The Free Lances: A Romance of the Mexican Valley

Chapter Fifty Five

“Only empty Bottles.”

About the time the Free Lances were burying their comrade in the cemetery of the convent the gate of San Antonio de Abad was opened to permit the passage of a squadron of Hussars going outward from the city. There were nigh 200 of them, in formation “by fours” – the wide causeway allowing ample room for even ten abreast.

At their head rode Colonel Santander, with Major Ramirez by his side, other officers in their places distributed along the line.

Soon as they had cleared the garita, a word to the bugler, with a note or two from his trumpet quick succeeding, set them into a gallop; the white dusty road and clear moonlight making the fastest pace easily attainable. And he who commanded was in haste, his destination being that old monastery, of which he had only lately heard, but enough to make him most eager to reach it before morning. His hopes were high; at last he was likely to make a coup– that capture so much desired, so long delayed!

For nearly an hour bridles were let loose, and spurs repeatedly plied. On along the calzada swept the squadron, over the bridge Churubusco, and past the hacienda of San Antonio de Abad, which gives its name to the city gate on that side. Thenceforward the Pedregal impinges on the road, and the Hussars still going at a gallop along its edge, another bugle-call brought them to a halt.

That, however, had naught to do with their halting, which came from their commander having reached the spot where he had left the hunchback in charge of the two soldiers.

He need not hail them to assure himself they were still there. The trampling of horses on the hard causeway, heard afar off, had long ago forewarned the corporal of what was coming; and he was out on the road to receive them, standing in an attitude of attention.

The parley was brief, and quick the action which accompanied it.

“Into your saddle, cabo!” commanded the colonel. “Take that curiosity up behind you, and bring it along.”

In an instant the corporal was mounted, the “curiosity” hoisted up to his croup by Perico, who then sprang to the back of his own horse. Once more the bugle gave tongue, and away they went again.

The cavalcade made no stop in San Augustin. There was no object for halting it there, and delay was the thing its commander most desired to avoid. As they went clattering through the pueblo, its people were a-bed, seemingly asleep. But not all. Two at least were awake, and heard that unusual noise – listened to it with a trembling in their frames and fear in their hearts. Two ladies they were, inside a house beyond the village, on the road running south. Too well they knew what it meant, and whither the galloping cohort was bound. And themselves unseen, they saw who was at the head; though they needed not seeing him to know. But peering through the jalousies, the moonlight revealed to them the face of Don Carlos Santander, in the glimpse they got of it, showing spitefully triumphant.

He could not see them, though his eyes interrogated the windows while he was riding past. They had taken care to extinguish the light in their room.

“Virgin Santissima! Mother of God!” exclaimed one of the ladies, Luisa Valverde, as she dropped on her knees in prayer, “Send that they’ve got safe off ere this!”

“Make your mind easy, amiga!” counselled the Condesa Almonté in less precatory tone. “I’m good as sure they have. José cannot fail to have reached and given them warning. That will be enough.”

A mile or so beyond San Augustin the southern road becomes too steep for horses to go at a gallop, without risk of breaking their wind. So there the Hussars had to change to a slower pace – a walk in fact. There were other reasons for coming to this. The sound of their hoof-strokes ascending would be heard far up the mountain, might reach the ears of those in the monastery, and so thwart the surprise intended for them.

While toiling more leisurely up the steep, any one chancing to look in the hunchback’s face would there have observed an expression indescribable. Sadness pervaded it, with an air of perplexity, as though he had met with some misfortune he could not quite comprehend.

And so had he. Before leaving the spot where the stiletto was taken from him, he had sought an opportunity to step back into that shady niche in the cliff where he had lost his treasures. The monté players, unsuspicious of his object, made no objection. But instead of there finding what he had expected, he saw only a pair of horse-halters: one lying coiled upon the ground, the head-stall of the other caught over the rock above, the rope end dangling down!

An inexplicable phenomenon, which, however, he had kept to himself, and ever since been cudgelling his brains to account for.

But soon after he had something else to think of: the time having arrived when he was called upon to give proof of his capability as a guide. Heretofore it had been all plain road riding; but now they had reached a point spoken of by himself where the calzada must be forsaken. The horses, too, left behind; everything but their weapons; the path beyond being barely practicable for men afoot.

Dismounting all, at a command – this time not given by the bugle – and leaving a sufficient detail to look after the animals, they commenced the ascent, their guide, seemingly more quadruped than biped, in the lead. Strung out in single file – no other formation being possible – as they wound their way up the zig-zag with the moonlight here and there, giving back the glint of their armour, it was as some great serpent – a monster of the antediluvian ages – crawling towards its prey. Silently as serpent too; not a word spoken, nor exclamation uttered along their line. For, although it might be another hour before they could reach their destination, less than a second would suffice for their voices to get there, even though but muttered.

