Rainbow's End Part 48

"Another hour and I'd have been into it," he declared, huskily.

"You will skill yourself," Jacket told him.

Rosa bent over him with s.h.i.+ning eyes and parted lips. "Yes," said she.

"Be patient. We will come back, O'Reilly, and to-night we shall be rich."

Colonel Cobo lit a black cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and exhaled two fierce jets of smoke through his nostrils. For a full moment he scowled forbiddingly at the sergeant who had asked to see him.

"What's this you are telling me?" he inquired, finally.

The sergeant, a mean-faced, low-browed man, stirred uneasily.

"It is G.o.d's truth. There are spirits on La c.u.mbre, and I wish to see the priest about it."

"Spirits? What kind of spirits?"

The fellow shrugged. "Evil spirits--spirits from h.e.l.l. The men are buying charms."

"Bah! I took you to be a sensible person."

"You don't believe me? Well, I didn't believe them, when they told me about it. But I saw with my own eyes."

Cobo leaned forward, mildly astonished. Of all his villainous troop, this man was the last one he had credited with imagination of this sort. "What did you see?"

"A ghost, my Colonel, nothing else. La c.u.mbre is no place for an honest Christian."

The colonel burst into a mocking laugh. "An honest Christian! YOU! Of all my vile ruffians, you are the vilest. Why, you're a thief, a liar, and an a.s.sa.s.sin! You are lying to me now. Come--the truth for once, before I give you the componte."

"As G.o.d is my judge, I'm telling you the truth," protested the soldier.

"Flog me if you will--rather the componte than another night in those trenches. You know that old quinta?"

"Where Pancho Cueto made a goat of himself? Perfectly. Do you mean to say that you saw old Esteban Varona walking with his head in his hands?"

"No, but I saw that she-devil who fell in the well and broke her neck."

"Eh? When did you behold this--this marvel?"

"Two nights ago. She was there beside the well and her face shone through the night like a lantern. Christ! There was fire upon it. She came and went, like a moth in the lamplight. I tell you I repented of my sins. Some of the men laughed at me when I told them, as they had laughed at the others. But last night two of the doubters went up there."

"Exactly. And they saw nothing."

"Your pardon, my Colonel. They came back in a cold sweat, and they spent the night on their knees. The woman was there again. You have seen the salt sea at night? Well, her face was aglow, like that, so they said. They heard the clanking of chains, too, and the sound of hammers, coming from the very bowels of the earth. It is all plain enough, when you know the story. But it is terrifying."

"This is indeed amazing," Cobo acknowledged, "but of course there is some simple explanation. Spirits, if indeed there are such things, are made of nothing--they are like thin air. How, then, could they rattle chains? You probably saw some wretched pacificos in search of food and imagined the rest."

"Indeed! Then what did I hear with these very ears? Whispers, murmurs, groans, and the clinkety-clink of old Sebastian's chisel. For his sins that old slave is chained in some cavern of the mountain. Soundless!

I'm no baby! I know when I'm asleep, and I know when I'm awake. That place is accursed, and I want no more of it."

Cobo fell into frowning meditation, allowing his cigarette to smolder down until it burned his thick fingers. He was not a superst.i.tious man and he put no faith in the supernatural, nevertheless he was convinced that his sergeant was not lying, and reference to Pancho Cueto had set his mind to working along strange channels. He had known Cueto well, and the latter's stubborn belief in the existence of that Varona treasure had more than once impressed him. He wondered now if others shared that faith, or if by chance they had discovered a clue to the whereabouts of the money and were conducting a secret search. It was a fantastic idea, nevertheless Cobo told himself that if people were prying about those deserted premises it was with some object, and their actions would warrant observation. The presence of the woman--a woman--with the glow of phosphorus upon her face was puzzling, but the whole affair was puzzling. He determined to investigate. After a time he murmured, "I should like to see this spirit."

The sergeant shrugged. It was plain from his expression that he could not account for such a desire. "Another night is coming," said he.

"Good! I shall visit the place, and if I see anything unusual I--well, I shall believe what you have told me. Meanwhile, go see your priest by all means. It will do you no harm."

XXVI

HOW COBO STOOD ON HIS HEAD

All that day, or during most of it, at least, Rosa and O'Reilly sat hand in hand, oblivious of hunger and fatigue, impatient for the coming of night, keyed to the highest tension. Now they would rejoice hysterically, a.s.suring each other of their good fortune, again they would grow sick with the fear of disappointment. Time after time they stepped out of the hut and stared apprehensively up the slopes of La c.u.mbre to a.s.sure themselves that this was not all a part of some fantastic illusion; over and over, in minutest detail, Johnnie described what he had seen at the bottom of the well. He tried more than once during the afternoon to sleep, but he could not, for the moment he closed his eyes he found himself back there in that pit upon the ridge's crest, straining at those stubborn rocks and slippery timbers. This inaction was maddening, his fatigue rendered him feverish and irritable.

