awakened by a tremendous vibration and found himself in the center of
the floor, undecided whether he had been hurled from his bed or whether
he had leaped thither. Still in a daze, he heard a shout from the
direction of Cobo's room, then a din of other voices, followed by a
rush of feet; the next instant his door was flung back and he saw, by
the light of high-held torches, Esteban Varona and a ragged rabble of
black men. Cueto knew that he faced death. He uttered a shrill scream
of terror, and, seizing the revolver which was always close at his
hand, he fired blindly. Then his foes were upon him. What happened
thereafter took but an instant. He dodged a blow from Esteban's clubbed
rifle only to behold the flash of a machete. Crying out again, he tried
to guard himself from the descending blade, but too late; the sound of
his hoarse terror died in his throat, half born.
"Quick! Soak the bed with oil and fire it," Esteban directed; then he
ran out into the hall to investigate that other shouting. He found the
chamber whence it issued and tried to smash the door; but at the second
blow he heard a gun-shot from within and the wood splintered outward
almost into his face. Simultaneously, from somewhere outside the house,
arose the notes of a Spanish bugle-call.
Young Varona waited to hear no more. Nor did his men; realizing the
peril into which they had been led, they bolted from the house as fast
as they could go. There was no need for questions; from the direction
of the sugar-mill came bellowed orders and the sound of men shouting to
their horses. Evidently those were troops--and trained troops, too, for
they took no time to saddle; they were up and mounted almost before the
marauders had gained the backs of their own animals. There was no
opportunity to choose a retreat across the fields; Esteban spurred down
the driveway toward the main calzada, yelling to his men to follow him.
The approach to La Joya was by way of a notable avenue, perhaps a
half-mile in length, and bordered by tall, even rows of royal palms.
These stately trees shaded the avenue by day and lent it a cavern-like
gloom by night. Near the public causeway the road was cut through a bit
of rising ground, and was walled by steep banks overgrown with vines.
Into the black tunnel formed by the palms the fugitives plunged, with
the clatter of hoofs close behind them. Those of the Volunteers who
pressed them hardest began to shoot wildly, for this typically Cuban
refusal to stand ground enraged them beyond measure.
Esteban's party would doubtless have made good their escape had it not
been for that other guerrillero returning from its raid; but, as it
happened, the two forces met in the sunken road. Nothing but the
darkness and the head-long approach of the fleeing men saved them from
immediate destruction, for the collision occurred between banks too
steep for a horse to climb, and with that yelling pack too close behind
to permit of retreat.
Instantly there began a blind battle in these desperately cramped
quarters. After the first moment or two friend and foe were
indistinguishable and the men of both parties began firing or thrusting
at whatever loomed nearest out of the gloom. The narrow ravine quickly
became a place of utter confusion, a volcano of blasphemies, a press of
jostling, plunging, struggling bodies. Horses reared and bit at one
another. Riders fought stirrup to stirrup with clubbed rifles and
machetes; saddles were emptied and the terrified horses bolted. Some of
them lunged up the banks, only to tumble down again, their threshing
limbs and sharp-shod hoofs working more havoc than blows from old-time
battle-hammers. Meanwhile those of Cobo's men who had ridden out from
the sugar-mill naturally attributed this new uproar to a stand of their
enemies, and began to rake the road with rifle fire; then, in obedience
to the commands of their half-clad colonel, they charged. A moment and
they were fighting hand to hand with their returning comrades. Spaniard
clashed with Spaniard, and somewhere in the melee the six marauders
battled for their lives.
Of course, after the first moment of conflict, Esteban had not been
able to exert the least control over his men; in fact, he could not
make himself heard. Nor could he spare the breath to shout; he was too
desperately engaged. When the full truth of the situation dawned upon
him he gave up hope for his life and at first merely strove to wreak
such havoc as he could. Yet while some of his faculties were completely
numbed in the stress of that white-hot moment, others remained
singularly clear. The shock of his surprise, the imminence of his
peril, rendered him dead to any emotion save dismay, and yet, strangely
enough, he remembered Rosa's pressing need for him and, more for her
sake than for his own, fought to extricate himself from the confusion.
