XVIII
Shortly before dawn the next morning the train stopped at the quarry-siding of Piedras Blancas, where the cooks of a squadron of Meruel Reds were preparing broth and maté with water from the railway tanks.
“There you are, lad,” the driver said, as he bade Hi good-bye. “Here’s a wheen good law-and-order men to give yon marauding Manuel his paiks. More power to ye, sons,” he cried, raising his voice. “And hang yon idolatrous Deeck Turpin on a sour apple-tree.”
On leaving the train, Hi slipped through the crowd of quarry men and soldiers, out of the siding to the road. Men and horses were coming from their billets in the village. The cliff of the quarry loomed out white: the stone dust made the village like moonlight or a flour mill.
Turning rapidly away downhill, he came to a grassy bank, where he breakfasted on food which the girl had provided. As he ate, all that expanse of the plain came into light and colour from the morning: he could see.
There, far away, was Santa Barbara, glittering under a smudge of mist, which hung over the violet of the sea. There, less than half way to the city, was the hill to which he had been struggling all these days. That heave of hill, topped by the church tower, one pinnacle of which was a statue of Our Lady, was the hill of Anselmo, distant. . . . He could not say how far distant it was, in that deceptive light: “Ten miles,” they had said, but it might well be fifteen. “Oh, for a telescope or a pair of glasses,” he said, “then I could see if the White army is there. That is where it must be.”
As he turned towards Anselmo, he heard the sergeants of the Meruel Reds calling the roll at the siding.
“Those fellows are here for no good,” he thought. “I’ll get along to Don Manuel before I am stopped.”
The sun strode up out of the sea to give to the country a beauty, unspeakable to one who had been for a week in the gloom of the forest. To the joy of the light was added a beauty of overwhelming blossom, so great that the soul of the earth seemed to be exulting in the sun.
“I shall reach Don Manuel after all,” he said. “I shall be actually with him when we save Carlotta from the prison. And, oh, thank God, after all, I have helped a little, for Rust has gotten through.”
After an hour and a half of walking, he was so far down into the plain that Anselmo was almost merged in the tree clumps at its base. It seemed to be less than two miles to the tower. The track led through clumps of ilex into groves of timber, among which a brook ran. As he passed into the cover of the ilex, he looked back at the land from which he had come, at the foothills like an advanced guard and the mountains like an army of kings. On the track by which he had come, he saw horsemen coming in twos at a rather quick trot. “There are those soldiers who were at the station,” he thought. “They are coming this way, too. Can they be coming to join Don Manuel?”
Why should they not be? They were State troops, but in civil wars, troops sometimes pass from the State to its rebels. “They can’t be coming to attack him, anyway,” he thought, “for there aren’t a hundred of them, and Don Manuel has thousands, so they said. If Don Manuel be in the village there, they’ll meet their match.”
It came into his mind that if these men were coming to attack, or if Don Manuel, being at Anselmo, came out to attack them, his own position, between the two forces, would be perilous. He therefore hurried through the cover, and pastures beyond to a copse of Turkey-oak which hid all sight of Anselmo hill. As he went, he listened for some sound of Don Manuel’s army, the noise of many hoofs, the call of bugles, the shouting of orders, or even a shot from a picket. As he heard no such sounds he concluded that the army was not there. “Perhaps it has gone on to Santa Barbara,” he thought. “I may be just too late for it, through sleeping too long yesterday.”
Then he thought, “It is more likely that they are all in Anselmo town on the other side of the hill. And more likely still that they haven’t yet reached Anselmo. They’ve been coming a long way on very bad going; they’re bound to have crocked a lot of horses. That’s it, no doubt. I’ve got here before them. In which case, good Lord, those Reds behind me will probably take me prisoner. I’d better hide in this copse till they’ve gone on or shown their hand.”
He had not gone far into the copse of Turkey-oak, when he suddenly found that the further half of the copse was full of soldiers. His first thought was, “Here are the Whites,” but a clearer view showed him that they wore dusty reddish Meruel uniforms such as he had seen at the station at dawn.
“Meruel Reds,” he thought, “I wish I knew which side they are on.”
To hesitate would have looked suspicious: he walked boldly on.
