by John Buchan
There were few in the place, three or four peasants drinking small glasses of aguardiente, and one man in the shadows who had before him a tankard of beer. Luis joined the group of peasants and gave his order. An albino negro, a weird sight in that ill-lit place, brought him his drink, and he commanded another glass for the man opposite him. This was a gipsy-looking fellow with long earrings, who had been discoursing to the company on cock fighting. A dispute presently arose in which Luis’s hiccuping voice was predominant. It was about the merit of Gomez’s red cock which had won the championship at Maddalo on St. Rosalia’s feast-day.
The dispute grumbled, died down, flared up, for all had the air of having drunk too well. Then the talk became confidential between Luis and his vis-a-vis, and they shuffled little apart from the others. More drinks were brought. There was a sudden gust of quarrel, and Luis in dudgeon removed himself across the room. But his new friend followed, and there seemed to be a reconciliation, for one again the two heads were close together and the talk was all of cocks and challenges.
In his new position Luis was scarcely a yard from the dark corner where the man with the tankard of beer was sitting. There were now three of them there. They looked viciously at the argumentative peasants, but there was no other part of the room which promised greater peace, and they remained sitting. Luis was by way of now being very drunk, and he made his confidences at close quarters into the garlic-smelling ear of his companion. But this position left his eyes free to wander, without the other noticing it, and he had a good view of the men in the shadows.
One had the face which he had seen three hours before in the crowded calle — a small man, very thickly made, with rabbit teeth, an underhung jaw, and a broken nose. This was the famous Daniel Judson. Beside him sat a taller man with a long, sallow, clean-shaven face and thick, dark eyebrows which made a straight band almost from ear to ear. This Luis knew for Laschallas, who, as he had told Blenkiron, was the most dangerous of the survivors of the Bodyguard. But it was the man opposite the two who surprised him. He wore a thin dark overcoat with the collar turned up, but the face above the collar had the unmistakable waxy pallor of Lariarty.
In the intervals of his drunken wrangling Luis tried to catch their conversation. But not a word could he overhear. They spoke in low tones, and when he sidled nearer them, still in the embrace of his cock-fighting colleague, Judson rose and cursed them. The other was scared into sobriety, for Mr Judson in his wrath was not a pretty sight, and Luis had perforce to follow him and put as much distance as possible between the three and themselves. Presently he gave up the attempt to eavesdrop, extricated himself with some difficulty from his companion, and staggered out of the cafe by the road he had come. He had learned several things — that the trusties, or at least one of them, were in Olifa, that Laschallas was alive, and that Lariarty was not leading an idle life.
He went home, got into proper clothes and hunted up one of Escrick’s staff-officers. There was a good deal of sound coming from the south, where the retreat from the trenches was being covered by machine-gun activity, and some of the troops already withdrawn were filing through the streets.
What had been infantry was now being transformed into light cavalry at the horse-lines north of the city. Luis found the staff-officer he sought, and learned from him that he only civilian accompanying Escrick was Lariarty-Blenkiron himself had sanctioned it — for whom a seat had been provided in one of the staff cars. He left the office with injunctions that no civilian passes were to be given without further reference, and that the occupants of every car were to be jealously scrutinised.
Then he supped with Blenkiron, and told him what he had discovered. Blenkiron, still sleepy as an owl, was slow to take it in. “They can’t do anything,” he reflected. “They’re bottled up in this city, whether it’s me or Lossberg that’s in charge. They’re town rats, Luis; they won’t thrive out in the wilds. Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d look up Lariarty and see if he’s ready. I propose to keep an eye on that gentleman.”
But when Luis was admitted by Lariarty’s servant to Lariarty’s flat he found no sign of impending departure. Lariarty, washed and perfumed, was wearing a smoking-suit of silk, and in the buttonhole of his jacket was a yellow picotee, such as Archie had remarked in the Gran Seco visitors the first night in the Olifa hotel. He was improvising on his piano. The nervousness of the afternoon had gone, and he seemed to be at ease with the world.
“Hullo, Senor,” Luis cried. “You’ll be late. We start in twenty minutes.”
Lariarty smiled and went on playing.
“I am not coming. Not at present. I have been reconsidering the matter, and I think that it is my business to remain here. Here or at Olifa. My duty is to the Mines, and my knowledge may be needed.”
Something had happened that evening, some news had reached the Conquistadors, which had caused them to change their plans. It would be as well, Luis thought, if they all remained in the city; he had not approved of Blenkiron’s consent to Lariarty’s departure, which seemed to have been the unthinking decision of an overpressed man. But did this mean that all would stay behind? Was there no chance of a blunder in this midnight retirement? The last four days had been too feverish to allow of strict attention to the ritual of surveillance which had looked on paper so perfect. The thought made Luis hurry to the northern barrier.
