Chapter 21

It was a lovely morning, sufficiently warm to promise a hot midday; the air was moist and fresh from a recent shower. This being the rainy season, the trails were soft, and where the rich red Cuban soil was exposed the travelers sank into it as into wet putty.

Crossing a rocky ridge, O'Reilly and his guide at last emerged upon an open slope, knee-high in grass and grown up to bottle-palms, those queer, distorted trees whose trunks are swollen into the likeness of earthen water-jars. Scattered here and there over the meadows were the dead or fallen trunks of another variety, the cabbage-palm, the green heart of which had long formed a staple article of diet for the Insurrectos. Spanish axes had been at work here and not a single tree remained alive. The green floor of the valley farther down was dotted with the other, the royal kind, that monarch of tropic vegetation which lends to the Cuban landscape its peculiar and distinctive beauty.

"Yonder is the camino," said the countryman, pointing into the valley; "it will lead you to the main road; and there"--he turned to the northward--"is Matanzas. Go with God, and don't drink the well water, which is polluted from the rains." With a smile and a wave of the hand the man turned back and plunged into the jungle.

As O'Reilly descended the slope he realized keenly that he was alone and in hostile territory. The hills and the woods from Pinar del Rio to Oriente were Cuban, or, at most, they were disputed ground. But here in the plains and valleys near the cities Spain was supreme. From this moment on O'Reilly knew he must rely entirely upon himself. The success of his enterprise--his very life--hinged upon his caution, his powers of dissimulation, his ability to pass as a harmless, helpless pacifico. It gave him an unaccustomed thrill, by no means pleasant.

The road, when he came to it, proved to be a deep gutter winding between red-clay banks cut by the high wheels of clumsy cane-carts. Inasmuch as no crops whatever had been moved over the road during the past season, it was now little more than an oozy, sticky rut. Not a roof, not a chimney, was in sight; the valley was deserted. Here was a fertile farming country--and yet no living thing, no sound of bells, no voices, no crowing cocks, no lowing cattle. It was depressing to O'Reilly, and more, for there was something menacing and threatening about it all.

Toward noon the breeze lessened and it became insufferably hot. A bank of clouds in the east promised a cooling shower, so Johnnie sought the nearest shade to wait for it, and took advantage of the delay to eat his slender lunch. He was meditatively munching a sweet-potato when a sound at his back caused him to leap to his feet in alarm. He whirled, then uttered an exclamation of amazement. Seated not fifty feet away was a bare-legged boy, similarly engaged in eating a sweet-potato. It was Jacket. His brown cheeks were distended, his bright, inquisitive eyes were fixed upon O'Reilly from beneath a defiant scowl.

"Jacket!" cried the man. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"You goin' to let me come along?" challenged the intruder.

"So! You followed me, after I said I didn't want you?" O'Reilly spoke reproachfully; but reproaches had no effect upon the lad. With a mild expletive, Jacket signified his contempt for such a weak form of persuasion.

"See here now." O'Reilly stepped closer. "Let's be sensible about this."

But Jacket scrambled to his feet and retreated warily, stuffing the uneaten portion of the sweet-potato into his mouth. It was plain that he had no confidence in O'Reilly's intentions. Muttering something in a muffled voice, he armed himself with a stout stick.

"Come here," commanded the American.

Jacket shook his head. He made a painful attempt to swallow, and when his utterance became more distinct he consigned his idol to a warmer place than Cuba.

"I'm a tough kid," he declared. "Don't get gay on me."

The two parleyed briefly; then, when satisfied that no violence was intended him, the boy sat down to listen. But, as before, neither argument nor appeal had the slightest effect upon him. He denied that he had followed his benefactor; he declared that he was a free agent and at liberty to go where he willed. If it so chanced that his fancy took him to the city of Matanzas at the same time O'Reilly happened to be traveling thither, the circumstance might be put down to the long arm of coincidence. If his company were distasteful to the elder man, O'Reilly was free to wait and follow later; it was a matter of complete indifference to Jacket. He had business in Matanzas and he proposed to attend to it. The boy lied gravely, unblushingly. Nevertheless, he kept a watchful eye upon his hearer.

