Quesada led his horse back around the bend and out of sounding distance.
He picketed him behind a feathery smoke-plant up the side of the gorge.
Then he stole forward toward the camp.
He caught now, as he drew near, the clatter of tin as of men preparing
breakfast, the tempting aroma of coffee, and the hot sizzle of frying
meat. Creeping through the underwood on hands and knees, silent as a cat
of the wilds, he came to where he could peer through an entangle of
white buckthorn and genista, and out into a trampled space about an
alder tree.
There were two men in the trampled space. They wore the blue,
red-trimmed uniform of the Guardia Civil.
The one holding a blackened frying pan over the small blaze of faggots
was facing toward Quesada. His uniform but poorly fitted his squat frame
and broadly uncouth shoulders; it showed palpable signs of having been
slept in the night before. His heavy-jawed, black-mustached face was
sweating copiously from the hot nearness to the fire; he had tossed his
tricorn police hat off his unkempt head and into the weeds behind; he
looked, forsooth, more the type of brigand than ever did Quesada
himself. He was the apelike gendarme, Pascual Montara.
The other, with back toward Quesada, was busying about the wiry,
coarse-haired ponies to one side. He was a tall man, his uniform as trim
on his military figure as if he had not spent the night on the ground,
and his polished three-corner hat set snugly on his head, white linen
sun-shield behind, in thorough preparation for the day's work. As he
currycombed and brushed the ponies, there was visible on one sleeve the
red-braided chevron of a sergeant.
"Hola, Don Esteban, mi sargento!" called Pascual at the fire. He put the
frying pan down upon the trampled grass and lifted the coffee pot from
its bed in the coals.
The tall man turned about and, in full view to the peeping Quesada, came
striding toward the fire. His hair, closely clipped, showed white
beneath his hat; yet there was in him no sign of the weakness of age. He
had a short, knife-sharp white beard, a face as lean and haughty as a
griffon vulture's. He was Sergeant Esteban Alvarado, father of the lover
of the Gypsy Paquita, Miguel Alvarado.
The two men squatted cross-legged upon the ground opposite each other,
and ate and drank in silence. But Montara, munching prodigiously, kept
continually shaking his ugly head. Finally he said:
"Seguramente, yes! It is the wild-goose chase."
"Pascual Montara," said the old man severely, "your talk shows you
unfaithful to your duty."
"Duty, za! It is my head I use, Don Esteban. Did not the Americano tell
us last night, from the great rock above, that the village is in the
throes of the cholera? We cannot go into the barrio for fear of taking
the disease, and they will not leave the pueblo for fear of spreading it
about the countryside.
"We have done our duty, mi sargento. We have found the American, the
great Morales, and his whole cuadrilla. They are safe. And they can
please themselves when they want to come down. Valgate Dios, it is not
in our instructions to drag them into civilization by the hair of their
head!"
"Muy bueno. But it is in our instructions to capture and kill Jacinto
Quesada--"
"Who is not in Minas de la Sierra. I tell you, Don Esteban, that
Americano does not lie. This is Quesada's native barrio, true; but he is
no friend of Jacinto Quesada. Jacinto Quesada robbed him in that affair
of the Seville-to-Madrid; for weeks he has been pursuing the Wolf
through the sierras. He says Quesada is not in the village."
The sergeant chewed his meat in silence. It was a dour silence, as if he
refused to argue, yet was not convinced by the logic of the other.
Beneath it, there seemed an undercurrent of imperial anger.
Opening his mouth wide as he ate, Montara looked at him sharply, from
under black bushy brows.
"Must I argue as I did last night?" he asked aggressively. "You say that
we have them all bagged, including Quesada, in this eagle's nest. But I
say Quesada is not there. He has not been up in this barrio for months.
He has been swinging like a pendulum back and forth across the two
Spains. My soul, he is like ten men for being in more places than one.
If he were up here, how can you account for that affair of the
Despenaperros over three weeks ago?"
"I must admit that," qualified the old man condescendingly. "My son
Miguel and I were stationed in the Pass at the time. Miguelito said he
was sure it was Quesada who stuck-up the automobile and beat to death
the rich Englishman. The Englishman's pale wife described the bandolero.
It was indeed Quesada. But that outrage, coming on top of the hold-up of
the Seville-to-Madrid, must surely have caused the outlaw to seek refuge
in his village."
"But it didn't, Don Esteban. You've heard of that happening in the
Alameda of Valladolid on a night two weeks ago. While the people, bent
on enjoying the open-air cinema, were all gathered on the grass in the
hot night, he appeared before the large white sheet and, pointing two
guns at them, brazenly called out that he was Jacinto Quesada. Then,
while the members of the civic orchestra were playing some outrageous
gypsy tune in obedience to his command, he slipped quietly away. I
cannot account for it myself. He gathered no gold from the crowd. But
sacred blood! it was bold."
"It was too bold for me to believe," objected Alvarado, shaking his
head. "Tut, it is but a story of the people. They are forever building
wonderful adventures and sentimental romances about these hungry dogs of
bandoleros. One would think that the wolves were gentlemen and fine
heroes, and we of the Guardia Civil only ratty red-eyed ferrets!"
Pascual vehemently nodded his heavy head.
