I made out the registration papers, I said: “Gentlemen, what shall we call the mine?”

“Name it the Maldonado,” said Carson.

“What!” exclaimed Buchan, turning an ashen paleness.

“The Major Domo,” replied Carson, looking somewhat abashed.

“Name it the Aberdeen,” said Buchan. “I like to hear that name spoken, it was my old home in Scotland.”

204

XXIII.

THE TWO OLD BLACK CROWS.

Amos sat in the little back room of Rayder’s office in Denver. His beady black eyes glistened beneath his beetle brows. A pleased expression shone on his thin face, drawn in wrinkles like stained parchment. Rayder was out, but had left instructions for him to wait. As he sat there his eye caught sight of something interesting on Rayder’s desk. The door was closed and he was alone. He leaned forward and took up some slips of paper for closer inspection. They were certificates of assay from Pendleton. The pleased look vanished as he noted Amos No. 1, Amos No. 2, Amos No. 3, and so on for a dozen or more slips. Rayder did not trust him, and had had the sample of ore assayed by Pendleton for corroboration.

“He does not even believe in honesty 205 among thieves,” he mused, as he carefully replaced the papers. Then the pleased look came back to his face.

“All the better,” he thought. “He will deal now and it is my time to strike before the iron cools.”

He drew his chair further back from the desk, and pretended to be reading a newspaper when he heard Rayder coming.

“Just the man I have been wanting to see,” said Rayder, extending his hand, “how is everything in Saguache and how is Annie?”

“Annie is handsome as ever, but there is a new assayer coming to town next month and I understand he is on the dead square, and what we do we have got to do all-fired quick. How is this for an eye-opener?” He took from his pocket several lumps of shining ore.

“Sylvanite,” exclaimed Rayder. “What does it run?”

“Eighty ounces to the ton. There is a quarter of a million dollars on the dump 206 and the fellows think it is copper and pyrites of iron.”

“How would it do to contest the claim?”

“Dangerous business, they have taken to killing claim jumpers. One was shot last week, and this outfit will shoot, no mistake. It is better to buy them out for a song. They are about broke anyway. They believe everything I tell them, have a child-like confidence in me, same as everybody has. I tell you, Rayder, I stand at the top in the estimation of everybody, and all we have got to do is to have the buyer on the ground, and when they come in with their next samples I will prove to them their values have run out, show them some rich stuff from down the valley and like all others of their class, they will stampede.”

“That sounds good, but tell me more of Annie, did she appreciate the cloak I sent her for a Christmas present?”

“Appreciate it! I should say she did. She just worships it because it came from you, and say, she has your photograph on 207 the wall where she can see it all the time. She just dotes on that picture. I tell her there is the chance of her life, a fine house, fine clothes, a chance to go abroad and cultivate her musical talent, become a great singer and meet dukes and lords and crowned heads. Why, the girl is just crazy over you, and I believe she would marry you even if you did not have a cent. It is like marrying December to May, you sixty and she nineteen, pretty and vivacious––warm up your old bones, eh?”

Rayder’s eyes shone and he stroked his beard with delight. “Charley,” he called to his office boy, “bring up a quart of whisky, some lemons and sugar.”

“Sweet creature, I love thee,” said Amos a few minutes later, holding up a half goblet of whisky. “You do the proper thing in setting out these kind of glasses; puts me in mind of my old home down in Texas, where we never drink out of anything smaller than a tin cup or a gourd.”

“Here is to Annie and Rayder––may 208 your posterity become presidents and wives of presidents.”

“Drink hearty,” said Rayder, emptying his glass, which he had filled to the fullness of Amos’ out of compliment.

“Charley, bring up a box of perfectos,” he shouted. “You may then lock up and go home.”

The glasses were again drained and the two black crows chattered until the streets were growing quiet for the night. Supper was forgotten in the love feast of Amos and Rayder.

“Do you know, Amos, I always did love you just like a brother?”

“Here, too, Rayder, you know the first time we saw each other, I sez to myself––I sez––there is a man that would stick to a friend through thick and thin.”

“You are that kind of a man yourself, Amos, is the reason you have a good opinion of me. I never had a friend in distress yet that I didn’t help him out.”

“That’s right, Rayder, that’s right. Them’s the qualities that go to make up 209 nature’s noblemen. Lord, if I had a known you years ago we’d a bin millionaires––my knowledge of mines and your sagacity. That’s what counts, and you never fail in your estimate of men, either. Lord, you was born under lucky stars.

“Take another drink, Rayder, take a cistern full. ’Taint often we meet on auspicious occasions like this, and we won’t go home ’till mornin,’ and we won’t go home ’till morning, hic––hurrah for Annie, Rayder, and a million outer the mine.”

“An’ she shame short of share of prosperity to my brother Amos,” and Rayder took another drink.

“Shay, Rayder, you come and go home with me and hang around a day or two until you buy the mine and play sweet with Annie, an’ the night of the weddin’ we’ll hev a dance and send you away on your bridal tour in a blaze of glory.”

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it, Amos, an’ then we’ll be almost brothers ’cordin’ ter law, anyway.”

“Shay, Rayder, did I tell ye I had a 210 little mix up with a woman, an’ I’m scared to death ’fear old woman ’ill find it out. I got ’ter square the deal or I’m a goner and stuff’s all off, want yer to let me take ten thousand fer few days, got ter blow a lot o’ money on weddin’, too, yer see.”

