*CHAPTER XXXV*
*Doom*
Outcast--Spectres--Conscience--Tracked--Vanity--Scylla--Charybdis--Jose--Faithful unto Death
Within a few miles of Calatayud, a narrow path, little more than afoot-track, leads down from the hills on to the highroad to Saragossa.Just before joining the highway, the path winds between two low bluffsthat screen it from the sight of wayfarers below. Indeed, any muleteeror arriero unacquainted with the country might almost pass unawares thespot where road and hill-path meet, so completely is it hidden by theash-gray contours of the hills.
About the time when Jack dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez, aman was making his way downward along this narrow track, urging aheavily-laden mule with low cries to hasten its flagging pace. He was ayoung man, in the costume of a muleteer; his cheeks were pale andsunken, his eyes unnaturally bright. Every now and again he would throwan anxious backward glance over his shoulder, not consciously, as if hefeared pursuit, but as though in obedience to some impulse of which hewas hardly aware.
When he approached the point where the track joined the road he steppedto the mule's head and brought the animal to a stand-still, looking fromleft to right as if in doubt. After a moment's hesitation he tied themule to one of the rare saplings that grew at the side of the track, andadvanced warily towards the highway, pausing at short intervals, andbending his head forward to listen. There was no sound save the silvertrill of a lark far above, and the soughing of a light breeze as itlapped the edges of the hills. The man moved forward again, still morecautiously; rounding a knoll, he came to the road, that stretched ingentle undulations for several hundreds of yards in a straight line eastand west. No one was in sight. The man gave a sigh of relief, followedby one of those quick uneasy backward glances that seemed to be habitualwith him. Rapidly scanning the road once more, he returned to the mule,released the bridle from the tree, and slowly led the laden animal downthe path.
He was within a dozen paces of the dusty highway when he haltedsuddenly, dragging heavily upon the reins. His dusky, olive-huedfeatures paled, the hand that grasped the bridle trembled nervously; hiswhole attitude was one of dire apprehension. For a moment he stoodintently listening, his eyes fixed in a wide stare; then, wheeling themule sharply round and prodding the weary beast desperately with theknife he drew from his belt, he raced back along the track. For a fullquarter of a mile he continued his upward course; then he stopped, andagain turned his head towards the road in the attitude of listening. Atfirst he could hear nothing but the throbbing of his heart and the quickbreathing of the mule by his side; but gradually the clatter of manyhoofs on the hard road became more and more audible through the clearair, though the horsemen were hidden from view by the obstructing hills.They arrived at what he judged to be the place he had just left. Heheard "Halt!" in a rough stentorian tone. The voice was Spanish, andits effect on the anxious listening man was as that of a galvanic shock.With a smothered cry he dashed forward, dragging the unwilling mule,which he goaded with alternate stabs of the knife and whispered wordshalf of menace half of entreaty.
There was no halting now. For mile after mile they continued theirflight, until, when both mule and man were exhausted, they at lengthstopped at the edge of a wild gorge high up in the mountains. There,for the first time since he fled the voice, the man looked carefullyaround. The place was evidently new to him. In his flight he haddiverged at the first opportunity from the track, along which he hadcome, not then alone, earlier in the day. The new path was moredifficult than the old; it wound away from his obvious destination; itled, indeed, almost due north into the heart of the mountaincountry--the Sierra de Moncayo, the precipitous granite range where KingAEolus had his mythic throne. But the fugitive knew not, cared not,whither he went, so long as it was away from the voice of hiscountrymen. And he avoided, with the shrinking of dread, the track heknew.
One thing was remarkable during his late impetuous flight. He seemed tohave forgotten his strange trick of glancing backward over his shoulder.Many times he turned half round to see if he was followed, butconsciously, less abjectly, for all his panic fear.
When he had rested for a few minutes, he rose and carefully scanned thesurrounding country, debating with himself what course to follow. Hisview was circumscribed by the irregular masses of bare rock and sparselywooded slopes that formed the horizon. But he appeared at last to havemade up his mind, for, pulling the mule slowly round on the narrowtrack, he took a few steps as if to return in the direction from whichhe had come. But his bearing was timid, uncertain, vacillating, and whena mountain eagle swept from its eyry, and screamed just above his head,he started as if struck, hauled his poor beast feverishly across thetrack, and once more pressed in hot haste towards the north.
