While Francis and the peon hurried up the ravine-trail in safety, the
ravine itself, below where the oil flowed in, had become a river of
flame, which drove the Jefe, Torres, and the gendarmes to scale the
steep wall of the ravine. At the same time the party of haciendados in
pursuit of the peon was compelled to claw back and up to escape out of
the roaring canyon.
Ever the peon glanced back over his shoulder, until, with a cry of joy,
he indicated a second black-smoke pillar rising in the air beyond the
first burning well.
“More,” he chuckled. “There are more wells. They will all burn. And so
shall they and all their race pay for the many blows they have beaten on
me. And there is a lake of oil there, like the sea, like Juchitan Inlet
it is so big.”
And Francis recollected the lake of oil about which the haciendado had
told him—that, containing at least five million barrels which could not
yet be piped to sea transport, lay open to the sky, merely in a natural
depression in the ground and contained by an earth dam.
“How much are you worth?” he demanded of the peon with apparent
irrelevance.
But the peon could not understand.
“How much are your clothes worth—all you’ve got on?”
“Half a peso, nay, half of a half peso,” the peon admitted ruefully,
surveying what was left of his tattered rags.
“And other property?”
The wretched creature shrugged his shoulders in token of his utter
destitution, then added bitterly:
“I possess nothing but a debt. I owe two hundred and fifty pesos. I am
tied to it for life, damned with it for life like a man with a cancer.
That is why I am a slave to the haciendado.”
“Huh!” Francis could not forbear to grin. “Worth two hundred and fifty
pesos less than nothing, not even a cipher, a sheer abstraction of a
minus quantity without existence save in the mathematical imagination of
man, and yet here you are burning up not less than millions of pesos’
worth of oil. And if the strata is loose and erratic and the oil leaks
up outside the tubing, the chances are that the oil-body of the entire
field is ignited—say a billion dollars’ worth. Say, for an abstraction
enjoying two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of non-existence, you are
some hombre, believe me.”
Nothing of which the peon understood save the word “hombre.”
“I am a man,” he proclaimed, thrusting out his chest and straightening
up his bruised head. “I am a hombre and I am a Maya.”
“Maya Indian—you?” Francis scoffed.
“Half Maya,” was the reluctant admission. “My father is pure Maya. But
the Maya women of the Cordilleras did not satisfy him. He must love a
mixed-breed woman of the _tierra caliente_. I was so born; but she
afterward betrayed him for a Barbadoes nigger, and he went back to the
Cordilleras to live. And, like my father, I was born to love a mixed
breed of the _tierra caliente_. She wanted money, and my head was
fevered with want of her, and I sold myself to be a peon for two hundred
pesos. And I saw never her nor the money again. For five years I have
been a peon. For five years I have slaved and been beaten, and behold,
at the end of five years my debt is not two hundred but two hundred and
fifty pesos.”
* * * * *
And while Francis Morgan and the long-suffering Maya half-breed plodded
on deeper into the Cordilleras to overtake their party, and while the
oil fields of Juchitan continued to go up in increasing smoke, still
farther on, in the heart of the Cordilleras, were preparing other events
destined to bring together all pursuers and all pursued—Francis and
Henry and Leoncia and their party; the peon; the party of the
haciendados; and the gendarmes of the Jefe, and, along with them,
Alvarez Torres, eager to win for himself not only the promised reward of
Thomas Regan but the possession of Leoncia Solano.
In a cave sat a man and a woman. Pretty the latter was, and young, a
_mestiza_, or half-caste woman. By the light of a cheap kerosene lamp
she read aloud from a calf-bound tome which was a Spanish translation of
Blackstone. Both were barefooted and bare-armed, clad in hooded
gabardines of sackcloth. Her hood lay back on her shoulders, exposing
her black and generous head of hair. But the old man’s hood was cowled
about his head after the fashion of a monk. The face, lofty and ascetic,
beaked with power, was pure Spanish. Don Quixote might have worn
precisely a similar face. But there was a difference. The eyes of this
old man were closed in the perpetual dark of the blind. Never could he
behold a windmill at which to tilt.
