Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  As he rode out of the town half an hour later, he vaguely wondered at himself for what he had done, and wondered, also, how he could get out of his present difficult position.

  He looked at his watch, and saw that it was growing late. He had far to ride, and had intended to start much earlier in the afternoon. He had the innkeeper’s best horse, but it was rather a slow animal, not to be compared with Basili’s brown mare. He quickened his pace as well as he could, however and cantered along the more level stretches of the high-road. At the first opportunity he struck off into a bridle-path to the right which led westward towards the heights above Maniace.

  He had ridden several miles, in and out among the little undulations of the upper valley, when he came out upon a broad bit of meadow, such as one occasionally finds in that region, just beyond the black lands. He put his horse at a gallop, taking advantage of the chance to gain a little time, and riding diagonally for a point at the opposite side from which the bridle-path led up to the hills, as he well knew.

  He was less than half-way across the grass when he heard the heavy tread of horses galloping after him, with the clanking of arms and a sound of deep voices calling out to him. He looked round, but he knew already that he was followed by mounted carabineers, and that they could overtake him easily enough. After a moment’s hesitation he drew rein and waited quietly for the troopers to come up. He wished that he had carried his rifle across his saddle-bow instead of at his back, for he at first believed that there was some information against him from Santa Vittoria, and that they meant to arrest him. On the other hand, to have unslung his rifle, after seeing that they were carabineers, would have been to acknowledge that he feared them. His mind worked quickly as he sat still in his saddle, waiting for them.

  But when they were fifty yards away one of them spoke, and reined in his charger.

  ‘It is Don Tebaldo Pagliuca!’ he exclaimed in a tone of surprise, and in the desolate stillness of the lonely field, Tebaldo heard the words and understood that he had been mistaken for someone else.

  The other trooper laughed a little, and they both trotted up to Tebaldo, saluting when they were near him.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the older soldier. ‘We took you for a stranger. It is a lonely place, and we have news that the brigands are somewhere in the neighbourhood. I trust we have not annoyed you, signore. Accept our excuses.’

  Tebaldo smiled easily.

  ‘You took me for an outlaw,’ he said ‘It is natural enough, I am sure. Do you know your way? Can I be of any service to you?’

  The elder trooper asked one or two questions about the directions in which the bridle-paths led. He evidently knew the country tolerably well, and Tebaldo was wise enough not to deceive him. After a few moments’ conversation, he offered the men a couple of cigars, which they gratefully accepted and hid in the inner pockets of their tunics, after which they saluted again and rode away in the direction whence they had come. In disturbed times such patrols are to be met with occasionally on almost every practicable bridle-path, and the foot-carabineers scramble up and down through the country in pairs, even where there are no paths at all.

  As he rode on alone Tebaldo was aware that his heart was beating faster than usual. He had been startled by the unexpected meeting, and for one moment had expected to be arrested. He now reflected that he had no real cause to fear any such catastrophe, since, by this time, the Moscio had certainly recovered the knife, which represented the only possible evidence against him. But the physical impression remained, and it was very like fear. He had rarely been afraid of anything in his life, and the sensation was disturbing, for it warned him that the strain on his whole nature was beginning to weaken him.

  He pressed on, urging his lazy horse whenever the ground permitted, and cutting across through the woods, from one bridle-path to another, as often as he could, shortening the way to gain time. He was near the foot of the hill on which the outlaws were camping and was just about to cross the streamlet which ran down from the spring, when a man in tweed clothes, that had an English look, quietly stepped out from behind a bush and stood in his way, at the water’s edge, holding a rifle in his hand. Tebaldo’s horse stopped of his own accord.

  ‘Your name, if you please,’ said the outlaw, civilly.

  ‘Tebaldo Pagliuca. I come by appointment to visit one of your friends.’

  ‘Name him, if you please.’

  ‘The Moscio,’ said Tebaldo, knowing that if the names had not agreed with those given to the sentinel as a pass, the man would probably have killed him instantly as a spy.

  ‘I will show you the way,’ said the brigand, slinging his rifle on his shoulder.

