IX
“Come along,” Hi said, “wake up. Come on out of this.”
“What’s that?” the man said.
“Wake up, man,” Hi said, “we’ve got the door open; we can get away.”
The man sat up, pulled out a sheath-knife, spat, and said:
“I’ll cut your guts out.”
“Never mind my guts,” Hi said, “they’ll keep; but we may be spotted, if we don’t hurry.”
“Garrrr,” the man screamed, “Garrrr and guts. See? Garrrr and guts. Harrar.” He rose upon his feet, with a brandish of his knife. “Come on the lot of you,” he yelled, “you don’t daunt me. I’m Henery Peach Kezia and my blood’s vitriol. I’ll seal you for your tombstone. Harrar you planets, I’ll put some of your lights out, once I get a hold of you.” Here he lifted up his voice into a yell.
“Ayayayayay,” he yelled, “I’m the frog who would a-wooing go. See me hop.”
“Hop out of the door,” Hi said. He held the door so that the frog might hop. He was frightened not only of the madman, but of his noise, which might bring the guards.
“Where’s the door?” the man asked.
“Here.”
“Where’s here?” the man asked. “How am I to know where here is?”
“Are you blind?” Hi asked. “I didn’t know you were blind.”
“I been blind since I was a poor little orphan child,” the man said. “I only smell things. There’s a smell of roses here, or maybe it’s lavender. You guide me to the door, my dear young Bible friend. Just reach me your hand and the blessings of the poor blind man will follow you. Oh, Heaven bless you, my sweet young gentleman angel, Heaven will bless you for this.”
Hi had taken the man by the left arm, while he kept the door open with his body. The man came unsteadily through the opening into the yard.
“There,” he said, “there.” He drew a deep breath, suddenly wheeled upon Hi, stabbed at him with his knife, and screamed:
“And now I’ll cut your guts out, like I said.”
Hi had half expected something of the kind. By a twist of his body he shook himself clear, so that the door, at once swinging-to, struck Henery Peach Kezia and made him miss his stab.
“Don’t you think to dodge me like that, when my blood’s up,” Kezia said, “you young swine. I’ll cut you double for that. I’ll cut you crossways, so’s your own mother will deny you.” He began to laugh with a deep down, joyless chuckle, which made Hi’s blood run cold. He was not very steady on his feet, but he had a horrid danger about him, because of his sideways lurches. Hi dodged him in his rush, but not by much, for they were on the concrete slopes of the yard and Hi wore English walking-shoes, the man stockings. It was as bright as bright moonlight from the fire.
“Now, then,” Kezia said. “Now we’ll see. Some would have took pity on you; but not me. Do you see jouncer? This knife’s jouncer. And as soon as I’ve breathed on the blade he’s going into you.”
He panted on to the blade like a hound getting breath, then he made a sudden dart, missed by about a foot, and then followed with dreadful speed and certainty round and round the yard. The fire, wherever it was, burned up with a brighter blaze to light him. Hi aimed to reach the door into the municipal building, but the man was too close behind him for him to try to open it. He slipped on the concrete, caught one of the pillars which held the pent-house roof, and swung round it with such force that he struck Kezia from behind. The rush and excitement seemed to steady Kezia.
“Ha,” he said, “ain’t this fun? Ain’t this nice hide and seek? And I’ll bleed you into veal in the drain; white meat; eightpence a pound, prime cuts.”
Here there came a crash. Perhaps the brightness of the fire had been fed for the past twenty minutes by the timbers and rafters of the roof. These now suddenly gave way and launched the blaze into the pit of the wreck; the glare of the burning died at once from about them. Hi was in the dark, poised behind a pillar, trying to see the drunkard, who was near the desired door. There was silence for about thirty seconds, each was trying to see the other; at last the drunkard spoke.
“Say, brother,” he said, “will you shake hands and let’s be friends?”
“I can’t shake hands,” Hi said, “when you’ve got a knife in your hand.”
“The knife’s nothing. I took the knife out to cut you a nice nosegay from all these pretty little bloody roses.”
“That was kind of you,” Hi said.
“I love you,” the man said; “you are like a lovely little angel.”
