Hearts of Three 55

Hearts of Three 55

“Guilty.”

 

No one was surprised, not even the prisoner.

 

“Appear to-morrow morning for sentence.——Next case.”

 

Having so ordered, the judge prepared to settle down into another nap,

when he saw Torres and the Jefe enter the courtroom. A gleam in the

Jefe’s eye was his cue, and he abruptly dismissed court for the day.

 

“I have been to Rodriguez Fernandez,” the Jefe was explaining five

minutes later, in the empty courtroom. “He says it was a natural gem,

and that much would be lost in the cutting, but that nevertheless he

would still give five hundred gold for it.——Show it to the judge, Senor

Torres, and the rest of the handful of big ones.”

 

And Torres began to lie. He had to lie, because he could not confess the

shame of having had the gems taken away from him by the Solanos and the

Morgans when they threw him out of the hacienda. And so convincingly did

he lie that even the Jefe he convinced, while the judge, except in the

matter of brands of strong liquor, accepted everything the Jefe wanted

him to believe. In brief, shorn of the multitude of details that Torres

threw in, his tale was that he was so certain of the jeweler’s

under-appraisal that he had despatched the gems by special messenger to

his agent in Colon with instructions to forward to New York to Tiffany’s

for appraisement that might lead to sale.

 

As they emerged from the courtroom and descended the several steps that

were flanked by single adobe pillars marred by bullet scars from

previous revolutions, the Jefe was saying:

 

“And so, needing the ægis of the law for our adventure after these gems,

and, more than that, both of us loving our good friend the judge, we

will let him in for a modest share of whatever we shall gain. He shall

represent us in San Antonio while we are gone, and, if needs be, furnish

us with the law’s protection.”

 

Now it happened that behind one of the pillars, hat pulled over his

face, Yi Poon half-sat, half-reclined. Nor was he there by mere

accident. Long ago he had learned that secrets of value, which always

connoted the troubles of humans, were markedly prevalent around

courtrooms, which were the focal points for the airing of such troubles

when they became acute. One could never tell. At any moment a secret

might leap at one or brim over to one. Therefore it was like a fisherman

casting his line into the sea for Yi Poon to watch the defendant and the

plaintiff, the witnesses for and against, and even the court hanger-on

or casual-seeming onlooker.

 

So, on this morning, the one person of promise that Yi Poon had picked

out was a ragged old peon who looked as if he had been drinking too much

and yet would perish in his condition of reaction if he did not get

another drink very immediately. Bleary-eyed he was, and red-lidded, with

desperate resolve painted on all his haggard, withered lineaments. When

the courtroom had emptied, he had taken up his stand outside on the

steps close to a pillar.

 

And why? Yi Poon had asked himself. Inside remained only the three chief

men of San Antonio——the Jefe, Torres, and the judge. What connection

between them, or any of them, and the drink-sodden creature that shook

as if freezing in the scorching blaze of the direct sun-rays? Yi Poon

did not know, but he did know that it was worth while waiting on a

chance, no matter how remote, of finding out. So, behind the pillar,

where no atom of shade protected him from the cooking sun which he

detested, he lolled on the steps with all the impersonation of one

placidly infatuated with sun-baths. The old peon tottered a step, swayed

as if about to fall, yet managed to deflect Torres from his companions,

who paused to wait for him on the pavement a dozen paces on, restless

and hot-footed as if they stood on a grid, though deep in earnest

conversation. And Yi Poon missed no word nor gesture, nor glint of eye

nor shifting face-line, of the dialogue that took place between the

grand Torres and the wreck of a peon.

 

“What now?” Torres demanded harshly.

 

“Money, a little money, for the love of God, senor, a little money,” the

ancient peon whined.

 

“You have had your money,” Torres snarled. “When I went away I gave you

double the amount to last you twice as long. Not for two weeks yet is

there a centavo due you.”

 

“I am in debt,” was the old man’s whimper, the while all the flesh of

him quivered and trembled from the nerve-ravishment of the drink so

palpably recently consumed.

 

“On the pulque slate at Peter and Paul’s,” Torres, with a sneer,

diagnosed unerringly.

 

“On the pulque slate at Peter and Paul’s,” was the frank acknowledgment.

“And the slate is full. No more pulque can I get credit for. I am

wretched and suffer a thousand torments without my pulque.”

