“THE BONES OF TA-BI-RÁ”
“Hoo-máh-no?” he kept repeating to himself. “Surely, the grandfather Desidério said me that word when he told of Them-of-the-Old, when They-with-Striped-Faces dwelt on yonder mesa. But they are all dead these many years.”
A swift, short flash split the darkness, and a growl of far thunder rolled across the ruins. Pablo glanced at the heaven. It was sown thick with the bright sky-seeds that flew up when the Coyote disobeyed the Trues and opened the sacred bag. From horizon to horizon there was not a cloud; but again the flash came, and again the mighty drum-beat of Those Above. Pablo crept to a breach in the wall, and peeped into the gloomy interior of the temple. Even as he looked, the zig-zag arrow of the Trues leaped again from ghostly wall to wall; and its blinding flight showed him that at which he caught his breath. For squat by a corner in the wall was a white-headed Indian waving his bare arms; and facing him and Pablo a dusky maiden, with drooping head. But her face was burned into his heart.
“Surely, such are precious to the Trues! For she is as the Evening Star, good to see!” and Pablo craned forward eagerly. “The viejo will be a Shaman,” he added, mentally, “for so our own Fathers make the lightning come at the medicine dance.[34] But she! If there were such in Shee-eh-huíb-bak, then one might take a wife—for her face is no face of a witch!”
Just then there came another flash; and then a soft, girlish cry. The magic lightning of the conjurer had betrayed Pablo; and before he could spring away a heavy hand was upon his shoulder.
“Hi-ma-tu-kú-eh?” demanded a deep voice in an unknown tongue.
“Nah Tee-wah,” said the abashed hunter, trying in vain to shake off that strong grasp.
“Tee-wah?” said the stranger, speaking in Pablo’s own language. “I, too, have the tongue of Shee-eh-huíb-bak, for my wife was of there. But now she has gone to Shee-p’ah-poón, and there lives for me only my child, and she is hurt. But what hast thou here, peeping at our medicine?”
“It is by chance, Kah-báy-deh,” answered Pablo. “For yesterday when the sun was so, I wounded a deer, and unto here I have followed it in vain. For, perhaps, it has the Power, and I could not kill it. And when I heard thy song I came, not knowing what it was.”
“Since yesterday when the sun was so, thou hast followed the road of a wounded deer? And how wounded?”
“In truth, I gave it two arrows through the life, but it minded them not.”
“Come, then, and thou shalt see thy hunting,” and he drew Pablo into the temple. In a moment a dry arm of the entraña (which the Trues gave for the first candles) was burning; and by its smoky, flaring light Pablo could see his strange surroundings. Beside him, that breakless hand still on his shoulder, stood an aged Indian. His hair was white as the snows of Shoo-p’ah-toó-eh, and his undimmed eyes shone from deep under snowy brows. He was naked but for the breech-clout, and upon his left arm was a great gauntlet from the forepaw of Ku-aí-deh, the bear, with all its claws. But at his wrinkled face Pablo stared in affright, for all across it ran long, savage knife-stripes, so old that they, too, were cut with wrinkles. “Rayado!” flashed through the young hunter’s mind, “even as were They-of-the-Old who dwelt in the mesa of the Hoo-máh-no! But they are all dead since long ago.”
But even his superstitious terror could not keep his eyes from that modest figure crouched in the angle of the strange wall. Truly, she was good to look at. In the soft olive of the cheeks a sweet, deep red was spreading. Under the downcast eyes the lashes drew dark lines across the translucent skin. A flood of hair poured into her lap, and from under its heavy waves peeped a slender hand. It was plain from her dress that she was none of the bárbaros, but a Pueblo. There was the same modest black manta of his people, the same fat, boot-like leg-wraps of snowy buckskin, the same dainty brown moccasins. Even the heavy silver rosary was about her neck, and from her ears hung strands of precious turquoise beads from the white, blue-veined heart of Mount Chalchihuitl. But even the white silver, and the stone that stole its color from the sky were not precious beside that sweet young face from which Pablo could not turn away.
And as he gazed with a strange warm tickling at his heart strings, the long lashes lifted timidly toward the handsome stranger, and on a sudden the bright face turned ashen, and the girl sank back upon a heap of fallen stones. Pablo stared with wide eyes, and a dizziness ran from head to knee, for there were dark drops upon the rocks, and amid the flowing hair he saw the notched ends of two arrows—his very own, feathered from the gray quills of Koor-níd-deh, the crane. He reeled, to fall, but the strong hand held him up and the strong voice said:
“Take the heart of a man, for it is not yet too late. Thou hast done this, unknowing; for the witches filled thine eyes with smoke, to fool thee. But we will yet make medicine to heal my daughter—for I am the wizard T’bó-deh, the last of the Hoo-máh-no, and precious to Those Above, who will help us. But thou hast still arrows in the quiver—go, then, till thou come to the first cliff on the west, and shoot three arrows strongly into the sky. And bring to me that which falls—for it needs that thou who hast shed her blood shouldst bring it again. Nay, tremble not, for the Trues will help thee; and with this amulet of the striped stone the witches cannot come nigh. Take the heart of a man, and go!”
Pablo looked at the pitiful little heap in the corner, and turning, manfully strode out through the broad portal and went stumbling westward in the darkness, over mounds and hollows and fallen walls. Down the long, steep ridge, across the undulant plain, knee-deep in dry and whispering grass, and up the western slope of the valley he trudged; and at last in the darkness ran up against a smooth, straight face of rock. “It is the cliff,” he shivered—for he feared greatly. But plucking up his soul, he backed away a few paces from the rock and notched a shaft and drew it to the head and sent it hurtling to the sky, and another and another. For a long time he waited, and then there was a soft whish! and an arrow stood in the earth at his feet. He groped and found it and drew back his hand quickly, for shaft and feathers were wet—with that soft, warm, ticklish wetness that never came from water yet. Another arrow fell and it was so, and so also was the third.
