What, we are not brutes nor Luteranos, I hope; we can be civil one to
other. Civility, as they say, costs nothing, yet makes many debtors. I,
therefore, did not spit at him as one without faith. ‘Good day, sir,’ I
said, ‘I trust that you are well, that your señora is well, that your
honoured parents preserve their health, even at their great age.’
“He rolled his eyes upon me like a cow dying of thirst. The gringos have
the eyes of cows rather than of men. ‘Tell me,’ he said to me, ‘the way
out of these mountains.’
“‘Truly, sir,’ I said, ‘you who bring civilisation to our savageries
will not so soon leave us. Stay, I entreat you, to dine, or at least to
sup, or to sing thus to the piano as do the women of you gringos. Yet,
since you must leave us, continue,’ I said, ‘a day’s journey
north-eastward, till you reach a place where all the rocks are rotten.
There you will find a path over the mountains, good for men, excellent
for beasts, having grass, inns, a road, good air, good water and good
bells, gravel soil and Holy Communion.’
“He was a big man, even for an Americano. He wore no boots, but
slippers, such as women wear.”
“So you sent him to the rotten rocks,” the others said. “But did he go,
Anselmo? He surely did not go?”
“Americanos believe all that they are told,” Anselmo said. “He either
went to the rotten rocks or to another place far from me, which was my
desire in speaking to him. Since there was nothing to be had from him,
then plainly it was my task to be rid of him.”
“Long live Anselmo!” the man said. “So he went to the rotten rocks
without question. This is it to be a gringo!”
“Without doubt he will be at the rotten rocks, dead?”
“Without doubt.”
The men laughed at this: presently the youngest of them said:
“You say that he had slippers such as women wear? Would it be worth the
while to retrieve the slippers for Mariquita?”
“It would not,” Anselmo said. “This man was outcast from the gringos,
unable to live even their easy life. His slippers were not women’s
slippers, but the wreck of boots cut to that size. He was in all
respects ruined: moreover he was lousy.”
They continued to talk of gringos for some little time, though the
thought recurred to the youngest of the men that Sard’s body might be
worth the rummaging: he asked Anselmo whether Sard had “a belt of the
Americans,” or at least “a pouch for tobacco, such as he had seen.”
“No,” Anselmo answered. “This gringo had nothing: even the crows will
have nothing from him. Had he had anything, I, Anselmo, would have had
it: as it was, let the vultures give Anselmo thanks.”
They talked on, of gringos, gringo women, the women of the district, the
recent cock-fights, the ingredients of sausages, the natures of
parasites, etc., etc., till Sard, lulled by their drawling low speech,
fell asleep. He was in a dangerous place, but danger will not keep men
awake so well as love or grief. Besides, few stop to identify a sleeping
man. He slept as a sailor will sleep, like a dead man. In his sleep,
some two hours later, he shifted about, so as to detach a piece of adobe
from his shelter. It fell, with a little clatter which he half heard
through his drowsiness. Unfortunately, it roused a little dog within the
hut; the dog began to bark. Sard sat up at once, wide awake; his
movement knocked down more adobe; the dog barked louder: a man within
the hut cursed the dog; but the dog, aware of Sard, would not be silent.
“Listen,” said the man in the hut, “be silent, Chaco. Listen; there is
someone there.”
“Who would be there?” a woman asked. “It is but a dog, prowling for
bones.”
“I do not know who may be there,” the man answered, “but it is no dog,
since dog will answer dog with barking.”
“It is some drunkard or some pig of the poblacion,” the woman said.
“Come here, Chaco; down, dog; quiet!”
Unfortunately, Sard in rising to his feet stirred Chaco to bark louder.
“Your drunkard or your dog or your pig,” the man said, “these are likely
excuses, are they not? Where are my boots?”
Sard heard him drag his boots to the bedside, muttering.
“What then do you expect to find, Andrés?” the woman asked.
“You know well what I expect to find,” Andrés replied.
“Indeed I know no such matter,” she answered, “since the expectations of
a husband are beyond the wit of wives. If you will tell me, then shall I
know.”
“Know, then,” Andrés answered, “that I expect to find Martin, your
lover, who taps here, like a second Pyramus, and shall die here in his
sin, like a second Chico the Blanco.”
Sard did not wish to be the second Chico the Blanco; he slipped up the
line of huts as swiftly as he could. He slid round the corner of a hut,
under its eaves, into the grey of the wall. He was hardly quiet there
when Andrés came rushing past looking for Martin.
