It was nine days later before they met their first chance of
aid. They had emerged from the labyrinth and were coming down
the seaward slopes, along a flat gulley between two low ridges
of granite. Before them at a great distance lay the surface of
the ocean, placid as its name, majestic as death, like a vast
enveloping obliviousness on the confines of man’s brief futile
life; between this and them, but still invisible, stretched a
broad land of hope and plenty, the grazing grounds of Chile,
woods as pretty as gardens, little nestling hamlets, and then
thriving towns, splendid cities, the noise and bustle of prosperous
ports;--but as yet nothing of all this in sight, not one stunted
shrub, not a trace left by human kind. Behind them lay those nine
pitiless days and the eight unendurable nights; a plodding delirium
of cold, hunger, and toil. For more than forty-eight hours he
had not been able to give her anything to eat. How long it was
since he himself had eaten he did not count. He was carrying her
on his back, his arms about her thighs, her arms about his neck,
her blackened shrunken face close against his hairy dust-begrimed
cheek. At intervals he had carried her in this manner throughout
the ordeal, but now his burden was becoming pitifully light.
“It’s all right, darling,” he whispered as he stalked along. “Keep
up your spirits. On my honour I see daylight at last. We have come
out just where I wanted. Sense of direction, what! Trust A. D.”
“Put me down, Tony. You _must_ be tired. Let me walk again.”
“Yes, directly. There’s another steep bit ahead.”
He set her upon her feet soon, and helped her to scramble with him
from the gulley down into a sort of plateau or wide terrace running
north and south upon the hillside. At the southern end of this
terrace they stopped to rest.
They were a pair that might well arouse swift pity in all but the
hardest of hearts. Their thinness alone sufficed to tell their
story and to urge their immediate need. The manifold print of
famine was upon them. Dyke, ragged and dirty, had mysteriously
preserved his strength; while Emmie rested he examined the ground,
peered over the edge of the plateau at the precipitous but not
impossible cliff, went forward to find a better way; moving to and
fro, he looked gaunt, dingy, dangerous as a famished wolf. Emmie,
with lips that the sun had split for want of grease, with blood
rusty and dry upon her chin, with matted hair plastered to her
forehead, looked like an emaciated boy who had been huddled into
the worn-out garments of a grown man. She seemed weak to the verge
of complete exhaustion; her eyes in the enlarged orbits seemed
enormous, spheres of dull glass without flash or glow. Yet her
faith in her companion was quite undaunted, her love for him quite
untouched.
He came and stood by her, snapped his bony fingers and produced
a chuckle in his hollow throat. He said that there was an
unmistakable track straight through this ledge and at the end
descending in zig-zags as far as he could see. It most certainly
would lead them to habitations and the road.
It was at this moment that they heard the sound of a human voice.
Dyke looked round eagerly. As if from nowhere, as if he and his
mule had dropped out of the sky, a man was riding towards them. He
sat high upon a padded and peaked saddle, and as well as himself,
the mule carried a couple of large sacks of forage and various
wallets and bags; till he drew considerably nearer he had the
aspect of a Chilian farmer, who on a business journey had somehow
attempted a short cut along the face of the hills. He shouted to
them in Spanish, telling them to stand still; and even before
noticing that he had drawn a pistol, Dyke whispered a warning.
“Emmie, I don’t like the look of him. Take everything quietly.
Don’t interfere, whatever I say or do. And, Emmie, this fellow
mustn’t know your sex.”
Indeed, one could not like the look of him, now that he drew close.
He was a thick-set man of about forty, with small blood-shot
eyes in a swarthy scarred face; his whole air, suggesting sullen
fierceness, stupid cruelty, unreasoned suspicion, was very
distasteful to Dyke. This peremptory stranger seemed far from being
the friend in need for whom one had hoped.
Dyke, obeying his order and the menace of his levelled revolver,
stood now with raised hands; and Emmie had to rise too and assume
the same attitude.
“We are neither of us armed,” said Dyke, meekly. “But my boy there
is very tired. Please don’t trouble him.”
The man told them to pull up their outer garments, in order to see
if there was anything concealed about their waists. They obeyed
him. And he then told them to turn round, so that he could look
at the backs of their breeches. Then, satisfied that they were
weaponless, he allowed Dyke to drop his hands and the boy to lie
down again. With an oath he asked what they were doing here, and
what they wanted.
Dyke said they were doing nothing, and they wanted food.
“Food?” the man echoed. “Food?” And bringing his mule still nearer,
he stared at Dyke’s high cheekbones and bearded mouth. “Have you
any money to buy food?”
Dyke said he had no money.
“That’s a silly lie,” said the man. “People don’t come up here
without money.”
“No more did I,” said Dyke. “But I’ve been robbed.”
“By whom?”
“By bandits,” said Dyke. “There are many of them about.”
The man grinned, as if amused, and said something to the effect
that such a great hulking rascal ought to be able to defend
himself. To this Dyke replied that he might have tried to do so,
but he was so completely exhausted by hunger. “My boy and I are
almost at our last gasp. You can see that for yourself.” Then
humbly and plaintively he begged for food, saying that the man
assuredly had food stowed away in those wallets, and imploring him
to spare a few morsels of it. “Have pity on us. Please have pity on
us.”
