The pale Frenchman looked full at Jacinto Quesada, and suddenly his small slate-colored eyes blazed like sunlight on ice.
"Do you not comprehend of the signs the meaning?" he asked sharply in tolerable Spanish.
"No."
"Nor that which I desire you to understand when I do this thing?"
Impetuously he stepped forward and grasped, with his right hand, the right hand of Jacinto Quesada. What followed seemed only a most ardent handshake. Then he dropped Quesada's hand and stepped back, assuming his old passive pose. And only Quesada knew that there had passed between them another signal—he alone knew that the Frenchman, on gripping his hand, had tapped the wrist of that hand with his index finger twice.
Rumpling his brow, the youthful bandolero consulted with himself for a space. Then, his face clearing, decisively he said:
"No, Frenchman, your signals to me have no meaning. It is, perhaps, that I am not of sufficient knowledge; I am only a poor Moor of Andalusia, you know. But what is the message you wish to convey by your cabalistic signs? I am curious, senor; tell me in honest Spanish and interestedly I shall listen."
The tall blond Frenchman laughed ruefully under his waxed mustache.
"As you do not comprehend my signs," he said, "to explain to you the meaning would do me little good, I fear."
Returned Quesada, somewhat disappointed, "You fear rightly, Frenchman!"
He made a slight gesture of the hand. Two of his dorados seized the Frenchman and proceeded to subject him to a rough overhauling. The Frenchman grimaced with impotent rage and, narrowing his naturally small calculating eyes, watched the searchers' every move with covert anxiety.
Brusque, precipitant, hasty was that search. Very easily might it have been more studied and thorough. But a gold watch, a few Spanish gold and silver peseta pieces, two rings set with diamonds and an emerald scarfpin were taken from him before he was liberated by the searchers. The rings and the scarfpin were not plucked from his hands and necktie; they were found deep in his pockets where he had hidden them, thinking perhaps, to smuggle them past the bandoleros.
At that, the emerald scarfpin was but a very ordinary jimcrack and the diamonds of the two rings, though huge and pretentious, had the dishonest and glassy look of paste imitations. Though but simple Moors, even as they called themselves, the bandoleros were not so ingenuous as to be deceived by them; and they wondered greatly why he had concealed them with such pains. Remarked sarcastically one of the searchers, a certain Ignacio Garcia, addressing Quesada:
"The elegant French rooster has but a thinly lined crop, maestro!"
He grasped the Frenchman's elbow and swung him about-face. Then he gave him a shove toward the group already plucked and gutted, shouting harshly, "Away with you, you false jewel! Pronto!"
The Frenchman hastened to merge himself into the background. Once his face was turned away from the bandoleros, his pebbly eyes sparkled with profound relief; they sparkled with inconcealable joy; and he smiled a superior triumphant smile.
"Who comes next?" asked Jacinto Quesada, without much interest.
"The beautiful young wife of the Frenchman, maestro. She, with the mouth that is a nest for kisses!" And Rafael Perez pointed her out.
"And it please you, you may come forward, Senora Dona!" in a carefully softened voice called Pio Estrada, another of the searchers. Strange, but her youth and beauty and high hidalgo look had moved the man to a ruffian's attempt at courtesy and gentleness.
As she made to step forward, Jacinto Quesada turned his eyes upon the beautiful golden-haired girl and, for the first time, gave her a special and particular scrutiny.
"Hola!" he gasped. "What is this?"
He stepped forward a step, his eyelids narrowed, his eyes gleaming; and he shot toward her a second look, piercing, probing. It was as though he were shocked and aroused, puzzled and confounded. While he looked eagerly and long at her, he muttered:
"What a resemblance! But no—it is not a resemblance. She is she herself!"
He moved slowly towards her as though drawn thence by an irresistible influence. Suddenly he called out a name!
"Felicidad!"
On the barren, windless plain to the right of the stalled carriages, they were all gathered, the bandoleros with their carbines, the travelers so like a herd of cattle in arodeo. Those passengers, already searched and robbed, were in a separate group; they were sequestered from those not yet searched and made to deliver. No sound came across the everlasting flats but the low incessant chitter of the desert-loving wheatears, little fuzzy fat birds that live among the mimosa and the thorny acacia and the stunted ilex of that ugly and desolate Manchega veldt. Out from the main drove of passengers moved bravely the golden-haired girl. And then, a name was called, and the windless air became suddenly electric with drama.
The Frenchman's young wife moved forward, seemingly unaware of Jacinto Quesada's call, of his now devouring gaze. Well, suddenly and all on the moment, she turned about-face and started swiftly for the stalled train!
It was altogether unexpected. She was not the first of her sex to be singled out for the search; she had seen nuns and convent maids and even Gitanas treated by the bandoleros with a respect and courtesy that amounted almost to reverence; and yet, at the last instant, alarm and trepidation had overcome her, it seemed. She was hysterical, perhaps; almost insane with terror.
Be that as it may, her unexpected and erratic performance caused an echoing panic to sweep over the other passengers. Even the bandoleros felt the contagion. Cursing excitedly, two of them started to pursue the golden-haired girl, while the third, Rafael Perez, standing near Quesada, raised his carbine and screamed hoarsely:
"Come back here, you outrageous minx!"
The crowd, momentarily free from the dread of the bandoleros, had commenced an insensate shouting and milling. Now, had Perez fired off the carbine, the whole hold-up might have ended then and there for the bandoleros in an inglorious headlong rout. The passengers, already out of thrall to the salteadores, would have risen in tumultuous, uncontrollable fury at this firing on a defenseless woman.
But Jacinto Quesada rose to the crisis and saved the situation. Excited though he was, he sprung toward Perez, tore the carbine from his hands and, pointing it at the crowd, shouted imperiously to his men:
"Back, you fools, to your stations! Guard these people. Shoot any that break away! And don't mind the girl! I'll bring her back—I, and no one else!"
Presto! and the bandoleros were back in their old positions, their carbines sweeping the crowd. The imminent danger of stampede was dissipated. The discipline of dread again prevailed.
Handing the carbine back to Perez, Jacinto Quesada started after the girl. She had fled without aim, without purpose, he thought, like a frightened doe that cares not where she flees so long as she flees from the huntsmen. Her panicky flight would do little good, however; a sort of trap was the stalled train, not a refuge and sanctuary.
The girl was just about to open the door of one of the third-class coaches and fling herself therein when, all at once, she cast back a look, first at her tall blond mustached husband, then at Quesada. Strangely, her glances seemed to have become preposterously mixed. It was a look of dread and loathing she threw back toward her husband; and a look of entreaty and beseeching she sent toward the pursuing bandolero!
With his long mountaineer's legs, Jacinto Quesada sprinted to the train. Hardly had the door of the third-class carriage closed behind the golden-haired girl than he was at that door. Open he flung it and in he burst.
"Felicidad! Felicidad,querida mia, my darling! It is I, Jacinto—Jacinto Quesada! You have naught to fear from me. And if you had told me that he, the Frenchman, was your husband, I would not have robbed him. Porvida! everything taken already shall be given him back. And as for you, dear Felicidad—"
She had backed herself against the door opposite. Now she came forward swiftly, her face paling and flushing, her lip a-quiver. It was not as though she were glad with sudden recognition: it was as though she were terribly agitated by some deadly fear. She said, in a dry expressionless tone:
"I heard your name mentioned by some passenger as we were bundled from the train, Jacinto, and ah! how grateful to God I was when I first saw you, almost half an hour ago, standing among those ruffianly ladrones! I remembered the time you saved me from my father's quirta—and I needed you so much more, now!