His rifle was empty, he had its hot barrel in his hands; he dimly
distinguished Asensio wielding his machete. Then he found himself down
and half stunned. He was running here and there to avoid lunging
horses; he was tripping and falling, but meanwhile, as opportunity
offered, he continued to use his clubbed weapon. Something smote him
heavily, at last--whether a hoof or a gun-stock he could not tell--and
next he was on all-fours, trying to drag himself out of this rat-pit.
But his limbs were queerly rebellious, and he was sick; he had never
experienced anything quite like this and he thought he must be wounded.
It greatly surprised him to find that he could struggle upward through
the brambles, even though it was hard work. Men were fighting all
around and below him, meanwhile, and he wondered vaguely what made them
kill one another when he and his negroes were all dead or dying. It
seemed very strange--of a piece with the general unreality of
things--and it troubled him not a little.
At last he gained the top of the bank and managed to assume an upright
position, clinging to the bole of a palm-tree. One of his arms was
useless, he discovered, and he realized with a curious shock that it
was broken. He was bleeding, too, from more than one wound, but he
could walk, after a fashion.
He was inclined to stay and finish the fight, but he recollected that
Rosa would be waiting for him and that he must go to her, and so he set
out across the fields, staggering through the charred cane stubble. The
night was not so black as it had been, and this puzzled him until he
saw that the plantation house was ablaze. Flames were belching from its
windows, casting abroad a lurid radiance; and remembering Pancho Cueto,
Esteban laughed.
By and by, after he was well away, his numbness passed and he began to
suffer excruciating pain. The pain had been there all the time, so it
seemed; he was simply gaining the capacity to feel it. He was ready to
die now, he was so ill; moreover, his left arm dangled and got in his
way. Only that subconscious realization of the necessity to keep going
for Rosa's sake sustained him.
After a while he found himself on a forest trail; then he came to other
fields and labored across them. Fortune finally led his feet down into
a creek-bed, and he drank greedily, sitting upon a stone and scooping
the water up in his one useful hand. He was a long time in quenching
his thirst, and a longer time in getting up, but he finally managed
this, and he succeeded thereafter in keeping on his feet. Daylight came
at last to show him his way. More than once he paused, alarmed, at
voices in the woods, only to find that the sounds issued from his own
throat.
It had grown very hot now, so hot that heat-waves obscured his vision
and caused the most absurd forms to take shape. He began to hunt
aimlessly for water, but there was none. Evidently this heat had
parched the land, dried up the streams, and set the stones afire. It
was incredible, but true.
Esteban reasoned that he must be near home by this time, for he had
been traveling for days--for years. The country, indeed, was altogether
unfamiliar; he could not recall ever having seen the path he trod, but
for that matter everything was strange. In the first place he knew that
he was going west, and yet the morning sun persisted in beating hotly
into his face! That alone convinced him that things had gone awry with
the world. He could remember a great convulsion of some sort, but just
what it was he had no clear idea! Evidently, though, it had been
sufficient to change the rotation of the earth. Yes, that was it; the
earth was running backward upon its axis; he could actually feel it
whirling under his feet. No wonder his journey seemed so long. He was
laboring over a gigantic treadmill, balancing like an equilibrist upon
a revolving sphere. Well, it was a simple matter to stop walking, sit
down, and allow himself to be spun backward around to the place where
Rosa was waiting. He pondered this idea for some time, until its
absurdity became apparent. Undoubtedly he must be going out of his
head; he saw that it was necessary to keep walking until the back-spin
of that treadmill brought Rosa to him.
But the time came when he could walk no farther. He tried repeatedly
and failed, and meanwhile the earth spun even more rapidly, threatening
to whirl him off into space. It was a terrible sensation; he lay down
and hugged the ground, clinging to roots and sobbing weakly. Rosa, he
knew, was just around the next bend in the trail; he called to her, but
she did not answer, and he dared not attempt to creep forward because
his grip was failing. He could feel his fingers slipping--slipping. It
was agony. He summoned his last atom of determination, but to no avail.
He gave up finally, and felt himself propelled dizzily outward into
immeasurable voids. His last thought, as he went whirling end over end
through space, was of his sister. She would never know how hard he had
tried to reach her.