For some time he marched on rapidly. Then the fatigue of travellingover the steep uneven track again made itself felt; his pace slackened;he moved along behind the mule as if mechanically, while mechanically hestill urged it forward with his knife. For minutes at a stretch heseemed as in a dream, immersed in dark thought. Again he glancedfearfully backward, not as though seeking a visible object of menace,not at the frowning hills, but with eyes that attempted to pierce theinfinite for a something beyond. At moments he started from his wakingnightmare to a full consciousness of his position among these bleakinhospitable hills. The phantoms dogging his thoughts then vanished,giving place to real cares--physical pain, a sense of desolation. Atsuch times he searched anxiously for a path to the west, whereby makinga circuit he might reach his goal, avoiding the highroad, where he hadso narrowly escaped the hands of his countrymen the guerrilleros. Butthe track wound on, swerving sometimes to right or left, yet leadingremorselessly northward, no by-path branching towards Calatayud. Hedared not turn back. The danger of the road, had he known it, was past;but the awful risk of capture made him sick with fear. He plodded on,sunk more and more in dark imaginings, until at last, when the red sunwas sinking below the distant purple peaks on his left, the mulesuddenly stopped, and, breathing heavily, dropped upon its knees. Thepoor brute was spent. The man awoke with a start from his reverie. Hewas on the edge of a deep gully; giant rocks hemmed him in on eitherside; the path--there was no path! For the first time he realized thatthe granite hills held him in their grip.
He looked at the mule, that lay with lolling tongue and starting eyes.The animal was famished. He had no food for it, none for himself; onlynow was he conscious of his own gnawing hunger. He loosened the girths,and, removing the heavy panniers from the mule's back, enabled it torise. There was nothing to tie it to. Sinking down on a flat rock, heheld the bridle and peered into the deepening gloom. He dared not moveforward; one careless step in this wild place might hurl them both intoan abyss. There he sat, and the darkness gathered, and the chill ofnight wrapped him round.
What were his thoughts as he waited and endured? Who shall say? Humanjustice may falter, may be long upon the road; Eternal Justice isinstant, relentless, inevitable. The sense of doom was upon this man,as he held sombre vigil with the cold accusing stars.
It was an unkempt, haggard, agued figure that rose stiffly and dizzilyfrom his hard couch as soon as the pale dawn came creeping through thenarrow gully among the hills. He could just see the mule standingmotionless a few yards away. He shuddered as his eye fell upon thebrass-clamped coffers at its feet. Then he moved as if to pass away,leaving behind him both mule and treasure, the visible links that boundhim to the past. But after a few staggering steps he hesitated, set histeeth in desperate resolve, and returning, painfully lifted the boxes onto the panniers, the mule standing with drooped ears, and shivering inthe raw air. In the half-light he led the famished beast away from theravine, searching the rocky ground narrowly for marks of its track.Here and there appeared a stone covered with gray lichen; at these themule halted and licked a scanty, bitter meal. At one point a silverrivulet poured from a fissure and fell clattering up
on the rocks fardown the steep. There Miguel dropped to his knees and drank with theanimal, then went on again.
It was nearly two hours before he saw, on the far side of a deep ravine,a foot-path winding about a wall of rock. Was it the path he had left?He did not know. Only the guerrilleros he feared to meet could havetold him that but one other path led across these barren heights.Leading the mule cautiously down one face of the ravine, he hauled itwith infinite difficulty up the other. The poor beast, faint withhunger, had scarcely strength to crawl when at last it scrambled withits burden on to the track. But for the constant goad it would havefallen by the way. The path ran north and south; Miguel hesitated whichdirection to take. Northward he would have to scale steeper heights,but would increase his distance from the garden of his fear; southward,he might reach Calatayud and safety with the French, but who knew whatdanger might lie between? As the question beat this way and that in histortured brain, his eyes lit upon a long, thin, jagged rock in which, inthe gloom of the preceding evening, he had marked with a shudder agrotesque resemblance to a human form he would have given worlds toforget. Then he knew that he was upon the track from which he hadwandered; he would persevere in the attempt to find a cross-path to thewest. Surely there must be one that would lead, by however long acircuit, to his goal?
