A flush of rose swept upward to the zenith heralding the sun, but in the adobe room, with its door to the west, no light came, except by dim reflection, and as Tula entered and the men stood at the threshold, they blocked the doorway of even that reflection, and the candle at the saint’s shrine shone dimly over the bent heads of the kneeling women.
Rotil stood looking about questioningly; he had not expected to see so many. Then at the sound of the click of the prayer beads, some recollection of some past caused him to automatically remove his wide-brimmed hat.
“Mothers,” said Tula quietly, “the Deliverer has come.”
There was a half-frightened gasp, and dark faces turned toward the door.
“He comes as I told you, because I am no one by myself, and he could not know I was sent by you. I am not anyone among people, and he does not believe. Only people of importance should speak with a soldier who is a general.”
“No, por Dios, my boy, you speak well!” said Rotil, clapping his hand on her shoulder, “but your years are not many and it cannot be you know the thing you ask for.”
“I know it,” asserted Tula with finality.
An old woman got up stiffly, and came towards him. “We are very poor, yet even our children are robbed from us––that is why we pray. Don Ramon, your mother was simple as we, and had heart for the poor. Our lives are wasted for the masters, and our women children are stolen for the sons of masters. That is done, and we wish they may find ways to kill themselves on the trail. But the man who drove them with whips is now your man––and we mothers ask him of you.”
The wizened old creature trembled as she spoke, and scarce lifted her eyes. She made effort to speak further, but words failed, and she slipped to her knees and the beads slid from her nervous fingers to the tiles. She was very old, and she had come fasting across the mesa in the chill before the dawn; her two grandchildren had been driven south with the slaves––one had been a bride but a month––and they killed her man as they took her.
Valencia came to her and wiped the tears from her cheeks, patting her on the back as one would soothe a child, and then she looked at Rotil, nodding her head meaningly, and spoke.
“It is all true as Tia Tomasa is saying, señor. Her children are gone, and this child of Capitan Miguel knows well what she asks for. The days of the sorrows of Jesus are coming soon, and the Judas we want for that day of the days will not be made of straw to be bound on the wild bull’s back, and hung when the ride is over. No, señor, we know the Judas asked of you by this daughter of Miguel;––it is the pale beast called El Aleman. For many, many days have we made prayers like this, before every shrine, that the saints would send him again to our valley. You, señor, have brought answer to that prayer. You have him trapped, but he belongs only to us women. The saints listened to us, and you are in it. Men often are in prayers like that, and have no knowing of it, señor.”
Kit listened in amazement to this account of prayers to Mexican saints for a Judas to hang on Good Friday! After four centuries of foreign priesthood, and foreign saints on the shrines, the mental effect on the aborigines had not risen above crucifixion occasionally on some proxy for their supreme earthly god, or mad orgies of vengeance on a proxy for Judas. The great drama of Calvary had taught them only new forms of torture and the certainty that vengeance was a debt to be paid. Conrad was to them the pale beast whipping women into slavery,––and as supreme traitor to human things must be given a Judas death!
He shivered as he listened, and looked at the eyes of women staring out of the dusk for the answer to their prayers.
“Por Dios!” muttered Rotil, half turning to Kit, yet losing nothing of the pleading strained faces. “Does your head catch all of that, señor? Can’t women beat hell? And women breed us all! What’s the answer?”
“In this case it’s up to you, General,” replied Kit. “I’m glad the responsibility is not mine. Even as it is, women who look like these are likely to walk through my dreams for many a night!”
Rotil gloomed at them, puzzled, frowning, and at times the flicker of a doubtful smile would change his face without lighting it. No one moved or spoke.
“Here!” he said at last, “this child and two women have spoken, but there are over twenty of you here. Three out of twenty is no vote––hold up your hands. Come, don’t hang back, or you won’t get Judas! There are no priests here, and no spies for priests, and there have been words enough. Show your hands!”
