"But I must! Gallantry, my dear ex-captor."
"Leave me not!" reiterated Pepillo, who had supported himself with his gun whilst the Englishman had looked at his hurt, "For the sake of my widow and four little ones."
"A bandit with a family," observed Gladsden. "This is curious."
"Yes; who know not of my mode of life," appealed the salteador, falling into a seated position and clasping his hands. "By the rules of our band – for I am one of the Caballeros de la Noche, of Matasiete – all my goods fall in to the gang! But my wife – my Angela! My little ones – my angelitos! Have still more compassion, you greatly noble American of the North, and hear my viva voce testament in their behalf."
"Go on," was the reply. "Considering where the commissioner to take oaths – who is only an Englishman, by the way, and no American of the Northern States – where he has his office opened, and the improbability of his traversing a wilderness of poisonous vermin of all descriptions to file your testament, it is a pure formality. However," he added, the while the dying robber divided his time between a disjointed supplication and wrestlings against a pain that convulsed him severely at intervals more and more closely recurrent, "will away your 'bacca box and your knife and sash. I'll do my best to carry them to the legatees."
"Listen to me," said Pepillo solemnly, and beckoning him to approach. His voice was singular in sound; his features contorted, his clayey, pale face streaming with cold, thick perspiration. "I have not always been a ranger of the prairie. I was a sailor, like you are, as I caught in your speech. Do you know the islands on the other coast of the Gulf of California?"
"I have only sailed round to Guaymas."
"I will draw you the chart. Due north from Cantador Island I have a treasure. Laugh not, raise no brow in derision. In coin, and emeralds, gold, silver, and pearls, I have over a million dollars."
"Nonsense!"
"I am the last of the band of Colonel Dartois the Filibuster, and I tell you I am the sole treasurer of the crew."
The Englishman was not acquainted with that adventurer, of much notoriety in his day on the Pacific Coast, but the tone of the dying man was sincere.
"Be quick, then, thou dying one, to give the clue," said he as if convinced, whether so or not.
CHAPTER IV.
A DESERT MYSTERY
Upon this enjoinder of so eminently practical a nature, and thoroughly aware of the necessity of haste, the fallen Mexican rapidly drew with his ramrod end, upon a space of earth smoothed by his foot in its deerskin boot, like an antique tablet under the stylus, a map – rude, but, to a navigator, plain and ample.
"At this point," said he, "a sunken reef trends north and south, with a break at a little bow a quarter mile from the black rock that juts out all but flush with its ripple. Deep water in 'the pot,' and there we anchored to ride to a submerged buoy, so that the cankerworm would not attack the metal or the borer the wood – a chest, bound with yellow metal. If it shall have broke away, its weight would only have sunk it deep in the oyster bed, all the shells there smashed to powdery scales by the drags. A diver will find it for you, then."
"Now, swear to me!" he went on, forcing his weakening voice to keep an even tenor. "Swear that one-half the contents of that hiding place shall be Ignacio Santamaria's, my brother-in-law's, who will give enough to his sister, my Angela. And the rest – be it yours, brave and Christian heart."
Whether he was only fostering a delusion, or accepting a commission that would enrich him, Gladsden nodded assent.
"But, swear!"
"I give you my word, as an English gentleman," said he, obstinately.
"I am content."
"And what is there stowed there away?" with a smile of his former discredit, "Copper bolts?"
"Pearls! The choicest from Carmen Island to Acapulco."
"Well, that sounds natural enough. The next thing is, where shall I find your brother Ignacio and the rest of the family, Master Pepillo Santamaria?"
Poignant anguish rendered the other unconscious of external matter for a period; he clutched his head with both hands as if to prevent the bones flying asunder, then recovering his senses, as the paroxysm quitted him, he said:
"You have not far to go for my brother. As for the dear ones, they are at the old town of Guaymas. My brother is here – "
"Here! The devil!" looking round and falling on guard.
"At the Mound Tower." He pointed with a wavering finger to the northeast. "Not two hours' ride, our rendezvous – a robber's rendezvous – but have no fear! Ignacio is second of the band, – remember, his sister's fortune is at stake! Call him out from among the crew – the signal, our private signal, two meows of the catamount – Ignacio is known as the Gato de montes, mark! Have mercy! Remember the pearls! My wife – my little angels! Pity!"
Gladsden averted his gaze not to witness an agony which he could not stay relieve or bid cease. When he looked on Pepillo again, he was dead.
As it threatened to come on dark, not only by the disappearance of the sun, but by a storm, which the seaman divined, rather than perceived in progress, he bent a silver coin, so as to make a species of pencil, with the point at the double, and using some cigarette paper, copied off, "in silver point," the map which the dead pirate, cum pearl fisher, plus highwayman, had designed on the ground bedewed with his blood. Whilst so employed, the Englishman repeated to himself, like a scholar beating a lesson into his brain, the instructions connected with this singular testament.
Recalling his intention before the robber's appeal had distracted him, Gladsden, gun in hand, marched with a determination not to be cried "halt!" to again, towards the huge cottonwood stump, by which he marked the scene of the Mexican standing at bay against the Apache.
The latter's remains were there, a fresh made grave (covered with stones and brambles to prevent the attack of the quadrupedal ghouls to which the luckless red man was consigned, in most probability), concealed don José de Miranda from the searcher's eyes. A fragment of Dolores' attire was all that prevented Gladsden from supposing he had been the prey of an illusion as to a woman having also occupied that natural pedestal. To complete the puzzle a spade of North American make was carelessly lying by the fresh mound.
"Hilli-ho! Ahoy there!" cried the Englishman, fortified against fear of the bandits by the claim he had upon the lieutenant of the band, and caring not a jot for Indians or others, since he had his gun in shooting order.
But save the mocking of birds there was no rejoinder.
Afar he heard thunder, though.
"A mound tower must be prominent," he mused, "and this thicket in a torrent rain and a tornado is worse accommodation than the toughest highwayman must accord the bearer of an inheritance. I'll make for the Mound Tower, and implore señor don El Sostenedor, of the most glorious robber chief What's-his-name, for a corner of his stronghold, a chunk of deer's meat, and a swig of pulque."
He returned to the two dead men, loaded his belt with such of their weapons as completed, not to say replete, a portable arsenal, which an Albanian janissary would have envied, and, with the same heedlessness as to southwestern travelling precautions which had heretofore distinguished him, stepped manfully away from the haunt of murder. Ere he had taken half a dozen strides, he heard many a soft padded foot in the bushes; the volunteer sextons of the prairie were flocking to entomb the dead in their unscrupulous maw.
The thunder boomed more audible, and the eagle screamed defiance over the lonely adventurer's head.
CHAPTER V.
THE GODSEND
The inhabitants of the wilderness, red or white, black or yellow, obliged often to "let go of all," as our sailor friend would word it, and "get" (as he would probably say if his foolhardy behaviour allowed him to live long enough in that region to acquire the cant language), and pretty suddenly too, to follow the chase or avoid an ambush, are