The man sat upon his mule, staring stupidly; hardly seeming to
listen to these piteous appeals, but to meditate. With his eyes
still on Dyke’s face, he dropped his rein round his saddle-peak,
passed the revolver from his right to his left hand, drew from his
belt-sheath a formidable knife, and then replaced the revolver in
its holster.
“You are lying,” he said, with some more oaths, but with no sign of
real anger. “You may have money concealed about you, as surely as
I have food in my bags. Perhaps if I searched your filthy carcase,
I should find it.” Then he began to grin again, as if an idea had
come into his sluggish mind. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Dyke said he was going down the hillside towards the high road.
“And further, perhaps,” said the man. “To hell, if I choose to send
you there. Eh?”
Dyke gave a little groan, and began to tremble very perceptibly. He
gazed at the man in mute despairing entreaty.
It was horrible. One could see the man’s mind dully working; these
poor wretches were utterly in his power, and he was cudgelling his
slow wits for a means of gratifying himself by making them suffer.
Merciless as a tiger, stupid as a wild hog, he meant to torment
them; their helpless condition afforded the chance of inflicting
pain, and pain must be inflicted. To run his knife into them would
be pleasurable, but too tame a jest. Here was the chance of real
fun. He wished, if he could, to work the thing up into a huge
side-splitting joke that he could brag about afterwards.
And presently he got upon what he felt to be the right line.
Grinning, and with the conscious effort of one who forces himself
to appear as a wit although nature has not given him an original
sense of humour, he said it was true that he had food, but he did
not feel disposed to part with it for nothing. Yes, he had good
food--bread and meat--wine too; and telling Dyke to keep his
distance, he opened a wallet and turned its gaping mouth so that
the food could be seen.
“There, that’s what you want? Eh?”
Dyke, trembling from head to foot, stared at the food and groaned,
as if in the agony of his craving.
“Ha, ha.” The man laughed. Then he said, with the same pompous and
straining effort, that he was quite willing to trade his food. If
they had no money, they at least had clothes. He would give them
a little food in exchange for their garments--say a bit of bread
as big as his finger for their boots; another such mouthful for
their breeches; another for their socks; and so on. Then, having
satisfied their hunger, they could continue the journey in their
shirts. That would keep them cool after their repast. It would also
be very amusing to him, and make a merry tale. He said he loved a
bit of fun. He and his friends were famous for their jokes: good
fellows all, liking to make the rocks echo to their laughter.
In vain Dyke pleaded. The man said those were his terms. If Dyke
and the boy accepted them, they would all three sit down quietly
and make the exchanges; and he laughed at the gaunt starving
creature who shivered and quailed and at last consented. Emmie had
risen to her feet, and, silent and intent, was watching.
They had no choice but to agree, said Dyke, tremblingly.
Then the man dismounted. He suffered Dyke humbly to hold the mule’s
rein as he did so; not turning his back as he got out of the
saddle, but swinging his right leg high over its peak so that he
came down facing his victim. But in the very moment that his feet
touched the ground he fell. In that brief fraction of time Dyke had
slipped his left arm through the rein and struck with his right
fist.
The man went down exactly after the style of the prize ring,
when something nearly if not quite as good as a knock-out blow
lands upon the jaw; and his attitude on the ground was similarly
characteristic--face downwards as he struggled to rise.
Dyke sprang upon his back, frustrating the attempt; with the
terrified mule rearing above them, nearly wrenching out the
shoulder of Dyke, he nevertheless kept his place. He was battering
the man’s face upon the stony earth because of his reluctance to
let go the knife; he was throttling him as well, working hard at
his windpipe; he was giving the man no respite or ease.
He got up presently with the knife in his own hand. He patted and
soothed the mule, led it a few paces away, gave it some hay to
nibble from one of the forage bags. Tranquil and composed at once,
in the manner of mules, it allowed Emmie to take charge of it. The
man lay quietly where he had been left, emitting groans--real ones,
not sham ones.
Dyke went to him, kicked him, and told him to get up. He obeyed at
once, staggering to his feet and moving his hands vaguely. He was
dazed, but could understand all that was said to him.
Dyke had a very ugly smile as he looked at his bleeding face, but
he spoke quietly and with a great affectation of politeness. He
told him that he might go now. They would retain the mule, but they
did not require his company any further.
The man obeyed, beginning to move stumblingly in the direction of
the zig-zag path, but Dyke barred his progress.
“No, not that way,” he said. “That’s the way we’re going ourselves.
You would taint the air for us. You smell of garlic. That way,
please”; and he pointed with the knife to the cliff.
The man, as if waking from his stupor, pleaded anxiously; the cliff
was too steep, to attempt it meant certain death. But Dyke said no,
he had examined it; any agile, fearless person could easily manage
it.
