Third Part.
CHAPTER VIII.
“AS GOMEZ WOULD SPEAK.”
“It is your turn, mi amigo!”
“Ready!” responded Hal, rubbing his eyes and then springing to his feet.
As he did so, he caught up the Mauser rifle which had lain at his side as he slept.
It was past sunrise. When he had lain down, the earth was still wrapped in darkness.
There had been a bargain that he should sleep an hour, then rise and stand guard while Juan snatched an hour of refreshing sleep.
Was it all a dream? Hal wondered, as he surveyed the scene with alert eyes while Juan had already commenced to snore.
A dream it certainly was not. The rifle with which each was provided was a reality. So was the small Cuban flag which Juan now wore proudly pinned to his tattered jacket.
Havana was now many miles behind. They were well up in the hills. Around them all was verdure and bloom.
This bit of wild forest beauty had escaped the devastating hand of the Spaniard.
It was Easter morning, Hal remembered, with a thrill. Surely, in this spot, nature was doing floral honor to the day.
Not a sound was heard save the calling of the birds, the buzzing of insects. Perched on a rise of ground, screened by thick bushes, a foe might have stood within a hundred feet and not discovered them.
“The only danger,” smiled Hal, “would come from Juan’s snoring.”
Amid all this solitude of nature, however, Juan’s nasal notes did not seem a source of danger.
“Jupiter! What’s that?” muttered Hal, suddenly.
From his perch he had an excellent view up a long, winding ravine.
“The glint of the sun on steel, as sure as I’m a sinner,” muttered the boy.
Turning, he gave Juan’s nearer shoulder a quick shake.
“Ready, senor,” murmured the Cuban, waking at once. “My hour is up, then?”
“No, but something else is up,” whispered excited Hal, pointing up the ravine. “Look there!”
Juan looked, and became instantly awake.
“The enemy!” he muttered, his eyes flashing ominously. “Heaven be thanked that at last we have guns. We can fight!”
“Fight that force?” demanded Hal, aghast. “My friend, have you counted their number?”
“No.”
“I have.”
“Well?”
“They number at least sixty.”
“No matter!” grated Juan. “We can worry them. We shall be killed, of course, but perhaps we can settle three or four of their men first.”
“See here,” remonstrated Hal. “I’m ready for fighting, but not for suicide.”
“It is the way we Cubans fight,” rejoined Juan, proudly. “We care not what the number of the enemy. We always fire when we see one.”
“We’ll fire, then, if you say so,” agreed Hal. “If you asked my opinion, though, I should say that we had better wait until we have had a chance to offer ourselves at the nearest Cuban camp.”
Juan fixed his wide open eyes on our hero for an instant.
“I have no doubt you are right, mi amigo,” he said, an instant later. “Our Cuban blood is too hot. We lack the cool judgment of you Americanos. Senor, will you take command?”
“Until we reach camp, if you wish it.”
“I beg you to do so.”
“Very well; though I warn you,” smiled Hal, “that I shall not give the order to attack thirty times our number.”
Juan sighed, but remained silent.
“They are going to march by within a hundred feet of us,” whispered Hal, following the course of the ravine.
Juan grasped his rifle tightly to still the trembling of his fingers.
By this time, the head of the column was within five hundred feet.
At the head rode a half a dozen mounted Spanish officers.
Behind them marched a captain and two lieutenants in command of the infantrymen.
Tattered and dusty-looking were these soldiers. Many of them limped, as if used up by a long forced march. Just at the foot of the hill from which Hal and Juan glared from covert, the captain, at a sign from one of the mounted officers, cried:
“Halt!”
It was a popular order, as the relieved faces of the men instantly showed.
“Break ranks.”
Arms were stacked, four sentinels mounted, and the horses tethered.
Just at that moment, two dust-covered troopers rode up the ravine from the direction of Havana.
They dismounted before the captain, talking with him in quick murmurs.
“My colonel,” called the captain, saluting one of the mounted officers, “the scouts tell me that there are none of the enemy within forty miles.”
“I do not believe there are any rebels nearer, captain,” laughed the colonel. “So let your poor fellows get some of the rest they need so badly. True, we have no breakfast to offer them, but I have caught sight of a stream through the trees. Let those who would like to take a swim.”
No proposition could have met with greater favor. As with one accord, the soldiers began to move off between the trees, while the scouts cantered away.
“You four,” cried the captain, selecting a quartette of his men, “will hurry up with your swim, and return here to relieve the sentinels, that they, too, may have a plunge.”