XIII
CAPITULATION
Late on the second day after the battle Asensio returned to his bohio.
Rosa and Evangelina, already frantic at the delay, heard him crying to
them while he was still hidden in the woods, and knew that the worst
had happened. There was little need for him to tell his story, for he
was weaponless, stained, and bloody. He had crossed the hills on foot
after a miraculous escape from that ravine of death. Of his companions
he knew nothing whatever; the mention of Esteban's name caused him to
beat his breast and cry aloud. He was weak and feverish, and his
incoherent story of the midnight encounter was so highly colored that
Rosa nearly swooned with horror.
The girl stood swaying while he told how the night had betrayed them,
how he had wrought incredible feats of valor before the shifting tide
of battle had spewed him out the end of the sunken road and left him
half dead in the grass. Asensio had lain there until, finding himself
growing stronger, he had burrowed into a tangle of vines at the foot of
a wall, where he had remained until the fighting ceased. When the
Spaniards had finally discovered their mistake and had ceased riding
one another down, when lights came and he heard Colonel Cobo cursing
them like one insane, he had wriggled away, crossed the calzada, and
hidden in the woods until dawn. He had been walking ever since; he had
come home to die.
Rosa heard only parts of the story, for her mind was numbed, her heart
frozen. Her emotion was too deep for tears, it paralyzed her for the
time being; she merely stood staring, her dark eyes glazed, her ashen
lips apart. Finally something snapped, and she knew nothing more until
hours afterward, when she found herself upon her comfortless bed with
Evangelina bending over her. All night she had lain inert, in a
merciful stupor; it was not until the next morning that she gradually
came out of her coma.
Then it was that the negress was really alarmed, fearing that if the
girl did rally her mind would be affected. But Rosa was young and,
despite her fragility of form, she was strong--too strong, it seemed to
her, and possessed of too deep a capacity for suffering. How she ever
survived those next few days, days when she prayed hourly to die, was a
mystery. And when she found that she could at last shed tears, what
agony! The bond between her and Esteban had been stronger than usually
exists between sister and brother; he had been her other self; in him
she had centered her love, her pride, her ambition. The two had never
quarreled; no angry word had ever passed between them: their mutual
understanding, moreover, had been almost more than human, and where the
one was concerned the other had been utterly unselfish. To lose
Esteban, therefore, split the girl's soul and heart asunder; she felt
that she could not stand without him. Born into the world at the same
hour, welded into unity by their mother's supreme pain, the boy and
girl were of the same flesh and spirit; they were animated by the same
life-current. Never had the one been ill but that the other had
suffered corresponding symptoms; never had the one been sad or gay but
that the other had felt a like reaction. Personalities so closely knit
together are not uncommon, and to sever them is often dangerous.
Into Rosa's life, however, there had come one interest which she could
not share with her twin--that was her love for O'Reilly. Spanish-reared
women, as a rule, do not play with love; when it comes they welcome it,
even though it be that first infatuation so often scorned by older,
colder people. So it was with Rosa Varona. Whatever might have been the
true nature of her first feeling for the Irish-American, suffering and
meditation had deepened and strengthened it into a mature and genuine
passion. As the wise men of old found wisdom in cave or desert, so Rosa
in her solitude had learned the truth about herself. Now, in the hour
of her extremity, thoughts of O'Reilly acted as a potent medicine. Her
hungry yearning for him and her faith in his coming stimulated her
desire to live, and so aided her recovery.
The day arrived when her brain was normal and when she could creep
about the hut. But she was only the ghost of the girl she had been; she
seldom spoke, and she never smiled. She sat for hours staring out into
the sunshine, and when she found tears upon her cheeks she was
surprised, for it seemed to her that she must long ago have shed the
very last.
Asensio, likewise recovered, but he, too, was sadly changed. There was
no longer any martial spirit in him; he feared the Spaniards, and tales
of their atrocities cowed him.
