The Free Rangers Part 18

"You have had a fright, Senor Wyatt," he said in his precise, cold English. "What is it?"

"Not a fright," replied Wyatt in tones that he sought to make indifferent, "but a start. I nearly trod on a rattlesnake that lay coiled ready to strike, and I got away just in time."

The Spaniard regarded him with a penetrating look, but the chilly blue eyes expressed nothing. Yet Francisco Alvarez thought that a bold woodsman like Braxton Wyatt would not show so much fear after a harmless pa.s.sage with any kind of a snake.

"Do you think the five, the party that you said were so much to be dreaded, are still following us?" he asked presently.

The pallor showed again for a moment through the tan in Braxton Wyatt's face, but he answered again as carelessly as he could:

"It may be. I hate them, but I do not deny that they are bold and resourceful. They have a good boat, and they may follow; but what harm could they do?"

"As I told you, they might go before Bernardo Galvez, our Governor General at New Orleans, and spoil the pretty plan that you and I have formed.

Galvez is--as he calls himself--a Liberal. He would help these rebels and fight England. How can a Spaniard lend himself to the cause of Republican rebels and injure monarchy? Cannot he foresee, cannot he look ahead a little and tell what rebel success means? It would in the end be as great a blow to Spain as to England. If Kaintock is permitted to grow she will threaten Louisiana. These men in their buckskins are daring and dangerous and we must attend to them!"

The Spaniard clenched his hands in anger, and the blue light of his eyes was singularly cruel.

"Galvez is a fool," he continued. "He is not allowing the English to trade at New Orleans, but he is giving the American rebels full chance. He his allowed one, Pollock, Oliver Pollock, to establish a base there. This Pollock has formed a company of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston merchants, and they are sending arms and ammunition in fleets of canoes up the Mississippi and then up the Ohio to Fort Pitt, where they are unloaded and then taken eastward by land for the use of the rebels. A fleet of these canoes is to start about the time we arrive in New Orleans."

"We might meet it," suggested Braxton Wyatt, "and say that it attacked us."

The Spaniard smiled.

"The idea is not bad," he said, "and it could be done. We could sink their whole fleet of canoes with the pretty little cannon that we carry, and we could prove that they began the attack. But I do not choose to run the risk of compromising myself just yet. There is a more glorious enterprise afoot. Hark you, Senor Wyatt."

Braxton Wyatt leaned forward and listened attentively. Francisco Alvarez had drank of wine that evening, and his blood was warm. He, too, dreamed a great dream.

"You are a man of discretion and you have helped me. I speak to you as one devoted to my cause. If you should but breathe what I say to another I would first swear that it was a lie, and then deliver you to these five gentlemen, former friends of yours, who would tear you in pieces."

Braxton Wyatt s.h.i.+vered again, and the Spaniard, seeing the s.h.i.+ver, laughed and was convinced.

"Why should I betray you?" said the renegade. "I have no motive to do so and every possible motive to keep faith."

"I know it," replied Alvarez, "and that is why I speak. It is to your interest to be faithful to me and when my enterprise succeeds, as it certainly will, you shall have your proper share of the reward. Bernardo Galvez, as you know, is the Governor General of Louisiana, and his father is the Viceroy of Mexico. They are powerful, very powerful, and I am only a commander of troops under the son, but I, too, am powerful. My family is one of the first in Spain. It sits upon the very steps of the throne and more than once royal blood has entered our veins. I was a favorite at the court and I have many friends there. The King might be persuaded that Bernardo Galvez is not a fit representative of the royal interests in Louisiana."

Francisco Alvarez leaned a little forward and his blue eyes, usually so chill, sparkled now with fire. He was speaking of what lay next to his heart. Braxton Wyatt, full of shrewdness and perception, understood at once.

"Bernardo Galvez might give way as Governor General of Louisiana," said the renegade, "to be succeeded by a better man, one who had the real interests of Spain at heart, one who would refuse to give the slightest aid to rebels, rebels who would strike against a throne!"

The Spaniard looked pleased.

"I see that you are a man of penetration, Senor Wyatt," he said, "and I am fortunate in having you as a lieutenant. You have divined my thought. I work, not for the interests of a man whose name has been mentioned by neither of us, but for the true interests of Spain and the divine right of kings. What is this miserable Kaintock which is springing up? We will crush it out as you would have crushed the rattlesnake! The people of New Orleans and Louisiana hate rebels! Why should they not? It is the rebels who in time will take Louisiana from us if they can, not England."

Braxton Wyatt smiled. He was delighted to the very center of his cunning heart. His plans and those of Alvarez marched well together. Each strengthened the other.

"I am with you to the end," he said.

"The end will be a glorious triumph," said the Spaniard in emphatic tones.

Meanwhile Henry and s.h.i.+f'less Sol still lay in the thicket. Their project to seize Braxton Wyatt and strip him of the maps and plans had been defeated. Henry knew that the renegade had caught a glimpse of him in the dusk and among the thick bushes and he expected an immediate alarm. But when Wyatt raised none, he and Sol lingered. They saw the renegade go to the Spaniard's side on the little mound, and they saw the two talk long and earnestly, but, of course, they could not understand a word of what was said.

"They look mighty pleased with one another," whispered s.h.i.+f'less Sol, "so it's bound to mean that they're up to the worst sort o' mischief."

"Yes," replied Henry, "and that mischief is sure to be aimed at our people."

They waited about a half hour longer and then picked their way back through the marsh to their own side of the peninsula.

It was now very late and Paul and Jim Hart were sound asleep in the boat, but Tom Ross was keeping vigilant guard.

"Wuz it them?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Henry. "They're camped on the other side of this neck, and Braxton Wyatt is still with them. There's big mischief afoot and we've got to keep on following, waiting our chance, which, I think, will come."

