“Hey, chum,” the man called. “Hold on a minute. Wait for me a moment.”
Possibly he began to suspect suddenly: at any rate, he snapped-to the breech of his rifle, rose, and began to walk steadily towards Hi.
“I’m just finishing,” Hi called. “I’m sure it must be more than you make it. I make it 127 paces.” He turned to see where the man was, measured his distance as about fifty yards, and then quietly, as though exploring some ruin at home, turned the corner of the building.
The instant that he was out of sight, he darted across the end of the temple into cover: he forced his way through the scrub, ducked well down into it so as to be hidden, and ran downhill as he had never run. He had gone perhaps seventy yards, head down and arms across eyes against the thorns, when something hard took him across the leg, just below the knee, so that he fell headlong violently into a thicket. It was a severe fall, which knocked all the breath out of him. He came to himself with a pain in his leg. “I’ve been shot,” he thought, “shot and hit in the leg.”
Up above him on the plateau of the temple, he heard Letcombe-Bassett call: “Chum. Heya, chum. Are you there, chum?” He heard him probe at some of the near-by cover, seemingly with the barrel of his rifle. “I’ve not been shot,” Hi thought, “I fell over a snag.” He dared not stir a muscle, he hardly dared to breathe: Letcombe-Bassett seemed so near, almost looking down upon him.
“Sing out, chum,” Letcombe-Bassett called. “Where have you got to? Answer.” He listened for an answer, and, having none, muttered a curse.
“You needn’t pretend that you can’t hear me,” he called again. “You’re within a few yards: so answer: don’t play the giddy goat.”
Hi’s heart was thumping in his throat, yet he smiled at this order, it was so like the call of a cross seeker, in hide and seek, in the shrubs at Tencombe, bidding the hiders to call “Cuckoo again.”
“Now cheese it, chum: come off with this kidding: where are you? Cut this right out.”
There was a pause after this, while Letcombe-Bassett listened, not so much for an answer, as for some sound, which would show him where Hi was. Hi kept still as a stone, which was not easy, for he had fallen into an uneasy posture, in a thicket which was the breeding or roosting place of minute scarlet midges. These things surveyed him for a few seconds, then, having decided that he would be good to eat, they settled upon him. There were perhaps fifty of them, each with the theory that the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat. Their bite was by far sharper than the bite of the spotted-winged marsh-midge at home. But far worse than the bite was the pertinacity with which they thrust down his neck, into his ears, up his nostrils, or down to the roots of his hair, before they bit. Hi longed to beat them from him and scratch as he had never scratched. Letcombe-Bassett listened, making no sound.
“Chuck it, chum,” he called at last. “I know you’re there. You won’t kid this nigger: I’m not that sort. You’d better come out. If I come in to fetch you, you’ll sing a different song, my lad.”
Seeing that threats had as little effect as persuasion, he tried again, with an appeal to reason. “Look here, kid,” he said, “I’m only speaking for your own good. You’ll never find your way out of this. You’ll get bushed to a dead cert, just as you were before. And if you get bushed in this part, God help you. There’ll be no kind white man to give you chow; don’t think it. If a snake doesn’t do you, a tiger will. Or if a woods Indian finds you, he’ll eat you: to say nothing of the fever. Come on out of it, like a sensible kid and turn-to at the temple. . . .
“If you think I’m not offering you enough, you’ve only to say the word. I’ll go you an honest half, share and share alike, in all we find: I can’t say squarer. I wouldn’t do it for many people; but I like you, because you’ve got guts, and so I tell you straight.”
“That’s why Doll Tearsheet loved Falstaff,” Hi thought, not stirring. “An odd taste, but love is blind. What will be his next move?” Letcombe-Bassett paused to consider and to listen.
“All right, chum,” he called at last. “I’ll remember this. You needn’t pretend to me that you’ve got clear away. I’m not so easily fooled as you may think. You’re within earshot and very well within range; kindly remember that. Are you going to come along and bear a hand?” He waited for ten seconds for an answer, then said,
“I’ll give you while I count seven: if you don’t come before then, I’ll come in and fetch you. I know where you are. As a matter of fact I can see you from here.” This was thrilling hearing, though Hi believed (and earnestly hoped) that it was not true. The man gave it a few seconds to work upon his victim’s mind; then he began to count.
“Very well, then: while I count seven. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. This is your last chance, I warn you straight. Are you coming? Very well, then. . . . Seven. I think I may promise you that you’ll regret this, my young friend. You’re within easy shot-gun range, and I’ll walk you up like I’d walk up partridges. I gave you a square deal, but you asked for trouble. Don’t blame me, if you get it.”
At that instant, from somewhere in the forest, perhaps thirty yards from where Hi had entered it, a piece of a dead bough fell to the ground, with a noise which to Hi was exactly that of one slipping on wet earth and recovering. To Letcombe-Bassett it gave a much-desired clue.
“Right,” he called. “Thank you for telling me where you are; now we’ll see. My Indians say you stink. You’ll stink worse before I’ve done with you, my young whelp.”
At this he burst into cover in the direction of the fallen bough; but as the jungle happened to be thick there, he gave it up, went back into the open, cast about for Hi’s marks, and re-entered at the very place where Hi had entered. When once within the scrub, he seemed to neglect tracks and again tried to force a passage to where the bough had fallen. He beat the cover as he went. It was all dry, feathery, fronded cover, sweetly smelling when crushed, but abounding in scarlet midges. Hi heard him slap at his cheeks and curse: he himself felt that he was being eaten alive, yet he could not stir.
“All right,” the man called. “Don’t think I’ve done with you. You’ve not done me yet. Since I know you’re not over here, I know you must be over there; and when I get you, you’ll get the kibosh put on all this poppycock; you wait.”
The man cast back along the fringe of the cover, beating it, as far as Hi could judge, with care. The wood there was all sage-green sari-sari plants, easy to thrust through but confusing to see in, as the fern-like shoots grew thick to the ground. When he had made a cast of about sixty yards, he turned, to make a cast back, a little further into the wood. Hi heard him come nearer.