“All right, Amos, youse’s square a man’s ever met. I’ll let ye hev it.”

“Good, thet’s relief; sooner I get it easier mind’ll be. Nuthin’ like ’mediate action to relieve man’s mind, you know. Let’s take nuther drink and ye can write th’ check with steadier hand.”

Rayder swallowed another drink while Amos fumbled about the desk until he found Rayder’s check book.

“Bet ye can’t spell ten without making a crook. There now, if you can write thousand as well you’re a peachareno. Bully, now write Silas Rayder at the bottom. You’re a brother in fact, Rayder, an’ I love ye better as any brother. Shay, let’s hev nuther bottle.”

And Amos pocketed the check and quietly slipped down stairs, to the saloon and was 211 back with another quart before Rayder had roused from his drunken stupor. He poured out another half goblet of whisky.

“Shay, Rayder, de ye know about story of Guvner of North Carolina sed to Guvner of South Carolina, to effet an’ words, it was long time between drinks?”

“An’ that was a damn shame Guvner hed to wait, ought to had you along an’ famous epigram ed never been born.”

Half an hour later Rayder was stretched upon the lounge in the little back office, dead to the world. Amos sat by the window sobering up until the grey of the morning. The sleeping man roused, and Amos gave him another half goblet of whisky followed by a sip of water. He had drawn the blinds and left the coal-oil lamp burning when it grew light, lest the sleeping man should arouse and discover it was daylight.

When the office boy came, he cautioned him not to awaken Rayder. He then crossed over to the bank, called for the face payment of the check in gold coin. He took the money to the Wells Fargo Express company’s office and expressed it to his wife in Saguache.

THE AREGUIPENA. (Page 56)

212

Rayder was sleeping when he returned. He placed the check book in its accustomed place in the desk, destroyed all evidence of the night’s debauch and left a note on the desk saying: “My dear Rayder, I have been suddenly called home by the illness of my wife. Come to Saguache as soon as you can make it convenient. Amos.”

When Rayder awoke it was four o’clock in the afternoon. His head was in a whirl and every muscle was twitching. He called Charley and sent for a doctor. The doctor saw the trouble at a glance. He called a hack and accompanied Rayder to his home.

“This will never do, Mr. Rayder. You have drank much whisky in your time and it has become a poison to your system. Do not look for me to get you out of this in less time than four weeks.”

213

XXIV.

THE RECKLESS HAND OF FATE.

The day was fair when Carson left Saguache with pretty Annie Amos seated beside him in the sleigh. Although he had spent the night in fearful anxiety, walking the streets, he now felt such a relief over getting out of town, undiscovered by Mary Greenwater, that he was bubbling over with high spirits. In the presence of Annie his better nature stood outward and he even surprised himself with his quick sallies of wit and repartee. Annie was charmed with his presence, and as the two chatted gaily, they did not notice the lowering clouds about the Spanish Peaks, until a strong wind began to raise and soon one of those sudden storms so common to the region was coming in all its fury. In a short while it became a raging blizzard. The 214 snow drifted in blinding swirls, so dense that the horse’s head could not be seen.

Carson had experienced the blizzard on the range and knew the only safe course was to let the horse have the reins, and trust to its animal instinct to find a shelter. He drew the robes securely about Annie and endeavored to allay her fears, although conscious of the peril they were in. The horse was plodding its way through the snow-drifts and it was evident that the animal would soon become exhausted. The blizzard might last all night, or it might continue for three days. On those trackless wastes in such a storm death by freezing was almost certain, unless they reached a place of shelter. The hours dragged by. He kept up an incessant talking with Annie, lest she should fall into the fatal sleep. The girl was quick to perceive his tender care, and in full apprehension of their danger, felt a growing confidence in the man beside her. She knew that he fully realized their peril and admired him for his efforts to conceal his fears from her.

215

It was growing darker and the horse was moving with feeble steps. Carson was at the point of giving vent to his fears, when the animal stopped. He left the sleigh, and upon going to the horse’s head, found they were beside a cabin. His heart gave a great leap of joy and he called exultantly to Annie.

The cabin was deserted, but, praise Providence, it was shelter. The door swung open on its hinges. There was a fireplace with some half-burned logs in a heap of ashes. When Annie was securely inside, he brought in the robes from the sleigh and next unhitched the horse and brought the animal inside the cabin. This made Annie’s heart leap with joy; she had not considered how they would protect the horse, and this humane act on the part of Carson gave her the most implicit confidence in the man. There is nothing to fear from a man who is so kind to animals, was her mental comment.

Soon there was a blazing fire on the hearth. Some poles were found by the 216 door. These Carson dug from the snow and brought inside. He had no axe with which to cut them, and in the emergency, he laid the ends together in the fire slantwise from the chimney, and as they burned away, he shoved the logs forward. The wind screamed in wildest fury, while the snow drifted in through the rough clapboard roof.

Until now no thought had been given to the lunch which Annie had prepared for the trip. She brought it out from among the wraps and when Carson gave the horse a buttered biscuit as his share of the meal, she watched the act with a thrill of gladness. The blazing logs gave warmth and light, and the man and woman sat and talked throughout the long watches of the night, while the snow drifted and the wind screamed and roared, making the loose clapboards of the roof creak and groan.

