The Mystery of The Barranca

CHAPTER XXV

Breaking through the stream of ocean vapors, the morning sun showed the jungle raising a languid head above the ruins of the flood. Long rents in its green mantle, bare patches of yellow mud, dark bruises where acres of debris had been piled in twisted masses, testified to the force of the wave. But, overlooking the wreckage from the smelter, Seyd took notice principally of a fact that suited his purpose – the river had been swept clean of driftwood. Not since the beginning of the rains had it shown such open stretches.

“Good!” he muttered. “The sooner we get away the better. I’ll call her at once.”

When, however, he knocked at the office door Francesca answered “Come!” When he entered she smiled at his surprise. “You said that we were to start early. Here I am, dressed and dried.”

“Not before breakfast,” he laughed. “It is ready. I’ll have it brought right in.”

All through the meal her eyes questioned, but, denying her curiosity, he talked of anything and everything but that which filled her mind. Even when, clothed in his waterproof, she took her seat opposite him in the stern of the dugout he denied their eloquent appeal. While sending the boat with vigorous strokes flying downstream he drew her attention to this and that phase of devastation and commented on the beauty of the morning, but not a word as to his purpose. It was cruel, and her eyes said so. But, remorseless, he held on till, about midway of the morning, they sighted San Nicolas. All the way down he had hugged the Santa Gertrudis side, and she received the first inkling when he replied to her question if it were not time to pull across.

“We are not going there.”

“Not going there?” she repeated, surprised.

“No, we shall keep right on – down to sea.”

“The sea?”

“The sea.” He nodded firmly. “And the minute we land there we’re going to be married.”

The idea was altogether too radical to be absorbed at once. No doubt she thought he was joking, for a smile broke around her mouth. Not until they were almost opposite San Nicolas did it give place to puzzled alarm.

“But, señor – Rob – Roberto.” She changed it in answer to his quick look. “But, Roberto – ”

“Might as well make it Bob,” he cut in, crisply. “It may seem strange at first, but seeing that we’re to be married you might as well begin to get used to it now.”

The San Nicolas walls now lay, a long, warm band, across their beam. From them her glance returned to the pendulum swing of his body. Finality centered in his steady stroke. It told that he had settled down for the day. Had he calculated its effect beforehand he could not have done better. Accustomed to Spanish deference, she was nonplussed by his authoritative air, yet its very unusualness invested it with a certain charm.

“But – Bob?” Somehow the curt appellation acquired grace and softness from her Spanish lisp. It fell so prettily that he made her repeat it. But, though she added to its attraction an appealing glance, he remained grimly obdurate.

“Give me time to think?”

“All you want. At this speed” – the oars creaked under his stroke – “you will have about twenty-four hours.”

She looked at him, frightened. “Please? At least let us talk it over.”

The cheerful roll of oars in the rowlocks returned wooden answer.

“Won’t you?”

He stopped rowing and sat regarding her sternly. “I’m allowing you more time than you gave me. If” – he paused, then, judging it necessary, relentlessly continued – “if he were here in my place do you suppose – ”

“Oh, he would! He did! After he had insured me against – ”

“ – Me,” he supplied, with a dogged shake of the head, then went on, “Well, even if he would, I won’t.” As he bent again to the oars the touch of admiration that leavened her undoubted fright paid tribute to his stubborn logic. Settling to his stroke, he began again: “Supposing that I complied and put you ashore at San Nicolas? Do you think that Don Luis would be any more favorably inclined toward me? You know that he wouldn’t. I should do well to escape with my life. But if you go back as my wife – well, the most they can do is to turn us out. Of course I can understand your feeling. It will be a frightful breach of the conventions – ”

“No, it is not that,” she interrupted him. “My friends will be scandalized, si, but they are long ago broken to that. They would be dreadfully disappointed if I did not fulfil their predictions by making a shameful end. And it isn’t – he. It is wicked to acknowledge it, but I know – I know now that no matter how hard I tried to school myself I should sooner or later have run away to you. They’ll think it shocking – my friends, my mother – but I can endure it.”

“And that can be avoided. I’ll take you away – throw up everything here – make a new start somewhere else.”

“No! no!” She shook her head. “Your work is here, and I am just as proud of it as you could be. Let them chatter. No, it isn’t even that.”

“Then what is it?”

“You wouldn’t understand. It is silly, just a woman’s reason. No, you would not understand.”

“I’ll try.”

“It is so foolish.” Nevertheless, encouraged by his sympathy, she continued: “Do you know that since the first kiss passed between us a year ago we have had speech together only for a few minutes in the presence of others? And her courtship is of such supreme importance in a girl’s life. It is her love time, and she loves to lengthen and draw out its lingering sweetness. And ours has been so short.”

