XXIII — APPLEBY TAKES A RISKIT was early next morning when Appleby and Harper sat at breakfast on the veranda. The white wall across the patio already shone dazzlingly against a strip of intense blue, and a patch of brightness grew broader across the veranda, but it was pleasantly cool as yet. From beyond the flat roof there rose the rasping thud of machetes swinging amidst the cane and the musical clink of hoes, with the dull rumble of the crushing machinery as an undertone.Appleby had apparently not slept very well, for there was weariness in his face, and he lay a trifle more limply than usual in his chair, with a morsel of bread and a very little cup of bitter black coffee in front of him, for in Spanish countries the regular breakfast is served later in the morning. Harper seemed to notice the absence of the major-domo.“Bread and coffee! Well, when he can’t get anything else one can live on them, but if Pancho had been around he’d have found us something more,” he said. “Their two meals a day never quite suited me. We have steak and potatoes three times in my country.”“I have seen you comparatively thankful to get one,” said Appleby. “I’m not sure that we will even have bread and coffee to fall upon in another day or two.”Harper glanced at him sharply. “Where’s Pancho?”“I sent him away last night with a message for Maccario.”“As the result of Morales coming round?”Appleby nodded. “Yes,” he said. “He made a demand I could not entertain.”“About me?”“Not exactly. I told him you felt sorry you had wounded the susceptibilities of his officer.”Harper laughed. “Well,” he said, “there’s only one thing I’m sorry for, and that is that I let up before I’d put the contract through. Still, I guess there’s more behind it.”“There is,” said Appleby gravely. “If you can keep quiet a minute or two I’ll tell you.”He spoke rapidly and concisely, and Harper’s face flushed as he listened. “You let him go!” he said. “Pancho and I were hanging round on the stairway.”Appleby smiled a trifle wearily. “I suspected it, but Morales is a good deal too cunning to take any unnecessary risks. If he had not come back we should have had half a company of cazadores turning up to ask what had become of him. Now I want you to understand the position. What are your countrymen likely to do about the ‘Maine’?”Harper’s eyes gleamed, and his voice was hoarse. “Make the Spaniards lick our boots or wipe them off the earth!”“Well,” said Appleby dryly, “you may do the last, but, if I know the Spaniards, you will never extort anything from them that would stain their national dignity. Still, I think you are right about your countrymen’s temper, and you see what it leads to. Every battalion of Spanish infantry will be wanted on the coast, and that will give the insurgents a free hand. It means they will once more be masters of this district, and that Santa Marta must fall. Believing that, I’m going to take a risk that almost frightens me.”“I don’t quite understand,” said Harper.“Harding is on his way to Cuba, and he has large sums sunk in San Cristoval and other places up and down the island. Once he gets here Morales will grind them out of him. Now, it is evident that Harding has as much sympathy with the insurgents as he has with the loyalists, and perhaps rather more, while just now he must stand in with one of them. It seems to me that if your people can’t be pacified the Spaniards will be driven out of Cuba.”“Still,” said Harper reflectively, “I don’t quite see why we should worry about that. Since you can’t sell Harding—and that’s quite plain—all we have to do is to light out quietly.”Appleby smiled. “I scarcely think we could manage it; and while I take Harding’s money there’s an obligation on me to do what I can for him. That is why I’m going to commit him definitely to standing in with the insurgents.”Harper stared at him in astonishment, and then brought his fist down with a bang on the table. “You are going to bluff the Spaniards, and play Sugar Harding’s hand?” he said with wondering respect. “You have ’most nerve enough to make a railroad king—but if it doesn’t come off, and they patch up peace again?”“Then,” said Appleby very quietly, “what I am going to do will cost Harding every dollar he has in Cuba, though that doesn’t count for so much since Morales means to ruin him, anyway. I can only make a guess, and stake everything on it. Your countrymen will ask too much, the Spaniards will offer very little. Still, it’s an almost overwhelming decision.”Again Harper looked at him with a faint flush in his face, for the boldness of the venture stirred the blood in him. “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever had a hand in,” he said. “Still, wherever it leads to, I’m going through with you!”“It is quite likely that it will lead us in front of a firing party,” said Appleby. “I have reasons for believing that Maccario is not far away, and I have asked him to occupy the hacienda. It commands the carretera to Santa Marta, and I fancy a handful of determined men could hold it against a battalion, while with it in their possession the Sin Verguenza would dominate this part of the country, in spite of Morales. He has, as you know, been sending troops away. The one thing that troubles me is the uncertainty whether Maccario can get here to-night.”“Well,” said Harper, “it’s quite an important question, and I don’t understand why we’re staying here. I’d far sooner light out at once and meet him. If Morales turns up in the meanwhile we’re going to have trouble.”Appleby smiled dryly. “I’m afraid we would not get very far,” he said. “Still, if it’s only to find out whether my notion is correct, we can try it.”Harper picked up what was left of the bread, and with characteristic caution slipped it into his pocket. “It may come in handy. I’ve been out with the Sin Verguenza before,” he said.They went down the stairway, along the tram-line, and out upon the Santa Marta road, but they had scarcely made half a mile when they came upon a sergeant and several files of cazadores sitting in the shadow by the roadside. Harper stopped abruptly and Appleby smiled.“The road is closed, then, Sergeant?” he said.“No, señor,” said the man. “Still, it is not very safe.”“Not even as far as Santa Marta?”The sergeant shook his head. “If you are going there I will send two files with you,” he said.Appleby glanced at Harper, who clenched a big hand, and appeared to have some difficulty in restraining himself. “I don’t think we will trouble you,” he said. “You had instructions from the Colonel Morales?”“He seemed anxious about your safety, señores,” said the man.Appleby turned upon his heel, and walked back the way he had come with Harper, murmuring anathemas upon Morales beside him, until the sergeant was out of sight.“I expected it!” he said.“Well,” said Harper dryly, “this is not the only way out of the place. We’ll try another.”They walked back to the hacienda, passed the sugar mill, and followed the little tram-line that wound through the cane until once more Harper came to a standstill, and his face grew a trifle grim. It was very hot, and the rails flung back the light dazzlingly between the tall green blades, but there was another suggestive blink of brightness among the long banana leaves in front of them.