Chapter 10

"Free men," Clay answered again, and pointed at the star on his coat.

The soldier muttered an apology, and striking his heels into his horse's side, dashed noisily away, his lantern tossing from side to side, high in the air, as he drew rein to scan each tree and passed from one lamp-post to the next.

"What does that mean?" said Mr. Langham; "did he take us for highwaymen?"

"It is the custom," said Clay. "We are out rather late, you see."

"If I remember rightly, Clay," said King, "they gave a ball at Brussels on the eve of Waterloo."

"I believe they did," said Clay, smiling. He spoke to the driver to stop the carriage, and stepped down into the street.

"I have to leave you here," he said; "drive on quickly, please; I can explain better in the morning."

The Plaza Bolivar stood in what had once been the centre of the fashionable life of Olancho, but the town had moved farther up the hill, and it was now far in the suburbs, its walks neglected and its turf overrun with weeds. The houses about it had fallen into disuse, and the few that were still occupied at the time Clay entered it showed no sign of life. Clay picked his way over the grass-grown paths to the statue of Bolivar, the hero of the sister republic of Venezuela, which still stood on its pedestal in a tangle of underbrush and hanging vines. The iron railing that had once surrounded it was broken down, and the branches of the trees near were black with sleeping buzzards. Two great palms reared themselves in the moonlight at either side, and beat their leaves together in the night wind, whispering and murmuring together like two living conspirators.

"This ought to be safe enough," Clay murmured to himself. "It's just the place for plotting. I hope there are no snakes." He seated himself on the steps of the pedestal, and lighting a cigar, remained smoking and peering into the shadows about him, until a shadow blacker than the darkness rose at his feet, and a voice said, sternly, "Put out that light. I saw it half a mile away."

Clay rose and crushed his cigar under his foot. "Now then, old man," he demanded briskly, "what's up? It's nearly daylight and we must hurry."

Stuart seated himself heavily on the stone steps, like a man tired in mind and body, and unfolded a printed piece of paper. Its blank side was damp and sticky with paste.

"It is too dark for you to see this," he began, in a strained voice, "so I will translate it to you. It is an attack on Madame Alvarez and myself. They put them up during the ball, when they knew my men would be at the Palace. I have had them scouring the streets for the last two hours tearing them down, but they are all over the place, in the cafés and clubs. They have done what they were meant to do."

Clay took another cigar from his pocket and rolled it between his lips. "What does it say?" he asked.

"It goes over the old ground first. It says Alvarez has given the richest birthright of his country to aliens--that means the mines and Langham--and has put an alien in command of the army--that is meant for me. I've no more to do with the army than you have--I only wish I had! And then it says that the boundary aggressions of Ecuador and Venezuela have not been resented in consequence. It asks what can be expected of a President who is as blind to the dishonor of his country as he is to the dishonor of his own home?"

Clay muttered under his breath, "Well, go on. Is it explicit? More explicit than that?"

"Yes," said Stuart, grimly. "I can't repeat it. It is quite clear what they mean."

"Have you got any of them?" Clay asked. "Can you fix it on some one that you can fight?"

"Mendoza did it, of course," Stuart answered, "but we cannot prove it. And if we could, we are not strong enough to take him. He has the city full of his men now, and the troops are pouring in every hour."

"Well, Alvarez can stop that, can't he?"

"They are coming in for the annual review. He can't show the people that he is afraid of his own army."

"What are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do?" Stuart repeated, dully. "That is what I want you to tell me. There is nothing I can do now. I've brought trouble and insult on people who have been kinder to me than my own blood have been. Who took me in when I was naked and clothed me, when I hadn't a friend or a sixpence to my name. You remember--I came here from that row in Colombia with my wound, and I was down with the fever when they found me, and Alvarez gave me the appointment. And this is how I reward them. If I stay I do more harm. If I go away I leave them surrounded by enemies, and not enemies who fight fair, but damned thieves and scoundrels, who stab at women and who fight in the dark. I wouldn't have had it happen, old man, for my right arm! They--they have been so kind to me, and I have been so happy here--and now!" The boy bowed his face in his hands and sat breathing brokenly while Clay turned his unlit cigar between his teeth and peered at him curiously through the darkness. "Now I have made them both unhappy, and they hate me, and I hate myself, and I have brought nothing but trouble to every one. First I made my own people miserable, and now I make my best friends miserable, and I had better be dead. I wish I were dead. I wish I had never been born."