Kit looked back into the darkest corner, wondering what the vote of Jocasta would be; her mother was said to be Indian, or half Indian, and her hatred of the German would help her understand these darker tribal sisters.
But in the many lifted hands her own could not be seen and he felt curiously relieved, though it was no affair of his, and one vote either way would weigh nothing.
Rotil looked at the lifted hands, and grunted.
“You win, muchacha,” he said to Tula. “I think you’re the devil, and it’s you made the women talk. You can come along to Soledad and fetch their Judas back to them.”
“My thanks to you, and my service, Excellency,” said Tula. “I will go and be glad that I go for that. But I swear by the Body and Blood, and I swear on this, that I only pay the debt of my people to El Aleman.”
She was helping old Tia Tomasa to her feet with one hand, and held up the little crucifix to him with the other. She had noted that white people make oath on a cross when they want to be believed, and she wished with all her pagan heart to be believed by this man who had been a sort of legendary hero to her many months before she had seen his face, or dared hope he would ever grant favor to her––Tula!
But whatever effect she hoped to secure by emphasizing her oath on the Christian symbol, she was not prepared for the rough grasp on her arm, or the harsh command of his voice.
“Holy God!” he growled, “why do you thrust that in my face,––you?”
“Excellency––I––” began Tula, but he shook her as a cat would shake a mouse.
“Answer me! How comes it in your hands?”
“I found it, señor––and did no harm.”
“When? Where?”
“Why––I––I–––”
A note of warning flashed from some wireless across the girl’s mind, for it was no little thing by which Ramon Rotil had suddenly become a growling tiger with his hand near her throat.
“Where?” he repeated.
“On a trail, señor.”
“When?”
“Three days ago.”
“Where?”
“At the place where the Soledad trail leaves that of Mesa Blanca.”
Rotil stared at her, and then turned to Kit.
“Do you know of this thing?”
“No, General, I don’t,” he said honestly enough, “but these women have many such–––”
“No,” contradicted Rotil, “they haven’t,––there’s a difference.”
He had seized the crucifix and held it, while he scanned the faces, and then brought his gaze back to Tula.
“You will show me that place, and prove yourself, muchacha,” he said grimly. “There’s something––something––Do you know, you damned young crane, that I can have my men shoot you against the wall out there if you lie to me?”
“Yes, my General, but it is better to give lead to enemies––and not friends. Also a knife is cheaper.”
“Silence! or you may get both!” he growled. “Here, look well––you––all of you! Have any of you but this creature seen it?”
He held it out, and Valencia, who was nearest, caught sight of it.
“Ai! Tula!” she said in reproof, “you to take that when the poor–––”
Tula flashed one killing look at her, and Valencia stopped dead, and turned an ashen gray, and Rotil watching!
“Ah––ha! I thought it!” he jeered. “Now whose trick is it to make me a fool? Come, sift this thing! You,” to Valencia, “have looked on this before. Whose
is it?”
“Señor––I–––”
“So!” he said with a sort of growl in the voice, “something chokes you? Look at me, not at the others! Also listen:––if a lie is told to me, every liar here will go before a firing squad. Whose is this crucifix?”
Valencia’s eyes looked sorrow on Tula, still under his hand, and then on the wood and silver thing held up before her. The sun was just rolling hot and red above the mountains, and Rotil’s shaggy head was outlined in a sort of curious radiance as the light struck the white wall across the patio at his back. Even the silver of the crucifix caught a glimmer of it, and to Valencia he looked like the warrior padres of whom her grandmother used to tell, who would thunder hell’s terrors on the frightened neophytes until the bravest would grovel in the dust and do penances unbelievable.
That commanding picture came between her and Rotil,––the outlaw and soldier and patriot. She stumbled forward with a pleading gesture towards Tula.
“Excellency, the child does no harm. She is a stranger in the house. She has picked it up perhaps when lost by the señora, and–––”
“What señora?”
