Part 14

He could not lift his gaze from them. If he did, they would surely vanish, and he awake from his dream. Yet in the very shock of awe, and starving though he was, the master-habit of his life, the secretive peasant cunning, had already begun to work. Never once relaxing his fixed stare, fearful even of blinking with his smoke-sored eyes, he shuffled sideways toward the window-hole, his hands groping the wall behind him. The wooden shutter and its fastening bar--a short oak pole--lay where he had dropped them, on the floor beneath the window. He crouched, feeling backwards for them; found, lifted them on to the inner ledge, and, with a half-turn of his body, thrust one arm deep into the recess and jammed the shutter into its place. To fix the bolt was less easy; it fitted across the back of the shutter, its ends resting in two sockets pierced in the wall of the recess. He could use but one hand; yet in less than a minute he found the first socket, slid an end of the bolt into it as far as it would go, lifted the other end and scraped with it along the opposite side of the recess until it dropped into the second socket. He was safe now--safe from prying eyes. In all this while--these two, perhaps three, minutes--his uppermost terror had been lest strange eyes were peering in through the window-hole: it had cost him anguish not to remove his own for an instant from the miracle to assure himself. But he had shut out this terror now: and the miracle had not vanished.

A few coins trickled yet. He crawled forward across the floor, crouching like a beast for a spring. But as he drew close his old legs began to shake under him. He dropped on his knees and fell forward, plunging both hands into the bright pile.

Dollars! real silver dollars!

He lay on the flood of wealth, stretched like a swimmer, his fingers feebly moving among the coins which slid and poured over the back of his hands. He did not ask how the miracle had befallen. He was starving; dying in fact, though he did not know it; and lo! he had found a heaven beyond all imagination, and lay in it and panted, at rest. The firelight played on the heave and fall of his gaunt shoulder-blades, and on the glass eyes of the Virgin, whose head had rolled half-way across the floor and lay staring up foolishly at the rafters.

* * * * *

"Mother, open! Ah, open quickly, mother, for the love of God!"

Whose voice was that? Yes, yes--Mercedes', to be sure, his granddaughter's. She had gone to Nogales ... long ago.... Yet that was her voice. Had he come, then, to Paradise that her voice was pleading for him--pleading for the door to open?

"Mother--Father! It is I, Mercedes! Open quickly--It is Mercedes, do you hear? I want my child--Sebastianillo--my child--quick!"

The voice broke into short agonised cries, into sobs. The door rattled.

At the sound of this last the old man raised himself on his knees. His eyes fell again on the shining dollars all around him. His throat worked.

Suddenly terror broke out in beads on his forehead. Someone was shaking the door! Thieves were there trying the door: they were come to rob him!

He drew himself up slowly. As he did so the door ceased to rattle, and presently, somewhere near the windy edge of the ravine, a faint cry sounded.

But long after the door had ceased to rattle, old Gil Chaleco stared at it, fascinated. And long after the cry had died away it beat from side to side within the walls of his head, while he listened and life trickled from him, drop by drop.

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night." But he was listening for it: it would come again....

And it came--with a rough summons on the door, and, a moment later, with a thunderous blow. The old man stood up, knee-deep in dollars, lifting both arms to cover his head. As the door fell he seemed to bow himself toward it, toppled, and slid forward--still with his arms crooked--amid a rush of silver.

III

Although crushed in the rear and broken inwards there, the hut showed its ordinary face to the path as Mercedes reached it in the failing daylight. She ran like a madwoman, and with short, distraught cries, as she neared her home. Her eyes were wild as a hunted creature's, her coarse black hair streamed over her shoulders, her bare feet bled where the rocks and ice had cut them. But one thing she did not doubt--would not allow herself to doubt--that at home she would find her child. For two days she had been parted from him, and in those two days ... God had been good to her, very good: but she could not thank God yet--not until she clutched Sebastianillo in her arms, held his small, wriggling body, felt his feet kick against her breast....