One spot their guide passed with something like a shudder. It was where he had appropriated the dagger taken from a dead body. His shuddering was not due to that, but to fear from a far different cause. The body was no longer there. Those who dwelt above must have been down and borne it away. They would now be on the alert, and at any moment he might hear the cracking of carbines – a volley; perhaps feel the avenging bullet. What if they should roll rocks down and crush him and the party behind? In any case there could be no surprisal now; and he would gladly have seen those he was guiding give up the thought of it and turn back. Santander was himself irresolute, and would willingly have done so. But Ramirez, a man of more mettle, at the point of his sword commanded the hunchback to keep on, and the cowardly colonel dare not revoke the order without eternally disgracing himself.

They had no danger to encounter, though they knew not that. Neither vidette nor sentinel was stationed there now; and, without challenge or obstruction, they reached the platform on which the building stood, the soldiers taking to right and left till they swarmed around it as bees. But they found no honey inside their hive.

There was a summons to surrender, which received no response. Repeated louder, and a carbine fired, the result was the same. Silence inside, there could be no one within.

Nor was there. When the Hussar colonel, with a dozen of his men, at length screwed up courage to make a burst into the doorway, and on to the Refectory, they saw but the evidence of late occupancy in the fragments of a supper, with some dozens of wine bottles “down among the dead men,” empty as the building itself.

Disappointed as were the soldiers at finding them so, but still more their commanding officer at his hated enemies having again got away from him. His soul was brimful of chagrin, nor did it allay the feeling to learn how, when a path was pointed out to him leading down the other side, they must have made off. And along such a path pursuit was idle. No one could say where it led – like enough to a trap.

He was not the only one of the party who felt disappointed at the failure of the expedition. Its guide had reason to be chagrined, too, in his own way of thinking, much more than the leader himself. For not only had he lost the goods obtained under false pretences, but the hope of reward for his volunteered services.

Still the dwarf was not so down in the mouth. He had another arrow in his quiver – kept in reserve for reasons of his own – a shaft from which he expected more profit than all yet spent. And as the Hussar colonel was swearing and raging around, he saw his opportunity to discharge it.

With half a dozen whispered words he tranquillised the latter; after which there was a brief conference between the two, its effect upon Santander showing itself in his countenance, that became all agleam, lit up with a satisfied but malignant joy.

When, in an hour after, they were again in their saddles riding in return for the city, a snatch of dialogue between Santander and Ramirez gave indication of what so gratified the colonel of the Hussars.

“Well, Major,” he said, “we’ve done road enough for this day. You’ll be wanting rest by the time you get to quarters.”

“That’s true enough, Colonel. Twice to San Augustin and back, with the additional mileage up the mountains – twenty leagues I take it – to say nothing of the climbing.”

“All of twenty leagues it will be when we’ve done with it. But our ride won’t be over then. If I’m not mistaken, we’ll be back this way before we lay side on a bed. There’s another nest not far off will claim a visit from us, one we’re not likely to find so empty. I’d rob it now if I had my way; but for certain reasons, mustn’t without permit from headquarters; the which I’m sure of getting! Carajo! if the cock birds have escaped, I’ll take care the hens don’t.”

And as if to make sure of it, he dug the spurs deep into the flanks of his now jaded charger, again commanding the “quick gallop.”

Chapter Fifty Six

A Day of Suspense

Dawn was just beginning to show over the eastern Cordilleras, its aurora giving a rose tint to the snowy cone of Popocatepec, as the Hussars passed back through San Augustin. The bells of the paroquia had commenced tolling matins, and many people abroad in the streets, hurrying toward the church, saw them – interrogating one another as to where they had been, and on what errand bound.

But before entering the pueblo they had to pass under the same eyes that observed them going outward on the other side; these more keenly and anxiously scrutinising them now, noting every file as it came in sight, every individual horseman, till the last was revealed; then lighting up with joyous sparkle, while they, thus observing, breathed freely.

For the soldiers had come as they went, not a man added to their number, if none missing, but certainly no prisoners brought back!

“They’ve got safe off,” triumphantly exclaimed the Countess, when the rearmost files had forged past, “as I told you they would. I knew there was no fear after they had been warned.”

That they had been warned both were by this aware, their messenger having meanwhile returned and reported to that effect. He had met the Hussars on their way up, but crouching among some bushes, he had been unobserved by them; and, soon as they were well out of the way, slipped out again and made all haste home.

He had brought back something more than a mere verbal message – a billetita for each of the two who had commissioned him.

The notes were alike, in that both had been hastily scribbled, and in brief but warm expression of thanks for the service done to the writers. Beyond this, however, they were quite different. It was the first epistle Florence Kearney had ever indited to Luisa Valverde, and ran in fervid strain. He felt he could so address her. With love long in doubt that it was even reciprocated, but sure of its being so now, he spoke frankly as passionately. Whatever his future, she had his heart, and wholly. If he lived, he would seek her again at the peril of a thousand lives; if it should be his fate to die, her name would be the last word on his lips.