Shaken as are the leaves of the shivering tree,[35] Pablo put to his lips the amulet of the wizard and drew a long breath from it. Then, gingerly plucking the standing arrows one by one, he started running from the haunted spot, not resting in his stumbling flight until he found himself at the foot of the hill of Ta-bi-rá. In a few moments he was groping along the great wall, and at last stood again within the roofless temple.
Now there was a tiny fire there, and the old man was squatted by it chanting and snapping two long feathers together in rhythm with his wild refrain. And in the corner was the same dark, limp heap, which seemed to drift near or farther away on the waves of the firelight.
“It is well!” said the old man, rising; “for already I have blown away the evil ones, that we be alone. And I see that thou hast brought blood from above to pay for that which is lost.”
Taking from Pablo’s hand the arrows, still red-wet, he broke one over the fire and one he thrust upright in the hard earth at the maiden’s feet. Then he rubbed his hands with ashes and laid them upon her breast, chanting:
As he rubbed and sang the maiden stirred and moved and sat up. And taking the third arrow he put the notch to his lips and the barb to her side and drew with a strong breath, and the buried shaft grew long and longer from her side, until it fell upon the ground. So he drew the second shaft, and it, too, came away and left her.[36] Then he laid the arrow of power against her side and the wounds were no more there; and she rose and took the hand of Pablo to her little mouth and breathed on it, and looked up at him with timid eyes, but Pablo sank down and knew nothing, for his strength was done.
When he woke, the Sun-Father was high over the gray ruins. Pablo found himself upon a bed of dry grass, in the shadow of the wall; and near him sat the old man who was last of the Hoo-máh-no, watching him with clear eyes. A low, sweet voice was crooning a sleep-song in his own tongue; and from behind a jutting wall peeped forth a little moccasined foot.
Pablo sat up, bending forward if he might see the singer; but there was only a gleam of soft eyes around the wall, and then they were gone. The old man eyed him kindly. He was dressed now like Pablo, with the garments of the Pueblos; and the stern, quiet face, with its strange scar-stripes, seemed after all very good.
“Thou hast slept well, son,” he said at last, “for we have been here many hours. But it is hard to fight them of the evil road, and for that thou wast tired. But rise now, eat and be strong, for other days come.”
As he spoke the maiden came bringing a steaming earthen bowl and set it down timidly before the stranger, at whom she dared not look, and disappeared again in her nook. The hot broth revived the young hunter, and a new heart came in him and he was strong. When he had eaten, the old man said:
“Now thou art a man again. Tell me how goes with the village of the Tee-wahn? For in fifty winters I have not seen Shee-eh-huíb-bak—since my wife had come from there to P’ah-que-toó-ai, where I loved her. Is it well with the town? Do they keep the ways of the Old?”
“There are many True Believers,” answered Pablo slowly, “but many have forgotten the ways of the Old and taken the evil road, so that it is hard to know who are good, there are so many witches. For that, the young men that believe in the Olds are afraid to make nests, lest they find feathers of the accursed birds therein—for many that look to be snowbirds are inwardly owls and woodpeckers.”
“And thou hast no nest?” asked the old man with a keen glance.
“In-dáh-ah!” replied Pablo emphatically—and from the corner he caught a bright gleam of eyes.
“It is well! For if the nest be bad, how shall the young birds grow up clean? And thy parents?”
“My father was War Captain of the Tee-wahn,” said Pablo proudly, “and he taught me the ways of men, and the sacred stories of the Old. But one gave him the evil eye, and he was slain by the Cumanche in war. My mother was a True Believer, and soon she went after him, to make his house good in Shee-p’ah-poón. So there is left only my grandfather, who is cacique, and my uncle. And with my uncle I live, for we are both of the Eagle clan.”
“It is well! But now it is to stay here for a time; for in this place is mighty power of the Olds. But if thou wilt hunt for us, that Deer-Maiden may eat well while I fast and talk with Those Above, then we will go with thee to Shee-eh-huíb-bak; for my people are no more and my child is lonely to be with the people of her mother. But show me the wahr with which thou huntest, for perhaps the witches have blinded it.”
Pablo fished out the little stone image, which he had never shown to man before, and T’bó-deh inhaled from its lips.
“It is so!” he said angrily; and prying out the turquoise heart he showed the hunter that from beneath it the sacred meal was gone, and in its place a tiny black feather. “It is no wonder that thy hunting was ill,” he cried, “for the witches have changed the heart of Keem-eé-deh! But I will give thee a strong wahr that none can kill,” and breaking the polluted image with a rock, he covered the fragments with a cloth and chanted a sacred song. In a moment the cloth moved, and the wizard drew from under it a bright new Keem-eé-deh, carved from the sunlight-stone, the yellow topaz, and bound to its side was an arrow-head of transparent emerald. Its heart was turquoise and its eyes red garnets.
“Take it, son, and fear not,” said the aged conjurer, “for it is stronger than the ghosts. But now go and hunt, for there is no more meat.”
When Pablo toiled up the hill of ruins at sundown a noble antelope was balanced upon his shoulders and a fat wild turkey dangled from his belt. He threw them down proudly, and was paid with a shy glance from the eyes that now lived in his heart, and the old man said:
“The new wahr is good! And thou art a hunter like Keem-eé-deh himself. Verily there will be no lack of meat in thy house.” But at this the maiden ran away with a red face, and Pablo’s heart was glad.