“I shall jolly soon know which side they’re on,” he thought. “They’re Reds. I’ll bet my burial money.”
Those whom he saw were single mounted troopers, each holding three unmounted horses. All were craned forward on their horses’ necks intently watching something that was being done outside the copse towards Anselmo. Beyond these horseholders, some dismounted troopers with carbines at the ready were at the edge of the copse, also intently watching. Two officers who were there staring at Anselmo through glasses, caught sight of Hi. One of them challenged in Spanish and at once moved up to him, to ask who he was, and what he wanted there.
“I am English,” Hi answered, “I am going to Anselmo.”
“What for?” the officer asked, in good English.
“To see George Elena?”
“Who is he?”
“A horse-breeder.”
“What about?”
“To borrow a horse to get back to Santa Barbara.”
“Where do you come from?”
“I’ve been lost in the forest.”
“How?”
“Well, I lost my way.”
“Oh, you lost your way, did you,” the officer said, becoming somewhat harder in his manner. “Why do you wear that coat and hat? you are not a native here. Why are you disguised?”
“My own clothes were ruined in the forest as you can see,” Hi said. “Some kind people at San Marco, where I came out of the forest, gave me these to make up.”
The other officer moved over to them, to ask what his brother had asked.
“So, a sacred pekin,” he said. They talked in Spanish for a moment, with looks at Hi which were not favourable.
“Zubiga,” the elder officer called, to a couple of orderlies, who jumped forward at the order, “Take this man in charge.” Then turning to Hi, he said, “You will stand aside a little. We will see later.”
“Mayn’t I go on to Anselmo?”
“No: sacred pekin, you mayn’t.”
They left him with the orderlies, while they returned towards the edge of the copse to watch what their scouts were doing. “They are sending out spies,” Hi thought. “I’ve come just too late. Don Manuel is up the hill in Anselmo, and if I’d only been here an hour sooner, I’d have joined him before these devils arrived. Now I’m diddled again.”
After some minutes of suspense, the squadron from Piedras Blancas entered the copse. The officer in charge of it took the salute of the two officers who had stopped Hi; he spoke to them both, went to the edge of the copse, to watch what was being done, talked for a few minutes there, and then came to Hi. He was an elderly man, with a frank, fearless face, and the pug-nosed look of a lightweight boxer.
Like all the officers of the army he spoke English.
“When were you last in Anselmo?” he asked.
“I have never been there.”
“Never; yet you know people there. Do you speak Spanish?”
“No: unfortunately. I’ve only been about a fortnight in this country.”
“Where were you last night?”
“In the ore-train coming from San Marco to Piedras Blancas.”
“Where were you yesterday?”
“At San Marco.”
“Did you see or hear anything of a rebel army at San Marco?”
“No.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“What are you doing in this country? How did you come here?”
Hi told him as much as he thought sufficient: it did not ring quite true. The officer seemed puzzled.
“Were you in Piedras Blancas this morning?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You saw these troops?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see troops yesterday?”
“No.”
“Yet you saw these this morning, you say?”
“Yes.”
“And at once decided that you would bring the news of what you had seen to Anselmo?”
“Not at all,” Hi said. “I’m not a spy. I happen to know that the Elenas in Anselmo have horses, and as they know friends of mine in Santa Barbara I hoped to borrow a horse to ride home on.”
The officer frowned.
“There’s something not quite right, somewhere,” he said, “I don’t see what brings you here. What friends have you in Santa Barbara?”
“Mr. Winter of Quezon. Mr. Weycock of the Sugar Company knows me.”
“English people?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” the officer said. “Stand easy.”
He stood easy for a few seconds, considering, then he returned to Hi.
“You say you were taken to Ribote and then lost your way in the forest? What were you doing when you were taken to Ribote?”
“Going to Anselmo.”
“What for?”
“To see the Elenas’ horses.”
“You say this was ten days ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why should you see the Elenas’ horses?”
“My father is a horse-breeder in England.”
“If you’re lying,” the officer said, “it may be a very serious matter for you.”
“I am not lying,” Hi said: he hoped that he wasn’t. A couple of scouts rode in to the copse to report: the officer left Hi to examine them: he went with them to the copse-edge while they explained something. Hi could see them gesticulating, while the officer tried to get at the truth. After a minute’s thought, he called the other officers, explained the situation to them, and gave the order to mount. Seeing Hi, he called to the orderly in Spanish to bring the boy with him. “Mount him on a spare horse,” he said.