The outlets from the city were few, and all were carefully barricaded. It was now midnight, and the troops were by this time safely out of the trench lines, where now a rearguard was conducting a noisy camouflage. The place was as bright as day with the great arc lights on their tall standards, and in their glare a mounted army was assembling, as shaggy a force as ever followed Timour or Genghiz. They had for the most part come straight from the line, and there was no sleep for them till they had put many thirsty miles between themselves and the Olifa van. Yet they were a cheerful crowd and drank black coffee out of bottles and smoked their little acrid cigarettes before they jogged off, each squadron to its appointed place.
The officer in charge of the business, a young analytic chemist, saluted him.
“All goes smoothly, sir,” he said. “The staff leaves in a quarter of an hour. The road is being kept clear for cars. Your advance party got off half an hour ago.”
“Advance party!” Luis stammered.
“Yes, sir. They presented your instructions and I countersigned them, as your telephone message directed.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Were their passes all right? I was afraid they might be slow in reaching them.”
“They were all in order, with the Chief’s signature.”
“One car, you say?”
“They packed into one car. Rather a tight fit for six of them.”
“Who was driving?”
“Mr Suvorin. He was the only one I recognised.”
“A good car?”
“One of the new Administration Packards. There’s nothing wrong, sir?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering when we would over-take them.”
IV
In the Courts of the Morning there was still peace. The brooding heats, the dust-storms, the steaming deluges of the lowlands were unknown. The air was that of a tonic and gracious autumn slowly moving to the renewal of spring. The mornings were chilly, with a sea-fog crawling over the rim of the plateau; the days were bright and dry as old wine, the nights blue and starlit. There was peace in that diamond ether, but it was not the peace of lethargy but of ordered action. The place was as busy as ever, but it had no longer the air of a headquarters. It was now a base, a depot, and the poste de commandement was some — where far below in the broken levels which spread dizzily towards the southern sky-line.
The Gobernador had been given his choice. “I can take you with me,” Sandy had said. “It won’t be a comfortable life, but you don’t mind that. Or you can stay here in the watch-tower and follow our doings on the map.”
“I am free to decide?” Casto
r had asked, and was told “Perfectly.” He had considered for a little and had finally chosen to remain. “I am your enemy,” he said, “and we should be at too close quarters for comfort. I shall stay here till something happens.”
Sandy laughed. “I know what you mean. Well, I hope it won’t, but if my luck gives out don’t imagine that the show is over. You’re the only one in your class, but I’ve heaps of alternatives in mine. Archie will keep you posted and I’ll look in every now and then.”
But Sandy did not come back...The crowded days’ work went on; horse and mule convoys came daily up the mountain paths and departed with their burdens; the receivers ticked busily in the wireless station; aeroplanes — fewer than before, for the fighting machines were mostly at advanced headquarters — departed at dawn and returned often after nightfall, while flares like forest fires burned to guide them to their landing-places. There was a special activity in the glen which led to the sea; it seemed as if its defenders had reached the conclusion that that port to the outer world would soon be discovered and closed, for almost every night some kind of tramp put in and unloaded and stole out before the following daylight. Busiest of all were the two girls. Barbara was in charge of the hospital stores, and it seemed that these were now urgently needed, for in the plains below men were suffering. With her staff of peons she worked early and late, with Janet as an unskilled assistant.
The latter had another duty laid upon her, and that was to provide company for the Gobernador. With Sandy’s departure he had become the prey of moods. His forme equability had gone, and he appeared to swing between profound abstraction, when he seemed unconscious of his surroundings, and a feverish interest in them.
For example, he visited constantly the top of the ravine and would spend an hour gazing into the green depths which ended in a sapphire patch of sea. Once, when Janet accompanied him, he turned to her sharply.
“This place could be forced,” he said. “Olifa has a navy...It would take a week — ten days perhaps — and he would lose a thousand men, but it could be done. Then his sanctuary of yours would fall. How would you scape?”
“I suppose by the hill roads to the south,” Janet answered.
“But they will be blocked. It might be hard to force a way up here from that side, but Olifa could block the exits. What then?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t believe both disasters could happen at once.”
“Why not?”
“Simply because things don’t work out that way.”
He laughed angrily. “You are all children. You trust childishly to fortune. That’s well enough for Clanroyden and the others. They are soldiers and take chances. But what is to become of you?”
“Barbara and I went into this with our eyes open.”
“You were a fool, then. And your husband was a fool to let you.”
There were many similar occasions when his face looked sharp and anxious and there was a hard edge to his voice.
But there were others, when the mountain spaces seemed to work on him as an opiate and he fell into a mood of reflection. From these fits he would emerge with cheerfulness almost, certainly with philosophy. At such times he seemed to enjoy Janet’s company and would detain her in talk from her many duties. He would ask her questions about herself, her home, her views on life, with an engaging ingenuousness, as if he had discovered a new type of mortal and was labouring to understand it. He had a natural good-breeding which robbed his questions of all impertinence, and in this novel sphere Janet felt that she could regard him as an equal.
“This hill-top is bad for me,” he once told her. “I have no facts to work upon and I begin to make pictures. Wasn’t it Napoleon who said that we should never think in pictures, but always look at things as if through a telescope — bring reality close to one, but always reality?”
