“It is a question absolute of certain death by execution for Henry Morgan,” Torres persisted. “Proven beyond doubt is his conviction for the murder of Alfaro Solano, who was your own full-blood uncle and your father’s own full-blood brother. There is no chance to save Henry Morgan. But Francis Morgan can I save in all surety, if——”
“If?” Leoncia queried, with almost the snap of jaws of a she-leopard.
“If ... you prove kind to me, and marry me,” Torres said with magnificent steadiness, although two Gringos, helpless, their hands tied behind their backs, glared at him through their eyes their common desire for his immediate extinction.
Torres, in a genuine outburst of his passion, though his rapid glances had assured him of the helplessness of the two Morgans, seized her hands in his and urged:
“Leoncia, as your husband I might be able to do something for Henry. Even may it be possible for me to save his life and his neck, if he will yield to leaving Panama immediately.”
“You Spanish dog!” Henry snarled at him, struggling with his tied hands behind his back in an effort to free them.
“Gringo cur!” Torres retorted, as, with an open backhanded blow, he struck Henry on the mouth.
On the instant Henry’s foot shot out, and the kick in Torres’ side drove him staggering in the direction of Francis, who was no less quick with a kick of his own. Back and forth like a shuttlecock between the battledores, Torres was kicked from one man to the other, until the gendarmes seized the two Gringos and began to beat them in their helplessness. Torres not only urged the gendarmes on, but himself drew a knife; and a red tragedy might have happened with offended Latin-American blood up and raging, had not a score or more of armed men silently appeared and silently taken charge of the situation. Some of the mysterious newcomers were clad in cotton singlets and trousers, and others were in cowled gabardines of sackcloth.
The gendarmes and haciendados recoiled in fear, crossing themselves, muttering prayers and ejaculating: “The Blind Brigand!” “The Cruel Just One!” “They are his people!” “We are lost.”
But the much-beaten peon sprang forward and fell on his bleeding knees before a stern-faced man who appeared to be the leader of the Blind Brigand’s men. From the mouth of the peon poured forth a stream of loud lamentation and outcry for justice.
“You know that justice to which you appeal?” the leader spoke gutturally.
“Yes, the Cruel Justice,” the peon replied. “I know what it means to appeal to the Cruel Justice, yet do I appeal, for I seek justice and my cause is just.”
“I, too, demand the Cruel Justice!” Leoncia cried with flashing eyes, although she added in an undertone to Francis and Henry: “Whatever the Cruel Justice is.”
“It will have to go some to be unfairer than the justice we can expect from Torres and the Jefe,” Henry replied in similar undertones, then stepped forward boldly before the cowled leader and said loudly: “And I demand the Cruel Justice.”
The leader nodded.
“Me, too,” Francis murmured low, and then made loud demand.
The gendarmes did not seem to count in the matter, while the haciendados signified their willingness to abide by whatever justice the Blind Brigand might mete out to them. Only the Jefe objected.
“Maybe you don’t know who I am,” he blustered. “I am Mariano Vercara è Hijos, of long illustrious name and long and honorable career. I am Jefe Politico of San Antonio, the highest friend of the governor, and high in the confidence of the government of the Republic of Panama. I am the law. There is but one law and one justice, which is of Panama and not the Cordilleras. I protest against this mountain law you call the Cruel Justice. I shall send an army against your Blind Brigand, and the buzzards will peck his bones in San Juan.”
“Remember,” Torres sarcastically warned the irate Jefe, “that this is not San Antonio, but the bush of Juchitan. Also, you have no army.”
“Have these two men been unjust to any one who has appealed to the Cruel Justice?” the leader asked abruptly.
“Yes,” asseverated the peon. “They have beaten me. Everybody has beaten me. They, too, have beaten me and without cause. My hand is bloody. My body is bruised and torn. Again I appeal to the Cruel Justice, and I charge these two men with injustice.”
The leader nodded and to his own men indicated the disarming of the prisoners and the order of the march.
“Justice!—I demand equal justice!” Henry cried out. “My hands are tied behind my back. All hands should be so tied, or no hands be so tied. Besides, it is very difficult to walk when one is so tied.”
The shadow of a smile drifted the lips of the leader as he directed his men to cut the lashings that invidiously advertised the inequality complained of.
“Huh!” Francis grinned to Leoncia and Henry. “I have a vague memory that somewhere around a million years ago I used to live in a quiet little old burg called New York, where we foolishly thought we were the wildest and wickedest that ever cracked at a golf ball, electrocuted an Inspector of Police, battled with Tammany, or bid four nullos with five sure tricks in one’s own hand.”
“Huh!” Henry vouchsafed half an hour later, as the trail, from a lesser crest, afforded a view of higher crests beyond. “Huh! and hell’s bells! These gunny-sack chaps are not animals of savages. Look, Henry! They are semaphoring! See that near tree there, and that big one across the canyon. Watch the branches wave.”
Blindfold for a number of miles at the last, the prisoners, still blindfolded, were led into the cave where the Cruel Justice reigned. When the bandages were removed, they found themselves in a vast and lofty cavern, lighted by many torches, and, confronting them, a blind and white-haired man in sackcloth seated on a rock-hewn throne, with, beneath him, her shoulder at his knees, a pretty mestiza woman.
The blind man spoke, and in his voice was the thin and bell-like silver of age and weary wisdom.
“The Cruel Justice has been invoked. Speak! Who demands decision and equity?”
All held back, and not even the Jefe could summon heart of courage to protest against Cordilleras law.
“There is a woman present,” continued the Blind Brigand. “Let her speak first. All mortal men and women are guilty of something or else are charged by their fellows with some guilt.”
Henry and Francis were for with-straining her, but with an equal smile to them she addressed the Cruel Just One in clear and ringing tones:
“I only have aided the man I am engaged to marry to escape from death for a murder he did not commit.”
“You have spoken,” said the Blind Brigand. “Come forward to me.”
Piloted by sackcloth men, while the two Morgans who loved her were restless and perturbed, she was made to kneel at the blind man’s knees. The mestiza girl placed his hand on Leoncia’s head. For a full and solemn minute silence obtained, while the steady fingers of the Blind One rested about her forehead and registered the pulse-beats of her temples. Then he removed his hand and leaned back to decision.
“Arise, Senorita,” he pronounced. “Your heart is clean of evil. You go free.—Who else appeals to the Cruel Justice?”
Francis immediately stepped forward.
“I likewise helped the man to escape from an undeserved death. The man and I are of the same name, and, distantly, of the same blood.”
He, too, knelt, and felt the soft finger-lobes play delicately over his brows and temples and come to rest finally on the pulse of his wrist.
“It is not all clear to me,” said the Blind One. “You are not at rest nor at peace with your soul. There is trouble within you that vexes you.”