Jacket, too, felt the strain, and after several fruitless attempts to sleep he rose and went out into the suns.h.i.+ne, where he fell to whetting his knife. He finished putting a double edge upon the blade, fitted a handle to it, and then a cord with which to suspend it round his neck.

He showed it to O'Reilly, and after receiving a word of praise he crept out-doors again and tried to forget how sick he was. Black spots were dancing before Jacket's eyes; he experienced spells of dizziness and nausea during which he dared not attempt to walk. He knew this must be the result of starvation, and yet, strangely enough, the thought of food was distasteful to him. He devoutly wished it were not necessary to climb that hill again, for he feared he would not have the strength to descend it.

Luckily for the sake of the secret, Evangelina spent most of the day searching for food, while Asensio lay babbling upon his bed, too ill to notice the peculiar actions of his companions.

It was with a strange, nightmare feeling of unreality that the trio dragged themselves upward to the ruined quinta when darkness finally came. They no longer talked, for conversation was a drain upon their powers, and the reaction from the day's excitement had set in. O'Reilly lurched as he walked, his limbs were heavy, and his liveliest sensation was one of dread at the hard work in store for him. The forcing of that door a.s.sumed the proportions of a Herculean task.

But once he was at the bottom of the well and beheld the handiwork of Sebastian, the slave, just as he had left it, his sense of reality returned and with it a certain measure of determination. Inasmuch as he had made no visible impression upon the bulkhead by his direct attack, he changed his tactics now and undertook to loosen one of the jambs where it was wedged into the rock at top and bottom. After a desperate struggle he succeeded in loosening the entire structure so that he could pry it out far enough to squeeze his body through.

"I have it!" he cried to Rosa. Seizing the candle, he thrust it into the opening. He beheld what he had expected to find, a small cavern or grotto which had evidently been pierced during the digging of the well.

He could appreciate now how simple had been the task of sealing it up so as to baffle discovery. Rosa, poised above him, scarcely breathed until he straightened himself and turned his face upward once more.

He tried to speak, but voiced nothing more than a hoa.r.s.e croak; the candle in his hand described erratic figures.

"What do you see?" the girl cried in an agony of suspense.

"I--It's here! B-boxes, chests, casks--everything!"

"G.o.d be praised! My father's fortune at last!"

Rosa forgot her surroundings; she beat her hands together, calling upon O'Reilly to make haste and determine beyond all question that the missing h.o.a.rd was indeed theirs. She drew perilously close to the well and knelt over it like some priestess at her devotions; her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears and there was a roaring in her ears. It was not strange that she failed to see or to hear the approach of a great blurred figure which materialized out of the night and took station scarcely an arm's-length behind her.

"He intended it for his children," she sobbed, "and Providence saved it from our wicked enemies. It was the hand of G.o.d that led us here, O'Reilly. Tell me, what do you see now?"

Johnnie had wormed his way into the damp chamber and a slim rectangle of light was projected against the opposite side of the well. Rosa could hear him talking and moving about.

Don Esteban Varona's subterranean hiding-place was large enough to store a treasure far greater than his; it was perhaps ten feet in length, with a roof high enough to accommodate a tall man. At the farther end were ranged several small wooden chests bound with iron and fitted with hasps and staples, along one side was a row of diminutive casks, the sort used to contain choice wines or liquors; over all was a thick covering of slime and mold. The iron was deeply rusted and the place itself smelled abominably stale.

O'Reilly surveyed this Aladdin's cave in a daze. He set his candle down, for his fingers were numb and unsteady. Cautiously, as if fearful of breaking some spell, he stooped and tried to move one of the casks, but found that it resisted him as if cemented to the rock. He noted that its head was bulged upward, as if by the dampness, so he took his iron bar and aimed a sharp blow at the chine. A hoop gave way; another blow enabled him to pry out the head of the cask. He stood blinking at the sight exposed, for the little barrel was full of coins--yellow coins, large and small. O'Reilly seized a handful and held them close to the candle-flame; among the number he noted a Spanish doubloon, such as young Esteban had found.

He tested the weight of the other casks and found them equally heavy.

Knowing little about gold, he did not attempt to estimate the value of their contents, but he judged they must represent a fortune. With throbbing pulses he next lifted the lid of the nearest chest. Within, he discovered several compartments, each stored with neatly wrapped and labeled packages of varying shapes and sizes. The writing upon the tags was almost illegible, but the first article which O'Reilly unwrapped proved to be a goblet of most beautiful workmans.h.i.+p. Time had long since blackened it to the appearance of pewter or some base metal, but he saw that it was of solid silver. Evidently he had uncovered a store of old Spanish plate.

In one corner of the chest he saw a metal box of the sort in which valuable papers are kept, and after some effort he managed to break it open. Turning back the lid, he found first a bundle of doc.u.ments bearing imposing scrolls and heavy seals. Despite the dampness, they were in fairly good condition, and there was enough left of the writing to identify them beyond all question as the missing deeds of patent to the Varona lands--those crown grants for which Dona Isabel had searched so fruitlessly. But this was not all that the smaller box contained.