“Besides, this is my fun. You fellows can’t have all the fun to
yourself. I, too, like a joke--even a stale joke--the joke you’ve
seen so often. Please tell your master how well I’ve learnt the
trick of it”; and he pricked him lightly with the knife. “Now,
skip--spring like a guanaco, dance like a mountain goat. Let the
rocks echo to our laughter.”
It was dreadful to see. With clumsy antics, in a sullen rage and
despair, the man retreated from the goading knife. Driven nearer
and nearer to the edge of the cliff, he made strange abrupt pauses
and capered heavily before moving nearer still; then, shrinking,
recoiling, on the very brink he really danced.
Emmie called to Dyke--“Tony, don’t. Tony, don’t”; but at first he
did not seem to hear her.
“Tony, stop,” she called again. “You are making me feel faint. I
shall lose the mule.”
“Oh, all right,” said Dyke, grumblingly.
And he ceased to use the knife, and used his boot instead. The man
crouched on all fours, lowered himself over the brink, hung by his
hands, disappeared. Dyke stood there watching him, laughing at him,
as he scrambled, fell, and rolled. About a hundred feet down he
seemed to stick fast; or fear prevented him from launching himself
further. Dyke went to the mule, came back with the revolver. “Go
on, you clumsy fool. Go on, or I’ll shoot.” The man looked upward,
but disobeyed the order. “Go on, I tell you. Very well”; and Dyke
fired--not at the man but near him. Immediately he went on again,
fell, rolled, scrambled, and at last was gone.
Then Dyke and Emmie dined. It was a never-to-be-forgotten meal.
They ate sparingly, feeling their internal cramps and pains melted
by the warmth of a divinely gentle fire, and yet almost dreading
that what gave back their lives might take them away again if they
were not careful. Above all else, the wine seemed to restore their
forces and set the blood flowing in their veins.
Dyke, dangling his legs over the abyss, talked gaily but
philosophically.
“I oughtn’t to have let him go with his life. No, I really ought to
have killed him, Emmie. But, then, I knew you wouldn’t like--And
I never like to myself, either--if it can be avoided. Of course,
I spotted at once that so poor a specimen as that couldn’t work
alone--that he was just an understrapper.” And Dyke explained and
apologized for the slight untruths that he had felt compelled to
tell in regard to the money. “You can’t call that lying, Emmie. I
never lie. I hate lies. That was mere poker talk. If he had known I
had it, and I hadn’t been nippy enough to down him first, he’d have
sent a bullet through me and you too. I thought it all out while he
was riding up to us--in fact, the moment I guessed he was one of
the gang. If I was to spare his life, I must conceal the money, or
he’d tell the others. He hasn’t anything to tell them now.” Dyke
chuckled as he said this. “And it’ll take him some time to get
home.”
It was past noon. Emmie mounted, and Dyke led the mule. Thus they
proceeded very comfortably, encountering no difficulties, on a
track that grew plainer and more easy all the way. Before long they
stopped and ate again. After another two hours they took another
snack. Before the sun went down, they came in sight of what Dyke
had been seeking. “There,” he said, pointing downward, “do you know
what that means, Emmie? It means safety. Yes, safety at last.”
* * * * *
It was a base camp of the engineers--not the engineers of the
railway, but those employed in relaying the underground telegraph
cable. One saw two rows of sheds where the men slept, and, close
by, something that might almost be called a house. This, as Dyke
knew, was an inn that had been established there four years ago
when the cable people first appeared in the hills. All round and
about these buildings were scattered heaps of material, broken
implements, balks of timber.
Dyke said that on the other side of it they would find the open
road, only a mile away.
“So we shan’t want the mule any more. And in any case it’s just as
well to leave him here, and save ourselves the bother of answering
questions. But we’ll keep this”; and he took the revolver from the
holster. “It might come in useful--even yet. One never knows. Where
did our friend keep his cartridges? Ah, here we are.” He refilled
the empty chamber of the revolver after extracting the spent case,
and, laughing, drew Emmie’s attention to the fact that the weapon
was of English make and Army Service pattern. “Where did the
blackguard get it, Emmie? Between you and me and the post, people
ought to be a lot more careful than they are in bringing fire-arms
into these South American republics. It _pays_, but I begin to
think it isn’t really right.”
He stripped the mule of saddle and everything else, shook out a
heap of hay for it to munch, and left it.
Some prowling dogs barked at them in timid fury as they stood
at the inn door, but no watchful attendant came out to welcome
them. The door was locked, and none of the engineering folk
showed themselves in response to Dyke’s shouting. Then after a
little while a man came round from the back of the house. He was
a shambling, hang-dog sort of fellow, and he seemed afraid of his
visitors. He said he could not possibly take them in; although it
was true that the place had once been an inn, it was an inn no
longer. The engineers had gone a week ago, taking all possible
custom with them. He and his wife were ruined. Dyke said that he
and the boy must spend the night there, and they would pay for
their accommodation. Fearfully and unwillingly, the man opened
the door, saying that they should settle the matter with his
wife. Dyke followed him into the house. The wife proved to be a
small, alert, brown woman, and obviously very much the better half
of the firm. Of uncertain nationality, she jabbered French and
Spanish alternately, sprinkling her discourse with a few English
words also. She showed no fear, but she was as reluctant as her
husband to perform an innkeeper’s task. She said there was no food,
no drink, nothing. She urged the visitors to proceed on their
journey. But Dyke made short work of her scruples, and ignoring her
inhospitable manner, promised to pay her well. She said then that
if they insisted, they must have their way. “We are all alone here,
my husband and I. We are very helpless. Often we are forced to do
what we are told, whether we like it or not.” As to food, she could
give them coffee, bread, perhaps some cheese. Dyke said that this
was enough.