“Stay, Martin accursed,” he cried; “we have accounts to settle,
offspring of a dog.” He ran, cursing, along the line of huts.
The village or poblacion had not composed itself to sleep: it was
perhaps always ready for a row. Sard heard a general rushing to doors,
as the inhabitants came to see the fun. Some boys brushed past Sard, who
joined them.
“What is it? What is it?” the boys asked.
“Andrés seeks Martin, to kill him,” Sard answered.
“Andrés is killing Martin,” the boys cried. “Come, boys, Andrés has
killed Martin.” Sard found himself in the midst of a crowd of men, women
and children, hurrying up the line of huts. The crowd stopped towards
the end of the line where Andrés was beating with his knife-hilt upon a
door.
“Come out, you Martin,” he was crying. “I will have thy liver as a bake
meat, yea and I will mince thy heart and eat it with red pepper, without
grace.”
There was a general edging back of the crowd at this, to get out of the
line of fire from Martin’s door: Sard edged back too, till his back was
against a hut wall. He could see Andrés’ wife at her hut door, peering
after her husband. All waited for Martin to answer the challenge: Andrés
even waited for a reply: none came.
“So, scum of a Martin,” Andrés continued, “half-breed of a toad and a
heretic, you justly fear my vengeance. See, now, brothers, this Martin,
before I take his skin to be my bed-mat, makes his last prayers: he
confesses, he sues for mercy. But I am not one to grant mercy till blood
has flown on my front teeth. So come out, Martin, offspring of a dog,
till I crack your marrow-bones with nutcrackers and take your marrow for
boot-grease.”
Suddenly the door of Martin’s hut was flung open and a woman faced the
madman.
“Who is it calls Martin?” she said. “Who is it couples a fine name with
the filth of a drunkard’s ravings? You, Andrés? I thought no less.
Martin is away, as is well known, or by this your tongue would have been
tied round your neck with your own entrails, dog of a drunkard. Away,
accursed one, trouble not the houses of the honest. But when Martin
returns, then he shall know of this, Andrés, and then, Andrés, shall you
be squeezed in the press till we know if your blood be wine or oil.”
Sard expected that Andrés would at least reply, but there was silence.
Martin’s wife took up the word once more.
“And you people of the town,” she said, “have you nothing better to do
than to watch the antics of this fool? Go, every one to his house, or
Martin shall deal with you, even as with him.”
There was silence again for about thirty seconds, then three or four of
the children, who had been on the outskirts of the little crowd, edged
sheepishly away. They were followed by others. Sard had no time to dodge
or hide; any movement of the sort would have betrayed him. He stood
where he was, somewhat bent and peering towards Martin’s hut, with his
left hand shading his face and eyes. Half-a-dozen people, children and
grown-ups, passed him on their way to their huts. They looked at him
rather hard, but no one spoke to him. A man and boy, as they passed,
looked perhaps harder than the others. After they had passed, Sard heard
the man ask under his breath:
“Who was that by the corner of the house?”
The boy said, “Old Ortiz, I thought. Good-night, Ortiz.”
Sard answered and muttered good-night. As he spoke, a couple of lads,
who were running, jolted into the two friends and jolted Ortiz out of
their minds. Up and down the line of huts people went home and closed
their doors. Martin’s wife stood at her door, looking at them. The last
to pass was Andrés, who went shambling past, muttering and twitching.
Sard heard him mutter, “With my good knife I would have laid him low, I
would have laid him low.”
Now from Andrés’ hut came the cry of a woman:
“Where is that creature calling himself a man, to whom the church has
bound me in matrimony, who suspects me of infamy? Where is this Andrés,
who from the blackness of his heart asperses the whiteness of my honour?
Let me see him that I may cast his foul calumny in his teeth. Is it for
this, O dog of all the dunghills of Spain, that I redeemed thee from thy
life as hangman’s boy and made thee a knight-at-arms?”
Those who had not gone home hurried to watch Andrés receive his wife’s
eloquence. Sard saw Andrés enter his home, but then something made him
look up suddenly. He saw that Martin’s wife, who had come a few paces
from her door, was looking at him with curiosity. It was bright
moonlight; no one who looked at him could fail to see that he did not
belong there.
“Well, I’m caught now,” Sard thought. “It’s neck or nothing now. Well,
the straightest way is the quickest.”
He walked straight up to her.
“Madam,” he said, “I’m not a spy or the police, or anything. I’m lost
here in these hills; will you help me out?”
She looked at him for some moments. “Go further up the line,” she said,
“the third hut from here is empty. Pass in there and have no fear.”
