trucks backing in upon the truck in which he was lying. He roused enough
to hear voices and the clank of chain, with the thought that they were
doing something with a steam winch, he could not care what. He drowsed
off at once into the deeps of sleep into which none but harvesters and
sailors ever sink. In his sleep, he became conscious of vibration, as
though he were in a berth above the engines in some small steamer under
way. It was soothing, or at least not unpleasant, to his mood of
feverish drowsiness, to be shaken thus, perhaps he slept the better for
it.
For some hours he slept. Gradually, as he came to himself, he found
himself listening in his sleep for the bell, so that he might know how
much of his watch remained to him. The bell did not strike, though he
hearkened after it. He felt cold, and was aware that sprays were hitting
the side of the deck-housecontinually.
Then, punctually at the “one bell,” at the moment at which he would have
been called, he roused up wide awake with the knowledge that something
was very wrong indeed.
He was accustomed to turning out and being on deck within a minute. He
roused up now with one heave, weak, stiff and aching as he was, ready
for action. He came to himself, remembering all the events of the night
before, and at once took stock of things. He was in the truck, which was
jolting along a bad line at about fifteen miles an hour. It was
daylight, yet all dim with storm. The hitting on the truck which he had
taken to be sprays on the deckhouse was sand, pelting in from the
desert. The floor of the truck was covered with a fine layer of sand. A
pelt of sand flew over the side of the car continually. As he stood
shakily up to see where he was, the sand blew into his eyes, hair and
mouth, down his neck, into his clothes, into his lungs. It came on a
cold wind in little dry particular pellets. Hard snow coming in a gale
has a similar power of annoying and confusing; this had a power beyond
snow, of maddening. It stung like hard snow, but after it had stung it
did not melt, it remained as grit where it had fallen, in the clothes,
the eyes or the mouth.
He could see, perhaps, sixty yards to windward and a hundred yards to
leeward of his truck, which seemed to be somewhere towards the end of a
goods or freight train. The train was going along a waterless land which
was sometimes a scrub of chaparral and mezquite and sometimes a desert,
with cactus and prickly pear. Over all this expanse the accursed norther
came down like a devil pelting sand, never in any great volume, but in a
drift which never ceased. Sard noticed that the side of the next truck
to his had already had a kind of polish given to it by the never-ceasing
pitting of the pellets.
He knew that the “norther” being as cold as it was, must be blowing from
within three points of north. This gave him the train’s course as
roughly north-west. The sort of glow in the sky, which marked where the
sun would be, as well as his own sense of time, always very acute,
showed him that it was about eight o’clock in the morning. Reckoning
that the train had picked up his trucks between three and four o’clock,
he judged that he had been carried some sixty or seventy miles into the
desert of Tloatlucan, and that the next stop would be fifty miles
further on, in the foothills beyond the desert, where the railway began
its climb into the Sierra.
Doug and his brother smugglers had of course gone with their freight on
the other fork of the railway far to the west. Looking about in the sand
on the floor of the truck, Sard found a hook-pot half full of cold
cazuela and two of the small loaves stuffed with sausage. He was glad of
these, in spite of their being gritty with sand. When he had
breakfasted, he felt more like himself.
As he could neither stop the train nor get out of it he went on with it,
wondering how soon he would be able to return. And as he wondered, he
took stock of his equipment. He was dressed in a pair of old serge
trousers belonging to Doug, a pair of slippers which had been cut down
from bluchers, an old flannel shirt, as clean and soft as lint, a blue
dungaree jacket, blackened with stains of dried oil, plainly the gift of
one of the launch-men, and a tam-o’-shanter working-cap, wanting the
topknot, which had once belonged to a sailor in the French battleship
_Suffren_. He had his own belt and knife, an old blue handkerchief
printed with the legend “A present from Bradford,” a paper collar, one
sock and one stocking. His own wet clothes, which he had put in the
truck, were gone. His watch, his money, penknife, key-ring and “pocket
tool chest,” a little appliance containing a marler, screwdriver,
nipper, spanner and corkscrew, were all gone. He had put them into the
pocket of the dungaree jacket, when he had changed his clothes, but they
were gone. He had nothing but the clothes in which he stood, his
sheath-knife and a little brown pocket-case which contained a few pulpy
visiting cards, some stamps ruined by the wet, a few matches, and three
crushed xicale flowers.
