“
Phe-ew!” Looking up from a treatise on bricklaying as applied to the building of furnaces, Billy pitched a stone at Seyd, who was experimenting with a batch of lime fresh drawn from a kiln of their own burning. “I’d always imagined bricklaying to be a mere matter of plumb and trowel, but this darned craft has more crinkles to it than the differential calculus. This fellow makes me dizzy with his talk of ties and courses, flues, draughts, cornering, slopes, and arches.”
Leaning on his hoe, Seyd wiped his wet brow. “I’m finding out a few things myself. I’d always sort of envied a hod-carrier. But now I know that the humble ‘mort’ puts more foot-pounds of energy into his work than the average horse. As a remedy for dizziness caused by overstudy, mixing mortar has no equal. Come and spell me with this hoe.”
“‘And the last state of that man was worse than the first,’” Billy groaned. “Can’twe hire a single solitary peon, Seyd?”
More eloquently than words, Seyd’s shrug testified to the sullen boycott which had been maintainedagainst them for the past three weeks. On the morning of their arrival at the mine, while the fear of Sebastien Rocha still lay heavy upon him, Carlos had been half bullied, half persuaded into the sale of Paz and Luz at a price which raised him almost to the status of a ranchero. But that single transaction summed up their dealings with the natives. No man had answered their call for laborers at wages which must have appeared as wealth to a peon. The charcoal-burners who drove their burros past the mine every day returned to their greetings either muttered curses or black stares. They were as stubborn in their cold obstinacy as the face of the temple god. Indeed, in these days the stony face of the image had become inseparably associated in Seyd’s mind with the determined opposition that had routed his predecessors and now aimed to oust him. He saw it even in the soft, round faces of the children who peeped at him from the doorways of cane huts, a somber look, centuries old in its stubborn dullness.
Not that he and Billy were in the least discouraged. Once convinced that labor was not to be obtained, they had stripped and pitched in. In one month they rebuilt the adobe dwelling which had been somewhat shattered by the Dutchman’s hurried exit, dug a lime kiln, and hauled the wood and stone for the first burning. They had completed the laying out of the smelter foundation, filling in odd moments by pickingfor the first charge the choicest ore from the hundreds of tons that the Englishmen had unwisely mined before they ran head-on into the hostile combination of freights and prices.
This last had been an inspiriting labor, for so rich were the values which the ore carried that after a trial assay Billy had danced all over the place beating an old pan. It is doubtful whether young men ever had better prospects; and so, knowing that Billy’s present pessimism arose from a strong disinclination for physical labor in the hot sun, Seyd merely grinned. Sitting down on a pile of brick, he mopped his face and stared out over the valley.
Situated, as the mine was, on a wide bench which gave pause to the earth’s dizzy plunge from the rim three thousand feet above, Seyd sat at the meeting-place of temperate and tropic zones. A hundred feet below—just where they had climbed the stiff trail out of the jungle that flooded the valley with its fecund life—a group of cocoanut palms stood disputing the downward rush of the pine, and all along the bench piñon and copal, upland growths, shouldered cedars and ceibas, the tropical giants. While these battled above for light and room there came, writhing snake-like up from the tropics, creepers and climbers, vines and twining plants, to engage the ferns and bracken, the pine’s green allies. A plague of orchids here attacked the copal, wreathing trunk and limb in sickly flame. Thebracken there overswept the riotous tropical life. All along the borderland the battle raged, here following a charge of the pine down a cool ravine, there mounting with the tropic growths to a sunlit slope. But in the valley below the tropics ruled clear down to the brilliant green of the San Nicolas cane fields.
“By the way”—Seyd spoke as his eye fell on these—“Don Luis is back from Mexico City. The hunchbacked charcoal-burner told me as he went past this morning.”
“The deuce he did!” Of all the black looks that came their way that of the cripple was the most vindictive. “You must have him hypnotized.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you had heard his accent. ‘El General is again at San Nicolas,’ just as though he were sentencing me to hang. Nevertheless, the news comes pat. I think it would be good policy for me to run down and pay the denunciation taxes before we begin work on the smelter. No, I don’t apprehend any trouble. Your Mexican hasn’t much stomach for litigation, and no doubt the old fellow feels quite safe in his pull with the metals companies and railroads. But while he is still in the mind we had better pay the money and complete title. If he once gets wind of the smelter—”
“Just so.” Billy threw down the hoe. “While you dress I’ll saddle up a mule—if you will please say to which demon you prefer to intrust yourprecious neck. Light began the day by kicking me through the side of the stable. She needs chastening. But then Peace dined on my arm yesterday. It’s Peace for yours, and I only hope you get it.”
“Hum!” he coughed when, half an hour later, Seyd emerged shaved, bathed, and clad in immaculate white. “Is this magnificence altogether for el General, or did Caliban drop some word of our niece? Really, old chap, you look fine. If I were the señorita I’d go for you myself.”
Though Seyd laughed, yet the instant he passed out of sight he fell into frowning thought which was evidently related to the letter he pulled out and reread while he rode down the steep grades. Written in a characterless round hand, it covered so many pages that he was halfway down before, after tearing it in shreds, he tossed it to the winds. Its destruction, however, did not seem to change his mood. He let Peace take her own way until, having slipped, slid, and tobogganed on tense haunches down the last grade, she felt able to assert her individuality by attempting to rub him off against a tree. Next she attempted the immolation of a fat brown baby that was rolling with a nest of young pigs in the dust outside a hut; and thereafter her performances were so varied that he was simply compelled to take some notice of the sights and sounds of the trail.
Not the least remarkable were the frequent andfamiliar scowls of the people he met. Various in expression, they ranged between the copious curses of the fat señora whose pacing-mule was driven by Peace off the trail, and the snarling malice of occasional muleteers; but, undisturbed, he pursued his inquiries for laborers at every chance.
“No, señor, we do not desire work.”
