University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
DEATH OF PAQUITA.

I WAS surrendered to the sheriff and taken
before a judge. I feared an investigation, lest
something might be revealed which would
connect the pale-faced boy in black with the long-haired
renegade living with the Indians, and thus
throw me into the hands of the military, which I had
just escaped.

The Prince was in Nicaragua battling for the establishment
of an order of things even more impossible
than my Indian Republic, and I had not a friend with
whom I dared communicate. I pleaded not guilty,
declined an examination, and was taken to prison.

And what a prison! A box, ten feet by ten; a
little window with iron grates looking to the east
over the top of another structure that clung to the
steep hill-side on which the rude and horrible prison
was built. A mattress on the floor; filth and vermin
everywhere; not a chair, not a drop of water half the
time; not a breath of air. The food was cold refuse

of some low chop-house. You could sometimes see
teeth-marks in the soggy biscuits. Some sovereign,
no doubt, had a contract for feeding the prisoners,
and was doing well.

Low-bred and half-read lawyers beset me. They
would tell the jailer I had sent for them, and thus
gain admittance. Somehow they thought I had or
could obtain money. They were coarse, insolent,
and persistent in their efforts to get into the secrets
of my life. At last, when they got what jewelry and
few available gold pieces I had, and could not get
my secrets, I saw them no more.

If the treatment I received at the hands of these
wretches is a fair example, then here is a wrong that
should be corrected, for a prisoner, let him be ever
so guilty, has more to fear from these fellows than
from his judges.

Many people visited me, but they could not remain
long in the wretched pen; and as I would never
speak to them, I had but little sympathy. Sometimes
for a while I was out of my mind. At such
times I would write strange, wild songs, in the Indian
tongue, all over the wooden walls.

At length the kind young man mentioned at my
capture came with a young lawyer named Holbrook.
This young lawyer was a gentleman, kind-hearted and
intelligent. After a few visits I told him my story
with perfect confidence. I do not think he believed

it altogether, for he now insisted on putting in a plea
of insanity. I scorned to do this, and grew indignant
as he persisted. He never betrayed a word of my
history, however, and went on, honestly, no doubt,
making up his case to prove his client insane.

Brave, noble Holbrook! he was doing, or thought
he was doing, all in his power to serve his client.
This man became a brilliant lawyer, a leading spirit
in Idaho, and twice represented the Territory in
Congress with distinction. He was killed in the
prime of manhood in a hand-to-hand encounter—a
sort of duel.

One night, as I lay half-awake in the steaming
little den, I heard the call of the cakea, or night bird,
on the steep hill-side above the prison. It stopped,
came nearer, called again, called three times, retreated,
called thrice, came again nearer, and called as at first.

I sprang to the window and answered through the
bars, till I heard the jailer turn in his bed, where he
lay in a large room into which my cell opened, and
then I was silent. But ah, how glad! All night I
paced eagerly around the room, trying to strengthen
my legs, and throwing out my arms to harden them
for action. I knew my friends the red men had
followed and found me. Here was something to be
done. I forgot about my lawyers, refused my food
no longer, and filled my head with plans.

The next day I waited for night, and it seemed the

sun would never go down. Then I waited for midnight;
and at last when it came, and no call from the
hill, I began to despair. I could hardly repress my
anxiety; my heart beat and beat at every breath, as
if it would burst. After all, I said to myself, I am
really insane.

I lay down with my face to the low window, looking
out to the dim, grey dawn breaking and flushing
like a great surf over the white wall of the sierras to
the east.

Maybe I slept an instant, for there, when I looked
intently, sat Paquita on the roof of the lower building,
peering through the rusty bars right into my
face.

I had learned the virtue, if not the dignity, of
silence. I arose instantly and stole up to the bars.

The poor girl tried, the first thing, to pass me a
pistol through the bars, as if that could have been of
any use to me there; but it could not be passed
between. Then she passed through a thin sheath
knife, but never said a word.