The building consisted of three rooms: in the middle a public room,
that they had already entered, and on each side a smaller room; one
the guest-chamber, and the other used by the innkeepers as their
kitchen and bed-room. Dyke took possession of the guest-chamber.
For furniture it had a low truckle-bed, a small table, and some
three-legged stools. The woman, bustling in and out, brought coffee
cups, hung a metal lamp to a hook on the wall, and asked them
innumerable questions, looking at them curiously with her quick
little eyes.
While waiting for their coffee, Emmie lay down upon the bed, and
immediately slept. Dyke strolled out of the house, walked all
about, and presently went into the kitchen and talked to the man as
well as to the woman. In his turn he asked questions. He asked if
by chance they were expecting any other visitors. The woman said
no, certainly not. Who should ever come here now that the engineers
had gone? Then he asked if, since the engineers left a week ago,
anybody at all had been there. They both said no, not a soul. Had
there been any passers-by? No. Were they sure that they had not
seen any horsemen--one horseman--or a farmer on a mule? No.
He went then and stood at the open doorway, looking across at the
vacated sheds and the refuse of timber and iron. The night had
now fallen, thinly and greyly, more than dusk, and yet much less
than darkness, so that one could see all salient objects, even at
a little distance away. Dyke stood there, noticing everything,
thinking about everything. He did not feel easy in his mind. There
was something very suspicious, if not quite inexplicable, about
this inn and its landlords. He did not want to make any more
mistakes. Emmie was in sore need of a night’s rest. He was keenly
anxious that she should get it. But he thought now that perhaps it
might be wiser to forsake the comfort of a bed, and, pushing on
farther, sleep in the open by the roadside. Should they drink their
coffee and go?
The woman came out of the kitchen, and passing through the room
behind him, said that the coffee was ready. She took it in to
the guest-chamber, but he did not follow her. He remained in the
doorway. He was doing more than looking out now; he was listening.
In the guest-chamber, the landlady set down the steaming pot of
coffee, and, bright-eyed, jabbering, quick-moving, called to Emmie
on the bed. Emmie raised herself, sat up, stretched her arms;
and the woman, who had sidled close, with an action as quick and
sudden as that of an animal, slid a brown hand into the opening of
Emmie’s coat, and felt her bosom. Then swiftly she stepped back and
laughed. “Yes, a woman! I thought so”; and as Emmie rose, angry
and disgusted, she laughed again, and with darting hand gave her a
playful pat behind. “Yes, a woman all over.” And roguishly nodding
her head, she bustled from the room.
Dyke at the doorway, listening intently, had fancied that he heard
a sound of horses’ hoofs, but it was gone again, and he thought,
“Yes, but the ground looked almost like a meadow beyond those
sheds--smooth and stoneless.” Then he heard the sound close and
near, and almost immediately saw two horsemen riding towards the
door. They came on until he could see them distinctly--two men in
cloaks and sombrero hats, riding small mettlesome horses. He drew
back and watched them. It was too late for him and Emmie to get
away now; and, as he guessed, they were in a peril greater than any
they had met in the mountains.
The two men did not immediately enter the house. The innkeeper came
from the kitchen with a lantern, and, after tying their horses to
posts near the door, they walked away with him talking. They seemed
to be waiting for something. Then more men arrived, perhaps ten
or a dozen, all mounted, but on mules, not horses. These bestowed
themselves and their animals in the empty sheds. The light from
the lantern, carried now by one of the horsemen, showed them
fitfully--as an ugly lot. Orders were asked for by some of them and
instructions given by the man with the lantern. He said they would
move from here at two in the morning, and they could sleep till
then.
Who were they? Dyke without difficulty guessed; and he wondered
if one of their crowd, a man with torn clothes and a broken face,
had yet joined them. The nature of their attitude to himself might
be affected by the presence of that stupid swine. Why were they
here and upon what errand were they engaged? Planning to pounce
at daybreak on some carefully tracked booty--a pack train, a
government consignment of gold mail bearers, something weak and
defenceless that they could surprise and overpower? Dyke did not
tax his brain. They were here. That was what concerned him.
