Although crushed in the rear and broken inwards there, the hut showed
its ordinary face to the path as Mercedes reached it in the failing
daylight. She ran like a madwoman, and with short, distraught cries,
as she neared her home. Her eyes were wild as a hunted creature's, her
coarse black hair streamed over her shoulders, her bare feet bled where
the rocks and ice had cut them. But one thing she did not doubt--would
not allow herself to doubt--that at home she would find her child. For
two days she had been parted from him, and in those two days ... God
had been good to her, very good: but she could not thank God yet--not
until she clutched Sebastianillo in her arms, held his small, wriggling
body, felt his feet kick against her breast....
The great sty beside the cabin was empty, of course: and the cabin
itself looked strange to her and desolate and unfriendly. For some
hours the snow had ceased falling, and, save in a snowstorm or a gale,
it was not the family custom to close door or window before dark:
indeed, the window-hole usually stood open night and day the year
round. Now both were closed. But warm firelight showed under the chink
of the door; and on the door she bowed her head, to take breath, and
beat with her hands while she called urgently--
"Mother! Quickly, mother--open to me for the love of God!"
No answer came from within.
"Mother! Father! Open to me--it is I, Mercedes!"
Then, after listening a moment, she began to beat again, frantically,
for at length she was afraid.
"Quick! Quick! Ah, do not be playing a trick on me: I want my
child--Sebastianillo!"
Again and again she called and beat. No answer came from the hut or
from the sombre twilight around her. She drew back, to fling her full
weight against the door. And at this moment she heard, some way down
the path, a man's footstep crunching the snow.
She never doubted that this must be her father returning up the
mountain-side, perhaps after a search for her. What other man--now that
her husband had gone soldiering--ever trod this path? She ran down to
meet him.
The path, about forty yards below, rounded an angle of the sheer
cliff, and at this angle she came to a terrified halt. The man, too,
had halted a short gunshot away. He did not see her, but was staring
upward at the cliff overhead; and he was not her father. For an instant
there flashed across her brain an incredible surmise--that he was
her husband, Sebastian: for he wore a soldier's overcoat and shako,
and carried a musket and knapsack. But no: this man was taller than
Sebastian by many inches; taller and thinner.
He was a soldier, then: and to Mercedes all soldiers were by this time
incarnate devils--or all but one, and that one a plucky little British
officer who had snatched her from his men just as she fell swooning
into their clutches, and had dragged and thrust her through the convent
doorway at Nogales and slammed the door upon her; and (though this
she did not know) held the doorstep, sword in hand, while the Fathers
within shot the heavy bolts.
The British had gone, and after them--close after--came the French:
and these broke down the convent door and ransacked the place. But
the Fathers had hidden her and a score or so more of trembling women,
nor would allow her to creep out and search for Sebastianillo in the
streets through which swept, hour after hour, a flood of drunken
yelling devils. So now Mercedes, who had left home two days ago to
watch an army pass, turned from this one soldier with a scream and ran
back towards the cabin.
In her terror lest he should overtake and catch her by the closed
door, she darted aside, clambered across the wall of the empty sty,
and crouched behind it in the filth, clutching at her bodice: for
within her bodice was a knife, which she had borrowed of the Fathers at
Nogales.
The footsteps came up the path and went slowly past her hiding-place.
Then they came to a halt before the hut. Still Mercedes crouched, not
daring to lift her head.
_Rat, rat-a-tat!_
Well, let him knock. Her father was a strong man, and always kept a
loaded gun on the shelf. If this soldier meant mischief, he would find
his match: and she, too, could help.
She heard him call to the folks within once or twice in bad Spanish.
Then his voice changed and seemed to threaten in a language she did not
know.
Her hand was thrust within her bodice now, and gripped the handle of
her knife; nevertheless, what followed took her by surprise, though
ready for action. A terrific bang sounded on the timbers of the door.
Involuntarily she raised her head above the wall's coping. The man had
stepped back a pace into the path, and was swinging his musket up for
another blow with the butt.
She stood up, white, with her jaw set. Her father could not be inside
the hut, or he would have answered that blow on his door as a man
should. But Sebastianillo might be within--nay, must be! She put her
hands to the wall's coping and swung herself over and on to the path,
again unseen, for the dusk hid her, and a dark background of cliff
behind the sty: nor could the man hear, for he was raining blow after
blow upon the door. At length, having shaken it loose from its hasp, he
stepped back and made a run at it, using the butt of his musket for a
ram, and finishing up the charge with the full weight of one shoulder.
The door crashed open before him, and he reeled over it into the hut. A
second later, Mercedes had sprung after him.
"Sebastianillo! You shall not harm him! You shall not----"
The door, falling a little short of the fire, had scattered some of the
burning brands about the floor and fanned the rest into a blaze. In the
light of it he faced round with a snarl, his teeth showing beneath his
moustache. The light also showed--though Mercedes neither noted it nor
could have read its signification--a corporal's chevron on his sleeve.
"Who the devil are you?" The snarl ended in a snap.
Mercedes stood swaying on the threshold, knife in hand.
"You shall not harm him!"
She spoke in her own tongue and he understood it, after a fashion; for
he answered in broken Spanish, catching up her word--
"Harm? Who means any harm? When a man is perishing with hunger and
folks will not open to him----"
He paused, wondering at her gaze. Travelling past him, it had fastened
itself on the back wall of the hut, across the fire. "Hullo! What's the
matter?" He swung round. "Good Lord!" said he, with a gulp.
He sprang past the fire and stooped over the old man's body, which
lay face downward on the shelving heap of silver. It did not stir.
By-and-by he took it by one of the rigid arms and turned it over, not
roughly.
"Warm," said he: "warm, but dead as a herring! Come and see for
yourself."