The great sty beside the cabin was empty, of course: and the cabin itself looked strange to her and desolate and unfriendly. For some hours the snow had ceased falling, and, save in a snowstorm or a gale, it was not the family custom to close door or window before dark: indeed, the window-hole usually stood open night and day the year round. Now both were closed. But warm firelight showed under the chink of the door; and on the door she bowed her head, to take breath, and beat with her hands while she called urgently--

"Mother! Quickly, mother--open to me for the love of God!"

No answer came from within.

"Mother! Father! Open to me--it is I, Mercedes!"

Then, after listening a moment, she began to beat again, frantically, for at length she was afraid.

"Quick! Quick! Ah, do not be playing a trick on me: I want my child--Sebastianillo!"

Again and again she called and beat. No answer came from the hut or from the sombre twilight around her. She drew back, to fling her full weight against the door. And at this moment she heard, some way down the path, a man's footstep crunching the snow.

She never doubted that this must be her father returning up the mountain-side, perhaps after a search for her. What other man--now that her husband had gone soldiering--ever trod this path? She ran down to meet him.

The path, about forty yards below, rounded an angle of the sheer cliff, and at this angle she came to a terrified halt. The man, too, had halted a short gunshot away. He did not see her, but was staring upward at the cliff overhead; and he was not her father. For an instant there flashed across her brain an incredible surmise--that he was her husband, Sebastian: for he wore a soldier's overcoat and shako, and carried a musket and knapsack. But no: this man was taller than Sebastian by many inches; taller and thinner.

He was a soldier, then: and to Mercedes all soldiers were by this time incarnate devils--or all but one, and that one a plucky little British officer who had snatched her from his men just as she fell swooning into their clutches, and had dragged and thrust her through the convent doorway at Nogales and slammed the door upon her; and (though this she did not know) held the doorstep, sword in hand, while the Fathers within shot the heavy bolts.

The British had gone, and after them--close after--came the French: and these broke down the convent door and ransacked the place. But the Fathers had hidden her and a score or so more of trembling women, nor would allow her to creep out and search for Sebastianillo in the streets through which swept, hour after hour, a flood of drunken yelling devils. So now Mercedes, who had left home two days ago to watch an army pass, turned from this one soldier with a scream and ran back towards the cabin.

In her terror lest he should overtake and catch her by the closed door, she darted aside, clambered across the wall of the empty sty, and crouched behind it in the filth, clutching at her bodice: for within her bodice was a knife, which she had borrowed of the Fathers at Nogales.

The footsteps came up the path and went slowly past her hiding-place. Then they came to a halt before the hut. Still Mercedes crouched, not daring to lift her head.

_Rat, rat-a-tat!_

Well, let him knock. Her father was a strong man, and always kept a loaded gun on the shelf. If this soldier meant mischief, he would find his match: and she, too, could help.

She heard him call to the folks within once or twice in bad Spanish. Then his voice changed and seemed to threaten in a language she did not know.

Her hand was thrust within her bodice now, and gripped the handle of her knife; nevertheless, what followed took her by surprise, though ready for action. A terrific bang sounded on the timbers of the door. Involuntarily she raised her head above the wall's coping. The man had stepped back a pace into the path, and was swinging his musket up for another blow with the butt.

She stood up, white, with her jaw set. Her father could not be inside the hut, or he would have answered that blow on his door as a man should. But Sebastianillo might be within--nay, must be! She put her hands to the wall's coping and swung herself over and on to the path, again unseen, for the dusk hid her, and a dark background of cliff behind the sty: nor could the man hear, for he was raining blow after blow upon the door. At length, having shaken it loose from its hasp, he stepped back and made a run at it, using the butt of his musket for a ram, and finishing up the charge with the full weight of one shoulder. The door crashed open before him, and he reeled over it into the hut. A second later, Mercedes had sprung after him.

"Sebastianillo! You shall not harm him! You shall not----"

The door, falling a little short of the fire, had scattered some of the burning brands about the floor and fanned the rest into a blaze. In the light of it he faced round with a snarl, his teeth showing beneath his moustache. The light also showed--though Mercedes neither noted it nor could have read its signification--a corporal's chevron on his sleeve.