The stereotyped answer merely stimulated the quiet persistence which formed the basis of his character, and he continued to ask at the village which raised graceful palm roofs out of a jungle clearing, at the ranchos which now began to cover the valley with a green checker of maize fields, and at scattered huts, half hidden by the rich foliage of palms and bananas. It was while he was questioning a peon who was hulling rice with a wooden pole and churn arrangement that the subdued hostility broke out in open demonstration.
The trail here ran between a fence of split poles, which inclosed the peon’s corn and frijoles, and the steep bank of a dry creek bed, so that only a few feet leeway was left for the train of burros which came trotting out of the jungle behind him. In single file they could have passed, but looking around he saw they were coming three abreast.
Had he chosen, there was time to make the end of the fence. But he had seen behind the train the sparkling, beady eyes of Caliban, thehunchback, and the dark grins of two of his fellows. Flushing with quick anger, he backed Peace against the fence, leaned forward over her neck, and slashed with his whip at the leading beasts. Checked by this, they would have fallen back to single file but for the whips behind that bit out hair and hide and drove them on in a huddled mass.
It seemed for a few seconds that he would be crushed. That he escaped injury was simply due to the hereditary hate between the mule and the ass which suddenly turned Peace into a raging fiend. While her chisel teeth slit ragged hides her other and busier end beat a devil’s tattoo on resounding ribs and filled the air with flying charcoal. Yet even her demoniac energies had their limitations. If she held the ground for herself and master she could not preserve the inviolability of his white trousers, which emerged sadly smudged from the fray. It is a pity she could not. Little things always cause the greatest trouble, and but for the smudges the incident would probably have closed with Seyd’s challenge:
“Can’t you be content with half the road?”
His patience even survived their insolent grins. Not until the hunchback in passing emitted a hoarse chuckle as he surveyed the smudges did Seyd’s temper burst its bonds. Swinging his whip then with all his might, he laid it across the crooked shoulders once, twice, thrice, beforethe fellow sprang, snarling, out of reach. The others, who had already passed, came leaping back at his cry, knives flashing as they ran, and though they stopped under the sudden frown of a Colt’s automatic, they did not retire, but stood, fingering their knives, muttering curses.
A little sorry on his part for the anger which had turned the sullen hostility into open feud, Seyd faced them, puzzled just what to do. It was too late to give way, for that would expose him to future insult. Yet if, taking the initiative, he should happen to kill a man, he knew enough of the quality of justice as dealt out by the Mexican courts to realize the danger.
While he debated, the puzzle was almost solved by the peon rice-huller, who came stealing up from behind the fence. Not until the man had swung his heavy pestle and was tiptoeing to his blow did Seyd divine the reason for the glances that were passing behind him. Looking quickly, he caught the glint of polished hardwood in the tail of his eye; then, without a pause for thought, he dropped flat on the rump of the mule, and not a second too soon, for, raising the hair on his brow as it passed, the club smashed down through the top rail of the fence. In falling backward his weight on the bridle brought Peace scurrying a few paces to the rear. When he snapped upright again the fourth enemy was also under his gun.
But what to do? The puzzle still remained—to be solved by another, for just then came a sudden beat of hoofs, and from behind a bamboo thicket galloped first the Siberian wolf hound, then the girl he had met at the train.
So silently did the girl come that the charcoal-burners were forced to jump aside, and, springing in the wrong direction, the hunchback was bowled over by the beast of themozowho rode at her back.
“Why, señor!” she exclaimed, reining in. Then taking in the knives, pistol, broken club, she asked, “They attacked you? Tomas!”
Her Spanish was too rapid for Seyd’s ear, but it was easy to gather its tenor from the results. With a certain complaisance Seyd looked on while his enemies scattered on a run that was diversified by uncouth leaps as themozo’swhip bit on tender places.
“He struck at you?” She broke in on the rice-huller’s voluble plea that never,neverwould he have raised a finger against the señor had he known him for a friend of hers! “Then he, too, shall be flogged.”
“I would not wish—” Seyd began.
But she interrupted him: “You were going toward San Nicolas? Then I shall turn and ride with you.” Anticipating his protest, she added, “I had already ridden beyond my usual distance.”
Very willingly he fell in at her side, and they rode on till they met themozoreturning, hot and flushed, from the pursuit. He was keen as a blooded hound; it required only her backward nod to send him darting along the trail, and just about the time they overtook the charcoal-burners a sudden yelling in their rear told that the account of the rice-huller was in course of settlement.
Passing his late enemies, Seyd could not but wonder at their transformation. With the exception of the hunchback, in whose beady eyes still lurked subdued ferocity, all were sobbing, and even he broke into deprecatory whinings. Having read his Prescott, Seyd knew something of the rigid Aztec caste systems from which Mexican peonage was derived. Now, viewing their abjectness, he was able to apprehend, almost with the vividness of experience, the ages of unspeakable cruelty that had given birth to their fear. But that which astonished him still more was the indifference with which the girl had ordered the flogging.
Such glimpses of her face as he was able to steal while they rode did not aid him much. It was impossible to imagine anything more typically modern than the delicately chiseled features lit with a vivid intelligence which seemed to pulse and glow in the soft shadow beneath her hat. And when from her face his glance fell to her smart riding-suit of tan linen he was completely at sea.
Curiosity dictated his comment: “Your justice is certainly swift. Really I am afraid that I was the aggressor. At least I struck first.”
“But not without cause.” She glanced at his smudged clothes. “Tell me about it.” And when he had finished she commented: “Just as I thought. And these are dangerous men. They would have killed you without a qualm. In the days that Don Sebastien was clearing the country of bandits he counted that hunchback one of his best men.”
“Yet he whined like a puppy under your man’s whip.”
Smiling at his wonder, she went on to state the very terms of his puzzle. “You do not know them—the combination of ferocity and subservience that goes with their blood. In the old days he who raised his hand against the superior caste was put to death by torture, and, though, thank God, those wicked days are past, the effect remains. They are obedient, usually, as trained hounds, but just as dangerous to a stranger. If I had not ordered them flogged they would have taken it as license to kill you at their leisure.”
“Now I realize the depth of my obligation.”
