by Max Brand
“Of her husband?”
“Husband? Her father, señor! He was president of Venzago.”
“I have never heard of him. Are they passing through the valley?”
“By the blessing of heaven, they have favored the valley by coming to live here! If the señor would trouble himself to rise . . . yonder . . . between the two houses . . . he will see their estate . . . like a king’s palace, señor. For the wealth of Señor Caporno is the wealth of a king. For two years, I cannot tell you how many scores of men worked to build it. First all the sand was dug away, and then the earth beneath, and then they came to the sandstone, and they cut through that, and still, beneath the sandstone, there was an ocean of solid black rock. Even into that they blasted and drilled, as though they were making a mine. I and all the other people in San Marin went every Sunday to look. It was a great hole in the ground. You could have poured all of the town into it, I think.
“‘What is it for?’ we said to one another.
“Then we saw chambers being cut and squared. Was it to be a house under the ground? No, for then masons came and walls of stone were raised . . . so thick as this! My arms could not span them. And the great walls rose and rose to a height. Señor, will you believe that that mighty work that we saw, it was no more than the digging of cellars for the house which was to be built? For two years they dug and they built. At last it was finished. And there it stands! Through the trees, you cannot guess. But it is very grand!”
It looked very grand, just as he said. About all that I could see beyond the foresting of palms and trees was an occasional glimpse of a white façade, and a long, stretching roof line.
But what took root in my heart was: how could any man or woman living in such a palace as this desire to compass the death of an obscure prospector, a lonely, rough, friendly and harmless old man like Truck Janvers? It seemed to me that once more I heard the knife strike home in the hollow of the throat of Truck. No matter what the contrast of ideas might be, I decided that I would never rest until I had got to the bottom of the trouble. But, in the meantime, I asked for more news concerning the proprietor of that estate. And I got what I wanted.
The business of the hotel could wait, now that the proprietor had such a story to tell. I suppose that he felt it almost too good to be true—that he should find a stranger who really was unaware of the history of Manuel Caporno.
Manuel Caporno, I learned, had been an obscure shopkeeper in the little South American republic of which he was a citizen. He had come to maturity without distinguishing himself, and for some years after that he still advanced only in wealth. For Señor Caporno was one of those shrewd weather prophets who can tell when a Latin-American revolution is pending, and also which side is apt to win. He knew with extraordinary precision just when it was better to lie low and let the government carry on. He knew, also, when the revolting party had a good chance of winning.
Then, like a good businessman, he advanced a quantity of much needed cash and took, in return from the rebel leaders, paper promises worth three times the sum he had advanced. This was high gambling, but Señor Caporno consistently won. The handicap was not too great for his astute wits. When the rebels went into office, he cashed in the paper promises and took home a cart load of loot, almost literally, although his hand was not seen in the revolt itself.
So that when the party that was down wished to come up again, he was ready, if their chances seemed good, to back them as he had backed the last comers. He even did more than this. He discovered that the business of revolutions was so profitable that they should be encouraged. And he found a way of encouraging them most effectually. The genial Caporno found that, in that small country of his, the lack of machine-guns and fine rifles usually beat the losing side. And, when he saw the storm of revolt beginning to lower over the distant horizon, he sent abroad and would purchase a whole cargo of ammunition and guns of all kinds. He chartered a big steamship and brought this cargo to his native shores.
When the proper signal was given, the revolt began. 5,000 unarmed men suddenly rushed to the place where the ship was waiting. Their hands were filled with guns, their belts with ammunition. A barefoot trio of beggars suddenly became an army and the transformation was so sudden, the danger appeared so quickly and so near to the capital whose possession visually decided the fate of the revolution, that on three separate occasions Señor Caporno became the master of the fortunes of his country at a single stroke.
He himself remained in the background. All that he took was not honor, but a very sizable proportion of the loot. And, when he had the money, he invested it discreetly in gilt-edged foreign bonds—American preferred. At length, however, having served both parties many times, he fell into disrepute with both. A little comparing of notes made the leaders on both sides feel that Caporno had played the traitor to both. Accordingly he was suddenly proscribed.
And, across the mouth of the river that communicated with the capital, the republic’s two little gunboats were stationed to keep off any new ship loads of arms and conserve the peace of the nations.
However, they did not reckon upon the brains of the amiable Caporno. Whereas upon the one hand he had furnished new arms in every war, on the other hand he had made it a point to buy in the old arms that were for sale for the price of a few drinks of native brandy as soon as the revolution was over. In the cellars of his great house there was a perfect arsenal, which had gradually accumulated. And, now that his head was in danger, he played his ace and suddenly appeared in the field as the representative of business—a man who wished to do away with revolutions, one who appealed to the common sense and the common wallets of all the shopping and trading classes of the republic. Down with the military! was his cry. Away with the professional soldiers!
He was heard and he was believed. The well-to-do mustered their allies and their servants and their friends. And the rude mob was equipped by magic from the cellars of the great house of Caporno. The colonel who rode with a squadron to arrest the traitor was arrested in turn and hanged to a tree with his warrant tied about his neck.
