Hearts of Three 56

Hearts of Three 56

Enrico forgot that he had deputed the transaction to his eldest son.

 

“Where is your witness?” he shouted.

 

And Yi Poon, calling softly down the steps into the shrubbery, evoked

the pulque-ravaged peon, a real-looking ghost who slowly advanced and

tottered up the steps.

 

* * * * *

 

At the same time, on the edge of town, twenty mounted men, among whom

were the gendarmes Rafael, Ignacio, Augustino, and Vicente, herded a

pack train of more than twenty mules and waited the command of the Jefe

to depart on they knew not what mysterious adventure into the

Cordilleras. What they did know was that, herded carefully apart from

all other animals, was a strapping big mule loaded with two hundred and

fifty pounds of dynamite. Also, they knew that the delay was due to the

Senor Torres, who had ridden away along the beach with the dreaded Caroo

murderer, José Mancheno, who, only by the grace of God and of the Jefe

Politico, had been kept for years from expiating on the scaffold his

various offenses against life and law.

 

And, while Torres waited on the beach and held the Caroo’s horse and an

extra horse, the Caroo ascended on foot the winding road that led to the

hacienda of the Solanos. Little did Torres guess that twenty feet away,

in the jungle that encroached on the beach, lay a placid-sleeping,

pulque-drunken, old peon, with, crouching beside him, a very alert and

very sober Chinese with a recently acquired thousand dollars stowed

under his belt. Yi Poon had had barely time to drag the peon into hiding

when Torres rode along in the sand and stopped almost beside him.

 

Up at the hacienda, all members of the household were going to bed.

Leoncia, just starting to let down her hair, stopped when she heard the

rattle of tiny pebbles against her windows. Warning her in low whispers

to make no noise, José Mancheno handed her a crumpled note which Torres

had written, saying mysteriously:

 

“From a strange Chinaman who waits not a hundred feet away on the edge

of the shrubbery.”

 

And Leoncia read, in execrable Spanish:

 

“First time, I tell you secret about Henry Morgan. This time I have

secret about Francis. You come along and talk with me now.”

 

Leoncia’s heart leaped at mention of Francis, and as she slipped on a

mantle and accompanied the Caroo it never entered her head to doubt that

Yi Poon was waiting for her.

 

And Yi Poon, down on the beach and spying upon Torres, had no doubts

when he saw the Caroo murderer appear with the Solano senorita, bound

and gagged, slung across his shoulder like a sack of meal. Nor did Yi

Poon have any doubts about his next action, when he saw Leoncia tied

into the saddle of the spare horse and taken away down the beach at a

gallop, with Torres and the Caroo riding on either side of her. Leaving

the pulque-sodden peon to sleep, the fat Chinaman took the road up the

hill at so stiff a pace that he arrived breathless at the hacienda. Not

content with knocking at the door, he beat upon it with his fists and

feet and prayed to his Chinese gods that no peevish Solano should take a

shot at him before he could explain the urgency of his errand.

 

“O go to hell,” Alesandro said, when he had opened the door and flashed

a light on the face of the importunate caller.

 

“I have big secret,” Yi Poon panted. “Very big brand new secret.”

 

“Come around to-morrow in business hours,” Alesandro growled as he

prepared to kick the Chinaman off the premises.

 

“I don’t sell secret,” Yi Poon stammered and gasped. “I make you

present. I give secret now. The Senorita, your sister, she is stolen.

She is tied upon a horse that runs fast down the beach.”

 

But Alesandro, who had said good night to Leoncia, not half an hour

before, laughed loudly his unbelief, and prepared again to boot off the

trafficker in secrets. Yi Poon was desperate. He drew forth the thousand

dollars and placed it in Alesandro’s hand, saying:

 

“You go look quick. If the Senorita stop in this house now, you keep all

that money. If the Senorita no stop, then you give money back....”

 

And Alesandro was convinced. A minute later he was rousing the house.

Five minutes later the horse-peons, their eyes hardly open from sound

sleep, were roping and saddling horses and pack-mules in the corrals,

while the Solano tribe was pulling on riding gear and equipping itself

with weapons.