“The brute,” Hi thought, “he knows something about hunting; he’ll cast to and fro like a shuttle till he lands right on to me. My only chance will be to trip him and try to bag his gun.”
The man came slowly back, searching: Hi heard him kick at the undergrowth, shake aside boughs, slap at the midges, and whistle between his teeth. Sometimes he sang, in a voice no bigger than a hum, the first line of a song:
“There were three flies; three merry, merry flies.”
He would stop here, as though he knew no more of the words, hum through the tune, or whistle it, in a groom’s whistle, between his teeth, and then sing the refrain: “Whack fol lol tiddly ido.” All the time, he was drawing nearer, beating the cover; presently he was at the end of his beat, and turning to beat back a little further into the forest. “I’m sixty or seventy yards into the forest from the clearing,” Hi reckoned. “He has gone roughly through half of that. Now he’s getting really near, and this time he may see me.”
The man seemed to think that he was drawing near to the quarry. “Do you hear?” he called, “you’re not dealing with anybody; you’re dealing with me. I don’t give up when I begin a thing: I do it. This cast or the next you’ll be sorry, my little sucking swine.” He came back, upon his new line, beating as before, and muttering to himself: “Oh, not in there? No, but not far off and not much longer. Damn these flies. If I’d a dog I’d damn soon flush this puppy. Come on out of it, you young swine. My good golly, I’ll take your pelt off in return for all these midges: so much I’ll promise you.”
He came slowly along, drawing nearer to Hi. He seemed to take hours over each few yards of ground. Hi understood now how it comes to pass that hunted men, with prices on their heads, will sometimes give themselves up. He had not come to that point yet, but it was no longer out of his thought. The man came near to Hi, passed him, still muttering, beating and singing, and so slowly went to the end of his beat.
“Now for it,” Hi thought. With the utmost care he moved his hand, so as to smear it, for one delicious instant, over his face: it was the only relief possible: the next instant, he heard the man turn and come swiftly straight towards him. Could he have heard or seen him moving?
“That’s where you are, is it, my cock,” the man called. “Right you are.”
Hi was tempted to leap and run for it. The words went through him like shots; but he gripped himself, and said, “No, this man deals in bluff; he’s bluffing now to make me stir.” He lay still, while the man came straight towards him. There was no song of the flies now, he was walking with some fixed intention as though to a mark. He stopped at about nine yards from where Hi lay. Hi could see both his leggings and boots.
“Now then,” the man said. “Now then, my sucking dove; you’re somewhere just about here. I know you must be. I’m quite content to stay here all day, waiting till you squeal. I’ve done as much for a rabbit I’d got no quarrel against. I’d do more for you, let me tell you. You won’t tire me, when I’m fixed on a thing. Are you going to surrender and ask my pardon? Well, if you won’t answer, you’re wise; for you’re going to get a bullet in your guts before you’re much older: you can save your breath to squeal with.”
He came two paces nearer through the scrub. Hi could see the fronds of the talpas moving above him as he forced his way through. Just beyond the talpas was a space of earth littered with yellow fungus. “When the beast comes on to that,” Hi thought, “he’ll be bound to see me; he must see me.”
The man wrestled through the talpas on to the bare space and kicked the fungus aside. “Yellow stink-horn,” he said. He was within six feet of Hi; he had only to stoop to see him.
Then at that instant, with a sudden startling leap, somewhere to the right of the man and behind Hi, something big arose in the cover and ran for it. The man was prepared for a jump of the sort: he leaped to one side with a cry: “Ah, there you go. So you think you’ll try that.” Hi saw him clearly for an instant, standing tense, trying to see the leaping thing, whatever it was. Then, as he could not see, he leaped into the covert after it, shouting, “Stop, or I’ll plug you.” Two yards further on, he may have had a glimpse of a quarry, for he fired, jerked out the shell, snapped in a second shell and fired again, quicker than Hi had thought possible. Hi heard him mutter: “Got him. That touched him where he lived; but I’ve got to get to him, to make sure.”
The man stood for an instant, trying to see. “He’s down,” he muttered. “Or is he down?” The noise still came to them of something moving: perhaps after all he hadn’t got him. Hi heard him jerk out the shell and snap in another. “Well, I’ll soon make sure,” he muttered. “It wasn’t a bad shot for nine-tenths guess-work, if I did get him. I’d have given something to have seen him cop the spike. These stinking kids think themselves someone at school: then they come here as though the earth belonged to them: they have to learn what they amount to.”
He moved away into the wood. Hi heard him there beating shrubs at about a hundred yards from him. At that distance he was not likely to hear small movements in the bush; Hi was able to change his position to a thicker patch of scrub and to deal with the midges. After an hour of searching, Letcombe-Bassett became silent. “He’s resting,” Hi thought, “or waiting for some sign. He thinks that if I’m alive I shall think that he is gone and get up to go; while, if I am dead, the carrion-birds or those beastly ‘betes-puants’ will show where I am.”
Letcombe-Bassett was in fact waiting for just those reasons. He had nothing better to do: he enjoyed snap-shooting and would gladly wait all day for a shot: he had besides found cause to believe that Hi had not budged. Presently, he came nearer to Hi and called, “All right, son, my Indios will be here at twelve with chow. We’ll see how you feel with some Indio trackers after you.” This was the last threat for the time: after this he came slowly up the hill, kicking or beating at some patches, though not searching them as on his way down. He passed within fifteen yards of Hi, somewhere out of sight in the talpas and sari-sari. In a few minutes, Hi heard him burst through a patch of crackle into the clearing.
“He’s going to wait for the Indian trackers,” Hi thought. “Or is that just a ruse of his? I wonder how long it is to twelve.”
