He had plenty of thoughts to worry him. First of these was disappointment that he had not seen “Her,” as he had hoped, the night before; next to this came rage at missing his passage; then came anxiety for that brother and sister in Los Xicales; what had happened to them? Lastly, from somewhere in the background of his mind, the thought came that it might not be easy to rejoin thePathfinder. It was going to be a good deal more difficult than he supposed.
“Hi, ya!”
The yell of “Hi, ya” was repeated from somewhere ahead. It was a shout or hail loud enough to be heard above the noise of the train and of the storm. It was addressed to him.
He stood up, screening his eyes from the sand. There, on the top of the freight-car nearest to the trucks, a train-hand lay. He seemed annoyed at Sard’s presence. He yelled at him and motioned to him to get out of the truck. He was a hard-looking man with a swollen face and a kind of vindictive energy. He lay crouched on the freight-car, hanging on with his left hand to the iron rail on the car-roof. In his right hand he had a long club, like a baseball club, which had a leather wrist-thong. He shook this club at Sard and motioned to him with it, that he should get out of the car. He also yelled at Sard in Spanish to ask what he was doing on the train and to tell him to get out of it. As he seemed to be an unreasonable man, Sard smiled at him and resumed his seat. The man crept a little nearer, perhaps to make certain that Sard was alone, and shouted:
“I’ll have you out of it before long, my white-faced Luterano with the pip!”
“Will you have me out of it by force, or by your sweet persuasion?” Sard asked him.
“You will see.”
“That will be something to look forward to.”
“You wait.”
“I am waiting.”
The man crept a foot nearer, spat towards Sard (not very successfully against the norther) and called him some filthy names.
“I will open your bag,” he said, “with my knife, which is used to opening the bags of Englishmen. I will see whether it is true that Englishmen have the tripes of cats, as it is said.”
“It is quite true,” Sard answered. “They have. May I ask if you are in love?”
“I will soon teach you.”
“What does your lady love in you; your appearance or your breeding?”
The man champed with his teeth, bit and worried his thumb as though he were a dog and it a bone, and as it were jerked the worry at Sard. It is a passionate gesture which looks more effective than it sounds. Sard smiled at him. Sard was slightly to windward of the man and could speak to him without effort with the certainty of being heard.
“You will get blood-poisoning,” he said, “if you bite your thumb with those teeth.”
The man seemed to focus into a pair of flaming eyes; the balls of the eyes rolled upwards so as to leave nothing but glaring yellow, then they rolled down in a frenzy. He opened his mouth, grinned with clenched teeth, hissed like a snake and howled like a hyæna. He spat thrice at Sard, nodded at him, and then retreated along the freight-car top out of sight. Sard noticed then that another train-hand was watching him from the nearest freight-car to the rear of him. This man did not speak, and did not meet his eyes. When Sard looked at him the man dropped his eyelids and seemed to be looking at the ground, but in another instant he was watching again and making a motion that Sard should leave the cars. Sard could not see him so clearly as he had seen the other man, but he made out a look of shiftiness and hardness, a mixture of prison and the boxing-ring, yet tanned, as it were, or coloured with the fineness of endurance. A sort of glimmer of high quality showed in the pitiless evil mug, as in the faces of old soldiers, with bad records, who have been through great campaigns. Sard judged that this man was not an Occidental. There was a look of English or American about him. Then he did not speak nor threaten: he used neither curse nor club, only watched. Presently he caught Sard’s eyes and undoubtedly made the motion that Sard should leave the cars.
“Beat it, kid,” the man cried.
This seemed so unreasonable that Sard paid no heed to him: he looked the other way.
“Beat it,” the man cried. “Pasea.”
Sard looked at him; then looked away.
“Hell and Maria,” the man said, “if you ain’t got a gall!”
Perhaps in normal runs the train-hands on that freighter foregathered for talk, drink or cards in the after-car. Perhaps the three trucks in the middle of the train made the journey impossible on this occasion, or it may be that Sard, the unknown man sitting in the truck, with the look of one able to guard himself, made them think the norther not worth the facing. They did not attempt the journey. The train pounded and jangled on across the desert, in the ceaseless pelting and pitting of the sand. The train presently reached a part of the desert where the wind for some reason had more scope. Perhaps the line there crossed the mouth of some great gut in the distant Sierra. The wind suddenly rose in strength and voice, lifting the sand so that it looked like a smoke into which the train had to butt. “Ai, ai!” it cried, just as it cries in rigging, while the sand came over like sprays. Sard kept well ducked down under a tarpaulin. When he looked up from his place towards his left, he sometimes saw the train-hand watching him. Whenever their eyes met, the train-hand motioned to him to leave the cars. Presently the train-hand grew weary of such foolishness: he shouted something which Sard could not hear, and then beat his way aft, out of sight.
