Long Odds Part 31

Benicia smiled, a little bitterly. "Yes," she said, "I know that the man who is so rash as to attempt it in this country is usually recalled in disgrace. Still, it is not a thing that happens very frequently. Dom Clemente is to be made the scapegoat."

"I think," said the man gravely, "I may be strong enough to save him that. It is possible, as I have told him, that he will be recalled--but what he has done will stand."

He spoke at last as a ruler, with authority, and a trace of sternness in his eyes, but his face changed again.

"Senorita," he said, "if it happens, I think you will not grudge it, or blame me."

The girl saw the opportunity she had been waiting for. "As you have admitted, you owe my father something, and now you have asked something more. Is it not conceivable that you owe me a little, too. I am an influence here--and it would be different in Lisbon if Dom Clemente was sent home again. Besides, sometimes he will listen to me.

Now and then a woman has made a change in a man's policy, and, though it is a little more difficult when the man is one's father, it might be done again."

"Ah," said her companion, "you wish to make a bargain."

"It would be too great a condescension, Senor," and Benicia laughed.

"I want a promise that is to be unconditional. Some day, perhaps, I shall ask you to do something for me. Then you will do it whatever it is."

The man looked up at her with a little dry smile, but, as he admitted, he owed her father a good deal, and he was not too old for gallantry.

Besides that, he had the gift of insight, and a curious confidence in this girl. He felt she would not ask him anything that was not fitting.

"The request," he said, "is a little vague, and perhaps, I am a trifle rash, but I almost think I can promise that what you ask shall be done."

Benicia, reaching out from the hammock, touched him with her fan.

"Now," she said, "I know what you think of me. How shall I make my poor acknowledgments? Still, there is another thing. You will discover presently that the brooms of the State are slow. There are two men not among its servants who have commenced the sweeping already. I think Dom Clemente knows this, but you will not mention it to him."

Her companion glanced at her sharply with a sudden keenness in his eyes, but he said nothing, and the girl smiled again.

"When you hear of them I would like you to remember that they are friends of mine," she said. "You will, of course, recognize that n.o.body I said that of could do anything that was really reprehensible."

"I might admit that it was unlikely," said her companion.

"Then," said Benicia, "when the time comes I would like you to remember it. That is another thing you will promise."

She flashed one swift glance at her companion, who smiled, and then looked round as Dom Clemente and two of the gunboat's officers came towards them along the deck. She roused herself to talk to them, and succeeded brilliantly, now and then to the momentary embarra.s.sment of the officers, who were young, while the man with the gray hair lay in a deck chair a little apart watching her over his cigar. She was clever, and quick-witted, but he knew also that she was like her father, one who at any cost stood by her friends. At the same time he was a little puzzled, for, in the case of a young woman, friend is a term of somewhat vague and comprehensive significance, and she had mentioned that there were two of them. That appeared to complicate the affair, but he had, at least, made a promise, and it was said of him that when he did so he usually kept it, though it was now and then in a somewhat grim fas.h.i.+on. There were also men in the sweltering towns beside the surf-swept beach the gunboat crawled along who would have felt uneasy had they known exactly why he had been sent out to them.

CHAPTER XXV

DOMINGO APPEARS

The carriers had stopped in a deserted village one morning after a long and arduous march from the mission station, when Ormsgill, lying in the hot white sand, looked quietly at Nares, who sat with his back against one of the empty huts.

"If I knew what the dusky image was thinking I should feel considerably more at ease," he said. "Still, I don't, and there's very little use in guessing. After all, we are a long way from grasping the negro's point of view on most subjects yet. They very seldom look at things as we do."

Nares nodded. "Anyway, I almost fancy we could consider what he has told us as correct," he said. "It's something to go upon."

The man he referred to squatted close by them, naked to the waist, though a few yards of cotton cloth hung from his hips. An old Snider rifle lay at his side, and he was big and muscular with a heavy, expressionless face. As Ormsgill had suggested, it certainly afforded very little indication of what he was thinking, and left it a question whether he was capable of intelligent thought at all. They had come upon him in the deserted village on the edge of a great swamp an hour earlier, and he had skillfully evaded their questions as to what he was doing there.

It was an oppressively hot morning, and a heavy, dingy sky hung over the vast mora.s.s which they could see through the openings between the scattered huts. It stretched back bare and level, a vast desolation, towards the interior, with a little thin haze floating over it in silvery belts here and there, and streaking the forest that crept up to its edge. The carriers lay half-asleep in the warm sand, blotches of white and blue and ebony, and the man with the rifle appeared vacantly unconcerned. Time is of no value to the negro, and one could have fancied that he was prepared to wait there all day for the white men's next question.

"It's not very much," said Ormsgill reflectively, referring to his comrade's last observation. "Domingo, it seems, is up yonder--but there are one or two other facts, which I think have their significance, in our possession. Herrero is coming up behind us, and, though there are no other Portuguese in the neighborhood, we find this village empty. I should very much like to know why the folks who lived in it have gone away, and I fancy our friend yonder could tell us.

Still, it's quite certain that he won't."

"Herrero evidently means to join hands with Domingo," suggested Nares.

"It's quite possible, too, that he will do what he can to prevent us buying the six boys from the Headman, who, it's generally believed, does a good deal of business with him. It's a little unfortunate. In another week the thing might have been done."

Ormsgill nodded as one who makes his mind up. "When in doubt go straight on--and, as a matter of fact, we can't afford to stop," he said. "Provisions are going to be a consideration. We'll push on and try what can be done with Domingo and the Headman before Herrero comes up."

He turned to the negro, and Nares amplified his question.

"Yes," said the man, with the faintest suggestion of a grin, "I know where Domingo is, and if you come to our village it is very likely that you will see him. I will take you to the Headman for the pieces of cloth you promise."