He spoke a little dryly, and she leaped to his meaning with a quickness that greatly advanced her in his secret classification. “I have hurt your pride. You will pardon me. I had forgotten the unconquerable valor of the gringos.”
“Oh, come!” he pleaded.
She stopped laughing. “Really, I did not doubt your courage. But do not imagine for one moment that they would attack you again in the open. A knife in the dark, a shot from a bush, that is their method, and if you should happen to kill one, even in self defense, gringos are not so well beloved in Guerrero but that some one would be found to swear it a murder. Be advised, and go carefully.”
“I surely will.” He was going on to thank her when she cut him off with the usual “It is nothing.” Whereupon, respect for her intuition was added to the classification which was beginning to bewilder him by its scope and variety.
In fact, he could not look her way nor could she speak without some physical trait or mental quality being added to the catalogue. Now it was the quivering sensitiveness of her mouth, an unsuspected archness, the astonishing range of feeling revealed by her large dark eyes. Looking down upon the charcoal-burners, they had gleamed like black diamonds; in talking, their soft glow waxed and waned. Sometimes—but this was omitted from the classification because it only occurred when his head was turned—a merry twinkle illumined a furtive smile. Taken in all its play and sparkle, her face expressed a lively sensibility altogether foreign to his experience of women.
After a short silence she took up the subjectagain. “But I am giving you a terrible impression of our people. It is only in moments of passion that the old Aztec crops out. At other times they are kind, pleasant, generous. Neither are we the cruel taskmasters that some foreign books and papers portray us. You would not believe how angry they make me—the angrier because I have a strain of your blood in my own veins. My grandfather, you know, was Irish. It was from him I learned your speech.”
The last bit of information was almost superfluous, for from no other source could she have obtained the pure lilting quality that makes the Dublin speech the finest English in the world. To it she had added an individual charm, the measured cadence and soft accent of her native Spanish, delivered in a low contralto that had in it a little break. Her laugh punctuated its flow as she came to her conclusion.
“But you will soon be able to see for yourself what terrible people we are.”
He obtained one glimpse within the next mile. He had already noted the passing of the last wild jungle. From fields of maize which alternated with sunburned fields ofmagueythey now rode into an avenue that led on through green cane. Rising far above their heads, the cane marched with them for a half mile, then suddenly opened out around a primitive wooden sugar mill. Under the thatched roof of an open hut half-nude women were stirring boiling syrup in open pans,and at the sight of Francesca one of them came running out to the trail.
“Her baby is to be christened next Sunday,” the girl told him as they rode on. “She was breaking her heart because she had no robe. But now she is happy, for I have promised to ask the goodmamato lend her mine, which she has treasured all these years.”
Soon afterward as they turned out of the cane into a new planting they almost ran down her uncle, who had come out to inspect the work. Only his quick use of the spur averted a collision, and as his own spirited roan sprang sideways Seyd noted with admiration that despite his bulk and age horse and man moved as one. If surprised at the sight of his niece in such company, the old man did not reveal it by so much as the lift of a brow. It was difficult even to perceive the twinkle in his eyes that lightened his chiding.
“Ola, Francesca! If there be no respect for thy own pretty neck, at least have pity on my old bones. It is you, señor? Welcome to San Nicolas.”
Neither did Seyd’s explanation of his business abate his brown impassivity. If assumed, his ponderous effort at recollection was wonderfully realistic. “Ah,si! Santa Gertrudis? If I remember aright, it was denounced before. Yes, yes, by several—but they had no good fortune. Still, you may fare better. Paulo, the administrador, will attend to the business.”
With a wave of the hand, courteous in its very indifference, he put the matter out of his province and displayed no further interest until the girl told of the attack on Seyd. Then he glanced up quickly from under frowning brows.
“You had them whipped?Bueno!The rascals must be taught not to molest travelers. And now we shall ride on that the señor may break his fast. And thou, too, wicked one, will be late. As thou knowest, it is the only fault the good mother sees in thee.”
“Would that it totaled my sins,” she laughed. “To escape another black mark I shall have to gallop.Ola!for a race!”
As from a light touch of the spur her beast launched out and away, the roan reared and tried to follow, and while he curbed it back to a walk the old man’s heavy face lit up with pleasure. “She rides well. I have not a vaquero with a better seat. But go thou, Tomas, lest she come to a harm. And you, señor, will follow?”
With a vivid picture of the figure Peace would cut in a race occupying the forefront of his mind it did not take Seyd long to choose. After the girl had passed from sight behind a clump of tamarinds he took note, as they rode along, of the peons who were laying the field out in shallow ditches wherein others were planting long shoots of seed cane. To his practical engineer’s eye the hand-digging seemed so slow and laborious that he could not refrain from a comment.
“It seems to me that a good steel plow would do the work much cheaper.”
“Cheaper? Perhaps.” After a heavy pause, during which he took secret note of Seyd out of the corner of his eye, the old man went on: “To do a thing at less cost in labor and time seems to be the only thing that you Yankees consider. But cheapness is sometimes dearly purchased. Come! Suppose that I put myself under the seven devils of haste that continually drive you. What would become of these, my people? Who would employ them? It is true that theirs is not a great wage—perhaps, after all, totals less than the cost of your steel plow and a capable man to run it. We pay only three and a half cents for each ditch, in our currency, and a man must dig twelve a day. If he digs less he gets nothing.
“That does not seem just to you?” He read Seyd’s surprise. “It would if you knew them. Grown children without responsibility or sense of duty are they. If left free to come and go, they would dig one, two, three ditches, enough and no more than would supply them withcigarrosandaguardiente, and our work would never be done. As it is, they dig the full twelve, and have money for other necessities.
“The wage seems small?” Again he read Seyd’s mind. “Yet it is all that we can afford, nor does it have to cover the cost of living. Each man has his patch of maize and frijoles, anda run for his chickens and pigs. Then the river teems with fish, the jungle with small game. His wage goes only for drink andcigarros, or, if there be sufficient left over, to buy a dress for his woman. They are perfectly content.” Slightly lifting his heavy brows, he finished, looking straight at Seyd: “I am an old Mexican hacendado, yet I have traveled in your country and Europe. Tell me, señor, can as much be said of your poor?”
