CHAPTER III. — A MISSING SENTINEL.—-FREMONT'S CAMP.
"Quien Vive!" A sentinel's challenge rings out. The sounds are borne away on the night wind sweeping Gavilan Peak. No response. March breezes drive the salty fog from Monterey Bay into the eyes of the soldier shivering in the silent hours before dawn.
"Only a coyote or a mountain wolf," mutters Maxime Valois. He resumes his tramp along the rocky ramparts of the Californian Coast Range. His eyes are strained to pierce the night. He waits, his finger on the trigger of his Kentucky rifle.
Surely something was creeping toward him from the chaparral. No: another illusion. Pride keeps him from calling for help. Three-score dauntless "pathfinders" are sleeping here around intrepid Fremont.
It is early March in 1846. Over in the valley the herd-guard watch the animals. "No, not an Indian," mutters the sentinel. "They would stampede the horses at once. No Mexican would brave death here," muses Valois.
Only a boy of twenty, he is a veteran already. He feels for his revolver and knife. He knows he can defy any sneaking Californian.
"It must be some beast," he concludes, as he stumbles along the wind-swept path. Maxime Valois dreams of his far-away home on the "Lower Coast," near New Orleans. He wanders along, half asleep. This hillside is no magnolia grove.
It is but a year since he joined the great "Pathfinder's" third voyage over the lonely American Desert. He has toiled across to the Great Salt Lake, down the dreary Humboldt, and over the snowy Sierras.
Down by Walker's Lake the "pathfinders" have crept into the valley of California. As he shields his face from biting winds, he can see again the panorama of the great plains, billowy hills, and broad vistas, tantalizing in their deceptive nearness. Thundering herds of buffalo and all the wild chivalry of the Sioux and Cheyennes sweep before him. The majestic forests of the West have darkened his way. The Great Salt Lake, a lonely inland sea; Lake Tahoe, a beautiful jewel set in snowy mountains; and its fairy sisters near Truckee—all these pass before his mental vision.
But the youth is tired. Onward ever, like the "Wandering Jew," still to the West with Fremont.
Pride and hot southern blood nerve him in conflicts with the fierce savages. Dashing among the buffalo, he has ridden in many a wild chase where a single stumble meant death. His rifle has rung the knell of elk and bear, of wolf and panther.
These varied excitements repaid the long days of march, but the Louisianian is mercurial. Homeward wander his thoughts.
Hemmed in, with starvation near, in the Sierras, he welcomes this forlorn-hope march to the sea. Fremont with a picked squad has swept down to Sutter's Fort to send succor to the remaining "voyageurs."
But the exploring march to Oregon, and back East by the southern road, appalls him. He is tired now. He would be free. As a mere volunteer, he can depart as soon as the frigate PORTSMOUTH arrives at Monterey. He is tired of Western adventures. Kit Carson, Aleck Godey, and Dick Owens have taught him their border lore. They all love the young Southerner.
The party are now on the defensive. Maxime Valois knows that General Jose Castro has forbidden them to march toward Los Angeles. Governor Pio Pico is gathering his army to overawe "los Americanos."
Little does Valois think that the guns of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma will soon usher in the Mexican war. The "pathfinders" are cut off from home news. He will join the American fleet, soon expected.
He will land at Acapulco, and ride over to the city of Mexico. From Vera Cruz he can reach New Orleans and the old Valois plantation, "Belle Etoile." The magnolias' fragrance call him back to-night.
Another rustle of the bushes. Clinging to his rifle, he peers into the gloom. How long these waiting hours! The gleaming stars have dipped into the far Pacific. The weird hours of the night watch are ending. Ha! Surely that was a crouching form in the arroyo. Shall he fire? No. Another deception of night. How often the trees have seemed to move toward him! Dark beings fancifully seemed to creep upon him. Nameless terrors always haunt these night hours.
To be laughed at on rousing the camp? Never! But his inner nature tingles now with the mysterious thrill of danger. Eagerly he scans his post. The bleak blasts have benumbed his senses.
