“We must work quickly—that is the one thing sure,” Francis said to the
little conclave of Solanos on the piazza of the Solano hacienda.
“One thing sure!” Leoncia cried out scornfully ceasing from her
anguished pacing up and down. “The one thing sure is that we must save
him.”
As she spoke, she shook a passionate finger under Francis’ nose to
emphasize her point. Not content, she shook her finger with equal
emphasis under the noses of all and sundry of her father and brothers.
“Quick!” she flamed on. “Of course we must be quick. It is that, or....”
Her voice trailed off into the unvoiceable horror of what would happen
to Henry if they were not quick.
“All Gringos look alike to the Jefe,” Francis nodded sympathetically.
She was splendidly beautiful and wonderful, he thought. “He certainly
runs all San Antonio, and short shrift is his motto. He’ll give Henry no
more time than he gave us. We must get him out to-night.”
“Now listen,” Leoncia began again. “We Solanos cannot permit this ...
this execution. Our pride ... our honor. We cannot permit it. Speak! any
of you. Father—you. Suggest something....”
And while the discussion went on, Francis, for the time being silent,
wrestled deep in the throes of sadness. Leoncia’s fervor was
magnificent, but it was for another man and it did not precisely
exhilarate him. Strong upon him was the memory of the jail patio after
he had been released and Henry had been arrested. He could still see,
with the same stab at the heart, Leoncia in Henry’s arms, Henry seeking
her hand to ascertain if his ring was on it, and the long kiss of the
embrace that followed.
Ah, well, he sighed to himself, he had done his best. After Henry had
been led away, had he not told Leoncia, quite deliberately and coldly,
that Henry was her man and lover, and the wisest of choices for the
daughter of the Solanos?
But the memory of it did not make him a bit happy. Nor did the rightness
of it. Right it was. That he never questioned, and it strengthened him
into hardening his heart against her. Yet the right, he found in his
case, to be the sorriest of consolation.
And yet what else could he expect? It was his misfortune to have arrived
too late in Central America, that was all, and to find this flower of
woman already annexed by a previous comer—a man as good as himself, and,
his heart of fairness prompted, even better. And his heart of fairness
compelled loyalty to Henry from him—to Henry Morgan, of the breed and
blood; to Henry Morgan, the wild-fire descendant of a wild-fire
ancestor, in canvas pants, and floppy sombrero, with a penchant for the
ears of strange young men, living on sea biscuit and turtle eggs and
digging up the Bull and the Calf for old Sir Henry’s treasure.
* * * * *
And while Enrico Solano and his sons talked plans and projects on their
broad piazza, to which Francis lent only half an ear, a house servant
came, whispered in Leoncia’s ear, and led her away around the ell of the
piazza, where occurred a scene that would have excited Francis’
risibilities and wrath.
Around the ell, Alvarez Torres, in all the medieval Spanish splendor of
dress of a great haciendado-owner, such as still obtains in Latin
America, greeted her, bowed low with doffed sombrero in hand, and seated
her in a rattan settee. Her own greeting was sad, but shot through with
curiousness, as if she hoped he brought some word of hope.
“The trial is over, Leoncia,” he said softly, tenderly, as one speaks of
the dead. “He is sentenced. To-morrow at ten o’clock is the time. It is
all very sad, most very sad. But....” He shrugged his shoulders. “No, I
shall not speak harshly of him. He was an honorable man. His one fault
was his temper. It was too quick, too fiery. It led him into a mischance
of honor. Never, in a cool moment of reasonableness, would he have
stabbed Alfaro——”
“He never killed my uncle!” Leoncia cried, raising her averted face.
“And it is regrettable,” Torres proceeded gently and sadly, avoiding any
disagreement. “The judge, the people, the Jefe Politico, unfortunately,
are all united in believing that he did. Which is most regrettable. But
which is not what I came to see you about. I came to offer my service in
any and all ways you may command. My life, my honor, are at your
disposal. Speak. I am your slave.”
Dropping suddenly and gracefully on one knee before her, he caught her
hand from her lap, and would have instantly flooded on with his speech,
had not his eyes lighted on the diamond ring on her engagement finger.
He frowned, but concealed the frown with bent face until he could drive
it from his features and begin to speak.
“I knew you when you were small, Leoncia, so very, very charmingly
small, and I loved you always.—No, listen! Please. My heart must speak.
Hear me out. I loved you always. But when you returned from your
convent, from schooling abroad, a woman, a grand and noble lady fit to
rule in the house of the Solanos, I was burnt by your beauty. I have
been patient. I refrained from speaking. But you may have guessed. You
surely must have guessed. I have been on fire for you ever since. I have
been consumed by the flame of your beauty, by the flame of you that is
deeper than your beauty.”
He was not to be stopped, as she well knew, and she listened patiently,
gazing down on his bent head and wondering idly why his hair was so
unbecomingly cut, and whether it had been last cut in New York or San
Antonio.
“Do you know what you have been to me ever since your return?”
