the Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his
veiled his figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio
Grande border if you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but
if you take his horse, you take a thing the loss of which renders him
poor, indeed, and which enriches you not--if you are caught. For the
Kid there was no turning back now.
With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness.
After a five-mile gallop he drew in to the plainsman's jogging trot,
and rode north-eastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the
country well--its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great
wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches
where one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east;
for the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay his
hand upon the mane of the great gulf, the gamesome colt of the
greater waters.
So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and
looked out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.
Captain Boone, of the schooner _Flyaway_, stood near his skiff, which
one of his crew was guarding in the surf. When ready to sail he had
discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the
parallelogrammatic shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten. A
sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo. Meanwhile the
captain paced the sands, chewing profanely at his pocket store.
A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's
edge. His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted
at a man's experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the
sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown. His
hair was as black and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet
been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and
steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body,
for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a
little bulky when packed in the left armhole of one's vest. He
looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and
expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.
"Thinkin' of buyin' that'ar gulf, buddy?" asked the captain, made
sarcastic by his narrow escape from the tobaccoless voyage.
"Why, no," said the Kid gently, "I reckon not. I never saw it
before. I was just looking at it. Not thinking of selling it, are
you?"
"Not this trip," said the captain. "I'll send it to you C.O.D. when
I get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstanfooted lubber
with the chewin'. I ought to've weighed anchor an hour ago."
"Is that your ship out there?" asked the Kid.
"Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want to call a schooner a
ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But you better say Miller and
Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K.
Boone, skipper."
"Where are you going to?" asked the refugee.
"Buenas Tierras, coast of South America--I forgot what they called
the country the last time I was there. Cargo--lumber, corrugated
iron, and machetes."
"What kind of a country is it?" asked the Kid--"hot or cold?"
"Warmish, buddy," said the captain. "But a regular Paradise Lost for
elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened every
morning by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple tails,
and the sighin' of breezes in the posies and roses. And the
inhabitants never work, for they can reach out and pick steamer
baskets of choicest hothouse fruit without gettin' out of bed. And
there's no Sunday and no ice and no rent and no troubles and no use
and no nothin'. It's a great country for a man to go to sleep with,
and wait for somethin' to turn up. The bananays and oranges and
hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes from there."
"That sounds to me!" said the Kid, at last betraying interest.
"What'll the expressage be to take me out there with you?"
"Twenty-four dollars," said Captain Boone; "grub and transportation.
Second cabin. I haven't got a first cabin."
"You've got my company," said the Kid, pulling out a buckskin bag.
With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular
"blowout." The duel in Valdos's had cut short his season of
hilarity, but it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight
that it had made necessary.
"All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope your ma won't blame me
for this little childish escapade of yours." He beckoned to one of
the boat's crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you won't
get your feet wet."
Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet
drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his
desired state of beatitude--a state where he sang ancient maudlin
vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana
peels--until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from
his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing
in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition, to extend
the hospitality and courtesy due from the representative of a great
nation. "Don't disturb yourself," said the Kid easily. "I just
dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your camp
before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship
from Texas."
"Glad to see you, Mr.----," said the consul.
The Kid laughed.
"Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to me to hear it. I'm
called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country."
"I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that cane-bottom chair. Now
if you've come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These
dingies will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don't
understand their ways. Try a cigar?"
"Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't for my corn shucks
and the little bag in my back pocket I couldn't live a minute." He
took out his "makings," and rolled a cigarette.
"They speak Spanish here," said the consul. "You'll need an
interpreter. If there's anything I can do, why, I'd be delighted.
If you're buying fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort,
you'll want somebody who knows the ropes to look out for you."
"I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "about nine times better than I do
English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And
I'm not in the market for anything."
"You speak Spanish?" said Thacker thoughtfully. He regarded the Kid
absorbedly.
"You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued. "And you're from
Texas. And you can't be more than twenty or twenty-one. I wonder if
you've got any nerve."
"You got a deal of some kind to put through?" asked the Texan, with
unexpected shrewdness.
"Are you open to a proposition?" said Thacker.
"What's the use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I got into a little gun
frolic down in Laredo and plugged a white man. There wasn't any
Mexican handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just
for to smell the morning-glories and marigolds. Now, do you _sabe_?"
Thacker got up and closed the door.
"Let me see your hand," he said.
He took the Kid's left hand, and examined the back of it closely.
"I can do it," he said excitedly. "Your flesh is as hard as wood and
as healthy as a baby's. It will heal in a week."
"If it's a fist fight you want to back me for," said the Kid, "don't
put your money up yet. Make it gun work, and I'll keep you company.