Now, in preparing a thesis for one of his social-science courses, Seyd had studied the wage scale of the cotton industry, and so knew that, ridiculously small as this peon wage appeared at the first glance, it actually exceeded that paid to women and children in Southern cotton factories. In their case, moreover, the pittance had to meet every expense.
He did not hesitate to answer. “I should say that your peons were better off, providing the conditions, as you state them, are general.”
“And they are, señor, except in the south tropics, where any kind of labor is murder. But here? It is as you see; and why disturb it by the introduction of Yankee methods?”
Pausing, he looked again at Seyd, and whether through secret pleasure at his concession or because he merely enjoyed the pleasure of speaking out that which would have been dangerous if let fall in the presence of a countryman, he presently went on: “Therefore it is that I do not stand withPorfirio Diaz in his commercial policies. He is a great man. Who should know it better than I that fought with or against him in a dozen campaigns. And he has given us peace—thirty years of slow, warm peace. Yet sometimes I question its value. In the old time, to be sure, we cut each other’s throats on occasion. In the mean time we were warmer friends. And war prevented the land from being swamped by the millions that overrun your older countries, the teeming millions that will presently swarm like the locusts over your own United States. As I say, señor, I am only an old Mexican hacendado, but I have looked upon it all and seen that where war breeds men, civilization produces only mice. If I be allowed my choice give me the bright sword of war in preference to the starvation and pestilence that thins out your poor.”
Concluding, he looked down, interrogatively, as though expecting a contradiction. But though, after all, his argument was merely a restatement of the time-worn Malthusianism, coming out of the mouth of one who had strenuously applied it during forty years of internecine war, it carried force. Maintaining silence, Seyd stole occasional glances at the massive brown face and the heavy figure moving in stately rhythm with the slow trot of his horse, while his memory flashed over tale after tale that Peters, the station agent, had told him when he was out the other day to the railroad—tales of bravery, hardy adventures, allperformed amidst the inconceivable cruelties of the revolutionary wars. Even had he been certain that the eventual peopling of the earth’s vacant places would not force a return to at least a revised Malthusianism, it was not for his youth to match theories with age. When he did speak it was on another subject.
“I have been riding all morning on your land. I suppose it extends as far in the other direction?”
“A trifle.” A deprecatory wave of the strong brown hand lent emphasis to the phrase. “A trifle, señor, by comparison with the original grant to our ancestor from Cortes. ‘From the rim of the Barranca de Guerrero on both sides, and as far up and down from a given point as a man may ride in a day,’ so the deed ran. Being shrewd as he was valiant, my forefather had his Indians blaze a trail in both directions before he essayed the running. A hundred and fifty miles he made of it when he started—not bad riding without a trail. But it is mostly gone by family division, or it has been forfeited by those who threw in their luck on the wrong side of a revolution. Now is there left only a paltry hundred or so thousands of acres—and this!”
For the first time pronounced feeling made itself felt through his massive reserve, and looking over the view that had suddenly opened, Seyd did not wonder at the note of pride. After leaving the cane they had plunged through green skirts of willow to the river that split the widevalley in equal halves, and from the shallow ford they now rode out on a grassy plateau that ran for miles along low lateral hills. Dotted with tamarinds, banyans, and the tall ceibas which held huge leafy umbrellas over panting cattle, it formed a perfect foreground for the hacienda, whose chrome-yellow buildings lay like a band of sunlight along the foot of the hill. The thick adobe walls that bound stables, cottages, and outbuildings into a great square gave the impression of a fortified town, castled by the house, which rose tier on tier up the face of the hill.
When they rode through the great gateway of the lower courtyard the interior view proved equally arresting. Mounting after Don Luis up successive flights of stone steps, they came to the upper courtyard, wherein was concentrated every element of tropical beauty—wide corridors, massive chrome pillars, time-stained arches, luxurious foliage. From the tiled roof above a vine poured in cataracts of living green so dense that only vigorous pruning had kept it from shutting off all light from the rooms behind. Left alone, it would quickly have smothered out the palms, orchids, rare tropical plants that made of the courtyard a vivid garden.
“They call it thesin verguenza.” While he was admiring the creeper Francesca had joined them from behind. “Shameless, you know, for it climbs ‘upstairs, downstairs,’ nor respects even the privacy of ‘my lady’s chamber.’ Thanksto the good legs of my beast, I escaped a scolding. Sit here where the vines do not obstruct the view.”
If Seyd had been told a few minutes before that anything could have become her more than the tan riding-suit he would have refused to believe. But now by the evidence of his own eyes he was forced to admit the added charm of a simple batiste, whose fluffy whiteness accentuated her girlishness. The mad gallop had toned her usual clear pallor with a touch of color, and as she looked down, pinning a flower on her breast, he noted the perfect curve of her head.
“Room for a good brain there,” he thought, while answering her observation. “It is beautiful. But don’t you find it a little dull here—after Mexico City?”
“No.” She shook her head with vigor. “Of course, I like the balls and parties, yet I am always glad to return to my horses and dogs and—though it is wicked to put them in the same category—my babies. There are always at least three mothers impatiently awaiting my return to consult me upon names. I am godmother to no less than seven small Francescas.”
“I never should have thought it. You must have begun—”
“—Very young? Yes, I was only fifteen, so my first godchild is now seven. That remindsme—she is waiting below to repeat her catechism. There is just time—if you would like it.”
“I would be delighted. So the position is not without its duties?”
“I should think not.” Her eyes lit with a touch of indignation. “I hold the baby at the christening after helping to make the robe. When they are big enough I teach them their catechism. You could not imagine the weight of my responsibilities, and I believe that I am much more concerned for their behavior than their mothers. If any of them were to do anything really wicked”—her little shudder was genuine—“I should feel dreadfully ashamed. But they are really very good—as you shall judge for yourself. Francesca!” As, with a soft patter of chubby feet, a small girl emerged from a far corner, she added with archness that was chastened by real concern, “Now you must not dare to say that she isn’t perfect.”
