The Stowaway Girl Part 36

There was no mistaking the gleam in those jet-black eyes. The smoldering fire flamed into furnace heat at the implied indignity of such a mandate being delivered by Iris.

"I suppose so," said Iris carelessly. "A servant brought the message.

He came to me in the first instance, but I am just going to my room to pack my few belongings. We leave here at daybreak, you know."

Carmela tried to smile.

"I shall be sorry to lose you," she said, "though I admit it will be pleasant to occupy my own room again."

Then Iris was genuinely distressed.

"I had not the least notion----" she began, but Carmela nodded and made off, saying as she went:

"What matter--for one night?"

So, at last, she would learn the truth. Salvador was out there, alone.

She would soon judge him. If he were innocent, she would know. If he had merely been made the sport of a designing woman, she was ready to forgive. In a more amiable mood than she had displayed at any moment since her arrival at Las FIores, Carmela hastened along a dark corridor, crossed a bare hall, pa.s.sed through a porch, and searched the shadows of the pateo for the form of her one-time lover.

A voice whispered, in French:

"Come quickly, Senhora, I pray you!"

It startled her to find San Benavides talking French, until it occurred to her that Iris and he must converse in that language or hardly at all.

The thought was disquieting. The volcano stirred again.

"Senhora, je vous prie!" again pleaded the man, who was on horseback under the trees.

She did not hesitate, but ran to him. Without a word of explanation, he bent sideways, caught her in his arms, drew her up until she was seated on the holsters strapped to a gaucho saddle, and wheeled his horse into a gallop. Filled with a grim determination, she uttered no protest. Not a syllable crossed her lips lest he should strive to amend his woeful blunder. She noticed that they were not going toward the camp, but circling round the enclosed land in the direction of the hills. Though the night was dark, the stars gave light enough for the horse to move freely. Carmela's head was bent. A gauze-like mantilla covered her black hair, and, strange though it may seem, one woman's small waist and slim figure can be amazingly like the same physical attributes in another woman.

But San Benavides wondered why the cold Ingleza had surrendered so silently. He expected at least a scream, a struggle, an impa.s.sioned demand to be released. He was prepared for anything save a dumb acceptance of this extraordinary raid.

So he began to explain.

"One word, Senhora!" he muttered. "You must think me mad. I am not.

All is lost! Our army is defeated! In an hour Las Flores will be in flames!"

The girl quivered in his arms. A moaning cry came from her.

"It is true, I swear it!" he vowed. "I mean you no ill. I fought till the end, and my good horse alone carried me in advance of the routed troops. Dom Corria may reach the _finca_ alive, but, even so, he and the rest will be killed. I refused to escape without you. Believe me or not, you are dearer than life itself. In the confusion we two may not be missed. Trust yourself wholly to me, I beseech you!"

He spoke jerkily, in the labored phrase of a man who has to pick and choose the readiest words in an unfamiliar language.

Carmela, with a sudden movement, raised her face to his, and threw aside her veil.

"Salvador!" she said.

His eyes glared into hers. His frenzied clutch at the reins pulled the horse on to its haunches.

"My G.o.d! . . . Carmela!" he almost shrieked.

"Yes. So you are running away, Salvador--running away with the English miss--deserting my father in the hour of his need! But she will die with the others, you say. Well, then--join her!"

During that quick twist on the horse's withers, she had plucked a revolver from a holster. She meant to shatter that false face of his utterly, to blast him as with lightning . . . but the lock snapped harmlessly, for San Benavides had, indeed, borne himself gallantly in the fray. He struck at her now in a whirl of fury. She winced, but with catamount activity drew back her arm and hit him on the temple with the heavy weapon. He collapsed limply, reeled from off the saddle, and they fell together. The frightened horse, finding himself at liberty, galloped to the camp, where already there was an unusual commotion.

Carmela flung herself on the man's body. She was capable of extremes either of grief or pa.s.sion.