Then Cobo came into the Yumuri. The valley, already well-nigh deserted,
was filled to the brim with smoke from burning fields and houses, and
through it the sun showed like a copper shield. Refugees passed the
bohio, bound farther into the hills, and Asensio told the two women
that he and they must also go. So the three gathered up what few things
they could carry on their backs and fled.
They did not stop until they had gained the fastnesses of the Pan de
Matanzas. Here they built a shelter and again took up the problem of
living, which was now more difficult than ever.
Asensio would not have been greatly inconvenienced by the change had he
been alone, for certain fruits grew wild in the forests, and the earth,
where the Spaniards had not trod, was full of roots upon which a
creature of his primitive habits could have managed to live. But
hampered as he was by two women, one of whom was as delicate as a
flower, Asensio found his task extremely difficult. And it grew daily
more difficult; for there were other people here in the woods, and,
moreover, the country round about was being steadily scoured by the
enemy, who had orders to destroy every living, growing thing that was
capable of sustaining human life. Stock was butchered and left to rot,
trees were cut down, root-fields burned. Weyler's policy of
frightfulness was in full sway, and starvation was driving its
reluctant victims into his net. Meanwhile roving bands of guerrillas
searched out and killed the stronger and the more tenacious families.
The Pan de Matanzas, so called because of its resemblance to a mighty
loaf of bread, became a mockery to the hungry people cowering in its
shelter. Bread! Rosa Varona could not remember when she had last tasted
such a luxury. Raw cane, cocoanuts, the tasteless fruita bomba, roots,
the pith from palm tops, these were her articles of diet, and she did
not thrive upon them. She was always more or less hungry. She was
ragged, too, and she shivered miserably through the long, chill nights.
Rosa could measure the change in her appearance only by studying her
reflection from the surface of the spring where she drew water, but she
could see that she had become very thin, and she judged that the color
had entirely gone from her cheeks. It saddened her, for O'Reilly's sake.
Time came when Asensio spoke of giving up the struggle and going in.
They were gradually starving, he said, and Rosa was ill; the risk of
discovery was ever present. It was better to go while they had the
strength than slowly but surely to perish here. He had heard that there
were twenty thousand reconcentrados in Matanzas; in such a crowd they
could easily manage to hide themselves; they would at least be fed
along with the others.
No one had told Asensio that the Government was leaving its prisoners
to shift for themselves, supplying them with not a pound of food nor a
square inch of shelter.
Evangelina at first demurred to this idea, declaring that Rosa would
never be allowed to reach the city, since the roads were patrolled by
lawless bands of troops. Nevertheless her husband continued to argue.
Rosa herself took no part in the discussion, for it did not greatly
matter to her whether she stayed or went.
Misery bred desperation at last; Evangelina's courage failed her, and
she allowed herself to be won over. She began her preparations by
disguising Rosa. Gathering herbs and berries, she made a stain with
which she colored the girl's face and body, then she sewed a bundle of
leaves into the back of Rosa's waist so that when the latter stooped
her shoulders and walked with a stick her appearance of deformity was
complete.
On the night before their departure Rosa Varona prayed long and
earnestly, asking little for herself, but much for the two black people
who had suffered so much for her. She prayed also that O'Reilly would
come before it was too late.
XIV
A WOMAN WITH A MISSION
Within a few hours after O'Reilly's return to New York he telephoned to
Felipe Alvarado, explaining briefly the disastrous failure of his Cuban
trip.
"I feared as much," the doctor told him. "You were lucky to escape with
your life."
"Well, I'm going back."
"Of course; but have you made any plans?"
"Not yet. I dare say I'll have to join some filibustering outfit. Won't
you intercede for me with the Junta? They're constantly sending
parties."
"Um-m! not quite so often as that." Alvarado was silent for a moment;
then he said: "Dine with me to-night and we'll talk it over. I'm eager
for news of my brothers and--there is some one I wish you to meet. She
is interested in our cause."
"'She'? A woman?"
"Yes, and an unusual woman. She has contributed liberally to our cause.
I would like you to meet her."
"Very well; but I've only one suit of clothes, and it looks as if I'd
slept in it."
"Oh, bother the clothes!" laughed the physician. "I've given most of
mine to my destitute countrymen. Don't expect too much to eat, either;
every extra dollar, you know, goes the same way as my extra trousers.
