“It’s all right, skipper, it’s all right,” Henry assured the breed
captain, who, standing on the beach with them, seemed loath to say
farewell and pull back to the _Angelique_ adrift half a mile away in the
dead calm which had fallen on Juchitan Inlet.
“It is what we call a diversion,” Francis explained. “That is a nice
word—_diversion_. And it is even nicer when you see it work.”
“But if it don’t work,” Captain Trefethen protested, “then will it spell
a confounded word, which I may name as _catastrophe_.”
“That is what happened to the _Dolores_ when we tangled her propeller,”
Henry laughed. “But we do not know the meaning of that word. We use
_diversion_ instead. The proof that it will work is that we are leaving
Senor Solano’s two sons with you. Alvarado and Martinez know the
passages like a book. They will pilot you out with the first favoring
breeze. The Jefe is not interested in you. He is after us, and when we
take to the hills he’ll be on our trail with every last man of his.”
“Don’t you see!” Francis broke in. “The _Angelique_ is trapped. If we
remain on board he will capture us and the _Angelique_ as well. But we
make the diversion of taking to the hills. He pursues us. The
_Angelique_ goes free. And of course he won’t catch us.”
“But suppose I do lose the schooner!” the swarthy skipper persisted. “If
she goes on the rocks I will lose her, and the passages are very
perilous.”
“Then you will be paid for her, as I’ve told you before,” Francis said,
with a show of rising irritation.
“Also are there my numerous expenses——”
Francis pulled out a pad and pencil, scribbled a note, and passed it
over, saying:
“Present that to Senor Melchor Gonzales at Bocas del Toro. It is for a
thousand gold. He is the banker; he is my agent, and he will pay it to
you.”
Captain Trefethen stared incredulously at the scrawled bit of paper.
“Oh, he’s good for it,” Henry said.
“Yes, sir, I know, sir, that Mr. Francis Morgan is a wealthy gentleman
of renown. But how wealthy is he? Is he as wealthy as I modestly am? I
own the _Angelique_, free of all debt. I own two town lots, unimproved,
in Colon. And I own four water-front lots in Belen that will make me
very wealthy when the Union Fruit Company begins the building of the
warehouses——”
“How much, Francis, did your father leave you?” Henry quipped teasingly.
“Or, rather, how many?”
Francis shrugged his shoulders as he answered vaguely: “More than I have
fingers and toes.”
“Dollars, sir?” queried the captain.
Henry shook his head sharply.
“Thousands, sir?”
Again Henry shook his head.
“Millions, sir?”
“Now you’re talking,” Henry answered. “Mr. Francis Morgan is rich enough
to buy almost all of the Republic of Panama, with the Canal cut out of
the deal.”
The negro-Indian mariner looked his unbelief to Enrico Solano, who
replied:
“He is an honorable gentleman. I know. I have cashed his paper, drawn on
Senor Melchor Gonzales at Bocas del Toro, for a thousand pesos. There it
is in the bag there.”
He nodded his head up the beach to where Leoncia, in the midst of the
dunnage landed with them, was toying with trying to slip cartridges into
a Winchester rifle. The bag, which the skipper had long since noted, lay
at her feet in the sand.
“I do hate to travel strapped,” Francis explained embarrassedly to the
white men of the group. “One never knows when a dollar mayn’t come in
handy. I got caught with a broken machine at Smith River Comers, up New
York way, one night, with nothing but a check book, and, d’you know, I
couldn’t get even a cigarette in the town.”
“I trusted a white gentleman in Barbadoes once, who chartered my boat to
go fishing flying fish——” the captain began.
“Well, so long, skipper,” Henry shut him off. “You’d better be getting
on board, because we’re going to hike.”
And for Captain Trefethen, staring at the backs of his departing
passengers, remained naught but to obey. Helping to shove the boat off,
he climbed in, took the steering sweep, and directed his course toward
the _Angelique_. Glancing back from time to time, he saw the party on
the beach shoulder the baggage and disappear into the dense green wall
of vegetation.
* * * * *
They came out upon an inchoate clearing, and saw gangs of peons at work
chopping down and grubbing out the roots of the virgin tropic forest so
that rubber trees for the manufacture of automobile tires might be
planted to replace it. Leoncia, beside her father, walked in the lead.
Her brothers, Ricardo and Alesandro, in the middle, were burdened with
the dunnage, as were Francis and Henry, who brought up the rear. And
this strange procession was met by a slender, straight-backed,
hidalgo-appearing, elderly gentleman, who leaped his horse across
tree-trunks and stump-holes in order to gain to them.
He was off his horse, at sight of Enrico, sombrero in hand in
recognition of Leoncia, his hand extended to Enrico in greeting of
ancient friendship, his lips wording words and his eyes expressing
admiration to Enrico’s daughter.
The talk was in rapid-fire Spanish, and the request for horses preferred
and qualifiedly granted, ere the introduction of the two Morgans took
place. The haciendado’s horse, after the Latin fashion, was immediately
Leoncia’s, and, without ado, he shortened the stirrups and placed her
astride in the saddle. A murrain, he explained, had swept his plantation
of riding animals; but his chief overseer still possessed a
fair-conditioned one which was Enrico’s as soon as it could be procured.