“More of them!” he said hoarsely.They walked on a few paces, and then a non-commissioned officer of cazadores in dusty white uniform moved out on to the line.“Well,” said Harper brusquely, “what are you wanting here?”The man made a little deprecatory gesture as he said, “We were sent.”Appleby made as though he would brush past him, but the soldier, moving a trifle, stood in front of him.“With permission, señor, it is safer about the hacienda,” he said. “Still, if you wish to go out into the country I will send a man or two with you.”Appleby laughed. “Then you are not alone?”The soldier called softly, and three or four men in uniform appeared amidst the banana leaves. “It seems,” he said, “the Colonel Morales is anxious about the hacienda.”Harper glanced at his comrade ruefully, but an inspiration dawned on Appleby. “One appreciates his solicitude. It is conceivable that your comrades would know what to do with a bottle or two of caña. A little is beneficial when one has passed the night in the open. There was, I think, a heavy dew.”“With thanks, but it is not permitted,” said the man. “We did not, however, leave Santa Marta until there was a little light in the sky.”“Colonel Morales was good enough to send a strong detachment?”The soldier shook his head. “A section of the Barremeda company,” he said. “The Sergeant Hernando was to follow with a few files when he came in from picket duty. One does not understand it, for the country is quiet now, but one asks no questions of an officer.”“It is not usually advisable,” said Appleby with a smile. “Still, if you change your mind about the caña you can come up to the hacienda and ask for me.”He swung round, and five minutes later sat down on a truck on the tram-line. Harper leaned against it, and looked at him.“I guess Morales means to make sure of us,” he said. “Well, we can only hope for Maccario. You couldn’t ask him if the men you sent got through?”“I made the venture, and he told me. It was last night I sent the men out, and the cazadores only started this morning. Morales blundered then, but it is rather more than likely he couldn’t help himself. Nobody would call him timid, but just now it would have been a risky thing for him to go back to Santa Marta alone.”Harper nodded. “There’s not much you don’t think of,” he said. “Still, it seems to me quite likely that Maccario can’t get through.”“Then so far as you and I are concerned I’m afraid the game is played out,” said Appleby.Harper pulled out his cigar case and wrenched it open. “Take a smoke,” he said. “I don’t feel like talking just now.”He sat down on a sleeper with his back to a wheel, while Appleby lay upon the truck with a cigar, which went out in his hand, gazing across the sunlit cane. It rose about him breast-high, a crude glaring green, luminous in its intensity of color, against the blueness above it, but Appleby scarcely saw it, or the gleaming lizard which lay close by suspiciously regarding him. He had made a very bold venture, and though Harding might yet benefit by it, he could realize the risk that he and his comrade ran.There was, however, consolation in the thought that Morales could not have known he had sent for the Sin Verguenza, or he would have flung a company of cazadores into the hacienda. A few resolute men could, Appleby fancied, hold it against a battalion, for there were no openings but narrow windows, and those high up, in the outer walls, while, if the defenders tore the veranda stairway up, the patio would be apt to prove a death-trap to the troops that entered it. It also seemed to him that, now the prospect of complications with the Americans would everywhere stir the insurgents to activity, Morales would scarcely have men to spare for a determined assault upon the hacienda.The longer Appleby reflected the more sure he felt that he had made a wise decision. It had, however, cost him an effort to face the risk, and now he wondered a little at his own fearlessness. He who had hitherto haggled about trifles and pored over musty papers in a country solicitor’s office had been driven into playing a bold man’s part in the great game of life, and the reflection brought him a curious sense of content. Even if he paid the forfeit of his daring, as it seemed he would in all probability do, he had, at least, proved himself the equal, in boldness of conception and clearness of vision, of men trained to politics and war, and he found the draught he had tasted almost intoxicating.The exhilaration of it had vanished now, but the vague content remained and blunted the anxieties that commenced to creep upon him. Still, he fell to wondering where Maccario was, and how long it would take him to reach San Cristoval, for Morales would demand his answer soon after nightfall He lay very still while the shadow of the cane grew narrower, until the sun shone hot upon his set brown face, and then slowly stood up.“I think we will go back and pay the men,” he said. “The few pesetas mean a good deal to them, and I would sooner they got them than Morales.”They went back together silently, and the whistle shrieked out its summons when the mill stopped for the men’s ten o’clock breakfast. Appleby drew them up as they came flocking in and handed each the little handful of silver due to him.“You will go back to work until the usual hour,” he said. “If all goes well you will begin again to-morrow, but this is a country in which no one knows what may happen.”The men took the money in grave wonder, and Appleby, who did not eat very much, sat down to breakfast, but both he and Harper felt it a relief when the plates were taken away.“You will keep them busy, if it is only to stop them talking,” he said. “I have wasted too much time already, and if I am to straighten up everything by this evening there is a good deal to do.”Harper went out, and Appleby, sitting down in his office, wrote up accounts until the afternoon. He dare leave no word for Harding, but that appeared unnecessary, for if Harding found San Cristoval in the possession of the Sin Verguenza he would, Appleby felt certain, understand and profit by the position. The room resembled an oven, and no more light than served to make writing possible entered the closed lattices; but with the perspiration dripping from him Appleby toiled on, and the last Spanish dollar had been accounted for when Harper and the man who carried the comida came up the stairway. Then it was with a little sigh he laid down his pen and tied the neatly engrossed documents together. The life he led at San Cristoval suited him, and now he was to turn his back on it and go back once more, a homeless and penniless adventurer, to the Sin Verguenza. Glancing up he saw Harper leaning on a bureau and looking at him.“That’s another leaf turned down,” he said. “A good deal may happen to both of us before to-morrow.”Harper nodded gravely. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to make a kind of special dinner. I don’t think I had much breakfast, and I don’t quite know when we may get another.”The dinner he had given the cook instructions concerning was rather more elaborate than usual, and flasks of red and amber wine stood among the dishes and the piled-up fruit. Neither of them had much to say, but they ate, and when very little remained on the table Harper leaned back in his chair with a smile of content.“That’s one thing Morales can’t take away from me, and I guess it should carry me on quite a while,” he said.They lay still, cigar in hand, for the most part of an hour and then as the sunlight faded from the patio Harper appeared to grow restless. Appleby watched him with a little smile.“You don’t seem quite easy,” he said.Harper stared at him, and then broke into a somewhat hollow laugh. “It’s a fact,” he said. “I was kind of wondering if it wasn’t time Pancho or one of the other men came back. I guess one could see them on the tram-line from the roof. Morales will be here in an hour or two.”He went out, and Appleby sat still, not because that was pleasant, but because he felt the necessity of holding himself in hand. He desired to retain a becoming tranquillity, and now he could only wait found that the tension was growing unendurable. There was no sound in the patio, where the light was failing, but he could hear Harper’s footsteps on the flat roof above, and found himself listening eagerly as his comrade paced up and down. He stopped once, and Appleby felt his heart beating, for it seemed that something had seized Harper’s attention. The footsteps, however, commenced again, and then Harper, who appeared to stop once more for a second, came hastily down the outside stairway. Appleby felt his fingers trembling, and it was only by effort he sat still instead of moving to the door to question him. If Harper had seen anything it was evident his comrade would hear of it in a moment or two.He came on down the stairway, and when he reached the veranda Appleby closed one hand as he moved in his chair, but Harper passed on down the lower stairway, and Appleby sat still again, while a curious little shiver ran through him. Half an hour had elapsed before his comrade came in again and flung himself down in the nearest chair. He shook his head disgustedly, and his face was very grim.“No sign of Pancho, and I’m not going back,” he said. “I guess watching for folks who don’t come gets kind of worrying. There’s another thing. I went prospecting down the tram-line, and found that sergeant had brought his men closer in.”“I could have told you that,” said Appleby. “If I had thought we could have got away I would scarcely have been quietly sitting here.”Harper’s face flushed. “Well,” he said, “it’s Maccario or Morales now.”He lighted a cigar and sat still, though his big hands quivered now and then, and the veins showed swollen on his forehead. The light grew rapidly dim, and at last Appleby moved sharply when a man came up the stairway with a lamp. Harper laughed unpleasantly.“It can’t last very long now,” he said. “We’ll know what’s going to happen in the next half-hour.”Appleby glanced at him languidly. “There is,” he said, “one thing that would induce Morales to let us slip through his fingers.”Harper stood up and straightened himself, clenching his hands on the chair back as he stared at Appleby.“If I thought you meant it I’d stop your talking for ever now,” he said. “Oh, I’ve now and then done a smart thing, and nobody expects too much from me, but I haven’t sold a countryman to the Spaniards yet—the devils who sunk the ‘Maine’!”Appleby laughed. “I think,” he said quietly, “you had better sit down.”Harper said nothing, but when he turned and flung himself into the chair his eyes were eloquent, and there was for almost an hour a tense silence in the room. It seemed interminable to Appleby, but at last there was a tramp of feet outside, and they rose simultaneously, Harper flushed and Appleby a trifle gray in face. Then there were footsteps on the stairway, and Morales came in with two or three files of cazadores behind him. He glanced at the two men, and his face grew a trifle harder, while a little vindictive sparkle crept into his eyes. Still, his voice was coldly even.“I had the honor of making you a proposal last night, Senor Appleby,” he said.Appleby nodded. “I am sorry that I found I could not entertain it,” he said.Morales let his hand fall on the hilt of his sword. “Then there is only one course open to me. I place these men in your custody, sergeant, and until you hand them over in the guardroom at Santa Marta you will be answerable for them.”The sergeant made a little sign, two men moved forward, and in another minute Appleby and Harper went down the stairway and saw a section of cazadores waiting in the patio.
XXIII — APPLEBY TAKES A RISKIT was early next morning when Appleby and Harper sat at breakfast on the veranda. The white wall across the patio already shone dazzlingly against a strip of intense blue, and a patch of brightness grew broader across the veranda, but it was pleasantly cool as yet. From beyond the flat roof there rose the rasping thud of machetes swinging amidst the cane and the musical clink of hoes, with the dull rumble of the crushing machinery as an undertone.Appleby had apparently not slept very well, for there was weariness in his face, and he lay a trifle more limply than usual in his chair, with a morsel of bread and a very little cup of bitter black coffee in front of him, for in Spanish countries the regular breakfast is served later in the morning. Harper seemed to notice the absence of the major-domo.“Bread and coffee! Well, when he can’t get anything else one can live on them, but if Pancho had been around he’d have found us something more,” he said. “Their two meals a day never quite suited me. We have steak and potatoes three times in my country.”“I have seen you comparatively thankful to get one,” said Appleby. “I’m not sure that we will even have bread and coffee to fall upon in another day or two.”Harper glanced at him sharply. “Where’s Pancho?”“I sent him away last night with a message for Maccario.”“As the result of Morales coming round?”Appleby nodded. “Yes,” he said. “He made a demand I could not entertain.”“About me?”“Not exactly. I told him you felt sorry you had wounded the susceptibilities of his officer.”Harper laughed. “Well,” he said, “there’s only one thing I’m sorry for, and that is that I let up before I’d put the contract through. Still, I guess there’s more behind it.”“There is,” said Appleby gravely. “If you can keep quiet a minute or two I’ll tell you.”He spoke rapidly and concisely, and Harper’s face flushed as he listened. “You let him go!” he said. “Pancho and I were hanging round on the stairway.”Appleby smiled a trifle wearily. “I suspected it, but Morales is a good deal too cunning to take any unnecessary risks. If he had not come back we should have had half a company of cazadores turning up to ask what had become of him. Now I want you to understand the position. What are your countrymen likely to do about the ‘Maine’?”Harper’s eyes gleamed, and his voice was hoarse. “Make the Spaniards lick our boots or wipe them off the earth!”