XVII
Hereckoned that he had breakfasted before seven, and had been at the ruin before nine: perhaps it was eleven now. Almost at once, he heard the chant of Indians and the drone of a pipe coming towards the clearing. “My luck is out again,” he thought. “Here are the Indians: this is where I shall stop, then.” He heard Letcombe-Bassett hail the Indians: he was still close to, at the edge of the clearing. Hi could hear the goobies clatter as the men trotted across to him. He heard the man address them, explaining what he wished them to do; and the grunting of the Indians as they understood and assented.
He was tempted to rise and run; but the memory of the swiftness of the man’s shooting held him back. “He would have half a dozen shots in the first half minute,” he thought, “and then the Indians would run me down. I’ve no chance that way; but this way I may get one bang at an Indian, if not at him.” He squirmed down into his patch, while the man led the Indians to the spot where he had entered cover some hours before. “Leu-in, hounds, eleu, ed-hoick,” the man called. The Indians came into cover, just like hounds, and began to cast, with little cries and ejaculations, like the whimper of hounds, feathering yet not quite owning to it. “Ed-hoick,” the man called. “Yooi, pash him up. Hoik to Chaunter: hoik. Hoik to Dowsabel. Yooi, yooi, yooi; fetch him out.”
“We all know you’ve been terrier-boy to the North Surrey,” Hi thought with bitterness. “You need not advertise the fact.”
The hounds came eastwards in a very wide cast. “It’s a drive,” Hi thought. “They’re going to make a semi-circle, and drive me up to the gun. He’s going to stay in the clearing, to pot me when I break.”
He had not time to consider the matter, for the Indians were moving swiftly to him, some above him, some below, and one straight for him. They were on the work they did best in the world. They were doing it with enjoyment, with little quick cries, one to another. “No power on earth can stop that Indian from seeing me,” Hi thought. “He’s coming straight for me.” In an instant the Indian had thrust aside the scrub, so that Hi saw him plainly. He was a short, squat, plump young Indian brave, in a cotton shirt; he had long black hair sleeked down with fat; he had a gold half-moon in his nose; he carried a spear, and bore a blow-pipe on his back. Their eyes met. Hi had never seen him before, that he could remember. He was a broad-faced, high-cheek-boned man, with hardly any nose, like most of the tribe. He looked at Hi and Hi at him for one marvellous second, in which they understood each other. So will a man and dog meet, understand and pass on, with no word said, yet the dog wagging his tail. The Indian smiled and passed on, and Hi knew that it was all right.
The little quick cries became a little louder, that was all, some sort of a message passed down the line, to let the Indians know.
Presently the Indians moved up into the clearing to report that the white man had escaped.
Their going was like the lifting of the cloud at the passing of the line-squall. Hi knew that there had been an overwhelming change in his fortunes, brought about by no merit of his own, but by something fortunate that happened. He had been upon the rack for hours: now he was suddenly free. He cleared his face and hands of midges, though their bites no longer seemed to matter. He rolled over, with a sigh of delight at being alive, and fell asleep.
Sometimes in childhood he had dreamed a recurring dream, of a most beautiful grave spirit of a woman, whom he knew as his “Elder Sister Ruth.” In his dreams, this spirit sometimes came to his bed, looked at him with eyes so beautiful that it was hard not to wake, and then, sometimes, some blessed times, took him by the hand and led him into the air, through the window and away, over the tree-tops, to strange lands, or to the stars. Even if such dreams were broken they were a joy to him: when they were not broken he thought of them for days.
He had not dreamed of Ruth for years; indeed, he had seldom thought of her since his going to his prep. school; but now he dreamed of her: she was there, that heavenly spirit, calling him “Christopher,” her name for him, just as she had called him, for the first time, in that night-nursery at Tencombe, in the nook where his cot was, when he had wakened (as he thought) to see her beside him, lit by the flicker from the fire. It was such joy to see her there, after those days of friendlessness, that the tears streamed down his face. He knew that it had been hard for her to come to him, and that it was hard for her to speak; yet what use were words, she understood.
For a moment he lay still in his happiness; then, thinking that he had not seen her for years, he gazed at her, and found that she had not changed; but that he could see more in her face than in the past. She had a calmness and wisdom of beauty that was not subject to change: all peace, courage, goodness and happiness were in her face, and a hope so bright that no danger made a drawback.
All this was joy to him for a moment, until, in his dream, the thought came to him that she only appeared to him in dream; that this was a dream, and that it would fade. She smiled at his thought. “No, it is not a dream,” she said, “look about you.”
Marvelling, he sat up and put out his hand upon the soft grey-green frondage of the sari-sari. That dry, feathery touch was real: that smell of mint and turpentine from the crushed fronds was real. The red-hearts in the glow of the sun were real; so were those little green wrynecks questing their bark for food. On the ground was the broken yellow fungus, and beyond it lay the two brass rifle-shells, with ants examining them. A little gust of wind came down the forest, the sari-sari bowed to it and glistened and dappled, like the grass under the wind on Blowbury. A buck of the forest, delicate and proud, appeared, wide-eyed as a hare, noble as a Persian prince; he scraped with his forefoot and tossed his head in challenge.
“You see, it is real,” Ruth said. “Shall we go on, then? We will set out together: it is not far.”
“O God, Ruth,” he said, “I’ve wanted you. I’ve wanted you.”
She knew that, without his telling: she helped him to his feet. The light became more glorious than he had ever known it: all the leaves upon the trees seemed to be edged with fire. The light upon Ruth’s face came from the beauty of her spirit: he knew that. This other beauty was a part of the happiness which she brought.
Instantly they set out through the forest side by side, so easily that they seemed to be moving upon the wind: the boughs gave way before them: they passed the hawk in her ravine and the wild-cat in his range: the deer gazed at them, but were not startled. In a glade of grass where a brook ran Ruth stopped him, because, in the brook, was a nest full of the eggs of a waterfowl, and in the grass were little blue mitai berries, known as the berries of our Lady from being ripe near Lady Day: of these he ate and took store.
After this they came to a jut of earth on which a dead tree stood with its roots exposed. Many mice in their holes here watched him with little bright eyes. At the foot of the jut was a shrub with hard, thick, dark-green leaves, and a rough bark, seamed with fibres like veins, as fragrant as incense from creamy gum.
