The Golden Fleece
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Julian Hawthorne >> The Golden Fleece
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THE GOLDEN FLEECE
A Romance
by JULIAN HAWTHORNE
CHAPTER I.
The professor crossed one long, lean leg
over the other, and punched down the
ashes in his pipe-bowl with the square tip
of his middle finger. The thermometer on
the shady veranda marked eighty-seven
degrees of heat, and nature wooed the soul to
languor and revery; but nothing could abate
the energy of this bony sage.
"They talk about their Atlantises,--their
submerged continents!" he exclaimed, with
a sniff through his wide, hairy nostrils.
"Why, Trednoke, do you realize that we
are living literally at the bottom of a
Mesozoic--at any rate, Cenozoic--sea?"
The gentleman thus indignantly addressed
contemplated his questioner with the serenity
of one conscious of freedom from geologic
responsibility. He was a man of about the
professor's age,--say, sixty years,--but not
like him in appearance. His figure was
stately and massive,--that of one who in
his youth must have possessed vast physical
strength, rigidly developed and disciplined.
Well set upon his broad shoulders was a
noble head, crowned with gray, wavy hair;
the eyes and eyebrows were black and powerful,
but the expression was kindly and
humorous. His moustache and the Roman
convexity of his chin would have confirmed
your conviction that he was a retired
warrior; in which you would have been correct,
for General Trednoke always appeared what
he was, both outwardly and inwardly. His
great frame, clad in white linen, was
comfortably disposed in a Japanese straw arm-
chair; yet there was a soldierly poise in his
attitude. He was smoking a large and
excellent cigar; and a cup of coffee, with a
tiny glass of cognac beside it, stood on a
mahogany stand at his elbow.
"Do you remember, Meschines, the time
I licked you at school?" he inquired, in a
tone of pleasant reminiscence.
"I can't say I do. What's more, I
venture to challenge your statement. And
though you are a hundred pounds the better
of me in weight, and a West Point graduate,
I will wager my pipe (which is worth its
weight in diamonds) against that old woollen
shirt of Montezuma's that you showed me
yesterday, that I can lick you to-day, and
forget all about it before bedtime!"
"Well, I guess you could," returned the
general, with a little chuckle, "even if I
hadn't that Mexican bullet in my leg. But
you couldn't, forty-five years ago, though
you tried, and though I was a year younger
than you, and weighed five pounds less.
Come, now: you don't mean to say you've
forgotten Susan Brown!"
"Oh--ah--hah! Susan Brown! Well,
I declare! And what brought her into your
head, I should like to know?"
"Why, after breaking your heart first, and
then mine, I lost sight of her, and I don't
think I have seen her since. But it appears
she was married to a fellow named Parsloe."
"Don't fancy that name!" observed the
professor, wagging his head and frowning.
"Has a mean sound to it. But what of it?"
"Well, she died,--rest her soul!--and
Parsloe too. But they had a daughter, and
she survives them."
"And resembles her mother, eh?--No,
Trednoke, the time for that sort of thing
has gone by with me. Susan might have
had me, five-and-forty years ago; but I
can't undertake to revive my passion for
the benefit of Mrs. Parsloe's daughter.
Besides, I'm too busy to think of marriage,
and not--not old enough!"
At this tour de force, the general laughed
softly, and finished his coffee. An old
Indian, somewhat remarkable in appearance,
with shaggy white hair hanging down on
his shoulders, stepped forward from the
room where he had been waiting, and
removed the cup.
"No letters yet, Kamaiakan?" asked the
general, in Spanish.
"In a few minutes, general," the other
replied. "Pablo has just come in sight
over the hill. There were several errands."
"Muy buen!--I was going to say,
Meschines, her father and mother left the girl
poor, and she, being, apparently, clever and
energetic, took to----"
"I know!" the professor interrupted.
"They all do it, when they are clever and
energetic, and that's the end of them!--
School-teaching!"
"Not at all," returned General Trednoke.
"She entered a dry-goods store."
"Entered a dry-goods store! Well,
there's nothing so extraordinary in that.
I've seen quantities of women do it, of all
ages, colors, and degrees. What did she
buy there?"
"Oh, a fiddlestick!" exclaimed the
general. "Why don't you keep quiet and
listen to my story? I say, she went into a
great dry-goods store in New York, as sales-
woman."
"Bless my soul! You don't mean a
shop-girl?"
"That's what I said, isn't it? And why
not?"
"Oh, well!--but, shade of Susan Brown!