“Virgen Santissima! Keep him safe!” was her prayer, as she finished devouring the sweet words; then, refolding the sheet on which they were written, secreted it away in the bosom of her dress – a treasure more esteemed than aught that had ever lain there.

The communication received by the Condesa was less effusive, and more to the point of what, under present circumstances, concerned the writer, as, indeed, all of them. Don Ruperto wrote with the confidence of a lover who had never known doubt. A man of rare qualities, he was true to friendship as to his country’s cause, and would not be false to love. And he had no fear of her. His liens with Ysabel Almonté were such as to preclude all thought of her affections ever changing. He knew that she was his – heart, soul, everything. For had she not given him every earnest of it, befriended him through weal and through woe? Nor had he need to assure her that her love was reciprocated, or his fealty still unfaltering; for their faith, as their reliance, was mutual. His letter, therefore, was less that of a lover to his mistress than one between man and man, written to a fellow-conspirator, most of it in figurative phrase, even some of it in cypher!

No surprise to her all that; she understood the reason. Nor was there any enigma in the signs and words of double signification; without difficulty she interpreted them all.

They told her of the anticipated rising, with the attempt to be made on Oaxaca, the hopes of its having a success, and, if so, what would come after. But also of something before this – where he, the writer, and his Free Lances would be on the following night, so that if need arose she could communicate with him. If she had apprehension of danger to him, he was not without thought of the same threatening herself and her friend too.

Neither were they now; instead, filled with such apprehension. In view of what had occurred on the preceding evening, and throughout the night, how could they be other? The dwarf must know more than he had revealed in that dialogue overheard by José. In short, he seemed aware of everything – the cochero’s complicity as their own. The free surrender of their watches and jewellery for the support of the escaped prisoners were of itself enough to incriminate them. Surely there would be another investigation, more rigorous than before, and likely to have a different ending.

With this in contemplation, their souls full of fear, neither went that morning to matins. Nor did they essay to take sleep or rest. Instead, wandered about the house from room to room, and out into the grounds, seemingly distraught.

They had the place all to themselves; no one to take counsel with, none to comfort them; Don Ignacio, at an early hour, having been called off to his duties in the city. But they were not destined to spend the whole of that day without seeing a visitor. As the clocks of San Augustin were striking 8 p.m. one presented himself at the gate in the guise of an officer of Hussars, Don Carlos Santander. Nor was he alone, but with an escort accompanying. They were seated in the verandah of the inner court, but saw him through the saguan, the door of which was open, saw him enter at the outer gate, and without dismounting come on towards them, several files of his men following. He had been accustomed to visit them there, and they to receive his visits, however reluctantly, reasons of many kinds compelling them. But never had he presented himself as now. It was an act of ill-manners his entering unannounced, another riding into the enclosure with soldiers behind him; but the rudeness was complete when he came on into the patio still in the saddle, his men too, and pulled up directly in front of them, without waiting for word of invitation. The stiff, formal bow, the expression upon his swarthy features, severe, but with ill-concealed exultation in it, proclaimed his visit of no complimentary kind.

By this both were on their feet, looking offended, even angry, at the same time alarmed. And yet little surprised, for it was only confirmation of the fear that had been all day oppressing them – its very fulfilment. But that they believed it this they would have shown their resentment by retiring and leaving him there. As it was, they knew that would be idle, and so stayed to hear what he had to say. It was —

“Señoritas, I see you’re wondering at my thus presenting myself. Not strange you should. Nor could any one more regret the disagreeable errand I’ve come upon than I. It grieves me sorely, I assure you.”

“What is it, Colonel Santander?” demanded the Countess, with sang-froid partially restored.

“I hate to declare it, Condesa,” he rejoined, “still more to execute it. But, compelled by the rigorous necessities of a soldier’s duty, I must.”

“Well, sir; must what?”

“Make you a prisoner; and, I am sorry to add, also the Doña Luisa.”

“Oh, that’s it!” exclaimed the Countess, with a scornful inclination of the head. “Well, sir, I don’t wonder at your disliking the duty, as you say you do. It seems more that of a policeman than a soldier.”

The retort struck home, still further humiliating him in the eyes of the woman he loved, Luisa Valverde. But he now knew she loved not him, and had made up his mind to humble her in a way hitherto untried. Stung by the innuendo, and dropping his clumsy pretence at politeness, he spitefully rejoined —

“Thank you, Condesa Almonté for your amiable observation. It does something to compensate me for having to do policeman’s duty. And now let it be done. Please to consider yourself under arrest; and you also, Señorita Valverde.”