"Very well," O'Reilly told him, finally. "I give in."

Jacket's face instantly lit up. He radiated good humor; he hitched his body closer.

"By----! I get my own way, don't I?" he laughed.

"Indeed you do." O'Reilly laid a hand fondly upon his loyal follower. "And I don't mind telling you that I'm more than half glad of it. I--I was getting lonesome. I didn't know how much I could miss you. But now we must make some plans, we must have an understanding and decide who we are. Let me see--your real name is Narciso--"

"Narciso Villar."

"Well, then, I shall be Juan Villar, your brother. Henceforth we shall speak nothing but Spanish. Tell me now, what was our father's name, where was our home, and what are we doing together?"

During the breathless interval before the shower the two sat with their heads together, talking earnestly. As the wind came and the cooling rain began to rattle on the leaves overhead they took up their bundles and set out. The big drops drenched them quickly. Their thin garments clung to them and water streamed down their bodies; overhead the sky was black and rent by vivid streaks of fire, but they plodded onward cheerfully.

Jacket was himself again; he bent his weight against the tempest and lengthened his short strides to O'Reilly's. He tried to whistle, but his teeth chattered and the wind interfered, so he hummed a song, to drive the chill out of his bones and to hearten his benefactor. Now that he was at last accepted as a full partner in this enterprise, it became his duty not only to share its perils, but to lessen its hardships and to yield diversion.

The rain was cold, the briers beside the overgrown path were sharp, and they scratched the boy's bare legs cruelly; his stomach clamored for a companion to that solitary sweet-potato, too, but in his breast glowed ardor and pride. Jacket considered himself a fortunate person--a very fortunate person, indeed. Had he not found a brother, and did not that brother love him? There was no doubt about the latter, for O'Reilly's eyes, when he looked down, were kind and smiling, his voice was friendly and intimate. Here was a man to die for.

The downpour lasted but a short time, then the sun came out and dried the men's clothes; on the whole, it had been refreshing. When evening came the Villar brothers sought refuge in an old sugar-mill, or rather in a part of it still standing. They were on the main calzada, now, the paved road which links the two main cities of the island, and by the following noon their destination was in sight.

O'Reilly felt a sudden excitement when Matanzas came into view. From this distance the city looked quite as it did when he had left it, except that the blue harbor was almost empty of shipping, while the familiar range of hills that hid the Yumuri--that valley of delight so closely linked in his thoughts with Rosa Varona--seemed to smile at him like an old friend. For the thousandth time he asked himself if he had come in time to find her, or if fate's maddening delays had proved his own and the girl's undoing.

O'Reilly knew that although Matanzas was a prison and a pesthole, a girl like Rosa would suffer therein perils infinitely worse than imprisonment or disease. It was a thought he could not bear to dwell upon.

Signs of life began to appear now, the travelers passed small garden-patches and occasional cultivated fields; they encountered loaded carts bound into the city, and once they hid themselves while a column of mounted troops went by.

O'Reilly stopped to pass the time of day with a wrinkled cartman whose dejected oxen were resting.

"Going into the city, are you?" the fellow inquired. "Starved out, I suppose. Well, it's as pleasant to starve in one place as another."

Jacket helped himself to a stalk of cane from the load and began to strip it with his teeth.

"Will the soldiers allow us to enter?" Johnnie inquired.

"Of course. Why not?" The old man laughed mirthlessly; then his voice changed. "Go back," he said, "go back and die in the fields. Matanzas stinks of rotting corpses. Go back where the air is clean." He swung his long lash over the oxen, they leaned against the load, and the cart creaked dismally on its way.