He went back to the inner room. Emmie had drunk her coffee and
was again sleeping on the bed. He did not disturb her. The oil
lamp burning on the wall showed him the disconsolate bareness of
the room; the one window high against the ceiling was too small
for anybody to get through, even at a pinch; there was no way of
leaving the room except by passing through the public room. He
picked up one of the clumsy three-legged stools, and looked at
it reflectively. Then he put it down, sat on it, and continued
to meditate. Yes, let Emmie sleep. There was not anything to be
done--certainly not anything until those fellows in the sheds had
had time to settle down to their slumbers. They were to move on at
two--that was the order. At two they would begin to stalk their
game; after two they would be busy; till two they were free. Then
the longer one let them sleep, the nearer it came to two o’clock,
the better chance one would have in any attempt to slip out of this
undesirable company. He decided to postpone personal effort as long
as he possibly could.
Those two horsemen came into the house, and were welcomed and
made much of by the landlady. One had a gruff loud voice, the
other spoke quietly, drawlingly. The drawling man called the other
Martinez. The landlady was finding various food for them, although
she had an empty larder for ordinary travellers, and there was
talk of wine, their own wine, the wine that she had in keeping
for them. They talked freely; but Dyke, listening with his door
ajar, knew instinctively that they were aware that the inner room
was occupied. The landlord, of course, had told them about his
unexpected guests. Then all at once the drawling man spoke of
these wanderers, saying he would go in and see them presently.
There was laughter--the man called Martinez laughing gruffly and
the woman shrilly. Then the voices ceased, and Dyke understood that
all three of them had gone into the kitchen and that they were
still talking of him out there.
They returned, and the woman came to the inner room to fetch the
coffee-pot and cups.
“Good trade to-night,” said Dyke, smiling at her. “Plenty of custom
all of a sudden. That’s fine for you.”
“One never knows,” she said, darting her eyes here and there.
“People come and they go. Strange people sometimes--like you two”;
and glancing at the recumbent figure on the bed, she gave a short
shrill laugh. Then she stooped towards him and spoke in a low
voice. “Don’t trouble them until they trouble you. Perhaps they
will leave you alone.”
“Yes, but one must be civil,” said Dyke, sufficiently loud to be
heard in the other room; “one can’t ignore the claims of courtesy.”
And he followed her through the door and closed it behind him.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
They were seated at the long table where the innocent laborious
engineers used to eat their well-earned food. The man called
Martinez, a brutal-looking ruffian, stared at Dyke, but took no
notice of his bow or greeting. The other man rose immediately, took
off his hat, and sat down again. He was the person of importance,
and Dyke concerned himself with him and paid little regard to the
uncourteous lieutenant.
As well as a lamp on the dresser, there were two candles stuck in
bottles on the table, so that one had him fairly illumined and easy
to study. He was tall and thin, so sallow of complexion as to seem
like a sick man; every tint of him was vague and unnatural, from
the sunken yellowish eyes, the blue mistiness of his shaved cheeks,
the umber-coloured lips and blackened teeth, to the undyed shaggy
cloth of his coat and the tarnished velvet of his broad belt;
for the rest, there was about him the air of something that must
necessarily cause fear and shrinking in all that looks at it--as
of a pallid ghost in a graveyard, or the body of a hanged murderer
brought into a dissecting room and there come to life again--an
arrogance of sheer repulsiveness that seemed to defy one to look
at it a second time. Dyke observed the mark of a sword cut on his
forehead, the saliva at the corners of the brown lips, and the
spasmodic flicker of his hairless eyelids. He wore two unusually
long knives in a leather belt above the velvet.
“A pleasant calm night,” Dyke said carelessly, as he crossed the
room and opened the door of egress. He stood there looking out,
taking the air. The two horses were in the same place; all was dark
now at the sheds; the landlord had left his lantern on the ground
by the corner of the house. Overhead the stars shone brightly from
a purple sky.
Dyke strolled back to the door of his own room, and, leaning
against its jamb, talked to the pallid man. He spoke politely
enough, but with the careless, indefinably contemptuous tone that
he might have employed to a stranger at his club, somebody who
ought to be a gentleman and yet isn’t.
“You are moving on soon, I hear--before to-morrow.”
“Yes,” said the man, drawling and blinking his eyes, “I do not stay
long anywhere. So I may go soon from here. With me it is always
uncertain. And you?”
“As soon as I can. I have a boy here with me, and he’s very tired.
I want him to get a good night’s rest, and then--”
“Ah, yes.” The man interrupted him. “There is a boy. You are not
alone. There is your boy”; and he turned his eyes from Dyke and
blinked at the ceiling.
“Moving as I do,” he murmured, after a pause, “now here, now there,
not sure myself where next I may be, I do not care to account for
myself. In truth--as is generally known--I prefer not to be met
with or observed, even involuntarily.”
Then he asked Dyke how it was that he, who appeared to be an
Englishman, had so reduced himself in baggage and belongings,
when visiting a neighbourhood as unfrequented as this. In the
same careless tone as before, Dyke gave him a brief but entirely
truthful outline of his trip: describing how he had gone far north
in search of an ancient mine, and how his followers had decamped,
leaving him and his young servant to get out of the scrape as best
they could.
“And you succeeded in getting out of that scrape. It was well done.