His handshake to Henry and Francis was hearty as well as dignified, as
he took two full minutes ornately to state that any friend of his dear
friend Enrico was his friend. When Enrico asked the haciendado about the
trails up toward the Cordilleras and mentioned oil, Francis pricked up
his ears.
“Don’t tell me, Senor,” he began, “that they have located oil in
Panama?”
“They have,” the haciendado nodded gravely. “We knew of the oil ooze,
and had known of it for generations. But it was the Hermosillo Company
that sent its Gringo engineers in secretly and then bought up the land.
They say it is a great field. But I know nothing of oil myself. They
have many wells, and have bored much, and so much oil have they that it
is running away over the landscape. They say they cannot choke it
entirely down, such is the volume and pressure. What they need is the
pipe-line to ocean-carriage, which they have begun to build. In the
meantime it flows away down the canyons, an utter loss of incredible
proportion.”
“Have they built any tanks?” Francis demanded, his mind running eagerly
on Tampico Petroleum, to which most of his own fortune was pledged, and
of which, despite the rising stock-market, he had heard nothing since
his departure from New York.
The haciendado shook his head.
“Transportation,” he explained. “The freight from tide-water to the
gushers by mule-back has been prohibitive. But they have impounded much
of it. They have lakes of oil, great reservoirs in the hollows of the
hills, earthen-dammed, and still they cannot choke down the flow, and
still the precious substance flows down the canyons.”
“Have they roofed these reservoirs?” Francis inquired, remembering a
disastrous fire in the early days of Tampico Petroleum.
“No, Senor.”
Francis shook his head disapprovingly.
“They should be roofed,” he said. “A match from the drunken or
revengeful hand of any peon could set the whole works off. It’s poor
business, poor business.”
“But I am not the Hermosillo,” the haciendado said.
“For the Hermosillo Company, I meant, Senor,” Francis explained. “I am
an oil-man. I have paid through the nose to the tune of hundreds of
thousands for similar accidents or crimes. One never knows just how they
happen. What one does know is that they do happen——”
What more Francis might have said about the expediency of protecting oil
reservoirs from stupid or wilful peons, was never to be known; for, at
the moment, the chief overseer of the plantation, stick in hand, rode
up, half his interest devoted to the newcomers, the other half to the
squad of peons working close at hand.
“Senor Ramirez, will you favor me by dismounting,” his employer, the
haciendado, politely addressed him, at the same time introducing him to
the strangers as soon as he had dismounted.
“The animal is yours, friend Enrico,” the haciendado said. “If it dies,
please return at your easy convenience the saddle and gear. And if your
convenience be not easy, please do not remember that there is to be any
return, save ever and always, of your love for me. I regret that you and
your party cannot now partake of my hospitality. But the Jefe is a
bloodhound, I know. We shall do our best to send him astray.”
With Leoncia and Enrico mounted, and the gear made fast to the saddles
by leather thongs, the cavalcade started, Alesandro and Ricardo clinging
each to a stirrup of their father’s saddle and trotting alongside. This
was for making greater haste, and was emulated by Francis and Henry, who
clung to Leoncia’s stirrups. Fast to the pommel of her saddle was the
bag of silver dollars.
“It is some mistake,” the haciendado was explaining to his overseer.
“Enrico Solano is an honorable man. Anything to which he pledges himself
is honorable. He has pledged himself to this, whatever it may be, and
yet is Mariano Vercara é Hijos on their trail. We shall mislead him if
he comes this way.”
“And here he comes,” the overseer remarked, “without luck so far in
finding horses.” Casually he turned on the laboring peons and with
horrible threats urged them to do at least half a day’s decent work in a
day.
From the corner of his eye, the haciendado observed the fast-walking
group of men, with Alvarez Torres in the lead; but, as if he had not
noticed, he conferred with his overseer about the means of grubbing out
the particular stump the peons were working on.
He returned the greeting of Torres pleasantly, and inquired politely,
with a touch of devilry, if he led the party of men on some
oil-prospecting adventure.
“No, Senor,” Torres answered. “We are in search of Senor Enrico Solano,
his daughter, his sons, and two tall Gringos with them. It is the
Gringos we want. They have passed this way, Senor?”
“Yes, they have passed. I imagined they, too, were in some oil
excitement, such was their haste that prevented them from courteously
passing the time of day and stating their destination. Have they
committed some offence? But I should not ask. Senor Enrico Solano is too
honorable a man——”
“Which way did they go?” the Jefe demanded, thrusting himself
breathlessly forward from the rear of his gendarmes with whom he had
just caught up.
And while the haciendado and his overseer temporized and prevaricated,
and indicated an entirely different direction, Torres noted one of the
peons, leaning on his spade, listen intently. And still while the Jefe
was being misled and was giving orders to proceed on the false scent,
Torres flashed a silver dollar privily to the listening peon. The peon
nodded his head in the right direction, caught the coin unobserved, and
applied himself to his digging at the root of the huge stump.
Torres countermanded the Jefe’s order.
