In fact, Don Hugo, the Governor of the Prison, had gained from Pablo Gomez a fairly clear knowledge of the topography of the Boca de Lobo, the valley in which Don Q. had always found safe retreat, baffling the expeditions sent out against him. It was approached by a tunnel-like passage, and, as far as the band knew, had no other outlet. The Governor boasted that the capture of the great brigand was now but a matter of time. He would be bottled up in his valley and secured by an overwhelming force. After this, the Governor promised to put him in a cage in the grand Plaza of Castelleno for the crowd to gaze at. Upon the third day he would be garrotted in public with much ceremonial to impress evil-doers.
All these sayings were faithfully carried to Don Q.
“Imagine this animal without honor to whom I sent Pablo!” he exclaimed to Lalor. “Truly I took an overhigh view of humanity! As to my garroting in public—” he laughed. “Come with me, Señor Lalor, and see how Don Q. begins to stand at bay.”
He went out and stood on the edge of the terrace and clapped his hands. The valley was unusually full, for all outlying parties of the band had been ordered to gather. Instantly from the fires and shelters the men hurried and collected in a group, looking up at the Chief.
“Place yourselves in your ranks, my children,” the sibilant voice cried softly, and the three score and odd picturesquely-clad figures fell into line. The Chief examined them slowly between his eyelids before he spoke again.
“My children, there are many soldiers and many of the civil guard coming from the plains against us. I am told that three hundred hope to stand where you now stand before three days pass.”
The men broke out into a tumultuous defiance of words and gesticulations. For a moment only, and then the yellow, meager hand again imposed silence.
“We are seventy. I shall not need so many to protect me. Every alternate man fall out of the ranks, and stand together in a new line.”
They did so. Don Q. looked them over in their turn.
“Thirty-four. That is well,” he said. “You will scatter, you will go down into the plains and lose yourselves in the towns. Go where you will; but, my children, remember, lead always honest lives, give none occasion to speak against you. And when I have destroyed the army of the Governor of the Prison of Castelleno, I will in due time send for you.”
The wild faces were painted with astonishment and awe. Who but Don Q. would prepare to resist a powerful force by half disbanding his own? The very act added to the mysterious reputation he already owned.
Next morning a similar scene was gone through. Again the Chief carefully examined the men, gave orders for every alternate one to fall out, exhorted them to lead honest lives, and dismissed them with the same formula.
By this time Lalor noticed that, with the exception of Robledo, the Chief had got rid of all the stanch and most reliable men of his band. It seemed strange that in a moment of such peril, he should retain the least loyal about his person. Yet so it was. He ventured presently to ask Don Q. a question on the matter.
“I have my little design,” replied the Chief, smiling with a cruel inflection of thin lips. “You perceive that I have already made an immense impression on my people—when they come to hear all, it will be yet deeper. As for these wolves, these jackals rather,” he pointed a scornful finger at the fellows remaining in the valley, “they are quite good enough for the purpose I intend them to serve.”
“What are we going to do then?”
“Señor,” said the Chief, turning his bald-browed, peaked face to the young man, “we are about to part. Perhaps the hour of my death draws near. Would you be sorry, tell me?”
Lalor caught the sad smile on the other’s lips.
“I believe I should,” he said.
“Then, señor, if I die yonder, you will grant me a favor?”
“Yes.”
“Today you go down into Castelleno to a little tavern where you will dwell in safety until Robledo brings you the last news of me. Listen, Señor Lalor, the favor that I would beg is that you will chronicle the manner of my death. You will tell the world how the greatest brigand of all ages turned at bay among his mountains, alone, as he had lived, save for sixteen disloyal men, against the flower of the chivalry of the South.
“I have further left you a large sum to engage an adequate illustrator. It would be a pity, señor, that so memorable a fight as that which is about to take place, should not be rendered full justice. I have had much pleasure in your society, my dear nephew,” Don Q. put out his bony hand to take Lalor’s, “and I recognize in you one whom the saints sent to a lonely man to record, perhaps, his last exploit—which might have been lost to history.”
