The vendor of food wailed and flung imprecations at his laughing tormentors. He cursed them fluently and shook a dirty brown fist at the circle of troopers. He threatened to tell Pasquale what they had done.
A harsh voice interrupted him. "What is it you will tell Pasquale?"
The army began to melt unobtrusively away. The general himself, accompanied by Major Ochampa, sat in the saddle and scowled at the farmer. The latter told his story, almost in tears. This was all he had, these chicken, cabbages, and apples. He had brought them down to sell and was going to enlist. His Excellency would understand that he, Pedro Cabenza, was a patriot, but, behold! he had been robbed.
He was at any rate a very ragged patriot. There was a hole in his cotton trousers through which four inches of coffee-colored leg showed. His shoes were in the last stages. The hat he doffed was an extremely ventilated one.
Pasquale passed judgment instantly. It would never do for word to get out that those bringing supplies to feed his army were not paid fairly.
"Buy the chickens and the cabbage, Ochampa. Pay the man for his apples. Enlist him and find him a mount."
He rode away, leaving his subordinate to deal with the details. Major Ochampa was the paymaster for the army as well as Secretary of the Treasury for the Government of which Pasquale was the chief. His name was on the very much-depreciated currency the insurgents had issued.
Until recently Ochampa had been a small farmer himself. He bargained shrewdly for the supplies, but in Cabenza he found a match. The man haggled to the last cent and then called on Heaven to witness that he had practically given away the goods for nothing. But when the sergeant led him away to enlist he was beaming at the bargain he had made.
Cabenza became at once an unobtrusive unit in the army. He could lie for hours and bask in the sunshine with the patient content of the Mexican peon. He could eat frijoles and tortillas week in and week out, offering no complaint at the monotony of his diet. He was as lazy, as hopeful, and as unambitious as several thousand other riders of the Legion. Nobody paid the least attention to him except to require of him the not very arduous duties of camp service. Presently Pasquale would move south and renew the campaign. Meanwhile his troopers had an indolent, easy time of it.
On the evening of the day after his enlistment Pedro Cabenza strolled across toward the prison where he had been told two Americans were held captive. Two guards sat outside in front of the door and gossiped. Cabenza, moved apparently by a desire for companionship, indifferently drifted toward them. He sat down. Presently he produced a bottle furtively. All three drank, to good health, to the success of the revolution, a third time to the day when they should march, victorious into the great city in the south.
They became exhilarated. Cabenza found it necessary to work off his excitement upon the prisoners. He stood on tiptoe, holding the window bars in his hands, and jeered at the men within.
"Ho, ho, Gringos! May the devil fly away with you! Food for powder—food for powder! Some fine morning the general will give orders and—we shall bury you in the sand by the river. Not so?" he scoffed in his own language.
One of the Americans within drew near the window.
"Listen," he said. "Do you want to earn some money—ten—twenty—one hundred dollars in gold? Will you take a letter for me to Los Robles?"
"No. The general would skin me alive. I spit upon your offer. I throw dirt upon you."
Cabenza stooped, in his hand scooped up some dust from the ground, and flung it between the bars.
One of the guards pulled him back savagely.
"Icabron! Know you not the orders of the general? None are to talk with the Gringos. Away, fool! Because of the drink Pablo and I will forget. Away!"
Cabenza showed a face ludicrously terror-stricken. The punishments of Pasquale were notoriously severe. If it were known he had broken the command he would at least be beaten with whips.
"I did not know. I did not know," he explained humbly, thrusting the liquor bottle at one of them. "Here, compañero, drink and forget that I have spoken."
He turned and scurried away into the darkness.
* * *
CHAPTER XVIII
HARRISON OVERPLAYS HIS HAND
Through the barred window Farrar watched the guard drag Cabenza back. He was very despondent. They had been prisoners now nearly a week and could see no termination of their jail sentence in sight. The food given them was wretched. They were anxious, dirty, and unkempt. Though he would not admit it even to himself, the camera man was oppressed by the shadow of a possible impending fate. The whim of a tyrant regardless of human life might at any hour send them to a firing squad.
