Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 48 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

14 ——— i ooo oe Then Dick gave convincing proof that he was uite well and as firm and determined as ever. 6 suddenly gathered the little novice to his heart and confronted the amazed priest with glowing eyes. ‘‘Padre Junipero,” he said, boldly, ‘‘ you see she loves me and I love her. You can not have this novice for a nun, for she isto be my wife. That is the reason, is it not, Pachita?” Pachita made no answer. She did not even stir. When she heard those terribly bold words of Dick, and thought of facing the old nuns, the poor little thing was completely overcome with a rush of conflicting emotions, shame, terror and a deep sense of guilt, in consequence of feel- ing a certain thrill of joy, that she was certain she ought not to feel. What with all these, and feeling that the eye of Padre Junipero was fixed on her, lying thus in the arms of a man, without struggling, poor Pachita fainted dead away in Dick’s arms. Dick did not know this, for the novice’s face was hid in his breast, and he felt that her silence implied consent. He turned his language to English, which the priest spoke well. ‘“You see, father,” he said, ‘‘she loves me. You may as well give up, and marry us. Her family will help her out of this, if they won’t let her marry an American. Come, which is best, to lose her to them or to me?” ‘To them, undoubtedly, senor,” said the priest, ee ‘‘ Your proposition to me is base, or you would speak it, so as to let Pachita com- prehend.” -Dick gathered Pachita closer to his breast with a careless hug. ‘‘Don’t you worry, father, about her. She knows as well as I that her family won’t let her m me willingly. At the same time, once married, they can not separate us, and if you perform the ceremony, you will be our friend, and earn our gratitude.” Padre Junipero hesitated. Like all priests of whatever denomination, he _— a keen eye for the dollars, and Dick’s words implied a hand- some reward. While he was thus musing over the question, he turned abruptly away to the window and looked absently out, on the hot, glaring, dusty landscape, outside. Something he saw there, under the convent walls, bed his thoughts. In front of the See and looking up at the window, were two women, of magnificent brunette beauty, with long, satin-like tresses of black hair, gathered together on the back of the head, and falling in showers behind. The two women were gorgeously dressed in the style of Indian warriors on the war-path, wearing leg- gings of velveteen loaded down with gold lace, while their necks, arms and bosoms were load- ed with necklaces, medals, chains, bracelets, and every other sort of ornament, in a marvelously picturesque mingling of civilized and savage adornnment. Each girl wore the head-dress, only worn by the highest chiefs of the Echipeta and Upsaro- ka tribe, composed of a crest of feathers at least two feet high, on the head of a tiger-cat, the whole fastened to the hair and ———e with it, graduaily sloping off and falling nearly to the ground behind. The priest was so much amazed at these wo- men warriors, who sat on their spotted char ers, bristling with revolvers, and looking straight at him, that he was compelled to mumble a pa- ternoster to himself before he could get his sen- ses fully. | There the two beautiful, wicked-looking crea- tures sat, like leopards of the forest, lithe, beau- tiful and dangerous, looking straight at Padre Junipero. . Then one of them put up her finger and beck- oned to the padre, with a soft smile that was irresistibly captivating. : Padre Junipero crossed himself piously, and repeated the invocation against evil spirits. He had seen Indians and squaws by hundreds, dirty eee creatures, whose appearance created nothing but disgust; but such beings as this he had never seen. _ Cleopatra in her glory might have looked so and less beautiful, and although Padre Junipero crossed himself devoutly and repeated the exor- cism once more, it was no use. Try as he might, he could not help looking, and the world wi him was stronger than all lutions! Finally, Padre Junipero gave in bodily. The alluring siren on the left hand, kept smiling and beckoning him down, and he could stand it no more; so out of the sick-room, down the corri- _ dor, past all the cells where the nuns were taking their noonday siesta, he passed till he his prayers and reso- Beadle’s HalfDime Library. came to the little postern door that opened out on the moat. Here, as he expected, he found the two strange, mysteriously-beautiful women, waiting for him, and was greeted with the salutation, in low tones: ‘* Good father, will you not let us in? We wish ’ to speak to you. Padre Junipero trembled. ‘‘My daughters, I dare not. If the nuns were to hear of my admitting women, dressed oe are, I should be disgowned in a fort- night.’ he one who had spoken laughed a low, melo- dious laugh. CHAPTER XX1. THE RED LORD AND MASTER. THE two girls, with a gesture full of grace caught up from where they fell over the horses’ croups, behind, two rich scarlet-cloth blankets, bordered with gold, and very different from the usual envelope of an Indian. With a care- less flirt, each threw her mantle over her shoul- ders, and sat there, muffled from head to foot in scarlet. ‘‘There, father, are we presentable now?’ asked the one who had not hitherto spoken, in very pure Spanish. ‘‘ The holy sisters may call us Nuns of the Sierra, if they like. Besides, they are all asleep. There will be time for us to have our little talk with you, before they awake.” Padre Junipero hesitated. There was some- thing in the actions, if not the words of these mysterious women, that made his heart beat like a small earthquake. They sat there, smil- ing bewitchingly at him, and alluring him to let them in, for what purpose he could not tell, but somehow he found himself wishing them in, and that the moat was not so broad. In a few moments the plank was pushed across, and Padre Junipero, fat, jolly, and rosy, beckoned for the two womén-warriors to cross, As soon as it was fairly across, one of the wo- men leaped down, and held it secure, while her sister, driving her long lance into the ground, tied both horses to the yet quivering weapon, and leaped off in her turn. Then both women stole lightly over the bending plank to the nar- row postern. Once inside, the door was hastily slammed to and Padre Junipero felt a pair