“I am, rather,” Hi said. The darkness of the man seemed to edge a shade nearer.
“I love angels,” the man said.
“That’s right,” Hi said.
“I always loved angels,” the man said, “since a boy.”
“Stick to them,” Hi said; “you can’t do better.”
“You blasted young swine,” the man screamed, making a rush. “I’ll cut your gall and your milt and your pancridge.”
Hi had expected the rush; he slipped to the left as it surged out at him. The man had expected this movement; he slashed out sideways with his knife, but missed. He was after Hi on the instant, roaring, as he rushed, his war cry of “Harrar.” Hi twisted sharp to his right; the man followed, he seemed horribly near. Hi heard a splash, followed by an oath, and a fall; the man had put a foot into the drain and fallen.
Hi fled to the door into the hall, where he paused; the man had not risen; he was lying in a heap in the well or drain, muttering oaths. The fall may have hurt him: it had certainly knocked the fight out of him.
“Will you come and give me a hand up?” he said.
“No.”
“Oh, Lord, my leg’s broke, man; I can’t hurt you.”
“Rats.”
“God, man; I’d not leave you, if you’d got a broken leg.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“The bone’s coming through the calf of me leg; I’m just bleeding away.”
Hi did not answer this; the man went on:
“It’s pretty poor goods,” he said, “when an Englishman will leave another Englishman to rot in agony. Oh, the torment, it’s awful. I feel it corrupting the blood.”
Hi was touched by the man’s moans, but did not answer. The man groaned some more.
“Young fellow,” he said, “if I die, and I am dying, you’ll take my love to my poor mother? Mrs. Jones, her name is. She lives at No. 27, Cowpop Street, Sale, Cheshire. It’s the only house in the street with a brass knocker. Say my last thought was of her. And I want you to sing “Rock of Ages” over my tomb. It’s cruel to die in a foreign land, but I’d rest better after “Rock of Ages”. Won’t you come and just hold my head up; I can’t breathe; there’s darkness coming. Lift me; won’t you lift me?”
“No, I won’t,” Hi said.
“You young swine,” the man said; “it’s lucky for you you didn’t, for if you had, I’d have settled you.”
Hi went through the door and bolted it behind him. He tiptoed swiftly along the passage to the corridor down which the Indians had dragged him. The corridor stretched right and left along the length of the house. Hi could make out a staircase, the blackness of doors, and light in one place from a half-opened door. Hi listened.
All was silent at first. Then from somewhere upstairs he heard the noise of stealthy footsteps, moving slowly. To his right, from time to time, there was a little light fluttering noise, as though the wind were stirring an ill-fitting shutter or loosened jalousie. The man in the prison yard was quiet. The smell of tobacco smoke shewed that the other prisoner had passed that way.
Hi went quietly to the half-opened door, listened there, heard nothing suspicious, and peeped in.
The room was lit by an oil-lamp which had been turned so low that it stank. He could not see far into the room. From within there came again the fluttering noise, which was now not quite that of a shutter, but liker the yielding of paper under pressure, as though someone were opening a book and pressing the pages down so that it should remain open at the place. It gave Hi the sense that some industrious old man was working there in the half darkness gumming papers together.
He pushed the door very gently till he could see that the room was a kind of board-room, with shuttered windows. The table, from which the chairs had been flung back, was littered with papers. A big picture, partly out of its frame, was hanging askew on the wall to the right. Nobody was to be seen; but the noise of the pressed papers came from somewhere on the floor beyond the table.
Hi thought, “It is rats gnawing papers,” but on coming into the room he saw that it was a dead man beset by myriads of cockroaches. The man’s pockets had been turned inside out.
Hi suddenly whirled about in terror: someone was at his elbow.
He saw at once that he had no need to be terrified; it was the little man who had opened the prison door. He had stolen up in his silent way. He grinned at having scared Hi.
“Didn’t ’ear me, did yer, cocky?” he said. “Seen the stiff? They done him in and gone through him; grizzled party; one of these Digos. We’d better ’op it arter ’ere.”
Hi noticed that the man was carrying a long heavy ebony ruler which had been a part of the office equipment. He had the feeling that this was the man who had turned out the dead man’s pockets.