Far away to the graceful groves and Gallic beauties of Belle Etoile his truant thoughts will fly once more. He wonders why he threw up his law studies under his uncle, Judge Valois, to rove in this wilderness.
Reading the exploits of Fremont fascinated the gallant lad.
As his foot falls wearily, the flame of his enthusiasm flickers very low.
Turning at the end of his post he starts in alarm. Whizz! around his neck settles a pliant coil, cast twenty yards, like lightning. His cry for help is only a gurgle. The lasso draws tight. Dark forms dart from the chaparral. A rough hand stifles him. His arms are bound. A gag is forced in his mouth. Dragged into the bushes, his unknown captors have him under cover.
The boy feels with rage and shame his arms taken from his belt. His rifle is gone. A knife presses his throat. He understands the savage hiss, "Vamos adelante, Gringo!" The party dash through the chaparral.
Valois, bruised and helpless, reflects that his immediate death seems not to be his captors' will. Will the camp be attacked? Who are these? The bitter words show them to be Jose Castro's scouts. Is there a force near? Will they attack? All is silent.
In a few minutes an opening is reached. Horses are there. Forced to mount, Maxime Valois rides away, a dozen guards around him. Grim riders in scrapes and broad sombreros are his escort. The guns on their shoulders and their jingling machetes prove them native cavalry.
For half an hour Valois is busy keeping his seat in the saddle. These are no amiable captors. The lad's heart is sad. He speaks Spanish as fluently as his native French. Every word is familiar.
A camp-fire flickers in the live-oaks. He is bidden to dismount. The lair of the guerillas is safe from view of the "pathfinders."
The east shows glimmers of dawn. The prisoner warms his chilled bones at the fire. He sees a score of bronzed faces scowling at him. Preparations for a meal are hastened. A swarthy soldier, half-bandit, half-Cossack in bearing, tells him roughly to eat. They must be off.
Maxime already realizes he has been designedly kidnapped. His capture may provide information for Castro's flying columns. These have paralleled their movements, from a distance, for several weeks. Aware of the ferocity of these rancheros, he obeys instantly each order. He feigns ignorance of the language. Tortillas, beans, some venison, with water, make up the meal. It is now day. Valois eats. He knows his ordeal. He throws himself down for a rest. He divines the journey will be hurried. A score of horses are here tied to the trees. In a half hour half of these are lazily saddled. Squatted around, the soldiers keep a morose silence, puffing the corn-husk cigarette. The leader gives rapid directions. Valois now recalls his locality as best he can. Fremont's camp on Gavilan Peak commands the Pajaro, Salinas, and Santa Clara. A bright sun peeps over the hills. If taken west, his destination must be Monterey; if south, probably Los Angeles; and if north, either San Francisco Bay or the Sacramento, the headquarters of the forces of Alta California.
Dragged like a beast from his post, leaving the lines unguarded! What a disgrace! Bitterly does he remember his reveries of the home he may never again see.
The party mounts. Two men lead up a tame horse without bridle. The leader approaches and searches him. All his belongings fill the saddle-pouches of the chief. A rough gesture bids him mount the horse, whose lariat is tied to a guard's saddle. Valois rages in despair as the guard taps his own revolver. Death on the slightest suspicious movement, is the meaning of that sign.
With rough adieus the party strike out eastwardly toward the San Joaquin. Steadily following the lope of the taciturn leader, they wind down Pacheco Pass. Valois' eyes rove over the beautiful hills of the Californian coast. Squirrels chatter on the live-oak branches, and the drumming grouse noisily burst out of their manzanita feeding bushes.
Onward, guided by distant peak and pass, they thread the trail. No word is spoken save some gruff order. Maxime's captors have the hang-dog manner of the Californian. They loll on their mustangs, lazily worrying out the long hours. A rest is taken for food at noon. The horses are herded an hour or so and the advance resumed.
Nightfall finds Valois in a squalid adobe house, thirty miles from Gavilan Peak. An old scrape is thrown him. His couch is the mud floor.