She closed her own door in his face, and Sard did as he was bid. The
third hut from hers was empty. He went into it. At some early time there
had been a mud wall across the hut, dividing it into two. This had
fallen into a pile of loose earth. Sard got behind this pile and
thought, “Well, here I am; and if that woman lifts a finger, my throat
will be cut on this doorstep, and that little beast, Chaco, will lick my
blood.”
He waited; each minute seemed an hour. At the end hut of the village the
man still sang to his mandoline, in his falsetto voice, a poem of
intolerable length and folly, which Sard recognised as a rhymed romance
of the early 17th century. Footsteps passed up and down outside the
door. Once three men came to the door and stopped there, muttering in
low voices for two or three minutes. They were smoking cigarettes and
spitting. One of the men was carrying harness, which clinked.
One of them said, “Well, sooner or later that’s what it’ll have to come
to.”
And another said, “We can count on you then?”
The other replied, “Well, come here, come on inside here; I’ll just give
you my reasons.”
He had his hand on the door-latch and the door eight inches ajar, when
the other said, “No, not in there, thank you. There are tarantulas in
there. Come on up along.”
They moved away. Then for a long time Sard sat there, thinking of what
they had said: “There are tarantulas in there.” He heard a queer,
regular, clicking noise in one of the corners, two or three yards from
him. It was a little dry, slight clicking noise, rather like two wooden
skewers being tapped together. Some one had told him, years before, that
tarantulas click their mandibles together before they attack. “That’s
what it is,” he thought, “it’s a tarantula in the corner.”
He kept himself breathlessly still, and then suddenly he heard a little
light pattering. There was a swift, flurrying scutter along the floor, a
shrill squeal, something leapt and fell across his feet and writhed away
squealing. He heard the thing, whatever it was, rat or mouse, trying to
shake itself free in the corner of the room. The squeals soon died to a
whimper and the whimper to a sigh, as the tarantula in the darkness
sucked his fill. Sard presently heard the corpse sink down, as the
insect moved away. He waited with his feet drawn up under him and his
hands covering his throat, lest the insect should want more blood and
come to him for it.
The time went slowly by, the man with the mandoline ceased his song,
somebody who wished to sleep cursed a howling dog until it came indoors.
But the wolves out on the mountains crept nearer. From time to time one
would cry his cry. Whenever this happened, the dogs in the huts
whimpered and were uneasy. Everybody, by this time, had gone to rest in
that village of outlaws. Sard thought that it could not be long before
the woman redeemed her promise.
Then from somewhere up above he heard the sound of drunken singing,
which became louder as the singer came down into the village. Sard
presently picked up the words of the song, which was one of the romances
of the Moors in Spain. As the drunkard entered the village, every dog in
every hut flew to the door barking with all its strength, in spite of
the curses and boots of the owners. The drunkard paused outside the row
of houses and cried in a loud voice, “Here I am, old Pappa Peppy, and
I’m as drunk as I want to be. Come on out, Martin, Tomás, Ramón,
Espinello, for I tell you I’m not Pappa Peppy, but an avenging angel of
the Day of Doom. I’m the Lord’s second coming and now I’m come.” And at
this he let fly with two revolvers at the doors of the huts, in
succession. Drunk as he was, he had extraordinary precision. The bullets
thudded into the doors as though he were running a stick along palings.
“Come, Tomás,” he cried, “and I’ll shoot the white out of your eye.
Come, Ramón, and I’ll see the colour of your blood; for I’m Pappa Peppy,
and I’m as drunk as Noah when he got home.”
There came another volley. Sard noticed that none of the bullets came
into his door. He thought: “This is that ruffian’s hut, he’ll presently
come in here to sleep.” The drunkard went to another hut and beat upon
the door with the revolver butt. “Come out, Ramón,” he said, “and let’s
shoot, man to man.”
Sard heard the voice of Ramón: “Take another drink, Pappa Peppy, and let
us shoot in the morning, for now I’m sober, and how can a sober man hope
to shoot like you?” A bottle seemed to be passed through a cautiously
opened shutter, and Sard heard Pappa Peppy say, “You’re a Christian
gentleman, Ramón. All I ever wanted was a drink, and now I’ve got it.”
Sard heard him take a drink and then come unsteadily to the door of the
hut where he lay. He fumbled at the door, opened it, and stood groping
there, feeling along the wall as though for a ledge where matches and
candle stood.
“The lamp’s gone,” he said; “th’ only lamp I ever loved all gone. They
all turn from Pappa Peppy.”
