BILLY BARNES OF THE PLANET.
Before sun up the next day there was a busy scene of bustling activity
at the plantation of La Merced. The bustle extended from the hacienda to
the barracks,—the news of the arrival of the _Aztec_ having been brought
to the estancia the night before by a native runner.
Old Matula, Señor Chester’s personal mocho had been down at the stables
since the time that the stars began to fade urging the men, whose duty
it was to look after the horses, to greater activity in saddling up the
mounts, which his master, Jimmie Blakely, and their cortege needed in
their ride to the coast to meet the boys.
The native plantation hands, as volatile as most of their race had
forgotten the events of the preceding night in their child-like
excitement at the idea of the arrival of _The Big Man Bird_, as they
called the _Golden Eagle_; this being their conception of the craft
gained after numerous consultations of Señor Chester.
Even Juan was strutting around the quarters and posing as a wounded
hero, to the great admiration of his wife and the other women who
entirely forgot that the night before he had appeared anything but a man
of arms, and that his wife had subsisted mainly on the Señor Chester’s
charity, since his desertion of her to become a patriot.
Jimmie Blakely and Señor Chester had sat far into the night talking over
the situation, and it had struck midnight before they arrived at the
conclusion that it would be inflicting a needless shock to inform Señora
Ruiz of Juan’s report of her husband’s death until some sort of
confirmation had been obtained. Fate, however, took the painful task out
of their hands. The gossipy servants who had heard Jose’s lamentations
lost no time in conveying the news to the estancia of Señor Pachecho.
Señora Ruiz received the report of her husband’s death bravely enough
while the servants were in the room, but after they had left she fell in
a swoon and speedily became so ill that the old doctor at Restigue had
to be routed out of bed and driven at post haste in a rickety volante to
Don Pachecho’s home.
After a hasty snack—a la Espagnole—the real breakfast in the tropics not
being taken till eleven o’clock or so—the master of La Merced and
Blakely mounted their horses and set out at top speed for Greytown.
“I’ve got my own ideas of welcoming the boys to Nicaragua,” confided Mr.
Chester to his overseer as they put spurs to their mounts, “I ordered a
bonga to be in readiness for us as soon as the _Aztec_ arrived. I guess
a trip through the surf in one of those will astonish them, eh?”
“I should jolly well think so,” replied the Hon. Jimmie, screwing his
monocule more firmly in his eye.
The young Britisher was immaculate in khaki riding breeches, long gray
coat and yellow puttees. The admired and feared eyeglass, to which he
owed so much of his power over the natives, was gleaming firmly from his
face, nor did the rapid pace at which the rough-gaited horses were urged
over the road, affect its equilibrium. To save time Mr. Chester had
elected to take a trail instead of the main road. By doing this they cut
off at least ten miles of the distance. It was a wild looking cavalcade
that galloped along through clouds of dust over the none too sure
footing of the rock-strewn trail. Behind Mr. Chester and Jimmie rode old
Matula and the redoubtable Jose. The latter proudly wore about his
classic brow a white bandage—in token of his being a hero and wounded.
Both Jose and Matula led after them extra ponies for the use of the boys
in the ride back to La Merced.
Bringing up the rear was a particular friend of Jimmie’s mounted on a
razor-backed, single-footing mule that somehow managed to get over the
ground as fast as the other animals and without any apparent exertion.
Jose’s friend was a peculiarly villainous-looking old Nicaraguan Indian,
who eked out a scanty living at rubber cutting—that is, slashing the
rubber trees for their milk and carting the product in wooden pails to
the coast.
He had arrived at the ranchero a few days before and not finding Jose
there, the patriot being at the front, had just hung around after the
easy fashion of the country to wait for him. The clothes of this old
scarecrow, who by the way answered to the name of Omalu, consisted of
coffee bags all glued over with the relics of countless tappings of the
rubber tree. As he bestrode his mule his legs stuck out from his gunny
bag costume like the drumsticks of a newly-trussed fowl.
Both Mr. Chester and Jimmie were armed. The former carried, besides his
navy pattern Colt, a cavalry carbine slung in a holster alongside his
right knee. Jimmie had strapped to a brand new cartridge belt an
automatic revolver of the latest pattern. In addition to these weapons
Jose and Matula carried their machetes, without which a native of any
Central American country will in no wise travel, and old Omalu regarded,
with a grin of pride on his creased face, his ancient Birmingham
matchlock—commonly known as a gas-pipe gun.
As the cavalcade clattered into the dusty palm-fringed port of Greytown,
with its adobe walls and staring galvanized iron roofs, the first launch
from the _Aztec_ was just landing passengers at the end of the new, raw
pine wharf recently built by the steamship company. Before this all
landings had been made through the surf, as Mr. Chester intended to land
the boys.
The owner of La Merced and his party halted to watch the group of new
arrivals making its way down the pier. Among the first to put his foot
ashore was the black-bearded man who had such a narrow escape of missing
the steamer in New York.
He looked very different now, however, except for his heavy face and
suspicious quick glances. He wore spotless white ducks, of which he had
purchased a supply a few days before, at the first tropic port of call
the _Aztec_ made. On his head was a huge Panama hat of the finest weave.
In his hand he still gripped the black leather bag that he had caused
such a fuss about in New York. It looked very incongruous in contrast to
his fresh South American attire.
“General Rogero!” exclaimed Mr. Chester, as the black-bearded man came
abreast of the little party. Hearing the name the person addressed
looked up quickly.