It was the poignant cry of her girl’s heart expressing the yearning of her starved love, and, coming from such spirited lips, it moved him deeply. Slipping the oars, he seized her two hands and pulled her forward into his arms. Then, while her dark head lay pillowed upon his shoulder, he continued the argument to better advantage.

The walls of San Nicolas had dwindled to a golden streak before she looked up in his face. “Supposing that I had refused?”

“I’d have carried you off in spite of yourself.”

And, whether she believed him or not, she clung the closer in that embrace.

CHAPTER XXVI

The new day opened a new and fertile country before Seyd’s sleepy eyes, a country wonderfully beautiful with variegated foliage of coffee, rubber, palm, and banana plantations.

During the night the Barranca walls had, while growing lower, closed in to a long gorge through which the river ran like a millrace. For two hours their ears were dinned and deafened by the roar and thunder of mad waters, but, as the boulders of the one rapid were buried thirty feet deep, they sustained nothing worse than a slight deafness and natural apprehension at the hair-raising speed with which they were catapulted onward. Excepting those two hours when he had to use both oars to hold the dugout’s head in the center of the current, Francesca had slept in his arms, and, nestling upon his shoulder the moment they emerged upon quieter waters, she had fallen asleep once more, nor did she move till the sun pointed a golden finger down between two clouds.

Awakening, she uttered a small cry and lay for a few seconds looking up into Seyd’s face, her eyes blank with bewildered terror. Then, recognizing him, she gave a sob of relief. “Oh, I was dreaming – that I was at El Quiss – to stay there – forever!” She paused and sat for a moment looking into his tired face, then burst out: “Oh, little animal! All night I slept while you kept watch. Now you shall sleep.”

Taking his place in the stern, she forced him, with pretty authority, to cushion his head in her lap. “Si, I will awaken you before we reach the harbor, but do not dare to open an eye till then.”

The command was unnecessary, for, completely fagged, he had no more than lain down when he was fast asleep. Until sure of the fact she sat perfectly still. Then, with a rueful glance at her soiled and shrunken garments, she murmured, “Nevertheless, we must try to look our best.”

After a second shy study of his sleeping face she let down her hair and began to comb it out with her slender fingers. Because of the length and thickness of the dark masses this proved a long task. The dugout had drifted miles before she finished the coiffure with small feminine pats. Reassured that he still slept, she dipped her handkerchief overside and washed her face and neck.

Her own toilet completed, she next essayed his. After warming the wet handkerchief against her own cheek she cleansed his face with delicate touches, then, with the same soft white comb – her fingers – smoothed his hair. Discovering, in the process, a few gray hairs, she murmured: “Oh, pobre! See what I have cost thee!”

Very gently she began to trace and smooth out the lines of worry upon his face, and, rediscovering his cleft chin, she repeated, with a soft laugh, her comment made that night in the shepherd’s hut. “Oh, fickle! fickle! I said thy wife would need the sharpest of eyes, but they will needs have nimble fingers that steal thee from me.”

Her face at that moment formed a playground for all that was arch, but presently it took the shadow of sadder thoughts. Brimming over, a big tear rolled down her cheek. Yet, while sincerely sorry for Sebastien, she was perfectly frank with herself in thought. “I would not, if I could, bring him back. ’Twould mean only more trouble – for all of us. Now, at least, he is at peace.

“They will think me hard and cruel.” Her musings continued. “The whole Barranca will throw up hands of horror – the hands that applauded the greater sin when I gave myself without love in marriage. Bueno!” She scornfully tossed her head. “Wicked or not, I will do it – for thee.”

She squeezed his face so hard, murmuring it, that he stirred, and for fully a minute thereafter she sat holding her breath. But he slept on. During the last hour the river had widened, and along its banks tufted cocoa palms were woven with the brighter foliage of bananas into the rich green damask of the bordering jungle. Also the sun had prevailed for a few hours in the daily battle with the mists, and under the golden spell of light and warmth the girl’s musings grew happier as they floated on. When she awoke him to the sight of the blue harbor opening up from behind a long bend, Seyd looked up at a smiling face.

“That’s the American consulate.” After rubbing the sleep out of his eyes he pointed out a white stone building which perched, like a gull, on a terrace above the flaming rose and gold of the adobe town. “We’ll go there. The consul is a fine old fellow. He’ll help us all he can.”

First, however, they were destined to encounter the unexpected, for when, an hour later, Seyd pulled the dugout into a ragged wooden pier an officer in the silver and gray of the Mexican rurales pushed through the peon laborers who thronged the wharf.

“You are from up river, señor? Then you can tell us of the flood in the Barranca. A cousin of mine, Don Sebastien —Caramba!” At the sight of Francesca he broke suddenly off. “It is surely the señorita Garcia? You will remember me, Eduardo Gallardo, upon the occasion that I visited, at San Nicolas, your uncle, the excellent General Garcia, with my wife, who is of your kinsfolk?”

