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The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure

by Rex Beach · English · Gutenberg #32101 · 479,263 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure

Author: Rex Beach


        
Release date: April 23, 2010 [eBook #32101]
                Most recently updated: May 28, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIMSON GARDENIA AND OTHER TALES OF ADVENTURE ***




                 _The Crimson Gardenia_

             _and Other Tales of Adventure_

                      BY REX BEACH

     AUTHOR OF "HEART OF THE SUNSET" "THE SPOILERS" ETC.


ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

THE CRIMSON GARDENIA AND OTHER TALES OF ADVENTURE
Copyright, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
Copyright, 1910, 1913, by Cosmopolitan Magazine
Copyright, 1906, by The Metropolitan Magazine Co.
Printed in the United States of America
Published April, 1916




[Illustration: Her eyes flashed to the white gardenia on his breast,
then up to his own.]




CONTENTS


THE CRIMSON GARDENIA

ROPE'S END

INOCENCIO

THE WAG-LADY

"MAN PROPOSES--"

TOLD IN THE STORM

THE WEIGHT OF OBLIGATION

THE STAMPEDE

WHEN THE MAIL CAME IN

MCGILL

THE BRAND




ILLUSTRATIONS


HER EYES FLASHED TO THE WHITE GARDENIA ON HIS BREAST, THEN UP TO HIS OWN

AS FLORÉAL ROSE FROM HIS FATHER'S BODY HE HEARD A SHOT AND SAW THE
SOLDIERS OF THE REPUBLIC CHARGING HIM

"TAKE YOUR HAND OFF THAT GUN, BARCLAY"

"BARCLAY WASN'T MORE 'N HALF DEAD, AND THE WOMAN FELL TO BEGGIN' FOR HIS
LIFE AGAIN"




THE CRIMSON GARDENIA




I


The royal yacht had anchored amid a thunder of cannon, and the king had
gone ashore. The city was bright with bunting; a thousand whistles blew.
Up through the festooned streets His Majesty was escorted between long
rows of blue-coated officers, behind which the eager crowds were massed
for mile upon mile. Thin wire cables were stretched along the curbs, to
hold the people back, but these threatened to snap before the weight of
the multitude.

In the neighborhood of the raised pavilion where the queen and her maids
of honor waited, the press was thickest; here rows of stands had been
erected that groaned beneath their freight, while roof-tops and windows,
trees and telegraph-poles, were black with clustered humanity.

The king was tall and dark; a long beard hid his face. But the queen was
young and blushing, and her waiting-women were fairer than springtime
flowers. To a crashing martial air, she handed him a sparkling goblet in
which he pledged her happiness, while the street rocked to the roar of
many voices, and in the open spaces youths, grotesquely costumed, danced
with goblin glee.

Mr. Roland Van Dam secretly thought it all quite fine and inspiriting,
but he was too highly schooled to allow himself much emotion. He had
been hard put to obtain seats, and had succeeded only through the
efforts of a friend, the Duke of Cotton; therefore, he felt, the members
of his party might have shown at least a perfunctory appreciation. But
they were not the appreciative kind, and their attitude was made plain
by Eleanor Banniman's languid words:

"How dull! It's nothing like the carnival at Nice, and the people seem
very common."

Her father was dozing uncomfortably, with his two lower chins telescoped
into his billowing chest; Mrs. Banniman complained of the heat and the
glare, and predicted a headache for herself. Near by, the rest of the
party were striving to conceal their lack of interest by guying the
crowd below. Van Dam had been the one to suggest this trip to New
Orleans for the Mardi Gras, and he felt the weight of entertainment
bearing heavily upon him. In consequence, he assumed a sprightly
interest that was very far from genuine.

"This sort of thing awakens something medieval inside of one, don't you
know," he said.

Miss Banniman regarded him with a bland lack of comprehension; her
mother moaned weakly, the burden of her complaint being, as usual:

"Why _did_ we leave Palm Beach?"

"All those dukes and things make me feel as if it were real," Van Dam
explained further. "They say this Rex fellow is a true king during Mardi
Gras week, and those chaps in masks are quite like court jesters. Maybe
they sing of wars and love and romance--and all that rot."

"I dare say life was just as uninteresting in olden days as it is now,"
Eleanor remarked. "Love and romance exist mainly in books, I fancy. If
they ever did exist, we've outgrown them, eh, Roly?"

Being a very rich and a very experienced young woman, Miss Banniman
prided herself upon her lack of illusion. To be sure, she occasionally
permitted Roland to kiss her in celebration of their engagement, but
such caresses left her unperturbed; her pulses had never been stirred.
She looked upon marriage as a somewhat trying, although necessary,
institution. Van Dam, being equally modern and equally satiated by
life's blessings, shared her beliefs in a vague way.

Manifestly, no lover could allow such an assertion as this to go
unchallenged, so he rose to the defense of romance, only to hear her
say:

"Nonsense! Do be sensible, Roly. Such things aren't done nowadays."

"What things aren't done?"

"Oh, those crude, primitive performances we read about in novels. Nice
people don't fall in love overnight, for instance. They don't allow
themselves to hate, and be jealous, and to rage about like wild animals
any more."

"The idea! Your father is a perfect savage, at heart," said Mrs.
Banniman. She nodded at her sleeping husband, who was roused at that
moment by a fly that had strayed into his right nostril. Mr. Banniman
sneezed, half opened his eyes, and murmured a feeble anathema before
dozing off again. It was plain that he was not greatly enjoying the
Mardi Gras.

"All men are primitive," said Roly, quoting some forgotten author, at
which Eleanor eyed him languidly.

"Could you love at first sight and run off with a girl?"

"Certainly not. I'd naturally have to know something about her people--"

"Were you ever jealous?"

"You've never given me an occasion," he told her, gallantly.

"Did you ever hate anybody?"

"Um-m--no!"

"Ever been afraid?"

"Not exactly."

"Revengeful?"

"Certainly not."

She smiled. "It's just as I said. Respectable people don't allow
themselves to be harrowed by crude emotions. I hate my modiste when she
fails to fit me; I was jealous of that baroness at the Poinciana--the
one with all those gorgeous gowns; I'm afraid of flying-machines; but
that is as deep as such things go, nowadays--in our set."

Van Dam was no hand at argument, and he had a great respect for Miss
Banniman's observation; moreover, he had been discussing something of
which he possessed no first-hand knowledge. Therefore, he said nothing
further. No one had a greater appreciation of, or took a keener pleasure
in, life's unruffled placidity than the young society man. No one had a
denser ignorance of its depths, its hidden currents, and its uncharted
channels than he; for adventure had never come his way, romance had
never beckoned him from rose-embowered balconies. And yet, as the world
goes, he was a normal individual, save for the size of his income. He
had not lost interest in life; he was merely interested in things which
did not matter. That, after all, is quite different.

There were times, nevertheless, when he longed vaguely for something
thrilling to happen, when he regretted the Oslerization of romance and
the commercializing of love. Of course, adventure still existed; one
could hunt big game in certain hidden quarters, if one chose. Van Dam
detested stuffed heads, and it took so much time to get them. These
unformed desires came to him only now and then, and he felt ashamed of
them, in an idle way.

Now that the parade had passed, the visitors lost no time in leaving,
and a dignified stampede toward the hotel occurred, for the gentlemen
were thirsty and the ladies wished to smoke. It was due to their haste,
perhaps, that Van Dam became separated from them and found himself
drifting along Canal Street alone in a densely packed crowd of
merrymakers. A masked woman in a daring Spanish dress chucked him under
the chin; her companion showered him with confetti. A laughing Pierrot
whacked him with a noisy bladder; boys and girls in ragged disguises
importuned him for pennies. A very, very shapely female person, in what
appeared to be the beginnings of a bathing suit, laughed over her
shoulder, inviting him, with eyes that danced.

"My word!" murmured the New-Yorker. "This is worth while."

Ahead of him, he caught a glimpse of Miss Banniman's aigrettes and the
ponderous figure of her father. But the gaiety of the carnival crowd had
infected him, and he was loath to leave it for the Grunewald, whither
his friends were bound with the unerring directness of thirsty
millionaires. It was a brilliant, gorgeous afternoon; the streets were
alive with color. Somewhere through this crowd, the young man idly
reflected, adventure--even romance--might be stalking, if such things
really existed. So he decided to linger. To be quite truthful, Van Dam's
decision was made, not with any faintest idea of encountering either
romance or adventure, but because a slight indigestion made the thought
of a gin-fizz or a julep unbearable at the moment.

As he continued to move with the throng, the butt of badinage and the
target for impudent glances, he felt a desire to be of it and in it. He
yielded himself to a most indiscreet impulse. Assuring himself that he
was unobserved, he stepped into a store, purchased a plain black domino
and mask, donned them, and then fell in with the procession once more,
dimly amused at his folly, vaguely surprised at his impropriety.

But now that he was one of the revelers he was no longer an object of
their attentions; they paid no heed to him, and he soon became bored. He
engaged himself in conversation with an old flower-woman, and, as she
had only a solitary gardenia left in her tray, he bought it in order
that she might go home. He pinned the blossom on the left breast of his
domino, and wandered to the nearest corner to watch the crowds flow
past.

He had been there but a moment when a girl approached and stood beside
him. She was petite, and yet her body beneath its fetching Norman
costume showed the rounded lines of maturity; at the edge of her mask
her skin gleamed smooth and creamy; her eyes were very dark and very
bright. As Mr. Van Dam was a very circumspect young man, not given to
the slightest familiarity with strangers, he confined his attentions to
an inoffensive inventory of her charms, and was doubly startled to hear
her murmur:

"You came in spite of all, m'sieu'!"

A French girl, he thought. No doubt one of those Creoles he had heard so
much about. Aloud, he said, with a bow:

"Yes, mademoiselle. I have been looking for some one like you."

Her eyes flashed to the white gardenia on his breast, then up to his
own. "You were expecting some one?"

"I was. A girl, to guide me through the carnival."

"But you are early. Did you not receive the warning?"

"Warning?" he answered, confused. "I received no warning."

"I feared as much," she said, "so I came. But it was unwise of you; it
was madness to risk the streets." Her eyes left his face, to scan the
crowds.

He fancied she shrank from them, as if fearing observation. Van Dam was
puzzled. Her voice and manner undoubtedly betrayed a genuine emotion, or
else she was a consummate actress. If this were some Mardi Gras prank,
he felt a desire to see the next move. If it proved to be anything more,
he fancied that he was too sophisticated to be caught and fleeced like a
countryman. But something told him that this was no ordinary street
flirtation. The words "warning," "risk" seemed to promise entertainment.
If, as he suspected, she had mistaken him for some one else, a brief
masquerade could lead to no harm. He decided to see how far he could
carry the deception.

"What warning could serve to prevent my seeing you?" he asked in a
hollow voice; then was surprised at the flush that stole upward to the
girl's dainty ear.

"You are indeed insane to jest at such a time," she breathed. "I would
never have known you without the flower. But come--we are in danger
here. Some one--is waiting. Will you follow me?"

"To the ends of the earth," he replied, gallantly.

Again she gave him a startled glance, half of pleasure, half of
deprecation; then, as he made a movement to accompany her, she checked
him.

"No, no! You must let me go ahead. They are everywhere. They may suspect
even my disguise. I--I am dreadfully afraid."

Van Dam scarcely knew how to answer this. So, like a wise man, he held
his tongue.

"Listen!" she continued. "I will walk slowly, and do you remain far
enough behind for your own safety--"

"My safety is as nothing to yours," he told her, but she shook her head
impatiently.

"Please! Please! They will never select you out of a thousand dominos,
and I am not sure they suspect me. But should they try to lift my mask,
you must escape at once."

"Would they dare?" Mr. Van Dam inquired, shocked at such a breach of
carnival etiquette.

"They would dare anything."

"But I couldn't allow it, really," he persisted. "If any hand is to lift
your mask, I insist that mine be the favored one."

She darted a doubtful look at him, being plainly perturbed at his tone,
then shook her head. "She told me you were reckless, but you are
quite--insane."

For a second time he discovered that delicious color tingeing her neck
and laughed, which disconcerted her even more. She hesitated, then
turned away and he fell in behind her.

But distance served only to enhance the girl's charms. Roly saw how
beautifully proportioned she was, how regally she carried herself, how
light and springy was her step. Although he had not seen her face, he
somehow felt agreeably certain that she possessed a witching beauty.

The circumspection with which she avoided the densest crowds made him
wonder anew at the character of the danger that could overhang a masked
maiden at mid-afternoon on a carnival day, for by this time he had
forgotten his first suspicion. He thought not at all that the peril
could be serious, or in any way involve him, for the magic of the Van
Dam name protected its owner like invisible mail. The effect of that
patronymic was really quite wonderful; policemen bowed to it, irate
strangers allowed their anger to ooze away before it. It smoothed the
owner's way through difficulties and brought him favors when least
expected; rage changed to servility; indignation, opposition, even
jealousy altered color in the shadow of the Van Dam millions. Nothing
really unpleasant ever happened to Roly, and so it was that he had
become _blasé_ and tired at twenty-six.

He followed his masked guide across Canal Street and into the foreign
quarter of the city, where the surroundings were unfamiliar to him. He
gazed with mild repugnance at the squalid old houses, moldering behind
their rusted iron balconies. Dim, flag-paved hallways allowed him a
glimpse of flowered courtyards at the rear; cool passages went twisting
in between the buildings. Over hard-baked, glaring walls there drooped
branches laden with bloom and fruit. The streets were narrow, the houses
leaned intimately toward one another, as if exchanging gossip; little
cafés with sanded floors opened upon the sidewalks. Here the carnival
crowd was more foreign in character; people were dancing to orchestras
of guitar and mandolin; youths turned somersaults for pennies; ragged
negroes jigged and shuffled with outstretched hats.

Through this confusion the Norman girl took her way, now seeking some
deep doorway to allow a particularly boisterous group to pass, now
flitting through the open spaces with the swift irregularity of a
butterfly winging its course through sunlit stretches. But her caution,
her birdlike, backward glances, told Van Dam that she was in constant
dread of discovery, and involuntarily he lessened the distance between
them.

It was well, perhaps, that he did so, for just then a man in a domino
like his own accosted the girl. Roly saw his guide shrink away, saw her
turn and signal him with a swift, imperious gesture of warning. Instead
of heeding it, he moved forward in time to intercept the stranger. The
fellow was laughing loudly; he assumed a tipsy air and lurched against
the girl; then, with a quickness that belied his pose, he snatched at
her mask and bared her features. She cried out in terror, and with the
sound of her voice Mr. Van Dam flew to action. He knew that until six
o'clock disguises were inviolate, and that it was against the strictest
of police regulations to unmask a reveler; therefore he yielded to a
righteous impulse and struck the man in the domino squarely upon the
jaw. Beneath Roly's rounded proportions was a deceptive machinery of
bone and muscle that had been schooled by the most expensive instructors
of boxing. He had known how to hit cleanly since he was twelve years
old, and although he had never struck a man in anger until this moment,
his fist went true. The fellow rocked stiffly back upon his heels and
fell like a wooden figure, his head thumping dully on the pavement, and
Roly gave vent to a most ungentlemanly snort of surprise and
satisfaction. It had been much easier than he had expected, and feeling
that the man should have every opportunity for fair play Roly began
promptly to count, "One, two, three--" Then he felt the girl's hand upon
his arm, and turned in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of a dimpled
chin as she drew her mask down. "Rotten trick, that!"

"Heaven above!" she gasped. "You must flee--quickly!"

People were crossing the street toward them, drawn by the sight of the
fallen man.

"Run away and leave you?" queried Roly. "Hardly!"

"Then"--the breath caught in the girl's throat--"come!"

She clutched his hand and they fled, side by side, pursued by half a
score of shouting merrymakers. Around the first corner they scurried,
into a crowd, then out of it and into the next thoroughfare, doubling
and turning until the girl's breath was gone.

"Why--did--you do--it? Ah!--why?" she gasped, still hurrying him along.

"Drunken loafer!" Van Dam said, vindictively.

"He was not drunk! Don't you understand? Didn't you guess? It was the
Black Wolf!"

Roly did not understand, and he had no opportunity to guess who or what
the Black Wolf might be, for his companion paused, crying:

"God help us! They are coming."

From the street behind rose a babble of angry voices.

"He saw me! He knows!"

She cast a despairing glance about, and, spying a narrow alley close at
hand, darted toward it, dragging Van Dam with her.

Retreat carries with it a peculiar panic, and the young man felt the
stirring of an utterly new sensation within him. He was running away!
What was more, he wanted to keep running, even though he had not the
faintest idea of what menaced him. It was quite remarkable. He seemed to
feel, for some unknown reason, that this sprightly young person beside
him was indeed risking her safety for him. Therefore, he began to share
her apprehensions, but as to what it meant or whither the adventure was
leading he had not a suspicion. He did wonder, however, where the Black
Wolf got his name.

The alley was damp and slippery, being no more than a tunnel-like
passage between two buildings, and it led into a large courtyard full of
carts and wagons. A low shed ran along one side of the inclosure; at the
rear was a two-story structure used as a stable.

"There! I guess we've given them the slip," Van Dam sighed, with relief.

But his companion shook her head. "No, no! We must hide. The Black Wolf
has the cunning of Satan, and now that he knows--" She sped through the
confusion of vehicles to the stable door, with Roly following. An
instant more and they were in an odorful, dim-lit place divided into
stalls out of which the heads of several horses were thrust in friendly
greeting. The girl closed the door and leaned panting against it, one
hand to her heaving bosom. Her head was bowed and her ears were strained
for sounds of pursuit. In the silence Van Dam heard his own heavy
breathing, the swish of the horses' tails, an impatient stirring of
hoofs, and a gentle whinny. He discovered that his pulse was hammering
in a very unusual manner and that he was agreeably excited.

The girl uttered an exclamation. "I feared so! Hurry!" She slipped past
him to a rickety stairway that led upward. "Ah--h--! this mask is
smothering me!" She disengaged it hastily, and he saw it dangling in her
hand as he mounted the steep stairs behind her. He saw also a pair of
dainty silken ankles, swelling into delicious curves that were hidden in
the foamy whiteness of lingerie. Being an extremely respectful
gentleman, Mr. Van Dam lowered his eyes, anticipating with curious
eagerness the pleasure of beholding her countenance, once they had
gained the loft. The desire to see behind her mask became really acute.
He had missed one opportunity by so narrow a margin as to quicken his
desires.

They came out upon a rough landing, and Van Dam caught the whisk of her
skirts disappearing through a door that led into the haymow. As he
followed, the door closed and he found himself in utter darkness. He
heard her fumbling with the lock. Their hands came together as he turned
a rusty key and he felt her figure close against his; her fragrant
breath fanned his cheek.

"Make no sound, as you value our lives."

As she whispered this, Van Dam swore mildly at the luck that prevented
him from appraising his companion's good looks, now that her mask was
off. From the courtyard below sounded voices. The girl clutched him
nervously; her hand was shaking. He could feel her shiver, so he slipped
an arm about her waist. He did this merely to steady her, he told
himself. He reasoned further that such a familiarity could scarcely be
offensive in the dark. As she yielded gratefully to his embrace, her
soft body palpitating against his own, he ceased reasoning and drew her
closer. It was very agreeable to discover that she made no resistance;
he could not recollect any sensation quite like this! As yet he had done
nothing improper, in view of the fact that it was every gentleman's
bounden duty to succor beauty in distress. He wondered if his friends at
the Grunewald had missed him, then realized with relief that Miss
Banniman never allowed his presence or his absence to interfere in the
slightest with her arrangements. They were probably finishing their
drinks by now. This would make an entertaining story, later in the
evening; they would never guess what he was doing.

"Who is that speaking?" he inquired.

"François, the Spider," whispered the girl. "Eh, God! How they all have
come to hate you!"

Roly reasoned from these words that his enemies numbered more than one
or two, and involuntarily he asked: "Hate me? What for?"

The girl trembled. "As if you did not know."

"And what would happen if they found me--us?" he persisted, feeling
vaguely for some hint.

"Ah!" Her breath caught. "Hush!" She laid her fingers over the lips of
his mask.

Van Dam yielded to an ungovernable impulse and kissed them through the
stiff, harsh cloth, whereat she said in wonderment:

"Heaven guard us! You are actually laughing. That you are wild, I knew;
but--you are--you act very strangely, m'sieu."

"Perhaps I'm intoxicated," he murmured, and pressed her slender waist
meaningly; whereupon she seemed to feel his arm for the first time. She
drew away, but as she disengaged his embrace her hand encountered his.

"It is wet--bloody--where you struck the Black Wolf."

"That was a good wallop, wasn't it?" Van Dam chuckled, with
satisfaction, while she felt for her handkerchief and dabbled at his
bruised knuckles. "I wondered if I could put him out."

Then they ceased whispering, for some one was entering the stable
beneath them. After a time the stairs creaked to a heavy tread, a hand
tried the door, and they could feel a presence within arm's-length. They
stood motionless, not daring even to shift their weight upon the crazy
floor, until the fellow began to explore the other portion of the loft.

"That is the Spider himself," breathed the girl, close to Van Dam's ear.
"He thinks he has me in his web; but--"

"Yes?"

"I would die before I married him."

A sudden dislike for spiders in general awoke in Roly's breast.

"I hate him. I would kill him if I dared, but he frightens me--" She
broke off and caught at her companion, gasping: "God! What are you
doing?"

He had turned the key softly and was opening the door. To be quite
truthful, Roly Van Dam did not know exactly what he intended doing, but
some reckless impulse moved him to action. He was invaded by a sudden
desire to lay hands upon this Spider person who went about terrorizing
pretty girls. Having been reared to a habit of doing exactly as impulse
dictated, he felt no hesitation now. Away back in his mind, however,
something told him calmly that he had gone quite mad, that the magic of
adventure had sent his wits a-flying and had played havoc with his
common sense. And a change really had come over him with the very
beginning of this enterprise, although he had not stopped to notice it.
The flaring rage that had answered to the Wolf's assault upon the girl,
the joyful sensation of setting his fist into the fellow's face, the
excitement of the flight and the pursuit, had all combined to upset his
equilibrium. Then, too, the presence of this bewitching creature close
beside him in the darkness, the pressure of her body in his arms, the
scent of her warm breath--all this helped to completely electrify him.
He felt the dawning of new and utterly absurd desires. Away with
discretion! To the winds with prudence! This maiden's cause was his.
Here was the one glad moment of his life.

"François!" he called in a low voice. He slipped the girl's hand from
his arm, thrust her back into the shadows, and stepped out upon the
landing.

"_Oui!_ In a moment!" The Spider came stumbling toward him. "She is not
here." Van Dam saw a tall man in a domino like his own. "_Sacré!_ She
has disappeared; and that devil's spawn is with her. You found no trace
in the yard below?"

"Sst! Listen," breathed Roly. He sank his fingers into his palms and
measured the distance carefully. Then, as François turned his head
attentively, Roly braced himself and swung. It may have been due to the
uncertain light, or to the narrow eyelet-holes through which he peered;
at any rate, Van Dam's blow went short.

The Spider uttered a cry of fury and surprise. Roly felt himself hugged
by a pair of thin, iron-muscled arms; then his hands felt in beneath the
man's disguise, and the cry changed to a gurgle. They strained and
rocked against each other briefly; the floor sagged and creaked; the
door behind them flew open. François was groping with one free hand at
his waist; but his domino was like a shirt, and he could not find that
for which his hungry fingers searched. As for Van Dam, a delicious
ferocity was flaming through his veins. Here was an enemy bent upon his
quick destruction. No game he had ever played was half so exhilarating
as this. He could feel the fellow writhe and the breath bursting through
beneath his fingers; he could feel the man's cords harden until they
were like wire. Strange to say, with every wrench and every surge his
own abysmal fury increased. But the Spider was no weakling; he fought
desperately until, in a burst of blind anger that was like some diabolic
glee, Van Dam lifted him bodily and hurled him at the opening in the
floor. The fellow missed his footing, clawed wildly, then fell backward
headlong into the light below. The next instant Van Dam, too, had lost
his balance and followed, bumping from step to step until he fetched up
at the foot with a jar that drove the breath out of him.

He sat up in a moment, still dazed; then he heard a rustle, and beheld
above him a pair of frightened, dark eyes gazing into his. Although he
could see nothing of the girl's face--she had replaced her mask--he knew
that she was racked with anxiety.

"Are you killed?" she queried.

"No; just abominably twisted," he said. Then, with a wry face: "Ouch!
That was an awful bump." As he felt himself over gingerly he stopped
short at the sight of his mask lying crumpled beside him. He realized
that the jig was up and began to formulate an explanation of his
deception, only to hear her exclaim, tremulously:

"God be praised! You are unhurt."

He sat still, staring at her, amazed that no outburst followed her
glimpse of his face.

"How did you dare--?" She turned to the figure of François, which Roly
discovered motionless an arm's-length away.

The Spider was sprawled loosely in the litter. His head was twisted upon
his shoulders in a peculiar way, and his mask, having slipped to the
back, stared upward with a placid, waxlike smile that was horrible under
the circumstances.

Still lost in wonderment, Van Dam arose, dusted off his clothing, and
picked up his own disguise. Was it possible that she did not know the
person she had gone to meet? It seemed so, indeed, for she was hanging
upon him anxiously, as if still doubting his safety, while she half
sobbed her admiration of his bravery and her gratitude at his escape.
Roly began to fear he had been imposed upon, after all, else how could
she fail to realize that he was an utter stranger? But the girl's
honesty was compelling; he found that he could not doubt the sincerity
of her gaze.

He felt an unaccountable lack of compunction regarding the Spider. In
fact, he experienced a sense of satisfaction at the completeness of his
victory over the ruffian, and she seemed to share the feeling.

He heard her urging him to make haste, and before he had fully regained
his wits he found himself following her out into the sunlight.
Underneath the wagon-shed she guided him, around behind it and into a
narrow three-foot space, the left side of which was bounded by a board
fence about head-high.

"Quick!" she cried, eagerly. "Once we are on the other side we may
escape. The others are somewhere close by."




II


Van Dam, being accustomed by this time to a certain obedience, lifted
the girl up to the top of the fence, scrambled over it himself, and held
up his arms to her. He was in another yard, much cleaner than the one he
had just quit. There were trees and flowers in it, and looking down on
them were shuttered windows which seemed empty. As she surrendered her
weight to him he gave rein to the license which was in his blood and
pressed a warm kiss back of her mask where the hair lay in wispy
ringlets against her neck.

"_Mon Dieu!_ What a man!" she laughed, struggling gently to free
herself. "You had better put on your mask. We haven't far to go, but
there may be observing eyes."

"Am--I--er--quite the person you pictured?" he queried, as he adjusted
the false face.

"Not at all."

"You have never seen me before to-day?"

"Of course not! How could I?"

"I have seen you often."

"Impossible! Where?"

"Dreams!" said Van Dam, vaguely, yet with some degree of truth. "This
all seems like a dream, as a matter of fact. I'm afraid I'll turn over,
and you'll change into an old lady with hoop-skirts, or a flock of
purple snowbirds, or a friendly crocodile with gold spectacles."

She pondered this for a moment as they made their way across the yard,
being careful in the mean while to see if they were observed. After a
moment she halted.

"Wait!" she said. "I--am not sure we dare risk going farther, for the
streets are alarmed and the Wolf is in the neighborhood with all his
pack. I had thought to take you straight home, but now they will be
watching. It would be madness to try it." Again she fell silent, only to
exclaim: "I have an idea. Come!" She turned abruptly to the right.

"Where are we going now?" he inquired, mildly.

She pointed to a house the back yard of which abutted upon the one that
they were crossing. "Yonder is your cousin Alfred's house. He is away at
business, the servants are out watching the carnival, and so it is
empty. Do you dare venture it?"

"Just the thing!" he said, amiably. "I owe Alfred a call."

The girl laughed shortly. "Ah! He would die of rage--or fright--if he
knew; but you can wait there while I go--"

"Oh, I say! You're not going to leave me?" queried Roly in genuine
alarm.

"Of course, silly! Some one must bring her."

Van Dam fell silent, speculating upon this last remark. After a moment
he said, "You're sure Alfred won't return?"

"Who knows? We must run some hazards. The key will be under the step, I
think. Come!"

They gained ingress to the next inclosure through a cedar hedge. Then,
as they neared the back door, a distant commotion sounded from the
stable-yard, warning them that the Spider's friends had stumbled upon
him. But the girl's ready fingers found the key where it was hidden, and
an instant later they were in a spotless creole kitchen ornamented with
shining pots and pans. A cat rose from a sleepy window-ledge, arched its
back, and stretched.

With a warning gesture Van Dam's guide bade him wait, then disappeared,
returning in a moment.

"It is as I thought--the house is empty." She beckoned him, and he
followed her past a pantry, down a hall, and into a study furnished with
a considerable degree of elegance. Drawn blinds shut out the glaring
heat; it was dim and cool and restful.

The maiden heaved a sigh of relief and steadied herself against one of
the massive mahogany chairs, showing by her attitude that the recent
strain had told upon her.

"Heaven be praised! You are safe here, for a time at least," she managed
to say.

"Nice, comfy place, this," remarked Van Dam, with an appreciative glance
at the surroundings. "We can sit here and--and get acquainted--eh?"

"Hm-m! I think I have learned to know you quite well in the past
half-hour," she laughed.

"True! But we've had very little chance to talk calmly and rationally;
now, have we? Of course you're accustomed to such things, perhaps; but
it has been a trifle strenuous for a person of my easy ways. I don't
mind telling you that I'm positively winded. Let's rest a bit before you
leave."

But the girl shook her head at his suggestion. "You forget how she has
waited and longed for this hour. She has been very ill; nothing seemed
to interest her until you promised to come on the last day of the
_fiesta_. Since then she has been like another woman. She is counting
the moments now until she feels your arms about her."

Roly stirred uncomfortably, for here was something he had not counted
upon. One woman at a time was ample; he had no desire to hold another to
his breast. He was shocked, too, that this girl should suggest such a
thing after what had passed between them. It was unseemly. He felt
tempted to confess his deception and to demand an explanation of the
whole affair, but some sense of shame held him back. Besides, his
companion was undoubtedly sincere, and he could not bring himself to
cause her dismay.

Another reason that urged him to hold his tongue and to let the
adventure run its course was that as yet he had not seen her face. The
desire to do so was becoming insufferable. He was about to claim the
privilege when she changed the current of his thoughts.

"You must not be shocked if she does not recognize you. She has been
ill, very ill, since you--proved so great a--trial to her. You
understand?"

"Perfectly!" he said, thankful that she could not detect his signs of
bewilderment.

"Very well, then. You will make free of your cousin Alfred's hospitality
while I am gone." She laughed nervously. "La! There is irony for you."

"Suppose he should return in the mean time?"

She shrugged. "You seem quite capable of caring for yourself, m'sieu'. I
should not wish to be in his shoes, that is all. But there is little
danger. And now I must leave you."

"Just a moment," he said, taking her two hands in his. "You have seen my
face. Don't you think I wish to see yours?"

Her breath caught at the tone of his voice. "Not yet. Please! When I
return--when you have held her in your arms and made your peace. Then,
perhaps, if you wish--but not until then." She pressed his fingers
meaningly, and he thrilled.

"You haven't spoken my name, either," said he. "Won't you tell me that
you--like me?"

"I--like you, Cousin Emile," said she; then, in a voice that told him
she was blushing rosily, "and what name do you give to me?"

Roly's wits came to his rescue barely in time; with an air of deepest
tenderness, that was not all assumed, he said: "I haven't dared
acknowledge the name my heart has given you, even to myself. It is--"

"No, no!" she laughed, tremulously. "Call me Madelon."

"Madelon, Desire of my Dreams." He raised her hand to his lips. "Until
you give me leave to lift your mask I kiss these dimpled fingers."

It was plain that his boldness did not altogether displease her, for she
paused reluctantly upon the threshold. Her eyes were shining, although
her mask smiled at him vacuously as she said:

"You are a most unusual young man. You awaken something strange within
me. I cannot despise you as I should, for you have taken away my reason.
That is disturbing, is it not? Now, then, avail yourself of the
hospitality of the man who has robbed you. I shall return as fast as
ever my feet will bring me." She waved him a kiss and was gone.

He heard the front door close. Then he endeavored to piece out some
theory as to the cause of this situation, but the more he considered the
clues in his possession the more bewildered he became. One thing only
stood out with alarming certainty--his cousin Madelon had gone to fetch
a woman who loved him. So long as the adventure had concerned him only
with the masked girl herself he had been eager to continue it. Now that
it threatened to involve a second woman, he decided it was time to go.

She would return and find him gone. It would be a disappointment,
perhaps, but not so great as his own at parting from her and leaving
this mystery unsolved. He was somewhat proud of his exploits thus far,
for in an hour's time he had met and bested two of his enemies and had
changed a maiden's heart. No mean accomplishment for an idler! But why
did she feel that she ought to despise him? Why had she risked so much
for a man beloved by another? Why, under these circumstances, had she
welcomed his advances and promised him a sight of her face--a kiss,
perhaps? Above all, who were the Black Wolf, the Spider, and Cousin
Alfred? He gave up puzzling over the affair and determined to get out of
this stranger's house without delay.

It was evident that Cousin Alfred was a person of substance, for the
study was furnished in rich old Santo Domingo mahogany, blood-red and
flaming where the light struck it; the books were bound in uniform
levant; the paintings were valuable; the bric-à-brac in irreproachable
taste. An inlaid ivory humidor was filled with coronas at exactly the
right degree of moisture. He removed the ground-glass stopper from an
etched decanter and sniffed of the contents. The aroma brought a smile
to his face, and, reflecting that the owner had robbed him, he took time
to pour out a drink and to light a fragrant cigar. All gentlemanly
housebreakers did the like, he reflected. Then he yielded to a whimsical
notion and fumbled in his pocket, thinking to leave the price of his
refreshments on the tray.

Midway in this purpose he paused. The breath hung in his throat, the
hair at the back of his neck seemed to rise. He had heard no one enter
the house, there had been no faintest stir since Madelon had left, he
detected no sound whatever, and yet he was positive that eyes were
boring into his back--that he was no longer alone. It was ridiculous,
and yet--A gentle cough sounded behind him!

With a swift gesture he settled his mask back in place and, whirling
around, beheld the most evil-appearing human being he had ever seen. The
man was little and stooped and undersized, all but his head, which was
unusually large. His face was fleshless and covered with a tight skin of
unusual pallor. He was bowing at Van Dam, but his smile was mocking and
his eyes glittered malignantly.

"Good day, Monsieur Black Wolf," said the stranger, harshly. "Making
yourself at home with my wines, as usual, eh?"

Van Dam felt the cold sweat leap out upon his body; he cursed the
deliberation that had betrayed him. With an assumption of indifference
he mumbled something and waved his cigar carelessly.

"How often must I tell you to come here only at night?" snarled the old
man. "Already the police are suspicious. Fortunately, it is carnival
day--I dare say no one suspected you in that disguise."

The speaker deposited his hat upon the table with a sour glance; then,
when his caller said nothing, he snapped:

"Well, well? What is it?"

Van Dam was at a loss for words; he was panic-stricken; but swift upon
his consternation came a reckless determination to take advantage of the
old gentleman's first mistake and to try to brazen the matter through.
There was nothing to be gained by explanation; no one would believe his
story. He spoke out boldly.

"The Wolf is hurt, and the Spider, I think, has his neck very neatly
broken. I came to tell you that your cousin Emile is in the city."

The effect of these words was amazing, electric. Cousin Alfred turned a
corpselike green; he froze in his tracks; his eyes rolled in their
sockets.

"Emile! Here!" His teeth chattered, he plucked at his collar as if he
were strangling. "Then--you? Who are you?"

Roly shrugged. "I am one of the others. I was sent to warn you." He
recognized now the character of the old fellow's emotion. It was
cowardice, terror, but of such utter foulness as to be disgusting.

Evidently this Emile, whoever he was, had a reputation. Roly multiplied
his host's discomfiture by adding:

"Yes; he struck down the Wolf in the street; then dropped the Spider on
his head from the top of a staircase."

"God help us!" stammered Cousin Alfred. "He will take me next! Oh, he
has threatened me--" He cast a frightened glance over his shoulder, as
if expecting the sanguinary Emile to appear at any moment. Then he began
to whine: "I know him, I know him. And the servants gone! I--I am an old
man; he would like nothing better than to find me alone. But how--how
dared he come? Wait! It was Félice. Ho! I'll wager she sent for him; and
he would not refuse, the scoundrel!" The speaker's lips were wet and
loose, his gaze was very evil as he mumbled along.

Félice must be the other girl, the one for whom Madelon had gone, Roly
decided. In view of Alfred's evident hatred, it did not seem right to
allow Madelon to bring the other girl without some warning. One glance
at those working features convinced the young man that such a meeting
would be dangerous; and yet he was quite at a loss how to prevent it.
His host was running on.

"It was only yesterday that she appealed to me, she and Madelon, and all
the time they knew he was coming." He ground his teeth. "I have been a
fool to spare them so long."

"This Félice," Van Dam ventured, groping blindly for some clue, "your
cousin Emile is fond of her, I judge."

"Damnation! He would pass through fire for her. And she would sacrifice
her soul for him." Alfred poured himself a drink with shaking hand. The
glass rattled against the decanter; he spilled the wine over his
waistcoat as he gulped it.

"So they planned to catch me napping, eh? But we shall see. Yes, yes! We
shall see." After a moment, during which he pulled himself together, he
continued: "You shall remain here with me. When he comes we shall afford
him a surprise." He slid open a drawer in the big desk and took from it
a revolver, at which Roly exclaimed:

"I say--whatever makes you think he'll come here?"

"Oh, he will come! There is no doubt of it. He has promised me that
much. Those were his last words--"

"Er--why don't you clear out? You don't have to stay and see him."

But the old man's eyes were red and vindictive as he shook his head.
"You don't understand. So long as he lives we are none of us safe, not
even you. Besides, he would return again; he hangs upon me like a leech.
I--I dream about him."

"Well, what are you going to do?"

"If I--if I should kill him, the law would say nothing. I could kill him
very easily and nothing would be said. You understand?" Cousin Alfred's
lips were watery; little drops of moisture gleamed upon his sallow face;
he eyed the pistol with a shrinking fascination. "I--I--" He fell to
trembling weakly, as his first desperation cooled.

Van Dam watched him curiously. He looked up, at length, to meet Roly's
gaze. His own eyes were wavering; his face was distorted with mingled
fear and eagerness. He stretched his neck, as if he already felt on it
the fingers of his cousin Emile. When Van Dam did not offer to help him
he whined: "He has always intended to even up the score; but I am an old
man. My hand is unsteady. Perhaps you--It would be worth something to
escape those dreams! I could afford to pay well, as you know. You are a
strong man. You have no nerves; your hand is sure--" The old villain's
expression was crafty; he was gnawed by a fierce desire that he was
loath to put into words.

"You mean you'd like to have me make away with him?" queried Van Dam, as
if in a dream.

"Yes, yes! The law would say nothing."

"How so? It's not so easy to kill a man and--"

"But the reward--two thousand dollars! You would get that. I will double
it. Eh? Come now, is it a bargain?" The speaker was trembling, but when
he received no answer he went on: "I will take the blame upon myself. I
will say that I did it; and you will get the money--four thousand
dollars. Let us say five thousand, eh? A tidy sum for a moment's work
with no risk. We are alone in the house. No one but the Wolf knows you
are here. Even I don't know--By the way, I--I haven't seen you yet."

"Under the circumstances, I think I'll keep my mask on," Van Dam
answered. "Perhaps the less you know about me, the better."

"Then you agree?" queried the other, all ashake.

Roly declined with a gesture.

"Eh, God! Five thousand dollars! A fortune, indeed! Think of it! Heaven
knows I am not a Cr[oe]sus, and yet--I might increase even that a
little. What do you say? Six thousand, then, all cash?"

"This is the money you stole from Emile, I believe," said Van Dam. "You
could afford even more--"

"Seven thousand five hundred!" chattered Alfred. "Not another cent, or I
shall do it myself."

"Good! You do it!" Roly exclaimed; whereat the tempter writhed and
shivered in an ague of fear. With a wail that came like a sob and with a
final wrench of his miserly soul, he exclaimed:

"Wait, then! I will pay you ten thousand dollars if you kill him. The
money is there. It will bankrupt me; but--God above! Ten thousand
dollars! It is scarcely worth it--such a little job!"

"How do I know you'd make good?" inquired the young man. "You robbed
him. You might rob me."

"I have promised! It is there--in the safe. The moment he is dead--"

"Bah!" Mr. Van Dam managed a mocking laugh, although his heart was
pounding. "Your word is worth nothing to me."

Alfred made answer by slipping across the room and kneeling before the
steel safe. He spun the knob swiftly to right and to left, then gave a
wrench, and the massive door opened.

"Come here!"

Van Dam obeyed.

"Look!"

He saw legal documents, deeds, mortgages, and blue envelopes, all neatly
marked, then a cash-drawer crowded full of symmetrical packages of
crisp, new ten-dollar bills, each with its bank band plainly labeled
"$1000."

"Eh? Are you satisfied?" The owner was staring craftily up at him,
careful to keep his body between Van Dam and the treasure.

"Jove!" Roly exclaimed in astonishment. "You'll be robbed some night."

"Is it a bargain?"

"I'm no business man." The masker hesitated with an air of extreme
suspicion. "Will you pay in advance?"

At this, Cousin Alfred uttered a bleat of dismay, but Roly was firm.

"I'm not sure you'd open the safe again, don't you see? Besides, it
would take time, and--I'd prefer not to wait; really I would, for I'm
always a bit nervous after a job of this kind."

"Listen, then," exclaimed the old man. "I will close the safe, but I
will leave the combination off. See! We must each run some risk in this
matter, I suppose; but--I trust you. Once it is over, there will be no
delay. A moment and you can be away with ten thousand dollars in your
pocket--and with me to do the explaining."

Why he had allowed the affair to run to so extraordinary a length Van
Dam hardly knew, except that he wished to gain time. He had no idea that
the mysterious Emile would really come to the house, for Madelon had as
much as told him that a far different reason lay behind the young man's
presence in the city.

What did concern Roly, however, the more he considered it, was the
possible consequence if the two girls returned. Thus far he had been
able to meet each new surprise, each fresh situation, with a resource
that amazed himself, but if they came face to face with him and Alfred,
his own masquerade would end at once and disastrous explanations would
certainly follow. Nevertheless, he could not run away and leave them in
an awkward position. As he looked back over the fantastic occurrences of
the past hour or more it amused and amazed him to realize how nicely he
had fitted into the puzzle--and puzzle it surely was; for the whole
sequence of events that had followed the purchase of the white gardenia
that lay above his heart was now more bewildering than ever.

That there was something more than mere roguery afoot he had ample
proof. He felt himself groping along the edge of something vague and
black and sinister. But what it was, what were the issues, or who were
the people involved, he had not the slightest conception. Of one thing
only was he sure, Madelon had no place in this elaborate web and woof of
crime. She had impressed him more deeply even than he had realized, and
his main anxiety now, outside of a desire to protect her from the venom
of this poisonous old man, was to see her face, to lift with his own
fingers the mask that had so tantalized him.

The owner of the house was busily arranging the plans for Emile's
destruction when the doorbell rang. He clutched his guest nervously by
the arm and thrust the revolver into his hand, whispering:

"It is he! The scoundrel has arrived! Quickly now--behind the door!"

But Roly stepped to a front window and, cautiously drawing the curtain
aside, peered out. He saw what he had feared--the figure of a petite
Norman maid, and beside it that of a masked woman in a long, dark robe.

"Well, now! Who can it be?" he heard Alfred whisper, and discovered the
senile villain peering past his shoulder.

"It is Madelon and Félice," Roly explained.

"_They!_ Here? Wait! I will give them a cursing to remember." But before
the speaker could move he found his arms pinioned behind him and his own
weapon pointed at his head. He uttered a squeak of amazement and terror.
"_Mon Dieu!_ What is this?"

"Shut up!" Roly dragged the old man from the window, stripped a thick
curtain cord from its hook, and knotted his wrists together.

Alfred offered no resistance; a horrible fear had him by the throat; he
hung like a sack in the younger man's grasp. His eyes alone retained
their activity. These followed Van Dam in a horrified stare; they seemed
about to emerge from their sockets.

Roly deposited his limp captive in a chair and, stepping to the window,
tapped sharply. When Madelon looked up he signaled her to wait. The hall
portières furnished another cord for Cousin Alfred's ankles, and a
handkerchief served as a gag. As this was being adjusted, however, the
captive quavered, hoarsely:

"Who--are you?"

"I?" Roly laughed. "Why, I am your cousin Emile!"

The householder voiced a thin shriek and began to plead for his life.
Then the remnants of his strength escaped, leaving him a spineless heap
in the great leather chair.

Van Dam bore him in his arms down the hall, searching for a place of
concealment. This he found in a closet, the door of which he closed.
Then he hastened back to the front entrance.

"You kept us waiting sufficiently," Madelon said, as he stepped aside
for the two women to enter.

Roly's eyes were glued upon the taller of the two figures, but Félice
seemed to take no heed of him. He heard her murmuring in a sick, eager
voice:

"Emile! My own beloved! Emile!"

Madelon raised her hand in a warning gesture and the young man shrank
closer into the shadows.

"Courage, dear!" she said to her companion. "We have arrived at last. A
moment now and he will come." She half led, half supported the taller
woman into the library. The next instant she was back at Van Dam's side.
Drawing him into the parlor, across the hall, she exclaimed in a voice
which showed that tears were in her eyes: "Thank Heaven, no one
recognized us! But I was weak with fright. Oh! It was pitiful! I have
wept at every step. She has been calling you like that, night and day.
Go--quickly!" She removed his mask and thrust him into the hall.

This was the most embarrassing moment Van Dam had experienced thus far.
He had been prepared to face eventual discovery, and had decided to make
a clean breast of his part in this comedy when the necessary moment
arrived, but--this was altogether different. Félice was ill,
half-demented. What might be the effect upon her of this disclosure?
There was nothing to do, however, but to face it out and to make the
truth known as quickly and as gently as possible.

But as he entered the study he received a surprise that robbed the
adventure of all its entertainment, that changed this comedy into a
tragedy and humbled the man's reckless spirit.




III


Van Dam saw that which filled him with an aching pity; for, instead of a
girl, he found awaiting him a frail, sweet-faced old woman whose fingers
were locked as if in prayer, whose lips were murmuring the name of her
son. Her hair, softer and finer than silken floss, was silvery white;
her wistful, wrinkled countenance was ablaze with a glad excitement that
made it glorious and holy. That which caused Van Dam's heart to melt and
to turn away completely, however, was the fact that she was blind.

She had heard his step, muffled as it was in the inch-thick carpet, and
rose with a tender cry, pausing with her arms outstretched, her body
shaken by an ecstasy of yearning.

"Emile! Emile!" she whispered, and came toward him. Her sightless eyes
were wet; she was trembling terribly.

Van Dam experienced a desire to flee. He tried to speak and to warn her
off, but as the feeble figure swayed toward him, the age-old, appalling
tragedy of mother love caused his throat to tighten. Then he took her
hands in his; his arms enfolded her. She lay against his breast, weeping
softly, gladly, while he bowed his head reverently over hers. Had his
life depended upon his speaking, he could not have done so. He merely
waited, with a sick feeling of dread, the instant of her awakening. He
was vaguely surprised as moment followed moment and it did not come.
Then he discovered the explanation. Grief had set her wits to wandering;
days and weeks and months of yearning had burned away some part of her
faculties, leaving her possessed by such a reasonless hunger that almost
any object would have served to fill her want. He had heard of demented
mothers whose minds had been saved by the substitution of a living for a
dead child, and it seemed that this was a similar case; for she was
flooded now with a supreme content and appeared to experience no
suspicion of fraud.

The touch of her fluttering fingers on his cheek was like the caress of
butterfly wings; her voice was soft; her words, though wandering, were
tender and filled with such a heaven-born adoration that his distress
was multiplied. This was her hour, he reflected. Perhaps an all-wise
Providence had selected him to fill this part and to bring glory to her
withered heart. At any rate, he would have been unspeakably cruel to
disillusionize her.

He led her to a chair, then knelt and bowed his head to her straying
fingers, murmuring those terms of endearment which cause a mother's
breast to thrill. When he looked up to Madelon, at last, she saw that he
was crying--quite like a little boy.

From the disconnected words that fell from the blind woman's lips he
began, after a time, to piece the truth together.

Emile had been an only son, a paragon of manly virtues, the keeper of
his mother's soul. There had come a great shock and a great disgrace
that had evidently conspired to unseat her reason. She spoke indirectly
of them, as a child marked by some prenatal influence recoils at contact
with the cause of its infirmity. Then, it seemed, Madelon had come to
watch over and to comfort her, filling a son's place with a daughter's
devotion. There had been persecution, want, the loss of property through
an enemy of whom the mother spoke ramblingly. Van Dam recollected the
dried-up villain in the closet down the hall, and felt a flame of rage
mount through him. He longed mightily to ask questions, to run the
matter down without delay, but dared not, for he was in momentary dread
that the imposture would be discovered. So he spoke as infrequently as
possible, and substituted for words those gentle caresses and endearing
attentions that are far more welcome to a starving heart. Madelon
remained close by, adding a grain of comfort and encouragement now and
then, and regarding Van Dam with a strangely bewildered attention.

But the mother was far from strong. Her excitement had wearied her, and
now, with the relaxation of contentment, fatigue stole over her. She lay
back among the soft cushions, her restless hands moving more slowly, her
gentle voice stilled. She dozed at last, her face serene and beatific.

Madelon motioned to Van Dam, and he rose. Noiselessly they stole across
the hall and into the drawing-room, leaving the placid figure in repose.

She turned upon him, saying, doubtfully: "With every moment you surprise
me, Emile. You are not at all what I expected, not at all the cousin of
whom I have heard so much! Even in looks you seem--how shall I say
it?--strange."

"Are you pleased or disappointed?"

"Ah! Pleased! I--I feel that I must weep. You are so brave and strong,
and yet so gentle, so sweet! Perhaps only a mother recognizes the good
that is in one. That scene in yonder was very--touching. I--I can hardly
credit my ears and my eyes."

"It's plain you have a wrong idea of me. I'm not at all a bad sort."

"So I begin to believe, in spite of everything. La! It is confusing. I
am all in a whirl." She uttered a hesitating, silvery little laugh that
proved her embarrassment.

"We must speak quickly," he said. "I am also greatly confused. You have
opened up a great possibility for me, Madelon. The whole world is
suddenly different. I--I think I am in love with you, my little cousin."

She flung out her hand to check him, crying: "No, no! I could never love
you!"

Her voice was uncertain, and he imprisoned her outstretched palm. Then,
with his free hand, he removed her mask. She made no resistance, she did
not even draw away from him. His heart leaped wildly at the face he saw;
for it was more perfect even than he had imagined. The eyes were deep
brown, the skin was smooth and olive-hued, the lips were red and pouting
with embarrassment. She met his hungry gaze with a flaming blush of
defiance; then she smiled pathetically, and without further delay he
drew her to him and kissed her once, twice, again and again, until she
lay, spent and shaken, in his arms. After a time, she said, wonderingly:

"What miracle is this? I have always hated you; I--hate you now when I
think of the evil you have done. I shall continue to hate you."

"I hardly believe that."

"It is very sad that this has come to pass; it means nothing but
unhappiness."

"How so?"

"Can you ask? You--a refugee, with a price upon your head!" She
shuddered and buried her face against his shoulder. "Why have you made
me love you?"

"It was fate, my little witch. If you will trust me, all will come out
right in the end. But there is a great deal here that I don't
understand. For instance, how came you two to be in want?"

"Surely you know as well as I."

"I do not."

"But I wrote--"

"Letters go astray. Tell me."

"There is little to tell. We hardly know ourselves, except that we
trusted in our good cousin Alfred, as you trusted. He is a snake!" She
clutched Roland fiercely by the folds of his domino. "Oh! It is too bad
that I did not know you sooner, Emile! I would have saved you from those
evil men; for I am very wise. But now you must suffer the punishment for
your crime; and I must suffer also. It is hardly just, is it?"

"Suppose I told you--er--I am innocent?"

"Please!" One rosy palm closed his lips. "You must never lie to me, even
to promote my happiness. No! When a woman loves, she loves blindly,
without reason, regardless of her lover's unworthiness. You have brought
misery to me as you brought it to--her. Perhaps you, too, will suffer,
as a punishment."

"And why have you devoted yourself to my mother?" he inquired.

"I love her. I am alone in the world. We are poor together. Cousin
Alfred has my money, too, you understand."

Van Dam was tempted, as upon several former occasions, to tell her the
truth, but a sudden idea occurred to him--an idea so inspiring, so
brilliant, that it brought an exclamation to his lips.

"Wait here for a moment," he said, and, leaving her, he stole into the
library. With an eye upon the sleeping figure, he knelt before the safe
and turned the knob. It opened noiselessly; and the sight of the
close-packed cash-drawer filled him with a tremendous merriment. It was
exhilarating, it was God-like to be endowed with the power of
restitution and retribution. He greatly enjoyed the feel of the crisp
new bank-notes as he emptied the compartment and assembled the packages
into a bundle. He was amazed at the amount represented. There must have
been twenty thousand dollars, all in those smooth, unsoiled ten-dollar
bills. Evidently the old miser preferred lock and key to a banker's
vagaries. Naughty Alfred, to rob widows and orphans! Well, he had been
warned of the danger of robbery. Van Dam predicted apoplexy for the
owner when he discovered his loss.

The girl was waiting where he had left her, but when she discovered the
nature of the gift he bore, she drew back in amazement.

"Come! Come!" he said. "It belongs to you and--Félice."

"But--_Mon Dieu!_"

"I have prospered. A lucky speculation--a gift from the gods, as it
were! You need have no hesitation in accepting it, for it is yours. And
no one can take it from you, not even Cousin Alfred."

She was still protesting, when they heard the mother call.

"This money--another miracle!" Madelon exclaimed. "It is wonderful! I
feel that I am dreaming. But come! We have overstayed; we may be
discovered at any moment."

He took her in his arms again and whispered his adoration. "I am coming
to find you, Madelon. I have the power to work miracles, you see."

"No, no! If you care for me, you must guard yourself. Perhaps after many
years--perhaps when you have shown yourself worthy, and the world has
forgotten--then--" She shivered at thought of the weary wait ahead of
her; her lips quivered pathetically.

There were many things he wished to ask her; the hunger to retain her in
his arms was almost unbearable. But now that she had been reawakened to
the perils of their situation she allowed him no opportunity. She tore
her lips reluctantly from his; she held him off in an agony of pleading,
and when the mother's voice sounded a second time they returned hand in
hand to the study.

There followed a touching farewell as the blind woman clung shakingly to
the gentle impostor, praying for his safety, imploring him piteously to
be a good man and to walk in the shadow of righteousness. Then came a
lingering, heart-breaking caress, and once more the three were at the
front door.

Van Dam seized the girl's fingers and kissed them, while the look in his
eyes brought tears to hers. Then they were gone; and he stood alone in
the hall of the house he had robbed.

He remained motionless for a time, lost in a blissful intoxication. Was
this strange, new-born delirium--love? It must be, it could be, nothing
else. It was quite amazing, utterly bewildering. He had never dreamed of
anything at all like it. He felt a desire to cry aloud the news of this
marvel; he was melting with pain and gladness; something inside him was
singing gloriously. At thought of Madelon's deep, wide eyes, of her
tender lips, dewy with the birth of passion, his muscles swelled and the
whole world seemed to applaud. But it was so new--so unbelievable! The
swift rush of this afternoon's events had left him in a dizzy whirl. An
hour ago he had been deaf, dumb, and blind, but he had suddenly regained
his every sense. He was no longer _blasé_; he was awake with yearnings
and appreciations. Madelon had taught him the greatest secret of the
universe. Madelon--But who the devil was Madelon?

Van Dam brought himself abruptly out of his reverie. There had been
enough mystery for one day. Now for the solution of this puzzle. Back
yonder, gagged and bound, was a cringing human rat who knew everything
Van Dam desired to know, and who would talk, if forced to do so. Roly
decided to have the inmost details of this affair, if it became
necessary to roast the soles of Cousin Alfred's feet over a slow fire in
order to loosen his tongue. Time had flown, but there was a little
margin left.

He hurried down the hall, flung open the door behind which his captive
lay, then recoiled, with mouth agape. The closet was empty!

"Alfred!" he called. "Alfred!" But his voice echoed lonesomely through
the empty rooms. Not a sound broke the silence. There on the floor lay
the handkerchief and the two tasseled curtain cords. He felt a chill of
apprehension, for unseen eyes were observing him, he was certain. With
that vindictive little ruffian at large, the situation altered; each
door might hide a menace, each moment add to his peril.

The thought of that rifled safe, and the consequences of discovery,
convinced Van Dam that this was no place for a respectable New York
society man, so he clapped on his mask and darted down the hall toward
the rear of the house.

Past the pantry and into the kitchen he fled, his precipitate haste
nearly causing him to collide with another masked figure that had just
entered from the garden. Instinctively the two men recoiled. Van Dam saw
that the stranger wore a black domino like his own, and that a white
gardenia was pinned over his heart--it was a twin to the flower that
reposed upon his own breast.

"Emile!" he exclaimed.

With a start the new-comer swept his mask downward, and simultaneously
he conjured an automatic revolver from some place of concealment. The
face that he exposed was not pleasant to look upon, for it was coarsened
by dissipation, and the eyes were both violent and furtive. Underneath
his heavy, passionate features, however, lay a marked resemblance to the
blind mother who had just left.

"Yes. I am Emile," he panted; then, with a snarl, he raised his weapon
until it bore upon Van Dam's breast. "And you are one of the gang, eh?"

"Here! Don't point that confounded thing at me. It might go off." Roly
brushed the mask from his own face, explaining, "I'm not one of the
gang; I'm a friend."

Emile eyed him intently before lowering his weapon. "I never saw you
before."

"Of course not. But--come. We've both got to get out of here."

"Indeed! I came to see my cousin Alfred. It is a little call I promised
him."

"I know everything; and, believe me, you have no time to lose."

"How do you come to know so much?" demanded Emile, suspiciously. "And
what is that?" With the muzzle of his weapon he indicated the waxen
white flower upon Roly's domino.

"There's no time to explain everything--but I know why you are here. The
old man has gone--"

"Gone! Bah! That is a lie. I have followed him all through the city.
I've been to his office, and they told me he was here. I've a little
matter to settle with him. It will only take a moment."

"I tell you he's gone."

"Who the devil are you, anyhow? I have no friends."

"I am Madelon's fiancé," Van Dam said, boldly.

"Another lie! She has no fiancé." The speaker's face darkened. "If she
marries any one, it shall be me."

An unfamiliar pang smote Van Dam suddenly, but he disregarded it.

"Don't be a fool," he insisted. "I know why you came here, but you're
too late. Your mother and Madelon were here, too, a moment ago--"

"Here?" exclaimed the youth, incredulously.

"Yes! Alfred heard you were in the city and he planned to ambush you; I
tied him up and threw him into a closet. Then I robbed his safe and gave
the money to Madelon and your mother."

Emile's face was a study at this amazing intelligence.

"When I came to look for the old fellow, a moment ago, I found he'd
escaped. I don't know where he has gone. That's why we'd better cut and
run for it, before he sets up an alarm."

"Run!" Emile shook his head. "I have been running--with the Black Wolf
at my heels. I thought they had me cornered more than once. They're
after me now, the whole pack."

"Do they know you're here?"

"I dare say; they were right behind me." He cursed violently. "And to
think that I missed Cousin Alfred, after all!"

"You had no business in the city. You must get out again."

"It's too late now. Why, it's nearly six o'clock. I could never get away
before it's time for masks off."

"Nevertheless, you must try," Van Dam said, decisively. "If you stay
here, you're lost. We'll climb the fence at the rear of the next yard
and slip out through the stable way."

Emile pondered for a moment. "I hadn't thought of that. It's a chance,
but you can't go with me. I sha'n't allow it."

"Nonsense!"

"You don't know the Wolf! If I were seen it would mean the death of both
of us."

"Very well, then, I'll leave by the front way. Now go!"

Van Dam half shoved the young man toward the door.

"Thanks," murmured the fugitive. "You seem to be the right sort. If I
live, I sha'n't forget." The next instant he was gone.

Roly watched him race across the yard, squeeze through the hedge; then,
an instant later, saw his form as he mounted the fence to the wagon
inclosure where the Spider had gone to his destruction earlier in the
afternoon. It was a risky route to safety, he reflected, but, in view of
what Emile had said about his pursuers, it was infinitely preferable to
any other.

Why he had helped the fellow Van Dam scarcely knew, unless it was
because of his sympathy for the under dog. Whatever the boy had done, he
possessed a reckless bravery that was commendable, and he still held his
mother's love.

Roly was about to close the door when he saw a second man, in a long,
black domino, briefly silhouetted above the fence. Then he heard a
whistle. The fellow dropped over into the tracks of Emile, leaving the
New-Yorker amazed at the apparition. A sickening fear clutched Van Dam,
but he knew it was useless to cry out. Could it be that he had sent the
young fellow to his death?

When a moment, then another, had passed with no sound from that quarter,
he closed the kitchen door and retraced his steps swiftly to the front
of the house.

As he came to the library entrance he found it closed, and, from inside,
he heard a tinkle as if a telephone hook was being violently agitated.
Inclining his ear, a low, agonized voice came to him:

"... Le Duc again.... Why haven't you sent the police?... Robbery.... My
cousin Emile ... murder me.... God above! They are slow!... He will
escape...."

Van Dam tried the door. It was locked. Then he called, sweetly: "Alfred!
My dear cousin Alfred!"

The voice at the telephone ended in a shriek. There came a crash as the
instrument fell from the old man's fingers.

So the police were on their way! Escape, then, must be but a matter of
moments. With his heart pounding, Van Dam stepped into the drawing-room
and reconnoitered from a front window. What he saw did not reassure him,
particularly in view of Emile's words; for, directly opposite, he beheld
a masked man in a black domino who looked very much like the Black Wolf.
Scattered up and down the block were others, all idling about in a
seemingly objectless manner. Evidently the house was surrounded. He
dared not risk the back way, after what he had seen. He could not
remain. From the library again came that faint, frantic tinkling.

Van Dam dropped his mask, tore the flimsy robe from his back, and strode
to the front door. Under any other circumstances he would have preferred
to remain and to take the consequences, but for Madelon's sake he dare
not risk an explanation to the police. Besides--how could he explain
that twenty thousand dollars, in clean, crisp ten-dollar notes, that she
had in her possession? He flung the portal wide, stepped out, then
turned and bowed as if to some one inside. "Good-by!" he called,
cheerily. "Had a delightful afternoon." The door closed with a click,
and he was in the open air. He extracted a cigarette from his jeweled
case, noting from the corner of his eye that, with one accord, the
maskers were closing in upon him. Descending the steps, he turned to the
left, walking briskly.

His one chance now depended upon whether these men knew Emile by sight.
If so, he felt that he was reasonably safe. If not--

He was approaching two of them. They separated to let him pass between.
From beneath their fatuously smiling masks he saw eyes staring at him
curiously. The flesh along his spine crinkled and rippled, but he did
not turn his head or falter, even when he knew they had halted. He could
feel the puzzled gaze of many eyes upon him, and imagined the
mystification his appearance had excited. In the midst of their
indecision there sounded the faint clamor of a gong. It grew rapidly
until, with wild clangor, a patrol-wagon reeled into the street and drew
up in front of the house Van Dam had just quitted. He turned as a
half-dozen blue-coats tumbled out of it and rushed up the steps;
incidentally, he saw that the black-clad figures were melting away in
various directions.

Roly did not wait to observe what followed. He turned the first corner,
then quickened his gait, at the next corner swinging once more to the
left. His pulses were jumping, his ears were roaring, he found the
muscles of his jaw were aching from the strain. A close call, surely!
But he had come through it all safely; he was whole, and on his way out
of this mysterious neighborhood. Once more his promptness and resource
had saved him. Here was the very street up which he and Madelon had
fled; yonder was the entrance to the blind alley that led into the
stable-yard.

He noticed that a little crowd was congregated there, many of its
members in the costume of merrymakers. He reflected that Emile might
have found their presence awkward in making his escape. They seemed
greatly excited or shocked over something, he noted, as he approached.
They completely blocked the alley entrance. In among them he forced his
way, then paused, staring down with startled eyes at what he saw. A
babble of voices smote his ears, but he heard nothing. He was elbowed
aside, but his gaze remained riveted upon the body of a man in a black
domino. It lay sprawled in the dirt, and covering the face was a mask
which smiled placidly up at the beholders; on the left breast was pinned
a solitary gardenia, crimson with blood. It had been pierced with a
dagger, and out of it had trickled a bright-red arterial stream.

Van Dam continued to stare at the gruesome sight while his wits whirled
dizzily. Why, it was but a moment ago that this boy had left him, in the
full flower of his youth! The body was still warm. It seemed
inconceivable that the grim reaper could have worked this grisly change
in so short a time! How had it happened? He recalled that somber figure
as he had seen it scaling the fence; he recalled that warning whistle.
At the memory he turned sick. Was it possible that he had been to blame
for this? He shook the notion from him, reflecting that Emile's fate
would have been the same, or worse, had he chosen any other course.
Arrest, he knew, would have been no more welcome than this.

Roly felt a great desire to shout the truth at these people who stood
about so stupidly; he longed to set them on the trail of the Black Wolf
and his pack, but he refrained. How little he really knew, after all!
Who was the Black Wolf? Who was this Emile? What had the young scapegoat
done to place himself not only outside the law, but outside the good
graces of those conspirators? What intricate network of hatred and crime
was here suggested? The desire to know the truth overcame all thought of
his own safety, so he began to question those around him, heedless of
the fact that he was being hunted in this very block.

The crowd was growing. An officer returned after sending a call for an
ambulance, and began to force the people back.

Van Dam discovered a voluble old woman, evidently a shopkeeper, who
seemed better informed than the others, and to her he applied himself.

"Do I know him, indeed?" she cried, shrilly, in answer to his question.
"And who should know him better than I, Emile Le Duc--a fine boy, sir,
of the very best family. Think of it! To be murdered like this! Ah!
That's what comes of a bad life, sir. But right at my own doorstep, as
you might say, and in the light of day! Well! Well! What can you expect?
He must have been mad to return, with the whole city knowing him so
well." She was greatly excited, and her voice broke under the stress of
her feelings. "It doesn't help the neighborhood, you understand, to have
such things happen," she ran on, "although nobody can say it's not as
quiet and respectable hereabouts as the next place. You've noticed as
much yourself, I dare say. Nothing ever happens. A misfortune to all of
us, I call it. Why, it's barely two hours ago that they brought a poor
fellow out of this very alley with his head lolloping around like a ball
on a string. He fell and hurt himself, I hear, although he looked
perfectly dead to me. Think of that! Two in one day. Oh, it doesn't help
the neighborhood, although there's nobody in the whole block as would do
another an injury, unless it might be that poor boy's cousin, the old
rip who lives in the fine house through yonder. He's a bad one, far
worse than Emile, if I do say it who never speaks ill of my neighbors.
And there's others besides me who'll be sorry it isn't him instead of
the young man who lies there with a hole through his ribs. Why, I
thought he was some masquerader, up to his carnival pranks, or drunk,
perhaps, until I noticed him all over blood."

Van Dam drew the speaker into her shop, which was near by, then handed
her a bank-note. "Come! I want you to tell me all you know."

"Ho! A detective, eh? Not that I wouldn't tell you all I know without
this--Ten dollars, is it? Peace and love! You _are_ generous! Well,
then, he has stood right in your tracks, in this very store, many's the
time. Law! What a lad he was! Nothing bad about him, but just reckless,
we used to think. Of course that was before we learned the truth."

"What do you mean?"

"You must be a stranger. Why, the whole world knows the scandal. It made
a commotion, I can tell you. But the poor lad! He's paid for all his
evil deeds. Why, sir, he was dead when he walked out into the street. He
must have been a corpse even when I took him for a merrymaker. Strange
things do happen on these carnival days. They must have finished him
with one stroke. Ugh!"

"They? Whom do you mean?"

The old woman winked, and wagged her head sagely. "Oh! You'll never
learn who, but we know. You think the gang was broken up when Emile went
to prison, but where do all these counterfeits come from, eh? Answer me
that. There's not a week goes by that one of them doesn't find its way
into my store. They're perfect, or nearly so; it would take a
bank-teller to find a flaw. I'm always frightened to death till I work
them off again. For all I know, this very ten-dollar bill you gave me is
bad, but I'll risk it. Some people don't seem to mind them at all, and
so long as there's a chance to get rid of them, why, I don't object. But
that's how it all came about--through counterfeit money, sir. They used
Emile for a cat's-paw, so I've heard, but when he was caught they let
him take his punishment. It was his cousin, Alfred Le Duc, who got him
to confess, under promise of a light sentence. They do say the old
rascal fooled him into it, for what reason nobody ever knew. Anyhow,
they sent Emile away for ten years. He threatened to turn state's
evidence, and perhaps he would have done so if he hadn't escaped."

"Ah! So he broke jail?"

"Exactly! And they've been hunting him ever since, with a reward on his
head, and all the time the counterfeits are still coming in, and the
police are as far from the truth as ever. Poor boy! There he lies, dead,
with a flower over his heart. And I saw him fall! This will kill his
mother. She's blind, you know, and very feeble."

"He has a cousin, Madelon, I believe," Roly ventured.

"Eh? Then you know her? A blessed angel, with a face like a picture and
a heart of pure gold. Hark!" The old lady listened. "There go the clocks
striking six. That means masks off and the end of the carnival. Too bad!
Too bad! And Emile with a flower over his heart."

       *       *       *       *       *

Like one in a dream Roland Van Dam emerged from the foreign quarter into
the broad reaches of Canal Street. He had been gone nearly three hours.
The pavements were strewn with confetti and the litter of a Mardi Gras
crowd, but nowhere was a masker to be seen. Directly ahead of him loomed
the Grunewald, a splendid tower of white brick and terra-cotta. Inside
were his friends, awaiting him, perhaps. He realized, with a sinking
sensation, that Eleanor Banniman was among them and that he had asked
her to be his wife. What a change three hours had brought to him! Why,
in that brief interval he had lived through all those very emotions the
existence of which they had both denied earlier in the day. Life had
opened for him, and he had seen it in the raw. On his hands was the
blood of a fellow-man; on his lips the fragrance of a kiss that set his
veins afire.

"I say, Roly, where _have_ you been?" Miss Banniman's strident voice
demanded, as he entered the café.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed her father, waving his prospective son-in-law
to a chair with a pudgy hand. "We thought you were lost in the tall
grass. You missed tea, but you're in time for a cocktail. Eleanor is
quite cranky if she misses hers."

"Beastly stupid place, don't you think?" Miss Banniman inquired of her
sweetheart.

"Um-m! I haven't found it so," Roly said, with a sigh of relief. "Fact
is, I've been quite entertained."

"You have _such_ absurd tastes. A dash of absinthe in mine, if you
please, waiter. Papa has ordered the car attached to the evening train,
and we're dining aboard. What d'you say to Pinehurst and a week of
golf?"

Roly felt a sudden distaste for Pinehurst, for golf, for all the places
and people he had known. "Lovely!" he managed to say; then, summoning
his courage: "I'll join you later, perhaps. Sorry to break up the party,
but I've a little business here that will take a day or so."

"Business? _You?_ How funny!" exclaimed Eleanor.

"Too bad!" her father said. "It's blooming hot here, and the flies are
awful."

The others joined in commiserating the young man. When they arose to go
up-stairs and prepare for the train, Roly fell in behind them with Miss
Banniman.

"See here, Eleanor, are you sure you love me?" he asked.

She lifted her brows slightly. "Not at all. What put such an idea into
your head? You're a charming boy, even if you are a bit romantic. But
love--I thought we understood each other."

"I've been thinking--something unusual for me--and I don't believe we're
either of us quite ready to take the fatal plunge. How does it strike
you?"

"I'm in no hurry," Miss Banniman said, indifferently. "Let's call it off
for the present. We can try it on again in the autumn, if we feel like
it."

"Mighty sensible of you," Van Dam told her, with relief.

"Oh, that's all right! Don't let this keep you away from Pinehurst,
however. The season's nearly over, and we'll need you for a foursome."
She extended her hand, and Van Dam took it gratefully.

Her father called from the elevator: "See you in a few days, Roly. Good
luck with your business, and don't take any bad money." Mr. Banniman's
use of slang was neither brilliant nor original, but he was chuckling as
the car shot up out of sight.

Van Dam hastened to the desk and called for a city directory, then ran
through it to the L's.

"_L-a, L-e--_" Ah, there it was! "Le Duc, Félice--wid. res. 247 Boule
St."

He made a note of the address, then settled his hat upon his head, lit a
cigarette, and walked jauntily out into the evening and turned toward
Canal Street. It was growing cool; the street lights were gleaming; long
rows of them were festooned for blocks in all directions, blazing forth
in fanciful designs. In a short time now the Rex parade would be under
way, with its countless floats depicting "The Age of Romance."

"Romance, indeed!" smiled Mr. Van Dam, contentedly. Why _this_ was the
age of romance. Something recalled Mr. Banniman's parting words to
him--"bad money!" The young man paused abruptly. "Bad money!" What a
coincidence! He pictured a safe sunk into a library wall, an open
cash-drawer jammed with neatly pinned packages of crisp, new ten-dollar
bank-notes. Then he recalled the story of the garrulous old shop-woman.

Roly came to himself with a jerk. He began to laugh.

"Good Lord!" said he, aloud. "I wonder if Cousin Alfred's money was
counterfeit!"

He was still smiling as he bought a white gardenia and placed it in his
buttonhole.




ROPE'S END




I


A round moon flooded the thickets with gold and inky shadows. The night
was hot, poisonous with the scent of blossoms and of rotting tropic
vegetation. It was that breathless, overpowering period between the
seasons when the trades were fitful, before the rains had come. From the
Caribbean rose the whisper of a dying surf, slower and fainter than the
respirations of a sick man; in the north the bearded, wrinkled Haytian
hills lifted their scowling faces. They were trackless, mysterious,
darker even than the history of the island.

Beneath a thatched roof set upon four posts was a table, spread with
food, and on it a candle burned steadily. No wind came out of the hot
darkness; the flame rose straight and unwavering. Under a similar
thatched shed, a short distance away, a group of soldiers were busy
around a smoldering cook-fire. There were other huts inside the jungle
clearing, through the dilapidated walls of which issued rays of light
and men's voices.

Petithomme Laguerre, colonel of tirailleurs, in the army of the
Republic, wiped the fat of a roasted pig from his lips with the back of
his hand. Using his thumb-nail as a knife-blade, he loosened a splinter
from the edge of the rickety wooden table, fashioned it into a
toothpick, then laid himself back in a grass hammock. He had expected to
find rum in the house of Julien Rameau, but either there had been none
or his brave soldiers had happened upon it; at any rate, supper had been
a dry meal--only one of several disappointments of the day. The sack of
the village had not been at all satisfactory to the colonel; one yellow
woman dead, a few prisoners, and some smoldering ruins--surely there was
no profit in such business.

Reclining at ease, he allowed himself to admire his uniform, a splendid
creation of blue and gold which had put him to much pains and expense.
It had arrived from Port au Prince barely in time to be of service in
the campaign. As for the shoes, they were not so satisfactory. Shoes of
any sort, in fact, cramped Colonel Petithomme Laguerre's feet, and were
refinements of fashion to which he had never fully accustomed himself.
He wore them religiously, in public, for a colonel who would be a
general must observe the niceties of military deportment, even in the
Haytian army, but now he kicked them off and exposed his naked yellow
soles gratefully.

On three sides of the clearing were thickets of guava and coffee trees,
long since gone wild. A ruined wall along the beach road, a pair of
bleaching gate-posts, a moldering house foundation, showed that this had
once been the site of a considerable estate.

These mute testimonials to the glories of the French occupation are
common in Hayti, but since the blacks rose under Toussaint l'Ouverture
they have been steadily disappearing; the greedy fingers of the jungle
have destroyed them bit by bit; what were once farms and gardens are now
thickets and groves; in place of stately houses there are now nothing
but miserable hovels. Cities of brick and stone have been replaced by
squalid villages of board and corrugated iron, peopled by a
shrill-voiced, quarreling race over which, in grim mockery, floats the
banner of the Black Republic inscribed with the motto, "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity."

Once Hayti was called the "Jewel of the Antilles" and boasted its
"Little Paris of the West," but when the black men rose to power it
became a place of evil reputation, a land behind a veil, where all
things are possible and most things come to pass. In place of monastery
bells there sounds the midnight mutter of voodoo drums; the priest has
been succeeded by the "papaloi," the worship of the Virgin has changed
to that of the serpent. Instead of the sacramental bread and wine men
drink the blood of the white cock, and, so it is whispered, eat the
flesh of "the goat without horns."

As he picked his teeth, Colonel Petithomme Laguerre turned his eyes to
the right, peering idly into the shadows of a tamarind-tree, the
branches of which overtopped the hut. Suspended from one of these was an
inert shape, mottled with yellow patches where the moonbeams filtered
through the leaves. It stirred, swayed, turned slowly, resolving itself
into the figure of an old man. He was hanging by the wrists to a rawhide
rope; his toes were lightly touching the earth.

"So! Now that Monsieur Rameau has had time to think, perhaps he will
speak," said the colonel.

A sigh, it was scarcely a groan, answered.

"Miser that you are!" impatiently exclaimed the colonel. "Your money can
do you no good now. Is it not better to part with it easily than to rot
in a government prison? You understand, the jails are full; many
mulattoes like you will be shot to make room."

"There is no--money," faintly came the voice of the prisoner. "My
neighbors will tell you that I am poor."

Both men spoke in the creole patois of the island.

"Not much, perhaps, but a little, eh? Just a little, let us say."

"Why should I lie? There is none."

"Bah! It seems you are stubborn. Congo, bring the boy!" Laguerre spoke
gruffly.

A man emerged from the shadows at the base of the tree and slouched
forward. He was a negro soldier, and, with musket and machete, shuffled
past the corner of the hut in the direction of the other houses, pausing
as the colonel said:

"But wait! There is a girl, too, I believe."

"Yes, monsieur. The wife of Floréal."

"Good! Bring them both."

Some moments later imploring voices rose, a shrill entreaty in a woman's
tones, then Congo and another tirailleur appeared; driving ahead of them
a youth and a girl. The prisoners' arms were bound behind them, and
although the girl was weeping, the boy said little. He stepped forward
into the candle-light and stared defiantly at the blue-and-gold officer.

Floréal Rameau was a slim mulatto, perhaps twenty years old; his lips
were thin and sensitive, his nose prominent, his eyes brilliant and
fearless. They gleamed now with all the vindictiveness of a serpent,
until that hanging figure in the shadows just outside turned slowly and
a straying moonbeam lit the face of his father; then a new expression
leaped into them. Floréal's chin fell, he swayed uncertainly upon his
legs.

"Monsieur--what is this?" he said, faintly.

The girl cowered at his back.

"Your father persists in lying," explained Laguerre.

"What do you--wish him to say?"

"A little thing. His money can be of no further use to him."

"Money?" Floréal voiced the word vacantly. He turned to his wife,
saying, "Monsieur le Colonel asks for money. We have none."

The girl nodded, her lips moved, but no sound issued; she also was
staring, horror-stricken, into the shadows of the tamarind-tree. Her
arms, bound as they were, threw the outlines of her ripe young bosom
into prominent relief and showed her to be round and supple; she was
lighter in color even than Floréal. A little scar just below her left
eye stood out, dull brown, upon her yellow cheek.

Laguerre now saw her plainly for the first time, and shook off his
indolence. He swung his legs from the hammock and sat up. Something in
the intensity of his regard brought her gaze away from the figure of
Papa Rameau. She saw a large, thick-necked, full-bodied black, of bold
and brutal feature, whose determined eyes had become bloodshot from
staring through dust and sun. He wore a mustache, and a little pointed
woolly patch beneath his lower lip. Involuntarily the girl recoiled.

"Um-m! So!" The barefoot colonel rose and, stepping forward, took her
face in his harsh palm, turning it up for scrutiny. His roving glance
appraised her fully. "Your name is--"

"Pierrine!"

"To be sure. Well then, my little Pierrine, you will tell me about this,
eh?"

"I know nothing," she stammered. "Floréal speaks the truth, monsieur.
What does it mean--all this? We are good people; we harm nobody. Every
one here was happy until the--blacks rose. Then there was fighting
and--this morning you came. It was terrible! Mamma Cleomélie is
dead--the soldiers shot her. Why do you hang Papa Julien?"

Floréal broke in, hysterically: "Yes, monsieur, he is an old man. Punish
me if you will, but my father--he is old. See! He is barely alive. These
riches you speak about are imaginary. We have fields, cattle, a
schooner; take them for the Republic, but, monsieur, my father has
injured no one."

Petithomme Laguerre reseated himself in the hammock and swung himself
idly, his bare soles scuffing the hard earthen floor; he continued to
eye Pierrine.

Now that young Rameau had brought himself to beg, he fell to his knees
and went on: "I swear to you that we are not traitors. Never have we
spoken against the government. We are 'colored,' yes, but the black
people love us. They loved Cleomélie, my mother, whom the soldiers shot.
That was murder. Monsieur--she would have harmed nobody. She was only
frightened." The suppliant's shoulders were heaving, his voice was
choked by emotion. "She is unburied. I appeal to your kind heart to let
us go and bury her. We will be your servants for life. You wish money.
Good! We will find it for you. I will work, I will steal, I will kill
for this money you wish--I swear it. But old Julien, he is dying there
on the rope--"

Floréal raised his tortured eyes to the black face above him, then his
babbling tongue fell silent and he rose, interposing his body between
Pierrine and the colonel. It was evident that the latter had heard
nothing whatever of the appeal, for he was still staring at the girl.

Floréal strained until the rawhide thongs cut into his wrists, his bare,
yellow toes gripping the hard earth like the claws of a cat until he
seemed about to spring. Once he turned his head, curiously, fearfully,
toward his young wife, then his blazing glance swung back to his captor.

The silence roused Laguerre finally, and he rose. "Speak the truth," he
commanded, roughly, "otherwise you shall see your father dance a
bamboula while my soldiers drum on his ribs with the cocomacaque."

"He is feeble; his bones are brittle," said the son, thickly.

"As for you, my little Pierrine, you will come to my house; then, if
these wicked men refuse to speak, perhaps you and I will reach an
understanding." Laguerre grinned evilly.

"Monsieur--!" With a furious curse Floréal flung himself in the path of
the black man; the wife retreated in speechless dismay.

Petithomme thrust young Rameau aside, crying, angrily: "You wish to
live, eh? Well, then, the truth. Otherwise--"

"But--she? Pierrine?" panted Floréal, with a twist of his head in her
direction.

"I may allow her to go free. Who can tell?" He led the girl out across
the moonlit clearing and to the largest house in the group. He
reappeared, making the door fast behind him, and returned, stretching
himself in the hammock once more.

"Now, Congo," he ordered, "let us see who will speak first." Taking a
pipe from his pocket, he filled it with the rank native tobacco and
lighted it. The tirailleur he had addressed selected a four-foot club of
the jointed cocomacaque wood, such as is used by the local police, and
with it smote the suspended figure heavily. Old Julien groaned, his son
cried out. The brutality proceeded with deliberation, the body of old
Julien swung drunkenly, spinning, swaying, writhing in the moonlight.

Floréal shrank away. Retreating until his back was against the table, he
clutched its edge with his numb fingers for support. He was young, he
had seen little of the ferocious cruelty which characterized his
countrymen; this was the first uprising against his color that he had
witnessed. Every blow, which seemed directed at his own body, made him
suffer until he became almost as senseless as the figure of his father.

His groping fingers finally touched the candle at his back; it was
burning low, and the blaze bit at them. With the pain there came a
thought, wild, fantastic; he shifted his position slightly until the
flame licked at his bonds. Colonel Laguerre was in the shadow now,
watching the torture with approval. Maximilien, the other soldier,
rested unmoved upon his rifle. Floréal leaned backward, and shut his
teeth; an agony ran through his veins. The odor of burning flesh rose
faintly to his nostrils.

"Softly, Congo," directed the colonel, after a time. "Let him rest for a
moment." Turning to the son he inquired, "Will you see him die rather
than speak?"

Floréal nodded silently; his face was distorted and wet with sweat.

Laguerre rose with a curse. "Little pig! I will make your tongue wag if
I have to place you between planks and saw you in twain. But you shall
have time to think. Maximilien will guard you, and in the morning you
will guide me to the hiding-place. Meanwhile we will let the old man
hang. I have an appetite for pleasanter things than this." He turned
toward the house in which Pierrine was hidden, whereat Floréal strained
at his bonds, calling after him:

"Laguerre! She is my wife--by the Church! My wife."

Petithomme opened the door silently and disappeared.

"Humph! The colonel amuses himself while I tickle the sides of this
yellow man," said Congo in some envy.

"I don't believe there is any money," Maximilien observed. "What? Am I
right?" He turned inquiringly to Floréal, but the latter had regained
his former position, and the candle-flame was licking at his wrists. "To
be sure! This is a waste of time. Make an end of the old man, Congo, and
I will take the boy back to his prison. It is late and I am sleepy."

The speaker approached his captive, his musket resting in the hollow of
his arm, his machete hanging at his side. "So, now! Don't strain so
bitterly," he laughed. "I tied those knots and they will not slip, for I
have tied too many yellow men. To-morrow you will be shot, monsieur, and
Pierrine will be a widow, so why curse the colonel if he cheats you by a
few hours?"

Congo was examining his victim, and uttered an exclamation, at which
Maximilien paused, with a hand upon Floréal's shoulder.

"Is he dead?"

"The club was heavier than I thought," answered Congo.

"He brought it upon himself. Well, the prison at Jacmel is full of
colored people; this will leave room for one more--"

Maximilien's words suddenly failed him, his thoughts were abruptly
halted, for he found that in some unaccountable manner young Rameau's
hands had become free and that the machete at his own side was slipping
from its sheath. The phenomenon was unbelievable, it paralyzed
Maximilien's intellect during that momentary pause which is required to
reconcile the inconceivable with the imminent. It is doubtful if the
trooper fully realized what had befallen or that any danger threatened,
for his mind was sluggish, and under Rameau's swift hands his soul had
begun to tug at his body before his astonishment had disappeared. The
blade rasped out of its scabbard, whistled through its course, and
Maximilien lurched forward to his knees.

The sound of the blow, like that of an ax sunk into a rotten tree-trunk,
surprised Congo. A shout burst from him; he raised the stout cudgel
above his head, for Floréal was upon him like the blurred image out of a
nightmare. The trooper shrieked affrightedly as the blade sheared
through his shield and bit at his arm. He turned to flee, but his head
was round and bare, and it danced before the oncoming Floréal. Rameau
cleft it, as he had learned to open a green cocoanut, with one stroke.
On the hard earth, Maximilien was scratching and kicking as if to drag
himself out of the welter in which he lay.

Floréal cut down his father and received the limp figure in his arms. As
he straightened it he heard a furious commotion from the camp-fire where
the other tirailleurs were squatted. From the tail of his eye he saw
that they were reaching for their weapons. He heard Laguerre shouting in
the hut, then the crash of something overturned. As he rose from his
father's body he heard a shot and saw the soldiers of the Republic
charging him. They were between him and Pierrine. He hesitated, then
slipped back into the shadow of the tamarind-tree, and out at the other
side; his cotton garments flickered briefly through the moonlight, then
the thicket swallowed him. His pursuers paused and emptied their guns
blindly into the ink-black shadows where he had disappeared.

[Illustration: As Floréal rose from his father's body he heard a shot
and saw the soldiers of the Republic charging him.]

When Colonel Laguerre arrived upon the scene they were still loading and
firing without aim, and he had some difficulty in restoring them to
order. Blood they were accustomed to, but blood of their own letting.
This was very different. This was a blow at the government, at their own
established authority. Such an appalling loss of life seldom occurred to
regular troops of the Republic; it was worse than a pitched battle with
the Dominicans, and it excited the troopers terribly.

Perhaps he had been mistaken and there was no money, thought the
colonel, as he returned to his quarters after a time. Of course the girl
still remained, and he could soon force the truth from her, but she was
the only source of information left now that Floréal had escaped, for
Laguerre had noted carelessly that the body of Julien had hung too long.
It was annoying to be deceived in this way, but perhaps the day had not
been without some profit, after all, he mused.

The road to the Dominican frontier was rough and wild. All Hayti was
aflame; every village was peopled by raging blacks who had risen against
their lighter-hued brethren. Among the fugitives who slunk along the
winding bridle-paths that once had been roads there was a mulatto youth
of scarcely twenty, who carried a machete beneath his arm. In his eyes
there was a lurking horror; his wrists were bound with rags torn from
his cotton shirt; he spoke but seldom, and when he did it was to curse
the name of Petithomme Laguerre.




II


Floréal took up his residence across the border. The countries had long
been at war, so he found reason to change his name. He likewise changed
his language, although that was not so easily accomplished, and then,
since he had been born of the sea, he returned to it. But he could not
bring himself to utterly forsake the island of his birth, for twice a
year, when the seasons changed, when the trades died and the hot lands
sent their odors reeking through the night, he felt a hungry yearning
for Hayti. During these periods of lifeless heat his impulses ran wild;
at these times his habits changed and he became violent, nocturnal. As
he thought of Petithomme Laguerre he bit his wrists in an agony of
recollection. Women shunned him, men said to one another:

"This Inocencio is a person of uncertain temper. He has a bad eye."

"Whence did he come?" others inquired. "He is not one of us."

"From Jamaica, or the Barbadoes, perhaps. He has much evil in him."

"And yet he makes no enemies."

"Nor friends."

"Um-m! A peculiar fellow. A man of passion--one can see it in his face."

Hayti had become quiet once more--as quiet as could be expected--and the
former colonel of tirailleurs had prospered. He was now "General
Petithomme Laguerre, Commandant of the Arrondissement of the South," and
the echo of his name crept eastward along the coast, even to Azua.

The bitterness of this news finally sent Inocencio seaward in a
barkentine, the business of which was not above suspicion. He cruised
through the Virgin Islands, on around the Leewards and the Windwards,
seeing something of the world and tasting of its wickedness. A year
later, at Trinidad, he fell in with a Portuguese half-breed, captain of
a schooner bound on hazardous business, and, inasmuch as high wages were
promised, he shipped. Followed adventures of many sorts, during which
Inocencio became a mate, but made no friends.

One night when the moon was full and the schooner lay becalmed there was
drinking and gambling in the little cabin. It was the change of the
seasons, before the rains had come; the air was close; the ship reeked
with odors. Inocencio played like a demon, for his heart was fierce, and
the cards befriended him. All night he and the Portuguese half-breed
shuffled and dealt, drank rum, and cursed each other. When daylight came
the schooner had changed hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colon sits on the southern shore of the Caribbean, and through it drifts
a current of traffic from many seas. It is like the riffle of a sluice
or the catch-basin of a sewer, gathering all the sediment carried by the
stream, and thither Captain Inocencio headed, drawn on the tide. It was
at the time of the French fiasco, when De Lesseps's name was powerful,
and when Colon was the wickedest, sickest city of the Western
Hemisphere.

Into the harbor came Inocencio's schooner, pelting ahead of the stiff
trade-winds that blew like the draught from an electric fan, and there
the Haytian stayed, for in Colon he found work that suited him. There he
heard the echo of tremendous undertakings; there he learned new
rascalities, and met men from other lands who were homeless, like
himself; there he tasted of the white man's wickedness, and beheld forms
of corruption that were strange to him. The nights were ribald and the
days were drear, for fever stalked the streets, but Inocencio was
immune, and for the first time he enjoyed himself.

But he was solitary in his habits; the festering town, with its
green-slimed sewers and its filthy streets, did not appeal to him, so he
took up his abode on the shore of a little bay close behind, where a
grove of palm-trees overhung a sandy beach. Just across a mangrove swamp
at his back was the city; before him lay his schooner, her bowsprit
pointing seaward. Day and night it pointed seaward, like a resolute
finger; pointed toward Hayti and--Pierrine.

In time the mulatto acquired a reputation and gathered a crew of
ruffians over whom he tyrannized. There were women in his camp, too,
'Bajans, Sant' Lucians, and wenches from the other isles, but neither
they nor their powdered sisters along the back streets of Colon appealed
to Inocencio very long, for sooner or later there always came to him the
memory of a yellow girl with a scar beneath her eye, and thoughts of her
brought pictures of a blue-and-gold negro colonel and an old man hanging
by the wrists. Then it was that he felt a slow flame licking at his
tendons, and his hatred blazed up so suddenly that the women fled from
him, bearing marks of his fingers on their flesh.

Sometimes he sailed away and was gone for weeks. When he returned his
crew told stories of aimless visits to the Haytian coast in which there
appeared to be neither reason nor profit, since they neither took nor
fetched a cargo. These journeys came at regular intervals, as if there
arrived upon the hurrying trades a call that took him northward, just
before the seasons changed.

His helpers retailed other gossip also, rumors of a coming revolution in
the Republic, tales of the great general, Petithomme Laguerre, who had
aims upon the Presidency. Inocencio's ears were open, and what he heard
stirred his rage, but he was not a brilliant man, and his brain, unused
to strategy, refused to counsel him. For five years he had studied the
matter incessantly, nursing his hate and searching for a means to
satisfy it. Then, as if born of the lightning, he saw his way.

He consulted a French clerk in the Canal offices, and between them they
contrived a letter which ran as follows:

     To His Excellency, General Petithomme Laguerre, Commandant of the
     Arrondissement of the South, Jacmel, Republic of Hayti.

     GENERAL,--The bearer, Inocencio Ruiz, of Cartagena, master of the
     schooner _Stella_, will consult you upon a matter of extreme
     delicacy which concerns the sale of two hundred rifles. These arms,
     of latest model, were consigned to this port, but under the
     existing relations of amity between the French and Colombian
     governments they cannot be used. Knowing your patriotism and the
     zeal with which you safeguard the welfare of your country, the
     writer makes bold to offer these arms to you, as agent of the
     Haytian government, at a low figure. Captain Ruiz, a man of
     discretion, is empowered to discuss the matter with you at greater
     length.

     In full appreciation of your supreme qualities as a soldier and
     statesman, it is with admiration that I salute you.

     Respectfully,
     ANTOINE LEBLANC.

When the letter was finally read to Inocencio he nodded; but the French
clerk said, doubtfully:

"This Laguerre is a man of force, I believe. I should not care to trifle
with him in this way."

"I, too, am a man of force," said the mulatto.

"He is your enemy?"

"To the death."

The white man shook his head. "Danger lurks along the Haytian coast;
many things happen there, for the people are barbarians. I should prefer
to forgive this Petithomme rather than oppose him, even though he were
my enemy."

Inocencio scowled. "When I die I shall have no enemies to forgive, for I
shall have killed them all," he said, simply.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jacmel lay white in the blazing sun as the _Stella_ dropped anchor. The
trades were failing, and the schooner drifted slowly under a full spread
of canvas. Near where she came to rest lay a Haytian gunboat,
ill-painted, ill-manned, ill-disciplined, and Inocencio regarded her
with some concern, for her presence was a thing he had not counted upon.
It argued either that Laguerre had won the support of her commander or
that she had been sent by the government as a check upon his activities.
In either event she was a menace.

A band was playing in the square, and there were many soldiers.
Inocencio did not go ashore. Instead he sent the letter by a member of
his crew, a giant 'Bajan whom he trusted, and with it he sent word that
he hoped to meet His Excellency, General Laguerre, that evening at a
certain drinking-place near the water-front.

The sailor returned at dusk with news that set his captain's eyes aglow.
Jacmel was alive with troops; there had been a review that very
afternoon and the populace had hailed the commandant as President. On
all sides there was talk of revolution; the whole south country had
enrolled beneath the banner of revolt. The gunboat was Laguerre's; all
Hayti craved a change; the old familiar race cry had been raised and the
mulattoes were in terror of another massacre. But the regular troops
were badly armed and the perusal of Inocencio's letter had filled the
general with joy.

Captain Ruiz was early at the meeting-place, but he waited patiently,
drinking rum and listening to the chatter of the street. His Spanish
accent, his identity as the master of the schooner in the offing, and,
above all, his threatening eyes, won him a tolerance which the warlike
blacks did not accord to Haytians of his color; therefore he was not
molested. He soon confirmed his sailor's story; revolution was indeed in
the air; the country was seething with unrest. Many houses already had
been burned--sure token of an uprising. The soldiers had had a taste of
pillage and persecution. The streets were thronged with them now;
merchants were on guard before their shops; from every side came the
sounds of revelry and quarreling.

Laguerre arrived, finally, a huge, forbidding man of martial bearing,
and he was heralded by cheers. He was much older and infinitely prouder
than when Inocencio had seen him. His uniform had been blue at that
time, but now it was parrot-green; his epaulettes were broader, the
golden braid and dangling loops were heavier, and he was fat from easy
living. With age and power he had coarsened, but his eyes were still
bloodshot and domineering.

"Captain Ruiz?" he inquired, pausing before the yellow man.

"Your Excellency!" Inocencio rose and saluted. The seaman's eyes were
smoldering, but his lips were cold, for he felt the dread of
recognition.

Time, it seemed, had dulled the sharp outlines of Laguerre's memory as
it had changed the younger man's features, for he continued,
unsuspectingly:

"You are the agent of Monsieur Leblanc, I believe."

"The same."

"Good! Now these rifles--you have them near by?"

"Within gunshot, Excellency. They are in the harbor at this moment."

Laguerre's face lighted. "Ha! A man of business, this Leblanc. You will
fix the price, as I understand it."

There followed a certain amount of bickering, during which the general
allowed himself to be worsted. He agreed weakly to Inocencio's terms,
having already decided to appropriate the God-sent cargo without
payment. The latter had counted upon this, and, moreover, he had
rightfully construed the light in those bloodshot eyes.

"Monsieur le Général must see these rifles for himself, to appreciate
them, and he must count them, too, else how can he know that I am not
deceiving him? We must observe caution, for there may be spies--"
Inocencio spoke craftily.

"Pah! Spies? In Jacmel?"

"Nevertheless, there is a gunboat in the harbor and she flies the flag
of the Republic. My skiff is waiting; we will slip out and back
again--in an hour the inspection will be completed. You must see those
rifles with your own eyes, Excellency. They are wonderful--the equal of
any in the world; no troops can stand before them. They are
magnificent."

"Come!" said Laguerre, rising.

"But alone!" Inocencio displayed a worthy circumspection. "This is
hazardous business. That war-ship with the flag of the Republic--my
employer is a man of reputation."

"Very well." Laguerre dismissed an aide who had remained at a distance
during the interview, and together the two set out.

"You arrived barely in time, for we march to-morrow," said the general;
"at least we march within the week. My defiance has gone forth. My
country cries for her defender. There will be bloody doings, for I tell
you the temper of the people is roused and they have no stomach for that
tyrant at Port au Prince."

"Bloody doings!" Inocencio smiled admiringly upon his companion. "And
who could cope with them better than yourself? You have a reputation,
Excellency. The name of Petithomme Laguerre is known, even in my
country."

"Indeed!" The black general's chest swelled.

"We have heroes of our own--men who have bathed in blood defending our
rights--but our soldiers are only soldiers, they are not statesmen. We
are not so fortunate as Hayti. We would welcome, we would idolize such a
one. Would that we had him; would that we boasted a--Petithomme
Laguerre."

The hearer was immensely gratified at this flattery and he straightened
himself pompously, saying:

"But we are favored by God, we Haytians, and we have bred a race of
giants. We have gained our proud position among the nations at the price
of blood. Believe me, we are not ordinary men. Our soldiers are braver
than lions, our armies are the admiration of the world, we have reached
that level for which God created us. It requires strong hands to guide
such a people. My country calls. I am her servant."

The moon was round and brilliant as they walked out upon the rotting
wharf--all wharves in Hayti are decayed--the night had grown still, and
through it came the gentle whisper of the tide, mingled with the babel
from the town. Land odors combined with the pungent stench of the harbor
in a scent which caused Inocencio's nostrils to quiver and memory to
gnaw at him. He cast a worried look skyward, and in his ungodly soul
prayed for wind, for a breeze, for a gentle zephyr which would put his
vengeance in his hands.

He had dropped anchor well offshore, hence the row was long, but as they
neared the _Stella_ a breath came out of the open. It was hot, stifling,
as if a furnace door had opened, and the yellow man smiled grimly into
the night.

The crew were sleeping on the deck as the two came overside, but at
sight of that glittering apparition of green and gold they rubbed their
eyes open and stared in speechless amazement. They were reckless
fellows, fit for any enterprise, but Inocencio had learned to keep a
silent tongue, so they knew nothing of his present plans. They heard him
saying:

"Into the cabin, Monsieur le Général, if you will be so good. It is
dark, yes, but there will be a light presently, and then--a sight for
any soldier's eyes! Something that will gladden the heart of any
patriot!" They went below, leaving the sailors open-mouthed. "A
miserable place, Excellency," came the soft voice, "but the Cause! For
Hayti one would suffer--A match, if you will be so kind. The lamp is at
your hand." The skylight glowed a faint yellow, then was brightly
illuminated. "For Hayti one would endure--much."

There followed the sound of a blow, of a heavy fall, then a loud,
ferocious cry, and a subdued scuffling, during which the crew stared at
one another. The giant 'Bajan crept forward finally and was met by
Inocencio, emerging from the cabin. The captain was smiling, and he
carefully closed the hatch before he gave orders to make sail.

The breeze was faint, so the schooner gathered headway slowly, but as
the lights of Jacmel and of the anchored gunboat faded out astern
Inocencio sat upon the deck-house and drummed with his naked heels upon
the cabin wall. He lit one cigarette after another, and the helmsman saw
that he was laughing silently.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dawn broke in an explosion of many colors. The sun rushed up out of the
sea as if pursued; night fled, and in its place was a blistering day,
full grown. The breeze had died, however, and the _Stella_ wallowed in a
glassy calm, her sails slatting, her booms creaking, her gear
complaining to the drunken roll. The slow swells heeled her first to one
side, then to the other, the decks grew burning hot; no faintest ripple
stirred the undulating surface of the Caribbean. Afar, the Haytian hills
wavered and danced through a veil of heat. The slender topmast described
long measured arcs across the sky, like a schoolmaster's pointer; from
its peak the halyards whipped and bellied.

"Captain!" The 'Bajan waited for recognition. "Captain!" Inocencio
looked up finally. "There--toward Jacmel--there is smoke. See! We have
been watching it."

The mulatto nodded.

"The smoke of a ship."

"Ah! A ship!" Inocencio smiled and the negro recoiled suddenly. All
night long the master of the _Stella_ had sat upon the deck-house,
staring at the sea and smoking. At times he had laughed and whispered to
some one whom the helmsman could not see, but this was the first time he
had smiled at any member of his crew. In fact, it was the first time the
sailor had ever seen him smile. The 'Bajan withdrew and went forward to
consult with his fellows. They eyed their employer curiously, fearfully,
for much had happened to alarm them, not the least of which had been a
furious commotion from below. Frightful curses had issued from the
cabin, threats which had caused their limbs to tremble, but they had
affected the captain like soothing music. It was very strange. It caused
the sailors to look with concern upon that thin, low streamer in the
distance; it led them to go aft in a body finally and speak their minds.

"The smoke is growing larger," they declared, and Inocencio roused
himself sufficiently to look. "It is the war-ship. We are pursued. Who
is this big man below?"

"He is a--friend of mine, Petithomme Laguerre--"

"Laguerre!"

"What did I tell you?" exclaimed the 'Bajan, breathlessly.

"What shall we do?" one of them inquired in a panic. "That smoke! The
wind has forsaken us." He shuffled his bare feet uncomfortably. "We will
be shot for this."

Inocencio tossed away his cigarette and rose; he lifted his eyes aloft.
The slim topmast arrested his attention as it swept across the sky, and
he watched it for a moment; then to the giant sailor he said: "You will
find a new rope forward. Make it fast to the end of this halyard and run
it through yonder block." He slid back the hatch and descended leisurely
into the cabin.

Laguerre was sitting in a chair with his arms and legs securely bound,
but he had succeeded in working considerable havoc with the furnishings
of the place as well as with his splendid uniform. His lips foamed, his
eyes protruded at sight of his captor; a trickle of blood from his scalp
lent him a ferocious appearance.

Inocencio seated himself, and the two men stared at each other across
the bare table.

Laguerre spoke first, his tongue thick, his voice hoarse from yelling.
Inocencio listened with fixed, unwavering gaze.

"You tricked me neatly," the former raved. "You are a government spy, I
presume. The government feared me. Well, then, it was bold work, but you
will listen to what I say now. We will settle this matter quickly, you
and I. I have money. You can name your price."

The hearer curled his thin lips. "So! You have money. You offer to buy
your life. Old Julien had no money; he was poor."

Petithomme did not understand. "I am too powerful to remain in prison,"
he declared. "The President would not dare harm me; no man dares harm
me; but I am willing to pay you--"

"All Hayti could not buy your life, Laguerre!"

Some tone of voice, some haunting familiarity of feature, set the
prisoner's memory to groping blindly. At last he inquired, "Who are
you?"

"I am Floréal."

The name meant nothing. Laguerre's life was black; many Floréals had
figured in it.

"You do not remember me?"

"N-no, and yet--"

"Perhaps you will remember another--a woman. She had a scar, just here."
The speaker laid a tobacco-stained finger upon his left cheek-bone, and
Laguerre noticed for the first time that the wrist beneath it was maimed
as from a burn. "It was a little scar and it was brown, in the
candle-light. She was young and round and her body was soft--" The
mulatto's lean face was suddenly distorted in a horrible grimace which
he intended for a smile. "She was my wife, Laguerre, by the Church, and
you took her. She died, but she had a child--your child."

The huge black figure shrank into its green-and-gold panoply, the
bloodshot eyes rested upon Inocencio with a look of terrified
recognition.

"I have no children, Laguerre; no wife; no home! I am poor and you have
become great. There was an old man whom you stretched by the wrists, in
the moonlight. Do you remember him? And the old woman, my mother, whom
one of your soldiers shot? Maximilien did it, but I killed him and
Congo! And now there is only you."

"That was--long ago." The prisoner rolled his eyes desperately; his
voice was uncertain as he whined, "I am rich--richer than anybody
knows."

"Others had more money than we, eh?"

The general nodded.

"Pierrine is dead, and you would have been the President. It is well
that I came in time." Again Captain Ruiz smiled, and the corpulent
soldier was shaken loosely as by an invisible hand. "Come now! Your
friends are approaching and I must prepare you to greet them."

He untied the knots at Laguerre's ankles, then motioned him toward the
cabin door.

That streamer of smoke had grown; it was a black smudge against the sky
when the two gained the deck, and at sight of it the general shouted:

"My ship! The gunboat! Ho! If harm comes to me--"

Inocencio took one end of the new rope which had been run through the
block at the masthead, and knotted it about his prisoner's wrists, then
with his knife he severed the other bonds.

"Give way!" he ordered.

The crew held back, at which he turned upon them so savagely that they
hastened to obey. They put their weight upon the line; Laguerre's arms
were whisked above his head, he felt his feet leave the deck. He was
dumb with surprise, choked with rage at this indignity, but he did not
understand its significance.

"Up with him! In a rush!" cried the captain, and hand over hand the
sailors hauled in, while upward in a series of jerks went Petithomme
Laguerre. The schooner listed and he swung outward; he tried to entwine
his legs in the shrouds, but failed, and he continued to rise until his
feet had cleared the crosstree.

"Make fast!" Inocencio ordered.

Laguerre was hanging like a huge plumbob now, and as the schooner heeled
to starboard he swung out, farther and farther, until there was nothing
beneath him but the glassy sea. He screamed at this, and kicked and
capered; the slender topmast sprung to his antics. Then the vessel
righted herself, and as she did so the man at the rope's end began a
swift and fearful journey. Not until that instant did his fate become
apparent to him, but when he saw what was in store for him he ceased to
cry out. He fixed his eyes upon the mast toward which the weight of his
body propelled him, he drew himself upward by his arms, he flung out his
legs to break the impact. The _Stella_ lifted by the bow and he cleared
the spar by a few inches. Onward he rushed, to the pause that marked the
limit of his flight to port, then slowly, but with increasing swiftness,
he began his return journey. Again he resisted furiously and again his
body missed the mast, all but one shoulder, which brushed lightly in
passing and served to spin him like a top. The measured slowness of that
oscillation added to its horror; with every escape the victim's strength
decreased, his fear grew, and the end approached. It was a game of
chance played by the hand of the sea. Under him the deck appeared and
disappeared at regular intervals, the rope cut into his wrists, the slim
spar sprung to his efforts. In the distance was a charcoal smear which
grew blacker.

After a time Laguerre heard Inocencio counting, and saw his upturned
face.

"Ha! Very close, Monsieur le Général, but we will try once again. Ship's
timber is not so hard as cocomacaque, but sufficiently hard,
nevertheless. And the rope bites, eh? But there was old Julien--What?
Again? You were always lucky. His flesh was cold and his bones brittle,
yet he did not kick like you. If Pierrine were here to see this! What a
sight--the liberator of his country--God's blood, Laguerre! The sea is
with you! That makes five times. But you are tiring, I see. What a sight
for her--the hero of a hundred battles dangling like a strangled parrot.
It is not so hard to die, monsieur, it--Ah-h!"

A cry of horror arose from the crew who had gathered forward, for
Petithomme Laguerre, dizzied with spinning, had finally fetched up with
a crash against the mast. He ricocheted, the swing of the pendulum
became irregular for a time or two, then the roll of the vessel set it
going again. Time after time he missed destruction by a hair's-breadth,
while the voice from below gibed at him, then once more there came the
sound of a blow, dull, yet loud, and of a character to make the hearers
shudder. The victim struggled less violently; he no longer drew his
weight upward like a gymnast. But he was a man of great vitality; his
bones were heavy and thickly padded with flesh, therefore they broke one
by one, and death came to him slowly. The sea played with him
maliciously, saving him repeatedly, only to thresh him the harder when
it had tired of its sport. It was a long time before the restless
Caribbean had reduced him to pulp, a spineless, boneless thing of putty
which danced to the spring of the resilient spruce.

They let him down finally and slid him into the oily waters, overside,
but the breeze refused to come and the _Stella_ continued to wallow
drunkenly. The sky was glittering, the pitch was oozing from the deck,
in the distance the Haytian mountains scowled through the shimmer.

Inocencio turned toward the approaching gunboat, which was very close by
now, a rusty, ill-painted, ill-manned tub. Her blunt nose broke the
swells into foam, from her peak depended the banner of the Black
Republic, symbolic of the motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The
captain of the _Stella_ rolled and lit a cigarette, then seated himself
upon the cabin roof to wait. And as he waited he drummed with his naked
heels and smiled, for he was satisfied.




INOCENCIO




I


Captain Inocencio prepared to let himself self over the side of the
schooner. Outside, the Caribbean was all agleam, save where the
coral-reef teeth gnashed it into foam; inside, a sand beach, yellow in
the moonlight, curved east and west like a causeway until the distance
swallowed it. Back of that lay the groves of cocoanut-trees, their
plumes waving in the undying undulations that had never ceased since
first the trade-winds breathed upon them. Beneath the palms themselves
the jungle was ink-black, patched here and there with silver. The air
was heavy with the slow rumble of an ever-restless surf and, all about,
the sea was whispering, whispering, as if minded to tell its mysteries
to the moon, not yet two hours high.

It was the sort of night that had ever wakened wild impulses in Captain
Inocencio's breast. It was on such a night that he had first felt the
touch of a woman's lips; it was on such another night that he had first
felt a man's warm blood upon his hands. That had been long ago, to be
sure, in far Hayti, and since that time both of those sensations had
lost much of their novelty, for he had lived fast and hard, and his
exile had plunged him into many evils. It was on such a night, also,
that he had begun his wanderings, fleeing southward between moonrise and
moonset; southward, whither all the scum of the Indies floated. But,
even to this day, when the full of a February moon came round with the
fragrant salt trades blowing and the sound of a throbbing surf beneath
it, the sated, stagnant blood of Captain Inocencio went hot, his thin
mulatto face grew hard, and a certain strange exultance blazed within
him.

His crew had long since come to recognize this frenzy, and had they now
beheld him, poised half nude at the rail, his fierce eyes bent upon the
forbidden shore, they would have ventured no remark. As it happened,
however, they were all asleep, all three of them, and the captain's lips
curled scornfully. What could black men know about such subtleties as
the call of moonlight? What odds to them if yonder palm fronds beckoned?
They had no curiosity, no resentfulness; otherwise they, too, might have
dared to break the San Blas law.

It was four years now since he had begun to sail this coast, and even
though he was known on every _cay_ and bay from Nombre de Dios to
Tiburon, and even though it was recognized that the Señor "Beel
Weelliams" paid proper price for cocoa and ivory nuts, his head trader
had never beaten down the people's distrust. On the contrary, their
vigilance had increased, if anything, and now, after four years of
scrupulous fair dealing, he, Captain Inocencio, was still compelled to
sleep offshore and under guard, like any common stranger.

It had made the Haytian laugh at first; for who would wish to harm a San
Blas woman, with the streets of Colon but a hundred miles to the west?
Then, as the months crept into years, and for voyage after voyage he
never saw a San Blas woman's face, he became furious. Next he grew
angry, then sullen, and a sense of injury burned into him. He set his
wits against theirs; but invariably the sight of his schooner's sails
was a signal for the women to melt away--invariably, when night came,
and he and his blacks had been herded back aboard their craft, the women
returned, and the sound of their voices served to fan the flame within
his breast.

Night after night, in sheltered coves or open river-mouths, the captain
of the _Espirita_ had lain, belly down, upon the little roof of the
deck-house, his head raised serpent-wise, his gloomy eyes fixed upon the
cook-fires in the distance. And when some woman's figure suddenly stood
out against the firelit walls, or when some maiden's song came floating
seaward, he had breathed curses in his bastard French, and directed a
message of hate at the sentinel he knew was posted in the jungle
shadows. At times he had railed at his crew of spiritless Jamaican
"niggers," and lusted for a following of his own kind--men with the
French blood of his island in their veins, men who would follow where
the moonlight flickered. He had even gone so far, at one time, as to
search the water-fronts from Port Limon to Santa Marta in quest of such
fellows; he had winnowed the off-scourings of the four seas gathered
there, but without success. They were villainous chaps, for the main
part, crossed with many creeds and colors, and ready for any desperate
venture; but he could not find three helpers of sufficient hardihood to
tamper with the San Blas virgins. Instead, they had retold him the tales
he already knew by heart; tales of swift and sudden retribution
overtaking blacks and whites; retribution that did not halt even at the
French or the hated _Americanos_. They told him that, of all the motley
races gathered here since earliest Spanish days, the San Blas blood
alone retained its purity. It was his boss, the Señor Williams, who had
gone back farthest into history, and it was he likewise who had
threatened him with prompt discharge if he presumed to trespass. The
Señor Williams was not one to permit profitable trade relations to be
jeopardized by the whim of a Haytian mulatto.

Inocencio had listened passively; then, when alone, smiled. He owed no
loyalty. He had no law. Even the name he went by was a fiction.

He continued to make his trips and, when he came driving in ahead of the
humming trade-winds, his schooner laden with the treasures of the
islands, the back streets of Colon awoke to his presence and prepared to
greet him. But however loud the music in the _cantinas_, however fierce
the exaltation of the liquor in him, however wild the orgy into which he
plunged, he could never quite drown the memory of those sleepless vigils
far to the eastward. Ever in his quiet moments he heard the faint song
of San Blas women wafted by the breath of the sea, ever in his dreams he
saw the slim outlines of girlish figures black against a flaring
camp-fire.

Four years this thing had grown upon him, during which he haunted the
San Blas coast. And then, one night, he slipped overside and swam
ashore. It was not so dangerous as it seemed, for, once he had gained
the shelter of the jungle, no less than a pack of hounds could have
followed him, inasmuch as the thickets were laced by a network of trails
that gave forth no sound to naked soles, and the rustling branches
overhead, played upon by the never-ceasing breeze, drowned all signal of
his presence. Once he had defied the tribal law, he knew no further
peace. It was like the first taste of blood to an animal. Thereafter
Inocencio, the outlaw, whose name was a symbol of daring, became a
jackal prowling through the midnight glades, tasting the scent of the
villages, and staring with hungry eyes from just beyond the shadow's
edge. Rather he became a panther, for in his caution was no cowardice,
only a feline patience. Village after village he hunted until he had
marked his prey. Then he waited to spring.

To be sure, he had never spoken with the girl, nor even seen her
clearly, but the sound of her voice made him tremble.

To accomplish even this much had taken many trips of the _Espirita_, had
meant many sleepless nights and some few tense moments when only the
shadows saved him from betrayal. There had been times, for instance,
when the quick simulation of a wild pig's grunt or the purr of _el
tigre_ had served to explain the sound of his retreat; other times when
he had stood motionless in the shadows, the evil rust-red blade of his
machete matching the hue of his half-nude body.

To-night he crouched behind the deck-house and ran his eye over the
schooner in one final glance of caution. It was well that all should be
in readiness, for the moment of his spring might come within the hour,
or, if not to-night, then to-morrow night, or a week, a month, a year
from to-night, and then a tackle fouled or a block jammed might spell
destruction.

He thrust his head through a loop of the leathern scabbard, and swung
the huge knife back until it lay along the crease between his shoulders;
then he seized the port stay and let himself softly downward overside.
The water rose to his chin. Without a ripple, he glided into the
moonlight astern, and a moment later his round, black head was no more
than a piece of bobbing drift borne landward by the current.

Down past the village he swam, noting the rows of dugouts on the beach.
He saw a blot in the big mahogany _cayuca_, a great canoe hewn from one
priceless trunk, and recognized it for the sentinel. On he floated, then
worked his way ashore behind the little point. Once he felt the hard,
smooth sand beneath his soles, he waited until a cloud obscured the
moon, and when the light broke through again he was dripping underneath
a wide-leaved breadfruit-tree at the jungle's edge. Removing the machete
from his neck, he wrung the water from his cotton trousers. Over his
head a night-bird croaked hoarsely.

The girl was at her father's house, tending a fire on the dirt floor. It
was a large house, for the old man was rich in daughters, and, by the
San Blas rule, their husbands had come to live with him. He had waxed
fat long ago on their labors, and now only this youngest one remained
unmarried. But the ceremony was set. Inocencio had heard the news upon
his arrival three days before, and had grudgingly bought a big store of
tortoise-shell from the groom-to-be, knowing full well that the money
was intended for the wedding celebration. Markeeña was the fellow's
name, a straight, up-standing youth who more than once had excited the
Haytian's admiration for his skill with a canoe. But since that day the
latter had regarded him with smoldering eyes.

The big thatched roof with its bark-floored loft stood on posts
blackened by the smoke of many feasts; there were no walls. The jungle
crept close to it from the rear, and hence the watcher could witness
every movement of the girl as she passed between the hammocks or stooped
to her task. He could see, for instance, the play of her dark round
shoulders above the neck of her shift. He ground his yellow teeth and
gripped the moist earth with the soles of his naked feet, as a tiger
bares its claws before the leap.

It was very hard to wait. For an hour he stood there. Once a dog came to
him and sniffed, then, recognizing a frequent visitor, returned to the
house and resumed its slumber beside the fire. From the houses beyond
came the sound of voices, of a child crying querulously, and of a woman
quieting it. People came and went. An old hag began pounding grain in a
mortar, crooning in a broken voice. The girl's father came rolling into
view, and, after a word to her, struggled heavily up the ladder to his
bed. He was snoring almost before the structure had ceased to creak
beneath him. In the thicket a multitude of nocturnal sounds arose, the
insect chorus of the night.

And then, before Inocencio realized what she was up to, the girl had
stolen swiftly out and past him, so close that he could hear the scuff
of her sandals on the beaten path. The next instant he had glided from
cover and fallen in behind, his pulses leaping, his long, lithe muscles
rippling; but he moved as silently as a shadow.

Had he been a less accomplished bushman he might have lost her, for she
plunged into the jungle unhesitatingly. However, he had long ago learned
these trails by daylight, and knew them better than the lines of his own
palm; hence, every moonlit turn, every flash of her white slip, found
him close upon her track.

It puzzled him at first to discover her reason for this unexpected
sally, but soon he decided she must be bent upon some mission. Then,
when he saw that she purposely avoided the village and was bending
toward the open palm-grove abreast of his anchorage, he knew she must be
going to a tryst. So Markeeña was the sentinel! That fellow in the
mahogany _cayuca_ was her lover! Inocencio, the dissolute, felt a flame
of rage suffuse him. When, at last, his quarry emerged into the
mysterious half-light under the high roof of palms, and paused, he
strode after her. She gave the melancholy call of the night-bird that
had sounded in the breadfruit-tree over his head earlier in the evening;
then, seeing him close beside her, uttered a little cry of pleasure. Not
until he was too near for flight did she discover her mistake, and then
she seemed to freeze. Her utter silence was more menacing than a scream.

It was the instant for which he had schooled himself, so he spoke to her
in her own tongue.

"Make no outcry! I will not harm you."

She drew back, at which he laid his great, bony hand upon her, his eyes
blazing. She was deathly frightened, being little more than a child.

"I have waited for you many nights," he explained. "I feared you
would never come." Then, as she continued to stare up at him
uncomprehendingly, he ran on: "I am Inocencio, the trader. Every night
I have watched you at your work. I want you for my woman."

Her voice had forsaken her utterly, but she struggled weakly, so he
tightened his grip until his fingers sank into her flesh. She began to
gasp as if from a swift run; the open neck of her garment slipped down
over one shoulder; her eyes were distended until he saw them ringed
about with white. The terror of this tall yellow man with the hungry
eyes robbed her of power, and she let him drag her toward the lapping
water as if she were no more than some weak, wild thing that he had
trapped.

Of course she knew him, for, while the San Blas law may banish women, it
cannot blind them, and she, too, had studied him from concealment.
Although his words had made no impression whatever upon her, his grasp
and the direction he was drawing her had at last translated what was in
his mind. Then she burst into life. But she made no outcry, for it takes
strength to scream, and every atom of her force was directed against
his. She began to moan. Her every muscle writhed. With her free hand she
tore at his entwining fingers, but they were like jungle creepers that
no human strength could serve to loosen. And all the time he drew her
with him, speaking softly.

Then she felt him pause, and her distracted vision beheld another figure
entering the shadows from the shore. She called to her lover hoarsely,
and saw him halt at the strange note, peering inward for a sight of her.
She voiced words now for the first time, crying:

"The stranger! The stranger!"

Then, hearing the scrape of her captor's machete as he drew it from its
scabbard, she renewed her struggle more fiercely.

Captain Inocencio held the girl at his left side until the last moment,
balancing the great knife-blade as if to try his arm; then, when the
Indian was close upon him, coming straight as a dart, he freed himself.
A slanting moonbeam showed Markeeña's ferocious visage and his upraised
weapon, but the Haytian met the falling blow with a fierce upward stroke
that once before had done him service. It was the stroke that had made
him an exile years before.

Inocencio's physical strength had ever been his pride, if also his
undoing. Above all things, he prided himself upon the dexterity and
vigor of his wrist. His early training on that blood-red Caribbean isle,
and a later life in thicket and swamp, had served to transform the
cumbrous native weapon into a thing of life at his hands. More than
once, for instance, he had harried a serpent until it struck, for the
mere satisfaction of severing its head in midcourse, and now he felt the
wide blade enter flesh. Before his antagonist could cry out twice he had
slashed again, this time downward as if to split a green cocoanut. The
next instant he had seized the girl as she fled into the jungle.

But she had found her voice at last, and he was forced to muffle her
with his palm. When they were out into the moonlight, however, with the
dry sand up to their ankles, he let her breathe; then, pointing with his
machete to the _Espirita_ lying white and ghostlike in the offing, he
drove her down into the warm sea until it reached her waist.

"Swim!" he ordered, and, when she would have renewed the alarm, he
raised his blade, grimly threatening to call the sharks with her blood.

"Swim!" he repeated, and she struck out, with him at her shoulder.

But the village was roused. A confused clamor betrayed its bewilderment,
and before the swimmers had won more than half-way to the schooner,
figures came running along the shore. Inocencio cautioned the girl to
hold her tongue, and she obeyed, thoroughly cowed by his roughness. She
turned upon her side and swam with her face close to his, her eyes fixed
upon him curiously, wonderingly. Her easy progress through the water
showed that her fright had largely vanished, and showed likewise that,
had the Haytian been no uncommon swimmer himself, she might have
distanced him. All the way out to the boat she stared at him with that
same fixed look, maintaining her position at his side. The moon and the
salt brine in his eyes played him tricks, else he might have fancied her
to be half smiling, as if in some strange exaltation akin to his own.

Not until he finally dragged her, panting, to the deck of the
_Espirita_, and her white-clad figure stood out clearly from the shore,
did her tribesmen realize the nature of the alarm. Then the vibrant
turmoil suddenly stilled for the space of a full minute while the
enormity of the outrage made itself felt. They drew together at the edge
of the sea, staring open-mouthed, amazed, before they raised their
blood-cry.

The man and woman rested a moment, their eyes upon the shore, and where
they stood twin pools of water blackened the deck. Then Inocencio turned
to look upon his prey. The girl's flimsy cotton shift was molded to her
figure, and he saw that she was even fairer than he had pictured. In
spite of his need for haste, he paused to gloat upon the favor the moon
and the salt sea had rendered him. As for her, she flung his glance back
bravely until he wrenched open the cabin hatch and pointed to the dark
interior. Then she weakened. But she had a will of her own, it seemed,
for she refused to be locked inside. He strode toward her, and she
clutched the rigging desperately, turning her glance to one of appeal.

"You may come up in a moment," he translated, but still she clung to the
stay. "If you try to escape--" He scowled upon her terribly, at which
she shook her head. Having already tasted her strength, he knew there
was no time to force her, so he leaped at his crew.

The three blacks were snoring forward of the deck-house, so he seized a
bucket of water at the rail and sluiced them into wakefulness, keeping
his eye upon the girl meanwhile. When he saw that in truth she made no
move he let his caution slip and raged over the ship like a tiger,
beating his half-clad crew ahead of him with the flat of his machete. By
the time they had gained their wits the tribesmen were massing at the
canoes. As the mainsail rose creaking he broke out the jib with his own
hand, then with one stroke of his knife severed the manila mooring-rope,
and the _Espirita_ fell off slowly ahead of the breeze. Inocencio ran
back to spur his befuddled "niggers" to further activity, only to find
the girl still motionless, her eyes following his every movement. Under
the curses, the schooner slowly raised her wings and the night wind
began to strain at the cordage.

But at last, when the Jamaicans were fully awake to the state of
affairs, they threatened mutiny, whereat the mulatto flung himself upon
them so savagely that they scattered to arm themselves with whatever
weapons lay at hand. Then they huddled amidship, rolling their eyes and
praying; for out from the shore came a long mahogany _cayuca_, and it
was full of straight-haired men.

It takes a sailing-craft some time to gain its momentum, and as yet the
full strength of the trades had not struck the _Espirita_; hence the
canoe overtook her rapidly. Inocencio called to one of his men and gave
him the tiller, then took stand beside the girl, the naked blade of his
weapon once more beneath his arm.

The schooner's helmsman gave himself to God, while the cordage overhead
began to whine as the deck rose. It was upon the Haytian's lips to warn
his pursuers off when one of them called to the girl, bidding her leap.
Inocencio heard the breath catch in her throat, but she made no move,
and the command was repeated.

This time she answered by some exclamation that he did not understand,
whereat the canoemen ceased paddling, as if her word had paralyzed them.
They hurled their voices at her savagely, but she remained motionless,
the while the waters beneath her began to foam and bubble. The
_Espirita's_ crew ceased their prayers, and in the silence that ensued
the sea whispered at the bow as the craft listed more heavily under the
full force of the wind.

Inocencio could not fathom the meaning of the subdued colloquy among the
San Blas men, so he shouted a warning, but, strangely enough, they made
no answer. They only crouched, with paddles motionless, staring at the
dimming figures facing them, until the _Espirita_, "wing and wing" ahead
of the trades, was no larger than a seagull. As yet they had not learned
of the other tragedy hidden in the shadow of the palms; had they
suspected what lay weltering at the edge of a trampled moonlit glade
behind them, no threat of Inocencio's, no plea of his new-found woman,
could have held them back.

Once the schooner was under way, the Haytian led the girl to the
deck-house and thrust her roughly inside, closing the hatch. Then with
his own hands he took his craft through the reef and out into the
leaping Caribbean. Not until the San Blas coast was a mere charcoal line
upon the port quarter and the salt spray was driving high did he deliver
over the helm. At last, however, he gave his crew instructions for the
night and went below, closing and bolting the hatch behind him. When the
smoky lamp that swung between the bunks was lit and its yellow gleam had
illumined the interior he saw the girl's eyes fast upon him. He went
toward her across the tilting floor and she arose to meet him, smiling.




II


Señor Bill Williams was in a fine rage. "Didn't you like your job?" he
questioned.

Inocencio shrugged languidly. "Oh yes! The job was good."

"You knew I'd fire you!"

"_Si!_"

The American tempered his indignant glare with a hint of curiosity. "You
must love that San Blas girl."

"What do you say?"

"You must love her--better than your job at least?"

"_Si_, señor. I suppose so."

"What is she like, Inocencio?"

"Well, she is just like other women. All women are alike--only some are
fat. One time I had a female from Martinique, and she acted just the
same as this one."

"Humph! If she is like all the others, what the devil made you--do it?"

"Señor, you have plenty of money, and yet one night I saw you bet two
thousand pesos on the _rouge_. Why did you do that, eh?"

"That is altogether different."

The Haytian smiled. "I am tired of these females at Colon. They are
common people--very common. Then, too, those San Blas people, they are
so scared that somebody is going to steal a woman! Maybe if they had
left me asleep on shore I would never have noticed no woman at all. But
they don't trust me, so, sure enough--I steal one."

"And you say she came willingly?" queried Williams, incredulously.

"Oh yes! When her people commanded her to jump from my schooner she
refused them. I did not understand at the time, but by an' by she told
me." He swelled his chest with pride. "I guess she never seen so brave a
man as me before. Eh, señor?"

"Humph! I guess I never will _sabe_ you niggers," acknowledged the
American.

Inocencio corrected his recent employer, but without show of the
slightest heat:

"I am no nigger, señor; I am Haytian. She is San Blas Indian. My father
was not even so dark as me. Black men have thick heads and you have to
beat them, but nobody ever beat me, not even a white man. When those
niggers sleep I lie awake and study; I make schemes. That is why I left
Hayti."

"Do you understand that you've got me into a hell of a fix? I've got to
take a trip down there myself to square things."

Inocencio lighted a black cigarette and blew the smoke through his nose.
Evidently other people's troubles did not concern him. Recognizing the
futility of reproach or indignation, the former speaker continued:

"But see here, now! This girl! You can't keep her."

"Eh? Who's going to take her away?" interrogated the Haytian, quickly.
"Bah! One man tried that, and--I killed him with my machete." His thin
lips drew back at the memory, and for an instant his yellow face showed
a hint of what had made his reputation.

"She won't stay with you."

"Oh yes, she will. She was wild, very wild at first, but--she will
stay."

"And how about her people? They're bad _hombres_. Even the government
lets them alone--fortunately for you."

"They won't make no trouble about that Markeeña. He is quite dead, I
think."

"By Jove! You're a cold-blooded brute!"

"Señor! You told me once that nobody had ever married a San Blas female,
eh?"

"Yes. Even the old Spaniards tried it, but the blood is clean, so far;
something unusual, too, in this country."

Inocencio began to laugh silently, as if at a joke. "Some day, maybe,
you will see a San Blas half-breed playing in the streets of Colon,"
said he.

"I don't believe it."

"I'll bet you my wages--two hundred pesos. Come! I'll show you."

"You get out of here," said the American, roughly. "That's something I
don't allow anybody to joke about." And, when the mulatto had gone, he
continued aloud: "By Heaven! this is sure a tough country for a white
man!"

Inocencio strode through the streets toward the swamp that lies behind
the town, oblivious to the grilling midday heat that smote him from
above, from the concrete walks beneath, and from the naked walls on
every side. It was before the days of the American occupation, and the
streets were nothing more than open cesspools, the stench from which
offended sorely. Buzzards flapped among the naked children at play in
the mire beside the sewer ditches.

The place was filled with everything unhealthy, and had long been known
as the earth's great festering sore. Neither the Orient nor the farthest
tropics boasted another spot like Colon, or Aspinwall, as it had been
called, with its steaming, hip-deep streets and its brilliant flowering
graveyards. So hateful had it proved, in fact, that when seamen signed
articles binding themselves to work their ships into any corner of the
globe they inserted a clause exempting them from entering Aspinwall.

Now, however, the town was lively, for this was the dry season, when the
fever was at its lowest, and the resorts were filled with the flotsam
and jetsam of a tropic world. It was a polyglot town, moreover, set upon
a fever-ridden mangrove isle serving as one terminus of the world's
short cut, and in it had collected all the parasites that live upon the
moving herd.

The French work of digging had but served to augment the natural
population by a no less desperate set from overseas, and now from the
open doors of their cubbyholes women of every color greeted the
passer-by.

Inocencio, whose last exploit was already a thing of gossip, received
unusual attention, there being no color line in Colon town. White,
yellow, and black women fawned upon him and bade him tarry, but he
merely paused to listen or to fan their admiration by a word, then idled
onward, pleased at the notice he evoked.

Once fairly out of the pest-hole, he threaded his way through the swamp
toward the other shore of the island. Blue land-crabs scuttled among the
mangrove roots at his approach; the place was noisy with the hum of
insects; on every hand the heated mud gave forth a sound like the smack
of huge moist lips. But on the other side he came into a different
domain. Here the sea-breeze banished the hovering miasma, the shore was
of powdered coral sand, a litter of huts drowsed beneath a grove of
cocoa palms, while a fleet of _cayucas_ lay moored to stakes inside the
breakers or bleaching in the sun.

Captain Inocencio was a person of some importance here, for, besides his
occupation as a trader, he exacted toll from a score or more of lazy
blacks. They were a lawless crew, gathered from the remotest corners of
the Indies, composed of Jamaicans, 'Bajans, and Saint Lucians, all
reared to easy life and ripe for such an occasional crafty pilgrimage as
Inocencio might devise. They had gathered around him naturally, paying
him scant revenue, to be sure, yet offering a certain loyalty that had
its uses. Although the village was but a mile from the town itself,
Inocencio's word was law; when the Colombian soldiers were called upon
to visit the spot, they came in numbers, never singly.

The girl was seated on the rickety porch of his cabin, her feet drawn
under her, her chin upon her knees. The other women were gossiping
loudly, staring at her from a distance, but her black eyes only
smoldered sullenly. He swore at the curious negro wenches and sent the
girl about her household duties, then stretched himself in the shade and
eyed her complacently until he fell asleep.

It was a week later that one of his men came to him breathlessly to
announce that the San Blas Indians were in the town.

"How many?" queried Inocencio.

"Four boat-loads."

"Did they come to trade?"

"Oh yes, boss."

This was no unusual thing, for they often displayed their little cargoes
of nuts and fruits and vegetables upon the water-front. Inocencio rose
lazily and stretched, then, calling the woman, explained the tidings to
her.

"I will go see them," he announced, finally.

"Oh, boss," cried the black man, "they will kill you!"

He shrugged his brawny shoulders and, thrusting the machete beneath his
arm, took the trail out through the mangrove swamp.

Straight to the Colon water-front he went, and there flaunted himself
before the men from down the coast. Here and there he strolled, casting
back their looks of hatred with a bravado that attracted all the idlers
in the neighborhood. Wenches nudged one another and tittered nervously,
pointing him out and telling anew the story of his daring. Men watched
him with wondering admiration, and he heard them murmuring:

"Ah, that Inocencio!"

"_El diabolo!_"

"And so brave! He would fight an army."

"See the great arms of him, and the eye like a tiger."

It was the keenest pleasure he had ever tasted.

As for his enemies, they kept their silence. They bartered their stock
and, having made their purchases, raised sail and scudded away down the
coast whence they had come.

Inocencio got drunk that night--for who could withstand the lavish
flattery that poured from every _cantina_ up and down the length of
Bottle Alley? Who could resist the smiles of the chalk-faced females of
Cash Street, all eager to laud his bravery. Some time before morning he
reeled into his shack beneath the palms, to find the woman waiting
fearfully. He cursed at her for staring at him so, and fell upon his
bed.

In the months that followed he seldom lost an opportunity of showing
himself to the San Blas men when they came to town, but in time this
pleasure palled as all others had, for the woman's kindred seemed
incapable of resentment. Gradually, also, he became accustomed to her
presence, and spent much of his time among the women of Cash Street. On
one occasion he returned from an orgy of this sort to find her talking
to one of his men, a young Barbadian with a giant's frame. It was only
by accident, due to the liquor in him, that his hand went wild and he
missed killing the fellow; then he beat the woman unmercifully.

Chancing to meet the Señor Williams on the street some time later, he
said: "_Buenas dias_, señor! You see, Captain Inocencio is still alive
and the woman has not run away."

His former employer grunted, as if neither phenomenon were worthy of
comment.

"I've heard how you rub it into those San Blas fellows," Williams
remarked. "I can't understand why they never avenged Markeeña."

"Bah! They have heard of me," said the Haytian, boastfully; then, with a
grin, "You remember our bet, señor?"

"I never made you a bet," the American denied, hotly. "But I've a mind
to. I've been here ten years, and I think I know those people."

"Two hundred pesos!"

"You'll never have a child by her. They won't allow it. They'll get her
and you, too, in ample time. I tell you, their blood is clean."

"Two hundred pesos that she brings me a San Blas half-breed within two
months," smiled the mulatto, insolently.

And Williams exclaimed: "I'll do it. It's worth two hundred 'silver' to
see a miracle."

"_Bueno!_ I'll bring him to you when he comes."

Thereafter Inocencio gave over beating the woman.

Back at the little settlement beyond the swamp the coming event did not
pass without comment, and although the black women were kind to their
straight-haired neighbor, she never made friends with them, nor did she
ever accompany Inocencio to town. On the contrary, she seemed obsessed
by an ever-present dread, and whenever she heard that her own people
were near she concealed herself and did not appear again until they were
gone. Bred into her deepest conscience was the certainty that her tribe
would make desperate attempt to preserve its most sacred tradition, and
hence, as the days dragged on and her condition became more pronounced
her fears increased likewise. She began to look forward to the birth of
the child as the crisis upon which her own life hinged. Inocencio did
his best to dissipate her fears, explaining boastfully that the mere
mention of his name was ample protection for her, and, did he wish it,
not even the army of the Republic could take her from him. But still she
would not be convinced.

And then, in the dark of the December moon, the expected came. It was
that season when the rains were at their heaviest, when rust and rot
might be felt by the fingers. A gray mold had crept over all things
indoors; a myriad of insect pests burdened the air.

In the rare intervals between showers every faintest draught deluged the
huts from the dripping palm leaves overhead. From the swamp arose a
noxious vapor whenever the sun exposed itself; tree-toads shrilled
incessantly. Outside, the surf maintained its sullen murmur; through the
gloom of starless nights its phosphorescent outlines rushed across the
reef like phantom serpents in parade.

In the dead of a night like this the visitors arrived.

Even the heavy animal slumber of the blacks was broken by the scream
that issued from the hut of Captain Inocencio. And then the sound of
such fighting! The negroes might have rushed to the assistance of their
leader had it not been for the echo of that awful woman-cry hovering
over the village like a shadow. It filled the air and hung there,
saturating the breathless night with such unnamable terror that the
wakened children began to whimper and the women buried their heads in
the ragged bedding to keep it out. Death was among them and the bravest
cowered while through the quivering silence there came the sounds of a
mighty combat lasting for such an interminable time that the listeners
became hysterical.

At length they discovered that the night was dead again, save for the
sudden patter of raindrops on the thatches when the palm fronds stirred.
One of them called shrilly, another answered, but they did not venture
forth. Afterward they fancied they had heard the thrust of paddles in
the lagoon and strange voices dwindling away to seaward, but they were
not sure. Eventually, however, the stillness got upon them more
fearfully than the former noises, and they stirred. Then, in time, they
heard the voice of Inocencio himself cursing faintly, as if from a great
distance. A light showed through the cracks of a hut, and Nicholas, the
least timid, emerged with a lantern held on high. He summoned the rest
around him, then went toward the black shadow of Inocencio's dwelling
with a score of white-eyed, dusky faces at his shoulder.

The door was down, and from the threshold they could see what the front
room contained. It was Nicholas who, with clattering teeth and nerveless
fingers, dragged a blanket from the bed and covered the woman's figure.
It was he who traced the feeble voice to the wreck of a room behind, and
strove to lift Inocencio out of the welter in which he lay. But the
Haytian blasted him with curses for opening his wounds; so they propped
him against the wall by his direction, and bound him about with strips
torn from the mattress. Then he called for a cigarette, and its ashes
were upon his breast when the French doctor arrived from the hospital on
the Point.

When the white man's work was done, the mulatto addressed him weakly:

"Will m'sieu' do me a great favor?"

"Certainly."

"M'sieu' is acquainted with the American, Señor Williams?"

"_Oui._"

"Will _m'sieu' le docteur_ please to tell him that Captain Inocencio has
won his wager?"

"I don't understand."

"Listen! In the room yonder, under the bed, m'sieu' will find a little
boy baby rolled up in a blanket. The woman heard them at the door, and
she was just in time. Oh, she knew they would be coming."

The French doctor nodded his comprehension. "But--your wife herself?"
said he. "Perhaps when you are well again you can have your vengeance.
The soldiers will--"

"Bah! What is the use?" interrupted Inocencio. "The world is full of
women." Then, strangely enough, he bared his yellow teeth in a smile of
rarest tenderness. "But this boy of mine! They came to kill him,
m'sieu', and to show that the San Blas blood cannot be crossed; but the
woman was too quick of wit. They did not find him, praise God! _Le
docteur_ has seen many children, perhaps, but never a child like this."
He ran on with a father's tender boastfulness. "M'sieu' will note the
back and the legs of him. And see, he did not even cry, poor little man!
Oh, he is like his father for bravery! He will be my vengeance, for he
has the San Blas blood in him; he will be a man like me, too. Bring him
to me quickly; I must see him again." He was still babbling fondly to
the negroes about him when the doctor reappeared, empty-handed.

"The child is dead," said the white man, simply.

In the silence Inocencio rose to a sitting posture. His fierce eyes grew
wild with a fright that had never been there until this moment. Then,
before they could prevent him, he had gained his feet. He waved them
aside and went into the room of death, walking like a strong man. A
candle guttering beside the open window betrayed the utter nakedness of
the place. With one movement of his great, bony hands he ripped the
planks of the bed asunder and stared downward. Then he turned to the
east and, raising his arms above his head, gave a terrible cry. He began
to sway, and even as the doctor leaped to save him he fell with a crash.

It was Nicholas who told the priest that the French doctor would not let
them move him; for he lay upon his face at the feet of the San Blas
woman, his arms flung outward like the arms of a cross.




THE WAG-LADY




Her real name was June--well, the rest doesn't matter; for no one ever
got beyond that point. It was the Scrap Iron Kid who first bore news of
her coming to the Wag-boys. Knowing him for a poet, they put down his
perfervid description as the logical outpouring of a romantic spirit.

Reddy summed it up neatly by saying, "The Kid has fell for another
quilt, that's all."

"I 'ain't fell for no frill," the Kid stoutly declared. "I've saw too
many to lose me out. This gal's a thoroughbred."

"Another recruit for Simons, I suppose," Llewellyn yawned. "I'll drop in
at the theater and look her over."

"An' she ain't no actor, neither," Scrap Iron declared. "She's goin' to
start a hotel."

"Bah! If she's as good-looking as you claim, some Swede will marry her
before she can buy her dishes."

"Sure! They must all pull something like that to start with," said the
Dummy, who was a woman-hater; "then when you've played 'em straight they
h'ist the pirate's flag and go to palmin' percentage checks in some
dance-hall."

But again the idealistic Scrap Iron Kid came stubbornly to the defense
of the new-comer; and the argument was growing warm when Thomasville and
the Swede entered with two caddies of tobacco which they had managed to
acquire during the confusion at the water-front, thus ending the
discussion.

There were six of the Wag-boys, six as bold and unscrupulous gentlemen
as the ebb and swirl of the Northern gold rush had left stranded beneath
the rim of the Arctic, and they had joined forces, drawn as much,
perhaps, by their common calling as by the facilities thus afforded for
perfecting any alibis that a long and lonesome winter might render
necessary. Nor is it quite correct to state that they were stranded; for
it takes more than the buffets of a stormy fate to strand such men as
the Dummy and George Llewellyn and the Scrap Iron Kid and their three
companions.

Llewellyn was the gentleman of the outfit, owing to the fact that the
polish of an early training had not been utterly dulled by a four years'
trick at Deer Lodge Penitentiary. The Dummy had gained his name from an
admirable self-restraint which no "third-degree" methods had ever served
to break; Thomasville was so called because of a boyish pride in his
Georgia birthplace; while Reddy and the Swede--But this is the story of
the Wag-lady, and we digress.

To begin with, June was young, with a springtime flush in her cheeks,
and eyes as clear as glacier pools. Yet with all her youth and beauty,
she possessed a poise that held men at a distance. She also had a
certain fearlessness that came, perhaps, from worldly innocence and was
far more effective than the customary brazenness of frontier women. She
went ahead with her business, asking neither advice nor assistance, and,
almost before the Wag-boys knew what she was up to, she had leased the
P. C. Warehouse near their cabin and had carpenters changing it into a
bunk-house.

In a week it was open for business; on the second night after it was
full. Then she built a tiny cabin near her "hotel," and proceeded to
keep house for herself, sleeping daytimes and working nights.

"Say, she's coinin' money!" the Scrap Iron Kid advised his companions
some time later. "She's got fifty bunks at a dollar apiece, and each one
is full of Swede. You'd ought 'o drift by in business hours--it sounds
like a sawmill."

"If she's getting the money so fast, why don't you grab her, Kid?"
inquired Llewellyn.

"You cut that out!" snapped the former speaker. "There ain't nobody
going to grab that dame. I'd croak any guy that made a crack at her, and
that goes!"

Seeing a familiar light smoldering in the Kid's eyes, Llewellyn desisted
from further comment, but he made up his mind to become acquainted with
June at once.

Now, while he succeeded, it was in quite an unexpected manner; for
before he had formulated any plan Thomasville came to him with a
proposition that drove all thoughts of women from his mind and sent them
both out to the mines shortly after dark, each provided with a
six-shooter and a bandana handkerchief with eyeholes cut in it.

Jane had returned to her cabin the following morning, and was preparing
for bed, when she heard a faltering footstep outside. She glanced down
at her money-sack filled with the night's receipts of her hotel, then at
the fastenings of her door. She knew that law was but a pretense and
order a mockery in the camp, but the next instant she slid back the bolt
and let in a flood of morning sunlight.

There, leaning against her wall, was a tall, dark young man whose head
was hanging loosely and rolling from side to side. His hair beneath the
gray Stetson was wet, his boots were sodden and muddy, one arm was
thrust limply into the front of his coat as if paralyzed. She saw that
the sleeve was caked with blood. Even as she spoke he sagged forward and
slid down at her feet.

She was not the sort to run for help, and so, taking him under the
armpits, she had him on her bed and his sleeve cut away before he opened
his eyes. It was but an instant's work to heat a basin of water; then
she fell to bathing the wound. When she drew forth the shreds of cloth
that had been taken into the flesh by the bullet, the man's face grew
ghastly and she heard his teeth grind, but he made no other sound.

"That hurt, didn't it?" she smiled at him, and he tried to smile back.
"How did it happen?" she queried.

"Accident."

"You have come a long way?"

He nodded.

"Why didn't you ask for help?"

"It--wasn't worth while."

She looked at him wonderingly, admiring his gameness; then was surprised
to hear him say:

"So you're June!"

"Yes."

He closed his eyes and lay still while she poured some brandy for him;
then he said:

"Please don't bother. I must be going."

"Not till you've eaten something." She laid a soft, cool palm upon his
forehead when he endeavored to rise, and he dropped back again, watching
her curiously.

He had barely finished eating when another footstep sounded outside and
a heavy knock followed.

"Hey, June!" called a voice. "Are you up?"

It was Jim Devlin, the marshal, and the girl rose, only to stop at the
look she saw in the wounded man's face. His dark eyes had widened;
desperation haunted them.

"What is it, Mr. Devlin?" she answered.

"Have you seen anything of a wounded man within the last half-hour?"

She flashed another glance at her guest, to find him staring at her
defiantly, but there was no appeal in his face. "What in the world do
you mean?"

"There was a hold-up at Anvil Creek, and some shooting. We're pretty
sure one of the gang was hit, but he got away. Pete, the waterman, says
he saw a sick-looking fellow crossing the tundra in this direction. I
thought you might have noticed him."

Again June's eyes flew back to the pale face of the stranger. He had
risen now and, seeing the frank inquiry in her gaze, he shrugged his
shoulders and turned his good hand palm upward as if in surrender,
whereupon she answered the marshal:

"I'm sorry you can't come in, Mr. Devlin; but I'm just going to bed."

"Oh, that's all right. I'll take a look through your bunk-house. Sorry
to disturb you."

When the footsteps had died away the stranger moistened his lips and
asked, "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know. You are brave, and brave men aren't bad. Besides, I
couldn't bear to send any person out of God's sunshine into the dark.
You see, I don't believe in prisons."

When Llewellyn told the other Wag-boys of June's part in his escape his
story was met with exclamations that would have pleased her to hear, but
the Scrap Iron Kid broke in to say, menacingly:

"Look here, George, don't aim to take no advantage of what she done for
you when you was hurt, or I'll tip her off!"

"Aw, rats!" cried Llewellyn, furiously. "What do you take me for?" Then,
staring coldly at the Kid, he said, "And it won't do her any good to
have you hanging around, either."

June's action toward Llewellyn, and her mode of life, gained the
admiration and respect of the Wag-boys, and although they avoided her
carefully, they watched over her from a distance. Nor was it long before
they found a means of serving her, although she did not hear of it for
many months.

The Dummy came home one night to inform his partners that Sammy
Sternberg, who owned the Miners' Rest, was boasting of his conquest of
June, whereupon Sammy was notified by Llewellyn, acting as a committee
of one, that his lies must cease. Sammy got a little drunk a few nights
later and boasted again, with the result that the Scrap Iron Kid, who
was playing black-jack, promptly floored him with a clout of his .45,
and the Swede who was standing near by kicked the prostrate Sternberg in
the most conspicuous part of his green-and-purple waistcoat, thereby
loosening a rib.

It was not long before the sporting element of the camp learned to treat
June with the highest courtesy, and, since she had been adopted in a
measure by the Wag-boys, she became known as the Wag-lady.

Meanwhile June was prospering. The homeless men who patronized her place
began to intrust their gold-sacks to her care; so she went to Harry
Hope, the P. C. agent, and bought a safe in which to deposit her
lodgers' valuables. Frequently thereafter she sat guard all night over
considerable sums of money while the owners snored peacefully in the big
back room.

When winter closed down June began to see more and more of Harry Hope.
And she began to like him, too; for he was the sort to win women's
hearts, being big and boyish and full of merriment. He had spent several
years in the Northland, and its winds had blown from him many of the
city-born traits, leaving him unaffected, impulsive, and hearty. While
the frontier takes away some evil qualities it also takes some good
ones, and Harry Hope was not by any means a saint. As the nights grew
longer he gained the habit of dropping in to talk with June on his way
up-town. One evening he paused before leaving and asked:

"Can you take care of something for me, June?"

"Of course," she answered.

He flung a leather wallet into her lap, laughing. "You're the banker for
the community; so lock that up overnight, if you please."

"Oh-h!" she gasped. "There are thousands of dollars! I'd rather not."

"Come! you must! I didn't get it in time to put it in the company's
safe, and if I carry it around somebody will frisk me."

"Where are you going?"

"Down to Sternberg's. I'm going to outguess his faro-dealer. This is my
lucky night, you know."

Realizing full well the lawlessness of the camp, June felt a bit nervous
as she laid the money away. In the course of the evening, however, she
gradually lost her fears.

Some time after midnight, when the big front room of the bunk-house was
empty, the outside door opened, admitting a billow of frost out of which
emerged two men. They were strangers to June, and when she asked them if
they wished beds they said "No." They backed up to the stove and began
staring at their surroundings curiously.

It had never been June's practice to forbid any man the comfort of her
coal-burner, even though he lacked the price for a bed, but, remembering
the money in her safe, she sharply ordered these two out.

Neither man stirred. They blinked at her in a manner that sent little
spasms of nervousness up her spine.

"I tell you it's too late--you can't stay!"

"That's too bad," said one of them. He crossed toward the desk behind
which she sat, at which she softly closed the heavy safe door. It gave
out a metallic click, however, which caused the fellow's eyes to gleam.

"That safe ain't locked, eh?" he inquired.

"Yes, it is," she lied.

He smiled as if to put her at her ease, but it was an evil leer and set
her heart to pounding violently. She was tempted to cry out and arouse
her lodgers, but merely flung back the fellow's glance defiantly.

The stranger ran his eye over the place and then said, "I guess we'll
set awhile." Drawing a chair up beside the door, he motioned to his
partner to do the same. They tilted back at their ease, and June fancied
they were listening intently. For a half-hour, an hour, they sat there,
following her every movement, now and then exchanging a word in a tone
too low for her to hear.

She was well-nigh hysterical with the strain of waiting, when she saw
both men lower the front legs of their chairs and rise together. The
next instant the door swung violently yet noiselessly inward and a
masked man with a gun in his hand leaped out of the night. Another man
was at his heels, and they covered her simultaneously. Then a most
amazing thing occurred.

June's mysterious visitors pounced upon them from behind, there was a
brief, breathless struggle, and the next instant all four swept out into
the snow amid a tangle of arms and legs. Followed the sounds of a
furious scuffle, of heavy blows, curses and groans, then a voice:

"Beat it now or we'll croak the two of you! And peddle the word that no
rough stuff goes here. Do you get that?" There was the impact of a boot
planted against flesh, and the next instant June's deliverers had
re-entered and closed the door.

One of them was sucking a wound in the fleshy part of his hand where a
falling revolver hammer had punched him, but he inquired in a thoroughly
business-like tone, "Got a little hot water, June?"

June emerged weakly from behind her desk. "W-what does it all--mean?"

"Oh, it's all right. They won't trouble you no more."

"They came to--rob me, and you knew it--"

"Sure! Harry Hope got full and told about leaving eight thousand dollars
with you; so we beat 'em to it."

"But why didn't you say so? You frightened me."

"We wasn't sure they'd try it, and we didn't like to work you up."

"Please--who are you?"

"Us? Why, we're Wag-boys! Llewellyn's our pal. I'm Charley Fitzhugh;
they call me the Dummy. And this is Thomasville."

Thomasville nodded and mumbled greetings without removing his thumb from
his mouth, whereupon June began to express her gratitude. But thanks
threw the Wag-boys into confusion, it seemed, and they quickly bade her
an embarrassed good night.

Now that they had removed the weight of obligation that had rested upon
them, the Wags became more neighborly. Llewellyn and the Scrap Iron Kid
called to explain that the Dummy and Thomasville had broken all rules of
friendship by "hogging the spotlight" and to express their own regret at
having been absent during the attempted hold-up.

June was eating her midnight lunch when they came, and after they had
left Llewellyn said:

"She didn't have any butter, Kid. Notice it?"

"Sure. Butter's peluk. Rothstein cornered the supply, and he's holding
it for a raise."

"Where does he keep it?"

"In that big tent back of his store, along with his other stuff."

Now, the Wag-boys did nothing by halves. About dusk the following day
the Rothstein watchman was accosted by a stranger who had just mushed in
from the creek. The two gossiped for a moment. Then, as the stranger
made off, he slipped and fell, injuring himself so painfully that the
watchman was forced to help him down to Kelly's drug-store. Upon
returning from this labor of charity the watchman discovered, to his
amazement and horror, that during his absence two men had entered the
tent by means of a six-foot slit in the rear wall. They had brought a
sled with them, moreover, and had made off with about five hundred
dollars' worth of Rothstein's heart's blood, labeled "Cold Brook
Creamery, Extra Fine."

The next morning when June returned to her cabin she found a case of
butter.

A few days later the Dummy discovered a string of ptarmigan hanging
beside the rear door of a restaurant, and, desiring to offer June some
delicate little attention, he returned after dark and removed them. As
ptarmigan were selling at five dollars a brace, he was careful to
protect the girl; he sat on the back steps of the restaurant and picked
the birds thoroughly, scattering the feathers with a careless hand.

Scarcely a day passed that June did not receive something from the Wags,
but of course she never dreamed that her gifts had been stolen. As for
her admirers, it was the highest mark of their esteem thus to lay at her
feet the choicest fruits of their precarious labors, and, although they
were common thieves--nay, worse than that--they stole rather from love
of excitement than for hope of gain, and the more fantastic the
adventure the more it tickled their distorted fancies.

They were most amusing, and June grew to like them immensely. She began
to mother them in the way that pleases all women. She ruled them like a
family of wayward children, she settled their disputes, and they
submitted with subdued, though extravagant, joy. She asked Llewellyn
once about that wound in his arm, but he lied fluently, and she believed
him, for she was not the kind to credit evil of her friends.

Once they had received encouragement, they fairly monopolized her. She
was never safe from interruption, for the Wag-boys never slept. They
came to her cabin singly and collectively at all hours of day or night,
during her absence or during her presence, and they never failed to
leave something behind them.

Reddy was a good cook, but he loathed a stove as he loathed a policeman,
yet he donned an apron, and at the cost of much profanity and sweat
produced a chocolate cake that would have done credit to a New England
housewife. Furthermore, it bore June's name in a beautiful scroll
surrounded by a chocolate wreath, and she found it on her bed when she
came home one morning.

Chancing to express a liking for oysters in the hearing of the Scrap
Iron Kid, she mysteriously received a whole case of them when she knew
very well that there were none in camp. Of course she did not dream that
in securing them the Kid had put his person in deadly peril.

On returning from her duties at another time she found that during the
night the interior walls of her cabin had been painted, and, although
she did not want them painted and although the smell gave her a violent
headache, she pretended to be overcome with delight. In order to
beautify her little nest Reddy had burgled a store and stolen all the
paint there was of the particular shade that pleased his eye.

Now, the Wag-boys pretended to be care-free and happy as time went on.
In reality they were gnawed by a secret trouble--it was June's growing
fondness for Harry Hope. After careful observation they decided that the
P. C. agent would not do at all; he was too wild. He had undeniably lost
his head and was gambling heavily, tempted perhaps by the lax morality
of the camp and the license of good times.

It was the Dummy who finally proposed a means of safeguarding June's
wandering affections.

"Somebody's got to split her away from this Hope," he declared. "It's up
to us, and Llewellyn's the only one in her class."

The Scrap Iron Kid's face assumed an ugly yellow cast as he inquired,
quietly, "D'you mean George is to marry her?"

"Hardly!" exploded the Dummy. "Just toll her away."

"Why shouldn't I marry her?" Llewellyn demanded.

"I can think of five reasons," the Kid retorted. He tapped his chest
with his finger. "Here's one, and there's the other four." He pointed to
the other Wag-boys. "D'you think we'd let you marry her? Huh! I'd sooner
marry her myself."

Llewellyn ended the discussion by stamping out of the cabin, cursing his
partners with violence.

Business of the P. C. Company took Harry Hope to Council City in
February; so the Wags felt easier--but only for a time. They found that
June was grieving for him, and were plunged into deep despair until
Scrap Iron came home with the explanation that the lovers had quarreled
before parting. It was a signal for a celebration during which Reddy
cooked wildly for a week, making puddings and pies and pastries, most of
which were smuggled into June's cabin. Thomasville journeyed out to a
certain roadhouse run by a Frenchman, and returned with a case of eggs
wrapped up in a woolen comforter. It required the combined perjury of
the other Wags to prove an alibi for him, but June had an omelet every
morning thereafter.

Then, just as they were weaning her away, as they thought, the blow
fell. It came with a crushing force that left them dumb and
panic-stricken. June took pneumonia! The Scrap Iron Kid brought the
first news of her illness, and he blubbered like a baby, while Dummy,
the woman-hater, cursed like a man bereft.

"How d'you know it's pneumonia?" queried Thomasville.

"The doc says so. Me 'n' George dropped in with some beefsteaks we
copped from the butcher, and found her in bed, coughing like the devil.
She couldn't get up--pains in her boosum. We run for Doc Whiting
and--fellers, it's true! George is there now." The Kid swallowed
bravely, and two tears rolled down his cheeks.

The Wag-boys broke out of their cabin on the run, then strung out down
the snow-banked street toward June's cabin, where they found Dr.
Whiting, very grave, and Llewellyn with his face blanched and his lips
tight drawn. They tiptoed in and stood against the wall in a silent,
stricken row, twirling their caps and trying to ease the pain in their
throats.

The Wag-lady was indeed very ill. Her yellow hair was tumbled over her
pillow and she was in great pain, but she smiled at them and made a
feeble jest--which broke in her throat, for she was young and all alone
and very badly frightened. It was too much for the Scrap Iron Kid, who
stumbled out into the freezing night and fought with his misery. He
tried to pray, but from long inexperience he fancied he made bad work of
it.

An hour later they assembled and laid plans to weather the storm.

"She's worried about her hotel," Llewellyn announced. "If that was off
her mind she'd have a better chance."

"Let's manage it for her," the Dummy offered. "I'll watch it to-night."

"An' who'll watch you?" queried the Kid.

"D'you reckon I'd run out on a pal like June?" stormed the Dummy,
whereat Scrap Iron assured him he was positive that he would not, for
the very good reason that he and Reddy would take care that no
opportunity offered.

"You run the joint like you say, an' we'll lookout her game for her;
then to-morrow night the other three can do it. We'll take turn an' turn
about, an' them that's off shift will nurse her. I've been thinkin'
now--if only we knowed something about women folks--"

"I been married once or twice, if that's any good," Thomasville ventured
to confess; whereupon he was elected head nurse by virtue of his
experience, and accordingly they went to work.

Dr. Whiting had promised to secure a woman to care for the sick girl,
but women were scarce that winter and he was only partly successful, so
the greater portion of the responsibility fell upon the Wags. He also
spoke of removing June to the excuse for a hospital, but they would not
hear to this. And so the battle for her life began.

It was a battle, too, for she grew rapidly worse and soon was delirious,
babbling of strange things which tore at the hearts of the Wag-boys. Day
after day, night after night, she lay racked and tortured, fighting the
brave fight of youth, and through it all the six thieves tended her.
They were ever at her side, coming and going like the wraiths of her
distorted fancy, and while three of them divided the day into watches
the other three ran the bunk-house, keeping strict account of every
penny taken in. They O. K.'d one another's books, and it would have
fared badly indeed with any one of them had he allowed the least
discrepancy to appear in his reckoning.

It was a strange scene, this, a sick and friendless girl mothered by a
gang of crooks. When June's condition improved they rejoiced with a deep
ferocity that was pitiful; when it grew worse they went about hushed and
terror-stricken. Through it all she called incessantly for Harry Hope,
and it was Llewellyn who finally volunteered to go to Council City and
fetch him--an offer that showed the others he was game.

But before the weather had settled sufficiently to allow it, Hope came.
He arrived one night in a blinding smother which whined down over the
treeless wastes, driving men indoors before its fury. Hearing of June's
illness, he had taken the trail within an hour, fighting his way for a
hundred trackless miles through a blizzard that daunted even a Wag-boy,
and he showed the marks of battle. His face was bitten deeply by the
cold, his dogs were dying in the harness, and it was evident that he had
not slept for many hours. He whimpered like a child when Llewellyn met
him at June's door; then he heard her wearily babbling his name, as she
had done these many, many days, and he went in, kneeling beside her with
his frozen breath still caked upon his parka hood.

Llewellyn stood by and heard him tenderly calling to the wandering girl,
saw the peace that came into her face as something told her he was near;
then the Wag-boy who had once been a gentleman came forward and gave
Hope his hand, and thanked him for his coming.

June began to mend after that, and it was not long before Whiting said
she might recover if she had proper food. She would, however, need
nourishment--milk; but there was only one cow in camp, and other sick
people, and not sufficient milk to go round. The Wag-boys lumped their
bank-rolls and offered to buy the animal from its owner, but he refused.
So they stole the cow and all her fodder.

Now it is no difficult matter to steal a cow, even in a mining-camp in
the dead of winter, but it is not nearly so easy for a cow to remain
stolen under such conditions, and the Wags were hard put to prevent
discovery. It would have been far easier, they realized, to steal a
two-story brick house or a printing-office, and then, too, not one of
them knew how to secure the milk even after they had gained the cow's
consent. They made various experiments, however, one of which resulted
in Reddy's having the breath rammed out of him, and another causing
Thomasville to adopt crutches for a day or so. But eventually June got
her milk, a gallon of it daily. Every night or two the cow had to be
moved, every day they gagged her to muffle her voice. Then, when
discovery was imminent, they made terms of surrender, exacting
twenty-five per cent. of the gross output as the consideration for her
return.

They breathed much easier when the cow was off their hands.

Spring was in sight when June became strong enough to take up her
duties, and she was surprised to find her hotel running as usual, also a
flour-sack full of currency beneath her bed, together with a set of
books showing her receipts. It was signed by Llewellyn and witnessed by
the other Wags. There was no record of disbursements.

One day Whiting advised her to get out in the air, and the Scrap Iron
Kid volunteered to take her for a dog ride.

"I didn't know you had a team," she said.

"Who? Me? Sure! I got as good a team as ever you see," he declared, and
when she accepted his invitation he proceeded to get his dogs together
in a startling manner. He tied a soup-bone on a string and walked the
back streets; then, when he beheld a likely-looking husky, he dragged
the bone behind him, enticing the animal by degrees to the Wag-boys'
cabin, where he promptly tied it up. He repeated the performance seven
times. The matter of harness and sled was but a detail; so June enjoyed
a ride that put pink roses into her cheeks and gave the Scrap Iron Kid a
feeling of pure, exalted joy such as he had never felt in all his
adventurous career.

The day she walked over to the Wag house unassisted was one of such wild
rejoicing that she was forced to tell them shyly of her own happiness, a
happiness so new that as yet she could scarcely credit it. She was to be
Mrs. Harry Hope, and asked them to wish her joy.

Llewellyn made a speech that evoked the admiration of them all, even to
the Kid, who was miserably jealous, and June went home with her heart
very warm and tender toward these six adventurers who had been so true
to her.

It was to be expected that Hope would share in his sweetheart's
extravagant gladness, for he loved her deeply, with all the force of his
big, strong nature, yet he acted strangely as time went on. Now he was
sad and worried, again he seemed tortured by a lurking disquietude of
spirit. This alarmed the Wag-lady, and she set out to find the secret of
his trouble.

The ice was breaking when he made a clean breast of it, and when he had
finished June felt that her heart was breaking also. It was the
commonplace story of a young man tempted beyond his strength. Hope's
popularity had made him a host of friends, while his generosity had made
"no" a difficult answer. He had plunged into excesses during the early
winter; gambled wildly, not to win, but for the fun of it. He had lost
company money, trusting to his ability to make it good from his own
pocket when the time came. The time was coming, and his pockets were
empty. Spring was here, the first boats would arrive any day, and with
them would come the P. C. men to audit his accounts. It was possible to
cover it up, to be sure, but he scorned to falsify his books.

"I should have stayed in Council City," he said, "but when I heard you
were--sick--" He buried his brown face in his hands.

The girl's lips were white as she asked, "How much is it?"

"Nearly twenty thousand."

She shook her head hopelessly. "I haven't nearly that much, Harry, but
perhaps they would let us pay off the balance as we are able."

"June!" he cried. "I wouldn't let you! I'll go to jail first! I--I
suppose you won't want to marry me, now that you know?"

"I love you more than twenty thousand dollars' worth," she replied.
"We'll face it out together."

"If only I had time I could pay it back and they'd never know, for I
have property that will sell, once the season opens."

"Then you must take time."

"I can't. Sternberg will tell."

"What has Sternberg to do with it?"

"I lost the money in his place--his books will show. He suspects, even
now, and he's talking about it. He doesn't like me, you know, since he
heard of our engagement."

The day

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