Ichabod!--what is the feminine of Ichabod,
by the way, Trednoke? But, seriously, it's
too bad. Susan may have been fickle, but
she was always aristocratic. And now her
daughter is a shop-girl. You and I are
avenged!"
"You are just as ridiculous, Meschines,
as you were thirty or fifty years ago," said
the general, tranquilly. "You declaim for
the sake of hearing your own voice. Besides,
what you say is un-American. Grace
Parsloe, as I was saying, got a place as shop-
girl in one of the great New York stores.
I don't say she mightn't have done worse:
what I say is, I doubt whether she could
have done better. That house--I know one
of its founders, and I know what I'm talking
about--is like an enormous family, where
children are born, year after year, grow up,
and take their places in life according to
their quality and merit. What I mean is,
that the boy who drives a wagon for them
to-day, at three dollars a week, may control
one of their chief departments, or even
become a partner, before they're done with
him; and, mutatis mutandis, the same with
the girls. When these girls marry, it's apt
to be into a higher rank of life than they
were born in; and that fact, I take it, is a
good indication that their shop-girl
experience has been an education and an
improvement. They are given work to do,
suited to their capacity, be it small or great;
they are in the way of learning something
of the great economic laws; they learn self-
restraint, courtesy, and----"
"And human nature! Yes, poor things:
they see the American buying-woman, and
that is a discipline more trying than any you
West Pointers know about! Oh, yes, I see
your point. If the fathers of the big family
ARE fathers, and the children ARE children to
them . . . All the same, I fancy the young
ladies, when they marry into the higher
social circles, as you say they do, don't, as
a rule, make their shop girl days a topic of
conversation at five-o'clock teas, or put
'Ex-shop-girl to So-and-so' at the bottom of
their visiting-cards."
"I believe, after all, you're a snob,
Meschines," said the general, pensively. "But,
as I was about to say, when you interrupted
me ten minutes ago, Grace Parsloe is coming
on here to make us a visit. She fell ill, and
her employers, after doing what could be
done for her in the way of medical attendance,
made up their minds to give her a
change of climate. Now, you know, as she
had originally gone to them with a letter
from me, and as I live out here, on the
borders of the Southern desert, in a climate
that has no equal, they naturally thought of
writing to me about it. And of course I
said I'd be delighted to have her here, for a
month, or a year, or whatever time it may
be. She will be a pleasure to me, and a
friend for Miriam, and she may find a husband
somewhere up or down the coast, who
will give her a fortune, and think all the
better of her because she, like him, had the
ability and the pluck to make her own way
in the world."
"Humph! When do you expect her?"
"She may turn up any day. She is
coming round by way of the Isthmus.
From what I hear, she is really a very fine,
clever girl. She held a responsible position
in the shop, and----"
"Well, let us sink the shop, and get back
to the rational and instructive conversation
that we--or, to be more accurate, that I was
engaged in when this digression began. I
presume you are aware that all the indications
are lacustrine?"
Hereupon, a hammock, suspended near the
talkers, and filled with what appeared to be
a bundle of lace and silken shawls, became
agitated, and developed at one end a slender
arched foot in an open-work silk stocking and
sandal-slipper, and at the other end a dark,
youthful, oval face, with glorious eyes and
dull black hair. A voice of music asked,--
"What is lacustrine, papa?"
"Oh, so you are awake again, Senorita
Miriam?"
"I haven't been asleep. What is lacustrine?"
"Ask the professor."
"Lacus, you know, my dear," said the
latter, "means fresh-water indications as
against salt."
"Then how does Great Salt Lake----"
"Oh, for that matter, the whole ocean
was fresh originally. Moisture, evaporation,
precipitation. Water is a great solvent:
earthquakes break the crust, and
there you are!"
"Then, before the earthquakes, the Salt
Lakes were fresh?" rejoined the hammock.
"There was fresh water west of the
Rockies and south of---- Why," cried
the professor, interrupting himself, "when
I was in Wyoming and around there, this
spring, in what they call the Bad Lands,--
cliffs and buttes of indurated yellow clay and
sandstone, worn and carved out by floods
long before the Aztecs started to move out
of Canada,--I saw fossil bones sticking out
of the cliffs, the least of which would make
the fortune of a museum. That was between
the Rockies and the Wahsatch."
"People's bones?" asked the hammock,
agitating itself again, and showing a glimpse
of a smooth throat and a slender ankle.
"Bless my soul! If there were people
in those days they must have had an anxious
time of it!" returned the sage. "No, no,
my dear. There was brontosaurus, and
atlantosaurus, and hydrosaurus, and iguanodon,
--lizards, you know, not like these little
black fellows that run about in the pulverized
feldspar here, but chaps eighty or a hundred
feet long, and twenty or thirty high; and
turtles, as big as a house."