He sat, while the pretty _mestiza_ read to him, listening and brooding,
for all the world in the pose of Rodin’s “Thinker.” Nor was he a
dreamer, nor a tilter of windmills, like Don Quixote. Despite his
blindness, that ever veiled the apparent face of the world in
invisibility, he was a man of action, and his soul was anything but
blind, penetrating unerringly beneath the show of things to the heart
and the soul of the world and reading its inmost sins and rapacities and
noblenesses and virtues.
He lifted his hand and put a pause in the reading, while he thought
aloud from the context of the reading.
“The law of man,” he said with slow certitude, “is to-day a game of
wits. Not equity, but wit, is the game of law to-day. The law in its
inception was good; but the way of the law, the practice of it, has led
men off into false pursuits. They have mistaken the way for the goal,
the means for the end. Yet is law law, and necessary, and good. Only,
law, in its practice to-day, has gone astray. Judges and lawyers engage
in competitions and affrays of wit and learning, quite forgetting the
plaintiffs and defendants, before them and paying them, who are seeking
equity and justice and not wit and learning.
“Yet is old Blackstone right. Under it all, at the bottom of it all, at
the beginning of the building of the edifice of the law, is the quest,
the earnest and sincere quest of righteous men, for justice and equity.
But what is it that the Preacher said? ‘They made themselves many
inventions.’ And the law, good in its beginning, has been invented out
of all its intent, so that it serves neither litigants nor injured ones,
but merely the fatted judges and the lean and hungry lawyers who achieve
names and paunches if they prove themselves cleverer than their
opponents and than the judges who render decision.”
He paused, still posed as Rodin’s “Thinker,” and meditated, while the
_mestiza_ woman waited his customary signal to resume the reading. At
last, as out of a profound of thought in which universes had been
weighed in the balance, he spoke:
“But we have law, here in the Cordilleras of Panama, that is just and
right and all of equity. We work for no man and serve not even paunches.
Sack-cloth and not broadcloth conduces to the equity of judicial
decision. Read on, Mercedes. Blackstone is always right if always
rightly read—which is what is called a paradox, and is what modern law
ordinarily is, a paradox. Read on. Blackstone is the very foundation of
human law—but, oh, how many wrongs are cleverly committed by clever men
in his name!”
Ten minutes later, the blind thinker raised his head, sniffed the air,
and gestured the girl to pause. Taking her cue from him, she, too,
sniffed:
“Perhaps it is the lamp, O Just One,” she suggested.
“It is burning oil,” he said. “But it is not the lamp. It is from far
away. Also, have I heard shooting in the canyons.”
“I heard nothing——” she began.
“Daughter, you who see have not the need to hear that I have. There have
been many shots fired in the canyons. Order my children to investigate
and make report.”
Bowing reverently to the old man who could not see but who, by
keen-trained hearing and conscious timing of her every muscular action,
knew that she had bowed, the young woman lifted the curtain of blankets
and passed out into the day. At either side the cave-mouth sat a man of
the peon class. Each was armed with rifle and machete, while through
their girdles were thrust naked-bladed knives. At the girl’s order, both
arose and bowed, not to her, but to the command and the invisible source
of the command. One of them tapped with the back of his machete against
the stone upon which he had been sitting, then laid his ear to the stone
and listened. In truth, the stone was but the out-jut of a vein of
metalliferous ore that extended across and through the heart of the
mountain. And beyond, on the opposite slope, in an eyrie commanding the
magnificent panorama of the descending slopes of the Cordilleras, sat
another peon who first listened with his ear pressed to similar
metalliferous quartz, and next tapped response with his machete. After
that, he stepped half a dozen paces to a tall tree, half-dead, reached
into the hollow heart of it, and pulled on the rope within as a man
might pull who was ringing a steeple bell.
But no sound was evoked. Instead, a lofty branch, fifty feet above his
head, sticking out from the main-trunk like a semaphore arm, moved up
and down like the semaphore arm it was. Two miles away, on a mountain
crest, the branch of a similar semaphore tree replied. Still beyond
that, and farther down the slopes, the flashing of a hand-mirror in the
sun heliographed the relaying of the blind man’s message from the cave.
And all that portion of the Cordilleras became voluble with coded speech
of vibrating ore-veins, sun-flashings, and waving tree-branches.
