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"Require the payment of me. – I, BENITO VÁZQUEZ DE BUSTAMENTE."
As quickly as he could he replaced what he did not wish to be burdened with, made the concealment good, and swept the grass with two buffalo skins, which he had also taken for clothing. This duty of a thankful and honourable man being accomplished, he darted back to where he had left Dolores with a free and easy movement, of which he had not believed himself ever again to be capable only a short time before.
He was amazed that a little food and spirit had restored him, and began to fear the reaction.
His wits remained clear. He remembered very distinctly indeed his confrontation of the savage who had been blasted as by a heavenly thunderbolt. He was not surprised when he found that redskin where he had rolled him. But what was his pain when he saw no trace of Dolores but the same fragment of her dress which Gladsden was, soon after, also to behold!
Sounds in the chaparral which reminded him of the four-footed scavengers in rivalry of the carrion birds that circled above, urged him to ply the spade, and he piously laid don José to his final rest.
Then, his rifle loaded, his frame fortified by the refreshment which he took at intervals on his march, he went forward in the trail which the abductor of the Mexican's daughter had been unable, so burdened, to avoid making manifest, all his emotions, even gratitude to the chief, set aside for the desire of vengeance on the remorseless foes to whom he owed so many and distressful losses, and on whom he had not yet been enabled to inflict any reprisal.
"Let me but overtake him, or them," thought he, "before the tempest obliterates this track with its deluge, and I will flesh this sword, or essay this new rifle on his vile carcass!"
CHAPTER VI.
ANY PORT IN A STORM
Gladsden was groping along when he perceived the thorn thicket changing into a prairie, only slightly interspersed with scrub. At the same time, though underfoot, the scene cleared, the indications of atmospheric perturbation increased in number and in ominous importance. Already the material man triumphed over the romantic one, and our Englishman thought considerably better of a solid refuge from the tempest than to come up with the abductor of the Mexican girl. Spite of its sinister aspect, therefore, his eyes were delighted when he saw, outlined against the northeastern sky, sullenly blackening, a curiously shaped tower. In a civilised country he would have ignobly supposed it a factory shaft.
He knew nothing whatever about this pillar of sunbaked bricks, some fifty feet in altitude, and, we repeat, cared nothing for the monument from any point of view but its qualities as a shelter.
Nevertheless, an archaeologist would have given a fortune to have studied this Nameless Tower, for the aboriginal held it too sacred for mention in common parlance. It was slightly pyramidal; the north side, not quite the true meridian, presented a right angle, presumably to breast and divide the wind of winter prevalent at its erection, while the rest was rounded trimly. The excellence of the work was better shown in the cement, not mud, or ground gypsum, having resisted the weather and particularly the sandy winds themselves, though they had worn the dobies (adobes, sun dried bricks) away deeply in places, without making airholes through. There was nothing like a window or depression save these natural pits, until the view reached the ragged top, where a sort of lantern or cupola, so far as a few vestiges indicated, had once crowned the edifice; there the floor of this disappeared chamber had become the roof, and an orifice, perhaps a loophole enlarged by rot, yawned like a deep set eye beside an arm of metal terminating in a hook. Presumably the column was a priest's watchtower, where a sacred fire was preserved in peace times to imitate the sun. It is known, the ancient Mexicans adored the sun. A beacon, too, in war times, for the fire and smoke signal code of the American Indians is too complete to have been the invention of yesterday. The entrance at the base cut in the rock utilised for nearly all the foundation. Once blocked up, the watcher, remote from lances, slingshots, and bowshots, could count the besiegers on this plain, and telegraph their number to his friends at a distance. The metal arm may have suspended a pulley block and rope by which provisions and even an assistant could be hauled up to him.
The natives avoid the tower and its proximity. The white rovers deem it uncanny, and, having no curiosity to gratify, also leave the spot untroubled.
Gladsden regarded the tall mass with some uneasiness as he approached sufficiently near to measure its dimensions and examine the emblems stained, rather than painted, on the alabaster base stone. A colossal half human, half bovine head, armed with terrible horns, and showing long angular teeth in a ferocious grin, was prominent among these designs.
All was so still that he hesitated to wake the echoes with a more or less tolerable imitation of the wildcat, to which no response came, or if from a distance such was raised, the approaching thunderpeals overcame it.
He boldly plunged into the doorless passage, the way to which had been to a more wary man suspiciously free from brambles.
A smell of smoke, and even of tobacco smoke, he thought, overcame that of damp earth.
The only light was that which the doorway admitted, but several plates of mica, backed rudely with metal, which time and damp had tarnished, made the interior a little less sombre by their dull reflections. A ladder of wood, all the fastenings of rawhide, could be distinguished climbing like a twin snake up the wall; on high a grayish eye seemed to look unwinkingly down: it was the light oozing in at the gap at the top.
There were red streaks on the wall: paintings in red pipe clay partially effaced, or mementoes of slaughter, just as the spectator chose to believe or fancy.
At the moment, the intruder was chiefly interested in the charcoal under his feet, almost warm, certainly so fresh that he concluded that others than he chose it for a refuge under stress of weather, no doubt Master Pepillo's congeners.
Less courageous, he would have shrunk away without pondering over the nature of his predecessors, possibly regular hosts of this lugubrious domicile of owl and vulture.
Convinced that he was, for the time being, the sole tenant, Gladsden resolved, however, to explore the portion unrevealed. To his hands and feet the ladder presented no obstacle, and he ran up the rough rattlings swiftly, spite of fatigue. It brought him into a species of manhole under the roof, close to the gap, and yet shielded from its draft by a jutting piece of wall.
"This will do," thought he, finding it dry and clean; "I will kill a brace of birds frightened into stupidity by the oncoming storm, roast them on that charcoal, and bring them up here for supper. If the robbers surprise me, I will maintain that I was merely killing time before the arrival of lieutenant Ignacio, and claim that gentleman's friendship by reason of my charge from his brother. If I am interrupted, I shall pull up the ladder, in trust that it will come free, and sleep here, safe from prowling beasts and serpents."
Suddenly gloom fell on all the landscape, as if a mighty hand had eclipsed the waning sun. The air was very much more thick and oppressive, and there were innumerable though faint crepitations like feeble snappings of electricity. To take the game he spoke of, before the rainfall drowned them out of their nests, it was needful to hasten. But he had not descended three rounds of the ladder, before he stopped all of a piece. From every side, there was the sound of an arrival of men, both on foot and ahorse. Instinctively he drew himself up, arranged his form on the floor so as to project only his forehead and eyes over the ledge where ended the means of ascension, and stared below.
A number of persons, congratulating themselves on their reunion loudly with the hyperbolic phrases of the Spanish ceremony of greeting, clattered into the tower. Presently a light was struck, and a roaring fire kindled. As the shaft thus became the chimney, Gladsden was forced to cough, though he smothered the sound as much as possible, hoped, as did the man who lighted the damp wood, that it would lose no time in burning up clearly.
When he could protrude his face over the peephole again, he beheld a dozen persons, swarthy, robust, richly clad as the prairie rovers, or cattle thieves, armed to the teeth. Cruel of eye, malignant