“Well,” said Appleby dryly, “you may do the last, but, if I know the Spaniards, you will never extort anything from them that would stain their national dignity. Still, I think you are right about your countrymen’s temper, and you see what it leads to. Every battalion of Spanish infantry will be wanted on the coast, and that will give the insurgents a free hand. It means they will once more be masters of this district, and that Santa Marta must fall. Believing that, I’m going to take a risk that almost frightens me.”“I don’t quite understand,” said Harper.“Harding is on his way to Cuba, and he has large sums sunk in San Cristoval and other places up and down the island. Once he gets here Morales will grind them out of him. Now, it is evident that Harding has as much sympathy with the insurgents as he has with the loyalists, and perhaps rather more, while just now he must stand in with one of them. It seems to me that if your people can’t be pacified the Spaniards will be driven out of Cuba.”“Still,” said Harper reflectively, “I don’t quite see why we should worry about that. Since you can’t sell Harding—and that’s quite plain—all we have to do is to light out quietly.”Appleby smiled. “I scarcely think we could manage it; and while I take Harding’s money there’s an obligation on me to do what I can for him. That is why I’m going to commit him definitely to standing in with the insurgents.”Harper stared at him in astonishment, and then brought his fist down with a bang on the table. “You are going to bluff the Spaniards, and play Sugar Harding’s hand?” he said with wondering respect. “You have ’most nerve enough to make a railroad king—but if it doesn’t come off, and they patch up peace again?”“Then,” said Appleby very quietly, “what I am going to do will cost Harding every dollar he has in Cuba, though that doesn’t count for so much since Morales means to ruin him, anyway. I can only make a guess, and stake everything on it. Your countrymen will ask too much, the Spaniards will offer very little. Still, it’s an almost overwhelming decision.”Again Harper looked at him with a faint flush in his face, for the boldness of the venture stirred the blood in him. “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever had a hand in,” he said. “Still, wherever it leads to, I’m going through with you!”“It is quite likely that it will lead us in front of a firing party,” said Appleby. “I have reasons for believing that Maccario is not far away, and I have asked him to occupy the hacienda. It commands the carretera to Santa Marta, and I fancy a handful of determined men could hold it against a battalion, while with it in their possession the Sin Verguenza would dominate this part of the country, in spite of Morales. He has, as you know, been sending troops away. The one thing that troubles me is the uncertainty whether Maccario can get here to-night.”“Well,” said Harper, “it’s quite an important question, and I don’t understand why we’re staying here. I’d far sooner light out at once and meet him. If Morales turns up in the meanwhile we’re going to have trouble.”Appleby smiled dryly. “I’m afraid we would not get very far,” he said. “Still, if it’s only to find out whether my notion is correct, we can try it.”Harper picked up what was left of the bread, and with characteristic caution slipped it into his pocket. “It may come in handy. I’ve been out with the Sin Verguenza before,” he said.They went down the stairway, along the tram-line, and out upon the Santa Marta road, but they had scarcely made half a mile when they came upon a sergeant and several files of cazadores sitting in the shadow by the roadside. Harper stopped abruptly and Appleby smiled.“The road is closed, then, Sergeant?” he said.“No, señor,” said the man. “Still, it is not very safe.”“Not even as far as Santa Marta?”The sergeant shook his head. “If you are going there I will send two files with you,” he said.Appleby glanced at Harper, who clenched a big hand, and appeared to have some difficulty in restraining himself. “I don’t think we will trouble you,” he said. “You had instructions from the Colonel Morales?”“He seemed anxious about your safety, señores,” said the man.Appleby turned upon his heel, and walked back the way he had come with Harper, murmuring anathemas upon Morales beside him, until the sergeant was out of sight.“I expected it!” he said.“Well,” said Harper dryly, “this is not the only way out of the place. We’ll try another.”They walked back to the hacienda, passed the sugar mill, and followed the little tram-line that wound through the cane until once more Harper came to a standstill, and his face grew a trifle grim. It was very hot, and the rails flung back the light dazzlingly between the tall green blades, but there was another suggestive blink of brightness among the long banana leaves in front of them.“More of them!” he said hoarsely.They walked on a few paces, and then a non-commissioned officer of cazadores in dusty white uniform moved out on to the line.“Well,” said Harper brusquely, “what are you wanting here?”The man made a little deprecatory gesture as he said, “We were sent.”Appleby made as though he would brush past him, but the soldier, moving a trifle, stood in front of him.“With permission, señor, it is safer about the hacienda,” he said. “Still, if you wish to go out into the country I will send a man or two with you.”Appleby laughed. “Then you are not alone?”The soldier called softly, and three or four men in uniform appeared amidst the banana leaves. “It seems,” he said, “the Colonel Morales is anxious about the hacienda.”Harper glanced at his comrade ruefully, but an inspiration dawned on Appleby. “One appreciates his solicitude. It is conceivable that your comrades would know what to do with a bottle or two of caña. A little is beneficial when one has passed the night in the open. There was, I think, a heavy dew.”“With thanks, but it is not permitted,” said the man. “We did not, however, leave Santa Marta until there was a little light in the sky.”“Colonel Morales was good enough to send a strong detachment?”The soldier shook his head. “A section of the Barremeda company,” he said. “The Sergeant Hernando was to follow with a few files when he came in from picket duty. One does not understand it, for the country is quiet now, but one asks no questions of an officer.”“It is not usually advisable,” said Appleby with a smile. “Still, if you change your mind about the caña you can come up to the hacienda and ask for me.”He swung round, and five minutes later sat down on a truck on the tram-line. Harper leaned against it, and looked at him.“I guess Morales means to make sure of us,” he said. “Well, we can only hope for Maccario. You couldn’t ask him if the men you sent got through?”“I made the venture, and he told me. It was last night I sent the men out, and the cazadores only started this morning. Morales blundered then, but it is rather more than likely he couldn’t help himself. Nobody would call him timid, but just now it would have been a risky thing for him to go back to Santa Marta alone.”Harper nodded. “There’s not much you don’t think of,” he said. “Still, it seems to me quite likely that Maccario can’t get through.”