Hypnosis is an abnormal cerebral state that soon wears off. As one who
wakes from a sleep or a spell, the girl Paquita now stretched her arms
wide, blinked her eyes, and looked swiftly over her shoulders and this
way and that.
Then slowly, her head bowed in thought, her brow knotted in a little
puzzled frown, she walked to where lay rumpled on the sand her
ocean-green Spanish gown. She slipped into it, returned, stamped into
the beach the debris of the two images and then clambered up the rocks.
She left the watercourse behind, and neared the camp of the Gitanos.
As she came through the trees that palisaded the clearing round, she
heard her father's voice and answering voices that she never before had
heard. She hesitated a moment, then crept forward quietly, almost to the
edge of the line of trees. Her body hidden by a bush, she parted the
screening foliage with her hands and looked out as through a little
window.
Her father, Pepe Flammenca, known to the Gypsies as Flammenco
Chorolengro, stood face to face with an oddly attired stranger and with
him busily talked. The fantastic stranger was hardly thirty. He was a
little below the middle height, had a long body and short muscular legs,
and seemed all iron and strength.
He wore the black rosette and ribbons of a matador in his coleta, his
queue--that long, thick, and sacred lock of hair all bullfighters wear
as the time-honored insignia of their ancient profession. His brown
Andalusian face was the typical young bullfighter's face--boyish, almost
effeminate with its mild contours. Upon his hands he wore riding gloves.
Over the shoulders of his short, gold-braided green jacket were slung
bandoleers crowded with cartridges. On a belt about his waist hung a
revolver and a sheathed knife. The pink silk stockings that clad his
legs were almost concealed by a pair of riding-boots of Cordovan
horsehide.
Addressing Pepe Flammenca, he said, "A hundred times, in the last four
days, we have lost our way on the plains. And now we are about to
assault the defiles and goat paths of the Sierra Morena. We must have a
guide. You know the mountains; agree to guide us at your own price!"
Behind him, standing in various attitude of attention, was a whole
background of men in oddly assorted costumes. When he spoke, they all
nodded assent like a Greek chorus, and remarked, "Si, si!" Evidently,
the young matador was their spokesman.
"I cannot," Pepe Flammenca answered; "I must stay here. I am the chief
of this clan and must remain with my own people. But there is another
Gitano somewhere about the camp. To replenish our stock of wild meat,
the others went early away, but he and I stayed behind to look after the
horses and foals. With my permission, he can guide you. He knows the
Sierra Morena thoroughly. I will call him."
Pepe Flammenca turned round, cupped his hands about his mouth and
bellowed, "Aguilino!"
Came forth from behind the wagons, another man whom Paquita had never
laid eyes on before.
He was clean-shaven, and brown as a mulatto. He wore the corduroy
leggings of a Gypsy and a red-striped shirt, and in true Zincali
fashion, his head was wrapped tightly with a red kerchief. Where his
left eyebrow once had been, was a hideous yellow scar that curved down
as far as the cheek bone. What with his harsh and evil features and his
mulatto-mahogany skin, this yellow scar gave him an altogether
villainous look. In his left hand, he held a currycomb.
As the man approached, Pepe Flammenca turned to another of the strangers
and remarked:
"When you first accosted me, after dismounting, you asked me for news of
the bandolero, Jacinto Quesada. Three times you asked me, and three
times I gave you the same reply. I was most truthful, but you were not
assured. You showed me a hand in which lay five gold coins. You thought
I had clenched my tongue between my teeth for some good reason, and the
sight of the red metal would make me loosen it. But even your tempting
golden Alfonsos did not cause me to lie. I have not seen Jacinto Quesada
in months, I repeat. I have had no word of him in months. Of his recent
movements I know nothing.
"But question this buck of my clan, this Aguilino! You will be assured
of my honesty, then. I desire that. I know one of you to be Manuel
Morales, the greatest matador in all the Spains, and I desire Manuel
Morales to be convinced that Pepe Flammenca is no teller of lies."
"I am convinced already, my friend!" interposed Morales at that. "Your
last words convince me."
But another of the strangers, a foreign-looking hombre, proved more
cautious.
"We will do what you say and question this man," he agreed in stilted
and strongly accented Spanish. "But first let us find out whether this
Little Eagle of yours will guide us through the mountains. That's the
most important business."
The man with the foreign accent was big, broad-shouldered, fair-haired
and as smooth-shaven as any bullfighter. He was square of face, his jaw
was a round resolute knob, and his eyes were blue and very steady in
gaze. He was garbed in a dark sack suit of rather formal cut, a pair of
tan riding boots and a peaked Manchegan sombrero; and heavily equipped
with a belt of cartridges, a carbine and a Colt's automatic. It was the
American, John Fremont Carson.
The nine fantastic looking cabalgadores closed about the ruffianly
Aguilino. They listened eagerly while Carson spoke to him in low
persuasive tones. At length Aguilino commenced nodding his head, saying,
"Si! I agree. Si! I will go with you."
The tall Frenchman with the waxed mustache, Jacques Ferou, whispered
triumphantly in Carson's ear, "We have our guide. Now let fall the name
of Jacinto Quesada!"
But the man Aguilino did not recoil at the sharp and sudden mention of
the bandolero.
"Seguramente, yes; I have heard of him often. On the plains and in the
mountains. He is a most celebrated man. No, I have never seen him in the
flesh. Nor have I word of his recent movements. You say that he must
have passed this way either in the dark of last night or in the gray of
this very morning? Ah, senores, you do not know how many barrancas there
are that gutter these foothills! You do not know how like a shadow this
man Jacinto Quesada is--how like a fox that skulks and dodges and keeps
always his distance from the habitations and bivouacs of men such as we!