* * * * *
While Enrico Solano, slenderly erect on his horse as an Indian youth and
convoyed on either side by his sons, Alesandro and Ricardo, hanging to
his saddle trappings, made the best of the time afforded them by
Francis’ rearguard battle with the gendarmes, Leoncia, on her mount, and
Henry Morgan, lagged behind. One or the other was continually glancing
back for the sight of Francis overtaking them. Watching his opportunity,
Henry took the back-trail. Five minutes afterward, Leoncia, no less
anxious than he for Francis’ safety, tried to turn her horse about. But
the animal, eager for the companionship of its mate ahead, refused to
obey the rein, cut up and pranced, and then deliberately settled into a
balk. Dismounting and throwing her reins on the ground in the Panamanian
method of tethering a saddle horse, Leoncia took the back-trail on foot.
So rapidly did she follow Henry, that she was almost treading on his
heels when he encountered Francis and the peon. The next moment, both
Henry and Francis were chiding her for her conduct; but in both their
voices was the involuntary tenderness of love, which pleased neither to
hear the other uttering.
Their hearts more active than their heads, they were caught in total
surprise by the party of haciendados that dashed out upon them with
covering rifles from the surrounding jungle. Despite the fact that they
had thus captured the runaway peon, whom they proceeded to kick and
cuff, all would have been well with Leoncia and the two Morgans had the
owner of the peon, the old-time friend of the Solano family, been
present. But an attack of the malarial fever, which was his due every
third day, had stretched him out in a chill near the burning oilfield.
Nevertheless, though by their blows they reduced the peon to weepings
and pleadings on his knees, the haciendados were courteously gentle to
Leoncia and quite decent to Francis and Henry, even though they tied the
hands of the latter two behind them in preparation for the march up the
ravine slope to where the horses had been left. But upon the peon, with
Latin-American cruelty, they continued to reiterate their rage.
Yet were they destined to arrive nowhere, by themselves, with their
captives. Shouts of joy heralded the debouchment upon the scene of the
Jefe’s gendarmes and of the Jefe and Alvarez Torres. Arose at once the
rapid-fire, staccato, bastard-Latin of all men of both parties of
pursuers, trying to explain and demanding explanation at one and the
same time. And while the farrago of all talking simultaneously and of no
one winning anywhere in understanding, made anarchy of speech, Torres,
with a nod to Francis and a sneer of triumph to Henry, ranged before
Leoncia and bowed low to her in true and deep hidalgo courtesy and
respect.
“Listen!” he said, low-voiced, as she rebuffed him with an arm movement
of repulsion. “Do not misunderstand me. Do not mistake me. I am here to
save you, and, no matter what may happen, to protect you. You are the
lady of my dreams. I will die for you—yes, and gladly, though far more
gladly would I live for you.”
“I do not understand,” she replied curtly. “I do not see life or death
in the issue. We have done no wrong. I have done no wrong, nor has my
father. Nor has Francis Morgan, nor has Henry Morgan. Therefore, sir,
the matter is not a question of life or death.”
Henry and Francis, shouldering close to Leoncia, on either side,
listened and caught through the hubble-bubble of many voices the
conversation of Leoncia and Torres.
“It is a question absolute of certain death by execution for Henry
Morgan,” Torres persisted. “Proven beyond doubt is his conviction for
the murder of Alfaro Solano, who was your own full-blood uncle and your
father’s own full-blood brother. There is no chance to save Henry
Morgan. But Francis Morgan can I save in all surety, if——”
“If?” Leoncia queried, with almost the snap of jaws of a she-leopard.
“If ... you prove kind to me, and marry me,” Torres said with
magnificent steadiness, although two Gringos, helpless, their hands tied
behind their backs, glared at him through their eyes their common desire
for his immediate extinction.
Torres, in a genuine outburst of his passion, though his rapid glances
had assured him of the helplessness of the two Morgans, seized her hands
in his and urged:
“Leoncia, as your husband I might be able to do something for Henry.
Even may it be possible for me to save his life and his neck, if he will
yield to leaving Panama immediately.”
“You Spanish dog!” Henry snarled at him, struggling with his tied hands
behind his back in an effort to free them.
“Gringo cur!” Torres retorted, as, with an open backhanded blow, he
struck Henry on the mouth.