But no barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me."
"It's easier than that," said Thacker. "Just step here, will you?"
Through the window he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house
with wide galleries rising amid the deep-green tropical foliage on a
wooded hill that sloped gently from the sea.
"In that house," said Thacker, "a fine old Castilian gentleman and
his wife are yearning to gather you into their arms and fill your
pockets with money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns half the
gold-mines in the country."
"You haven't been eating loco weed, have you?" asked the Kid.
"Sit down again," said Thacker, "and I'll tell you. Twelve years ago
they lost a kid. No, he didn't die--although most of 'em here do
from drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil even if
he wasn't but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some
Americans who were through here prospecting for gold had letters to
Señor Urique, and the boy was a favourite with them. They filled his
head with big stories about the States; and about a month after they
left, the kid disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed
himself away among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone to
New Orleans. He was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought,
but they never heard anything more of him. Old Urique has spent
thousands of dollars having him looked for. The madam was broken up
worst of all. The kid was her life. She wears mourning yet. But
they say she believes he'll come back to her some day, and never
gives up hope. On the back of the boy's left hand was tattooed a
flying eagle carrying a spear in his claws. That's old Urique's coat
of arms or something that he inherited in Spain."
The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at it curiously.
"That's it," said Thacker, reaching behind the official desk for his
bottle of smuggled brandy. "You're not so slow. I can do it. What
was I consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In a week I'll
have the eagle bird with the frog-sticker blended in so you'd think
you were born with it. I brought a set of the needles and ink just
because I was sure you'd drop in some day, Mr. Dalton."
"Oh, hell," said the Kid. "I thought I told you my name!"
"All right, 'Kid,' then. It won't be that long. How does Señorito
Urique sound, for a change?"
"I never played son any that I remember of," said the Kid. "If I had
any parents to mention they went over the divide about the time I
gave my first bleat. What is the plan of your round-up?"
Thacker leaned back against the wall and held his glass up to the
light.
"We've come now," said he, "to the question of how far you're willing
to go in a little matter of the sort."
"I told you why I came down here," said the Kid simply.
"A good answer," said the consul. "But you won't have to go that
far. Here's the scheme. After I get the trademark tattooed on your
hand I'll notify old Urique. In the meantime I'll furnish you with
all of the family history I can find out, so you can be studying up
points to talk about. You've got the looks, you speak the Spanish,
you know the facts, you can tell about Texas, you've got the tattoo
mark. When I notify them that the rightful heir has returned and is
waiting to know whether he will be received and pardoned, what will
happen? They'll simply rush down here and fall on your neck, and the
curtain goes down for refreshments and a stroll in the lobby."
"I'm waiting," said the Kid. "I haven't had my saddle off in your
camp long, pardner, and I never met you before; but if you intend to
let it go at a parental blessing, why, I'm mistaken in my man, that's
all."
"Thanks," said the consul. "I haven't met anybody in a long time
that keeps up with an argument as well as you do. The rest of it is
simple. If they take you in only for a while it's long enough.
Don't give 'em time to hunt up the strawberry mark on your left
shoulder. Old Urique keeps anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in his
house all the time in a little safe that you could open with a shoe
buttoner. Get it. My skill as a tattooer is worth half the boodle.
We go halves and catch a tramp steamer for Rio Janeiro. Let the
United States go to pieces if it can't get along without my services.
_Que dice, señor?_"
"It sounds to me!" said the Kid, nodding his head. "I'm out for the
dust."
"All right, then," said Thacker. "You'll have to keep close until we
get the bird on you. You can live in the back room here. I do my
own cooking, and I'll make you as comfortable as a parsimonious
Government will allow me."
Thacker had set the time at a week, but it was two weeks before the
design that he patiently tattooed upon the Kid's hand was to his
notion. And then Thacker called a _muchacho_, and dispatched this
note to the intended victim:
EL SEÑOR DON SANTOS URIQUE,
La Casa Blanca,
MY DEAR SIR:
I beg permission to inform you that there is in my house as a
temporary guest a young man who arrived in Buenas Tierras from the
United States some days ago. Without wishing to excite any hopes
that may not be realized, I think there is a possibility of his being
your long-absent son. It might be well for you to call and see him.
If he is, it is my opinion that his intention was to return to his
home, but upon arriving here, his courage failed him from doubts as
to how he would be received.
Your true servant,
THOMPSON THACKER.
Half an hour afterward--quick time for Buenas Tierras--Señor Urique's
ancient landau drove to the consul's door, with the barefooted
coachman beating and shouting at the team of fat, awkward horses.