Sard knew enough about the train-hands on these freighters to be sure of evil from them. Hoboes had killed so many train-hands that now the train crews always carried clubs, which they used on any hoboes who were unable to pay their way or to defend themselves. Sard had no doubts about being able to defend himself, but that evil face abaft-all made him wonder how he was to get back across the desert to Las Palomas. How would he fare, he wondered, if the train-hands on the returning train were that sort of men? He realised that he was not now Sard Harker, the mate of a crack ship, but a ragged-looking rough-neck, dirty and unshaven, who would get “the hoboes’ deal, a bat on the head and six months’ road-gang.” He began to have misgivings about his future.
For another two hours the train ran on across the storm. It was running away from the storm, all the time, so that the violence of the wind and the annoyance of the sand both abated. Presently the sand ceased to pelt, the train ran out into the sun, leaving behind it a cloud of sand-coloured storm, stretching up into the heaven, where it smoked like sulphur fumes.
Now on both hands in a winking bright light was the desert of the Indios Salvajes with the Sierra of the Holy Ghost beyond. After the misery of the night and the nuisance of the storm, the beauty of the wilderness was overwhelming. It lay in a half-circle, stretching for ninety miles under the spine of the Sierra. It was all shining, vast, mysterious, lonely beyond belief, empty of any life that was not poisonous and spined and savage. There were patches of chaparral, a few mezquite trees, a few giant cactuses. The most of it was empty shining sand, many-coloured, flitting, sometimes danced over by eddies. Rocks of violent colours rose out of it like the bones of dead beasts. Parts of it seemed to be alive and thinking, other parts of it seemed dead from old time, all parts of it drew Sard like a temptation.
He knelt on his tarpaulin to stare at it. He had known the desert of the sea for a good many years. There men exist by effort and strength, pitting their worth against it day by day. This was the desert of the land, which calls men, not to try their worth, but to consider their nature and their source, and to let all their effort and their strength be absorbed in that contemplation.
He felt power come into him from that vast expanse which bore no life, or almost none, that was not deadly, yet had absorbed for centuries, unshielded, the energy of the sun in his strength.
At about midday the train, which had been running in sight of the Sierra, passed so close under the foothills that Sard lost sight of them. He was feeling rested and well: his leg was still numb, but fit for use. He looked ahead along the line. There in an opening of the foothills a couple of miles away were the houses of a settlement. They were adobe houses, some of them limewashed, under a roll of foothill which bore the marks of silver-mining. There was a white church with a red-tiled campanile pierced in the Mission fashion for three bells. Sard could see that there was a station here. Something made him look back suddenly behind him. He was not in any danger, but from his perch in the after-car the hard-faced man was watching him.
“Beat it, kid,” the man shouted. “Beat it like hell.” He signed to Sard to leap from the car on the desert side. “Kid,” he cried, “this ain’t no kid glove foolishness. You wanna beat it just like smoke.”
Unfortunately, Sard had heard of men shot while trying to “beat it” from a freight-car. He did not want to beat it, but to explain his presence and get a lift back to the coast. Besides, with one leg numb from poison, it was not easy to beat it while the train was moving. The train-hand shook his head much as Pilate washed his hands; he moved aft along the cars out of sight again.
The Occidental train-hand, who had promised to look at his tripes, reappeared for an instant to make sure that he was still there. He showed his teeth at Sard and made a motion of cutting open a waistcoat with the upward sweep of one hand. The train slackened speed so that Sard could hear the clanging of the bell on the engine. Looking out, he could see the population of the town sauntering to the station to watch the train come to a stop. She curved in to the platform, which had been made there some years before for a President’s visit. Only the engine and one car could draw to the platform at one time. On the end of the station building the name of the place, Tlotoatin, was painted on a plank. The train stopped.
As she stopped, Sard laid hold of the truck side to swing himself out. At that instant, the train jerked forward and then backwards violently, so that he was pitched down into his truck. He was out of the train just three seconds after the train-hands.