Lalor went down the mountains, leaving Don Q. with a priest the Chief had caused to be fetched from the little chapel of San Pedro. For Don Q., in view of his possible death, desired to confess and to receive absolution.
The young Englishman took up his abode in a tavern on the outskirts of Castelleno, where he waited for nearly a week.
One afternoon a young woman touched him on the arm, and raising her fine eyes to his—
“You have heard of Isabelilla?” she said, laying an indicative finger on her own breast.
Lalor bowed and made a suitable reply.
She went on to say that the hospitality of the poor dwelling of her mother, who was a laundress, was open to him if he would follow her, for there was one come from the mountains to see the señor.
She moved off at once, and Lalor followed. At the house he found Robledo. The handsome brigand was very pale under his sunburn, and he crossed himself repeatedly.
During the meal, which was made up of an excellent stew, beans and fruit, Lalor asked no questions. After it, he lit a cigarette, and inquired how Don Q. fared.
Robledo shook his head.
“I will tell the señor the story.”
And he told it, backing his words with look and gesture, till Lalor felt as if he saw the scenes described.
Robledo told of the last look at the deserted valley of the Boca de Lobo, of the march to the last fastness of the brigands on an isolated peak surrounded by precipices on every side, and joined only to the mass of the sierra by a narrow bridge of living rock. Here was situated one of the dwelling caves of Don Q., and the spot was fortified by sangars craftily constructed to dominate the approach.
“My lord and I walked last, for those others were not willing to go to the Punta de Lanza,” said Robledo.
“But why?” Lalor asked in surprise. “It could never be taken if defended.”
“True, señor. But also one could not run away from it.”
He spoke of a man who tried to desert, and whom he and a companion had hurled from the cliff, and of shepherding the remainder across the rocky bridge. Having completed his preparations, a characteristic fit of gloom and silence fell upon the Chief. The last scout had been withdrawn, the bridge had been strewn with stones and boulders to make the footing treacherous. All was ready. Two days of waiting followed, while they lay cut off from all the world. Two blue, golden days, that reflected the glories of the sierra above, and far beneath the peaceful smoke rising from scattered hovels, and the haze that clung round distant towns on the warm and drowsy plain.
“Thus we waited, watching, my lord and I and those fourteen, for the coming of three hundred.” The young Spaniard stopped and sat musing with frowning brows, until Isabelilla, growing impatient, laid her arms across his shoulder. He started slightly and resumed.
Once or twice the echo of a shot rang sadly from gorge to gorge. And at last came a dawn which showed them the enemy. With the rising of the sun a company advanced to storm the position of the brigands. Don Q. had supplied each of his men with three loaded magazine-rifles, and bade them reserve their fire until he gave the signal.
“My lord lay beside me in the trench,” Robledo told it with pride, “and we s
aw that none of our foes was quick to step first upon the bridge, till a tall captain thrust out of the crowd. He had a white face under big black eyebrows, and he drove a man before him with his naked sword. It was Pablo. My lord laid his cheek to the rifle, and it yelped in my ear. Pablo twirled round, screaming, and seized the captain about the middle. They twisted on the bridge as strong men twist in a grapple, and in a moment they reeled over the edge together.
“Then the great Seññor Don Q. leaped upon a high rock, where all could behold him, and called to Don Hugo to see how a traitor died! Señor, I shut my eyes, I could hear the bullets chipping upon the rocks round my lord, I almost felt the weight of his body as it fell,” Robledo rubbed himself reminiscently. “But it was a sore thrust in the side from the butt of my lord’s rifle—I doubt but it broke a rib or two—for he was angry. ‘Fool! Can they kill me?’ he said.
