Hearts of Three 15

Hearts of Three 15

“Francis, I’m glad for one thing, most damn glad....”

 

“Which is?” Francis queried in the pause, just as they swung around the

corner to the horses.

 

“That I didn’t cut off your ears that day on the Calf when I had you

down and you insisted.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

 

Mariano Vercara e Hijos, Jefe Politico of San Antonio, leaned back in

his chair in the courtroom and with a quiet smile of satisfaction

proceeded to roll a cigarette. The case had gone through as prearranged.

He had kept the little old judge away from his _mescal_ all day, and had

been rewarded by having the judge try the case and give judgment

according to program. He had not made a slip. The six peons, fined

heavily, were ordered back to the plantation at Santos. The working out

of the fines was added to the time of their contract slavery. And the

Jefe was two hundred dollars good American gold richer for the

transaction. Those Gringos at Santos, he smiled to himself, were men to

tie to. True, they were developing the country with their _henequen_

plantation. But, better than that, they possessed money in untold

quantity and paid well for such little services as he might be able to

render.

 

His smile was even broader as he greeted Alvarez Torres.

 

“Listen,” said the latter, whispering low in his ear. “We can get both

these devils of Morgans. The Henry pig hangs to-morrow. There is no

reason that the Francis pig should not go out to-day.”

 

The Jefe remained silent, questioning with a lift of his eyebrows.

 

“I have advised him to storm the jail. The Solanos have listened to his

lies and are with him. They will surely attempt to do it this evening.

They could not do it sooner. It is for you to be ready for the event,

and to see to it that Francis Morgan is especially shot and killed in

the fight.”

 

“For what and for why?” the Jefe temporised. “It is Henry I want to see

out of the way. Let the Francis one go back to his beloved New York.”

 

“He must go out to-day, and for reasons you will appreciate. As you

know, from reading my telegrams through the government wireless——”

 

“Which was our agreement for my getting you your permission to use the

government station,” the Jefe reminded.

 

“And of which I do not complain,” Torres assured him. “But as I was

saying, you know my relations with the New York Regan are confidential

and important.” He touched his hand to his breast pocket. “I have just

received another wire. It is imperative that the Francis pig be kept

away from New York for a month—if forever, and I do not misunderstand

Senor Regan, so much the better. In so far as I succeed in this, will

you fare well.”

 

“But you have not told me how much you have received, nor how much you

will receive,” the Jefe probed.

 

“It is a private agreement, and it is not so much as you may fancy. He

is a hard man, this Senor Regan, a hard man. Yet will I divide fairly

with you out of the success of our venture.”

 

The Jefe nodded acquiescence, then said:

 

“Will it be as much as a thousand gold you will get?”

 

“I think so. Surely the pig of an Irish stock-gambler could pay me no

less a sum, and five hundred is yours if pig Francis leaves his bones in

San Antonio.”

 

“Will it be as much as a hundred thousand gold?” was the Jefe’s next

query.

 

Torres laughed as if at a joke.

 

“It must be more than a thousand,” the other persisted.

 

“And he may be generous,” Torres responded. “He may even give me five

hundred over the thousand, half of which, naturally, as I have said,

will be yours as well.”

 

“I shall go from here immediately to the jail,” the Jefe announced. “You

may trust me, Senor Torres, as I trust you. Come. We will go at once,

now, you and I, and you may see for yourself the preparation I shall

make for this Francis Morgan’s reception. I have not yet lost my cunning

with a rifle. And, as well, I shall tell off three of the gendarmes to

fire only at him. So this Gringo dog would storm our jail, eh? Come. We

will depart at once.”

 

He stood up, tossing his cigarette away with a show of determined

energy. But, half way across the room, a ragged boy, panting and

sweating, plucked his sleeve and whined:

 

“I have information. You will pay me for it, most high Senor? I have run

all the way.”

 

“I’ll have you sent to San Juan for the buzzards to peck your carcass

for the worthless carrion that you are,” was the reply.

 

The boy quailed at the threat, then summoned courage from his emptiness

of belly and meagerness of living and from his desire for the price of a

ticket to the next bull-fight.

 

“You will remember I brought you the information, Senor. I ran all the

way until I am almost dead, as you can behold, Senor. I will tell you,

but you will remember it was I who ran all the way and told you first.”

 

“Yes, yes, animal, I will remember. But woe to you if I remember too

well. What is the trifling information? It may not be worth a centavo.