There these two, thrown together by the reckless hand of fate, told incidents of their lives and won the love and sympathy of each other. A new song was born in 217 Carson’s breast. For a moment he seemed to remember a former life; somewhere out in the wide, white waste and hush of infinite space, where they had known each other and now their souls imprisoned in forms of clay, they had met by chance and renewed an old affinity.

As she told him the simple story of her life, he listened with ever-increasing interest. An orphan at an early age, she had since lived in the home of her Uncle Amos. Everything had gone well until the last year, when her uncle brought Rayder to their home and insisted that she should regard him as a suitor for her hand. Rayder, old and grey, had dyed his whiskers and tried to appear boyish. His intentions were well enough––he would give her all she would ask that money could purchase––but she could not love the man and could never think of becoming his wife. Amos, her uncle, was a man of avarice and greed. He insisted that it was a duty she owed him for his fatherly care in bringing her up. He dwelt on the advantages it would 218 be to him in his old age and that it would be only right for her to help him in this way. He had appealed to her generous nature and sought to make her believe this sacrifice on her part would be just and right. Amos’ wife had taken the same view of the matter and urged that the wedding should be at an early date. Annie, alone in the world, had no one to whom she could go for counsel. Some of the coarse women of the mining camp who came to their home thought her the most fortunate of girls to have a suitor as rich as Rayder, and ridiculed the idea of her refusing to accept the greatest opportunity of her life. Some of their husbands were rough, uncouth men, who cared nothing for the luxuries of a home, spent most of their money and time drinking and gambling at the Lone Tree, and they gauged conditions as they were with themselves. They were honest-hearted women of the frontier who believed they were doing the girl a kindness. It was not through bravery that she was cool and collected, yesterday, in the 219 presence of death from the lions, she told him, but because she had almost made up her mind that she did not care. Death had lost its terrors in the contemplation of impending fate.

He did not tell her of the burden of his heart. He did not feel that he dared to ask for sympathy. At that hour he would have given ten years of his life to undo his marriage with Mary Greenwater by the ancient custom of the Swiftest Horse. He knew the Indian woman and knew that she intended to kill him and yet he felt helpless, powerless. He did tell the girl beside him that he, too, was alone in the world and hoped to merit the love of a good woman and that his every act in life should go to prove his sincerity. And so, amid the wild scenes of the night, they talked.

At noon the following day, the storm abated and when the flurries of snow had ceased they saw the town of Del Norte well down on the plain.

Annie was received at the home of her friends with delight and when she told them 220 of her recent adventures, they gave expression to heartfelt joy for Annie’s safety, and called Carson a hero.

Carson did not leave Del Norte for six weeks. Meanwhile, Annie visited her friends. When the two were not together in the cozy parlor at Annie’s host’s, Carson kept close in his room at the hotel. He wanted to delay the meeting with Mary Greenwater as long as possible. If she was only a man,––ah, that would be different! It would then be knife to knife, or bullet to bullet––he would not shrink. But she was a woman, an educated Indian woman upon whom society had some claim, and she had some claim upon it.

Annie promised to become his wife and it was arranged that she should return to her uncle’s home, and as soon as he could arrange his affairs at the mine they would go to an eastern state. He first intended, however, to make a clean breast of the Mary Greenwater affair, and trust his fate to her love for him.

When he reached the foot of the Sangre 221 de Christo range, through the great depths of snow, he saw the fearful havoc of the snow slide and noted the slanting position of the edgewise cliff. Thinking it was of but recent occurrence, he hurried to Saguache and gave the alarm that two of his companions were buried beneath the mountain of snow.

In no place in the world does an appeal for help meet with a quicker response than among the pioneers of the west. The news flew over the town like wildfire that two miners were imprisoned in a snow slide. A relief party was organized at once and Carson led them to the base of the range.

Mary Greenwater saw Carson organizing the relief, she stood within a few feet of him unobserved, and could have shot him, but she knew better than shoot a man in the act of aiding the distressed. The crowd would hang her, woman or no woman, and she knew it. Some other time than this––she would wait.

222

XXV.

CORDS OF LOVE ARE STRONG.

Hattie Judson sat by the window overlooking the green wheat fields of the Los Ossis valley. The bells in the old mission were calling the humble worshippers of the valley, just as they had done for more than one hundred and forty years. She watched the blue haze of the valley growing denser in the shadows of the evening. She heard the low boom of a signal gun roll up from the sea. It was from the coast steamer in the open roadstead, the signal she was listening for in the hope that it would bring her a letter––the letter for which she had been waiting for six weeks.

The shadows from the coast hills crept up the valley, and the stars shone, when the whistle of the little narrow-gauge engine announced its arrival from the port. She put on her wraps and went to the postoffice and waited a good long hour before the mail was distributed. There was nothing 223 in her box except the San Francisco paper. And yet she felt intuitively there must be some news. She returned to her home with a vague feeling of dread and lit the parlor lamp. Mechanically she scanned the headlines of the paper when her eye caught the line:

“Imprisoned Miners in Snow-slide;
Relief Party Working Night and Day.”

“Saguache, Colo.––Word reached here last night that John Buchan and James Winslow, miners working a claim on the Sangre de Christo range, were buried in their cabin beneath a snow slide. It is believed the men are alive although there seems to be small hope of rescuing them on account of an overhanging cliff which may topple at any moment, with the melting snows and crush them out of existence. Rescue parties are at work night and day.”

