The Mystery of The Barranca

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The new day opened a new and fertile country before Seyd's sleepy eyes,a country wonderfully beautiful with variegated foliage of coffee,rubber, palm, and banana plantations.

  During the night the Barranca walls had, while growing lower, closed into a long gorge through which the river ran like a millrace. For twohours their ears were dinned and deafened by the roar and thunder of madwaters, but, as the boulders of the one rapid were buried thirty feetdeep, they sustained nothing worse than a slight deafness and naturalapprehension at the hair-raising speed with which they were catapultedonward. Excepting those two hours when he had to use both oars to holdthe dugout's head in the center of the current, Francesca had slept inhis arms, and, nestling upon his shoulder the moment they emerged uponquieter waters, she had fallen asleep once more, nor did she move tillthe sun pointed a golden finger down between two clouds.

  Awakening, she uttered a small cry and lay for a few seconds looking upinto Seyd's face, her eyes blank with bewildered terror. Then,recognizing him, she gave a sob of relief. "Oh, I was dreaming--that Iwas at El Quiss--to stay there--forever!" She paused and sat for amoment looking into his tired face, then burst out: "Oh, little animal!All night I slept while you kept watch. Now you shall sleep."

  Taking his place in the stern, she forced him, with pretty authority, tocushion his head in her lap. "_Si_, I will awaken you before we reachthe harbor, but do not dare to open an eye till then."

  The command was unnecessary, for, completely fagged, he had no more thanlain down when he was fast asleep. Until sure of the fact she satperfectly still. Then, with a rueful glance at her soiled and shrunkengarments, she murmured, "Nevertheless, we must try to look our best."

  After a second shy study of his sleeping face she let down her hair andbegan to comb it out with her slender fingers. Because of the length andthickness of the dark masses this proved a long task. The dugout haddrifted miles before she finished the coiffure with small feminine pats.Reassured that he still slept, she dipped her handkerchief overside andwashed her face and neck.

  Her own toilet completed, she next essayed his. After warming the wethandkerchief against her own cheek she cleansed his face with delicatetouches, then, with the same soft white comb--her fingers--smoothed hishair. Discovering, in the process, a few gray hairs, she murmured: "Oh,_pobre_! See what I have cost thee!"

  Very gently she began to trace and smooth out the lines of worry uponhis face, and, rediscovering his cleft chin, she repeated, with a softlaugh, her comment made that night in the shepherd's hut. "Oh, fickle!fickle! I said thy wife would need the sharpest of eyes, but they willneeds have nimble fingers that steal thee from me."

  Her face at that moment formed a playground for all that was arch, butpresently it took the shadow of sadder thoughts. Brimming over, a bigtear rolled down her cheek. Yet, while sincerely sorry for Sebastien,she was perfectly frank with herself in thought. "I would not, if Icould, bring him back. 'Twould mean only more trouble--for all of us.Now, at least, he is at peace.

  "They will think me hard and cruel." Her musings continued. "The wholeBarranca will throw up hands of horror--the hands that applauded thegreater sin when I gave myself without love in marriage. _Bueno!_" Shescornfully tossed her head. "Wicked or not, I will do it--for thee."

  She squeezed his face so hard, murmuring it, that he stirred, and forfully a minute thereafter she sat holding her breath. But he slept on.During the last hour the river had widened, and along its banks tuftedcocoa palms were woven with the brighter foliage of bananas into therich green damask of the bordering jungle. Also the sun had prevailedfor a few hours in the daily battle with the mists, and under thegolden spell of light and warmth the girl's musings grew happier as theyfloated on. When she awoke him to the sight of the blue harbor openingup from behind a long bend, Seyd looked up at a smiling face.

  "That's the American consulate." After rubbing the sleep out of his eyeshe pointed out a white stone building which perched, like a gull, on aterrace above the flaming rose and gold of the adobe town. "We'll gothere. The consul is a fine old fellow. He'll help us all he can."

  First, however, they were destined to encounter the unexpected, forwhen, an hour later, Seyd pulled the dugout into a ragged wooden pier anofficer in the silver and gray of the Mexican rurales pushed through thepeon laborers who thronged the wharf.

  "You are from up river, senor? Then you can tell us of the flood in theBarranca. A cousin of mine, Don Sebastien--_Caramba!_" At the sight ofFrancesca he broke suddenly off. "It is surely the senorita Garcia? Youwill remember me, Eduardo Gallardo, upon the occasion that I visited, atSan Nicolas, your uncle, the excellent General Garcia, with my wife, whois of your kinsfolk?"

  Recognizing him while he was still in the crowd, Francesca had gainedtime to prepare. His use of her maiden name proved that here at the portthey had heard nothing as yet of her marriage, so, after brieflydescribing Sebastien's death and the destruction of El Quiss, sheconcluded: "I was saved by the senor, here, who rode in to warn us. Butfor him I also should have drowned."

