IX
“Comealong,” Hi said, “wake up. Come on out of this.”
“What’s that?” the man said.
“Wake up, man,” Hi said, “we’ve got the door open; we can get away.”
The man sat up, pulled out a sheath-knife, spat, and said:
“I’ll cut your guts out.”
“Never mind my guts,” Hi said, “they’ll keep; but we may be spotted, if we don’t hurry.”
“Garrrr,” the man screamed, “Garrrr and guts. See? Garrrr and guts. Harrar.” He rose upon his feet, with a brandish of his knife. “Come on the lot of you,” he yelled, “you don’t daunt me. I’m Henery Peach Kezia and my blood’s vitriol. I’ll seal you for your tombstone. Harrar you planets, I’ll put some of your lights out, once I get a hold of you.” Here he lifted up his voice into a yell.
“Ayayayayay,” he yelled, “I’m the frog who would a-wooing go. See me hop.”
“Hop out of the door,” Hi said. He held the door so that the frog might hop. He was frightened not only of the madman, but of his noise, which might bring the guards.
“Where’s the door?” the man asked.
“Here.”
“Where’s here?” the man asked. “How am I to know wherehereis?”
“Are you blind?” Hi asked. “I didn’t know you were blind.”
“I been blind since I was a poor little orphan child,” the man said. “I only smell things. There’s a smell of roses here, or maybe it’s lavender. You guide me to the door, my dear young Bible friend. Just reach me your hand and the blessings of the poor blind man will follow you. Oh, Heaven bless you, my sweet young gentleman angel, Heaven will bless you for this.”
Hi had taken the man by the left arm, while he kept the door open with his body. The man came unsteadily through the opening into the yard.
“There,” he said, “there.” He drew a deep breath, suddenly wheeled upon Hi, stabbed at him with his knife, and screamed:
“And now I’ll cut your guts out, like I said.”
Hi had half expected something of the kind. By a twist of his body he shook himself clear, so that the door, at once swinging-to, struck Henery Peach Kezia and made him miss his stab.
“Don’t you think to dodge me like that, when my blood’s up,” Kezia said, “you young swine. I’ll cut you double for that. I’ll cut you crossways, so’s your own mother will deny you.” He began to laugh with a deep down, joyless chuckle, which made Hi’s blood run cold. He was not very steady on his feet, but he had a horrid danger about him, because of his sideways lurches. Hi dodged him in his rush, but not by much, for they were on the concrete slopes of the yard and Hi wore English walking-shoes, the man stockings. It was as bright as bright moonlight from the fire.
“Now, then,” Kezia said. “Now we’ll see. Some would have took pity on you; but not me. Do you see jouncer? This knife’s jouncer. And as soon as I’ve breathed on the blade he’s going into you.”
He panted on to the blade like a hound getting breath, then he made a sudden dart, missed by about a foot, and then followed with dreadful speed and certainty round and round the yard. The fire, wherever it was, burned up with a brighter blaze to light him. Hi aimed to reach the door into the municipal building, but the man was too close behind him for him to try to open it. He slipped on the concrete, caught one of the pillars which held the pent-house roof, and swung round it with such force that he struck Kezia from behind. The rush and excitement seemed to steady Kezia.
“Ha,” he said, “ain’t this fun? Ain’t this nice hide and seek? And I’ll bleed you into veal in the drain; white meat; eightpence a pound, prime cuts.”
Here there came a crash. Perhaps the brightness of the fire had been fed for the past twenty minutes by the timbers and rafters of the roof. These now suddenly gave way and launched the blaze into the pit of the wreck; the glare of the burning died at once from about them. Hi was in the dark, poised behind a pillar, trying to see the drunkard, who was near the desired door. There was silence for about thirty seconds, each was trying to see the other; at last the drunkard spoke.
“Say, brother,” he said, “will you shake hands and let’s be friends?”
“I can’t shake hands,” Hi said, “when you’ve got a knife in your hand.”
“The knife’s nothing. I took the knife out to cut you a nice nosegay from all these pretty little bloody roses.”
“That was kind of you,” Hi said.
“I love you,” the man said; “you are like a lovely little angel.”
“I am, rather,” Hi said. The darkness of the man seemed to edge a shade nearer.
“I love angels,” the man said.
“That’s right,” Hi said.
“I always loved angels,” the man said, “since a boy.”
“Stick to them,” Hi said; “you can’t do better.”
“You blasted young swine,” the man screamed, making a rush. “I’ll cut your gall and your milt and your pancridge.”
Hi had expected the rush; he slipped to the left as it surged out at him. The man had expected this movement; he slashed out sideways with his knife, but missed. He was after Hi on the instant, roaring, as he rushed, his war cry of “Harrar.” Hi twisted sharp to his right; the man followed, he seemed horribly near. Hi heard a splash, followed by an oath, and a fall; the man had put a foot into the drain and fallen.
Hi fled to the door into the hall, where he paused; the man had not risen; he was lying in a heap in the well or drain, muttering oaths. The fall may have hurt him: it had certainly knocked the fight out of him.
“Will you come and give me a hand up?” he said.
“No.”
“Oh, Lord, my leg’s broke, man; I can’t hurt you.”
“Rats.”
“God, man; I’d not leave you, if you’d got a broken leg.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“The bone’s coming through the calf of me leg; I’m just bleeding away.”