Clay laid his hand on the other's bowed shoulder and shook him gently. "Don't talk like that," he said; "it does no good. Why do you hate yourself?"

"What?" asked Stuart, wearily, without looking up. "What did you say?"

"You said you had made them hate you, and you added that you hated yourself. Well, I can see why they naturally would be angry for the time, at least. But why do you hate yourself? Have you reason to?"

"I don't understand," said Stuart.

"Well, I can't make it any plainer," Clay replied. "It isn't a question I will ask. But you say you want my advice. Well, my advice to my friend and to a man who is not my friend, differ. And in this case it depends on whether what that thing--" Clay kicked the paper which had fallen on the ground--"what that thing says is true."

The younger man looked at the paper below him and then back at Clay, and sprang to his feet.

"Why, damn you," he cried, "what do you mean?"

He stood above Clay with both arms rigid at his side and his head bent forward. The dawn had just broken, and the two men saw each other in the ghastly gray light of the morning. "If any man," cried Stuart thickly, "dares to say that that blackguardly lie is true I'll kill him. You or any one else. Is that what you mean, damn you? If it is, say so, and I'll break every bone of your body."

"Well, that's much better," growled Clay, sullenly. "The way you went on wishing you were dead and hating yourself made me almost lose faith in mankind. Now you go make that speech to the President, and then find the man who put up those placards, and if you can't find the right man, take any man you meet and make him eat it, paste and all, and beat him to death if he doesn't. Why, this is no time to whimper--because the world is full of liars. Go out and fight them and show them you are not afraid. Confound you, you had me so scared there that I almost thrashed you myself. Forgive me, won't you?" he begged earnestly. He rose and held out his hand and the other took it, doubtfully. "It was your own fault, you young idiot," protested Clay. "You told your story the wrong way. Now go home and get some sleep and I'll be back in a few hours to help you. Look!" he said. He pointed through the trees to the sun that shot up like a red hot disk of heat above the cool green of the mountains. "See," said Clay, "God has given us another day. Seven battles were fought in seven days once in my country. Let's be thankful, old man, that we're NOT dead, but alive to fight our own and other people's battles."

The younger man sighed and pressed Clay's hand again before he dropped it.

"You are very good to me," he said. "I'm not just quite myself this morning. I'm a bit nervous, I think. You'll surely come, won't you?"

"By noon," Clay promised. "And if it does come," he added, "don't forget my fifteen hundred men at the mines."

"Good! I won't," Stuart replied. "I'll call on you if I need them." He raised his fingers mechanically to his helmet in salute, and catching up his sword turned and strode away erect and soldierly through the debris and weeds of the deserted plaza.

Clay remained motionless on the steps of the pedestal and followed the younger man with his eyes. He drew a long breath and began a leisurely search through his pockets for his match-box, gazing about him as he did so, as though looking for some one to whom he could speak his feelings. He lifted his eyes to the stern, smooth-shaven face of the bronze statue above him that seemed to be watching Stuart's departing figure.

"General Bolivar," Clay said, as he lit his cigar, "observe that young man. He is a soldier and a gallant gentleman. You, sir, were a great soldier--the greatest this God-forsaken country will ever know--and you were, sir, an ardent lover. I ask you to salute that young man as I do, and to wish him well." Clay lifted his high hat to the back of the young officer as it was hidden in the hanging vines, and once again, with grave respect to the grim features of the great general above him, and then smiling at his own conceit, he ran lightly down the steps and disappeared among the trees of the plaza.

