The Free Lances: A Romance of the Mexican Valley

The cochero it was, José, though they knew not his name, nor anything more of him than what they had learned in that note of the Condesa’s, saying that he could be trusted, and their brief association with him afterwards – which gave them proof that he could.

As he presented himself inside the room he seemed panting for breath, and really was. He had only just arrived up the steep climb, and exchanged hardly half a dozen words with the major-domo, who had met him at the outside entrance.

Announced as a messenger, neither the Captain of the Free Lances nor Florence Kearney needed telling who sent him. A sweet intuition told them that. Rivas but asked —

“How have you found the way up here?”

“Por Dios! Señor, I’ve been here before – many’s the time. I was born among these mountains – am well acquainted with all the paths everywhere around.”

“But the sentry below. How did you get past him? You haven’t the countersign!”

“He wouldn’t have heard it if I had, Señor. Pobre! he’ll never hear countersign again – nor anything else.”

“Why? Explain yourself!”

“Esta muerto! He lies at the bottom of the cliff, his body crushed – ”

“Who has done it? Who’s betrayed us?” interrupted a volley of voices.

“The hunchback, Zorillo,” answered José, to the astonishment of all. For in the dialogue between the dwarf and Santander, he had heard enough to anticipate the ghastly spectacle awaiting him on his way up the mountain.

Cries of anger and vengeance were simultaneously sent up; all showing eager to rush from the room. They but waited for a word more.

Rivas, however, suspecting that the messenger meant that word for himself, claimed their indulgence, and led him outside, inviting Kearney to accompany them.

Though covering much ground, and relating to many incidents, the cochero’s story was quickly told. Not in the exact order of occurrence, but as questioned by his impatient listeners. He ran rapidly over all that happened since their parting at the corner of the Coyoacan road, the latter events most interesting them. Surprised were they to hear that Don Ignacio and his daughter for some time had been staying at San Augustin – the Condesa with them. Had they but known that before, in all probability things would not have been as now. Possibly they might have been worse; though, even as they stood, there was enough danger impending over all. As for themselves, both Mexican and Irishman, less recked of it, as they thought of how they were being warned, and by whom. That of itself was recompense for all their perils.

Meanwhile those left inside the room were chafing to learn the particulars of the treason, though they were not all there now. Some had sallied out, and gone down the cliff to bring up the body of their murdered comrade; others, the major-domo conducting, back to the place where the hunchback should be, but was not. There to find confirmation of what had been said. The cell untenanted; the window bar filed through and broken; the file lying by it, and the chain hanging down outside.

Intelligible to them now was the tale of treason, without their hearing it told.

When once more they assembled in the Refectory, it was with chastened, saddened hearts. For they had come from digging a grave, and lowering into it a corpse. Again gathered around the table, they drank the stirrup-cup, as was their wont, but never so joylessly, or with such stint.

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.”