“She who is most sorrowful guest here, Excellency, and her arms still bruised from the iron chains of El Aleman.”
“And her name?”
“Excellency, it is the woman saved from your man by the Americano señor here beside you. And,––she asked to be nameless while sheltered at Mesa Blanca.”
“But not to me! So this is a game between you two––” and he looked from Tula to Kit with sinister threat in his eyes, “it is then your woman who–––”
“Ramon––no!” said a voice from the far shadows, and the black shawled figure stood erect and cast off the muffling disguise. Her pale face shone like a star above all the kneeling Indians.
“God of heaven!” he muttered, and his hand fell from the shoulder of Tula. “You––you are one of the women who knelt here for vengeance?”
“For justice,” she said, “but I was here for a reason different;––it was a place to hide. No one helped me, let the child go! Give these women what they ask or deny them, but send them away. To them I am nameless and unknown. You can see that even my presence is a thing of fear to them,––let them go!”
He stared at her across those frightened dark faces. It was true they drew away from her in terror; her sudden uprising was as if she had materialized from the cold tiles of the chapel floor. Kit noted that their startled eyes were wide with awe, and knew that they also felt they were gazing on a beauty akin to that of the pictured saints. Even the glimmer of the candle touching her perfect cheek and brow added to the unearthly appearance there in the shadows.
But Ramon Rotil gazed at her across a wider space than that marked by the kneeling Indian women! Four years were bridged by that look, and where the others saw a pale Madonna, he saw a barefooted child weaving flowers of the mountain for a shrine where poverty prevented a candle.
He had sold maize to buy candles, and shoes for her feet, and she had given him the little brown wooden crucifix.
Once in the height of her reign of beauty in the hacienda of Perez, a ragged brown boy from the hills had lain in wait for her under the oleanders, and thrust a tightly bound package of corn husks into her hand, and her maid regarded with amazement the broken fragments of a wooden cross so poor and cheap that even the most poverty stricken of the peons could own one, and her wonder was great that her mistress wept over the broken pieces and strove to fit them together again.
And now it lay in his hand, bound and framed in silver wires delicately wrought.
He had traveled farther than she during the years between, and the memento of the past made him know it.
“Ramon, let them go!” she repeated with gentle appeal.
“Yes,” he said, taking a deep breath as if rousing from a trance, “that is best. Child––see to it, and have your way. Señor, will you arrange that the señora has what comfort there is here? Our horses wait, and work waits–––”
He saw Valencia go with protecting, outstretched hands to Jocasta, and turned away.
Jocasta never moved. To save her friends from his rage she had spoken, and to her the big moment of humiliation dreamed of and feared had come and been lived through. He had seen her on her knees among all that brown herd made up of such women as his mother and her mother had been. From mistress of a palace on an estate large as many European kingdoms she had become an outcast with marks of fetters on her arms, while he was knelt to as a god by the simple people of the ranges, and held power of life and death over a wide land!
Kit could not even guess at all the tempestuous background of the drama enacted there in the chill of the chapel at sunrise, but the clash of those two outlaw souls suddenly on guard before each other, thrilled him by the unexpected. Rotil, profane, ruthless, and jeering, had suddenly grown still before the face of a woman from whom he turned away.
“Late! An hour late!” he grumbled, hobbling back to the plaza. “What did I tell you? Hell of women! Well, your damned little crane got what she started after––huh! Why did she lie?”
“Well, you know, General,” said Kit doubtfully, “that the enmity between you and José Perez is no secret. Even the children talk of it, and wish success to you––I’ve heard that one do it! Doña Jocasta is of a Perez household, so it was supposed you would make prisoner anyone of their group. And Tula––well, I reckon Tula listened last night to some rather hard things the señora has lived through at Soledad, and knew she would rather die here than go back there.”