He came fumbling along the wall into the hut, and then went fumbling
back and shut the door. Then he said: “Well, I’ve got box o’ matches.
First of all, I’ll put the nice brandy up in the corner. I’ve got a box
of matches somewhere. I tell you I’ve got a box of matches and then I’ll
show them. They aren’t going to fool Pappa Peppy.”
Sard heard him creep back to the door, holding on by the wall, and heard
him say: “I’ll just kneel down very carefully and I’ll put down the
brandy there, and I’ve got a box of matches somewhere. I know I’ve got a
box of matches somewhere. The man who says I haven’t got a box of
matches, I’ll shoot the white out of his eye. Who says I haven’t got a
box of matches? That’s the sort of skunk they are. They daren’t say it
to my face, not one of them. Of course I’ve got a box of matches.”
He proceeded to empty his pockets in the dark, muttering over each
thing. “What in the name of all the saints is this? Bit of a cigar. What
in the—oh, bit more cigar. That’s a bottle of peppermint, all broken.
Ugh! the glass is all broken.” A reek of peppermint liqueur filled the
little hut. “No good looking for them in that pocket,” said the man;
“there’s cigars in this pocket. There goes the box of matches. I knew I
had a box of matches and it’s gone on the floor.”
The box of matches jerked out of the pocket and fell very close to Sard.
The drunkard went down on hands and knees, diffusing a warm breath of
peppermint liqueur and aniseed brandy. Sard felt as though he was to
leeward of one of the Spice Islands. The man began to grope for the box
of matches, patting with his great hands and breathing with difficulty.
“I know the box of matches isn’t far,” he said. “It’s very stormy
to-night. In a wind like this one has to go miles out of one’s way. Oh,
the wind’s roaring, the wind’s roaring! And well it might roar, for I’m
not Pappa Peppy, I’m the Day of Judgment. I’m the Day of Judgment, and
I’m dawning and I’m coming up over the mountains now, just like blood,
and if I lay my hands on that box of matches, they’ll be the first thing
I’ll blast. I’ll teach ’em to fool the Day of Judgment!”
Presently he paused in his search. He had missed Sard by half inches two
or three times. Presently Pappa Peppy stopped not more than a yard from
Sard and said in a little, cold, clear voice, “Lord pity the poor
sailors on a night like this! That’s ten times I’ve been round this room
looking for that drink. It’s been witchcraft. I can see you here, and
well I’ve known you were here all the time, and I know you’re doing it
with your witchcraft, you black beast. I’ve watched you doing it, but
you needn’t think to scare Pappa Peppy. He’s the Lord’s, he is; he isn’t
one of yours. He’s a lily for the pure to look to. He fears not Satan
nor all his minions. Ah! here’s the bottle. I knew I’d come to it, if I
kept to the south far enough.”
Sard heard the cork drawn from the bottle and the gurgle as he drank raw
aniseed brandy.
“That was what I wanted,” said Pappa Peppy. “A man like me who takes a
lot out of himself has to put it back or go under. And I’ll have another
like that—ah! I’ll have another like that. And now I can lie down on
the floor without holding on, and let the storm roar itself sick. I
don’t care, I don’t care. To-morrow when I get hold of that box of
matches, I’ll show it what I think of it.”
The bottle dropped from his hand. It must still have been a third full,
for as it rolled away some liquid gurgled out of it. Pappa Peppy gurgled
in sympathy or in tune, and composed himself to sleep, sitting up
against the wall. He passed into a drunken unconsciousness almost at
once, breathing with dreadful difficulty, being in fact at the point of
strangulation, through his throat pressing against his collar. After two
or three convulsive gasps, he shook himself out of his dangerous
position and lapsed sideways. “There’ll be death upon the sea this
night,” he murmured; “I’ve known gales, but never anything like this.”
After this he slept and the village slept.
It must have been full midnight when the door opened suddenly and the
cool night wind blew in from the desert. The woman was there. “Come
you,” she said.
Pappa Peppy groaned and fought with his drink. Sard rose up and came to
the door. The woman had a little leather bag full of food for him and a
leather-covered gourd full of water.
“If you go past the houses,” she said, “and follow up the cañon, to the
end, you will come out below the icefields. In all my living here I have
only heard of one man who has ever crossed those fields. His name was
Gonzalez: he lived a hundred years ago. He crossed them and reached San
Agostino in five days.”
“It’s San Agostino that I want to reach,” Sard said.
