The Wolf Cub Part 4

But the Spanish engine driver did neither of those two things. It is not that the Iberians are not as polite as the French; they are more polite and altogether more ceremonious. Know you that in Spain, and also in Mexico, it is considered something of an insult to proffer a man matches when he requests a light of you and you yourself are smoking. It is as though you consider him socially beneath you, when you proffer him matches.

The locomotive lumbered by. But the engine driver crowded forward on his seat; his arms worked; the whistle shrieked. And the train groaned and jolted, roared and banged to a full stop.

Pa.s.sengers telescoped themselves out of windows, some knocked all a-scramble by the sudden halt, others pale and frightened. Those heads that protruded from fortunate windows saw the engine driver clamber down from his high turret, a lighted cigarette in his hand. And they saw spur forward to meet him, the dusty vaquero, in his mouth a cigarette that was dead.

The vaquero flung himself from his pony. He and the engine driver drew together. A hand of each met, became entwined. Their heads leaned close, the cigarettes between their teeth touching ends.

Suddenly the engine driver staggered away from the vaquero, his jaw dropping, his cigarette falling unheeded to the ground. A huge long-barrelled revolver in the hand of the vaquero was nuzzling his umbilicus.

"_Aupa!_" shouted the vaquero harshly. "Up!"

Prodding his belly persistently, the vaquero followed him back, step by step. The engine driver was suddenly enlightened. It was all a piece of herdsmen's buffoonery, a monstrous practical joke!

"Benito!" he roared, addressing his stoker in the cab above. "Benito, look down! Here is a vaquero who thinks himself a _salteador de camino_, a bandolero like the poor dead Pernales or that new man, Jacinto Quesada! _Por los Clavos de Cristo!_ what a fool's idea!"

Then to the vaquero. "Don't you know I have no time for horseplay, you silly one, you buffoon, you? You are making yourself liable to arrest!"

"I am the new man, Jacinto Quesada!" said Jacinto Quesada with politeness and reserve. Then, "Aupa, aupa!"

"Jacinto Quesada--Almighty G.o.d!" gasped the engine driver. Only he made it, "_Todopoderoso Dio!_" and he groaned it out slowly.

But with great alacrity he put up his hands.

Then after a moment, stuttering with fright, he commenced objecting.

"But caballerete--but Don Jacinto--"

"What would you?"

"But you cannot hold up the Seville-to-Madrid! No one ever holds up the Seville-to-Madrid! And besides, you are alone!"

"But I am not alone," returned Jacinto Quesada.

Nor was he. Out of the Arroyo Seco, a hundred yards up the track, three men as drab and dusty as he had poked their dishevelled heads.

Shouted Quesada, "_Adelante_, mis dorados! The stew is ready, approach the bowl! Forward, my golden ones!"

CHAPTER V

The Golden Ones approached at a run, showing in their hands carbines of no recent fashion. They were rough-bearded fellows of impetuous courage but of little skill or fame; reckless scapegraces whom he had picked up, on the plains and in the mountains, to reinforce him in this most pretentious and uncommon hold-up.

After the consummation of the deed, they would go their ways and he his.

Like most Spanish _bandoleros en grande_, Jacinto Quesada preferred, whenever he could, to keep his heels clean of confederates and coadjutors; he preferred to hold himself aloof and solitary. However, they were his companeros for the nonce; for the nonce, they were his dorados, his golden, his trustworthy ones.

One of them clambered up into the cab after the fireman, Benito. The rest, under the supervision of Jacinto Quesada, proceeded to turn inside out the Seville-to-Madrid.

Pretentious train robberies are forever much alike. Save that those waylaid and despoiled were Spaniards, and Spaniards are eternally themselves, and their souls glow frankly and incandescently out through their bodies in everything they do, the hold-up of the Seville-to-Madrid was like an American train robbery, like a train robbery anywhere.

The mail coach was first disposed of. Then the highwaymen turned their attention to the pa.s.sengers. In a jostling, milling, frightened drove on the open plain to the right of the stalled coaches, the pa.s.sengers were herded by the four taciturn workmanlike bandoleros. Then one by one each pa.s.senger was led forward from the rest and searched for money and valuables.

Those who were cowardly, quaked and walked knock-kneed, their mouths stuttering rapid prayers. Those who were courageous but overawed, clenched their teeth in their lips, held their eyes pasted upon the bandoleros, and did silently and with utter obedience that which they were told to do. Those who were weak, wept. Few words were said, yet the faces of all were as a loudly chanted litany of dreads.