He got up leisurely, and Ormsgill, who called to the boys, looked at Nares as they plodded into the forest that skirted the swamp.

"It's quite certain the man was waiting for somebody, and it wasn't Herrero, or he wouldn't have gone away," he said. "That naturally seems to suggest he might have been on the lookout for us. In that case I should very much like to know what was amusing him."

It was not to be made clear until some time later, and in the meanwhile they pushed on for a week through straggling forest with all the haste the boys were capable of, though Ormsgill's face grew thoughtful when they twice pa.s.sed an empty village. The fact had its significance, for little labor recruiting had been done in that strip of country. Still, its dusky inhabitants had apparently forsaken it, and it became more evident that something unusual was going on. Once only they met a native, or rather he blundered upon their camp when they lay silent in the thin shadow of more open bush on a burning afternoon, and their guide roused himself sharply to attention when a patter of footsteps came out of the stillness. Somebody was evidently approaching in haste, and Ormsgill glanced at Nares in warning when the negro who lay close beside them rose to a crouching posture and drew back the hammer of his old Snider rifle. It was clear that strangers were regarded with suspicion in that country. Then the man drew one foot under him, and sat upon it with the arm that supported the rifle on his knee, and an unpleasantly suggestive look in his heavy face. One could have fancied that he meant to kill, and Ormsgill stretching out a hand laid it on his comrade's shoulder restrainingly.

"Wait," he whispered. "In the meanwhile it's not our business."

Nares waited, but he felt it become more difficult to do so as the footsteps grew plainer. He could hear the little restless movements of the boys, but he had eyes for little beyond the ominous half-naked figure clutching the heavy rifle. It dominated the picture. Tall trunks, trailing creepers, and cl.u.s.tering carriers grew indistinct, but he was vaguely conscious that there was an opening between the leaves some sixty yards in front of him, and his heart throbbed painfully with the effort the restraint he laid upon himself cost him.

Then a dusky figure appeared in the opening, and stopped a moment, apparently in astonishment or terror, while Ormsgill was sensible of a sudden straining after recollection. The man was leanly muscular and dressed as scantily as any native of the bush, but there was something in his appearance that was vaguely familiar. In the meanwhile he was also conscious that their guide's arms were stiffening rigidly, and when the man's cheek sank a little lower on the rifle stock he let his hand drop from Nares's shoulder. As it happened, he was close behind the negro, and in another moment would have clutched him.

Just then, however, the stranger sprang forward and a little acrid smoke blew into Ormsgill's eyes. There was a detonation and he contrived to fall with a hand on the ground instead of upon the crouching negro with the rifle. When he looked up again the man who had narrowly escaped from the peril by his quickness was running like a deer, and vanished amidst a crash of displaced undergrowth, while their guide flung back his rifle breech with clumsy haste. When he turned round there was no sign of the stranger and Ormsgill was quietly standing on his feet. Only a few seconds had elapsed since the man had first appeared.

The guide made a little grimace which was expressive of resignation as he turned the rifle over and shook out the cartridge, and in another minute or two they were going on again. When he moved a little away from them Ormsgill looked at Nares.

"It's probably just as well our friend does not know I meant to spoil his aim," he said. "I haven't the least notion why he wished to shoot that man, and very much wish I had, but I can't help fancying that I've seen him before--at one of the Missions most likely. I should be glad if anybody could tell me what he is doing here."

There was n.o.body who could do it except, perhaps, their guide, but Ormsgill surmised that he was not likely to supply him with any information. He was not to know until some time later that the man in question had once served Herrero, who had beaten him too frequently and severely, and that as a result of this he met Pacheco the Government messenger in a deserted village after another week's arduous journey. In the meanwhile he pushed on, limping a little, through marsh and forest until their guide led them into a large native village where he expected to find the last of Lamartine's boys.

This one, at least, was not deserted. In fact, it appeared unusually crowded and, as Ormsgill was quick to notice, most of its inhabitants were armed. He had, however, little opportunity of noticing anything else, for he was led straight into the presence of its ruler, who sat on a low stool under a thatched roof raised on a few rickety pillars in the middle of the village. He was dressed in a white man's duck jacket, worn open, and a s.h.i.+rt; and every person of consequence in the place had gathered about him. The guide presented the newcomers tersely, and it seemed to Ormsgill that the manner in which he did it was significant.

"They are here," he said. "I have done as I was bidden."

The Headman spent some time examining the collection of the sundries they offered him and made a few indifferent attempts to restrain the rapacity of his retainers, who desired something, too. Then he asked Ormsgill his business, and nodded when the latter explained it briefly.

"The six boys are certainly here," he said. "Still, I do not know just now if I can sell you them. That will depend--" Nares understood from the next few words that he desired to be a little ambiguous on this point. "You have, it seems, some business with Domingo, too?"

Nares said it concerned the boys in question, but as the labor purveyor had no claim upon them the matter could be arranged with the Headman, who grinned very much as the guide had done, while a curious little smile crept into the faces of some of the rest.

"Then," he said, "I think he will be here in a day or two. Some of my people have gone for him, but I am not sure that he will have much to tell us when he comes. In the meanwhile you will stay with us a few days, and when I am ready to talk about the boys again I will send for you."

He made a sign that the interview was over, and several of his followers who were armed escorted the white men and their boys to the hut set apart for them. They left them there with a plainly worded hint that it would be wise of them not to come out of it, and when they went away Ormsgill looked at Nares.

"I suppose you're not sure what that Headman really meant," he said.

"A man naturally has you at a disadvantage when he doesn't wish to make himself very clear and talks in a tongue you don't quite understand. I wish I knew exactly why he chuckled."

Nares looked thoughtful. "He seemed to know we meant to visit him."