Chapter 7

“He gave you food and clothes, and a bed to lie on. It’s like you, to bite the hand that fed you. When have you ever stuck to any side or anybody if you could get a dollar more by selling him out?”

The whole thing had become intolerable. It was abject and degrading, like a falling-out among thieves. They reminded me of a group of drunken women I had once seen, shameless and foul-mouthed, fighting in the street, with grinning night-birds urging them on. I felt in some way horribly responsible, as though they had dragged me into it--as though the flying handfuls of mud had splattered me. And yet the thing which inflamed me the most against them was their unfairness to Aiken. They would not let him speak, and they would not see that they were so many, and that he was alone. I did not then know that he was telling the truth. Indeed, I thought otherwise. I did not then know that on those occasions when he appeared to the worst advantage, he generally was trying to tell the truth.

Captain Heinze pushed nearer, and shoved his fist close to Aiken’s face.

“We know what you are,” he jeered. “We know you’re no more on our side than you’re the American Consul. You lied to us about that, and you’ve lied to us about everything else. And now we’ve caught you, and we’ll make you pay for it.”

One of the men in the rear of the crowd shouted, “Ah, shoot the beggar!” and others began to push forward and to jeer. Aiken heard them and turned quite white.

“You’ve caught me?” Aiken stammered. “Why, I came here of my own will. Is it likely I’d have done that if I had sold you out?”

“I tell you you did sell us out,” Heinze roared. “And you’re a coward besides, and I tell you so to your face!” He sprang at Aiken, and Aiken shrank back. It made me sick to see him do it. I had such a contempt for the men against him that I hated his not standing up to them. It was to hide the fact that he had stepped back, that I jumped in front of him and pretended to restrain him. I tried to make it look as though had I not interfered, he would have struck at Heinze.

The German had swung around toward the men behind him, as though he were subpoenaing them as witnesses.

“I call him a coward to his face!” he shouted. But when he turned again I was standing in front of Aiken, and he halted in surprise, glaring at me. I don’t know what made me do it, except that I had heard enough of their recriminations, and was sick with disappointment. I hated Heinze and all of them, and myself for being there.

“Yes, you can call him a coward,” I said, as offensively as I could, “with fifty men behind you. How big a crowd do you want before you dare insult a man?” Then I turned on the others. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves,” I cried, “to all of you set on one man in your own camp? I don’t know anything about this row and I don’t want to know, but there’s fifty men here against one, and I’m on the side of that one. You’re a lot of cheap bullies,” I cried, “and this German drill-sergeant,” I shouted, pointing at Heinze, “who calls himself an officer, is the cheapest bully of the lot.” I jerked open the buckle which held my belt and revolver, and flung them on the ground. Then I slipped off my coat, and shoved it back of me to Aiken, for I wanted to keep him out of it. It was the luck of Royal Macklin himself that led me to take off my coat instead of drawing my revolver. At the Point I had been accustomed to settle things with my fists, and it had been only since I started from the coast that I had carried a gun. A year later, in the same situation, I would have reached for it. Had I done so that morning, as a dozen of them assured me later, they would have shot me before I could have got my hand on it. But, as it was, when I rolled up my sleeves the men began to laugh, and some shouted: “Give him room,” “Make a ring,” “Fair play, now,” “Make a ring.” The semi-circle spread out and lengthened until it formed a ring, with Heinze and Reeder, and Aiken holding my coat, and myself in the centre of it.

I squared off in front of the German and tapped him lightly on the chest with the back of my hand.

“Now, then,” I cried, taunting him, “I call _you_ a coward to _your_ face. What are you going to do about it?”

