Hearts of Three by Jack London Chapter IX
IN the meantime the Solanos were being overtaken, and Henry teased Francis with:
"Here in the jungle is where dollars are worthless. They can buy neither fresh horses, nor can they repair these two spineless creatures, which must likewise be afflicted with the murrain that carried off the rest of the haciendado's riding animals."
"I've never been in a place yet where money wouldn't work," Francis replied.
"I suppose it could even buy a drink of water in hell," was Henry's retort.
Leoncia clapped her hands.
"I don't know," Francis observed. "I have never been there."
Again Leoncia clapped her hands.
"Just the same I have an idea I can make dollars work in the jungle, and I am going to try it right now," Francis continued, at the same time untying the coin-sack from Leoncia's pommel. "You go ahead and ride on."
"But you must tell me," Leoncia insisted; and, aside, in her ear as she leaned to him from the saddle, he whispered what made her laugh again, while Henry, conferring with Enrico and his sons, inwardly berated himself for being a jealous fool.
Before they were out of sight, looking back, they saw Francis, with pad and pencil out, writing something. What he wrote was eloquently brief, merely the figure "50." Tearing off the sheet, he laid it conspicuously in the middle of the trail and weighted it down with a silver dollar. Counting out forty-nine other dollars from the bag, he sowed them very immediately about the first one and ran up the trail after his party.
Augustino, the gendarme who rarely spoke when he was sober, but who when drunk preached volubly the wisdom of silence, was in the lead, with bent head nosing the track of the quarry, when his keen eyes lighted on the silver dollar holding down the sheet of paper. The first he appropriated; the second he turned over to the Jefe. Torres looked over his shoulder, and together they read the mystic "50." The Jefe tossed the scrap of paper aside as of little worth, and was for resuming the chase, but Augustino picked up and pondered the "50 "thoughtfully. Even as he pondered it, a shout from Kafael advertised the finding of another dollar. Then Augustino knew. There were fifty of the coins to be had for the picking up. Flinging the note to the wind, he was on hands and knees overhauling the ground. The rest of the party joined in the scramble, while Torres and the Jefe screamed curses on them in a vain effort to make them proceed.
When the gendarmes could find no more, they counted up what they had recovered. The toll came to forty-seven.
"There are three more," cried Eafael, whereupon all flung themselves into the search again. Five minutes more were lost, ere the three other coins were found. Each pocketed what he had retrieved and obediently swung into the pursuit at the heels of Torres and the Jefe.
A mile farther on, Torres tried to trample a shining dollar into the dirt, but Augustino's ferret eyes had been too quick, and his eager fingers dug it out of the soft earth. Where was one dollar, as they had already learned, there were more dollars. The posse came to a halt, and while the two leaders fumed and imprecated, the rest of the members cast about right and left from the trail.
Vicente, a moon — faced gendarme, who looked more like a Mexican Indian than a Maya or a Panamanian "breed," lighted first on the clue. All gathered about, like hounds around a tree into which the 'possum has been run. In truth, it was a tree, or a rotten and hollow stump of one, a dozen feet in height and a third as many feet in diameter. Five feet from the ground was an opening. Above the opening, pinned on by a thorn, was a sheet of paper the same size as the first they had found. On it was written "100."
In the scramble that ensued, half a dozen minutes were lost as half a dozen right arms strove to be first in dipping into the hollow heart of the stump to the treasure. But the hollow extended deeper than their arms were long. "We will chop down the stump," Eafael cried, sounding with the back of his machete against the side of it to locate the base of the hollow. "We will all chop, and we will count what we find inside and divide equally."
By this time their leaders were frantic, and the Jefe had begun threatening, the moment they were back in San Antonio, to send them to San Juan where their carcasses would be picked by the buzzards.
"But we are not back in San Antonio, thank God," said Augustino, breaking his sober seal of silence in order to enunciate wisdom.
"We are poor men, and we will divide in fairness," spoke up Rafael. "Augustino is right, and thank God for it that we are not back in San Antonio. This rich Gringo scatters more money along the way in a day for us to pick up than could we earn in a year where we come from. I, for one, am for revolution, where money is so plentiful."
"With the rich Gringo for a leader," Augustino supplemented. "For as long as he leads this way could I follow forever."
"If," Rafael nodded agreement, with a pitch of his head toward Torres and the Jefe, "if they do not give us opportunity to gather what the gods have spread for us, then to the last and deepest of the roasting hells of hell for them. We are men, not slaves. The world is wide. The Cordilleras are just beyond. We will all be rich, and free men, and live in the Cordilleras where the Indian maidens are wildly beautiful and desirable-"
"And we will be well rid of our wives, back in San Antonio," said Vicente. "Let us now chop down this treasure tree."