He turned wearily towards the north and instinctively glanced backacross the hills, now variously tinted by the ascending sun. As he didso his eyes dilated, and for some moments he stood as if rooted to theground. In the clear distance two figures mounted on mules were comingtowards him. Even while he looked he saw one, the smaller of the two,pointing in his direction. The other drew rein for an instant, then bothurged their mules to a trot. A bend in the path hid them from view, andMiguel leapt round, knowing that he was in very truth a hunted man. Fornearly a day he had been pursued by the phantom of his crime. He hadrun from the shadow of a sound, fled from the perils his own imaginationhad created. Terror of he knew not what had left him all unstrung. Butnow that vengeance dogged him in real bodily form his mind braced itselfto meet it. Only for a moment did his heart quail with misgiving; hereeled slightly, and clutched at the mule's bridle for support; then,recovering himself instantly, he struck the jaded beast, and with afierce cry drove it before him up the path.
Suddenly the track bent eastward, it ceased to rise, he seemed to be onthe northern slope of the watershed up which he had toiled during theprevious day. He topped the crest. The path stretched downwards beforehim; and, scattering the loose stones to right and left, Miguel raced onwith the mule until at a turn in the track a vast and brilliant panoramaopened before his yearning eyes. Below him, at the edge of the longslope, stretched a rolling wooded country intersected by numerouswatercourses shining in the morning sun. Far away on the horizon asilver streak wound and doubled on itself. It must be the river Ebro.Could he but gain the rich champaign below, he hoped that, for a time atleast, he would be safe. In some copse or covert, vineyard orolive-ground, even in the byways of some hamlet, he might find atemporary refuge. But with the thought itself its utter hopelessnesswas borne in upon him. His pursuers must be closing in fast, althoughthe windings of the track hid them from him when at intervals he turnedto see. Panting himself, he dragged his panting beast with recklesshaste, though in his inmost consciousness sure that the road was toolong, the time too short. One solitary hope remained to him. If heleft the mule with its retarding load, abandoned the prize for which hehad staked his all, he might perhaps even yet find some rocky defile,some favouring grove, wherein to hide and baffle pursuit. But no, therenunciation was too great for his blighted soul. For the treasure hehad schemed and sinned; he could not, dared not, let it go.
Scrambling on down the mountain track, he spied at length, some hundredsof feet below him, a narrow hillroad to which his headlong course mustlead him by and by. Its farther side bordered a ravine. The roadseemed near at hand, but as he continued his flight he found that thedownward track zigzagged on the face of the slope, so that sometimes twoor three of its coils lay immediately beneath him. There was no shorterway. Approaching the end of the last of these windings, he was warnedby the clatter of dislodged stones that his pursuers were now hard uponhis heels. He threw a quick glance upward; there, two hundred feetabove him, the riders crossed his sight, following at headlong speed thefirst winding of the track. Without pause he raced staggeringly along.
All unknowing, he had himself been watched for some time from below. Atthe edge of the hill-road, hidden from him by a jutting mass of rock, aman was resting, seated on a boulder, eating a frugal meal from a wallethung at his neck. He was a gaunt, hollow-eyed man, with wasted cheeks;thin, unkempt locks straggled from beneath his cap; his long tangledbeard was snowy white. His attitude was of one in pain. At first hewatched the impetuous muleteer dully, without attention; then hestarted, paused in lifting a piece of bread, and stared long withquickening breath. As the mule turned the last of the zigzags a sunbeamflashed on the brass of one of the boxes. The seated man rose; hiseyes, opened to their fullest width, now fixed themselves with a glareof the intensest hatred upon the fugitive approaching, until once morehe was hidden from sight.
Then with the stealthy movement of a cat the worn, panting wayfarerglided from the brink of the ravine to the opposite side of the road,and crouched down under cover of the rocks that had hidden him from theman above. Almost ceasing to breathe, he drew his knife, and waited. Hismovements suggested that he expected the muleteer to emerge into theroad between himself and the animal. But not thus was the event ordered.Rounding the last turn of the path, Miguel, to avoid a projecting rock,had changed sides; thus when, after a few seconds, he reached thejunction of path and road, the mule was between him and the man who laythere waiting, ready to strike. The anticipated moment was come. ButMiguel was snatched from human vengeance; for him was reserved anotherfate. With an inarticulate cry of baffled rage the ambuscader sprangforward as if to overtake the mule, but, under the impetus gained duringthe last few yards of the hill-path, the beast was still moving quicklyin an oblique direction across the road. Miguel at one and the samemoment heard the cry and saw the flash of the knife. Till then he wasunaware of his enemy's presence, so absorbed was his attention with thepath ahead and the progress of the pursuers behind. At the cry he gavea startled side-long glance at the wild menacing features glaring at himacross the mule's neck. In that dark look he read his doom.
