"Phe-ew!" Looking up from a treatise on bricklaying as applied to
the building of furnaces, Billy pitched a stone at Seyd, who was
experimenting with a batch of lime fresh drawn from a kiln of their own
burning. "I'd always imagined bricklaying to be a mere matter of plumb
and trowel, but this darned craft has more crinkles to it than the
differential calculus. This fellow makes me dizzy with his talk of ties
and courses, flues, draughts, cornering, slopes, and arches."
Leaning on his hoe, Seyd wiped his wet brow. "I'm finding out a few
things myself. I'd always sort of envied a hod-carrier. But now I know
that the humble 'mort' puts more foot-pounds of energy into his work
than the average horse. As a remedy for dizziness caused by overstudy,
mixing mortar has no equal. Come and spell me with this hoe."
"'And the last state of that man was worse than the first,'" Billy
groaned. "_Can't_ we hire a single solitary peon, Seyd?"
More eloquently than words, Seyd's shrug testified to the sullen boycott
which had been maintained against them for the past three weeks. On the
morning of their arrival at the mine, while the fear of Sebastien Rocha
still lay heavy upon him, Carlos had been half bullied, half persuaded
into the sale of Paz and Luz at a price which raised him almost
to the status of a ranchero. But that single transaction summed up
their dealings with the natives. No man had answered their call for
laborers at wages which must have appeared as wealth to a peon. The
charcoal-burners who drove their burros past the mine every day returned
to their greetings either muttered curses or black stares. They were as
stubborn in their cold obstinacy as the face of the temple god. Indeed,
in these days the stony face of the image had become inseparably
associated in Seyd's mind with the determined opposition that had routed
his predecessors and now aimed to oust him. He saw it even in the soft,
round faces of the children who peeped at him from the doorways of cane
huts, a somber look, centuries old in its stubborn dullness.
Not that he and Billy were in the least discouraged. Once convinced that
labor was not to be obtained, they had stripped and pitched in. In one
month they rebuilt the adobe dwelling which had been somewhat shattered
by the Dutchman's hurried exit, dug a lime kiln, and hauled the wood and
stone for the first burning. They had completed the laying out of the
smelter foundation, filling in odd moments by picking for the first
charge the choicest ore from the hundreds of tons that the Englishmen
had unwisely mined before they ran head-on into the hostile combination
of freights and prices.
This last had been an inspiriting labor, for so rich were the values
which the ore carried that after a trial assay Billy had danced all over
the place beating an old pan. It is doubtful whether young men ever had
better prospects; and so, knowing that Billy's present pessimism arose
from a strong disinclination for physical labor in the hot sun, Seyd
merely grinned. Sitting down on a pile of brick, he mopped his face and
stared out over the valley.
Situated, as the mine was, on a wide bench which gave pause to the
earth's dizzy plunge from the rim three thousand feet above, Seyd sat
at the meeting-place of temperate and tropic zones. A hundred feet
below--just where they had climbed the stiff trail out of the jungle
that flooded the valley with its fecund life--a group of cocoanut palms
stood disputing the downward rush of the pine, and all along the bench
pinon and copal, upland growths, shouldered cedars and ceibas, the
tropical giants. While these battled above for light and room there
came, writhing snake-like up from the tropics, creepers and climbers,
vines and twining plants, to engage the ferns and bracken, the pine's
green allies. A plague of orchids here attacked the copal, wreathing
trunk and limb in sickly flame. The bracken there overswept the riotous
tropical life. All along the borderland the battle raged, here following
a charge of the pine down a cool ravine, there mounting with the tropic
growths to a sunlit slope. But in the valley below the tropics ruled
clear down to the brilliant green of the San Nicolas cane fields.
"By the way"--Seyd spoke as his eye fell on these--"Don Luis is back
from Mexico City. The hunchbacked charcoal-burner told me as he went
past this morning."
"The deuce he did!" Of all the black looks that came their way that of
the cripple was the most vindictive. "You must have him hypnotized."
"You wouldn't think so if you had heard his accent. 'El General is
again at San Nicolas,' just as though he were sentencing me to hang.
Nevertheless, the news comes pat. I think it would be good policy for me
to run down and pay the denunciation taxes before we begin work on the
smelter. No, I don't apprehend any trouble. Your Mexican hasn't much
stomach for litigation, and no doubt the old fellow feels quite safe in
his pull with the metals companies and railroads. But while he is still
in the mind we had better pay the money and complete title. If he once
gets wind of the smelter--"
"Just so." Billy threw down the hoe. "While you dress I'll saddle up a
mule--if you will please say to which demon you prefer to intrust your
precious neck. Light began the day by kicking me through the side of
the stable. She needs chastening. But then Peace dined on my arm
yesterday. It's Peace for yours, and I only hope you get it."