"I know, I know!" he agreed heartily. "It is no longer any honor to
wear the uniform of the police in Spain. But what think you now of my
argument, Don Esteban? Need I recite that shocking affair of the Plaza
de Toros of Seville? The glamorous Moors of Spain do not make up stories
about their bandoleros robbing brave matadors in the House of God. It is
a lizard's trick. Since Quesada stuck-up the popular espada, Lagartijo,
in the bullfighters' chapel of Seville, all Spain has been stunned by
the sacrilege. And that was but one short week gone--"
Jacinto Quesada drew back from the entangled buckthorn and genista. His
brow was ruffled as a mountain stream. So this was the meaning of his
dorados' sullen insinuations! Come to think of it, even old Pedro down
in Granada had been struck aghast at sight of him whom he had known from
a boy.
"Ah, Mother of God!" old Pedro had exclaimed, a strange quavering note
in his voice. "It is Jacinto Quesada about whom all Spain talks!" And he
had added, upon hearing of the plague: "It is the hand of God,
Jacintito! It is a scourge of God striking down those about you because
of the terrible vile things you have been doing, these last nights,
throughout the peninsula!"
Some unknown was sticking-up persons on the road and in far-off
alamedas, and then, with bluster and insane braggadocio, announcing he
was Jacinto Quesada! The fool had cold murder in his bowels! He had
killed a foreigner, an Englishman. He slayed like a ferocious beast or a
crazed man. And he had abused the sanctity of the chapel of the
bullfighters in the Plaza de Toros of Seville. The thing was unheard of.
It was sacrilege!
"By the wounds of Christ!" swore Quesada softly. "The fellow is odious
and detestable. And all his vile ordure is flung at my head. The
creature is braiding a noose for my neck!"
Out in the trampled space about the alder tree, the sergeant's voice had
risen with a peremptory note.
"Do not stay here, Pascual Montara! It is against all the code of the
Guardia Civil, but zut! ride away without me, and you please. I stay
here. Understand, hombre; I stay here! Every wolf has his lair, every
bandolero his home. This barrio above is Quesada's home. In a week or a
month, he must return here. I shall wait that week or that month. He can
come only this way. When he comes this way, by the Life! I shall rid
Spain forever of his baneful presence!"
Jacinto Quesada stole back around the bend to his picketed horse. From
behind the cantle of the saddle, he removed those canvas packs which
contained the drugs, preparations, and liquors he had gathered at the
doctor's casa. He unwound the reins from about a branch of the sumach
bush and tied them loosely to the pommel of the saddle. He broke off a
hairy flower stalk from the smoke-plant. Then, with an eye to quietude,
carefully he led the pony down the brushy side of the gorge.
Once in the dust-coated road which wound through the bottom of the
gorge, he faced the pony down the way he had come and inserted, under
the brows of the saddle against the spine, the setule of flower stalk.
Immediately the animal, irritated out of his weariness, began fidgeting,
flicking his tail, snapping his head round on either side, baring his
long yellow teeth and crinkling again and again the skin of his back.
Quesada stepped to one side. With his open hand, he struck the horse a
resounding thwack upon the rump. The pony leaped forward, the bristle of
flower stalk painfully rubbing his spine. Ere he could recover from the
shock of the blow and pause to lessen the aggravating pricking under the
saddle, Quesada snapped out his revolver and discharged it in the air
behind him--bang, bang! Exasperated and thoroughly frightened, the horse
fled precipitantly down the road.
While the winding gutter of gorge detonated with the hoof-clatter of the
racing horse and while the rock walls flung back and forth, like
sounding-boards, the sharp metallic explosions of the pistol, Jacinto
Quesada bounded up the brushy side to where, behind the feathery
wig-plant, he had flung the canvas saddlebags.
He was none too quick. Like a louder echo of the echoes sounded up the
gorge, of a sudden, the crang of a carbine; then the thundering hoof
beats of horses careering down at full tilt; and then the voices of men
lunging up in the dread challenge and command of the police:
"Alto a la Guardia Civil! Halt for the Civil Guard!"
Quesada crouched behind the whitish-green thicket of sumach, and waited
tense as a trigger at half-cock.
Around the bend up the road drove into view like a lean racing terrier a
wiry rough-coated pony, hoofs pounding in a quick rataplan, barrel low
to the dust, and ears flattened sharply back. Upright in the saddle, a
carbine across the hollow of one arm, was the tall sergeant of police,
linen sun-shield flying straight behind like a white guidon snapping in
a wind.
"Don't shoot, Montara!" he called back from an eager keen-edged face.
"Don't shoot till you see the hair on his neck!"
"Shoot his horse!" answered a roaring shout. "Carajo! In all our lives,
we may never get another such chance at Jacinto Quesada!"
Around the bend, like a screaming projectile, lunged another pony, neck
extended, nostrils blowing red, and the ugly policeman Montara standing
a-tiptoe in the stirrups. Montara was like some wild Arab in a mad
display of horsemanship. He swayed back and forth; he waved the carbine
in one long apelike hand. Carried away by the lust of the chase, he
shouted repeatedly from his blood-darkened countenance:
"Alto a la Guardia Civil! Alto, alto! Alto a la Guardia Civil!"
Ponies and riders plunged behind a huge brown boulder down the road and
out of sight. Quesada snapped up. Active as an ape, he slung the canvas
packs over his shoulders and leaped down the brushy side of the gorge.
What time the stony defile echoed and reechoed with the distance-dimming
clangor of pounding hoofs and turbulent shouts, he sped, on his long
mountaineer's legs, up the convolutions of the goat path to the
empested barrio.
The crang of a carbine suddenly spearing aloft from down the gorge
caused him to halt on the great rock at the brink of the village. He
looked back. He smiled somberly.
"That will be my poor horse," he remarked. "He has halted for the
Guardia Civil!"