  ‘I know the way perfectly,’ answered Tebaldo. ‘Pray do not trouble yourself.’

  ‘It is a pleasure,’ returned the other, and he cleared the little stream at a bound.

  Tebaldo guessed that he was not altogether trusted even now. As the man walked up the hill he whistled softly, and in a few moments, emerging from the brush into a little clearing, Tebaldo saw the Moscio waiting for him. It was dusky under the trees, but Tebaldo could see the pleasant smile on the girlish face. The Moscio had his rifle under his arm, and was smoking a cigarette. The man who had led Tebaldo to the spot disappeared into the brush, returning to his post by the stream. Tebaldo dismounted.

  ‘Have you met anyone?’ enquired the outlaw shaking hands.

  ‘No,’ answered Tebaldo, ‘not since I left the high-road.’

  He had reflected that he had done unwisely in not turning back with the carabineers and riding with them as far as the road, in order to disarm any possible suspicions, and he knew that the Moscio would think so too. He should, if necessary, have even waited till the next day before coming up to the camp, but his anxiety to see the knife safe in the Moscio’s possession had outweighed everything else.

  ‘So much the better,’ answered the outlaw, unsuspiciously. ‘By the bye, here is your knife. Is this it?’

  He held it out to Tebaldo, who took it eagerly, his fingers closing round the sheath, as though he were afraid of dropping it. He breathed hard between his teeth once or twice, as he looked at it in sheer satisfaction.

  ‘It is yours, I suppose?’ observed the Moscio, interrogatively, for Tebaldo had forgotten to speak. ‘There was no other.’

  ‘Yes. I thank you. I am very grateful to you.’ The words were as sincere as any the man had ever uttered, and he handed the knife back.

  ‘Not at all,’ answered the outlaw. ‘It was interesting to see the place. I am glad to have served you. Since you have taken the trouble to come so far, will you accept our hospitality this evening? You can hardly get back to Randazzo to-night. Mauro is in a very good humour this evening, and the weather is pleasant. You will not suffer much inconvenience. The huts are quite dry. We will try and make you some return for your former hospitality.’

  Tebaldo accepted readily enough, and they began to ascend the hill at once. It was some distance to the top. The Moscio turned to the right at a big, old chestnut tree.

  ‘That is not the best way,’ remarked Tebaldo. ‘Keep on another ten yards and then turn to the left. There is an old bridle-path on the other side of the hawthorn bushes.’

  The Moscio laughed softly.

  ‘It is a pity that you are not with us,’ he said. ‘You know the paths better than we do.’

  ‘I was born near here,’ answered Tebaldo. ‘I have known these woods since I was a boy.’

  ‘I wish I had. I sometimes lose my way in this part of Sicily.’

  The path began exactly where Tebaldo had said that it did, the entrance being hidden by hawthorn and blackberry bushes. He went on a few steps, doubled behind the brambles, and led the Moscio along a much better way than the outlaws had discovered for themselves. The outlaw appreciated the advantage, and reflected that Tebaldo could help the band in a thousand ways if he chose. Without passing by the spring, they suddenly found themselves at the top of the hill. The path stopp
ed abruptly against the back of one of the wooden huts, having formerly crossed the summit at this point.

  ‘Let me go first,’ said the Moscio, and he passed Tebaldo and his horse and went round the corner of what was really little more than a shed, roughly enclosed with half-rotten planks.

  Various exclamations of surprise greeted their appearance from an unexpected quarter.

  ‘Our friend, Don Tebaldo Pagliuca,’ said the Moscio, addressing a number of men who were sitting and lying about on the dry ground. ‘He knows the woods better than we, and has shown me a new path from the big chestnut tree.’

  ‘He is welcome,’ said Mauro, in a dull and muffled voice, but with some cordiality.

  He and most of the others rose and greeted Tebaldo warmly. Some had known him already, and almost all had known Ferdinando well.