And the boy, too.” As the man said this, a flutter seemed to pass
from his eyelids downward through the flesh of his cheeks till it
played about his moist lips as a sickening deadly sort of smile.
“Yes, you and your boy!” And, his face rigid again, he showed for
a moment the underpart of his tongue obtruding through his opened
teeth.
He asked a few more languid questions, but not one in regard to
Dyke’s possible possession of any money; and Dyke knew that this
apparent lack of curiosity on the point was a bad sign.
While they talked the woman brought in the food--an omelette, some
cold chicken, and a flask of wine. She hummed a few notes of a song
as she bustled in and out. Acting as waitress, she moved swiftly
round and about the table, and every now and then darted at Dyke a
glance that seemed to have meaning in it. The man called Martinez
ate greedily, but his leader scarcely at all. He sat staring at the
wine in his glass, held the glass up to the flame of the nearest
candle, and slobbered its edge as he took an occasional sip.
Then abruptly he asked Dyke to leave them alone now, adding that he
would join him later.
“By all means,” said Dyke; and he went back into the other room and
closed the door.
“Emmie, wake.” He was shaking her by the shoulder, but holding his
hand firmly over her mouth lest in waking her she should cry out.
“Listen,” he whispered, “and don’t speak. We have got to do a bolt.
Not yet, but soon. First, hide this for me. Put it right under you
and lie on it.” And he pushed the revolver into her hands. “Now can
you keep awake? Emmie, you must. Somehow keep awake and listen to
what goes on--but pretend to be asleep. Then, when I call to you,
come straight to me and give me the revolver--as quick as possible.
Lie still, darling--and for God’s sake keep awake.”
Then he moved hastily to the table and sat on one of the stools.
He looked back towards the bed and saw that Emmie was lying
motionless, sprawled in an attitude of deep sleep; then he turned
again to the door. Without the slightest sound it had been opened
wide, and the pallid man stood on the threshold looking at him.
“We will not keep you waiting long,” he drawled. “Only a few
minutes.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Dyke. “My time’s your time.”
“Thank you”; and the man half closed the door and withdrew. He
could be heard speaking to Martinez, and for a little while
Martinez growled and muttered to him. Then they moved about the
outer room, and there was silence. Dyke sat quietly waiting and
Emmie did not stir.
Then he heard the woman humming and the chink of crockery as she
began to clear the table. Next moment she had slipped through the
doorway and was at his side. She touched his forehead with her
fingers and spoke cautiously. “They have gone to their horses--and
to fetch something. They will come back.”
“Are you a friend?” said Dyke, looking up at her and smiling
gravely.
“Yes, I’ll be your friend now.”
“So I guessed. That was what you meant when you made those signs?”
“Yes.” And nodding her head she went on rapidly. “Because you are
so brave; and because I am sorry. Very sorry since I told him”; and
she pointed to the bed. “I should not if I had thought. You must
risk everything to get away.”
“That seems the idea,” said Dyke, still smiling at her.
“See.” She stooped suddenly, pulled up her skirts, and whipped a
knife from the clip that held it to her girdle. “I bring you this.”
Dyke shook his head negatively.
“Not? Why? You have a gun?”
“Not, so to speak, about me.”
“Then take this. It is something. Why not?”
“Because directly they come in here they’ll search me. Put it away,
please.”
She did so, talking fast. “I will help you. I will watch. And you
will take your chance--you are very brave. If you could once get
out. There are the horses.”
“Exactly. It had occurred to me. If I could get the horses.”
“I’ll try my best. I’ll watch. Hush.”
Swift as a lizard she glided into the outer room, and begun to hum
merrily as she picked up the plates.
They had come back. Dyke heard them lock the outer door and drop a
cross-bar into its socket. Then, obedient to an order, the woman
entered the inner room carrying the two candles in the bottles. The
pale captain of the revels followed her, pointed with his hand,
and she set the candles on the table. Martinez had come in too. He
dropped some sacking and a coil of rope upon the floor-boards near
the door, and stood there. The woman went out, glancing back at
Dyke. The captain called after, telling her to get wine ready.
“Now we will talk,” he said, “and perhaps drink. But first of
all--if you permit--”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Dyke. “I have no weapon about me of
any sort or kind.”
“If you will be good enough to prove that, we can talk comfortably.”
Dyke, with a contemptuous smile, stood up, opened his garments,
slapped his large breeches pockets, showed them the tops of his
boots, and satisfied them that he was without means of defence.
“That is quite satisfactory.”
“But I notice,” said Dyke, “that you don’t return the compliment.”
“Ah, no. With us it is different,” said the captain, and he picked
up one of the candles, and sauntered towards the bed.
Dyke was there before him and stood in his way.
“What do you want?”
“Only another peep at the boy--the wonderful boy. No, I will not
wake him--not yet. I will attend to him later. But soon.” Mistily
and vaguely, the man moved his disengaged hand as though sketching
in the air the shape of the recumbent form. Then he went back to
the table and invited Dyke to sit down again. He himself sat down,
drew one of his long knives from its sheath, and laid it across his
knees.