His men, of course, readily joined the ranks of the new president. Caporno marched straight upon the capital. There was a random skirmish in its vicinity and there the money-lender showed that he had courage as well as business acumen for, in the middle of the fight, he rallied a stanch body of clerks and shopkeepers and drove at their head straight at the center of the enemy. The enemy’s center was not broken, however. For they ran so fast that the men of Caporno never came up with them. And in this manner Caporno became president.
It was soon seen, however, that Caporno was in fact even more of a businessman than the country had bargained for. He knew exactly how much in taxes could be gathered and how little must be spent to run the administration. The difference between the two sums he placed in his own pocket—or, rather, in a treasury fund that he declared was to accumulate to pay off the national debts. He bought in a great many of the government bonds—which were not worth a great deal more than the paper they were printed on—and on the strength of the debt fund the bonds leaped up to almost half of their face value. Whereupon he unloaded his holdings and put away in foreign securities another comfortable fortune.
This was not all, however. Señor Caporno’s heavy taxes began to cause murmurs, and the traders and the shopkeepers were the first to wail, because he knew their status so exactly that he understood just how deep their pockets were. A new revolution began to gather upon the cloudy horizon. It concluded in a secret march by night of several thousand angry men. They reached the splendid house of Señor Caporno—and they were paralyzed with astonishment to find that it no longer belonged to their president. He had sold it only the day before to a rich Englishman who coveted its wide lawns and its cool shade trees. They began to search for their president. And, among other places, they looked in the government treasury. There they did not find him.
Neither did they find the debt fund. It had disappeared, and at the sam
e time a little gasoline yacht was sliding down the river and making excellent time toward the open sea with the business president on board and his daughter sitting with him upon the deck. And so it was, eventually, that he looked around until he discovered the valley of the San Marin. There he had settled down.
I wondered at the narrator even more than at his narration. For when he finished, he exclaimed: “Yes, he is a brave man, a wise man, a great man, the Señor Caporno!”
“But a bit of a rascal?” I could not help suggesting.
“Rascal? Señor! That is a strange thing to say.”
X
That was a terse way of saying that when vice reached to a certain altitude, it is no longer vice, but victory. I, however, was remembering Truck Janvers, who had been murdered in his wretched little shack. What possible connection there could be between the splendid ex-president of Venzago and old Janvers I could not imagine. But I was prepared to find out.
It was dusk when the proprietor finished this long tale about the exile from Venzago, whose crimes were too beautifully successful and polished to be called crimes. My mind was so full of the story that I went out to walk for a while through the quieting street of the evening and to enjoy the cool of the day. But, going down the steps, my spur unluckily caught on the top of the verandah and I stumbled down and ran heavily into my pair of Americans—the cowpuncher and the prospector. They had had their share of tequila that afternoon, and tequila is famous for making a man savage. It was the prospector who I had lunged against. He turned with a snarl.
“The greaser dude!” he gasped, and smote fairly for my jaw.
I stepped back from the wind of his fist, and, as I did so, the cowpuncher leaped in. I was in perfect balance to duck, and I did, and struck low and hard at the same moment. Exactly as that unlucky José had thrown his weight against my driving fist, so the cowpuncher came against it. And, exactly as the ribs of José had been broken, so I felt the side of the cowpuncher yield beneath my driving knuckles. He fell with a gasp of agony. The prospector with one startled glance at me forgot all about fighting and leaned over his stricken friend. Between us we carried him up to the porch of the verandah and sent for a doctor. To him I explained in good Spanish just what had happened. I told him, moreover, that the ribs would not be well instantly, and I suggested that the patient be kept at the hotel at my expense.
All of this was done. They carried the cowpuncher into a comfortable room, and I left him with a great swathing of tape around his middle. The prospector met me in the hall.
He said in fairly good Spanish: “My friend and I made a mistake. A hard mistake to make.” And he grinned at me.
I wanted to grin back. Instead, I assured him that I would take care of his companion until he was well. It was a great relief to the miner. I suppose that his own stock of money was running low; in fact, the next morning he was gone.
That night I slept as a man sleeps who has long been away from beds—four years away from them, and in all that time the nearest I had come to one had been ten nights on a prison cot.
It was broad morning when I opened my eyes, and for a moment a wave of confused fears rushed over me, for I felt as though I were back in the jail once more—so unfamiliar to me was anything more confining than the open sky above my head. When I had my wits about me once more, I went down to breakfast, and then out toward the verandah. In the doorway I paused, for just across the street, his eyes fastened full upon me, was José!
He sat his saddle motionlessly, and motionless were his bright eyes on my face. But, after the first shock, the first impulse to draw and to shoot, I stepped calmly out on the verandah and took a chair for my morning cigarette. There I sat and smoked it, apparently indifferent to the questing eyes of the Negro across the street.
Presently, as though he had made up his mind, he touched his horse with the spurs and they were off down the street with hoof beats silenced in the velvet of the dust. It left me with a mind spinning in doubts.