IX

Clay slept for three hours. He had left a note on the floor instructing MacWilliams and young Langham not to go to the mines, but to waken him at ten o'clock, and by eleven the three men were galloping off to the city. As they left the Palms they met Hope returning from a morning ride on the Alameda, and Clay begged her, with much concern, not to ride abroad again. There was a difference in his tone toward her. There was more anxiety in it than the occasion seemed to justify, and he put his request in the form of a favor to himself, while the day previous he would simply have told her that she must not go riding alone.

"Why?" asked Hope, eagerly. "Is there going to be trouble?"

"I hope not," Clay said, "but the soldiers are coming in from the provinces for the review, and the roads are not safe."

"I'd be safe with you, though," said Hope, smiling persuasively upon the three men. "Won't you take me with you, please?"

"Hope," said young Langham in the tone of the elder brother's brief authority, "you must go home at once."

Hope smiled wickedly. "I don't want to," she said.

"I'll bet you a box of cigars I can beat you to the veranda by fifty yards," said MacWilliams, turning his horse's head.

Hope clasped her sailor hat in one hand and swung her whip with the other. "I think not," she cried, and disappeared with a flutter of skirts and a scurry of flying pebbles.

"At times," said Clay, "MacWilliams shows an unexpected knowledge of human nature."

"Yes, he did quite right," assented Langham, nodding his head mysteriously. "We've no time for girls at present, have we?"

"No, indeed," said Clay, hiding any sign of a smile.

Langham breathed deeply at the thought of the part he was to play in this coming struggle, and remained respectfully silent as they trotted toward the city. He did not wish to disturb the plots and counterplots that he was confident were forming in Clay's brain, and his devotion would have been severely tried had he known that his hero's mind was filled with a picture of a young girl in a blue shirt-waist and a whipcord riding-skirt.

Clay sent for Stuart to join them at the restaurant, and MacWilliams arriving at the same time, the four men seated themselves conspicuously in the centre of the café and sipped their chocolate as though unconscious of any imminent danger, and in apparent freedom from all responsibilities and care. While MacWilliams and Langham laughed and disputed over a game of dominoes, the older men exchanged, under cover of their chatter, the few words which they had met to speak.

The manifestoes, Stuart said, had failed of their purpose. He had already called upon the President, and had offered to resign his position and leave the country, or to stay and fight his maligners, and take up arms at once against Mendoza's party. Alvarez had treated him like a son, and bade him be patient. He held that Caesar's wife was above suspicion because she was Caesar's wife, and that no canards posted at midnight could affect his faith in his wife or in his friend. He refused to believe that any coup d'etat was imminent, save the one which he himself meditated when he was ready to proclaim the country in a state of revolution, and to assume a military dictatorship.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Clay. "What is a military dictatorship without soldiers? Can't he see that the army is with Mendoza?"

"No," Stuart replied. "Rojas and I were with him all the morning. Rojas is an old trump, Clay. He's not bright and he's old-fashioned; but he is honest. And the people know it. If I had Rojas for a chief instead of Alvarez, I'd arrest Mendoza with my own hand, and I wouldn't be afraid to take him to the carcel through the streets. The people wouldn't help him. But the President doesn't dare. Not that he hasn't pluck," added the young lieutenant, loyally, "for he takes his life in his hands when he goes to the review tomorrow, and he knows it. Think of it, will you, out there alone with a field of five thousand men around him! Rojas thinks he can hold half of them, as many as Mendoza can, and I have my fifty. But you can't tell what any one of them will do for a drink or a dollar. They're no more soldiers than these waiters. They're bandits in uniform, and they'll kill for the man that pays best."

"Then why doesn't Alvarez pay them?" Clay growled.

Stuart looked away and lowered his eyes to the table. "He hasn't the money, I suppose," he said, evasively. "He--he has transferred every cent of it into drafts on Rothschild. They are at the house now, representing five millions of dollars in gold--and her jewels, too--packed ready for flight."

"Then he does expect trouble?" said Clay. "You told me--"

"They're all alike; you know them," said Stuart. "They won't believe they're in danger until the explosion comes, but they always have a special train ready, and they keep the funds of the government under their pillows. He engaged apartments on the Avenue Kleber six months ago."