“Martinez, the wine. Get some wine ready”; and he sat looking at
Dyke over the table until, after a minute or two, Martinez returned
with a small tray, three glasses, and two flasks of wine. “No, not
on the table. Put it on that stool.”
“Well,” said Dyke, “I am at your service. What do you want with me?”
“With you not much”; and once more there was the muscular flicker
about the brown lips. “But for myself I would like, if possible, to
have a little fun.”
“Oh, damn your fun, Ruy Chaves,” said Dyke forcibly. “You are
Chaves himself, aren’t you? But of course you are. There couldn’t
be two such jokers knocking about at the same time.”
“Martinez.”
Martinez was growling. He picked up the coil of rope; but at a sign
from the chieftain dropped it again.
“Well then, Chaves, I’m tired of your fun,” Dyke went on quietly.
“Get to business. What’s the game?”
“So you don’t like fun. But your boy? Is not all this funny? Oh,
that boy!” And for the first time he laughed. It was a rasping,
whistling snigger. “Suppose now I ask you to spare me your boy.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Oh, ho. You speak resolutely. Suppose then the fancy comes to take
him without your permission.”
“I should be sorry for you to try to do that, Chaves.”
“If it amused me! To keep him with me in the mountains. Ho, ho. You
flush. Be calm. I said, to keep him in the mountains, make of him
my pet and my toy, as you seem to have done.”
“Ruy Chaves.”
“Yes, perhaps to put him in girl’s frocks--and when I have played
with him so--dressing and undressing him--then hand him on to my
men for their doll.”
“Chaves,” said Dyke, raising his voice, “that’s enough. I am asking
myself if it can possibly be true--what people say--that you were
once a soldier--consorting with other soldiers--fighting fair,
as they fight. When did they find you out? When were you first
flogged, or branded--or whatever they did to you, to show what
they thought of you?” He went on speaking, grimly and defiantly,
scarcely knowing and not really caring what he said. From the
bed he had heard the sound of Emmie’s breathing, quickened and
sharpened by fear; and he wanted to drown the sound.
“I think,” said Chaves, “you had better have a drink now.”
“No, thank you, I am not thirsty.”
“Martinez, pour out wine for him. From his own bottle. Let him have
a bottle to himself. There. Toss it off.”
“Thanks, no.”
“Then I think you had better go to sleep.”
“I am not sleepy.”
“Drink. Then you may feel ready to sleep. Sleep is so good, so
comfortable. And remember, I have yet to attend to the boy. When
one sleeps one sees nothing, one knows nothing. Whereas to a
wakeful man, bound fast with cords, and compelled to watch, while--”
Once more Dyke talked loud. Again he had heard the terrified
breathing from the bed. But he chose his words now, such word as
might possibly relieve the strain of the listener.
“Chaves, drop all this rubbish and rot. Stop chattering. Talk
sense. There’s nothing in what you’re saying to frighten anybody.
It’s ridiculous.”
“Be it so. Then drink. We’ll drink together; and happily you may
sleep. Take your glass.”
Behind the bulky frowning Martinez, the innkeeper’s wife showed for
a moment in the doorway, and Dyke saw her sign to him not to drink.
The warning was of course unnecessary. Indeed, the bandit had
himself plainly indicated that he was offering a drugged beverage.
“I am obliged to you--but no.”
“Take the glass.”
Dyke took it then, and, looking steadily at Chaves, he poured the
wine on the floor and replaced the glass on the table.
“Martinez.”
Martinez displayed a cutlass, and taking a step forward from the
wall, felt the blade with his nail.
“Keep where you are, but be ready,” said Chaves; and he refilled
the glass. “Drink. I have told you to drink--and I don’t like to be
refused. Drink this to the dregs.”
For the second time Dyke took the glass. He held it high in the
candlelight, sniffed at it, and again held it poised.
“Drink. It is good stuff for you. It will save you pain. Drink and
forget.”
“Emmie!” Dyke called the name loudly, as he drove the rim of the
glass against the bandit’s sunken eyes and flooded them full.
Chaves gave a yell of pain, and, blinded, spluttering, sprang up
with his knife. But already Dyke had the wooden stool high in the
air; he crashed it down, broke it on Chaves’s head, and sent him
senseless to the floor. Turning, he tried to ward off Martinez with
the fragments of the stool; but his foot slipped on the wet boards.
Martinez cut at him, closed with him, and both went down together,
Dyke underneath.
It was all in a moment, this sudden tumult and struggle. Emmie had
leaped to the signal, and, half mad with terror, she screamed aloud
as Dyke fell. Twice she screamed, in her agony of dread, as the two
men fought at her feet. Then some one fired. One after another,
three shots were fired, filling the room with smoke, seeming to
split the walls with the force of the explosions. And then in the
cloud of smoke Dyke was up, gripping her hand, dragging her through
the doorway.