Hi did not answer this; the man went on:
“It’s pretty poor goods,” he said, “when an Englishman will leave another Englishman to rot in agony. Oh, the torment, it’s awful. I feel it corrupting the blood.”
Hi was touched by the man’s moans, but did not answer. The man groaned some more.
“Young fellow,” he said, “if I die, and I am dying, you’ll take my love to my poor mother? Mrs. Jones, her name is. She lives at No. 27, Cowpop Street, Sale, Cheshire. It’s the only house in the street with a brass knocker. Say my last thought was of her. And I want you to sing “Rock of Ages” over my tomb. It’s cruel to die in a foreign land, but I’d rest better after “Rock of Ages”. Won’t you come and just hold my head up; I can’t breathe; there’s darkness coming. Lift me; won’t you lift me?”
“No, I won’t,” Hi said.
“You young swine,” the man said; “it’s lucky for you you didn’t, for if you had, I’d have settled you.”
Hi went through the door and bolted it behind him. He tiptoed swiftly along the passage to the corridor down which the Indians had dragged him. The corridor stretched right and left along the length of the house. Hi could make out a staircase, the blackness of doors, and light in one place from a half-opened door. Hi listened.
All was silent at first. Then from somewhere upstairs he heard the noise of stealthy footsteps, moving slowly. To his right, from time to time, there was a little light fluttering noise, as though the wind were stirring an ill-fitting shutter or loosened jalousie. The man in the prison yard was quiet. The smell of tobacco smoke shewed that the other prisoner had passed that way.
Hi went quietly to the half-opened door, listened there, heard nothing suspicious, and peeped in.
The room was lit by an oil-lamp which had been turned so low that it stank. He could not see far into the room. From within there came again the fluttering noise, which was now not quite that of a shutter, but liker the yielding of paper under pressure, as though someone were opening a book and pressing the pages down so that it should remain open at the place. It gave Hi the sense that some industrious old man was working there in the half darkness gumming papers together.
He pushed the door very gently till he could see that the room was a kind of board-room, with shuttered windows. The table, from which the chairs had been flung back, was littered with papers. A big picture, partly out of its frame, was hanging askew on the wall to the right. Nobody was to be seen; but the noise of the pressed papers came from somewhere on the floor beyond the table.
Hi thought, “It is rats gnawing papers,” but on coming into the room he saw that it was a dead man beset by myriads of cockroaches. The man’s pockets had been turned inside out.
Hi suddenly whirled about in terror: someone was at his elbow.
He saw at once that he had no need to be terrified; it was the little man who had opened the prison door. He had stolen up in his silent way. He grinned at having scared Hi.
“Didn’t ’ear me, did yer, cocky?” he said. “Seen the stiff? They done him in and gone through him; grizzled party; one of these Digos. We’d better ’op it arter ’ere.”
Hi noticed that the man was carrying a long heavy ebony ruler which had been a part of the office equipment. He had the feeling that this was the man who had turned out the dead man’s pockets.
“Bleedin’ old beano goin’ on down the boulevard,” the man said; “kind of a Brock’s benefit. If they come on ’ere agine, the goin’ won’t ’elp us; we shan’t ’alf ’ave all right.”
He led the way out of the room and so away towards the front door, from which fresh air was blowing into the house. On the top step a great yellow pariah dog stood, longing to enter, but scared by their approach. He snarled and slunk away from them as they came out into the open. Moved by the thought that the dog might eat the body, Hi closed the door behind him.
That part of the town was empty of life, except for the moths about the globe of the electric light. The houses were shuttered and seemed to be deserted; but Hi saw that a great disorder had raged there since he had been thrust into the prison. Household gear of many kinds had been dragged into the street and left. Far away down the hill was the glow of the shell of the mansion, each window red as a furnace mouth. All the inhabitants, as well as the lancers, seemed to be at the fire, except a few who came thence quietly with sidelong glances, having pickings from the wreck under their cloaks.
“I’m goin’ to ’op it arter ’ere,” the man said. “No ’ot potitoes in mine. Coo lummy, what’s that?”
From the back of the city hall, from the direction of the prison yard, there came a sound of song, mixed with the tolling of a cuckoo. Henery Peach Kezia was lapping himself in soft Lydian airs:
O the cuckoo bird sings in the merry May morn.Singing cuckoo, O cuckoo, how happy am I.O cuckoo, O cuckoo, O cuckoo.Cuckoo.
O the cuckoo bird sings in the merry May morn.Singing cuckoo, O cuckoo, how happy am I.O cuckoo, O cuckoo, O cuckoo.Cuckoo.
O the cuckoo bird sings in the merry May morn.Singing cuckoo, O cuckoo, how happy am I.O cuckoo, O cuckoo, O cuckoo.Cuckoo.
O the cuckoo bird sings in the merry May morn.
Singing cuckoo, O cuckoo, how happy am I.
O cuckoo, O cuckoo, O cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
“It’s the drunkard,” Hi said.
“The stiff? You woke him?”
“Yes.”
Hi noticed that the man’s eyes were fixed upon him somewhat strangely.
“Which way you goin’, cocky?” he asked.
“Anselmo,” Hi said. “Do you know it?”
“I know it well,” the man said. “I don’t mind setting you there, or on the way there.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Hi said. “But are you going that way?”
“Never you mind where I’m going,” the man said. “You’re a damn sight too nosy.”
“No more nosy, as you call it, than you,” Hi answered. “I know the way to Anselmo; if it’s out of your own way, I can find it myself. But we’d better not go straight past the fire; we might be recognised.”