"All this long, long afternoon I prayed that something would happen—anything, anything! God of my soul! how I prayed! But even after I discovered you and realized that, for our childhood's sake, you would protect me, it took all my courage and strength to flee from the crowd and conceal myself here, where I could speak to you and not be spied upon or suspected by that evil, that terrible man!"
Almost in a whisper were her words spoken, but they crashed upon Jacinto Quesada's brain like exploding, detonating shells. He reeled back, overwhelmed, staggered, knocked all to pieces. He gasped:
"Por los Clavos de Cristo! what is all this?"
"Ah,Maria purissima! He does not understand! But all, I shall tell him!"—and swiftly, precipitantly, the girl went on:
"This Frenchman. He calls himself Jacques Ferou. He was the only one that was kind to me and even until two hours ago, I thought I loved him. We were to be married in Madrid to-night—but now—"
"Then he is not already your husband! Carajo! I thought—"
"No; we but eloped this morning. And now, I would not continue on with him; I would turn back! I am afraid—afraid!"
"But tell me all from the beginning. Your words turn my brain to a stew!"
Jacinto Quesada had known Felicidad's father, Don Jaime de Torreblanca y Moncada; he had lived in the great, cold, dingy house near Granada; he had tasted the secluded, lonely life of Felicidad. Therefore, she had but to say a few sketchy rapid sentences and he comprehended the beginning of everything.
"Of late years, my father has become gradually poorer, Jacinto," she said.
Quesada nodded his head understandingly. Don Jaime had never refused his physician's services to the poverty-stricken and wretched; and the poverty-stricken and wretched were always becoming sick; and the poverty-stricken and wretched seldom paid. Small wonder that Don Jaime's fortunes had fallen into decay!
"My father had no money put by to keep him in his old age; but he always said he would sell those old beloved books of his when he became incapacitated, by age, for a physician's arduous toils, or when bitter necessity pressed him hard. You must know, Jacinto, that father's ancient, yellow-leafed books are worth much, much money."
She went on to explain. Learned men, famous men—some of them scholarly descendants of noble families, others erudite plebeians with the right to affix a dozen initials after their names—were always coming to Don Jaime's house from the University of Salamanca and the Museo Provincial of Seville to examine those books and to write historical treatises and critiques from them. And it was not unusual to find one of these bookworms, these bibliophiles, thesehombres del todo aficionado á los libros, making eager hints to purchase such of the precious dingy tomes as they considered within their means.
Some of the books had been possessed by Don Jaime's family for hundreds of years; others he had come by through his godfather who was a famous Spanish historian and very rich; and still others he had himself discovered when doctoring ruined hidalgo families and the monks of poverty-gutted monasteries; and he had taken these finds in place of monetary fees. Naturally enough, therefore, he hated to part with any of this great treasure in books.
Fearing an old age of stony poverty, however, Don Jaime at last made up his mind to put the books on sale. The money he might receive from marketing the books he planned to invest in Argentine bonds. Three months gone, he wrote to two great houses that deal in rare and valuable books; the one in London, the other in Paris.
Posthaste, two months since, came to the house outside Granada, the buyer for the London firm. In far-away cold London, they had heard of Don Jaime's collection, for there was not another collection of its like outside of Spain. For two weeks the London book-buyer lived in the casa with Don Jaime and Felicidad, cataloguing and pricing the books. Some of the old quaint authors he rejected as of little worth, but others he called "glorious Golcondas" and offered Don Jaime such a sum for them that he was amazed, astounded. He had not expected to receive so much money for the whole aggregate and total of his collection.
"Three weeks ago, after paying my father a fortune in bank notes," continued the girl, "the English book-buyer, Senor Havelock Moore-Ingraham, went away, and with him, borne by a caravan of ten mules, went the cream and richness of my father's library.
"Then came to our house this Jacques Ferou. He said he had been sent by the Paris house to whom my father had written. My father told him that he was too late to bid, that all the books of value had been sold.
"At that Jacques Ferou became very downcast; he said that his firm would be much put out when they learned he had allowed the English company to bag the hares while he played the laggard. And he begged very earnestly for permission to look through the books, which had not been purchased, in the hope that the English agent had overlooked a few volumes of value, volumes that he might buy in order to save his face."
Don Jaime gave him permission so to do. For almost a month he lived in the great dusky lonely house. When he was not in the library poring over the yellowed tomes, he wandered through the house, seeking sight of Felicidad. When she had her daily "hour of balcony", he would leave the casa and stand watching her from across the road, "playing the bear" in a very serious and devoted manner.
"I had never had anoviobefore," explained Felicidad, "and his eyes were so kind and sympathetic! It was very lonely in the great house with just my father and the old whining Pedro and the old childish Teresa. And he treated me with such consideration and reverence!
"We used to meet often in the long dusky corridors, he kissing my hands and telling me how beautiful I was, and I liking it, yet feeling fear of him and all a-tremble, besides, lest my father discover us. And at dinner time and all through the evenings, there he would be again, talking with my father about 'rogue novels' and the chroniclers of the conquistadores, and ever looking at me with the burning eyes of love.
"Two days ago, my father spoke very harshly to me, threatening me with a beating—he beats me even yet, you know. Old Pedro had told him that I had a novio—that was why he was angered at me. But he did not as yet suspect that my lover was Jacques Ferou.
"Jacques was to leave our house for Paris in another week. I could not resign myself to the old loneliness in that empty gloomy house; and I would not suffer even one more time the indignity of a beating at my father's hands. So two days ago I consented to run off with Jacques Ferou and become his wife.
"At four o'clock this morning, when it was still dark, I left my bed, dressed, put a few things together, and went out on my balcony. Jacques was waiting for me. He threw up a rope and I tied it to the iron railing and let myself down into his arms.
"Down the road a high-powered automobile awaited us. In it we raced precipitantly away, for as you very well know, we had the outraged pride of my terrible father to fear. Before seven o'clock in the morning, we had fled almost as far as Jaen. Then something went wrong with the automobile and it would go no farther; whereupon, Jacques sent alabradorinto Jaen, who soon came back escorting a diligence pulled by four horses. In the diligence we set off for Castro which is on the railroad to Madrid. It was two hours before noon when we reached Castro, and the train came at noon."
They were on the Seville-to-Madrid that afternoon, when suddenly Felicidad thought:
"Has Jacques forgotten that he came to my father's house to purchase books—has he forgotten his matter-of-fact business in his overmastering love for me? He has neither paid my father for those books he selected, nor taken those books he selected away with him.
"I questioned Jacques. He laughed. He told me not to worry about his business affairs. But I continued to worry; I felt already a wife's interest and pride in my future husband's career; and I was much afraid that his employers in Paris would be angered by his careless handling of the whole transaction.
"When Jacques saw that I was still put out about him, he laughed again, this time heartily and long. Then suddenly he stopped laughing and, looking hard into my eyes, said in a cold, challenging voice:
"'Suppose I should tell you,ma chérie, that I am not in the employ of a Paris book house; that my business is not at all that of a purchaser of rare books; and that I care for rare books not a snap of the fingers!'"
Felicidad was thunderstruck and a little stunned. He saw the shocked expression on her face and thereat commenced, with a cruel malicious delight, to tell her other things.