The room seemed to whirl and grow dark as she finished reading. Tears came to her eyes and she cried aloud. The members of the family came to find the cause of her outcry and found her in a flood of 224 tears. They read the dispatch and knew the cause. The paper was two days old from San Francisco. What could she do? She must know at once. She went to the telegraph office and sent a message of inquiry to the mayor of Saguache. It was twelve o’clock when the message came: “Lines all down in San Luis valley.” There was a telegraph line to San Louis Obispo, but no coast line railroad nearer than Paso Robles Hot Springs, sixty miles inland. It would be three days before there was another steamer for San Francisco. She felt that if she waited the suspense would kill her. She must go to Saguache.

In the grey of the morning she was seated beside a driver in a light running rig behind the swiftest pair of horses in the town. The northern express was due at noon and the distance of sixty miles must be made. The fleet animals climbed the mountain slopes and crossed the divide of the Santa Lucia range, and went speeding through the beautiful Santa Marguerite 225 valley with its carpet of green, enlivened with splashes of yellow from the wild mustard blossoms. Across the swift flowing ford of the Salinis river, through deep ravines and mountain gorges, and over miles and miles of sun-baked sand and dreary waste of stunted cactus and sagebrush, the horses sped.

The scorched winds of the desert caught up the sands and hurled them hot into their faces and stung them like tiny sparks.

Dripping with foam the horses were reined up at the depot platform in just five hours and fifty minutes from the time of starting––a record that stands in San Louis Obispo today as the best ever made, and that too by a big-hearted western man who did it only to aid a woman in distress.

The train sped over miles of brown and parched desert, studded with a growth of palms that rattled in the sultry wind like dried sunflower stalks. The scenes were scarcely noticed by Hattie as she sat in the coach busied with her own thoughts. The train was an express but it seemed to her 226 to creep along. The rumble of the wheels clanking on the iron rails seemed to say: “You’ll be too late, you’ll be too late.”

At Sacramento there was a wait of four hours for the east bound express, and Hattie sat in the depot where she could watch the clock, tick, tock, tick, tock––swinging the pendulum in these moments of suspense and waiting. Those monotonous sounds persistently repeated the single theme, seconds were born and ushered into eternity with the slow swing of the pendulum; every tick brought the time of starting nearer, but the pendulum swung so slow.

Those four hours watching the clock were the most tedious of her life. When the time was drawing nigh and the waiting passengers were stirring about, the man in the ticket office came out and wrote upon the blackboard, “East bound Express two hours late.”

Again the slow swinging pendulum sent a torrent of woe to the unhappy girl, and when the train rolled into the yards she felt as though she had lived within sound of that clock for a year.

227

The green valley changed to the red earth of the foothills, still showing signs of the gold hunters of 1849. The puffing and wheezing of the engine told they were climbing steep grades, and soon they were in the snows of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The train entered the forty-two mile snow shed and when half way through struck a hand car, derailing the engine.

It was day without, but dark within the sheds. A kindly woman with her daughter occupied the berth opposite Hattie. She noticed the troubled look on the girl’s face and from that time on until they separated at Cheyenne, did everything she could to make the journey pleasant. But there was the ever present suspense and doubt.

It was ten hours before the train was again under way, but they had lost the right of way on the road and were compelled to make frequent stops on the sidings to allow other trains to pass.

As the train skirted the Great Salt Lake with its bleak and desolate islands of rock rising in silhouette against the cold grey 228 skies, Hattie compared the scene to the feeling of utter desolation within her soul.

A storm was raging on the Laramie plains and when the snow plow, driven by the tremendous force of an extra engine in front, stuck fast in the snow, she began to have some conception of the mighty force of an avalanche, and the difficulty of reaching imprisoned men beneath its weight.

The railroad ended at a little station in the San Luis valley and then followed many miles of staging in a crowded coach. Everywhere the girl met with the most profound respect and attention from fellow passengers. She was always given the best seat in the coach, and otherwise made as comfortable as circumstances would permit. Such was the gallantry of these men of the frontier to the girl who was traveling alone.

At the last stage station before reaching Saguache, she heard men talking of the imprisoned miners in the Sangre de Christo mountains, but she was unable to learn 229 any of the particulars other than that the relief party was still working. When, at last, she alighted at the hotel in Saguache her first question was concerning the imprisoned men. They will have them out in a few days if nothing happens was the assurance given by the landlady. “They are alive, we know, for we can see the smoke coming out from under the rock.”

The two men under the snow slide had been the talk of the town for days. Every day a new party went to the scene to relieve those who had worked the day and night before, tunneling up the steep mountain side through snow of an unknown depth.

When Hattie reached the tunnel she begged to be allowed to go to the end of it where the men were working. She was assisted up the mountain side by willing hands and when she reached the workers one of them said: “The boys are all right for we can hear their voices.”

It was then she gave an exclamation of joy, and when Buchan said to me in the cabin, “It seems that I hear her voice,” he was right.

230

XXVI.

WHEN THE DEATH GLOOM GATHERS.

