Chapter 6

After midnight we were too stiff and sore to ride farther, and we bivouacked on the trail beside a stream. I had no desire for further sleep, and I sat at the foot of a tree smoking and thinking. I had often “camped out” as a boy, and at West Point with the battalion, but I had never before felt so far away from civilization and my own people. For company I made a little fire and sat before it, going over in my mind what I had learned since I had set forth on my travels. I concluded that so far I had gained much and lost much. What I had experienced of the ocean while on the ship and what little I had seen of this country delighted me entirely, and I would not have parted with a single one of my new impressions. But all I had learned of the cause for which I had come to fight disappointed and disheartened me. Of course I had left home partly to seek adventure, but not only for that. I had set out on this expedition with the idea that I was serving some good cause--that old-fashioned principles were forcing these men to fight for their independence. But I had been early undeceived. At the same time that I was enjoying my first sight of new and beautiful things I was being robbed of my illusions and my ideals. And nothing could make up to me for that. By merely travelling on around the globe I would always be sure to find some new things of interest. But what would that count if I lost my faith in men! If I ceased to believe in their unselfishness and honesty. Even though I were young and credulous, and lived in a make-believe world of my own imagining, I was happier so than in thinking that everyone worked for his own advantage, and without justice to others, or private honor. It harmed no one that I believed better of others than they deserved, but it was going to hurt me terribly if I learned that their aims were even lower than my own. I knew it was Aiken who had so discouraged me. It was he who had laughed at me for believing that Laguerre and his men were fighting for liberty. If I were going to credit him, there was not one honest man in Honduras, and no one on either side of this revolution was fighting for anything but money. He had made it all seem commercial, sordid, and underhand. I blamed him for having so shaken my faith and poisoned my mind. I scowled at his unconscious figure as he lay sleeping peacefully on his blanket, and I wished heartily that I had never set eyes on him. Then I argued that his word, after all, was not final. He made no pretence of being a saint, and it was not unnatural that a man who held no high motives should fail to credit them to others. I had partially consoled myself with this reflection, when I remembered suddenly that Beatrice herself had foretold the exact condition which Aiken had described.

“That is not war,” she had said to me, “that is speculation!” She surely had said that to me, but how could she have known, or was hers only a random guess? And if she had guessed correctly what would she wish me to do now? Would she wish me to turn back, or, if my own motives were good, would she tell me to go on? She had called me her knight-errant, and I owed it to her to do nothing of which she would disapprove. As I thought of her I felt a great loneliness and a longing to see her once again. I thought of how greatly she would have delighted in those days at sea, and how wonderful it would have been if I could have seen this hot, feverish country with her at my side. I pictured her at the inn at Sagua smiling on the priest and the fat little landlord; and their admiration of her. I imagined us riding together in the brilliant sunshine with the crimson flowers meeting overhead, and the palms bowing to her and paying her homage. I lifted the locket she had wound around my wrist, and kissed it. As I did so, my doubts and questionings seemed to fall away. I stood up confident and determined. It was not my business to worry over the motives of other men, but to look to my own. I would go ahead and fight Alvarez, who Aiken himself declared was a thief and a tyrant. If anyone asked me my politics I would tell him I was for the side that would obtain the money the Isthmian Line had stolen, and give it to the people; that I was for Garcia and Liberty, Laguerre and the Foreign Legion. This platform of principles seemed to me so satisfactory that I stretched my feet to the fire and went to sleep.

I was awakened by the most delicious odor of coffee, and when I rolled out of my blanket I found Jose standing over me with a cup of it in his hand, and Aiken buckling the straps of my saddle-girth. We took a plunge in the stream, and after a breakfast of coffee and cold tortillas climbed into the saddle and again picked up the trail.

After riding for an hour Aiken warned me that at any moment we were likely to come upon either Laguerre or the soldiers of Alvarez. “So you keep your eyes and ears open,” he said, “and when they challenge throw up your hands quick. The challenge is ‘Halt, who lives,’” he explained. “If it is a government soldier you must answer, ‘The government.’ But if it’s one of Laguerre’s or Garcia’s pickets you must say ‘The revolution lives.’ And whatever else you do, _hold up your hands._”

I rehearsed this at once, challenging myself several times, and giving the appropriate answers. The performance seemed to afford Aiken much amusement.