“Come along ’ere, cocky,” the man said. “If we go along this road a piece, we can easy cut across later.”
They turned up a road which opened to the north not far from the city hall. The houses near it were small adobe bungalows, with roofs of red tiles. The stars in the heaven shone like lamps.
“I say, look at the stars,” Hi said.
“Are you being pleasant?” the man asked. “You’re doing ‘Oh, the starlight’; but they’re cocky little bleeders, stars.”
They walked on together for a minute, till they were in the midst of a grove, where a night singing bird was making a plaintive, exquisite haunting call. The man paused.
“What was the nime of the plice you was goin’ to?” he asked.
“Anselmo.”
“Anselmo, that was it; Anselmo.” He seemed to think for an instant. “Well, there’s no plice of that nime anywheres abaht ’ere.”
“But you said you knew it,” Hi said.
“What was the nime agine?”
“Anselmo.”
“Oh, Anselmo,” the man said, “the plice you see over there?”
“No; over there,” Hi said, turning to point. Some instinct told him to look out, but it came a fraction of a second too late. He never knew certainly what happened next, because he was knocked unconscious by a blow on the point of his jaw, which ended the world for him for four minutes.
When he came to himself, with a dizzy head full of confusion, he tried to stand, but found that his feet hurt. Groping down to find out why, he found that his shoes were gone. Instead of them, a pair of old white deck shoes, with rubber soles, lay beside him in the track. Then a certain slackness at his waist seemed unaccustomed. He put his hand to his waist and found that his money belt was gone; then he found that his pockets had been searched: he had been robbed. He called aloud at this. Then he looked about for his companion, whom he at once judged to be the thief. There was neither sight nor sound of him. He had vanished into the night where he belonged. There was no sound of anyone running, no noise of steps, nor of bushes being thrust aside. The bird was still making a plaintive call in the tree.
“I can’t think what has happened,” Hi said. He sat down to try to compose himself. When he began to know that he had been knocked out, he wondered, “for how long?” The stars had not changed position much, so far as he could see, and there was still some warmth or so he thought in the toes of the shoes.
“He knocked me out and robbed me,” he thought. “I’d gladly have gone halves with him. I don’t know what the deuce to do now. Well, I must get to Anselmo, that’s the first thing. And it must be nearly midnight by this time and I’m further from Anselmo than I was when I started.”
He put on the deck shoes. There was a meanness in the theft of his shoes which hurt him more even than the loss of his precious pocket-book with the sprig of hermosita. When he had put on the shoes and felt their discomforts, as well as their kind, which was specially loathsome to him, he walked back to the town, he could not afterwards tell why. He had no very clear thought of what he was doing nor of what he ought to do, for the brains were still shaky in his head from the knock upon his jaw.
When he turned into the street in front of the city hall, he saw some of the lancers, followed by a mob, riding uphill towards him. He turned uphill away from them, till he was out of the town, in a rocky path near a pine wood. The lancers paused at the city hall, as though to bivouac. Hi felt a deadly weariness overcoming the need of reaching Anselmo.
“I am done,” he thought. “I have done nothing, but I have been through a good deal to-day. I must rest for a bit before I go on.” He was cold as well as weary, for the cold sea breeze was blowing. “It must be midnight,” he thought. “I will rest for just an hour among those rocks. If I had only not spoken to that officer at La Boca, I would have been fifty miles on beyond Anselmo by this.”
He was so stupid from fatigue and the blow that he paid little heed to his going, as he pushed through the scrub towards what looked like shelter. Suddenly he caught a whiff of scent, a rustle of movement and a gleam of something: he was aware that people were hiding there. A startled somebody, speaking intensely, in a hiss of anxiety, said “Padre? . . . padre mio?”
“I’m not the man,” Hi said.
Immediately somebody surged out of the darkness, flung him down and got him by the throat. He realised at once that he was in the hands of someone much stronger than himself, who could break his neck at will, if he made a noise. Some years before, at the Old Berks Steeplechases, he had seen a welsher caught by the crowd. When overtaken, the man had fallen and lain perfectly still, as though dead; this came back to Hi on the instant as wise.
The man who had grappled him got him well by the throat with one hand, while he reached back for his knife with the other. Hi saw a darkness of face staring into his, and beyond it pine boughs and stars. Other people were there: he smelt the scent of verbena: a woman’s voice gave a caution. A woman seemed to be trying to open a box of matches and to take out a match: her fingers fumbled on the matches and people whispered. A man who came hurriedly from among the rocks struck a match upon his trouser leg, screened and held it down. Hi saw a lot of faces staring with surprise at him. He counted four persons: an old woman with white hair, a girl with great black eyes, a man with a somewhat finicky pale face, like the Aztec in the waxworks (he was the one who held the match), and a swarthy, fierce, very splendid-looking young man who had him by the throat. Hi noticed the muscles in the clear brown flesh of the arms which held him. “Golly,” he thought, “this man could tear a pack of cards across.” At this instant the match went out.
“It’s all right,” Hi said. “I’m English.”
“Inglis,” they repeated. The younger of the two women asked him in halting English: “What you doing here?”
Hi felt inclined to ask them what they were doing there, four civilised people, with jewels and scents, in the wilderness at midnight, garrotting strangers. He said that he was going to Anselmo and that he had been robbed. They seemed to understand a part of what he said, but they were puzzled by it.