"How did they get there?"
"Got mired while they were feeding,
perhaps; or the water drained off and left
them high and dry."
"But where did the water go to?"
The general chuckled at this juncture,
and lit another cigar. "She knows more
questions than you do the answers to them,"
quoth he. "But I wouldn't mind hearing
where the water went to, myself. I should
like to see some of it back again."
"Ask the earthquakes, and the sun.
There's a hundred and thirty degrees of
heat in some of these valleys,--abysses,
rather, three or four hundred feet below sea-
level. The earth is very thin-skinned in
this region, too, and whatever water wasn't
evaporated from above would be likely to
come to grief underneath."
"But, professor," said the musical voice,
"I thought there was a law that water
always seeks its own level. So how can
there be empty places below sea-level?"
"It's the fault of the aneroid barometer,
my dear. We were very comfortable and
commonplace until that came along and
revealed anomalies. The secret lies, I
suppose, in the trend of the strata, which is
generally north and south. You see the
ridges cropping out all through the desert;
and there's a good deal of lava oozing over
them, too. They probably act as walls, to
prevent the sea getting in from the west, or
the Colorado leaking in from the east."
"In that case," remarked the general, "a
little more seismic disturbance might produce
a change."
"It would have to be more than a little, I
suspect," returned Meschines.
"Kamaiakan told me that the Indians
have a prophecy that a great lake will come
back and make the desert fruitful, and that
there are some who know the very place
where the water will begin to flow." And
here the hammock, with a final convulsion,
gave birth to a beautiful young woman, in a
diaphanous silk dress and a white lace
mantilla. She crossed the veranda, and seated
herself on the broad arm of her father's
chair.
"Why, that's important!" said the
general, arching his brows. "I wonder if
Kamaiakan is one of those who know the
place? If so, it might be worth his while
to let me into the secret."
"Oh, you couldn't go there! It's
enchanted, and people who go near it die.
There are bones all about there, now."
"This Kamaiakan appears to be a remarkable
personage: where did you pick him
up?" inquired the professor.
"It was rather the other way," Trednoke
replied, taking one of his daughter's hands
in his, and caressing it. "We are appendages
to Kamaiakan. You look so natural,
sitting there, Meschines, that I forget it's
thirty years since we met, and that all the
significant events of my life have happened
in that time,--the Mexican war, my marriage,
and the rest of it! I have been a
widower ten years."
"And I've been a bachelor for over
sixty!" said Meschines, with a queer expression.
"Your wife was Spanish, was she not?"
"Her father was a Mexican of Andalusian
descent. But her mother was descended
from the race of Azatlan: there are records
and relics indicating that her ancestors were
princes in Tenochtitlan before Cortez made
trouble there."
"And I've been losing my heart to a
princess, and never realized my audacity!"
exclaimed the professor, laying his hand on
his waistcoat and making an obeisance to
Miriam.
She tossed her free foot, and played with
the fringe of her reboso.
"I will tell my maid to look for it," she
said; "but I think you must have left it in
papa's curiosity-room."
"No: I'm an Aztec sacrifice!" cried the
professor; and they all laughed. "One
would hardly have anticipated," he resumed
after a pause, addressing Trednoke, "that
you would have made a double conquest,--
first of the men, and then of the woman!"
"The woman conquered me, without
trying or wishing to, and then, because she
was a woman, took compassion on me.
Whether my country has benefited much by
the Mexican annexation, I can't say; but I
know Inez--made a heaven on earth for
me," concluded the general, in a low voice.
His countenance, at this moment, wore a
solemn and humble expression, beautiful to
see; and Miriam bent and laid her cheek
against his. Meschines knocked the ashes
out of his pipe, and sighed.
"No woman ever took compassion on
me," he remarked, "and you see the result,
--ashes!"
"Ashes,--with their wonted fires living in
them," said Trednoke.
"We were talking about this Indian of
yours," said Meschines.
"Ay, to be sure. Well, he was attached
to Inez's family when I first knew them. It
was a peculiar relation; not like that of a
servant. One finds such things in Mexico.
The conquered race were of as good strain
as their conquerors; the blood of Montezuma
was as blue as the best of the Castilian.
There were many intermarriages; and there
are many instances of the survival of
traditions and records; though the records are
often symbolic, and would have no meaning
to persons not initiated. But they have
been sufficient to perpetuate ties of a personal
nature through generation after generation;
and the alliance between Kamaiakan
and Inez was of this kind. His forefathers,
I imagine, were priests, and priests were a
mighty power in Tenochtitlan. For aught
I know, indeed Kamaiakan may be an original
priest of Montezuma's; no one knows
his age, but he does not look an hour older,
to-day, than when I first saw him, over
twenty years ago."