Threewit sat gloomily on the stool, elbows on knees and chin resting on his fists. He could have wept for himself almost without shame. For forty-five years he had gone his safe way, a policeman always within call. Not once had life in the raw reached out and gripped him. Not once had he faced the stark probability of sudden, violent death. Clubs and after-theater suppers and poker and golf had offered him pleasant diversion. And now—a cruel fate had thrown him in the way of a barbarian with no sense of either justice or kindness. He felt himself too soft of fiber to cope with such elemental forces.
"Look! What is that, Threewit?"
Farrar was pointing to something on the table that gleamed white in the moonlight. He stepped forward and picked it up. The article was a stone around which was wrapped a paper tied by a string.
"The Mexican must have thrown it in with the dirt. It wasn't there before," replied the director quickly.
Farrar untied the string and smoothed out the paper, holding it toward the moonlight. "There's writing on it, but I can't make it out. Strike a match for me."
His companion struck on his trousers a match and the camera man read by its glowing flame.
Keep a stiff upper lip. Cactus Center is on the job. Don't know when my chance will come, but I'm looking for it. Chew this up.
S. Y.
Farrar gave a subdued whoop of joy. "It's old Steve. He hasn't forgotten us, good old boy. I'll bet he has got something up his sleeve."
"Hope that greaser doesn't give us away to Pasquale or Harrison."
"He won't. Trust Cactus Center. He's bridle-wise, that lad is. I feel a lot better just to know he has got us on his mind."
"What do you suppose he is planning?"
"Don't know. Of course he has to lie low. But he pulled off his own getaway and I'll back him to figure out ours." The camera man was nothing if not a loyal admirer of the range-rider.
They talked in whispers, eager and excited with the possibility of rescue that had come. Somehow, of all the men they had known, they banked more on Steve Yeager in such an emergency than any other. It was not alone his physical vigor, though that counted, since it gave him so complete a mastery over himself. Farrar had seen him once stripped in a swimming-pool and been stirred to wonder. Beneath the satiny skin the muscles moved in ripples. The biceps crawled back and forth like living things, beautiful in the graceful flow of their movement. Whatever he had done had been done easily, apparently without effort. This reserve power was something more than a combination of bone and sinew and flesh. It was a product of the spirit, a moral force to be reckoned with. It helped to make impossible things easy of accomplishment.
* * *
The panic of Cabenza vanished as soon as he was out of sight of the guards. As he turned down toward the sandy river-bed a little smile lay in his eyes.
From the place where it was buried beneath the root of a cottonwood, he dug out a bandanna handkerchief containing several bottles, little brushes, and a looking-glass. Sitting there in the moonlight, he worked busily renewing the tints of his hands and face and also of the coffee-colored patch of skin that peeped through his torn trouser leg.
This done, he sauntered back to the little town and down the adobe street. A horseman cantered up to the headquarters of the general just as Pasquale stepped out with Culvera. The latter snapped hi
s fingers toward Cabenza and that trooper ran forward.
"Hold the horse," ordered the officer in Mexican.
Cabenza relieved the messenger, who stepped forward and delivered what had been given him to say. The hearing of the man holding the horse was acute and he listened intently.
"Señor Harrison sends greeting to the general. He is in touch with the play-actor Lennox and hopes soon to get the Gringo Yeager. If Lennox plays false...."
The words ran into a murmur and Cabenza could hear no more.
The messenger was dismissed. Cabenza stooped to tie a loose lace in his shoe. Pasquale and Culvera passed back from the end of the porch into the house. As they went the trooper heard another stray fragment in the voice of the general.
"If Harrison crosses the line after him at night...."
That was all, but it told Cabenza that Harrison was negotiating with Lennox for the delivery of Yeager in exchange for Threewit and Farrar. The leading man was, of course, playing for time until Steve, under the guise of Cabenza, could arrange to win the freedom of the prisoners.
