CHAPTER VITHE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE

The wordcacofirst appears in Haitian history in 1867. The men who took to the bush in the insurrection against President Salnave adopted that pseudonym, and nicknamedzandolitethose who supported the government. The semi-savage insurrectionists, flitting at will through the rugged interior of the country, indifferent alike to the thorny jungle and the precipitous mountains, saw in themselves a likeness to the Haitian bird which flies freely everywhere, and in their opponents a similarity to the helpless caterpillars on which it feeds. The two terms have persisted to this day.

Haiti has never since been entirely free fromcacos, though there have been occasional short periods when the country has been spared their ravages. Let a new president lose his popularity, however, or some ambitious rascal raise the banner of revolt, and the bandit-revolutionists were quick to flock together, beginning their operations as soon as the mangos were ripe enough to furnish them subsistence. With the exception of a few ephemeral leaders with more or less of the rudiments of education, thecacosare a heterogeneous mob of misguided wretches who have been cajoled or forced into revolt by circumstances of coercion. Ragged, penniless, illiterate fellows in the mass, they gather in bands varying from a score to thousands in number, depending on the reputation, persuasiveness, or power of compulsion of their self-appointed leaders. The latter, though in some cases men of standing, are more often as illiterate as their followers. Now and again one of them, usually with some Caucasian blood in his veins, has personal ambitions either of making himself President of Haiti in the long-approved manner, or at least of becoming powerful enough to force the Government to appoint him ruler of a province or of a smaller district. Others are merely the agents of disgruntled politicians or influential “respectable citizens” of Port au Prince or others of the larger cities, who secretly supply funds to the active insurrectionists.

The president of Haiti

A Haitian gendarme

A street in Port au Prince

The unfinished presidential palace of Haiti, on New Year’s Day, 1920

The backwardness and poverty of Haiti are largely due to the constant menace of these roving outlaws. Travel has often entirely disappeared from many a trail; more than one fertile region has been left wholly uncultivated and virtually uninhabited because of marauding bands ofcacos. Cattle, once plentiful throughout the republic, have almost wholly disappeared, thanks to the fact that their flesh furnishes the chief means of livelihood and their hides the one sure source of income for the bandits. The depredations of thecacoshave cost the Black Republic most of its wealth and the greater share of its worldly troubles.

Some two years after American occupationcacoismtook on a new life. In perfect frankness it must be admitted that this was partly the fault of the Americans. Next to the cleaning up of Port au Prince the most important job on hand was the building of roads. If Haiti is to take her place even at the tail end of civilization, she must become self-supporting—in other words, able to pay her foreign debts, both public and commercial. The prosperity of French days, when the island exported large quantities of coffee, sugar, and cotton, has as completely disappeared under the anarchy of the blacks as have the old plantations. What little the country might still export, consisting mainly of coffee, could not get down to tide-water for lack of highways, those which the French built having been wholly overgrown by the militant jungle.

In their eagerness to furnish the country with this first obvious step to advancement the forces of occupation resurrected an old French law called thecorvée. We still have something of the sort in many of our own rural districts—the requirement that every citizen shall work a certain number of days a year on the roads. But there is a wide difference between the public-spirited Americans and the wild black men into which the mass of Haitians has degenerated. Neither they nor their ancestors for several generations have seen the need of roads, at least anything more than trails wide enough along which to chase their donkeys. But they probably would have endured the resurrectedcorvéehad it been applied in strict legality, a few days’ labor in their own locality, instead of being carried out with too energetic a hand. When they were driven from their huts at the point of a gendarme rifle, transported, on their own bare feet, to distant parts of the country, and forced to labor for weeks under armed guards, it is natural that they should have concluded that these new-coming foreigners with white skins were planning to reduce them again to the slavery they had thrown off more than a century before. The result was that acertain percentage of the forced laborers caught up any weapon at hand and took to the hills ascacos. If they have any definite policy, it is to imitate their forefathers and drive the white men from the island. One chief announced the program of killing off the American men and carrying their women off to the hills. The mass of Haitians believe that the world’s supply of white men is very limited; it is beyond their conception that there are many fold more of them where these came from. Their ancestors drove out the French, and they not only did not come back, but the blacks were never subjected to any punishment—at least any their simple minds could recognize as such—for their revolt. Why could not a new Toussaint l’Ouverture accomplish the feat over again?