To his surprise, neither of these men made any movement towards him: they stood watching, while a squad of soldiers followed their officers out of the rear cars. The officers and men wore the grey uniforms and green tejada-de-burro caps of the Nacionales. The officers plainly knew of Sard’s presence on the train. They came straight towards him with drawn revolvers in their hands. One of the officers was an elderly captain, fat, pompous, slow-witted, and with a face like a slab of something: the other was a little thin dapper lieutenant, with legs like pipestems cased in tight patent-leather boots to the knees. Sard knew at once that these men were coming back to barracks after being escort to a consignment of silver from the mines. He saluted the officers, who did not return his salute: on the contrary, they seemed indignant at his saluting. A couple of soldiers covered Sard with their rifles.
“Who are you?” the captain asked.
Sard told him.
“So. You speak Spanish. What are you doing on the line?”
Sard told him.
“A likely story, eh, lieutenant?”
“Very likely, my captain.”
“You know the law against trespass on the line?”
“No, captain,” Sard said.
“That is false,” the captain answered; “since you know Spanish, you must know it.”
“I am English, and do not,” Sard said.
“That is false,” the captain answered. “You are not English. You are French. Your cap proves it. You are a deserter from the French ship which called here.”
“If there be any English or Scotchman here,” Sard said, “or any American, I can prove that I am English.”
“We desire no proof, since we need none. You were on the line, that suffices; without papers, which clinches it. You are arrested.”
“You had better not arrest me,” Sard said; “in spite of my clothes, I am an officer, equal in rank to yourself.”
“Enough words,” the captain said.
“By many, too many words,” the lieutenant said.
“At least,” Sard said, “you can telegraph to the British Consul at Las Palomas about me, or send me to him.”
“It is not for you to prescribe our course of action,” the captain said. “You are arrested. Your case will have every consideration. Meanwhile, to the barracks.”
“To the barracks: march,” the lieutenant added.
If he had resisted, perhaps if he had said another word, they would have shot him and pitched him down a disused working. Sard knew that the silver escorts were apt to shoot to save trouble. He judged it best to submit. “They are cross from the sandstorm,” he thought; “soon they will have lunched; then they will listen to reason; or I can get word to some Englishman, or to the Consul.” Like all sailors, he had the utmost contempt for soldiers; to be jailed by soldiers was a bitter experience.
The guards fell in on each side of him; two men came behind him with fixed bayonets; the officers brought up the rear with drawn revolvers; the captain called “March!” As they set out, the Occidental train-hand darted two steps forward and crouched to screech some insults. He mocked, showed his teeth and jeered at Sard, making again the gesture of the stomach-ripper. “You get him,” he screeched in English, “you get-a your bag cut. A te te . . . ucho!”
Just a couple of paces beyond this screamer, the other train-hand stood, twirling his club as though puzzled. He was looking hard at Sard with a face made of broken commandments: Sard expected a bat on the head from him as he passed. He did not get it: the man dropped his eyes as before, and spat sideways as though dismissing the thought of Sard. They passed out of the station enclosure to the town, which was crowded with inhabitants, who had either come to see the train or were now coming to see “the bandit.” Most of the citizens were mestizos or Indios. Sard looked in vain for an American or English face. He heard the comments passed upon him.
“An English bandit who robbed the silver train.”
“That a white so sickly should have so much blood!”
“Ha, dirty thief, to the gallows!”
“Ho, Englishman, it is not so easy to rob our silver: we are not your Africans from whom you may rob gold.”
“Englishman, the garota: cluck-cluck!”
“They say he killed seven before being taken.”
“He? An Englishman? They were asleep, covered in their blankets. He stabbed them sleeping.”
“Hear you, he killed seven, sleeping.”
“Let them kill him, then. We have enough of these whites at our doors without Englishmen.”
The barracks were close to the station. The party marched into the patio of the barrack buildings: the heavy maruca-wood gates were closed behind them. The place looked as dingy as a prison and as mean as a workhouse: it smelt like a cesspool. One end of it, the men’s end, was two storeys high and covered with scaling plaster, the sides were one storey adobe buildings which had been limewashed once since they were built. The left side of the square seemed to be officers’ quarters, for it was screened by a verandah. On the side opposite to it were stables, kitchens, and a sort of barton where two charrucas were housed.
“You will be imprisoned till you can give an account of yourself,” the lieutenant said. “Take him to the cells, you men.”
“I am perfectly ready to go to the cells,” Sard said, “but I wish to let the English of this town know that I am here.”