In one sense the caution was needed. After a brave answer to the question “Who is thy Creator, Francesca?” the child displayed a slight uncertainty as to the origin of light, added a week or two to the “days of creation,” and became hopelessly mixed as to the specific quantities of the “Trinity”—wherein, after all, she was no worse than the theologians who have burned each other up, in both senses, in furious disputes over the same question. But better, far better than letter perfection, was the simpleawe of the small brown face and the devotion of the lisping voice which followed the tutor’s gentle prompting.
“Fine! fine!” Seyd applauded a last valorous attack on the Ten Commandments, and the small scholar ran off clutching a silver coin, just so much the richer for his heretical presence. As he rose to follow his hostess inside he added, “If all the Francescas are equal to sample, the next generation of San Nicolas husbands will undoubtedly rise up and call you blessed.”
“Now you are laughing at me,” she protested. “Though that might be truly said of my mother. She is a saint for good works. But come, or I shall yet earn my scolding. And let me warn you to take care of your heart. All of thecaballerosfall in love with mother.”
It was quite believable. While seated in the dining-room, a vaulted chamber cool as a crypt in spite of the sunblaze outside, a room which would have seated an army of retainers, he observed the señora with the satisfaction that even a stranger may feel in the promise a handsome mother holds out to her girls. In addition to the sweetness of her eyes and her tenderly tranquil expression she had retained her youthful contour. She exhibited the miracle of middle age achieved without fat or stiffness. In her scarf and black lace she was maturely beautiful. Waving away his apologies for the intrusion, she was anxiously solicitous for his wants through themeal. Yet he noticed that in taking his leave an hour later she did not ask him to call again.
Up to that moment there had been no further mention of his business. But as he stood hesitating, loath to introduce it, Don Luis relieved his embarrassment. “Now you would see the administrador? I am sorry, señor, but it seems that he is away at Chilpancin about the sale of cattle. But if you will intrust your moneys to Francesca she will see to the business and have the papers sent out to the mine.”
Neither did Francesca, when saying good-by, ask him to return. But, conscious that with all their kind hospitality they still regarded him as an intruder, Seyd was neither offended nor surprised. He was even a little astonished when Don Luis stated his intention of riding with him as far as the cane.
Until they came to the ford they rode in silence. Though only a few inches deep at this season, the river’s wide bed proclaimed it one of those torrential streams which rise from a trickle to a flood in very few hours, and when he remarked upon it Don Luis assented with his heavy nod.
“Si, it is very treacherous. One night during the last rains it rose fifty feet and swept down the valley miles wide, bearing on its yellow bosom cattle, houses, sheep, and pigs, and it drowned not a few of our people. And each year the floods go higher. Why? Because of the cursedlust that would mint the whole world into dollars. Year by year your Yankee companies are stripping the pine from the upper valley, and, though I have spoken with Porfirio Diaz about it, he is mad for commerce. He would see the whole state of Guerrero submerged before he revoked one charter. And they even try to make me a party to it. ‘General, if you will grant us a concession to do this, that, the other? If you will only allow us to run a branch line into your pine we can make big money—guarantee you half a million pesos.’ When I am in Mexico your Yankee promoters swarm round me like hungry dogs. But never have I listened, nor ever will!”
He struck the pommel of his saddle a heavy blow, then looked his surprise as Seyd spoke. “I should not think that you would. I understand your feelings.”
“You do?Caramba!Then you are the first Yankee that ever did. In return for your sympathy let me offer you advice. You are not the first man to denounce on my land, nor is Santa Gertrudis the only location. Yankees, English, French, Germans, they have come, denounced claims here and there, but no man has ever held one. No man everwill. Already you have tasted the bitter hostility of my people, and were I to nod not even the American Ambassador could save you alive. And this is only the beginning. Let me return your money?Mexico is one great mine. Anywhere you can kick the soil and uncover a fortune.”
“But none like the Santa Gertrudis.” Seyd smiled. “Of course, I feel it’s pretty raw for me to force in on your land; but, knowing that if I don’t some other will, I shall have to refuse. As for the opposition—that is all in the day’s work.” He finished, offering his hand. “But I hope this won’t prevent us from being good neighbors?”
Shaking his massive head, Don Luis reined in his horse. “No, señor, we can never be that. But next to a good friend I count a hearty enemy, and you may depend upon me for that.”
With a courteous wave of the hand he rode off; and, watching him go at a stately canter, Seyd muttered, “Enemy or friend, you are a fine old chap.”
“You are surely a fine old chap.”
Retracing his path through the long succession of farm, jungle, and fields, Seyd repeated it, and as he rode along he saw things in a new light. As he passed through one village at sundown the entire population was filing into church, the peons in clean blankets, their women in decent black. The next hamlet was in the throes of a fiesta. Girls in white, garlanded with flaming flowers, were dancing the eternal jig of the country with their brown swains. And these two functions, church andbaile, marked the bounds of their simple life. A plenty of rice andfrijoles, a peso or two for clothing, were all that they asked or needed.
While prospecting in the Sierra Madres Seyd had drawn many a comparison between the happy indolence of the peon and the worry, strain, strife to live up to a standard just beyond income that obtains in American life. Because the peon had time to think his simple thoughts, listen to bird song and the music of babbling streams, to watch the splendors of sunrise and sunset over purple valleys, Seyd’s suffrage had often gone to him. Observing this pastoral life in its tropical setting of palms and jungle, the opinion grew into a strong conviction.
“The old fellow’s right!” he ejaculated, riding out of the last village into the jungle proper. “We have nothing to give his people, and we’d surely kill all they have.”
Though the profusion of foliage which made of the trail one long green tunnel prevented him from seeing it, he was now riding along at the foot of the Barranca wall. Its deep shadow already filled the jungle with a twilight that thickened into night as he rode. But, knowing that whatever her faults of temperament Peace could be trusted to fetch her own stable, he left her to take her own way while he pursued his thoughts. While the siren whistle of beetles, chatter ofchickicuillotes—wild hens of the jungle—deafened his ears, he tried to bring the crowding impressions of the day into some kind of order—noeasy task when a fire-eating old general and a typical Mexican mother had to be reconciled in thought with a young girl who possessed the face of a Celt, eyes of a Spaniard, vivacity of a Frenchwoman, and American intelligence.
