Suddenly the peon stepped forth and spoke unbidden, his voice evoking a thrill as of the shock of blasphemy from the sackcloth men.
“Oh, Just One, let this man go,” said the peon passionately. “Twice was I weak and betrayed him to his enemy this day, and twice this day has he protected me from my enemy and saved me.”
And the peon, once again on his knees, but this time at the knees of justice, thrilled and shivered with superstitious awe, as he felt wander over him the light but firm finger-touches of the strangest judge man ever knelt before. Bruises and lacerations were swiftly explored even to the shoulders and down the back.
“The other man goes free,” the Cruel Just One announced. “Yet is there trouble and unrest within him. Is one here who knows and will speak up?”
And Francis knew on the instant the trouble the blind man had divined within him—the full love that burned in him for Leoncia and that threatened to shatter the full loyalty he must ever bear to Henry. No less quick was Leoncia in knowing, and could the blind man have beheld the involuntary glance of knowledge the man and woman threw at each other and the immediate embarrassment of averted eyes, he could have unerringly diagnosed Francis’ trouble. The mestiza girl saw, and with a leap at her heart scented a love affair. Likewise had Henry seen and unconsciously scowled.
The Just One spoke:
“An affair of heart undoubtedly,” he dismissed the matter. “The eternal vexation of woman in the heart of man. Nevertheless, this man stands free. Twice, in the one day, has he succored the man who twice betrayed him. Nor has the trouble within him aught to do with the aid he rendered the man said to be sentenced to death undeserved. Remains to question this last man; also to settle for this beaten creature before me who twice this day has proved weak out of selfishness, and who has just now proved bravely strong out of unselfishness for another.”
He leaned forward and played his fingers searchingly over the face and brows of the peon.
“Are you afraid to die?” he asked suddenly.
“Great and Holy One, I am sore afraid to die,” was the peon’s reply.
“Then say that you have lied about this man, say that his twice succoring of you was a lie, and you shall live.”
Under the Blind One’s fingers the peon cringed and wilted.
“Think well,” came the solemn warning. “Death is not good. To be forever unmoving, as the clod and rock, is not good. Say that you have lied and life is yours. Speak!”
But, although his voice shook from the exquisiteness of his fear, the peon rose to the full spiritual stature of a man.
“Twice this day did I betray him, Holy One. But my name is not Peter. Not thrice in this day will I betray him. I am sore afraid, but I cannot betray him thrice.”
The blind judge leaned back and his face beamed and glowed as if transfigured.
“Well spoken,” he said. “You have the makings of a man. I now lay my sentence upon you: From now on, through all your days under the sun, you shall always think like a man, act like a man, be a man. Better to die a man any time, than live a beast forever in time. The Ecclesiast was wrong. A dead lion is always better than a live dog. Go free, regenerate son, go free.”
But, as the peon, at a signal from the mestiza, started to rise, the blind judge stopped him.
“In the beginning, O man who but this day has been born man, what was the cause of all your troubles?”
“My heart was weak and hungry, O Holy One, for a mixed-breed woman of the tierra caliente. I myself am mountain born. For her I put myself in debt to the haciendado for the sum of two hundred pesos. She fled with the money and another man. I remained the slave of the haciendado, who is not a bad man, but who, first and always, is a haciendado. I have toiled, been beaten, and have suffered for five long years, and my debt is now become two hundred and fifty pesos, and yet I possess naught but these rags and a body weak from insufficient food.”
“Was she wonderful?—this woman of the tierra caliente?” the blind judge queried softly.
“I was mad for her, Holy One. I do not think now that she was wonderful. But she was wonderful then. The fever of her burned my heart and brain and made a task-slave of me, though she fled in the night and I knew her never again.”
The peon waited, on his knees, with bowed head, while, to the amazement of all, the Blind Brigand sighed deeply and seemed to forget time and place. His hand strayed involuntarily and automatically to the head of the mestiza, caressed the shining black hair and continued to caress it while he spoke.
“The woman,” he said, with such gentleness that his voice, still clear and bell-like, was barely above a whisper. “Ever the woman wonderful. All women are wonderful ... to man. They love our fathers; they birth us; we love them; they birth our sons to love their daughters and to call their daughters wonderful; and this has always been and shall continue always to be until the end of man’s time and man’s loving on earth.”
A profound of silence fell within the cavern, while the Cruel Just One meditated for a space. At the last, with a touch dared of familiarity, the pretty mestiza touched him and roused him to remembrance of the peon still crouching at his feet.
“I pronounce judgment,” he spoke. “You have received many blows. Each blow on your body is quittance in full of the entire debt to the haciendado. Go free. But remain in the mountains, and next time love a mountain woman, since woman you must have, and since woman is inevitable and eternal in the affairs of men. Go free. You are half Maya?”
“I am half Maya,” the peon murmured. “My father is a Maya.”
“Arise and go free. And remain in the mountains with your Maya father. The tierra caliente is no place for the Cordilleras-born. The haciendado is not present, and therefore cannot be judged. And after all he is but a haciendado. His fellow haciendados, too, go free.”
The Cruel Just One waited, and, without waiting, Henry stepped forward.
“I am the man,” he stated boldly, “sentenced to the death undeserved for the killing of a man I did not kill. He was the blood-uncle of the girl I love, whom I shall marry if there be true justice here in this cave in the Cordilleras.”
But the Jefe interrupted.
“Before a score of witnesses he threatened to his face to kill the man. Within the hour we found him bending over the man’s dead body that was yet warm and limber with departing life.”
“He speaks true,” Henry affirmed. “I did threaten the man, both of us heady from strong drink and hot blood. I was so found, bending over his dead warm body. Yet did I not kill him. Nor do I know, nor can I guess, the coward hand in the dark that knifed out his life through the back from behind.”
“Kneel both of you, that I may interrogate you,” the Blind Brigand commanded.
Long he interrogated with his sensitive, questioning fingers. Long, and still longer, unable to attain decision, his fingers played over the faces and pulses of the two men.
“Is there a woman?” he asked Henry Morgan pointedly.
“A woman wonderful. I love her.”
“It is good to be so vexed, for a man unvexed by woman is only half a man,” the blind judge vouchsafed. He addressed the Jefe. “No woman vexes you, yet are you troubled. But this man”—indicating Henry—“I cannot tell if all his vexation be due to woman. Perhaps, in part, it may be due to you, or to what some prompting of evil may make him meditate against you. Stand up, both men of you. I cannot judge between you. Yet is there the test infallible, the test of the Snake and the Bird. Infallible it is, as God is infallible, for by such ways does God still maintain truth in the affairs of men. As well does Blackstone mention just such methods of determining the truth by trial and ordeal.”
CHAPTER XI
To all intents it might have been a tiny bull-ring, that pit in the heart of the Blind Brigand’s domain. Ten feet in depth and thirty in diameter, with level floor and perpendicular wall, its natural formation had required little work at the hands of man to complete its symmetry. The sackcloth men, the haciendados, the gendarmes—all were present, save for the Cruel Just One and the mestiza, and all were lined about the rim of the pit, as an audience, to gaze down upon some bull-fight or gladiatorial combat within the pit.