Our mistake in the matter has been corrected. The American officer who countenanced, if he did not sanction, these high-handed methods has gone to new honors on other fields of battle; the young district commanders whose absolute power led them to apply too sternly their orders to build roads have returned to the ranks, and thecorvéehas been abolished. But the scattered revolt persists, and in the opinion of all but a few temperamentally optimistic residents, either Haitian or American, is due to continue for some time to come. That forced labor was not the cause ofcacoism, for it is in the Haitian blood to turncaco; but it made a fertile field of ignorant, disgruntled negroes from which the bandit leaders were able to harvest most of their followers, and it gave added strength to the chief argument of the rascally leaders—the assertion that the Americans had come to take possession of Haiti and reëstablish slavery. To this day even the foreign companies which have no trouble in recruiting labor for other purposes cannot hire the workmen needed to build their roads. The thick-skulled native countrymen see in that particular task the direct route to becoming slaves.

For more than two years courageous young Americans have been chasingcacosamong the hills of central and northern Haiti, with no other ulterior motive than to give the Black Republic the internal peace it has long lacked and sadly needed. All of them are members of our Marine Corps, though many of them are in addition officers of the Gendarmerie of Haiti, with increased rank and pay. Take care not to confuse these two divisions of pacifiers, for the gendarmerie has a strongesprit de corps, and a just pride in its own achievements, in spite of being still marines at heart. For a long time the native gendarmes, of whom twenty-five hundred, officered by marine enlistedmen, have been recruited by our forces of occupation, were efficient against the bandits only when personally led by Americans. Merely to shout the word “Caco!” has long been sufficient to stampede a Haitian gathering of any size. Bit by bit, however, the gendarmes have been taught by practical demonstration that they are better men than thecacos, and the immediate job of hunting down the bandits is gradually being turned over to these native soldiers. American supervision, nevertheless, for years to come will certainly be necessary to eventual success.

Though the world has heard little of it, ourcaco-hunters have performed feats that compare with anything done by their fellows in France. In fact, their work has often required more sustained courage and individual initiative, and has brought with it greater hardships. In the trenches at their worst the warrior had the support and the sense of companionship of his comrades and a more or less certain commissary at the rear; if his opponents were sometimes brutal, they clung to some of the rules of civilized warfare. In Haiti many a young American gendarme officer has set forth on an expedition of long duration through the mountainous wilderness, often wholly alone, except for three or four native gendarmes, cousins to thecacosthemselves, sleeping on the bare ground when he dared to sleep at all, subsisting on the scanty products of the jungle, his life entirely dependent on his own wits, and his nerves always taut with the knowledge that to be wounded or captured means savage torture and mutilation, to be followed by certain death. Bit by bit the native gendarmes have been trained to fight thecacosunassisted, and three or four of them have now reached commissioned rank; but the best of them still require the moral support of a white leader, and the energetic American youths scattered through the “brush” of Haiti have the future peace of the country in their keeping.

It must be admitted that thecacosdo not constitute a dangerous army in the modern sense of the word. Their discipline is less than embryonic, their weapons seldom better than dangerous playthings. One rifle to five men is the average equipment, and many of these are antiquated pieces captured from the French expeditionary force under Leclerc that was driven from the island more than a century ago. Some of them are of no more use than thecocomacaque, or Haitian shillalah, even when their possessors can obtain ammunition. Such cartridges as fall into the hands of thecacosare usually wrapped round and round with paper to make them fit the larger bore of their ancient guns, and thebullet that comes zigzagging down the barrel is seldom deadly beyond two hundred yards. But the possession of a rifle, even one worthless as a firearm, is a sign of leadership that carries with it great personal pride, and an occasionalcacoowns a high-powered modern carbine. The mass of them are armed with machetes, rusty swords of the olden days, or revolvers even more useless than the rifles.