The man, who was holding him, allowed him to sit up and said something in apology for having been so rough.
“What are they doing in the city?” the young woman asked.
“They are plundering and robbing, Señorita,” Hi said.
At this instant some horses were heard trotting near to the pine clump. The man, who had held Hi, signed to him to remain still, while he stole away through the scrub to see who came. In a few minutes he returned with the riders of the horses, one of whom carried a lantern. This man was a swarthy, bearded, elderly don, more than sixty years of age, but still lean and alert. His face was both hard and melancholy, with something of watchfulness stamped on it by a life passed upon a frontier. He held up the lantern to examine Hi, while the others repeated to him Hi’s story of Anselmo, which he did not seem altogether to accept. “Allan Winter said there was a feeling against us,” Hi thought. “Now here it is.” He debated whether he should tell them that he was a White, going on a White errand. “It might be all right,” he thought. “But supposing it were all wrong. Supposing these people were really Reds. Then I should be in a fine mess.”
The family drew aside to debate what should be done. Presently the daughter left the group and explained to Hi that they had to ride to safety, that they did not doubt his good faith, but that their lives depended on leaving no witness of their going and that, in short, Hi must come with them.
“We are most sad to ask it,” she said, “but it is for our mother and sister. You see, this is war. They might kill us.”
“We not take you far,” the young man said. “We set you on your journey, when we get to friends.”
There was something good-natured and well-bred about the young man which won Hi, who was, in any case, too utterly weary to protest. He said he understood and would gladly do as they asked. The girl and the young man said that it was very nice of him to take it like that. They mounted him on one of their spare horses, and set off together, through a woodland track, which set, for a while, to the south, and then curved west. Hi watched the direction as well as he could by the stars, so as to keep his bearings clear. About north-north-west was his course, he judged. “Now here I am going south,” he thought. “The Lord alone knows when I shall get to Anselmo.” He fell asleep on his horse and knew nothing more of his journey till he was wakened by the horses stopping.
He saw that they had reached a point in the hill from which, looking down a ravine, they could see far below them the lights of the town and the glowing of the burnt house. The night wind had roused up the flames on the last of the wreck so that it made a beacon still. The riders were staring at this, all strangely moved. The two women were sobbing: the men were muttering curses, or prayers that were of the nature of curses.
“Ah, the accursed, the accursed.”
“For all this they shall pay sevenfold.”
“You saints that bear the sword grant me the sword that I may smite these accursed ones.”
“It is their home,” Hi thought, “where all their past lies burnt. They were chased out of it and then it was fired.”
The father interrupted the scene by saying, “It suffices. To-morrow is a new day: let us get to-morrow.” He took his wife’s rein and led the way on, the others followed him. Hi heard the nice young man say something to him, but he was too heavy with sleep to know what it was or to answer. He fell asleep again upon his horse. The high southern saddle kept him in his seat; sometimes he joggled forwards, sometimes backwards, while the horse went quietly on with the others.
At about two o’clock in the morning they came to a ranch which was guarded by mounted men. Here they all dismounted and went indoors (Hi with them) to what seemed to be a gathering of the clan.
There was a long room, lit by electric light, like all the houses in those hills even at that early age. There was a fire at one end of the room, for the night was cold enough. A maid of enormous strength, with a fine, square, good-humoured face, was making or dispensing maté among the gathering. There were perhaps forty men there, most of them talking at once, yet the room was so big that they did not crowd it.
As the party entered the room, the girl with the verbena scent noticed how weary Hi was.
“You are tired,” she said. “Enrique, this gentleman is weary. Anton, get him a maté.” (Enrique was the Aztec; Anton the nice one.)
“Sit down,” she said, showing a seat which ran round the wall. “Anton will bring you a maté.”
“You sit,” he said. “Let me bring you a maté.” Anton shoved him down on to his seat.
“Our guests do not wait, they are waited on,” he said. “You are not a Red, I am sure, to rob us of the last of all our pleasures.”
“I am a White,” Hi said.
“You are a White?” the girl said. “But we thought all you English were Reds.”
“I’m a heretic, of course,” Hi said, “but a White.”
Anton brought him a maté, which revived him. He saw the Aztec step into the midst of the gathering call for silence, and begin a long harangue, with many gestures. The babble of his voice, the heat of the room and more than twenty-four hours of strain together made him fall asleep with the bombilla in his hand.
This falling asleep may be said to mark the end of the first day of Hi’s going to warn Don Manuel. His going had not prospered, mainly because one of Don Lopez’ chief supporters, the half-breed Don Livio, a man of vengeful temper, had detached some lancers to burn the mansion of the Ribotes, who had had the misfortune to be the lords in the village in which he had passed his youth.
This act of private vengeance brought the lancers across Hi’s path at the wrong time.
While Hi was being checked by event after event, on this first day, Ezekiel Rust was riding to the west with his message. At the very moment, when Hi was falling asleep, Ezekiel Rust was rousing from his rest eighty miles away to begin his second day’s ride.
X
Himay have slept for half an hour, when he was wakened by the tinkle of his bombilla falling on the floor. He roused up as a big, elderly rogue-bull of a man, with bloodshot eyes and a heavy ruminating mouth, which seemed to be chewing the cud of fifty different plans, came in, to take charge of the gathering. Plainly all there looked up to him as a leader. A flock of talkers surged up to him with a gabble of explanation and persuasion: some of it very hot, Hi thought.