With the men went their officers, nine in number. The heat of the day made cold water a luxury that could not be resisted.
Down in the camp, with the horses and stacked arms, remained only the four sentinels.
Even these looked wistfully through the trees as the shouts and plashing of water came to their ears.
“Jupiter!” whispered Hal, his eyes beginning to sparkle. “I’m beginning to feel some of the Cuban hot blood myself.”
“If we could only capture that camp!” murmured Juan, eagerly.
To his intense delight, Hal made this whispered reply:
“By thunder, we’ll try it, if we go under for it!”
“Oh, my brave friend,” quivered Juan Ramirez, “you have spoken as our brave Gomez would speak!”
For a few moments the heads of the two youths bobbed together in earnest, whispered conversation.
When they had finished, Juan crept off through the bushes with the stealth of an Indian.
He reached a spot twenty feet away from our hero before he halted and signaled back.
Through the bushes the muzzle of Hal’s rifle protruded.
As he aimed at one of the sentinels, a curious thrill swept over the American.
He was about to take a life, and unfairly, it seemed, since he must fire from ambush upon an unsuspecting foe.
Yet, even as he hesitated, the remembrance came back to him of the evening before, when a Spanish officer had proposed to send him over the fatal ferry to Morro Castle.
The enemy would not hesitate; he must not. Besides, war consists of killing; war is gauged only by its successes.
With these thoughts surging through his mind, Hal Maynard steadied both hands and vision.
Crack!
His rifle spoke, and the sentinel at whom he had aimed dropped and lay still.
Crack!
Juan had waited only for this signal. Before the first sentinel had struck the ground, the second had received his death-wound.
Crack! crack!
Right on the heels of the first two shots came the next pair.
Before the last two sentries had time to turn, run or fire, they had met their fates.
In a twinkling Hal was on his feet. The fire of battle was in his blood; the spirit of freedom possessed his soul as his voice rang out full and clear!
“By platoon, battalion charge!”
An answering yell came from Ramirez as that youth too leaped to his feet.
Together they rushed down the hill-side, shouting commands to an imaginary battalion.
Crack! crack! crack! crack! crack!
Without stopping to aim, they fired their repeating rifles through the trees as fast as they could.
“Viva Cuba Libre!” they shouted in unison.
Through the woods came the startled yells of the bathing Spanish soldiers, just out of range of vision.
Reaching the ravine, Hal made for one stack of rifles, Juan for another.
Seizing each a rifle in either hand, they commenced discharging them two at a time in the direction of the creek.
“Al machete! al machete!” (To the sword!) roared Juan, keeping up a thunderous rattle of musketry.
“Surround the enemy!” thundered Hal. “Give no quarter to Spaniards! Every foe killed to-day is a foe the less to meet to-morrow.”
All the while the incessant banging of guns rang out.
To the startled bathers by the creek it seemed as if they had fallen, naked and unarmed, into fierce, one-sided battle.
“Keep a-banging and a-shouting,” muttered Hal, as he sped by Juan.
Ramirez obeyed with a will, while Hal, though he still continued to yell, busied his hands by gathering up the rifles an armful at a time.
There was rope around in plenty among the camp baggage.
Working like a Trojan, Hal quickly had thirty of the rifles lashed upon two of the horses.
Juan turned and saw with blazing eyes what his comrade had accomplished.
“The Spaniards are running,” he quivered. “If it were not so, we would have them on our hands by this time.”
And he worked like a beaver to help Hal lash the remaining arms upon other horses.
There were many cartridge belts strewn around. These, too, were lashed across the saddles, as well as a few cases of ammunition.
“Here are four less of the enemy for our men to deal with,” cried Juan, spurning with his foot the body of one of the four slain sentinels.
“It was a tremendous piece of cheek,” blurted Hal, vaulting into one of the saddles, and seizing the halters of two led pack horses.
“The Spaniards must still be running,” chuckled Juan.
“I imagine few of them stopped for their clothes,” laughed Hal. “But mount, my friend, mount! When the enemy halt——”
“It will be a half an hour before they do,” derided Ramirez. “Oh, mi amigo, you were born a master of strategy. It was magnificent—that charge of a battalion of trees—that fusilade fired by four hands!”
“Into saddle! forward!” urged Hal. “It is our turn to laugh, now, but in sixty seconds it may not be. When the enemy discover the trick, rivers of blood would not satisfy them!”
Smiling grimly, with a full realization of the peril, Hal Maynard urged his mount into a trot.