The lesser military ranks are not in favor among thecacos. Every leader of a band is a general, and usually a major general at that. Most of them have been commissioned by thecaco-in-chief—on a slip of paper scrawled with a rusty pen, or even with a pencil, by the one man on his staff who can write a more or less legible hand. These “commissions” all follow the prescribed form which has been stereotyped in Haiti since the days of Dessalines:

“Liberté Egalité FraternitéRépublique d’Haiti

“Liberté Egalité Fraternité

République d’Haiti

Informé que vous réunissez les conditions et aptitudes voulues—Informed that you possess the qualifications and aptitude desired, I hereby appoint you general of division operating against the Americans and direct that you proceed with your troops to attack”—this or that hamlet or village in the hills. The expression “Opérant contre les américains” is seldom lacking in these scribbled rags, and some of them raise the holder to higher dignities than were ever reached by mere field marshals on the battle-grounds of Europe. The “commission,” for instance, of the “Chief of Intelligence” of thecaco-in-chief reads succinctly, “I name you as chief of the Division of Spies to spy everywhere”—an order that has at least the virtue of leaving the recipient unhampered with that division of responsibility which has been the bane of civilized warfare. Incidentally the intelligence system of thecacosis their strongest point. Like most uncivilized tribes the world over, they have some means of spreading information that makes the telegraph and even the radio seem slow and inefficient by comparison. An uninformed stranger, reading these highfalutin’ “commissions,” might easily picture thecaco“generals” as mightier men than Foch and Pershing combined, instead of what they really are, stupid, uneducated negroes dressed in the dirty remnants of an undershirt and cotton trousers, a discard straw or felt hat with a bit of red rag sewed on it as a sign of rank, and armed with a rusty old saber or a revolver that has long since lost its power to revolve.

Thecacoshave a mortal fear of white soldiers. Scores of times a single marine or gendarme officer has routed bands of a hundred or more, killing as many as his automatic rifle could reach in the short period between their first glimpse of him and the time it takes the ragged “army” to scatter to the four points of the compass through thorny undergrowth or cactus-hedges which no white man could penetrate though all the forces of evil were pursuing him. The natives cannot “savez” this uncanny prowess ofles blancs, and commonly attribute it to the sustaining force of some voodoo spirit friendly to the white man. This belief is to a certain extent a boomerang, for the Haitian gendarmes often fancy themselves immune in the presence of a white superior, and more than one of them has bitten the dust because he insisted on calmly standing erect, smoking a cigarette, and placidly handing cartridges to the marine who lay hugging the ground beside him, pumping lead into the fleeingcacos. With a white man along how could he be hurt? Up to date at least three thousand bandits have been killed as against four Americans,—a major and a sergeant who were shot from ambush, and two privates who lost their lives by over-confidence.

Captured correspondence shows what a terrible war is thisguerre des cacos:

“The Americans,” reads the report of onegénéral de divisionto his superior, “attacked us in force on the night of the 13–14th. I found myself with a shortage of ammunition, but I succeeded in borrowing ten carbine cartridges and three revolver bullets and was able to hold the situation in hand.” As a matter of fact the American “force” consisted on this particular occasion of three marines, and the “general” “held the situation in hand” by scurrying away through the mountains so fast that it was a week or more before he got any considerable number of his band together again.

“I write to tell you,” says another great military genius, “that I had a cruel battle before Las Cahobas the other day, with one wounded. I also tell you that I arrested General Ulysses St. Raisin for being drunk and disarmed him and he is under guard in my camp. Also that General Etienne Monbrun Dubuisson had a big battle with the Americans last week and besides having a soldier severely wounded he had onedéléguétaken by the whites.”

The Americans who are striving to bring internal peace to Haiti have come to the unanimous conclusion that the mere killing ofcacoswill not wipe out banditism. They have hunted them by every availablemeans, including the use of aëroplanes. Thecacosshow a wholesome terror for the latter, which they call “God’s wicked angels”; they have suffered “cruel” losses before the machine-guns of the determined American youths who are pursuing them, but they continue theircacoism. All efforts are now being bent to two ends—to kill off the chiefs and to weed the country of firearms. In the early days of the occupation the native caught in possession of a rifle was given five years at hard labor, and many of them are still serving sentence, though the penalty has recently been reduced to six months. Every report of “jumping” a band or a camp ofcacosends now with a regular formula in which only the numbers differ: “Killed 1 general and 2 chiefs; captured 9 rifles, 6 swords, 11 machetes.”

