A LITTLE fire burned in a hollow of the dusty barranco that fissured the
face of the hill, a clear red fire of the kind that gives little light
and makes no smoke, and its pale glow showed but feebly against the rock
behind. This was still flushed with a warm lustre caught from the
western sky, though the sun had dipped and the fleecy mists were
creeping across the dusky plain below.
A group of weary men lay about the fire, dusty and ragged, for they had
spent most of twelve weary hours forcing a path through thickets and
climbing like goats from rock to rock under the heat of the tropics. Two
of them wore garments of cotton, which hung about them rent by thorns;
three others jackets of American make, looted from a loyalist store; and
one trousers of English tweed, through which his knees protruded, and a
jacket of alpaca of a kind esteemed in Spain. He had, however, a red
silk sash of beautiful texture, which had cost somebody else a good many
dollars, round his waist; and his face, which was bronzed to a coffee
color, had once been of paler complexion than those of most of his
companions. He raised himself a trifle, and glanced about him with a
little whimsical smile.
"They are a choice collection of scarecrows to take a city with," he
said in English.
A man who lay close by looked up with a twinkle in his eyes. "I have
seen smarter soldiers," he drawled. "Still, they're a hard crowd, and
I'd feel kind of sorry for Colonel Morales if his cazadores don't put up
a good fight to-night. What we have on hand isn't quite the thing I came
out to do, but I guess it's better than catching fever down there in the
mangrove swamps. That's how it strikes me, though it will scarcely be
the kind of business you've been used to, Appleby."
Appleby laughed again as he glanced at the ragged men sprawling in
attitudes that were rather easy than picturesque a little farther up the
gorge. They were of various shades of color, from pale Castilian olive
to African jet, and a good many of them were barefooted, while the shoes
of the rest were burst. The arms scattered about them were as curiously
assorted--American Marlin rifles, old English Sniders, Spanish service
weapons, and cutlass-like machetes with a two-foot blade, which proved
as efficient when, as quite frequently happened, there was a difficulty
in obtaining the right kind of cartridges.
They were for the most part men with wrongs, individual as well as
national; for the Spanish system of checking disaffection was sharp and
stern, and the man who has seen brother or comrade butchered to bolster
up an effete authority is apt to remember it. Those who had no wrongs
possessed a lust of plunder which served almost as well as animus; but
there were a few who had been driven to join them by patriotic
convictions. They had already made themselves a terror to the conscript
troops of Spain, as well as peaceful peasants with loyalist sympathies,
who called them the Sin Verguenza--the men without shame. It was not from
choice that Appleby had cast in his lot with them, but because it seemed
to him preferable to falling into the Spaniards' hands. He had, however,
by daring in one encounter, and shrewd counsel, already made himself an
influence, and had been endowed with the rank of Teniente.
"No," he said a trifle dryly, "it is not. When I plundered folks in my
country I did it for other people with a bill, and I had the law behind
me. I was trained to it, you see."
"It's quite a good trade," said Harper, who had joined the Sin Verguenza
because the coast was too strictly watched to leave him any chance of
getting away again. "Kind of pity to let up on it. It was a woman sent
you here?"
Appleby laughed, and then sat silent a moment or two staring straight
before him. The dusty gorge seemed to fade, and he could fancy himself
standing once more at the head of a shadowy stairway in an English hall
looking into a woman's eyes. They were big gray eyes that seemed to read
one's thoughts, set most fittingly in a calm, proud face, above which
clustered red-gold hair, and he had seen them often since that eventful
night, on many a weary march, as well as in his sleep.
"Yes," he said; "but not in the way I think you mean. She was my best
friend's sweetheart, and nothing to me. No doubt she has married him by
now."
Harper's smile seemed to express incredulity, and for the first time a
doubt flashed into his comrade's mind. Would he have done so much for
Tony if the woman had been any one else than Violet Wayne? The question
almost startled him and though he strove to answer it in the affirmative
no conviction came. Tony had been his friend, and until he came to
Northrop he had never seen the girl; while it was, of course,
preposterous to suspect that he had gone out under a cloud for her sake;
and yet the doubt remained to be afterwards grappled with. In the
meanwhile he brushed the question aside as of no moment. Violet Wayne
would marry Tony, and in all probability he had already passed out of
her memory. He was, however, glad when a man with an olive face stood up
beside the fire and glanced at him with a smile.
"Among comrades it is not good courtesy to speak apart, and the English
is a difficult tongue to me," he said in Castilian. "I have apprehended
no more in the Havana than the response discourteous, 'You bedam.'"