 

* * * * *

 

Up and down the coast, and on the various paths leading back to the

Cordilleras, the Solanos scattered, questing blindly in the blind dark

for the trail of the abductors. As chance would have it, thirty hours

afterward, Henry alone caught the scent and followed it, so that, camped

in the very Footstep of God where first the old Maya priest had sighted

the eyes of Chia, he found the entire party of twenty men and Leoncia

cooking and eating breakfast. Twenty to one, never fair and always

impossible, did not appeal to Henry Morgan’s Anglo-Saxon mind. What did

appeal to him was the dynamite-loaded mule, tethered apart from the

off-saddled forty-odd animals and left to stand by the careless peons

with its load still on its back. Instead of attempting the patently

impossible rescue of Leoncia, and recognising that in numbers her

woman’s safety lay, he stole the dynamite-mule.

 

Not far did he take it. In the shelter of the low woods, he opened the

pack and filled all his pockets with sticks of dynamite, a box of

detonators, and a short coil of fuse. With a regretful look at the rest

of the dynamite which he would have liked to explode but dared not, he

busied himself along the line of retreat he would have to take if he

succeeded in stealing Leoncia from her captors. As Francis, on a

previous occasion at Juchitan, had sown the retreat with silver dollars,

so, this time, did Henry sow the retreat with dynamite——the sticks in

small bundles and the fuses, no longer than the length of a detonator,

and with detonators fast to each end.

 

* * * * *

 

Three hours Henry devoted to lurking around the camp in the Footstep of

God, ere he got his opportunity to signal his presence to Leoncia; and

another precious two hours were wasted ere she found her opportunity to

steal away to him. Which would not have been so bad, had not her escape

almost immediately been discovered and had not the gendarmes and the

rest of Torres’ party, mounted, been able swiftly to overtake them on

foot.

 

When Henry drew Leoncia down to hide beside him in the shelter of a

rock, and at the same time brought his rifle into action ready for play,

she protested.

 

“We haven’t a chance, Henry,” she said. “They are too many. If you fight

you will be killed. And then what will become of me? Better that you

make your own escape, and bring help, leaving me to be retaken, than

that you die and let me be retaken anyway.”

 

But he shook his head.

 

“We are not going to be taken, dearest sister. Put your trust in me and

watch. Here they come now. You just watch.”

 

Variously mounted, on horses and pack mules—whichever had come handiest

in their haste—Torres, the Jefe, and their men clattered into sight.

Henry drew a sight, not on them, but on the point somewhat nearer where

he had made his first plant of dynamite. When he pulled trigger, the

intervening distance rose up in a cloud of smoke and earth dust that

obscured them. As the cloud slowly dissipated, they could be seen, half

of them, animals and men, overthrown, and all of them dazed and shocked

by the explosion.

 

Henry seized Leoncia’s hand, jerked her to her feet, and ran on side by

side with her. Conveniently beyond his second planting, he drew her down

beside him to rest and catch breath.

 

“They won’t come on so fast this time,” he hissed exultantly. “And the

longer they pursue us the slower they’ll come on.”

 

True to his forecast, when the pursuit appeared, it moved very

cautiously and very slowly.

 

“They ought to be killed,” Henry said. “But they have no chance, and I

haven’t the heart to do it. But I’ll surely shake them up some.”

 

Again he fired into his planted dynamite, and again, turning his back on

the confusion, he fled to his third planting.

 

After he had fired off the third explosion, he raced Leoncia to his

tethered horse, put her in the saddle, and ran on beside her, hanging on

to her stirrup.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXVI

 

 

Francis had left orders for Parker to call him at eight o’clock, and

when Parker softly entered he found his master still asleep. Turning on

the water in the bathroom and preparing the shaving gear, the valet

re-entered the bedroom. Still moving softly about so that his master

would have the advantage of the last possible second of sleep, Parker’s

eyes lighted on the strange dagger that stood upright, its point pinning

through a note and a photograph and into the hard wood of the

dresser-top. For a long time he gazed at the strange array, then,

without hesitation, carefully opened the door to Mrs. Morgan’s room and

peeped in. Next, he firmly shook Francis by the shoulder.