He had been to the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile; he had been to Egypt, Italy, England, and Sweden. He had been to Spain more than a dozen times before. He had had many adventures. But, strangely, these adventures were all adventures in crime. He had robbed cathedrals in France and Spain of their valuable paintings and jewels and even of their statuary. He had robbed museums and private collections of the New World.
He seemed to swell with pride, to grow with importance as he bared his real self thus to her. With snobbish care, he explained to her how far superior to ordinary criminals he was; he defined himself as one of a limited and ultra-clever aristocracy of thieves. It was as though he were showing a noble and praiseworthy side of himself hitherto unrevealed; it was as though he had wooed a peasant girl, while disguised in a most humble attire, and now lifted his vagabond's ragged cap to reveal a prince's crown. He said he was a member of the "White Wolves", an organization of French criminals who stole mostly from churches. He said he was a member of many other exclusive criminal fraternities.
When from the lips of Felicidad, Jacinto Quesada heard this last, he ejaculated:
"Carajo! So that was why, before we searched him, he made such queer signs to me—he was using thieves' signs, the signals of those criminal brotherhoods to which he belongs. He thought I, as another thief, might have some knowledge of that language of signs and that, out of a thief's respect for a thief, I might exempt him from the ordeal of the search!"
"Of what do you speak now—what signs?" asked Felicidad, bewildered.
Jacinto Quesada explained. Then he said, "Proceed with your story, dear Felicidad."
Continuing, therefore, Felicidad told how Jacques Ferou, intent on showing how consummately clever he was at all criminal business, and not averse to filling his young wife with awe and fear of him, led up at last to the business that had brought him to Spain and to the house of Don Jaime de Torreblanca y Moncada.
Once upon a time, he had indeed worked for the Paris book house whose card he had used to introduce himself to the haughty hidalgo. He had been hired by a very rich and very crazy bibliophile to get feloniously, as it was beyond even the bibliomaniac's purse, a certain precious book in the possession of the Paris firm; and the better to steal the ancient volume, he had hired himself as a clerk to them for three months.
Through another clerk still in their employ—a hunchbacked fellow whom he had picked out, with a criminal's sure instinct, as a weakling inclined to dishonesty and crime of a sort—he had secured Don Jaime's letter offering the books for sale, before any one but his ally and friend, the hunchback, had a chance to see it.
Now, he knew a little about rare books; so he practiced talking about books like a bibliophile and buyer; and very shortly, he started for Spain. But he traveled slowly for a certain reason.
When he told her this last, Felicidad asked him:
"But for what reason did you travel slowly?"
Jacques Ferou looked at Felicidad in a pity that, perhaps, amounted to a contempt.
"Why, you silly baby!" laughed he. "After all I have said, don't you know why it was I traveled all the way from Paris to your father's house in Andalusia?"
"No!"
At that, laughing the louder, he opened the top of his vest and put his hand down beneath his shirt and undershirt. Presently, from under his armpit, he drew out a small, mahogany-colored leather purse and let Felicidad look into it. Within was a roll of bills, tightly wound and compressed so that they took up but little space. Felicidad gasped with fright and horror when she saw the color of the top bank note. It was a bank note on the Bank of Spain for five thousand pesetas! Her father, the terrible Don Jaime, had been paid by the English book-buyer in five-thousand peseta bills!
But Jacques Ferou was saying:
"You know, your father mentioned offering the books to the English firm when he wrote that letter to Paris. Therefore, I delayed my journey to Spain so that I should not reach your father's house until the English book-buyer had paid over the money for the purchased books and had left with his purchases. Ma chérie, I came to Spain, not for books, but for this. This is the money paid to your father for his books!" And he held up the small mahogany-colored leather purse that had been Felicidad's father's.
Sometime since, when with cruel, malicious delight he had started to tell her of his criminal operations, Felicidad had drawn away from him in horror. Now she started up, crying out in supreme contempt:
"So you stole all the money that was to keep my father in his old age! Oh, you—you disgusting thief!"
He saw then that he had been too open, too bold, too braggard. He tried to quiet and soothe her with caressing hands, with kisses. But her lips had become cold as ice, and they shrank away from his in profound loathing.
They were alone in the regulation separated continental coach. She tried to tear herself from his arms and to throw herself from the moving train. Death was all she thought of at first. By allowing herself to be cajoled into running off with a creature who had no more decency than to rob the father of his all, while he stole from him also his only daughter, she had disgraced the high name of Torreblanca y Moncada. What a blow this would be at the pride of the eagle-haughty Don Jaime! He had never forgiven her mother for her desertion. Of a surety, never would he forgive Felicidad!
But even as Felicidad despaired and thought of death, there had come to her the protector of her childhood days, Jacinto Quesada. And to him she now appealed, saying with the ferocity of desperation:
"The leather purse is still strapped under his armpit next his skin! Go quickly and take it from him! You should have found it in the search; then I would not have had to do as I have since done. That purse contains the happiness of my father's old age. Tear it from that yellow-livered Frenchman and return it in some way to Don Jaime!"
With nervous eager hands she sought to hurry Jacinto Quesada from the carriage. But he did not think to resist her, so glad was he to turn from talk to action. Then, as he dashed impetuously away, she said in a half-whisper, her voice breaking with sobs:
"If God has intended that I should live on as the wife of a criminal, I will suffer my fate in silence and patience, knowing that I, in my waywardness, am alone to blame. But my father shall not be robbed of hisbuena ventura—he shall not end his days in want and misery. Seguramente, no!Dios de mialma, no!
"I have dishonored Don Jaime—and Don Jaime most certainly will kill me if ever he sets eyes on me again—butno lo quiera Dios! that I should suffer this obscene crime against him to be committed! There is blood and pride in me yet—I am yet a Torreblanca y Moncada!"
Half-way to the muster of people, Jacinto Quesada halted to throw back to her a heartening look and to call:
"Despacio!Softly!—gently! And watch, my Felicidad, how easy it is to rob the robber!"
High overhead a bustard sailed on slow, lazy pinions, but below, across the flat, tawny Manchegan plain, not a gust of desert dust whirled, not a buck-rabbit bounded, not a cow or bullock lumbered. Hot and large, empty and silent was the slow-crawling afternoon.
Jacinto Quesada faced the herded people. He had been gone five minutes; now, in visible trepidation, they awaited the upshot of his return. Their eyes adhered stickily to his; they were utterly without voice. Suddenly, he called, "Bring up and search the Frenchman again!"
Dios hombre!but the thing was swiftly done. The Frenchman's protests went for nothing; he was mauled about, roughed and ruffed, fine-combed and intimately worked over. Jacinto Quesada himself was lead-hound in the second search. He it was who drew forth the small, mahogany-colored leather purse from its nook of concealment in the fellow's armpit.
Looking black as thunder, Jacques Ferou retreated once again into the background of people. There situated, he gave vent freely to his exasperation and fury, muttering savagely: "Name of a name of a name of a name of a dog!" Also, many other choice French curses. But the more he cursed, the more acrimonious and virulent he became. His face went livid with stirred-up bile; his slate-colored eyes snapped in bitter resentment; he bared his long white teeth in a passionate carnivorous snarl of envenomed hate.
But hate for whom? At first his hate was directed against no one in particular. Because he had lost the purse, life had suddenly changed to a more somber color and bitterly he detested the whole world!