Appleby laughed. "I fancy you others can beat us in that line," he said.
"Shall we get in to-night, Maccario?"
The Insurgent captain made a little expressive gesture. "Who knows!" he
said. "They have two companies of cazadores, but there is this in our
favor--they do not expect us. Four days' march--for troops--from Adeje, and
we have come in two! Yes, I think we shall get in, and then there will
be trouble for those others in Santa Marta and the Colonel Morales."
Appleby glanced down the barranco, and saw framed, as it were, in its
rocky gateway the sweep of plain below. The tall green cane and orange
groves had faded to a blur of dusky blueness now, but in one place he
could still discern the pale gleam of white walls. That was Santa Marta,
and he remembered how they had been welcomed there when, weary and dusty
with travel, they had last limped that way. There were no troops in
Santa Marta then, and the Sin Verguenza, who did not know that an
infantry battalion lay close by, had accepted the citizens' hospitality,
and borrowed much less from them than they usually did when their
entertainers had loyalist sympathies. While they slept the deep sleep of
weariness the cazadores fell upon the town, and the Colonel Morales
allowed a very short shrift to those who failed to escape from it.
Therefore Santa Marta was anathema to the Sin Verguenza, and, what was
almost as much to the purpose, it was rich.
While he watched the white walls faded, and the fire in the barranco
grew brighter as darkness closed down. A negro, who removed a kettle
from it, carefully put it out, and served them with a meal, though
Harper sighed disgustedly as he lighted a maize-husk cigarette when he
had consumed his portion.
"Well, I guess we'll get breakfast to-morrow, if we're alive," he said.
"I've lived on some kind of curious things in Cuba, including fricassee
of mule, but onions, bad guavas, and half-ripe mangoes, as a mixture for
fighting on, doesn't suit my taste at all. No, sir. I want to lie down
nice and quiet, and not worry anybody, when I've got dysentery."
His companions, however, did not complain. Perhaps they were accustomed
to scarcity, though the Sin Verguenza lived well when they could do so
at other men's expense; and there is a capacity for patient endurance in
most of the peoples of Spain. They lay smoking cigarettes instead, while
a little cool breeze came down out of the soft darkness that now veiled
the hills above. Beneath them lights twinkled dimly like clustering
fireflies in the misty plain, and once a faint elfin ringing of bugles
came up. The Sin Verguenza answered it with a hoarse murmur, and then
lay still, patiently biding their time.
The dew settled heavily as the rocks grew cooler; Appleby's alpaca
jacket grew clammy, but he lay motionless beside the embers, once more
grappling with the question what was he, an Englishman of education,
doing there? Violet Wayne's eyes seemed to ask it of him reproachfully,
and he could not find a fitting answer. The plea that he was there
because he could not help it did not occur to him, for he was young, and
believed that a determined man can shape his own destiny. Instead, he
admitted vaguely that the reckless life, the testing of his bodily
strength, the close touch with human nature stripped of its veneer, and
the brief taste of command, all appealed to him. This, he knew, was no
defence; but he felt that he at least owed the Sin Verguenza something,
for they had come upon him while he hid from the troops of Spain, and,
finding that he had nothing but his life to part with, had incontinently
given him what they had, which was just then very little.
At last the Captain Maccario rose to his feet and called aloud. There
was a murmur of voices, a clatter of arms, a rattle of stones, and a
patter of feet, and the Sin Verguenza came out from the barranco like
beasts from their lairs. The hillside fell steep beneath them, but they
went down, flitting noiselessly, half-seen shadows, while each man chose
his own path, and not as troops would have done. Here and there the
machetes cleared a way where it would take too long to go round, or
there was a crackle of undergrowth when they plunged into a belt of
trees. Then a mule track led them down to the level, and with a shuffle
of broken boots and soft patter of naked feet they swung along the dusty
carretera road. It wound away before them smelling of dew-cooled earth,
a faint white riband, past the shadowy tobacco and dusky sugar cane, and
there was no stoppage when here and there a flat-roofed house loomed up
beside it. Then there was a murmur of warning, a drowsy "Viva la
libertad!" and the column passed on; for the insurrection had taken
hold, and the enemies of the Sin Verguenza were the men who had
something to lose.
Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind
when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amidst the cane, and
the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride. If the Colonel
Morales was to be caught at all he must be caught napping, and, as they
knew, he usually slept with one eye open. Still, Appleby fancied it
might be accomplished, for he had discovered already that the Castilian
has a disdain for petty details, and frequently leaves a good deal to
chance.