It will be a sort of patriotic 'poverty party.' Come at seven, please."
"Dining out, eh? Lucky devil!" said Leslie Branch when he had learned
of his companion's invitation. "And to meet a philanthropic old lady!
Gee! Maybe she'll offer to adopt you. Who knows?"
"I wish you'd offer to lend me a clean shirt."
"I'll do it," readily agreed the other. "I'll stake you to my last one.
But keep it clean! Have a care for the cuffs--a little inadvertency
with the soup may ruin my prospects for a job. You understand, don't
you, that our next meal after this one may depend upon this shirt's
prosperous appearance?" Branch dove into his bag and emerged with a
stiffly laundered shirt done up in a Cuban newspaper. He unwrapped the
garment and gazed fondly upon it, murmuring, "'Tis a pretty thing, is
it not?" His exertions had brought on a violent coughing-spell, which
left him weak and gasping; but when he had regained his breath he went
on in the same key: "Again I solemnly warn you that this spotless bosom
is our bulwark against poverty. One stain may cut down my space rates;
editors are an infernally fastidious lot. Fortunately they want facts
about the war in Cuba, and I'm full of 'em: I've fought in the trenches
and heard the song of grape and canister--"
"Grape-fruit and canned goods, you mean," O'Reilly grinned.
"Well, I shall write with both in mind. The hope of one will stir
memories of the other. And who is there to dispute me? At least I know
what a battle should be like, and I shall thrill my readers with
imaginary combats."
O'Reilly eyed the speaker with appreciation. On the way north he had
learned to know Leslie Branch and to like him, for he had discovered
that the man possessed a rare and pleasing peculiarity of disposition.
Ordinarily Branch was bitter, irritable, pessimistic; but when his luck
was worst and his fortunes lowest he brightened up. It seemed that he
reacted naturally, automatically, against misfortune. Certainly his and
O'Reilly's plight upon leaving Cuba had been sufficiently unpleasant,
for they were almost penniless, and the invalid, moreover, knew that he
was facing a probably fatal climate; nevertheless, once they were at
sea, he had ceased his grumbling, and had surprised his
traveling-companion by assuming a genuinely cheerful mien. Even yet
O'Reilly was not over his amazement; he could not make up his mind
whether the man was animated by desperate courage or merely by hopeless
resignation. But whatever the truth, the effect of this typical
perversity had been most agreeable. And when Leslie cheerfully
volunteered to share the proceeds of his newspaper work during their
stay in New York, thus enabling his friend to seize the first chance of
returning to Cuba, Johnnie's affection for him was cemented. But
Branch's very cheerfulness worried him; it seemed to betoken that the
fellow was sicker than he would confess.
That evening O'Reilly anticipated his dinner engagement by a few
moments in order to have a word alone with Alvarado.
"I've seen Enriquez," he told the doctor, "but he won't promise to send
me through. He says the Junta is besieged by fellows who want to fight
for Cuba--and of course I don't. When I appealed in Rosa's name he told
me, truthfully enough, I dare say, that there are thousands of Cuban
women as badly in need of succor as she. He says this is no time for
private considerations."
"Quite so!" the doctor agreed. "We hear frightful stories about this
new concentration policy. I--can't believe them."
"Oh, I guess they are true; it is the more reason why I must get back
at once," O'Reilly said, earnestly.
"This lady who is coming here to-night has influence with Enriquez. You
remember I told you that she has contributed liberally. She might help
you."
"I'll implore her to put in a word for me. Who is she?"
"Well, she's my pet nurse--"
"A nurse!" O'Reilly's eyes opened wide. "A nurse, with MONEY! I didn't
know there was such a thing."
"Neither did I. They're rarer even than rich doctors," Alvarado
acknowledged. "But, you see, nursing is merely Miss Evans's avocation.
She's one of the few wealthy women I know who have real ideals, and
live up to them."
"Oh, she has a 'mission'!" Johnnie's interest in Doctor Alvarado's
other guest suddenly fell away, and his tone indicated as much. As the
doctor was about to reply the ringing of the door-bell summoned him
away.