Читать книгу The Tide of Empire - Peter B. Kyne - Страница 3

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In the late spring of 1848 a mounted man, herding before him two pack-animals, paused at timber-line in the mouth of a pass through the formidable range which forms the principal barrier between California and Nevada and which since has been named, for no particular reason—for such is the paucity of men’s imaginations—the White Mountains.

A little sigh escaped the man as his hungry glance swept the amazing panorama outspread before and some six or seven thousand feet below him. That sigh might have been one of relief in the knowledge that his struggle to pass this mountain barrier had been won; but it might, also, have been a sigh of resignation as his glance rested on a taller and much more impassable barrier some twenty miles to the west—the peaks of the Sierra Nevada Range, the Alps of America.

Months of solitary wandering in the wilderness had inculcated in this man the habit of talking to his animals. “We’ll rest a bit here, Pathfinder, and enjoy the view,” he announced. “Michael—and you, Shawneen,” he admonished the pack-animals, “let me see none of your rascally attempts to rub your packs off on the lower branches of these scrubby pine-trees.”

He dismounted, loaded a brier pipe, sat down on a windfall and smoked tranquilly. Between the range on whose western slope he had halted and the sullen blue-black buttress of the Sierra Nevada a lovely valley spread, emerald-green, with a river running through its center. In spots the verdant land gleamed blue and gold, dependent upon which color the lupine happened to be, or whether the dainty little bluebells and wild irises had outstripped the buttercups and eschscholtzia in their race to herald the spring.

Tiny moving dots, single or in groups, proclaimed herds of game animals, which later the lone traveler was to discover were elk, deer, antelope and grizzly bear, with here and there herds of fifty to sixty mountain-sheep making their spring hegira from the lower levels of the White Mountains, where they had wintered, to the lower levels of the Sierra, up which they would, as the season advanced, follow the retreating snow-line to the vast mountain meadows that lie among the lower peaks.

Millions of wild fowl, which had evidently wintered farther south in this valley, were now making their pilgrimage into the north, there to raise their young; the crisp still air carried up to the wanderer a tremendous diapason of sound that was made up of the cries of trumpeter swan, the honking of geese and the shrill whistling or deep quacking of ducks.

The transcendent beauty of that lonely, silent land impinged upon the man’s consciousness with a poignancy that was almost pain; accentuated, perhaps, because he too was lonely. He raised a hand as if in eager greeting.

“Ah, California, but ’tis sweeter you are than ever I dreamed,” he apostrophized. “A young land for young men you are, my California, acushla. But ’tis up and over those hoary-headed peaks I must go and down to the plain that borders the Pacific, where the Spanish settlements are. And there’s a bitter journey for you, Pathfinder, and you, Shawneen, and you, Michael—you imp of hell, stop that!”

He threw a rock at Michael, who was industriously striving to get his pack under a projecting limb and tear the hated burden from his back. “You thief! ’Tis a boot in the belly you’d be wanting, is it?” the man shouted, whereupon Michael, judging discretion to be the better part of rebellion, bounced out from under the tree and commenced to graze with an air of innocence possessed by no animal save the mule.

Suddenly Michael raised his head; simultaneously Shawneen did likewise; with alert ears they listened, meanwhile gazing inquiringly back into the pass. Instantly the man mounted his horse and darted into the timber, taking up a position where he would not be likely to be seen from the open patch of mountain meadow, down which men and horses undoubtedly were approaching. He had heard the snort of a horse, the low voices of men, and he feared Indians; realizing that he would have no time to hide his pack-animals in the sparse timber, he did not attempt to do so.

A troop of twenty horsemen rode down the glade, herding an equal number of Indian pack-ponies before them; at sight of Michael and Shawneen the leader drew rein and gazed about him for their owner.

“Hello, stranger—wherever you are!” he shouted.

The lone traveler rode out from his concealment, bowed low in his saddle with a grace and courtliness that bespoke a breeding singularly alien to his surroundings, and said gravely: “Good morning, gentlemen. I am Dermod D’Arcy.”

“Hum-m!” The man who had called to him did not see fit to name himself. “Where’s the rest of your party?” he demanded.

“I travel alone,” D’Arcy replied, “on the theory that he who travels alone travels fastest.”

“What’s your hurry? There’s no law west of the Ohio River.”