of soft, rounded arms thrown round his neck. But what is the reason that the clasp of those arms suddenly closes so tightly? t is the reason that one of these mysterious women, ree | higher than Padre Junipero (who is a short, fat man), suddenly whirls round behind him, the other in front, while both hug him tightly in their arms Padre Junipero finds the arm of the woman behind under his chin, pressing against his throat with throttling force, the woman in front seizes his wrists and brings them together with a low laugh; he hears a click, feels some- thing hard encircling his wrists, realizes that he is handeuffed, and at the same moment the per- fidious beauty in front raises one little moc- casined foot, and plants a Mi kick right over the place where Padre Junipero’s f is supposed to lie, before digestion. was a very cruel thing to do, but it an- swers the woman’s p . Witha low groan, cut short by pain, the father confessor slips down on the floor, completely powerless. ‘‘ Quick, Levrette, the lasso,” says the lively lady, so dexterous with her feet. ‘* Never mind,” says the more stately Lev- rette. ‘‘ Here’s an empty cell. Shove him in and lock him up.” No sooner said than done. Each girl takes an arm, and they drag the groaning priest down the corridor to a dark cell-hole, where they throw him into some unknown depth. They hear him go bump, bump, on some stone steps, and Levrette says, gigg go ‘‘Tt’s the wine-cellar, I believe, Chevie. He won’t hurt. Let’s bolt him in.” The door is bolted, top and bottom, and then the two girls steal back to the postern, laughing at the success of their trick. Levrette looks out and gives a low whistle. It is answered from the old ruined stable that had contained the assassins of Dick Darling. A moment later, a tall, slender chief, whose costume is identical with that of the two girls, and equally magnificent in material, while his handsome face is guiltless of paint, comes gal- loping out to the postern, leaps from his horse, and crosses the swaying plank with active step. , \ a a a ne nn a ES | ** You called me; I am come,” he says, in the deep, musical tones of an Indian. It was a grand sight to see the two that stood in the convent corridor, the tall, stately chief, with his serene, aquiline face, towering above the glorious beauty of the two French-Indian Amazons. From the way in which they twined about him, it was easy to see that White Thun- der’s lodge was not yet disturbed by jealousy, and that Levrette and Chevrette adored him, Warrior girls as they were, with the elfen of bearing arms and riding on the chase with the chief, they were subdued to softness at his side, whose prowess they had witnessed. ‘* What is it that my singing-birds desire?” he again asked, in his caressing manner. ' “ Listen,” said Levrette, ge? ‘‘ Before we knew how true was the aim of White Thunder, and before we were bought with the scalps of our foes, we both knew a youth, who rode for the great father in the East. He was a boy, but we both loved him, not as we love White Thunder, but still passing well. He was slain by the Utes in front of this building, as the black squaws say, but we do not believe it, and we are going to find out whether they lied or not. Is it good?’ “Tt is good,” said White Thunder, gravely. If the man lives, he is a brave warrior, who killed three Utes single-handed. Lead on.” ‘‘He is not dead,” said Chevrette. ‘‘ The squaws who bring fish to the convent told me that so, py a sick man here, and it must be our Darling.” ‘* Yes,” said Levrette, ‘‘ and the black squaws are keeping him a prisoner, because they have no man in the convent.” White Thunder frowned. ‘Tt shall not be. A brave man is not to be mewed in a cell, or burrowed like a woodchuck. Let us take him out.” ‘*‘ Agreed,” cried Levrette and Chevrette to- gether. Then the three Indians, all appareled as war- riors on the war-path, and all so strangely beau- tiful, stole swiftly and noiselessly along the con- vent corridors. Soon they came to the rows of cells, with half- open doors, where the nuns lay taking their siesta in a SAE OCRAEY of death, for each nun lay in her coffin, according to the rules of the order, and the bandages around their faces gave them the appearance of corpses in cere- ments. Levrette and Chevrette were used to this sight, from their early convent experience as children, but White Thunder seemed very much impressed with the spectacle of the coffined nuns. The two girls, as they passed each door, shot the bolts quietly on the outside, and thus had the happiness, in a very short time, of locking up forty-three nuns and the Reverend Mother, snoring away in peaceful unconsciousness. The nuns-being secured against alarm, the two girls droppe had hitherto displayed. ‘There can be no more, Chevie,” said Lev- rette, in French. ‘‘ You remember how all the sisters slept in a row at the Sacre Coeur. All we have to do is to find the Infirmary now. Our Darling’s there if he’s alive.” ‘‘ He is alive,” said White Thunder, speaking for the first time in his life in the lan he had so long secretly understood. ‘‘ He lives, and we shall find him. Then, if you wish him to live, keep away from him, for ite Thunder is not a fool.” Had a thunderbolt fallen, the two girls could not have been more utterly crushed and as- tounded than when the young chief, for the first time, gave evidence that he understood what they had been saying. Had it not been for an uncontrollable spasm nal nc at hearing his wives speaking so familiarly and_ lovingly of Dick Darling before his very face, White Thun- der might have kept his secret. The two girls, never yet restrained by any necessity of pru- dence, any more than young men, on account of their pe ect freedom in the tribe, had become, as we have seen, as wild as young colts at pas- ture, full of animal spirits, queens of the desert, and unused to control themselves. The Black- foot chiefs they despised, as mental inferiors ; the coarse whi like Hardin, for their manners. Dick Darling was the only man they had seen who could talk to them of the world, and who was not, like Colonel Sam Jones, of a class too high to an Indian woman. In this mat- ter of blood, the sting of humiliation that they had often felt in the Kast, and which, more than any thing else, had driven them from civiliza- tion to the wilderness, merely rendered their haughtiness more ineffable. The sneer of “ half- giving any the caution they EGOMmichdoo (C S) » (Gio) | |