COLONEL URGO REPAYS
Before he had descended to the street Grant began to regret his flash
of anger which had launched him out of Doc Stooder’s office. To be
sure, the unconventional doctor had been insulting; his was hardly the
orthodox reception to be expected by one who had crossed the continent
to become his partner in some hidden enterprise. Equally certain it was
that, to apply the cigar clerk’s pat phrase, Stooder was “organized
for the day”; the finishing touches to that organization had been made
in two trips to the closet in Grant’s presence. Need one have been so
touchy under these alcoholic circumstances?
Strive as he would to put the best face on the matter, the man from
New York could not escape a lowering of the spiritual barometer. Here
he was, a stranger in an outlandish desert town with none to give him
so much as a friendly glance. Glances enough came his way, but they
were inspired by his clothes, the cut of which seemed to put them
beyond the pale. Grant pleasured himself by reviewing his case in the
most pessimistic light. He had been but a fortnight ago a sober and
industrious citizen. Came to him a wild letter hinting darkly of some
shadowy enterprise in a bleak land. Instantly he had quit his work and
galloped across two thousand miles to encounter a scarecrow cynic who
greeted him as a book agent.
He wandered aimlessly beyond the town and out onto a road which
wound up to the edge of one of the mesas which were the eaves of
Arizora. Well might drivers of passing cars stare at the figure of a
broad-shouldered young man in a black derby and double-breasted coat,
who was afoot in a country where no man walks unless he carries a
blanket on his shoulders--unless he is a “stiff,” in the phrase of the
Southwest. Even though February was but on the wane, already the sun
was guarantor of a promise to pay with heat interest in sixty days.
He came to the top of the rise and halted under the psychic compulsion
of boundless space. For space, crystalline and ethereal as the gulf
between stars, flowed from him as an ocean. The air that filled this
space was so thin, so impalpable as to seem no air at all, and it was
tinted faint gold by reflection from the desert below. Mountains near
and far were so many detached reefs taking the silent surf of the ocean
of space; they were tawny where shadows did not smear purple-black
down their sides. Near at hand showed the grim desert growths: prickly
clumps of _cholla_, whose new daggers sparkled like frosted glass;
fluted columns of _sahuaro_, or giant cactus, lifting their fat arms
twenty and thirty feet above the ground; vivid green of cottonwoods
laid in a streak to mark a secret watercourse.
To the man just come from the softness and languor of Eastern
landscapes, where lakes lie in the laps of green hillocks, this first
intimate view of the desert carried some subtle terror prick. The iron
savagery of it! What right had man or beast to venture here?
Then flashed to his mind the picture of Benicia O’Donoju, the girl who
loved the desert, who felt she was prisoner only when hedged about by
the walls of cities in the East. Somewhere to the south where a higher
raft of peaks marked Sonora’s mystery land--somewhere in country like
this she was speeding to her home. What kind of a home might that be?
How could a girl with the bounding vitality that was hers find life
worth living in a land enslaved by thirst? A hundred miles from town
or railroad, she had said:--a hundred miles deep in such a wilderness
her home! Heavens, how he pitied her!
Grant turned back to the town, revolving over and over in his mind
the first steps he would have to take to learn where Benicia O’Donoju
lived; and, haply discovering the place of her abode, how to get there.
By the time night fell the restless visitor to Arizora had exhausted
the town’s opportunities for amusement. He crossed the Line into the
companion Mexican community, Sonizona. Here was beguilement enough.
The rabbit-proof fence which converted Main Street into a Calle
Benito Juarez also marked a frontier no less obvious. North of the
fence was aridity to rejoice the conscience of the most enthusiastic
prohibitionist; south of it the frail goddess Virtue tottered in her
step. In Arizona a man sought traps and deadfalls consciously and
with a secret thrill of bravado; in Sonora he avoided them only by
the most circumspect watching of his step. Dark streets winding along
the contours of the crowding mountains were raucous with the bray of
phonographs and the tin-panning of pianos. Lattices over darkened
windows trembled as one passed and the ghosts of whispers fluttered
through them. Where an occasional arc lamp threw a spot of radiance
across the ’dobe road lurked shadowy creatures who whined in an
American dialect for money to buy drugs.