“Isn’t that right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but the joke is that you won’t be able to tell which is the government soldier and which is the revolutionist, and you’ll give the wrong answer, and we’ll both get shot.”

“I can tell by our uniform,” I answered.

“Uniform!” exclaimed Aiken, and burst into the most uproarious laughter. “Rags and tatters,” he said.

I was considerably annoyed to learn by this that the revolutionary party had no distinctive uniform. The one worn by the government troops which I had seen at the coast I had thought bad enough, but it was a great disappointment to hear that we had none at all. Ever since I had started from Dobbs Ferry I had been wondering what was the Honduranian uniform. I had promised myself to have my photograph taken in it. I had anticipated the pride I should have in sending the picture back to Beatrice. So I was considerably chagrined, until I decided to invent a uniform of my own, which I would wear whether anyone else wore it or not. This was even better than having to accept one which someone else had selected. As I had thought much on the subject of uniforms, I began at once to design a becoming one.

We had reached a most difficult pass in the mountain, where the trail stumbled over broken masses of rock and through a thick tangle of laurel. The walls of the pass were high and the trees at the top shut out the sunlight. It was damp and cold and dark.

“We’re sure to strike something here,” Aiken whispered over his shoulder. It did not seem at all unlikely. The place was the most excellent man-trap, but as to that, the whole length of the trail had lain through what nature had obviously arranged for a succession of ambushes.

Aiken turned in his saddle and said, in an anxious tone: “Do you know, the nearer I get to the old man, the more I think I was a fool to come. As long as I’ve got nothing but bad news, I’d better have stayed away. Do you remember Pharaoh and the messengers of ill tidings?”

I nodded, but I kept my eyes busy with the rocks and motionless laurel. My mule was slipping and kicking down pebbles, and making as much noise as a gun battery. I knew, if there were any pickets about, they could hear us coming for a quarter of a mile.

“Garcia may think he’s Pharaoh,” Aiken went on, “and take it into his head it’s my fault the guns didn’t come. Laguerre may say I sold the secret to the Isthmian Line.”

“Oh, he couldn’t think you’d do that!” I protested.

“Well, I’ve known it done,” Aiken said. “Quay certainly sold us out at New Orleans. And Laguerre may think I went shares with him.”

I began to wonder if Aiken was not probably the very worst person I could have selected to introduce me to General Laguerre. It seemed as though it certainly would have been better had I found my way to him alone. I grew so uneasy concerning my possible reception that I said, irritably: “Doesn’t the General know you well enough to trust you?”

“No, he doesn’t!” Aiken snapped back, quite as irritably. “And he’s dead right, too. You take it from me, that the fewer people in this country you trust, the better for you. Why, the rottenness of this country is a proverb. ‘It’s a place where the birds have no song, where the flowers have no odor, where the women are without virtue, and the men without honor.’ That’s what a gringo said of Honduras many years ago, and he knew the country and the people in it.”

It was not a comforting picture, but in my discouragement I remembered Laguerre.

“General Laguerre does not belong to this country,” I said, hopefully.

“No,” Aiken answered, with a laugh. “He’s an Irish-Frenchman and belongs to a dozen countries. He’s fought for every flag that floats, and he’s no better off to-day than when he began.”

He turned toward me and stared with an amused and tolerant grin. “He’s a bit like you,” he said.

I saw he did not consider what he said as a compliment, but I was vain enough to want to know what he did think of me, so I asked: “And in what way am I like General Laguerre?”

The idea of our similarity seemed to amuse Aiken, for he continued to grin.

“Oh, you’ll see when we meet him,” he said. “I can’t explain it. You two are just different from other people--that’s all. He’s old-fashioned like you, if you know what I mean, and young--”

“Why, he’s an old man,” I corrected.

“He’s old enough to be your grandfather,” Aiken laughed, “but I say he’s young--like you, the way you are.”