"Who the devil are you?" The snarl ended in a snap.

Mercedes stood swaying on the threshold, knife in hand.

"You shall not harm him!"

She spoke in her own tongue and he understood it, after a fashion; for he answered in broken Spanish, catching up her word--

"Harm? Who means any harm? When a man is perishing with hunger and folks will not open to him----"

He paused, wondering at her gaze. Travelling past him, it had fastened itself on the back wall of the hut, across the fire. "Hullo! What's the matter?" He swung round. "Good Lord!" said he, with a gulp.

He sprang past the fire and stooped over the old man's body, which lay face downward on the shelving heap of silver. It did not stir. By-and-by he took it by one of the rigid arms and turned it over, not roughly.

"Warm," said he: "warm, but dead as a herring! Come and see for yourself."

Mercedes did not move. Her eyes sought the dark corners of the cabin, fixed themselves for a moment on the shattered image of the Virgin, and met his across the firelight in desperate inquiry.

"What is this? What have you done?"

"Done? I tell you I never touched the man; never saw him before in my life. Who is he? Your father? No: grandfather, more like. Eh? Am I right?"

She bent her head, staring at the money.

"This? This is dollars, my girl: dollars enough to set a man up for life, with a coach and lads in livery, and dress you in diamonds from head to heel. Don't stand playing with that knife. I tell you I never touched the old man. What's more, I'm willing to be friendly and go shares." He stared at her with quick suspicion. "You're alone here, hey?"

She did not answer.

"But answer me," he insisted, "do you live alone with him?" And he pointed to the body at his feet.

"There was my mother," said Mercedes slowly, in her turn pointing to the third bed of straw by the fire. "We journeyed over to Nogales, she and I. Your soldiers came and took away our pigs, giving us pieces of paper for them. They said that if we took these to Nogales someone would pay us: so we started, leaving _him_. And at Nogales your men were rough and parted us, and I have not seen her since."

The Corporal eyed her with the beginnings of a leer. She faced him with steady eyes. "Well, well," said he, after a pause, "I mean no harm to you, anyway. Lord! but you're in luck. Here you reach home and find a fortune at your door--a sort of fortune a man can dig into with a spade; while a poor devil like me----" He paused again and stood considering.

"You knew about this?" She nodded towards the dollars. "You knew how it came here, and you came after it?"

"I did and I didn't. I knew 'twas somewhere hereabouts; but strike me, if a man could dream of finding it like this!"

"Yet you came to this door and beat it open!"

"You've wits, my girl," said the Corporal admiringly; "but they are on the wrong tack. I mean no harm; and the best proof is that here I'm standing with a loaded musket and not offering to hurt you. As it happens, I came to the door asking a bite of bread. I'm cruel hungry."

Mercedes pulled a crust of millet-bread from her pocket. The Fathers at the convent had given it to her at parting, but she had forgotten to eat. She stepped forward; the Corporal stretched out a hand.

"No," said she, and, avoiding him, laid the crust on the block-table. He caught it up and gnawed it ravenously. "I think there is no other food in the house."

"You don't get rid of me like that." He ran a hand along the shelves, searching them. "Hullo! a gun?" He took it down and examined it beside the fire, while Mercedes' heart sank. She had hoped to possess herself of it, snatching it from the shelf when he should be off his guard. "Loaded, too!" He laid it gently on the block and eyed her, munching his crust.

"You'd best put down that knife and talk friendly," said he at length. "What's the use?--you a woman, and me with two guns, both loaded? It's silliness; you must see for yourself it is. Now look here: I've a notion--a splendid notion. Come sit down alongside of me, and talk it over. I promise you there's no harm meant."

But she had backed to her former position in the doorway and would not budge.

"It's treating me suspicious, you are," he grumbled: "hard _and_ suspicious."

"Cannot you take the money and go?" she begged, breathing hard, speaking scarcely above a whisper.

"No, I can't: it stands to reason I can't. What can I do in a country like this with dollars it took two carts to drag here--two carts with six yoke of bullocks apiece? And that's where my cruel luck comes in. All I can take, as things are, is just so much as this knapsack will carry: and even for this I've run some risks."

