The Mystery of The Barranca

  CHAPTER XXIII

  In the few minutes that passed before she met Sebastien Francesca hadregained self control. To his reproof, "This was foolish; why did youlinger?" she calmly replied, "I wished to make sure that all the peoplewere out."

  He nodded approval. "Then no one is left?"

  "No one."

  "_Bueno!_ We have no more than time to make the hills. Pancho's beast isstronger than yours. Give him the child." She had begun to hope, but itdied within her as he went on: "In my rooms are valuable papers. 'Twilltake but a moment to get them. Ride on, you. My horse goes two paces toyour one. I can catch you halfway to the hills."

  She almost fainted when he rode off, for just as surely as though shehad seen him questioning the fugitive women she knew now that he wasaware of Seyd's presence. She reined her animal around to follow, thenchecked it sharply under a sudden inspiration.

  "Why do you wait, Pancho?" she asked, sharply. "While you sleep theflood will be on us. Ride! Ride your hardest! I will follow."

  The _mozo_, to tell the truth, was damning with inward tremblings theluck that had placed him in such jeopardy. Only the fear of Sebastienhad kept him from bolting, and now, without even a backward glance, helaid on with quirt and spurs and galloped off with Roberta, leavingFrancesca free to carry out her plan.

  It was quite simple. In this, the rainy season, the shade trees weredraped from crown to foot with green lace of morning glories, and on theouter edge of the nearest clump a banyan had been converted into a hugetent which would have stabled a hundred horses. Parting the lacework ofleaves with one hand, after she had ridden under it, Francesca obtained,through the gateway, an oblique view of the guardhouse at the momentSebastien closed the iron doors. The crash of the bars carried to hertree, and had he looked that way he might have seen the curtain ofleaves swing under the forward move of her beast. But, controlling theimpulse, she reined it back again. When Sebastien raced past a couple ofminutes later she dropped her hand and shrank in sudden fear.

  It was, however, impossible for him to see her. Moreover, theintervening clumps prevented him from discovering that she was not withPancho until he came bursting out on his heels in open pasture half amile ahead.

  "_Tonto!_ where is thy mistress?"

  The _mozo's_ look of frightened surprise proclaimed at once hisignorance and fear. Both had reined in, and under the other's deadlylook Pancho cowered behind his bent arm. Sickly green patches stainedhis dull chocolate. When Sebastien pulled a pistol from his holster hebowed down to the saddle horn, his face in his hands. Leaning over,Sebastien placed the muzzle against the fellow's head. His finger evenhad tightened. Then, checking the impulse, came Roberta's whimper,"Senor! oh, senor!" Above it rose a distant thunderous roar, and,glancing northward, he saw in the far distance a writhing movement inthe jungle beyond the pastures.

  "Off, fool! Save the child!"

  Striking the man's shoulders with the pistol, he wheeled his horse andshot away, heading back to the hacienda. Riding, he kept one eye on thegreen wave that was moving with the speed of the wind over the jungle.As he passed in among the shade trees it boiled over the far edge of thepastures, and from beneath the swaying trees emerged a muddy wallcrowned with bristling black. Traveling more swiftly in the open, itcame on at an acute angle which had its point in the flooded lands alongthe river, its base in the jungle close to the hills, and when Sebastiendashed out of the timber the point had passed the hacienda.

  Even then he must have known it for hopeless. The thunderous diapasonhad risen into a furious crescendo which was spaced by the tear andcrash of uprooted trees, and, higher than his head, the liquid wall wascoming on under the pressure of the yellow frothing sea that stretchedbehind to the limit of sight. Yet, laying on quirt and spurs, he raceddown its front in a desperate spurt for the gates.

  While he was still a hundred yards away the wave struck the northernwall of the compound that fenced the buildings. Built solidly of stone,it melted, vanished without a premonitory shiver, and in its overthrowaccomplished good. Catching root and branch in the debris, the grindingwelter of fallen trees hesitated, then piled in a huge tangled bar uponthe line of cottages and stables which intervened between the wall andhouse.

  To Sebastien, however, this brought no respite. Shooting along theeastern wall, the wave outraced him and beat him to the gate by a longfifty yards.

  * * * * *

  While Francesca was still under the banyan she had heard the roaringdiapason of the flood. Clothed in dripping lacery of leaves and flowerstorn away by the beast's leap from the spur, she galloped into thepatio, and when she dismounted the vines still twined around her limbs.Without waiting to tear them off she threw all of her strength into avain effort to swing the bars of the guardhouse doors, but, swollen bythe rain, they were fast in the staples.

  "Oh, _what_ shall I do?"

  Her cry carried through to Seyd. After a fruitless attempt on the doorhe was just about to attack the window bars with an oaken club he hadfound in one corner. Now, tearing away the sacks of maize that blockedthe one small square window on her side, he thrust it between the bars.

  "Knock them up with this!"

  But after the bars yielded the rusty doors defied her strength. "Theywill not budge! Oh, I cannot move them!"

  Again his practical sense served. "Slip a stirrup over the staple, thenstart your horse gently. Fine!" He heard the groan of the moving door."Key gone! Never mind, I can shoot out the lock. Stand away--off to oneside."

  Above the roar of the flood Sebastien heard the shots. A few secondslater he saw Seyd look out of the gateway, then rush back in. Behind thegates an iron ladder led up to a lookout post on top of the guardhouse,and, racing down the front of the wave, Sebastien saw Seyd rise abovethe low parapet and lift Francesca to his side.

  At the same moment they saw him. In Francesca's outstretched handsSebastien saw her impulse to save. In the sudden covering of her eyes heread his fate. The fifty yards that lay between him and the gates mightjust as well have been a thousand, for, less than half the distanceaway, the great yellow comber rose high over his head.

  Before it broke, however, he did two things--reined his horse to faceit, then, just before he went under the grinding welter, with the sameeasy courtesy which he would have shown to a kinsman or a friend, heturned in the saddle and waved his hand.