The guide did not squirm. He could not squirm. He was stiff with terror
of the misty abysmal depths below. Yet, somehow, he managed to stutter:
"Heart of God, senor, don't! You will lose yourselves--in these savage
mountains--without me to guide you! You will all starve to death!
Maestro, for the love of Mary the Pitiful, don't, don't!"
There was something of truth in what the guide said. Morales put him
back upon the path. But he said with bitterness and brooding menace, "We
will lose no more mules. You will see to that, eh, my trustworthy man?"
Aguilino worked more cleverly after that.
In the dusk of the following night, Turiddu, the mule led by Morales
himself, went over a cliff, almost dragging the matador along. There was
no use blaming the guide, Aguilino. He had not been near the doomed ass
during the long morning and the longer afternoon.
Besides, twenty times that day the beast had come within an ace of its
eventual finis. Since dawn, it had conducted itself in a contrary and
restive manner; it had shied without seeming cause, reared and plunged
forward in sudden frights, caracoled and beat the path with its hoofs,
and whinnied, snorted, and shaken its head as though unaccountably
irritated. It seemed a mule spirited and unrestrainably stimulated by
an overfeeding of oats; a mule intoxicated, possessed of a demon!
What had befallen Turiddu in the shadowy darkness of the prior night,
Dios sabe! Yet the Gypsies have a jockey trick which might explain the
whole mystery. When selling or bartering mules and borricos, they drop a
tiny nodule of quicksilver into the long ears of the beasts.
Have you ever suffered a drop of water in the ear and been unable to
move a hand to flick it out? The nodule of quicksilver is as irritating
as that. It is wet and never still. It frets the mules and causes them
to liven up their paces and seem more mettlesome.
Morales and his cabalgadores watched the guide with deep but
indefensible suspicion. Vexedly they wondered and worried. Finally, in
the next few days, they were provoked into savage anger when three more
mules took it upon themselves to act unconventionally, and then die in
fits, one, two, three.
These mules were thoughtful and discreet to a degree. They did not leap,
screaming, off the walls of the mountains. They expired in their tracks
and therefore saved to the nine Quixotes the panniers strapped over
their spines.
Morales and his men became, all at once, coldly furious. The third mule
in dying, coughed up a round, compactly pressed ball of pointed
black-green leaves. Some one in the company had forced handfuls of
oleander leaves down the throats of the three mules!
Now, the leaves of the oleander are extremely poisonous to man and
beast. Horses and kindred cattle have an instinct which warns them
against eating the shrub. But man who has no strong instincts, often
dies poisoned by the oleander's juices. It is related that several
British soldiers during the Peninsular War cut and peeled some oleander
branches to use as skewers for roasting meat over the campfires. Of the
twelve men who ate that meat, seven died.
Even a creature as asinine as an ass knows enough to avoid the pointed
black-green leaves. Most mules would rather starve than even smell of
the plant. Yet, during the nights that preceded their untimely
taking-off, some one in the company had forced handfuls of the poisonous
leaves down the throats of the three mules.
For hours before the death, each mule had coughed. Also, each mule had
simpered, simpered like a convent girl. Simpered is a strange word to
use in such a case, but it describes exactly the way the mules had moved
and worked their lips in a try to rid their stomachs of the deadly
leaves.
Of the whole caravan of seven mules that had trotted so bravely out,
there was left now but one sorely burdened ass. The nine cabalgadores
weighted the surviving beast with some of the provisions from the backs
of the three poisoned mules; they encumbered their own shoulders with
the rest; then they continued doggedly on, thinking to kill the last
mule for meat, once the provisions upon their backs and in the panniers
were completely exhausted.
That night they bivouacked in a stony and savage ravine, and built two
small fires, and hugged them close. It was very cold. An icy mountain
fog or _neblina_ had crept down like a clammy gray ghost from the windy
passes and frozen snowfields far above. One could not see much farther
before one through the thick mist than the nose upon one's face.