Then he turned his eyes upon Jacinto Quesada, thinking, for obvious reasons, to concentrate his spleen upon him. Jacinto Quesada caught the Frenchman's burning look and smiled contemptuously. That contemptuous smile should have infuriated the Frenchman all the more; but strangely, it did not! Somehow the Frenchman sensed that Jacinto Quesada was not the prime mover in his downfall; and, his hate still at a loss for a target to direct itself against, he took his eyes altogether off the youthful bandolero.
ThenSacre Bleu! who was that he glimpsed out of the ends of his irises? Was it not Felicidad, his promised wife? She had made an inconspicuous, an almost clandestine exit, from the third-class coach wherein she had hid herself; and now she was furtively seeking to rejoin the muster of people. Watching her, the Frenchman saw plainly that she it was who had betrayed him to the bandoleros. And his whole malignant rancid soul bunched and crouched in his eyes, and threw toward her a look searing and scalding, a look of vitriolic vindictiveness.
Ever since Felicidad had pushed him with impetuosity and precipitation from the third-class coach, telling him to go quickly and tear from the Frenchman the purse, Jacinto Quesada had been dominated by the will of the girl, doing swiftly and with utter obedience that which she had bade him do. He had worked in a white vacuum of action, without prejudice or plan of his own, without forethought. Never did he doubt but that once the mahogany-hued purse was taken from the Frenchman the whole wrong would automatically right itself. And now—what should he do with the purse? It would be some time before he could plan ways and means to return it safely to Don Jaime.
Of a sudden, then, to make matters more perplexing, Jacinto discovered the Frenchman looking at Felicidad in that ugly and ominous way. At that, he ceased worrying about the mahogany-colored purse; he shoved it into an inside pocket of his sheepskin zamarra and straightway forgot it. The question of its disposal was an insignificant matter; a greater question bothered him. What should he do with the girl?
As one wrestler closes with another, Jacinto Quesada closed with that great question. The while he gripped and folded it in the doughy coils of his brains, however, he did not stand quiet and pensive. Enough time already had been lost. Loudly Quesada shouted orders.
One of his supernumeraries, Pio Estrada, dipped down into the dry gutter of the Arroyo Seco for the horses. The others, Rafael Perez and Ignacio Garcia, fell to prodding the herded passengers with their carbines back upon the train. Instantly the whole panorama took on a brisker look. At haphazard, into any of the coaches which presented themselves, plunged those boarding the train, not caring in what style they rode, or what comfort, so long as they soon speeded away.
Pio Estrada reappeared, leading by their bridles three hairy Manchegan ponies. Another galvanic command from Quesada and, from the work of bundling the passengers aboard the train, hurriedly the other two salteadores detached themselves. They bustled about their ponies, roping upon them the weighty sacks of mail and conglomerate loot, looking to their curved bits and cinch-straps. With dispatch, everything was being prepared for a nimble get-away.
The last of the waylaid passengers were crowding back into the train, the engine driver and his stoker were high in their cab once more and busily engaged in getting up steam. It needed only the word of Quesada, and the Manchegan ponies would be mounted, the train released on its way, and the hold-up of the Seville-to-Madrid consummated.
Still dodging the great question of the disposal of the girl, sparring for time, Jacinto Quesada stole a look toward where he last had seen Felicidad. He started and scowled. She and the Frenchman were together. They were among those few not yet distributed through the various coaches.
As the laggards milled and pushed along the line of opening and closing doors, along the line of compartments crowded and jammed, the Frenchman, Jacques Ferou, had sidled near her. He had caught her by the arm. Now, his tall athletic body bent forward sharply, his calculating eyes narrowed to mere blazing slits, the nostrils of his high predatory nose twitching and working, his whole ashy face working and grimacing like a horrible mask of rubber, he was whispering into her ear!
There was no mistaking the active threat in the man's attitude; there was no mistaking the real and terrible fear in the girl's cowering pose. She made to put up her hands as if to ward off blows; she trembled like a tag of paper hung in the wind; and suddenly the cry that had chilled in her throat at his first touch, burst up through the walls of her lungs, and shrilled out in a terrified wail.
Jacinto Quesada leaped, as though lashed, toward the two. The lumpy problem was smashed, by that cry, into smithereens. The great question demanded action. There was but one kind of action to do.
Rafael Perez bulked up before him.
"Give the word, maestro," said he, "and we shall signal the engineer to start the train."
"The word is given, then!"
Rafael Perez made a semaphore of his arms. Another salteador farther up the track repeated and relayed the signal. The locomotive whistle shrilled shortly once, then the bell clanged and clanged with warning insistence.
As Quesada flung past Rafael Perez, he threw out the words:
"Tell Garcia and Estrada to mount and make ready to start away, the moment I give the command. You wait to hold my pony for me. As was the plan, my pony goes unburdened by any of the sacks of stuff; but, though it was also the plan, I will not linger behind to cover the get-away. I have a new worry to trouble me. You lagartos will have to look to your own safety. Should we get separated, you know the pass in the mountains where we have planned to meet. Am I understood?"
"Si, maestro!"
With the emission of the waste steam through the chimney, the engine of the Seville-to-Madrid commenced puffing slowly; the cars began shuddering and groaning as though about to start. Jacques Ferou held open the door of a second-class coach for Felicidad. But it was already packed full of men and she hesitated to enter.
"Come, hurry!" roughly ordered the Frenchman. "The train in another minute will start. You do not wish to be left behind, do you?"
"But this is not our coach! The coach we rode in thus far is up forward." Almost it seemed as if the girl were sparring for time.
"Enter, it isno importa, señora dona!" said, with kindness, one of the men within—a man in a yellow bullfighter's costume, one of the picadores of Morales' cuadrilla.
"Yes, enter, please," spoke up another in a green costume, the great Morales himself. "You are most welcome here, I assure you!" And he reached down, seeking to help her climb aboard.
"Quick, or the train will start without you!" cried another, the blue-eyed American. Then in English, for suddenly the train had commenced to bang back and forth, and he had become beside himself with excitement:
"Make haste, girl! The accursed slow freight is about to move. Gad! here it goes."
Just as the train puffed rapidly and, with a roar and a tremendous yank started off, he crowded between the knees of the cuadrilla of bullfighters, pushed aside Morales, and leaped through the door. Staggering from the precipitant leap, he made toward the girl, intending to lift and fling her into the moving train.
A man came between them.
"What do you do here?" cried this man sharply. "Back, into the coach!"
The American recognized Jacinto Quesada. He tried to fling past him. A huge long-barreled revolver showed in the bandolero's hand.
"Back, you, into your coach!" cried Quesada once again. "And you, you dog of a Frenchman! Quick! enter! or I will shoot you through the fat of your breeches!"
Swiftly the Frenchman went. He dashed after the moving coach, caught up with it and flung himself headlong in upon the floor. Then he pulled himself to his feet again, went over to the open door, and banged it shut.
The American did not budge.
"But the girl!" he shouted. He drove at the bandolero. Quesada dodged his fist. He reversed the revolver in his hand and swiftly crashed it butt-first down upon the American's forehead.
The American reeled back, stunned, falling. Quesada looked down the length of train moving up toward him; he saw another open-doored coach rattling near. Suddenly stooping, he tackled at the legs of the American, lifted him bodily into the air, and flung him back upon the floor of the open, moving coach. The American never knew how he boarded that train no more than he would had he been a soulless sack of barley!
All over sweat and panting deeply, Jacinto Quesada turned to Felicidad.
