THE ORDEAL
With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the
advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals
blown upon by the wind of anger.
“None of that! Get back there--you!” Bim’s voice was scarcely audible
but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was
sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble.
Then to Benicia:
“Young woman, you’re making the mistake of your life. I’m a’mighty
sorry for you, an’ you are going to be right regretful yourself when
you have time to think.” Grant made a step forward to lay a checking
hand on his friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted.
“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!--the dagger from the wall of
his chamber--” Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled
to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of
hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration.
“You--I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part.
Then fate brings you to this house wounded--snatched from death. An
escaped convict from a chain gang--you yourself admitted as much just
last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused
your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father?
Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!”
“Señorita O’Donoju--” Grant’s effort to check her was fruitless, for
she had whirled upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my father--unknown to
me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were
hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you
deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill--and then to
rob?”
The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings,
illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now
she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her
small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of
uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for
all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the
numbness Benicia’s accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so
tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her
gently:
“If you will permit me to go to my room while you make further
investigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must be
plain to you, Señorita O’Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place.”
The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what he
said, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, she
turned and disappeared beyond the patio’s green. Bim threw an arm over
his pal’s shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door he
whirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him a
grin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude.
“When the she-ones get to stampedin’, old pal, they sure have us
helpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a
look round below your window and elsewheres.”
Bim’s easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the man
who was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a fever
of mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he might
to palliate Benicia’s charge against him on the score of the girl’s
complete prostration through the night’s tragedy, the quick and fiery
blood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always he
came against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passion
in him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accused
him of murder out of hand.
Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumped
down on him with the burst of a high explosive shell.
Benicia’s accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look upon
the facts through her eyes--so a curiously impersonal phase of mind
prompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A man
who was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trick
of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o’clock
in the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls “Murder!”
though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparently
discovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber.
This man--this waif brought in from the desert--prevents the daughter’s
going in to the room of death until first he has entered that room
and locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers in
blood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend--“call him
confederate” was Grant’s cynical amendment--organize a hue and cry
outside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in the
guest’s room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid the
rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastily
thrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. The
dagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints as
those on the door of the dead don’s chamber.
There was the record. How refute it?
Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of his
window and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he was
so vigilant at three o’clock in the morning, had he not seen that hand
of a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? And
whose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his own
which took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman?
Another’s finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own?
Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detective
central office to juggle with such minutiæ as the whorls and spirals
in a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the Casa
O’Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and more
Indians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the prints
of their fingers?
The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed
drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a
glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as
helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong
through the space between all the suns of infinity.
He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon
when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion opened to
illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant
arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was
standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was
Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile.
The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You will please follow me,
señor,” was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step
behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms
towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave
Grant a glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed woman he saw.
Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the
girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness
of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental
things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment.
The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeance
and blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mocking
cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in
portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of
blood lust in eyes.
They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some
prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking
of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual.
All the retainers of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house
servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the
rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped
huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming
sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who
manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the
strain of awaiting an untoward event.
When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious
death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned
Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in
turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts
to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such
as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid
two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers
deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or
more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe.
Still the hollow _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum, whisper and cluck of
the notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs was
grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets of
dried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to the
knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved in
a shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers.
The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features.
The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of _ocatilla_
sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a young
rooster. The fowl’s head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted as
he was carried on the big Indian’s arm through the throng. Two helpers
lifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cock
underneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. The
bird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seeking
egress.
Now Benicia took from ’Cepcion something she had carried wrapped about
in a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall the
handkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon the
stained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass swept
through the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top of
the dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles did
a sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desert
sidewinder’s warning.
Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all this
preparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them.
The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest with
ritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl’s
preparations--particularly in the offering of the knife upon this
rude altar--formulæ of an appeal to decision of powers beyond human
comprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancient
custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among the
unregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If big
Quelele knew better he had kept his tongue still.
Benicia’s features had never relaxed their cold intentness during
the preparations. There was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some
element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage
of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took
her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to
the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the
white sky.
Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of
the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant.
“It is the test of God,” she said in a dulled voice. “My people have
used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here
including you, Señor Hickman, and you, Señor Bagley, will endure this
test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and
show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the
imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron.”
Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to
the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and
held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back
beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--no other sign.
Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake
of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial.
Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and
great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were
replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to
diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis--eyes white
and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over
dried lips.
_Thrut-t-t-t-t!_ An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder
of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the
kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent
of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of _sahuaro_. His
arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great
moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear.
Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock’s
head as Quelele approached. “Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a frenzy.
The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those
in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little
distance from Benicia and the two white men.
Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs.
Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the
blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod
of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a
finger through the soot. “_Njo oovik_ (Bird speaking),” he cried, and
there was foam on his lips.
But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of
the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that
all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method
of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the
science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to
hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon
the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural
calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and
dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to
kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring
him under its subjection.
“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who gripped Grant’s arm and pointed
to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his
place and fallen back three numbers.
On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned
cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual
who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had
dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the
one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on.
The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep
of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and
gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers.
“Hai--ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the
young man’s hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean.
“Hai--ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch
back to the kettle.
Then his victim went to his knees--to his face in the dust. He rolled
and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle,
his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger
extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock’s crow.
“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped
him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward
menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought
out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of
horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow
heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia.
The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle
grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was
scored through the neck of the eagle.
The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out
to her in pleading, “The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-señor
Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or
my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!”
“And he gave you this--” the girl began.
“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me
this peso. ‘Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo señor,’ he
commands. ‘Use no other.’”
Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought a
hair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute.
Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to be
taken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoes
are, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see him
again. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime.
She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once the
wretch’s confession had been heard. The soul of the girl now stood
its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by the
wounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes,
even though the spirit of Benicia O’Donoju was not one easily to humble
itself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turned
gropingly to make her hard penance before Grant.
Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she was
striding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to the
house. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of the
world.