A CURIOUS PAGAN RITE
"E un peccato che se ne va con l'acqua benedetta."
--_Machiavelli_.
The Storm Centre looked round, about and above. He was as a fly in a
bottle. A massive rough-hewn door, jammed tight, sealed him within adobe
walls two feet thick. There was one window, cross-barred, as high as his
chin, and only large enough to frame his head. They had brought him to
the carcel, or dungeon, of the hacienda, where peons were constrained to
docility. A wide masonry bench against the wall approximated a couch,
but it was as blocked ice. By the flickering of a lone tallow dip, Din
Driscoll noted these things with every sense delicately attuned to
strategy. But his verdict was unpromising.
"Tough luck!" he observed.
The adobe was built among the stables that bordered on the pasture, and
when not needed as a calabozo, it served snugly for the administrador's
best horse. From the one stall came a tentative whinny. Driscoll jumped
with delight. "Demijohn! W'y, you good old scoundrel, you!" The night
before, he remembered, he had seen the horse bedded here. "Say howdy as
loud as you want," he cried, slapping him fondly on the flank, "you'll
not betray us. _That's_ been done already."
Driscoll was cavalryman to the bone, and it heartened him unaccountably
to find his horse. If, only, he could have his pistols too! Ever since
the Federals had cut him off from his furloughs home, those black ugly
navies were next to the nearest in his affections. The nearest was the
buckskin charger. And now, only the buckskin was left, which simply made
the dilemma more poignant. The condemned man gazed critically at the
walls, the rafters, the ground, and shook his head. Supposing a chance
for escape, could he bring himself to leave Demijohn behind? He got his
pipe to going, sat down, and frowned ruefully at the candle.
"I don't want to be shot!" he burst out suddenly, with a plaintive
twang. Then he grinned. The boy still in him had prompted the absurdity.
And the rough warrior had laughed at it. Boy and warrior faced each
other, either surprised that the other existed. The boy flushed
resentfully at the veteran's contemptuous grunt. His eyes still had the
boy's naively inquisitive greeting to the world before him. Next, quite
abruptly, the warrior knew a bitterness against himself. If he could,
but once, whimper as the lad about to be soundly strapped! He took no
pride in his irony, nor in his hardened indifference to the visage of
death. How far, how very far, had the few past years of strife carried
him from the youngster who used to gaze so eagerly, so expectantly, out
on life!
First, he was home from the University, from the pretty, shady little
Missouri town of Columbia. But the vacation following he spent in
bloodily helping to drive the Jayhawkers back across the Kansas line.
And soon after, when the fighting opened up officially, and his State,
at the start, had more of it than any other battle ground, how many
hundreds of times did his life bide by the next throw of Fate? During
one cruel winter month he had lain with other wounded in a hospital
dug-out in the river's cliff, and there, wanting both quinine and food,
he would peep through the reeds, only to see the merciless Red Legs
prying about in search of his hiding place.
And then there was the wild, busily dangerous life with Old Joe's
Brigade, with that brigade of Missouri's young firebrands. Once,
stretched on the prairie, where he had dropped from exhaustion and
hunger and loss of blood, the Storm Centre awoke to find a Pin Indian
stooping over him for his scalp. On that occasion, the deft turning of
the wrist from the waist outward, with the stripping of the pistol's
hammer simultaneously, had enabled him later to restore to relatives
certain other scalps already dangling from the savage's girdle.
And now here he was in an adobe with walls two feet thick, and numerous
saddle-colored Greasers proposing to shoot him first thing in the
morning!
"I'll be blessedly damned," he drawled querulously, "I object!"
It was the warrior who spoke now, and with him the boy joined hands.
They became as one and the same person. The common foe was without. They
would see this through together, with grim stoicism, with young-blooded
daredeviltry.
The door opened, and one of the common foe, bearing a tray, came within.
"Well, Don Erastus, how goes it?" With a pang of homesickness the
Missourian thought of darkies who carried trays.