They wrapped their ponchos about them and shivered in the damp. A cavern
of snarling wind-echoes and of eddying, dark shapes was the steep
ravine. Down the length of it, the fog marched like an endless caravan
of ghostly, silent, gray mules. The two fires, robust enough and
certainly well attended, seemed as pale and anæmic and cold as two
incandescents in the black heart of a mine.
Without the fling of the twin fires, a man in sheepskin zamarra,
alpagartas and voluminous mountaineer's shawl sat cross-legged on a
large boulder and watched the men bulk before the flames, and move back
and forth, and lie down, keeping close together for warmth. He did not
seem to feel the icy chill of the fog; he did not seem to fear
discovery. And yet, should the fires leap up and burn voraciously
because of some knot braided with pitch, he would be disclosed most
surely to the men about the flames.
For days, however, he had been with them and never once had chance
betrayed him to the men he watched. He had clung to a risco above them
when they had climbed like slow obstinate flies out of the profundities
of the Llanos de Jaen and plunged into the gargantas and barrancas of
the desolate Sierra Nevada. He had hung upon their flank as a wolf hangs
upon the flank of a gang of deer; as a podenco, or hunting dog, hangs
upon the flank of a sounder of wild boar. While they ate, he had
lingered near and, with a rare and pensive curiosity, had watched them
slowly but surely exhaust the linings of their mules' panniers.
Suddenly, from the boulder on which he sat as quietly as another rock,
he lifted up his voice in a long, thin, bestial ululation. Such a somber
and unearthly sound is made only by the Spanish she-wolf when, standing
above the den of its brood, it gives tongue to a thousand old memories
and desires.
One of the recumbent figures about the fires lifted himself upon an
elbow and, his face sharp, hearkened intently. Again, from the boulder,
uprose the steely cry, mournful as a wail sent spearing aloft from
Purgatory. From his elbow, Aguilino the guide lifted himself to his
feet.
"When you hear the she-wolf give tongue," he answered to the inquiring
looks of the others, "you may be sure that its den and runways are near.
The young fat cubs make fairly good meat. I will go out into the
darkness, hearkening to the cries of the bitch, and if I am lucky, I may
locate the brood for you. God willing, we will have an oteo, a
wolf-drive, at dawn to-morrow!"
He walked out of the radius of the firelight and went stumbling through
the shadowy gloom. As he brushed through the white buckthorn, arbutus,
and holly which sprouted in the more generous soil between the boulders,
those about the fires could hear a swishing and snapping, and a
regular-spaced crackling from the rich mould under his walking feet.
Then all crackling and rustling ceased, and the night was darkly still.
Aguilino halted at the foot of the boulder. The man in the mountaineer's
shawl dropped down beside him.
"Rafael Perez," he said, "to-morrow you must murder the last mule!"
"But, Don Jacinto, I dare not! Three times already have they threatened
my life, and they regard me forever with the most savage of looks. The
others I do not fear so much, but that magnificent one--I tell you I
fear Morales so that I shudder at each of his glances. The man looks
murder. Believe me, Don Jacinto, he would shoot me like a dog should I
make but one more move!"
"Then I must finish that last mule myself. To-morrow, above the Pass of
the Blessed Trinity, where the three roads converge into one, I will
send down a boulder to crush out its life."
"Ah, that is better, senor don! They cannot blame me if a little rock
falls from the heights, while I walk with them through the gap. But how
much longer must I endure their scowling looks, maestro? My life is not
worth a peseta while I linger with that company."
"They continue to eat, do they not?" said Quesada significantly.
"Si, but it's no fault of mine. Don Jacinto, how could I dare send more
than three mules toppling off the mountain walls? You yourself, maestro,
told me to resort to the oleander leaves. Remember, it was in that
little talk behind the granite crag? But the oleander leaves did not get
rid of the panniers of the three poisoned beasts. These Quixotes fill
themselves from those panniers without stint, especially the Frenchman.
They will continue to eat for a few days--"
"Hola, the Frenchman has an appetite, eh?"
"Seguramente, si! But when shall I quit the distasteful presence of that
terrible Morales?"
"To-morrow at dusk, if you will have it."
"A thousand thanks! But what excuses shall I give, Don Jacinto?"
"Say to them that it is not the will of God that you go farther!"
