A SNARE NOT SPREAD IN VAIN
The town of Aranda lay to the left, perched high above them on the
slopes of the Sierra de Moncayo. Rollo looked past the crumbling grey
turrets of the little fortalice and over the juniper-and-thyme covered
foot-hills to the red peaks of the Sierra. From the point at which they
stood Moncayo fronted them like a lion surprised at the mouth of his
lair, that raises his head haughtily to view the rash trespassers on his
domain.
The lower slopes of the mountain were tawny-yellow, like the lion's
fell, but from the line at which the scant mane of rock-plants ceased,
Moncayo shone red as blood in the level rays of the setting sun.
"There, there!" thought Rollo, "I have it almost in hand now. Beyond
that flank lie Vera and the headquarters of General Elio!"
They were riding easily, debouching slowly and in single file out of one
of the many defiles with which the country was cut up. The Sergeant and
Rollo were leading, when, as they issued out upon the opener country,
suddenly they heard themselves called upon peremptorily to halt, at the
peril of their lives.
"Whom have we here? Ah, our highly certificated Englishman! And in his
company--whom?"
The speaker was a dark-haired man of active figure and low stature,
whose eyes twinkled in his head. He was dressed in the full uniform of a
Carlist general. About him rode a brilliant staff, and from behind every
rock and out of every deep gully-cleft protruded the muzzle of a rifle,
with just one black eye peering along it from under the white Basque
_boina_ or the red one of Navarre.
And for the third time Rollo Blair, out upon his adventures, had come
face to face with General Don Ramon Cabrera of Tortosa.
Yet it was with glad relief in his heart that Rollo instantly rode up to
Cabrera, and having saluted, thus began his report, "I have the honour,
General, to report that I have been fortunate enough to induce her
Majesty the Queen-Regent of Spain and her daughter the young Queen
Isabel to place themselves under my protection. I am proceeding with
them to the headquarters of General Elio according to my instructions;
and if it be at all convenient, I should be glad of an additional
escort, that I may be able to bring my charges safely within the lines
of Vera!"
The brow of General Cabrera had been darkening during this speech, and
at the close he burst out with an oath.
"I know no such person as the Queen-Regent of Spain. I have heard of a
certain light-o'-love calling herself Maria Cristina, widow of the late
King Fernando the Seventh. And if this be indeed the lady and her brat,
we of the true opinion owe you, Don Rollo, a debt of gratitude which
shall not be easily repaid. For she and hers have troubled the peace of
this country much and long. Of which now, by San Nicolas, there shall be
a quick end!"
As he spoke he ran his eyes along the line to where Munoz rode behind
his mistress.
"And the tall gentleman with the polished whiskers? Who may he be?" he
cried, a yet more venomous fire glittering in his eyes.
"That, General Cabrera," said Rollo, quietly, "is his Excellency the
Duke of Rianzares."
"At last, _estanco_-keeper!" cried Cabrera, riding forward as if to
strike Munoz on the face. "I, Ramon Cabrera of Tortosa, have waited a
long time for this pleasure."
Munoz did not answer in words, but, as before, preserved his
imperturbable demeanour. His half contemptuous dignity of bearing, which
had irritated even Rollo, seemed to have the power of exciting Cabrera
to the point of fury.
"Colonel," he cried, "I relieve you of your charge. You have done well.
I am the equal in rank of General Elio, and there is no need that you
should convoy this party to his camp. I will assume the full
charge--yes, and responsibility. By the Holy St. Vincent, I promised
them twenty for one when they slew my mother in the Square of the
Barbican. But I knew not from how evil a vine-stock I should gather my
second vintage. A poor commandant's wife from a petty Valentian fort was
the best I could do for them at the time. But now--the mother of Ramon
Cabrera shall be atoned for in such a fashion as shall make the world
sit dumb!"
While Cabrera was speaking Rollo grew slowly chill, and then ice-cold
with horror.
"Sir," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse and broken, "surely you do not
realise what you are saying. These ladies are under my protection. They
have committed themselves to my care under the most sacred and absolute
pledges that their lives shall be respected. The same is the case with
regard to Senor Munoz. It is absolutely necessary that I should place
them all under the care of General Elio as the personal representative
of the King!"
"I have already told you, sir," cried Cabrera, furiously, "that I am of
equal rank with any Elio or other general in the armies of Don Carlos.
Have not I done more than any other? Was it not I who carried my command
to the gates of Madrid? Aye, and had I been left to myself, I should
have succeeded in cutting off that fox Mendizabal. Now, however, I am
absolutely independent, owing authority to no man, save to the King
alone. It is mine to give or to withhold, to punish or to pardon.