Aiken knew that it annoyed me when he pretended I was so much younger than himself, and I had started on some angry reply, when I was abruptly interrupted.

A tall, ragged man rose suddenly from behind a rock, and presented a rifle. He was so close to Aiken that the rifle almost struck him in the face. Aiken threw up his hands, and fell back with such a jerk that he lost his balance, and would have fallen had he not pitched forward and clasped the mule around the neck. I pulled my mule to a halt, and held my hands as high as I could raise them. The man moved his rifle from side to side so as to cover each of us in turn, and cried in English, “Halt! Who goes there?”

Aiken had not told me the answer to that challenge, so I kept silent. I could hear Jose behind me interrupting his prayers with little sobs of fright.

Aiken scrambled back into an upright position, held up his hands, and cried: “Confound you, we are travellers, going to the capital on business. Who the devil are you?”

“Qui vive?” the man demanded over the barrel of his gun.

“What does that mean?” Aiken cried, petulantly. “Talk English, can’t you, and put down that gun.”

The man ceased moving the rifle between us, and settled it on Aiken.

“Cry ‘Long live the government,’” he commanded, sharply.

Aiken gave a sudden start of surprise, and I saw his eyelids drop and rise again. Later when I grew to know him intimately, I could always tell when he was lying, or making the winning move in some bit of knavery, by that nervous trick of the eyelids. He knew that I knew about it, and he once confided to me that, had he been able to overcome it, he would have saved himself some thousands of dollars which it had cost him at cards.

But except for this drooping of the eyelids he gave no sign.

“No, I won’t cry ‘Long live the government,’” he answered. “That is,” he added hastily, “I won’t cry long live anything. I’m the American Consul, and I’m up here on business. So’s my friend.”

The man did not move his gun by so much as a straw’s breadth.

“You will cry ‘Long live Alvarez’ or I will shoot you,” said the man.

I had more leisure to observe the man than had Aiken, for it is difficult to study the features of anyone when he is looking at you down a gun-barrel, and it seemed to me that the muscles of the man’s mouth as he pressed it against the stock were twitching with a smile. As the side of his face toward me was the one farther from the gun, I was able to see this, but Aiken could not, and he answered, still more angrily: “I tell you, I’m the American Consul. Anyway, it’s not going to do you any good to shoot me. You take me to your colonel alive, and I’ll give you two hundred dollars. You shoot me and you won’t get a cent.”

The moment was serious enough, and I was thoroughly concerned both for Aiken and myself, but when he made this offer, my nervousness, or my sense of humor, got the upper hand of me, and I laughed.

Having laughed I made the best of it, and said:

“Offer him five hundred for the two of us. Hang the expense.”

The rifle wavered in the man’s hands, he steadied it, scowled at me, bit his lips, and then burst into shouts of laughter. He sank back against one of the rocks, and pointed at Aiken mockingly.

“I knew it was you all the time,” he cried, “for certain I did. I knew it was you all the time.”

I was greatly relieved, but naturally deeply indignant. I felt as though someone had jumped from behind a door, and shouted “Boo!” at me. I hoped in my heart that the colonel would give the fellow eight hours’ pack drill. “What a remarkable sentry,” I said.

Aiken shoved his hands into his breeches pockets, and surveyed the man with an expression of the most violent disgust.

“You’ve got a damned queer idea of a joke,” he said finally. “I might have shot you!”

The man seemed to consider this the very acme of humor, for he fairly hooted at us. He was so much amused that it was some moments before he could control himself.

“I saw you at Porto Cortez,” he said, “I knew you was the American Consul all the time. You came to our camp after the fight, and the General gave you a long talk in his tent. Don’t you remember me? I was standing guard outside.”

Aiken snorted indignantly.

“No, I don’t remember you,” he said. “But I’ll remember you next time. Are you standing guard now, or just doing a little highway robbery on your own account?”