“Then so far as you and I are concerned I’m afraid the game is played out,” said Appleby.Harper pulled out his cigar case and wrenched it open. “Take a smoke,” he said. “I don’t feel like talking just now.”He sat down on a sleeper with his back to a wheel, while Appleby lay upon the truck with a cigar, which went out in his hand, gazing across the sunlit cane. It rose about him breast-high, a crude glaring green, luminous in its intensity of color, against the blueness above it, but Appleby scarcely saw it, or the gleaming lizard which lay close by suspiciously regarding him. He had made a very bold venture, and though Harding might yet benefit by it, he could realize the risk that he and his comrade ran.There was, however, consolation in the thought that Morales could not have known he had sent for the Sin Verguenza, or he would have flung a company of cazadores into the hacienda. A few resolute men could, Appleby fancied, hold it against a battalion, for there were no openings but narrow windows, and those high up, in the outer walls, while, if the defenders tore the veranda stairway up, the patio would be apt to prove a death-trap to the troops that entered it. It also seemed to him that, now the prospect of complications with the Americans would everywhere stir the insurgents to activity, Morales would scarcely have men to spare for a determined assault upon the hacienda.The longer Appleby reflected the more sure he felt that he had made a wise decision. It had, however, cost him an effort to face the risk, and now he wondered a little at his own fearlessness. He who had hitherto haggled about trifles and pored over musty papers in a country solicitor’s office had been driven into playing a bold man’s part in the great game of life, and the reflection brought him a curious sense of content. Even if he paid the forfeit of his daring, as it seemed he would in all probability do, he had, at least, proved himself the equal, in boldness of conception and clearness of vision, of men trained to politics and war, and he found the draught he had tasted almost intoxicating.The exhilaration of it had vanished now, but the vague content remained and blunted the anxieties that commenced to creep upon him. Still, he fell to wondering where Maccario was, and how long it would take him to reach San Cristoval, for Morales would demand his answer soon after nightfall He lay very still while the shadow of the cane grew narrower, until the sun shone hot upon his set brown face, and then slowly stood up.“I think we will go back and pay the men,” he said. “The few pesetas mean a good deal to them, and I would sooner they got them than Morales.”They went back together silently, and the whistle shrieked out its summons when the mill stopped for the men’s ten o’clock breakfast. Appleby drew them up as they came flocking in and handed each the little handful of silver due to him.“You will go back to work until the usual hour,” he said. “If all goes well you will begin again to-morrow, but this is a country in which no one knows what may happen.”The men took the money in grave wonder, and Appleby, who did not eat very much, sat down to breakfast, but both he and Harper felt it a relief when the plates were taken away.“You will keep them busy, if it is only to stop them talking,” he said. “I have wasted too much time already, and if I am to straighten up everything by this evening there is a good deal to do.”Harper went out, and Appleby, sitting down in his office, wrote up accounts until the afternoon. He dare leave no word for Harding, but that appeared unnecessary, for if Harding found San Cristoval in the possession of the Sin Verguenza he would, Appleby felt certain, understand and profit by the position. The room resembled an oven, and no more light than served to make writing possible entered the closed lattices; but with the perspiration dripping from him Appleby toiled on, and the last Spanish dollar had been accounted for when Harper and the man who carried the comida came up the stairway. Then it was with a little sigh he laid down his pen and tied the neatly engrossed documents together. The life he led at San Cristoval suited him, and now he was to turn his back on it and go back once more, a homeless and penniless adventurer, to the Sin Verguenza. Glancing up he saw Harper leaning on a bureau and looking at him.“That’s another leaf turned down,” he said. “A good deal may happen to both of us before to-morrow.”Harper nodded gravely. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to make a kind of special dinner. I don’t think I had much breakfast, and I don’t quite know when we may get another.”The dinner he had given the cook instructions concerning was rather more elaborate than usual, and flasks of red and amber wine stood among the dishes and the piled-up fruit. Neither of them had much to say, but they ate, and when very little remained on the table Harper leaned back in his chair with a smile of content.“That’s one thing Morales can’t take away from me, and I guess it should carry me on quite a while,” he said.They lay still, cigar in hand, for the most part of an hour and then as the sunlight faded from the patio Harper appeared to grow restless. Appleby watched him with a little smile.“You don’t seem quite easy,” he said.Harper stared at him, and then broke into a somewhat hollow laugh. “It’s a fact,” he said. “I was kind of wondering if it wasn’t time Pancho or one of the other men came back. I guess one could see them on the tram-line from the roof. Morales will be here in an hour or two.”He went out, and Appleby sat still, not because that was pleasant, but because he felt the necessity of holding himself in hand. He desired to retain a becoming tranquillity, and now he could only wait found that the tension was growing unendurable. There was no sound in the patio, where the light was failing, but he could hear Harper’s footsteps on the flat roof above, and found himself listening eagerly as his comrade paced up and down. He stopped once, and Appleby felt his heart beating, for it seemed that something had seized Harper’s attention. The footsteps, however, commenced again, and then Harper, who appeared to stop once more for a second, came hastily down the outside stairway. Appleby felt his fingers trembling, and it was only by effort he sat still instead of moving to the door to question him. If Harper had seen anything it was evident his comrade would hear of it in a moment or two.He came on down the stairway, and when he reached the veranda Appleby closed one hand as he moved in his chair, but Harper passed on down the lower stairway, and Appleby sat still again, while a curious little shiver ran through him. Half an hour had elapsed before his comrade came in again and flung himself down in the nearest chair. He shook his head disgustedly, and his face was very grim.