The man--it was the effect of hunger, perhaps, and exposure and drunkenness on past marches--had an ugly, wolfish face; but his eyes, though cunning, were not altogether evil, not quite formidably evil. She divined that, though lust for the money was driving him, some weakness lay behind it.

"You are a deserter," she said.

"We'll pass that." He seated himself, flinging a leg over the block and laying the two guns side by side on his knees. "I can win back, maybe. As things go, between stragglers and deserters it's hard to choose in these times, and I'll get the benefit of the doubt. I've taken some risks," he repeated, glancing from the guns on his knees to the pile of silver and back: "pretty bad risks, and only to fill my knapsack. But, now it strikes me----Can't you come closer?"

But she held her ground and waited.

"It strikes me, why couldn't we collar the whole of this, we two? We're alone: no one knows; I've but to lift one of these"--he tapped the guns--"and where would you be? But I don't do it. I don't want to do it. You hear me?"

"You don't do it," said Mercedes slowly, "because without me you can't get away with more than a handful of this money. And you want the whole of it."

"You're a clever girl. Yes, I want the whole of it. Who wouldn't? And you can help. Can't you see how?"

"No."

He sat swinging his legs. "Well, that's where my notion comes in. I wish you'd drop that knife and be friendly: it's a fortune I'm offering you. Now my notion is that we two ought to marry." He stood up.

Mercedes lifted the knife with its point turned inward against her breast. "If you take another step!"

"Oh, but look here: look at it every way. I like you. You're a fine build of a woman, with plenty of spirit--the very woman to help a man. We should get along famously. One country's as good as another to me: I'm tired of soldiering, and there's no woman at home, s'help me!" He was speaking rapidly now, not waiting to cast about for words in Spanish, but falling back on English whenever he found himself at a loss. "I dare say you can fit me out with a suit of clothes." His glance ran round the hut and rested on the body of the old man.

Mercedes had understood scarce half of his words: but she divined the meaning of that look and shuddered.

"No, no; you cannot do that!"

"Hark!" said he raising his head and listening. "What's that noise?"

"The wolves. We hear them every night in winter."

"A nice sort of place for a woman to live alone in! See here, my dear; it's sense I'm talking. Better fix it up with me and say 'yes.'"

She appeared to be considering this. "One thing you must promise."

"Well?"

"You won't touch him"--she nodded towards her grandfather's corpse. "You won't touch him to--to----"

"Is it strip him you mean? Very well, then, I won't."

"You will help me to bury him? He cannot lie here. I can give you no answer while he lies here."

"Right you are, again. Only, no tricks, mind!"

He stowed the guns under his left arm and gripped the collar of the old man. Mercedes took the feet; and together they bore him out--a light burden enough. Outside the hut a pale radiance lay over all the snow, forerunner of the moon now rising over the crags across the ravine.

"Where?" grunted the Corporal.

Mercedes guided him. A little way down the path, beyond the wall of the sty, they came to a recess in the base of the cliff where the wind's eddies had piled a smooth mound of snow. Here, under a jutting rock, they laid the body.

"Cover him as best you can," the Corporal ordered. "My hands are full."

He stood, clasping his guns, and watched Mercedes while she knelt and shovelled the snow with both hands. Yet always her eyes were alert and she kept her knife ready. From their mound they looked down upon the ravine in front and over the wall of the sty towards the cabin. Behind them rose the black cliff.

"Hark to the wolves!" said the Corporal, listening: and at that moment something thudded down from the cliff, striking the snow a few yards from him; rolled heavily down the slope and came to a standstill against the wall of the sty, where it lay bedded.

The round moon had risen over the ravine, and was flooding the mound with light. The Corporal stared at Mercedes: for the moment he could think of nothing but that a large, loose stone had dropped from the cliff. He ran to the thing and turned it over.

It was a knapsack.

He did not at once understand, but stepped back a few paces and gazed up at the crags mounting tier by tier into the vague moonlight. And while he gazed a lighter object struck the wall over head, glanced from it, went spinning by him, and disappeared over the edge of the ravine. As it passed he recognized it--a soldier's shako.