“This is not England,” the lieutenant said, “but the Occidental Republic, where the English, the Irish, and other accursed gringos have no voice, save when they mew like cats for the charity of our leavings. Your presence shall be explained to such English as may be here. The brothel-keeper is English and the town-scavenger Irish. There is also a Scotchman in the road-gang for murder. Such are the places of your race among the Occidentales.”
“We do the things most needed,” Sard answered. “Next to begetting a new race.”
“For half a peseta I would blow your brains out.”
“Any Occidental would do murder for half a peseta.”
“You will find, my dog, that we do justice for nothing.”
“So America thinks.”
The lieutenant whirled right round upon his heel, a complete circle. He gurgled in his throat, thrust his revolver-butt into his mouth and bit it, so that marks showed upon the wood. His face turned black with rage: he stamped with his feet so that Sard expected his little brittle pipestems to snap.
“Remove him to the cells,” he said, as soon as he could speak.
“I am going to the cells,” Sard said. “Remember that you have been warned that you are jailing an officer and will be held responsible.” He turned his back upon the lieutenant and followed a corporal through the barton to a yard beyond. In this yard, which was fenced with a high adobe wall, tiled at the top, were the cells. The corporal unlocked the door of one of the cells and motioned to Sard to enter. Sard cast a glance about the yard. He noticed all down the western wall a line of bullet-marks about breast-high. He had seen similar marks on walls in Santa Barbara: they marked executions.
“Enter, then,” the corporal said. The cell was dirty, but the dirt was old dirt.
“Look,” Sard said, pausing at the door. “Will you, or one of your men, send word to the engineers of the mines that I, an Englishman, am in the cells here?”
“Assuredly.”
“At once, can you go or send at once?”
“Assuredly.”
“I will see that you are rewarded.”
“Assuredly.”
“Send to the chief English or Scotch engineer at the chief mine.”
“Assuredly,” the corporal said. “Meanwhile, enter.”
Sard entered and was locked in. The corporal opened the grating in the door and said, “How am I to be rewarded for this sending to the engineers?”
“You shall be rewarded when they come.”
“Who will reward me?” the corporal asked; “will it be yourself or the engineers?”
“It will be myself.”
“Truly, then,” the corporal said, “since it will be you who will reward me, when the work is done, it must be you who shall make it worth my while to do it. How much then? A hundred pesetas?”
“Not a penny piece,” Sard said, “till the engineers are here. Then indeed you shall be rewarded.”
“There is a very wise proverb,” the corporal said, “ ‘Paid first never grieves.’ And yet another proverb says, ‘Will-pay is a fine bird, but cash-down sings.’ ”
“There is yet another proverb,” Sard answered, “ ‘The fed hound never hunts,’ and another still, ‘Penny-pouched is promise-broken.’ ”
“These are English proverbs,” the corporal said, “and do not concern me. Show me at least the colour of your money, or no message will go.”
“There is another proverb,” Sard said, “which says, ‘Grudging greed gets not.’ ”
“Adios,” the corporal said, “grudging greed will get no food nor drink; no message to any engineer; nor blanket at night, if blanket be needed.” He slipped the shutter across the grating and moved across the yard, back into the barton, leaving Sard alone. The cell was empty of any furniture. It measured about seven feet each way. Its roof sloped down from about eight feet at the door to six feet at the back. The floor was earth, the walls adobe, the roof ceiled with plaster, European fashion, against tarantulas. The cell was lit by the omission of one block of adobe just under the eaves at the back. Sard could just see out of this hole by standing on tiptoe. He saw a patch of sandy soil which had been channelled and pitted by people wanting sand; rats were humping about in this among refuse tipped there from the barracks. Beyond the sandy strip and distant about 120 yards was the railway, with its platform, water tank, fuel heap, and the legend
Tlotoatin.
Beyond this was the desert reaching to infinity, where violet rocks gleaming with snow merged into the shimmer of the sky.
The shutter of his door was pulled back: a private soldier peered at him through the bars.
“See,” he said, “you want a message taken to an engineer?”
“Yes,” Sard said.
“Which engineer?”
“Any English engineer. There must be some.”
“Yes. There is one, Mason, at Chicuna Mine.”
“Can you go to him? Will you go?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell him of me and ask him to come here?”
“Yes. Listen. That corporal is a fool. He is put on to ask money by the lieutenant.”
“Indeed.”