  And Seyd availed himself of the opening. "As the senorita is completelyexhausted, senor, you will please to excuse us. We go to the Americanconsulate."

  "But why the consulate, senor," the rurale politely objected, "when sheowns here the house of her kinswoman? The senora, my wife--"

  "_Si_, I have heard of her--nothing that is not lovely." Drawing him alittle aside, Francesca proceeded to heal, with winning smiles, thewound in his pride. "You shall give her my love, cousin. Tell her that Ishould prefer to visit her, but, having taken my life from the hand ofthis senor, I cannot do otherwise than fall in with his plans."

  Deferring with Latin politeness to her wish, his pride was none the lesshurt, and while they climbed the hill to the consulate he hurried hometo his wife, whose feminine intuitions placed the whole matter in anentirely new light.

  "A gringo, sayest thou? Then it will be he for whose sake she was sentaway to Europe. Medium tall, is he, with a straight nose, hollow cheeks,quick gray eyes? The very man that Paulo, the administrador, describedto me on his last visit to the port. _Caramba!_ Here's fine bread forthe baking! 'Tis told all over the Barranca that she has this man inher blood, and count me for a liar if she comes with him this far forany purpose but marriage. 'Twill never do to have Don Luis knocking atour door to ask why we let her go before our very eyes. He is a power,_hombrecita_, with the government, thy master, and, fail or win, we losenothing by trying to trip her run. And 'twill be easy! A word in the earof the _jefe_, judge, and priest, and 'tis done. And do not sleep on it.Away with you--at once."

  In his cool white salon on the hill above, the consul--a portly oldfellow with a clean, good-natured face--was counseling Seyd at thatmoment in almost the same terms.

  "As you say, this is no time to stand on conventions--especially afterthe man had locked you in and left you to drown. After seeing the younglady"--his smiling glance went to the door through which Francesca hadjust gone with his wife--"I should feel less than ever like protractedmourning. Besides, it is now or never. If you don't marry her at oncethe chance may never come again. If Eduardo Gallardo hadn't seen you itwould have been quite simple. I could have fixed it up for you allright. But he is counted something of a sneak, and if he once sniffs thewind--well, you can be sure he won't let such a chance slip to betterhimself with General Garcia. You've simply got to beat him to it."

  After a pause of thought he went on: "In their usual course, both thelegal and ecclesiastical procedures are very slow. It takes about a weekfor the lawyers to coin the bridegroom's natural impatience into readymoney, and after they are through the Church holds out its hand forwhat's left. It's an awful graft, but has its advantages, for if thewheels are well greased they spin like lightning. Shut up! I don't haveto be told that you emerged from the flood with empty pockets. I'llattend to that, and you can settle with me any old time. All you have todo"--taking Seyd by the shoulders, he marched him into his ownbedroom--"
is to take a shave and bath and make yourself look as much asyou can like a happy bridegroom."

  With a last order, "Help yourself from my clothes," he went outlaughing. But when he returned an hour later his smile was obscured by avexed cloud. "Eduardo wins," he reported to Seyd, who had just come outon the veranda. "He must have gone right to it, for when I arrived atthe _edificio municipal_ they were already primed. The judge and_jefe-politico_ both count themselves of mine, but they wouldn't do athing. Really you can't blame them. _El general_ Garcia is a name toconjure with down here, and they are all afraid of their official heads.'Much as we would like to serve you,' and so forth, 'but in the case ofa young lady of such high family we dare not proceed without herguardian's written consent.'

  "And the _jefe_ gave me good advice. _El capitan_, Eduardo, it seems, isnot only ambitious, but not a bit too scrupulous about the way by whichhe gains his ends. So you must not go out alone. It would be quite easyto trump up some charge, arrest, and then shoot you as an escapingprisoner under the law of _El Fuga_. You wouldn't be the first to beshot inside the prison and then thrown outside, and, though I shouldmost certainly hold an inquiry and kick up an awful row, that wouldn'tbring you back to life. Also we shall have to look out that they don'tkidnap your girl."

  While the consul was thus easing his bosom of its load of doubt Seyd hadstared out over the blue harbor at a steamer that was taking cargo froma dozen lighters. Suddenly he asked, "What ship is that?"

  "The _Curacao_, of San Francisco."

  "American, then. When does she sail?"

  "To-morrow morning at five."

  "How far outside the harbor does Mexican jurisdiction extend?"

  "The usual three miles beyond the headlands."

  Seyd came to his point. "Then what is to prevent her skipper frommarrying us?"

  "_Bueno!_" The consul slapped him on the back. "He'll do it sure, forhe's a friend of mine. Bravo! Trust your lover to find a way."