“We will go the other way,” Torres said, with a wink to the Jefe. “A
little bird has told me that our friend here is mistaken and that they
have gone the other way.”
As the posse departed on the hot trail, the haciendado and his overseer
looked at each other in consternation and amazement. The overseer made a
movement of his lips for silence, and looked swiftly at the group of
laborers. The offending peon was working furiously and absorbedly, but
another peon, with a barely perceptible nod of head, indicated him to
the overseer.
“There’s the little bird,” the overseer cried, striding to the traitor
and shaking him violently.
Out of the peon’s rags flew the silver dollar.
“Ah, ha,” said the haciendado, grasping the situation. “He has become
suddenly affluent. This is horrible, that my peons should be wealthy.
Doubtless, he has murdered some one for all that sum. Beat him, and make
him confess.”
The creature, on his knees, the stick of the overseer raining blows on
his head and back, made confession of what he had done to earn the
dollar.
“Beat him, beat him some more, beat him to death, the beast who betrayed
my dearest friends,” the haciendado urged placidly. “But no——caution. Do
not beat him to death, but nearly so. We are short of labor now and
cannot afford the full measure of our just resentment. Beat him to hurt
him much, but that he shall be compelled to lay off work no more than a
couple of days.”
Of the immediately subsequent agonies, adventures, and misadventures of
the peon, a volume might be written which would be the epic of his life.
Besides, to be beaten nearly to death is not nice to contemplate or
dwell upon. Let it suffice to tell that when he had received no more
than part of his beating; he wrenched free, leaving half his rags in the
overseer’s grasp, and fled madly for the jungle, outfooting the overseer
who was unused to rapid locomotion save when on a horse’s back.
Such was the speed of the wretched creature’s flight, spurred on by the
pain of his lacerations and the fear of the overseer, that, plunging
wildly on, he overtook the Solano party and plunged out of the jungle
and into them as they were crossing a shallow stream, and fell upon his
knees, whimpering for mercy. He whimpered because of his betrayal of
them. But this they did not know, and Francis, seeing his pitiable
condition, lingered behind long enough to unscrew the metal top from a
pocket flask and revive him with a drink of half the contents. Then
Francis hastened on, leaving the poor devil muttering inarticulate
thanks ere he dived off into the sheltering jungle in a different
direction. But, underfed, overworked, his body gave way, and he sank
down in collapse in the green covert.
Next, Alvarez Torres in the lead and tracking like a hound, the
gendarmes at his back, the Jefe panting in the rear from shortness of
breath, the pursuit arrived at the stream. The foot-marks of the peon,
still wet on the dry stones beyond the margin of the stream, caught
Torres’ eye. In a trice, by what little was left of his garments, the
peon was dragged out. On his knees, which portion of his anatomy he was
destined to occupy much this day, he begged for mercy and received his
interrogation. And he denied knowledge of the Solano party. He, who had
betrayed and been beaten, but who had received only succor from those he
had betrayed, felt stir in him some atom of gratitude and good. He
denied knowledge of the Solanos since in the clearing where he had sold
them for the silver dollar. Torres’ stick fell upon his head, five
times, ten times, and went on falling with the certitude that in all
eternity there would be no cessation unless he told the truth. And,
after all, he was a miserable and wretched thing, spirit-broken by
beatings from the cradle, and the sting of Torres’ stick, with the
threat of the plenitude of the stick that meant the death his own owner,
the haciendado, could not afford, made him give in and point the way of
the chase.
But his day of tribulation had only begun. Scarcely had he betrayed the
Solanos the second time, and still on his knees, when the haciendado,
with the posse of neighboring haciendados and overseers he had called to
his help, burst upon the scene astride sweating horses.
“My peon, senors,” announced the haciendado, itching to be at him. “You
maltreat him.”
“And why not?” demanded the Jefe.
“Because he is mine to maltreat, and I wish to do it myself.”
The peon crawled and squirmed to the Jefe’s feet and begged and
entreated not to be given up. But he begged for mercy where was no
mercy.
“Certainly, senor,” the Jefe said to the haciendado. “We give him back
to you. We must uphold the law, and he is your property. Besides, we
have no further use for him. Yet is he a most excellent peon, senor. He
has done what no peon has ever done in the history of Panama. He has
told the truth twice in one day.”
His hands tied together in front of him and hitched by a rope to the
horn of the overseer’s saddle, the peon was towed away on the back-track
with a certain apprehension that the worst of his beatings for that day
was very imminent. Nor was he mistaken. Back at the plantation, he was
tied like an animal to a post of a barbed wire fence, while his owner
and the friends of his owner who had helped in the capture went into the
hacienda to take their twelve o’clock breakfast. After that, he knew
what he was to receive. But the barbed wire of the fence, and the lame
mare in the paddock behind it, built an idea in the desperate mind of
the peon. Though the sharp barbs of the wire again and again cut his
wrist, he quickly sawed through his bonds, free save for the law,
crawled under the fence, led the lame mare through the gate, mounted her
barebacked, and, with naked heels tattooing her ribs, galloped her away
toward the safety of the Cordilleras.