Soon descended the mountains only men who had turned their backs upon Minas de la Sierra and who thought to leave behind forever the bleak peaks and the wind-swept gorges and the implacable hunger. Out of every ten only one crawled back, beaten and bruised by the savage Spanish cities and the savage Spanish plains. With those of Minas de la Sierra who could not tear themselves away from their native rocks, these broken-hearted ones continued on and with them slowly starved.
It was not the will of the good God that Jacinto Quesada should have fat pudgy legs by reason of his father's endeavors. Shrewd were the dogs, Pepe and Lenchito, but they were not so shrewd as were the Spanish police. Came a pale and stuttering arriero, a muleteer, up to the village one day. To Jacinto Quesada's mother he brought tragic news.
The men of the Guardia Civil had discovered poor Juanito as he was unbuckling a packet of Cuban cigars from the throat of the dog Lenchito; they had walked him out behind a sand dune; they had made him dig a grave. Then they had shot down Lenchito; then they had shot down Juan Quesada. And then the dog and the man were kicked together into the one grave and sand piled on top of them both.
But make no mistake, mi señor caballero reader! The men of the Guardia Civil are not abominations of cruelty. They are not monsters, brutal and depraved. Quita! no.
There are twenty-five thousand men in the Guardia Civil; twenty thousand foot and five thousand cavalry. By twos, eternally by twos, they go through Spain, exterminating crime wherever crime shows its fanged and evil head.
Every Spaniard is potentially a criminal. An empty belly goads him into lawlessness; his very nature greases his wayward feet. The Spaniard is by nature sullen, irascible, insolently independent, lawless. He is more African than European. Prick a Spaniard and a vindictive Moor bleeds.
Then, whether it be his famishing hunger or lawless passion which has caused him to rise above the law, the Spaniard, his crime writ in red, flees from the police. Spain is a country of uncouth wilds. There are the desolate high steppes and the savage mountains; there are the tawny despoblados, which are uninhabitated wastes; there are the marismas, which are labyrinthine everglades where whole regiments may lie concealed.
But also, in Spain, there are railroads and telegraphs, and a most efficient constabulary, the Guardia Civil. And, were it not for Caciquismo, all evil-doers would be speedily apprehended by the Guardia Civil, tried under the alcaldes, and incarcerated in the Carcel de la Corte or the Presidio of Ceuta.
Caciquismo is not a tangible thing. It is a secret and sinister influence. It is not the Tammany of New York; it is not the Camorra of Naples. Yet it resembles both these corrupt edifices in its special Spanish way. Its instruments are prime ministers and muleteers, members of the cortes and bullfighters, hidalgos and low-caste Gitanos.
A cacique may be only the mayor of a tiny hamlet; again, he may be privy councilor to the king. Yet high or low, he is but one of the many tentacles of a gigantic octopus which lays its clammy shadow athwart the land.