Next he fell to speculating upon the causes which had kept her single at an age that, according to Mexican standards, placed her hopelessly upon the shelf, and he found the answer in the gossip of the American station agent on his last trip out to the railroad. “She could have had her cousin Sebastien any time, and there were others around these parts. But once let a high-strung girl like her get a glimpse of the outside world and no common hacendado can ever hope to tie her shoestring. They say she has had other chances—attachés of foreign legations in Mexico City. But she turned ’em down—I don’t know why, unless it’s ideals.” With a humorous twinkle the agent had added: “Bad things, ideals—always in the way. If you happen to have any in stock give ’em to the first beggar you meet along the road. Hers are keeping San Nicolas and El Quiss from reuniting, but she don’t seem to care.”
“A fine girl—the man will be lucky that gets her.” Seyd now re-expressed the agent’s homely verdict. “If it wasn’t—” He stopped short, with a savage laugh. “You darned fool! mooning over a girl who would turn up her pretty nose at any gringo, much more one that has forcedhimself in on her uncle’s land. Your business is to get a fortune out of the mine, and do it quick. And even if it wasn’t—”
The thought was never finished, for the last few minutes had brought him out into the starlight at the foot of the Barranca wall, and as Peace gathered herself for the scramble upward the jungle lit up with a sudden flash. Before Seyd’s ears caught the report he felt his left shoulder clutched, as it were, by a red-hot hand. The next second he was almost thrown by the mule’s sudden plunge—fortunately, for otherwise the bullet that came out of a second flash would have smashed through his brain.
“Muzzle-loaders!” In the moment he lay on the mule’s neck he divined it from the thick explosion. Then the thought, “It will take them a minute to reload,” followed a quick calculation, “They’ll catch me again on the first turn.”
With him action always sprang of subconscious processes which were quicker than thought, and while he crouched on her neck and Peace took the turn on a scrambling gallop he turned loose with both of his Colts, aiming at the spot from which the flashes had come. And the sequel proved his judgment. This time a single flash announced the bullet which grazed the mule’s rump just as she shot into a patch of woodland.
“Reckon I made one of you sick,” he interpreted the single shot.
The burning smart of his wound and the treachery of the attack had loosed within him a fury of anger. Reining in, he felt his shoulder. The bullet had plowed a furrow in the flesh of the upper arm, but, muttering “I guess it’s bled about all it’s going to,” he first tied the mule to a tree, then slid the “reloads” into his guns.
It would have been foolish to expose himself in the open trail under the clear starlight. Resisting the savage impulse which urged him to close quarters, he crawled back to the edge of the timber and again turned loose his guns, searching the jungle below with a swinging muzzle. Time and again he did it, thanking his stars whenever he reloaded for the forethought which had caused Billy to slip an extra box of cartridges into the holsters, and not until only one charge was left did he pause to listen.
Whether or no it was the firing that had frightened even the night birds into temporary quiet, not even a twig stirred in the darkness below. He caught only the distant whooping which told that Billy had heard, and as this drew nearer with astonishing quickness Seyd rose and went back to his mule.
“Coming downhill hell for leather!” he muttered. “If I don’t hurry he’ll break his neck.”
One afternoon about a week later Mr. William Thornton was to be seen mixing mortar for the bricks he was laying on the smelter foundation. Rising almost sheer from the edge of the bench behind him, the Barranca wall shut off the western breeze, and from its face the fierce sunblaze was reflected in quivering waves of heat. Coming out from an early lunch he had noted that the thermometer registered ninety in the shade, and he was now ready to swear that with one more degree he himself would be able to supply all the moisture required for the operation.
While working he cast occasional glances toward the house; and when, the mortar being mixed, he began to lay brick he used the trowel with care lest its clink should awaken Seyd. For though the blood loss from a severed artery had left him quite weak, he had obstinately refused to stop work. To-day he had even balked at the suggestion of a siesta until Billy had lain down himself. As soon as Seyd fell asleep Billy had slipped out, and when he now paused to listen the concern in his look passed into sudden attentionas the clink of a shod hoof rose up from the trail below.
Five minutes passed before he heard it again, and in the mean time his actions bespoke an intelligent appreciation of the needs of the case. Picking up a Winchester which leaned against a tree, he crouched behind his bricks, and while training it on the point where the trail emerged on the bench a ferocious scowl overshadowed his sunburn.
“If we played it your way I’d brown you the second your nose shows,” he muttered as the hoofbeats grew louder. “Thank your musty old saints that we don’t. Ah! Eh? Well!”
The interjections respectively fitted the wolf hound, her young mistress, and themozo, as they appeared in the order named. As only Billy’s head showed over the bricks, and both were on the same color scheme, he was practically invisible; and, reining up her beast, the girl allowed her curious gaze to wander around the bench from the gaping hole where the drift ran into the vein over the adobe hut and foundation—just missing Billy’s head—to the blue-green piles of copper ore.
“So this is themina!” Her tone denoted disappointment. “Good heavens! Tomas, is this the wealth the gringos seek? What an ado over a pile of stones! I should think Don Luis would be thankful to have them carted away.”
She had spoken in Spanish, but when, havingshed his arsenal under cover of the bricks, Billy rose and came forward, she addressed him in English. “Mr. Thornton, is it not? We have brought the papers from the administrador—at least, Tomas has. I am playing truant. Though it is only fifteen miles from here to San Nicolas, this is the first time that I have seen the place. Where is Mr. Seyd?”
Now than Billy, was there never a young man more naturally chivalrous. Usually a locomotive could not have dragged from him a single word calculated to shock or offend a girl. But in his confusion at finding an expected enemy changed into a charming friend he let slip the naked truth. “He was shot—returning from your place.”