Amos staggered out of the fog of powder smoke and groped his way to the door. He took the center of the street reeling as he went, and made his way to his home. The scenes at the Bucket of Blood were magnified in his whisky-crazed brain. He raved in wild delirium, fighting the demons that gathered around his bedside. The doctor came and shook his head. “He has been drinking so long that my medicine will not act,” he said. Amos glared wildly from his bloodshot eyes when a monkey seemed to leap on the footboard. He held a glass in his hand. “Have a cocktail, Amos,” said the monkey, as he tossed the liquid into the air and caught it in another glass. Amos’ throat was parched and he wanted the cocktail, but the monkey did not give it to him. A rhinoceros came creeping through the 231 wall and looked at him with its leaden eyes. The monkey tossed the cocktail into the wide open mouth of the rhinoceros, who smacked his lips and said to the monkey, “Let’s play ante over.”

“All right,” replied the monkey, “what with?”

“Get his eye, get his eye,” exclaimed the rhinoceros.

The monkey crept forward and plucked out one of Amos’ eyes, as he groaned and yelled. For awhile the rhinoceros was on one side of the dresser and the monkey on the other, tossing his eye to and fro between them. The scene changed. He was on a white horse, plunging down a steep rocky road lined with trees on either side; pythons and rattlesnakes reached out from among the branches striking their fangs at his head. There was the form of a dead woman behind him on the horse. Her cold arms clung about his neck as little devils came out from behind the trees and shouted: “You did it; you did it.” The horse was now plunging over a snow-covered 232 country. He felt the icy winds chill his heart. He was trying to shake off the dead arms that clung to his neck, when the horse stopped in a wild spot among the rocks. A grave digger, with the flesh of face and arms dried to the bone, appeared. “We will bury her here,” he said as he sunk his spade into the earth. As the grave digger threw up the clods they turned to little devils, the size of frogs and yelped, “We are the sins of Amos come out of the grave.” The vision passed and another appeared. Three Sisters of Charity stood at the footboard of his bed. They were looking down on him with sorrowful eyes. One of them lifted her hand and all was a livid flame. Amos raised his head and gave one prolonged shriek. A shriek of death.

When Amos returned to Saguache after his spree with Rayder his first act was to purchase a ranch in the San Luis valley and deed it to his wife. He then went to his assay office and drew down the blinds and sat in the shadows like a cunning old 233 spider in hiding waiting for the unwary fly for which he had wove his web. His life had been that of the iconoclast who creates nothing to adorn the world’s great gallery of gods. But he was not philosophical enough to evolve an idea that would disrupt existing beliefs.

It was some weeks after his arrival home, when he espied Rayder one morning coming down the street towards his office. He cautiously turned the key in his office and slipped over to the Bucket of Blood and returned with some beer and two quart bottles of whisky. When Rayder returned an hour later he was maudlin drunk.

Rayder was still pale from the effects of his recent debauch and when he found Amos in an intoxicated condition he went away, not caring to stay and talk with him on important business matters lest he should get drawn into another spree. Meanwhile, Carson had arrived and spread the news of the imprisoned miners under the snow slide. Rayder learned that this 234 was the mine he had come to purchase through the connivance of Amos and concluded to wait and see what time would develop.

Day after day he sought Amos, but the latter was too drunk to talk with any sense. He then sought Carson and offered financial assistance in the rescue work, but the men spurned the offer. They felt they were doing a God-given duty and to receive money for an act of that kind would be debasing their manhood. Such was it then and such is now the spirit of the West. He called at the Amos home, and while he was received by the matron and failed to see Annie, he thought he detected an air of distress in the surroundings, and attributed it to Amos’ condition. Feeling that he was at their home at an inopportune time, he went away and started out to find Amos and if possible persuade him to quit drinking. Not finding him at his office he took a nearer route and entered the Bucket of Blood by the back door. He passed two or three hoboes sitting on beer kegs on the 235 outside. “Say, old timer, can’t I dig into ye for two bits?” asked one. The man was trembly and his lips quivered as he spoke. Remembering his own recent condition Rayder handed the fellow a dollar and motioning to the others, said: “Divide up.” The men jumped to their feet with alacrity and followed the first man to the bar.

Rayder walked to the faro table where Amos sat with his back to him putting down twenty dollar gold pieces on the money. “I never squeal,” Amos was saying to another man who was drawing out the cards from the box. “Bet yer life, man wins my money I never squeal,” Amos was saying to the dealer. “Got skads of it anyhow, and when that’s gone I know where to get a mine worth more an’ a million.” Rayder stood watching the player tossing twenty after twenty in gold and tapping a tiny bell now and then when a waiter came and took the orders from those seated around the table watching the game. They all called for whisky except the dealer, he 236 took a cigar. It requires a clear head to deal faro.

Rayder grew tired of watching and sat down. He was thinking where did Amos get so much money? He had not attended to the business of his office since his recovery and had had no occasion to look into his check book. After a certain period of the night with Amos in his back office, everything was a blank. He remembered the conversation about Annie and the mine but had no recollection about signing the check. To see Amos sitting at that table losing money like a prince at Monte Carlo, almost took his breath. He began to feel certain now as to the fabulous riches of the mine, for he could conceive of no other way by which Amos could get possession of so much money. He had learned of Mrs. Amos purchasing the ranch and paying for it in gold, and wondered at the time. Then he thought that perhaps Amos was trying to throw him off the purchase of the mine in order to secure the property himself. There 237 was a mystery somewhere he could not fathom.

