Soldiers of Fortune Part 22

The noise of the galloping hoofs brought women and children to the barred windows of the houses, but no men stepped into the road to stop their progress, and those few they met running in the direction of the palace hastened to get out of their way, and stood with their backs pressed against the walls of the narrow thoroughfare looking after them with wonder.

Even those who suspected their errand were helpless to detain them, for sooner than they could raise the hue and cry or formulate a plan of action, the carriage had pa.s.sed and was disappearing in the distance, rocking from wheel to wheel like a ship in a gale. Two men who were so bold as to start to follow, stopped abruptly when they saw the outriders draw rein and turn in their saddles as though to await their coming.

Clay's mind was torn with doubts, and his nerves were drawn taut like the strings of a violin. Personal danger exhilarated him, but this chance of harm to others who were helpless, except for him, depressed his spirit with anxiety. He experienced in his own mind all the nervous fears of a thief who sees an officer in every pa.s.sing citizen, and at one moment he warned the driver to move more circ.u.mspectly, and so avert suspicion, and the next urged him into more desperate bursts of speed. In his fancy every cross street threatened an ambush, and as he cantered now before and now behind the carriage, he wished that he was a mult.i.tude of men who could encompa.s.s it entirely and hide it.

But the solid streets soon gave way to open places, and low mud cabins, where the horses' hoofs beat on a sun-baked road, and where the inhabitants sat lazily before the door in the fading light, with no knowledge of the changes that the day had wrought in the city, and with only a moment's curious interest in the hooded carriage, and the grim, white-faced foreigners who guarded it.

Clay turned his pony into a trot at Langham's side. His face was pale and drawn.

As the danger of immediate pursuit and capture grew less, the carriage had slackened its pace, and for some minutes the outriders galloped on together side by side in silence. But the same thought was in the mind of each, and when Langham spoke it was as though he were continuing where he had but just been interrupted.

He laid his hand gently on Clay's arm. He did not turn his face toward him, and his eyes were still peering into the shadows before them.

"Tell me?" he asked.

"He was coming up the stairs," Clay answered. He spoke in so low a voice that Langham had to lean from his saddle to hear him. "They were close behind; but when they saw her they stopped and refused to go farther. I called to him to come away, but he would not understand.

They killed him before he really understood what they meant to do. He was dead almost before I reached him. He died in my arms." There was a long pause. "I wonder if he knows that?" Clay said.

Langham sat erect in the saddle again and drew a short breath. "I wish he could have known how he helped me," he whispered, "how much just knowing him helped me."

Clay bowed his head to the boy as though he were thanking him. "His was the gentlest soul I ever knew," he said.

"That's what I wanted to say," Langham answered. "We will let that be his epitaph," and touching his spur to his horse he galloped on ahead and left Clay riding alone.

Langham had proceeded for nearly a mile when he saw the forest opening before them, and at the sight he gave a shout of relief, but almost at the same instant he pulled his pony back on his haunches and whirling him about, sprang back to the carriage with a cry of warning.

"There are soldiers ahead of us," he cried. "Did you know it?" he demanded of the driver. "Did you lie to me? Turn back."

"He can't turn back," MacWilliams answered. "They have seen us. They are only the custom officers at the city limits. They know nothing.

Go on." He reached forward and catching the reins dragged the horses down into a walk. Then he handed the reins back to the driver with a shake of the head.

"If you know these roads as well as you say you do, you want to keep us out of the way of soldiers," he said. "If we fall into a trap you'll be the first man shot on either side."

A sentry strolled lazily out into the road dragging his gun after him by the bayonet, and raised his hand for them to halt. His captain followed him from the post-house throwing away a cigarette as he came, and saluted MacWilliams on the box and bowed to the two riders in the background. In his right hand he held one of the long iron rods with which the collectors of the city's taxes were wont to pierce the bundles and packs, and even the carriage cushions of those who entered the city limits from the coast, and who might be suspected of smuggling.

"Whose carriage is this, and where is it going?" he asked.

As the speed of the diligence slackened, Hope put her head out of the curtains, and as she surveyed the soldier with apparent surprise, she turned to her brother.

"What does this mean?" she asked. "What are we waiting for?"

"We are going to the Hacienda of Senor Palacio," MacWilliams said, in answer to the officer. "The driver thinks that this is the road, but I say we should have taken the one to the right."

"No, this is the road to Senor Palacio's plantation," the officer answered, "but you cannot leave the city without a pa.s.s signed by General Mendoza. That is the order we received this morning. Have you such a pa.s.s?"

"Certainly not," Clay answered, warmly. "This is the carriage of an American, the president of the mines. His daughters are inside and on their way to visit the residence of Senor Palacio. They are foreigners--Americans. We are all foreigners, and we have a perfect right to leave the city when we choose. You can only stop us when we enter it."

The officer looked uncertainly from Clay to Hope and up at the driver on the box. His eyes fell upon the heavy bra.s.s mountings of the harness. They bore the arms of Olancho. He wheeled sharply and called to his men inside the post-house, and they stepped out from the veranda and spread themselves leisurely across the road.

"Ride him down, Clay," Langham muttered, in a whisper. The officer did not understand the words, but he saw Clay gather the reins tighter in his hands and he stepped back quickly to the safety of the porch, and from that ground of vantage smiled pleasantly.

"Pardon," he said, "there is no need for blows when one is rich enough to pay. A little something for myself and a drink for my brave fellows, and you can go where you please."