“No sign of Pancho, and I’m not going back,” he said. “I guess watching for folks who don’t come gets kind of worrying. There’s another thing. I went prospecting down the tram-line, and found that sergeant had brought his men closer in.”“I could have told you that,” said Appleby. “If I had thought we could have got away I would scarcely have been quietly sitting here.”Harper’s face flushed. “Well,” he said, “it’s Maccario or Morales now.”He lighted a cigar and sat still, though his big hands quivered now and then, and the veins showed swollen on his forehead. The light grew rapidly dim, and at last Appleby moved sharply when a man came up the stairway with a lamp. Harper laughed unpleasantly.“It can’t last very long now,” he said. “We’ll know what’s going to happen in the next half-hour.”Appleby glanced at him languidly. “There is,” he said, “one thing that would induce Morales to let us slip through his fingers.”Harper stood up and straightened himself, clenching his hands on the chair back as he stared at Appleby.“If I thought you meant it I’d stop your talking for ever now,” he said. “Oh, I’ve now and then done a smart thing, and nobody expects too much from me, but I haven’t sold a countryman to the Spaniards yet—the devils who sunk the ‘Maine’!”Appleby laughed. “I think,” he said quietly, “you had better sit down.”Harper said nothing, but when he turned and flung himself into the chair his eyes were eloquent, and there was for almost an hour a tense silence in the room. It seemed interminable to Appleby, but at last there was a tramp of feet outside, and they rose simultaneously, Harper flushed and Appleby a trifle gray in face. Then there were footsteps on the stairway, and Morales came in with two or three files of cazadores behind him. He glanced at the two men, and his face grew a trifle harder, while a little vindictive sparkle crept into his eyes. Still, his voice was coldly even.“I had the honor of making you a proposal last night, Senor Appleby,” he said.Appleby nodded. “I am sorry that I found I could not entertain it,” he said.Morales let his hand fall on the hilt of his sword. “Then there is only one course open to me. I place these men in your custody, sergeant, and until you hand them over in the guardroom at Santa Marta you will be answerable for them.”The sergeant made a little sign, two men moved forward, and in another minute Appleby and Harper went down the stairway and saw a section of cazadores waiting in the patio.
IT was early next morning when Appleby and Harper sat at breakfast on the veranda. The white wall across the patio already shone dazzlingly against a strip of intense blue, and a patch of brightness grew broader across the veranda, but it was pleasantly cool as yet. From beyond the flat roof there rose the rasping thud of machetes swinging amidst the cane and the musical clink of hoes, with the dull rumble of the crushing machinery as an undertone.
Appleby had apparently not slept very well, for there was weariness in his face, and he lay a trifle more limply than usual in his chair, with a morsel of bread and a very little cup of bitter black coffee in front of him, for in Spanish countries the regular breakfast is served later in the morning. Harper seemed to notice the absence of the major-domo.
“Bread and coffee! Well, when he can’t get anything else one can live on them, but if Pancho had been around he’d have found us something more,” he said. “Their two meals a day never quite suited me. We have steak and potatoes three times in my country.”
“I have seen you comparatively thankful to get one,” said Appleby. “I’m not sure that we will even have bread and coffee to fall upon in another day or two.”
Harper glanced at him sharply. “Where’s Pancho?”
“I sent him away last night with a message for Maccario.”
“As the result of Morales coming round?”
Appleby nodded. “Yes,” he said. “He made a demand I could not entertain.”
“About me?”
“Not exactly. I told him you felt sorry you had wounded the susceptibilities of his officer.”
Harper laughed. “Well,” he said, “there’s only one thing I’m sorry for, and that is that I let up before I’d put the contract through. Still, I guess there’s more behind it.”
“There is,” said Appleby gravely. “If you can keep quiet a minute or two I’ll tell you.”
He spoke rapidly and concisely, and Harper’s face flushed as he listened. “You let him go!” he said. “Pancho and I were hanging round on the stairway.”
Appleby smiled a trifle wearily. “I suspected it, but Morales is a good deal too cunning to take any unnecessary risks. If he had not come back we should have had half a company of cazadores turning up to ask what had become of him. Now I want you to understand the position. What are your countrymen likely to do about the ‘Maine’?”
Harper’s eyes gleamed, and his voice was hoarse. “Make the Spaniards lick our boots or wipe them off the earth!”
“Well,” said Appleby dryly, “you may do the last, but, if I know the Spaniards, you will never extort anything from them that would stain their national dignity. Still, I think you are right about your countrymen’s temper, and you see what it leads to. Every battalion of Spanish infantry will be wanted on the coast, and that will give the insurgents a free hand. It means they will once more be masters of this district, and that Santa Marta must fall. Believing that, I’m going to take a risk that almost frightens me.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Harper.
“Harding is on his way to Cuba, and he has large sums sunk in San Cristoval and other places up and down the island. Once he gets here Morales will grind them out of him. Now, it is evident that Harding has as much sympathy with the insurgents as he has with the loyalists, and perhaps rather more, while just now he must stand in with one of them. It seems to me that if your people can’t be pacified the Spaniards will be driven out of Cuba.”
“Still,” said Harper reflectively, “I don’t quite see why we should worry about that. Since you can’t sell Harding—and that’s quite plain—all we have to do is to light out quietly.”
Appleby smiled. “I scarcely think we could manage it; and while I take Harding’s money there’s an obligation on me to do what I can for him. That is why I’m going to commit him definitely to standing in with the insurgents.”
Harper stared at him in astonishment, and then brought his fist down with a bang on the table. “You are going to bluff the Spaniards, and play Sugar Harding’s hand?” he said with wondering respect. “You have ’most nerve enough to make a railroad king—but if it doesn’t come off, and they patch up peace again?”
“Then,” said Appleby very quietly, “what I am going to do will cost Harding every dollar he has in Cuba, though that doesn’t count for so much since Morales means to ruin him, anyway. I can only make a guess, and stake everything on it. Your countrymen will ask too much, the Spaniards will offer very little. Still, it’s an almost overwhelming decision.”
Again Harper looked at him with a faint flush in his face, for the boldness of the venture stirred the blood in him. “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever had a hand in,” he said. “Still, wherever it leads to, I’m going through with you!”