“He is a greedy one, the lieutenant. But one who will squeeze his feet will bleed his mother, as we say. And to ask money of one whom God has afflicted . . .”
“You, who ask no money, shall be well rewarded.”
“I ask no reward,” the man said. “God forbid that I should make profit from distress. One thing only I would ask: that you would lend me your coat, so that I could leave the barracks, since in uniform it is forbidden.”
“Truly I will do that,” Sard said.
“If you will pass it through the bars,” the man said, “then I will put it on and hurry to the Chicuna Mine, so as to be there before the whistle blows. It will blow for dinner and siesta in a few minutes now.”
Sard knew that the siesta hour must be very near and that the moment was propitious for the finding of a fellow-countryman. He had only been a few minutes in prison, but already the thought of being locked up through the siesta when he might be outside made him anxious for the engineer to be there.
“Give to the engineer this card,” he said, “and urge him hither at once; any engineer who speaks my tongue.”
“There is a penalty,” the man said, “if we are caught outside the gates in uniform.”
“What penalty?”
“That of the thumbs.”
“Still, in this coat,” Sard said, “you could surely pass out unobserved?”
“They will not catch me,” the man said; “and if they do (though they will not), it will be well worth while, since to help the afflicted can never be a sin. This will I always maintain.”
“Surely rightly,” Sard said, stripping off the old and oily jacket. “But here is the disguise for you; this coat. You had better take the cap as well.”
Sard could just make out that some other soldiers were in the yard not very far away.
“Is it safe?” he asked. “There are men there who may see you take the coat. Will they betray you, if they see you?”
“Never,” the man answered. “They are my brothers, set there to watch for the corporal.”
“Take then the coat and cap.”
The soldier cast a glance about him, to see if it were safe to take them; then he slipped them through the bars and under his coat. “Wait yet, one moment,” he said; “should you desire food or drink, I would buy some, if you would give the penny. I mention this, because otherwise you will have neither food nor drink.”
“Thank you, I need neither food nor drink,” Sard said, “but only the engineer, as soon as you can bring him.”
“Right, Excellency,” the man said. “And now it will be necessary that I close the shutter.”
“Right,” Sard said. “And thank you.”
The man closed the shutter. “I will start straight away,” he said.
Sard heard him move away to the other soldiers who were standing in the shade of the wall.
“I have the coat,” he said proudly to his comrades. “And not only that, he said, ‘You had better take the cap as well.’ I had asked for the coat as a disguise, thinking it the limit that I could ask, when, lo, he himself says, ‘You had better take the cap as well.’ ”
There came a roar of laughter from the soldiers.
“Cap and coat too?”
“Yes; and it was he himself who said, ‘You had better take the cap as well.’ And I had not thought of the cap. Never once should I have dreamed of it. But he himself thrust it on me, ‘Take the cap as well, O take the cap as well.’ ‘I beseech you,’ he said to me, ‘take the cap as well.’ ”
“It is a French cap, Martin,” one of the soldiers said. “The Little Twig-Legs remarked of it, that it is a French cap. Thus we have the Paris fashions at Tlotoatin.”
“Mind” (another said) “that the French cap do not bring within itself the French crown.”
“This Englishman is more innocent than Joseph.”
“Wait, Martin,” one of the men said; “did not this Englishman offer you money?”
“Money? Why, he has no money. I, who watched his face, know well that he has no money.”
“No money and no coat and no cap.”
“Stay yet,” one objected. “He handed you paper, as I myself observed. Was not that money?”
“It was this, which I was to give to an engineer.”
“What engineer?”
“One Mason, of the Chicuna Mine: such being the names which came into my head. He asked, ‘Is there an English engineer?’ ‘Truly,’ I said, following my inspiration, ‘there is Mason of the Chicuna Mine.’ ‘Give him this, then,’ he said.”
“What is it?”
“I know not. Writing. He had several like it.”
“Is it English money?”
“No. The English use only gold.”
“Accursed Lutherans, and that they steal!”
“I think that the writing is the symbol of a secret society to which all these dogs belong,” one of the soldiers said. “These symbols they pass to each other by messengers to give warning of their accursednesses.”
“Tear it up then.”
“Meanwhile,” Martin said, “I will with this coat and this cap to Eustaphia; madre de las putas that she is, even she will assuredly give me one twenty-five for them.”
“They are old,” a soldier objected. “She will not give one twenty-five, but one five, or one ten, not a Portuguese milrei more.”
“One five or one ten. They are of European weaving and will last for many lives. But to market.”