“Isn’t that begging the question?” the girl replied. “Reality for us is what we make of things. We may make them conform to our picture. It is what we all do. It is what you have been doing all your life, Excellency.”
“But your pictures and mine have been very different. I am a scientist and you are a romantic.”
“You are the romantic. You have tried to force the world inside a theory, and it is too big for that. We humble people never attempt the impossible. You are a self-deceiver, you know.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because of your intellectual pride. It is only humility that sees clearly and knows its limitations.”
“Lord Clanroyden, for example, is humble?” There was a not unpleasant irony in his voice.
“Profoundly.”
“Yet he has challenged me. With his handful of amateurs he has challenged the might of Olifa. Was your Jack the Giant-killer humble?”
Janet laughed. “I think he was. Jack saw that the giants were far bigger than himself, but that, being over-grown, unnatural things, they were bound to be stupid and weak.”
“You think that a colossus is always weak?”
“He must be if he is outside the human scale. If he has no other flaw, he will have the weakness of pride.”
“You and your friends are very proud.”
“Oh, I hope not. If we are, we shall be punished for it. Sandy — Lord Clanroyden — is daring, but that is not because he thinks too much of himself, but because he believes that he has great allies.”
“Such as?”
The girl quoted: “Exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
Castor laughed. “That is Wordsworth, isn’t it? It is a good answer, Lady Roylance, from your point of view. I am prepared of admit that Lord Clanroyden has allies — at any rate, he has friends. He need not be lonely.”
“You are lonely?” she asked with kind eyes.
“I have always been rather lonely...Perhaps...if I had met someone like you...long ago...I should not be so lonely to-day.”
It was Archie who brought the first big news. One evening he appeared at dinner with his left arm in a sling. “Not a wound,” he explained. “It was my own dashed silliness in getting too near the business end of a mule. I’ve been having a giddy time and I’m badly short of sleep. How are things going — ? Pas si bete, as they say — except for Sandy. Old Sandy has gone stark mad. At present it’s a useful kind of madness, but the question is how long it will be till he goes clean off his rocker. He’s been doing pretty desperate things.”
Later he explained.
“Lossberg is making war according to the books. Sandy its down and thinks out very carefully what the books direct and then does the exact opposite. He is trying to draw the enemy deep into the country, and for that purpose he is making a feature of Fort Castor. We’ve a pretty useful intelligence service, and the best part of it is that section which we put at Lossberg’s disposal. You see, having the country on our side, we have a lot of enthusiastic volunteers. Lossberg picks up some Indian or half-starved mestizo who is easily frightened into telling what he knows. The poor devil is obviously speaking the truth, for he is too cared and stupid to lie. Only what he says has been carefully pumped into him by our little lot. The result is that Lossberg has got it into his head that Fort Castor is our big base, and is stretching his claws round it as carefully as a cat stalking a mouse. He has moved up the better part of a division. But there’s nothing in Fort Castor except mounted patrols. We put up a beautiful camouflage and let Lossberg’s flying men have a discreet look at it once in a while. But when he takes the place after some trouble he won’t find a tin of bully beef in it.”
Somebody asked where Sandy was.
“He was in Magdalena yesterday. We are organised in two armies. Escrick, with the Army of the North, is now divided between Loa and Magdalena, and he has a covered line of communications between them through the hills behind, just like what Stonewall Jackson had in the Shenandoah valley. The enemy has spotted neither. Peters, with the Army of the South, is playing the same game. Lossberg thinks he is based on the Indian pueblas in the
Tierra Caliente from which he can threaten the Mines, and consequently he has a division strung out from the San Tome to the Universum and is building a sort of Great Wall of China in the shape of blockhouses. Peters just does enough to keep the Mines lively, but he isn’t worrying about them. All he wants is to get Lossberg rattled.”
Archie pointed to the south-east corner of the big map. “There’s a spot there called Pacheco, just under the hills. That’s Peters’ real base. He’s got some nice country west of that for his scallywags to operate in. There should be news from that quarter pretty soon.”
“Base?” he said in reply to a question of Castor’s. “Why, we haven’t any proper base, and we haven’t any communications to cut. We’re the most lightly equipped force in the world, for we don’t go in for high living. A bit of charqui and a bag of meal will last one of our fellows for a week. Also we know all the wells and water-holes, and Lossberg doesn’t. Water is going to give him a lot of trouble.”
“Has he no one who knows the country?” Janet asked.
“Not as we do. He’ll pick up somebody later, for we’re bound to have a traitor or two in our camp. Also there are your gunmen, Excellency. One or two of them have been a bit around. But he hasn’t got anybody yet, and has gone poking about, trusting to bad maps, and the lies we manage to feed him.”
“What about his Air Force?”
Bobby Latimer answered. “So far we’ve managed to keep it in order. We’ve nothing on them in the way of flying, for they’re nicely trained, but they can’t just fight in our way. And they haven’t any machines as good as our new Gladas. If this were a regular war, they’d be mighty good at contact work and bombing expeditions. You never saw prettier squadron flying. But we’ve no communications to bomb, and at present they’re wasting their efforts every night on Fort Castor.”