“Bleedin’ old beano goin’ on down the boulevard,” the man said; “kind of a Brock’s benefit. If they come on ’ere agine, the goin’ won’t ’elp us; we shan’t ’alf ’ave all right.”
He led the way out of the room and so away towards the front door, from which fresh air was blowing into the house. On the top step a great yellow pariah dog stood, longing to enter, but scared by their approach. He snarled and slunk away from them as they came out into the open. Moved by the thought that the dog might eat the body, Hi closed the door behind him.
That part of the town was empty of life, except for the moths about the globe of the electric light. The houses were shuttered and seemed to be deserted; but Hi saw that a great disorder had raged there since he had been thrust into the prison. Household gear of many kinds had been dragged into the street and left. Far away down the hill was the glow of the shell of the mansion, each window red as a furnace mouth. All the inhabitants, as well as the lancers, seemed to be at the fire, except a few who came thence quietly with sidelong glances, having pickings from the wreck under their cloaks.
“I’m goin’ to ’op it arter ’ere,” the man said. “No ’ot potitoes in mine. Coo lummy, what’s that?”
From the back of the city hall, from the direction of the prison yard, there came a sound of song, mixed with the tolling of a cuckoo. Henery Peach Kezia was lapping himself in soft Lydian airs:
O the cuckoo bird sings in the merry May morn.
Singing cuckoo, O cuckoo, how happy am I.
O cuckoo, O cuckoo, O cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
“It’s the drunkard,” Hi said.
“The stiff? You woke him?”
“Yes.”
Hi noticed that the man’s eyes were fixed upon him somewhat strangely.
“Which way you goin’, cocky?” he asked.
“Anselmo,” Hi said. “Do you know it?”
“I know it well,” the man said. “I don’t mind setting you there, or on the way there.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Hi said. “But are you going that way?”
“Never you mind where I’m going,” the man said. “You’re a damn sight too nosy.”
“No more nosy, as you call it, than you,” Hi answered. “I know the way to Anselmo; if it’s out of your own way, I can find it myself. But we’d better not go straight past the fire; we might be recognised.”
“Come along ’ere, cocky,” the man said. “If we go along this road a piece, we can easy cut across later.”
They turned up a road which opened to the north not far from the city hall. The houses near it were small adobe bungalows, with roofs of red tiles. The stars in the heaven shone like lamps.
“I say, look at the stars,” Hi said.
“Are you being pleasant?” the man asked. “You’re doing ‘Oh, the starlight’; but they’re cocky little bleeders, stars.”
They walked on together for a minute, till they were in the midst of a grove, where a night singing bird was making a plaintive, exquisite haunting call. The man paused.
“What was the nime of the plice you was goin’ to?” he asked.
“Anselmo.”
“Anselmo, that was it; Anselmo.” He seemed to think for an instant. “Well, there’s no plice of that nime anywheres abaht ’ere.”
“But you said you knew it,” Hi said.
“What was the nime agine?”
“Anselmo.”
“Oh, Anselmo,” the man said, “the plice you see over there?”
“No; over there,” Hi said, turning to point. Some instinct told him to look out, but it came a fraction of a second too late. He never knew certainly what happened next, because he was knocked unconscious by a blow on the point of his jaw, which ended the world for him for four minutes.
When he came to himself, with a dizzy head full of confusion, he tried to stand, but found that his feet hurt. Groping down to find out why, he found that his shoes were gone. Instead of them, a pair of old white deck shoes, with rubber soles, lay beside him in the track. Then a certain slackness at his waist seemed unaccustomed. He put his hand to his waist and found that his money belt was gone; then he found that his pockets had been searched: he had been robbed. He called aloud at this. Then he looked about for his companion, whom he at once judged to be the thief. There was neither sight nor sound of him. He had vanished into the night where he belonged. There was no sound of anyone running, no noise of steps, nor of bushes being thrust aside. The bird was still making a plaintive call in the tree.
“I can’t think what has happened,” Hi said. He sat down to try to compose himself. When he began to know that he had been knocked out, he wondered, “for how long?” The stars had not changed position much, so far as he could see, and there was still some warmth or so he thought in the toes of the shoes.