As the soldier passed Sard’s door, to market the coat and cap, he called out, with a fair imitation of Sard’s voice and accent:
“Take then the coat and cap. You had better take the cap as well.”
As a blow, which would have been pleasanter than an answer, was impossible, Sard kept silent, though his thoughts were bitter. In about ten minutes, Martin returned triumphantly. He passed close to the cell-door, so that Sard not only heard him but smelt the fragrant reek of the hot tamales and annis brandy, which he had bought with the spoils.
“See,” he said, “she being glad with brandy gave me one-forty.”
“One-forty; is it possible?”
“Let us, then, into our room, away from corporal and Little Twig-Legs.”
“Stay yet,” one soldier said. “Shall we not give a tamale and a tot of brandy to this Englishman?”
“He has refused it,” Martin answered. “He refused it with scorn, almost with insult. ‘I need neither food nor drink,’ he said, ‘only the engineer, who is my sole passion, now that my wife has fled with the lodger.’ ”
Sard would have been very glad of a tamale and a drink of water, but neither was offered. The men moved off and closed a door behind them. Soon after that, the hooter-whistles blew at three different mines. A trumpeter, taking the time from them, blew a call in the patio of the barracks. For a few minutes Sard could hear the shuffling of many feet, hurrying to those calls to dinner and siesta. “No one will come to me now,” Sard said, “for three hours. I am locked in till they choose to remember me, and nobody who knows me knows where I am.” He tried the door, which was locked, as well as barred across: the upper and lower panels of it were metalled. He tried the walls: they were made of a kind of adobe which had been furnace-burnt: they were brick. The roof he could not easily reach, except at the back of the cell. The floor was of clay which had been puddled and beetled.
Of all these four barriers, the floor seemed to him to be the most easy to remove. He hung the handkerchief, “A present from Bradford,” over the grating in the door, lest some spy should pull back the shutter. When he had done this, he knelt down close to the back of the cell, took out his knife and began to dig bare the lowest courses of adobe.
His knife had been given to him years before as a keepsake by his second in the port main; it had been with him in his first voyage in theVenturer, and ever since, in all his sea-going. It had not been taken from him by the soldiers, because they had not expected that any man would carry a weapon where a sailor carries his knife. They had tapped his side, breast and hip pockets, but not the middle of his back. The knife was of the common type of sailors’ sheath-knife. He had cut nicks on the handle, a nick for every passage completed between port and port; thirty-six nicks altogether. The sheath was not the original sheath, but a gift from a sailor called Panther Jack, who had made it for him in thePathfinderout of an old boot. The knife-blade was worn away to a thin crescent of steel by repeated sharpenings at the grindstone. It was as good a knife as a man might hope for in work aloft, cutting stops or ropes’ ends, but it was the poorest kind of trowel. In his eagerness, he put too much weight upon it and snapped the blade across about an inch from the handle.
He was disheartened by this, but continued to scrape till he discovered that the pounded clay on the floor had been laid on a spread of pebbles set in mortar. The mortar was queer stuff, very hard near the pebbles, but soft between them. It took Sard one hour to clear out three pebbles. Under the third was an iron bolt, or nail, the length and weight of a marline-spike. It had been bent a little. In its day it had had a good deal of battering. It was rusty, but very well fitted to be a punch to drift out other pebbles. Using a pebble as a mallet, Sard was making good progress when a low voice called him:
“Kid!”
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Say, Kid, don’t make any noise, but come right up to the hole there.”
Sard came cautiously, half expecting a missile through the hole. He saw that the hole was blocked by a man’s face, which so shut out the light that he could not recognise it.
“Say, Kid.”
The face swung away from the hole, for the stone on which the man was standing slipped a little. Sard recognised the ugly-looking train-hand who had watched him from the after-car.
“Say, Kid,” the man repeated, as he clawed back into position, “you wanna get quit of here, or you’ll line the cold-meat cart.”
“I’m trying to get quit,” Sard said.
“Well, you wanna try pretty dam’ hard. You was on the silver line and you ain’t got any plunks, I guess.”
“No.”
“Well, you wanna get out before sundown, sport. These silver-escort guys, they’ll keep a man till sundown, to see if he’ll pay to be let out. If he can’t, they bring him into the yard ‘for exercise’ and shoot him full of holes. If any question’s asked, they say they shot him while he was trying to escape. What the hell did you stay on the train for till she pulled up? I gave you the flag to beat it, and you put your dam’ hoof right on it.”