The tendency of thecacoto use his rifle chiefly as ballast to be thrown overboard when the appearance of a white soldier gives his black legs their maximum speed has helped this weeding out of weapons, as the time-honored Haitian custom for opposing warriors to mount a prominent hillock and hurl foul-mouthed defiance at their foes has raised the scores of American marksmen. Recently an intelligent propaganda has been carried on by the gendarmerie to induce the misled rank and file to come in and surrender their arms, receiving in exchange a small cash equivalent and a card attesting thembons habitants. This offer of amnesty, which has already shown gratifying results, is brought to the attention of the bandits chiefly through the market-women, who, swarming all over Haiti, have always been the chief channel of information for thecacos, with whom they are in the main friendly despite having frequently been robbed of their wares by some hungry “army.” The chief drawback to this plan, however, is a certain lack of team-work between the two corps of caco-hunters. The marines have orders to shoot on sight any native carrying a rifle—a perfectly justifiable command, since there is no other distinguishing mark between abon habitantand acaco. But the result is that the chief who has determined that surrender to the nearest gendarme officer is the better part of valor, or thecaco“volunteer” who has at last succeeded in eluding his own sentries, is forced to wrap his weapon in banana-leaves and sneak up to within a few miles of town, hide his firearm, and apply at the gendarmerie for a native soldier to protect him while he goes to get it.

In most cases the bandits travel in small groups until called together for some projected attack. But more than one permanent camp, veritable towns in some cases, has been found tucked away insome mountainous retreat. The latest of these to be destroyed had seventy-five houses, a headquarters building (with two hundred chairs), a voodoo temple, and a cockpit; for thecacoremains a true Haitian for all hiscacoism, and will not be separated from his voodoo rites, his fighting cock, and his women except in case of direst necessity.

Of many courageous feats performed by the American youths in khaki who are roaming the hills of Haiti one stands out as the most spectacular. Indeed, it is fit to rank with any of the stirring warrior tales with which history is seasoned from the days of the Greeks to the recent World War. Hearing it, one might fancy he was listening to a story of the black ages of Haiti when Christophe was ruling his sable brethren with bloody hand, rather than to something accomplished a bare half-year ago by a persevering young American.

Charlemagne Masena Péralte was a member of one of the two families that have long predominated in the village of Hinche. He was what the Haitians call agriffe, a three-fourths negro. The French priest with whom he served as choir-boy and acolyte remembers him well as “a boy who was not bad, but haughty and quick to take offense.” When he had learned what the thatched schoolhouse of Hinche had to offer, Charlemagne was sent to Port au Prince, where he finished the course given by French ecclesiastics. In other words he was a man of education by Haitian standards. Like many of the sons of the “best families” in Haiti, he decided to go into politics rather than pursue a more orderly profession. But politicians are thicker than mangos in the Black Republic, and for some reason things did not break right for Charlemagne. Wounded in his pride and denied his expected source of easy income, he followed the long-established Haitian custom in such matters. He gathered a band of malcontents and pennilesscacosabout him and marched against the capital. The Government realized the danger and bought Charlemagne off by appointing him commandant of an important district. A few years later, when a new turn of the political wheel left him again among the “outs,” he followed the same route to another official position. It got to be a habit with Charlemagne to force each succeeding government to appoint him to office.

Finding himself in disfavor with the American occupation, he set out to work his little scheme once more. It does not seem to have occurred to him that conditions had changed. Captured, and convicted ofcacoismin October, 1917, by an American court martial sitting inhis native town of Hinche, he was sentenced to five years at hard labor.

A year later, while working on the roads in company with other inmates of the departmental prison at Cap Haïtien, he eluded his gendarme guards and escaped. Taking to the bush, he set out to organize a new band ofcacos. Thecorvée, then at its height, made his task easier. To turn the scales still more in his favor, the large gang working on the highway at Dignon, near his home town, had not been paid in more than three months, thanks to that stagnation of circulation to which quartermaster departments are frequently subject. “Come along,” said Charlemagne, “andI’llget you your money,” and some three hundred disgruntled workmen followed him into the mountains.

Within a few months he was signing himself “Chief of the Revolutionary Forces against the American nation on the soil of Haiti,” and had gathered several thousandcacosabout him. The magic name of General Charlemagne spread throughout the island. Every leader of a collection of lawless ragamuffins sought to be “commissioned” by him. He appointed more generals than ever did a European sovereign. Every lazy black rascal with nothing to lose and everything to gain joined his growing ranks. When the simple countrymen would not follow him by choice, they were recruited by force. He assassinated and punished until his word became law to any one out of reach of gendarme protection. He spread propaganda against the American officers, asserted that they had orders to annex the country, and posed as the savior of Haiti, calling upon the people to help him drive out the white oppressors as their fathers had done more than a century before.