Swinging their machetes with heavy, hacking blows, the wood, so rotten that it was spongy, gave way readily before their blades. And when the stump fell over, they counted and divided, in equity, not one hundred silver dollars, but one hundred and forty-seven.
"He is generous, this Gringo," quoth Vicente. "He leaves more than he says. May there not be still more?"
And, from the debris of rotten wood, much of it crumbled to powder under their blows, they recovered five more coins, in the doing of which they lost ten more minutes that drove Torres and Jefe to the verge of madness.
"He does not stop to count, the wealthy Gringo," said Rafael. "He must merely open that sack and pour it out. And that is the sack with which he rode to the beach of San Antonio when he blew up with dynamite the wall of our jail."
The chase' was resumed, and all went well for half an hour, when they came upon an abandoned freehold, already half — overrun with the returning jungle. A dilapidated, strawthatched house, a fallen-in labor barracks, a broken-down corral the very posts of which had sprouted and leaved into growing trees, and a well showing recent use by virtue of a fresh length of riata attaching bucket to well-sweep, showed where some man had failed to tame the wild. And, conspicuously on the well-sweep, was pinned a familiar sheet of paper on which was written "300."
"Mother of God! a fortune!" cried Eafael.
"May the devil forever torture him in the last and deepest hell!" was Torres' contribution.
"He pays better than your Senor Regan," the Jefe sneered in his despair and disgust.
"His bag of silver is only so large," Torres retorted. "It seems we must pick it all up before we catch him. But when we have picked it all up, and his bag is empty, then will we catch him."
"We will go on now, comrades," the Jefe addressed his posse ingratiatingly. "Afterwards, we will return at our leisure and recover the silver."
Augustino broke his seal of silence again.
"One never knows the way of one's return, if one ever returns," he enunciated pessimistically. Elated by the pearl of wisdom he had dropped, he essayed another. "Three hundred in hand is better than three million in the bottom of a well we may never see again."
"Some one must descend into the well," spoke Rafael, testing the braided rope with his weight. "See! The riata is strong. We will lower a man by it. Who is the brave one who will go down?"
"I," said Vicente. "I will be the brave one to go down-"
"And steal half that you find," Eafael uttered his instant suspicion. "If you go down, first must you count over to us the pesos you already possess. Then, when you come up, we can search you for all you have found. After that, when we have divided equitably, will your other pesos be returned to you."
"Then will I not go down for comrades who have no trust in me," Vicente said stubbornly. "Here, beside the well, I am as wealthy as any of you. Then why should I go down? I have heard of men dying in the bottom of wells."
"In God's name go down!" stormed the Jefe. "Haste! Haste!"
"I am too fat, the rope is not strong, and I shall not go down," said Vicente.
All looked to Augustino, the silent one, who had already spoken more than he was accustomed to speak in a week. "Guillermo is the thinnest and lightest," said Augustino. "Guillermo will go down!" the rest chorused. But Guillermo, glaring apprehensively at the mouth of the well, backed away, shaking his head and crossing himself.
"Not for the sacred treasure in the secret city of the Mayas," he muttered.
The Jefe pulled his revolver and glanced to the remainder of the posse for confirmation. With eyes and head-nods they gave it.
"In heaven's name go down," he threatened the little gendarme. "And make haste, or I shall put you in such a fix that never again will you go up or down, but you will remain here and rot forever beside this hole of perdition. Is it well, comrades, that I kill him if he does not go down?" "It is well," they shouted.
And Guillermo, with trembling fingers, counted out the coins he had already retrieved, and, in the throes of fear, crossing himself repeatedly and urged on by the handthrusts of his companions, stepped upon the bucket, sat down on it with legs wrapped about it, and was lowered away out of the light of day.
"Stop!" he screamed up the shaft. "Stop! Stop! The water! I am upon it!"
Those on the sweep held it with their weight. "I should receive ten pesos extra above my share," he called up.
"You shall receive baptism," was called down to him, and, variously: "You will have your fill of water this day"; "We will let go"; "We will cut the rope"; "There will be one less with whom to share."
"The water is not nice," he replied, his voice rising like a ghost's out of the dark depth. "There are sick lizards, and a dead bird that stinks. And there may be snakes. It is well worth ten pesos extra what I must do."
"We will drown you!" Rafael shouted.
"I shall shoot down upon you and kill you!" the Jefe bullied.
"Shoot or drown me," Guillermo's voice floated up; "but it will buy you nothing, for the treasure will still be in the well."
There was a pause, in which those at the surface questioned each other with their eyes as to what they should do.
"And the Gringos are running away farther and farther," Torres fumed. "A fine discipline you have, Senor Mariano — Vercara e Hijos, over your gendarmes!"
