Thoroughly fagged out by six weary nights on the train, Seyd slept like
the dead, and did not awaken until a sudden clatter of pots aroused him
to knowledge of a golden cobweb of light streaming in between the flimsy
siding of the hut. Through the open doorway he obtained a glimpse of a
bejeweled world, resonant with the song of birds. After informing him of
these facts, his eyes reintroduced him to the young lady in the tan
riding habit who had ousted the pretty peona of last night from her
command over fire and dishes. The satisfying odor of hot coffee
completed the verdict of his senses.
"Breakfast all ready? I must have slept like a log."
"You did." She laughed. "I rattled the dishes in vain. I was just about
to throw something at you."
Now, his last waking thought had outlined a purpose to inform her at
once of his marriage, and while they were eating breakfast it recurred
again. But not with the same force. That which, when imbued with the
sentimental values of firelight and silence, appeared necessary and
right somehow appeared almost absurd when viewed in broad day. Checking
sentiment, too, by its very friendliness, her manner did not invite
confession.
"It would be impertinent," he concluded. "She has no personal interest
in me."
If he had observed her only an hour earlier re-entering the _jacal_
after a shivering exchange outside with the peona he might not have been
quite so sure. Once or twice she had indulged in softer thought, whose
key was to be found in her murmur just before she tried to awake him:
"_Adios_, Rosario."
Also the morning had brought its own problem to fill his mind. He could
not but see that their appearance at the inn in the Barranca so early in
the day would be a confession of their breach of the most rigid of
Spanish conventions. But how to broach the subject without offense?
Though he racked his brains while saddling the horse and, later, when it
was carrying them double upon their way, he had come to no conclusion up
to the moment that she settled it herself with a little cry.
"Now I know where I am." She was indicating an outcropping of rock on a
sterile hillside. "We strayed miles away from our trail. We shall soon
come to a path that leads past a rancho where I can borrow a horse."
Almost as they spoke the cattle track they had been following joined a
trail, and shortly after she spoke again, laughing. "And now, Senor
Rosario, I must bid you good-by. This good beast has done nobly, but we
shall gain time if one rides forward to the rancho and sends back a
horse. Which shall it be?"
But he was already on the ground, hat in hand. "Rosa, _adios_."
Laughing, she rode on while he sat down on an outcropping of rock to
wait, for he was not minded to wade through the wet grass and brush of
some woods at the foot of the hill. Until she passed from sight he sat
watching, then, feeling a little lazy, he fitted his angles into a sort
of natural couch in the rock and fell to musing, reviewing again the
incidents of the night. He had not intended to sleep. But what with the
warmth and stillness, he presently passed quietly away, was still
unconscious when the stroke of a hoof on a rock awoke him to the sight
of two horsemen with a led beast.
"For me," he thought. Then, as he recognized Sebastien Rocha in the
second horseman, he whistled his consternation. If the hacendado had not
actually met Francesca he must surely have pumped the _mozo_ dry, and
now the sight of him, Seyd, would fully reveal their case!
"Now for a big fat row," he told himself. But, greatly to his surprise,
Sebastien passed on with a nod, and presently turned from the trail,
following their fresh hoof tracks over the hill. The _mozo_ had already
gone on to retrieve Francesca's saddle from the dead horse, and,
irritated and alarmed, Seyd mounted the led beast and rode on at a
gallop. But, quickly realizing that his further company was not likely
to improve the girl's case, he presently pulled the beast back to a
walk. Lost in frowning thought, he rode on slowly until, an hour later,
there came a beat of galloping hoofs, and Sebastien rode up from behind.
His reiteration of the thought "Now for the row!" was colored by the way
in which the hacendado's hand went to his holster. But Seyd's hand,
which moved as quickly to his own gun, dropped, and he blushed crimson
as the other held out his brier pipe.
"Merely _this_, senor." He glanced meaningly at Seyd's gun. "For _that_
you would have been too late. I could have shot you through the back.
After this do not let your foolish Yankee pride stop you from looking
behind."
Though both angry and alarmed, the cold impudence of it made Seyd laugh.
"Yes? How did you resist the temptation?"
"It was a temptation." He gravely approved the word. "Your back made
such a fine smooth mark. I could see the bullet splash in the center."
"Then why didn't you? Since you are so frank I don't mind saying that I
believe that you already had a hand in at least one of three attempts on
my life! Is it that you would prefer to have me blown up?"
"Like your predecessor, the Hollander?" Sebastien's shrug might have
meant anything. "I have, of course, my preferences, and some day I shall
have to decide in just which way I would wish you put to death. In
passing the opportunity now you ought to feel complimented, for let me
tell you that I would never leave any Mexican lips free to tell of your
experiences last night."