He had lost his job, his passage, his clothes, his possessions, his
identity. He was being carried across the desert into the heart of a
continent. What he was to do when he left the train, in order to get
back to Las Palomas, was not very clear.
“After all,” he said, “there will be someone at the way-station who will
let me have a passage back in a truck. When once I am there, I can get
along.”
The events of the night before seemed to belong to a past life or to
another man. He rose up again to take stock of his whereabouts and to
see if he could see a train-hand. He saw the trucks forging and jolting
ahead. Beyond the trucks, both in front and behind, were the high,
closed, yellow, wooden Occidental freight-cars, marked with capacity
marks in dull red. The train lurched and jangled along the desert in a
ceaseless pelt of sand. The sand was merciless and pitiless, a little
and a little and a little. The chaparral bowed a little to it, the
cactus seemed to put back its ears. Everything was dry with it, gritty,
cracked, burnished. The persistence of its small annoyance told on all
things. As the dropping of water wears the stone, so the pelting of the
sand wore the spirit. Sard remembered what he had heard of these
northers: how the children are kept from school lest they should mutiny,
and how men, maddened by that insistent patting, will strike and kill.
The thought crossed his mind that if he had to walk back along the track
in that pelting, that annoyance of the tiny hands pat-pat-patting on
face and hands would be soon unbearable. Even there, sheltered in the
truck, it came pat-pat-patting, flying like a little dry-shot over the
sides, filtering up through cracks in the bottom, and dancing there,
like grains in a spring, till they were flung away. From time to time
the dry, quiet pat-pat-patting deepened to a noise of water, with a
roaring and a swish, into which the train joggled, lurched, jangled and
clanked, and at last seemed to tread down and over-roar.
He had plenty of thoughts to worry him. First of these was
disappointment that he had not seen “Her,” as he had hoped, the night
before; next to this came rage at missing his passage; then came anxiety
for that brother and sister in Los Xicales; what had happened to them?
Lastly, from somewhere in the background of his mind, the thought came
that it might not be easy to rejoin the _Pathfinder_. It was going to be
a good deal more difficult than he supposed.
“Hi, ya!”
The yell of “Hi, ya” was repeated from somewhere ahead. It was a shout
or hail loud enough to be heard above the noise of the train and of the
storm. It was addressed to him.
He stood up, screening his eyes from the sand. There, on the top of the
freight-car nearest to the trucks, a train-hand lay. He seemed annoyed
at Sard’s presence. He yelled at him and motioned to him to get out of
the truck. He was a hard-looking man with a swollen face and a kind of
vindictive energy. He lay crouched on the freight-car, hanging on with
his left hand to the iron rail on the car-roof. In his right hand he had
a long club, like a baseball club, which had a leather wrist-thong. He
shook this club at Sard and motioned to him with it, that he should get
out of the car. He also yelled at Sard in Spanish to ask what he was
doing on the train and to tell him to get out of it. As he seemed to be
an unreasonable man, Sard smiled at him and resumed his seat. The man
crept a little nearer, perhaps to make certain that Sard was alone, and
shouted:
“I’ll have you out of it before long, my white-faced Luterano with the
pip!”
“Will you have me out of it by force, or by your sweet persuasion?” Sard
asked him.
“You will see.”
“That will be something to look forward to.”
“You wait.”
“I am waiting.”
The man crept a foot nearer, spat towards Sard (not very successfully
against the norther) and called him some filthy names.
“I will open your bag,” he said, “with my knife, which is used to
opening the bags of Englishmen. I will see whether it is true that
Englishmen have the tripes of cats, as it is said.”
“It is quite true,” Sard answered. “They have. May I ask if you are in
love?”
“I will soon teach you.”
“What does your lady love in you; your appearance or your breeding?”
The man champed with his teeth, bit and worried his thumb as though he
were a dog and it a bone, and as it were jerked the worry at Sard. It is
a passionate gesture which looks more effective than it sounds. Sard
smiled at him. Sard was slightly to windward of the man and could speak
to him without effort with the certainty of being heard.
“You will get blood-poisoning,” he said, “if you bite your thumb with
those teeth.”