"Come; I must take you with me," he said to her, "to my mother in Minas de la Sierra. We will send back the purse to your father. We will tell him the true story of events. Depend upon it, my Felicidad, he will forgive you, he will relent. Until he does that, however, my mother will take care of you, and I will be your guardian angel, besides." He could not prevent a smile. And he added, "A sinful and thieving sort of guardian angel, but one strong to protect you, you may be sure of that! Come! Up on my horse!"
He swung her up upon his Manchegan pony. Before her, he mounted. He dug his heels in the pony's sleek mouse-colored barrel. They started away.
"Hold tight with your little hands, my Felicidad!" he remarked. "It will be fast riding for quite awhile."
"Ah, thankfully I go with you, Jacinto!" she said, after a little, despite the unevenness and hardship of their fast pace. "Jacques Ferou whispered to me that he would show me, once we got to Madrid, how the Apaches, the depraved criminals of Paris, treat those women who to them are unfaithful!"
After lumbering slowly across the rickety Arroyo Seco bridge, the Seville-to-Madrid swung eastward on its gleaming rails and pursued, across the desert uplands, a course parallel to that of the bandoleros. From the coach windows on one side, the passengers could see Rafael Perez, Ignacio Garcia, and Pio Estrada fleeing across the parched and tawny flat on their plunder-laden, loping Manchegan ponies. They were speeding for the distant gray and purple mountains.
A jump behind these worthies and rapidly overtaking them were Jacinto Quesada and the golden-haired girl. Distinctly the passengers could make out Felicidad and her kidnaper. And the sight was as a red muleta to a Miura bull.
A young bride stolen from her husband! A young girl abducted by highwaymen! That was she behind the last of the retreating bandoleros—see the flying green skirt, see the glint of her golden hair in the sun! They were taking her off with them, carrying her away into the savage mountains! Had there been no men among all those creatures in trousers scattered throughout the train—no men to rise in their masculinity and to sacrifice their lives if need be, but at all hazards to prevent this abominable crime?
Women screamed, and women prayed. Hideous visions rose before their eyes; visions of the bandoleros in some craggy retreat shaking dice for possession of the girl! One of the black-clad nuns fainted outright.
On its gleaming rails, the Seville-to-Madrid swerved once again. With distance, the fleeing horsemen grew small, smaller. They were little as bounding rabbits; then they were little as low-skimming birds. And then at last they lost themselves in the ocean of ilex and thorny acacia, the dun immensity of sand.
The Seville-to-Madrid had been under way for a full twenty minutes and was nearing the steel cantilever bridge over the river Zancura, when a man, lurching heavily and looking very sick, picked his steps slowly and cautiously along the footboard on the right side of the train—that footboard used by the train guards in going from compartment to compartment of the many-coached continental-style caravan, collecting tickets and locking the doors between stops. The man clung to door knobs, window jambs and window sills. And gradually he worked forward along half the length of the train.
At last he had progressed to a second-class coach that resounded with the voices of indignant and outraged men, that quivered and rang with bass and baritone curses in both Spanish and French. When he had closed in upon this coach, the man on the footboard smiled triumphantly, yanked open the door, and flung himself within.
For a space, it was not as though he had entered a crowded coach; it was as though he had flung himself into a surf of rolling breakers. Masses of words struck him with the velocity and flying weight of charging masses of water. He spread his feet, braced his shoulders and chest to the impacting masses of words, and waited.
The pounding tumulting seas crashed over him; he held his footing; they receded, drew back, ebbed away. Then, before the greatzipizapeof words could recommence, he held up his hands for silence. Silence was given him. He said:
"I am a Norte Americano, a Yanqui. In my country if a girl were kidnaped by bandits, quite well I know what we Yanquis would do. But this is Spain, not the United States. What are you Spaniards going to do?"
"What can we do, Senor Americano?" asked one of the cuadrilla of bullfighters, a banderillero by his dress. "We ask you that—what can we do?"
"Do not think it an everyday thing," spoke up the matador, Morales, "for blossoming girls to be stolen by Spanish highwaymen and carried off into the mountains. One reads about such happenings in the bizarre and romantic novels of the elder Dumas; but one does not think to see such things occur in real life.
"You would search far in our country's history for a parallel to this outrageous crime! José Maria. Diego Corrientes, Agua-Dulce and Visco el Borje left our women severely alone. They were simple-souled men of the people, risen against oppression. Even as would any humble and pious and hardworking labrador, so these bandoleros en grande feared God and public opinion. Right well they knew they could continue to exist as outlaws only by reason of the favor of Spanish public opinion, not to speak of the favor of God. And they set the fashion for future Spanish outlaws. They made the conventions by which all bandoleros are supposed to conduct themselves to-day. The bandoleros, just before this man Quesada, honored those conventions. El Vivillo and Pernales committed no crimes against Spanish women.
"Senor Americano, you may have noticed that we Spaniards accord our bandoleros a certain respect. Because they have been altogether masculine, varonil, and yet treated our womenkind with the utmost reverence, the bandoleros have wrung from us this esteem which amounts sometimes even to love.
"And even this Jacinto Quesada to-day! He treated me with great consideration, chatting pleasantly about his love of bullfighting and other very human things. And he struck me as being a bandolero of the splendid good old sort—the José Maria, the Visco el Borje sort! Why, he even asked after the health of my wife, Marta, and my two little ones! But now! To find out that he is a renegade, a damnable turncoat from the old bandolero code, an inhuman wretch, a despicable rapist—Porvida!"
Morales' boyishly rounded face flamed with anger and with a great deal more of shame.
"In my country," said the American, "should a man abduct a girl, a posse would be organized at once, the criminal pursued, brought to bay, and made to pay with his life for the crime. The posse would be composed of every rich man, poor man, beggar man and thief in the community, and it would never rest until its work was completely done and the girl brought safely back to her promised husband."
Three of the bullfighters spoke up at once.
"A posse? We have never heard of that!"
"Well, I come from the western part of the United States, and if you ever had lived there for even a short time, you could not be so blissfully ignorant. When I say a posse I mean aposse comitatus, which is a lawyer's term for the citizens who may be summoned to assist an officer in enforcing the law. My father was a pioneer in the State of California; he made his start in Inyo County mines and his millions in Bakersfield oil wells; and many's the story he has told me of quickly formed posses and their rapid, sure work. We would be forming a posse of a sort, if we all agreed to go after this Jacinto Quesada and bring back the girl."
One of the two yellow-costumed picadores was on his feet, his swarthy face ruddy with agitation and strong emotion.
"Then, in the name of Spanish womanhood, let us do that!" he cried. "I, Coruncho Lopez, the most superb picador in Spain, volunteer to be one of the posse!"
"And I, Alfonso Robledo, a banderillero as great as any!"
"And I—"
Suddenly, those about to volunteer became tongue-tied; the whole cuadrilla of bullfighters looked sheepish and confused. The youthful matador, Manuel Morales, had stepped before them, on his face a cold and contemptuous scowl.
"You are the peones of my cuadrilla," he said brutally, "and I am your maestro. You will do exactly that which I order you to do and nothing else! But, perhaps, you have forgotten the strict laws of discipline of our profession?"
Shamefaced and abject, the whole cuadrilla replied at once, "Forgive us, maestro. We await your orders."
Morales seemed to feel better after that. With the easy magnificence of a matador and maestro, he turned to the American.