Presently, Hi found this man staring at him, though as yet without comprehension. His eyes were fixed on Hi while his lower lip moved in and out under the strain of thought. After a time, his bull-like brain began to notice that Hi was a stranger in the camp: he turned to a man, indicated Hi by a jerk of the head, and asked, “Who is that?” Then, turning to Hi, whom of course he knew to be English, he jerked with his head, saying, “Come here, you. What are you?”
Anton explained as Hi came forward; Hi heard the words “caballero ingles”: then Anton, after asking his name, introduced him to Don Pablo something of Meruel. Hi was refreshed by his sleep and eager to be doing. He made up his mind that as these were Whites he would tell his tale, so he did. He said that he was going on urgent White business to Don Manuel at Encinitas; he asked for a horse that he might proceed.
When he had said his say, he knew that he had said something wrong. “I believe they are Reds, after all,” he thought. “Now I’ve put my foot in it.” Anton drew him aside a moment and explained: “All the Whites here are anti-clerical, they hate Don Manuel like poison. You have said, ‘I take nice Luteran message to the Pope.’ ” Anton seemed to think it very funny, but Hi was appalled. “I’ve done for myself now,” he thought, “they’ll probably jail me for a week.”
“Business with Don Manuel at Encinitas?” Don Pablo repeated. “And what business?”
“To tell him that the Reds have put Señorita de Leyva into prison.”
This was news to the assembly, but on the whole pleasant news: the de Leyvas were blamed for most of the troubles which had fallen on the Whites.
“At least,” Don Pablo said, “you cannot reach Don Manuel from here.”
“I don’t want to,” Hi said. “I want to reach Anselmo from here, and from there go on to Don Manuel.”
“Very pretty,” Don Pablo said. “There are telegraphs in Anselmo. You could warn Santa Barbara of all that has been said here.”
“No, sir,” Hi said, “unfortunately, I know no Spanish, and have not understood what has been said here: besides, I am not a spy.”
“You are the first to mention the word,” Don Pablo answered. “You are here, we are here, the trouble exists, the telegraph exists, Santa Barbara exists. I consider the situation.”
“Yes, sir,” Hi said, “but I have been only four nights in this land, I know nothing of your politics.”
“How comes it then,” Don Pablo interrupted, “that you go at all upon this errand? Why are you sent? Who sent you?”
“I must not tell you that, sir,” Hi answered, “but I was sent because the need was great, and because an Englishman will not be suspected by the Reds.”
“Very true,” Don Pablo answered, “but he may be suspected by the Whites. See you,” he added, turning to address the assembly in Spanish, “this boy may justly be suspected by us, when he comes from we know not where and says that he wishes to reach Anselmo.”
As most of those there were like water, ready to flow in any direction opened to it, as long as it were downhill, this turned the company against Hi. They agreed that he might justly be suspected. Why should he be there, they asked, if he wished to reach Anselmo? This was now war; Anselmo was a place of the Reds undoubtedly; this was an English boy; that he should be sent on a message was a farce. Undoubtedly he was a spy or might be used as a spy. Hi did not know their words, but their meanings were plain.
“You may be this or you may be that,” Don Pablo said, in English, “but you cannot go to Anselmo.”
“But, sir, I must go.”
“What say you?”
“Sir, I must go.”
Don Pablo pretended to be deaf, he held one of his ears with his hand, so as to catch the sound: the company tittered.
“What say you?”
“Sir, I must go to Anselmo.”
“Ah,” Don Pablo said with a smile, turning to the men, “He says that he must go to Anselmo.Must go; this very important English word. No, sir,” he said, turning to Hi, “you may go to your Reds in Carpinteria, or you may go home to your English in England; no one shall stop you; it is a healthy walk, for you English are accustomed to walk; but you shall not go to Anselmo. You shall not go to Anselmo, because it is a special place, which I am determined that you shall not see.”
His face, as he spoke, became gorged with blood like the wattles of a turkey cock. Having settled Hi, as he judged, he turned to the assembled men and made them a long harangue in Spanish. Long afterwards Hi learned that the purpose of the meeting was to keep the Pituba raiders out of that part of Meruel. The men there were Whites, but anti-clerical and, on the whole, in favour of Lopez, because he was a Meruel man. Pablo’s purpose, at that moment, was to get the party to ride to a well-known ranch to get from it the reinforcement of its company.
All there seemed pleased at his suggestion, except those whose mansion had been burned in Ribote. These retired in a group in some indignation when the others left the room. Hi was left alone in the great room, save for the broad, good-humoured maid, who was gathering up the bombillas. She was a friendly soul; she made remarks in Spanish to Hi, so that he might feel at ease.
“Many bombillas.”
“Si,” Hi answered.
“Better many guests than many locusts.”
This was beyond Hi, who grinned. After a little time, she added, with a sigh:
“There are more guests than lovers.”
Hi did not know what she said, but he answered, in English, “Such is life.”
After some twenty minutes of talking outside the house the assembled men mounted their horses, which had been kicking and snapping at each other, from anger at the cold, through all the hours of the discussion. Even when they had mounted they made no effort to start. They continued to discuss till it was broad daylight, when they all set off together.
Anton entered with his sister. He came up to Hi to apologise for Don Pablo.
“It is absurd,” he said, “that that man should have stopped your going to Anselmo. There is no reason why you shouldn’t go to Anselmo. Of course you may go there.”