The man seemed to focus into a pair of flaming eyes; the balls of the
eyes rolled upwards so as to leave nothing but glaring yellow, then they
rolled down in a frenzy. He opened his mouth, grinned with clenched
teeth, hissed like a snake and howled like a hyæna. He spat thrice at
Sard, nodded at him, and then retreated along the freight-car top out of
sight. Sard noticed then that another train-hand was watching him from
the nearest freight-car to the rear of him. This man did not speak, and
did not meet his eyes. When Sard looked at him the man dropped his
eyelids and seemed to be looking at the ground, but in another instant
he was watching again and making a motion that Sard should leave the
cars. Sard could not see him so clearly as he had seen the other man,
but he made out a look of shiftiness and hardness, a mixture of prison
and the boxing-ring, yet tanned, as it were, or coloured with the
fineness of endurance. A sort of glimmer of high quality showed in the
pitiless evil mug, as in the faces of old soldiers, with bad records,
who have been through great campaigns. Sard judged that this man was not
an Occidental. There was a look of English or American about him. Then
he did not speak nor threaten: he used neither curse nor club, only
watched. Presently he caught Sard’s eyes and undoubtedly made the motion
that Sard should leave the cars.
“Beat it, kid,” the man cried.
This seemed so unreasonable that Sard paid no heed to him: he looked the
other way.
“Beat it,” the man cried. “Pasea.”
Sard looked at him; then looked away.
“Hell and Maria,” the man said, “if you ain’t got a gall!”
Perhaps in normal runs the train-hands on that freighter foregathered
for talk, drink or cards in the after-car. Perhaps the three trucks in
the middle of the train made the journey impossible on this occasion, or
it may be that Sard, the unknown man sitting in the truck, with the look
of one able to guard himself, made them think the norther not worth the
facing. They did not attempt the journey. The train pounded and jangled
on across the desert, in the ceaseless pelting and pitting of the sand.
The train presently reached a part of the desert where the wind for some
reason had more scope. Perhaps the line there crossed the mouth of some
great gut in the distant Sierra. The wind suddenly rose in strength and
voice, lifting the sand so that it looked like a smoke into which the
train had to butt. “Ai, ai!” it cried, just as it cries in rigging,
while the sand came over like sprays. Sard kept well ducked down under a
tarpaulin. When he looked up from his place towards his left, he
sometimes saw the train-hand watching him. Whenever their eyes met, the
train-hand motioned to him to leave the cars. Presently the train-hand
grew weary of such foolishness: he shouted something which Sard could
not hear, and then beat his way aft, out of sight.
Sard knew enough about the train-hands on these freighters to be sure of
evil from them. Hoboes had killed so many train-hands that now the train
crews always carried clubs, which they used on any hoboes who were
unable to pay their way or to defend themselves. Sard had no doubts
about being able to defend himself, but that evil face abaft-all made
him wonder how he was to get back across the desert to Las Palomas. How
would he fare, he wondered, if the train-hands on the returning train
were that sort of men? He realised that he was not now Sard Harker, the
mate of a crack ship, but a ragged-looking rough-neck, dirty and
unshaven, who would get “the hoboes’ deal, a bat on the head and six
months’ road-gang.” He began to have misgivings about his future.
For another two hours the train ran on across the storm. It was running
away from the storm, all the time, so that the violence of the wind and
the annoyance of the sand both abated. Presently the sand ceased to
pelt, the train ran out into the sun, leaving behind it a cloud of
sand-coloured storm, stretching up into the heaven, where it smoked like
sulphur fumes.
Now on both hands in a winking bright light was the desert of the Indios
Salvajes with the Sierra of the Holy Ghost beyond. After the misery of
the night and the nuisance of the storm, the beauty of the wilderness
was overwhelming. It lay in a half-circle, stretching for ninety miles
under the spine of the Sierra. It was all shining, vast, mysterious,
lonely beyond belief, empty of any life that was not poisonous and
spined and savage. There were patches of chaparral, a few mezquite
trees, a few giant cactuses. The most of it was empty shining sand,
many-coloured, flitting, sometimes danced over by eddies. Rocks of
violent colours rose out of it like the bones of dead beasts. Parts of
it seemed to be alive and thinking, other parts of it seemed dead from
old time, all parts of it drew Sard like a temptation.