"Juan Bautista, at Y'r Mercy's orders," the Dragoon corrected him.
"Don John the Baptist then, como le whack?"
"Bien, senor, bien."
"Any theory as to what you've got there?"
"Y'r Mercy's supper. The Senor Coronel Lopez does not desire that Y'r
Mercy should have any complaint."
"Oh, none whatever, Johnny, except what I'm to die of. Set it down, here
on the feather bed."
There were a few native dishes, with a botellon of water and a jar of
wine. Driscoll tipped the botellon to his lips. His whiskey flask had
contained poison, though the poison of ink, and as he drank, he pondered
on why water should not be an antidote for the poisons that lurk in
whiskey flasks. Then he wondered why such foolish conceits at such times
persist in shouldering death itself out of a man's thoughts. And
meanwhile, there stood the precursor of his end, in the emblematic
person of a very brown John the Baptist. The fellow's gorgeous red
jacket was unbuttoned, revealing a sordid dirty shirt. He was officer of
the guard, and had a curiosity as to how a Gringo about to be shot would
act. He waited clumsily, lantern in hand. But he was disappointed. There
seemed to be nothing out of the commonplace. Some condemned Mexican,
though a monotonously familiar spectacle, would yet have been more
entertaining.
Driscoll looked at him over the botellon. That earthen bottle had not
left the prisoner's lips. It had stopped there, poised aloft by an idea.
"See here," Driscoll complained, "where's the rest of the water I'm to
have?"
"Of what water, senor?"
"For my bath, of course. Don't I die to-morrow?"
"Yes, but----"
"Here, this wine is too new for me. Drink it yourself, if you want."
"Many thanks, senor, with pleasure. But a bath? I don't understand."
"No? Don't you Mexicans ever bathe before you die?"
"We send for the padre."
"Oh, that's it! And he spiritually washes your sins away? But suppose
you couldn't get your padre?"
The Indian shuddered. "Ai, Maria purisima, one's soul would go to
everlasting torment!"
"There! Now you can understand why I count so much on ablution. It's
absolution."
The native readily believed. Like others of his class, he thought all
Protestants pagans, and none Catholic but a Mexican. "Must be something
like John the Baptist's day, verdad, senor?" he said. "On that holy day,
once a year, we must all take a bath."
"Quite right too," Driscoll returned soberly. "A man should go through
most anything for his religion.--Haven't noticed my horse there, have
you, Johnny?" The guard pricked up his ears. "Of course not," Driscoll
went on, "you're worrying about my soul instead. Well, so am I. We
Americans, you know, save our yearly baths for one big solemn final one,
just before we die. And if I don't get mine to-night, I'll be
associating with you unshrived Mexicans hereafter, and that would be
pretty bad, wouldn't it? It's what made me think of my horse there. That
horse, Johnny, is heavy on my soul. He's most too heavy to wash away.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that I actually stole him; but just the
same, if a good man like you would take him, after I'm gone--why, I'd
feel that he was washed off pretty well."
The Mexican's sympathy grew more keen.
"But the other sins," Driscoll added, "they'll need water, and a great
plenty, too."
Juan Bautista was feeling the buckskin's knees. Driscoll longed to choke
him, but instead, he drove again at the wedge. "Another thing, I'll have
to leave my money behind." He mentioned it casually, but his breath
stopped while he waited for the effect. The guard straightened.
Demijohn's knees seemed to be all right. He took up the tray, and opened
the door, yet without a word. Driscoll's fist doubled, to strike and run
for it. Then the fellow spoke.
"Does Y'r Mercy want soap too?"
The fist unclenched. "No," came the reply, almost in a joyful gasp,
"this is for, for godliness only."
"One jar, senor?"
"Bless me, no! Two big ones, bigger'n a barrel."
With a parting glance at Demijohn, the guard stole forth to gratify the
heathen's whim.
"I'll give him enough to _buy_ a horse," Driscoll resolved.