Then he understood. Someone had found the spot on the road above where the treasure had been upset, and these things were being dropped to guide his search. The Corporal ran to Mercedes and would have clutched her by the wrist. The knife flashed in her hand as she evaded him.

"Quick, my girl--back with you, quick! They're after the money, I tell you!"

He caught up the knapsack. They ran back together and flung themselves into the cabin. The Corporal bolted the door.

"King's Own," he announced, having dragged the knapsack to the firelight. "If there's only one, we'll do for him."

He stepped to the window-hole, pulled open the shutter, laid the two guns on the ledge, and waited, straining his ears.

"Got such a thing as a shovel or a mattock?" he asked after a while. "I reckon you could make shift to cover up the dollars: there's a deal of loose earth come down with them."

It took her some time to guess what he wanted, for he spoke in a hoarse whisper. He listened again for a while, then pointed to the treasure.

"Cover it up. If there's more than one, we'll have trouble."

She produced a mattock from a corner of the cabin and began, through the broken wall, to rake down mud and earth and cover the coins. For an hour and more she worked, the Corporal still keeping watch. Once or twice he growled at her to make less noise.

He did not stand the suspense well, but after the first hour grew visibly uneasy.

"I've a mind to give this over," he grumbled, and fell to unstrapping his knapsack. "Here!"--he tossed it to her--"pack it, full as you can. Half a loaf may turn out better than no bread."

She laid the knapsack open on the floor and set to work, cramming it with dollars.

"Talking of bread," he went on by-and-by, "that's going to be a question. My stomach's feeling at this moment like as if it had two rows of teeth inside."

"Hist!" Mercedes rose, finger to lip. He turned again to the window-hole and peered out, gun in hand, his shoulder blocking the recess.

A man's footsteps were coming up the path--coming cautiously. Their crunch upon the snow was just audible, and no more. Mercedes stole towards the window and crept close behind the Corporal's back; stood there, holding her breath.

The man on the path halted for a moment, and came on again, still cautiously.... There was a jet of flame, a roar; and the Corporal, after the kick of his musket, strained himself forward on the window-ledge to see if his shot had told.

"Settled him!" he announced, drawing back and turning to face her with a triumphant grin.

But Mercedes confronted him with her father's fowling-piece in hand. She had slipped it off the window-ledge from under his elbow as he leaned forward.

"Unbar the door!" she commanded.

"Look here, no nonsense!"

"Unbar the door!" She believed him to be a coward, and he was.

"You just wait a bit, my lady!" he threatened, but drew the bolt, nevertheless; when he turned, the muzzle of the fowling-piece still covered him.

She nodded toward the knapsack. "Pick up that, if you will.... Now turn your back--your back to me, if you please--and go."

He hesitated, rebellious: but there was no help for it.

"Go!" she repeated. And he went.

Above the cabin the path ended almost at once in a _cul de sac_--a wall of frowning cliff. There was no way for him, whether he wished to descend or climb the mountain, but that which led him past the body of the man he had just murdered. He went past it tottering, fumbling with the straps of his knapsack: and Mercedes stood in the moonlit doorway and watched him out of sight.

By-and-by she seated herself before the threshold, and, laying the gun across her knees, prepared herself to wait for the dawn. The dead man lay huddled on his side, a few paces from her. Overhead, along the waste mountain heights, the wolves howled.

Hours passed. Still the wolves howled, and once from the upper darkness Mercedes heard, or fancied that she heard, a scream.

* * * * *

At noon, next day, two men--a priest and a young peasant--were climbing the mountain-path leading to the hut. The young man carried on his shoulder a two-year-old child; and, because the sun shone and the crisp air put a spirit of life into all things untroubled by thought, the child crowed and tugged gleefully at his father's _berret_. But his father paid no heed, and strode forward at a pace which forced the priest (who was stout) now and again into a run.

"She will not be there," he kept repeating, steeling himself against the worst. "She cannot be there. When she missed her child----"