The man's tone of quiet certainty robbed the words of extravagance; and,
accustomed now to a life that out-melodramaed melodrama, Seyd knew
better than to take them for jest. "That's very nice of you," he quietly
answered, and as just then the trail narrowed to pass through a copal
grove he added: "Forewarned is forearmed. Just to keep you out of
temptation--will you please to go first?"
"With pleasure."
Faint though it was, the smile that loosened the firm mouth made it
easier for Seyd to continue when they were riding once more side by
side. "For the young lady's sake I am glad to have you take such a
sensible view of an unavoidable situation. I take it that you were going
the other way. If you can trust me--"
"Trust no one and you will never be deceived. If I had my way of it
there would be an end to the girl's wild tricks. But since she _will_ be
abroad, what better escort could she have than her kinsman?"
"None," Seyd agreed. "I overtook her by accident, cared for her the best
that I could; now she is in your hands."
Sebastien shook his head. "Not so swiftly. She would hardly thank me for
your dismissal." While the shadow of a smile lifted the corner of his
thin lips he added: "The last time I mixed in her affairs she refused to
speak with me for over a year, and I have no mind to repeat the
experience. We are all going to San Nicolas. It would be foolish to ride
apart."
"Very well," Seyd agreed, not, however, with any great degree of
pleasure. Apart from the strain involved by a day's travel with a man
who had just confessed to a permanent intention of killing him he felt
more disappointment than he would have cared to admit at the spoiling of
the tete-a-tete with the girl. In fact, the feeling was so acute that he
found it necessary to justify it in his own thought. "It was only for a
day," he mused, slightly changing his previous conclusion to fit the
case, "and I'd like to have seen it out."
"So! so! The storm proved a little too much for this one."
They had just ridden into copal woods, and, looking up, Seyd saw that he
was pointing at a pile of bones and wet tatters of clothing that lay
under a swinging fray of rope. If possible, it was more grisly of
appearance than a second mummy which still swung, clicking its miserable
bones in the wind. Whether or no he noticed Seyd's shiver of disgust
Sebastien ran easily on:
"He was a stout rogue, this fellow, with a keen eye for a pretty woman
and small scruples as to how he got her. It was, indeed, through this
little weakness that we caught him, using a girl to bait the trap. But
he died game--with a joke on his lips. 'Senor,' he said, as the mule
went from under him, 'if but one-half of my brats walk in my steps thou
wilt have need of an army to finish us up.'
"He had humor, too. He it was that stole the altar service from the
church of San Anselmo to pay the priest of Guadaloupe to say a thousand
masses for the repose of his soul. He was dead and the masses said
before the service was traced by a pilgrim to the Guadaloupe shrine, and
ever since the priests have been at war--both over the return of the
service and to decide the burning question as to whether it is possible
to nullify a heavenly title obtained through fraud. It makes a pretty
point in theology, and the battle still rages. Being debarred from
physical expression, the brute in a priest exercises itself through the
tongue, and they will not leave such a choice morsel till the last shred
of meat has been gnawed from the bones."
In presence of those dumb witnesses to its truth, the grim banter
sounded even grimmer. During the long white nights that followed hard
days at work on the smelter nothing had suited Caliban more than to be
drawn on to talk of the war against the brigands. Under the red light of
a camp fire, with the vast night of the Barranca yawning below, the
tales had been spun--tales that had outdone the dime novels of Seyd's
youth. Of them all, that which had ended with the hanging of the last
bandit in this very glade had outdone all in sheer desperation.
Kindling to the romance of it all, he took stealthy note, as they rode
on, of the lithe muscular figure, which was as extraordinary in its
balanced strength as the calm power of the quiet brown face. When memory
drew a vivid contrast between Sebastien and his early training in the
sober atmosphere of the English commercial boarding-school Seyd
wondered, and finally put his wonder into words.
"Didn't you find the transition from Manchester rather sudden? It must
have been like plunging head first into a romance."
"Romance?" For the first time that morning, for matter of that, in all
their intercourse, Sebastien laughed outright. "Oh, you Anglo-Saxons!
Romance is a creature of your own dreamy idealism. We do not know it. We
are passionate, nervous, hysterical, gross, materialistic, but for all
our heat we see life more clearly than you. It would be better for us if
we did not. For where in the mirror of your imaginings you see your
strength enormously magnified our clearer perceptions show our
weaknesses. Even at the point of death you neither see nor accept
defeat. But we, cowering before it, are swept the quicker away." Just as
on that other occasion when he stood talking beside their fire on the
rim of the Barranca, this came out of his quiet with volcanic heat.
Dropping as quickly into his usual calm, he finished, "No, I did not
find it romantic--merely amusing."
Nettled a little by his amused contempt, Seyd quickly retorted: "I fail
to see how you can claim to have no ideals? You who are striving with
all your might against the American invasion?"
Sebastien shrugged. "Racial aversion--backed up by the instinct of
self-preservation. Even cattle will band together against the wolves.