They did not start until noon the next day, in order to give the Spaniards a longer lead, and they rounded the neck of land very slowly lest they run into a trap. But when the river lay straight before them again they beheld nothing. They pa.s.sed the point where the Spaniards had camped and saw the dead coals of their fires, but they did not stop, continuing instead their steady progress down stream.

It now grew hot upon the water. They had come many hundreds of miles since the start, and they were in a warmer climate. The character of the vegetation was changing. The cypress and the magnolia became frequent on the banks, and now and then they saw great, drooping live oaks. The soil seemed to grow softer and the water was more deeply permeated with mud.

Although the flood was gone, the river spread out in places to a vast width, and even at its narrowest it was a gigantic stream. Other great, lazy rivers poured in their volume from east and west. Narrow, deep inlets, half-hidden in vegetation, extended from either side. There were bayous, although the five had not yet heard the name, and many of them swarmed with fish.

The warm air was heavy and languorous and now s.h.i.+f'less Sol confessed.

"I'm gittin' too much o' it, even fur a lazy man," he said. "'Pears to me I'm always wantin' to sleep. Now, I like about sixteen hours sleepin' out o' the twenty-four, but when it comes to keepin' awake jest long enough to eat three meals a day I ain't in favor o' it."

"It must be a rich country, though," said Tom Ross. "No wonder them Spaniards want to keep it."

That day they pa.s.sed at some distance three canoes containing Indians, but the canoes showed no wish to come near and investigate. Henry said that the Indians in them looked sprawling and dirty, unlike the alert, clean-limbed natives of the North.

"They probably belong," said Paul, "to the Natchez tribe who were beaten into submission long ago by the French, and who doubtless lack energy anyhow."

The Indian canoes went lazily on, and soon were lost to sight. Now a serious problem arose. They were approaching the settled parts of Louisiana. It is true, it was only the thinnest fringe of white people extending along either sh.o.r.e of the river a short distance above New Orleans, but they were coming to a region in which they would be noticed, and they might have to explain their presence before they wished to do so.

Nor had they found any opportunity to capture Braxton Wyatt and his maps and plans. Nevertheless, they hung so closely on the trail of Alvarez that every night and morning they could see the smoke of his camp fire.

They stopped one evening in a cove of the river, sheltered by great mournful cypresses, and Henry and s.h.i.+f'less Sol went out again to scrutinize the Spanish camp. They returned before midnight with unusual news. Alvarez with his whole force had turned from the Mississippi and had gone up a bayou about four miles. There he had landed some of his small cannon and stores at a rude wharf, and showed all the signs of making a stay, but whether short or long they could not tell.

"Alvarez must have a place, a plantation, I believe they call it, near here," said Paul intuitively, "and he's going to stop at it. As he wants to get Spain into a war with us he could plot a lot of mischief in a house of his own away from New Orleans."

"Of course, that's it," said Henry with conviction. "Now if we could only capture Braxton Wyatt and then carry off the fellow and his maps and plans with us, it would be a great stroke. It might make Alvarez quit his wicked plot."

Henry and s.h.i.+f'less Sol slept briefly, and rising before daylight, went forth to investigate again. When they arrived at the edge of the bayou, they saw that the work of removal had been resumed already. All the boats had been tied up securely, and a mongrel lot of new men had joined the Spanish force, s.h.i.+ftless and half-civilized Houma and Natchez Indians, coal black negroes, some from the West Indies and some from Africa, Acadians, and fierce-looking adventurers from Europe. Most of them seemed to be laborers, however, and they worked with the arms and baggage taken from the boats. Among these laborers were several stalwart negro women with blazing red handkerchiefs tied around their heads.

Alvarez came off one of the boats, followed by Braxton Wyatt. The Spanish commander had attired himself with great care, and he was a really splendid figure in his glittering uniform and plumed hat. His gold-hilted small sword swung by his side. He bore himself as a lord proprietor, and in fact he was such at this moment. He was about to go, surrounded by his retainers, to his own house on a huge grant of land made to him by the Spanish King--Spanish kings granted lands very freely in America to favorites, and the relatives of favorites.

Braxton Wyatt also showed pride. Was he not the most trusted friend of an able man who was dreaming a great dream, a dream that would come true? The last remnants of his border attire had disappeared and he, too, was dressed wholly as a Spanish officer, though by no means so splendidly as his chief.

Alvarez addressed a few words to a man in civilian attire, evidently his overseer, a dark, heavy West India Spaniard who carried a pistol in his sash, and then advanced through the rabble, which quickly fell back on either side to let him pa.s.s.

Horses were in waiting for Alvarez, Wyatt, and several others, and mounting, they rode off, Henry and s.h.i.+f'less Sol watching from the bush as well as they could, and following. The way of the officers led through a great plantation but partially redeemed from the ancient forest. Cane and grain fields were on either side of the path, and presently they approached a large house of only one story, built of wood, and surrounded by a wide veranda supported with posts at regular intervals. This house was built around a court in the center of which was a clear pool.

Henry and the s.h.i.+ftless one saw Alvarez and his company dismount and enter the house. They noticed others who approached on foot, but who did not enter, obviously men who did not dare to enter unless asked. Among them was a thin, middle-aged Natchez Indian, whose extraordinary, feline face had won for him the name of The Cat. Henry particularly observed this man, whose manner was in accordance with his appearance and name. Like those they had seen in the canoes he had a hangdog, s.h.i.+ftless look, different from the bold warrior of the more northerly forests.

The two did not remain long. So many people were about that they were likely to be seen, and they returned through the forest to the cypress cove in which "The Galleon" lay hidden. Here, it was agreed that they should go forth later in the day on another tour of inspection, re-inforced by Tom Ross, while Long Jim and Paul should remain to guard the boat and their precious stores.