Grant did not realize that when he passed through the rabbit-proof
fence he left behind him everything for which he paid income tax and
other doles--protection, due processes of law, all the checks and
balances on society and the individual painstakingly built up under
the Anglo-Saxon scheme of things. He did not conceive himself in the
light of an alien--of a not-too-popular nation--gratuitously placing
himself under the protection of laws quite the opposite in terms of
interpretation. Nor did he appreciate that, save for his suitcase and
a signature on a hotel register, he had left behind him nothing to
bear testimony to the fact that a man named Grant Hickman had come
to Arizora and had left the United States to enter Mexico. All these
inattentions he recalled later when opportunity for correction had
passed.
Grant was circling the plaza, where the municipal band was giving a
concert, when amid the strollers he thought he saw a familiar face. He
looked again and was sure. Little Colonel Urgo, in a snappy uniform of
dark blue with back-turned cape, was walking with a woman whose beauty
was that of the blown peony. Chance brought Urgo’s eyes Grant’s way.
They lighted with sudden surprise, then the colonel brought up his hand
in a salute. A flash of teeth was cut by the travelling hand; it was
like a too quick shutter on the villain’s smile in Way Down East.
Grant doffed his hat and passed on. Half an hour later a particularly
glittering sheaf of lights he had noted in earlier saunterings pricked
his curiosity and he turned into a low building just off the plaza. A
bare front room easily visible from the street was a too obvious blind
for complacent police inspection; through an open arch in its rear wall
a crowded gambling room was given false length by wall mirrors in dingy
frames. Fifty or more men and women were clustered about roulette,
faro and crap tables. A fat Chinaman with a face expressionless as a
bowl of jelly sat on a dais behind a little desk stacked high with
silver and with deft movement of his fingers achieved nice problems in
international exchange. Pursuit of the goddess Luck was being engaged
in with a frankness and business-like absorption quite different from
furtive evasions of hidden attic and camouflaged club across the Line.
Grant exchanged a ten-dollar note for a heavy stack of Mexican silver
and moved over to a table where two ivory cubes were dancing to the
droning incantations of a big negro game keeper. He was curious to see
whether Big Dick and Lady Natural were as temperamental a couple in
Mexico as he had discovered them to be in many a front-line dugout in
France.
“Come to papa!” A raw-boned Arizonan across the table was singing to
the dice held in his cupped palms, huge as waffle irons; a humorous imp
of strong liquor danced in his eyes. “Cap’n come down the gangplank and
says, ‘Good mawnin’, Seven!’”
The ring of dark faces about the green cloth stirred and white teeth
flashed unlovely smiles when a six and a one winked up from the dice. A
chinking of silver dollars as a red paw gathered them in.
“Baby! Now meet you’ grandpaw, Ole Man E-oleven. Wham! Lookit! Five an’
a six makes e’oleven! How’s that for nussin’ ’em along, white man?”
The crap wizard looked across to Grant and grinned in amity. Mexican
scowls accompanied the covering of the winner’s pile left temptingly
untouched. Grant felt an undefined tugging of race bonds here in this
ring of alien faces, and he backed the Arizonan against the field. On
his third throw the big fellow made his point.
“That’s harvestin’! That’s bringin’ in the sheaves! Now here’s my stack
of ’dobe dollars for any Mex to cop if he thinks the copping’s good.”
When it came Grant’s turn to throw his new-found friend played him
vociferously against the Mexican field, calling upon all present to
witness that a white man sure could skin anything under a sombrero,
from craps to parchesi. For the first time since he had left the train
that morning the New Yorker felt the warming tingle of fellowship; the
gaunt, sunburned face of the desert man with the dancing imps of humour
in the eyes was a jovial hailing sign of fraternity.
“Shoot ’em, Mister Man! You’re rigged for Broadway, Noo Yawk, but I can
see from here that you has the lovin’ touch.”
Grant rolled and won, rolled and won again. Carelessly he dropped the
heavy fistfuls of dollars into the side pocket of his coat. Even when
he lost his point, he had a bulging weight of silver there. Grant was
enjoying the game itself not nearly so keenly as he did the Arizonan
across the table, his Homeric humour and the bewildering wonder of his
vocabulary. So intent was he that he did not see Colonel Urgo enter,
nor did he catch the almost imperceptible nod toward him that the
little officer passed to a furtive-eyed tatterdemalion who accompanied
him. The latter by a devious course of idling finally came to a stand
behind Grant and appeared to be a keen spectator of the game.
“Ole Man Jed Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ splatter out a natch’ral. Ole Man
Hawkins’ son is a-goin’ turn loose the hay cutter an’ mow him a mess of
greens. Comes Little Joe! Dip in, Mexes, an’ takes yo’ fodder! Now the
man from Dos Cabezas starts a-runnin’--”
A hand was busy at Grant’s pocket--a slick, suave hand which replaced
weight for weight what it subtracted. Just three quick passes and
the tatterdemalion who had been so intent on the prancing dice lost
interest and moved away.