On the instant Henry’s foot shot out, and the kick in Torres’ side drove
him staggering in the direction of Francis, who was no less quick with a
kick of his own. Back and forth like a shuttlecock between the
battledores, Torres was kicked from one man to the other, until the
gendarmes seized the two Gringos and began to beat them in their
helplessness. Torres not only urged the gendarmes on, but himself drew a
knife; and a red tragedy might have happened with offended
Latin-American blood up and raging, had not a score or more of armed men
silently appeared and silently taken charge of the situation. Some of
the mysterious newcomers were clad in cotton singlets and trousers, and
others were in cowled gabardines of sackcloth.
The gendarmes and haciendados recoiled in fear, crossing themselves,
muttering prayers and ejaculating: “The Blind Brigand!” “The Cruel Just
One!” “They are his people!” “We are lost.”
But the much-beaten peon sprang forward and fell on his bleeding knees
before a stern-faced man who appeared to be the leader of the Blind
Brigand’s men. From the mouth of the peon poured forth a stream of loud
lamentation and outcry for justice.
“You know that justice to which you appeal?” the leader spoke
gutturally.
“Yes, the Cruel Justice,” the peon replied. “I know what it means to
appeal to the Cruel Justice, yet do I appeal, for I seek justice and my
cause is just.”
“I, too, demand the Cruel Justice!” Leoncia cried with flashing eyes,
although she added in an undertone to Francis and Henry: “Whatever the
Cruel Justice is.”
“It will have to go some to be unfairer than the justice we can expect
from Torres and the Jefe,” Henry replied in similar undertones, then
stepped forward boldly before the cowled leader and said loudly: “And I
demand the Cruel Justice.”
The leader nodded.
“Me, too,” Francis murmured low, and then made loud demand.
The gendarmes did not seem to count in the matter, while the haciendados
signified their willingness to abide by whatever justice the Blind
Brigand might mete out to them. Only the Jefe objected.
“Maybe you don’t know who I am,” he blustered. “I am Mariano Vercara è
Hijos, of long illustrious name and long and honorable career. I am Jefe
Politico of San Antonio, the highest friend of the governor, and high in
the confidence of the government of the Republic of Panama. I am the
law. There is but one law and one justice, which is of Panama and not
the Cordilleras. I protest against this mountain law you call the Cruel
Justice. I shall send an army against your Blind Brigand, and the
buzzards will peck his bones in San Juan.”
“Remember,” Torres sarcastically warned the irate Jefe, “that this is
not San Antonio, but the bush of Juchitan. Also, you have no army.”
“Have these two men been unjust to any one who has appealed to the Cruel
Justice?” the leader asked abruptly.
“Yes,” asseverated the peon. “They have beaten me. Everybody has beaten
me. They, too, have beaten me and without cause. My hand is bloody. My
body is bruised and torn. Again I appeal to the Cruel Justice, and I
charge these two men with injustice.”
The leader nodded and to his own men indicated the disarming of the
prisoners and the order of the march.
“Justice!—I demand equal justice!” Henry cried out. “My hands are tied
behind my back. All hands should be so tied, or no hands be so tied.
Besides, it is very difficult to walk when one is so tied.”
The shadow of a smile drifted the lips of the leader as he directed his
men to cut the lashings that invidiously advertised the inequality
complained of.
“Huh!” Francis grinned to Leoncia and Henry. “I have a vague memory that
somewhere around a million years ago I used to live in a quiet little
old burg called New York, where we foolishly thought we were the wildest
and wickedest that ever cracked at a golf ball, electrocuted an
Inspector of Police, battled with Tammany, or bid four nullos with five
sure tricks in one’s own hand.”
“Huh!” Henry vouchsafed half an hour later, as the trail, from a lesser
crest, afforded a view of higher crests beyond. “Huh! and hell’s bells!
These gunny-sack chaps are not animals of savages. Look, Henry! They are
semaphoring! See that near tree there, and that big one across the
canyon. Watch the branches wave.”
* * * * *
Blindfold for a number of miles at the last, the prisoners, still
blindfolded, were led into the cave where the Cruel Justice reigned.
When the bandages were removed, they found themselves in a vast and
lofty cavern, lighted by many torches, and, confronting them, a blind
and white-haired man in sackcloth seated on a rock-hewn throne, with,
beneath him, her shoulder at his knees, a pretty mestiza woman.