 

“You are a pig creature without reason!”

 

A strange dignity, as of wisdom beyond wisdom, seemed suddenly to

animate the old wreck as he straightened up, for the nonce ceased from

trembling, and gravely said:

 

“I am old. There is no vigor left in the veins or the heart of me. The

desires of my youth are gone. Not even may I labor with this broken body

of mine, though well I know that labor is an easement and a forgetting.

Not even may I labor and forget. Food is a distaste in my mouth and a

pain in my belly. Women—they are a pest that it is a vexation to

remember ever having desired. Children—I buried my last a dozen years

gone. Religion—it frightens me. Death—I sleep with the terror of it.

Pulque—ah, dear God! the one tickle and taste of living left to me!

 

“What if I drink over much? It is because I have much to forget, and

have but a little space yet to linger in the sun, ere the Darkness, for

my old eyes, blots out the sun forever.”

 

Impervious to the old man’s philosophy, Torres made an impatient threat

of movement that he was going.

 

“A few pesos, just a handful of pesos,” the old peon pleaded.

 

“Not a centavo,” Torres said with finality.

 

“Very well,” said the old man with equal finality.

 

“What do you mean?” Torres rasped with swift suspicion.

 

“Have you forgotten?” was the retort, with such emphasis of significance

as to make Yi Poon wonder for what reason Torres gave the peon what

seemed a pension or an allowance.

 

“I pay you, according to agreement, to forget,” said Torres.

 

“I shall never forget that my old eyes saw you stab the Senor Alfaro

Solano in the back,” the peon replied.

 

Although he remained hidden and motionless in his posture of repose

behind the pillar, Yi Poon metaphorically sat up. The Solanos were

persons of place and wealth. That Torres should have murdered one of

them was indeed a secret of price.

 

“Beast! Pig without reason! Animal of the dirt!” Torres’ hands clenched

in his rage. “Because I am kind do you treat me thus! One blabbing of

your tongue and I will send you to San Juan. You know what that means.

Not only will you sleep with the terror of death, but never for a moment

of waking will you be free of the terror of living as you stare upon the

buzzards that will surely and shortly pick your bones. And there will be

no pulque in San Juan. There is never any pulque in San Juan for the men

I send there. So? Eh? I thought so. You will wait two weeks for the

proper time when I shall again give you money. If you do not wait, then

never, this side of your interment in the bellies of buzzards, will you

drink pulque again.”

 

Torres whirled on his heel and was gone. Yi Poon watched him and his two

companions go down the street, then rounded the pillar to find the old

peon sunk down in collapse at his disappointment of not getting any

pulque, groaning and moaning and making sharp little yelping cries, his

body quivering as dying animals quiver in the final throes, his fingers

picking at his flesh and garments as if picking off centipedes. Down

beside him sat Yi Poon, who began a remarkable performance of his own.

Drawing gold coins and silver ones from his pockets he began to count

over his money with chink and clink that was mellow and liquid and that

to the distraught peon’s ear was as the sound of the rippling and

riffling of fountains of pulque.

 

“We are wise,” Yi Poon told him in grandiloquent Spanish, still clinking

the money, while the peon whined and yammered for the few centavos

necessary for one drink of pulque. “We are wise, you and I, old man, and

we will sit here and tell each other what we know about men and women,

and life and love, and anger and sudden death, the rage red in the heart

and the steel bitter cold in the back; and if you tell me what pleases

me, then shall you drink pulque till your ears run out with it, and your

eyes are drowned in it. You like that pulque, eh? You like one drink

now, _now_, soon, very quick?”

 

* * * * *

 

The night, while the Jefe Politico and Torres organized their expedition

under cover of the dark, was destined to be a momentous one in the

Solano hacienda. Things began to happen early. Dinner over, drinking

their coffee and smoking their cigarettes, the family, of which Henry

was accounted one by virtue of his brotherhood to Leoncia, sat on the

wide front veranda. Through the moonlight, up the steps, they saw a

strange figure approach.

 

“It is like a ghost,” said Alvarado Solano.

 

“A fat ghost,” Martinez, his twin brother, amended.

 

“A Chink ghost you couldn’t poke your finger through,” Ricardo laughed.

 

“The very Chink who saved Leoncia and me from marrying,” said Henry

Morgan, with recognition.