The board partition against which he sat was thin, and while he was not playing eavesdropper, he could not help hearing: “The secret of that mine has been known to me since I was a child,” a woman was saying, “but I never supposed Carson would locate it when I gave him the papers.” And then she recounted the story of the hidden Spanish treasure in the Grand river hills and continued: “The two men they are trying to rescue from under the snow slide are dead long ago and the only one left that is interested is Carson. I will get him out of the way, and you must file on the claim, I cannot, for I am an Indian, but you can. Besides, I could never sing my death song in peace if he lives.”

“Tonight, then,” her companion said. “You had better act before matters go any farther.”

Here was another revelation to Rayder, he saw coming through one archway an Indian woman, and through the other, 238 Coyote Jim who slowly walked toward the faro table. Rayder’s first and best impulse was to see Carson and warn him of impending danger. His second thought was that such a course would be bad financial policy. No, he would let the woman kill him if she could and he would jump the claim himself. He was certain now of its fabulous value and determined to have it at any price.

And so the old black crow sat and waited and plotted, while the other old black crow gambled away his money, and when the shooting was over, and the coal oil lamps flickered their sickly flame through the curling powder smoke, Rayder was raised from the floor where he had flattened himself against the baseboard, trembling like a frightened sheep about to be led to the slaughter.

239

XXVII.

A NIGHT OF TRAGEDIES.

The Lone Tree saloon and dance hall was ablaze with lights. Two bar-keepers in white jackets were setting out the bottles over the long, polished counter. There was the clink of glasses, as men stood in rows drinking the amber-colored liquid. “Have another on me,” was frequently heard along the counter, as someone felt it was his turn to set up the drinks to the crowd.

A brawny miner stepped up to the side of a sheep herder who had been edging in all evening to get free drinks––and squirted a mouthful of tobacco juice in his ear.

“If anybody else had done that but you, Bill, I’d be tempted to strike him.”

“Don’t let your friendship for me spoil your notions,” the miner said with a contemptuous look.

The sheep herder made no reply, as he wiped his ear. The fire that burned in his 240 stomach demanded whiskey, and he would brook any insult to get it. He had reached the level of the sodden, and others passed him by. It was yet early in the night, and crowds were gathering in the rear of the large room, about the roulette wheel, the crap tables and faro layout, back of which the lookout was seated on a raised platform. Stacks of coin in gold and silver were on the tables to tempt the players. At other tables men were seated playing cards and smoking. In an adjoining room, cut with archways, was the dance hall. An orchestra on a platform played rag-time music, while painted women in short dresses to give them a youthful appearance, sat on benches against the wall, or danced with swaggering men to the calls of a brawny bullet-headed floor manager. His bleared eyes and heavy swollen jaw showed the effects of a recent debauch ending in a fist fight.

The women urged their partners to drink at the end of every dance. While the men drank whiskey, they gave the bar-keepers a 241 knowing look, and a bottle like the others was set out containing ginger ale which the women drank as whiskey, and were given a check, which they afterwards cashed as their percentage.

While the sign on the windows read The Lone Tree Saloon and Dance Hall, the place had earned the sobriquet of the Bucket of Blood, from the many tragedies enacted therein. And this place was run by a woman, Calamity Jane, famous in several mining camps. One fellow analyzed her when he said: “She is a powerful good woman, except she hain’t got no moral character.”

Coyote Jim, faro dealer, sauntered in and took his place at the table. His eyes were a steel blue, the kind that men inured to the mining camps of the early west had learned were dangerous. His face was thin and white, hair of a black blue, like a raven’s wing, hung half way to his shoulders. His thin hands handled the pasteboards in the box with a dexterity that marked him an expert. Supple in form, 242 with quick, cat-like motions, he made one think of a tiger.

A dark faced woman wearing a Spanish mantilla was winning at the roulette wheel. The onlookers crowded about. She was winning almost every bet. The interest grew intense, men crowded forward to catch a glimpse of her whose marvelous luck surpassed anything in the history of the Lone Tree. Her stack of chips of white, red and blue, grew taller at every turn of the wheel. The face of the gambler at the wheel grew vexed and then flushed with anger. The devil appeared to have been turned loose and he was losing his stakes. The chips vanished from his box in twenties, fifties and hundreds, and the group of onlookers stared in astonishment. As he counted out his last hundred he said: “If you win this you have broke the game.”

The woman lost and the gambler began to have hope, when she won again, and so the pendulum of chance swung to and fro over those last hundred chips for an hour, when the gambler slammed the lid of his 243 box with the exclamation: “You have busted the game!”

The woman cashed in her checks. Over five thousand dollars was paid to her. She walked up to the bar and threw down five hundred dollars on the counter and said to a bar-tender:

“I pay for everybody’s drinks here tonight. Take no money from any of them and when this runs short, call on me.”

The word was passed, “Free drinks at the bar,” and the crowd surged forward. A half-tipsy fellow raised his glass above the heads of others. “Here’s to Mary Greenwater, Queen of the Cherokee Indians!”

“Rah fer Mary Greenwater,” chattered old Amos, holding his reeling form up by the bar rail.

The invitation was even too much for Rayder, strong as had been his resolution to let the stuff alone. The temptation of free drinks was too great, he imagined he needed something and called for gin.

Just then, some one came in and announced 244 that the two men had been rescued from under the snow-slide. The games stopped and the men at the tables ordered their drinks from the waiters. The dance in the adjoining room stopped in the middle of a set, while men and women crowded about the bar.

