The White Mice

by Richard Harding Davis

Apparently satisfied that Roddy had brought no one with him, the messenger now rejoined him, and with a gesture of apology took the lead, and at a smart trot started in the same direction in which Roddy had been walking.

Roddy gave his guide a start of fifty feet, and followed. With the idea of a possible ambush still in his mind, he held the pony well in hand, and in front of him, in his belt, stuck one of the revolvers. He now was fully awake. No longer in the darkness was he stumbling on foot over the stones and ruts of the road. Instead, the day was breaking and he had under him a good horse, on which, if necessary, he could run away. The thought was comforting, and the sense of possible danger excited him delightfully. When he remembered Peter, sleeping stolidly and missing what was to come, he felt a touch of remorse. But he had been warned to bring no one with him, and of the letter to speak to no one. He would tell Peter later. But, he considered, what if there should be nothing to tell, or, if there were, what if he should not be alive to tell it? If the men who had planned to assassinate Colonel Vega intended to punish him for his interference, they could not have selected a place or hour better suited to their purpose. In all the world, apparently, he was the only soul awake. On either side of him were high hedges of the Spanish bayonet, and back of them acres of orange groves. The homes of the planters lay far from the highway, and along the sides of the road there were no houses, no lodge gates, not even a peon’s thatched hut.

Roddy was approaching a sharp turn in the road, a turn to the left at almost right angles. It was marked by an impenetrable hedge. Up to now, although the hedges would have concealed a regiment, the white road itself had stretched before him, straight and open. But now the turn shut it from his sight. The guide had reached the corner. Instead of taking it, he turned in his saddle and pulled his pony to a walk.

To Roddy the act seemed significant. It was apparent that they had arrived at their rendezvous. Sharply, Roddy also brought his pony to a walk, and with a heavy pull on the reins moved slowly forward. The guide drew to the right and halted. To Roddy’s excited imagination this manœuvre could have but one explanation. The man was withdrawing himself from a possible line of fire. Shifting the reins to his left hand, Roddy let the other fall upon his revolver. Holding in the pony and bending forward, Roddy peered cautiously around the corner.

What he saw was so astonishing, so unlike what he expected, so utterly out of place, that, still leaning forward, still with his hand on his revolver, he stared stupidly.

For half a mile the road lay empty, but directly in front of him, blocking the way, was a restless, pirouetting pony, and seated upon the pony, unmoved either by his gyrations or by the appearance of a stranger in her path, was a young girl.

As Roddy had cautiously made his approach he had in his mind a picture of skulking Venezuelans with pointed carbines; his ears were prepared for a command to throw up his hands, for the slap of a bullet. He had convinced himself that around the angle of the impenetrable hedge this was the welcome that awaited him. And when he was confronted by a girl who apparently was no more a daughter of Venezuela than she was a masked highwayman, his first thought was that this must be some innocent foreigner stumbling in upon the ambush. In alarm for her safety his eyes searched the road beyond her, the hedges on either side. If she remained for an instant longer he feared she might be the witness to a shocking tragedy, that she herself might even become a victim. But the road lay empty, in the hedges of spiked cactus not a frond stirred; and the aged man who had led him to the rendezvous sat motionless, watchful but undisturbed.

Shifting the reins to his left hand, Roddy let the other fall upon his revolver.