"Senor Americano," he said, "I have become a successful and renowned espada only after years of hard work and vigilant heed to the duties of my profession. And now that I am the great Morales, I am as much a slave to my fame as any of my peones is the slave to me. In his offices in Seville sits my manager, the Senor Don Arturo Guerra, signing contract after contract; and these contracts I must fulfill, or lose much money and much prestige with thepresidentesof bull rings and with theaficionados. Therefore, I must be discreet, circumspect, and full of forethought.
"Senor Americano, these peones have no franchise to speak for themselves. They are but my thoughtless, irresponsible children. If I did not rule them with a hand of iron, they would be off on a thousand wild escapades in a month! But one of them, just now, said a very splendid thing. 'In the name of Spanish womanhood,' he said, 'let us form of ourselves a posse!'
"Carajo! I am discreet, circumspect, and full of forethought as the great Morales should be, but my heart tells me those words are good words! My heart leaps with eagerness to be pursuing the despicable Jacinto Quesada in the name of Spanish womanhood!
"What are contracts! What is money! What is prestige, fame! Senor Americano, join out with me, and we will chase this scoundrel up and down the peninsula until we have bayed him down and brought back the girl! If you wish it, I will command my whole cuadrilla to come with us; but it is my own wish, that we two go alone and unencumbered. This same Jacinto Quesada who stole the girl called me one of the three bravest men in Spain. And he named himself as the second most brave man, and you as the third! Let us go then, we two brave men together! Two such as we are equal to a posse of a dozen common men!"
The blue-eyed American looked a little uncomfortable; he did not quite know how to take the matador's flamboyant words. But he answered, heartily enough:
"Sure I'll join out with you! My name is Carson—John Fremont Carson—and here's my hand on it! But better take the whole cuadrilla along with us. We two may be as wonderful as you say we are, but just the same, numbers count, and every man can do his little bit to get back the girl. And now—"
"In this posse I am included, too, of course!"
It was the Frenchman, Jacques Ferou. He, the one to all outward appearances most injured and aggrieved by Jacinto Quesada's outrageous conduct, had played little part in the proceedings up to this moment. But now, his tone was very peremptory and harsh, and he looked as if he meant business.
"Of course!"
"Por los Clavos de Cristo! we can't leave you out!"
The American produced a pencil and notebook.
"And now," he said, "to arrange the details. There will be horses needed, and provisions and guides and—"
"It will be mules in the mountains," said one bullfighter.
"Manchegan ponies are cheap," said another.
"We will need Mausers and revolvers, too," said a third. "We cannot conduct a man-hunt without weapons."
"But how will we finance the expedition?" asked the practical Frenchman. "Myself, I have not a franc, what you call a peseta. And I have no means of replenishing my rifled pockets!"
"Ah, then, it is for me to finance the expedition!" cried the matador, Morales. "I will telegraph to Seville when we get off at the next stop, and so much money will be sent me by Don Arturo, my manager, that you will be surprised, astounded! It is just that I should do this—I and my bullfighters make up the bulk of this troop; I am the most rich of you all."
"I don't know about that," said the American dryly. "Please allow me to go halves with you."
"Ah, I had forgotten; you Americans are all as rich as Monte Cristo. You and I will share the expense, then. We get off at the next stop and make our start after this Jacinto Quesada, do we not?"
The two were Spaniards. They wore the uniform of the Guardia Civil, and they rode hairy, vigorous little police ponies. They had been in the saddle since daybreak, persistently pushing southward. The cobs were dog-weary but as steady-paced as machines of clockwork; the men were hunched of shoulder, heavy-headed, their faces coated with a gray-brown powder of dust.
They drew rein atop a naked hummock in the immensity of sand and ilex and thorny acacia. At the hip of the younger and taller of the two was slung a pair of binoculars. The one, and then the other, trained these glasses upon the rolling, everlasting veldt and swept the horizon round, their scrutiny long, patient, and searching.
All the long morning and the longer, more dreary afternoon, they had seen upon the endless despoblado only half-wild cattle and half-wild asses, and an occasional high-soaring falcon or an ugly, three-foot-long eyed-lizard. And this time was not the first time they had paused to peer through the binoculars; they had paused often, and then continued on without remark. Now, however, as he put back the glasses in their leather sheath, the younger policeman rather bitterly said:
"There is no one abroad upon La Mancha. Not even a solitary salteador de camino hiding out from us of the Guardia Civil."
"Yet I tell you, Miguel—most surely are they out there somewhere!" returned his compañero; vehemently dissenting. "How could they have attained, so soon, to the Sierra Morena ahead—I ask you that!"
Touching their ponies with their barbed heels, they enterprised once more upon the long traverse. There was a terrible sun that day, a sun African in the ferocity of its passion. The sun glare tortured their eyes. It caused their lacquered three-cornered police hats, made of shiny patent leather, to reflect and flash like the mirrors of a heliograph. The men sweated until they were as dry as cinders and could sweat no more.
In the more subdued glare of the late afternoon, the two came at length to the brown rolling foothills toward which they had been making throughout the whole hideous day. The foothills billowed away, in undulations rising even higher and higher, until finally they became part of a distant and purple alpland of massive and lofty peaks—the exalted spires and crags of the Sierra Morena.
As their jaded ponies took doggedly the initial rise, the younger and taller of the two policemen—he called Miguel—drew from his breast a yellow paper on which was mimeographed a copy of a typewritten telegram. He commenced to read aloud.
The great Manuel Morales—his full cuadrilla—an American, the Senor Don John Fremont Carson, and a Frenchman, name unknown. It is especially important that you discover news of the American, Carson; he is a millionaire and of high social position in his own country. Both the American Ambassador and the Bank of Spain desire to ascertain his whereabouts, his reason for carrying such a large sum of money upon his person, and his purpose in setting off into the wilderness. The Bank of Spain is also much interested in the well-being of Manuel Morales, for he also withdrew a large account by telegraph before disappearing from sight.The nine men left the Seville-to-Madrid at Alcazar de San Juan, four days ago, secured horses and enough provisions to last them a week and, traveling together, rode southward towards the Sierra Morena. They were well-armed, having bought carbines and automatic pistols from the Jewish cacique of Alcazar, Dicenta. They told no one their errand. They took no guides.You of the Guardia Civil, find them and give them escort. Report all information to me—Echegaray,Ministro de Gobernacion.
The great Manuel Morales—his full cuadrilla—an American, the Senor Don John Fremont Carson, and a Frenchman, name unknown. It is especially important that you discover news of the American, Carson; he is a millionaire and of high social position in his own country. Both the American Ambassador and the Bank of Spain desire to ascertain his whereabouts, his reason for carrying such a large sum of money upon his person, and his purpose in setting off into the wilderness. The Bank of Spain is also much interested in the well-being of Manuel Morales, for he also withdrew a large account by telegraph before disappearing from sight.
The nine men left the Seville-to-Madrid at Alcazar de San Juan, four days ago, secured horses and enough provisions to last them a week and, traveling together, rode southward towards the Sierra Morena. They were well-armed, having bought carbines and automatic pistols from the Jewish cacique of Alcazar, Dicenta. They told no one their errand. They took no guides.
You of the Guardia Civil, find them and give them escort. Report all information to me—Echegaray,Ministro de Gobernacion.