As a matter of fact, the patriotism of Charlemagne, of which he constantly boasted in pompous words, consisted of nothing more or less than an exaggerated ego and an overwhelming desire to advance his own personal interests. He had that in common with all the yellow politicians of Haiti. But he played the patriotic card with unusual success. Disgruntled politicians and men of wealth who had some personal reason for wishing the occupation abolished gave him secret aid. The simple mountain negroes really believed that they were fighting to free Haiti from the white man, and that under the great General Charlemagne the task would soon be accomplished. Thecorvéehappened to have been abolished soon after the “general’s” escape from prison; he quickly took personal credit for the change and promised the simple Haitians to free them in the same manner of all foreigninterference. Before the end of 1918 he attacked his native town with several thousand followers and was not easily repulsed. It was decided to put the marines in the field against him, and for eight months they pursued him in vain. If anything, thecacosituation was becoming worse instead of better. Despite the “jumping” of many a band and camp by the marines and the gendarmerie, the central portion of the country was becoming more and more bandit-ridden. It became apparent that the pacification of Haiti depended chiefly on the elimination of Charlemagne.

Herman H. Hanneken was a typical young American who had joined the Marine Corps soon after finishing at the preparatory school on the corner of Cass and Twelfth streets in his native town of St. Louis. After taking part in the Vera Cruz demonstration, he was sent to Haiti with the first forces of occupation, in August, 1915. There he reached the rank of sergeant, and in due time became in addition a captain in theGendarmérie d’Haïti. It was in the latter rather than the former capacity that he took part in the little episode I am attempting to report, which was strictly an affair of the gendarmerie as distinguished from their brotherly rivals in arms, the marines.

In June, 1919, Captain Hanneken was appointed district commander, with headquarters in the old town of Grande Rivière, famous in Haitian military and political annals. A powerful fellow of more than six feet, who had reached the advanced age of twenty-five, he was ideal material for the making of a successfulcaco-hunter. Having recently returned from leave in the States, however, and his former stations having been in peaceful regions, he had little field experience in the extermination of bandits. Moreover, his extreme modesty and inability to blow his own horn had never called him particularly to the attention of the higher officials of the gendarmerie. No one expected him to do more than rule his station with the average high efficiency which is taken for granted in any of the hand-picked marines who are detailed as gendarme officers.

Captain Hanneken, however, had higher ambitions. Having familiarized himself in a month with the routine of his district, he found time weighing heavily on his hands. He turned his attention to the then most pressing duty in Haiti, the elimination of Charlemagne. Unfortunately for his plans, there were almost nocacosin the district of Grande Rivière. He could not encroach upon the territory of his fellow-officers; the only chance of “getting a crack” at the bandits was to import some of them into his own region.

Jean Batiste Conzé, a native of Grande Rivière, was agriffe, like Charlemagne; he also belonged to one of the “best families” of his home town. But there his similarity with the chief of thecacosceased. He had always been a law-abiding citizen, and had once been chief of police on his native heath. Like all good Haitians, he realized the damage and suffering which the continued depredations of the bandits were causing his country. Moreover, he was at a low financial ebb; but that is too general a condition in Haiti to call for special comment, beyond stating that a reward of two thousand dollars had been offered for Charlemagne, dead or alive.

One night Captain Hanneken asked Conzé to call upon him at his residence. When he was certain that the walls had been shorn of their ears, he addressed his visitor in the Haitian “creole,” which he had learned to speak like a native:

“Conzé, I want you to go and join thecacos.”

“’Aiti, mon capitaine!” cried Conzé, “Moi, toujou’ bon habitant, de bonne famille, me fairecaco?”

“Exactly,” replied Hanneken; “I want you to become acacochief. I will furnish you whatever is necessary to gather a good band of them about you, and you can take to the hills and establish a camp of your own.”

The conference lasted well into the night, whereupon Conzé consented, and left the captain’s residence through the back garden in order to call as little attention as possible to his visit. A few days later, toward the middle of August, he disappeared from town, carrying with him in all secrecy fifteen rifles that had once been captured from thecacos, 150 rounds of ammunition, several swords, and a showy pearl-handled revolver that belonged to Hanneken. He was well furnished, too, with money and rum, the chief sinews of war among thecacos. With him had gone a personal friend and a trusted native gendarme who was forthwith rated a deserter on the captain’s roster.