Only three in that room did not rejoice at the news––Mary Greenwater, Coyote Jim and Rayder. Amos was too drunk to know whether he ought to be sad or rejoice. He did neither, but gave another loud “Rah for Mary Greenwater!” when a waiter led him to a seat. When the hubbub of voices which the announcement of the rescue had created, had subsided somewhat, the players resumed their games and amid the clink of chips and glasses, could now and then be heard from some gamester, “Hold on there, that’s mine!”

Mary Greenwater went to the faro table. “Get up, Coyote,” she said, “I’m going to bust this bank, and you and I have been together so much that they will think you have throwed the game. Let some one else 245 deal.” Another dealer was called and Mary laid down a hundred on the ace. Men crowded about as before, when she was at the roulette wheel. There was a hush for a moment, when the clear tones of a man at the door rang out.

“Hands up, everybody. Don’t try to escape, the doors are guarded!”

All was confusion in an instant. Calamity Jane, eyes ablaze, strode from behind the curtain in the dance hall. Quick of action, she fired at the nearest hold-up in mask. The uproar was furious. The lamps were shot out by confederates of the hold-ups. The ball room women screamed with fright, while jets of fire spit from revolvers in different parts of the room. Men were afraid to make an outcry, lest a bullet would follow at the sound of their voice. Coyote Jim was crouching like a tiger, beside the stacks of coin on the table. In his hand was a long, keen blade. He felt a stealthy hand near his own and he lunged the knife. A heavy groan and a few words in a language which only he understood, 246 and the body sank to the floor. The tiger’s blood was now afire and he leaped upon the faro table, revolver in hand. His form was outlined in silhouette by a light across the street, when a spark flashed in the darkness and he fell headlong to the floor. There was a heavy roar of voices, as the men stampeded to the door.

When lights were brought from the outside, the masked men were gone except one. He lay dead near the door, with a bullet from Calamity Jane’s revolver in his brain. Coyote Jim lay dead, and by his side, Mary Greenwater, with her life’s blood still ebbing from the knife stab.

From this scene of tragedy, Amos made his escape to end with the horrors of delirium at home. The Bucket of Blood had maintained its reputation.

The excitement of the affair spread over the town, and among the spectators who crowded in was a haggard man. His eyes were hollow and deep-set, showing that he had undergone a severe mental strain for weeks. He saw them lift the affrighted 247 Rayder from his place of safety at the baseboard, then his eyes rested on the dead woman at the faro table. He threw a cloth over her face, and sat staring into vacancy until the undertaker and assistants came. Then he took the undertaker aside and said: “See to it that she has a Christian burial. I will be responsible.” When she was buried the next day, there was one attendant beside the undertaker and his assistants, at the grave.

The tragedies of the night marked a new era in Saguache. The better element arose in their might and demanded that the Bucket of Blood be forever closed.

248

XXVIII.

FROM OUT THE SHADOWY PAST.

When Buchan arose in the cabin and said “I thought I heard a voice, her voice,” I was amazed. It did not occur to me that anyone would attempt our rescue, else why had they not done it long ere this?

He opened the door and shouted, then turning to me, exclaimed: “They are digging us out.”

Our hearts leaped for joy. We shook hands in expression of delight and Buchan danced a highland fling around the room. Two men, snow-covered, entered and hailed us joyously. Then came a woman, followed by Carson. She ran to Buchan and he caught her in his arms. I was deaf and could not hear what they said or I would write it word for word, but he kissed her and she cried, and he wiped away some tears, and I turned my back and pretended to be talking to Carson.

249

The men gathered up our few belongings and we hurriedly left the cabin. Sleds were waiting at the foot of the mountain, and we were soon speeding toward Saguache. The air was crisp and the stars shone like eyes of tender sympathy over the white plain. We were brought to a stop at the hotel. Men and women whom we had never seen came and joyfully shook us by the hands, and had much to say in congratulation. The news of Hattie’s arrival and her interest in Buchan had spread over the camp, and many were the motherly old women who came to say sympathetic things and invite her to their homes, so great was their admiration for her loyalty and sacrifice for the man she loved.

The next day a mass meeting was called by the citizens. The Lone Tree saloon and dance hall had to go. A railroad survey had been completed through the town, and public works had been projected by the newly-elected city council. A new era was dawning for Saguache. The hall was crowded, as one citizen after another spoke 250 of the future possibilities of the town, and a good government that would no longer tolerate a lawless element. When resolutions were passed and the assembly was ready to adjourn, one speaker arose and said he heartily endorsed everything that was said and done there that evening, but there was another matter which should have attention: One of the men rescued from under the snow-drift had just married the girl who had arrived a few days before from California, and his partner who led the rescue party had married an estimable young woman of the town. The double wedding had occurred at the hotel an hour before, and he thought it would be fitting to celebrate the event and the new era of Saguache with a dance that night, in which everybody should be asked to participate. A roar of approval greeted the speaker. There was no resolution or motion. None was needed. Men instantly set to work clearing the hall of chairs, while a committee was sent to the hotel to announce to Buchan and Carson that a dance 251 had been arranged that night in their honor.