Jacinto Quesada come to our camp and break bread with us? Ah, senores,
senores, that would be too much honor!"
The nine men exchanged glances of disappointment and dismay. They had
been altogether off in their guess. Jacinto Quesada had not stopped in
passing to hobnob with the Gypsies. He had not passed that way at all.
The cabalgadores felt themselves like beagles who mill around and bark
in vain braggadocio. Jacinto Quesada had shaken them off his heels.
Neither sight nor smell of their game had they.
At this disheartening stage, suddenly from the forest a nut-brown girl
in a green dress came out and stood before them. She was round limbed
and delicately graceful as any nymph or naiad of the glens and
waterfalls. Her dye-black hair hung loose upon her shoulders; two spots
of hot crimson burned on the roundness of her cheeks; and her eyes
pulsed like fiery opals. She seemed all aflame with some strong emotion.
In a throaty shaking voice, she cried out:
"My father lies! This Aguilino whom I have never seen before--he too
lies! Jacinto Quesada has been here, in this very spot! He came to this
barranca in the dark of last night--he and three dorados and a tall
ungraceful wench, pale as a sickly lily! They were given food, they were
given shelter for the night. Then went away but two hours ago. They went
on up the canyon!"
A sharp gust of wind shrilled through the barranca, rattling among the
trees overhead. The sky seemed suddenly to darken, the day to grow
colder. Pepe Flammenca snarled aloud, between bared fangs, in the
gerigonza of the Gypsies which the strangers did not understand:
"You horrible flea, you maggot of the dung, you vile daughter of an
unfaithful mother! Into my _tan_ and say not another word! For every
word you have said, you shall pay with ten lashes of greenhide across
your bare back!"
The cabalgadores could not know what he said, but they sensed the threat
shaking his voice. No one spoke or made a move. The girl looked at her
father a moment with eyes like cold gloomy mountain lakes, then moved
slowly toward the large tent of the hetman. Her lips were set in a
disdainful and a triumphant smile.
About the clearing and above her head, the trees shook and swayed as in
an agony. Three great drops of water fell with the weight of leaden
bullets and made slow stains upon her green gown. The dog-grass, vetch
and darnels of the clearing lifted up and seemed to drink the air. A
storm was approaching. Leaves whirled about like a hundred excited
birds.
Of a sudden, the girl Paquita paused near the tent to turn her head and
fling back the words:
"I have not lied! Though my father will beat me for it, I have told the
truth! I hate Jacinto Quesada!"
"Say another word, thou child of a witch-woman and a demon!" sibilated
Pepe Flammenca in the Gypsy gerigonza, "and I will kill thee with my
bare hands!"
The girl Paquita entered the tent of her father, there to await him and
his whip of greenhide.
Suddenly and with great gusto, it began to rain. Great drops of water,
lead-gray and heavy as shot, pelted down. The cabalgadores sought the
cover of the trees. But the trees afforded little shelter, as the rain
volleyed this way and that at the will of the gusts of wind, and each
drop seemed to hold a whole cupful of icy water. In a trice, the men
were wet to the skin.
Pepe Flammenca motioned them to the tents. Manuel Morales, Jacques
Ferou, and the American, Carson, found themselves together beneath the
same protection of canvas and vari-colored rags.
"What do you think?" asked Morales.
"That she spoke the truth," returned the Frenchman. "She had on my
Felicidad's green traveling dress. Jacinto Quesada has indeed been
here."
"But will that great bearded Gypsy beat the girl?" anxiously asked
Carson.
The tall Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
"The Zincali are a strange people, _mon Americain_!" said he. "And,
besides, she said he is her father. Would you interpose between a father
and his daughter?"
Carson subsided into a gloomy silence and looked about the tent.
"But this guide, Aguilino," continued Ferou. "He lied to us, Morales.
Should we trust ourselves to his guidance?"
"What would you?" returned Morales in Spanish fashion. "We must have a
guide in these mountains, and there is no one else to hire. Surely, this
Aguilino is better than no guide. We will watch him, we nine men, and
above all, we will go on."
The American motioned them into silence. He nodded over his shoulder
toward the rear of the tent. Behind them, they saw a naked child asleep
on a blanket between two dogs and an old hag of a Gitana crouched in a
corner, her eyes alive and fixed unwaveringly upon them.
The men remained wordless but they did not sit down. The smell of
unwashed bodies and much-used body blankets of a sudden breathed into
their nostrils. The tent was filthy. All at once, the three wished
themselves out in the sweet, clean, if wet open again.
"What these folk need is education," whispered Carson in Morales' ear.
"Education can do everything!"
"Education, si!" returned Morales in the same manner. "But what they
need more is some one with a lion heart, a great golden arrogant heart,
to lead them in the fight, to lead them up!"
Jacques Ferou said nothing, but as he followed them out into the open,
he smiled his calculating and very superior smile.
Outside, the very mountains above seemed to have melted away into opaque
sheets of driving water. The earth was sliding in brown streams from
under their feet. The barranca boomed like a thousand drums beaten by
mad Arabs.
To make himself heard above the booming of the rain, Jacques Ferou
cupped his hands about his mouth and screamed into the faces of the
others: "Let us go back. Sacre, we are soaking water here!"
"No!" returned the others, and they grimaced in disgust. But the rain
fell with such outrageous passion that it was unendurable; there was
naught to do but return within the tent.
Driven to it, they sought the shelter of the tent once again, but found
it now a very poor shelter beneath that onslaught of rain. It leaked
like a Japanese paper umbrella. And all the time the trees ran with
heavy tears, and the rain flooded down with a tumultuous booming and a
morose persistency.