“He knocked me out and robbed me,” he thought. “I’d gladly have gone halves with him. I don’t know what the deuce to do now. Well, I must get to Anselmo, that’s the first thing. And it must be nearly midnight by this time and I’m further from Anselmo than I was when I started.”
He put on the deck shoes. There was a meanness in the theft of his shoes which hurt him more even than the loss of his precious pocket-book with the sprig of hermosita. When he had put on the shoes and felt their discomforts, as well as their kind, which was specially loathsome to him, he walked back to the town, he could not afterwards tell why. He had no very clear thought of what he was doing nor of what he ought to do, for the brains were still shaky in his head from the knock upon his jaw.
When he turned into the street in front of the city hall, he saw some of the lancers, followed by a mob, riding uphill towards him. He turned uphill away from them, till he was out of the town, in a rocky path near a pine wood. The lancers paused at the city hall, as though to bivouac. Hi felt a deadly weariness overcoming the need of reaching Anselmo.
“I am done,” he thought. “I have done nothing, but I have been through a good deal to-day. I must rest for a bit before I go on.” He was cold as well as weary, for the cold sea breeze was blowing. “It must be midnight,” he thought. “I will rest for just an hour among those rocks. If I had only not spoken to that officer at La Boca, I would have been fifty miles on beyond Anselmo by this.”
He was so stupid from fatigue and the blow that he paid little heed to his going, as he pushed through the scrub towards what looked like shelter. Suddenly he caught a whiff of scent, a rustle of movement and a gleam of something: he was aware that people were hiding there. A startled somebody, speaking intensely, in a hiss of anxiety, said “Padre? . . . padre mio?”
“I’m not the man,” Hi said.
Immediately somebody surged out of the darkness, flung him down and got him by the throat. He realised at once that he was in the hands of someone much stronger than himself, who could break his neck at will, if he made a noise. Some years before, at the Old Berks Steeplechases, he had seen a welsher caught by the crowd. When overtaken, the man had fallen and lain perfectly still, as though dead; this came back to Hi on the instant as wise.
The man who had grappled him got him well by the throat with one hand, while he reached back for his knife with the other. Hi saw a darkness of face staring into his, and beyond it pine boughs and stars. Other people were there: he smelt the scent of verbena: a woman’s voice gave a caution. A woman seemed to be trying to open a box of matches and to take out a match: her fingers fumbled on the matches and people whispered. A man who came hurriedly from among the rocks struck a match upon his trouser leg, screened and held it down. Hi saw a lot of faces staring with surprise at him. He counted four persons: an old woman with white hair, a girl with great black eyes, a man with a somewhat finicky pale face, like the Aztec in the waxworks (he was the one who held the match), and a swarthy, fierce, very splendid-looking young man who had him by the throat. Hi noticed the muscles in the clear brown flesh of the arms which held him. “Golly,” he thought, “this man could tear a pack of cards across.” At this instant the match went out.
“It’s all right,” Hi said. “I’m English.”
“Inglis,” they repeated. The younger of the two women asked him in halting English: “What you doing here?”
Hi felt inclined to ask them what they were doing there, four civilised people, with jewels and scents, in the wilderness at midnight, garrotting strangers. He said that he was going to Anselmo and that he had been robbed. They seemed to understand a part of what he said, but they were puzzled by it.
The man, who was holding him, allowed him to sit up and said something in apology for having been so rough.
“What are they doing in the city?” the young woman asked.
“They are plundering and robbing, Señorita,” Hi said.
At this instant some horses were heard trotting near to the pine clump. The man, who had held Hi, signed to him to remain still, while he stole away through the scrub to see who came. In a few minutes he returned with the riders of the horses, one of whom carried a lantern. This man was a swarthy, bearded, elderly don, more than sixty years of age, but still lean and alert. His face was both hard and melancholy, with something of watchfulness stamped on it by a life passed upon a frontier. He held up the lantern to examine Hi, while the others repeated to him Hi’s story of Anselmo, which he did not seem altogether to accept. “Allan Winter said there was a feeling against us,” Hi thought. “Now here it is.” He debated whether he should tell them that he was a White, going on a White errand. “It might be all right,” he thought. “But supposing it were all wrong. Supposing these people were really Reds. Then I should be in a fine mess.”