D’Arcy’s dark brown eyes gleamed resentfully. “It is not my habit to tolerate impudence from strangers. My business is my own affair. I haven’t asked you who you are, where you are going and why. I’m not interested, me bold bucko.”

The other man appraised D’Arcy coolly. He saw a young man, twenty-eight years old at the outside, he guessed, and above medium height; and, judging from the faint Celtic burr that hung like dewdrops in his speech, his crisp black hair, heavy lips, resolute square chin and reddish brown complexion, the stranger came to the conclusion that this cool young man was Irish.

He noted other things. This alien who dared the wilderness alone bestrode the finest horse any of the recent arrivals had ever seen. A dark, dappled brown with black points and a thin white blaze between his eyes—a horse that stood like a thoroughbred, ears alert, eyes fixed on the horizon, tail slightly arched. He must weigh, in good condition, nearly thirteen hundred pounds. And he was a stallion.

From the horse the insolent eyes of the recent arrival roved over the animal’s equipment—a fine, well-cared-for saddle of the type then in use by the cavalry. A snaffle-bit on a bridle of plain black leather, with the exception of a yellow brow-band and reins of finely braided rawhide—a product, evidently, of Mexico. From a carved leathern boot the stock of a carbine emerged, and the butts of cap and ball revolvers protruded from holsters of similar pattern on each side of the cantle. At the rider’s left hip a third holster swung, at his right a bowie-knife in a metal sheath.

The adventurer’s clothing, although travel-stained and old, was not such as was worn by common men; his broad flat beaver hat, with the scarlet wing of a blackbird upthrust from the wide band, gave to him a faint suggestion of a dandified bandit. More incongruous still, he had shaved that very morning. He wore neither beard nor mustache. His hair, jet-black and wavy, hung upon his capable shoulders and was, apparently, accustomed to twice-daily brushing.

“Does your maw know you’re out alone?” the stranger demanded of Dermod D’Arcy. A huge, rough, ignorant, and unkempt man, born and bred to the wilderness, he had achieved instinctively a dislike for this man whom he recognized as a superior.

A bound, and the big brown thoroughbred horse was beside him. “Faith, you’re the inquisitive one, aren’t you?” D’Arcy cried hotly, and with a furious blow of his open hand against the other’s jaw, swept him to earth. The brown stallion whirled and the fallen man’s companions saw in D’Arcy’s hand a long revolver that swept through a menacing arc, seeming to cover them all at once.

Somebody laughed, then a pleasant voice hailed D’Arcy. “Put up the pop-gun, boy. Nobody here’s going to quarrel with you for putting Alvah Cannon in his place.”

With his right hand D’Arcy backed his horse away from them, steadied the animal and drew another pistol. “If you have business farther ahead, gentlemen, pray do not permit me to detain you.”

Alvah Cannon got sheepishly to his feet and mounted his horse. “Forward!” he commanded, and as his cavalcade swept on down the pass he looked with much interest at D’Arcy’s two competent pack-mules with their neat brown canvas-covered packs.

Half an hour after the party had passed on, Dermod D’Arcy followed on their trail. He saw them half-way across the valley as he halted to camp for the night.

“I wonder now where those laddybucks are bound?” he queried of his mules when they came up to the fire for the flapjack he customarily shared with them. “The fellow Cannon is not a popular leader, yet he is the leader. That’s because he knows the country and the others do not. He rides with assurance, so he does, Shawneen. Now, a knowledge of the passes over the Sierra I have not, nor have I a map.”

He divided the flapjack between the mules.

“We’ll be up betimes, lads, and follow on Cannon’s trail. We’ll be beholden to them, Michael, but thank God we will not have to admit it. Independence is a dear thing to the clan D’Arcy. Doubly dear, you beggar, in view of the fact that ’tis little else we have left.”

His evening meal cooked, he extinguished his camp-fire, and leaving his hobbled animals to graze, rolled up in his blankets and went to sleep.

At sunrise he was en route again, following the easily discernible trail in the lush green grass. At the river-bank it turned south for a few miles, where evidently Cannon had found a ford and crossed to the western bank; in a grove of scattered bull-pines he caught up with the party.

He counted the bodies—nineteen white men and twelve Indians.

“Their horses and pack-ponies it was, Michael, that brought them to this. The Indians coveted the stock, and Cannon was careless and put out no pickets. Jedediah Smith, in his traverse through this valley in 1835, reported the Indians not customarily hostile but great horse-thieves. Michael, there’s one man missing from the party. Where is the leader? The others stood their ground and fought to the last, but not that lad whose ear I boxed. The Indians have lifted their booty and departed, so we’ll have a look through the wreckage. Hah, a map, as sure as pussy is a cat!”