She made signs for me to cut away the bars with
the knife, that she would come and help me, motioned
to the grey surf breaking against the sky in the east,
and disappeared.

I hugged that knife to my heart as if it had been a
bride come home. I danced mercilessly and Indian-like
about my cell, and flourished the knife above my

head. I was now not so helpless. I was not alone.
This knife was more to me than all the lawyers.

I will kill that dreadful jailer with this knife some
night when he comes in with my supper, I said, pass
out, slip into town, mount a horse and escape to the
mountains. I lay down at last, hid the knife in my
bosom, and hugged it till I fell asleep.

Paquita came early the next night. Indians are
too cunning to come twice at the same hour.

I had done nothing all day. This time she spoke
and told me that the bars must be filed and cut
away, that this was now the only hope, since all
other attempts of hers had failed. An Indian warrior
was waiting, she said, with horses out of town;
only get the bars away and we could almost step
from the house-top to the steep hill-side, and then all
would be well.

She had hacked two thin knives together, making
a kind of saw, and we set to work. The bars were
an inch in diameter, but made of soft iron, and the
knife-blades laid hold like vipers.

At dawn she filled up the little gashes we had cut
across the bars with a substance she had prepared
just the colour of the rusty bars, and again disappeared.

For more than a week we kept at this work. No
one passed on the brushy hill-side or dwelt there, and
we were never disturbed. At last three bars were

loosened, and on Saturday night, when, as was then
the custom, the men of the city, officers and all, would
be more or less in their glasses, our time was set for
the escape.

She came about midnight, the true and faithful
little savage, the heroine, the red star of my stormy
life, crouching on the roof, and laid hold of the bars
one by one, and bent them till I could pass my head
and shoulders. Then she drew me through, almost
carried me in her arms, and in another moment we
touched the steep but solid earth.

She hurried me up the hill-side to the edge of a
thicket of chaparral. I could go no further. I fell
upon my knees and clasped my hands. I bent down
my face and kissed and kissed the earth as you would
kiss a sister you had not seen for years. I arose and
clasped the bushes in my arms, and stripped the fragrant
myrtle-leaves by handfuls. I kissed my hands
to the moon, the stars, and began to shout and leap
like a child.

She laid her hand on my mouth, and almost angrily
seized me by the arm. I turned and I kissed her, or
rather only the presence and touch of her. I lifted
her fingers to my lips, her robe, her hair, as she led
me over the hill, around and down to a trail. There,
in answer to the night-bird call, an Indian, a brave,
reckless fellow, who had been with me in many a
bold adventure, led three horses from a thicket.

The tide was coming in again. The great grey
surf was breaking over the wall of the Sierras in the
east. They lifted me to my saddle, for I was as
weak as a child. We turned our steeds' heads; we
plunged away in the swift, sweet morning air, and
as we climbed a hill and left the town behind, I
looked across my shoulder, and threw a bitter curse
and threat....

But the prison only was burned. The town, Shasta
city, stands almost a ruin. The great men who made
it great in early days have gone away. Chinamen
and negroes possess the once crowded streets, bats
flit in and out through broken panes, and birds build
nests there in houses that are falling to decay. The
city of twenty years ago looks as though it had felt
the touch of centuries.

How grandly the old eternal snow peak lifted his
front before us! How gloriously the sunlight rolled
and flashed about his brow before its rays got down
into the pines that lay along our road.

We plunged into the Sacramento river at full
speed, and swam to the other side.

When you swim a river with a horse, you must
not touch the rein; that may draw his nose into the
water, and drown you both. You drop the rein,
clutch the mane, and float free of his back, even
using your own limbs, if strong enough, to aid your
horse in the passage. You wind a sash tightly about

your head or hat, and thrust your pistols in the folds.
Keep your head above water, and you are ready to
fight the moment you touch land on the other side.

As the first rays of the sun shot across the mighty
ramparts to the east, we climbed the rocky bluff and
set our course through the open oaks for a crossing
on Pit River, not far from the military camp spoken
of before. We hoped to reach it and cross ere dark,
and rode like furies. Where did the Indian get these
horses?