“Ah, Señor Chester,” he exclaimed, displaying a glistening row of teeth
beneath his heavy moustache, “how strange that you should be the first
person I should meet after my little voyage to your delightful country.
How goes it at the Rancho Merced?” He seemed purposely to avoid the
important events that were transpiring.
Mr. Chester assured him that rarely before had the season promised
better. The rains had ceased early and the crops looked as if they would
be exceptionally heavy.
While they talked a barefooted messenger from the telegraph office in
the iron railroad station slouched up to them.
“For you, General,” he said, saluting as he handed the bearded man a
pink envelope.
With a swift “pardon” Rogero ripped open the envelope the messenger had
handed him. From the time it took him to read it it was of greater
length than the ordinary wire and he raised his eyebrows and exclaimed
several times as he perused it.
When at length he looked up from it his face had lost the almost smug
expression it had worn before. In its place there had come a manner of
contemptuous command very thinly veiled by a sort of sardonic
politeness.
“As you probably know,” he said, “and as this telegram informs me, the
insurgent forces under the renegade Estrada were beaten back two days
ago at El Rondero,” he looked insolently from under his heavy lids at
the American planter to observe the effects of his words upon him.
For all the effect it had on Mr. Chester however, the words might as
well have been directed at a graven image.
“Well?” he said, taking up the thinly disguised challenge flung at him
by Rogero.
“Well,” sneered Rogero, “I simply thought it might be of interest to you
to tell you that you are regarded at Managua as renegado. I may also
inform you that to-day at sunrise the two captured Americans suspected
of being connected with the revolutionaries were shot down like——”
Whatever General Rogero might have been going to add he stopped short as
Mr. Chester bent his angry gaze on him.
“What!” exclaimed the latter, “shot down without a trial—without an
opportunity to explain. Zelaya will suffer for this.”
“That remains to be seen,” sneered Rogero, selecting a cigarette from a
silver case and lighting it with calm deliberation. “What I have to say
to you is in the nature of a warning, Señor. ‘Verbum sapiente,’ you
know.”
“I can dispense with your advice, Señor,” cut in Mr. Chester.
“At present perhaps—but we may meet later and under different
circumstances. Remember, Señor, that General Rogero of President
Zelaya’s army shows no mercy to those who choose to ally themselves with
dogs of rebels. Whether they are American citizens—or British,” he added
with a look of scorn at Jimmie, “it makes no difference. A bullet at
sunrise answers all questions.—Adios Señores.”
He raised his hat with an abrupt gesture, and with a sharp “Venga,” to
an obsequious orderly from the barracks, who had just arrived with a
horse for him, the general swung himself into the saddle and rode off to
the Hotel Gran Central de Greytown.
As the general cantered off in a scattering cloud of dust, a youth who
had landed from the launch at the same time, stepped up to Mr. Chester
and his companion. He looked as if he might have walked off the
vaudeville stage. Over one shoulder was slung a camera, from the other
depended a canteen. A formidable revolver was strapped at his waist, and
a pith helmet with a brilliant green cumer-bund sat low on his reddish
hair. While the general had been uttering his sinister threats this
figure had been busy taking snapshots of everything from the gallinazos
or carrion buzzards that sat in long rows along the ridges of the
galvanized roofs to the old women under huge umbrellas, who dispensed
evil-looking red and yellow candy from rickety stands.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, placing his hand on the pommel of Mr.
Chester’s saddle. “Would you mind telling me who that gentleman is with
whom you have just been speaking?”
As he raised his face he disclosed a plump, amiable countenance
ornamented by a pair of huge round spectacles.
“I know this is unusual,” he hurried on apologetically, “but I’m
Barnes—Billy Barnes of the New York Planet,—correspondent, you know.”
“Well, Mr. Barnes, if you are a correspondent you will have a lot of
opportunities to meet General Rogero before this little trouble is
over,” replied Mr. Chester, in an amused tone.
The effect of this reply on Mr. Barnes of the Planet, was extraordinary.
He blew his cheeks out like a frog and executed a sort of double
shuffle. He gazed at Mr. Chester in a portentous way for a few seconds
and then sputtering out:—“You say that’s General Rogero?” then, with the
cryptic words:
“Joseph Rosenstein, diamond salesman, eh?—oh Lord, what a story!” he
dashed off in the direction the general’s horse had vanished.
“That young man is either insane or the sun has gone to his head,”
commented Mr. Chester, as both he and Jimmie watched young Mr. Barnes’s
fat little legs going like pistons bearing him toward the Hotel Gran
Central.
“He’s a jolly queer sort of a cove,” was the amiable Jimmie’s comment,
“a bit balmy in the crumpet, I should say.”
Any explanation of the meaning of “Balmy in the crumpet” on Jimmie’s
part, was cut short by a native who ran from midway down the wharf and
approaching Mr. Chester, rapidly muttered a few words of corrupt
Spanish.
“He says the bonga is ready,” said Mr. Chester, turning to Jimmie—“come
on. Remember I haven’t seen my boys for a year or more.”
They hurried down the wharf leaving Matula, Jose and old Omalu behind to
watch the horses. Alongside the pier, riding the heavy swells like a
duck, lay a peculiar type of boat about thirty feet long, called by the
Nicaraguans, a bonga. It was carved out of a solid log of mahogany and
painted a bright glaring red inside and out. They clambered down into it
by a ladder formed of twisted jungle creepers and a few minutes later
were skimming the smooth green swells that lay between them and the
_Aztec_.