The family drew aside to debate what should be done. Presently the daughter left the group and explained to Hi that they had to ride to safety, that they did not doubt his good faith, but that their lives depended on leaving no witness of their going and that, in short, Hi must come with them.
“We are most sad to ask it,” she said, “but it is for our mother and sister. You see, this is war. They might kill us.”
“We not take you far,” the young man said. “We set you on your journey, when we get to friends.”
There was something good-natured and well-bred about the young man which won Hi, who was, in any case, too utterly weary to protest. He said he understood and would gladly do as they asked. The girl and the young man said that it was very nice of him to take it like that. They mounted him on one of their spare horses, and set off together, through a woodland track, which set, for a while, to the south, and then curved west. Hi watched the direction as well as he could by the stars, so as to keep his bearings clear. About north-north-west was his course, he judged. “Now here I am going south,” he thought. “The Lord alone knows when I shall get to Anselmo.” He fell asleep on his horse and knew nothing more of his journey till he was wakened by the horses stopping.
He saw that they had reached a point in the hill from which, looking down a ravine, they could see far below them the lights of the town and the glowing of the burnt house. The night wind had roused up the flames on the last of the wreck so that it made a beacon still. The riders were staring at this, all strangely moved. The two women were sobbing: the men were muttering curses, or prayers that were of the nature of curses.
“Ah, the accursed, the accursed.”
“For all this they shall pay sevenfold.”
“You saints that bear the sword grant me the sword that I may smite these accursed ones.”
“It is their home,” Hi thought, “where all their past lies burnt. They were chased out of it and then it was fired.”
The father interrupted the scene by saying, “It suffices. To-morrow is a new day: let us get to-morrow.” He took his wife’s rein and led the way on, the others followed him. Hi heard the nice young man say something to him, but he was too heavy with sleep to know what it was or to answer. He fell asleep again upon his horse. The high southern saddle kept him in his seat; sometimes he joggled forwards, sometimes backwards, while the horse went quietly on with the others.
At about two o’clock in the morning they came to a ranch which was guarded by mounted men. Here they all dismounted and went indoors (Hi with them) to what seemed to be a gathering of the clan.
There was a long room, lit by electric light, like all the houses in those hills even at that early age. There was a fire at one end of the room, for the night was cold enough. A maid of enormous strength, with a fine, square, good-humoured face, was making or dispensing maté among the gathering. There were perhaps forty men there, most of them talking at once, yet the room was so big that they did not crowd it.
As the party entered the room, the girl with the verbena scent noticed how weary Hi was.
“You are tired,” she said. “Enrique, this gentleman is weary. Anton, get him a maté.” (Enrique was the Aztec; Anton the nice one.)
“Sit down,” she said, showing a seat which ran round the wall. “Anton will bring you a maté.”
“You sit,” he said. “Let me bring you a maté.” Anton shoved him down on to his seat.
“Our guests do not wait, they are waited on,” he said. “You are not a Red, I am sure, to rob us of the last of all our pleasures.”
“I am a White,” Hi said.
“You are a White?” the girl said. “But we thought all you English were Reds.”
“I’m a heretic, of course,” Hi said, “but a White.”
Anton brought him a maté, which revived him. He saw the Aztec step into the midst of the gathering call for silence, and begin a long harangue, with many gestures. The babble of his voice, the heat of the room and more than twenty-four hours of strain together made him fall asleep with the bombilla in his hand.
This falling asleep may be said to mark the end of the first day of Hi’s going to warn Don Manuel. His going had not prospered, mainly because one of Don Lopez’ chief supporters, the half-breed Don Livio, a man of vengeful temper, had detached some lancers to burn the mansion of the Ribotes, who had had the misfortune to be the lords in the village in which he had passed his youth.
This act of private vengeance brought the lancers across Hi’s path at the wrong time.
While Hi was being checked by event after event, on this first day, Ezekiel Rust was riding to the west with his message. At the very moment, when Hi was falling asleep, Ezekiel Rust was rousing from his rest eighty miles away to begin his second day’s ride.