  They were a strange-looking set of men. Most of them were well dressed, and so far as their clothes were concerned might have been taken for a party of southern country gentlemen and rich young farmers, camping during a day’s shooting. Mauro, who was by far the oldest, might have been seven or eight and thirty years of age, but not more, and most of the others were evidently under thirty. They were all strong-looking, with the toughened appearance of men accustomed to live in the open air and to take exertion as a matter of course. The Moscio alone had preserved his marvellous, child-like freshness of complexion. The ‘Moscio’ means the ‘soft,’ being similar to our English word ‘mush,’ and the youth’s looks accounted for the name, while his remarkable strength and utter fearlessness contrasted rather comically with the epithet.

  The peculiarities in the appearance of his companions were chiefly in their faces and expressions. Most of them had the oddly sinister, unchanging smile with something contemptuous in it which so often characterises adventurers, both within the pale of society and beyond its bounds. Such men do not laugh easily. In their eyes, too, there was the look one sees in those of some Red Indians and of dangerous wild animals aware of pursuit and always inclined to turn at bay rather than escape. Tebaldo felt, rather than saw, the glances that were turned upon him as he stood in their midst, still holding his horse by the bridle.

  Mauro himself was dark, clean shaven, close cropped, and already bald on the top of his head. He had often disguised himself successfully as a priest, for he had been educated in a seminary, had turned atheist, had been a journalist, and had finally got into trouble by shooting his editor in consequence of a quarrel which had apparently begun about a question of grammar, but had in reality been connected with politics, so that the deed had been regarded as an act of justice and patriotism by the mafia. There had been a reward of twenty thousand francs on Mauro’s head, dead or alive, for several years, and photographs of the famous brigand were sold everywhere in Palermo, Messina, and Catania, but there was not a carabineer in the island who could boast of having seen the man himself. He was taciturn and reticent, too, though he could be fluent enough when he pleased; and although he put a gold piece into his purse for everyone he killed, as the Moscio had said, he could never be induced to tell how many there were in the little leathern bag. He never did anything unnecessarily, but was capable of the most blood-curdling cruelty when any end was to be gained, and was merciless to informers when they fell into his hands, not exactly out of love for inflicting pain, but in order to inspire a salutary terror. He was extremely temperate in his habits and simple in his clothes, though his weapons were always of the best and of the newest device, and he had a large account with the leading bank of Palermo. He intended to emigrate, he said, when he should be rich enough, but those who knew him did not believe that he could be satisfied to settle down as a well-to-do proprietor in the Argentine Republic. The Moscio always said that Mauro would yet repent of his ways, enter a monastery, mortify the flesh, and die in the odour of sanctity. Whereat Mauro generally nodded thoughtfully, as though he himself regarded such a termination to his career as quite within the bounds of possibility.

  As for the rest of the band, none of them were in any way so remarkable as their leader. The man known as Leoncino was believed to be a son of the famous Leone, and boasted of it. He had stabbed a rival in a village love affair, after having been brought up rather mysteriously in the house of a rich farmer. Schiantaceci was undoubtedly a gentleman by birth, a sad young fellow, with a drooping brown moustache, fiery eyes, and a very sweet voice in which he often sang softly on a summer’s evening when it was not dangerous to make a noise in the camp. No one knew his real name. In a fight he always behaved as though he wished to be killed, which is generally the surest way of killing others.

  Among the rest there were men of all classes. There was a man who had been mayor of his village, there was a butcher, there were three or four deserters from the army, who had each killed a comrade, and one who had attacked his lieutenant but had not killed him. There was a chemist’s apprentice who had poisoned his master, and an actor who had strangled his manager’s wife in a love quarrel. There were also two anarchists who had escaped imprisonment under Crispi’s rule. But there was not one in the number who had done less than two murders at the time when Tebaldo went up to the camp.

  One of the outlaws led his horse away, and he sat down by Mauro a little apart from the rest. In the middle of the open space a fire was burning down to a bed of coals. It had been very carefully built and slowly fed so as to produce the smallest possible amount of smoke. A well-cleaned gridiron was stuck upright in the earth by the handle, and at the entrance to one of the huts the man who was a butcher was cutting a huge piece of fresh meat into steaks.