"Bah!" said Clay. "It's the old story. Why don't you quit him?"

Stuart raised his eyes and dropped them again, and Clay sighed. "I'm sorry," he said.

MacWilliams interrupted them in an indignant stage-whisper. "Say, how long have we got to keep up this fake game?" he asked. "I don't know anything about dominoes, and neither does Ted. Tell us what you've been saying. Is there going to be trouble? If there is, Ted and I want to be in it. We are looking for trouble."

Clay had tipped back his chair, and was surveying the restaurant and the blazing plaza beyond its open front with an expression of cheerful unconcern. Two men were reading the morning papers near the door, and two others were dragging through a game of dominoes in a far corner. The heat of midday had settled on the place, and the waiters dozed, with their chairs tipped back against the walls. Outside, the awning of the restaurant threw a broad shadow across the marble-topped tables on the sidewalk, and half a dozen fiacre drivers slept peacefully in their carriages before the door.

The town was taking its siesta, and the brisk step of a stranger who crossed the tessellated floor and rapped with his knuckles on the top of the cigar-case was the only sign of life. The newcomer turned with one hand on the glass case and swept the room carelessly with his eyes. They were hard blue eyes under straight eyebrows. Their owner was dressed unobtrusively in a suit of rough tweed, and this and his black hat, and the fact that he was smooth-shaven, distinguished him as a foreigner.

As he faced them the forelegs of Clay's chair descended slowly to the floor, and he began to smile comprehendingly and to nod his head as though the coming of the stranger had explained something of which he had been in doubt. His companions turned and followed the direction of his eyes, but saw nothing of interest in the newcomer. He looked as though he might be a concession hunter from the States, or a Manchester drummer, prepared to offer six months' credit on blankets and hardware.

Clay rose and strode across the room, circling the tables in such a way that he could keep himself between the stranger and the door. At his approach the new-comer turned his back and fumbled with his change on the counter.

"Captain Burke, I believe?" said Clay. The stranger bit the cigar he had just purchased, and shook his head. "I am very glad to see you," Clay continued. "Sit down, won't you? I want to talk with you."

"I think you've made a mistake," the stranger answered, quietly. "My name is--"

"Colonel, perhaps, then," said Clay. "I might have known it. I congratulate you, Colonel."

The man looked at Clay for an instant, with the cigar clenched between his teeth and his blue eyes fixed steadily on the other's face. Clay waved his hand again invitingly toward a table, and the man shrugged his shoulders and laughed, and, pulling a chair toward him, sat down.

"Come over here, boys," Clay called. "I want you to meet an old friend of mine, Captain Burke."

The man called Burke stared at the three men as they crossed the room and seated themselves at the table, and nodded to them in silence.

"We have here," said Clay, gayly, but in a low voice, "the key to the situation. This is the gentleman who supplies Mendoza with the sinews of war. Captain Burke is a brave soldier and a citizen of my own or of any country, indeed, which happens to have the most sympathetic Consul-General."

Burke smiled grimly, with a condescending nod, and putting away the cigar, took out a brier pipe and began to fill it from his tobacco-pouch. "The Captain is a man of few words and extremely modest about himself," Clay continued, lightly; "so I must tell you who he is myself. He is a promoter of revolutions. That is his business,--a professional promoter of revolutions, and that is what makes me so glad to see him again. He knows all about the present crisis here, and he is going to tell us all he knows as soon as he fills his pipe. I ought to warn you, Burke," he added, "that this is Captain Stuart, in charge of the police and the President's cavalry troop. So, you see, whatever you say, you will have one man who will listen to you."

Burke crossed one short fat leg over the other, and crowded the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.

"I thought you were in Chili, Clay," he said.

"No, you didn't think I was in Chili," Clay replied, kindly. "I left Chili two years ago. The Captain and I met there," he explained to the others, "when Balmaceda was trying to make himself dictator. The Captain was on the side of the Congressionalists, and was furnishing arms and dynamite. The Captain is always on the winning side, at least he always has been--up to the present. He is not a creature of sentiment; are you, Burke? The Captain believes with Napoleon that God is on the side that has the heaviest artillery."

