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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64700 ***

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FOMBOMBO

[Illustration: "I--I--how far do we have to run?" she gasped.]




FOMBOMBO

BY
T. S. STRIBLING

AUTHOR OF
TEEFTALLOW, ETC.

[Illustration: Decoration]


GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK




Copyright, 1923, by
THE CENTURY CO.

Copyright, 1923, by
T. S. STRIBLING


Printed in U. S. A.




TO MY UNCLE
LEE B. WAITS

_Soldier, Fox-Hunter, and Philosopher_




FOMBOMBO




CHAPTER I


In Caracas, Thomas Strawbridge called at the American Consulate, from
a sense of duty. The consul, a weary, tropic-shot politician from
Kentucky, received him with gin, cigars, and a jaded enthusiasm. He
glanced at Mr. Strawbridge's business card and inquired if his visitor
were one of the Strawbridges of Virginia. The young man replied that
he lived in Keokuk, Iowa, and that his father had moved there from
somewhere East. Upon this statement the consul ventured the dictum that
if any family didn't know they had come from Virginia, they hadn't.

Having exhausted their native states as a topic of conversation, they
swung around, in their talk, to the relatively unimportant Venezuela
which sweltered outside the consulate in a drowse of endless summer.
The two Americans damned the place, with lassitude but thoroughness.
They condemned the character of the Venezuelan, his lack of morals,
honesty, industry, and initiative. The Venezuelan was too polite;
he was cowardly. He had not the God-given Anglo-Saxon instinct for
self-government. But the high treason named in this joint bill of
complaint was that the Venezuelan was unbusinesslike.

"I'm no tin angel," proceeded Mr. Strawbridge, emphatically, "but you
know just as well as I do, Mr. Anderson, that the fellow who pulls
slick stuff in a business deal has hit the chutes for the bowwows.
Business methods and strict business honesty will win in the long run,
Mr. Anderson."

The consul nodded a trifle absent-mindedly at this recommendation of
his nation's widely advertised virtue.

"In fact," continued Mr. Strawbridge, with an effect of having begun
to recite some sort of creed he could not stop until he reached the
end, "in fact, continual aggressive business policies coupled with
an incorruptible honesty are bound to land the American exporter
flat-footed on the foreign trade. And, moreover, Mr. Anderson--"
Strawbridge had the traveling salesman's habit of repeating a
companion's name over and over in the course of a conversation, so he
would not forget it--"moreover, Mr. Anderson, we American traveling
business men have got to set an example to these people down here; show
'em what to do and how to do it. Snap, vim, go, and absolute honesty."

"Yes, ... yes," agreed the consul, still more absently. He was holding
Mr. Strawbridge's card in his fingers and apparently studying it.
Presently he broke into the homily:

"Speaking of business, how do you find the gun-and-ammunition business
in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge?"

"Rotten. I've hardly booked an order since I landed in the country."

The consul lifted his brows.

"Have you booked any at all?"

"Well, no, I haven't," admitted Strawbridge.

The consul smiled faintly and finished off his glass of gin and water.

"I thought perhaps you hadn't."

"What made you think that?"

"No one does who just passes through the country offering them to any
and every merchant."

"Why not?"

"Isn't allowed."

Strawbridge stared at his consul--a very honest blue-eyed stare.

"Not allowed? Who doesn't allow it, Mr. Anderson? Why, look here--"
he straightened his back as there dawned on him the enormity of this
personal infringement of his right to sell firearms whenever and
wherever he found a buyer--"why the hell can't I sell rifles and--"

"Forbidden by the Government," interposed Mr. Anderson, patly.

Strawbridge was outraged.

"Now, isn't that a hell of a law! No reason at all, I suppose. Like
their custom laws. They don't tax you for what you bring into this
God-forsaken country; they tax you for the mistakes you make in saying
what you've brought in. They look over your manifest and charge you for
the errors you've made in Spanish grammar. Venezuela's correspondence
course in the niceties of the Castilian tongue!"

The consul again smiled wearily.

