He would kill the smile.
He climbed down the bamboo ladder and, beneath the floor, went directly to the big net, hanging from post to post. From one of the flaccid folds he drew an object. In three leaps he was up again, and in the faint light of his little tin lamp, for a while he acted like a child with a doll. He crouched down, the thing upon his knee, spoke to it with tender accent, stroked it with long, gentle caress. But it was not a doll; it was a gun, a dainty Mauser carbine. It was oiled and polished, and beautiful, but he spent two hours over it, cleaning, oiling, snapping the delicate machinery. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he went down again and laid the precious toy among the secretive folds of the net.
The following evening, as in the moonlight the Sergeant rode out to inspect the outposts, a shot rang near and a bullet wailed overhead. Pedro, through the bush screening him, saw the great horse shy and rear, saw the Sergeant's graceful, almost lazy recover. Then man and beast stood still, black, statuesque in the sheen of moon, the horse with ears cocked forward, trembling beneath the compelling reining hand, the man erect and proud on the high-pommelled saddle. There was a silence long as infinity. The horse champed resoundingly at the heavy Mexican bit. Pedro panted. Slowly the Sergeant turned his head, from the thicket to the right, to the golden ribbon of road ahead, then smoothly, in imperceptible movement, to the left. His eyes were upon Pedro; they seemed to pierce the screen of brush to halt penetratingly upon the assassin. And upon the face, clear in the moonlight, appeared the smile.
A sense of immense helplessness whelmed Pedro; he crouched lower; his hands, flaccid, dropped their hold upon the gun which sank softly in the high cogon. There was a long, throbbing silence. Then the tinkle of spur rang out in silvery note. With an elastic bound the horse leaped forward, immediately to be checked by the powerful guiding hand; and slowly they moved down the moonlit road, horse and man, huge, black, granite-hewn—unconquerable.
But Pedro, sneaking back, low behind the thicket, pressed both hands to his breast as if to hold there the germ of an idea he felt within; and with feverish haste hiding his gun, he crouched down at his accustomed place to face it. It was a dolorous process. The thing sparked, flamed, wavered, went out completely, sparked anew. He contemplated it fixedly, encouraged it, fanned it; and finally for a moment it blazed, vivid, calm, unforgettable.
"Alipusta!" he shouted triumphantly; "alipusta—contempt!" "Alipusta," he repeated slowly, contemplatively, the triumph of discovery sinking into the ashes of realisation. Yes, that was it; it was contempt, that smile, the smile of his caybigan; contempt, thorough, tranquil, absolute.
II
During the following days, Pedro worked with renewed frenzy. There was some rumour of the presence of an Insurrecto camp near the pueblo somewhere. Pedro went about the taos, cajoled, threatened, flattered, begged, cross-questioned, menaced in the full exercise of his singular gift, progressing from rumour to probability, from probability to certainty, and then he searched the country like a hound, along subterranean trails, springing from trace to trace, hour after hour closer. But all the time he shot sly side glances at his big caybigan, in ambush for the smile, the smile of contempt which, as he worked more and more feverishly, nearer and nearer success, came to the Sergeant's lips with growing frequency, with less and less restraint, with increasing insolence. And at his heart a desire gnawed, a black, obscure desire for something, something—he could not tell what—something he could not determine, but which now was indispensable to him, without which he could not live; something that tasted like water to his thirst, but was not water. He wished no more to kill; the new longing overwhelmed the other more primitive impulse. It was something bigger, grander, more magnificent; it tore at his bowels, a want, vague, unnamable, but of corrosive violence. On the third day they located the camp; travelling sinuously along a trace of trail they saw at last, through the bamboo thicket, the pointed roof of the Insurrecto cuartel—a nipa hut in the centre of a clearing. They stopped a moment in consultation; then Pedro slid smoothly through the cogon toward the camp. Half-an-hour later he was back, sprang up suddenly as from the earth at the feet of the Sergeant.
"Tacbo—gone," he said.
The Sergeant was accustomed to such disappointments. Tilting back his wide-brimmed sombrero in philosophical gesture, he followed Pedro toward the clearing. But as they broke out of the thicket he gripped his guide's arm with iron fingers and with a bound threw himself back into cover. For before the hut human figures sprawled in feigned sleep, their guns stacked behind them, and at the windows shadowy forms lurked. "What the devil——" he began fiercely.