"Salvador, my love! my love!" she screamed. "What have I done? Speak to me, Salvador! It is I, Carmela! Oh, Mary Mother, come to my aid! I have killed him, killed my Salvador!"

He looked very white and peaceful as he lay there in the gloom. She could not see whether his lips moved. She was too distraught to note if his heart was beating. It seemed incredible that she, a weak woman, should have crushed the life out of that lithe and active frame with one blow. Then a dark stain appeared on the white skin. Her hands, her lips, were covered with blood. She tasted it. The whole earth reeked of it. It scorched her as with vitriol. She rose and ran blindly. The darkness appalled her. No matter now what fate befell, she must have light, the sound of human voices. . . . And she sobbed piteously as she ran:

"Salvador! Oh, G.o.d in heaven, my Salvador!"

It is not the crime, but the conscience, that scourges erring humanity.

Carmela needed some such flogging. It was just as well that her fright at the horrible touch of blood was not balanced by the saner knowledge that a ruptured vein was nature's own remedy for a man jarred into insensibility. Long before Carmela reached the _finca_, San Benavides stirred, groaned, squirmed convulsively, and raised himself on hands and knees. He turned, and sat down, feeling his head.

"The spit-fire!" he muttered. "The she-devil! And that other! Would that I could wring _her_ neck!"

A sputtering of rifles crackled in the valley. There was a blurred clamor of voices. He looked at the sky, at the black summits of the hills. He stood up, and his inseparable sword clanked on the stony ground.

"Ah, well," he growled, "I have done with women. They have had the best of my life. What is left I give to Brazil."

So he, too, made for Las Flores, but slowly, for he was quite exhausted, and his limbs were stiff with the rigors of a wild day in the saddle.

Carmela went back to a household that paid scant heed to her screaming.

Dom Corria was there, bare-headed, his gorgeous uniform sword-slashed and blood-bespattered. General Russo, too, was beating his capacious chest and shouting:

"G.o.d's bones, let us make a fight of it!"

A sprinkling of soldiers, all dismounted cavalry or gunners, a few disheveled officers, had accompanied De Sylva in his flight. With reckless bravery, he and Russo had tried to rally the troops camped at headquarters. It was a hopeless effort. Half-breeds can never produce a military caste. They may fight valiantly in the line of battle--they will not face the unknown, the terrible, the harpies that come at night, borne on the hurricane wings of panic. Unhappily, De Sylva and his bodyguard were the messengers of their own disaster. The cowardly genius at Pesqueira had planned a surprise. He would not lead it, of course, but in Dom Miguel Barraca he found an eager subst.i.tute. It was a coup of the Napoleonic order; an infantry attack along the entire front of the Liberationist position cloaked the launching against the center of a formidable body of cavalry. The project was to thrust this lance into the rebel position, probe it thoroughly, as a surgeon explores a gunshot wound, and extract the offender in the guise of Dom Corria.

The scheme had proved eminently successful. The Liberationists were crumpled up, and here was Dom Corria making his last stand.

He deserved better luck, for he was magnificent in failure. Calm as ever, he tried to be shot or captured when the reserves in camp failed him. Russo and the rest dragged him onward by main force.

"They want me only," he urged. "My death will end a useless struggle. I shall die a little later, when many more of my friends are killed. Why not die now?"

They would not listen.

"It is night!" they cried. "The enemy's horses are spent. A determined stand may give us another chance."

But it was a forlorn hope. As San Benavides lurched into the _pateo_, the horses of the first pursuing detachment strained up the slope between house and encampment.

Carmela, all her fire gone, the pallid ghost of the vengeful woman who would have shattered her lover's skull were the revolver loaded, was the first to see him. She actually crouched in terror. Her tongue was parched. If she uttered some low cry, none heard her.

Dom Corria, striving to dispose his meager garrison as best he could, met his trusted lieutenant. His face lit with joy.

"Ah, my poor Salvador!" he cried. "I thought we had lost you at the ford!"

"No," said San Benavides. "I ran away!"