The escape so far was a success. At first I had
had no hope. The idea of cutting away iron bars
with knives seemed a delusive dream. But Indian
patience can achieve incredible things. At first the
knives would pinch and bite in the little grooves, for
the back was of course thicker than the edge. But
Paquita was equal to all that. By day she would
grind the knives on the rocks, while hiding away in
the bushes, till they were thin as wafers. A watch-spring
is a common instrument used to cut away
bars or rivets. The fine steel lays hold of the iron
like teeth. Mexican revolutionists, liable at any
time to imprisonment, sometimes have their watch-springs
prepared especially for such an emergency;
and I have known common cut-throats on the border
to have a watch-spring around the arm under the
folds of a garment. Prison-breaking in the Old
World, owing to the massive and substantial

structures, is almost a lost art. “But few escapes are
made now,” said a Newgate prisoner to me, “and
those are mostly by strategy, like that of the illustrious
prisoner of Ham.”

It was nearly dusk when we touched the bank of
the river, up which we must ride a mile or so before
we came to the crossing.

Our horses fairly staggered under us, but we kept
on, full of hope, and certain of security.

We descended the hill that sloped to the crossing,
winding our scarfs about our heads, and preparing
for the passage, which, once accomplished, would
make our rest secure.

Suddenly, from a clump of low fir-trees, an officer
with a platoon of soldiers stepped out, with rifles to
their faces, and called to us to surrender.

The soldiers were there concealed, waiting for
Indians that might attempt to cross at this favourite
pass, and we were upon them before we suspected an
enemy within miles of us.

They were almost between us and the deep cut
leading to the river that had been made by animals
and Indians from time immemorial, and we could not
reach it. To attempt to ascend the hill, up the trail,
on our tired horses, had been certain death.

The officer called again. The Indian drew his
pistol, called to us to leap our horses down the bank
into the river, and as we did so, fired in the face of

the officer. Then, with a yell of defiance, he followed
us over the precipice into the boiling, surging river,
cold and swollen from the melting snows of Mount
Shasta.

It was a fearful leap; not far, but sudden and
ugly, with everything on earth against us. My horse
and myself went far down in the blue, cold river, but
he rose bravely, and struck out fairly for the other
side.

But poor Paquita and her brave companion were
not so fortunate. The river ran in an eddy, and their
weak and bewildered horses were spun around like
burrs in a whirlpool.

The soldiers had discharged a volley as we disappeared,
but I think none of us were touched from
this first fire. My horse swam very slow, and dropped
far down the current. The soldiers came up, stood
on the bank, deliberately loaded, aimed their pieces,
and fired every shot of the platoon at me, but only
touched my horse. They had not yet discovered
Paquita and her companion struggling in the eddy,
almost under their feet, else neither of them had ever
left it. Now, they got their horses turned and struck
out, diving and holding on to the mane.

They were not forty feet from the soldiers when
discovered. The guns were dropped, pistols were
drawn, and a hundred shots, and still another hundred,
rained down upon and around those two brave
children, but they gave no answer.

I was down the stream out of reach, and nearing
the shore. I witnessed the dreadful struggle for life,
looking back, clinging to my almost helpless horse's
mane.

They would dive, then the black heads and shiny
shoulders would reappear, a volley of shot, down
again till almost stifled; up, again a volley, and
shouts and laughter from the shore.

It seemed they would never get away from out the
rain of lead. Slowly, oh! how slowly, their weary,
wounded horses struggled on against the cold, blue
flood that boiled and swept about them.

At last my spent horse touched a reach of sand
far below, that made a shoal from shore, and I
again looked back. I saw but one figure now. The
brave and fearless warrior had gone down pierced by
a dozen balls.

My horse refused to go further, but stood bleeding
and trembling in the water up to his breast, and I
managed to make land alone. I crept up the bank,
clutching the long wiry grass and water-plants.
I drew myself up and sat down on the rocks still
warm from the vanished sunshine.