"d.a.m.ned brigands," growled Langham, savagely.

"Not at all," Clay answered. "He is an officer and a gentleman. I have no money with me," he said, in Spanish, addressing the officer, "but between caballeros a word of honor is sufficient. I shall be returning this way to-morrow morning, and I will bring a few hundred sols from Senor Palacio for you and your men; but if we are followed you will get nothing, and you must have forgotten in the mean time that you have seen us pa.s.s."

There was a murmur inside the carriage, and Hope's face disappeared from between the curtains to reappear again almost immediately. She beckoned to the officer with her hand, and the men saw that she held between her thumb and little finger a diamond ring of size and brilliancy. She moved it so that it flashed in the light of the guard lantern above the post-house.

"My sister tells me you shall be given this tomorrow morning," Hope said, "if we are not followed."

The man's eyes laughed with pleasure. He swept his sombrero to the ground.

"I am your servant, Senorita," he said. "Gentlemen," he cried, gayly, turning to Clay, "if you wish it, I will accompany you with my men.

Yes, I will leave word that I have gone in the sudden pursuit of smugglers; or I will remain here as you wish, and send those who may follow back again."

"You are most gracious, sir," said Clay. "It is always a pleasure to meet with a gentleman and a philosopher. We prefer to travel without an escort, and remember, you have seen nothing and heard nothing." He leaned from the saddle, and touched the officer on the breast. "That ring is worth a king's ransom."

"Or a president's," muttered the man, smiling. "Let the American ladies pa.s.s," he commanded.

The soldiers scattered as the whip fell, and the horses once more leaped forward, and as the carriage entered the forest, Clay looked back and saw the officer exhaling the smoke of a fresh cigarette, with the satisfaction of one who enjoys a clean conscience and a sense of duty well performed.

The road through the forest was narrow and uneven, and as the horses fell into a trot the men on horseback closed up together behind the carriage.

"Do you think that road-agent will keep his word?" Langham asked.

"Yes; he has nothing to win by telling the truth," Clay answered. "He can say he saw a party of foreigners, Americans, driving in the direction of Palacio's coffee plantation. That lets him out, and in the morning he knows he can levy on us for the gate money. I am not so much afraid of being overtaken as I am that King may make a mistake and not get to Bocos on time. We ought to reach there, if the carriage holds together, by eleven. King should be there by eight o'clock, and the yacht ought to make the run to Truxillo in three hours. But we shall not be able to get back to the city before five to-morrow morning. I suppose your family will be wild about Hope. We didn't know where she was when we sent the groom back to King."

"Do you think that driver is taking us the right way?" Langham asked, after a pause.

"He'd better. He knows it well enough. He was through the last revolution, and carried messages from Los Bocos to the city on foot for two months. He has covered every trail on the way, and if he goes wrong he knows what will happen to him."

"And Los Bocos--it is a village, isn't it, and the landing must be in sight of the Custom-house?"

"The village lies some distance back from the sh.o.r.e, and the only house on the beach is the Custom-house itself; but every one will be asleep by the time we get there, and it will take us only a minute to hand her into the launch. If there should be a guard there, King will have fixed them one way or another by the time we arrive. Anyhow, there is no need of looking for trouble that far ahead. There is enough to worry about in between. We haven't got there yet."

The moon rose grandly a few minutes later, and flooded the forest with light so that the open places were as clear as day. It threw strange shadows across the trail, and turned the rocks and fallen trees into figures of men crouching or standing upright with uplifted arms. They were so like to them that Clay and Langham flung their carbines to their shoulders again and again, and pointed them at some black object that turned as they advanced into wood or stone. From the forest they came to little streams and broad shallow rivers where the rocks in the fording places churned the water into white ma.s.ses of foam, and the horses kicked up showers of spray as they made their way, slipping and stumbling, against the current. It was a silent pilgrim age, and never for a moment did the strain slacken or the men draw rein. Sometimes, as they hurried across a broad tableland, or skirted the edge of a precipice and looked down hundreds of feet below at the shining waters they had just forded, or up at the rocky points of the mountains before them, the beauty of the night overcame them and made them forget the significance of their journey.

They were not always alone, for they pa.s.sed at intervals through sleeping villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, where the dogs ran yelping out to bark at them, and where the pine-knots, blazing on the clay ovens, burned cheerily in the moonlight. In the low lands where the fever lay, the mist rose above the level of their heads and enshrouded them in a curtain of fog, and the dew fell heavily, penetrating their clothing and chilling their heated bodies so that the sweating horses moved in a lather of steam.

They had settled down into a steady gallop now, and ten or fifteen miles had been left behind them.

"We are making excellent time," said Clay. "The village of San Lorenzo should lie beyond that ridge." He drove up beside the driver and pointed with his whip. "Is not that San Lorenzo?" he asked.

"Yes, senor," the man answered, "but I mean to drive around it by the old wagon trail. It is a large town, and people may be awake. You will be able to see it from the top of the next hill."

The cavalcade stopped at the summit of the ridge and the men looked down into the silent village. It was like the others they had pa.s.sed, with a few houses built round a square of gra.s.s that could hardly be recognized as a plaza, except for the church on its one side, and the huge wooden cross planted in its centre. From the top of the hill they could see that the greater number of the houses were in darkness, but in a large building of two stories lights were shining from every window.

"That is the comandancia," said the driver, shaking his head. "They are still awake. It is a telegraph station."