“Put this cream upon your face and hands,” Ruth said, “then you will not feel the bites of the insects.”
He smeared himself as he was bidden and instantly the burning in his skin was soothed. He saw Ruth gravely considering him with eyes so beautiful that he felt that he could not bear their gaze.
“Will you be always with me?” he asked.
“Always.”
“Oh,” he said, “if you would help me to save Carlotta, who is in danger and trusting to me.”
“She is in no danger,” Ruth said, “but the trumpets are calling.”
As in a dream, the words “the trumpets are calling” seemed fraught with meanings from beyond the world. He gazed at Ruth, as though by gazing he would come to a knowledge of the truth. He saw, as it were darkly, a confusion of men doing terrible things to each other while the trumpeters blew. Then all this cleared away, he beheld nothing but Carlotta in white, looking upward, with a look of happiness such as he had never seen, save on Ruth’s face. Behind her, he saw the pinnacles of a church, glittering, as he thought, from the light catching the crockets, until he saw that the glittering was from winged spirits exulting in such beauty.
“It is not as man thinks,” Ruth says, “but as God wills.”
He felt the scene merge again into a dimness, so that he could not see, only feel, that he was moving away again, with Ruth near him, over country which would have been difficult but for her presence. She led him through thorns, which he never felt and through waters where she bare him up. Once, after the endless way, he would have sunk, had she not sung to him, as once before at Tencombe, a song so beautiful that it was as though the world were singing. What happened to him in these hours he never knew, save that he was miraculously helped: in a sense, those hours were as though they had not been: in another sense, they were among the intensest hours of his life.
It was after three o’clock in the next afternoon when he came out of the wood into the plain of San Jacinto. The forest ceased, the light became stronger suddenly: then, instead of the waving gloom stabbed with glare, he saw the plain, going on into the north in rolls of freedom: he saw the homes of men and heard the lowing of cattle.
Soon he came to a road running east and west; he turned to the east along it, till, at a wayside cross, he sat down, wondering whether he could go any further: the world seemed to be swaying beneath him and in front of him.
Half an hour later, a horseman hove in sight, closely followed by a three-horsed brake full of men and women, who were singing to a mandoline and a reed-pipe, under an awning of green and white stuff. The rider saluted Hi as he passed, then, being struck by his appearance, which was that of a corpse and a scarecrow combined, pulled up and caused the brake to halt. Some of the men dismounted and asked Hi, in Spanish, what was the matter. A plump and pale young woman, with eyes like big black plums, came down to look at him. Hi heard them decide that he was English and a caballero; but, then came a discussion of the question: how had a caballero gotten into this pickle?
“Where you been?” the girl asked, in English. “In the forest?”
“Yes.”
“Lost?”
“Yes.”
“Ay de mi. For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dios mio. He had been lost in the forest. Regard the mud: see also the thorn-marks and the bitings of bichos.”
“Always some are lost in the forest: they go blind, then they go mad. They will drink fire, thinking it water.”
“Remember that man of Matoche: he who had nothing but a book.”
“Also that other: the Americano: for whom some Americana must still mourn. He had her locket, the poor man.”
“And this is but a boy and a caballero.”
“Yes, and very gentle,” the girl said. “His manners are so modest.”
She turned to Hi, and spoke again in English. “You go San Marco?” she asked. “We take you to San Marco?”
“Is that near Anselmo?”
“Near where?”
“Anselmo.”
This the girl did not know: she repeated it among her friends, who all seemed puzzled. Then one man said:
“Anselmo?”
“Si,” Hi repeated. “Anselmo.”
“Si,” the man said, with a swift jabber of assent and explanation to the company. “Anselmo.” He seemed to add that it could be reached through San Marco.
“Yes,” the girl called, “you get Anselmo there.”
“I’m not very tidy for riding with you,” Hi said, shewing the wreck of his clothes, torn in forty places and mired to the throat.
“That doesn’t matter,” the girl said. “Can you climb up?”
He could not climb up; he found that he could hardly stand. The girl and one of the men helped to steady him on his feet; then the men in the brake got hold of him and heaved him in, with cries of:
“Welcome the stranger.”
“Since thou mayst be Jesus, welcome: yet if thou beest not, welcome.”
The girl, who had spoken English, made room for him beside her, and as the brake drove on, she put her arm round him and called him, “My dear.” She had been drinking a little, but she was a very good young woman.
“I talk English, my dear; I love the English: some of them, what? We had two English in our house. Mr. and Mrs. Watson; do you know them? To-day, we been to a wedding.”
Here one of the musicians handed her a wicker-covered blue glass liqueur-bottle with a tin measure which could be screwed over the stopper.
“Isn’t Paco dreadful?” she said. “First we had wine: then we had brandy: now he’s going to give us all the Milk of Venus. We shall all be drunk, Paco.”
“No, no, not for you,” Paco said. “But for the Englishman.” They gave Hi a swig of the Milk of Venus, which revived him wonderfully: then they took swigs of it themselves till it was all gone: then they threw the bottle at Uncle Philip (as they called the rider), hit his horse on the crupper and made him buck. The plump young woman was very kind; she put her arm a good deal more tightly round Hi and said that she did love stars.
“You know, stars in the evening: they’re so like angels.”
Hi said that she was like an angel.
“A bit fallen angel; I don’t think: what?” she said.
A man with a mahogany-coloured face, “rather like a frog,” Hi thought, since his eyes turned up and his face was all going to throat, began to sing a doleful ballad, with a chorus in which all joined. As all felt better after this, one of the other men sang a song which went with great spirit, though it made the ladies blush. As he was pleased with its reception, he sang all the blushing parts of it a second time. Then the frog man produced a bag from under the seat: it contained three small bottles with brightly coloured labels showing ladies of a free disposition. The labels were printed with the words: “Smiles of the Muses.” There was much applause in the brake when they appeared.