For an instant he seemed too enraged and astonished to move, and the next he exploded with a wonderful German oath and rushed at me, tugging at his sword. At the same moment the men gave a shout and the ring broke. I thought they had cried out in protest when they saw Heinze put his hand on his sword, but as they scattered and fell back I saw that they were looking neither at Heinze nor at me, but at someone behind me. Heinze, too, halted as suddenly as though he had been pulled back by a curbed bit, and, bringing his heels together, stood stiffly at salute. I turned and saw that everyone was falling out of the way of a tall man who came striding toward us, and I knew on the instant that he was General Laguerre. At the first glance I disassociated him from his followers. He was entirely apart. In any surroundings I would have picked him out as a leader of men. Even a civilian would have known he was a soldier, for the signs of his calling were stamped on him as plainly as the sterling mark on silver, and although he was not in uniform his carriage and countenance told you that he was a personage.

He was very tall and gaunt, with broad shoulders and a waist as small as a girl’s, and although he must then have been about fifty years of age he stood as stiffly erect as though his spine had grown up into the back of his head.

At the first glance he reminded me of Van Dyke’s portrait of Charles I. He had the same high-bred features, the same wistful eyes, and hewore his beard and mustache in what was called the Van Dyke fashion, before Louis Napoleon gave it a new vogue as the “imperial.”

It must have been that I read the wistful look in his eyes later, for at the moment of our first meeting it was a very stern Charles I. who confronted us, with the delicate features stiffened in anger, and the eyes set and burning. Since then I have seen both the wistful look and the angry look many times, and even now I would rather face the muzzle of a gun than the eyes of General Laguerre when you have offended him.

His first words were addressed to Reeder.

“What does this mean, sir?” he demanded. “If you cannot keep order in this camp when my back is turned I shall find an officer who can. Who is this?” he added, pointing at me. I became suddenly conscious of the fact that I was without my hat or coat, and that my sleeves were pulled up to the shoulders. Aiken was just behind me, and as I turned to him for my coat I disclosed his presence to the General. He gave an exclamation of delight.

“Mr. Aiken!” he cried, “at last!” He lowered his voice to an eager whisper. “Where are the guns?” he asked.

Apparently Aiken felt more confidence in General Laguerre than in his officers, for at this second questioning he answered promptly.

“I regret to say, sir,” he began, “that the guns were seized at New Orleans. Someone informed the Honduranian Consul there, and he--”

“Seized!” cried Laguerre. “By whom? Do you mean we have lost them?”

Aiken lowered his eyes and nodded.

“But how do you know?” Laguerre demanded, eagerly. “You are not sure? Who seized them?”

“The Treasury officers,” Aiken answered

“The captain of the Panama told me he saw the guns taken on the company’s wharf.”

For some moments Laguerre regarded him sternly, but I do not think he saw him. He turned and walked a few steps from us and back again. Then he gave an upward toss of his head as though he had accepted his sentence. “The fortunes of war,” he kept repeating to himself, “the fortunes of war.” He looked up and saw us regarding him with expressions of the deepest concern.

“I thought I had had my share of them,” he said, simply. He straightened his shoulders and frowned, and then looked at us and tried to smile. But the bad news had cut deeply. During the few minutes since he had come pushing his way through the crowd, he seemed to have grown ten years older. He walked to the door of his tent and then halted and turned toward Reeder.

“I think my fever is coming on again,” he said. “I believe I had better rest. Do not let them disturb me.”

“Yes, General,” Reeder answered. Then he pointed at Aiken and myself. “And what are we to do with these?” he asked.

“Do with these?” Laguerre repeated. “Why, what did you mean to do with them?”

Reeder swelled out his chest importantly, “If you had not arrived when you did, General,” he said, “I would have had them shot!”

The General stopped at the entrance to the tent and leaned heavily against the pole. He raised his eyes and looked at us wearily and with no show of interest.

“Shoot them?” he asked. “Why were you going to shoot them?”

“Because, General,” Reeder declared, theatrically, pointing an accusing finger at Aiken, “I believe this man sold our secret to the Isthmian Line. No one knew of the guns but our three selves and Quay. And Quay is not a man to betray his friends. I wish I could say as much for Mr. Aiken.”

At that moment Aiken, being quite innocent, said even less for himself, and because he was innocent looked the trapped and convicted criminal.