“I have no horse,” Hi said. “Would you lend me a horse so that I could go there?”
“Do you know the way?” the girl asked.
“No.”
“It must be forty kilometres and a difficult way except through Ribote.”
“I could find it,” Hi said.
The brother and sister looked at each other with some hesitation. Hi was afraid that they were wondering whether to trust a tramp, who came at midnight, with neither collar nor tie, from God knows where.
“I am sorry to say,” he said, “that I have got no money with me, but Mr. Winter, of Quezon, beyond Santa Barbara, knows me, and Señora Piranha and her daughter know me.”
“Rosa Piranha?” the girl said. “You know her?”
“Very well. Do you?”
“We were at the convent together,” the girl said. “Of course we will lend you a horse. What is your name?”
“Ridden. Will you tell me yours?”
“We are Ribotes,” she said. “But what makes us consider is, the road to Anselmo. It is no road, my brother says.”
“It is a bad road,” Anton said.
“I don’t mind how bad it is as long as it is a road,” he said. “And I’ll not let your horse down or give him a sore back or anything; I swear I won’t. And I don’t know how to thank you for saying you will lend me one. The point is, getting him back to you. I’m going to the Elenas, the horse-breeders, of Anselmo; I am sure they would send him back or I would bring him back myself, if you would not mind waiting a few days.”
“Bring him back yourself,” Anton said.
“Yes, yes,” the girl said.
“The horse will be all right,” Anton said, “but how about the rider? First you must have food.”
They gave him sausage, bread, coffee and figs. Then they filled saddle-bags with these things and with corn for him to take with him. Anton brought him a silk scarf.
“You will want this for your neck,” he said. “There will be ticks or mosquitoes in the forest.”
No doubt they would have given him money, had they not feared to hurt his feelings.
“I don’t know how to thank you two,” he said. “You have been most frightfully kind.”
“The least we could do,” Anton said, “after nearly murdering you in the dark, as I did.”
They brought him out to the stables, where they saddled a horse for him.
“He will take you to Anselmo all right,” Anton said. “The question is, will you be able to find your way there?”
“I will try,” Hi said.
“Not so easy,” Anton said. “Look there.”
From where he stood Hi could see nothing but great swathes of rolling forest, amid a mist that was lifting and falling as though it were alive.
“You see that it is not easy,” Anton said, “even when you get out of the forest.”
“I think I’ll find it all right,” Hi said. “I’m good at finding my way.”
Anton pursed up his lips and shook his head. “I hope,” he said, “I hope. You got good remembrance?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then I tell you all the way.”
“Right. I’ll remember.”
“It is difficult,” Anton said. “You follow this track here for three kilometres, through the scrub. Then you come to a place very big as a saucer; big, big. Then north-west across it to a hole, snap, cut off, like so, in the hills, a long way, fifteen kilometres. Out there you will see peones who ride. One will show you. You must not go so, no; but so, because, so, there is no ground; all is gone. But this not for twenty kilometres. Till then, you look for the place big as a pan, very big; and the hill that has like so; high, yet so, snap, see; no, more like so.”
This was not clear as a course should be, but his gestures made it clearer. Anton knew the dangers of losing a trail; he turned to his sister for an English rendering of what he wished to explain. Unfortunately she had not seen the place which he strove to describe, nor was her English much better than his, but she added a few words.
“After this track,” she said, “there is a . . . very big.”
“A lake?” Hi suggested.
“A what?”
“A water?”
“No, no, no; very big dry.”
“I understand. A dry valley?”
“Si, si. Then you cross this; oh, it is long. Then you look a way out. There is a hole in the hill, like so.”
“A pass?” Hi said. “A gap? A way to go through?”
“Si, si.”
“But,” Anton said, “you must not go to this side, right side, because no ground; go to left side. Ask peones.”
“Will there be peones?”
“Always peones.”
“And if I cannot find a peon to ask?” Hi said.
“Bad, bad,” Anton said. “A difficult way. Not for some kilometres. But keep north through the path through the forest; see?”
“Anselmo is north from the pass,” the girl said.
“I’ll find it,” Hi said.
“Si, si, you will find it. It is narrow road in the forest; but to the left. Then you get out of the forest you will see.”
Hi was well used to finding his way on the downs; he had plenty of confidence in himself. “I’ll find it,” he repeated. “But one thing more; if any people stop me, may I say that I come from you?”
“They will see that you come from us.”
“How?”
“The brand,” Anton said, pointing to two wavy marks, one above the other, on the horse’s quarter.
“Thank you again,” Hi said, “for all that you have done for me.”
“Good luck,” the girl said.
“Come tell us how you got on,” Anton said.
“I will, indeed, if I may. Thank you.”
His horse was one of the rather small, sturdy, savannah ranch horses, bred in the uplands from the descendants of the conquerors’ mares by the stallions imported from England. He was dark, wise and full of go.
“Will he buck?” Hi asked.
“If you meet a tiger.”
“If a pig, he kick; so you know,” the girl said.
“Right. Thanks. Good-bye.”
“Con Dios.”
The horse was as eager to be gone as Hi to go. He sailed sideways down the avenue. Just as he turned into the thicket, Hi looked back to wave to his friends; they waved back to him. In two seconds more they were out of sight; he was riding through forest that was all dropping dew and trailing mist.
“I am really off at last,” he thought. “Twenty-four hours late in starting and twice as far from Anselmo as I was.”
