Like a beaten bull in the ring seeking a way to escape and gazing up at the amphitheatre of pitiless faces, so the Jefe looked up and saw only the rifles of the sackcloth men, the triumphing faces of Leoncia and Francis, the curious looks of his own gendarmes, and the blood-eager faces of the haciendados that were like the faces of any bull-fight audience.
The shadowy smile drifted the stern lips of the leader as he handed the rifle to Henry and started to blindfold him.
“Why don’t you make him face the wall until I’m ready?” the Jefe demanded, as the silver bell tinkled in his passion-convulsed hand.
“Because he is proven God’s man,” was the reply. “He has stood the test. Therefore he cannot do a treacherous deed. You now must stand the test of God. If you are true and honest, no harm can befall you from the Snake. For such is God’s way.”
Far more successful as the hunter than as the hunted one, did the Jefe prove. Across the pit from Henry, he strove to stand motionless; but out of nervousness, as Henry’s rifle swept around on him, his hand trembled and the bell tinkled. The rifle came almost to rest and wavered ominously about the sound. In vain the Jefe tried to control his flesh and still the bell.
But the bell tinkled on, and, in despair, he flung it away and threw himself on the ground. But Henry, following the sound of his enemy’s fall, lowered the rifle and pulled trigger. The Jefe yelled out in sharp pain as the bullet perforated his shoulder, rose to his feet, cursed, sprawled back on the ground, and lay there cursing.
Again in the cave, with the mestiza beside him at his knee, the Blind Brigand gave judgment.
“This man who is wounded and who talks much of the law of the tierra caliente, shall now learn Cordilleras law. By the test of the Snake and the Bird has he been proven guilty. For his life a ransom of ten thousand dollars gold shall be paid, or else shall he remain here, a hewer of wood and a carrier of water, for the remainder of the time God shall grant him to draw breath on earth. I have spoken, and I know that my voice is God’s voice, and I know that God will not grant him long to draw breath if the ransom be not forthcoming.”
A long silence obtained, during which even Henry, who could slay a foe in the heat of combat, advertised that such cold-blooded promise of murder was repugnant to him.
“The law is pitiless,” said the Cruel Just One; and again silence fell.
“Let him die for want of a ransom,” spoke one of the haciendados. “He has proved a treacherous dog. Let him die a dog’s death.”
“What say you?” the Blind Brigand asked solemnly. “What say you, peon of the many beatings, man new-born this day, half-Maya that you are and lover of the woman wonderful? Shall this man die the dog’s death for want of a ransom?”
“This man is a hard man,” spoke the peon. “Yet is my heart strangely soft this day. Had I ten thousand gold I would pay his ransom myself. Yea, O Holy One and Just, and had I two hundred and fifty pesos, even would I pay off my debt to the haciendado of which I am absolved.”
The old man’s blind face lighted up to transfiguration.
“You, too, speak with God’s voice this day, regenerate one,” he approved.
But Francis, who had been scribbling hurriedly in his check book, handed a check, still wet with the ink, to the mestiza.
“I, too, speak,” he said. “Let not the man die the dog’s death he deserves, proven treacherous hound that he is.”
The mestiza read the check aloud.
“It is not necessary to explain,” the Blind Brigand shut Francis off. “I am a creature of reason, and have not lived always in the Cordilleras. I was trained in business in Barcelona. I know the Chemical National Bank of New York, and through my agents have had dealings with it aforetime. The sum is for ten thousand dollars gold. This man who writes it has told the truth already this day. The check is good. Further, I know he will not stop payment. This man who thus pays the ransom of a foe is one of three things: a very good man; a fool; or a very rich man. Tell me, O Man, is there a woman wonderful?”
And Francis, not daring to glance to right or left, at Leoncia or Henry, but gazing straight before him on the Blind Brigand’s face, answered because he felt he must so answer:
“Yes, O Cruel Just One, there is a woman wonderful.”
CHAPTER XII
At the precise spot where they had been first blindfolded by the sackcloth men, the cavalcade halted. It was composed of a number of the sackcloth men; of Leoncia, Henry, and Francis, blindfolded and mounted on mules; and of the peon, blindfolded and on foot. Similarly escorted, the haciendados, and the Jefe and Torres with their gendarmes, had preceded by half an hour.
At permission given by the stern-faced leader, the captives, about to be released, removed their blindfolds.
“Seems I’ve been here before,” Henry laughed, looking about and identifying the place.
“Seems the oil-wells are still burning,” Francis said, pointing out half the field of day that was eaten up by the black smoke-pall. “Peon, look upon your handiwork. For a man who possesses nothing, you are the biggest spender I ever met. I have heard of drunken oil-kings lighting cigars with thousand dollar bank-notes, but here are you burning up a million dollars a minute.”
“I am not a poor man,” the peon boasted in proud mysteriousness.
“A millionaire in disguise!” Henry twitted.
“Where do you deposit?” was Leoncia’s contribution. “In the Chemical National Bank?”