  After the first greetings, the men relapsed into silence, and paid little attention to Tebaldo. Mauro talked with him in low tones. The chief seemed, indeed, unable to speak loud. He asked many questions about the Saracinesca, but he would have considered it a breach of civility to refer to the truth about Francesco’s death.

  ‘These Saracinesca are naturally antipathetic to you,’ he observed, ‘and I daresay you would not be sorry if one of them put his ears in pawn at my bank.’

  ‘They are a powerful family,’ answered Tebaldo, cautiously. ‘If one of them were taken by you, there would be reinforcements of carabineers throughout Sicily.’

  ‘These carabineers are much like flies,’ said Mauro, thoughtfully. ‘They come in swarms, they buzz, and they fly away again, leaving nobody much the worse. It means a little more caution for a month or two. That is all. But the Saracinesca would pay a good sum to keep the young heir’s nose on his face, and San Giacinto would probably write a cheque at my dictation before he were half roasted.’

  He spoke quietly and in a reflective tone.

  ‘For my part,’ replied Tebaldo, ‘I wish them no good, as you may imagine. But the younger Saracinesca is in Rome. San Giacinto came back last night, it is true, but he is safe at Camaldoli.’

  ‘Safe is a relative term when we are in the neighbourhood,’ remarked Mauro. ‘Especially if you will give us your assistance,’ he added. ‘On the whole, it would be more convenient to take San Giacinto. He could write the cheque, and I could cash it almost before there were any alarm, holding him until we got the money. If we took the young one, we should have to communicate with the family. That is always disagreeable.’

  ‘You might have difficulty in cashing the cheque,’ suggested Tebaldo.

  ‘None whatever,’ replied Mauro. ‘You are quite mistaken. That is always easy, though of course money in cash is preferable. A cash transaction is always better, as a mere matter of business.’

  Tebaldo had not by any means anticipated that he was to be called in as an ally in such an affair, and did not like the prospect at all. He promised himself that he would return to Rome as soon as possible. For the present he put aside the extremely complicated position in which he was placed by having given two promises of marriage. He felt uncomfortable, too, and chilly. He shivered a little, and Mauro noticed it, and called for a cup of wine. Tebaldo swallowed it eagerly and felt better.r />
  ‘It will be necessary for you to help us,’ said Mauro, presently, and in a tone of quiet decision. ‘No one knows the land about Camaldoli as well as you do, and the approaches to the house.’

  ‘I would rather not be involved in the capture,’ answered Tebaldo.

  ‘I am sure you will not refuse,’ replied Mauro, smiling at him. ‘It will be a little return for the service the Moscio has done you. He was very glad to help you, of course, but you must not forget that you are one of us now, and that we always help each other when we can. I am sure you will not refuse.’

  Tebaldo glanced sideways at the quiet, priest-faced man who had been the terror of Sicily for years. He realised that the outlaw had spoken the truth, and that he might at any moment have to turn outlaw himself, if the secret of the knife were known. He knew the brigands and their ways. They would keep faith with him, even at the risk of their own lives, but he must submit to their conditions. They had him in their power, and he must help them if they required him to do so. If he refused, information would be in the hands of the carabineers in twelve hours, which would drive him into outlawry, if he escaped at all. But if he helped them, they would stand by him. He had not foreseen such a situation.

  ‘What is it that you wish me to do?’ he enquired after a short pause.

  ‘I will tell you,’ answered Mauro. ‘There are now only four carabineers quartered at Camaldoli, and as they ride on patrol duty like the rest, there are never more than two in the house at a time. There is San Giacinto himself, so that there are three men to deal with. The rest of the people are Sicilians, and will give no trouble.’

  ‘San Giacinto is equal to two or three ordinary men,’ observed Tebaldo.

  ‘Is he?’ Mauro spoke indifferently. ‘One man is very like another, at the end of a rifle-barrel,’ he continued, ‘and if one pulls the trigger, they are all exactly alike. The point is this. We intend to surprise Camaldoli to-morrow night. You must lead us by the ways you know to the low rampart at the back, behind the stables and over the river. There is a way up on that side, but we do not know it. We shall find a ladder resting against the wall on that side. A friend will place it there.’