Recognizing him while he was still in the crowd, Francesca had gained time to prepare. His use of her maiden name proved that here at the port they had heard nothing as yet of her marriage, so, after briefly describing Sebastien’s death and the destruction of El Quiss, she concluded: “I was saved by the señor, here, who rode in to warn us. But for him I also should have drowned.”

And Seyd availed himself of the opening. “As the señorita is completely exhausted, señor, you will please to excuse us. We go to the American consulate.”

“But why the consulate, señor,” the rurale politely objected, “when she owns here the house of her kinswoman? The señora, my wife – ”

“Si, I have heard of her – nothing that is not lovely.” Drawing him a little aside, Francesca proceeded to heal, with winning smiles, the wound in his pride. “You shall give her my love, cousin. Tell her that I should prefer to visit her, but, having taken my life from the hand of this señor, I cannot do otherwise than fall in with his plans.”

Deferring with Latin politeness to her wish, his pride was none the less hurt, and while they climbed the hill to the consulate he hurried home to his wife, whose feminine intuitions placed the whole matter in an entirely new light.

“A gringo, sayest thou? Then it will be he for whose sake she was sent away to Europe. Medium tall, is he, with a straight nose, hollow cheeks, quick gray eyes? The very man that Paulo, the administrador, described to me on his last visit to the port. Caramba! Here’s fine bread for the baking! ’Tis told all over the Barranca that she has this man in her blood, and count me for a liar if she comes with him this far for any purpose but marriage. ’Twill never do to have Don Luis knocking at our door to ask why we let her go before our very eyes. He is a power, hombrecita, with the government, thy master, and, fail or win, we lose nothing by trying to trip her run. And ’twill be easy! A word in the ear of the jefe, judge, and priest, and ’tis done. And do not sleep on it. Away with you – at once.”

In his cool white salon on the hill above, the consul – a portly old fellow with a clean, good-natured face – was counseling Seyd at that moment in almost the same terms.

“As you say, this is no time to stand on conventions – especially after the man had locked you in and left you to drown. After seeing the young lady” – his smiling glance went to the door through which Francesca had just gone with his wife – “I should feel less than ever like protracted mourning. Besides, it is now or never. If you don’t marry her at once the chance may never come again. If Eduardo Gallardo hadn’t seen you it would have been quite simple. I could have fixed it up for you all right. But he is counted something of a sneak, and if he once sniffs the wind – well, you can be sure he won’t let such a chance slip to better himself with General Garcia. You’ve simply got to beat him to it.”

After a pause of thought he went on: “In their usual course, both the legal and ecclesiastical procedures are very slow. It takes about a week for the lawyers to coin the bridegroom’s natural impatience into ready money, and after they are through the Church holds out its hand for what’s left. It’s an awful graft, but has its advantages, for if the wheels are well greased they spin like lightning. Shut up! I don’t have to be told that you emerged from the flood with empty pockets. I’ll attend to that, and you can settle with me any old time. All you have to do” – taking Seyd by the shoulders, he marched him into his own bedroom – “is to take a shave and bath and make yourself look as much as you can like a happy bridegroom.”

With a last order, “Help yourself from my clothes,” he went out laughing. But when he returned an hour later his smile was obscured by a vexed cloud. “Eduardo wins,” he reported to Seyd, who had just come out on the veranda. “He must have gone right to it, for when I arrived at the edificio municipal they were already primed. The judge and jefe-politico both count themselves of mine, but they wouldn’t do a thing. Really you can’t blame them. El general Garcia is a name to conjure with down here, and they are all afraid of their official heads. ‘Much as we would like to serve you,’ and so forth, ‘but in the case of a young lady of such high family we dare not proceed without her guardian’s written consent.’

“And the jefe gave me good advice. El capitan, Eduardo, it seems, is not only ambitious, but not a bit too scrupulous about the way by which he gains his ends. So you must not go out alone. It would be quite easy to trump up some charge, arrest, and then shoot you as an escaping prisoner under the law of El Fuga. You wouldn’t be the first to be shot inside the prison and then thrown outside, and, though I should most certainly hold an inquiry and kick up an awful row, that wouldn’t bring you back to life. Also we shall have to look out that they don’t kidnap your girl.”

While the consul was thus easing his bosom of its load of doubt Seyd had stared out over the blue harbor at a steamer that was taking cargo from a dozen lighters. Suddenly he asked, “What ship is that?”

“The Curaçao, of San Francisco.”

“American, then. When does she sail?”

“To-morrow morning at five.”

“How far outside the harbor does Mexican jurisdiction extend?”

“The usual three miles beyond the headlands.”

Seyd came to his point. “Then what is to prevent her skipper from marrying us?”