Conzé took pains to be seen by the worst native element as he was leaving town, among whom he had already spread propaganda calling upon them to join him in a newcacoenterprise. On the road he held up the market-women and several travelers, taking nothing from them, but impressing upon them the fact that he had turned bandit. All this was reported to Captain Hanneken by his secret police. He told them to keep their ears open, but not to worry, that he would get the rascal all in good season. One morning a written notice appeared inthe market of Grande Rivière. It was signed by Conzé and berated the commander of the district in violent terms, calling upon the inhabitants to join the writer and put an end to his oppression. People recalled that Conzé and the big American ruler of the town had once had words over some small matter. Within three days the talk in all the district was of this member of one of Grande Rivière’s most prominent families who had turnedcaco.

Specially favored by his rifles, rum, and apparently unlimited funds, Conzé soon gathered a large band of realcacosabout him. When questions were asked, he explained that he had captured the weapons from the gendarmerie by a happy fluke, and the wealthy citizens of Grande Rivière, disgusted with the exactions of American rule, were furnishing him with money. The new army established a camp at Fort Capois, at the top of a high hill five hours’ walk from Grande Rivière. Now and then they made an attack in the neighborhood, Conzé keeping a secret list of those who suffered serious damage and never allowing his men to give themselves over to the drunken pillaging that is so common tocacowarfare. The people accounted for this by recalling that Conzé had always been a more kindly man than the average bandit leader. Meanwhile the new chief continued his recruiting propaganda. He made personal appeals to those of lawless tendency, he induced several smaller bands to join him, he sent scurrilous personal attacks on Captain Hanneken to be read in the market-place. The law-abiding citizens of Grande Rivière, well aware of the advantages of American occupation and fearful of acacoraid, appealed to the district commander to drive the new band out of the region. Hanneken reassured them in a special meeting of the town notables with the assertion that he already had a scheme on foot that would settle that rascal Conzé.

At the same time he had as many real worries as the good citizens, though of a different nature. The first was a threat by the nearest marine commander to wipe out that camp at Fort Capois if the strangely laggard gendarme officer did not do so. It would have been fatal to Hanneken’s plans to take the marines into his confidence; the merest whisper of a rumor travels with lightning speed in Haiti. Besides Conzé and his friend the gendarme “deserter,” the only persons whom he had let into the secret were his department commander and the chief of the gendarmerie in Port au Prince. Even his own subordinate officers were kept wholly ignorant of the real state of affairs. In spite of this extreme care, he was annoyed by persistentrumors that the whole thing was a “frame-up.” Conzé, ran the market-place gossip, was really azandolite, a “caterpiller” in the pay of the Government and the Americans. General Charlemagne, stationed far off in the district of Mirebalais, had been warned to look out for him, a more or less unnecessary “tip,” since it is natural to Haitian chiefs to be suspicious of their fellows. In vain Conzé sent letters written by his secretary, the “deserted” gendarme, in propercacostyle—most of them dictated by Hanneken—to the big chief, offering the assistance of his growing band. For a month he received no reply whatever. Then Charlemagne wrote back in very courteous terms, lauding Conzé’s conversion to the cause of Haitian liberty, but constantly putting him off on one polite pretext or another. These letters, always sent by women ofcacosympathies, were a week or more old before the replies came back through devious bandit channels, and the situation often changed materially within that length of time, upsetting Hanneken’s plans. Meanwhile Conzé cleared the region about him, built houses for his soldiers, and made Fort Capois the talk of all thecacos. Each new recruit was given a draft of rum and what seemed to him a generous cash bounty, and better food was served than most of them had tasted in their lives. Still Charlemagne would have nothing to do with him beyond the exchange of polite, non-committal notes.

At length thecaco-in-chief sent one of his trusted subordinates to report on the situation at Fort Capois. General ’Tijacques marched into Conzé’s camp one evening at the head of seventy-five well-armed followers, every man with a shell in his chamber. His air was more than suspicious, and he ended by openly accusing Conzé of being azandolite.

“If I am, go ahead and shoot me!” cried the latter, laying aside his weapons and ordering his men to withdraw. ’Tijacques declined the invitation, but all night long he and his men sat about the fire, their weapons in their hands, while Conzé slept with the apparent innocence of a babe. When morning broke without an attack upon him, ’Tijacques was convinced. He kissed Conzé on both cheeks, complimented him on joining the “army of liberation,” and welcomed him as a brother in arms. When Conzé presented him with a badly needed suit of clothes, a still more desired bottle of rum, and money enough to pay his troops a week’s salary of ten cents each, he left avowing eternal friendship.