It came Grant’s turn to roll the dice. He dipped into his pocket and
carelessly dropped a stack of eight silver dollars on the table. One
of them rolled a little way and flopped in front of a Mexican player.
The latter started to pass the dollar back to Grant when he hesitated,
gave the coin a sharp scrutiny, then balanced it on a finger tip and
struck its edge with one from his own pile.
“Señor!” An ugly droop to his smiling lips. “Ah, no, señor!”
He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated courtesy. Eyes all
about the table, which had followed the pantomime with avid interest,
now centred on the American’s face. As if on a signal the fat Chinaman
at the exchange desk waddled over to shoulder his way officiously to
Grant’s side. He growled something in Spanish and held out his hand.
Dazedly Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. The Chinaman
flung it on the green felt with a contemptuous “Faugh!” and he pointed
imperiously at Grant’s bulging pocket.
“It’s a frame, pardner,” called the Arizonan. “If your money’s bogus
it’s what the Chink himself handed you.”
“I came in here with American money and changed it at your desk,”
Grant quietly addressed the Chinaman. “See here; this is the money I
either got from you or won at this table.” He brought from his pocket a
brimming handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them on the cloth. Two
or three of the heavy discs shone true silver; the others were clumsy
counterfeits, dull and leaden.
A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd about the table, now
grown to a score: “Aha--gr-ringo!”
A movement of the crowd forward to rush Grant against the wall. Then
with a cougar’s spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, feet
spread wide apart, head towering above the tin light shade. He balanced
a chair in one hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift his
baton. His gaunt features were split in a wide grin. Before Grant could
gather his senses a big paw had him by the shoulder and was dragging
him up onto the green island of refuge.
“They don’t saw no whizzer off on a white man wiles ole Jed Hawkins’
boy got his health,” Grant’s companion bellowed a welcome. “I got these
greasers’ number, brother!”
Grant’s gaze as he rose to his feet over the heads all about
encountered two interesting objects. One was Colonel Urgo, who stood
alone in a far corner of the room; the colonel was smiling with rare
good humour. A second was a man wrapped about with a blanket, over
whose shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was just coming through
from the front room on a run and there were three like him following.
Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen of Mexico.
Just what ensued Grant never could quite piece together. He remembered
seeing Hawkins wrench off a leg from his chair and send it whizzing at
a central cluster of light globes in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with
a thin tinkling of glass. Then the rush.
Out of the dark swirl of figures about the table’s edge a vivid spit
of flame--roar of a pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs on
the table top. “Huh” of breath expelled as Hawkins swung his chair in
a wide sweep downward. A cry, “Hesus!” Oaths chirped in the voice of
songbirds. A knife missing its objective and trembling rigid in the
midst of the baize.
The table collapsed with dull creakings, and then the affair of mauling
and writhing became a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured
short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object lay nearest. When one arm
was pinioned he swung the other against the restraining body until it
was freed. Some one sank teeth in his shoulder.
“Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” came the shrill cry of battle from somewhere in
the mill. Then a blow at the base of the brain which meant lights out
for Grant.
When consciousness came halting back he found himself standing
half-supported by two of the rurales in a dark street and before a
high gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. He was propelled
violently through the dark arch and into a small room, where sat a man
in uniform under a dusty electric globe. He did not look up from the
scratching of his pen on the desk before him.
A door behind the writing man opened and Colonel Urgo entered. His
start at seeing the bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales
supported was well acted. A hand came to the vizor of his cap in
mocking salute. Then he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged low
words with him.
“Ah, Señor ’Ickman”--Colonel Urgo’s voice was tender as the dove’s--“I
regret to learn you are here in the _carcel_ on serious charges. The
one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, resisting officers
of the law. Very regrettable, Señor ’Ickman. But, remembering your
courtesies toward me on the train yesterday, let me assure you of my
willingness to serve you in any way. You will command me, señor.”
A sudden lightning flash of comprehension shot through the clouds that
pressed down on the prisoner’s mind. He saw the whole trick of the
counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered the little Spaniard’s
threat on the observation platform of the train the night before:
“To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar
Urgo is a law unto himself.” Grant strained forward and his mouth
opened to incoherent speech.
“And now, señor,” Colonel Urgo continued blandly, “unfortunately you
will be locked up incommunicado.”
Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a steel-studded door in a
Mexican jail, was as wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken
submarine.