“A great battle followed. The slaughter upon the narrow path was terrible. The troops, attempting to rush it, were shot down again and again. The vultures’ wings came between the sun and the fight, casting their shadows on the dead. Still the brigands held off the enemy. Don Q. was everywhere, passing from trench to trench, exposing himself recklessly.
“Shouts, señor, and many screaming above the loud rattling of the shots. Men and muskets tossed like rags in a wind as they pitched into the chasm. I have met death in the face many a time, señor, but not like that!” the young fellow shuddered.
“By midday the Governor drew off his troops from the desperate encounter, and sat down to wait until his ally starvation should begin to tell upon the courage of the besieged. But though only one of them was wounded, the brigands began to grumble among themselves, and concoct plans for betraying their Chief.
“But one cannot deceive him, señor,” remarked Robledo, confidently. “When night fell he called them to him from the trenches, and read their hearts as a priest reads his book. They denied their treachery with oaths. Then my lord said if any would still follow him and fight, let them stand out on his side.” Isabelilla, crouched by the young robber, gazed up at him with blazing eyes.
“How many stood on his side? Tell me,” she said.
“But one only.”
“And that one? I know him! It was you, my Robledo!” exclaimed the girl.
He nodded, and she flung her arms round him in a fierce caress.
“My lord laughed,” Robledo crossed himself. “He laughed, but I feared his laughter. He drove those others from the cave, and bade them live or die as they would. For a while he sat silent, señor, and then he told me to follow him. We crept in the darkness over the peak, and down upon the other side, and my lord led me by goat tracks for a long time, and we came at length to a hole, and he made me enter. In truth, I feared to enter—but also I feared my lord.
“In a little time my lord lit a lantern. Señor, we were in a tunnel under the bridge of rock, and it grew smaller, till we were obliged to crawl as a wild cat crawls through the underbrush, and my breathing came hard. I know not how long we crept through the heart of the mountains; my head was bursting, and I vowed an offering to the patron saint of hunters, if I ever escaped to the free air again. At the last I found myself lying in a hollow of deep grass with the wind blowing over me.
“The moon was out, and through a screen of bushes we could see the bridge and the peak. The soldiers were flying a white flag and taking their wounded from the bridge, and a white flag came up out of the trenches on the Punta de Lanza. I feared for the anger of my lord. But he only laughed very softly, and pointed to one who lay on his face beside the end of the path and held talk with some of the civil guard.”
“They were betraying the peak—your own men?”
“Yes, señor. But the people of the Governor feared treachery, and would not pass over. In the end the civil guards rushed across—there are men of spirit in the civil guard,” Robledo remarked generously—“and by degrees nearly all the troops passed over and swarmed upon the Punta de Lanza, searching for my lord. Then I found that my lord was gone from beside me.
“Listen, señor. Don Hugo himself passed over, for I saw him. Indeed, when they knew the surrender was complete all would have gone to look at the cave of Don Q., for never before in all the history of the sierra have the expeditions found a dwelling of my lord’s. So I thought of these things within myself and wondered what my lord would do, when I was shaken by a horrible noise that deafened me. And the mountain vomited a leaping flame and shook with the pain of its torment. Great stones and rocks hurled upward, and for many minutes the voices that my lord of the mountains called to his aid, rang and roared in the sierra that is his.”
Lalor felt his own face pale.
“Go on!” he cried.
“I could hear men stumbling and groaning and crying on the saints. And then, señor, I think I slept, for I was weary. When the sun rose I wakened, and my lord was standing beside me in the thicket and bade me look down. I looked. Señor, it was a wonderful sight! The bridge was gone, and there upon the Punta de Lanza, upon the crags we had defended only yesterday, half an army was clinging, able neither to go forward, because of the precipices, nor to return because of the broken path across the chasm.
“After I had looked a long time, my lord spoke. ‘Robledo,’ he said, ‘you see that none may ever triumph over me. Tell that to thy friends. But many will say I am dead. You alone know I am not. Go to Castelleno and tell but two only—the Señor Lalor, and your Isabelilla. If you tell the secret to any other in Spain, I will know.’”