A tall man with a white moustache alighted, and assisted to the
ground a lady who was dressed and veiled in unrelieved black.
The two hastened inside, and were met by Thacker with his best
diplomatic bow. By his desk stood a slender young man with
clear-cut, sunbrowned features and smoothly brushed black hair.
Señora Urique threw back her heavy veil with a quick gesture. She
was past middle age, and her hair was beginning to silver, but her
full, proud figure and clear olive skin retained traces of the beauty
peculiar to the Basque province. But, once you had seen her eyes,
and comprehended the great sadness that was revealed in their deep
shadows and hopeless expression, you saw that the woman lived only in
some memory.
She bent upon the young man a long look of the most agonized
questioning. Then her great black eyes turned, and her gaze rested
upon his left hand. And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to
shake the room, she cried "_Hijo mio!_" and caught the Llano Kid to
her heart.
A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate in response to a
message sent by Thacker.
He looked the young Spanish caballero. His clothes were imported,
and the wiles of the jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain.
A more than respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled a
shuck cigarette.
"What's doing?" asked Thacker.
"Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat my first iguana steak
to-day. They're them big lizards, you sabe? I reckon, though, that
frijoles and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you care for
iguanas, Thacker?"
"No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles," said Thacker.
It was three in the afternoon, and in another hour he would be in his
state of beatitude.
"It's time you were making good, sonny," he went on, with an ugly
look on his reddened face. "You're not playing up to me square.
You've been the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could have
had veal for every meal on a gold dish if you'd wanted it. Now, Mr.
Kid, do you think it's right to leave me out so long on a husk diet?
What's the trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on anything that
looks like cash in the Casa Blanca? Don't tell me you don't.
Everybody knows where old Urique keeps his stuff. It's U.S.
currency, too; he don't accept anything else. What's doing? Don't
say 'nothing' this time."
"Why, sure," said the Kid, admiring his diamond, "there's plenty of
money up there. I'm no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will
undertake for to say that I've seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in
that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his safe. And he lets
me carry the key sometimes just to show me that he knows I'm the real
little Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time ago."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker angrily. "Don't you
forget that I can upset your apple-cart any day I want to. If old
Urique knew you were an impostor, what sort of things would happen to
you? Oh, you don't know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws here
have got mustard spread between 'em. These people here'd stretch you
out like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you about fifty
sticks at every corner of the plaza. And they'd wear every stick
out, too. What was left of you they'd feed to alligators."
"I might as well tell you now, pardner," said the Kid, sliding down
low on his steamer chair, "that things are going to stay just as they
are. They're about right now."
"What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass
on his desk.
"The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And whenever you have the
pleasure of speaking to me address me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll
guarantee I'll answer to it. We'll let Colonel Urique keep his
money. His little tin safe is as good as the time-locker in the
First National Bank of Laredo as far as you and me are concerned."
"You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" said the consul.
"Sure," said the Kid cheerfully. "Throw you down. That's it. And
now I'll tell you why. The first night I was up at the colonel's
house they introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the floor--a
real room, with a bed and things in it. And before I was asleep, in
comes this artificial mother of mine and tucks in the covers.
'Panchito,' she says, 'my little lost one, God has brought you back
to me. I bless His name forever.' It was that, or some truck like
that, she said. And down comes a drop or two of rain and hits me on
the nose. And all that stuck by me, Mr. Thacker. And it's been that
way ever since. And it's got to stay that way. Don't you think that
it's for what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If you have any
such ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with
women in my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that
we've got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a
low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead
of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that
I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention my name."
"I'll expose you to-day, you--you double-dyed traitor," stammered
Thacker.
The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker by the throat with
a hand of steel, and shoved him slowly into a corner. Then he drew
from under his left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold
muzzle of it against the consul's mouth.
"I told you why I come here," he said, with his old freezing smile.
"If I leave here, you'll be the reason. Never forget it, pardner.
Now, what is my name?"
"Er--Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker.
From outside came a sound of wheels, and the shouting of some one,
and the sharp thwacks of a wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat
horses.
The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the door. But he turned
again and came back to the trembling Thacker, and held up his left
hand with its back toward the consul.
"There's one more reason," he said slowly, "why things have got to
stand as they are. The fellow I killed in Laredo had one of them
same pictures on his left hand."
Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the door.
The coachman ceased his bellowing. Señora Urique, in a voluminous
gay gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward with a
happy look in her great soft eyes.
"Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the rippling Castilian.
"_Madre mia, yo vengo_ [mother, I come]," answered the young Don
Francisco Urique.