This would take time, for success would depend upon several dove-tailing factors. To attempt a rescue and to fail would be practically to sign the death-warrant of Farrar and Threewit.
Yeager, alias Cabenza, returned to the stable where he and a score of patriots of the Northern Legion had sleeping-quarters. He would much have preferred to take his blankets out into the pure night air and to bed under the stars. But he was playing his part thoroughly. He could not afford to be nice or scrupulous, for fear of calling special attention to himself.
As for the peons beside him, they snored peacefully without regard to the lack of cleanliness of their bedroom. The first day of his arrival Yeager had knocked a hole in the flimsy wall and had given it out as the result of a chance kick of a bronco. This served to let air into a building which had no other means of ventilation. It also allowed some small percentage of the various concentrated odors to escape.
The Arizonian was a light sleeper. But like some men in perfect trim he had the faculty of going to sleep whenever he desired. Often he had taken a nap in the saddle while night-herding. Fatigued from eighteen hours of wrestling the cattle to safety through a bitter storm, he had learned to fall easily into rest the instant his head hit the pillow. It was a heritage that had come to him from his rugged, outdoor life. So he slept now, a gentle, untroubled slumber, until daylight sifted through the hole in the wall at his side.
He was on duty that day herding the remuda, and it was not until late afternoon that he returned to camp. From a distance, dropping down into the draw which formed the location of the town, he saw a dust cloud moving down the street. At the apex of it rode a little bunch of travelers, evidently just in from the desert. Incuriously his eyes watched the party as it moved toward the headquarters of Pasquale. Some impulse led him to put his scarecrow of a pony at a canter.
The party reached the house of Pasquale and the two leaders dismounted. Yeager was still at some distance, but he had an uncertain impression that one of them was a woman. They stood on the porch talking. The larger one seemed to be overruling the protest of the other, so far as Steve could tell at that distance. The two passed together into the house.
It was not at all unusual for women to go into that house, according to the camp-fire stories that were whispered in the army. Pasquale was an unmoral old barbarian. If he liked women and wine the Legion made no complaint. The women were either camp-followers or visitors from the nearest town. In either case they were not of a sort whose reputation was likely to suffer.
Yeager cooked his simple supper and ate it. He sat down with his back to an adobe wall and rolled a cigarette. The peons, loafing in the cool of the evening, naturally fell into gossip. Steve, intent on his own thoughts, did not hear what was said until a word snatched him out of his indifference. The word was the name of Harrison.
"This afternoon?" asked one.
"Not an hour ago."
"Brought a woman with him, Pablo says," said a third indifferently.
"Yes." The first speaker laughed with an implication he did not care to express.
One of the others leaned forward and spoke in a lower tone. "This Harrison promised the general to bring back with him the Gringo Yeager. Old Gabriel is crazy to get the Yankee devil in his hands. Not so? Harrison brings him a woman instead to soften his bad temper, maybe."
The American gave no sign of interest. His fingers finished rolling the cigarette. Not another muscle of the inert body moved.
"A white woman this time, Pablo says."
The first speaker shrugged. "Look you, brother. All is grist that comes to the mill of Gabriel. As for these Gringo women"—He whispered a bit of slander that brought the blood to the face of Steve.
The peons guffawed with delight. This kind of joke was adapted both to their prejudices and their lack of intelligence. They were as ignorant of the world as children, fully as gay, irresponsible, and kindhearted. But they had, too, a capacity for cruelty and frank sensuousness that belongs only to the childhood of a race.
Presently Yeager arose, yawned, and drifted inconspicuously toward the stable that had been converted into a bedroom by the simple process of throwing a lot of blankets on the floor. But as soon as he was out of sight, Steve doubled across the road into the alley that ran back of the house where Pasquale was putting up.