Obviously José had taken up his post that morning for the sake of a glimpse of me. I was not long in finding a reason for it. No doubt his own ribs were still sore from the blow I had given them. And if the story came to his ears of how a big stranger in San Marin had crushed the side of another man, it would not have been odd if he had wished to make sure that the stranger and Hugo Ames were not the same man. What the impertinent rascal had decided I, of course, could not imagine. But I was fairly convinced that he could not have pierced through my disguise. Not, at least, from such a distance as across the street when I, standing before a mirror, hardly could recognize my own face.
And yet I was uneasy. I knew the shrewdness of that fellow from of old. And, first of all, I cursed the weight of my hand. Moreover, I felt the incongruity of a Mexican dandy striking a blow as hard as a pugilist. That would need some explaining.
Altogether, I was thoroughly uncomfortable. I lingered on the verandah for some time, hardly knowing what to think, and uneasily scanning the street, up and down—half expecting that, at any moment, a sheriff with a posse behind him might ride into view and, coming up to me, arrest me under the name of Hugo Ames.
But the next thing of interest that I saw was, an hour later, one of the unmistakable Negroes of Caporno, tall, slender, lean of face, and mounted on a horse of the Comanche breed that floated along with a swinging gallop like a swallow on the wing.
He came up to the hotel, dismounted, and then advanced straight upon me. He took off his hat to speak to me. “You,” he said, “are Señor Mendez?”
“I am,” I said.
“I bring you a letter from Señor Caporno,” he said. And he handed me a letter.
I ripped open the envelope and took out a sheet of stiff linen paper. Upon it, in a shapeless, sprawling hand was written, in Spanish:
Señor Mendez:
We have heard of you, and heard of you in such a way that I am making bold to send a letter without a proper introduction. Whatever you may think of this brusque behavior, I entreat you to make allowances. In a word, Señor Mendez, I have learned that with your fist you break the side of a strong man as though his ribs were deadwood.
I, señor, am in a position in which I need very much the help of a man who, I think, may be your very self. Now, this may seem to you like the offer of a position. But, in all seriousness, whether you are open to such offers or not, it would be a great pleasure to me to meet you and talk with you.
And as I am at present confined to my chair with a touch of illness, I am bold to beg you to visit me at your pleasure during the day. Forgive me for this unconventional approach and, believe me, obediently yours,
Manuel Caporno
Now, when I had finished this little letter, I straightaway turned back to the beginning of it and read it through again, and then I folded it slowly and restored it to the envelope, and placed the envelope carefully inside my coat pocket.
The possibilities were simply infinite. I, having trailed my four wild riders to the south, had at last come upon them near their lair. And to that lair I was now being freely invited. It was such good fortune that I could not help but doubt it. Even the worst of fools would have done so. It might be that the intentions of Señor Caporno were the highest and the best in the world.
But then again, if the sharp eye of José had detected me under my disguise, might it not be that I was being invited to the great house of Caporno so that a too inquisitive trailer might be taken off the scent?
How taken off? I remembered the knife that had slid into the throat of Truck Janvers. Perhaps he, too, had mysteriously been put in position to ask too many questions.
Then I stole a glance at the face of the Negro and discovered that he was looking me over with a sort of childish admiration that centered upon my brawny hands. I wondered suddenly how those big, broad, sun-blackened hands of mine fitted in with the clothes and the mannerisms of a Mexican gentleman of leisure? I saw that, according to the circumstances in which I found myself, I should have
to be prepared to play differing roles. In a word, I should have to expand my character to meet varying needs.
With all of this in mind, I found at last that the temptation to go to beard the lion in his den was altogether too much for me. I got up suddenly and told the Negro that I should accompany him to the house of Caporno. At this, he bowed with much ceremony. I could not help admiring Caporno, in the first instance, for the skill with which he had disciplined the members of his household staff. A discipline so perfect, indeed, that he was enabled to send them 1,000 miles to kill a man and they performed his orders with the most astonishing skill and celerity. I had no doubt that their reward was no more than a single added month’s pay. A good shopkeeper like Caporno was not one to waste money right and left.
I had the stable boys saddle Sandy for me, and, when the mare was brought around to the front of the hotel, burnished and shining from a most scrupulous grooming, I leaped into the saddle and we started down the street. I began to ask a question of my companion, but I found that he had fallen back a length to the rear, and, when I shortened rein to let him come up with me, he slowed his own horse to a corresponding degree. This was his manner, therefore, of accompanying a superior. So I loosed the reins of Sandy and gave up the idea of pumping any worthwhile information out of him. I would have to trust to eyes and ears to read the character of the house and the people in it after I got there.
We turned presently from the main road—the voice of the Negro directing me—and we entered a winding avenue with a lofty bordering of palms upon either side. This guided us up a gentle elevation and at length brought us before the long, white face of the house of Caporno. There were few trees near the house. They would have marred the lines of its simple beauty. But big trees in the distance were piled up to make a background, and all between the walls and the forestation there were stretching green lawns and delicately designed gardens.
When I dismounted from my horse, I felt that I was indeed visiting royalty. One servant took my reins; I could not help wondering if I should ever see Sandy again as a second Negro met me and escorted me over the broad steps, and into the mouth of the patio. There, in the coolness of the colonnade, I had my first sight of that great man, Manuel Caporno.