It was lying in the grass close to the dead embers of the camp-fire, where, doubtless, someone had been studying it when the attack was launched. Dermod D’Arcy studied it now, without haste. A crude map it was, more panoramic sketch than map, but at the conclusion of his perusal of it D’Arcy knew that approximately a hundred miles to the south was Walker Pass, leading over the Sierra and down into the Tulares, as the lower San Joaquin Valley was then known.

Before leaving that camp of the dead, Dermod D’Arcy satisfied himself that the marauding Indians had driven their captured horses back across the river and into the east. He decided, therefore, in his journey southward to the eastern entrance to Walker Pass, to keep as close to the Sierra foot-hills as possible. There was an abundance of water from the melting snows of the Sierra, flowing out into the valley in little creeks and emptying into the river, but the soil along the foot-hills was sandy and not productive of heavy feed. D’Arcy decided that for this reason game would be scarce in that direction and consequently he would be less liable to establish unexpected contact with the Indians.

He pushed south, taking his time, traveling by night and hiding in the sparse mesquite timber by day. Gradually as he drew into the south the valley became more arid; low stunted sage took the place of the rich grasses, and game was no longer encountered. Thereafter he pushed on in daylight.

In the middle of the afternoon of his first trek in daylight he came across the spoor of a shod horse!

“Indians do not shoe their horses, Pathfinder, my boy,” he informed the big brown stallion, and thereafter rode on that trail. Eventually it swung at right angles toward the buttress of the Sierra and debouched into a canyon. D’Arcy consulted his map. “Walker Pass,” he decided, and pressed forward.

The gradient increased rapidly, and by sunset he found himself two thousand feet above the floor of the great valley. The melting snow provided ample water, and bunch-grass, rich and nutritious, grew among the sage on the mountainside. A well-defined trail led over the pass, and the melting snow had made this trail slushy; D’Arcy noted clearly the hoof-prints of the shod horse.

Upon resuming his journey next morning he came suddenly upon the horse, lying dead in the trail. The animal was saddled, bridled, and still warm; investigation revealed that after it had fallen and broken a leg, a bullet had ended its misery.

But that was not all that interested Dermod D’Arcy, albeit his interest was not pronounced. In the dead horse he thought he recognized the animal the man Cannon had been riding that morning they had met in the pass of the White Mountains.

“A bad thing for any man to find himself afoot in this wilderness, Pathfinder, my boy,” D’Arcy assured his horse. “And afoot the man is. There’s his trail, showing plainly in the snow.”

As he climbed upward the snow increased in depth, but fortunately it was frozen solid and offered nice footing for the animals. The imprint of the boots of the man ahead showed plainly and all day D’Arcy followed them. At sunset he camped on the summit at an elevation close to ten thousand feet, and since there was no grazing here, he tied his stock in the scrubby timber.

At the first graying in the east he was on the trail again, for this day’s march was to be a forced one. His stock had not eaten the day previous, and he was anxious to camp that night below the snow-line on the western slope of the pass, where his jaded animals would again find grass.

He walked, leading Pathfinder and gnawing on jerked venison for his breakfast. The footprints of the man ahead still showed plainly in the snow, and while they gave no indication of exhaustion or a slackening of pace, D’Arcy presently had indubitable evidence that he was catching up with the man. The snow-crystals that fringed his footprints were not frozen solid, and once D’Arcy saw a tiny wisp of smoke rising out of the snow; upon investigation he discovered it to be the dottle from a pipe recently emptied.

From time to time D’Arcy halted to rub his eyes, for the glare of the sun on the snow-field was causing them to smart and water. He drew his hat well down and stepped resolutely forward. Suddenly a rifle-shot echoed through the pass and a bullet ripped through the heavy mass of hair at the base of D’Arcy’s neck.

“A miss is as good as a mile,” he decided, his start of surprise over, and gazed about him. Up the hillside he saw a little thicket of young mountain cedar with a thin wisp of white smoke floating out of it. Instantly he mounted Pathfinder, drew his pistol and charged the thicket, firing into it when in range.

“Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, don’t!” a man’s voice shrilled.

“Very well. Come out with both hands above your head. Leave your rifle there. I’ll get it presently.”