Therefore I, General Ramon Cabrera, having sworn publicly to avenge my
mother, when, where, and how I can, solemnly declare that, as a
retaliation, I will shoot these three prisoners to-morrow at sunrise,
even as Nogueras, the representative of this woman who calls herself
Queen-Regent of Spain, shot down my innocent mother for the sole crime
of giving birth to an unworthy son! Take them away! I will hear no
more!"
* * * * *
Thus in a moment was Rollo toppled from the highest pinnacle of
happiness, for such to a young man is the hope of immediate success. He
cursed the hour he had entered the bloodthirsty land of Spain. He cursed
his visit to the Abbey of Montblanch, and the day on which he accepted a
commission from men without honour or humanity. He was indeed almost in
case to do himself a hurt, and both Concha and the Sergeant watched him
with anxious solicitude during the remainder of the afternoon as he
wandered disconsolately about the little camp, twirling his moustache
and clanking Killiecrankie at his heels with so fierce an air, that even
Cabrera's officers, no laggards on the field of honour, kept prudently
out of his way.
The royal party had been disposed in a small house, a mere summer
residence of some of the _bourgeois_ folk of Aranda, and there, by an
unexpected act of grace and at the special supplication of the Sergeant,
La Giralda had been permitted to wait upon them.
The beauty of Concha was not long in producing its usual effect upon the
impressionable sons of Navarre and Guipuzcoa. But the Sergeant, whose
_prestige_ was unbounded, soon gave them to understand that the girl had
better be left to go her own way, having two such protectors as Rollo
and El Sarria to fight her battles for her.
To the secret satisfaction of all the Sergeant did not resume his duties
in the camp of Cabrera. The troop to which he belonged had been left
behind to watch the movements of the enemy. For Cabrera had barely
escaped from a strong force under Espartero near the walls of Madrid
itself, by showing the cleanest of heels possible. Cardono, therefore,
still attached himself unreproved to the party of Rollo, which camped a
little apart. A guard of picked men was, however, placed over the
quarters of the royal family. This Cabrera saw to himself, and then
sullenly withdrew into his tent for the night to drink _aguardiente_ by
himself, in gloomy converse with a heart into whose dark secrets at no
time could any man enter. It is, indeed, the most charitable
supposition that at this period of his life Ramon Cabrera's love for a
mother most cruelly murdered had rendered him temporarily insane.
Deprived of La Giralda, and judging that Rollo was in no mood to be
spoken with, Concha Cabezos took refuge in the society of El Sarria.
That stalwart man of few words, though in the days of her
light-heartedness quite careless of her wiles, and, indeed, unconscious
of them, was in his way strongly attached to her. He loved the girl for
the sake of her devotion to Dolores, as well as because of the secret
preference which all grave and silent men have for the winsome and gay.
"This Butcher of Tortosa," she said in a low voice to Ramon Garcia,
"will surely never do the thing he threatens. Not even a devil out of
hell could slay in cold blood not the Queen-Regent only, but also the
innocent little maid who never did any man a wrong."
El Sarria looked keenly about him for possible listeners. Concha and he
sat at some distance above the camp, and El Sarria was idly employed in
breaking off pieces of shaly rock and trying to hit a certain pinnacle
of white quartz which made a prominent target a few yards beneath them.
"I think he will," said Ramon Garcia, slowly. "Cabrera is a sullen dog
at all times, and the very devil in his cups. Besides, who am I to blame
him--is there not the matter of his mother? Had it been Dolores--well.
For her sake I would have shot half a dozen royal families."
"The thing will break our Rollo's heart if it cannot be prevented,"
sighed Concha, "for he hath taken it in his head that the Queen and her
husband trusted themselves to his word of honour."
Ramon Garcia shook his head sadly.
"Ah, 'tis his sacred thing, that honour of his--his image of the Virgin
which he carries about with him," he said. "And, indeed, El Sarria has
little cause to complain, for had it not been for that same honour of
Don Rollo's, Dolores Garcia might at this moment have been in the hands
of Luis Fernandez!"
"Aye, or dead, more like," said Concha; "she would never have lived in
the clutches of the evil-hearted! I know her better. But, Don Ramon,
what can we, who owe him so much, do for our Don Rollo?"
"Why--what is there to do?" said Ramon, with a lift of his eyebrows.
"Here in the camp of Cabrera we are watched, followed, suspected. Do you
see that fellow yonder with the smartly set _boina_? He is a miller's
son from near Vitoria in Alava. Well, he hath been set to watch that
none of us leave the camp unattended. I will wager that if you and I
were to wander out fifty yards farther, yonder lad would be after us in
a trice!"
"Ah!" said Concha, in a brown study. "Yes--he is not at all a
bad-looking boy, and thinks excessively well of himself--like some
others I could mention. Now, El Sarria, can you tell me in which
direction lies Vera, the headquarters of General Elio?"