The youth sleeps heavily. His last remembrance is the surly wish of a guard that Commandante Miguel Peralta will hang the accursed Gringo.
At daybreak he is roused by a carelessly applied foot. The dejected "pathfinder" begins his second day of captivity. He fears to converse. He is warned with curses to keep silent. In the long day Maxime concludes that the Mexicans suspect treachery by Captain Fremont's "armed exploration in the name of science."
These officials hate new-comers. Valois had been, like other gilded youth of New Orleans, sent to Paris by his opulent family. He knows the absorbing interest of the South in Western matters. Stern old Tom Benton indicated truly the onward march of the resistless American. In his famous speech, while the senatorial finger pointed toward California, he said with true inspiration: "There is the East; there is the road to India."
All the adventurers of the South are ready to stream to the West. Maxime knows the jealous Californian officials. The particulars of Fremont's voyage of 1842 to the Rockies, and his crossing to California in 1843, are now history. His return on the quest, each time with stronger parties and a more formidable armament, is ominous. It warns the local hidalgos that the closed doors of the West must yield to the daring touch of the American—-manifest destiny.
The enemy are hovering around the "pathfinders" entrenched on the hills; they will try to frighten them into return, and drive them out of the regions of Alta California. Some sly Californian may even contrive an Indian attack to obliterate them.
Valois fears not the ultimate fate of the friends he has been torn away from. The adventurous boy knows he will be missed at daybreak. The camp will be on the alert to meet the enemy. Their keen-eyed scouts can read the story of his being lassoed and carried away from the traces of the deed.
The young rover concludes he is to be taken before some superior officer, some soldier charged with defending Upper California. This view is confirmed. Down into the valley of the San Joaquin the feet of the agile mustangs bear the jaded travellers.
They cross the San Joaquin on a raft, swimming their horses. Valois sees nothing yet to hint his impending fate. Far away the rich green billows of spring grass wave in the warm sun. Thousands of elk wander in antlered armies over the meadows. Gay dancing yellow antelope bound over the elastic turf. Clouds of wild fowl, from the stately swan to the little flighty snipe, crowd the tule marshes of this silent river. It is the hunter's paradise. Wild cattle, in sleek condition, toss their heads and point their long, polished horns. Mustangs, fleet as the winds, bound along, disdaining their meaner brethren, bowing under man's yoke. At the occasional mud-walled ranches, vast flocks of fat sheep whiten the hills.
Maxime mentally maps the route he travels. Alas! no chance of escape exists. At the first open attempt a rifle-ball, or a blow from a razor-edged machete, would end his earthly wanderings. Despised, shunned by even the wretched women at the squalid ranchos, he feels utterly alone. The half-naked children timidly flee from him. The wicked eyes of his guards never leave him. He knows a feeling animates the squad, that he would be well off their hands by a use of the first handy limb and a knotted lariat. The taciturn chief watches over him. He guards an ominous silence.
The cavalcade, after seven days, are in sight of the purpled outlines of the sculptured Sierras. They rise heavenward to the sparkling crested pinnacles where Bret Harte's poet fancy sees in long years after the "minarets of snow." Valley oaks give way to the stately pines. Olive masses of enormous redwoods wrap the rising foot-hills. Groves of laurel, acorn oak, and madrona shelter the clinging panther and the grim warden of the Sierras, the ferocious grizzly bear.
Over flashing, bounding mountain brooks, cut up with great ledges of blue bed rock, they splash. Here the silvery salmon and patrician trout leap out from the ripples to glide into the great hollowed pools, yet the weary cavalcade presses on. Will they never stop?
Maxime Valois' haggard face looks back at him from the mirrored waters of the Cottonwood, the Merced, and the Mariposa. The prisoner sees there only the worn features of his strangely altered self. He catches no gleam of the unreaped golden harvest lying under the feet of the wild mustangs. These are the treasure channels of the golden West.