He knelt on his tarpaulin to stare at it. He had known the desert of the
sea for a good many years. There men exist by effort and strength,
pitting their worth against it day by day. This was the desert of the
land, which calls men, not to try their worth, but to consider their
nature and their source, and to let all their effort and their strength
be absorbed in that contemplation.
He felt power come into him from that vast expanse which bore no life,
or almost none, that was not deadly, yet had absorbed for centuries,
unshielded, the energy of the sun in his strength.
At about midday the train, which had been running in sight of the
Sierra, passed so close under the foothills that Sard lost sight of
them. He was feeling rested and well: his leg was still numb, but fit
for use. He looked ahead along the line. There in an opening of the
foothills a couple of miles away were the houses of a settlement. They
were adobe houses, some of them limewashed, under a roll of foothill
which bore the marks of silver-mining. There was a white church with a
red-tiled campanile pierced in the Mission fashion for three bells. Sard
could see that there was a station here. Something made him look back
suddenly behind him. He was not in any danger, but from his perch in the
after-car the hard-faced man was watching him.
“Beat it, kid,” the man shouted. “Beat it like hell.” He signed to Sard
to leap from the car on the desert side. “Kid,” he cried, “this ain’t no
kid glove foolishness. You wanna beat it just like smoke.”
Unfortunately, Sard had heard of men shot while trying to “beat it” from
a freight-car. He did not want to beat it, but to explain his presence
and get a lift back to the coast. Besides, with one leg numb from
poison, it was not easy to beat it while the train was moving. The
train-hand shook his head much as Pilate washed his hands; he moved aft
along the cars out of sight again.
The Occidental train-hand, who had promised to look at his tripes,
reappeared for an instant to make sure that he was still there. He
showed his teeth at Sard and made a motion of cutting open a waistcoat
with the upward sweep of one hand. The train slackened speed so that
Sard could hear the clanging of the bell on the engine. Looking out, he
could see the population of the town sauntering to the station to watch
the train come to a stop. She curved in to the platform, which had been
made there some years before for a President’s visit. Only the engine
and one car could draw to the platform at one time. On the end of the
station building the name of the place, Tlotoatin, was painted on a
plank. The train stopped.
As she stopped, Sard laid hold of the truck side to swing himself out.
At that instant, the train jerked forward and then backwards violently,
so that he was pitched down into his truck. He was out of the train just
three seconds after the train-hands.
To his surprise, neither of these men made any movement towards him:
they stood watching, while a squad of soldiers followed their officers
out of the rear cars. The officers and men wore the grey uniforms and
green tejada-de-burro caps of the Nacionales. The officers plainly knew
of Sard’s presence on the train. They came straight towards him with
drawn revolvers in their hands. One of the officers was an elderly
captain, fat, pompous, slow-witted, and with a face like a slab of
something: the other was a little thin dapper lieutenant, with legs like
pipestems cased in tight patent-leather boots to the knees. Sard knew at
once that these men were coming back to barracks after being escort to a
consignment of silver from the mines. He saluted the officers, who did
not return his salute: on the contrary, they seemed indignant at his
saluting. A couple of soldiers covered Sard with their rifles.
“Who are you?” the captain asked.
Sard told him.
“So. You speak Spanish. What are you doing on the line?”
Sard told him.
“A likely story, eh, lieutenant?”
“Very likely, my captain.”
“You know the law against trespass on the line?”
“No, captain,” Sard said.
“That is false,” the captain answered; “since you know Spanish, you must
know it.”
“I am English, and do not,” Sard said.
“That is false,” the captain answered. “You are not English. You are
French. Your cap proves it. You are a deserter from the French ship
which called here.”
“If there be any English or Scotchman here,” Sard said, “or any
American, I can prove that I am English.”
“We desire no proof, since we need none. You were on the line, that
suffices; without papers, which clinches it. You are arrested.”
“You had better not arrest me,” Sard said; “in spite of my clothes, I am
an officer, equal in rank to yourself.”
“Enough words,” the captain said.
“By many, too many words,” the lieutenant said.
“At least,” Sard said, “you can telegraph to the British Consul at Las
Palomas about me, or send me to him.”
“It is not for you to prescribe our course of action,” the captain said.
“You are arrested. Your case will have every consideration. Meanwhile,
to the barracks.”
“To the barracks: march,” the lieutenant added.
