To all intents it might have been a tiny bull-ring, that pit in the
heart of the Blind Brigand’s domain. Ten feet in depth and thirty in
diameter, with level floor and perpendicular wall, its natural formation
had required little work at the hands of man to complete its symmetry.
The sackcloth men, the haciendados, the gendarmes—all were present, save
for the Cruel Just One and the mestiza, and all were lined about the rim
of the pit, as an audience, to gaze down upon some bull-fight or
gladiatorial combat within the pit.
At command of the stern-faced leader of the sackcloth men who had
captured them, Henry and the Jefe descended down a short ladder into the
pit. The leader and several of the brigands accompanied them.
“Heaven alone knows what’s going to happen,” Henry laughed up in English
to Leoncia and Francis. “But if it’s rough and tumble, bite and gouge,
or Marquis of Queensbury or London Prize Ring, Mister Fat Jefe is my
meat. But that old blind one is clever, and the chances are he’s going
to put us at each other on some basis of evenness. In which case, do
you, my audience, if he gets me down, stick your thumbs up and make all
the noise you can. Depend upon it, if it’s he that’s down, all his crowd
will be thumbs up.”
The Jefe, overcome by the trap into which he had descended, in Spanish
addressed the leader.
“I shall not fight with this man. He is younger than I, and has better
wind. Also, the affair is illegal. It is not according to the law of the
Republic of Panama. It is extra-territorial and entirely unjudicial.”
“It is the Snake and the Bird,” the leader shut him off. “You shall be
the Snake. This rifle shall be in your hands. The other man shall be the
Bird. In his hand shall be the bell. Behold! Thus may you understand the
ordeal.”
At his command, one of the brigands was given the rifle and was
blindfolded. To another brigand, not blindfolded, was given a silver
bell.
“The man with the rifle is the Snake,” said the leader. “He has one shot
at the Bird who carries the bell.”
At signal to begin, the bandit with the bell, tinkled it at extended
arm’s length and sprang swiftly aside. The man with the rifle lowered it
as if to fire at the space just vacated and pretended to fire.
“You understand?” the leader demanded of Henry and the Jefe.
The former nodded, but the latter cried exultantly:
“And I am the Snake?”
“You are the Snake,” affirmed the leader.
And the Jefe was eager for the rifle, making no further protests against
the extra-territoriality of the proceedings.
“Are you going to try to get me?” Henry warned the Jefe.
“No, Senor Morgan. I am merely going to get you. I am one of the two
best shots in Panama. I have two score and more of medals. I can shoot
with my eyes shut. I can shoot in the dark. I have often shot, and with
precision, in the dark. Already may you count yourself a dead man.”
Only one cartridge was put into the rifle, ere it was handed to the Jefe
after he was blindfolded. Next, while Henry, equipped with the tell-tale
bell, was stationed directly across the pit, the Jefe was faced to the
wall and kept there while the brigands climbed out of the pit and drew
the ladder up after them. The leader, from above, spoke down:
“Listen carefully, Senor Snake, and make no move until you have heard.
The Snake has but one shot. The Snake cannot tamper with his blindfold.
If he so tampers it is our duty to see that he immediately dies. The
Snake has no time limit. He may take the rest of the day, and all of the
night, and the remainder of eternity ere he fires his one shot. As for
the Bird, the one rule is that never must the bell leave his hand, and
never may he stop the clapper of it from making the full noise intended
of the clapper against the sides of the bell. Should he do so, then will
he immediately die. We are here above you, both of you Senors, rifles in
hand, to see that you die the second you infract any of the rules. And
now, God be with the right, proceed!”
The Jefe turned slowly about and listened, while Henry, essaying
gingerly to move with the bell, caused it to tinkle.
The rifle was quick to bear upon the sound, and to pursue it as Henry
ran. With a quick shift he transferred the bell to the other extended
hand and ran back in the opposite direction, the rifle sweeping after
him in inexorable pursuit. But the Jefe was too cunning to risk all on a
chance shot, and slowly advanced across the arena. Henry stood still,
and the bell made no sound.
So unerringly had the Jefe’s ear located the last silvery tinkle, and so
straightly did he walk despite his blindfold, that he advanced just to
the right of Henry and directly at the bell. With infinite caution,
provoking no tinkle, Henry slightly raised his arm and permitted the
Jefe’s head to go under the bell with a bare inch of margin.
His rifle pointed, and within a foot of the pit-wall, the Jefe halted in
indecision, listened vainly for a moment, then made a further stride
that collided the rifle muzzle with the wall. He whirled about, and,
with the rifle extended, like any blind man felt out the air-space for
his enemy. The muzzle would have touched Henry had he not sprung away on
a noisy and zig-zag course.
In the center of the pit he came to a frozen pause. The Jefe stalked
past a yard to the side and collided with the opposite wall. He circled
the wall, walking cat-footed, his rifle forever feeling out into the
empty air. Next he ventured across the pit. After several such
crossings, during which the stationary bell gave him no clue, he adopted
a clever method. Tossing his hat on the ground for the mark of his
starting point, he crossed the edge of the pit on a shallow chord,
extended the chord by a pace farther along the wall, and felt his way
back along the new and longer chord. Again against the wall, he verified
the correctness of the parallelness of the two chords, by pacing back to
his hat. This time, with three paces along the wall from the hat, he
initiated his third chord.