"Hum!" he coughed when, half an hour later, Seyd emerged shaved, bathed,
and clad in immaculate white. "Is this magnificence altogether for el
General, or did Caliban drop some word of our niece? Really, old chap,
you look fine. If I were the senorita I'd go for you myself."
Though Seyd laughed, yet the instant he passed out of sight he fell
into frowning thought which was evidently related to the letter he
pulled out and reread while he rode down the steep grades. Written in a
characterless round hand, it covered so many pages that he was halfway
down before, after tearing it in shreds, he tossed it to the winds. Its
destruction, however, did not seem to change his mood. He let Peace
take her own way until, having slipped, slid, and tobogganed on tense
haunches down the last grade, she felt able to assert her individuality
by attempting to rub him off against a tree. Next she attempted the
immolation of a fat brown baby that was rolling with a nest of young
pigs in the dust outside a hut; and thereafter her performances were so
varied that he was simply compelled to take some notice of the sights
and sounds of the trail.
Not the least remarkable were the frequent and familiar scowls of the
people he met. Various in expression, they ranged between the copious
curses of the fat senora whose pacing-mule was driven by Peace off
the trail, and the snarling malice of occasional muleteers; but,
undisturbed, he pursued his inquiries for laborers at every chance.
"No, senor, we do not desire work."
The stereotyped answer merely stimulated the quiet persistence which
formed the basis of his character, and he continued to ask at the
village which raised graceful palm roofs out of a jungle clearing, at
the ranchos which now began to cover the valley with a green checker
of maize fields, and at scattered huts, half hidden by the rich foliage
of palms and bananas. It was while he was questioning a peon who was
hulling rice with a wooden pole and churn arrangement that the subdued
hostility broke out in open demonstration.
The trail here ran between a fence of split poles, which inclosed the
peon's corn and frijoles, and the steep bank of a dry creek bed, so that
only a few feet leeway was left for the train of burros which came
trotting out of the jungle behind him. In single file they could have
passed, but looking around he saw they were coming three abreast.
Had he chosen, there was time to make the end of the fence. But he
had seen behind the train the sparkling, beady eyes of Caliban, the
hunchback, and the dark grins of two of his fellows. Flushing with
quick anger, he backed Peace against the fence, leaned forward over her
neck, and slashed with his whip at the leading beasts. Checked by this,
they would have fallen back to single file but for the whips behind that
bit out hair and hide and drove them on in a huddled mass.
It seemed for a few seconds that he would be crushed. That he escaped
injury was simply due to the hereditary hate between the mule and the
ass which suddenly turned Peace into a raging fiend. While her chisel
teeth slit ragged hides her other and busier end beat a devil's tattoo
on resounding ribs and filled the air with flying charcoal. Yet even her
demoniac energies had their limitations. If she held the ground for
herself and master she could not preserve the inviolability of his white
trousers, which emerged sadly smudged from the fray. It is a pity she
could not. Little things always cause the greatest trouble, and but for
the smudges the incident would probably have closed with Seyd's
challenge:
"Can't you be content with half the road?"
His patience even survived their insolent grins. Not until the hunchback
in passing emitted a hoarse chuckle as he surveyed the smudges did
Seyd's temper burst its bonds. Swinging his whip then with all his
might, he laid it across the crooked shoulders once, twice, thrice,
before the fellow sprang, snarling, out of reach. The others, who had
already passed, came leaping back at his cry, knives flashing as they
ran, and though they stopped under the sudden frown of a Colt's
automatic, they did not retire, but stood, fingering their knives,
muttering curses.
A little sorry on his part for the anger which had turned the sullen
hostility into open feud, Seyd faced them, puzzled just what to do. It
was too late to give way, for that would expose him to future insult.
Yet if, taking the initiative, he should happen to kill a man, he knew
enough of the quality of justice as dealt out by the Mexican courts to
realize the danger.
While he debated, the puzzle was almost solved by the peon rice-huller,
who came stealing up from behind the fence. Not until the man had swung
his heavy pestle and was tiptoeing to his blow did Seyd divine the
reason for the glances that were passing behind him. Looking quickly,
he caught the glint of polished hardwood in the tail of his eye; then,
without a pause for thought, he dropped flat on the rump of the mule,
and not a second too soon, for, raising the hair on his brow as it
passed, the club smashed down through the top rail of the fence. In
falling backward his weight on the bridle brought Peace scurrying a few
paces to the rear. When he snapped upright again the fourth enemy was
also under his gun.
But what to do? The puzzle still remained--to be solved by another, for
just then came a sudden beat of hoofs, and from behind a bamboo thicket
galloped first the Siberian wolf hound, then the girl he had met at the
train.