Hearts of Three 8

Hearts of Three 8

“_Was?_” interrupted Francis with significant stress on the past tense.

 

“_Was_, I said,” Henry nodded. “He _isn’t_ now. His name was Alfaro

Solano, and he had some temper himself. They claim to be descended from

the Spanish _conquistadores_, and they are prouder than hornets. He’d

made money in logwood, and he had just got a big henequen plantation

started farther down the coast. And then we quarreled. It was in the

little town over there—San Antonio. It may have been a misunderstanding,

though I still maintain he was wrong. He always was looking for trouble

with me—didn’t want me to marry Leoncia, you see.

 

“Well, it was a hot time. It started in a _pulqueria_ where Alfaro had

been drinking more mescal than was good for him. He insulted me all

right. They had to hold us apart and take our guns away, and we

separated swearing death and destruction. That was the trouble—our

quarrel and our threats were heard by a score of witnesses.

 

“Within two hours the Comisario himself and two gendarmes found me

bending over Alfaro’s body in a back street in the town. He’d been

knifed in the back, and I’d stumbled over him on the way to the beach.

Explain? No such thing. There were the quarrel and the threats of

vengeance, and there I was, not two hours afterward, caught dead to

right with his warm corpse. I haven’t been back in San Antonio since,

and I didn’t waste any time in getting away. Alfaro was very

popular,—you know the dashing type that catches the rabble’s fancy. Why,

they couldn’t have been persuaded to give me even the semblance of a

trial. Wanted my blood there and then, and I departed very pronto.

 

“Next, up at Bocas del Toro, a messenger from Leoncia delivered back the

engagement ring. And there you are. I developed a real big disgust, and,

since I didn’t dare go back with all the Solanos and the rest of the

population thirsting for my life, I came over here to play hermit for a

while and dig for Morgan’s treasure.... Just the same, I wonder who did

stick that knife into Alfaro. If ever I find him, then I clear myself

with Leoncia and the rest of the Solanos and there isn’t a doubt in the

world that there’ll be a wedding. And now that it’s all over I don’t

mind admitting that Alfaro was a good scout, even if his temper did go

off at half-cock.”

 

“Clear as print,” Francis murmured. “No wonder her father and brothers

wanted to perforate me.—Why, the more I look at you, the more I see

we’re as like as two peas, except for my mustache——”

 

“And for this....” Henry rolled up his sleeve, and on the left forearm

showed a long, thin white scar. “Got that when I was a boy. Fell off a

windmill and through the glass roof of a hothouse.”

 

“Now listen to me,” Francis said, his face beginning to light with the

project forming in his mind. “Somebody’s got to straighten you out of

this mess, and the chap’s name is Francis, partner in the firm of Morgan

and Morgan. You stick around here, or go over and begin prospecting on

the Bull, while I go back and explain things to Leoncia and her

people——”

 

“If only they don’t shoot you first before you can explain you are not

I,” Henry muttered bitterly. “That’s the trouble with those Solanos.

They shoot first and talk afterward. They won’t listen to reason unless

it’s post mortem.”

 

“Guess I’ll take a chance, old man,” Francis assured the other, himself

all fire with the plan of clearing up the distressing situation between

Henry and the girl.

 

But the thought of her perplexed him. He experienced more than a twinge

of regret that the lovely creature belonged of right to the man who

looked so much like him, and he saw again the vision of her on the

beach, when, with conflicting emotions, she had alternately loved him

and yearned toward him and blazed her scorn and contempt on him. He

sighed involuntarily.

 

“What’s that for?” Henry demanded quizzically.

 

“Leoncia is an exceedingly pretty girl,” Francis answered with

transparent frankness. “Just the same, she’s yours, and I’m going to

make it my business to see that you get her. Where’s that ring she

returned? If I don’t put it on her finger for you and be back here in a

week with the good news, you can cut off my mustache along with my

ears.”

 

An hour later, Captain Trefethen having sent a boat to the beach from

the _Angelique_ in response to signal, the two young men were saying

good-bye.

 

“Just two things more, Francis. First, and I forgot to tell you, Leoncia

is not a Solano at all, though she thinks she is. Alfaro told me

himself. She is an adopted child, and old Enrico fairly worships her,

though neither his blood nor his race runs in her veins. Alfaro never

told me the ins and outs of it, though he did say she wasn’t Spanish at

all. I don’t even know whether she’s English or American. She talks good

enough English, though she got that at convent. You see, she was adopted

when she was a wee thing, and she’s never known anything else than that

Enrico is her father.”

 

“And no wonder she scorned and hated me for you,” Francis laughed,

“believing, as she did, as she still does, that you knifed her full

blood-uncle in the back.”

 

Henry nodded, and went on.