“Sir,” Hi called out. “Will you not let me go on to Anselmo?”
“No, sacred pekin,” the pekin officer answered. “And make less noise.”
When the squadron had mounted, with Hi in their midst on a spare horse, the files moved away out of the copse into the open. They moved across a scrubby pasture in a direction parallel with Anselmo hill. Flankers rode out to their left, and all eyes were turned to the left, not to Anselmo, but to a roll of rising ground beyond it. “That is where Don Manuel is, then,” Hi thought.
As they drew clear of the trees, Hi had for a moment a good view of Anselmo. It was like one of the little hill cities which he had seen in Italy, except that it was smaller than any, and stood upon a smaller hill. A clump of trees grew on the hillside so as to hide most of the wall with gray-green leaves. From the edge of the wood the white church tower rose, topped by its statue.
When this was about a mile behind them, the troops came over the roll of ground into sight of the plain stretching on into the west. There, rather more than a mile away, was a big white estancia with a haras or horse-breeding stable beside it, below three conspicuous windmill pumps. About half a mile beyond this, moving slowly towards Santa Barbara, was a large body of mounted men, with flankers thrown out on both sides, and many spare horses.
“There they are,” everybody said at once. “There it is,” Hi said to himself. “That is Don Manuel’s army, or a part of it; and that big breeding stable is the Elenas’ place, where I ought to have been ten days ago.
“And now,” he thought, with a quickening pulse, “I shall probable see a battle; and these hundred odd Reds will get licked as they deserve.”
However, the officer of his party had no intention of engaging. He hung to the rear of the moving army for rather more than a mile: then, at a crossing of tracks, he turned away directly to Santa Barbara and gave the order to trot. It was perhaps ten in the morning when they left the cross roads: it must have been mid-day when they halted at the Inn of the Little Foxes, where a trooper, bearing a red pennon, stood at the door: the inn being a headquarters of some kind.
The commander went into the inn to report and to ask for orders. He was gone for a quarter of an hour, during which a shot was fired a mile or two to the west. It was followed by several shots, of different qualities, answering each other. After this, though the firing often almost ceased, and sometimes sounded from further away, it never quite ceased and on the whole drew nearer. It was all independent firing.
It reminded Hi of the sounds of pheasant shooting at home in the unpreserved downland coverts where birds are scarce.
When the commander came out, another officer was with him. This one seemed to be a general, preparing to ride. He was flicking his spotless boots with a silk handkerchief, and walking with an arch of the legs caused partly by tight breeches, partly by affectation. “Where is this English fellow?” he called.
“There, sir,” the commander said. “Bring him up, you.” Hi was led forward.
“I believe, boy, that you are a spy,” the general said. “I’ve a good mind to shoot you. Most soldiers in my place would shoot you. As it happens, my orders are not to shoot aliens, but to send them in for trial; which I shall do. You will go in to Santa Barbara till your case can be sifted a little. Any misfortune which happens to you you will have brought upon yourself.” He called in Spanish to some troopers to take Hi to the waggons which were about to start under escort to the city. He also gave them a few written words about Hi’s case for the escort commander. As Hi now knew what answer any officer would give to him, if he replied, he held his peace. The troopers gave him into the charge of the escort of the waggon, who told him, in English, to get into a waggon. When Hi asked which waggon, for there were half a dozen tilted army waggons all of one pattern, the man told him that he did not care which waggon, but that if he did not get into one straightaway he would break his face. “Get into that one there,” he cried, “and don’t show your face outside the tilt or you’ll get a butt in the lip.”
“You can’t come in here,” an Englishman, inside the waggon said, “this one is full up.”
“What are you waiting for?” the escort called. “Get in.”
“It is full up,” Hi said.
“Full up,” the man replied. “Who says it’s full up? You sacred suspects should all be shot if I’d my way. I’ll see if you’re full up. Get in. Make way for him, you. Now get in.” With a cudgel which he carried he poked the suspects till they made room; then Hi was thrust in among them.