“Señor! He—he is not—dead?”
There was no mistaking her concern. Sorry for his abruptness, Billy plunged to reassure her. “No! no! Only wounded.”
“Is he—much hurt?”
It occurred to Billy that a flesh wound was, after all, rather a small price for such solicitude. But where a touch of jealousy might have caused another to make light of Seyd’s wound, his natural unselfishness made him paint it in darker colors. “The bullet cut an artery, and he’s pretty weak from loss of blood. Yet he won’t lay off. I had to trick him into a siesta to-day. I’ll go call him.”
But she raised a protesting hand. “No! no!Let him sleep. You can give him the papers. Tell him when he awakes that he will hear from us again.”
With a smile which caused Billy additional regret for his lack of wounds she rode off at a pace which filled him with anxiety for her neck. Until he caught a glimpse of her, foreshortened to a dot on the trail far below, he stood watching. Then, muttering “I’ll bet Seyd will raise Cain when he awakes,” he went back to his work.
Nor was he mistaken, for when Seyd came out, yawning and stretching, an hour or so later, the last vestige of sleep was burned up by the sudden flash of his eyes. “You darned chump! Do we have visitors so often that you let me sleep on like a rotten log?”
Neither was he appeased by Billy’s answer, delivered with an irritating grin: “Why should she wish to see you when I was around? A pallid wretch who has to make three tries to cast a shadow!”
“He has, has he?” Seyd growled. “Well, I’m solid enough to punch your fat head.”
The atmosphere having thus been cleared, he commented: “Went off to tell the General, eh? I wonder how he’ll take it?”
“Shouldn’t imagine he’d shed any tears—unless at their poor shooting. Well, we’ll see!”
And see they did, for as they sat at lunch on the second day thereafter a yell followed by the crack of a whip brought them out just in time tosee Caliban, the charcoal-burner, and the peon rice-huller coming on a shuffling run ahead of Tomas. The bloody bandages which bound the head of one and the leg of the other testified to Seyd’s shooting, just as their glazed eyes and painful pantings told of the merciless run ahead of themozo. It required only the hempen halter which each wore around his neck to complete the picture of misery.
“These be they that attacked you, señor?” While the rice-huller squirmed under a sudden cut of his whip themozowent on: “This son of a devil was found nursing a wound in his hut, and he told on the other. Don Luis sends them with his compliments to be hanged at your leisure. If it please you to have it done now—there is an excellent tree.”
Too surprised to answer, Seyd and Billy stood staring at each other until, taking silence for consent, themozobegan to herd his charges toward the said tree. “Here!” Seyd called him back. “This is kind of Don Luis, and you will please convey to him our thanks. It is very thoughtful of you to pick out such a fine tree, but, while we are sure that they would look very nice upon it, it is not the habit with our people to hang save for a killing, and I, as you see, am alive.”
Themozo’sdark brows rose to the eaves of his hair. “But of what use, señor, to hangafterthe killing? Will the death of the murderer bring the murdered to life? But hang him ingood season and you will have no murder. And this is a good tree, low, with strong, wide branches ordained for the purpose. See you! One throw of the rope, a pull, a knot—’tis done, easily as drinking, and they are out of your way.”
It was good logic; but, while admitting it, Seyd still pleaded his foolish national custom.
Though his bent brows still protested against such squeamishness, themozopolitely submitted. ”Bueno!it is for you to say. I leave them at your will to cure or kill.”
“Now, what shall we do?” Seyd consulted Billy. “If we send them back the old Don will surely hang them.”
“Well, what if he does? I’m sure that I don’t care a whoop—” He paused, then suddenly exclaimed: “Are we crazy? Here we have been chasing labor all over the valley, and now that it is offered us free we turn up noses. Keep them, you bet! Put it into Spanish as quickly as you can.”
Smiling, themozonodded comprehension. “As you say, señor, a live slave is better than a dead thief. They are at your orders to kill by rope or work.”
Though it was scarcely his thought, Seyd allowed it to go at that. Throwing the ends of the halters to Billy, themozoconcluded his mission. “It remains only to say that Don Luis will have you come to San Nicolas till your wound is cured.”
“Fine!” Billy enthusiastically commented, when the invitation was translated. “I’ve said all along that you ought to lay off. Go down for a week. By the time you come back I’ll have these chaps beautifully broken.”
“And you unable to speak a word of Spanish—not to mention the risk to your throat?” Seyd shook his head. “Besides, the old fellow made no bones of his feelings the other day. The invitation is merely in reparation for what he considers a violation of his hospitality. If it wasn’t—My place is here.”
Accordingly, themozocarried back to San Nicolas a note which, if not penned in the best Spanish, yet caught its grave courtesy so cleverly that its perusal at the dinner table caused Francesca to pause and listen, drew an approving smile from the señora, and produced from Don Luis his heavy nod.
“The young man is a finecaballero. Your ordinary gringo would have saddled himself upon us for three months, and we should have been worn to skeletons by his parrot chatter. As he lets us off so easily, I must ride up to the mine and warn those rascals to play him no tricks.”
Meanwhile Seyd and Billy had been giving the disposition of the said rascals considerable thought. After themozoleft, Billy cut the halters from around their necks and brought them food and drink from the house. But whether orno they considered this fair front as being assumed to emphasize future tortures the two kept their sullen silence.
“If we have to stand guard all the time we’d be better without them,” Billy doubted.
“Yes,” Seyd acquiesced. “Unless we can find some incentive. I wonder if they have families.” When the two returned nods to his questions he continued, hopefully: “There we have it. Your Mexican peon takes homesickness worse than a Swiss. If we offer them a fair wage while the smelter is building I think they’ll prove faithful. At least we can try.”
To an experienced eye—themozo’s, for instance—the sudden brightening of the dark faces might have meant something else than relief. At first Caliban seemed to find the good news impossible. But presently, setting it down as another idiocy of the foolish gringos, his incredulity vanished. In one hour he and the rice-huller were transformed from sullen foes to eager servants. Indeed, what with their willing work that afternoon and next morning, the smelter foundation had risen a full yard by the time that Don Luis came riding up to the bench.