It fell more quickly than any of the four persons--the actorsthemselves, the spectators above--could have thought possible. The tworiders on the steep hill-path had now come within full sight of thescene passing on the road. As they gazed, holding their breath, theysaw the mule between the two men staggering across the road. Startled bythe sudden flash of the uplifted blade, the poor beast swerved towardsthe ravine, driving Miguel, all unconscious, on to the brink. He hadalready slipped towards the almost perpendicular descent before herealized his peril; then he clutched wildly at the slackened bridle,dragging the mule after him. It stumbled at the edge; burdened with itstreasure-laden panniers it could not recover its footing, and in amoment man and beast, with one mingled scream of terror, disappearedinto the yawning gulf.
The spectators above had halted, transfixed by the appalling tragedy.Then they hastened downward impetuously. The older man had fallenforward on the very edge of the ravine. Jack feared that he wouldfollow Miguel Priego to destruction. But when, reaching the road, hethrew himself from his mule and stooped to the prone figure, he foundthat the man had fainted, overcome by his fierce passion and theagitation of the last tense moments. Then for the first time Jack wasaware of the thunderous roar of a torrent, and looking into the ravinehe saw a white flood swirling over the rocks hundreds of feet below.
"Pepito," he said in a strained voice, "clamber down carefully. Seewhat has become of Don Miguel--if anything can be done for him."
While the boy was gone on his perilous errand Jack loosened the clothingof the prostrate
man, fetched water from a mountain-rill, and bathed hishead. He opened his eyes, but there was no speculation in them. Theywandered vacantly and closed again. Jack looked at him pityingly, and,as he looked, felt vaguely that the worn features were familiar to him.They reminded him of someone he had known as a child in Barcelona, a manwho had mended his toys for him, and carried him on his back when tired;who had petted him and scolded him by turns, and whom he had alternatelyplagued and domineered over. Was it Jose Pinzon? Jack could scarcelybelieve it. The Jose he had known was a man touching his prime, strong,stalwart, bright-eyed, raven-haired; the man lying before him was bentand aged, wasted, hoary, decrepit. Yet the likeness to the old Jose wasremarkable. Was it possible that the faithful servant had not beenkilled in Galindo's sortie, as Juanita had believed?
It was three-quarters of an hour before Pepito returned from his descentof the precipice. Nothing living could have survived so terrible afall; Miguel must instantaneously have gone to his account. Fragmentsof the boxes, but for which the mule might have regained its footing,lay scattered on the rocks, and out of the ruin Pepito had recovered butone relic--one gold pendant,--which he handed to his master; all elsehad been swept away by the torrent. Then he helped him lift the poorwayfarer to the back of his mule, and together they bore him to amuleteer's cabin in the hills.
For three days the man lingered there, unconscious for the most part,and in intervals of consciousness talking at random of people and thingsthat were quite strange to his hearers. Jack nursed him with everycare; but it was evident from the first that his days were numbered. Onthe third evening, when the sun was near setting and the cicalas hadcommenced their chant, the man opened his eyes wide and looked amazedlyabout him. He made an effort to rise, but fell back upon the roughblanket that formed his bed. He seemed to be listening. Jack, watchinghim, saw for the first time a glimmer of intelligence in his eyes.Through the open door came the sound of hoofs rapidly approaching.There was a strange eagerness in the man's upward gaze. The soundceased; Pepito came into the hut, followed by a young lady and a priestfetched in hot haste from Carinena. The former bent over the bed andlooked hard at the pallid face; the latter fell on his knees and beganto recite the prayers for the dying.
"Jose! Jose!" whispered Juanita; "you know me, my dear friend?"
"My mistress!" he murmured faintly.
She clasped his hand; a look of glad content shone for a brief moment inthe sick man's eyes. There was a silence; then, as the light faded,came the solemn voice of Padre Consolacion:
"Domine, in manus tuas animam suam commendamus!"
Boys of the Light Brigade: A Story of Spain and the Peninsular War Page 38