“Ha. Smiles of the Muses. Three bottles.”
“Ha, the good Hernando, who knows what is good.”
“Always the good Smiles of the Muses, to drive away care and settle what went before.”
The brake pulled up by the wayside, so that no Smile might be spilled. The good Hernando dispensed something like a quarter of a bottle to each of the company. It was a syrup or cordial, about as thick as olive oil. It smelt, when opened, of all the flowers of heaven. At a first taste it reminded one of strawberries and of honey: then it warmed the throat: then, as it trickled along, it made a feeling glow all the way down.
When the brake drove on again, the mandoline struck up a Smile of the Muse: the reed-pipe piped to it and the company sang. The song had not much body to it, being indeed a catch about the eyes of a lady being as lovely as stars. It went on, during some miles of the way, till in the dusk of the evening the brake halted in San Marco, which was a town of six farms and a chapel.
Here, as weary as Hi was, he noticed that something had happened: someone had come in with news which brought all the town out of doors. When the news reached the wedding party, it changed their tone. The younger men hurried off to the group about the messenger, who stood on the chapel steps answering questions. The frog-faced man, the good Hernando, helped Hi down from the brake. Uncle Philip and the girl urged him to enter a lime-washed farm-house, with a smell of wine-press about it near which the brake had stopped. Hi was so dizzy with fatigue that he hardly knew what he was doing, yet he shrank from bringing his filthy state into a clean home.
“You come to the harness-room,” Uncle Philip said, through the girl, “for a bath, and to get out the thorns and jiggers.”
They brought him a half-cask and hot water: after his bathe they gave him a clean cotton sleeping suit and a bed with Christian sheets. They brought broth to him, when he was in bed, but he was asleep before it came: he slept for fifteen hours.
In the afternoon of the next day, when he woke, he found his clothes washed and mended. Uncle Philip and the girl brought him a coat, a sombrero and a pair of new shoes, which they pressed him to accept with a grace and sweetness of welcome which moved him almost to tears. “Guests come from God,” they said.
“Hosts, too,” he thought.
“If I ever can,” he said, “I will bring these things back: be sure. I can never, never thank you enough.”
When he had dressed, he came to the girl.
“What has happened?” he asked. “I’ve been lost for a week. What has happened in the country?”
“There is war,” she said.
“In Santa Barbara city?”
“We do not hear of the city, save once in the week, when the ore-train returns with the empty trucks. No; but one from the west came here yesterday to call us to war. There are thousands, he said, marching to Santa Barbara.”
“What for?”
“For our religion, so he said.”
“Is that Don Manuel?” Hi asked. “Is it Don Manuel’s army that is marching?”
“I do not know. It will be some army.”
“Where it is?” Hi asked. “Do you happen to know where it is?”
“It was near here, within a short ride, yesterday,” she said, “going to Anselmo, the place you asked about.”
“That is it,” he said. “If the army comes from the west and is marching east it must be Don Manuel’s army, going to save Carlotta. Is it a White army?”
“Yes.”
“Thank heaven,” he said, “Ezekiel Rust got through. You do not know, do you, whether the Reds have harmed one Señorita de Leyva?”
“No.”
“I suppose all the people here have gone to the army?”
“No,” the girl said. “One or two have gone.”
“Aren’t you Whites here? Are you Reds?”
“We have the work to do: it is the people in cities who have these quarrels.”
“But in this quarrel,” he said, “surely everyone must join.”
“The work has to be done. If these city people worked, they would not have the time to quarrel.”
“Oh, wouldn’t they,” he said, “that’s all you know of men. But, look here, how can I get to Anselmo?”
“You are not going to fight?”
“I’ve been trusted with a message to Don Manuel. If he is to be at Anselmo, I must try to get there to meet him. You’re sure it is Anselmo?”
“The men from here went there last night.”
“And how can I get there?”
“The ore-train to Piedras Blancas, going to-night,” she said, “would take you to within ten miles of it, so Hernando says.”
“Could I go in that?”
“Uncle Philip will speak to the engine driver.”
“Oh, thank you. At what time would the train reach the place within ten miles of Anselmo?”
“Who knows, with a thing so dangerous as a train? Perhaps at midnight: perhaps at dawn. Sometimes it is two days.”
“Good heaven. Is the engine-driver likely to refuse to take me?”
“Hernando says that soldiers were searching the line yesterday.”
“What soldiers?”
“Red soldiers: State soldiers from Meruel. They were looking to see if the Whites were coming by train.”
“Has there been any battle yet?”
“We have heard of none. They expected none till they are close to the city.”
“Thank heaven,” Hi said, “perhaps I shall be with them in time, after all. And, oh, will you ask your Uncle Philip to beseech the engine-driver to take me? Say it’s very, very important: for a woman’s life may depend on it.”
“He ask all right.”
“Suppose he refuse,” Hi said.
“He not refuse, unless he got soldiers with him. But Hernando says they may explode the line to stop the soldiers.”
However, at eight that evening, when the engine-driver took Hi as a passenger, the line had not been exploded and no news had come of a battle. The engine-driver was a Scot from Lanark, who had seen a detachment of the Western army away in the west two days before. “They came to the siding at Zamorra,” he said, “to lift the oats stored there for the teams. Their captain was with them, a very big man, fierce-looking, with fine hands. What’s this, they call him? Manuel.”
“Yes, Manuel.”
“The damned marauding son of a gun will get his neck in a noose before he’s much older.”
“Will he?” Hi asked. “He has the right on his side.”
“Be damned to the right on his side. He’s setting up a civil war here, because he don’t like the laws of the opposition. Yon’s a damned precedent. However, he’ll be soon hanged and his moss-troopers the same. Now get in, lad, to your nest: she’s starting.”
Hi leaned out to shake hands with the girl, Uncle Philip and Hernando, who had come to see him off. He thanked them again and again.
“If you come these way again,” the girl said, “you look us up, what?”
“That indeed I will do,” Hi said. “And I wish I could thank you or repay you.”