“I thought you were going to shoot me,” Sard said. “Anyhow, I could not have jumped from the train, because my leg is queer.”
“Hell!” the man said. “You ain’t got ten plunks?”
“No.”
“I mean, sewed away anywheres, against an emergency?”
“I haven’t a penny.”
“Because if you have ten plunks, you’re up against your emergency, don’t you make any mistake.”
“I haven’t a farthing.”
“Hell!” the man said, “I was cleaned out at pinochle myself, only last night, by that dam’ Dutchman. Hell!” He climbed from his perch, readjusted his foothold and clambered back.
“Dam’ that Dutchman’s soul and that dam’ Las Palomas Pilsener.” He seemed to be busy with his hands and eyes: soon he spoke again.
“Say, Kid, you gotta get out-a here. Watch-a doing? Digging?”
“Yes.”
“Is the roof ceiled inside? I see it is. Hold on, then, till I have a try.”
Sard heard him heave himself up on to the roof, where he seemed to lie prone, working busily, with very little noise, for ten minutes. It was still siesta time, but Sard judged that someone in the barracks might see or hear at any moment. Mutterings, mainly curses, came from the man on the roof, with the scraping and raking of tiles. For all the attempt to keep quiet, a good deal of force was being used; soon pieces of tile went slithering down the roof with what seemed to Sard a devilish tumult. Then the man seemed to get a purchase on a key-tile and wrench it this way and that, with the noise of a riveter’s yard. Sard felt that any sleeper within a hundred yards must be roused by the racket. Worse followed, for the tile broke; some of it flew off into the yard and smashed upon a stone, the rest bounced on the roof and then slithered down it and off it: the train-hand cursed it and its parents.
One of the soldiers, who had been sleeping in the barton, came into the yard, looked about him, saw the man on the roof and challenged.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m mending this dam’ roof. Remediando this dam’ teja.”
“Who told you to mend the roof?”
“The capataz and also the teniente.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes, my brave, it is true. Go you and ask them if you don’t believe me.”
“What do you say?”
“Go you and ask them, if you do not believe.”
“They did not say so to me, that the roof should be mended.”
“See here, brother: they said so to me. Do you get that? To me, that is me here, they dicoed that I should mend this dam’ roof; and I’m mending it; and when it’s ended, you can have the dam’ bits to scratch with.”
“Bueno,” the man said, after a pause. “Esta bueno.”
“I guess it is bueno,” the train-hand muttered. “It’s pretty dam’ bueno, if you ask me.”
He went on working. Having cleared away two tiles, his task was easier, because he could get at the pegs in the heads of the course below them. He cracked each tile at the peg by a smart tap, then shook it clear and piled it to one side. Presently he wrenched a couple of laths away, beat violently downwards with them and knocked a foot of the ceiling into Sard’s cell. He had begun his work with some precautions against noise: he now took none. A second soldier came yawning out of the barton. He stood staring with his mate at the breaking of the tiles.
“What is he doing?” he asked.
“Mending the roof.”
“Verdad?”
“Verdad.”
“See here now,” the train-hand said to Sard, “can you ketch aholt of these laths and give a swig down on them?”
“Yes.”
“He is talking to the prisoner,” the second soldier said to his comrade. “He ought not to talk to the prisoner.”
“Assuredly he ought not.”
“And what was I saying to the prisoner?” the train-hand answered. “The prisoner was talking to me. He was complaining that I broke his siesta.” He bent his head down, as though speaking to Sard. “You say you’ll complain at having your siesta broken; complain to the capataz. You’ll complain hell. I’m doing my duty in mending this roof.” Then under his breath he added in English: “Two more swigs like that and she’ll make hell-gate on the flood. Heave, Kid, you can git more purchase on it than I can.”
Sard could get purchase on it, by leaping up, catching at a lath or at the plaster, and tearing it down by his weight. The noise of the wreckage falling into the cell gave the two soldiers some uneasiness. They looked at each other at each fall, with comments.
“He is making much mess.”
“Assuredly.”
“Do you think that it is all right? What?”
“That is what I ask.”
“I heard no word of the mending of this roof.”
“Nor I.”
“I half think that I ought to report it.”
“Such is half my thought also.”
“Assuredly, if aught should happen that should not . . .”
“Then, indeed . . .”
“Suppose, then, that you acquaint the corporal . . .”
