At that, Tránsita was upon her feet at once, nor paused until she was tugging at the teamster’s arms. The dirt was heaped upon his legs, and he had fainted with the pain, and such a dead weight she could not budge. She dropped the limp shoulders and began to claw the loose earth away. In a moment the left foot was free; but as she dragged it out, the dirt slipped down and revealed the corner of an iron-bound box resting upon the other leg. A sudden impulse led her to sweep back the soil until the end of the case was uncovered. The funny black marks there meant nothing to Tránsita—indeed, if any one had spelled out for her the “M-a-double-n-l-i-c-h-e-r,” I seriously doubt if that grewsome German name would have made her any the wiser. But if she did not know letters from ten-penny nails, and was equally ignorant of the inventions and the existence of Germany, Tránsita was no fool. For a moment her brown face looked more than usually dull. Then a slow grayness crept into it, and there was a hitch in her breath.
She looked up at the Misti appealingly, and then down at the box, staring as if fascinated. Presently the rather heavy jaw set stubbornly. She lifted the corner of the box an inch, by a violent effort, pried her shin against the sharp edge to hold it, and laboriously dragged out the imprisoned foot. Then she scraped the earth over until the box was well hidden again, and leaving the liberated but unconscious teamster where he lay, went racing down the street like one gone daft.
“This is a pretty story to bring to the cuartel, daughterling,” said Captain Yrribarri, fifteen minutes later. Corporal Eugénio had no sooner heard his sister’s breathless message than he brought her before the commanding officer, and there she had rehearsed it all, unshaken by questionings and banter. “It has to be true,” she declared, over and over, “else mi taita Misti never would have showed me.”
“A girl’s nonsense,” the grave officer repeated. “And still—what do any boxes, thus hidden in loads of earth, and in these times? I mind me, now, that Don Telesfor has been hauling earth all the way from Yura these many weeks, when there is better at Carmen Alto. It is fit to be looked into, and by the saints, if thy guess is true, little one, thou shalt be corporal, or thy brother sergeant! Oyez, Eugénio! With a squad of thirty men surround Don Telesfor’s house and hold it tight that it leak not, while Pedro goes with five to verify the cart and the box. If that is nothing, they will report to you and you will return to quarters with the tongue behind the teeth; but if they shall find arms in the cart, keep the house and warn me.”
For my own part, I do not overly love the soldier-police of Arequipa, and have sometimes been angry enough to want to choke them for murdering my sleep with their abominable midnight whistles. But after all, I am glad that they were not all knocked on the head the night after the earthquake; for in spite of their ignorance and their skin and their ear-piercing way of announcing “All’s well,” they are a kindly, honest, well meaning set, who could be much better utilized than by clubbing. And particularly Eugénio, who is a very good boy and likes to talk with me, calling me “your grace.” He has told me many interesting things, and often sent a cholo to “tote” my heavy camera around. Sergeant Eugénio now, please—for Tránsita declined to be a corporal when the search revealed not only the one case of Mannlicher rifles in the dirt under the wrecked cart, but thirty cases more in Don Telesfor’s house, along with papers which left no doubt of his treason. Some fellow-conspirator must have warned him in time of the wayside accident, for though Eugénio and his men kept the house fully surrounded until a report came from the cart, when they broke in there was not a soul to be found.
None of the other plotters were known, and Don Telesfor eluded pursuit. It may or may not be true, as, I have been told, that he took asylum in Bolivia and was afterward drowned in trying to ford the Choqueyapu during a freshet; but, at all events, he never came back to revive his nipped revolution.
As for Tránsita, you might just as well try to tell her that the Misti is not there at all as that “He” did not specially and intentionally interpose to save the peace of his daughters and the head of Eugénio. I half believe her brother is secretly of the same opinion, for the superstition of the peak is very strong in Arequipa; though he shrugs his shoulders in a deprecatory way when put the direct question, and says evasively:
“Pues, who knows? So the women declare. For me it is enough that he did it, and in time, the same as if he knew.”