It is never difficult to enter a trap, and Matanzas was precisely that. There were soldiers everywhere, but beyond an indifferent challenge at the outer blockhouse, a perfunctory question or two, Narciso and Juan Villar experienced no trouble whatever in passing the lines. Discipline, never strict at best, was extremely lax at the brick fortinas along the roads, and, since these two refugees were too poor to warrant search, they were waved onward by the sentries. They obeyed silently; in aimless bewilderment they shuffled along toward the heart of the city. Almost before they realized it they had run the gauntlet and had joined that army of misery, fifteen thousand strong. The hand of Spain had closed over them.

XXIV

ROSA

"Look!" Jacket clutched at O'Reilly and pointed a shaking finger. "More beggars! Cristo! And those little children!" The boy tried to laugh, but his voice cracked nervously. "Are they children, or gourds with legs under them?"

O'Reilly looked, then turned his eyes away. He and Jacket had reached the heart of Matanzas and were facing the public square, the Plaza de la Libertad it was called. O'Reilly knew the place well; every building that flanked it was familiar to him, from the vast, rambling Governor's Palace to the ornate Casino Espanol and the Grand Hotel, and time was when he had been a welcome visitor at all of them. But things were different now. Gone were the customary crowds of well-dressed, well-fed citizens; gone the rows of carriages which at this hour of the day were wont to circle the Plaza laden with the aristocracy of the city; gone was that air of cheerfulness and substance which had lent distinction to the place. Matanzas appeared poor and squalid, depressingly wretched; its streets were foul and the Plaza de la Libertad--grim mockery of a name--was crowded with a throng such as it had never held in O'Reilly's time, a throng of people who were, without exception, gaunt, listless, ragged. There was no afternoon parade of finery, no laughter, no noise; the benches were full, but their occupants were silent, too sick or too weak to move. Nor were there any romping children. There were, to be sure, vast numbers of undersized figures in the square, but one needed to look twice to realize that they were not pygmies or wizened little old folks. It was not strange that Jacket had compared them to gourds with legs, for all were naked, and most of them had bodies swollen into the likeness of pods or calabashes. They looked peculiarly grotesque with their spidery legs and thin faces.

O'Reilly passed a damp hand across his eyes. "God!" he breathed. "She--she's one of these!"

He had not penetrated even thus far into the city without receiving a hint of what conditions must be, for in the outlying streets he had seen sights and smelled odors that had sickened him; but now that he was face to face with the worst, now that he breathed the very breath of misery, he could scarcely credit what he saw. A stench, indescribably nauseating, assailed him and Jacket as they mingled with the crowd, for as yet their nostrils were unused to poverty and filth. It was the rancid odor that arises from unwashed, unhealthy bodies, and it testified eloquently to the living-conditions of the prisoners. Hollow eyes and hopeless faces followed the two new-comers as they picked their way slowly along.

The reconcentrados overran Matanzas in an unclean swarm; streets and plazas were congested with them, for no attempt was made to confine them to their quarters. Morning brought them streaming down from the suburban slopes where they lived, evening sent them winding back; their days were spent in an aimless search for food. They snatched at crumbs and combed the gutters for crusts. How they managed to exist, whence came the food that kept life in their miserable bodies, was a mystery, even to the citizens of the city; no organized effort had been made to care for them and there was insufficient surplus food for half their number. Yet somehow they lived and lingered on.

Of course the city was not entirely peopled by the starving--as a matter of fact they formed scarcely one-fifth of the normal civil population--and the life of the city was going on a good deal as usual. Stores were open, at least there was a daily train from Habana, and the barracks were full of Spanish troops. It was from off the wastage of this normal population that these fifteen thousand prisoners were forced to live. Even this wastage was woefully inadequate, merely serving to prolong suffering by making starvation slower.