The thicket parted and Alvah Cannon emerged, hands uplifted, blinking in the strong sunlight.

“I suppose you coveted my animals and equipment,” Dermod D’Arcy suggested almost plaintively.

“I’m hungry and half blind and half crazy, Mr.—er—”

“D’Arcy, Friend Cannon, Dermod D’Arcy.”

“Forgive me, Mr. D’Arcy.”

“Certainly, you superb ass, certainly. But I’ll keep an eye on you for all that. Go back and pick up your rifle. No time for mooning, Friend Cannon. We must push on to grass tonight. Have some of this jerked venison? It will stay your hunger pangs until I can prepare a good dinner.”

Cannon hung his head. “You’re mighty kind to me, friend—”

“You conceited jackdaw! In the event of more Indians, two rifles are better than one, are they not? Besides, you know this country and I do not. It’s a fine large country, and I think there’s room for both of us, provided you behave.”

“I will, Mr. D’Arcy, I will,” Cannon promised fervently. “To err is human, to forgive divine, as the Good Book says.”

“I imagine you might not have erred if you hadn’t been suffering from a touch of snow ophthalmia. Ordinarily you would never have missed me at such short range, I dare say. By the way, how did you manage to escape that massacre back in the valley?”

“I’d left camp to kill an elk for our party, and while I was away the Indians attacked. When I got back I found what you found; I couldn’t do nothin’, so I—I—just kept on.”

“Well, dubious as your society must be, Friend Cannon, I’m grateful for it. Indeed, I’m fairly mad for human society, but if I cannot get that, inhuman society will do. Where were you and your party bound?”

“To trap in the Tulares.”

“Ah! I take it, then, you know your way about the Tulares.”

“I’ve trapped there two years.”

“You can lead me to the Spanish settlements on the Pacific shore?”

“Happy to, Mr. D’Arcy.”

“Thank you. I accept your guidance. By the way, hand me your powder-horn. I have never heard of a rifle doing much damage unless primed with powder. ... Thank you, my friend. You have a pistol. Hand that over, too.”

“It’s empty, Mr. D’Arcy. My pistol balls I left in camp, and while the weapon was loaded then, I’ve used every charge to kill sage-hens and rabbits.”

D’Arcy examined the gun and discovered his prisoner had not lied. He smiled grimly. “Evidently you’re handier with a pistol than with a rifle.”

Cannon nodded, a bit jauntily, now that he was convinced his life would not be forfeit because of his treachery.

“As a traveling companion you’ll prove a bit of an embarrassment, I’m thinking. Well, no matter. Your presence will make the journey all the more interesting. How far had you and your party come when I first met you?”

“From the Mormon settlement on Great Salt Lake. Where do you hail from?”

“I have ridden from Springfield, Illinois.”

Cannon stared incredulously. “Meet any Indians?”

“Hundreds. Fine fellows. Nature’s noblemen. Poor divils! They haven’t encountered sufficient white men as yet to know any better than to behave. A man couldn’t find grander hospitality in county Galway.”

“I don’t understand how you got through.”

“I’m lucky—and careful.”

“Any friends in Californy?”

“Divil a one.”

“What you intend doin’ when you git thar?”

“Lord knows. They tell me, however, ’tis a grand country for a poor man to get his start.”

“Can that horse o’ yourn run?”

“Like a hare. There’s not a drop of cold blood in him, and he has yet to meet the horse that didn’t have a look at the tail of him. He’s five years old come Christmas day next.”

“Then take my advice and do some horse-racing. Them greasers’ll bet their last cow on a horse-race. It’s the main sport at Monterey.”

“Indeed. Well, now, that’s interesting. What distances do they run?”

“Most of their nags are quarter-horses; some have enough blood to run the half, and there are mebbe two or three horses that race at the mile.”

“With the help of God and Pathfinder here I believe I’ll go into the cattle business,” D’Arcy replied, gravely humorous.

“There’s an easier way than that,” Cannon suggested, “if you speak their lingo.”

D’Arcy nodded. “Why?”

Cannon’s hard face wore a smirk. “Marry a cattle ranch,” he suggested.

D’Arcy had no reply to this. It occurred to him that Cannon was presumptuous and it was far from his intention to permit the slightest familiarity. They walked in silence the remainder of that day.