"He must be!" said Miriam, with some
positiveness. "He has told me of seeing
and doing things hundreds of years ago.
And he says----" She paused.
"What does he say, Nina adorada?"
asked her father.
"It was about the treasure, you know."
"Let us hear. The professor is one of
us."
"It's one of our traditions that my
mother's ancestors, at the time of Cortez,
were very rich people," continued Miriam,
glancing at Meschines, and then letting her
eyes wander across the garden, blooming
with roses and fragrant with orange-trees,
and so across the trellised vines towards the
soft outline of the mountains eastward. "A
great part of their wealth was in the form
of jewels and precious stones. When Cortez
took the city, one of the priests, who
was a relative of our family, put the jewels
in a box, and hid them in a certain place in
the desert."
"And does Kamaiakan know where the
place is?" asked the general.
"He can know, when the time comes."
"Which will be, perhaps, when you are
ready for your dowry," observed the
professor, genially.
"A spell was put upon the spot," Miriam
went on, with a certain imaginative seriousness;
for she loved romance and mystery so
well, and was of a temperament so poetical,
that the wildest fairy-tales had a sort of
reality for her. "No one can find the
treasure while the spell remains. But
Kamaiakan understands the spell, and the
conjuration which dissolves it; and when he
dissolves it, the treasure will be found."
"And, between ourselves," added the
general, "Kamaiakan is himself the priestly
relative by whom the spell was wrought.
He bears an enchanted life, which cannot
cease until he has restored the jewels to
Miriam's hands."
"There might be something in it, you
know," said Meschines, after a pause.
"The treasures of Montezuma have never
been found. Is there no old chart or
writing, in your collection of curiosities
and relics, that might throw light on it?"
"The scriptures of Anahuac were of the
hieroglyphic type,--picture-writing,"
replied the other. "No, I fear there is
nothing to the purpose; and if there were,
I shouldn't know how to decipher it."
"But, papa, the tunic!" exclaimed
Miriam.
"Oh! has the tunic anything to do with
it?"
"Is that the queer woollen garment with
the gold embroidery?" inquired the professor,
becoming more interested. "I took a
fancy to that, you remember. Has it a
story?"
"Well, it is a kind of an anomaly, I
believe," the general answered, looking up
at his daughter with a smile. "The Aztecs,
you are aware, dressed chiefly in cotton.
Even their defensive armor was of cotton,
thickly quilted. Their ornaments were
feathers, and embroidery of gold and precious
stones. But wool, for some reason, they
didn't wear; and yet this garment, as you
can see for yourself, is pure wool; and that
it is also pure Aztecan is beyond question."
"Admitting that, what clue does it give
to the treasure?"
"You must ask Kamaiakan," said Miriam:
"only, he wouldn't tell you."
"Possibly," the professor suggested, "the
place where the treasure is hidden is the
place whence the water is to flow out; and
the water is the treasure."
"Seriously, do you suppose that such a
phenomenon as the return of an inland sea
is physically practicable?" asked Trednoke.
"No phenomenon, in this part of the
world, would surprise me," returned
Meschines. "The Colorado might break its
barriers; or it is conceivable that some
huge stream, taking its rise in the heights
hundreds of miles north and east of us, may
be flowing through subterranean passages
into the sea, emerging from the sea-bottom
hundreds of miles to the westward. Now,
if a rattling good earthquake were to happen
along, you might awake in the morning
to find yourself on an island, or even under
water."
"A moderate Mediterranean would satisfy
me," the general said. "I wouldn't
exchange the certainty of it for the treasures
of Montezuma."
"The thirst for gold and for water are
synonymous in your case?"
"Give this section a moist climate, and I
needn't tell you that the Great American
Desert would literally blossom as the rose.
Even as it is, I expect a great deal of it will
be redeemed by scientific irrigation. The
soil only needs water to become inexhaustibly
productive. Our desert, as you know,
is not sand, like parts of the Sahara; it has
all the ingredients that go to nourish plants,
only their present powdery condition makes
them unavailable. Now, I can, to-day, buy
a hundred square miles of desert for a few
dollars. You see the point, don't you?"
"And all you want is expert opinion as
to the likelihood of finding water?"
"The man who solves that question for
me in the affirmative is welcome to half my
share of the results that would ensue from it."
"Why don't you engage some expert to
investigate?"