At the time of O'Reilly's arrival the sight presented by these innocent victims of war was appalling; it roused in him a dull red rage at the power which had wrought this crime and at the men who permitted it to continue. Spain was a Christian nation, he reflected; she had set up more crosses than any other, and yet beneath them she had butchered more people than all the nations of the earth combined. This monstrous, coldly calculating effort to destroy the entire Cuban people seemed to him the blackest infamy of all, and he wondered if it would be allowed to succeed.

Fortunately for the two friends, General Betancourt's generosity served to relieve them from any immediate danger of starvation. After making a few purchases and eating with the utmost frugality, they began their search. Later, they stretched themselves out to sleep on the stones beneath the portales of the railroad station.

They spent a horrid, harrowing night, for now the general distress was brought home to them more poignantly than ever. At dawn they learned that these people were actually dying of neglect. The faint light betrayed the presence of new corpses lying upon the station flagstones. From those still living, groans, sighs, sick mutterings rose until O'Reilly finally dragged his youthful companion out of the place.

"I can't stand that," he confessed. "I can't sleep when people are starving to death alongside of me. This money burns my pocket. I--I--"

Jacket read his purpose and laid a detaining hand upon his arm.

"It will save OUR lives, too," he said, simply.

"Bah! We are men. There are women and children yonder--"

But Jacket's sensibilities were calloused, it seemed. "Of what use would your few pesetas be among so many?" he inquired. "God has willed this, and He knows what He is doing. Besides, your 'pretty one' is probably as hungry as are these people. No doubt we shall find that she, too, is starving."

O'Reilly slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket. "Yes! It's Rosa's money. But--come; I can't endure this."

He led the way back to the Plaza of Liberty and there on an iron bench they waited for the full day. They were very tired, but further sleep was impossible, for the death-wagons rumbled by on their way to collect the bodies of those who had died during the night.

Neither the man nor the boy ever wholly lost the nightmare memory of the next few days, for their search took them into every part of the reconcentrado districts. What they beheld aged them. Day after day, from dawn till dark, they wandered, peering into huts, staring into faces, asking questions until they were faint from fatigue and sick with disappointment.

As time passed and they failed to find Rosa Varona a terrible apprehension began to weigh O'Reilly down; his face grew old and drawn, his shoulders sagged, his limbs began to drag. It was all that Jacket could do to keep him going. The boy, now that there was actual need of him, proved a perfect jewel; his optimism never failed, his faith never faltered, and O'Reilly began to feel a dumb gratitude at having the youngster by his side.

Jacket, too, became thin and gray about the lips. But he complained not at all and he laughed a great deal. To him the morrow was always another day of brilliant promise toward which he looked with never-failing eagerness; and not for a single moment did he question the ultimate success of their endeavor. Such an example did much for the older man. Together they practised the strictest, harshest economy, living on a few cents a day, while they methodically searched the city from limit to limit.

At first O'Reilly concerned himself more than a little with the problem of escape, but as time wore on he thought less and less about that. Nor did he have occasion to waste further concern regarding his disguise. That it was perfect he proved when several of his former acquaintances passed him by and when, upon one occasion, he came face to face with old Don Mario de Castano. Don Mario had changed; he was older, his flesh had softened, and it hung loosely upon his form. He appeared worried, harassed, and O'Reilly recalled rumors that the war had ruined him. The man's air of dejection seemed to bear out the story.

They had been enemies, nevertheless O'Reilly felt a sudden impulse to make himself known to the Spaniard and to appeal directly for news of Rosa's fate. But Don Mario, he remembered in time, had a reputation for vindictiveness, so he smothered the desire. One other encounter O'Reilly had reason to remember.