The mist strayed itself out into clearness and the tops of the trees began to glitter as the sun rose higher. Little birds came flying just in front of him, as though to show their speed. Their cries, as they flew, sounded as though each bird were calling to “go it.” “I’ll go it fast enough,” he said.
For a long time he heard no other noise than the cries of these birds and the drumming of the feet of the horse. As he went on, he caught another noise, which at first he thought must be the wind in the tree-tops. Then, as it grew louder, he recognised it as the noise of water. He came round a curve upon a scene so beautiful that it made him pull up.
He came unexpectedly upon a ravine or gash in the hill. Close to him, on his left side, the hill, which had always been steep, changed suddenly to crag, over which a brook was falling in white, delaying mists, for some seven hundred feet. At the foot of the fall some long distant collapse had made an undercliff, nearly flat, across which the water loitered in a broad shallow rock basin, till it reached another fall. What he had been hearing was the noise of the falls.
As the ravine and pool made a wide open space, all the hillside in front of him was in such light that he could see, for the first time, what colour can be. The timber grew to great heights beyond the pool, but all the timber down the glade was heaped and piled with a pouring fire of creeper in blossom. A white flowered creeper had piled itself like snow even to the tops of the green-hearts, and fell thence in streamers and banners.
All the crags, as well as the rocks of the pool, were of a pale blue colour, like lapis lazuli. Mists from the falling water made rainbows all down the cliff. White birds cruised among the rainbows and changed colour in them.
He saw all this in a few seconds of admiration. Then he saw that the broad shallow pool was peopled by a priesthood, in rosy mantles, moving with an exquisite peace along the water. The leading priest rose into the air silently and gracefully; the others followed, till all the flight were moving away, more like flowers or thoughts or dreams than birds. He watched them till their effortless wings drooped them to some lower pool out of sight. “Those are the rosy ibises,” he thought.
“Damned pretty birds,” his father had said, “only you don’t often get a shot at them.”
He rode through the pool to the rising trail beyond; soon he was in the gloom again, winding up into the hills among forest. “I must be near the big dry pan or valley,” he thought. “I hope I haven’t gone wrong.”
Almost as he uttered the thought the thickets thinned to an undergrowth in blossom noisy with bees. A few yards more brought him out to the “very big dry” of the savannah, which was unlike anything ever seen by him.
His first thought was that it was the crater of a volcano or the bed of a lake, perhaps twenty miles long by seven broad. It may well have been both, in turn. Now it was an expanse of grass ringed by hills. Some eagles were cruising over it; their majesty suited the vastness of the expanse. The emptiness and the freedom of the vastness made Hi catch his breath. He was the king of that space; there was nothing there but wind and grass, with clumps of tussock-grass standing out here and there.
He did not take it all in at once; then he thought, “I was to meet peones here, who will set me on my way. I see no peones.”
A searching of the distance showed him, far off, some specks, some white, some dark. “Those are the herds,” he thought. “And the peones are with them. How those white cattle shine in the sun. But they are all miles away from here. There is none near me.
“But what was it that they said I was to look for? I was to go ‘north-west across it to a hole, snap, so,’ ten miles away. Well, let’s have a look. That will be north-west, roughly. And there, by George, is a sort of snap in the hills, as though they were cut or broken. That is the pass he means; that is my way. So let us forward for there. But what a place, what a land, what a life.”
It was a good enough life for a man, to ride that expanse on a horse worthy of such going. The horse felt the stir of that freedom. Hi felt him kindle beneath him into the tireless stride of the horse of the savannah. As he went, his hoofs drummed up myriads of glittering green beetles which whirled about them and flew with them, sometimes settling on horse or man, then whirling on again, now with shrillness, now with droning, till the noise they made was the ride itself set to music. “I shall save her,” he sang to the music, “I shall save Carlotta. And she will marry her man, of course, but all the same I shall have done that; and we shall be friends of a special sort all our lives. It will be something that nobody else will have.”
He kept headed for the pass, but his eyes roved the land for a peon. Soon he was startled by the light on the distance to his left; he had seen nothing like it. All the things in that southern distance became so distinct that he felt that he was looking at them through a telescope. At the same time, the calls of the peones, the beating of their horses’ hoofs, and the movings of the cattle came to him from across the miles of the savannah. “It is odd that things should be so clear,” he thought. “I should say it means rain.” The tops of the southern hills brightened till they seemed to spout flames into the sky. These flames soon changed into streamers of cirrus, less fiery than copper-coloured, with rose half-way up the heavens. “It is just as though the sky were feeling bilious,” he thought. With this change in the heavens, a change came into the air and into the horse; all the delight of the going went; the beetles gave up their play. Presently the copper-colour darkened along the hilltops to something like the smoke of a burning.
“It’s going to be a storm,” Hi thought. “I’d be just as well in the cover of the pass before it breaks. Come up, horse.”
The horse made it clear that he was uneasy about something, or was in some way feeling Hi’s uneasiness. He had become nervy and on edge in a way which Hi could not explain. He himself felt nervy, but the restlessness of his horse frightened him. “I believe he smells some wild beast or snakes,” Hi thought; but he could see neither; there seemed to be no creatures on that llano save some beasts like tailless rats and a few birds which piped and fled. The edge of the clouds tattered out into rags which soon laid hold of the sun so that all the joy died from the scene.