And if it isn’t I’ll make you sorry the sun ever shone on you. And

buzzard-picking of you at San Juan will be paradise compared with what I

shall visit on you.”

 

“The jail,” the boy quavered. “The strange Gringo, the one who was to be

hanged yesterday, has blown down the side of the jail. Merciful Saints!

The hole is as big as the steeple of the cathedral! And the other

Gringo, the one who looks like him, the one who was to hang to-morrow,

has escaped with him out of the hole. He dragged him out of the hole

himself. This I saw, myself, with my two eyes, and then I ran here to

you all the way, and you will remember....”

 

But the Jefe Politico had already turned on Torres witheringly.

 

“And if this Senor Regan be princely generous, he may give you and me

the munificent sum that was mentioned, eh? Five times the sum, or ten

times, with this Gringo tiger blowing down law and order and our good

jail-walls, would be nearer the mark.”

 

“At any rate, the thing must be a false alarm, merely the straw that

shows which way blows the wind of this Francis Morgan’s intention,”

Torres murmured with a sickly smile. “Remember, the suggestion was mine

to him to storm the jail.”

 

“In which case you and Senor Regan will pay for the good jail wall?” the

Jefe demanded, then, with a pause, added: “Not that I believe it has

been accomplished. It is not possible. Even a fool Gringo would not

dare.”

 

Rafael, the gendarme, rifle in hand, the blood still oozing down his

face from a scalp-wound, came through the courtroom door and shouldered

aside the curious ones who had begun to cluster around Torres and the

Jefe.

 

“We are devastated,” were Rafael’s first words. “The jail is ‘most

destroyed. Dynamite! A hundred pounds of it! A thousand! We came bravely

to save the jail. But it exploded—the thousand pounds of dynamite. I

fell unconscious, rifle in hand. When sense came back to me, I looked

about. All others, the brave Pedro, the brave Ignacio, the brave

Augustino—all, all, lay around me dead!” Almost could he have added,

“drunk”; but, his Latin-American nature so compounded, he sincerely

stated the catastrophe as it most valiantly and tragically presented

itself to his imagination. “They lay dead. They may not be dead, but

merely stunned. I crawled. The cell of the Gringo Morgan was empty.

There was a huge and monstrous hole in the wall. I crawled through the

hole into the street. There was a great crowd. But the Gringo Morgan was

gone. I talked with a moso who had seen and who knew. They had horses

waiting. They rode toward the beach. There is a schooner that is not

anchored. It sails back and forth waiting for them. The Francis Morgan

rides with a sack of gold on his saddle. The moso saw it. It is a large

sack.”

 

“And the hole?” the Jefe demanded. “The hole in the wall?”

 

“Is larger than the sack, much larger,” was Rafael’s reply. “But the

sack is large. So the moso said. And he rides with it on his saddle.”

 

“My jail!” the Jefe cried. He slipped a dagger from inside his coat

under the left arm-pit and held it aloft by the blade so that the hilt

showed as a true cross on which a finely modeled Christ hung crucified.

“I swear by all the Saints the vengeance I shall have. My jail! Our

justice! Our law!——Horses! Horses! Gendarme, horses!” He whirled about

upon Torres as if the latter had spoken, shouting: “To hell with Senor

Regan! I am after my own! I have been defied! My jail is desolated! My

law—our law, good friends—has been mocked. Horses! Horses! Commandeer

them on the streets. Haste! Haste!”

 

* * * * *

 

Captain Trefethen, owner of the _Angelique_, son of a Maya Indian mother

and a Jamaica negro father, paced the narrow after-deck of his schooner,

stared shoreward toward San Antonio, where he could make out his crowded

long-boat returning, and meditated flight from his mad American

charterer. At the same time he meditated remaining in order to break his

charter and give a new one at three times the price; for he was

strangely torn by his conflicting bloods. The negro portion counseled

prudence and observance of Panamanian law. The Indian portion was urgent

to unlawfulness and the promise of conflict.

 

It was the Indian mother who decided the issue and made him draw his

jib, ease his mainsheet, and begin to reach in-shore the quicker to pick

up the oncoming boat. When he made out the rifles carried by the Solanos

and the Morgans, almost he put up his helm to run for it and leave them.

When he made out a woman in the boat’s sternsheets, romance and thrift

whispered in him to hang on and take the boat on board. For he knew

wherever women entered into the transactions of men that peril and pelf

as well entered hand in hand.