The waggon was full. It contained an Englishman with a Spanish wife and three little children; an elderly American in the pineapple trade; an imbecile of doubtful nationality who dribbled at the mouth and gurgled in the throat; a strong young native woman in hysterics; an old woman who was drunk; her grandson, who had eaten something which had disagreed with him; three native men, one of them very old and infirm, the second shot in the body, unconscious and plainly near death, the third in a dreadful condition with fever. On the top of the discomforts of Hi’s entrance, the waggons started.
“Why couldn’t you have gone to one of the other waggons?” the Englishman said. “You could have seen that this was full, one would have thought.”
“I had to do what I was told,” Hi said. “It’s not my fault.”
“At least you can give a lady room,” the man replied, “you can see that there’s a lady here in an interesting condition.”
“I am sorry,” Hi said, moving as far as he could, “I did not see.”
“Any man of decent feeling would stand up,” the man said. “But perhaps you don’t come from the fobug St. German.”
“Where is that?”
“Oh, perhaps you don’t understand Latin; it’s where manners is.”
“Well, I wish we were there,” Hi said.
“That touched you where you live,” the American said. “This kid ain’t to blame for coming here. Though I’ll roast this gol-derned Government for putting him.”
“Ay, ay, ay, de mi,” the young woman called, as she rose to a sitting posture and clawed with both hands in the faces beside her.
“Come off with all that, Angelita,” the American said. “You, mister, catch a holt of that hand and I’ll catch a holt of this; then she won’t do us an injury.” Hi caught one of the arms of the young woman as he was bid, but she was strong in the arm and writhing all ways at once. “Gee,” the American said, “this young woman will ask her husband how about it when he comes home from his Lodge; she won’t wait till day dawns.”
As Hi hove down the arm of the young woman, the imbecile began to coo at him, with symptoms of affection. Presently the Englishman, who was a tall, thin, hatchet-faced man, with little moustaches waxed at the ends, said: “That captain-man ought to be shot for sending a lady in such a state in a waggon like this. I have been here five years and this is my reward. My wife now is going to be sick. It is the fresh air beating upon her, in her present state.”
The old woman, who was drunk, here shoved her grandson to the tail-board of the waggon; the fresh air seemed to have beaten upon him.
“This is a nice way to send a lady to the city,” the Englishman said. “That boy ought to be ashamed of himself. As for that captain-man, I shall complain to the Government. It is a marvel that she doesn’t miscarry.”
“She’ll run a darned good chance of that,” the American said. “The Whites will be here this afternoon. There’ll be fighting in the streets to-night. So if you know a good snug cellar in a back street, get to it, pronto.”
Here the three children of the Englishman began to cry; their mother, who was a big woman with a white fat face and jowl, boxed their ears for crying. The drunken woman, having soothed her grandson a little, drank from a bottle; then, rising from the floor to her feet, tried to dance, lifting her skirts to her knee. All this time the waggon was swaying forward at a good pace on a rough road; the children were weeping, the Englishman was growling, the young woman was writhing and hysterical, the old man was motionless, the dying man gasping for air, and the man with the fever was shivering. Hi and the American were trying to keep the girl in one place. The imbecile, who had decided that he liked Hi, kept pressing close to him and patting the back of his neck. Hi, who had no free hand, kept warding him off with his elbow; but the creature, perhaps mistaking this for a return of affection, pressed back, cooing.
The girl suddenly shook herself free and shrieked at the top of her voice. She did not know what she was doing; all her young muscular body was out of control. Hi remembered tales in the Bible of people who “had a devil”; this young woman had a devil, or the devil had her. “Look out, kid,” the American called, “she’s into the hay-lot, your side.”
“Come back,” Hi called. “Be quiet, señorita; it’s all right. We’re all friends here.”
“Friends,” the American said, “I guess we are. It’s these darned Santa Barbarians who are the enemies in this land. They’ll knock my apple season galley west. Lie still, Angelita, lie still.”
“It’s all these hidalgos,” the Englishman said. “They cause the trouble in this land. What this land wants is to be opened up to free competition and progress. It wants white men. These priests and these hidalgos are fallacies; they ought to have been exploded long ago. If the English Government doesn’t step in, it ought to be made to. My wife is a Pinamente; one of the oldest families, if we had our rights; and here these soldiers, these fine jacks-in-office, send her in a waggon like this.”