Laguerre’s eyes glowed like two branding-irons. As he fixed them on Aiken’s face one expected to see them leave a mark.

“If the General will only listen,” Aiken stammered. “If you will only give me a hearing, sir. Why should I come to your camp if I had sold you out? Why didn’t I get away on the first steamer, and stay away--as Quay did?”

The General gave an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders. He sank back slowly against one of the Gatling guns.

“What does it matter?” he said, bitterly. “Why lock the stable door now? I will give you a hearing,” he said, turning to Aiken, “but it would be better for you if I listened to you later. Bring him to me to-morrow morning after roll-call. And the other?” he asked. He pointed at me, but his eyes, which were heavy with disappointment, were staring moodily at the ground.

Heinze interposed himself quickly.

“Aiken brought him here!” he said. “I believe he’s an agent of the Isthmian people, or,” he urged, “why did he come here? He came to spy out your camp, General, and to report on our condition.”

“A spy!” said Laguerre, raising his head and regarding me sharply.

“Yes,” Heinze declared, with conviction. “A spy, General. A Government spy, and he has found out our hiding-place and counted our men.”

Aiken turned on him with a snarl.

“Oh, you ass!” he cried. “He came as a volunteer. He wanted to fight with you,--for the sacred cause of liberty!”

“Yes, he wanted to fight with us,” shouted Heinze, indignantly. “As soon as he got into the camp, he wanted to fight with us.”

Laguerre made an exclamation of impatience, and rose unsteadily from the gun-carriage.

“Silence!” he commanded. “I tell you I cannot listen to you now. I will give these men a hearing after roll-call. In the meantime if they are spies, they have seen too much. Place them under guard; and if they try to escape, shoot them.”

I gave a short laugh and turned to Aiken.

“That’s the first intelligent military order I’ve heard yet,” I said.

Aiken scowled at me fearfully, and Reeder and Heinze gasped. General Laguerre had caught the words, and turned his eyes on me. Like the real princess who could feel the crumpled rose-leaf under a dozen mattresses, I can feel it in my bones when I am in the presence of a real soldier. My spinal column stiffens, and my fingers twitch to be at my visor. In spite of their borrowed titles, I had smelt out the civilian in Reeder and had detected the non-commissioned man in Heinze, and just as surely I recognized the general officer in Laguerre.

So when he looked at me my heels clicked together, my arm bent to my hat and fell again to my trouser seam, and I stood at attention. It was as instinctive as though I were back at the Academy, and he had confronted me in the uniform and yellow sash of a major-general.

“And what do you know of military orders, sir,” he demanded, in a low voice, “that you feel competent to pass upon mine?”

Still standing at attention, I said: “For the last three years I have been at West Point, sir, and have listened to nothing else.”

“You have been at West Point?” he said, slowly, looking at me in surprise and with evident doubt. “When did you leave the Academy?”

“Two weeks ago,” I answered. At this, he looked even more incredulous.

“How does it happen,” he asked, “if you are preparing for the army at West Point, that you are now travelling in Honduras?”

“I was dismissed from the Academy two weeks ago,” I answered. “This was the only place where there was any fighting, so I came here. I read that you had formed a Foreign Legion, and thought that maybe you would let me join it.”

General Laguerre now stared at me in genuine amazement. In his interest in the supposed spy, he had forgotten the loss of his guns.

“You came from West Point,” he repeated, incredulously, “all the way to Honduras--to join me!” He turned to the two officers. “Did he tell you this?” he demanded.

They answered, “No,” promptly, and truthfully as well, for they had not given me time to tell them anything.

“Have you any credentials, passports, or papers?” he said.

When he asked this I saw Reeder whisper eagerly to Heinze, and then walk away. He had gone to search my trunk for evidence that I was a spy, and had I suspected this I would have protested violently, but it did not occur to me then that he would do such a thing.

“I have only the passport I got from the commandante at Porto Cortez,” I said.