The train’s jerk at starting flung him from his farewells into his nest among the ore, where he passed this the last night of his journey to fetch Don Manuel.
XVIII
Shortlybefore dawn the next morning the train stopped at the quarry-siding of Piedras Blancas, where the cooks of a squadron of Meruel Reds were preparing broth and maté with water from the railway tanks.
“There you are, lad,” the driver said, as he bade Hi good-bye. “Here’s a wheen good law-and-order men to give yon marauding Manuel his paiks. More power to ye, sons,” he cried, raising his voice. “And hang yon idolatrous Deeck Turpin on a sour apple-tree.”
On leaving the train, Hi slipped through the crowd of quarry men and soldiers, out of the siding to the road. Men and horses were coming from their billets in the village. The cliff of the quarry loomed out white: the stone dust made the village like moonlight or a flour mill.
Turning rapidly away downhill, he came to a grassy bank, where he breakfasted on food which the girl had provided. As he ate, all that expanse of the plain came into light and colour from the morning: he could see.
There, far away, was Santa Barbara, glittering under a smudge of mist, which hung over the violet of the sea. There, less than half way to the city, was the hill to which he had been struggling all these days. That heave of hill, topped by the church tower, one pinnacle of which was a statue of Our Lady, was the hill of Anselmo, distant. . . . He could not say how far distant it was, in that deceptive light: “Ten miles,” they had said, but it might well be fifteen. “Oh, for a telescope or a pair of glasses,” he said, “then I could see if the White army is there. That is where it must be.”
As he turned towards Anselmo, he heard the sergeants of the Meruel Reds calling the roll at the siding.
“Those fellows are here for no good,” he thought. “I’ll get along to Don Manuel before I am stopped.”
The sun strode up out of the sea to give to the country a beauty, unspeakable to one who had been for a week in the gloom of the forest. To the joy of the light was added a beauty of overwhelming blossom, so great that the soul of the earth seemed to be exulting in the sun.
“I shall reach Don Manuel after all,” he said. “I shall be actually with him when we save Carlotta from the prison. And, oh, thank God, after all, I have helped a little, for Rust has gotten through.”
After an hour and a half of walking, he was so far down into the plain that Anselmo was almost merged in the tree clumps at its base. It seemed to be less than two miles to the tower. The track led through clumps of ilex into groves of timber, among which a brook ran. As he passed into the cover of the ilex, he looked back at the land from which he had come, at the foothills like an advanced guard and the mountains like an army of kings. On the track by which he had come, he saw horsemen coming in twos at a rather quick trot. “There are those soldiers who were at the station,” he thought. “They are coming this way, too. Can they be coming to join Don Manuel?”
Why should they not be? They were State troops, but in civil wars, troops sometimes pass from the State to its rebels. “They can’t be coming to attack him, anyway,” he thought, “for there aren’t a hundred of them, and Don Manuel has thousands, so they said. If Don Manuel be in the village there, they’ll meet their match.”
It came into his mind that if these men were coming to attack, or if Don Manuel, being at Anselmo, came out to attack them, his own position, between the two forces, would be perilous. He therefore hurried through the cover, and pastures beyond to a copse of Turkey-oak which hid all sight of Anselmo hill. As he went, he listened for some sound of Don Manuel’s army, the noise of many hoofs, the call of bugles, the shouting of orders, or even a shot from a picket. As he heard no such sounds he concluded that the army was not there. “Perhaps it has gone on to Santa Barbara,” he thought. “I may be just too late for it, through sleeping too long yesterday.”
Then he thought, “It is more likely that they are all in Anselmo town on the other side of the hill. And more likely still that they haven’t yet reached Anselmo. They’ve been coming a long way on very bad going; they’re bound to have crocked a lot of horses. That’s it, no doubt. I’ve got here before them. In which case, good Lord, those Reds behind me will probably take me prisoner. I’d better hide in this copse till they’ve gone on or shown their hand.”
He had not gone far into the copse of Turkey-oak, when he suddenly found that the further half of the copse was full of soldiers. His first thought was, “Here are the Whites,” but a clearer view showed him that they wore dusty reddish Meruel uniforms such as he had seen at the station at dawn.
“Meruel Reds,” he thought, “I wish I knew which side they are on.”
To hesitate would have looked suspicious: he walked boldly on.
“I shall jolly soon know which side they’re on,” he thought. “They’re Reds. I’ll bet my burial money.”
Those whom he saw were single mounted troopers, each holding three unmounted horses. All were craned forward on their horses’ necks intently watching something that was being done outside the copse towards Anselmo. Beyond these horseholders, some dismounted troopers with carbines at the ready were at the edge of the copse, also intently watching. Two officers who were there staring at Anselmo through glasses, caught sight of Hi. One of them challenged in Spanish and at once moved up to him, to ask who he was, and what he wanted there.
“I am English,” Hi answered, “I am going to Anselmo.”
“What for?” the officer asked, in good English.
“To see George Elena?”
“Who is he?”
“A horse-breeder.”
“What about?”
“To borrow a horse to get back to Santa Barbara.”
“Where do you come from?”
“I’ve been lost in the forest.”
“How?”
“Well, I lost my way.”
“Oh, you lost your way, did you,” the officer said, becoming somewhat harder in his manner. “Why do you wear that coat and hat? you are not a native here. Why are you disguised?”
“My own clothes were ruined in the forest as you can see,” Hi said. “Some kind people at San Marco, where I came out of the forest, gave me these to make up.”
The other officer moved over to them, to ask what his brother had asked.
“So, a sacred pekin,” he said. They talked in Spanish for a moment, with looks at Hi which were not favourable.
“Zubiga,” the elder officer called, to a couple of orderlies, who jumped forward at the order, “Take this man in charge.” Then turning to Hi, he said, “You will stand aside a little. We will see later.”
“Mayn’t I go on to Anselmo?”
“No: sacred pekin, you mayn’t.”
