The Gringos<br />A Story Of The Old California Days In 1849 by B. M. Bower (latest books to read .txt) 📗

a great, wide-spreading live oak near the roasting pits, three fat young steers swung by their heels from a horizontal limb, ready for the huge gridirons that stood leaning against the trunk behind them. Indeed, the heads of those same steers were even then roasting in their hide in the smaller pit of their own, where the ashes were still warm, though the fire had been drawn over-night.

The sun was not more than two hours high when Don Andres himself appeared in his gala dress upon the veranda, to greet in flowery Spanish the first arrivals among his guests. The señora, he explained courteously, was still occupied, and the señorita, he averred fondly, was sleeping still, because there would be no further opportunity to sleep for many hours; but his house and all that he had was half theirs, and they would honor him most by entering into their possessions.

Whereupon the señoras and the señoritas settled themselves in comfortable chairs and waited, and inspected the house of this lord of the valley, whose luxury was something to envy. Some of those señoras walked upon bare, earthen floors when they were at home, and their black eyes rested hungrily upon the polished, dark wood beneath their feet, and upon the rugs that had come from Spain along with the paintings upon the walls. They looked, and craned, and murmured comments until the señora appeared, a little breathless and warm from her last conference with Margarita in the kitchen, and turned their tongues upon the festival.

Dade was just finishing the rite of shaving, and thinking the while that he would give all that he possessed, including Surry, if he could whisk Jack and himself to the cool, pine slope in the Sierras where was their mine. Every day of waiting and gossiping over the duel had but fostered the feeling of antagonism among the men of the valley, and whatever might be the outcome of that encounter, Dade could see no hope of avoiding an open clash between the partisans of the two combatants. Valencia and Pancho and two or three others of the Picardo vaqueros, who hated Manuel—and therefore had no love for José—would be more than likely to side with him and Jack, though he honestly wished that they would not; for the more friends they had when the test was made, the greater would be the disturbance, especially since there would be wine for all; and wine never yet served to cool a temper or lull excitement.

Without in the least realizing it, Dade's face while he shaved wore a scowl quite as pronounced as the one that had called his attention to Jack's mood. And, more significant, he had no sooner finished than he looked into his little box of pistol caps to see how many he had left, and inspected the pistol as well; for the law of self-preservation strikes deeper than most emotions, and his life had mostly been lived where men must frequently fight for the right to live; and in such surroundings the fighting instinct wakes at the first hint of antagonism.

"My riata's gone!" announced Jack breathlessly, bursting into the room at that moment as if he expected to find the thief there. "I left it on my saddle last night, and now—"

"And that was a fool thing to do, I must say!" commented Dade, startled into harshness. He slid the pistol into its holster and buckled the belt around his muscular body with fingers that moved briskly. "Well, my riata's no slouch—you can use it. You've used it before."

"I don't want yours. I've got used to my own. I know to an inch just where it will land—oh, damn the luck—It was some of those fellows camped by the orchard, and when I find out which—"

"Keep your head on, anyway," advised Dade more equably. "Your nerves must be pretty well frazzled. If you let a little thing like this upset you, how do you expect—"

"It ain't a little thing!" gritted Jack, loading his pistols hurriedly. "That six-strand riata has got a different feel, a different weight—oh, you know it's going to make all the difference in the world when I get out there with José. Whoever took it knew what it meant, all right! Some one—"

"Where's Surry?" A sudden fear sent Dade hurrying to the door. "By the Lord Harry, if they've hurt Surry—" He jerked the door open and went out, Jack hard upon his heels.

"I didn't think of that," Jack confessed on the way to the stable, and got a look of intense disgust from Dade, which he mitigated somewhat by his next remark. "Diego was to sleep in the stall last night."

"Oh." Dade slackened his pace a bit. "Why didn't you say so?"

"I think," retorted Jack, grinning a little, "somebody else's nerves are kinda frazzled, too. I don't want you to begin worrying over my affairs, Dade. I'm not," he asserted with unconvincing emphasis. "But all the same, I'd like to get my fingers on the fellow that took my riata!"

Since he formulated that wish after he reached the doorway of the roomy box-stall where Surry was housed, he faced a badly scared peon as the door swung open.

"Señor—I—pardon, Señor! But I feared that harm might come to the riata in the night. There are many guests, Señor, who speak ill of gringos, and I heard a whisper—"

Jack, gripping Diego by the shoulders, halted his nervous explanations. "What about the riata?" he cried. "Do you know where it is?"

"Sí, Señor. Me, I took it from the señor's saddle, for I feared harm would be done if it were left there to tempt those who would laugh to see the señor dragged to the death to-day. Señor, that is José's purpose; from a San Vincente vaquero I heard—and he had it from the lips of Manuel. José will lasso the señor, and the horse will run away with José, and the señor will be killed. Ah, Señor!—José's skill is great; and Manuel swears that now he will truly fight like a demon, because the prayers of the señorita go with José. Her glove she sent him for a token—Manuel swears that it is so, and a message that he is to kill thee, Señor!"

"But my riata?" To Diego's amazement, his blue-eyed god seemed not in the least disturbed, either by plot or gossip.