He looked up now, the young smooth-faced policeman who had been reading, and turned his handsome head to gaze back over the long monotony of purgatorial desert. It was the words, scribbled in ink in a strong hand and added like a postscript or annotation to the telegraphed instructions, which he went on to read aloud now:
They are somewhere in Ciudad Real or Jaen. The country they are traversing is lawless and sparsely-populated, a country infested with ladrones, among whom the most notable is the notorious Quesada.Spain will never forgive us if any harm should come to the great Morales. And we must answer to the American Ambassador should this John Fremont Carson be not safeguarded. The Constabulary will please give its most careful attention to the search.—Alvarez, Captain-General of the Guardia Civil for the District.
They are somewhere in Ciudad Real or Jaen. The country they are traversing is lawless and sparsely-populated, a country infested with ladrones, among whom the most notable is the notorious Quesada.
Spain will never forgive us if any harm should come to the great Morales. And we must answer to the American Ambassador should this John Fremont Carson be not safeguarded. The Constabulary will please give its most careful attention to the search.—Alvarez, Captain-General of the Guardia Civil for the District.
Putting the yellow paper back in the breast of his tight blue jacket faced with red, the younger policeman, Miguel, rode on up the slope beside his compañero?—a squat, fiercely mustached and apelike fellow.
"Pascual," he asked presently, "would you know that magnificent one, Morales, should you meet him face to face—"
"Seguramente, yes! Have I not watched him murder a thousand bulls?"
Then, thoughtfully, the apelike one added:
"Once we chance upon their spoor, once we scent them from afar, it should be a most simple matter for us of the Guardia Civil to run down these fools-errant of Manuel Morales. We know these plains and foothills; they do not. And they are a large troop and must make a great to-do of noise and dust whenever they move about. It is not as though we seek a bandolero riding alone, friend Miguel. A bandolero riding alone is a very fox to catch!"
"Ah, that Jacinto Quesada!" ejaculated the other with boyish enthusiasm. "Is not he the crafty lizard, the sly tricky one? He has given us more work to do than any twenty other lawbreakers in Spain. If Morales and his fools-errant—as you call them, Pascual—conceal their movements but half so well as does he, we will be chasing will-o'-the-wisps for the next hundred years! But, by the way, Pascual, could you describe Jacinto Quesada to me?"
The older man pondered.
"That is most difficult," he said at length, chewing in a ruminating manner one end of his black mustache. "He is of the Sierra Nevada, this Quesada; he is not a native of La Mancha. Few men hereabouts could describe him, I think; he does not go abroad much to fiestas and wedding feasts, since he took to the highroads, you know. And the few folk that have met him since he became a bandolero have been too frightened to note well what he looked like. But I have been told by a paisano of his, a serrano of the Sierra Nevada, that he looks very much like me, myself!"
That last was said with downright pride. The policeman, Pascual, did not even take trouble to conceal his vain pleasure in the thought, his flattered conceit in himself. He sat a little straighter in the saddle and, with self-conscious braggadocio, fingered his black mustache, looking about him fiercely the while.
He was squat, broadly uncouth of shoulder, prognathous jawed—an ugly apelike sort. There was something bestially predatory in the simian look of him which the black mustache rather heightened than detracted from. He did not resemble any of his immediate progenitors who had been men of Aragon and Guardias Civiles every one. More he resembled, perhaps, certain Miquelets and reclaimed brigands from whose loins his line had originally sprung. He did not look at all like Jacinto Quesada!
The youthful Civil Guard eyed the apelike Pascual a moment, and then derisively laughed.
"That is strange," he said, with a sneer. "Certain Gypsies of my acquaintance have seen Quesada in the mountains and on the plains. Outlaws such as he often repair to the Gitanos when hard-pressed, you know; the Gypsies look upon them as blood-brothers, for the Gypsies are all thieves. And it is strange, Pascual, but these Gypsies of my acquaintance have told me thatIwas the living image of Jacinto Quesada. He is very young, they say, little more than a boy even, and he is tall and smooth-shaven and handsome, indeed, very much like me!"
Youthful, tall, smooth of face and very handsome was, indeed, that policeman called Miguel. He was lean, supple and gallant looking as a sword of Toledo.
"Fools and children tell the truth," returned the apelike Pascual, quoting an old Spanish proverb. Then, barbing it with a sting of his own making, he added: "But Gitanos, never!"
Surlily, he rode on ahead, the while the other slid down from his horse and ran in pursuit of his shiny leather police hat which was tumbling in a quick succession of flip-flops down the hill. He had knocked it from his own head inadvertently when, while talking, he had raised the binoculars to his eyes for another look back over La Mancha.
After a short erratic chase, Miguel retrieved his recalcitrant headgear; but, strangely, he did not return immediately to the saddle. Instead, stooping low, he stood motionless near the place where he had picked up the hat, peering down as at a nugget of gold half hidden in the dust and grass. Then, becoming altogether inexplicable in his actions, he went scurrying off up the slope at a tangent, his body bent far forward, his head turned toward the ground, and his face sharp and pale with excitement and expectancy.
"Caspita!" he was heard by Pascual to mutter. "Caspita!"—"Wonderful! Wonderful!"
Every so often, he halted and stooped lower, crouching almost to the very ground. It was as though, each time, he discovered something of sober interest to him and paused to examine that something.
Pascual followed him with puzzled and astounded eyes. At last, as the curious performance persisted, he called out, "Dios hombre!what ails you, man?"
His face flushed, his eyes smiling with triumph, the youthful and handsome Miguel came back to the spot where he had started his mysterious shadow-dance up the hillside.
"Pascual Montara!" he called. "This way, quick!"
As the other trotted his pony over, he pointed a finger to the ground before him and said, "Do you see that which I see, Pascual?"
"Seguramente, yes."
"What is it, then?"
"Carajo, Miguel! it is only a handful of grass, plucked and left in a tiny hillock by some one."
"Bueno! But who plucked it, then, and left it in a heap upon the ground?"
"Zut!How should I know? Who is it plucks grass, anyway?"
The young policeman seemed to take joy in the rôle of Grand Inquisitor. He smiled a superior smile and moved on a few feet, and then again halted.
"And this—what is this?" he demanded, pointing before him once more.
"You buffoon, you—what game are you playing with me? It is only another hillock of plucked grass, as any fool can see!"
"And this?" The Grand Inquisitor had moved on another couple of yards.
"I shall call it a mountain, an it please you better. The Devil take you and your little hills of grass, Miguel Alvarado!"
"And this?" Once again the policeman with the superior smile had moved on up the hillside. But this time he did not point at any hillock of dead herbage.
"That? Why, that is only a cross made by two sticks that have fallen by chance one upon the other."
"Which way does the longest arm point, Pascual?"
"Straight up and down the slope."
"Muy bueno!I have pointed out everything to you, then. Chew upon what you have seen, Spaniard!"
He returned to his horse, mounted and started on. The apelike Pascual, his face a study in curiosity, drew alongside.
"You have asked me a lot of questions, Miguel Alvarado," he said. "Now I will thank you a thousand times if you will explain your great mystery away."
"Great mystery—za! It is only because you are a lunkhead that you perceive any great mystery here. There are Gitanos encamped in the hills ahead, that is all!"
"Did those hillocks of plucked grass spell out that for you?"
"Yes; and the crossed sticks, also. The hillocks and the crossed sticks are the Gypsies' trail—what they call their patteran. They leave them in their wake that their brethren, who have lagged behind, may be guided by them to the meeting-place."
"Y pues?" grunted Pascual. "Well, and what of that? It is a matter of no moment to me. But hola! why turn your horse to the right?"
"I am going to the camp of the Zincali. They may have word of these men we seek. Should they have seen Morales and the rest upon the plains, or even have heard of their presence abroad, they will tell me such news as they have by chance acquired. Do not come with me, Pascual Montara, if you do not wish to."