Thus he combed the area of the pit, and Henry saw that he could not
escape such combing. Nor did he wait to be discovered. Tinkling the bell
as he ran and zigzagged and exchanging it from one hand to the other, he
froze into immobility in a new place.
The Jefe repeated the laborious combing out process; but Henry was not
minded longer to prolong the tension. He waited till the Jefe’s latest
chord brought him directly upon him. He waited till the rifle muzzle,
breast high, was within half a dozen inches of his heart. Then he
exploded into two simultaneous actions. He ducked lower than the rifle
and yelled “Fire!” in stentorian command.
So startled, the Jefe pulled the trigger, and the bullet sped above
Henry’s head. From above, the sackcloth men applauded wildly. The Jefe
tore off his blindfold and saw the smiling face of his foe.
“It is well—God has spoken,” announced the sackcloth leader, as he
descended into the pit. “The man uninjured is innocent. Remains now to
test the other man.”
“Me?” the Jefe almost shouted in his surprise and consternation.
“Greetings, Jefe,” Henry grinned. “You _did_ try to get me. It’s my turn
now. Pass over that rifle.”
But the Jefe, with a curse, in his disappointment and rage forgetting
that the rifle had contained only one cartridge, thrust the muzzle
against Henry’s heart and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a
metallic click.
“It is well,” said the leader, taking away the rifle and recharging it.
“Your conduct shall be reported. The test for you remains, yet must it
appear that you are not acting like God’s chosen man.”
Like a beaten bull in the ring seeking a way to escape and gazing up at
the amphitheatre of pitiless faces, so the Jefe looked up and saw only
the rifles of the sackcloth men, the triumphing faces of Leoncia and
Francis, the curious looks of his own gendarmes, and the blood-eager
faces of the haciendados that were like the faces of any bull-fight
audience.
The shadowy smile drifted the stern lips of the leader as he handed the
rifle to Henry and started to blindfold him.
“Why don’t you make him face the wall until I’m ready?” the Jefe
demanded, as the silver bell tinkled in his passion-convulsed hand.
“Because he is proven God’s man,” was the reply. “He has stood the test.
Therefore he cannot do a treacherous deed. You now must stand the test
of God. If you are true and honest, no harm can befall you from the
Snake. For such is God’s way.”
Far more successful as the hunter than as the hunted one, did the Jefe
prove. Across the pit from Henry, he strove to stand motionless; but out
of nervousness, as Henry’s rifle swept around on him, his hand trembled
and the bell tinkled. The rifle came almost to rest and wavered
ominously about the sound. In vain the Jefe tried to control his flesh
and still the bell.
But the bell tinkled on, and, in despair, he flung it away and threw
himself on the ground. But Henry, following the sound of his enemy’s
fall, lowered the rifle and pulled trigger. The Jefe yelled out in sharp
pain as the bullet perforated his shoulder, rose to his feet, cursed,
sprawled back on the ground, and lay there cursing.
* * * * *
Again in the cave, with the mestiza beside him at his knee, the Blind
Brigand gave judgment.
“This man who is wounded and who talks much of the law of the tierra
caliente, shall now learn Cordilleras law. By the test of the Snake and
the Bird has he been proven guilty. For his life a ransom of ten
thousand dollars gold shall be paid, or else shall he remain here, a
hewer of wood and a carrier of water, for the remainder of the time God
shall grant him to draw breath on earth. I have spoken, and I know that
my voice is God’s voice, and I know that God will not grant him long to
draw breath if the ransom be not forthcoming.”
A long silence obtained, during which even Henry, who could slay a foe
in the heat of combat, advertised that such cold-blooded promise of
murder was repugnant to him.
“The law is pitiless,” said the Cruel Just One; and again silence fell.
“Let him die for want of a ransom,” spoke one of the haciendados. “He
has proved a treacherous dog. Let him die a dog’s death.”
“What say you?” the Blind Brigand asked solemnly. “What say you, peon of
the many beatings, man new-born this day, half-Maya that you are and
lover of the woman wonderful? Shall this man die the dog’s death for
want of a ransom?”
“This man is a hard man,” spoke the peon. “Yet is my heart strangely
soft this day. Had I ten thousand gold I would pay his ransom myself.
Yea, O Holy One and Just, and had I two hundred and fifty pesos, even
would I pay off my debt to the haciendado of which I am absolved.”
The old man’s blind face lighted up to transfiguration.
“You, too, speak with God’s voice this day, regenerate one,” he
approved.
But Francis, who had been scribbling hurriedly in his check book, handed
a check, still wet with the ink, to the mestiza.
“I, too, speak,” he said. “Let not the man die the dog’s death he
deserves, proven treacherous hound that he is.”
The mestiza read the check aloud.
“It is not necessary to explain,” the Blind Brigand shut Francis off. “I
am a creature of reason, and have not lived always in the Cordilleras. I
was trained in business in Barcelona. I know the Chemical National Bank
of New York, and through my agents have had dealings with it aforetime.
The sum is for ten thousand dollars gold. This man who writes it has
told the truth already this day. The check is good. Further, I know he
will not stop payment. This man who thus pays the ransom of a foe is one
of three things: a very good man; a fool; or a very rich man. Tell me, O
Man, is there a woman wonderful?”
And Francis, not daring to glance to right or left, at Leoncia or Henry,
but gazing straight before him on the Blind Brigand’s face, answered
because he felt he must so answer:
“Yes, O Cruel Just One, there is a woman wonderful.”