"That can I!" said El Sarria, forgetting his caution. And he was about
to turn him about and point it out with his hand, when Concha stopped
him.
"The miller's son is craning his neck to look," she whispered: "do not
point. Turn about slowly, and the third stone you throw, let it be in
the direction of Vera!"
El Sarria did as he was bid, and after the third he continued to project
stones Vera-wards, explaining as he did so--"Up yonder reddish cleft the
road goes, a hound's path, a mere goat's slide, but it is the directest
road. There is open ground to the very foot of the ascent. Many is the
time I have ridden thither, God forgive me, on another man's beast! Then
cast him loose and left him to find his way home as best he could. There
are good hiding-places on the Sierra de Moncayo, up among the red
sandstone where the caves are deep and dry, and with mouths so narrow
and secret that they may be held by one man against fifty."
Concha did not appear to be greatly interested in El Sarria's
reminiscences. Even guileless Ramon could not but notice her wandering
glances. Her eyes, surveying the landscape, lighted continually upon the
handsome young Vitorian in the red _boina_, lifted again sharply, and
sought the ground.
At this El Sarria sighed, and decided mentally that, with the exception
of his Dolores, no woman was to be trusted. If not at heart a rake, she
was by nature a flirt. And so he was about to leave Concha to her own
devices and seek Rollo, when Concha suddenly spoke.
"Don Ramon," she said, "shall we walk a few hundred yards up the
mountain away from the camp and see if we are really being watched?"
El Sarria smiled grimly to himself and rose. The stratagem was really,
he thought, too transparent, and his impression was strengthened when
Concha presently added, "I will not ask you to remain if you would
rather go back. Then we will see whom they are most suspicious of, you
or I. A girl may often steal a horse when a man dares not look over the
wall."
In the abstract this was incontestable, but El Sarria only smiled the
more grimly. After all Dolores was the only woman upon whose fidelity
one would be justified in wagering the last whiff of a good _cigarillo_.
And as if reminded of a duty El Sarria rolled a beauty as he dragged one
huge foot after another slowly up the hill in the rear of Concha, who,
her love-locks straying on the breeze, her _basquina_ held coquettishly
in one hand, and the prettiest toss of the head for the benefit of any
whom it might concern, went leaping upwards like a young roe.
All the while Rollo was sitting below quite unconscious of this
treachery. His head was sunk on his hand. Deep melancholy brooded in his
heart. He rocked to and fro as if in pain. Looking down from the
mountain-side Ramon Garcia pitied him.
"Ah, poor innocent young man," he thought, "doubtless he believes that
the heart of this girl is all his own. But all men are fools--a
butterfly is always a butterfly and an Andaluse an Andaluse to the day
of her death!"
Then turning his thoughts backward, he remembered the many who had taken
their turn with mandolin and guitar at the _rejas_ of Concha's window
when he and Dolores lived outside the village of Sarria; and he (ah,
thrice fool!) had taken it into his thick head to be jealous.
Well, after all this was none of his business, he thanked the saints. He
was not responsible for the vagaries of pretty young women. He wondered
vaguely whether he ought to tell Rollo. But after turning the matter
this way and that, he decided against it, remembering the dire
consequences of jealousy in his own case, and concluding with the sage
reflection that there were plenty of mosquitoes in the world already
without beating the bushes for more.
But with the corner of an eye more accustomed to the sun glinting on
rifle barrels than to the flashing eyes of beauty, El Sarria could make
out that the Vitorian in the red _boina_ was following them, his gun
over his shoulder, trying, not with conspicuous success to assume the
sauntering air of a man who, having nothing better to do, goes for a
stroll in the summer evening.
"'Tis the first time that ever I saw a soldier off duty take his musket
for a walk!" growled El Sarria, "and why on the Sierra de Moncayo does
the fellow stop to trick himself out as for a _festa_?"
Concha looked over her shoulder, presumably at El Sarria, though why the
maiden's glances were so sprightly and her lips so provokingly pouted is
a question hard enough to be propounded for the doctorial thesis at
Salamanca. For Ramon Garcia was stolid as an ox of his native Aragon,
and arch glances and pretty gestures were as much wasted on him as if he
chewed the cud. Still he was not even in these matters so dull and
unobservant as he looked, that is, when he had any reason for observing.
"Here comes that young ass of Alava," he murmured. "Well, he is at least
getting his money's worth. By the saints favourable to my native parish,
the holy Narcissus and Justus, but the _burro_ is tightening his
girths!"
And El Sarria laughed out suddenly and sardonically. For he could see
the lad pulling his leathern belt a few holes tighter, in order that he
might present his most symmetrical figure to the eyes of this dazzling
Andalucian witch who had dropped so suddenly into the Carlist camp from
the place whence all witches come.