Burke lighted his pipe and drummed absentmindedly on the table with his match-box.

"I can't afford to be sentimental," he said. "Not in my business."

"Of course not," Clay assented, cheerfully. He looked at Burke and laughed, as though the sight of him recalled pleasant memories. "I wish I could give these boys an idea of how clever you are, Captain," he said. "The Captain was the first man, for instance, to think of packing cartridges in tubs of lard, and of sending rifles in piano-cases. He represents the Welby revolver people in England, and half a dozen firms in the States, and he has his little stores in Tampa and Mobile and Jamaica, ready to ship off at a moment's notice to any revolution in Central America. When I first met the Captain," Clay continued, gleefully, and quite unmindful of the other's continued silence, "he was starting off to rescue Arabi Pasha from the island of Ceylon. You may remember, boys, that when Dufferin saved Arabi from hanging, the British shipped him to Ceylon as a political prisoner. Well, the Captain was sent by Arabi's followers in Egypt to bring him back to lead a second rebellion. Burke had everybody bribed at Ceylon, and a fine schooner fitted out and a lot of ruffians to do the fighting, and then the good, kind British Government pardoned Arabi the day before Burke arrived in port. And you never got a cent for it; did you, Burke?"

Burke shook his head and frowned.

"Six thousand pounds sterling I was to have got for that," he said, with a touch of pardonable pride in his voice, "and they set him free the day before I got there, just as Mr. Clay tells you."

"And then you headed Granville Prior's expedition for buried treasure off the island of Cocos, didn't you?" said Clay. "Go on, tell them about it. Be sociable. You ought to write a book about your different business ventures, Burke, indeed you ought; but then," Clay added, smiling, "nobody would believe you." Burke rubbed his chin, thoughtfully, with his fingers, and looked modestly at the ceiling, and the two younger boys gazed at him with open-mouthed interest.

"There ain't anything in buried treasure," he said, after a pause, "except the money that's sunk in the fitting out. It sounds good, but it's all foolishness."

"All foolishness, eh?" said Clay, encouragingly. "And what did you do after Balmaceda was beaten?--after I last saw you?"

"Crespo," Burke replied, after a pause, during which he pulled gently on his pipe. "'Caroline Brewer'--cleared from Key West for Curacao, with cargo of sewing-machines and ploughs--beached below Maracaibo--thirty-five thousand rounds and two thousand rifles--at twenty bolivars apiece."

"Of course," said Clay, in a tone of genuine appreciation. "I might have known you'd be in that. He says," he explained, "that he assisted General Crespo in Venezuela during his revolution against Guzman Blanco's party, and loaded a tramp steamer called the 'Caroline Brewer' at Key West with arms, which he landed safely at a place for which he had no clearance papers, and he received forty thousand dollars in our money for the job--and very good pay, too, I should think," commented Clay.

"Well, I don't know," Burke demurred. "You take in the cost of leasing the boat and provisioning her, and the crew's wages, and the cost of the cargo; that cuts into profits. Then I had to stand off shore between Trinidad and Curacao for over three weeks before I got the signal to run in, and after that I was chased by a gun-boat for three days, and the crazy fool put a shot clean through my engine-room. Cost me about twelve hundred dollars in repairs."

There was a pause, and Clay turned his eyes to the street, and then asked, abruptly, "What are you doing now?"

"Trying to get orders for smokeless powder," Burke answered, promptly. He met Clay's look with eyes as undisturbed as his own. "But they won't touch it down here," he went on. "It doesn't appeal to 'em. It's too expensive, and they'd rather see the smoke. It makes them think--"

"How long did you expect to stay here?" Clay interrupted.

"How long?" repeated Burke, like a man in a witness-box who is trying to gain time. "Well, I was thinking of leaving by Friday, and taking a mule-train over to Bogota instead of waiting for the steamer to Colon." He blew a mouthful of smoke into the air and watched it drifting toward the door with apparent interest.