Hearts of Three 13

Hearts of Three 13

“There must be at least a dozen guards always hanging out at the jail,”

Ricardo, Leoncia’s youngest brother, a lad of eighteen, objected.

 

Leoncia, her eagerness alive again, frowned at him; but Francis took his

part.

 

“Well taken,” he agreed. “But we will eliminate the guards.”

 

“The five-foot walls,” said Martinez Solano, twin brother to Alvarado.

 

“Go through them,” Francis answered.

 

“But how?” Leoncia cried.

 

“That’s what I am arriving at. You, Senor Solano, have plenty of saddle

horses? Good. And you, Alesandro, does it chance you could procure me a

couple of sticks of dynamite from around the plantation? Good, and

better than good. And you, Leoncia, as the lady of the hacienda, should

know whether you have in your store-room a plentiful supply of that

three-star rye whiskey?”

 

“Ah, the plot thickens,” he laughed, on receiving her assurance. “We’ve

all the properties for a Rider Haggard or Rex Beach adventure tale. Now

listen. But wait. I want to talk to you, Leoncia, about private

theatricals....”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V.

 

 

It was in the mid-afternoon, and Henry, at his barred cell-window,

stared out into the street and wondered if any sort of breeze would ever

begin to blow from off Chiriqui Lagoon and cool the stagnant air. The

street was dusty and filthy—filthy, because the only scavengers it had

ever known since the town was founded centuries before were the carrion

dogs and obscene buzzards even then prowling and hopping about in the

debris. Low, whitewashed buildings of stone and adobe made the street a

furnace.

 

The white of it all, and the dust, was almost achingly intolerable to

the eyes, and Henry would have withdrawn his gaze, had not the several

ragged _mosos_, dozing in a doorway opposite, suddenly aroused and

looked interestedly up the street. Henry could not see, but he could

hear the rattling spokes of some vehicle coming at speed. Next, it

surged into view, a rattletrap light wagon drawn by a runaway horse. In

the seat a gray-headed, gray-bearded ancient strove vainly to check the

animal.

 

Henry smiled and marveled that the rickety wagon could hold together, so

prodigious were the bumps imparted to it by the deep ruts. Every wheel,

half-dished and threatening to dish, wobbled and revolved out of line

with every other wheel. And if the wagon held intact, Henry judged, it

was a miracle that the crazy harness did not fly to pieces. When

directly opposite the window, the old man made a last effort,

half-standing up from the seat as he pulled on the reins. One was

rotten, and broke. As the driver fell backward into the seat, his weight

on the remaining rein caused the horse to swerve sharply to the right.

What happened then—whether a wheel dished, or whether a wheel had come

off first and dished afterward—Henry could not determine. The one

incontestable thing was that the wagon was a wreck. The old man,

dragging in the dust and stubbornly hanging on to the remaining rein,

swung the horse in a circle until it stopped, facing him and snorting at

him.

 

By the time he gained his feet a crowd of _mosos_ was forming about him.

These were roughly shouldered right and left by the gendarmes who

erupted from the jail. Henry remained at the window and, for a man with

but a few hours to live, was an amused spectator and listener to what

followed.

 

Giving his horse to a gendarme to hold, not stopping to brush the filth

from his person, the old man limped hurriedly to the wagon and began an

examination of the several packing cases, large and small, which

composed its load. Of one case he was especially solicitous, even trying

to lift it and seeming to listen as he lifted.

 

He straightened up, on being addressed by one of the gendarmes, and made

voluble reply.

 

“Me? Alas senors, I am an old man, and far from home. I am Leopoldo

Narvaez. It is true, my mother was German, may the Saints preserve her

rest; but my father was Baltazar de Jesus y Cervallos é Narvaez, son of

General Narvaez of martial memory, who fought under the great Bolivar

himself. And now I am half ruined and far from home.”

 

Prompted by other questions, interlarded with the courteous __EXPRESSION__s

of sympathy with which even the humblest _moso_ is over generously

supplied, he managed to be polite-fully grateful and to run on with his

tale.

 

“I have driven from Bocas del Toro. It has taken me five days, and

business has been poor. My home is in Colon, and I wish I were safely

there. But even a noble Narvaez may be a peddler, and even a peddler

must live, eh, senors, is it not so? But tell me, is there not a Tomas

Romero who dwells in this pleasant city of San Antonio?”

 

“There are any God’s number of Tomas Romeros who dwell everywhere in

Panama,” laughed Pedro Zurita, the assistant jailer. “One would need

fuller description.”

 

“He is the cousin of my second wife,” the ancient answered hopefully,

and seemed bewildered by the roar of laughter from the crowd.