“We’re in for a storm and a half,” Hi thought, “one of those electrical storms my father was always gassing about.” He took a look to his left, where now the darkness had blotted out the line of the hills, then he took a look to his right, where the hills stood in a glow which made them look like hills in hell. Straight ahead was the gash or pass by which he was to descend. He could see no cattle nor peones there. “Perhaps they are in the pass,” he thought, “in some ranch or corral there. But I hope they are, for then I may find some shelter.”
The air had long since lost its zest. It was flat yet heavy, though both Hi and the horse were sweating, there was a feeling of death being present, which suggested cold; all kinds of evil seemed about to happen. Waifs and strays of thought came into Hi’s mind and went out of it; he felt that he could not concentrate upon any one of them. A few drops of rain splashed down, like florins and half-crowns, with a rattle on the tough grass.
He had made an effort to be in the pass before the storm broke. He reached it in time but, being there, he found it grim enough. It was a gash, between two cliffs of rotten rock, which curved round into a grimmer gash, all black with a grove of vast trees. “Better under the trees than in the open,” he thought, so he turned towards the cover. The noise of the hoofs upon the stones made echoes like the smacking of nails into a coffin. “That’s got you, that’s got you,” the smacking seemed to say, “that’s got you.” He stopped the horse, so that the echoes might stop. Looking back at the crater over which he had ridden, he found that he could see little save a greyness out of which came a sighing. All the place seemed to moan at him with a moan of despair, that sounded like, “Oh, it’s got us at last.” Out of the greyness a coldness came suddenly from the icefields on the mountain. Then the great grassy expanse disappeared from view. The storm, sweeping up, shut out the world. “Very little more,” he thought, “and I should have been caught in the open.” Suddenly streaks of greyness ran like men along the ground and struck flashes with their feet. “By George, it’s rain,” he said; “it’s all rain. This is rain indeed.”
On the instant, the greyness sighed into a hissing, hissed into a rushing, and rushed into a roaring. It sucked up all the last of the savannah, surged over the mouth of the pass, beat Hi breathless and engulfed him, in a roaring of pouring, as though a river were falling. Hi felt that he was freezing and that everything else had turned to water: he was in water and under water, the air he breathed was water: the earth his horse stood on was running water. Thunder sounded not far off: he could not see the lightning, but remembered his father’s stories of iron outcrops in the rocks near the Meruel border, which seemed to “attract” any lightning there might be. He did not know whether iron outcrops could “attract” lightning; probably it was one of his father’s insane theories, but it might be the fact, in which case he was near the Meruel border, and might be standing on the magazine waiting for the spark. The thought of trying to push on, through the rain, did not enter his head: he could not see twenty yards in any direction.
The violence of the rain lasted for some two hours, after which it relented to a downpour not worse than that of steady rain in England. When once it had relented thus, it steadied, as though it would never cease: it was this steadiness which daunted Hi. “It’s raining like an eight-day clock,” Hi thought. “It might keep on at this pace for days.” He sought to the thickest cover that he could find and hoped for the best. In another hour, the heavens descended on him, so that while water streamed from heaven and forest, the air was a greyness of melting and moving cloud. All the forest was alive with the rushings, the laughters and the forebodings of rain falling or being shaken: sometimes it came at him like the footsteps of enemies, sometimes like lamentings, anon with a crackle as though a pack were afoot. “The horse would take me out of this,” he thought, “but he would take me straight back to the estancia, so that I should have to start again. I’d better wait here. After all, if it rains like this it must rain itself out before long: no clouds could stand it. I wonder where all the cloud can come from. As soon as this mist or cloud or fog goes, I’ll push on.”
Having made his plan, he stuck to it: the cloud seemed to do the same; it did not go: it even increased till the earth seemed melting and the air liquid. “Golly,” Hi thought, “this cloud isn’t going to go. I may be here for days.” He reckoned that he had been there already for some hours. “I must find some browsing for the horse.”
This the horse found without going far from where they were: he led the way to some shrubs, which he ate with relish. “I hope he knows what is good for him,” Hi thought, “for I don’t.”
He secured the horse from straying: then he sought about for a shelter from this never-ceasing drip: there was no shelter in sight. “Probably there isn’t one anywhere,” he thought, shuddering. “I shall be here for the day and night, and goodness knows how much longer besides.”
He had come back to his horse, partly from fear of losing him, partly for his company, when the greyness dimmed to a greater density, so that he could not see his outstretched hand. In this dimness an eternity passed. The rain continued unabated. He contrived to tend the horse, and to give him some of the corn which Anton had provided; later, when he had watered him, he contrived to tether him securely near the bushes where he could browse. After this he himself ate, very sparingly, of the food which Anton had given. When he had supped, it was dark: the night had fallen. Hi made himself a nest of unease in the edible bush, which smelt like his mother’s tooth-powder. Lying on a mess of trampled boughs, which kept him off the mud, he crouched himself into a ball till something like warmth came into him; then he even slept a little, in starts and nightmares, from which he would leap up, terrified that the horse had gone.
This was his second night upon the road to fetch Don Manuel. At about the time when he lay down upon his boughs Ezekiel Rust, dead beat, pulled up somewhere in sight of the lights of San Jacinto city, at the other end of the Central Province. Out there in the barrens, the old man was comforting his horse, before lying down in the sage with a rope round him to keep off the snakes. He had had such a ride as he had never dreamed of; but being soft to the saddle, after some years in a town, he could go no further without a rest.