Mercedes did not move. Her eyes sought the dark corners of the cabin,
fixed themselves for a moment on the shattered image of the Virgin, and
met his across the firelight in desperate inquiry.
"What is this? What have you done?"
"Done? I tell you I never touched the man; never saw him before in my
life. Who is he? Your father? No: grandfather, more like. Eh? Am I
right?"
She bent her head, staring at the money.
"This? This is dollars, my girl: dollars enough to set a man up for
life, with a coach and lads in livery, and dress you in diamonds from
head to heel. Don't stand playing with that knife. I tell you I never
touched the old man. What's more, I'm willing to be friendly and go
shares." He stared at her with quick suspicion. "You're alone here,
hey?"
She did not answer.
"But answer me," he insisted, "do you live alone with him?" And he
pointed to the body at his feet.
"There was my mother," said Mercedes slowly, in her turn pointing to
the third bed of straw by the fire. "We journeyed over to Nogales, she
and I. Your soldiers came and took away our pigs, giving us pieces of
paper for them. They said that if we took these to Nogales someone
would pay us: so we started, leaving _him_. And at Nogales your men
were rough and parted us, and I have not seen her since."
The Corporal eyed her with the beginnings of a leer. She faced him
with steady eyes. "Well, well," said he, after a pause, "I mean no
harm to you, anyway. Lord! but you're in luck. Here you reach home and
find a fortune at your door--a sort of fortune a man can dig into with
a spade; while a poor devil like me----" He paused again and stood
considering.
"You knew about this?" She nodded towards the dollars. "You knew how it
came here, and you came after it?"
"I did and I didn't. I knew 'twas somewhere hereabouts; but strike me,
if a man could dream of finding it like this!"
"Yet you came to this door and beat it open!"
"You've wits, my girl," said the Corporal admiringly; "but they are
on the wrong tack. I mean no harm; and the best proof is that here
I'm standing with a loaded musket and not offering to hurt you. As it
happens, I came to the door asking a bite of bread. I'm cruel hungry."
Mercedes pulled a crust of millet-bread from her pocket. The Fathers at
the convent had given it to her at parting, but she had forgotten to
eat. She stepped forward; the Corporal stretched out a hand.
"No," said she, and, avoiding him, laid the crust on the block-table.
He caught it up and gnawed it ravenously. "I think there is no other
food in the house."
"You don't get rid of me like that." He ran a hand along the shelves,
searching them. "Hullo! a gun?" He took it down and examined it beside
the fire, while Mercedes' heart sank. She had hoped to possess herself
of it, snatching it from the shelf when he should be off his guard.
"Loaded, too!" He laid it gently on the block and eyed her, munching
his crust.
"You'd best put down that knife and talk friendly," said he at length.
"What's the use?--you a woman, and me with two guns, both loaded? It's
silliness; you must see for yourself it is. Now look here: I've a
notion--a splendid notion. Come sit down alongside of me, and talk it
over. I promise you there's no harm meant."
But she had backed to her former position in the doorway and would not
budge.
"It's treating me suspicious, you are," he grumbled: "hard _and_
suspicious."
"Cannot you take the money and go?" she begged, breathing hard,
speaking scarcely above a whisper.
"No, I can't: it stands to reason I can't. What can I do in a country
like this with dollars it took two carts to drag here--two carts with
six yoke of bullocks apiece? And that's where my cruel luck comes in.
All I can take, as things are, is just so much as this knapsack will
carry: and even for this I've run some risks."
The man--it was the effect of hunger, perhaps, and exposure and
drunkenness on past marches--had an ugly, wolfish face; but his eyes,
though cunning, were not altogether evil, not quite formidably evil.
She divined that, though lust for the money was driving him, some
weakness lay behind it.
"You are a deserter," she said.
"We'll pass that." He seated himself, flinging a leg over the block and
laying the two guns side by side on his knees. "I can win back, maybe.
As things go, between stragglers and deserters it's hard to choose in
these times, and I'll get the benefit of the doubt. I've taken some
risks," he repeated, glancing from the guns on his knees to the pile of
silver and back: "pretty bad risks, and only to fill my knapsack. But,
now it strikes me----Can't you come closer?"
But she held her ground and waited.
"It strikes me, why couldn't we collar the whole of this, we two? We're
alone: no one knows; I've but to lift one of these"--he tapped the
guns--"and where would you be? But I don't do it. I don't want to do
it. You hear me?"
"You don't do it," said Mercedes slowly, "because without me you can't
get away with more than a handful of this money. And you want the whole
of it."
"You're a clever girl. Yes, I want the whole of it. Who wouldn't? And
you can help. Can't you see how?"
"No."
He sat swinging his legs. "Well, that's where my notion comes in. I
wish you'd drop that knife and be friendly: it's a fortune I'm offering
you. Now my notion is that we two ought to marry." He stood up.
Mercedes lifted the knife with its point turned inward against her
breast. "If you take another step!"
"Oh, but look here: look at it every way. I like you. You're a fine
build of a woman, with plenty of spirit--the very woman to help a
man. We should get along famously. One country's as good as another
to me: I'm tired of soldiering, and there's no woman at home, s'help
me!" He was speaking rapidly now, not waiting to cast about for words
in Spanish, but falling back on English whenever he found himself at
a loss. "I dare say you can fit me out with a suit of clothes." His
glance ran round the hut and rested on the body of the old man.
Mercedes had understood scarce half of his words: but she divined the
meaning of that look and shuddered.
"No, no; you cannot do that!"
"Hark!" said he raising his head and listening. "What's that noise?"
"The wolves. We hear them every night in winter."
"A nice sort of place for a woman to live alone in! See here, my dear;
it's sense I'm talking. Better fix it up with me and say 'yes.'"