At dusk they were far enough down the western slope of Walker’s Pass to find grazing for the stock, so they camped there. During the day D’Arcy had shot two grouse and they supped upon these, with flapjacks and black coffee, Cannon doing the cooking. At the conclusion of the meal the fellow glanced at his captor.

“Reckon you’ve forgiven me, Mr. D’Arcy?”

The exile from Erin laughed and tossed him over his plug of tobacco, which Cannon received gratefully. “I have to forgive you, in view of the fact that there is no law here—and if there was, where are my witnesses? Your word would be as good as mine.”

“You’re a sensible feller,” Cannon decided approvingly.

“I am—for which reason I shall tie your hands behind your back when you turn in for the night. I salvaged your horse equipment, so you may roll yourself in the saddle-blanket and the tarpaulins from the packs when you’ve finished your pipe. I can see in your fishy eye a plan to kill me and steal my outfit if an opportunity presents itself.”

“I give you my word—”

“I’m a sensible man. Shut up.”

“But I can’t sleep with my hands tied behind me.”

“Stay awake, then. On second thought, I shall tie your ankles together. Sleeping men can still be kicked to death by a big lummox like you. And be good enough to smoke on your own side of the fire whilst I amuse myself.”

He produced a small tin flute and played with great cheerfulness, “I Know My Love by His Way o’ Walkin’,” “The Pretty Maid Milkin’ Her Cow,” and “The Bard of Armagh.”

“You’re a funny feller,” Cannon hazarded.

“You would think so, of course. The joke’s on you.” And he rippled through “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”

Cannon sighed, prepared his bed and sat awaiting the minstrel’s pleasure in the matter of binding him for the night.

“There’s two thin strips of látigo in my saddle pocket. Get them for me, Mr. Cannon, darlin’, whilst I play for you ‘Owen Roe’s Lullaby.’ You can go to sleep on that.”

His concert concluded, D’Arcy bade Cannon lie on his belly while he bound him securely. “To be sure, you might chafe that látigo on a sharp bit of rock and cut it through before morning,” he decided, and tied a spare shirt around the bound hands. “Roll over into your bed now and I’ll tuck our little Baby Bunting in,” he commanded cheerfully. “And remember—the Lord loveth a cheerful loser, and a game sport never knows a regret. Good night.”

He kicked off his boots, rolled into his blankets with a great sigh of contentment, and was asleep in five minutes.

Cannon was sleeping so soundly next morning he did not know he had been unbound until D’Arcy jerked the coverings off and awakened him with a not too gentle spurning with his boot. While D’Arcy prepared breakfast Cannon rounded up the stock, saddled and packed them. That night they camped in a lovely mountain meadow far below the snow-line, and since there was an abundance of grass, feed, and water, and the stock required food and rest, they camped there three days. From this point the pass dropped swiftly toward sea-level, and presently, from the heights, they gazed out above another wonderful valley, shrouded in a faint bluish haze.

The prisoner pointed. “There are the Tulares, Mr. D’Arcy.”

They descended, marching through an empire of wild oats and alfilerilla knee-high, dotted with wild flowers that distilled a fragrance upon the land. Once more they saw herds of game, but of humankind there was no sign.

“We cross the Tulares and skirt the northern edge of a great lake that lies off yonder to the westward, close to those mountains,” Cannon announced. “We may meet Injuns, but they’re a poor lot and afraid o’ guns. There’s a desert to cross, but at this season ’tain’t difficult, and we can do it in a night. A pass leads through the range to the Mission San Miguel.”

That was a delightful march across the Tulares and even the baneful presence of Alvah Cannon failed to detract from Dermod D’Arcy’s enjoyment of the wild beauty through which they had wandered. In all that vast country there were no Spanish ranchos, the feeble civilization of Spain never having extended beyond the coastal plain at the foot of the Coast Range. They were fortunate, too, in not meeting Indians, and as they traveled by easy stages, Pathfinder, Shawneen, and Michael, as Cannon expressed it, “fleshed up.” Even in that barren strip of country now known as the Kern desert, grass was plentiful and pools of water from a late rain lay in the arroyos, in consequence of which they did not have to travel by night.

At the western end of the pass leading to Mission San Miguel they came to the Chalame Rancho, where the hacendado, Señor Juan Barilla, gave them courteous and unstinted welcome. Here they rested three days, Cannon, at D’Arcy’s suggestion, faring with the ranch hands while the latter occupied a guest-chamber in the adobe hacienda.