"One can't always trust an expert. I
don't mean as to his expertness only, but as
to his good faith. He might prefer to sell
the idea to somebody who could pay cash,
--which I cannot."
"Why, you seem to have given this thing
a good deal of thought, Trednoke."
"Well, yes: it has been my hobby for a
year past; and I have made some investigations
myself. But this is the first time I
have spoken of it to any one."
"I understand. And what of the investigations?"
"I can say that I found enough to interest
me. I'll tell you about it some time. I
should be glad to leave Miriam something
to make her independent."
"I should say that her Creator had already
done that!" said Meschines. "By
the way, I know a young fellow--if he were
only here--who is just the man you want,
and can be trusted. He's a civil engineer,
--Harvey Freeman: the Lord only knows
in what part of the world he is at this
speaking. He has made a special study of these
subterranean matters."
"Don't you remember, papa, Coleridge's
poem of Kubla Khan?--
"Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea!"
"Our sacred river, when we find it, shall
be named Miriam."
"It ought to be Kamaiakan," she
rejoined; "for, if anybody finds it, it will
be he."
"I think I hear the wings of the angel of
whom we have been speaking," said the
general. "Yes, here he is; and he has got
the letters. Let us see! One for you
Meschines. And this, I see, is from our friend
Miss Parsloe, postmarked Santa Barbara.
Why, she'll be here to-morrow, at that
rate."
"Here's a queer coincidence!" exclaimed
the professor, who had meanwhile opened
his envelope and glanced through the contents.
"The very man I was speaking of,
--Harvey Freeman! Says he is in this
neighborhood, has heard I'm here, and is
coming down to pay me a visit. Methinks
I hear the rolling of the sacred river!"
"But you won't mention it to him,
until----"
"Bless me! Of course not. I'll bring
him over here, in the course of human
events, and you can take a look at him, and
act on your own intuitions. I won't say on
Princess Miriam's, for Harvey is a very fine-
looking fellow, and her intuitions might get
confused."
"A civil engineer!" said Miriam, with
an intonation worthy of the daughter of a
West-Pointer and the descendant of an
Aztec prince.
Kamaiakan (who spoke only Spanish) had
been gathering up some cushions that had
fallen out of the hammock. Having replaced
them, and cast a quick glance at
Meschines, he withdrew.
CHAPTER II.
The Southern Pacific Railway passes, today,
not far from the site of General
Trednoke's ranch. But the events now to
be narrated occurred some years before the
era of transcontinental railroads: they were
in the air, but not yet bolted down to the
earth. The general, therefore, was a
pioneer, and was by no means overrun with
friends from the East in search of an
agreeable winter climate. The easiest way to
reach him--if you were not pressed for time
--was round the cape which forms the
southernmost point of South America and
sticks its sharp snout inquiringly into the
Antarctic solitudes, as if it scented something
questionable there. The speediest
route, though open to strange discomforts,
was by way of the Isthmus; and then there
were always the saddle, the wagon, and the
stage, with the accompaniments of road-
agents, tornadoes, deserts, and starvation.
Miss Grace Parsloe came via the Isthmus;
and the latter part of her journey had been
alleviated by the society of a young
gentleman from New York, Freeman by name.
There were other passengers on the vessel;
but these two discovered sympathies of
origin and education which made companionship
natural. They sat together at table,
leaned side by side over the taffrail,
discussed their fellow-travellers, and
investigated each other. As he lolled on the
bench with folded arms and straw hat tilted
back from his forehead she, glancing side-
long, as her manner was, saw a sunburnt
aquiline nose, a moustache of a lighter
brown than the visage which it decorated,
a lean, strong jaw, and a muscular neck.
His forehead, square and impending, was as
white as ivory in comparison with the face
below; his hair, in accordance with the
fashion introduced by the late war, was
cropped close. But what especially moved
Miss Grace were those long, lazy blue eyes,
which seemed to tolerate everything, but to
be interested in nothing,--hardly even in
her. Now, Grace could not help knowing
she was a pretty girl, and it was somewhat
of a novelty to her that Freeman should
appear so indifferent. It would have been
difficult to devise a better opportunity than
this to monopolize masculine admiration,
and she fell to speculating as to what sort of
an experience Mr. Freeman must have had,
so to panoply him against her magic. On
the other hand, she was the recipient of
whatever attentions he could bring himself
to detach from the horizon-line, or from his
own thoughts (which appeared to amount,
practically, to about the same thing). She
had no other rivals; and a woman will submit
amiably to a good deal of indifference,
provided she be assured that no other woman
is enjoying what she lacks.
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