“It is quite likely that it will lead us in front of a firing party,” said Appleby. “I have reasons for believing that Maccario is not far away, and I have asked him to occupy the hacienda. It commands the carretera to Santa Marta, and I fancy a handful of determined men could hold it against a battalion, while with it in their possession the Sin Verguenza would dominate this part of the country, in spite of Morales. He has, as you know, been sending troops away. The one thing that troubles me is the uncertainty whether Maccario can get here to-night.”
“Well,” said Harper, “it’s quite an important question, and I don’t understand why we’re staying here. I’d far sooner light out at once and meet him. If Morales turns up in the meanwhile we’re going to have trouble.”
Appleby smiled dryly. “I’m afraid we would not get very far,” he said. “Still, if it’s only to find out whether my notion is correct, we can try it.”
Harper picked up what was left of the bread, and with characteristic caution slipped it into his pocket. “It may come in handy. I’ve been out with the Sin Verguenza before,” he said.
They went down the stairway, along the tram-line, and out upon the Santa Marta road, but they had scarcely made half a mile when they came upon a sergeant and several files of cazadores sitting in the shadow by the roadside. Harper stopped abruptly and Appleby smiled.
“The road is closed, then, Sergeant?” he said.
“No, señor,” said the man. “Still, it is not very safe.”
“Not even as far as Santa Marta?”
The sergeant shook his head. “If you are going there I will send two files with you,” he said.
Appleby glanced at Harper, who clenched a big hand, and appeared to have some difficulty in restraining himself. “I don’t think we will trouble you,” he said. “You had instructions from the Colonel Morales?”
“He seemed anxious about your safety, señores,” said the man.
Appleby turned upon his heel, and walked back the way he had come with Harper, murmuring anathemas upon Morales beside him, until the sergeant was out of sight.
“I expected it!” he said.
“Well,” said Harper dryly, “this is not the only way out of the place. We’ll try another.”
They walked back to the hacienda, passed the sugar mill, and followed the little tram-line that wound through the cane until once more Harper came to a standstill, and his face grew a trifle grim. It was very hot, and the rails flung back the light dazzlingly between the tall green blades, but there was another suggestive blink of brightness among the long banana leaves in front of them.
“More of them!” he said hoarsely.
They walked on a few paces, and then a non-commissioned officer of cazadores in dusty white uniform moved out on to the line.
“Well,” said Harper brusquely, “what are you wanting here?”
The man made a little deprecatory gesture as he said, “We were sent.”
Appleby made as though he would brush past him, but the soldier, moving a trifle, stood in front of him.
“With permission, señor, it is safer about the hacienda,” he said. “Still, if you wish to go out into the country I will send a man or two with you.”
Appleby laughed. “Then you are not alone?”
The soldier called softly, and three or four men in uniform appeared amidst the banana leaves. “It seems,” he said, “the Colonel Morales is anxious about the hacienda.”
Harper glanced at his comrade ruefully, but an inspiration dawned on Appleby. “One appreciates his solicitude. It is conceivable that your comrades would know what to do with a bottle or two of caña. A little is beneficial when one has passed the night in the open. There was, I think, a heavy dew.”
“With thanks, but it is not permitted,” said the man. “We did not, however, leave Santa Marta until there was a little light in the sky.”
“Colonel Morales was good enough to send a strong detachment?”
The soldier shook his head. “A section of the Barremeda company,” he said. “The Sergeant Hernando was to follow with a few files when he came in from picket duty. One does not understand it, for the country is quiet now, but one asks no questions of an officer.”
“It is not usually advisable,” said Appleby with a smile. “Still, if you change your mind about the caña you can come up to the hacienda and ask for me.”
He swung round, and five minutes later sat down on a truck on the tram-line. Harper leaned against it, and looked at him.
“I guess Morales means to make sure of us,” he said. “Well, we can only hope for Maccario. You couldn’t ask him if the men you sent got through?”
“I made the venture, and he told me. It was last night I sent the men out, and the cazadores only started this morning. Morales blundered then, but it is rather more than likely he couldn’t help himself. Nobody would call him timid, but just now it would have been a risky thing for him to go back to Santa Marta alone.”
Harper nodded. “There’s not much you don’t think of,” he said. “Still, it seems to me quite likely that Maccario can’t get through.”
“Then so far as you and I are concerned I’m afraid the game is played out,” said Appleby.
Harper pulled out his cigar case and wrenched it open. “Take a smoke,” he said. “I don’t feel like talking just now.”
He sat down on a sleeper with his back to a wheel, while Appleby lay upon the truck with a cigar, which went out in his hand, gazing across the sunlit cane. It rose about him breast-high, a crude glaring green, luminous in its intensity of color, against the blueness above it, but Appleby scarcely saw it, or the gleaming lizard which lay close by suspiciously regarding him. He had made a very bold venture, and though Harding might yet benefit by it, he could realize the risk that he and his comrade ran.
There was, however, consolation in the thought that Morales could not have known he had sent for the Sin Verguenza, or he would have flung a company of cazadores into the hacienda. A few resolute men could, Appleby fancied, hold it against a battalion, for there were no openings but narrow windows, and those high up, in the outer walls, while, if the defenders tore the veranda stairway up, the patio would be apt to prove a death-trap to the troops that entered it. It also seemed to him that, now the prospect of complications with the Americans would everywhere stir the insurgents to activity, Morales would scarcely have men to spare for a determined assault upon the hacienda.
The longer Appleby reflected the more sure he felt that he had made a wise decision. It had, however, cost him an effort to face the risk, and now he wondered a little at his own fearlessness. He who had hitherto haggled about trifles and pored over musty papers in a country solicitor’s office had been driven into playing a bold man’s part in the great game of life, and the reflection brought him a curious sense of content. Even if he paid the forfeit of his daring, as it seemed he would in all probability do, he had, at least, proved himself the equal, in boldness of conception and clearness of vision, of men trained to politics and war, and he found the draught he had tasted almost intoxicating.