If he had resisted, perhaps if he had said another word, they would have
shot him and pitched him down a disused working. Sard knew that the
silver escorts were apt to shoot to save trouble. He judged it best to
submit. “They are cross from the sandstorm,” he thought; “soon they will
have lunched; then they will listen to reason; or I can get word to some
Englishman, or to the Consul.” Like all sailors, he had the utmost
contempt for soldiers; to be jailed by soldiers was a bitter experience.
The guards fell in on each side of him; two men came behind him with
fixed bayonets; the officers brought up the rear with drawn revolvers;
the captain called “March!” As they set out, the Occidental train-hand
darted two steps forward and crouched to screech some insults. He
mocked, showed his teeth and jeered at Sard, making again the gesture of
the stomach-ripper. “You get him,” he screeched in English, “you get-a
your bag cut. A te te . . . ucho!”
Just a couple of paces beyond this screamer, the other train-hand stood,
twirling his club as though puzzled. He was looking hard at Sard with a
face made of broken commandments: Sard expected a bat on the head from
him as he passed. He did not get it: the man dropped his eyes as before,
and spat sideways as though dismissing the thought of Sard. They passed
out of the station enclosure to the town, which was crowded with
inhabitants, who had either come to see the train or were now coming to
see “the bandit.” Most of the citizens were mestizos or Indios. Sard
looked in vain for an American or English face. He heard the comments
passed upon him.
“An English bandit who robbed the silver train.”
“That a white so sickly should have so much blood!”
“Ha, dirty thief, to the gallows!”
“Ho, Englishman, it is not so easy to rob our silver: we are not your
Africans from whom you may rob gold.”
“Englishman, the garota: cluck-cluck!”
“They say he killed seven before being taken.”
“He? An Englishman? They were asleep, covered in their blankets. He
stabbed them sleeping.”
“Hear you, he killed seven, sleeping.”
“Let them kill him, then. We have enough of these whites at our doors
without Englishmen.”
The barracks were close to the station. The party marched into the patio
of the barrack buildings: the heavy maruca-wood gates were closed behind
them. The place looked as dingy as a prison and as mean as a workhouse:
it smelt like a cesspool. One end of it, the men’s end, was two storeys
high and covered with scaling plaster, the sides were one storey adobe
buildings which had been limewashed once since they were built. The left
side of the square seemed to be officers’ quarters, for it was screened
by a verandah. On the side opposite to it were stables, kitchens, and a
sort of barton where two charrucas were housed.
“You will be imprisoned till you can give an account of yourself,” the
lieutenant said. “Take him to the cells, you men.”
“I am perfectly ready to go to the cells,” Sard said, “but I wish to let
the English of this town know that I am here.”
“This is not England,” the lieutenant said, “but the Occidental
Republic, where the English, the Irish, and other accursed gringos have
no voice, save when they mew like cats for the charity of our leavings.
Your presence shall be explained to such English as may be here. The
brothel-keeper is English and the town-scavenger Irish. There is also a
Scotchman in the road-gang for murder. Such are the places of your race
among the Occidentales.”
“We do the things most needed,” Sard answered. “Next to begetting a new
race.”
“For half a peseta I would blow your brains out.”
“Any Occidental would do murder for half a peseta.”
“You will find, my dog, that we do justice for nothing.”
“So America thinks.”
The lieutenant whirled right round upon his heel, a complete circle. He
gurgled in his throat, thrust his revolver-butt into his mouth and bit
it, so that marks showed upon the wood. His face turned black with rage:
he stamped with his feet so that Sard expected his little brittle
pipestems to snap.
“Remove him to the cells,” he said, as soon as he could speak.
“I am going to the cells,” Sard said. “Remember that you have been
warned that you are jailing an officer and will be held responsible.” He
turned his back upon the lieutenant and followed a corporal through the
barton to a yard beyond. In this yard, which was fenced with a high
adobe wall, tiled at the top, were the cells. The corporal unlocked the
door of one of the cells and motioned to Sard to enter. Sard cast a
glance about the yard. He noticed all down the western wall a line of
bullet-marks about breast-high. He had seen similar marks on walls in
Santa Barbara: they marked executions.
“Enter, then,” the corporal said. The cell was dirty, but the dirt was
old dirt.