Kit realized he was on delicate ground when trying to explain any of the actions of any of the black and tan group to each other, but he sought the safest way out, and drew a breath of relief at his success, for Rotil listened closely, nodding assent, yet frowning in some perplexity.
“Um! what does that mean,––rather die than go back?” he demanded. “No one has told me why the lady has come to Mesa Blanca, or what she is doing here. I don’t see––What the devil ails you?”
For Kit stared at him incredulous, and whistled softly.
“Haven’t you got it yet?” he asked. “Last night you joked about a girl Marto stole, and we stole from him again. Don’t you realize now who that girl is?”
“Jocasta!”
It was the first time he had uttered her name and there was a low terrible note in his voice, half choked by smothered rage.
“But how could Marto,––or why should––” he began and then halted, checked by various conflicting facts, and stared frowningly at Rhodes who again strove to explain that of which he had little knowledge.
“General, I reckon Marto was square to your interests about everything but the woman Perez and Conrad sent north into the desert, and it was Marto’s job to see that she never left it alive. Evidently he did not report that extra task to you, for he meant to save the woman for himself. But even at that, General, you’ve got to give him credit. He says she bewitched him, and he couldn’t kill her, and he wouldn’t let the others have her. Also he risked a whale of a beating up, and some lead souvenirs, in trying to save her, even if it was for himself. So you see, Marto was only extra human, and is a good man. His heart’s about broke to think he failed you, and I’ll bet he wouldn’t fail you again in a thousand years!”
“Yes, you have the right of that,” agreed Rotil. “I did not know; I don’t know yet what this means about Perez and––and–––”
“None of us do, General,” stated Kit. “I heard Valencia say it must be something only a confessor could know,––but it must be rather awful at that! She was started north like an insane criminal, hidden and in chains. She explains nothing, but General, you have now the two men at Soledad who made the plan, and you have here Marto who was their tool––and perhaps––at Soledad––” he paused questioning.
“Sure! that is what will be done,” decided Rotil. “See to it, you, after we are gone. Bring Doña Jocasta to Soledad with as mu
ch show of respect as can be mustered in a poor land, your girl and Isidro’s wife to go along, and any comforts you can find. Yes, that is the best! Some way we will get to the bottom of this well. She must know a lot if they did not dare let her live, and Marto––well, you make a good talk for him, straight too––Marto will go with me. Tell no one anything. Make your own plans. By sunset I will have time for this mystery of the chains of Doña Jocasta. Be there at Soledad by sunset.”
“At your command, General.”
Then Chappo and Fidelio helped their leader into the saddle. Marto, crestfallen and silently anticipating the worst, was led out next; a reata passed around the saddle horn and circling his waist was fastened back of the saddle. His hands were free to guide his horse, but Chappo, with a wicked looking gun and three full cartridge belts, rode a few paces back of him to see that he made no forbidden use of them.
Kit watched them ride east while the long line of women of Palomitas took up the trail over the mesa to the north. Their high notes of a song came back to him,––one of those wailing chants of a score of verses dear to the Mexican heart. In any other place he would have deemed it a funeral dirge with variations, but with Indian women at sunrise it meant tuneful content.
Kit listened with a shiver. Because of his own vagrant airs they had called him “El Pajarito” when he first drifted south over Mexican trails,––but happy erratic tunefulness was smothered for him temporarily. Over the vast land of riches, smiling in the sun, there brooded the threats of Indian gods chained, inarticulate, reaching out in unexpected ways for expression through the dusky devotees at hidden shrines. The fact that occasionally they found expression through some perverted fragment from an imported cult was a gruesome joke on the importers. But under the eagle of Mexico, whose wide wings were used as shield by the German vultures across seas, jokes were not popular. German educators and foreign priests with Austrian affiliations, saw to that. The spiritual harvest in Mexico was not always what the planters anticipated,––for curious crops sprung up in wild corners of the land, as Indian grains wrapped in a mummy’s robe spring to life under methods of alien culturists.
The Treasure Trail Page 20