For three days they were there while the old man made medicine; and every day Pablo brought back much game. And every day his eyes grew deeper and those of the maiden drooped lower. On the fourth day they started, the three, to the northeast; and with three journeys they came to Shee-eh-huíb-bak. There Pablo brought the strangers to his grandfather, the cacique; and when old Desidério knew that this was the great wizard, the last of the Hoo-máh-no, he was very glad, and gave him of the common lands, that his home should be always there.
When the people of Shee-eh-huíb-bak were making clean for the Noche Buena, Pablo came to the cacique, and said: “Tata, there is another year, and I am tired to be alone.”
“But canst thou keep a wife?”
“Thou knowest, tata, that none kill more game. As for my fields, they are good, and the careless-weed never grows there.”
“It is truth, my son. And who is good in thine eyes?”
“There is only one, tatita, and that is Deer-Maiden, the child of the Hoo-máh-no. She is very good.”
“I like her,” answered the withered cacique, slowly, “for her father has given her a good heart, and they are both precious to Those Above. It is well.”
In four days the cacique and the Hoo-máh-no brought Pablo and the Deer-Maiden to the cacique’s house and gave them to eat two ears of raw corn—to him a blue ear, but to her a white one, for a woman’s heart is always whiter. Pablo looked at her as he ate, but she could not look. And when both had proved themselves by eating the last grain, the elders took them out to the sacred running-place and put them side by side, and marked the course, and gave them the road. Then Pablo went running like a strong antelope, but the girl like a scared fawn; and up the sacred hill they flew, and turned at the Stone of the Bell, and came flying back. But now Pablo was slower, for it is not well to surpass one’s bride in the marrying race, as if one would rob her of respect; and if they come in equal, there is no marriage. So she was first; and all the people blessed them, and they were one. No witch could ever harm their house, for He-that-Was-Striped gave them strong wahr, and they were happy.
Candelária’s Curse.
Candelária’s Curse.
What a snip-click! snip-click! snip-click! of the big steel shears, till the corral rang like an exaggerated telegraph office! Hoarse voices kept calling out “Numer’ uno!” “dieziseis!” “veintetres!” and tall, handsome Lorenzo, standing in a corner with the tally card in his hand, penciled a mark opposite No. 1, No. 16, No. 23, and so on as each man called out the number by which he was known. The calls came fast, and for each one a shabby gray shadow, looking like the ghost of a boy with a home hair-cut, “only more so,” went scurrying into the ranks of his yet unshorn fellows. The big corral was full as it could hold. Fifteen hundred sheep were there, so tightly packed that a mouse tossed upon their backs could hardly have found its way to the ground between them. Only in the triangular corners of the fence (which was built of logs laid up in zigzags) was there a trifle of room; and it was from these that all the noise came. In each was a fast-swelling heap of dirty, gray wool, and just in front of it the shearer. Each, as he turned a victim loose, yelled out his number, to be tallied one, and running upon the huddled mass of sheep, caught one by the fleece with each hand, dragged it to his corner, flopped it upon its side, knotted its four sharp feet together with a dextrous movement, and, snatching the shears from his belt, fell instantly to work. It was a scene to bewilder an Eastern sheep-grower. There were no shearing tables. Each man bent over, as though there were a hinge in his waist, until his hands were within six inches of the ground, and thus worked all day long. Holding and turning the sheep with the left hand, with the right he drove the sharp blades snipping through the wool with startling rapidity—till, almost before one knew it, the whole fleece rolled off to one side, very much as if it had been an unbroken pelt. As quick a motion freed the feet again and the shorn creature scrambled up and ran to hide his confusion, while the shearer was already playing barber to the “next gentleman.”
So it was no sleepy work, tallying for the thirty-seven swart fellows who were doing Don Roman’s fall shearing, and any one less practiced than Lorenzo might have lost count now and then. Every one seemed to be working his best, but the two cries that came oftenest of any were “trece” and “diezisiete.” Number thirteen was a short, thickset Mexican from Los Lunas, known (because of his unusually dark complexion) as Black Juan, and number seventeen was that two-fisted Pedro of Cubero. They had been for several years the two best shearers in Valencia county, and therefore, very naturally, rivals—though in some way they had never come together before. But now finding themselves, on the eve of the fall clip of 50,000 sheep, face to face each with a man he had never seen, but had disliked for ten years, neither could refrain from a slight curl of the lip. That fellow such a guapo? Huh! He might make a noise among the slowpokes down in the valley, but beside a real shearer there wouldn’t be enough of him to make a shadow! It was not long before their thoughts came to speech, and soon they had made a wager for a sheep-shearing race on the morrow. The ponies upon which they had come, their tattered blankets and a large proportion of their prospective wages were staked on which should shear the more fleeces between sunrise and sunset.
For eleven hours, now, the race had been in progress. Lorenzo had given the word when the first rim of sun peered above the yellow mesas. At noon the other shearers had taken the usual half hour to swallow the rude meal of tortillas and roasted sheep-ribs, but Juan and Pedro had worked doggedly on. The crunch of their shears seemed never to stop, and against the numbers thirteen and seventeen the little slanting marks (each fourth one crossed) had crept clear across the tally card and Lorenzo had to start a new line for each of them.
Five o’clock—five-thirty—six—and suddenly the timekeeper shouted “Ya ’stá!” The noise redoubled for a moment as each man hurried to finish his present sheep, and then stopped. Bent backs straightened slowly amid a general sigh of relief. A hard day, truly. Not a man in the corral, even down to young Blea, who had not sheared his sixty or seventy sheep. But the rivals? All crowded around Lorenzo as he began to count up.