“Be quick now. Not that way. Here.” The woman was there. She took
Dyke by the arm, led him through the middle room, through her
kitchen-bedroom, and out into the cold clean air. Dyke looked round
the corner of the house. The horses were no longer there. There
were shoutings in the sheds, the men all stirring, roused by the
noise.
“Come quick,” said the woman, hurrying them away, chattering as she
went. “My husband has the horses ready. My husband is good too. He
was set to guard the other door, but he opened it for me.”
They came to the man meekly holding the horses. But pursuit was
too close at hand. Some one--Chaves possibly, certainly not
Martinez--had recovered sufficiently to unbolt the main door and
yell frenzied orders to the gang. One could hear the mules coming
out of the sheds. Then the men began to fire their rifles, blindly,
down the path towards the high road. It seemed to Dyke that it was
too dangerous to use the horses as he had intended. Emmie was in
no state to mount and run the gauntlet in the dark. Yet the horses
might be useful in another way.
He took them from the man, set their heads towards the road, loosed
them. Then he kicked the stomach of each in turn, and they galloped
away. As he guessed, they knew the road and would surely make for
it.
As he and Emmie ran off in the opposite direction, he heard the men
firing. Then evidently they mounted their mules and started on a
stern chase of the galloping hoofs.
Presently he dived with her down a sharp slope until they lodged
themselves in a horizontal ravine. They waited there for sunrise,
and then worked their way back along the hillside, far below the
now silent camp, and onward till they came to the high road.
Trudging down the road, they met almost immediately a Chilian
officer with a couple of gendarmes. Their troubles were over.
The officer, courteously turning, took them to a place that was
at once post-house and barracks, and there provided them with a
two-horse wheeled conveyance which he grandiloquently called a
carriage. He told Dyke that two troops of cavalry had gone up to
the hills, and spoke hopefully of those pests, those disgraces to
civilization, being sooner or later cornered and caught. He said
that they had been too long permitted. He promised that within a
few hours the innkeeper and his wife should be rescued from their
precarious situation, that they should suffer no reproaches for any
indiscreetness of which they might have been guilty as compelled
accomplices of the gang, and that he would hold as a sacred charge
the money that Dyke gave him for their future use.
The travellers drove away then, after breakfast, in their
carriage--jolting, bumping, making the dust and the stones fly,
as they whirled downward side by side; downward, with feathery
tree-tops rising to enchant their eyes, green meadows, sparkling
streams, brilliant many-coloured flowers--downward into the kindly
smiling paradise that nature has spread out between the foot-hills
and the sea.
“Oh, for a bath, Emmie! And what price a bed with sheets? That’s
what I always tell people. If you want to enjoy--But, by Jove, I’ve
forgotten something. The revolver! I must make quite sure.” And
he opened the breech of the weapon and emptied the six chambers.
“Yes,” he said, “just as I thought.” Three of the cartridges were
intact, the other three had been fired. “You saved my life! You
killed Martinez.”
And suddenly he burst into tears. The tears ran down in rivulets,
melting the dirt, whitening his cheekbones, bringing out the red
here and there on his dusty beard. “You killed him,” he sobbed,
“dead as mutton. How the devil you missed me in doing it, I don’t
know. All--all the more to your credit. Oh, Emmie--my little
fragile, delicate girl--the, the bravest creature that ever lived,
as well as the most divinely precious. Oh, Emmie, Emmie.”
Miss Verinder, herself affected by emotion with her arm round his
neck soothed and quieted him.
“Don’t, Tony, don’t.”
She said that she did not really know what happened in that
horrible room, except that she was crazy with fear. She never
wanted to think of the place again, and it would be unkind of him
if he did not help her to forget the agony she felt during the
moment when he was rolling about the floor and she was trying to
get the revolver into his hand. She knew that, despairing, she had
pulled the trigger once. But surely not more than once? It had
seemed to her then that all the people in the room and in the house
were firing together--not merely revolvers but large cannon. It
was hot, too, as if the house was on fire. She remembered no other
sensations of any kind whatever, until the choking smoke lifted and
she felt cold air upon her face and Dyke’s hand dragging her along.
They left the carriage at the nearest railway town, and went on
by train to Santiago. Here, in perhaps the most beautiful city of
the world, they stayed three days, washing themselves, sleeping,
eating. Here too they bought clothes, and became once more Mrs.
Fleming the journalist and Mr. Dyke her guide.
At Santiago he learned, in telegraphic communication with his agent
at Buenos Ayres, that Australia was clamouring for him as much
overdue. Important work awaited him; and he was at once in a fever
to be off, willing to forgo or indefinitely postpone bone-breaking
vengeance on muleteers, thinking only of the new adventure. He
flushed with delight when he found that a steamer was on the point
of sailing from Valparaiso for Brisbane. Since Emmie showed a
strong disinclination to recross the mountains by herself and go
home the shortest way via Buenos Ayres, he said she must travel in
one steamer to Panama, in another to San Francisco; and thence in a
train to New York, where she would have a choice of Atlantic liners.
They parted at Valparaiso; and six weeks later she was sitting at
breakfast in the coffee-room of a private hotel in the Cromwell
Road, Kensington.