Cannon came to D’Arcy’s room on the morning of their departure. “Well, what do you want?” D’Arcy demanded acidly.

“You told me you were a poor man.”

“Well?”

“Don’t be in too big a hurry to leave.” The fellow winked mysteriously. “There’s a surprise comin’.”

“I like surprises,” D’Arcy replied, and waited.

Presently an Indian servant entered, laid upon the dresser two buckskin bags and departed wordlessly. Cannon opened them and rolled out upon the dresser from each fifty dollars in United States gold.

“What is this for, Cannon?”

“For us, of course.”

“But why? I, at least, have not requested a loan from our host.”

“Of course you hain’t, but then some of these har Californy dons carry hospitality to the limit. You see, Mr. D’Arcy, these greasers are always mighty polite, and Barilla is too polite to offer the money openly, on account maybe of hurtin’ our feelin’s. So he just has it left in the room. If we want it, we take it. If we don’t, we leave it. It’s up to us, understand?”

“I understand. Don Juan Barilla is too fine to question us as to our poverty and too great-hearted to see us depart penniless and perhaps hopeless, from the hospitality of his home. If we accept this gold I suppose there is no obligation on our part to return it.”

“Hell, no. These greasers are all so rich they don’t miss a few dollars.”

“I see. They are muy caballero. Well, it’s a long way from Galway to the Mission San Miguel, but there are real gentlemen at both ends of the trail. I could use this money but—I shall not.”

“Why not, D’Arcy?”

“I am Mr. D’Arcy to you. Never forget that, animal. And do not question my motives. You are too low-bred to understand them.”

“Well, you refuse yours if you feel that way about it, but I’m no fine gentleman. I’ll take mine.”

“Put it back, you scum,” Dermod D’Arcy roared.

“Man, I’m clean busted.”

“That is immaterial. Put it back.”

Cannon met D’Arcy’s fierce gaze unflinchingly. On the trail he had been meek, servile, unresisting, but now that he found himself in civilization he felt he could afford again to be his own man. As the two looked into each other’s eyes the thought came to D’Arcy that Cannon was not without a certain animal courage.

“Give me that purse, you filthy rogue, or but one of us shall leave this hacienda alive!”

“So you’d shoot an unarmed man, would you?”

“No! I’ll kill you with my naked hands.”

Reluctantly Cannon handed him the purse. “Perhaps me and you’ll meet again sometime,” he hinted darkly. “Well, seein’ as how I arrived afoot, with you mounted, Don Juan has give me a mustang to fit my saddle and bridle. I can keep the horse, I reckon.”

“I shall pay for the mustang. Horses must be very cheap here. Get out.”

At parting, D’Arcy insisted upon paying Don Juan Barilla for the horse.

“It is nothing,” the old grandee protested. “We have here many horses and it is the custom to give all dismounted guests a horse.”

“A sweet custom, too, my host, and grateful indeed must be the guest whose purse is too flat to permit of the purchase of a horse. Already we are your debtors for food and shelter; it will be an added kindness to permit payment for this horse.”

Don Juan Barilla shrugged and spread his hands. “As you will, señor. The animal is costly at five dollars. Perhaps if you will give three dollars, señor, to my majordomo, that will adjust this argument.”

D’Arcy gave five dollars to the majordomo and departed from the Chalame Rancho with Don Juan’s benediction, the sweetest in any language and now, alas, no longer heard in California. “Vaya usted con Dios. Go you with God.”

“I like this country, Cannon,” D’Arcy announced as the two jogged toward Mission San Miguel with Shawneen and Michael mincing along in front, occasionally snatching mouthfuls of herbage along the trail.

“You won’t like it very long, curse you!” Cannon growled. “I’ll make it too hot to hold you.”

“Braggart,” the Celt retorted, and got out his tin flute to beguile the long miles with music.

Where the trail from the Chalame cut El Camino Real, the rutted dusty highway that connected all of the missions from Sonoma to San Diego, Cannon pulled up his horse. “I reckon I’ll leave you here, D’Arcy,” he said. “A few miles south is the Mission San Miguel, but I aim to push on to Monterey. Goin’ to give me back my pistol and rifle?”

“Certainly. Get off your horse. I’m also going to thrash you for shooting a lock of hair off my sinful head. My rifle isn’t loaded and I’m going to remove all the percussion-caps from my pistols and put the caps in my pocket. That precaution is taken in order that, should you succeed in upsetting me temporarily, you cannot run for a gun and shoot me.”