She did not reply, nor did she endeavour to withdraw her hand, although
his was crushing and bruising her flesh against Henry Morgan’s ring. She
forgot to listen, led away by a chain of thought that linked far. Not in
such rhodomontade of speech had Henry Morgan loved and won her, was the
beginning of the chain. Why did those of Spanish blood always voice
their emotions so exaggeratedly? Henry had been so different. Scarcely
had he spoken a word. He had acted. Under her glamor, himself glamoring
her, without warning, so certain was he not to surprise and frighten
her, he had put his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers. And
hers had been neither too startled nor altogether unresponsive. Not
until after that first kiss, arms still around her, had Henry begun to
speak at all.
And what plan was being broached around the corner of the ell by her men
and Francis Morgan? Her mind strayed on, deaf to the suitor at her feet.
Francis! Ah—she almost sighed, and marveled, what of her self-known love
for Henry, why this stranger Gringo so enamored her heart. Was she a
wanton? Was it one man? Or another man? Or any man? No! No! She was not
fickle nor unfaithful. And yet?... Perhaps it was because Francis and
Henry were so much alike, and her poor stupid loving woman’s heart
failed properly to distinguish between them. And yet—while it had seemed
she would have followed Henry anywhere over the world, in any luck or
fortune, it seemed to her now that she would follow Francis even
farther. She did _love_ Henry, her heart solemnly proclaimed. But also
did she love Francis, and almost did she divine that Francis loved
her—the fervor of his lips on hers in his prison cell was inerasable;
and there was a difference in her love for the two men that confuted her
powers of reason and almost drove her to the shameful conclusion that
she, the latest and only woman of the house of Solano, was a wanton.
A severe pinch of her flesh against Henry’s ring, caused by the
impassioned grasp of Torres, brought her back to him, so that she could
hear the spate of his speech pouring on:
“You have been the delicious thorn in my side, the spiked rowel of the
spur forever prodding the sweetest and most poignant pangs of love into
my breast. I have dreamed of you ... and for you. And I have my own name
for you. Ever the one name I have had for you: the Queen of my Dreams.
And you will marry me, my Leoncia. We will forget this mad Gringo who is
as already dead. I shall be gentle, kind. I shall love you always. And
never shall any vision of him arise between us. For myself, I shall not
permit it. For you ... I shall love you so that it will be impossible
for the memory of him to arise between us and give you one moment’s
heart-hurt.”
Leoncia debated in a long pause that added fuel to Torres’ hopes. She
felt the need to temporise. If Henry were to be saved ... and had not
Torres offered his services? Not lightly could she turn him away when a
man’s life might depend upon him.
“Speak!—I am consuming!” Torres urged in a choking voice.
“Hush! Hush!” she said softly. “How can I listen to love from a live
man, when the man I loved is yet alive?”
_Loved!_ The past tense of it startled her. Likewise it startled Torres,
fanning his hopes to fairer flames. Almost was she his. She had said
_loved_. She no longer bore love for Henry. She _had_ loved him, but no
longer. And she, a maid and woman of delicacy and sensibility, could
not, of course, give name to her love for him while the other man still
lived. It was subtle of her. He prided himself on his own subtlety, and
he flattered himself that he had interpreted her veiled thought aright.
And ... well, he resolved, he would see to it that the man who was to
die at ten next morning should have neither reprieve nor rescue. The one
thing clear, if he were to win Leoncia quickly, was that Henry Morgan
should die quickly.
“We will speak of it no more ... now,” he said with chivalric
gentleness, as he gently pressed her hand, rose to his feet, and gazed
down on her.
She returned a soft pressure of thanks with her own hand ere she
released it and stood up.
“Come,” she said. “We will join the others. They are planning now, or
trying to find some plan, to save Henry Morgan.”
The conversation of the group ebbed away as they joined it, as if out of
half-suspicion of Torres.
“Have you hit upon anything yet?” Leoncia asked.
Old Enrico, straight and slender and graceful as any of his sons despite
his age, shook his head.
“I have a plan, if you will pardon me,” Torres began, but ceased at a
warning glance from Alesandro, the eldest son.
On the walk, below the piazza, had appeared two scarecrows of beggar
boys. Not more than ten years of age, by their size, they seemed much
older when judged by the shrewdness of their eyes and faces. Each wore a
single marvelous garment, so that between them it could be said they
shared a shirt and pants. But such a shirt! And such pants! The latter,
man-size, of ancient duck, were buttoned around the lad’s neck, the
waistband reefed with knotted twine so as not to slip down over his
shoulders. His arms were thrust through the holes where the side-pockets
had been. The legs of the pants had been hacked off with a knife to suit
his own diminutive length of limb. The tails of the man’s shirt on the
other boy dragged on the ground.
“Vamos!” Alesandro shouted fiercely at them to be gone.
But the boy in the pants gravely removed a stone which he had been
carrying on top of his bare head, exposing a letter which had been thus
carried. Alesandro leaned over, took the letter, and with a glance at
the inscription passed it to Leoncia, while the boys began whining for
money. Francis, smiling despite himself at the spectacle of them, tossed
them a few pieces of small silver, whereupon the shirt and the pants
toddled away down the path.