“M—m—m—twenty-four, twenty-five—twenty-five tallies and three. Pedro has one hundred and twenty-eight sheep!” And Juan? “M—m—m—twenty-seven tallies and one—one hundred and thirty-six! Bravo! Que guapo!” And the evening air rang with shouts.
“Thou couldst not have done it fairly!” growled Pedro, with rage in every line of his dusty face.
“How, fairly, sleepyhead? Have I not worked openly before all?”
But Pedro went over the fence sullenly and walked away, muttering to himself. Only when a couple of other shearers joined him at his camp-fire did he give further vent to his feelings.
“Thrice fool that I was,” he snarled, “to make a bet against that! For clearly to-day my shears were bewitched and would not cut well. And you know well the why—it is that old bruja of a Candelária who has given them the evil eye! For yesterday, as she passed, my dog ran at her, whereat I laughed, and in the act she turned and cursed me.”
“Thou didst ill,” said one of his companions. “All know that she is a witch, and works all manner of evil to them that offend her. Why, there was Marcelino, who refused to give her meat when he killed a sheep, and straightway she made a mouse to steal into his stomach, so that it was near to kill him.”
“But I am not Marcelino, then, to go pay a horse to another witch to cure me. No, I will have-me-them with her. She shall pay me for this loss and for the laughter they have put upon me.”
“What is that, Pedro?” said young Alonzo, coming up just then and squatting by the fire. “You wouldn’t hurt the poor old woman?”
“Who gave you a candle in this funeral?” snapped the defeated shearer. “That is what I will do. There are too many of these brujas putting spells on innocent folks, and there’s only one way to cure them—the way they did in San Mateo last year. We’ll stone her for a witch. And much care thou, that thou get not hurt also!”
The two others made no serious opposition to Pedro’s plan. They had nothing against the old woman themselves, but every one knew that such witches were a great pest to the community—perhaps it would be a public service to put her out of the way. Besides, they were rather used to being led around by the nose by Pedro, who, in addition to his prowess as a shearer, was so powerful and reckless that he had become the acknowledged leader of a certain class.
“Pues, understood! We will go over presently and give the old hag a shower of St. Peter’s tears! And thou”—turning to Alonzo, who was rising to go—“the less tongue, the less sore bones, eh?”
Candelária lived across the arroyo in a miserable little jacal of piñon[37] trunks chinked with mud, right up against the side of the great lava flow. She was a sorry-looking hag; and, on seeing her, the first thought of much better educated people than Pedro would very likely have been: “What an old witch!” She was tall and gaunt and incredibly wrinkled, but with such keen black eyes that almost every one shrank at her gaze.
Alonzo himself was certainly not fond of her, and probably it would not be too much to say that he was secretly a bit afraid of this grim, dark figure in greasy tatters, despite his year of school in the little mission at San Rafael. But at thought of her being stoned to death he felt a sudden revulsion.
“But what to do?” he muttered to himself as he slouched away from the camp-fire. “Pedro is bad to meddle with, and no one here will help me; even Don Roman is afraid of the witches, and hates them. Ea! I will go warn her, so she can hide till the shearers have gone.”
It was already very dark as he stumbled over the rocky ground and turned west along the bank of the arroyo. This was a deep ravine plowed through the meadow by the intermittent brook from the snows of the Zuñi mountains. In summer there was no stream, but here and there were pools enough for the thirsty sheep and cattle. Now there had been rains, and a narrow rill connected the brimming pools. He found the white, peeled log which served as a footbridge from bank to bank, and started to walk cautiously across it. Midway he stopped suddenly with an audible chuckle, turned, came back and shambled toward the corrals. Something seemed to amuse him mightily, for at every few steps he paused to laugh softly. Camp-fires burned all about the corral, and even far up the rocky mesa, where the sheep were being herded for the night; but Alonzo had eyes for but one. Near an angle of the enclosure stood a stout post, and not far from its foot was a bed of embers surrounded with sooty kettles and frying pans. It was Telango’s slaughter house and kitchen, where that greasy gentleman turned twenty sheep a day into soups and joints for the shearers.
Telango was at the moment absent, and when he returned to his post a kettle of mutton tallow that had been trying out over the embers was missing. That should have made a pretty row, for the cook was a touchy autocrat; but, supper being over, Telango was so sleepy that he would scarce have noticed it had his whole kitchen been carried off.
“Well, are we ready?” asked Pedro in a low tone of his allies a little after 8 o’clock. Every one else was asleep, apparently. The camp-fires had all died down and no one was moving. Pedro rose quietly and stole off into the darkness, followed by Pepe and ’Lipe. “Close behind me,” he whispered, “and with care, for if she hears us she can hide in the malpaís, where no one could find her.”
“But perhaps she would not run,” broke out ’Lipe uneasily, as they neared the arroyo. “Since she is a witch she might rather throw a spell on us.”
“Quiet you the mouth, stupid! We have only to take care that she does not hear us.”
“But I have heard that they need not the ears, for the evil spirits tell them.”
“Let the evil one tell her, if he will!” growled Pedro. “I would like to see him keep this from her,” and he picked up a jagged lava fragment over which he had stumbled. “Be not sheep! Close behind me, now.”
Pedro stepped out upon the log whose white length stretching into the gloom seemed to rest upon nothing. His teguas made no noise upon the wood, and he was midway across when suddenly there came a stifled oath. His feet flew right and left and he dropped astride the log with a violence that shook the breath out of him, and in the same instant began to slip to one side. In vain he clutched at the log. It gave no hold, and lurching over he dropped twenty feet. There was a tremendous splash; and then another and another. Pepe and ’Lipe had followed their leader downward without even stopping to sit down first.
