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No criminal has yet appeared of good blood, save Tomas Maria Carrillo. But he has been dead a year, shot in his tracks by a brave man. The bandits hover around Stockton. The Americans go heavily armed, and only travel in large bodies. Public rage reaches its climax, when there is found pinned on the body of a dead deputy-sheriff a printed proclamation of the Governor of $5,000 for Joaquin's head.
Camping twenty miles away, Maxime dreams of his Southern home, as the stars sweep westward. In the morning, a rough hand rouses him. It is the sentinel. "Captain, wake up!" He springs to his feet. "What is it?" he cries. "Half the men are gone, sir. They have stolen back to hang the old Spaniard. They think he has concealed Joaquin's treasures." Valois rouses several tired friends.
This the negroes have since said; * that one of the ship-boys feeling, from Captain Amasa Delano's presence, some hopes of release, and not having enough prudence, dropped some chance-word respecting his expectations, which being overheard and understood by a slave-boy with whom he was eating at the time, the latter struck him on the head with a knife, inflicting a bad wound, but of which the boy is now healing; that likewise, not long before the ship was brought to anchor, one of the seamen, steering at the time, endangered himself by letting the blacks remark some expression in his countenance, arising from a cause similar to the above; but this sailor, by his heedful after conduct, escaped; * that these statements are made to show the court that from the beginning to the end of the revolt, it was impossible for the deponent and his men to act otherwise than they did; * that the third clerk, Hermenegildo Gandix, who before had been forced to live among the seamen, wearing a seaman's habit, and in all respects appearing to be one for the time; he, Gandix, was killed by a musket ball fired through mistake from the boats before boarding; having in his fright run up the mizzen-rigging, calling to the boats "don't board," lest upon their boarding the negroes should kill him; that this inducing the Americans to believe he some way favored the cause of the negroes, they fired two balls at him, so that he fell wounded from the rigging, and was drowned in the sea; * that the young Don Joaquin, Marques de Aramboalaza, like Hermenegildo Gandix, the third clerk, was degraded to the office and appearance of a common seaman; that upon one occasion when Don Joaquin shrank, the negro Babo commanded the Ashantee Lecbe to take tar and heat it, and pour it upon Don Joaquin's hands; * that Don Joaquin was killed owing to another mistake of the Americans, but one impossible to be avoided, as upon the approach of the boats, Don Joaquin, with a hatchet tied edge out and upright to his hand, was made by the negroes to appear on the bulwarks; whereupon, seen with arms in his hands and is a questionable altitude, he was shot for a renegade seaman; * that on the person of Don Joaquin was found secreted a jewel, which, by papers that were discovered, proved to have been meant for the shrine of our Lady of Mercy in Lima; a votive offering, beforehand prepared and guarded, to attest his gratitude, when he should have landed in Peru, his last destination, for the safe conclusion of his entire voyage from Spain; * that the jewel, with the other effects of the late Don Joaquin, is in the custody of the brethren of the Hospital de Sacerdotes, awaiting the disposition of the honorable court; * that, owing to the condition of the deponent, as well as the haste in which the boats departed for the attack, the Americans were not forewarned that there were, among the apparent crew, a passenger and one of the clerks disguised by the negro Babo; * that, beside the negroes killed in the action, some were killed after the capture and re-anchoring at night, when shackled to the ring-bolts on deck; that these deaths were committed by the sailors, ere they could be prevented.
Kiss me again, consuelo de mi alma!" and they separated suddenly, to speak no more that night. The next morning, when Elena went to Joaquin's room to make the bed, she found Dario's note in the pocket of the coat, but she had had no opportunity to write one herself. Nor did she have time to read his until after dinner, although it burned her neck and took away her appetite.
The good priest shudders as Harry Love, leaning on the rifle which sent its ball into Joaquin's heart, calmly says, "That thing is worth ten thousand dollars to me to-night, Valois!" Already, swift riders are bringing up the forces of the sheriff. In the morning the history is known. The converging columns struck the bandits, who scattered. The work of vengeance was quick.
Under questioning of the padre, whose honorable French blood boils at the domain being made a nest of assassins, the Don describes Joaquin's lurking-places. With one or two mozos, Valois visits all the old camps of the freebooters, within seventy-five miles. He leaves his men at Lagunitas for safety. He threads the fastnesses of the inviolate forests.
Byron, whom he adored and imitated, could have invented nothing more romantic than Joaquin's life; but though Joaquin inherited Scotch intensity, he had nothing of the close mental grip of the true Scot and nothing of his humor. Vast stretches of his poetry are empty; some of it is grandiose, elemental, and yet somehow artificial, as even the Grand Canyon itself looks at certain times.
"He is old and foolish, but he shall not be abused. Let him answer to the law." "Captain," cries one, "we don't want to hurt you, but we are going to find Joaquin's plunder." "The first man who moves over this threshold is a dead man!" cries Valois. No one cares to be first, but they rage wildly. They all gather for a rush. Weapons are ominously clicking.
According to Father Joaquin's estimate, the Fathers of San Gabriel must have had twenty thousand acres under cultivation, and, in 1820, this Mission alone possessed one hundred and sixty thousand vines, two thousand three hundred trees, twenty-five thousand head of cattle, and fifteen thousand sheep.
How it was believed that Waters was one of Joaquin's gang, that he had killed Smith, etc., etc.
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