“Go then,” the woman said, “and may you have that man’s luck. He was my
grandfather. But know this: you’re in the land of the bad men, the land
of Red Sleeve and the Jacarillos, and not one other soul for thirty
miles would have done what I do, not one other soul.”
“Tell me your name,” Sard said, “that if ever I get among my people
again, I will think of you with gratitude until I die.”
“We have no names in the Jacarillo country,” she said; “but if ever you
come to some church in Christian country, say a prayer to the Virgin for
Juanita of the Bolson. And now go.”
She was herself gone on the instant and flitted back like a thief into
her hut. Pappa Peppy gurgled in his sleep and cried, “I’ll deal with you
if I can get at you!” and then cried, “O God!” and moaned. Sard knelt
down, picked up Pappa Peppy’s box of matches, took his two pistols and
cartridge belt, loaded both pistols, slung his provisions over his
shoulder, and set out with a pistol in each hand from that city of the
Jacarillos.
Fifty yards from the huts, he entered the cañon, now stealthy with the
noises of the night. Near the mouth of the cañon a sentry lay asleep
within the ring of his rope which screened him from snakes. Sard crept
past him on tiptoe, but need not have taken such precaution, since the
man slept like the dead. Not far away, something large, grey and silent,
probably a wolf, which had been creeping up to steal the sentry’s food,
glided into the sage brush.
In another fifty yards the trail turned upwards into the hills, out of
sight of the gully. Sard went on as hard as he could put foot to ground
for three hours. Then coming suddenly round a corner, walking rather
carelessly, thinking that he was quite out of the reach of pursuit, the
faint smell of smoke crossed his path; immediately he was in sight of
three mud huts by the side of the road. He was reassured an instant
later by seeing that two of the huts were ruined. There came a rustling
from within the third; a hideous old Indian woman came out. She might
have been any age from a hundred and twenty downwards. They looked at
each other in the grey light in the heart of the wilderness. She mumbled
something in reply to his question, but any wits she once had had long
since gone.
Sard pointed to the snowy peaks below the stars in the sky. He asked in
Spanish, “Is there a trail across the Sierras?” He made signs of a trail
and of mountains.
Some memory lit up intelligence in her faded mind. She laughed. “They
all go over the mountains,” she said. “All the young men go into the
mountains. That’s why all the mountains are white, for all their bones
are on the mountains. Your bones will be white on the mountains. I live
up here among the mountains and I can hear them. All the round white
skulls come rolling down the mountains.” She ran into her hut and
returned with the skulls of three white men. “They all rolled down the
mountain,” she said, “for they are Indian mountains, and the white men
know much, but they don’t know about the mountains. By and by I’ll have
your skull. I’ll put him in the ants’ nest to clean and I’ll keep him on
the shelf.”
Sard hurried away from her, but for about half a mile she followed him,
hugging the skulls. He pushed uphill as hard as he could go, but in the
stillness of that glen he could hear her voice for a long time, saying
that his skull would roll down the mountain.
There was now no trail, but he fixed his course straight to the frozen
crag, which gleamed above him against the sky. Dawn found him still
pushing onward and upward in a trackless wilderness that seemed to bear
no living thing. When the sun rose, he found some shelter among the
rocks, where he might defend himself if attacked. He expected that the
Jacarillos would trail him as soon as it was light enough to see tracks,
and that with ponies or donkeys they might well be on him before noon.
In this he was unjust to the Jacarillos: they did not trail those whom
they judged to be already doomed. In his shelter he ate, drank and then
slept; he did not wake until the setting sun shone through a crevice
among the rocks on to his face. After eating and drinking he set out
again into the Sierras.
All littleness was gone from the mountains now. His world was one with
the elements, the sky, great stars, and gigantic crags, silent except
when now and then there came a roar from something breaking in the
glacier, or the thunder of a boulder falling. The moon rose to light his
going up a slope of rock, which seemed curtained by other slopes of
rock. Here he laid down one of the revolvers which he had taken from
Pappa Peppy. He laid it on the rock beside him. Instantly it slithered
down, gathering small stones as it went, till it was thundering down the
rocky slope far, far below, with an avalanche about it. He saw it flash
and presently heard a report, and realised, as he had not realised
before, that he might have slipped like the gun and gone gliddering down
among the boulders in the same way.
At about midnight he reached a ledge of rock, where he slept until
daybreak. When he woke he saw what he took to be three cloaked Indians,
sitting on the ledge beside him. He sat up and looked at them. They
withdrew their heads from their blankets. They were no Indians, but
vultures. They looked at him with interest and without fear. He spoke to
them, they muttered a little and moved uneasily.