"Ah, the riata! Last night I greased it well, Señor, so that to-day it would be soft. And this morning at daybreak I stretched it here in the stall and rubbed it until it shone. Now it is here, Señor, where no knife-point can steal into it and cunningly cut the strands that are hidden, so that the señor would not observe and would place faith upon it and be betrayed." Diego lifted his loose, linen shirt and disclosed the riata coiled about his middle.

The eyes of his god, when they rested upon the brown body wrapped round and round with the rawhide on which his life would later hang, were softer than they had been since he had craved the kiss that had been denied him, many hours before. It was only the blind worship and the loyalty of a peon whose feet were bare, whose hands were calloused with labor, whose face was seamed with the harshness of his serfdom. Only a peon's loyalty; but something hard and bitter and reckless, something that might have proved a more serious handicap than a strange riata, dropped away from Jack's mood and left him very nearly his normal self. It was as if the warmth of the rawhide struck through the chill which Teresita's unreasoning spite had brought to the heart of him, and left there a little glow.

"Gracias, Diego," he said, and smiled in the way that made one love him. "Let it stay until I have need of it. It will surely fly true, to-day, since it has been warmed thus by thy friendship."

From an impulse of careless kindness he said it, even though he had been touched by the peon's anxiety for his welfare. But Diego's heart was near to bursting with gratitude and pride; those last two words—he would not have exchanged the memory of them for the gold medal itself. That his blue-eyed god should address him, a mere peon, as "thy," the endearing, intimate pronoun kept for one's friends! The tears stood in Diego's black eyes when he heard; and Diego was no weakling, but a straight-backed stoic of an Indian, who stood almost as tall as the Señor Jack himself and who could throw a full-grown steer to the ground by twisting its head. He bowed low and turned to fumble the sweet, dried grasses in Surry's manger; and beneath his coarse shirt the feel of the rawhide was sweeter than the embrace of a loved woman.

"You want to take mighty good care of this little nag of mine," Dade observed irrelevantly, his fingers combing wistfully the crinkly mane. "There'll never be another like him in this world. And if there was, it wouldn't be him."

"I reckon it's asking a good deal of you, to think of using him at all." For the first time Jack became conscious of his selfishness. "I won't, Dade, if you'd rather I didn't."

"Don't be a blamed idiot. You know I want you to go ahead and use him; only—I'd hate to see him hurt."

To Dade the words seemed to be wrenched from the very fibers of his friendship. He loved that horse more than he had ever believed he could love an animal; and he was mentally sacrificing him to Jack's need.

Jack went up and rubbed Surry's nose playfully; and it cost Dade a jealous twinge to see how the horse responded to the touch.

"He won't get hurt. I've taught him how to take care of himself; haven't I, Diego?" And he put the statement into Spanish, so that the peon could understand.

"Sí, he will never let the riata touch him, Señor. Truly, it is well that he will come at the call, for otherwise he would never again he caught!" Diego grinned, checked himself on the verge of venturing another comment, and tilted his head sidewise instead, his ears perked toward the medley of fiesta sounds outside.

"Listen, Señors! That is not the squeal of carts alone, which I hear. It is the carriage that has wheels made of little sticks, that chatters much when it moves. Americanos are coming, Señors."

"Americanos!" Dade glanced quickly at Jack, mutely questioning. "I wonder if—" He gave Surry a hasty, farewell slap on the shoulder and went out into the sunshine and the clamor of voices and laughter, with the creaking of carts threaded through it all. The faint, unmistakable rattle of a wagon driven rapidly, came towards them. While they stood listening, came also a confused jumble of voices emitting sounds which the two guessed were intended for a song. A little later, above the high-pitched rattle of the wagon wheels, they heard the raucous, long-drawn "Yank-ee doo-oo-dle da-a-andy!" which confirmed their suspicions and identified the comers as gringos beyond a doubt.

"Must be a crowd from San Francisco," said Jack needlessly. "I wrote and told Bill about the fiesta, when I sent up after some clothes. I told him to come down and take it in—and I guess he's coming."

Bill was; and he was coming largely, emphatically, and vaingloriously. He had a wagon well loaded with his more intimate friends, including Jim. He had a following of half his Committee of Vigilance and all the men of like caliber who could find a horse or a mule to straddle. Even the Roman-nosed buckskin of sinister history was in the van of the procession that came charging up the slope with all the speed it could muster after the journey from the town on the tip of the peninsula.

In the wagon were a drum, two fifes, a cornet, and much confusion of voices. Bill, enthroned upon the front seat beside the driver of the four-horse team, waved both arms exuberantly and started the song all over again, so that they had to sing very fast indeed in order to finish by the time they swung up to the patio and stopped.

Bill scrambled awkwardly down over the wheel and gripped the hands of those two whose faces welcomed him without words. "Well, we got here," he announced, including the whole cavalcade with one sweeping gesture. "Started before daylight, too, so we wouldn't miss none of the doings." He tilted his head toward Dade's ear and jerked his thumb towards the wagon. "Say! I brought the boys along, in case—" His left eyelid lowered lazily and flew up again into its normal position as Don Andres, his sombrero in his hand, came towards them across the patio, smiling a dignified welcome.

Dade spoke not a word in reply, but his eyes brightened wonderfully. There was still the element of danger, and on a larger scale than ever. But it was heartening to have Bill Wilson's capable self to stand beside him. Bill could