“Oh, I’m standing guard for keeps,” said the sentry, earnestly. “Our camp’s only two hundred yards back of me. And our Captain told me to let all parties pass except the enemy, but I thought I’d have to jump you just for fun. I’m an American myself, you see, from Kansas. An’ being an American I had to give the American Consul a scare. But say,” he exclaimed, advancing enthusiastically on Aiken, with his hand outstretched, “you didn’t scare for a cent.” He shook hands violently with each of us in turn. “My name’s Pete MacGraw,” he added, expectantly.

“Well, now, Mr. MacGraw,” said Aiken, “if you’ll kindly guide us to General Laguerre we’ll use our influence to have you promoted. You need more room. I imagine a soldier with your original ideas must find sentry duty go very dull.”

MacGraw grinned appreciatively and winked.

“If I take you to my General alive, do I get that two hundred dollars?” he asked. He rounded off his question with another yell of laughter.

He was such a harmless idiot that we laughed with him. But we were silenced at once by a shout from above us, and a command to “Stop that noise.” I looked up and saw a man in semi-uniform and wearing an officer’s sash and sword stepping from one rock to another and breaking his way through the laurel. He greeted Aiken with a curt wave of the hand. “Glad to see you, Consul,” he called. “You will dismount, please, and lead your horses this way.” He looked at me suspiciously and then turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

“The General is expecting you, Aiken,” his voice called back to us. “I hope everything is all right?”

Aiken and I had started to draw the mules up the hill. Already both the officer and the trail had been completely hidden by the laurel.

“No, nothing is all right,” Aiken growled.

There was the sound of an oath, the laurels parted, and the officer’s face reappeared, glaring at us angrily.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “My information is for General Laguerre,” Aiken answered, sulkily.

The man sprang away again muttering to himself, and we scrambled and stumbled after him, guided by the sounds of breaking branches and rolling stones.

From a glance I caught of Aiken’s face I knew he was regretting now, with even more reason than before, that he had not remained at the coast, and I felt very sorry for him. Now that he was in trouble and not patronizing me and poking fun at me, I experienced a strong change of feeling toward him. He was the only friend I had in Honduras, and as between him and these strangers who had received us so oddly, I felt that, although it would be to my advantage to be friends with the greater number, my loyalty was owing to Aiken. So I scrambled up beside him and panted out with some difficulty, for the ascent was a steep one: “If there is any row, I’m with _you_, Aiken.”

“Oh, there won’t be any row,” he growled.

“Well, if there is,” I repeated, “you can count me in.”

“That’s all right,” he said.

At that moment we reached the top of the incline, and I looked down into the hollow below. To my surprise I found that this side of the hill was quite barren of laurel or of any undergrowth, and that it sloped to a little open space carpeted with high, waving grass, and cut in half by a narrow stream. On one side of the stream a great herd of mules and horses were tethered, and on the side nearer us were many smoking camp-fires and rough shelters made from the branches of trees. Men were sleeping in the grass or sitting in the shade of the shelters, cleaning accoutrements, and some were washing clothes in the stream. At the foot of the hill was a tent, and ranged before it two Gatling guns strapped in their canvas jackets. I saw that I had at last reached my destination. This was the camp of the filibusters. These were the soldiers of Laguerre’s Foreign Legion.

III

Although I had reached my journey’s end, although I had accomplished what I had set out to do, I felt no sense of elation nor relief. I was, instead, disenchanted, discouraged, bitterly depressed. It was so unutterably and miserably unlike what I had hoped to find, what I believed I had the right to expect, that my disappointment and anger choked me. The picture I had carried in my mind was one of shining tent-walls, soldierly men in gay and gaudy uniforms, fluttering guidons, blue ammunition-boxes in orderly array, smart sentries pacing their posts, and a head-quarters tent where busy officers bent over maps and reports.

The scene I had set was one painted in martial colors, in scarlet and gold lace; it moved to martial music, to bugle-calls, to words of command, to the ringing challenge of the sentry, and what I had found was this camp of gypsies, this nest of tramps, without authority, discipline, or self-respect. It was not even picturesque. My indignation stirred me so intensely that, as I walked down the hill, I prayed for a rude reception, that I might try to express my disgust.

