Felizardo smiled grimly. “And I killed a priest, for her,” nodding towards Dolores.
Carlos leaned forward quickly. “Are you named Felizardo? I thought so. Even here, on the mountains, we hear things …. Let me, let us, stay here with you in this cave—as I said, you are the better man and can take it if you will—but I can help you; and the women will not be lonely.”
For answer, Felizardo held out his hand; and so was started his band, which afterwards became the most famous in the Islands.
The band grew rapidly, as is the way of such organisations, when the leader is infinitely stronger than any of his followers; then, after a while, Felizardo determined to weed it out. He would have no men who were outlaws merely because of their own vicious natures, to whom ladronism was a natural calling. There were many of these already in the mountains, and they formed a rival band against him, on hearing of which he sallied out one night and cut them to pieces. From that time onwards, for many years, no native challenged his sovereign rights over the mountain range.
He made peace with the tribe of head-hunters, who were his northern neighbours, respecting their customs, so long as they took none of his men’s heads, and with the tao to the south, from whom he bought live-stock, the money he gave being obtained from Presidentes and Tenientes and planters, and other folk who oppress the common people, though it was taken as tribute, Felizardo not being a midnight robber, like Cinicio Dagujob had been.
News might go up from the coastal towns to the mountains, in fact it did go freely—news of what the Government was doing, of how the Presidentes and Tenientes were robbing the tao, of where the Guardia Civil was; but very little came down from the mountains, at least to the white men, and, of that little, practically none reached Calocan. Consequently, five years after Felizardo had turned ladrone, neither Don José nor the corporal knew that he was the chief of the big band, consisting of outlaws rather than of ladrones, of which they had heard vague rumours.
“They are in the mountains—pouf! I should let them stay there,” the corporal said. “They do not seem to do much harm, and it would cost a fabulous sum to hunt them out from amongst the caves and craters;” an opinion with which Don José, being already heavily taxed, agreed heartily.
“I wonder if Felizardo is there,” he added.
The corporal shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Let me see—he went four, or was it five, years ago. Five, that is it. Probably he is dead by now; he was not of the true ladrone breed. Anyway, I was right when I said he would never come back, just as I was right when I said I should never go home to Spain.”
“Have you applied for your pension?” the merchant asked.