He was penitent in his helplessness, and had such a man as Father Serafino encountered him then, he might never have recurred to his former life. But no one came near the crippled hermit but sea otter hunters, and pearl and whale fishers, and they were rough, unsympathetic souls, who only landed to buy, or take by force, the vegetables which he raised.
In this way, chained to the spot by his loss of limb, with the perpetual presence of the reef where that treasure had been drawn up, to embitter his thoughts and his dreams, Matasiete nursed projects of vengeance, not merely against the Englishman and don Benito, but against all human kind.
At last, nearly four years in this almost solitary existence having passed, and his little hoard of earnings by the supply of green meat to the whalers swelling out so that he feared he would be robbed, he took advantage of the offer of an officer of a British man-of-war, surveying the Gulf, to transport him to Guaymas.
People and things had changed there; the prospect of the railways connecting the port with the United States and Mexico City had galvanised it into a life he had never known before. Most of his associates had disappeared; but he found Don Stefano Garcia humbly "clerking it" in a merchant's, and very reticent about a fortnight in the chain gang, which punishment he had undergone for some little playfulness in his banking business.
Wary, tenacious, exacting, the returned salteador fastened himself upon the clerk and blackmailed him almost daily, spending the extorted money in the sailors' drinking dens. At last, seeing that his Old Man of the Sea was doomed to be his destruction, Garcia made an effort, gave the robber a large sum of money once for all, and started him for the northern interior. The former rover of the Sierras had expressed a desire to resume the old life of freedom, tempered with depredation and debauchery.
Soon, indeed, to the nucleus of a few chosen scoundrels with whom he had beguiled the intervals between revels and card play in the Guaymas groggeries, with stories of the merry life on the prairies, the captain added the floating scum of Upper Sonora. But this time he did not hesitate to venture into New Mexico and run off cattle from the American settlers. Thus he acquired a wider fame than before, and on both sides of the border the One-legged Rustler had a price set on his head.
About a year before, he had an accession to his band in the person of no less than the ex-banker, don Stefano Garcia. That estimable gentleman, from forgery to forgery, had contrived to bring the credulous foreign firm that employed him to bankruptcy, and, well supplied with funds, thus shamefully acquired, was encountered by his old associate gambling it away in the Green Ranch. They were scandalous rogues, born to travel in harness, and Garcia at once stepped into the lieutenancy of the formidable band. Too corpulent to be agile, except in the dance, in which he excelled like most Mexicans, he preferred to win by astuteness, and was no more daring when his neck was concerned than El Manco himself.
It was he who earnestly approved his superior's idea of stopping the desultory fighting and becoming friends with the Apaches. For one knew as well as the other that they were wolves whose hide would cost dear, and then be worthless.
The Apaches, as we have elsewhere remarked, are about the most ferocious and barbarous nation in the great Southwest. Neither Sioux nor Pawnees attain their perfection in cruelty, and they are matchless as the Comanches in horse stealing.
They are tyrants of the wilderness, in short, who see no life worth living without murder, pillage, torture, and conflagrations. They make no nice distinctions in attacking any beings, white, red, or mixed blood, merely out of an implacable hatred for those born beyond their pale. It is said that when other supply of foemen fall short, they will quarrel among themselves and cross knives in the council lodge itself for the sheer relish of bloodshedding.