The blind man spoke, and in his voice was the thin and bell-like silver
of age and weary wisdom.
“The Cruel Justice has been invoked. Speak! Who demands decision and
equity?”
All held back, and not even the Jefe could summon heart of courage to
protest against Cordilleras law.
“There is a woman present,” continued the Blind Brigand. “Let her speak
first. All mortal men and women are guilty of something or else are
charged by their fellows with some guilt.”
Henry and Francis were for with-straining her, but with an equal smile
to them she addressed the Cruel Just One in clear and ringing tones:
“I only have aided the man I am engaged to marry to escape from death
for a murder he did not commit.”
“You have spoken,” said the Blind Brigand. “Come forward to me.”
Piloted by sackcloth men, while the two Morgans who loved her were
restless and perturbed, she was made to kneel at the blind man’s knees.
The mestiza girl placed his hand on Leoncia’s head. For a full and
solemn minute silence obtained, while the steady fingers of the Blind
One rested about her forehead and registered the pulse-beats of her
temples. Then he removed his hand and leaned back to decision.
“Arise, Senorita,” he pronounced. “Your heart is clean of evil. You go
free.—Who else appeals to the Cruel Justice?”
Francis immediately stepped forward.
“I likewise helped the man to escape from an undeserved death. The man
and I are of the same name, and, distantly, of the same blood.”
He, too, knelt, and felt the soft finger-lobes play delicately over his
brows and temples and come to rest finally on the pulse of his wrist.
“It is not all clear to me,” said the Blind One. “You are not at rest
nor at peace with your soul. There is trouble within you that vexes
you.”
Suddenly the peon stepped forth and spoke unbidden, his voice evoking a
thrill as of the shock of blasphemy from the sackcloth men.
“Oh, Just One, let this man go,” said the peon passionately. “Twice was
I weak and betrayed him to his enemy this day, and twice this day has he
protected me from my enemy and saved me.”
And the peon, once again on his knees, but this time at the knees of
justice, thrilled and shivered with superstitious awe, as he felt wander
over him the light but firm finger-touches of the strangest judge man
ever knelt before. Bruises and lacerations were swiftly explored even to
the shoulders and down the back.
“The other man goes free,” the Cruel Just One announced. “Yet is there
trouble and unrest within him. Is one here who knows and will speak up?”
And Francis knew on the instant the trouble the blind man had divined
within him—the full love that burned in him for Leoncia and that
threatened to shatter the full loyalty he must ever bear to Henry. No
less quick was Leoncia in knowing, and could the blind man have beheld
the involuntary glance of knowledge the man and woman threw at each
other and the immediate embarrassment of averted eyes, he could have
unerringly diagnosed Francis’ trouble. The mestiza girl saw, and with a
leap at her heart scented a love affair. Likewise had Henry seen and
unconsciously scowled.
The Just One spoke:
“An affair of heart undoubtedly,” he dismissed the matter. “The eternal
vexation of woman in the heart of man. Nevertheless, this man stands
free. Twice, in the one day, has he succored the man who twice betrayed
him. Nor has the trouble within him aught to do with the aid he rendered
the man said to be sentenced to death undeserved. Remains to question
this last man; also to settle for this beaten creature before me who
twice this day has proved weak out of selfishness, and who has just now
proved bravely strong out of unselfishness for another.”
He leaned forward and played his fingers searchingly over the face and
brows of the peon.
“Are you afraid to die?” he asked suddenly.
“Great and Holy One, I am sore afraid to die,” was the peon’s reply.
“Then say that you have lied about this man, say that his twice
succoring of you was a lie, and you shall live.”
Under the Blind One’s fingers the peon cringed and wilted.
“Think well,” came the solemn warning. “Death is not good. To be forever
unmoving, as the clod and rock, is not good. Say that you have lied and
life is yours. Speak!”
But, although his voice shook from the exquisiteness of his fear, the
peon rose to the full spiritual stature of a man.
“Twice this day did I betray him, Holy One. But my name is not Peter.
Not thrice in this day will I betray him. I am sore afraid, but I cannot
betray him thrice.”
The blind judge leaned back and his face beamed and glowed as if
transfigured.
