Hearts of Three 20

Hearts of Three 20

With Leoncia and Enrico mounted, and the gear made fast to the saddles

by leather thongs, the cavalcade started, Alesandro and Ricardo clinging

each to a stirrup of their father’s saddle and trotting alongside. This

was for making greater haste, and was emulated by Francis and Henry, who

clung to Leoncia’s stirrups. Fast to the pommel of her saddle was the

bag of silver dollars.

 

“It is some mistake,” the haciendado was explaining to his overseer.

“Enrico Solano is an honorable man. Anything to which he pledges himself

is honorable. He has pledged himself to this, whatever it may be, and

yet is Mariano Vercara é Hijos on their trail. We shall mislead him if

he comes this way.”

 

“And here he comes,” the overseer remarked, “without luck so far in

finding horses.” Casually he turned on the laboring peons and with

horrible threats urged them to do at least half a day’s decent work in a

day.

 

From the corner of his eye, the haciendado observed the fast-walking

group of men, with Alvarez Torres in the lead; but, as if he had not

noticed, he conferred with his overseer about the means of grubbing out

the particular stump the peons were working on.

 

He returned the greeting of Torres pleasantly, and inquired politely,

with a touch of devilry, if he led the party of men on some

oil-prospecting adventure.

 

“No, Senor,” Torres answered. “We are in search of Senor Enrico Solano,

his daughter, his sons, and two tall Gringos with them. It is the

Gringos we want. They have passed this way, Senor?”

 

“Yes, they have passed. I imagined they, too, were in some oil

excitement, such was their haste that prevented them from courteously

passing the time of day and stating their destination. Have they

committed some offence? But I should not ask. Senor Enrico Solano is too

honorable a man——”

 

“Which way did they go?” the Jefe demanded, thrusting himself

breathlessly forward from the rear of his gendarmes with whom he had

just caught up.

 

And while the haciendado and his overseer temporized and prevaricated,

and indicated an entirely different direction, Torres noted one of the

peons, leaning on his spade, listen intently. And still while the Jefe

was being misled and was giving orders to proceed on the false scent,

Torres flashed a silver dollar privily to the listening peon. The peon

nodded his head in the right direction, caught the coin unobserved, and

applied himself to his digging at the root of the huge stump.

 

Torres countermanded the Jefe’s order.

 

“We will go the other way,” Torres said, with a wink to the Jefe. “A

little bird has told me that our friend here is mistaken and that they

have gone the other way.”

 

As the posse departed on the hot trail, the haciendado and his overseer

looked at each other in consternation and amazement. The overseer made a

movement of his lips for silence, and looked swiftly at the group of

laborers. The offending peon was working furiously and absorbedly, but

another peon, with a barely perceptible nod of head, indicated him to

the overseer.

 

“There’s the little bird,” the overseer cried, striding to the traitor

and shaking him violently.

 

Out of the peon’s rags flew the silver dollar.

 

“Ah, ha,” said the haciendado, grasping the situation. “He has become

suddenly affluent. This is horrible, that my peons should be wealthy.

Doubtless, he has murdered some one for all that sum. Beat him, and make

him confess.”

 

The creature, on his knees, the stick of the overseer raining blows on

his head and back, made confession of what he had done to earn the

dollar.

 

“Beat him, beat him some more, beat him to death, the beast who betrayed

my dearest friends,” the haciendado urged placidly. “But no——caution. Do

not beat him to death, but nearly so. We are short of labor now and

cannot afford the full measure of our just resentment. Beat him to hurt

him much, but that he shall be compelled to lay off work no more than a

couple of days.”

 

Of the immediately subsequent agonies, adventures, and misadventures of

the peon, a volume might be written which would be the epic of his life.

Besides, to be beaten nearly to death is not nice to contemplate or

dwell upon. Let it suffice to tell that when he had received no more

than part of his beating; he wrenched free, leaving half his rags in the

overseer’s grasp, and fled madly for the jungle, outfooting the overseer

who was unused to rapid locomotion save when on a horse’s back.

 

Such was the speed of the wretched creature’s flight, spurred on by the

pain of his lacerations and the fear of the overseer, that, plunging

wildly on, he overtook the Solano party and plunged out of the jungle

and into them as they were crossing a shallow stream, and fell upon his

knees, whimpering for mercy. He whimpered because of his betrayal of

them. But this they did not know, and Francis, seeing his pitiable

condition, lingered behind long enough to unscrew the metal top from a

pocket flask and revive him with a drink of half the contents. Then

Francis hastened on, leaving the poor devil muttering inarticulate

thanks ere he dived off into the sheltering jungle in a different

direction. But, underfed, overworked, his body gave way, and he sank

down in collapse in the green covert.

 

Next, Alvarez Torres in the lead and tracking like a hound, the

gendarmes at his back, the Jefe panting in the rear from shortness of

breath, the pursuit arrived at the stream. The foot-marks of the peon,

still wet on the dry stones beyond the margin of the stream, caught

Torres’ eye. In a trice, by what little was left of his garments, the

peon was dragged out. On his knees, which portion of his anatomy he was

destined to occupy much this day, he begged for mercy and received his

interrogation. And he denied knowledge of the Solano party. He, who had

betrayed and been beaten, but who had received only succor from those he

had betrayed, felt stir in him some atom of gratitude and good. He

denied knowledge of the Solanos since in the clearing where he had sold

them for the silver dollar. Torres’ stick fell upon his head, five

times, ten times, and went on falling with the certitude that in all

eternity there would be no cessation unless he told the truth. And,

after all, he was a miserable and wretched thing, spirit-broken by

beatings from the cradle, and the sting of Torres’ stick, with the

threat of the plenitude of the stick that meant the death his own owner,

the haciendado, could not afford, made him give in and point the way of

the chase.

 

But his day of tribulation had only begun. Scarcely had he betrayed the

Solanos the second time, and still on his knees, when the haciendado,

with the posse of neighboring haciendados and overseers he had called to

his help, burst upon the scene astride sweating horses.

 

“My peon, senors,” announced the haciendado, itching to be at him. “You

maltreat him.”

 

“And why not?” demanded the Jefe.

 

“Because he is mine to maltreat, and I wish to do it myself.”

 

The peon crawled and squirmed to the Jefe’s feet and begged and

entreated not to be given up. But he begged for mercy where was no

mercy.

 

“Certainly, senor,” the Jefe said to the haciendado. “We give him back

to you. We must uphold the law, and he is your property. Besides, we

have no further use for him. Yet is he a most excellent peon, senor. He

has done what no peon has ever done in the history of Panama. He has

told the truth twice in one day.”

 

His hands tied together in front of him and hitched by a rope to the

horn of the overseer’s saddle, the peon was towed away on the back-track

with a certain apprehension that the worst of his beatings for that day

was very imminent. Nor was he mistaken. Back at the plantation, he was

tied like an animal to a post of a barbed wire fence, while his owner

and the friends of his owner who had helped in the capture went into the

hacienda to take their twelve o’clock breakfast. After that, he knew

what he was to receive. But the barbed wire of the fence, and the lame

mare in the paddock behind it, built an idea in the desperate mind of

the peon. Though the sharp barbs of the wire again and again cut his

wrist, he quickly sawed through his bonds, free save for the law,

crawled under the fence, led the lame mare through the gate, mounted her

barebacked, and, with naked heels tattooing her ribs, galloped her away

toward the safety of the Cordilleras.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX

 

 

In the meantime the Solanos were being overtaken, and Henry teased

Francis with:

 

“Here in the jungle is where dollars are worthless. They can buy neither

fresh horses, nor can they repair these two spineless creatures, which

must likewise be afflicted with the murrain that carried off the rest of

the haciendado’s riding animals.”

 

“I’ve never been in a place yet where money wouldn’t work,” Francis

replied.

 

“I suppose it could even buy a drink of water in hell,” was Henry’s

retort.

 

Leoncia clapped her hands.

 

“I don’t know,” Francis observed. “I have never been there.”

 

Again Leoncia clapped her hands.

 

“Just the same I have an idea I can make dollars work in the jungle, and

I am going to try it right now,” Francis continued, at the same time

untying the coin-sack from Leoncia’s pommel. “You go ahead and ride on.”

 

“But you must tell _me_,” Leoncia insisted; and, aside, in her ear as

she leaned to him from the saddle, he whispered what made her laugh

again, while Henry, conferring with Enrico and his sons, inwardly berated himself for being a jealous fool.