But remove the danger and the bulls fall at once fighting for command of
the herd. Before Diaz we had sixty-five rulers in sixty years, very few
of whom died in their beds. Once remove his iron hand from our throats
and we shall go at it again, revolution upon revolution, for the sole
purpose of satisfying some man's personal ambition, lust, or individual
greed. No, senor, we are individualists in the extreme. We have nothing
in our make-up to correspond to the racial ideal that makes you Northmen
subordinate personal interest to the general good. And because of our
lack you will eventually rule us."
"Yet you strive against it?"
"For the one reason, as I told you, that the weaker wolf declines to be
eaten. Individually, I find it amusing. I would much prefer shooting
gringo soldiery to hanging Mexican bandits."
"And the General--Don Luis?"
Once again Sebastien laughed. "That old revolutionist? He would deny all
I have said as rank heresy, though he himself is its most startling
example. He would say that he was for Mexico, but Mexico, to him, is
Mexico with a Garcia for president. Selfish to the backbone, every one
of us."
In a phrase he had described Don Luis, and, while he could not but smile
at its truth, Seyd was just a little startled by the keen intelligence
and flashing intuition. Even after allowing for advantages of travel and
education the man's sharp reasoning and originality were remarkable.
Like a clear black pool his mind sharply reflected all that passed over
it, and always the conception stood out as under a lightning flash.
"No, senor," he went on, after a pause, "we are individualists, and as
such can only obtain happiness by following our own bent. If we are held
back for a while by Porfirio, be sure that sooner or later we shall
return with greater zest to our ancient pastime of cutting each other's
throats."
His uncanny intelligence, too, threw sinister lights on everything they
passed. "I told you we were gross," he said, indicating a youth and a
brown girl who were flirting through the barred windows of an adobe
ranch house. "The proof--the bars. With us love is a passion; the ideal
exists only in our songs."
Shortly thereafter they rode out on the rim overlooking the Barranca,
and the necessity of riding in single file down the zigzag staircases
brought an end to their talk. Neither did he begin it again as they
crossed the bottom flat to the inn. Coming after a long silence, the
invitation which he delivered at last, as they rode into the patio, came
as a greater surprise.
"I feel certain, senor, that my cousin will wish you to lunch with us."
Because another trait in Sebastien's nature was not revealed until, a
few minutes later, he knocked at Francesca's door, Seyd failed to see
that which, after all, was perhaps even more surprising. As he entered
in response to her call she rose and stood, one hand resting on the
small altar where burned a tiny taper; and as he stood looking at her
across the length of the room the inquiry in her wide eyes became
touched with fear.
"It is you?" she broke the silence. "They told me that you spent last
night here. How was it that I did not meet you on the way?"
"Simply because I had happened to turn in at the Rancho del Rio to look
at some cattle. But I overtook the _mozo_ you sent back with the horse
for the gringo. Also I called in at the _jacal_ of Miguel, the vaquero
of San Angel, where I found Maria, his woman, just returned. She was
rejoicing over a supernatural visitation. It seems that while she and
Miguel were away the Virgin Guadaloupe abode in their house, and even
honored Maria by putting on her best fiesta clothes. In proof thereof
she showed me a silver peso that the Virgin left tied up in one corner
of her chemisette. It was truly remarkable, and I was well on my way to
a healthy conversion when I happened to stumble on the gringo's pipe--at
least, he claimed it on sight."
"And you immediately turned about to tattle this to me?"
He merely smiled under her bright scorn. "To see you home."
"Where you will proceed to make my mother eternally miserable, and
uncle--"
"--Infernally angry? On the contrary, I am prepared to back up with
pistol and knife the tale of Maria's visitation. Why should I wish to
bring suffering to the good mother? It was a hap of the trail, and, much
as I hate all gringos, it was far better that you should have been in
this man's hands. Some day I may have to kill him, and I shall do it
with greater pleasure because of this!"
"If the attempt does not fail as miserably as that which you made on his
soul."
"Put it morals, cousin, just to bring it within the bounds of my
comprehension. You know my beliefs as to souls."
"In any case it was a mean trick."
"Tricks are tricks only when they fail. Successful, they rise to the
dignity of strategems. And he ought not to complain. Did he not come out
of the ordeal unscathed, tricked out in the flowers of virtue? He's
really in my debt. But returning to my point, some day I shall kill him;
but in the mean time I have asked him to lunch with us. As he looked
hungry, I should suggest a little haste."
"I am ready now." Going toward him, she spoke, hesitantly: "Let
me--thank you. Were you always thus, Sebastien, we should be better
friends."
"_Gracias_, anything but that." Bowing, he stood aside to permit her to
pass. "The half liking that you deal out to Anton, Javier, and other
fat-jowled hacendados, your admirers, would never do for me. I prefer
your--fear."
"But I am not afraid of you." She looked straight in his eyes passing
out.
"You will be--some day."