At the words Aiken gave a quick shake of the head, as a man does when he sees another move the wrong piece on the chess-board. But when I stared at him inquiringly his expression changed instantly to one of interrogation and complete unconcern.

“Ah!” exclaimed Heinze, triumphantly, “he has a permit from the Government.”

“Let me see it,” said the General.

I handed it to him, and he drew a camp-chair from the tent, and, seating himself, began to compare me with the passport.

“In this,” he said at last, “you state that you are a commercial traveller; that you are going to the capital on business, and that you are a friend of the Government.”

I was going to tell him that until it had been handed me by Aiken, I had known nothing of the passport, but I considered that in some way this might involve Aiken, and so I answered:

“It was necessary to tell them any story, sir, in order to get into the interior. I could not tell them that I was _not_ a friend of the Government, nor that I was trying to join you.”

“Your stories are somewhat conflicting,” said the General. “You are led to our hiding-place by a man who is himself under suspicion, and the only credentials you can show are from the enemy. Why should I believe you are what you say you are? Why should I believe you are not a spy?”

I could not submit to having my word doubted, so I bowed stiffly and did not speak.

“Answer me,” the General commanded, “what proofs have I?”

“You have nothing but my word for it,” I said.

General Laguerre seemed pleased with that, and I believe he was really interested in helping me to clear myself. But he had raised my temper by questioning my word.

“Surely you must have something to identify you,” he urged.

“If I had I’d refuse to show it,” I answered. “I told you why I came here. If you think I am a spy, you can go ahead and shoot me as a spy, and find out whether I told you the truth afterward.”

The General smiled indulgently.

“There would be very little satisfaction in that for me, or for you,” he said.

“I’m an officer and a gentleman,” I protested, “and I have a right to be treated as one. If you serve every gentleman who volunteers to join you in the way I have been served, I’m not surprised that your force is composed of the sort you have around you.”

The General raised his head and looked at me with such a savage expression that during the pause which ensued I was most uncomfortable.

“If your proofs you are an officer are no stronger than those you offer that you are a gentleman,” he said, “perhaps you are wise not to show them. What right have you to claim you are an officer?”

His words cut and mortified me deeply, chiefly because I felt I deserved them.

“Every cadet ranks a non-commissioned man,” I answered.

“But you are no longer a cadet,” he replied. “You have been dismissed. You told me so yourself. Were you dismissed honorably, or dishonorably?”

“Dishonorably,” I answered. I saw that this was not the answer he had expected. He looked both mortified and puzzled, and glanced at Heinze and Aiken as though he wished that they were out of hearing.

“What was it for--what was the cause of your dismissal?” he asked. He now spoke in a much lower tone. “Of course, you need not tell me,” he added.

“I was dismissed for being outside the limits of the Academy without a permit,” I answered. “I went to a dance at a hotel in uniform.”

“Was that all?” he demanded, smiling.

“That was the crime for which I was dismissed,” I said, sulkily. The General looked at me for some moments, evidently in much doubt. I believe he suspected that I had led him on to asking me the reason for my dismissal, in order that I could make so satisfactory an answer. As he sat regarding me, Heinze bent over him and said something to him in a low tone, to which he replied: “But that would prove nothing. He might have a most accurate knowledge of military affairs, and still be an agent of the Government.”

“That is so, General,” Heinze answered, aloud. “But it would prove whether he is telling the truth about his having been at West Point. If his story is false in part, it is probably entirely false, as I believe it to be.”

“Captain Heinze suggests that I allow him to test you with some questions,” the General said, doubtfully; “questions on military matters. Would you answer them?”

I did not want them to see how eager I was to be put to such a test, so I tried to look as though I were frightened, and said, cautiously, “I will try, sir.” I saw that the proposition to put me through an examination had filled Aiken with the greatest concern. To reassure him, I winked covertly.

Captain Heinze glanced about him as though looking for a text.