The shores here were steep and rocky, cut deep in a lava flow millenniums older than that whose jet black miles lay along the pretty meadow. In the middle was a long, deep pool wherein the few boys of Alamitos were wont to swim in summer. Just now it was not particularly attractive. During the shearing several thousand sheep were watered daily at the head of this pool and at the shallower one above, and at such times no one thought of bathing in the odorous mess.
Any one listening might have heard for some seconds after the splashes nothing but a faint gurgle, as of bubbles breaking. Then there were curious snorts and plashings, as if that invisible black abyss had suddenly become the home of a hippopotamus family, and then a laborious thrashing about. Presently there was a rattle of pebbles, mingled with coughs and angry mutterings, as if some one were trying to scale the banks.
“Why didn’t you come this side, stupids?” Pedro whispered across when he had done choking and sputtering. “The bruja lives over here—not yonder. Vamos!”
“But man! We are not crazy! Seest thou not that she has the power and so easily has bewitched us? If we go further we shall find worse.”
“Four times fools! It was only that I slipped, and you, being scared, fell also. Come on!”
“Thanks,” answered Pepe and ’Lipe in a breath. “But even fools know better than to defy the evil one.”
“Come over or you answer to me!” snorted Pedro, forgetting his caution. “Cowards that you are, I’ll show you,” and he started back across the log to get in arguing reach of the deserters.
But four steps from the bank his feet again suddenly leaped out from under him and the log smote him in the back with a loud thump, and a wild splash flung a dirty rain in the faces of his terrified companions.
“Uh, uh!” he gasped, coming to the surface at last. “Kff! Tchoo!” for he had swallowed a most unsavory pint.
“Ah, ha-ha!” rang a weird, shrill laugh from the southern bank. Pepe and ’Lipe crossed themselves and took to their heels, without thought of waiting for their leader. It struck a chill through Pedro, too, as he floundered to the shore and clambered up the jagged rocks frantically, cutting his hands and knees. But he hardly noticed that—all he could think of was the mocking laugh. Candelária’s laugh! After all, she was too strong! There was no use fighting against these witches—just see how easily she had undone his strength and wit! No more witch hunts for him—and he scrambled up the bank in utter rout. Just then a dark form reached out overhead. Pedro did not see it; but in an instant came a warm, suffocating avalanche which choked his cry of terror and half blinded him.
“Murder!” he managed to sputter at last. “So-cor-r-r-ro!” and he fled to the camp like one chased by wolves.
“So, thief! Shameless! It was thou that stole my tallow, then!” roared Telango, who had discovered his loss just now. “To anoint that dirty head, eh? Then take this!” and with a stout cudgel he belabored the luckless Pedro till the latter broke away and fled into further darkness. No wonder Telango had found him out—his great shock of hair and beard were matted in a gray, greasy mask, like the runnings of a cheap candle.
Pedro did not finish the shearing season. Next morning he was missing from Alamitos, and a few days later news came that he was in Cubero. His accomplices had no explanations to offer for his disappearance or for their wet clothing, and as for Alonzo, he “told nothing to nobody.” Only at times he was observed to drop his shears and double up as though he had a pain in his stomach, while his face would become suspiciously red. Furthermore, he came carelessly up to Telango at noon with:
“Oh, here’s your lard bucket—I picked it up by the arroyo. And say—if you want to make candles, you’d better go scrape the foot-log. Somebody has greased the whole middle of it!”
“What thing?” grumbled Telango. “Of the witches, no doubt. And quizas the same who anointed Pedro.”
“Quizas,” answered Alonzo solemnly, and he walked off without cracking a smile.
The Habit of the Fraile.
The Habit of the Fraile.
I.
The end drew near of the longest siege that was ever in any of the three Americas. More than a year ago the red field of Ayacucho had crowned the triumph of the rebel colonies. The mother-nation that found the New World, and tamed it and gave it to her sons, no longer had sons there, for the very last had disowned her. Mexico, the first great Spanish kingdom in America, had turned republic; and so had the neighbor provinces. South America had followed suit; for the cry of “Independence,” premature as it was among these peoples, then and still so unripe for self-government, carried contagion, and Peru itself, the gem of the conquest, the land of riches and romance, had thrown off the merciful “yoke” of home to stagger for generations under the ten-fold worse yoke of her own corrupt sons. Of all the Americas that had been Spain’s by discovery, by conquest and by settlement, there now remained to her on the continent only the space boxed by the four walls of Callao[38]—a space a mile and a half square. There the red-yellow-and-red flag still flaunted defiance to the victorious insurgents; for there Rodil,[39] “the second Leonidas,” was making the last heroic stand for Spain.
It was hopeless odds—this fiery loyalist against all rebel South America. There was no possibility of reinforcements from anywhere; no chance of retreat. Cooped up in what was then the largest fort in the New World, he saw the land fenced with the flushed armies of Bolívar,[40] the bay blocked by the allied fleets. For twenty-one months he had repulsed their almost daily attacks and outwitted their ceaseless stratagems; and for twenty-one months, too, had baffled the still more dangerous foes within his walls. Of the two thousand eight hundred men at his hand when the siege began, March 1, 1824, over seven hundred had been killed and more than twice as many had died of the pestilence. Of the eight thousand citizens first within the fort—for all Callao was included by those huge ramparts—two thousand four hundred had been sent out to avoid famine, and over five thousand had fallen by the plague. The survivors had no heart left. Almost daily some new plot to betray the fort was discovered, and almost daily the “iron general” gave a row of conspirators to the musketeers. To war, disease and treachery, famine added its terrors. Horse meat and rats were already delicacies; and only yesterday, a noble invalid had given a plate heaped up with gold for three lemons.