“I’m right glad to oblige you, mister,” Cannon cried exultantly, and dismounted. “How’re we goin’ to fight?”

“Your way—as an animal fights.”

There, beside El Camino Real, they fought. But not long. As Cannon rushed to clinch, he brought his right knee up viciously. But his opponent’s body was not there to receive it. A straight left under the chin tilted Cannon’s shaggy head backward, and the shock of the blow, traveling along his jaw-bone to the brain, sent him reeling. Recovering his balance, he shielded his face with his great arms and rushed again, only to have a devil’s tattoo beaten on his unprotected abdomen; when he dropped his arms and bent double, half a dozen wicked blows smashed into his face and straightened him up again.

“Enough!” he cried, realizing the futility of defending himself against such scientific onslaught.

“I shall be the judge of that,” D’Arcy retorted, and walked around his man, cutting him, flattening his nose, closing his eyes, loosening his teeth, eventually knocking Cannon senseless.

Beside the fallen man he tossed powder-horn, rifle, and empty pistol, wiped his skinned knuckles on Cannon’s shirt, mounted Pathfinder and turned south along El Camino Real, nor cast one anxious look behind until a patter of hoofs caused him to do so.

A horseman was approaching at the fast running walk to which California riders of that period trained their mounts, and D’Arcy saw that the stranger was a Hispano-Californian, evidently of the better class. He moved courteously to the side of the trail to permit the man to pass, but instead the latter pulled up alongside him, raised his conical-shaped hat, fringed with little silver bells on the brim, and said pleasantly:

“Good afternoon, sir. Do you speak Spanish?”

“I do, sir,” D’Arcy answered him pleasantly, in the same language.

“I had thought, judging by your raiment and the manner in which you fight, that you were a gringo, but your Spanish is without an accent. And now that I look closer, I observe that you are of our people.”

Dermod D’Arcy grinned. “I am an Irishman, but who can tell how much Spanish blood there may be in an Irishman from the West?” And he named himself.

“Ah, D’Arcy. That sounds French,” the Californian suggested after the other had spelled the name.

“It was the fashion of the French, in days gone by, to come to Ireland to help us whip the English. The first D’Arcy of our line, however, fled to Ireland to escape the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. But that was a long time ago and I fear we are preponderantly Irish now.”

“Pardon me. I am remiss in politeness, sir. My name is Carlos Felipe Maria Antonio Sanchez y Montalvo. May I be accorded the pleasure of riding with you? I am bound to my rancho close to the Mission San Miguel.”

“Certainly. I am honored. I, too, ride to the Mission San Miguel. Is there an inn in San Miguel?”

“Yes, you are a gringo—a newcomer, after all, else you would know that in California there are no inns. You are welcome to my poor house.”

Dermod D’Arcy extended his hand, then seeing that it was gory, apologized and withdrew it. “I accept your invitation, Señor Montalvo, in the generous spirit in which it is extended. I have no friends in your California, and to a stranger—”

“I must beg to disagree with you, Señor D’Arcy. You ride with a friend and presently you will be among other friends. Is it permitted to inquire why you fought with that bearded fellow back yonder?”

Briefly D’Arcy explained.

“Then that was a meritorious deed, Señor D’Arcy,” Montalvo commented. “Alas, we have many such ruffians among the Americans here.”

“Gentlemen do not constitute the vanguard of new civilizations, Señor Montalvo. It is the rough, the hardy and the ruthless who press forward and pave the way for new tides of conquest.”

“Ah, they will come in great numbers now,” the Californian replied sadly. “Every ship brings them in from Mexico, and when the news of the discovery of gold reaches your country they will come like the grasshoppers in a dry year.”

“Gold? You say gold has been discovered in California?” D’Arcy cried sharply. “Indeed, Señor Montalvo, I had not heard that news.”

“It is true. Each traveler from the north brings the story and already all of the gringos and some of our own young men have departed to dig for gold in the Sierra. It is sad to note the greed, the wild excitement this discovery arouses everywhere. There is no other topic of conversation among the gringos.” Señor Montalvo sighed and his fine, middle-aged countenance saddened. “It will be a curse upon California,” he added.

“Is this gold plentiful and easy to come at?” D’Arcy queried eagerly. “You understand, of course, Señor Montalvo, that I am much interested, for I too am a gringo.”