Jacinto Quesada took little part in the searching; he left that to his journeymen. He stood aloof, his revolver in hand, his eyes studying pensively, as they were put to the search, the demeanor of the brave and the base.

Many of the herded and driven and robbed wondered at this boy with no vestige of hair on his smooth brown cheeks. They did not know him. They thought Jacinto Quesada, he who had begun making such a great noise through Spain, one of the bearded, black-visaged, older men.

First to be led forward and made to deliver was a traveler for a Barcelona manufactory. Then came two brokers who had been speeding about Spain to make contracts on the grape, olive, orange, and apricot crops.

Then came a wine taster, one cork grower, and three cattle breeders; and then a troupe of Gitanos, Gypsy musicians and dancers of the metropolitan cafes. And these having been plucked in their proper sequence, there was led forward a wisp of black-clad nuns.

Jacinto Quesada stepped forward and took off his hat to the nuns. He motioned that they should be brought back to their old places without suffering the sacrilege of search, and he said, "Your pardon, Ladies of G.o.d!"

Then was led forward a foreign looking man, a globe-trotter who had been traveling alone. He was big, broad-shouldered, fair-haired and as smooth-shaven as any bullfighter. He was square of face, his jaw was a round resolute k.n.o.b, and his eyes were blue and hinted of being quick to laugh. Struck by the foreign look of the man, Jacinto Quesada stepped forward once again and, with an air of ingenuous curiosity, asked, "You are a Frenchman, are you not?"

It is a fact that most Spaniards mistake all foreigners for either Frenchmen or Englishmen. And they never can distinguish between persons of the two races.

Answered the outlander, "I am neither, _muchacho_. I am what you Spaniards call a _Yanqui_, a _Norte Americano_."

"Cascaras! You are one of those who gave Spain such a great beating a few years ago and robbed us of Cuba and the Philippines. Thorough and impudent salteadores de camino, you Yanquis seem to me! But sometimes it does a person or a country good to be beaten and robbed. Spain is the better for having had her b.u.t.tocks soundly spanked; and the Philippines and Cuba--zut! they were ulcers on her flesh, and Spain is sincerely thankful she submitted to the surgeon's knife, now that the thing is done!"

At the philosophical and rather elevated tone of the boy, the American raised his eyebrows in surprise. Yet he had traveled in Spain some months already, and he should have been used to Spanish logic and Spanish eloquence.

The race of the Cristinos Viejos is an old, old race, full of salt and masculinity and knowledge that is not to be acquired in schools. In a country where any peasant will argue or exchange racy jokes with Alfonso and even slap him on the back in the ensuing hurly-burly of merriment, where a hidalgo will eat with his coachman, and a beggar light his cigarette from that of a bishop, how otherwise than the way Jacinto Quesada talked, would a man of the people talk?

So this was the notorious Jacinto Quesada, he whom all Spain had commenced talking about! Smiling a smile of appreciation, the American said:

"I think you are very well right about the recent war. You Spaniards are certainly long on common sense. But you are young to be a philosopher, Don Jacinto."

At least, that was what he tried to say. But he was speaking in Spanish and he was not altogether at home in the idioms of the language.

However, Jacinto Quesada got his meaning.

He felt pleased, did Jacinto Quesada, to be called a philosopher. With a smile he remembered the ferocious way of thinking which had caused him, when a child, to seek to be the dorado of the poor dead Pernales--that savage philosophy which had finally moved him to become a bandolero. He was not nearly so impetuous and fiery and bigoted a youngster as then; he was more serene, more Apollonian, more pensively thoughtful.

But the American was speaking. Thinking to be polite and, at the same time, rid his system of a sally typically American in humor, he said, "It is pleasant to meet a Spaniard like you!"

Quesada caught the inference. He smiled, showing his clean white teeth, and returned, "It is pleasant to rob you, senor!"

And he added, struck with surprise that a man could joke while in such an awkward and even perilous position, and startled by his surprise into admiration and wonder:

"To know you, caballero, is to know why your countrymen won the recent war. You are a man of the great bravery; you are as brave as the very G.o.d Himself!"

Your American is forever afraid lest he be made the b.u.t.t of irony and ridicule, the target of satire and sarcasm. His very self-consciousness indicates how vulnerable he is to others' opinions of him; and his extreme reserve is only a cloak worn eternally to mask the weakness.

This particular American changed countenance as he had never changed countenance when menaced by the bandoleros' carbines; he went white and cold, his eyes flashed angrily. And sharply, he exploded:

"Why do you say that?"