It was New Year’s eve. That, down here, twelve degrees below the equator, meant high summer. All day long the tropic heat had beaten mercilessly upon Callao, and now the wan defenders lay sprawled along the ramparts beside their guns, drinking the grateful dusk. Here and there sounded the uneven tramp of the patrol down the cobble-paved streets, and their sharp challenge, “Alto! Quien vive?” to every one they met. It rang out now, and the soldiers crossed their muskets before a tall, gray-robed figure.
“It is I, my children,” was the quiet answer. “Delay me not, for I go to the sick.”
“Pass, father,” said the sargento, and all lifted their caps, stepping from the narrow sidewalk to make room for the priest.
“But what is this?” cried the officer, suddenly thrusting out his long arm and clutching something which was about to fly right between them. It was a thin, pale girl of ten, hooded in the black manta of her people.
“Que es esto?” repeated the sargento more gently. “Dost thou not know the orders that none shall move upon the street after dark, since so many drop letters over the walls to the rebels? Get thee in, for even children are not exempt,” and he pushed her back into the doorway from which she had just burst.
But the child made no motion to obey. “The padre!” she panted. “The padre! For my brother is very sick.”
“Si, pues? Well, go thou and catch the fraile, then. But much eye that thou come not near the walls.” And the kindly old Spaniard led his men off down the street.
By this time the priest had turned the corner; and when the child came flying to that street, lo! he was far ahead. But she kept running breathlessly and at last, where the dark bulk of the castle of San Felipe overhung them, she plucked the gray robe from behind. Her bare feet had drawn no noise from the stones, and the priest started violently, choking back what sounded like the beginning of a cry.
He wheeled sharply about with a stern “What is this?”—but his voice was pinched.
“My brother—very sick—padre! Please, your grace, come!” she panted.
“To the devils with your brother!” he growled, flinging her off. “Váyate!” and he was gone before the dumbfounded child could speak again. She stood a moment looking stupidly after him, and then, sobbing, limped wearily homeward.
II.
The house, like most of Callao in those ill days, was little better than a wreck after twenty-one months of the rebel cannonading. The dark stairway teetered and groaned dismally as she scrambled up, and overhead the Southern Cross blinked hazily at her through a tattered frame—the insurgent shells had left little of the flimsy roofs of the city where it never rains. Long, ragged strips of bamboo lathing dangled here and there, and at her childish tread dribbles of the gravel covering came pattering about her like uncanny footfalls. She was trembling all over when she pushed open a broken door and entered the room, the rude Moorish balcony of which overhung the street. There was a hole in the roof here, too, and the doors of the balcony had been splintered by a cannon ball. A twisted rag flared smokily in an iron plate of grease on a broken chair, and where the vagrant shadows began to stand their ground against its feeble rays, some one was bending over a tattered mattress upon the floor.
“No hay cuidado,” said a strange voice as she stopped short, in alarm. “The sargento bade me bring a cup of caldo for thy brother, seeing thee so much a woman. For now that there is nothing to eat, he said, perhaps that would be the best medicine.”
“God pay you!” cried the child nervously. “And my brother?”
“He drank the broth as one greedy, and in a moment fell asleep. How many days makes it that he is sick?”
“Two, señor. Since four days there was nothing to eat but two crusts of bread, and those he made me eat.”
“Pobrecito! He has no more than hunger. To-morrow I will bring another caldo—for even broth of horse gives strength—that ye may not starve. But have ye no fathers?”
“Papa fell in San Felipe; and our mother was sent from the city with many. But us she hid in the house, saying that the enemy had no mercy even to the weak. And so it was; for the women that tried to pass to Lima the insurjentes fired upon. And she never came back.”
“Dogs of rebels! But now I go, little one. Have heart, for I will look to you. Hásta luego.”
When he was gone the child crouched down by her brother and slipped her trembling hand into his. The shadows were so crawly! They seemed to draw back and then come stealing at her. And it was so still—only the hail of the sentries, breaking across such a silence as if they stood guard over a city of the dead.
“Que hay, little sister?” said the boy, starting up wide awake with the suddenness of those that are fevered. “The father? Couldst not find one? But it is all the same, for God sent us a friend with food.”
“And he comes to-morrow also,” she added eagerly. Then she told how she had followed the priest, but he had shaken her off with rough words.
“Ea? How is that? For the fathers do not so. And how is it thou followedst him even to the castillo?”
“Pues, for that he went very fast and I could not catch him. He was at the corner even when the sargento let me pass; but when I came running there he was almost at the next cuadra, as if he too had run.”
Vicente suddenly sat up on the squalid mattress. The smoky wick flung deep shadows in his hollow cheeks, and he looked so pale and wild that Lina almost cried out at him.
“I tell thee, ’manita,” he whispered earnestly, “I believe not in that priest! Running so, and so rough to thee! And thou sayest that at touch of thy hand to his robe he started and was to call out? There is a danger, I tell thee!” he repeated vehemently, striking his thin fist upon the floor till the impish shadows danced again. “All is crooked now, when they say the very captains wait to sell our general. And if the priests be traitors too——”
“But what to do?” asked the girl, in awe of this fierce young brother.
“Ay! What to do? For we know nothing. But something there is, my heart tells me. Oyez! Wouldst thou know the padre again, seeing him?”
“Como no? For it was near the farol, and I saw under the hood his eyes, how shining they were.”