A day or two later Charlemagne sent another of his generals, Papillon,on a secret mission to arrest Conzé and bring him to his own camp. It was merely a lucky coincidence that Hanneken had decided on that very night to “attack” Fort Capois, as he had already done several times before. Conzé, who made three nightly journeys a week to Grande Rivière on the pretext of getting more money from the inhabitants friendly to his cause, and entered Hanneken’s house through the back garden, was instructed how to conduct himself in the affair to avoid personal injury. For all that, the American had hard work to keep his gendarmes from wiping out the camp entirely. In the midst of the fighting he slipped aside in the bushes and, smearing his left arm with red ink, wrapped it up in a bandage generously covered with the same liquid. Then he sounded the retreat, and the gendarmes fell back pell-mell on Grande Rivière. The next morning the market-place was agog with the astonishing news. Thecacosof Fort Capois had repulsed the gendarmes! Moreover, the great Conzé himself had wounded the redoubtable American captain! It would not be long before the bandits descended on Grande Rivière itself! Some of the frightened inhabitants seized their valuables and fled to Cap Haïtien.

For days Captain Hanneken wandered disconsolately about the town with his arm in a sling. When his own officers or friends joggled against it by accident, he cried out with pain. His greatest difficulty was to keep himself from being invalided to the rear, or to keep the solicitous marine doctor from dressing his wounds. News of the great battle quickly reached Charlemagne. Meanwhile the agent he had sent to arrest Conzé met ’Tijacques on the trail.

“You’re crazy!” cried the latter when Papillon whispered his orders. “Conzé is as sincere acacoas you or I. I will myself return to Charlemagne and tell him so.”

The report of ’Tijacques, added to the news that Conzé had wounded the accursed American commander, as well as repulsing his force, won the confidence of Charlemagne—with reservations, of course; he never put full confidence in any one, being too well versed in Haitian history. He invited Conzé to visit him at his headquarters. There he commissioned him “General Jean,” thanked him in the name of Haitian liberty, and promised to coöperate with him. Incidentally, he relieved him of the pearl-handled revolver that had once belonged to their common enemy, Hanneken. It was too fine a weapon to be carried by any one but the commander-in-chief, he explained. Before they parted, he promised the new general to join him some day in Fort Capois.

Meanwhile the “deserted” gendarme had joined Charlemagne’s forces and had so completely won his confidence that he was made his private secretary. He found means of reporting conditions and plans now and then to Hanneken. Conzé and Charlemagne entered into correspondence in planning a general attack on Grande Rivière. Here Hanneken well knew that he was playing with fire. If anything went wrong and Grande Rivière was taken, nothing could keep thecacosout of Cap Haïtien, the second city of Haiti and the key to all the northern half of the country. Besides, how could he be sure that his agents were not “double-crossing” him instead of Charlemagne?

Negotiations continued all through the month of October. Toward the end of that month Charlemagne, his brother St. Remy Péralte, several other generals, and many chiefs arrived at Fort Capois, bringing with them twelve hundred bandits. In company with “General Jean” they planned a concerted attack on Grande Rivière. At the same time the programs of two other assaults, on the towns of Bahon and Le Trou, were set for the same date. The chief value of the latter was that they would keep the marines busy and leave the larger town to the protection of the gendarmes.

Charlemagne’s forces were to approach Grande Rivière from the Fort Capois side and to charge across the river when they received the signal agreed upon. Conzé’s men were to descend upon the city from the opposite direction, and “General Jean” was to give the signal himself by firing three shots from an old ruined fortress above the town. As it was well known that Charlemagne never attacked personally with his troops, but hung back safely in the rear, it had been arranged through Conzé that he await events at a place called Mazaire and enter the city in triumph after the news of its capture had been brought to him.

On the night set, the last one of October, Captain Hanneken ordered ten picked gendarmes to report at his residence. With them was his subordinate, Lieutenant William R. Button, who had just been let into the secret. The doors guarded against intrusion, Hanneken told the gendarmes to lay aside their uniforms and put oncaco-like rags that had been gathered for the occasion. The two Americans dressed themselves in similar garments and rubbed their faces, hands, and such portions of their bodies as showed through the tatters, with cold cream and lamp-black. Then the detail sallied forth one by one, to meet at a place designated, where rifles that had been secretly conveyed there were issued to them.