By degrees the dust grew thicker and the little flat-topped houses more
plentiful, while here and there white haciendas grew into shape among
the trees. There were no lights in any of them; but by and by the Sin
Verguenza stopped where the white orange flowers lay crushed upon the
road and consulted with their guide. The Colonel Morales, they believed,
did not expect them, but it was likely that he had pushed forward a
section or two of cazadores to watch the road. The leaders also argued
softly for some little time, and Appleby listened with his Marlin rifle
under his arm, noticing how the fireflies sparkled in the leaves
meanwhile. There were great stars above him in the sweep of cloudless
indigo, and the low murmur of voices emphasized the stillness, while the
heavy scent of the orange flowers was in his nostrils. Long afterwards a
vision of the long, straggling column waiting in the dim white road
would rise up before him when he breathed that scent.
Then they went on again, by paths that led through tobacco fields and
amidst breast-high cane dripping with the dew that brushed them as they
passed. This was, however, the work the Sin Verguenza were accustomed
to, and no one saw them flit through the misty fields file by file. The
cazadores, on their part, marched with bugles and wagons and loaded
mules; and there was perhaps some excuse for their leader, the Colonel
Morales, who believed the Sin Verguenza to be hiding some ten leagues
away.
They stopped for the last time within sight of the white-walled town,
which lay dark and silent girdled by thin wisps of mist, and the Captain
Maccario spoke to those who could hear him. His words were not eloquent
or especially patriotic, but they were answered by a portentous murmur;
and Appleby surmised that there would be wild work if the Sin Verguenza
sacked the town. He, however, moved forward as he was bidden with his
ragged half-company, realizing that in the meanwhile he was rather going
with than leading them. Where the rest went he could not see, for his
attention was occupied in getting into and out of enclosures
noiselessly, and once he fell into an aloe hedge and pricked himself
grievously. Then he wondered what had happened to the barefooted men,
but none of them at least said anything, and the dim, flitting forms
went on. It all seemed unreal to him--white walls that rose higher,
shadowy figures, and the silence they scarcely disturbed; but once more
he was vaguely conscious that it was curiously familiar.
Then there was no more cover, for they straggled out, not in ranks, but
clusters, from among orange trees and tall, flowering shrubs, which he
fancied by their scent were oleanders, with a bare strip between them
and the flat-topped houses. Santa Marta lay before him scarcely two
hundred yards away, and he felt his heart throb painfully. His guide
whispered something, and Appleby nodded, though he could not remember
what the man had said, and they went forward at a run. The patter of
feet, and clatter of strap and swivel, seemed to swell into a
bewildering din, but they were almost upon the fielato offices, where
the carretera entered the town, before a rifle flashed.
It was answered by a bugle behind them, for it seemed that the cazadores
had watched the road; another rang out in the town. But it was in grim
silence the Sin Verguenza ran, though there were now pale flashes along
the parapet of the flat roofs in front of them. A man--a negro, he
fancied--clutched at Appleby's arm, loosed it, and reeled backwards with
a shrill scream. Another staggered, and Appleby trod on him as he fell
under his feet. He scarcely saw the man, only the white walls that
seemed to come no nearer, though he knew by the way his heart was
thumping that he was running savagely. A curious din was going on,
bugles ringing, the patter of desultory riflery; but he caught the words
of somebody who ran behind him, and cried out breathlessly in Castilian
as he swung up his hand.
Swinging past the fielato offices they swept under a white wall, and
plunged into a shadowy calle, where pale faces peered out at them from
the lattices. They went down it at a run, and would have gained the
broad plaza it led to but that the blast of a volley met them in the
face. Men went down, but not many, for Appleby heard the click of the
bullets on the walls and stones, and surmised that it was conscript
troops shipped off half trained in haste from Spain that fired. He could
dimly see more of them flocking into the calle, and it became evident to
him that his men must go through them.
With a hoarse shout he sprang forward, though he could never remember
whether it was in English or Castilian he cried, and the Sin Verguenza
came on with a roar behind. This was not the kind of fighting they
preferred, but they had the best of reasons for surmising that no mercy
would be shown them if they did not succeed. They were in among the
huddled men before the rifles could flash again, barrel and butt
rattling among the bayonets of those who had found opportunity of fixing
them, and machetes swinging.