"They have a better reason than that for forbidding
rifles--revolutions. You know in this country they stage at least one
revolution every forty-eight hours. The minute any Venezuelan gets
hold of a gun he steps out and begins to shoot up the Government. If
he wings the President, he gets the President's place. It's a very
lucrative place, very. It's about the only job in this country worth a
cuss. So you see there's a big reason for forbidding the importation of
arms into Venezuela."

Mr. Strawbridge drew down his lips in disgust.

"Good Lord! Ain't that rotten! When will this leather-colored crew ever
get civilized? Here I am--paid my fare from New York down here just
to find out nobody buys firearms in this sizzling hell-hole; can't be
trusted with 'em!"

In the pause at this point Mr. Anderson still twirled his guest's card.
He glanced toward the front of his consulate, then toward the rear.
The two Americans were alone. With his enigmatic smile still wrinkling
his tropic-sagged face, the consul said in a slightly lower tone:

"I didn't say no one bought firearms in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge. I
said they were not allowed to be sold here."

"O-o-oh, I se-e-e!" Mr. Strawbridge's ejaculation curved up and down as
enlightenment broke upon him, and he stared fixedly at his consul.

"All I meant to say was that the trade is curtailed as much as
possible, in order to prevent bloodshed, suffering, and the crimes of
civil war."

Mr. Strawbridge continued his nodding and his absorbed gaze.

"But, still, some of it goes on--of course."

"Naturally," nodded Strawbridge.

"I suppose," continued the consul, reflectively, "that every month sees
a considerable number of arms introduced into Venezuela, as far as that
goes."

Strawbridge watched his consul as a cat watches a mouse-hole--for
something edible to appear.

"Yes?" he murmured interrogatively.

"Well, there you are," finished the consul.

Strawbridge looked his disappointment.

"There I am?" he said in a pained voice. "Well, I must say I am not
very far from where you started with me; am I?"

"It seems to me you are somewhat advanced," began the diplomat,
philosophically. "You know why you haven't sold anything up to date.
You know why you can't approach a Venezuelan casually to sell him guns,
as if you were offering him stoves or shoe-polish." The consul was
still smiling faintly, and now he drew a scratch-pad toward him and
began making aimless marks on it after the fashion of office men. "In
fact, to attempt to sell guns at all would be quite against the law,
as I have explained, for the reasons I have stated. It's a peculiar and
I must say an unfortunate situation."

As he continued his absent-minded marking his explanation turned into a
soliloquy on the Venezuelan situation:

"You may not know it, Mr. Strawbridge, but there are one or two
revolutions which are chronic in Venezuela. There is one in Tachira,
a state on the western border of the country. There is another up in
the Rio Negro district, headed by a man named Fombombo. They never
cease. Every once in a while the federal troops go out to hunt these
insurrectionists, a-a-and--" the consul dragged out his "and" after
the fashion of a man relating something so well known that it isn't
worth while to give his words their proper stress--"a-a-and if they
kill them, more spring up." His voice slumped without interest. He
continued marking his pad. "Then there are the foreign juntas. About
every four or five years a bunch of Venezuelans go abroad, organize a
filibustering expedition, come back, and try to capture the presidency.
Now and then one succeeds." The consul yawned. "Then the diplomatic
corps here in Caracas have to get used to a different sort of ... of
... President." He paused, smiling at some recollection, then added,
"So, you see, one can hardly blame the powers that be for wanting to
keep rifles out of the country."

The young man was openly disappointed.

"Well, ... that's very interesting historically," he said with a
mirthless smile, "and I am sure when I send in my expense account for
this trip my house will be deeply interested in the historical reasons
why I blew in five hundred dollars and landed nothing."