 

“And a dozen Tomas Romeros live in and about San Antonio,” the assistant

jailer went on, “any one of which may be your second wife’s cousin,

Senor. There is Tomas Romero, the drunkard. There is Tomas Romero, the

thief. There is Tomas Romero—but no, he was hanged a month back for

murder and robbery. There is the rich Tomas Romero who owns many cattle

on the hills. There is....”

 

To each suggested one, Leopoldo Narvaez had shaken his head dolefully,

until the cattle-owner was mentioned. At this he had become hopeful and

broke in:

 

“Pardon me, senor, it must be he, or some such a one as he. I shall find

him. If my precious stock-in-trade can be safely stored, I shall seek

him now. It is well my misfortune came upon me where it did. I shall be

able to trust it with you, who are, one can see with half an eye, an

honest and an honorable man.” As he talked, he fumbled forth from his

pocket two silver pesos and handed them to the jailer. “There, I wish

you and your men to have some pleasure of assisting me.”

 

Henry grinned to himself as he noted the access of interest in the old

man and of consideration for him, on the part of Pedro Zurita and the

gendarmes, caused by the present of the coins. They shoved the more

curious of the crowd roughly back from the wrecked wagon and began to

carry the boxes into the jail.

 

“Careful, senors, careful,” the old one pleaded, greatly anxious, as

they took hold of the big box. “Handle it gently. It is of value, and it

is fragile, most fragile.”

 

While the contents of the wagon were being carried into the jail, the

old man removed and deposited in the wagon all harness from the horse

save the bridle.

 

Pedro Zurita ordered the harness taken in as well, explaining, with a

glare at the miserable crowd: “Not a strap or buckle would remain the

second after our backs were turned.”

 

Using what was left of the wagon for a stepping block, and ably assisted

by the jailer and his crew, the peddler managed to get astride his

animal.

 

“It is well,” he said, and added gratefully: “A thousand thanks, senors.

It has been my good fortune to meet with honest men with whom my goods

will be safe—only poor goods, peddler’s goods, you understand; but to

me, everything, my way upon the road. The pleasure has been mine to meet

you. To-morrow I shall return with my kinsman, whom I certainly shall

find, and relieve from you the burden of safeguarding my inconsiderable

property.” He doffed his hat. “Adios, senors, adios!”

 

He rode away at a careful walk, timid of the animal he bestrode which

had caused his catastrophe. He halted and turned his head at a call from

Pedro Zurita.

 

“Search the graveyard, Senor Narvaez,” the jailer advised. “Full a

hundred Tomas Romeros lie there.”

 

“And be vigilant, I beg of you, senor, of the heavy box,” the peddler

called back.

 

Henry watched the street grow deserted as the gendarmes and the populace

fled from the scorch of the sun. Small wonder, he thought to himself,

that the old peddler’s voice had sounded vaguely familiar. It had been

because he had possessed only half a Spanish tongue to twist around the

language—the other half being the German tongue of the mother. Even so,

he talked like a native, and he would be robbed like a native if there

was anything of value in the heavy box deposited with the jailers, Henry

concluded, ere dismissing the incident from his mind.

 

* * * * *

 

In the guardroom, a scant fifty feet away from Henry’s cell, Leopoldo

Narvaez was being robbed. It had begun by Pedro Zurita making a profound

and wistful survey of the large box. He lifted one end of it to sample

its weight, and sniffed like a hound at the crack of it as if his nose

might give him some message of its contents.

 

“Leave it alone, Pedro,” one of the gendarmes laughed at him. “You have

been paid two pesos to be honest.”

 

The assistant jailer sighed, walked away and sat down, looked back at

the box, and sighed again. Conversation languished. Continually the eyes

of the men roved to the box. A greasy pack of cards could not divert

them. The game languished. The gendarme who had twitted Pedro himself

went to the box and sniffed.

 

“I smell nothing,” he announced. “Absolutely in the box there is nothing

to smell. Now what can it be? The caballero said that it was of value!”

 

“Caballero!” sniffed another of the gendarmes. “The old man’s father was

more like to have been peddler of rotten fish on the streets of Colon

and his father before him. Every lying beggar claims descent from the

conquistadores.”

 

“And why not, Rafael?” Pedro Zurita retorted. “Are we not all so

descended?”

 

“Without doubt,” Rafael readily agreed. “The conquistadores slew many——”

 

“And were the ancestors of those that survived,” Pedro completed for him

and aroused a general laugh. “Just the same, almost would I give one of

these pesos to know what is in that box.”