The letter was from Henry, and Leoncia scanned it hurriedly. It was not
precisely in farewell, for he wrote in the tenour of a man who never
expected to die save by some inconceivable accident. Nevertheless, on
the chance of such inconceivable thing becoming possible, Henry did
manage to say good-bye and to include a facetious recommendation to
Leoncia not to forget Francis, who was well worth remembering because he
was so much like himself, Henry.
Leoncia’s first impulse was to show the letter to the others, but the
portion about Francis with-strained her.
“It’s from Henry,” she said, tucking the note into her bosom. “There is
nothing of importance. He seems to have not the slightest doubt that he
will escape somehow.”
“We shall see that he does,” Francis declared positively.
With a grateful smile to him, and with one of interrogation to Torres,
Leoncia said:
“You were speaking of a plan, Senor Torres?”
Torres smiled, twisted his mustache, and struck an attitude of
importance.
“There is one way, the Gringo, Anglo-Saxon way, and it is simple,
straight to the point. That is just what it is, straight to the point.
We will go and take Henry out of jail in forthright, brutal and direct
Gringo fashion. It is the one thing they will not expect. Therefore, it
will succeed. There are enough unhung rascals on the beach with which to
storm the jail. Hire them, pay them well, but only partly in advance,
and the thing is accomplished.”
Leoncia nodded eager agreement. Old Enrico’s eyes flashed and his
nostrils distended as if already sniffing gunpowder. The young men were
taking fire from his example. And all looked to Francis for his opinion
or agreement. He shook his head slowly, and Leoncia uttered a sharp cry
of disappointment in him.
“That way is hopeless,” he said. “Why should all of you risk your necks
in a madcap attempt like that, doomed to failure from the start?” As he
talked, he strode across from Leoncia’s side to the railing in such way
as to be for a moment between Torres and the other men, and at the same
time managed a warning look to Enrico and his sons. “As for Henry, it
looks as if it were all up with him——”
“You mean you doubt me?” Torres bristled.
“Heavens, man,” Francis protested.
But Torres dashed on: “You mean that I am forbidden by you, a man I have
scarcely met, from the councils of the Solanos who are my oldest and
most honored friends.”
Old Enrico, who had not missed the rising wrath against Francis in
Leoncia’s face, succeeded in conveying a warning to her, ere, with a
courteous gesture, he hushed Torres and began to speak.
“There are no councils of the Solanos from which you are barred, Senor
Torres. You are indeed an old friend of the family. Your late father and
I were comrades, almost brothers. But that—and you will pardon an old
man’s judgment—does not prevent Senor Morgan from being right when he
says your plan is hopeless. To storm the jail is truly madness. Look at
the thickness of the walls. They could stand a siege of weeks. And yet,
and I confess it, almost was I tempted when you first broached the idea.
Now when I was a young man, fighting the Indians in the high
Cordilleras, there was a very case in point. Come, let us all be seated
and comfortable, and I will tell you the tale....”
But Torres, busy with many things, declined to wait, and with soothed
amicable feelings shook hands all around, briefly apologized to Francis,
and departed astride his silver-saddled and silver-bridled horse for San
Antonio. One of the things that busied him was the cable correspondence
maintained between him and Thomas Regan’s Wall Street office. Having
secret access to the Panamanian government wireless station at San
Antonio, he was thus able to relay messages to the cable station at Vera
Cruz. Not alone was his relationship with Regan proving lucrative, but
it was jibing in with his own personal plans concerning Leoncia and the
Morgans.
“What have you against Senor Torres, that you should reject his plan and
anger him?” Leoncia demanded of Francis.
“Nothing,” was the answer, “except that we do not need him, and that I’m
not exactly infatuated with him. He is a fool and would spoil any plan.
Look at the way he fell down on testifying at my trial. Maybe he can’t
be trusted. I don’t know. Anyway, what’s the good of trusting him when
we don’t need him? Now his plan is all right. We’ll go straight to the
jail and take Henry out, if all you are game for it. And we don’t need
to trust to a mob of unhung rascals and beach-sweepings. If the six men
of us can’t do it, we might as well quit.”
“There must be at least a dozen guards always hanging out at the jail,”
Ricardo, Leoncia’s youngest brother, a lad of eighteen, objected.
Leoncia, her eagerness alive again, frowned at him; but Francis took his
part.
“Well taken,” he agreed. “But we will eliminate the guards.”
“The five-foot walls,” said Martinez Solano, twin brother to Alvarado.
“Go through them,” Francis answered.
“But how?” Leoncia cried.
“That’s what I am arriving at. You, Senor Solano, have plenty of saddle
horses? Good. And you, Alesandro, does it chance you could procure me a
couple of sticks of dynamite from around the plantation? Good, and
better than good. And you, Leoncia, as the lady of the hacienda, should
know whether you have in your store-room a plentiful supply of that
three-star rye whiskey?”
“Ah, the plot thickens,” he laughed, on receiving her assurance. “We’ve
all the properties for a Rider Haggard or Rex Beach adventure tale. Now
listen. But wait. I want to talk to you, Leoncia, about private
theatricals....”