“And his voice, too—no? Come, then, and we will see who is this father that curses his children!” And the boy rose eagerly, though his legs shook under him.
“But how canst thou go out, hermano, being so sick?”
“No hay cuidado. For now it is for our king against the rebels, and strength I shall have for that. The caldo also gives me new life. Vamos!”
III.
Weak as he was, he drew her down the tottering stairs and into the dark street; and there they stood a moment, not knowing whither to turn. “Claro!” exclaimed Vicente, “we will follow as he went—perchance we may meet him returning.”
But at the very corner some one turning in hastily from the next street stumbled fairly over them; and Vicente and Lina and the stranger went down in a heap.
“Little animals!” snarled an angry voice. “Are you blind? For a so-little I would break your bones. Eh? He is who?” he hissed, catching them by the arms—for he had heard Lina’s excited whisper, “Es él.”
“She says you are the priest that would not go to her sick brother,” answered Vicente in a steady voice, “and I believe it, for you are rough to the weak. But we will find a padre who is not so.”
“Márchanse, brats!” said the stranger in a tone of relief. “But,” he added, turning and shaking his finger at them, “no more running after me, or I throw you over the wall.”
“Have no care, señor padre,” said Vicente, with sarcastic politeness; and taking Lina by the hand he hurried around the corner. In a moment he turned his head and caught a glimpse of some dark object peering past the wall. “Es!” he whispered, squeezing the slender fingers, and a few rods farther on drew Lina into a recess of the wall. He was trembling all over.
“Es!” he repeated. “Canst thou not see that he is no fraile, though he wears the habit? It is the voice of a soldier and not of the church. And here! This fell to my very hand when we all went to the ground together”—and he held up a crumpled paper. “But first it is to see whither goes this father of rebels. Come so far as the house and there wait me, for it is better that I go alone.”
“But, Vicente—I—I’m afraid of the duéndes!”
“Epa! Fear not, sisterling, for the goblins touch not those that are true. Remember, it is for Spain!” And pushing her gently inside their own doorway, and stooping to kiss her, he hurried down the street.
Lina dared not climb the noisy stairs to the deserted rooms. She crouched in the hall, shivering, drawing the manta about her shoulders as if with cold, but shutting her teeth bravely. The shuffle of Vicente’s broken shoes had already died away; and it seemed as if the whole world had slipped past with him. Ages and ages she waited, till she was ready to scream with fear; and then she sprang nervously to the door at a sound in the street. It was only a patrol shambling over the crazy cobblestones, but as it drew nigh she was seized with a sudden access of fear. Between them stumbled Vicente, a heavy hand on either shoulder.
“Let him go!” she cried, rushing upon the soldiers as if to strike them down. “He is my little brother, and has done nothing. Only we found the——”
“Cállete, Lina!” spoke up Vicente sharply. “If only the señor official will be so good as to take her with me to the general—for she is quite alone, señor.”
“It is well—come on, little Amazon!” said the officer, from whom war and starvation had not dried up all Andalusian humor. “Snails! But I thought she was to capture us! March!”
IV.
General Rodil pushed back his chair from the table, and his grave face took on a puzzled look as the officer and his odd prisoners were ushered into the room. “The general who never sleeps,” they called him—for at whatever hour of day or night, he was always appearing suddenly here, there, everywhere. Well masked was the faint heart into whose depths those gray eyes did not bore; tiny indeed the slackness that escaped them. Well might the ignorant invest him with a superstitious terror—this man who was really the garrison of Callao.
“Que cosa?” he demanded in a low, clear voice.
“Pues, señor generál,” said the officer, still standing at “salute.” “This boy we found in the Street of the Pelicans, as if waiting for some one. And when we searched him this was in his shirt.”
Rodil uncrumpled the paper and bent to read it by the flickering candle. Suddenly his haggard face turned even paler, and then a dark flush rose as he sprang to his feet and took two steps forward. As suddenly he stopped, and threw at the children a glance that seemed fairly to burn them.
“Are there none but traitors?” he cried, with a choke. “Even to the babies! And now, my Ponce de Leon!” for the smuggled note read:
“Todo listo. No mas se espera al comandante rúbio. Arregla todo de San Rafael.”
[All ready. Only waiting the blonde commander. Fix everything in the castle of San Rafael.]
The “blonde commander” could be none other than Rodil’s dear friend and trusted officer, in charge of one of the twin castles—a man whom he had “made” in rank and fortune. The general’s face seemed of stone as he demanded:
“Boy! From where is this letter?”
“Vueséncia, I picked it up from a fraile who fell over us in the street; and because he had been rough to my little sister, I followed to see where he would go.”
“Carefully! For when it is between the king’s honor and traitors, even youth counts not! What should a fraile be doing with letters of the insurgents?”
“For that, I think he was no fraile,” answered Vicente sturdily, holding his head erect, though his knees wavered; and he told all the happenings of the evening, while Lina nodded an earnest corroboration. Before he was done, something of the hardness had faded from Rodil’s face.
“Your cuenta runs well,” he said at last. “Give me proof and I will fill your hat with gold. But if not—if you are old enough to be a traitor, you are old enough to die one!”
Vicente’s ragged shoulders squared still straighter. “When I ask you for money, señor generál!” he replied proudly. “We are of Spain, and for that I do it. He that made as priest went not to the convento, but into the house 74, Street of the Viceroy.”
“Hola! Señor teniente, take twenty men in the instant and round-up that house, bringing hither all that are in it; and that everything be searched. And send the teniente Ochoa with another file to bring hither prisoner the Comandante Ponce de Leon. Corriendo!”