They left him with the orderlies, while they returned towards the edge of the copse to watch what their scouts were doing. “They are sending out spies,” Hi thought. “I’ve come just too late. Don Manuel is up the hill in Anselmo, and if I’d only been here an hour sooner, I’d have joined him before these devils arrived. Now I’m diddled again.”
After some minutes of suspense, the squadron from Piedras Blancas entered the copse. The officer in charge of it took the salute of the two officers who had stopped Hi; he spoke to them both, went to the edge of the copse, to watch what was being done, talked for a few minutes there, and then came to Hi. He was an elderly man, with a frank, fearless face, and the pug-nosed look of a lightweight boxer.
Like all the officers of the army he spoke English.
“When were you last in Anselmo?” he asked.
“I have never been there.”
“Never; yet you know people there. Do you speak Spanish?”
“No: unfortunately. I’ve only been about a fortnight in this country.”
“Where were you last night?”
“In the ore-train coming from San Marco to Piedras Blancas.”
“Where were you yesterday?”
“At San Marco.”
“Did you see or hear anything of a rebel army at San Marco?”
“No.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“What are you doing in this country? How did you come here?”
Hi told him as much as he thought sufficient: it did not ring quite true. The officer seemed puzzled.
“Were you in Piedras Blancas this morning?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You saw these troops?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see troops yesterday?”
“No.”
“Yet you saw these this morning, you say?”
“Yes.”
“And at once decided that you would bring the news of what you had seen to Anselmo?”
“Not at all,” Hi said. “I’m not a spy. I happen to know that the Elenas in Anselmo have horses, and as they know friends of mine in Santa Barbara I hoped to borrow a horse to ride home on.”
The officer frowned.
“There’s something not quite right, somewhere,” he said, “I don’t see what brings you here. What friends have you in Santa Barbara?”
“Mr. Winter of Quezon. Mr. Weycock of the Sugar Company knows me.”
“English people?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” the officer said. “Stand easy.”
He stood easy for a few seconds, considering, then he returned to Hi.
“You say you were taken to Ribote and then lost your way in the forest? What were you doing when you were taken to Ribote?”
“Going to Anselmo.”
“What for?”
“To see the Elenas’ horses.”
“You say this was ten days ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why should you see the Elenas’ horses?”
“My father is a horse-breeder in England.”
“If you’re lying,” the officer said, “it may be a very serious matter for you.”
“I am not lying,” Hi said: he hoped that he wasn’t. A couple of scouts rode in to the copse to report: the officer left Hi to examine them: he went with them to the copse-edge while they explained something. Hi could see them gesticulating, while the officer tried to get at the truth. After a minute’s thought, he called the other officers, explained the situation to them, and gave the order to mount. Seeing Hi, he called to the orderly in Spanish to bring the boy with him. “Mount him on a spare horse,” he said.
“Sir,” Hi called out. “Will you not let me go on to Anselmo?”
“No, sacred pekin,” the pekin officer answered. “And make less noise.”
When the squadron had mounted, with Hi in their midst on a spare horse, the files moved away out of the copse into the open. They moved across a scrubby pasture in a direction parallel with Anselmo hill. Flankers rode out to their left, and all eyes were turned to the left, not to Anselmo, but to a roll of rising ground beyond it. “That is where Don Manuel is, then,” Hi thought.
As they drew clear of the trees, Hi had for a moment a good view of Anselmo. It was like one of the little hill cities which he had seen in Italy, except that it was smaller than any, and stood upon a smaller hill. A clump of trees grew on the hillside so as to hide most of the wall with gray-green leaves. From the edge of the wood the white church tower rose, topped by its statue.
When this was about a mile behind them, the troops came over the roll of ground into sight of the plain stretching on into the west. There, rather more than a mile away, was a big white estancia with a haras or horse-breeding stable beside it, below three conspicuous windmill pumps. About half a mile beyond this, moving slowly towards Santa Barbara, was a large body of mounted men, with flankers thrown out on both sides, and many spare horses.
“There they are,” everybody said at once. “There it is,” Hi said to himself. “That is Don Manuel’s army, or a part of it; and that big breeding stable is the Elenas’ place, where I ought to have been ten days ago.
“And now,” he thought, with a quickening pulse, “I shall probable see a battle; and these hundred odd Reds will get licked as they deserve.”
However, the officer of his party had no intention of engaging. He hung to the rear of the moving army for rather more than a mile: then, at a crossing of tracks, he turned away directly to Santa Barbara and gave the order to trot. It was perhaps ten in the morning when they left the cross roads: it must have been mid-day when they halted at the Inn of the Little Foxes, where a trooper, bearing a red pennon, stood at the door: the inn being a headquarters of some kind.
The commander went into the inn to report and to ask for orders. He was gone for a quarter of an hour, during which a shot was fired a mile or two to the west. It was followed by several shots, of different qualities, answering each other. After this, though the firing often almost ceased, and sometimes sounded from further away, it never quite ceased and on the whole drew nearer. It was all independent firing.
It reminded Hi of the sounds of pheasant shooting at home in the unpreserved downland coverts where birds are scarce.
When the commander came out, another officer was with him. This one seemed to be a general, preparing to ride. He was flicking his spotless boots with a silk handkerchief, and walking with an arch of the legs caused partly by tight breeches, partly by affectation. “Where is this English fellow?” he called.
“There, sir,” the commander said. “Bring him up, you.” Hi was led forward.
“I believe, boy, that you are a spy,” the general said. “I’ve a good mind to shoot you. Most soldiers in my place would shoot you. As it happens, my orders are not to shoot aliens, but to send them in for trial; which I shall do. You will go in to Santa Barbara till your case can be sifted a little. Any misfortune which happens to you you will have brought upon yourself.” He called in Spanish to some troopers to take Hi to the waggons which were about to start under escort to the city. He also gave them a few written words about Hi’s case for the escort commander. As Hi now knew what answer any officer would give to him, if he replied, he held his peace. The troopers gave him into the charge of the escort of the waggon, who told him, in English, to get into a waggon. When Hi asked which waggon, for there were half a dozen tilted army waggons all of one pattern, the man told him that he did not care which waggon, but that if he did not get into one straightaway he would break his face. “Get into that one there,” he cried, “and don’t show your face outside the tilt or you’ll get a butt in the lip.”