“Bueno!” The consul slapped him on the back. “He’ll do it sure, for he’s a friend of mine. Bravo! Trust your lover to find a way.”

CHAPTER XXVII

Instead of the steps of a church, which form the natural way to their new estate for the great majority of brides, Francesca stepped into hers from the companion ladder of the Curaçao. But there had been various happenings – the visit of the Doña Gracio de Gallardo y Garcio to urge, in her own stout black person, Francesca’s acceptance of her house and contents, her husband’s equally hospitable offer of horses and escort for her safe conduct to San Nicolas, also his subsequent espionage and the means by which they evaded it. And now she was stepping from the companionway into the launch which was to take the newly married pair.

Just as the consul had done his best for Seyd, so, with a woman’s natural enthusiasm for a wedding, his wife had dressed the girl. By means of a few pins plus a basting needle a pretty dress had been pulled into a perfect fit, and out of its foam her shapely head now rose like a delicate dark flower. In the dusk of a crushed panama her clear-cut face glowed with unusual color. Swaying there on Seyd’s arm, she made a picture which drew the admiration of the men and the tender sympathy of the women passengers who looked down upon them from the rail. While Seyd was handing her into the launch a storm of rice broke overhead and fell softly into the water, and when, leaving them dancing in its wake, the big hulk of the ship moved on, a hearty cheer floated back to them.

If not so boisterous, the congratulations of the consul at the pier were equally hearty. “You didn’t do it a bit too soon,” he informed them. “Just after you left friend Eduardo notified me that it had been decided in a family council that your wife should go at once to the house of her relative. Without actually saying it he gave me to understand that a charge of kidnapping lay behind the demand. Just for the fun of it I let him wander along, and when I sprang it, and told him that by this time you were undoubtedly married, you should have seen his face. He won’t trouble you again – neither will he furnish you horses.”

“That doesn’t matter,” his wife put in. “I have that all arranged.”

“What?” The consul looked his surprise. “What’s this? A conspiracy? I expected that you would stay with us at least a week?”

“No.” His wife took the answer into her own hands. “You know, Francesca’s mother and uncle are grieving in the belief that she is drowned. And she has other reasons of her own – and yours,” she added for Seyd. “Though you are not to bother her with questions.”

At the consulate breakfast was waiting, and in the cheer of the following hour and bustle of departure, Seyd forgot his momentary wonder. It did not revive until, early that afternoon, they reined in to rest their horses on the crest of the first hill in the chain that led in giant steps up to the plateau above the Barranca. As they rode on, after a last look at the harbor, which lay like a huge turquoise within its setting of hills, he looked inquiringly at Francesca.

“Can you not guess?” she asked. When he shook his head she rallied him with a happy laugh upon his dullness. “I think your memory is very poor, Señor Rosario.”

“What – Rosa!” For instantly there flashed up a picture of her wet face looking at him from under her capote hood on the day that he found her standing in the rain beside her fallen horse.

“So you recognize me at last?”

“You don’t mean to say – ”

“Si, señor, my husband” – contradicting her laugh, a deep thrill inhered in the words – “it is even so. In the days before the railroad, when there was great travel between San Nicolas and the port, Don Luis maintained houses a day’s journey apart. Though none of our family has visited them in the last two years, they were in good condition when Paulo passed this way at the beginning of the rains. So to-night, Rosario, we bide in our own house.”

Again did her accent on the “our” move and thrill him. Always undemonstrative, however, he merely caught her hand, and so, linked like children, they rode on side by side. At first they observed a happy silence, but presently the trail took on such remarkable likeness to the one they had traveled that other day, proceeding from the stretches of black volcanic rock through copal and scrub oak to sparsely grassed barrens, that the strength of the associations forced them into talk.

“That’s where your horse fell,” he began it. When she agreed, he asked, “I wonder if you had any conception of the risks you were running when you rode behind me?”

Though she knew very well what he meant, she pretended ignorance and made him explain in detail his feelings at the sight of her hands resting like white butterflies on the front of his coat, his sudden emotion when the scent of her wet hair floated over his shoulder, utter intoxication whenever a slip of his horse caused her to tighten her hold on his waist.

“You hid it very cleverly,” was her comment upon these revelations.

“And you never knew it?”

“Of course I did.” To which she added the brazen confession, “Or I would not have done it.”

Shooting over a hill not long thereafter, the trail suddenly fell through copal and oak woods into a sheltered valley where, with a suddenness that drew an exclamation of admiration from Seyd, they came in sight of the house. A small adobe, washed with gold with pale-violet borders, it stood under a great banyan tree within the embrace of a grove of tall palms. Almost across its doorway a bright arroyo ran swiftly, to disappear in the dark shade of clump tamarinds. All the afternoon the sun had pursued a futile struggle with the ocean mists, and now, completing the beauty of the place, it shot a last coppery shaft between two clouds.