For twenty minutes “the sleepless general” walked the room—sometimes apparently unconscious of the children, and suddenly flinging at them some question, sharp and searching as a javelin. Then there were reluctant feet upon the stairs.
“It has to report, your Excellency,” said Lieutenant Ochoa, “that the Señor Comandante Ponce de Leon is not to be found. Since the first dusk no one has seen him.”
Rodil struck his forehead; but before he seemed able to command his voice, there was another commotion outside, and a group of officers bustled into the room.
“What is this, mi generál?” cried one of them angrily. “Here we are dragged from the house like criminals! What means this rat-catcher of a lieutenant?”
“Little by little, gentlemen mine!” answered Rodil in a suspiciously quiet tone. “You will excuse the molestation for my sake, since I ordered it. And now, I beg you, have the goodness to tell me of a fraile who entered your house half an hour ago.”
“Fraile, señor generál? No priest has entered the house,” answered the first speaker, sharply. He was a tall, handsome officer, upon whom even the shabbiness of a uniform that had seen twenty-one months’ fighting sat becomingly. “I think your Excellency might have asked the question with less violence to us.”
“Ill it fits me to show discourtesy to such loyal gentlemen,” Rodil replied, with an added dryness. “And I am glad to learn that no priest has been among you—for I fancied, my Señor Captain Baca, that he might be converting you to the brotherhood. You would half pass for a fraile yourself, now that I see”—and in spite of himself the general’s voice rose ever so little—“the moustache which was the pride of the company is shorn off since midday.”
“Pues—your Excellency,” stammered the tall captain. “For the heat—and—and—since time hangs heavily on our hands, I shaved for a joke.”
“Well edged is thy humor, captain mine!” The ironic respect had given place to the contemptuous tu. “Ójala we had earlier guessed thy wit, to ease the weariness of the siege. Tell me, boy—is this thy fraile?” The question came like a bullet.
“I know not, Excellency,” said Vicente, hesitatingly. “Of that size he was, but his face I saw not well.”
“But it is his voice!” cried Lina impetuously. “And had he the hood, I would know if it is his face—for the capucho covered him well.”
“Little animals!” growled the captain, starting as if to spring at them. But then, commanding himself, he said sullenly: “Until what will your Excellency carry this farce? Am I to be burlado by lying brats of the street? With these gentlemen I have passed the time since I came off duty.”
“It is true, señor generál,” declared the others, who had nervously watched their spokesman, the ranking officer among them. “We have all been together since——”
“Alto!” interrupted Rodil sternly. “You must bring me better witnesses than your tongues. For by my faith, I would see this joke of the moustache played through. Sargento, search this captain of the wits.”
“For pity, mi generál! Shame me not thus!” And the officer fell on his knees.
For answer, Rodil only stretched his lean finger grimly. The sergeant, awkward at disrespectful approach to his superior, laid his hand upon the arm of the risen captain, and in another moment lay sprawling upon the floor. Baca was a young and muscular man; and almost in the same motion with the blow he sprang at the window.
The dumbfounded privates had no time to reach him; but Vicente, in a flash of rage, flung himself at his legs, and the tall officer crashed upon the floor. Before he could rise a dozen soldiers were upon him, and Rodil, his slender sword quivering at half-arm, faced the four other officers.
“There is nothing in his pockets, Excellency,” announced the sergeant.
“Claro! For he who changes his face so soon can as well change his clothing. In his shoes, then.”
There was a renewed scuffle; but in a moment a cry of exultation—and the sergeant dragged a thin, soiled paper from Baca’s stocking.
“Still given to jests, capitan mio—that you walk on the mines which are to blow the rebels up at the next assault. It is a clever diagram, and Salom would have paid thee well for it, I warrant. Hola!”
For the door let in four soldiers and their petty officer; and over the arm of the latter hung the long gray-brown habit of a Franciscan friar.
“It was between the mattresses of the señor capitan Baca,” announced the sergeant. “And as for these little ones, I am their witness—for to my patrol passed first a tall fraile, and soon came running this womanling after him for her brother, who was very sick.”
“And the boy is he to whom I carried a cup of broth—and I found him well fevered,” spoke up one of the soldiers, scared at his own thick voice before the grim general.
“It is enough,” interrupted Rodil. “I give thanks to God that there are patriots yet—and eyes in them, too. These children stay with me. For the Señor Captain Baca, and for these gentlemen who ‘were with him all the time,’” he continued with grim terseness, “sunrise against the wall of San Felipe. Until then, your heads answer for theirs!”
That is all there is to tell of the habit of the fraile—except that it served for a shroud to the traitor who had masqueraded in it.
But already was the beginning of the end. The desertion of the Comandante Ponce de Leon, who had dropped over the wall and fled to the enemy, gave to the insurgents plans and information of fatal importance. Then Riera, the other comandante, turned traitor too, and delivered to the foe the castle of San Rafael.
Resistance was no longer possible, even to “the Spartan of Peru.” On the 11th of January he entered into correspondence which ended with the honorable and advantageous capitulation of Callao, January 23, 1826. Of the original 2,800 soldiers only three hundred and seventy-six remained, and a scant seven hundred citizens of all the former thousands. There was little left save glory—but of that so proud a share as was earned by no other man of either side in the war of the colonial rebellion. For that matter, history has few pages like the resistance of Spain’s last fort in America.
When Rodil, in full uniform, boarded the English frigate “Briton” to sail away to the long years and high honors that awaited him in Spain, he carried with the banners of his favorite regiments a boy and girl who seemed less embarrassed by their fine new dress than by the attention which everywhere greeted “the little orphans of Callao.”