the night.
With just enough light to identify him, Henry Tresillian is seen to be habited in shooting coat, breeches, and gaiters, laced buskins, and a tweed cloth cap; in short, the costume of an English sportsman – shot-belt over the shoulders, and double-barrel in hand – about to attack a pheasant preserve, or go tramping through stubble and swedes. The gambusino himself wears the picturesque dress of his class and country; the gun he carries being a rifle, while the sword-like weapon hanging along his hip is the ever-present macheté– in Sonora sometimes called cortanté.
As, overnight, the programme had been all arranged, their interchange of speech at present has only reference to something in the way of desayuna before setting out. This they find ready and near; at the central camp fire now blazing up, where several of the women, “whisks” in hand, are bending over pots of chocolate, stirring the substantial liquid to a creamy froth.
A taza of it is handed to each of the “cazadores,” with a “tortilla enchilada,” accompanied by a graceful word of welcome. Then, emptying the cups, and chewing up the tough, leatherlike maize cakes, the hunters slip quietly out of camp, and set their faces for the Cerro.
The ascent, commenced almost immediately, is by a ravine – a sort of gorge or chine worn out by the water from the spring-head above and disintegrating rains throughout the long ages. They find it steep as a staircase, though not winding as one; instead, trending straight up from its debouchment on the plain to the summit level, between slopes, these with grim, rocky façade, still more precipitous. Down its bottom cascades the stream – a tiny rivulet now, but in rain-storms a torrent – and along this lies the path, the only one by which the Cerro can be ascended, as the gambusino already knows.
“There’s no other,” he says, as they are clambering upward, “where a man could make the ascent, unless with a Jacob’s ladder let down to him. All around, the cliff is as steep as the shaft of a mine. Even the wild sheep can’t scale it, and if we find any on the summit – and it’s to be hoped we shall – they must either have been bred there, or gone up this way. Guarda!” he adds, in exclamation, as he sees the impulsive English youth bounding on rather recklessly. “Have a care! Don’t disturb the stones; they may go rattling down and smash somebody below.”
“By Jove! I didn’t think of that,” returns he thus cautioned, turning pale at thought of how he might have endangered the lives of those dear to him; then ascending more slowly, and with the care enjoined upon him.
In due time they arrive at the head of the gorge, there stopping to take breath. Only for an instant, when they proceed on, now no longer in a climb, the path thence leading over ground level as the plain itself; but still by the rivulet’s edge, through a tangle of trees and bushes.
At some two hundred yards from the head of the gorge they come into an opening, the Mexican as he enters it exclaiming:
“El ojo de agua!”
Chapter Five.
Los Guajalotes
The phrase, “ojo de agua” (the water’s eye), is simply the Mexican name for a spring; which Henry Tresillian needs not to be told, being already acquainted with the pretty poetical appellation. And he now sees the thing itself but a few paces ahead, gurgling up in a little circular basin, and sending off the stream which supplies the lake below.
In an instant they are upon its edge, to find it clear as crystal, the gambusino saying, as he unslings his drinking-cup of cow’s horn,
“I can’t resist taking a swill of it, notwithstanding the gallons I had swallowed overnight. After such a long spell of short-water rations, one feels as though he could never again get enough.” Then filling the horn, and almost instantly emptying it, he concludes with the exclamation “Delicioso!”
His companion drinks also, but from a cup of solid silver; vessels of this metal, even of gold, being aught but rare among the master-miners of Sonora.
They are about to continue on, when lo! a flock of large birds by the edge of the open. On the ground these are – having just come out from among the bushes – moving leisurely along, with beaks now and then lowered to the earth; in short, feeding as turkeys in a pasture field. And turkeys they are, the Mexican saying in a whisper:
“Los guajalotes!”
So like are they to the domestic bird – only better shaped and every way more beautiful – that Henry Tresillian has no difficulty in identifying them as its wild progenitors. One of superior size, an old cock, is at their head, striding to and fro in all the pride of his glittering plumage, which, under the beams of the new-risen sun, shows hues vivid and varied as those of the rainbow. A very sultan he seems, followed by a train of sultanas and their attendants; for there are young birds in the flock, fledglings, that differ in appearance from the old ones.
Suddenly the grand satrap erects his head, and with neck craned out, utters a note of alarm. Too late. “Bang – bang!” from the double-barrel – the sharper crack of the rifle sounding simultaneously – and the old cock, with three of his satellites, lies prostrate upon the earth, the rest taking flight with terrified screeches, and a clatter of wings loud as the “whirr” of a threshing machine.
“Not a bad beginning,” quietly observes the gambusino, as they stand over the fallen game. “Is it, señorito?”
“Anything but that,” answers the young Englishman, delighted at having secured such a good bottom for their bag. “But what are we to do with them? We can’t carry them along.”
“Certainly not,” rejoins the Mexican. “Nor need. Let them lie where they are till we come back. But no,” he adds, correcting himself. “That will never do. There are wolves up here, no doubt – certainly coyotes, if no other kind – and on return we might find only feathers. So we must string them up out of reach.”
The stringing up is a matter which occupies only a few minutes’ time; done by one leg thrust through the opened sinew of the other to form a loop; then the birds hoisted aloft, and hung upon the up-curving arms of a tall pitahaya.
“And now, on!” says the gambusino, after re-loading guns. “Let us hope we may come across something in the four-legged line, big enough to give everybody a bit of fresh meat for dinner. Likely we’ll have to tramp a good way before sighting any; the report of our guns will have frighted both birds and beasts, and sent all to the farthest side of the mesa. But no matter for that. I want to go there direct, and at once, for a reason, muchacho, I’ve not yet made known to you.”
While speaking, an anxious expression has shown itself on the gambusino’s face, which, taken in connection with his last words, leads Henry Tresillian to suspect something in, or on, his mind, beside the desire to kill game. Moreover, before leaving the camp he had noticed that the Mexican seemed to act in a manner more excited than was his wont – as if in a great hurry to get away. That, no doubt, for the reason he now hints at; though what it is the young Englishman cannot even give a guess.
“May I know it now?” he asks, with some eagerness, noting the grave look.
“Certainly you may, and shall,” frankly responds the Mexican. “I would have told you sooner, and the others as well, but for not being sure about it. I didn’t like to cause an alarm in the camp without good reason. And I hope still there’s none. After all it may not have been smoke.”
“Smoke! What?”
“What I saw, or thought I saw, yesterday