"This is not San Antonio," the Jefe flared back. "This is the bush of Juchitan. My dogs are good dogs in San Antonio. In the bush they must be handled gently, else may they become wild dogs, and what then will happen to you and me?"
"It is the curse of gold," Torres surrendered sadly. "It is almost enough to make one become a socialist, with a Gringo thus tying the hands of justice with ropes of gold."
"Of silver," the Jefe corrected.
"You go to hell," said Torres. "As you have pointed out, this is not San Antonio but the bush of Juchitan, and here I may well tell you to go to hell. Why should you and I quarrel because of your bad temper, when our prosperity depends on standing together?"
"Besides," the voice of Guillermo drifted up, "the water is not two feet deep. You cannot drown me in it. I have just felt the bottom and I have four round silver pesos in my hand right now. The bottom is carpeted with pesos. Do you want to let go? Or do I get ten pesos extra for the filthy job? The water stinks like a fresh graveyard."
"Yes! Yes!" they shouted down.
"Which? Let go? Or the extra ten?"
"The extra ten!" they chorused.
"In God's name, haste! haste!" cried the Jefe.
They heard splashings and curses from the bottom of the well, and, from the lightening of the strain on the riata, knew that Guillermo had left the bucket and was floundering for the coin.
"Put it in the bucket, good Guillermo," Rafael called down.
"I am putting it in my pockets," up came the reply. "Did I put it in the bucket you might haul it up first and well forget to haul me up afterward."
"The double weight might break the riata," Rafael cautioned.
"The riata may not be so strong as my will, for my will in this matter is most strong," said Guillermo.
"If the riata should break …" Eafael began again.
"I have a solution," said Guillermo. "Do you come down. Then shall I go up first. Second, the treasure shall go up in the bucket. And, third and last, shall you go up. Thus will justice be triumphant."
Rafael, with dropped jaw of dismay, did not reply.
"Are you coming, Rafael?"
"No," he answered. "Put all the silver in your pockets and come up together with it."
"I could curse the race that bore me," was the impatient observation of the Jefe.
"I have already cursed it," said Torres.
"Haul away I " shouted Guillermo. " I have everything in my pockets save the stench; and I am suffocating. Haul quick, or I shall perish, and the three hundred pesos will perish with me. And there are more than three hundred. He must have emptied his bag."
Ahead, on the trail, where the way grew steep and the horses without stamina rested and panted, Francis overtook his party.
"Never again shall I travel without minted coin of the realm," he exulted, as he described what he had remained behind to see from the edge of the deserted plantation. "Henry, when I die and go to heaven, I shall have a stout bag of cash along with me. Even there could it redeem me from heaven alone knows what scrapes. Listen! They fought like cats and dogs about the mouth of the well. Nobody would trust anybody to descend into the well unless he deposited what he had previously picked up with those that remained at the top. They were out of hand. The Jefe, at the point of his gun, had to force the littlest and leanest of them to go down. And when he was down he blackmailed them before he would come up. And when he came up they broke their promises and gave him a beating. They were still beating him when I left."
"But now your sack is empty," said Henry.
"Which is our present and most pressing trouble," Francis agreed. "Had I sufficient pesos I could keep the pursuit well behind us forever. I'm afraid I was too generous. I did not know how cheap the poor devils were. But I'll tell you something that will make your hair stand up. Torres, Senor Torres, Senor Alvarez Torres, the elegant gentleman and old-time friend of you Solanos, is leading the pursuit along with the Jefe. He is furious at the delay. They almost had a rupture because the Jefe couldn't keep his men in hand. Yes, sir, and he told the Jefe to go to hell. I distinctly heard him tell the Jefe to go to hell."
Five miles farther on, the horses of Leoncia and her father in collapse, where the trail plunged into and ascended a dark ravine, Francis urged the others on and dropped behind. Giving them a few minutes' start, he followed on behind, a self-constituted rearguard. Part way along, in an open space where grew only a thick sod of grass, he was dismayed to find the hoof-prints of the two horses staring at him as large as dinner plates from out of the sod. Into the hoofprints had welled a dark, slimy fluid that his eye told him was crude oil. This was but the beginning, a sort of seepage from a side stream above off from the main flow. A hundred yards beyond he came upon the flow itself, a river of oil that on such a slope would have been a cataract had it been water. But being crude oil, as thick as molasses, it oozed slowly down the hill like so much molasses. And here, preferring to make his stand rather than to wade through the sticky mess, Francis sat down on a rock, laid his rifle on one side of him, his automatic pistol on the other side, rolled a cigarette, and kept his ears pricked for the first sounds of the pursuit.