It so chanced that one day he and Jacket found themselves in the miserable rabble which assembled at the railroad station to implore alms from the incoming passengers of the Habana train. Few people were traveling these days, and they were, for the most part, Spanish officers to whom the sight of starving country people was no novelty. Now and then, however, there did arrive visitors from whom the spectacle of so much wretchedness wrung a contribution, hence there was always an expectant throng at the depot. On this occasion O'Reilly was surprised to hear the piteous whines for charity in the name of God turn suddenly into a subdued but vicious mutter of rage. Hisses were intermingled with vituperations, then the crowd fell strangely silent, parting to allow the passage of a great, thick-set man in the uniform of a Colonel of Volunteers. The fellow was unusually swarthy and he wore a black scowl upon his face, while a long puckering scar the full length of one cheek lifted his mouth into a crooked sneer and left exposed a glimpse of wolfish teeth.

O'Reilly was at a loss to fathom this sudden alteration of attitude, the whistle of indrawn breaths and the whispered curses, until he heard some one mutter the name, "Cobo." Then indeed he started and stiffened in his tracks. He fixed a fascinated stare upon the fellow.

Colonel Cobo seemed no little pleased by the reception he created. With his chest arched and his black eyes gleaming malevolently he swaggered through the press, clicking his heels noisily upon the stone flags. When he had gone Jacket voiced a vicious oath.

"So that is the butcher of babies!" exclaimed the boy. "Well, now, I should enjoy cutting his heart out."

O'Reilly's emotions were not entirely unlike those of his small companion. His lips became dry and white as he tried to speak.

"What a brute! That face--Ugh!"

He found himself shaking weakly, and discovered that a new and wholly unaccountable feeling of discouragement had settled upon him. He tried manfully to shake it off, but somehow failed, for the sight of Rosa's arch-enemy and the man's overbearing personality had affected him queerly. Cobo's air of confidence and authority seemed to emphasize O'Reilly's impotence and bring it forcibly home to him. To think of his lustful persecution of Rosa Varona, moreover, terrified him. The next day he resumed his hut-to-hut search, but with a listlessness that came from a firm conviction that once again he was too late.

That afternoon found the two friends among the miserable hovels which encircled the foot of La Cumbre, about the only quarter they had not explored. Below lay San Severino, the execution-place; above was the site of the old Verona home. More than once on his way about the city O'Reilly had lifted his eyes in the direction of the latter, feeling a great hunger to revisit the scene of his last farewell to Rosa, but through fear of the melancholy effect it would have upon him he had thus far resisted the impulse. To-day, however, he could no longer fight the morbid desire and so, in spite of Jacket's protest at the useless expenditure of effort, he set out to climb the hill. Of course the boy would not let him go alone.

Little was said during the ascent. The La Cumbre road seemed very long and very steep. How different the last time O'Reilly had swung up it! The climb had never before tired him as it did now, and he reasoned that hunger must have weakened him even more than he realized. Jacket felt the exertion, too; he was short of breath and he rested frequently. O'Reilly saw that the boy's bare, brown legs had grown bony since he had last noticed them, and he felt a sudden pang at having brought the little fellow into such a plight as this.

"Well, hombre," he said when they paused to rest, "I'm afraid we came too late. I'm afraid we're licked."

Jacket nodded listlessly; his optimism, too, was gone. "They must all be dead or we would have found them before this," said he. When O'Reilly made no answer he continued, "It is time we thought of getting away from here, eh?"

Johnnie was sitting with his face in his hands. Without lifting his head he inquired: "How are we going to get away? It is easy enough to get into Matanzas, but--" He shrugged hopelessly.

From where the two sat they could see on the opposite hillside a section of the ditch and the high barbed-wire fence which girdled the city and made of it a huge corral. Spaced at regular intervals along the intrenchments were slow-moving, diminutive figures, sentries on their well-worn paths.

Jacket brightened at the thought of escape. "Ho! I'll bet we can find a hole somewhere," said he. "We're not like these others. They haven't the spirit to try." There was a moment of silence, and then: "Caramba! You remember those jutias we ate? They were strong, but I would enjoy the smell of one now. Eh? Another week of this and we shall be living on garbage like the rest of these poor people."