"Well, that's the state of affairs," repeated the consul, with the
sudden briskness of a man ending an interview. "Insurrectionists
in Tachira, old Fombombo raising hell on the Rio Negro, and an
occasional flyer among the filibusters." He rose and offered his
hand to his caller. "Be glad to have you drop in on me any time, Mr.
Strawbridge. Occasionally I give a little soirée here for Americans.
Send you a bid." He was shaking hands warmly now, after the fashion
of politicians. His air implied that Mr. Strawbridge's visit had been
sheer delight. And Mr. Strawbridge's own business-trained cordiality
picked up somewhat even under his unexpressed disappointment. In fact,
he was just loosing the diplomat's hand when he discovered there was a
bit of paper in Mr. Anderson's palm pressing against his own. When the
consul withdrew his hand he left the paper in his countryman's fingers.

"Well, good-by; good luck! Don't forget to look me up again. When you
leave Caracas you'd better give me your forwarding address for any mail
that might come in."

The consul was walking down the tiled entrance of the consulate,
floating his guest out in a stream of somewhat mechanical cordiality.
Strawbridge moved into the dazzling sunshine, clenching the bit of
paper and making confused adieus.

He walked briskly away, with the quick, machine-like strides of an
American drummer. After a block or two he paused in the shade of a
great purple flowering shrub that gushed over the high adobe wall
of some hidden garden. Out of the direct sting of the sun he found
opportunity to look into his hand. It held a sheet of the scratch-pad.
This bore the address, "General Adriano Fombombo, No. 27 Eschino San
Dolores y Hormigas." Inside the fold was the sentence, "This will
introduce to you a very worthy young American, Mr. Thomas Strawbridge,
a young man of discretion, prompt decision, strict morals, and
unimpeachable honesty." It bore no signature.

Strawbridge turned it over and perused the address for upward of half
a minute. Now and then he looked up and down the street, then at the
numbers on the houses, after the fashion of a man trying to orient
himself in a strange city.




CHAPTER II


In the capital of Venezuela, ancient usage has given names to the
street corners instead of to the streets. This may have been very well
in the thinly populated days of the Spanish conquest, but to-day this
nomenclature forms a hopeless puzzle for half the natives and all the
foreigners.

To Mr. Thomas Strawbridge the address on the consul's note was
especially annoying. He hardly knew what to do. He could not go back
and ask Mr. Anderson where was Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas, because
in a way there was a tacit understanding between the two men that no
note had passed between them. On the other hand, he felt instinctively
that it was not good revolutionary practice to wander about the streets
of Caracas inquiring of Tomas, Ricardo, and Henrico the address of a
well-known insurrectionary general. However, he would have to do just
that thing if he carried out the business hint given him by the consul.
It was annoying, it might even be dangerous, but there seemed to be no
way out of it. It never occurred to the drummer to give the matter up.
The prospect of a sale was something to be pursued at all hazards. So
he put the note in his pocket, got out a big silver cigar-case with his
monogram flowing over one of its sides, lit up, frowned thoughtfully
at the sun-baked streets, then moved off aimlessly from his patch
of shade, keeping a weather eye out for some honest, trustworthy
Venezuelan who could be depended upon to betray his country in a small
matter.

As the American pursued this odd quest, the usual somnolent street
life of Caracas drifted past him: a train of flower-laden donkeys,
prodded along by a peon boy, passed down the _calle_, braying
terrifically; native women in black mantillas glided in and out of the
ancient Spanish churches, one of which stood on almost every corner;
lottery-ticket venders loitered through the streets, yodeling the
numbers on their tickets; naked children played in the sewer along
foot-wide pavements; dark-eyed señoritas sat inside barred windows,
with a lover swinging patiently outside the bars. Banana peels, sucked
oranges, and mango stones littered the _calles_ from end to end and
advertised the slovenliness of the denizens.

All this increased in Strawbridge that feeling of mental, moral, and
racial superiority which surrounds every Anglo-Saxon in his contacts
with other peoples. How filthy, how slow, how indecent, and how immoral
it all was! Naked children, lottery venders, caged girls! Evidently
the girls could not be trusted to walk abroad. Strawbridge looked at
them--tropical creatures with creamy skins, jet hair, and dark, limpid
eyes; soft of contour, voice, and glance.