“Well spoken,” he said. “You have the makings of a man. I now lay my
sentence upon you: From now on, through all your days under the sun, you
shall always think like a man, act like a man, be a man. Better to die a
man any time, than live a beast forever in time. The Ecclesiast was
wrong. A dead lion is always better than a live dog. Go free, regenerate
son, go free.”
But, as the peon, at a signal from the mestiza, started to rise, the
blind judge stopped him.
“In the beginning, O man who but this day has been born man, what was
the cause of all your troubles?”
“My heart was weak and hungry, O Holy One, for a mixed-breed woman of
the tierra caliente. I myself am mountain born. For her I put myself in
debt to the haciendado for the sum of two hundred pesos. She fled with
the money and another man. I remained the slave of the haciendado, who
is not a bad man, but who, first and always, is a haciendado. I have
toiled, been beaten, and have suffered for five long years, and my debt
is now become two hundred and fifty pesos, and yet I possess naught but
these rags and a body weak from insufficient food.”
“Was she wonderful?—this woman of the tierra caliente?” the blind judge
queried softly.
“I was mad for her, Holy One. I do not think now that she was wonderful.
But she was wonderful then. The fever of her burned my heart and brain
and made a task-slave of me, though she fled in the night and I knew her
never again.”
The peon waited, on his knees, with bowed head, while, to the amazement
of all, the Blind Brigand sighed deeply and seemed to forget time and
place. His hand strayed involuntarily and automatically to the head of
the mestiza, caressed the shining black hair and continued to caress it
while he spoke.
“The woman,” he said, with such gentleness that his voice, still clear
and bell-like, was barely above a whisper. “Ever the woman wonderful.
All women are wonderful ... to man. They love our fathers; they birth
us; we love them; they birth our sons to love their daughters and to
call their daughters wonderful; and this has always been and shall
continue always to be until the end of man’s time and man’s loving on
earth.”
A profound of silence fell within the cavern, while the Cruel Just One
meditated for a space. At the last, with a touch dared of familiarity,
the pretty mestiza touched him and roused him to remembrance of the peon
still crouching at his feet.
“I pronounce judgment,” he spoke. “You have received many blows. Each
blow on your body is quittance in full of the entire debt to the
haciendado. Go free. But remain in the mountains, and next time love a
mountain woman, since woman you must have, and since woman is inevitable
and eternal in the affairs of men. Go free. You are half Maya?”
“I am half Maya,” the peon murmured. “My father is a Maya.”
“Arise and go free. And remain in the mountains with your Maya father.
The tierra caliente is no place for the Cordilleras-born. The haciendado
is not present, and therefore cannot be judged. And after all he is but
a haciendado. His fellow haciendados, too, go free.”
The Cruel Just One waited, and, without waiting, Henry stepped forward.
“I am the man,” he stated boldly, “sentenced to the death undeserved for
the killing of a man I did not kill. He was the blood-uncle of the girl
I love, whom I shall marry if there be true justice here in this cave in
the Cordilleras.”
But the Jefe interrupted.
“Before a score of witnesses he threatened to his face to kill the man.
Within the hour we found him bending over the man’s dead body that was
yet warm and limber with departing life.”
“He speaks true,” Henry affirmed. “I did threaten the man, both of us
heady from strong drink and hot blood. I was so found, bending over his
dead warm body. Yet did I not kill him. Nor do I know, nor can I guess,
the coward hand in the dark that knifed out his life through the back
from behind.”
“Kneel both of you, that I may interrogate you,” the Blind Brigand
commanded.
Long he interrogated with his sensitive, questioning fingers. Long, and
still longer, unable to attain decision, his fingers played over the
faces and pulses of the two men.
“Is there a woman?” he asked Henry Morgan pointedly.
“A woman wonderful. I love her.”
“It is good to be so vexed, for a man unvexed by woman is only half a
man,” the blind judge vouchsafed. He addressed the Jefe. “No woman vexes
you, yet are you troubled. But this man”—indicating Henry—“I cannot tell
if all his vexation be due to woman. Perhaps, in part, it may be due to
you, or to what some prompting of evil may make him meditate against
you. Stand up, both men of you. I cannot judge between you. Yet is there
the test infallible, the test of the Snake and the Bird. Infallible it
is, as God is infallible, for by such ways does God still maintain truth
in the affairs of men. As well does Blackstone mention just such methods
of determining the truth by trial and ordeal.”