“You can’t come in here,” an Englishman, inside the waggon said, “this one is full up.”
“What are you waiting for?” the escort called. “Get in.”
“It is full up,” Hi said.
“Full up,” the man replied. “Who says it’s full up? You sacred suspects should all be shot if I’d my way. I’ll see if you’re full up. Get in. Make way for him, you. Now get in.” With a cudgel which he carried he poked the suspects till they made room; then Hi was thrust in among them.
The waggon was full. It contained an Englishman with a Spanish wife and three little children; an elderly American in the pineapple trade; an imbecile of doubtful nationality who dribbled at the mouth and gurgled in the throat; a strong young native woman in hysterics; an old woman who was drunk; her grandson, who had eaten something which had disagreed with him; three native men, one of them very old and infirm, the second shot in the body, unconscious and plainly near death, the third in a dreadful condition with fever. On the top of the discomforts of Hi’s entrance, the waggons started.
“Why couldn’t you have gone to one of the other waggons?” the Englishman said. “You could have seen that this was full, one would have thought.”
“I had to do what I was told,” Hi said. “It’s not my fault.”
“At least you can give a lady room,” the man replied, “you can see that there’s a lady here in an interesting condition.”
“I am sorry,” Hi said, moving as far as he could, “I did not see.”
“Any man of decent feeling would stand up,” the man said. “But perhaps you don’t come from the fobug St. German.”
“Where is that?”
“Oh, perhaps you don’t understand Latin; it’s where manners is.”
“Well, I wish we were there,” Hi said.
“That touched you where you live,” the American said. “This kid ain’t to blame for coming here. Though I’ll roast this gol-derned Government for putting him.”
“Ay, ay, ay, de mi,” the young woman called, as she rose to a sitting posture and clawed with both hands in the faces beside her.
“Come off with all that, Angelita,” the American said. “You, mister, catch a holt of that hand and I’ll catch a holt of this; then she won’t do us an injury.” Hi caught one of the arms of the young woman as he was bid, but she was strong in the arm and writhing all ways at once. “Gee,” the American said, “this young woman will ask her husband how about it when he comes home from his Lodge; she won’t wait till day dawns.”
As Hi hove down the arm of the young woman, the imbecile began to coo at him, with symptoms of affection. Presently the Englishman, who was a tall, thin, hatchet-faced man, with little moustaches waxed at the ends, said: “That captain-man ought to be shot for sending a lady in such a state in a waggon like this. I have been here five years and this is my reward. My wife now is going to be sick. It is the fresh air beating upon her, in her present state.”
The old woman, who was drunk, here shoved her grandson to the tail-board of the waggon; the fresh air seemed to have beaten upon him.
“This is a nice way to send a lady to the city,” the Englishman said. “That boy ought to be ashamed of himself. As for that captain-man, I shall complain to the Government. It is a marvel that she doesn’t miscarry.”
“She’ll run a darned good chance of that,” the American said. “The Whites will be here this afternoon. There’ll be fighting in the streets to-night. So if you know a good snug cellar in a back street, get to it, pronto.”
Here the three children of the Englishman began to cry; their mother, who was a big woman with a white fat face and jowl, boxed their ears for crying. The drunken woman, having soothed her grandson a little, drank from a bottle; then, rising from the floor to her feet, tried to dance, lifting her skirts to her knee. All this time the waggon was swaying forward at a good pace on a rough road; the children were weeping, the Englishman was growling, the young woman was writhing and hysterical, the old man was motionless, the dying man gasping for air, and the man with the fever was shivering. Hi and the American were trying to keep the girl in one place. The imbecile, who had decided that he liked Hi, kept pressing close to him and patting the back of his neck. Hi, who had no free hand, kept warding him off with his elbow; but the creature, perhaps mistaking this for a return of affection, pressed back, cooing.
The girl suddenly shook herself free and shrieked at the top of her voice. She did not know what she was doing; all her young muscular body was out of control. Hi remembered tales in the Bible of people who “had a devil”; this young woman had a devil, or the devil had her. “Look out, kid,” the American called, “she’s into the hay-lot, your side.”
“Come back,” Hi called. “Be quiet, señorita; it’s all right. We’re all friends here.”
“Friends,” the American said, “I guess we are. It’s these darned Santa Barbarians who are the enemies in this land. They’ll knock my apple season galley west. Lie still, Angelita, lie still.”
“It’s all these hidalgos,” the Englishman said. “They cause the trouble in this land. What this land wants is to be opened up to free competition and progress. It wants white men. These priests and these hidalgos are fallacies; they ought to have been exploded long ago. If the English Government doesn’t step in, it ought to be made to. My wife is a Pinamente; one of the oldest families, if we had our rights; and here these soldiers, these fine jacks-in-office, send her in a waggon like this.”
“I feel for her,” the American said, “being of a darned old family myself.”
At this moment, above the noise of the waggons, as they bumped and lurched along, there came the whine and beat of barbaric music. The waggons drew to the side of the track, while the music grew louder and went by. Some hundreds of horses in twos went by, with a scuffling up of dust and the stink of sweat, horses and hot leather.
“Pitubas moving out,” the American said. “I told you the Whites are coming. They’ll fight this day and the Whites’ll whip.”
“How do you know?” the Englishman asked.
“Because I’ve been in the fighting business; had three years of it, and I know fighters when I see them. Man for man, the Whites will put rings round these yellow devils.”
“You lie,” the old drunken woman said suddenly, in very good English, blinking like an owl. “Damn your soul, you lie.” She blinked, but said no more; as it happened, it was all the English she knew. The waggon halted by the side of the track as other music drew nearer.
“Their darned national anthem,” the American said, beginning to sing to the tune.