A group of four domino-players were at a game just outside a
_peluqueria_. A fifth man, holding a guitar, leaned against a
little shrine to the Blessed Virgin which some pious hand had built
into the masonry at the corner of the adobe. He was a graceful,
sunburned fellow, and as he bent his head over the guitar, during his
intermittent strumming, Strawbridge was surprised to see that his hair
was done up like a woman's, in a knot at the back of his head.

Just why the American should have decided to ask this particular
man for delicate information, it is impossible to say. It may have
been because he was leaning against a shrine, or because he showed
splendid white teeth as he smiled at the varying fortunes of the
players. There is a North American superstition that a man with good
teeth also possesses good morals. If one can believe the dentifrice
advertisements, a good tooth-paste is a ticket to heaven. At any rate,
for these or other reasons, the drummer moved across the _calle_ and
came to a stand, with his own hand resting on the base of the little
clay niche that sheltered the small china Virgin. He was so close to
the man that he could smell the rank pomade on his knob of hair. He
stood in silence until his nearness should have established that faint
feeling of fellowship which permits a question to be asked between two
watchers of the same scene. Presently he inquired in a casual tone, but
not loud enough for the players to hear:

"Señor, can you tell me where is Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas?"

The strumming paused a moment. The man with the knot of hair gave
Strawbridge a brief glance out of the corners of his eyes, then resumed
his desultory picking at the strings.

"How should I know where is Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas?" he replied
in the same nonchalant undertone.

"I thought perhaps you were a native of this town."

"_Pues_, you are a stranger?"

"Yes."

"_Un Americano_, I would say?"

"Yes."

The strumming proceeded smoothly.

"Señor, in your country, is it not the custom in searching for an
address to inquire of the police?"

A little trickle of uneasiness went through the American's diaphragm.

"Certainly," he agreed, with a faint stiffness in his undertone,
"but when there is no policeman in sight, one can inquire of any
_gentleman_."

The man with the knob of hair muted his guitar, then lifted his hand
and pointed.

"Yonder stands one, two corners down, señor."

"_Gracias_, señor." Strawbridge had a feeling as if a path he meant
to climb along a precipice had begun crumbling very gently under his
feet. "_Gracias_; I'll just step down there." He made a little show of
withdrawing his attention casually from the game, glanced about, got
the direction of the policeman in question, then moved off unhurriedly
toward that little tan-uniformed officer.

As he went, Strawbridge tried quickly to think of some other question
to ask the police. He wondered if it would be best not to go up to the
officer at all. If he knew the man with the hair was not looking after
him.... He was vaguely angry at everything and everybody--at Venezuela
for making a law that would force an American salesman to go about
the important function of business like a thief; at the consul for
not giving him complete sailing instructions; at himself for asking
ticklish questions of a man with a wad of hair. He might have known
there was something tricky about a man like that!

Then his thoughts swung around to the nation again. He began swearing
mentally at the basic reason of his slightly uncomfortable position.
"Damn country is not run on business principles," he carped in his
thoughts. "Looks like they're not out for business. Then what the hell
are they out for? Why, they were all trying to pull crooked deals,
overcharging, milking the customs! One honest, upright, strictly
business American department-store down here in Caracas would grab the
business from these yellow sons of guns like a burglar taking candy
from a sick baby!" He moved along, pouring the acid of a righteous
indignation over his surroundings. However, he was now approaching the
policeman, and he stopped insulting the Venezuelan nation, to think of
a plan to circumvent it.

He was again beginning to debate whether or not he should make a show
of going to the officer at all, when he heard the thrumming of a guitar
just behind him. He looked around quickly and saw that the man with
the knot of hair had followed him. Then Strawbridge realized that not
only would he have to go to the policeman, but he would have to inquire
for the actual address in order to maintain an appearance of innocence.
Right here he lost his order! He damned his luck unhappily and was on
the verge of crossing the street, when the man with the knob of hair
continued their conversation, in the same low tone they had used:

"By the way, señor, I just happened to recall an errand of my own at
the address you inquired for, if you care to go along with me."