Almost to Appleby's astonishment they also went through; and when,
swinging the Marlin rifle by the muzzle, he reeled out into the plaza
the cazadores fled across it like sheep. There was a breathless howl as
they did so, a fresh trampling of feet, and the rest of the Sin
Verguenza poured out from another calle with a half-company of cazadores
retiring before them, and firing as they went. Some of them were less
than half dressed, but they gave back unwillingly, with the spitting of
their rifles showing red against the walls that shut in the shadowy
square.
It seemed to Appleby that if the others rallied and joined them the Sin
Verguenza would have their work cut out, and when one who carried a
sword in place of a rifle made a stand he shouted in Castilian. He spoke
the words that came to him, without reflection; but he was the son of a
ranker, and the grandson of a colonel on his mother's side. There was a
flicker of riflery from the calle where Maccario's men were, but the
officer with the sword was standing still, and men who turned by twos
and threes closing in on him. The first mob of beaten men were also
halting, when Appleby hurled his ragged handful like a wedge in between.
They went in with clubbed rifle and red machete; the officer went down,
and for a few wild, moments cazador and rebel fought hand to hand. Then
the drilled men broke and fled, half of them to meet the other band of
Sin Verguenza pouring from the street, and the rest up the dark calle
that led out of the plaza with Appleby and his followers hard upon their
heels. It was a fierce chase, but a short one, for the cazadores
vanished into a great archway, and streaks of red sparks lighted the
windows above. Appleby glanced over his shoulder and saw the rest of the
ragged column running down the street, and then that some of them were
going down. He had no leisure for reflection, but it was borne in upon
him that if they were to carry Santa Marta it must be accomplished
before the scattered infantry had recovered from the surprise, for he
had seen already that there is very little cowardice amongst the troops
of Spain.
What he said or in which tongue he spoke he did not know, but in another
moment he and a negro with a machete sprang into the smoke of the rifles
that whirled in the archway, and, howling like beasts now, the Sin
Verguenza followed them. Men he could scarcely see broke away before
them, though he fancied some remained and were trampled on; and then
they were in a broad patio with lights shining behind the lattices about
him, and the negro was no longer beside him. A door crashed to in front
of them, pale flashes shone at the windows; but in another moment the
door went down, and they were pressing up a stairway through stinging
smoke, with half-seen men firing down on them. There was dust in the
smoke, and the plaster came raining down until Appleby could scarcely
see anything at all; but the Sin Verguenza went on, and he was borne
forward in front of them when they poured tumultuously out upon a flat
roof at the head of the stairway. Then there was a roar of exultation,
and he dimly saw men in uniform floundering over the low walls that
divided roof from roof, while from other openings there poured out more
of the Sin Verguenza.
Appleby wondered why he could not see them clearly, and then his hearing
also seemed to fail him. He was conscious of a confused shouting in the
street below, but it grew curiously faint, and he staggered clear of the
rest, and, scarcely knowing why he did so, groped his way back to the
patio, where he sat down beside a bush of heliotrope or some other
flower that had a heavy sickly smell. He did not know how long he sat
there feeling cold and faint, but at last somebody shook him and held
something to his lips. He drank, gasped, and saw Harper smiling gravely
down on him.
"I guess you feel better now!" he said.
Appleby blinked at him. "I don't quite know what's the matter with me,
but I feel--dazed," he said. "What are the boys doing?"
Harper gravely felt his head, for Appleby had lost his hat. "Well,
that's not astonishing--and it's a good one," he said. "The whack that
sergeant gave you would 'most have felled a bullock. As to the other
question, the Sin Verguenza have the town. Morales' men hadn't a show at
all, though they might have made a stand if you hadn't kept them on the
hustle. Take another drink."
Appleby drank again, and his scattered senses came back to him. "I don't
seem to remember very much," he said.
"No?" said Harper, with a curious little laugh. "Now it's my business to
get the most out of men, but I haven't seen anything much smarter than
the way you took hold and handled the Sin Verguenza. Say, who taught you
soldiering?"
Appleby stared at him, and then laughed softly when he saw that the man
was perfectly serious.
"I never saw a shot fired at a man in my life until I joined the Sin
Verguenza," he said. "Still, though I don't know that it has anything to
do with the case, most of my folks had their share of fighting, and one
was with the Cristinos in Spain."
Harper shook his head. "Never heard of them," he said. "Anyway, if you
feel fit for walking you had better come along and get some food. I
guess you'll want it, and onions and mangoes don't go very far with me.
This place will be very like the pit with the blast on when the Sin
Verguenza get their work in."