Men came with their wives and their sweethearts, dressed just as they were from their work, and the women as they were in their homes. Evening clothes would have been as much out of place in that ballroom, as the garb of a workman would be out of place in the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. The orchestra struck up, and Buchan and Hattie were given the place of honor in the dance. Carson and Annie, being better known, felt that they should largely play the part of host and yielded every honor to Buchan and Hattie. The music was good. Everybody joined in the spirit of goodfellowship, and the dance continued until the small hours of the morning.

It was toward the close that Rayder came upon the floor with a fat widow milliner. He had taken a few drinks of gin and was trying to act kittenish when, in the midst of a cotillion, the widow fell to the floor in an epileptic fit. They bore the woman 252 to an adjoining room, where she soon recovered, but it was such a shock to Rayder’s nerves that he went out and braced up on a little more gin.

I was at the governor’s reception in the state capitol of Colorado. The rooms and corridors were brilliantly lighted. Men and women in rich attire were there to do honor to the occasion. I was seated behind a decoration of palms, when a prominent attorney and a companion took seats near me.

A heavy set man with a woman leaning on his arm entered the corridor. They were well, but modestly dressed. There were grey streaks in their hair, but their steps were firm and, both were the picture of good health, evidence of good and wholesome lives.

“Here comes Senator Buchan and lady,” said the attorney to his companion. “I knew those people twenty-five years ago. I was one of a party to rescue Buchan and a companion from under a snow slide in the Sangre de Christo mountains. The girl 253 had come all the way from California to help in the rescue. I don’t believe she would have lived two days longer if we had not got him out. Shows what the right sort of love will do. It stands the test of time. There is no divorce business in that. Buchan had an iron will, too. Somehow he and his partners had discovered a lost Spanish mine and did not know its value on account of some trickery of an assayer. But Silas Rayder did, so Rayder hounded the boys to sell and finally when he offered a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they closed the deal. Carson had just married, too. He took his money and invested it in a flouring mill. I do not know what became of the other fellow, but Buchan put his money in a bank and it failed in less than three months and he went to running an engine on the Rocky Mountain railroads. It was a pretty hard knock, but right there is where that girl came to the front like a guardian angel. She told him that perhaps it was all for the best. Riches do not always bring happiness. It is adversity that 254 brings to the surface our better natures and fires our ambitions to the nobler and grander things of life.

“Buchan must have had this in mind, for while he was running his engine he was always trying to help some poor fellow. He accepted his lot in life and worked for years content with the love of that woman and when people saw he was made of the right sort of stuff they elected him to the legislature and his very first act was to put through a bill making eight hours a legal day’s work. That very act took the yoke of bondage off more than half a million workers.

“It turned out just as the girl said. He has served the people three terms and if he had not worked for their interests they would never have sent him back the third time.

“Adversity, sir, is oftimes the making of us. I never thought so when Bob Lee surrendered and our dreams of imperialism vanished and left most of us without a dollar. But I can see now it is all for the 255 best. As a nation united we welcome all men regardless of their nationality, and, in return, they give us the best thoughts the world can produce.”

“Rayder, what became of him?” asked his companion.

“When Rayder bought the mine he thought he had millions but he only took out of it about enough to get even when the vein gave out between two big slabs of granite that came together like the thin end of a wedge. A widow who had fits sued him about this time for a breach of promise, and either to get out of that or get square with some old enemy, he married the widow Amos.”

I arose and stood before the attorney and his companion. “I want to shake hands with you, sir,” I said. He arose, and in extending his hand, said: “Your name, please?”

“I am the other fellow you rescued from the cabin,” I replied.

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Table of Contents

- ILLUSTRATIONS
- CONTENTS
- Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew

- I.

- UNDER THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.

- II.

- IN DAYS OF INNOCENCE.

- III.

- THROUGH MISTS OF THE SEA.

- IV.

- GRAVES GAVE UP THEIR DEAD.

- V.

- FAIREST FLOWER OF THE CORDILLERAS.

- VI.

- A HUMILIATING INCIDENT.

- VII.

- IN THE THROES OF REVOLUTION.

- VIII.

- VIVA GENERALISSIMO PIEROLA.

- IX.

- AMID THE DIN OF BATTLE.

- X.

- WE MEET AGAIN, FELICITA.

- XI.

- THE MASQUE BALL AT TIRAVAYA.

- XII.

- COWARDLY ACT OF A VILLAIN.

- XIII.

- MURDEROUS PLAN OF THE INSURGENTS.

- XIV.

- FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY.

- XV.

- IN DESPERATE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

- XVI.

- THE SCREAMING WINDS OF NIGHT.

- XVII.

- THE BARBARIAN MEETS HIS INGOMAR.

- XVIII.

- ON SUNNY SEAS BOUND NORTH.

- XIX.

- DEATH SHIPS OF THE SEA.

- XX.

- A DAUGHTER OF THE CHEROKEES.

- XXI.

- CARSON’S BLANK PAGES IN LIFE.

- XXII.

- A VOICE FROM CENTURIES PAST.

- XXIII.

- THE TWO OLD BLACK CROWS.

- XXIV.

- THE RECKLESS HAND OF FATE.

- XXV.

- CORDS OF LOVE ARE STRONG.

- XXVI.

- WHEN THE DEATH GLOOM GATHERS.

- XXVII.

- A NIGHT OF TRAGEDIES.

- XXVIII.

- FROM OUT THE SHADOWY PAST.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE