The Firebrand

  CHAPTER II

  THE MAN WITHOUT A FRIEND

  Yet on the side of Rafael and little Dolores Garcia there was somethingto be said. Ramon, had he known all, need not have become "El Sarria,"nor yet need young de Flores, the alcalde's son, have been carried hometo the tall house with the courtyard and the one fig tree, a stab underhis right shoulder-blade, driven through from side to side of his whitegirlish body.

  It was true enough that he went to the house of Ramon to "eat iron," to"pluck the turkey," to "hold the wall." But 'twas not Dolores, the wifeof Ramon, who knew of it, but pretty Andalucian Concha, the handmaidenand companion Ramon had given his wife when they were first married.Concha was niece to the priest's Manuela, a slim sloe-eyed witty thing,light of heart and foot as a goose feather that blows over a common on anortherly breeze. She had had more sweethearts than she could count onthe fingers of both hands, this pleasantly accommodative maiden, andthere was little of the teaching of the happy guileful province in whichConcha needed instruction, when for health and change of scene she cameto the house of Ramon and Dolores Garcia in the upland village ofSarria.

  These were the two fairest women in all Sarria--nay, in all that bordercountry where, watered by the pure mountain streams, fertile Cataluniameets stern and desolate Aragon, and the foot-hills of the EasternPyrenees spurn them both farther from the snows.

  Well might her lovers say there was none like her--this Concha Cabezos,who had passed her youth in a basket at her mother's feet in the tobaccomanufactories of Sevilla, and never known a father. Tall as the tower ofLebanon that looketh towards Damascus, well bosomed, with eyes thatpromised and threatened alternate, repelled and cajoled all in onemeasured heave of her white throat, Concha of the house of Ramon, called"little" by that Spanish fashion of speech which would have invented adiminutive for Minerva herself, brought fire and destruction intoSarria. As the wildfire flashes from the east to the west, so the fameof her beauty went abroad. Also the wit of her replies--how she hadbidden Pedro Morales (who called himself, like Don Jaime, "ElConquistador") to bring her a passport signed at all his former housesof call; how she had "cast out the sticks" of half the youth of thevillage, till despised batons strewed the ground like potsherds. And sothe fame of little Concha went ever farther afield.

  Yet when Rafael, the alcalde's son, came to the window on moonlessnights, Concha was there. Hers was the full blood, quick-running andgenerous of the south, that loves in mankind a daintiness and effeminacywhich they would scorn in their own sex.

  So, many were the rich golden twilights when the two lovers whisperedtogether beneath the broad leaves of the fig-trees, each dark leafrimmed with the red of the glowing sky. And Rafael, who was to marry thevine-dresser's daughter, and so must not "eat the iron" to please anymaid, obeyed the word of Concha more than all Holy Writ, and let it besupposed that he went to the Ramon's house for the sake of his cousinDolores.

  For this he paid Manuela to afford him certain opportunities, by whichhe profited through the cleverness of Concha and her aunt Manuela. Forthat innocent maid took her mistress into her confidence--that is, afterher kind. It was wonderfully sad, she pleaded. She had a lover--good,generous, eager to wed her, but his family forbade, and if her kindmistress did not afford her the opportunity she would die. Yes, Conchawould die. The maids of Andalucia ofttimes died for love. Then the tearsran down her cheeks and little Dolores wept for company, and because shealso was left alone.

  Thus it chanced that this foolish Rafael, the alcalde's son, marchedwhistling softly to his fate. His broad sombrero was cocked to the leftand looped on the side. His Cordovan gloves were loosely held in hisright hand along with his tasselled cane. He had an eye to thepavemented street, lest he should defile his lacquered shoes with thepoints carved like eagle's beaks. He whistled the jota of Aragon as hewent, and--he quite forgot Ramon, the great good-humoured giant withwhom he had jested and at whom he had laughed. He was innocent of allintent against little Lola, his playmate. He would as soon have thoughtof besieging his sister's balcony, or "plucking the turkey" under hisown mother's window.

  But he should not have forgotten that Ramon Garcia was not a man towait upon explanations, when he chanced on what seemed to touch thehonour of his house. So Rafael de Flores, because he was to marryFelesia Grammunt and her wine-vats, and Concha the Andaluse, because tobe known as Rafael's sweetheart might interfere with her other loves,took the name of Ramon Garcia's wife in vain with light reckless hearts.This was indeed valorously foolish, though Concha with her much wisdomought to have known better. But a woman's experience, that of such awoman as Concha at least, refers exclusively to what a man will do inrelation to herself. She never considered what Ramon Garcia might do inthe matter of his wife Dolores.

  Concha thought that giant cold, stupid, inaccessible. When she firstcame into the clear air of the foot-hills from Barcelona (where apromising adventure had ended in premature disaster) she had tried herbest wiles upon Ramon.

  She had met him as he came wearied home, with a basin of water in hertwo hands, and the deference of eye-lashes modestly abased. He passedher by, merely dipping his finger-tips in the water without so much asonce looking at her. In the shade of the pomegranate trees in thecorner, knowing herself alone, she had touched the guitar allunconscious, and danced the dance of her native Andalucia with a verveand abandon which she had never excelled. Then when Ramon discoveredhimself in an arbour near by and congratulated her upon herperformance--in the very middle of her tearful protestations that if shehad only known he was there, she would never, never have dared, neverhave ventured, and could he forgive her--he had tramped unconsciousaway. And instead of forgiving her in a fit and proper manner, he hadsaid he would go and bring down his wife to see her dance the _bolero_in the Andalucian manner. It would afford Dona Dolores much pleasure.

  With such a man who could do anything? It was a blessing all men werenot alike, said Concha with a pout. And indeed from Cadiz by the sea tothe mountains of the north she had found men otherwise--always quiteotherwise, this innocent much experienced little Concha.

  * * * * *

  Meanwhile the hunters closed in on Ramon the brigand on the hills aboveMontblanch. One cannot kill (or as good as kill) an alcalde's sonwithout suffering for it, and it chanced that the government, havingbeen reproached on all sides for lack of vigour, and being quite unableto capture Don Carlos or Zumalacarregui, had resolved to make an exampleof Ramon, called "El Sarria."

  So to begin with, it had confiscated all that Ramon possessed--house andfarm, vineyard and oliveyard, wine-presses and tiers of well-carpenteredvats with the wine of half a score of vintages maturing therein. Thesewere duly expropriated in the name of the government of the mostChristian regent Dona Maria Cristina. But how much of the produce stuckto the fingers of General Rodriguez, the military governor, and of SenorAmado Gomez, administrator of so much of the province as was at thattime in the hands of the Cristinos, who shall say? It is to be fearedthat after these gentlemen had been satisfied, there remained not agreat deal for the regencial treasure-chest at Madrid.

  Meantime Ramon lay on his rock-ledge and wondered--where little Doloreswas, chiefly, and to this he often returned. If he had had time thatnight would he have killed her? Sometimes he thought so, and thenagain--well, she was so small, so dainty, so full of all gentle ways andwinsomenesses and--hell and furies, it was all deceit! She had beendeceiving him from the first! Those upward glances, those shy, sweetconfidences, sudden, irresistible revealings of her heart, he hadthought they were all for him. Fool! Three times fool! He knew betternow. They were practised on her husband that she might act them betterbefore her lover. God's truth, he would go down and kill her even now,as he had killed that other. Why had he not waited? He could easily haveslain the soldiers who had rushed upon him, whom that hell-cat Manuelahad brought--ah, he was glad he had marked her for life.

  * * * * *

  "_Ping! Ping!_" Two rifle
bullets sang close past the brigand's headas he lay in his rocky fastness. He heard them splash against the dampstone behind him, and the limestone fell away in flakes. A loose stonerumbled away down and finally leaped clear over the cliff into the mist.

  El Sarria's cavern lay high up on the slopes of the Montblanch, the holywhite mountain, or rather on an outlying spur of it called the Peak ofBasella. Beneath him, as he looked out upon the plain, three thousandfeet below, the mists were heaped into glistening white Sierras, onwhich the sun shone as upon the winter snows of the far away Pyrenees.

  As the sun grew stronger Ramon knew well that his mountain fastnesswould be stormed and enveloped, by these delusive cloud-continents. Theywould rise and dissipate themselves into the faint bluish haze ofnoonday heat.

  Already there appeared far down the cleft called the Devil's Gulf, whichyawned below the Peak of Basella, certain white jets of spray tossedupwards as from a fountain, which were the forerunners of that cominginvasion of mist that would presently shut him out from the world.

  But not a moment did Ramon waste. As quick as the grasshopper leaps fromthe flicked forefinger, so swift had been El Sarria's spring for hisrifle. His cartouches lay ready to his hand in his belt of untannedleather. His eyes, deep sunken and wild, glanced everywhere with theinstant apprehension of the hunted.

  _Ping! Ping!_

  Again the bullets came hissing past him. But Ramon was further backwithin his cave this time, and they whistled over his head. The chips ofbrittle limestone fell with a metallic clink on the hard stone floor.

  El Sarria saw from whence one at least of his enemies had fired. Alittle drift of white reek was rising from the mouth of a cavern on theopposite escarpment of the Montblanch. He knew it well, but till now hehad thought that but one other person did so, his friend Luis Fernandezof Sarria. But at the same moment he caught a glimpse of a blue jacket,edged with red, round the corner of a grey boulder up which the youngivy was climbing, green as April grass. The contrast of colour helpedhis sight, as presently it would assist his aim.

  "The Lads of the Squadron!" he murmured grimly. And then he knew that ithad come to the narrow and bitter pass with him.

  For these men were no mere soldiers drafted from cities, or taken fromthe plough-tail with the furrow-clay heavy upon their feet. These weremen like himself; young, trained to the life of the brigand and thecontrabandista. Now they were "Migueletes"--"Mozos de laEscuadra"--"Lads of the Squadron," apt in all the craft of the smuggler,as good shots as himself, and probably knowing the country quite aswell.

  For all that El Sarria smiled with a certain knowledge that he had afriend fighting for him, that would render vain all their vauntedtracker's craft. Miguelete or red-breeched soldier, guerilla orcontrabandista, none could follow him through that rising mist whichboiled like a cauldron beneath. Ramon blew the first breath of its sourspume out through his nostrils like cigarette smoke, with a certainrelish and appreciation.

  "They have found me out, indeed, how, I know not. But they have yet totake Ramon Garcia!" he muttered, as he examined the lock of his gun.

  He knew of a cleft, deep and secret, the track of an ancientwatercourse, which led from his cave on the Puig, past the cliff at thefoot of which was perched the great and famous Abbey of Montblanch, toanother and a yet safer hold among the crags and precipices ofPuymorens.

  This none knew but his friend and brother, dearer to his soul than anyother, save little Dolores alone--Luis Fernandez, whose vineyard hadneighboured his in the good days when--when he had a vineyard. He wasthe groomsman, who, even in those old days, had cared for Dolores withmore than a brother's care. The secret of the hidden passage was safewith him. Ramon held this thought to his soul amid the general wreck.This one friend at least was true. Meantime yonder was a Migueletebehind a stone--a clumsy one withal. He, El Sarria, would teach him theelements of his trade. He drew a bead on the exposed limb. The piececracked, and with a yell the owner rolled back behind his protectingboulder. For the next hour not a cap-stem was seen, not a twig ofjuniper waved.

  El Sarria laughed grimly. His eye was still true and his rifle good asever. That was another friend on whose fidelity he could rely. He pattedthe brown polished stock almost as he used to do little Lola's cheek inthe evenings when they sat at their door to watch Jose, the goatherd,bringing his tinkling flock of brown skins and full udders up from thescanty summer pasturage of the dried watercourses.

  Ah, there at last! The mist rose quite quickly with a heave of hugeshoulders, strong and yet unconscious, like a giant turning in hissleep. From every direction at once the mist seemed to swirl upwardstill the cave mouth was whelmed in a chaos of grey tormented spume, likethe gloom of a thundercloud. Then again it appeared to thin out till theforms of mountains very far away were seen as in a dream. But Ramon knewhow fallacious this mirage was, and that the most distant of theseseeming mountain summits could be reached in a dozen strides--that is,if you did not break your neck on the way, much the most probablesupposition of all.

  Ramon waited till the mist was at its thickest, rising in hissingspume-clouds out of the deeps. Then with a long indrawing of breath intohis lungs, like a swimmer before the plunge, he struck out straight forthe cave on the face of the Montblanch from which the bullets had come.

  But long ere he reached it, the ground, which had been fairly level sofar, though strewn with myriads of rocky fragments chipped off by winterfrosts and loosened by spring rains, broke suddenly into a succession ofprecipices. There was only one way down, and El Sarria, making as if hewould descend by it, sent instead a great boulder bounding and roaringdown the pass.

  He heard a shouting of men, a crash and scattering thunder of fallingfragments far below. A gun went off. A chorus of angry voicesapostrophised the owner, who had, according to them, just as much chanceof shooting one of his comrades as El Sarria.

  Ramon laughed when he heard this, and loosening a second huge stone ("toamuse the gentlemen in the blue and red," he said), he sent it after thefirst.

  Then without waiting to ascertain the effect, Ramon plunged suddenlyover an overhanging rock, apparently throwing himself bodily into space.He found his feet again on an unseen ledge, tip-toed along it, with hisfingers hooked in a crack, and lo! the rock-face split duly in twain andthere was his cleft, as smooth and true as if the mountain had been cutin half, like a bridescake, and moved a little apart.

  There was the same glad defiance in the heart of El Sarria, which he hadfelt long ago, when as a boy he lay hidden in the rambling cellars ofthe old wine-barn, while his companions exhausted themselves in loud andunavailing research behind every cask and vat.

  And indeed the game was in all points identically the same. For in nolong space of time, Ramon could hear the shouting of his pursuers abovehim. It was dark down there in the cleft, but once he caught a glimpseof blue sky high above him, and again the fragrance of a sprig of thymewas borne to his nostrils. The smell took him at an advantage, andsomething thickened painfully in his throat. Dolores had loved thatscent as she had loved all sweet things.

  "It is the bee's flower," she had argued one night, as he had stood withhis arm under her mantilla, looking out at the wine-red hills under afiery Spanish gloaming, "the bees make honey, _and I eat it_!"

  Whereat he had called her a "greedy little pig," with a lover's fondabuse of the thing he most loves, and they had gone in together quicklyere the mosquitoes had time to follow them behind the nets which Ramonhad held aside a moment for her to enter.

  Thinking of this kept Ramon from considering the significance of theother fact he had ascertained. Above he saw the blue sky, deep blue asthe Mediterranean when you see it lie land-bound between twopromontories.

  Then it struck him suddenly that the mist must have passed. If he wentnow he would emerge in the clear sunshine of even. Well, it matterednot, he would wait in the cleft for sunset and make his escape then. Heknew that the "Lads of the Squadron" would be very hot and eager on thechase, after one of them had tasted El S
arria's bullet in his thigh. Hewould have a short shrift and no trial at all if he fell into theirhands. For in those days neither Carlist nor Cristino either asked orgave quarter. And, indeed, it was more than doubtful if even theCarlists themselves would spare El Sarria, whose hand was against everyman, be he King's man or Queen's man.

  The evening darkened apace. Ramon made his way slowly to the bottom ofthe cleft. There was the wide _arroyo_ beneath him, brick-red and hot, avalley of dry bones crossed here and there by rambling goat tracks, andstrewn with boulders of all sizes, from that of a chick-pea to that of acathedral.

  It was very still there. An imperial eagle, serenely adrift across theheavens, let his shadow sail slowly across the wide marled trough of theglen. There could be no fear now.

  "Well," thought Ramon, with philosophy, "we must wait--none knows ofthis place. Here I am secure as God in his Heaven. Let us roll acigarette!"

  So, patiently, as only among Europeans a Spaniard can, El Sarria waited,stretching his fingers out to the sun and drawing them in, as a tigerdoes with his claws, and meanwhile the afternoon wore to evening.

  At last it was time.

  Very cautiously, for now it was life or death, yet with perfectassurance that none knew of his path of safety, Ramon stole onward. Hewas in the jaws now. He was out. He rushed swiftly for the first hugeboulder, his head drawn in between his shoulders, his gun held in hisleft hand, his knife in his right.

  But from the very mouth of the pass six men sprang after him, and asmany more fronted him and turned him as he ran.

  "Take him alive! A hundred duros to the man who takes El Sarria alive!"

  He heard the voice of the officer of Migueletes. He saw the short,businesslike sword bayonets dance about him like flames. The uniformsmixed themselves with the rocks. It was all strange and weird as in adream.

  But only one face he saw crystal clear. One man alone inevitably barredhis way. He dropped his gun. He could run better without it. They weretoo many for that, and it was not needed. He tore his way through abrace of fellows who had closed in upon him eager for the reward.

  But through all the pother he still dashed full at the man whose face heknew. This time his knife made no mistake. For assuredly no enemy, but afriend, had done this--even Luis Fernandez, the brother of his heart.

  And leaving the wounded strewn among the grey boulders and all theturmoil of shouting men, Ramon the hunted, broke away unscathed, and thedesolate wilderness of Montblanch swallowed him up. Yet no wildernesswas like this man's heart as he fled down and down with his knife stillwet in his hand. He had no time to wipe it, and it dripped as he ran.

  _For this man had now neither wife nor friend._