Now, it is against all orders and precedent for one of the Spanish constabulary to go where his fellow goes not; the men of the Guardia Civil hunt forever in braces. The apelike Pascual grumbled, but loyally he followed his arrogant and imperious camarada.
Their horses topped the rise and, suddenly taking heart, entered briskly a tinybarrancaset transverse between the hilltops. It was only a long gully or dingle, but it was cool and reposeful with wild olive and algarroba trees, white buckthorn, holly and arbutus. Through gutters strewn with moss-overgrown boulders, edged with rhododendrons and overarched by oleanders, raced down the whole length of it a glad, loud-chattering run of water.
Sighing their delight, the two surprised and pleasured policemen rode under an upstanding and ancient wild olive at its portal and plunged into the secret, beautiful place. Instantly a great flutter of butterflies of all sizes and colors lifted in spangled clouds about them.
"But the Gypsies may be a great way ahead in the hills!" grumbled Pascual filled with a hasty but mighty desire to linger in this barranca, smoking cigarettes and dreaming the moments away in the cool of some shady tree.
All on the moment, the youthful Miguel Alvarado was off his horse again. They were following a narrow, barely discernible trail up the canyon's deep long alley; along this trail he now ran, leading his pony by the bridle and looking ever to the left side. Soon he paused and looked back at Pascual Montara.
"The Gitanos have pitched their tents just beyond the first turn above," he announced.
"Hola! Have you seen more of their sign writing in grass-ricks and sticks?"
"Si, Pascual. Look well at the forked rod set upright in the soft loam to the left of the trail—one prong is broken off, the other points to the right. I knew, if it was here, it would be found to the left of the trail. It is a signpost only set up to guide night travelers. The Gitanos erected it here no more than an hour, or an hour and a half ago."
Pascual grunted noncommittally. But the younger man seemed possessed of a strange and febrile excitement.
"Let us bathe our faces and heads in the runlet," he suggested urgently. "It would be an error of strategy if we failed to look as gallant as possible when we ride into the camp of the Zincali. Besides, the Gypsy girls may not be overclean themselves, Pascual, but greatly they admire a Busno—a White-blood—with a face freshly laved and as handsome as yours or mine!"
"Za! The Gypsy wenches are all jades and strumpets!"
But he went, this surly Pascual Montara, and bathed his head in the brook. Puffing prodigiously, he mounted and rode on beside the other. Miguel Alvarado looked altogether the gay and haughty cavalier after his ablutions. Pascual could not help eyeing in admiration his camarada's lean, clean-cut youthful profile, his smooth, brown, handsome face. Alvarado's cheeks were tinged with red, his eyes bright and sparkling as though with some concealed but hopeful expectancy.
"You bristle with eagerness, senor caballero of my soul!" remarked Pascual slyly.
Miguel Alvarado shrugged his shoulders, but did not answer. Suspicion growing in his glance, the apelike one continued to eye him. Then, as if he were accusing his camarada of something rather to be ashamed of, he said pointedly:
"It is because Gypsies are so near, that you burn and bristle—is it not? You are enamored of them; they captivate you with their uncouth glamors; towards them you are drawn, eh?
"Ah, I understand now, Miguel, that which heretofore has made you seem mysterious in my eyes—your trick of reading cabalistic signs written in chalk on the stonework of bridges and the adobe of posadas andprovidencias; your trick of reading hillocks of grass and crosses of sticks placed beside the road; and your trick, too, of ordering your pony about in the thieves' Latin of the Gitanos. You are like so many other Moors of Andalusia, Miguel Alvarado. You are one ofLos del Aficion—Those of the Predilection! I have guessed rightly, have I not?"
Miguel Alvarado shrugged his shoulders once again, and smiled his superior smile. Lightly, he remarked, "The Gypsy wenches are like she-leopards, soft and caressing of movement, but free and bold of eye. I cannot resist the lure in their golden glances."
The other snorted and spat disgustedly down into the watercourse. He drew a little away from Miguel Alvarado. After that, he rode on, through the gathering dusk, very much in the manner of a man companioned by one possessed of a demon—full of a certain respect but also full of reserve and caution. Scarcely could you say he became more at his ease, more the boon compañero and dorado. Was not the man he rode with one of Those of the Predilection?
In Spain, especially in Andalusia, there has long existed a large class of men given over utterly to a zest for Gitanos, their ways of life, their dances and their songs. These admirers of the Gypsies cannot shake off the fascination; they follow after the wandering Roms like the slaves of an evil eye; they cultivate the Cales, the Black Men of Zend, wherever met; they delight to watch the strange obscene dances of the Gypsy maids that are like nothing so much as writhings of snakes in an ecstasy of desire. These men are Those of the Predilection.
In the hushed and golden gloaming, they came at last, those two of the Guardia Civil, to a turning of the narrow canyon and then, beyond, to a Gypsy camp set in an opening among the trees. The brown tents were patched with rags of a hundred hues, and strings of rags, slovenly washed and as variegated, hung drooping and gathering smoke between the ridgepoles and the trees.
There were seven dusty dun wagons in a wide circle, and great huddles of gaunt and hungry dogs lazying about, and horses, foals, and burros coming and going at will among the trees. From the limbs of the trees dangled all manner of saddles, traces, and other odds and ends of harness. There were three fires sending black smoke and dancing sparks up into the lines of washing and the overarching greenery; and there were a dozen men and women, and three times that many children, postured about the fires and beneath the wagons.
"Alto à la Guardia Civil!" bellowed thunderously Pascual Montara, thinking to give the Gypsies a start with this dread call of the police.
The men about the fires did not move. The golden-skinned sloe-eyed women, stooped above the pots and kettles, looked up idly. Only the rabble of children seemed affrighted; they scurried away, those tousle-headed, chocolate-brown, ragged brats, some of even five and six years old stark naked, and hid themselves in the black insides of the wagons.
A young man, his shirt open to the waist, a yellowfajaor scarf wound about his middle, was busily engaged with winding a battered accordion. It was outlandishly sweet under his hands. Nearby, a Gypsy woman of seventeen nursed a new-born bantling, her breast uncovered. A slim young girl leaned against the trunk of an algarroba, pensively brushing the calf of one nut-brown leg with the toes of the other. A man, tall, massive and nobly upright of port, got up from beside one of the fires and advanced slowly toward the two policemen on the edge of the clearing.
A red kerchief tightly bound his head, and he wore the leather slop of a blacksmith. He had a short, curly grizzled beard. What with his gigantic body, herculean shoulders, monolithic throat, and haughty, savagely beautiful head, he looked like some Byzantine emperor of the old Roman strain. He was sixty, but he had every appearance of being under forty-eight.
Even as the colossal one approached, Miguel Alvarado caught sight of the slim young nut-brown girl under the algarroba tree. He went deathly pale. He clutched at his throat, devouring her with his gaze. His eyes were like two hot pulsing embers.
"Go forward to meet this man, Pascual Montara," at length he stuttered. "His name is Pepe Flammenca. He is a Gypsy count and lords it over the clan encamped here. Find out what he knows of Morales and the others. Question him shrewdly; he may know much!"
Without realizing that Miguel Alvarado was not to follow, Pascual pressed forward obediently. Meanwhile, the other policeman turned his horse in between the trees, skirted the clearing, and approached the spot where the Gypsy girl stood.