“Because he is mine to maltreat, and I wish to do it myself.”
The peon crawled and squirmed to the Jefe’s feet and begged and entreated not to be given up. But he begged for mercy where was no mercy.
“Certainly, senor,” the Jefe said to the haciendado. “We give him back to you. We must uphold the law, and he is your property. Besides, we have no further use for him. Yet is he a most excellent peon, senor. He has done what no peon has ever done in the history of Panama. He has told the truth twice in one day.”
His hands tied together in front of him and hitched by a rope to the horn of the overseer’s saddle, the peon was towed away on the back-track with a certain apprehension that the worst of his beatings for that day was very imminent. Nor was he mistaken. Back at the plantation, he was tied like an animal to a post of a barbed wire fence, while his owner and the friends of his owner who had helped in the capture went into the hacienda to take their twelve o’clock breakfast. After that, he knew what he was to receive. But the barbed wire of the fence, and the lame mare in the paddock behind it, built an idea in the desperate mind of the peon. Though the sharp barbs of the wire again and again cut his wrist, he quickly sawed through his bonds, free save for the law, crawled under the fence, led the lame mare through the gate, mounted her barebacked, and, with naked heels tattooing her ribs, galloped her away toward the safety of the Cordilleras.
CHAPTER IX
In the meantime the Solanos were being overtaken, and Henry teased Francis with:
“Here in the jungle is where dollars are worthless. They can buy neither fresh horses, nor can they repair these two spineless creatures, which must likewise be afflicted with the murrain that carried off the rest of the haciendado’s riding animals.”
“I’ve never been in a place yet where money wouldn’t work,” Francis replied.
“I suppose it could even buy a drink of water in hell,” was Henry’s retort.
Leoncia clapped her hands.