Looking up from a blue print of the foundation, Seyd saw him coming at the heavy trot which combined military stiffness with vaquero ease, and noting the keen glance with which he swept the bench the thought flashed upon him, “Now the cat’s out of the bag!” He did not,however, try to smuggle the animal in again. When, greetings over, Don Luis turned a curious eye on the foundation he answered the unspoken question. “A smelter, señor.”
“A smelter?” For once the old fellow’s massive self possession showed slight disturbance. “I thought—”
“That it took a fortune to build one.” Seyd filled in his pause. “It does—to put in a modern plant.” While he went on explaining that this was merely an old-style Welch furnace of small capacity he felt the constraint under the old man’s quiet, and was thereby stimulated to a mischievous addition. “You see, the freight rates on crude ore from this point are prohibitive, but one can make good money by smelting it down into copper matte.”
“A good plan, señor.” Like a tremor on a brown pool, his disquiet passed. “And how long will it be in the building?”
“We had calculated on four months. But with the help you so kindly sent us we can do it now in two.”
He could not altogether repress a mischievous twinkle. But Don Luis gave no sign. “Bueno!It was for this that I came—to read these rascals their lesson.” Menacing the peons with a weighty forefinger, he went on: “Now, listen,hombres! Since it has pleased the señor to save you alive, see that you repay his mercy with faithful labor. If there be any failure, tricks, or nightflittings, remember that there is never a rabbit hole in all Mexico but where Luis Garcia can find you.”
Emphasizing the threat with another shake of his finger, he turned and went on with quiet indifference to comment upon the scenery. “A beautiful spot. Once I had thought to build here, but one cannot live on the edge of a cliff, and San Nicolas has its charm. Is it true that we cannot tempt you to come down? The señora begs that you reconsider.”
But he nodded his appreciation of Seyd’s reasons. “Si, si,a man’s place is with his work—and I have stayed too long. There is business forward at Chilpancin, and even now I should be miles on the way.”
“Will you not stay for lunch?” Seyd protested.
But replying that he had already lunched at a ranch in the valley, the old man rode away on his usual heavy lope. “You see,” Seyd commented, watching him go, “it is all right for me to accept his invitation, but he will not eat of our bread.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” Billy answered. “I’d feel sore myself if I were he. But, say, we’re getting quite gay up here. Regular social whirl. I wonder who’s next? We only need mamma to complete the family.”
The remark was prophetic, for, while the señora did not herself brave the Barranca steeps, only two days thereafter Francesca and themozoreappeared driving before them a mule whosepanniers were crammed with eggs and cheese, butter and honey, fruit, both fresh and preserved, also a full stock of bandages, liniments, curative simples, and home-made cordials. While unpacking them on the table in their house the girl laughingly explained that if Seyd would not come to be cured the cures must needs come to him.
“This is a wash for the wound.” She patted a large fat jug. “This other is to be taken every hour. Of this liquor you must take a glass at bed-time. Those pills must be swallowed when you rise. This”—noting Billy’s furtive grin, she finished with a laugh—“you will not have room for more. Give the rest to Mr. Thornton. But under pain of the good mamma’s severest displeasure I am to see you drink at least two cups of this soup.”
“You shall if you stay to lunch,” Seyd said. “Billy makes gorgeous biscuit, and they’ll go finely with the honey.”
“If you can eat bacon—we have only that and a few canned things,” Billy added, a little dubiously, and would have extended the list of shortcomings only that she broke in:
“Just what I like. I’m tired of Mexican cooking, and I am dreadfully hungry.”
That this was no idle assertion she presently proved, and while she ate of their rough food with the appetite of perfect health their acquaintance progressed with the leaps and bounds natural toyouth. Before the end of the meal she had drawn Billy completely out of his painful bashfulness, and he was telling her with great pride of his beautiful sister while she contemplated her photograph with head held delicately askew.
“Yes, she’s fair,” he told her, adding with great pride, “but not a bit like me.”
“The most wonderful hair!” Seyd volunteered. “Darkest Titian above a skin of milk.”
“Oh, you make me envious!” she cried, with real feeling. “I love red hair. Luisa Zuluaga, my schoolmate in Brussels, had it combined with great black Spanish eyes. She got her colors from an Irish great grandfather who came over a century ago to coin pesos for the Mexican mint. Now, why couldn’t I have had them?”
Observing the fine-spun cloud that flew like a dark mist around the ivory face, Seyd could not find it in his heart to blame her grandfather, and, if good taste debarred him from saying it, the belief was nevertheless expressed through the permitted language of the eyes. Perhaps this accounted for the suddenness with which her long dark lashes swept down over certain mischievous lights.
Any but an expert in feminine psychology might indeed have found himself puzzled by certain phases of her manner. Its sympathy, addressing Billy, would give place to a slight reserve with Seyd, then this would melt and give place to unaffected friendliness. Occasionally,too, she offered all the witchery of her smiles, yet the hypothetical expert would never have suspected her of coquetry. The feeling was far too mischievous for the fencing of sex. Its key was to be found in the thought that passed in her mind. “‘Almost pretty enough to marry,’ you said. The trouble is that my girlish beauty is in inverse ratio to my future fatness. What a pity!”
Yet this little touch of pique was never sufficiently pronounced to interfere with her real enjoyment. As for them—it was a golden occasion. If they ate little, they still feasted their eyes on the face that bloomed like a rich flower in the soft shadows of the adobe hut, their ears on her low laughter and soft woman’s speech. They found it hard to believe when she sprang up with a little cry: “I have been here two hours! Now I have earned my scolding. Themadreonly let me come under a solemn promise to be back before sunset.”
Had they been unaware of the principal concomitant in the charm of the hour, knowledge would have been forced upon them when she rode away, for, though the birds still sang and the hot sun poured a flood of light and heat down on the bench, somehow things looked and felt cold and gray.
And she? Going downgrade an afterglow of smiles lent force to her murmur: “Gringos or no, they are very nice.”