"Why, sure!" accepted Strawbridge, vastly relieved. He drew out a silk
handkerchief and touched the moisture on his face. "Sure! Be glad to
have your company."

The man began tinkling again.

"I suppose you are going to ... er ... to the house with the blue
front?" He lifted his eyebrows slightly.

"I'm looking for Number ... I never was there before, so I don't know
what color the house is."

"No?" The guitarist lifted his brows still more. He seemed really
surprised. But the next moment his attention broke away. He smote his
guitar to a purpose, and broke out in a bold tenor voice:


     "Thine eyes are cold, thine eyes are cold to me.
       Would I could kindle in their depths a flame.
     I bring my heart, a bold torero's heart to thee."


The American was startled at this sudden outbreak of song, but no one
else took any notice of it. That is, no one except a girl inside a
barred window, who dropped a rose through the grille and withdrew. As
the two men passed this spot, the singer stooped for the flower and in
a shaken voice murmured into the window, "Little heaven!" and somewhere
inside a girl laughed.

The two men walked on a few paces, when the guitarist shrugged, spread
a hand, and said:

"They always laugh at you!"

Strawbridge stared at him.

"Who?" he asked.

"A bride ... that bride ... any bride."

The American had been so absorbed in the matter of the police and the
street address that he had followed none of this by-play.

"A bride?" he repeated blankly.

"Yes, she married three nights ago. _Caramba!_ The house was crowded,
and everybody was tipsy. The guests overflowed out here, into the
_calle_...." He broke off to look back at the window, after a
moment waved his hand guardedly, then turned around and resumed his
observations:

"Don't you think there is something peculiarly attractive ... well, now
... er ... provocative in a young girl who has just been married?"

The American stared at his new acquaintance, vaguely outraged.

"Why--great God!--no!"




CHAPTER III


The man with the knob of hair came to a halt, and pointed on a long
angle across the street.

"That big blue house, señor. I'll come on more slowly and pass you.
There is no use for two men to be seen waiting outside the door at one
time."

This touch of prudence reassured Strawbridge more than any other thing
the stranger could have said. The drummer nodded briskly and walked
ahead of his companion toward the building indicated. It was one of a
solid row of houses all of which had the stuccoed fronts and ornamental
grilles that mark the better class of Caracas homes. The American
paused in front of the big double door and pressed a button. He waited
a minute or two and pushed again.

Nothing happened. A faint breeze moved a delicate silk curtain in one
of the barred windows, but beyond that the _casa_ might have been
empty. The silent street of old Spanish houses, their polychrome
fronts, and somewhere the soft, guttural quarreling of pigeons wove
a poetic mood in Strawbridge's brain. It translated itself into the
thought of a huge order for his house and a rich commission for
himself. He began calculating mentally what his per cent. would be
on, say, ten thousand cases of cartridges--or even twenty thousand.
Here began a pleasant multiplication of twenty thousand by thirty-nine
dollars and forty-two cents. That would be ... it would be....

The sonnet of his mood was broken by the guitarist, who walked past
him, snarling:

"_Diablo, hombre!_ You'll never get in that way! Ring once, then four
short rings, then a second long, then three." He walked on.

This brought Strawbridge back to the fact that his order had not yet
reached the stage where he could count his profits. He pressed the
button again, using the combination the knob-haired man had given him.

Immediately a small panel in the great door opened and framed the head
of a negro sucking a mango. The head withdrew and a moment later a
whole panel in the door and a corresponding panel in the iron grille
opened and admitted the drummer. Strawbridge stepped into a cool
entrance of blue-flowered tiles which led into a bright patio. He
looked around curiously, seeking some hint of the revolutionist in his
_casa_.

"Is your master at home?" he asked of the negro.

The black wore the peculiarly stupid expression of the boors of his
race. He answer in a negroid Spanish:

"No, seño', he ain't in."

"When'll he be in?"

The negro lowered his head and swung his protruding jaws from side to
side, as though denying all knowledge of the comings and goings of his
master.