“Let us suppose,” he said, importantly, “that you are an inspector-general come to inspect this camp. It is one that I myself selected; as adjutant it is under my direction. What would you report as to its position, its advantages and disadvantages?”

I did not have to look about me. Without moving from where I stood, I could see all that was necessary of that camp. But I first asked, timidly: “Is this camp a temporary one, made during a halt on the march, or has it been occupied for some days?”

“We have been here for two weeks,” said Heinze.

“Is it supposed that a war is going on?” I asked, politely; “I mean, are we in the presence of an enemy?”

“Of course,” answered Heinze. “Certainly we are at war.”

“Then,” I said, triumphantly, “in my report I should recommend that the officer who selected this camp should be court-martialled.”

Heinze gave a shout of indignant laughter, and Aiken glared at me as though he thought I had flown suddenly mad, but Laguerre only frowned and waved his hand impatiently.

“You are bold, sir,” he said, grimly; “I trust you can explain yourself.”

I pointed from the basin in which we stood, to the thickly wooded hills around us.

“This camp has the advantage of water and grass,” I said. I spoke formally, as though I were really making a report. “Those are its only advantages. Captain Heinze has pitched it in a hollow. In case of an attack, he has given the advantage of position to the enemy. Fifty men could conceal themselves on those ridges and fire upon you as effectively as though they had you at the bottom of a well. There are no pickets out, except along the trail, which is the one approach the enemy would not take. So far as this position counts, then,” I summed up, “the camp is an invitation to a massacre.”

I did not dare look at the General, but I pointed at the guns at his side. “Your two field-pieces are in their covers, and the covers are strapped on them. It would take three minutes to get them into action. Instead of being here in front of the tent, they should be up there on those two highest points. There are no racks for the men’s rifles or ammunition belts. The rifles are lying on the ground and scattered everywhere--in case of an attack the men would not know where to lay their hands on them. It takes only two forked sticks and a ridge-pole with nicks in it, to make an excellent gun-rack, but there is none of any sort. As for the sanitary arrangements of the camp, they are _nil_. The refuse from the troop kitchen is scattered all over the place, and so are the branches on which the men have been lying. There is no way for them to cross that stream without their getting their feet wet; and every officer knows that wet feet are worse than wet powder. The place does not look as though it had been policed since you came here. It’s a fever swamp. If you have been here two weeks, it’s a wonder your whole force isn’t as rotten as sheep. And there!” I cried, pointing at the stream which cut the camp in two--“there are men bathing and washing their clothes up-stream, and those men below them are filling buckets with water for cooking and drinking. Why have you no water-guards? You ought to have a sentry there, and there. The water above the first sentry should be reserved for drinking, below him should be the place for watering your horses, and below the second sentry would be the water for washing clothes. Why, these things are the A, B, C, of camp life.” For the first time since I had begun to speak, I turned on Heinze and grinned at him.

“How do you like my report on your camp?” I asked. “Now, don’t you agree with me that you should be court-martialled?” Heinze’s anger exploded like a shell.

“You should be court-martialled yourself!” he shouted. “You are insulting our good General. For me, I do not care. But you shall not reflect upon my commanding officer, for him I--”

“That will do, Captain Heinze,” Laguerre said, quietly. “That will do, thank you.” He did not look up at either of us, but for some time sat with his elbow on his knee and with his chin resting in the palm of his hand, staring at the camp. There was a long, and, for me, an awkward silence. The General turned his head and stared at me. His expression was exceedingly grave, but without resentment.

“You are quite right,” he said, finally. Heinze and Aiken moved expectantly forward, anxious to hear him pass sentence upon me. Seeing this he raised his voice and repeated: “You are quite right in what you say about the camp. All you say is quite true.”

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and, as he continued speaking with his face averted, it was as though he were talking to himself.

“We grow careless as we grow older,” he said, “One grows less difficult to please.” His tone was that of a man excusing himself to himself. “The old standards, the old models, pass away and--and failures, failures come and dull the energy.” His voice dropped into a monotone; he seemed to have forgotten us entirely.