The peon did not understand the allusions, but knew that he was being made fun of, and drew himself up in proud silence.
The stern leader spoke:
“From this point you may now go your various ways. The Just One has so commanded. You, senors, will dismount and turn over to me your mules. As for the senorita, she may retain her mule as a present from the Just One, who would not care to be responsible for compelling any senorita to walk. The two senors, without hardship, may walk. Especially has the Just One recommended walking for the rich senor. The possession of riches, he advised, leads to too little walking. Too little walking leads to stoutness; and stoutness does not lead to the woman wonderful. Such is the wisdom of the Just One.”
“Further, he has repeated his advice to the peon to remain in the mountains. In the mountains he will find his woman wonderful, since woman he must have; and it is wisest that such woman be of his own breed. The woman of the tierra caliente are for the men of the tierra caliente. The Cordilleras women are for the Cordilleras men. God dislikes mixed breeds. A mule is abhorrent under the sun. The world was not intended for mixed breeds, but man has made for himself many inventions. Pure races interbred leads to impurity. Neither will oil nor water congenially intermingle. Since kind begets kind, only kind should mate. Such are the words of the Just One which I have repeated as commanded. And he has especially impressed upon me to add that he knows whereof he speaks, for he, too, has sinned in just such ways.”
And Henry and Francis, of Anglo-Saxon stock, and Leoncia of the Latin, knew perturbation and embarrassment as the vicarious judgment of the Blind Brigand sank home. And Leoncia, with her splendid eyes of woman, would have appealed protest to either man she loved, had the other been absent; while both Henry and Francis would have voiced protest to Leoncia had either of them been alone with her. And yet, under it all, deep down, uncannily, was a sense of the correctness of the Blind Brigand’s thought. And heavily, on the heart of each, rested the burden of the conscious oppression of sin.
A crashing and scrambling in the brush diverted their train of thought, as descending the canyon slope on desperately slipping and sliding horses, appeared on the scene the haciendado with several followers. His greeting of the daughter of the Solanos was hidalgo-like and profound, and only less was the heartiness of his greeting to the two men for whom Enrico Solano had stood sponsor.
“Where is your noble father?” he asked Leoncia. “I have good news for him. In the week since I last saw you, I have been sick with fever and encamped. But by swift messengers, and favoring winds across Chiriqui Lagoon to Bocas del Toro, I have used the government wireless—the Jefe of Bocas del Toro is my friend—and have communicated with the President of Panama—who is my ancient comrade whose nose I rubbed as often in the dirt as did he mine in the boyhood days when we were schoolmates and cubicle-mates together at Colon. And the word has come back that all is well; that justice has miscarried in the court at San Antonio from the too great but none the less worthy zeal of the Jefe Politico; and that all is forgiven, pardoned, and forever legally and politically forgotten against all of the noble Solano family and their two noble Gringo friends——”
Here, the haciendado bowed low to Henry and Francis. And here, skulking behind Leoncia’s uncle, his eyes chanced to light on the peon; and, so lighting, his eyes blazed with triumph.
“Mother of God, thou has not forgotten me!” he breathed fervently, then turned to the several friends who accompanied him. “There he is, the creature without reason or shame who has fled his debt of me. Seize him! I shall put him on his back for a month from the beating he shall receive!”
So speaking, the haciendado sprang around the rump of Leoncia’s mule; and the peon, ducking under the mule’s nose, would have won to the freedom of the jungle, had not another of the haciendados, with quick spurs to his horse’s sides, cut him off and run him down. In a trice, used to just such work, the haciendados had the luckless wight on his feet, his hands tied behind him, a lead-rope made fast around his neck.
In one voice Francis and Henry protested.
“Senors,” the haciendado replied, “my respect and consideration and desire to serve you are as deep as for the noble Solano family under whose protection you are. Your safety and comfort are sacred to me. I will defend you from harm with my life. I am yours to command. My hacienda is yours, likewise all I possess. But this matter of this peon is entirely another matter. He is none of yours. He is my peon, in my debt, who has run away from my hacienda. You will understand and forgive me, I trust. This is a mere matter of property. He is my property.”
Henry and Francis glanced at each other in mutual perplexity and indecision. It was the law of the land, as they thoroughly knew.
“The Cruel Just One did remit my debt, as all here will witness,” the peon whispered.
“It is true, the Cruel Justice remitted his debt,” Leoncia verified.
The haciendado smiled and bowed low.
“But the peon contracted with me,” he smiled. “And who is the Blind Brigand that his foolish law shall operate on my plantation and rob me of my rightful two hundred and fifty pesos?”
“He’s right, Leoncia,” Henry admitted.
“Then will I go back to the high Cordilleras,” the peon asserted. “Oh, you men of the Cruel Just One, take me back to the Cordilleras.”
But the stern leader shook his head.
“Here you were released. Our orders went no further. No further jurisdiction have we over you. We shall now bid farewell and depart.”
