Roaming Through the West Indies

by Harry Alverson Franck

The first outpost advanced the detachment without question. The score of negroes who made it up seemed to be too excited with the taking of Grande Rivière to be any longer suspicious. Some five minutes later the group was again halted, this time by an outpost of some forty men. Their leader scrutinized the newcomers carefully one by one as they passed, the latter, in turn, shuffling along with bowed heads, as if they were completely exhausted with the climb from Grande Rivière, which was not far from the truth. Several of the bandits along the way were heard to remark in their slovenly “creole,” “Bon dieu, but those niggers are sure tired.” The third and fourth outposts gave the party no trouble, beyond demanding the countersign, except that casual questions were flung at them by the cacos scattered along the trail. These the disguised gendarmes answered without arousing suspicion. Perfectly as he knew “creole,” Hanneken avoided speaking whenever possible, and left the word to François, fearful of giving himself away by some hint of a foreign accent or a mischosen word from the southern dialect, with which he was more familiar. No white man, whatever his training, can equal the slovenly, thick-tongued pronunciation of the illiterate Haitian.

At the fifth outpost the leader was a huge, bulking negro as large as Hanneken, and he stood on the alert, revolver half raised, as the detail approached. The giving of the countersign did not seem to satisfy him. He looked Hanneken up and down suspiciously and asked him a question. The captain, pretending he was out of breath, mumbled an answer and stalked on. It happened to be his good luck that he is blessed with high cheek bones and a face that would not be instantly recognized as Caucasian on a dark night. Button, on the other hand, seemed to arouse new suspicion. He was carrying an automatic rifle and, in order to conceal the magazine, bore it vertically across his chest, his arms folded over it. The negro sentry caught the glint of the barrel and snatched Button by the arm.

“Where did you get such a fine-looking rifle?” he demanded.

Hanneken, scenting trouble, had halted several paces beyond, his hands on the butts of the revolver and the automatic which he carried on his respective hips. It would have been easy to kill the suspicious negro, but that would have been the end of his hopes of reaching Charlemagne—and probably of the two Americans. For though the disguised gendarmes were all armed with carbines, they would have been no match for the swarms of cacos about them, even if their taut nerves did not give way in flight under the strain.

Button, however was equal to the occasion.

“Let me go!” he panted, jerking away from the negro leader. “Don’t you see that my chief is getting out of sight?”

The black giant, still suspicious, yielded with bad grace, and the Americans hurried on. The sixth outpost was the immediate guard over Charlemagne, about thirty paces from where he had spread his blanket for the night. François gave the countersign, took two or three steps forward, whispered in Hanneken’s ear, “he is up there,” and slipped away into the bushes. The gendarmes had likewise disappeared. The Americans advanced to within fifteen feet of a faintly blazing camp-fire. On the opposite side of it a man stood erect, his silk shirt gleaming in the flickering light. He was peering suspiciously over the fire, trying to recognize the newcomers. A woman was kneeling beside the heap of fagots, coaxing it to blaze. A hundred or more cacos were lined up to the right, at a respectful distance from the peering chief.

Two negroes, armed with rifles, halted the Americans, at the same time cocking their pieces. Hanneken raised his black, invisible automatic and fired at the chief beyond the fire, at the same time shouting, “Let her go, Button!” in an instant the kneeling woman scattered the fire with a sweeping gesture and plunged the spot in darkness. Button was spraying the line of cacos to the right with his machine-gun. The disguised gendarmes came racing up and lent new legs to the fleeing bandits. When a space had been cleared, Hanneken placed his handful of soldiers in a position to offset a counter-attack, and began groping about the extinguished fire. His hands encountered a dead body dressed in a silk shirt. This, however, was no proof that his mission had been accomplished. Some of Charlemagne’s staff might have boasted silk shirts, also. He ran his hands down the body to a holster and drew out the pearl-handled revolver which he had loaned to Conzé, and which had been appropriated in turn by Charlemagne. The caco-in-chief had been shot squarely through the heart.

When daylight came, the hilltop was found to be strewn with the bodies of nine other bandits, while trails of blood showed that many more had dragged themselves off into the bushes. Among the wounded, it was discovered later, was St. Remy, the brother of Charlemagne, who afterward died of his wounds. The captured booty included nine rifles, three revolvers, two hundred rounds of ammunition, seven swords, fifteen horses and mules, and Charlemagne’s voluminous correspondence. This latter was of special value, since it contained the names of the good citizens of Port au Prince and the other larger cities who had been financing the caco-in-chief. Most of them are now languishing in prison. But let me yield the floor to Captain Hanneken’s official diary of the events that followed. Its succinctness is suggestive of the character of the man:

Nov. 1, 1919.—Killed Charlemagne Péralte, Commander-in-Chief of the bandits. Wounded St. Remy Péralte. Brought Charlemagne’s body to Grande Rivière, arriving 9 A. M. Went to Cap Haïtien with the body. Received orders to proceed to Fort Capois next morning. Went to Grande Rivière via handcar, arriving 9 P. M. Wrote report re death of Charlemagne. Left Grande Rivière with seven gendarmes, via handcar to Bahon, arriving midnight.