“I feel for her,” the American said, “being of a darned old family myself.”
At this moment, above the noise of the waggons, as they bumped and lurched along, there came the whine and beat of barbaric music. The waggons drew to the side of the track, while the music grew louder and went by. Some hundreds of horses in twos went by, with a scuffling up of dust and the stink of sweat, horses and hot leather.
“Pitubas moving out,” the American said. “I told you the Whites are coming. They’ll fight this day and the Whites’ll whip.”
“How do you know?” the Englishman asked.
“Because I’ve been in the fighting business; had three years of it, and I know fighters when I see them. Man for man, the Whites will put rings round these yellow devils.”
“You lie,” the old drunken woman said suddenly, in very good English, blinking like an owl. “Damn your soul, you lie.” She blinked, but said no more; as it happened, it was all the English she knew. The waggon halted by the side of the track as other music drew nearer.
“Their darned national anthem,” the American said, beginning to sing to the tune.
We will rally to the banner of our fathers,
In the land that we lo—o—o—ove so well;
We will rally to the banner of our fathers,
In the land where our lo—o—oved ones dwell.
Red the blood that we shed for our faith,
Red the flag that we cherish to the death,
Red our hope for our enemies’ confusion
In the land that we lo—o—ove so well.
“Perro de Rojo,” the old woman screamed. “Abajo, perro de Rojo,” she leaped up to a kneeling posture and spat in the American’s face.
“Now, now, momma,” he said, “That don’t go. You didn’t ought to spit at people, even when you’ve bit ’em and hate the taste.”
She snarled at him like a wild beast; then, seeing foot soldiers marching by in the dust stirred up by the Pitubas’ horses, she wrestled her way to the tail-board of the waggon, from which she cursed them for being Red.
“Come back into the waggon, mother,” the American said. “Gee, kid, catch a holt of mommer. These Reds will shoot her if she don’t let up.” An officer who was passing struck her with the flat of his sword in the face: “Keep in,” he said. “And you, driver, get on with you into the city.”
The waggon moved on slowly after that. Troops were passing, horse, foot and a few guns, with waggons and gear. They were in the suburbs by this time, among houses, in a stream of people who were setting into the city, carrying whatever they could from their homes in the threat of war. At the gate, there was delay and confusion; the waggon was jammed in the crowd, waiting its turn to pass. When they came through the gate, a big mulatto, with a bright green ostrich plume in his hat, looked under the tilt at them, and said, “Suspecteds. Take all Suspecteds to the Church of the Sanctity of Lopez, once called by the slaves of superstition Trinity.”
They had not far to go to this church. They passed a public square used as a camp for refugees, then they entered what seemed like a city of the dead, where none stirred out from the shuttered houses. As the guards herded them into the church once called the Trinity, Hi heard the distant fire of rifles, popping more constantly from the region through which he had passed.
“Skirmishers’ independent fire,” the American said. “If it comes nearer, it’s a sign the Whites have whipped; if it dies down, it’s a sign the Whites are whipped. Say,” he continued, to one of the Red officers at the church-door, “we here are American and English citizens. Don’t you think to gaol us, but send us to our Consuls.” He repeated this pointedly in Spanish. “We’re not going to stand for being gaoled,” he said.
“This is no gaol,” the officer explained, “but a shelter till affairs are resolved. Whom do you wish to see?”
“The American Consul.”
“And you?”
“The English Consul,” the Englishman said.
“And you?”
“I want to go to my hotel, the Santiago,” Hi said.
“It is closed.”
“Then to the English Club.”
“That, too, is closed.”
“Then the English Consul.”
The officer made notes in pencil upon a piece of paper. “Word will be sent at once to your Consuls,” he said. “Now enter.”
“I’ll be darned if I enter,” the American said.
Half a dozen troopers flung him violently into the church; Hi and the Englishman were flung in on top of him, and the doors were closed and locked upon them. Two English-speaking guards in the pulpit called out to them to be quiet.
“But we insist on seeing our Consuls.”
“Consuls sent for,” the men said. “Hold your rows.”
“I’ll bet the Consuls aren’t sent for,” the American said. “I know my darned Barbarians by this time.”