III
THE BOLD DRAGOON
OR THE
ADVENTURE OF MY GRANDFATHER
WASHINGTON IRVING
My grandfather was a bold dragoon, for it's a profession, d'ye see,
that has run in the family. All my forefathers have been dragoons,
and died on the field of honour, except myself, and I hope my
posterity may be able to say the same; however, I don't mean to be
vainglorious. Well, my grandfather, as I said, was a bold dragoon,
and had served in the Low Countries. In fact, he was one of that
very army which, according to my uncle Toby, swore so terribly in
Flanders. He could swear a good stick himself; and moreover was the
very man that introduced the doctrine Corporal Trim mentions of
radical heat and radical moisture; or, in other words, the mode of
keeping out the damps of ditchwater by burnt brandy. Be that as it
may, it's nothing to the purport of my story. I only tell it to show
you that my grandfather was a man not easily to be humbugged. He had
seen service, or, according to his own phrase, he had seen the
devil--and that's saying every thing.
Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was on his way to England, for which
he intended to embark from Ostend--bad luck to the place! for one
where I was kept by storms and headwinds for three long days, and the
devil of a jolly companion or pretty girl to comfort me. Well, as I
was saying, my grandfather was on his way to England, or rather to
Ostend--no matter which, it's all the same. So one evening, towards
nightfall, he rode jollily into Bruges.--Very like you all know
Bruges, gentlemen; a queer old-fashioned Flemish town, once, they
say, a great place for trade and money-making in old times, when the
Mynheers were in their glory; but almost as large and as empty as an
Irishman's pocket at the present day.--Well, gentlemen, it was at the
time of the annual fair. All Bruges was crowded; and the canals
swarmed with Dutch boats, and the streets swarmed with Dutch
merchants; and there was hardly any getting along for goods, wares,
and merchandise, and peasants in big breeches, and women in half a
score of petticoats.
My grandfather rode jollily along, in his easy, slashing way, for he
was a saucy, sunshiny fellow--staring about him at the motley crowd,
and the old houses with gable ends to the street, and storks' nests
in the chimneys; winking at the yafrows who showed their faces at the
windows, and joking the women right and left in the street; all of
whom laughed, and took it in amazing good part; for though he did not
know a word of the language, yet he had always a knack of making
himself understood among the women.
Well, gentlemen, it being the time of the annual fair, all the town
was crowded, every inn and tavern full, and my grandfather applied in
vain from one to the other for admittance. At length he rode up to
an old rickety inn, that looked ready to fall to pieces, and which
all the rats would have run away from, if they could have found room
in any other house to put their heads. It was just such a queer
building as you see in Dutch pictures, with a tall roof that reached
up into the clouds, and as many garrets, one over the other, as the
seven heavens of Mahomet. Nothing had saved it from tumbling down
but a stork's nest on the chimney, which always brings good luck to a
house in the Low Countries; and at the very time of my grandfather's
arrival, there were two of these long-legged birds of grace standing
like ghosts on the chimney-top. Faith, but they've kept the house on
its legs to this very day, for you may see it any time you pass
through Bruges, as it stands there yet, only it is turned into a
brewery of strong Flemish beer,--at least it was so when I came that
way after the battle of Waterloo.
My grandfather eyed the house curiously as he approached. It might
not have altogether struck his fancy, had he not seen in large
letters over the door,
HEER VERKOOPT MAN GOEDEN DRANK.
My grandfather had learnt enough of the language to know that the
sign promised good liquor. "This is the house for me," said he,
stopping short before the door.
The sudden appearance of a dashing dragoon was an event in an old inn
frequented only by the peaceful sons of traffic. A rich burgher of
Antwerp, a stately ample man in a broad Flemish hat, and who was the
great man and great patron of the establishment, sat smoking a clean
long pipe on one side of the door; a fat little distiller of Geneva,
from Schiedam, sat smoking on the other; and the bottle-nosed host
stood in the door, and the comely hostess, in crimped cap, beside
him; and the hostess's daughter, a plump Flanders lass, with long
gold pendants in her ears, was at a side window.
"Humph!" said the rich burgher of Antwerp, with sulky glance at the
stranger.
"De duyvel!" said the fat little distiller of Schiedam.
The landlord saw, with the quick glance of a publican, that the new
guest was not at all to the taste of the old ones; and, to tell the
truth, he did not like my grandfather's saucy eye. He shook his
head. "Not a garret in the house but was full."
"Not a garret!" echoed the landlady.
"Not a garret!" echoed the daughter.
The burgher of Antwerp, and the little distiller of Schiedam,
continued to smoke their pipes sullenly, eyeing the enemy askance
from under their broad hats, but said nothing.