 

“The other thing is fairly important. And that’s the law. Or the absence

of it, rather. They make it whatever they want it, down in this

out-of-the-way hole. It’s a long way to Panama, and the gobernador of

this state, or district, or whatever they call it, is a sleepy old

Silenus. The Jefe Politico at San Antonio is the man to keep an eye on.

He’s the little czar of that neck of the woods, and he’s some crooked

_hombre_, take it from yours truly. Graft is too weak a word to apply to

some of his deals, and he’s as cruel and blood-thirsty as a weasel. And

his one crowning delight is an execution. He dotes on a hanging. Keep

your weather eye on him, whatever you do.... And, well, so long. And

half of whatever I find on the Bull is yours: ... and see you get that

ring back on Leoncia’s finger.”

 

* * * * *

 

Two days later, after the half-breed skipper had reconnoitered ashore

and brought back the news that all the men of Leoncia’s family were

away, Francis had himself landed on the beach where he had first met

her. No maidens with silver revolvers nor men with rifles were manifest.

All was placid, and the only person on the beach was a ragged little

Indian boy who at sight of a coin readily consented to carry a note up

to the young senorita of the big hacienda. As Francis scrawled on a

sheet of paper from his notebook, “I am the man whom you mistook for

Henry Morgan, and I have a message for you from him,” he little dreamed

that untoward happenings were about to occur with as equal rapidity and

frequence as on his first visit.

 

For that matter, could he have peeped over the out-jut of rock against

which he leaned his back while composing the note to Leoncia, he would

have been startled by a vision of the young lady herself, emerging like

a sea-goddess fresh from a swim in the sea. But he wrote calmly on, the

Indian lad even more absorbed than himself in the operation, so that it

was Leoncia, coming around the rock from behind, who first caught sight

of him. Stifling an exclamation, she turned and fled blindly into the

green screen of jungle.

 

His first warning of her proximity was immediately thereafter, when a

startled scream of fear aroused him. Note and pencil fell to the sand as

he sprang toward the direction of the cry and collided with a wet and

scantily dressed young woman who was recoiling backward from whatever

had caused her scream. The unexpectedness of the collision was

provocative of a second startled scream from her ere she could turn and

recognize that it was not a new attack but a rescuer.

 

She darted past him, her face colorless from the fright, stumbled over

the Indian boy, nor paused until she was out on the open sand.

 

“What is it?” Francis demanded. “Are you hurt? What’s happened?”

 

She pointed at her bare knee, where two tiny drops of blood oozed forth

side by side from two scarcely perceptible lacerations.

 

“It was a viperine,” she said. “A deadly viperine. I shall be a dead

woman in five minutes, and I am glad, glad, for then my heart will be

tormented no more by you.”

 

She leveled an accusing finger at him, gasped the beginning of

denunciation she could not utter, and sank down in a faint.

 

Francis knew about the snakes of Central America merely by hearsay, but

the hearsay was terrible enough. Men talked of even mules and dogs dying

in horrible agony five to ten minutes after being struck by tiny

reptiles fifteen to twenty inches long. Small wonder she had fainted,

was his thought, with so terribly rapid a poison doubtlessly beginning

to work. His knowledge of the treatment of snake-bite was likewise

hearsay, but flashed through his mind the recollection of the need of a

tourniquet to shut off the circulation above the wound and prevent the

poison from reaching the heart.

 

He pulled out his handkerchief and tied it loosely around her leg above

the knee, thrust in a short piece of driftwood stick, and twisted the

handkerchief to savage tightness. Next, and all by hearsay, working

swiftly, he opened the small blade of his pocket-knife, burned it with

several matches to make sure against germs, and cut carefully but

remorsely into the two lacerations made by the snake’s fangs.

 

He was in a fright himself, working with feverish deftness and

apprehending at any moment that the pangs of dissolution would begin to

set in on the beautiful form before him. From all he had heard, the

bodies of snake-victims began to swell quickly and prodigiously. Even as

he finished excoriating the fang-wounds, his mind was made up to his

next two acts. First, he would suck out all poison he possibly could;

and, next, light a cigarette and with its live end proceed to cauterize

the flesh.

 

But while he was still making light, criss-cross cuts with the point of

his knife-blade, she began to move restlessly.

 

“Lie down,” he commanded, as she sat up, and just when he was bending

his lips to the task.

 

In response, he received a resounding slap alongside of his face from

her little hand. At the same instant the Indian lad danced out of the

jungle, swinging a small dead snake by the tail and crying exultingly:

 

“Labarri! Labarri!”

 

At which Francis assumed the worst.

 

“Lie down, and be quiet!” he repeated harshly. “You haven’t a second to

lose.”

 

But she had eyes only for the dead snake. Her relief was patent; but

Francis was no witness to it, for he was bending again to perform the

classic treatment of snake-bite.