“It lies in the beds of the streams, washed down, I am informed, from the Sierra in bygone ages. A man named Marshall, an employee of the man Sutter, who has the fort and the great plantations on the Sacramento River, found it in the river at Coloma, while preparing the foundations for a sawmill which this man Sutter sought to build. It is in coarse flakes and small lumps, from the size of a pin-head to an egg, and is to be found in the sand-bars when the water is low in the streams. Other than that I am not informed, nor have I the slightest interest in gold-mining.” He passed a package of Mexican cigarettes to D’Arcy, who selected one. “When we arrive at my hacienda,” the Californian continued, “it would be well to bathe those injured knuckles in aguardiente.”

“You are very kind, Señor Montalvo.”

Señor Montalvo waved a deprecating hand and edged over to the extreme left of the road, the better to make a critical appraisal of Pathfinder. “By our Lady la Purísima,” he declared, “that is a horse!”

Thus, casually did he dismiss further discussion of the discovery of gold in California, a discovery that was to enthrall the entire civilized world, create new destinies and hasten, perhaps by a century, the upbuilding of the United States of America from the Mississippi River west.

“To secure this gold, then,” D’Arcy persisted, “nothing is required of a man save the ability and the will to take it. Is that not so?”

“Thus runs the tale, señor. Two days ago, in Monterey, I met a friend, a gentleman in whose veracity I have the utmost confidence, and to me he related having seen in San Francisco a gringo with a bag of new gold weighing twelve pounds, and this the result of one week of labor on a stream.”

“By the toe-nails of Moses,” Dermod D’Arcy declared in English, “I’ve arrived in California just in the nick of time.”

Montalvo glanced at him sharply and saw in his slightly heightened color and the far-away gleam in his eyes that the tale of gold had gripped him. “You will have the madness, like all gringos,” he prophesied. “But for the present, tell me, señor, if you please, of the breeding of your horse, and if perhaps you would consider selling him to me. He is a stallion, I observe, and thus the more valuable. I would give much to own that horse.”

“I fear I haven’t the heart to sell him, Señor Montalvo, but if you would care to have some foals by him out of your best mares, then he is yours.”

The Californian’s face glowed with delight. “I have indeed met you, Señor D’Arcy, in a fortunate moment. You are a different gringo, and I shall have great pleasure in presenting you to all of my friends, who will welcome you for my sake. Yes, you are a fine fellow. You must spend many months with me. I will arrange a great baile to do you honor and—but tell me, señor, can this noble animal run? A little, no? Ah, do not desolate me with the statement that he is not as fleet as a deer.”

“He can, I think, Señor Montalvo, outrun any horse in California. He is of a famous strain and the blood is pure.”

“I am certain of it,” Montalvo cried enthusiastically. “And I shall have colts by him? Of a certainty I am a happy man. Yes, he has in his carriage the pride that goes with royal blood. He has a powerful forehand, good ribs and great haunches. Good hoofs, too, and a sweet disposition, for I mark he does not fight the bit. Señor, if you will consider selling him to me, I will give to you for him five—no—ten thousand head of my fattest cattle.”

“Cattle would be an embarrassment to me, Señor Montalvo. I have no lands upon which to graze them. Their flesh is valueless; I could sell but the hide and tallow; I do not possess sufficient capital to hire men to slaughter the animals, skin them and reduce the tallow; nor could I haul that product to a market which is uncertain and dependent upon the casual arrival of a ship from the Atlantic seaboard. Meanwhile I would be afoot.”

“I will, then, give you five thousand head and my vaqueros shall slaughter them for you, skin the carcasses and render the tallow. The hides and tallow may be stored at my warehouse at Monterey and sold for you with my own hides and tallow when a ship arrives.”

“I suppose each cow would then net me two dollars gold.”

“Undoubtedly. A high price for a horse, señor, but then I have many cattle.”

But Dermod D’Arcy shook his head. “If what you tell me of the discovery of gold be but half true, I would be foolish to sell my horse. It is my purpose to find some gentleman who would care to race his horse against mine for a modest stake. The winning of this stake will enable me to outfit myself properly for the journey to the gold-diggings, employ labor, erect a suitable habitation, and purchase food.”

“I am desolate,” Señor Montalvo murmured. “Did I not tell you this gold would bring a curse upon California? Already it is interfering with one man’s happiness.”