“And your lord, where is he?” questioned Lalor after a pause.
Robledo shook his head obstinately.
“I will tell my story to the end,” he answered, “My lord and I sat together in the hollow to rest, and my lord said I should not see him again for a long time. ‘Go you and marry your Isabelilla, and be happy if you can,’ he said. ‘But I do not think you will be so, for that woman has a fierce heart. And you had better sell your guitar or bury it, Robledo, for men do not serenade their wives, and such a wife as yours will not allow you to serenade others.’ So spoke my lord.”
Isabelilla sighed in the silence.
“My lord was the wisest of men,” she murmured.
“And have you no message whatever for me?” asked Lalor in some disappointment.
“Yes, señor,” Robledo took up a package from a corner. “My lord said, ‘Tell the señor that, though for the time men think me dead, I live still. Tell him that I have bequeathed to him a little autobiography of my life, which—if none hear of me again within a year—he will, for my sake, offer to the consideration of a publisher, in order that the world may know a little more of one of its greatest and most blameless men.’”
McALLISTER’S CHRISTMAS, by Arthur Train
Taken from McAllister and His Double (1905).
I
McAllister was out of sorts. All the afternoon he had sat in the club window and watched the Christmas shoppers hurrying by with their bundles. He thanked God he had no brats to buy moo-cows and bow-wows for. The very nonchalance of these victims of a fate that had given them families irritated him. McAllister was a clubman, pure and simple; that is to say though neither simple nor pure, he was a clubman and nothing more. He had occupied the same seat by the same window during the greater part of his earthly existence, and they were the same seat and window that his father had filled before him. His select and exclusive circle called him “Chubby,” and his five-and-forty years of terrapin and cocktails had given him a graceful rotundity of person that did not belie the name. They had also endowed him with a cheerful though somewhat florid countenance, and a permanent sense of well-being.
As the afternoon wore on and the pedestrians became fewer, McAllister sank deeper and deeper into gloom. The club was deserted. Everybody had gone out of town to spend Christmas with someone else, and the Winthrops, on whom he had counted for a certainty, had faile
d for some reason to invite him. He had waited confidently until the last minute, and now he was stranded, alone.
It began to snow softly, gently. McAllister threw himself disconsolately into a leathern armchair by the smouldering logs on the six-foot hearth. A servant in livery entered, pulled down the shades, and after touching a button that threw a subdued radiance over the room, withdrew noiselessly.
“Come back here, Peter!” growled McAllister. “Anybody in the club?”
“Only Mr. Tomlinson, sir.”
McAllister swore under his breath.
“Yes, sir,” replied Peter.
McAllister shot a quick glance at him.
“I didn’t say anything. You may go.”
This time Peter got almost to the door.
“Er—Peter; ask Mr. Tomlinson if he will dine with me.”
Peter presently returned with the intelligence that Mr. Tomlinson would be delighted.
“Of course,” grumbled McAllister to himself. “No one ever knew Tomlinson to refuse anything.”
He ordered dinner, and then took up an evening paper in which an effort had been made to conceal the absence of news by summarizing the achievements of the past year. Staring head-lines invited his notice to:
A YEAR OF PROGRESS.
What the Tenement-House Commission Has Accomplished.
FURTHER NEED OF PRISON REFORM.
He threw down the paper in disgust. This reform made him sick. Tenements and prisons! Why were the papers always talking about tenements and prisons? They were a great deal better than the people who lived in them deserved. He recalled Wilkins, his valet, who had stolen his black pearl scarf-pin. It increased his ill-humor. Hang Wilkins! The thief was probably out by this time and wearing the pin. It had been a matter of jest among his friends that the servant had looked not unlike his master. McAllister winced at the thought.
The Victorian Villains Megapack Page 39