The mountain gnomes of this mystic wilderness are already in terror lest some fortunate fool may utter the one magic word, "Gold." It will call greedy thousands from the uttermost parts of the earth to break the seals of ages, and burrow far below these mountain bases. Through stubborn granite wall, tough porphyry, ringing quartz, and bedded gnarled gneiss, men will grope for the feathery, fairy veins of the yellow metal.
A feverish quest for gold alone can wake the dreamy "dolce far niente" of the Pacific. God's fairest realm invites the foot of man in vain. Here the yellow grains will be harvested, which buy the smiles of beauty, blunt the sword of justice, and tempt the wavering conscience of young and old. It will bring the human herd to one grovelling level—human swine rooting after the concrete token of power. Here, in later years, the wicked arm of power will be given golden hammers to beat down all before it. Here will that generation arise wherein the golden helmet can dignify the idle and empty pate.
Maxime, now desperate, is ready for any fate. Only let this long ride cease. Sweeping around the hills, for the first time he sees the square courtyard, the walled casas of the rancho of Lagunitas.
By the shores of the flashing mountain lake, with the rich valley sweeping out before it, it lies in peace. The fragrant forest throws out gallant flanking wings of embattled trees. It is the residence of the lord of ten leagues square. This is the great Peralta Rancho.
In wintering in the San Joaquin, Maxime has often heard of the fabulous wealth and power of this inland chieftain. Don Miguel Peralta is Commandante of the San Joaquin. By a fortunate marriage he is related to Jose Castro, the warlike Commandante general of Pio Pico—a man of mark now. Thousands of cattle and horses, with great armies of sheep, are herded by his semi-military vaqueros. The young explorer easily divines now the reason of his abduction.
The party dismounts. While the sergeant seeks the major-domo, Valois' wondering eye gazes on the beauties of lake and forest. Field and garden, bower and rose-laden trellises lie before him. The rich autumn sun will ripen here deep-dyed clusters of the sweet mission grapes. It is a lordly heritage, and yet his prison. Broad porches surround the plaza. There swinging hammocks, saddled steeds, and waiting retainers indicate the headquarters of the Californian Don.
Maxime looks with ill-restrained hatred at his fierce guards. They squat on the steps and eye him viciously. He is under the muzzle of his own pistol. It is their day of triumph.
Dragging across the plaza, with jingling spur, trailing leggings, and sombrero pushed back on his head, the sergeant comes. He points out Maxime to a companion. The new-comer conducts the American prisoner to a roughly furnished room. A rawhide bed and a few benches constitute its equipment. A heavy door is locked on him. The prisoner throws himself on the hard couch and sleeps. He is wakened by an Indian girl bringing food and water. Some blankets are carelessly tossed in by a "mozo." The wanderer sleeps till the birds are carolling loudly in the trees.
Hark! a bell! He springs to the window. Valois sees a little chapel, with its wooden cross planted in front. Is there a priest here? The boy is of the old faith. He looks for a possible friend in the padre. Blessed bell of peace and hope!
Sturdy and serious is the major-domo who briskly enters Valois' room.
"Do you speak Spanish?" he flatly demands in that musical tongue.
"Yes," says Maxime, without hesitation. He knows no subterfuge will avail. His wits must guard his head.
"Give me your name, rank, and story," demands the steward.
Valois briefs his life history.
"You will be taken to the Commandante. I advise you not to forget yourself; you may find a lariat around your neck." With which admonition the major-domo leaves. He tosses Maxime a bunch of cigaritos, and offers him a light ere going, with some show of courtesy.
Valois builds no fallacious hopes on this slender concession. He knows the strange Mexicans. They would postpone a military execution if the condemned asked for a smoke.
Facing his fate, Maxime decides, while crossing the plaza, to conceal nothing. He can honorably tell his story. Foreigners have been gathering in California for years. The Commandante can easily test his disclosures, so lying would be useless. He believes either a British or American fleet will soon occupy California. The signs of the times have been unmistakable since the last return of the foreigners. Will he live to see the day? "Quien sabe?"