The pretended cacos took up their post at Mazaire behind a bushy hedge along which Charlemagne must pass if he kept his rendezvous. While they lay there, Conzé and his following of realcacos, some seven hundred in number, passed close by them on their way to attack Grande Rivière. This had been reinforced with a large number of gendarmes and a machine-gun manned by Americans under the personal command of the Department Commander of the North, all barricaded in the market-place facing the river. Conzé gave the preconcerted signal, and Charlemagne’s army dashed out of the foothills toward the stream. It was only the over-eagerness of the barricaded force, which failed to hold its fire long enough, that made thecacocasualties number merely by the dozen rather than by the hundred.

At the height of the battle Charlemagne’s private secretary, the “deserted” gendarme, crawled up to Hanneken and informed him that thecaco-in-chief had changed his mind. With his extraordinary gift of suspicion, he had smelled a rat. He would not come down to Mazaire until the actual winner of the battle came to him to announce the capture of Grande Rivière.

To say that Captain Hanneken received the news quietly is merely another way of stating that he is not a profane man. Here he had planned and toiled for four months to do away with the archcacoand break the back of the rebellion that was holding up the advancement of Haiti, only to have all his plans fail through the over-suspicion of the outlaw politician. He had run the risk of having the headquarters of his district captured, with dire, far-reaching results that no one realized better than himself. He had played the part of a dime-novel hero, descended to the rôle of an actor, which his forceful, straight-forward nature detested, only to be left the laughing-stock of his fellow-officers of the gendarmerie, to say nothing of the “kidding” Marine Corps, in which he was still a sergeant. Incidentally, he had staked the plan to the extent of eight hundred dollars of his own money, which there was no hope of recovering through the devious channels of official reimbursement if that plan failed, though as a matter of fact this latter detail was the least of his worries. It was not a question of a few paltry dollars, but of success.

If all these thoughts passed through his head as he lay concealed in the bushes with his dozen fakecacos, they passed quickly, for his next command came almost instantly. It was by no means the first time in this hide-and-seek game with Charlemagne that he had been forced to change his plans completely on the spur of the moment.

“Button,” he whispered, “we will be the successfulcacodetachment that brings the news of the capture of Grande Rivière to Charlemagne.”

Led by Jean Edmond François, the “deserted” gendarme and private secretary of thecaco-in-chief, the little group set out into the mountains. Charlemagne, said the secretary, had come a part of the way down from Fort Capois, but had camped for the night less than half-way to the town. It was nearing midnight. Heavy clouds hung low in the sky, but the stars shone here and there through them. For three hours the detail stumbled upward along a difficult mountain trail. Neither of the Americans knew how soon the gendarmes would lose their nerve and slip off into the night, frightened out of all discipline by the dreaded name of Charlemagne. There was no positive proof that they were not themselves being led into an ambuscade, and they knew only too well the horrible end that would befall two lone Americans captured by the bandits. To make matters worse, Button was suffering from an acute attack of his old malaria, though he was too much a marine and a gendarme officer to let that retard his steps.

The detachment was halted at last by acacosentry, who demanded the countersign. It happened that night to be “General Jean,” in honor of Charlemagne’s trusted—with reservations—ally, Conzé. François, the “deserted” gendarme, gave it. The sentry recognized him also as the private secretary of the great chief. He advanced him, but declined to let the detail with him pass without specific orders from Charlemagne. The secretary left his companions behind and hurried on.

The disguised gendarmes mingled with thecacooutpost and announced the capture of Grande Rivière, adding that the population was eagerly waiting to receive the great Charlemagne and his doughty warriors. Shouts of triumph rose and spread away into the night. In all the years of American occupation no town of anything like the size of Grande Rivière had ever been taken by thecacos. It was the death-knell of the cursed whites, who would soon be driven from the great Republic of Haiti, as they had been many years before.

Nearly an hour after his departure the secretary returned, to report that Charlemagne had ordered the detachment to come to him immediately with the joyful news.

“But,” added François, “there aresixseries of outposts between here and Charlemagne’s headquarters. There isn’t a chance in the world that we can pass them all without being detected, andcacosswarm everywhere along the trail. It is a question of turning back,mon Capitaine, or of leaving the trail and sneaking up over the mountain through the brush.”

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