When I had strength to rise, I went up the warm
grassy river-bank, peering through the tules in an
almost hopeless search for my companions. Nothing
was to be seen. The troops on the other bank had
gone away, not knowing, perhaps not caring, what
they had done.

The deep, blue river gave no sign of the tragedy
now. All was as still as the tomb. I stole close and
slowly along the bank. I felt a desolation that was
new and dreadful in its awful solemnity. The bluff
of the river hung in basaltic columns a thousand feet
above my head; only a narrow little strip of grass
and tules, and reeds and willows, nodding, dipping,
dripping, in the swift, strong river.

Not a bird flew over, not a cricket called from out
the long grass. “Ah, what an ending is this!” I
said, and sat down in despair. My eyes were riveted
on the river. Up and down on the other side, everywhere
I scanned with Indian eyes for even a sign of
life, for friend or foe. Nothing but the bubble and
gurgle of the waters, the nodding, dipping, dripping
of the reeds, the willows, and the tules.

If earth has any place more solemn, more solitary,
more awful than the banks of a strong, deep river
rushing, at nightfall, through a mountain forest,
where even the birds have forgotten to sing, or the
katydid to call from the grass, I know not where
it is.

I stole further up the bank; and there, almost at
my feet, a little face was lifted as if rising from the
water into mine.

Blood was flowing from her mouth and she could
not speak. Her naked arms were reached out and
holding on to the grassy bank, but she could not

draw her body from the water. I put my arms
about her, and, with sudden and singular strength,
lifted her up and back to some warm, dry rocks, and
there sat down with the dying girl in my arms.

Her robe had floated away in the flood and she was
nearly naked. She was bleeding from many wounds.
Her whole body seemed to be covered with blood as
I drew her from the water. Blood spreads with water
over a warm body in streams and seams; and at such
a time a body seems to be covered with a sheet of
crimson.

Paquita?

I entreated her to speak. I called to her, but she
could not answer. The desolation and solitude was
now only the more dreadful. My voice came back
in strange echoes from the basalt bluffs, and that was
all the answer I ever had.

The Indian maiden, pure as vestal virgin, brave as
was Lucretia, beautiful as any picture lay dying in my
arms. Blood on my hands, blood on my clothes,
and blood on the grass and stones.

The lonely July night was soft and sultry. The
great white moon rose up and rolled along the
heavens, and sifted through the boughs that lifted
above and reached from the hanging cliff, and fell in
lines and spangles across the face and form of my
dead.

Paquita!

Once so alone in the awful presence of death, I
became terrified. My heart and soul were strung to
such a tension, it became intolerable. I would
have started up and fled. But where could I have
fled, even had I had the strength to fly? I bent my
head, and tried to hide my face.

Paquita dead!

Our lives had first run together in currents of
blood on the snow, in persecution, ruin, and destruction;
in the shadows and in the desolation of
death; and so now they separated for ever.

Paquita dead!

We had starved together; stood by the sounding
cataracts, threaded the forests, roamed by the river-banks
together; grown from childhood, as it were,
together. But now she had gone away, crossed the
dark and mystic river alone, and left me to make
the rest of the journey with strangers and without a
friend.

Paquita!

Why, we had watched the great sun land, like some
mighty navigator sailing the blue seas of heaven,
on the flashing summit of Shasta; had seen him come
with lifted sword and shield, and take possession of
the continent of darkness; had watched him in the
twilight marshal his forces there for the last great
struggle with the shadows, creeping like evil spirits
through the woods, and, like the red man, make a

last grand battle there for his old dominions. We
had seen him fall and die at last with all the snow-peak
crimsoned in his blood.

No more now. Paquita, the child of nature,
the sunbeam of the forest, the star that had seen
so little of light, lay wrapped in darkness. Paquita
lay cold and lifeless in my arms.

That night my life widened and widened away
till it touched and took in the shores of death.