The Mystery of The Barranca

  CHAPTER V

  "Phe-ew!" Looking up from a treatise on bricklaying as applied tothe building of furnaces, Billy pitched a stone at Seyd, who wasexperimenting with a batch of lime fresh drawn from a kiln of their ownburning. "I'd always imagined bricklaying to be a mere matter of plumband trowel, but this darned craft has more crinkles to it than thedifferential calculus. This fellow makes me dizzy with his talk of tiesand courses, flues, draughts, cornering, slopes, and arches."

  Leaning on his hoe, Seyd wiped his wet brow. "I'm finding out a fewthings myself. I'd always sort of envied a hod-carrier. But now I knowthat the humble 'mort' puts more foot-pounds of energy into his workthan the average horse. As a remedy for dizziness caused by overstudy,mixing mortar has no equal. Come and spell me with this hoe."

  "'And the last state of that man was worse than the first,'" Billygroaned. "_Can't_ we hire a single solitary peon, Seyd?"

  More eloquently than words, Seyd's shrug testified to the sullen boycottwhich had been maintained against them for the past three weeks. On themorning of their arrival at the mine, while the fear of Sebastien Rochastill lay heavy upon him, Carlos had been half bullied, half persuadedinto the sale of Paz and Luz at a price which raised him almostto the status of a ranchero. But that single transaction summed uptheir dealings with the natives. No man had answered their call forlaborers at wages which must have appeared as wealth to a peon. Thecharcoal-burners who drove their burros past the mine every day returnedto their greetings either muttered curses or black stares. They were asstubborn in their cold obstinacy as the face of the temple god. Indeed,in these days the stony face of the image had become inseparablyassociated in Seyd's mind with the determined opposition that had routedhis predecessors and now aimed to oust him. He saw it even in the soft,round faces of the children who peeped at him from the doorways of canehuts, a somber look, centuries old in its stubborn dullness.

  Not that he and Billy were in the least discouraged. Once convinced thatlabor was not to be obtained, they had stripped and pitched in. In onemonth they rebuilt the adobe dwelling which had been somewhat shatteredby the Dutchman's hurried exit, dug a lime kiln, and hauled the wood andstone for the first burning. They had completed the laying out of thesmelter foundation, filling in odd moments by picking for the firstcharge the choicest ore from the hundreds of tons that the Englishmenhad unwisely mined before they ran head-on into the hostile combinationof freights and prices.

  This last had been an inspiriting labor, for so rich were the valueswhich the ore carried that after a trial assay Billy had danced all overthe place beating an old pan. It is doubtful whether young men ever hadbetter prospects; and so, knowing that Billy's present pessimism arosefrom a strong disinclination for physical labor in the hot sun, Seydmerely grinned. Sitting down on a pile of brick, he mopped his face andstared out over the valley.

  Situated, as the mine was, on a wide bench which gave pause to theearth's dizzy plunge from the rim three thousand feet above, Seyd satat the meeting-place of temperate and tropic zones. A hundred feetbelow--just where they had climbed the stiff trail out of the junglethat flooded the valley with its fecund life--a group of cocoanut palmsstood disputing the downward rush of the pine, and all along the benchpinon and copal, upland growths, shouldered cedars and ceibas, thetropical giants. While these battled above for light and room therecame, writhing snake-like up from the tropics, creepers and climbers,vines and twining plants, to engage the ferns and bracken, the pine'sgreen allies. A plague of orchids here attacked the copal, wreathingtrunk and limb in sickly flame. The bracken there overswept the riotoustropical life. All along the borderland the battle raged, here followinga charge of the pine down a cool ravine, there mounting with the tropicgrowths to a sunlit slope. But in the valley below the tropics ruledclear down to the brilliant green of the San Nicolas cane fields.

  "By the way"--Seyd spoke as his eye fell on these--"Don Luis is backfrom Mexico City. The hunchbacked charcoal-burner told me as he wentpast this morning."

  "The deuce he did!" Of all the black looks that came their way that ofthe cripple was the most vindictive. "You must have him hypnotized."

  "You wouldn't think so if you had heard his accent. 'El General isagain at San Nicolas,' just as though he were sentencing me to hang.Nevertheless, the news comes pat. I think it would be good policy for meto run down and pay the denunciation taxes before we begin work on thesmelter. No, I don't apprehend any trouble. Your Mexican hasn't muchstomach for litigation, and no doubt the old fellow feels quite safe inhis pull with the metals companies and railroads. But while he is stillin the mind we had better pay the money and complete title. If he oncegets wind of the smelter--"

  "Just so." Billy threw down the hoe. "While you dress I'll saddle up amule--if you will please say to which demon you prefer to intrust yourprecious neck. Light began the day by kicking me through the side ofthe stable. She needs chastening. But then Peace dined on my armyesterday. It's Peace for yours, and I only hope you get it."