“Yes; but if all be truly well, if the roof be entitled to this mending, then shall we be like him who, fearing the burglar, shot the priest.”
“If it be not so entitled, on the other hand, what then?”
“Then, indeed . . .”
The train-hand judged that this conversation had reached a danger-point. He started a counter-topic.
“My aunt hell,” he cried.
“What is it?” the soldiers asked.
“Good Sarah, watch the devils.”
“Watch what?”
“Say,” the train-hand said, in an excited tone, “Pronto now, where does this ceiling end? At each end of the building, isn’t it?”
“Yes; but why, what has happened?”
“Get you within doors, then; one at each end; quick now; take sticks. Do as I tell you; quickly.”
“Yes, yes; here are sticks; what are we to do?”
“Into the building, one at each end, quickly now. It is rattlesnakes curled up here, twenty at least. Get in. I’ll drive them down to you. There is a reward, half a peseta a rattle. One at each end, now. And watch. I’ll drive them down to you.”
“Watch where?”
“Where shall we watch?”
“At the ventilators. Quick, quick, or they’ll be gone. Get down and kill them as they crawl out. It will be ten pesetas each.”
The men did not know where to go, but realised that they were to be indoors, watching the ventilators. They had picked up laths from a bundle lying against a wall. After a half a minute of confusion, turning this way and that, they did as they were bidden, they ran indoors, one at each end of the building.
“Shut the doors behind you,” the train-hand cried, “or they’ll be out into the yard.”
The doors were slammed to.
“Now,” the train-hand said to Sard, “now, Kid, hump yourself. Get a holt of this rafter and out, pretty P.D.Q.”
Sard leaped to the rafter, caught it, drew himself up to it, got an arm over it, got his head above the roof and saw the station and the desert, both beautiful with freedom. The train-hand gripped him by the belt and hove upon him. With a wrestle and a struggle he got his other arm over a rafter, then his knees; he was on the roof top.
“Beat it, Kid, like hell,” the train-hand said. “Here’s Twig-Legs.”
Sard just saw that someone was entering the yard from the barton. He did not stay to see who it was, but shot himself off the roof into the waste with one heave. He swerved to his left under cover of the barrack wall and “beat it” as his helper had bade. His helper hurled bits of tile into Twig-Legs’ face, then flung himself off the roof and “beat it” in the other direction.
Sard turned at the angle of the barracks into a sandy street of adobe houses, some of which had white canvas screens spread across their stoops. The street was like a street of the dead in the siesta. A few dogs, the exact colour of the sand, lay in the sun as though killed by a pestilence. Sard dodged their bodies, darted down a lane to the right, and found himself barred by a wall, which was topped by spikes. He got hold of a spike, swung himself up and scrambled over, into a graveyard in which the dead seemed to be coming out of their graves.
The rats and dogs snarled at him as he crossed the graveyard, the skulls looked out at him, the hands clutched at him. He went across the graveyard and out of it, by a gap where the wall had fallen, into a lane. He turned to his left, ran along the lane for about fifty yards and turned sharply to his right into a street of detached houses, some of which had palms growing in boxes at their gates. He walked along this street for a little way, listening for pursuers but hearing none.
“I must find out if they’re after that train-hand,” he said; “I must find that train-hand and thank him.”
He listened intently, expecting to hear a tumult at the barracks, but all was still there. He brushed the plaster and tile dust from his clothes. He regretted that he had no hat: not even “A present from Bradford,” which he had left screening the shutter on the door of his cell. He remembered suddenly three cases of murderers arrested from having lost their hats at the scene of their crimes. He remembered another case, from the time of the Terror in Paris, of a man saved from the guillotine by having a hat thrust suddenly upon his head, while he waited his turn in the dusk and rain at the place of execution. When his turn came at the end of the batch, he was judged to be one of the spectators and passed by.
“I’m suspect without a hat,” he thought, “and I am also guilty of train-trespass and prison-breaking. But I’m not going to beat it from here till I know whether that man has beaten it.”
He turned to his left, walked along another sandy road of silent adobe houses and sleeping dogs, and soon reached a road which he recognised. Far down it, a quarter of a mile away, on the left, was the barrack entrance, with its flag-pole, bearing the green-grey-blue tricolour of the Occidental Republic. Opposite Sard, as he stopped to reconnoitre, was a pulperia, with a hoarding on its roof. It was this hoarding which was familiar; he had noticed it while he was being led to the barracks; it bore a legend which he could now read, in translation: