Hearts of Three 21

Hearts of Three 21

Before they were out of sight, looking back, they saw Francis, with pad

and pencil out, writing something. What he wrote was eloquently brief,

merely the figure “50.” Tearing off the sheet, he laid it conspicuously

in the middle of the trail and weighted it down with a silver dollar.

Counting out forty-nine other dollars from the bag, he sowed them very

immediately about the first one and ran up the trail after his party.

 

* * * * *

 

Augustino, the gendarme who rarely spoke when he was sober, but who when

drunk preached volubly the wisdom of silence, was in the lead, with bent

head nosing the track of the quarry, when his keen eyes lighted on the

silver dollar holding down the sheet of paper. The first he

appropriated; the second he turned over to the Jefe. Torres looked over

his shoulder, and together they read the mystic “50.” The Jefe tossed

the scrap of paper aside as of little worth, and was for resuming the

chase, but Augustino picked up and pondered the “50” thoughtfully. Even

as he pondered it, a shout from Rafael advertised the finding of another

dollar. Then Augustino knew. There were fifty of the coins to be had for

the picking up. Flinging the note to the wind, he was on hands and knees

overhauling the ground. The rest of the party joined in the scramble,

while Torres and the Jefe screamed curses on them in a vain effort to

make them proceed.

 

When the gendarmes could find no more, they counted up what they had

recovered. The toll came to forty-seven.

 

“There are three more,” cried Rafael, whereupon all flung themselves

into the search again. Five minutes more were lost, ere the three other

coins were found. Each pocketed what he had retrieved and obediently

swung into the pursuit at the heels of Torres and the Jefe.

 

A mile farther on, Torres tried to trample a shining dollar into the

dirt, but Augustino’s ferret eyes had been too quick, and his eager

fingers dug it out of the soft earth. Where was one dollar, as they had

already learned, there were more dollars. The posse came to a halt, and

while the two leaders fumed and imprecated, the rest of the members cast

about right and left from the trail.

 

Vicente, a moon-faced gendarme, who looked more like a Mexican Indian

than a Maya or a Panamanian “breed,” lighted first on the clue. All

gathered about, like hounds around a tree into which the ‘possum has

been run. In truth, it was a tree, or a rotten and hollow stump of one,

a dozen feet in height and a third as many feet in diameter. Five feet

from the ground was an opening. Above the opening, pinned on by a thorn,

was a sheet of paper the same size as the first they had found. On it

was written “100.”

 

In the scramble that ensued, half a dozen minutes were lost as half a

dozen right arms strove to be first in dipping into the hollow heart of

the stump to the treasure. But the hollow extended deeper than their

arms were long.

 

“We will chop down the stump,” Rafael cried, sounding with the back of

his machete against the side of it to locate the base of the hollow. “We

will all chop, and we will count what we find inside and divide

equally.”

 

By this time their leaders were frantic, and the Jefe had begun

threatening, the moment they were back in San Antonio, to send them to

San Juan where their carcasses would be picked by the buzzards.

 

“But we are not back in San Antonio, thank God,” said Augustino,

breaking his sober seal of silence in order to enunciate wisdom.

 

“We are poor men, and we will divide in fairness,” spoke up Rafael.

“Augustino is right, and thank God for it that we are not back in San

Antonio. This rich Gringo scatters more money along the way in a day for

us to pick up than could we earn in a year where we come from. I, for

one, am for revolution, where money is so plentiful.”

 

“With the rich Gringo for a leader,” Augustino supplemented. “For as

long as he leads this way could I follow forever.”

 

“If,” Rafael nodded agreement, with a pitch of his head toward Torres

and the Jefe, “if they do not give us opportunity to gather what the

gods have spread for us, then to the last and deepest of the roasting

hells of hell for them. We are men, not slaves. The world is wide. The

Cordilleras are just beyond. We will all be rich, and free men, and live

in the Cordilleras where the Indian maidens are wildly beautiful and

desirable——”

 

“And we will be well rid of our wives, back in San Antonio,” said

Vicente. “Let us now chop down this treasure tree.”

 

Swinging their machetes with heavy, hacking blows, the wood, so rotten

that it was spongy, gave way readily before their blades. And when the

stump fell over, they counted and divided, in equity, not one hundred

silver dollars, but one hundred and forty-seven.

 

“He is generous, this Gringo,” quoth Vicente. “He leaves more than he

says. May there not be still more?”

 

And, from the debris of rotten wood, much of it crumbled to powder under

their blows, they recovered five more coins, in the doing of which they

lost ten more minutes that drove Torres and Jefe to the verge of

madness.

 

“He does not stop to count, the wealthy Gringo,” said Rafael. “He must

merely open that sack and pour it out. And that is the sack with which

he rode to the beach of San Antonio when he blew up with dynamite the

wall of our jail.”

 

The chase was resumed, and all went well for half an hour, when they

came upon an abandoned freehold, already half-overrun with the returning

jungle. A dilapidated, straw-thatched house, a fallen-in labor barracks,

a broken-down corral the very posts of which had sprouted and leaved

into growing trees, and a well showing recent use by virtue of a fresh

length of riata attaching bucket to well-sweep, showed where some man

had failed to tame the wild. And, conspicuously on the well-sweep, was

pinned a familiar sheet of paper on which was written “300.”

 

“Mother of God!—a fortune!” cried Rafael.

 

“May the devil forever torture him in the last and deepest hell!” was

Torres’ contribution.

 

“He pays better than your Senor Regan,” the Jefe sneered in his despair

and disgust.

 

“His bag of silver is only so large,” Torres retorted. “It seems we must

pick it all up before we catch him. But when we have picked it all up,

and his bag is empty, then will we catch him.”

 

“We will go on now, comrades,” the Jefe addressed his posse

ingratiatingly. “Afterwards, we will return at our leisure and recover

the silver.”

 

Augustino broke his seal of silence again.

 

“One never knows the way of one’s return, if one ever returns,” he

enunciated pessimistically. Elated by the pearl of wisdom he had

dropped, he essayed another. “Three hundred in hand is better than three

million in the bottom of a well we may never see again.”

 

“Some one must descend into the well,” spoke Rafael, testing the braided

rope with his weight. “See! The riata is strong. We will lower a man by

it. Who is the brave one who will go down?”

 

“I,” said Vicente. “I will be the brave one to go down——”

 

“And steal half that you find,” Rafael uttered his instant suspicion.

“If you go down, first must you count over to us the pesos you already

possess. Then, when you come up, we can search you for all you have

found. After that, when we have divided equitably, will your other pesos

be returned to you.”

 

“Then will I not go down for comrades who have no trust in me,” Vicente

said stubbornly. “Here, beside the well, I am as wealthy as any of you.

Then why should I go down? I have heard of men dying in the bottom of

wells.”

 

“In God’s name go down!” stormed the Jefe. “Haste! Haste!”

 

“I am too fat, the rope is not strong, and I shall not go down,” said

Vicente.

 

All looked to Augustino, the silent one, who had already spoken more

than he was accustomed to speak in a week.

 

“Guillermo is the thinnest and lightest,” said Augustino.

 

“Guillermo will go down!” the rest chorused.

 

But Guillermo, glaring apprehensively at the mouth of the well, backed

away, shaking his head and crossing himself.

 

“Not for the sacred treasure in the secret city of the Mayas,” he

muttered.

 

The Jefe pulled his revolver and glanced to the remainder of the posse

for confirmation. With eyes and head-nods they gave it.

 

“In heaven’s name go down,” he threatened the little gendarme. “And make

haste, or I shall put you in such a fix that never again will you go up

or down, but you will remain here and rot forever beside this hole of

perdition.—Is it well, comrades, that I kill him if he does not go

down?”

 

“It is well,” they shouted.

 

And Guillermo, with trembling fingers, counted out the coins he had

already retrieved, and, in the throes of fear, crossing himself

repeatedly and urged on by the hand-thrusts of his companions, stepped

upon the bucket, sat down on it with legs wrapped about it, and was

lowered away out of the light of day.

 

“Stop!” he screamed up the shaft. “Stop! Stop! The water! I am upon it!”

 

Those on the sweep held it with their weight.

 

“I should receive ten pesos extra above my share,” he called up.

 

“You shall receive baptism,” was called down to him, and, variously:

“You will have your fill of water this day”; “We will let go”; “We will

cut the rope”; “There will be one less with whom to share.”

 

“The water is not nice,” he replied, his voice rising like a ghost’s out

of the dark depth. “There are sick lizards, and a dead bird that stinks.

And there may be snakes. It is well worth ten pesos extra what I must

do.”

 

“We will drown you!” Rafael shouted.