"Carajo, they will shoot me for it!"
"Que, que! What of that? They will only cheat the Guardia Civil of
another black rogue!"
Little comforted by the words of consolation, grumbling and shaking his
head morosely, Rafael Perez, alias Aguilino, returned to the bivouac of
the nine fantastic ones. The other, who wore the garb of a serrano,
hurried away through the foggy darkness, his head bent and brow
thoughtful.
The following day, as slowly they climbed one of the three roads which
led into the mournful Pass of the Blessed Trinity, a huge boulder came
bounding down from the granite heights, viciously leaped by John Fremont
Carson's head and, having been deflected by a rock above, missed the
last mule by a good dozen yards. The guide Aguilino swore in his chest,
and no one heard him.
As the sun rose to its meridian, the vertical rays, reflected from the
stony bare-fanged walls, gave off an intense heat, and the party halted
in a hollow that lay brown and lean between two mountains. The men
squatted down to partake of a light noontide repast, and it was then
that Rafael Perez approached Morales.
"Caballero of my soul," he said fearfully, "I can go no farther with
you!"
"Disparate!" exclaimed Morales, jumping to his feet. "What nonsense is
this! Hola, Ferou and you, Carson; the treacherous knave desires to
abandon us!"
The Frenchman and American crowded up.
"But he cannot!" objected Ferou. "We will not let him!"
"What reason have you for refusing to go farther?" asked Carson, turning
upon the guide.
"Senores," replied Aguilino with feigned humility, but no little
trepidation; "it is not the will of God!"
"It is not the will of Jacinto Quesada, you mean!" bit out the American
with quick penetration.
Aguilino shrugged his shoulders expressively.
"Senores," he whined, "there are no churches in these mountains, and men
of the good Dios come but seldom here. In these mountains, the will of
Jacinto Quesada moves stronger than does the will of God!"
"Ah!" exclaimed Morales, with sudden understanding. "So that's it, eh?"
And his youthful face cold and grim, he lifted his automatic pistol and
shoved it beneath the nose of the guide.
"Smell of its maw, my good hombre!" he commanded metallically. "Now tell
me whose will you will obey!"
Aguilino grimaced like a frightened monkey.
"Heart of God, Senor Don Manuel, I will stay, I will stay!"
They went on through the hollow in the northern hills. And Aguilino
shook his head.
"It is that terrible Morales," he mumbled to himself. "Don Jacinto does
not know him. Twice has Don Jacinto failed me this day."
They went up a dark green corry that looked like the hiding place of
savage wolves. It was a narrow bridle path, a mere tunnel hewn out of
solid rock and overarching foliage. The afternoon drew into twilight; a
dim fresco held beneath the plait-work of lentisk, oleanders, and
clinging briar; and then, all at once, the corry topped its rise and
began descending, plunging down abrupt rock faces and zigzagging about
the mountainside like the spiral of a corkscrew. It made the spine
tingle to think that one false step in the darkness might precipitate
one into the unseen murmuring stream far below.
They camped, that night, in a dell at the foot of the corry, not far
from the constantly crashing stream. When they sprawled out to sleep,
Morales and John Fremont Carson drew close on either side of Aguilino
and carelessly dropped a leg across his legs, one from the right, the
other from the left.
But they slept too well, those self-appointed bodyguards. What with the
fatigue poisons that had been gathering in their joints and muscles
during the long toilsome day and the many days which had preceded it,
they could not hope to bat one eye in sleep and keep the other warily
winking at the mat between. Quickly they became like logs of wood,
incapable of feeling and enterprise. And in some black cavernous hour of
the night, Aguilino crawled out and away.
They awoke in the chill dawn, and looked about them with red-rimmed
eyes, and spoke together in husky whispers. Without a guide, they were
like the fabled babes in the wood. They were lost completely in those
gray, echoing, savage mountains.
They breakfasted glumly and, with lightened packs upon their shoulders,
went on. Now before them stalked no Gypsy guide; before them stalked an
emaciated and bony specter that looked back to grimace every little
while, and to beckon them on--the specter of Starvation!