And the beaten peon, threatened with more beatings and belaboring his over-ridden mare, rode across the top of the ravine above Francis, and, at the oil-well itself, had his exhausted animal collapse under him. With his heels he kicked her back to her feet, and with a stick belabored her to stagger away from him and on and into the jungle. And the first day of his adventures, although he did not know it, was not yet over. He, too, squatted on a stone, his feet out of the oil, rolled a cigarette, and, as he smoked it, contemplated the flowing oil-well. The noise of approaching men startled him, and he fled into the immediately adjacent jungle, from which he peered forth and saw two strange men appear. They came directly to the well, and, by an iron wheel turning the valve, choked down the flow still further.
"No more," commanded the one who seemed to be leader. "Another turn, and the pressure will blow out the pipes for so the Gringo engineer has warned me most carefully."
And a slight flow, beyond the limited safety, continued to run from the mouth of the gusher down the mountain side. Scarcely had the two men accomplished this, when a body of horsemen rode up, whom the peon in hiding recognized as the haciendado who owned him and the overseers and haciendados of neighboring plantations who delighted in running down a fugitive laborer in much the same way that the English delight in chasing the fox.
No, the two oil-men had seen nobody. But the haciendado who led saw the footprints of the mare, and spurred his horse to follow, his crowd at his heels.
The peon waited, smoked his cigarette quite to the finish, and cogitated. When all was clear, he ventured forth, turned the mechanism controlling the well wide open t watched the oil fountaining upward under the subterranean pressure and flowing down the mountain in a veritable river. Also, he listened to and noted the sobbing, and gasping, and bubbling of the escaping gas. This he did not comprehend, and all that saved him for his further adventures was the fact that he had used his last match to light his cigarette. In vain he searched his rags, his ears, and his hair. He was out of matches.
So, chuckling at the river of oil he was wantonly running to waste, and, remembering the canyon trail below, he plunged down the mountainside and upon Francis, who received him with extended automatic. Down went the peon on his frayed and frazzled knees in terror and supplication to the man he had twice betrayed that day. Francis studied him, at first without recognition, because of the bruised and lacerated face and head on which the blood had dried like a mask.
"Amigo, amigo," chattered the peon. But at that moment, from below on the ravine trail, Francis heard the clatter of a stone dislodged by some man's foot. The next moment he identified what was left of the peon as the pitiable creature to whom he had given half the contents of his whiskey flask.
"Well, amigo," Francis said in the native language, "it looks as if they are after you."
"They will kill me, they will beat me to death, they are very angry," the wretch quavered. "You are my only friend, my father and my mother, save me."
"Can you shoot?" Francis demanded.
"I was a hunter in the Cordilleras before I was sold into slavery, Senor," was the reply.
Francis passed him the automatic, motioned him to take shelter, and told him not to fire until sure of a hit. And to himself he mused: The golfers are out on the links right now at Tarrytown. And Mrs. Bellingham is on the clubhouse veranda wondering how she is going to pay the three thousand points she's behind and praying for a change of luck. And here am I, Lord! Lord, backed up to a river of oil …
His musing ceased as abruptly as appeared the Jefe, Torres, and the gendarmes down the trail. As abruptly he fired his rifle, and as abruptly they fell back out of sight. He could not tell whether he had hit one, or whether the man had merely fallen in precipitate retreat. The pursuers did not care to make a rush of it, contenting themselves with bushwhacking. Francis and the peon did the same, sheltering behind rocks and bushes and frequently changing their positions.
At the end of an hour, the last cartridge in Francis' rifle was all that remained. The peon, under his warnings and threats, still retained two cartridges in the automatic. But the hour had been an hour saved for Leoncia and her people, and Francis was contentedly aware that at any moment he could turn and escape by wading across the river of oil. So all was well, and would have been well, had not, from above, come an eruption of another body of men, who, from behind trees, fired as they descended. This was the haciendado and his fellow haciendados, in chase of the fugitive peon although Francis did not know it. His conclusion was that it was another posse that was after him. The shots they fired at him were strongly confirmative.
The peon crawled to his side, showed him that two shots remained in the automatic he was returning to him, and impressively begged from him his box of matches. Next, the peon motioned him to cross the bottom of the canyon and climb the other side. With half a guess of the creature's intention, Francis complied, from his new position of vantage emptying his last rifle cartridge at the advancing posse and sending it back into shelter down the ravine.
The next moment, the river of oil flared into flame from where the peon had touched a match to it. In the following moment, clear up the mountainside, the well itself sent a fountain of ignited gas a hundred feet into the. air. And, in the moment after, the ravine itself poured a torrent of flame down upon the posse of Torres and the Jefe.
Scorched by the heat of the conflagration, Francis and the peon clawed up the opposite side of the ravine, circled around and past the blazing trail, and, at a dog-trot, raced up the recovered trail.