The officer who had first approached us stopped at the opening of the solitary tent, and began talking excitedly to someone inside. And as we reached the level ground, the occupant of the tent stepped from it. He was a stout, heavy man, with a long, twisted mustache, at which he was tugging fiercely. He wore a red sash and a bandman’s tunic, with two stars sewn on the collar. I could not make out his rank, but his first words explained him.

“I am glad to see you at last, Mr. Aiken,” he said. “I’m Major Reeder, in temporary command. You have come to report, sir?”

Aiken took so long to reply that I stopped studying the remarkable costume of the Major and turned to Aiken. I was surprised to see that he was unquestionably frightened. His eyes were shifting and blinking, and he wet his lips with his tongue. All his self-assurance had deserted him. The officer who had led us to the camp was also aware of Aiken’s uneasiness, and was regarding him with a sneer. For some reason the spectacle of Aiken’s distress seemed to afford him satisfaction.

“I should prefer to report to General Laguerre,” Aiken said, at last.

“I am in command here,” Reeder answered, sharply. “General Laguerre is absent--reconnoitering. I represent him. I know all about Mr. Quay’s mission. It was I who recommended him to the General. Where are the guns?”

For a moment Aiken stared at him helplessly, and then drew in a quick breath.

“I don’t know where they are,” he said. “The Panama arrived two days ago, but when I went to unload the guns Captain Leeds told me they had been seized in New Orleans by the Treasury Department. Someone must have--”

Both Major Reeder and the officer interrupted with a shout of anger.

“Then it’s true!” Reeder cried. “It’s true, and--and--you dare to tell us so!”

Aiken raised his head and for a moment looked almost defiant.

“Why shouldn’t I tell you?” he demanded, indignantly. “Who else was there to tell you? I’ve travelled two days to let you know. I can’t help it if the news isn’t good. I’m just as sorry as you are.”

The other officer was a stout, yellow-haired German. He advanced a step and shook a soiled finger in Aiken’s face. “You can’t help it, can’t you?” he cried. “You’re sorry, are you? You won’t be sorry when you’re paid your money, will you? How much did you get for us, hey! How much did Joe Fiske--”

Reeder threw out his arm and motioned the officer back. “Silence, Captain Heinze,” he commanded.

The men of the Legion who had happened to be standing near the tent when we appeared had come up to look at the new arrivals, and when they heard two of their officers attacking Aiken they crowded still closer in front of us, forming a big half-circle. Each of them apparently was on a footing with his officers of perfect comradeship, and listened openly to what was going forward as though it were a personal concern of his own. They had even begun to discuss it among themselves, and made so much noise in doing so that Captain Heinze passed on Reeder’s rebuke as though it had been intended for them, commanding, “Silence in the ranks.”

They were not in ranks, and should not have been allowed where they were in any formation, but that did not seem to occur to either of the officers.

“Silence,” Reeder repeated. “Now, Mr. Aiken, I am waiting. What have you to say?”

“What is there for me to say?” Aiken protested. “I have done all I could. I told you as soon as I could get here.” Major Reeder drew close to Aiken and pointed his outstretched hand at him.

“Mr. Aiken,” he said. “Only four people knew that those guns were ordered--Quay, who went to fetch them, General Laguerre, myself, and you. Some one of us must have sold out the others; no one else could have done it. It was not Quay. The General and I have been here in the mountains--we did not do it; and that--that leaves you.”

“It does not leave me,” Aiken cried. He shouted it out with such spirit that I wondered at him. It was the same sort of spirit which makes a rat fight because he can’t get away, but I didn’t think so then.

“It was Quay sold you out!” Aiken cried. “Quay told the Isthmian people as soon as the guns reached New Orleans. I suspected him when he cabled me he wasn’t coming back. I know him. I know just what he is. He’s been on both sides before.”

“Silence, you--you,” Reeder interrupted. He was white with anger. “Mr. Quay is my friend,” he cried. “I trust him. I trust him as I would trust my own brother. How dare you accuse him!”

He ceased and stood gasping with indignation, but his show of anger encouraged Captain Heinze to make a fresh attack on Aiken.

“Quay took you off the beach,” he shouted.