The exhilaration of it had vanished now, but the vague content remained and blunted the anxieties that commenced to creep upon him. Still, he fell to wondering where Maccario was, and how long it would take him to reach San Cristoval, for Morales would demand his answer soon after nightfall He lay very still while the shadow of the cane grew narrower, until the sun shone hot upon his set brown face, and then slowly stood up.
“I think we will go back and pay the men,” he said. “The few pesetas mean a good deal to them, and I would sooner they got them than Morales.”
They went back together silently, and the whistle shrieked out its summons when the mill stopped for the men’s ten o’clock breakfast. Appleby drew them up as they came flocking in and handed each the little handful of silver due to him.
“You will go back to work until the usual hour,” he said. “If all goes well you will begin again to-morrow, but this is a country in which no one knows what may happen.”
The men took the money in grave wonder, and Appleby, who did not eat very much, sat down to breakfast, but both he and Harper felt it a relief when the plates were taken away.
“You will keep them busy, if it is only to stop them talking,” he said. “I have wasted too much time already, and if I am to straighten up everything by this evening there is a good deal to do.”
Harper went out, and Appleby, sitting down in his office, wrote up accounts until the afternoon. He dare leave no word for Harding, but that appeared unnecessary, for if Harding found San Cristoval in the possession of the Sin Verguenza he would, Appleby felt certain, understand and profit by the position. The room resembled an oven, and no more light than served to make writing possible entered the closed lattices; but with the perspiration dripping from him Appleby toiled on, and the last Spanish dollar had been accounted for when Harper and the man who carried the comida came up the stairway. Then it was with a little sigh he laid down his pen and tied the neatly engrossed documents together. The life he led at San Cristoval suited him, and now he was to turn his back on it and go back once more, a homeless and penniless adventurer, to the Sin Verguenza. Glancing up he saw Harper leaning on a bureau and looking at him.
“That’s another leaf turned down,” he said. “A good deal may happen to both of us before to-morrow.”
Harper nodded gravely. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to make a kind of special dinner. I don’t think I had much breakfast, and I don’t quite know when we may get another.”
The dinner he had given the cook instructions concerning was rather more elaborate than usual, and flasks of red and amber wine stood among the dishes and the piled-up fruit. Neither of them had much to say, but they ate, and when very little remained on the table Harper leaned back in his chair with a smile of content.
“That’s one thing Morales can’t take away from me, and I guess it should carry me on quite a while,” he said.
They lay still, cigar in hand, for the most part of an hour and then as the sunlight faded from the patio Harper appeared to grow restless. Appleby watched him with a little smile.
“You don’t seem quite easy,” he said.
Harper stared at him, and then broke into a somewhat hollow laugh. “It’s a fact,” he said. “I was kind of wondering if it wasn’t time Pancho or one of the other men came back. I guess one could see them on the tram-line from the roof. Morales will be here in an hour or two.”
He went out, and Appleby sat still, not because that was pleasant, but because he felt the necessity of holding himself in hand. He desired to retain a becoming tranquillity, and now he could only wait found that the tension was growing unendurable. There was no sound in the patio, where the light was failing, but he could hear Harper’s footsteps on the flat roof above, and found himself listening eagerly as his comrade paced up and down. He stopped once, and Appleby felt his heart beating, for it seemed that something had seized Harper’s attention. The footsteps, however, commenced again, and then Harper, who appeared to stop once more for a second, came hastily down the outside stairway. Appleby felt his fingers trembling, and it was only by effort he sat still instead of moving to the door to question him. If Harper had seen anything it was evident his comrade would hear of it in a moment or two.
He came on down the stairway, and when he reached the veranda Appleby closed one hand as he moved in his chair, but Harper passed on down the lower stairway, and Appleby sat still again, while a curious little shiver ran through him. Half an hour had elapsed before his comrade came in again and flung himself down in the nearest chair. He shook his head disgustedly, and his face was very grim.
“No sign of Pancho, and I’m not going back,” he said. “I guess watching for folks who don’t come gets kind of worrying. There’s another thing. I went prospecting down the tram-line, and found that sergeant had brought his men closer in.”
“I could have told you that,” said Appleby. “If I had thought we could have got away I would scarcely have been quietly sitting here.”
Harper’s face flushed. “Well,” he said, “it’s Maccario or Morales now.”
He lighted a cigar and sat still, though his big hands quivered now and then, and the veins showed swollen on his forehead. The light grew rapidly dim, and at last Appleby moved sharply when a man came up the stairway with a lamp. Harper laughed unpleasantly.
“It can’t last very long now,” he said. “We’ll know what’s going to happen in the next half-hour.”
Appleby glanced at him languidly. “There is,” he said, “one thing that would induce Morales to let us slip through his fingers.”
Harper stood up and straightened himself, clenching his hands on the chair back as he stared at Appleby.
“If I thought you meant it I’d stop your talking for ever now,” he said. “Oh, I’ve now and then done a smart thing, and nobody expects too much from me, but I haven’t sold a countryman to the Spaniards yet—the devils who sunk the ‘Maine’!”
Appleby laughed. “I think,” he said quietly, “you had better sit down.”
Harper said nothing, but when he turned and flung himself into the chair his eyes were eloquent, and there was for almost an hour a tense silence in the room. It seemed interminable to Appleby, but at last there was a tramp of feet outside, and they rose simultaneously, Harper flushed and Appleby a trifle gray in face. Then there were footsteps on the stairway, and Morales came in with two or three files of cazadores behind him. He glanced at the two men, and his face grew a trifle harder, while a little vindictive sparkle crept into his eyes. Still, his voice was coldly even.
“I had the honor of making you a proposal last night, Senor Appleby,” he said.
Appleby nodded. “I am sorry that I found I could not entertain it,” he said.
Morales let his hand fall on the hilt of his sword. “Then there is only one course open to me. I place these men in your custody, sergeant, and until you hand them over in the guardroom at Santa Marta you will be answerable for them.”
The sergeant made a little sign, two men moved forward, and in another minute Appleby and Harper went down the stairway and saw a section of cazadores waiting in the patio.