The news about Harrison's return was disquieting. Ever since Yeager's second arrival at Noche Buena he had been gone. What did his appearance now mean? Who was the American woman he had brought back with him? Steve was inclined to think she was probably some one of the man's dubious acquaintances from Arixico. But of this he intended to make sure.
He passed quietly up the alley and into the yard back of the big house the insurgent general had appropriated for his headquarters. A light was shining from one of the back upper rooms. From it, too, there came faintly the sound of a voice, high and frightened, in which sobs and hysteria struggled.
By means of a post the Arizonian climbed to the top of the little back porch. Leaning as far as he could toward the window of the lighted room, he could see Pasquale and Harrison. The woman, whoever she might be, was in the corner of the room beyond his vision. The prizefighter showed both in face and manner a certain stiff sullenness. He was insisting upon some point to which there was determined opposition. As the general turned half toward him once, the range-rider saw in his little black eyes an alert and greedy cunning he did not understand.
The woman broke out into violent protest.
"I won't do it. I won't. If you are a liberator, as they say you are, you won't let him force me to it, general, will you?"
At the sound of that voice Yeager's heart jumped. He would have known it among ten thousand. Little beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. The primitive instinct to kill seared across his brain and left him for the moment dizzy and trembling.
There was a grin on Pasquale's ugly mug. His tobacco-stained teeth showed behind the lifted lips.
"If young ladies will insist on running away with officers of mine—"
"I didn't. Ask the men. I fought. See where I bit his hand," she protested, fighting against hysterical fears.
"So? But Señor Harrison says you were engaged to him."
"I hate him. I've found him out. I'd rather die than—"
Yeager caught the arm fling that concluded her sentence of passionate protest.
Pasquale, little black eyes twinkling, shrugged broad shoulders and turned to Harrison.
"You see. The lady has changed her mind, señor. What will you?"
"What's that got to do with it? She's mine. Send for a priest and have us married," the other man demanded bluntly.
"Not so fast, amigo," remonstrated Pasquale softly. "Give her time—a few days—quien sabe?—she may change her mind again."
Harrison choked on his anger. He was suspicious of this suavity, of this sudden respect for a girl's wishes. Since when had
the old despot become so scrupulous as to risk offending one who had served him a good deal and might aid him in more serious matters? The prizefighter could guess only one reason for the general's attitude. His jealousy began to smoke at once.
"She can change her mind afterward just as well. If we're married now, then I'm sure of her," the prizefighter insisted doggedly.
Impulsively the girl swept into that part of the room within the view of Steve. She knelt in front of Pasquale and caught at his hand.
"Send me home—back to my mother. I'm only a girl. You don't make war on girls, do you?" she pleaded.
Had she only known it, the very sweetness of her troubled youth, the shadows under the starry eyes edging the wild-rose cheeks, the allure of her lines and soft flesh, fought potently against her desire for a safe-conduct home. The greedy, treacherous little eyes of the insurgent chief glittered.
He shook his head. "No, señorita. That is not possible. But you shall stay here—under the protection of Gabriel Pasquale himself. You shall have choice—Señor Harrison if you wish, another if you prefer it so. Take time. Perhaps—who knows?" He smiled and bowed with the gallantry of a bear as he kissed her hand.
"No—no. I want to go home," she sobbed.
"Young ladies don't always know what is best for them. Behold, we shall marry you to a soldier, one of rank. From the general down, you shall have choice," Pasquale promised largely.
Harrison scowled. He did not at all like the turn things were taking. "Not as long as I'm alive," he said savagely. "She's mine, I tell you."
The Mexican looked directly at him with a face as hard as jade. "So you don't expect to live long, señor. Is that it? We shall all mourn. Yes, indeed." He turned decisively to the white-faced girl. "Go to sleep, muchacha. To-morrow we shall talk. Gabriel Pasquale is your friend. All shall be well with you. None shall insult you on peril of his life. Buenos!"
With a gesture of his hand he pointed the door to Harrison.
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