  "Hum!" he coughed when, half an hour later, Seyd emerged shaved, bathed,and clad in immaculate white. "Is this magnificence altogether for elGeneral, or did Caliban drop some word of our niece? Really, old chap,you look fine. If I were the senorita I'd go for you myself."

  Though Seyd laughed, yet the instant he passed out of sight he fellinto frowning thought which was evidently related to the letter hepulled out and reread while he rode down the steep grades. Written in acharacterless round hand, it covered so many pages that he was halfwaydown before, after tearing it in shreds, he tossed it to the winds. Itsdestruction, however, did not seem to change his mood. He let Peacetake her own way until, having slipped, slid, and tobogganed on tensehaunches down the last grade, she felt able to assert her individualityby attempting to rub him off against a tree. Next she attempted theimmolation of a fat brown baby that was rolling with a nest of youngpigs in the dust outside a hut; and thereafter her performances were sovaried that he was simply compelled to take some notice of the sightsand sounds of the trail.

  Not the least remarkable were the frequent and familiar scowls of thepeople he met. Various in expression, they ranged between the copiouscurses of the fat senora whose pacing-mule was driven by Peace offthe trail, and the snarling malice of occasional muleteers; but,undisturbed, he pursued his inquiries for laborers at every chance.

  "No, senor, we do not desire work."

  The stereotyped answer merely stimulated the quiet persistence whichformed the basis of his character, and he continued to ask at thevillage which raised graceful palm roofs out of a jungle clearing, atthe ranchos which now began to cover the valley with a green checkerof maize fields, and at scattered huts, half hidden by the rich foliageof palms and bananas. It was while he was questioning a peon who washulling rice with a wooden pole and churn arrangement that the subduedhostility broke out in open demonstration.

  The trail here ran between a fence of split poles, which inclosed thepeon's corn and frijoles, and the steep bank of a dry creek bed, so thatonly a few feet leeway was left for the train of burros which cametrotting out of the jungle behind him. In single file they could havepassed, but looking around he saw they were coming three abreast.

  Had he chosen, there was time to make the end of the fence. But hehad seen behind the train the sparkling, beady eyes of Caliban, thehunchback, and the dark grins of two of his fellows. Flushing withquick anger, he backed Peace against the fence, leaned forward over herneck, and slashed with his whip at the leading beasts. Checked by this,they would have fallen back to single file but for the whips behind thatbit out hair and hide and drove them on in a huddled mass.

  It seemed for a few seconds that he would be crushed. That he escapedinjury was simply due to the hereditary hate between the mule and theass which suddenly turned Peace into a raging fiend. While her chiselteeth slit ragged hides her other and busier end beat a devil's tattooon resounding ribs and filled the air with flying charcoal. Yet even herdemoniac energies had their limitations. If she held th
e ground forherself and master she could not preserve the inviolability of his whitetrousers, which emerged sadly smudged from the fray. It is a pity shecould not. Little things always cause the greatest trouble, and but forthe smudges the incident would probably have closed with Seyd'schallenge:

  "Can't you be content with half the road?"

  His patience even survived their insolent grins. Not until the hunchbackin passing emitted a hoarse chuckle as he surveyed the smudges didSeyd's temper burst its bonds. Swinging his whip then with all hismight, he laid it across the crooked shoulders once, twice, thrice,before the fellow sprang, snarling, out of reach. The others, who hadalready passed, came leaping back at his cry, knives flashing as theyran, and though they stopped under the sudden frown of a Colt'sautomatic, they did not retire, but stood, fingering their knives,muttering curses.

  A little sorry on his part for the anger which had turned the sullenhostility into open feud, Seyd faced them, puzzled just what to do. Itwas too late to give way, for that would expose him to future insult.Yet if, taking the initiative, he should happen to kill a man, he knewenough of the quality of justice as dealt out by the Mexican courts torealize the danger.

  While he debated, the puzzle was almost solved by the peon rice-huller,who came stealing up from behind the fence. Not until the man had swunghis heavy pestle and was tiptoeing to his blow did Seyd divine thereason for the glances that were passing behind him. Looking quickly,he caught the glint of polished hardwood in the tail of his eye; then,without a pause for thought, he dropped flat on the rump of the mule,and not a second too soon, for, raising the hair on his brow as itpassed, the club smashed down through the top rail of the fence. Infalling backward his weight on the bridle brought Peace scurrying a fewpaces to the rear. When he snapped upright again the fourth enemy wasalso under his gun.

  But what to do? The puzzle still remained--to be solved by another, forjust then came a sudden beat of hoofs, and from behind a bamboo thicketgalloped first the Siberian wolf hound, then the girl he had met at thetrain.