Maxime sees a stern man of fifty seated in his official presence room. Commandante Miguel Peralta is clad in his undress cavalry uniform. The sergeant captor is in attendance, while at the door an armed sentinel hovers. This is the wolf's den. Maxime is wary and serious.
"You are a Yankee, young man," begins the soldier. Maxime Valois' Creole blood stirs in his veins.
"I am an American, Senor Commandante, from New Orleans. No Yankee!" he hotly answers, forgetting prudence. Peralta opens his eyes in vague wonder. No Yankee? He questions the rash prisoner. Valois tells the facts of Fremont's situation, but he firmly says he knows nothing of his future plans.
"Why so?" demands Peralta. "Are you a common soldier?" Maxime explains his position as a volunteer.
A pressing inquest follows. Maxime's frankness touches the Commandante favorably. "I will see you in a day or so. I shall hold you as a prisoner till I know if your chief means war. I may want you as an interpreter if I take the field."
"Sergeant," he commands.
The captor salutes his chief.
"Has this young man told me the truth?"
"As far as I know, Senior Don Miguel," is the reply.
"See that he has all he wants. Keep him watched. If he behaves himself, let him move around. He is not to talk to any one. If he tries to escape, shoot him. If he wants to see me, let me know."
The Commandante lights a Mexican cigar, and signs to the sergeant to remove his prisoner. Maxime sees a score of soldiers wandering around the sunny plaza, where a dozen fleet horses stand saddled. He feels escape is hopeless. As he moves to the door, the chapel bell rings out again, and with a sudden inspiration he halts.
"Senior Commandante, can I see the priest?" he asks.
"What for?" sharply demands the officer.
"I am a Catholic, and would like to talk to him."
Don Miguel Peralta gazes in wonder. "A Gringo and a Catholic! I will tell him to see you."
Valois is reconducted to his abode. He leaves a puzzled Commandante, who cannot believe that any despised "Gringo" can be of the true faith. He has only seen the down-east hide traders, who are regarded as heathen by the orthodox Dons of the Pacific.
Don Miguel knows not that the mariners from Salem and the whalers of New England hold different religious views from the impassioned Creoles of the Crescent City.
The prisoner's eye catches the black robe of the priest fluttering among the rose walks of the garden. Walking with him is a lady, while a pretty girl of seven or eight years plays in the shady bowers.
The sergeant gruffly fulfils the orders of his chief. Maxime is given the articles needed for his immediate use. He fears now, at least, a long captivity, but a war may bring his doom suddenly on him.
There is an air of authority in Miguel Peralta's eye, which is a guarantee of honor, as well as a personal menace. His detention will depend on the actions of the besieged Fremont.
Valois prays that bloodshed may not occur. His slender chances hang now on a peaceable solution of the question of this Yankee visit.
There have been days in the dreary winter, when Maxime Valois has tried to divine the future of the magnificent realm he traverses. His education and birth gave him the companionship of the scientific subordinates of the party. His services claimed friendly treatment of the three engineer officers in command. That the American flag will finally reach the western ocean he doubts not. Born in the South, waited upon by patrimonial slaves, he is attached to the "peculiar institution" which throws its dark shadow on the flag of this country. Already statesmen of the party have discussed the question of the extension of slavery. Maxime Valois knows that the line of the Missouri Compromise will here give a splendid new southern star to the flag south of 36 deg 30 min. In the long, idle hours of camp chat, he has laughingly pledged he would bring a band of sable retainers to this western terra incognita. He dreamed of establishing a great plantation, but the prison cell shatters these foolish notions.
He marvels at his romantic year's experience. Was it to languish in a lonely prison life on the far Pacific, that he left the gay circle at far-off Belle Etoile? Worn with fatigue, harassed with loneliness, a prisoner among strangers, Maxime Valois' heart fails him. Sinking on the couch, he buries his head in his hands.
No present ray of hope cheers the solitary American. He raises his eyes to see the thoughtful face of a young priest at the door of his prison room.