Strawbridge hesitated, speculated on the advisability of delivering his
note to any such creature, finally did draw it out, and stood holding
it in his hand.

"Could you deliver this note to your master?"

"If de Lawd's willin' an' I lives to see him again, seño'."

Strawbridge was faintly amused at such piety.

"I don't suppose the Lord will object to your delivering this note," he
said.

"No, seño'," agreed the black man, solemnly, and Strawbridge placed the
folded paper in the numskull's hands.

The creature took it, looked blankly at the address, then unfolded it
and with the same emptiness of gaze fixed his eyes on the message.

"It goes to General Fombombo," explained Strawbridge.

"Gen'l Fombombo," repeated the negro, as if he were memorizing an
unknown name.

"Yes, and inside it says that ... er ... ah ... it says that I am an
honest man."

"A honest man."

"Yes, that's what it says."

"I thought you was a _Americano_, seño'."

Strawbridge looked at the negro, but his humble expression appeared
guileless.

"I am an American," he nodded. "Now, just hand that to your master and
tell him he can communicate with me at the Hotel Bolivia." Strawbridge
was about to go.

"_Sí_, seño'," nodded the servant, throwing away the mango stone.
"I tell him about de _Americano_. I heard about yo' country, seño',
_el grand America del Norte_; so cold in de rainy season you freeze
to death, so hot in de dry season you drap dead. _Sí_, seño', but
ever'body rich--dem what ain't froze to death or drap dead."

"Sounds like you'd been there," said the drummer, gravely.

"I never was, but I wish I could go. Do you need a servant in yo' line
o' business, seño'?"

"I don't believe I do."

"Don't you sell things?"

"Sometimes."

"What, seño'?"

"I sell--" then, recalling the private nature of this particular
prospect, he finished--"almost anything any one will buy."

This answer apparently satisfied the garrulous black, who nodded and
pursued his childish curiosity:

"An' when you sell something do you have it sent from away up in
_America del Norte_ down here?"

"Sure."

"An' us git it?"

Strawbridge laughed.

"If you're lucky."

The black man scratched his head at this growing complication of the
drummer's sketch of the North American export trade. Then he discovered
a gap in his information.

"Seño', you ain't said what it is you sell, yit."

"That's right," agreed Strawbridge, looking at the fool a little
more carefully. "I have not." Then he added, "A man doesn't talk his
business to every one."

The negro nodded gravely.

"Dat's right, but still you's bound to talk your business somewhere, to
sell anybody at all, seño'."

"That's true," acceded the American, with a dim feeling that perhaps
this black fellow was not the idiot he had at first appeared.

"And how would you git paid, away up there in America?" persisted the
black.

The American decided to answer seriously.

"Here's the way we do it. We ship the ... the goods ... down here and
at the same time draw a draft on a bank here in Caracas. We get our
pay when the goods are delivered, but the bank extends the buyer six,
nine, or twelve months' credit, whatever he needs. That is the accepted
business method between North and South America."

The drummer was not sure the black man understood a word of this. The
fellow stood scratching his head and pulling down his thick lips.
Finally he said, speaking more correctly:

"Señor, I was not thinking about the time a person had to pay in. It
was how you could get paid at all."

"How I could get paid at all?"

The negro nodded humbly, and his dialect grew a trifle worse:

"You see, if anybody was to go an' put a lot o' money in de banks here
in Caracas, most likely de Guv'ment would snatch it right at once."

Strawbridge came to attention and stood studying the African.

"How would the Government ever know?" he asked carefully.

"How would you ever keep 'em from knowin'?" retorted the negro. "How
could anybody, seño', even a po' fool nigger like me, drive a string o'
ox-carts through de country, loaded wid gold, drive up to the bank do'
an' pile out sacks o' gold an' not have ever'body in Caracas know all
about it?"

The suggestion of gold, of wagon-loads of gold delivered to banks, sent
a sensation through Strawbridge as if he had been a harp on which some
musician had struck a mighty chord. As he stood staring at the black
man his mouth went slightly dry and he moistened his lips with his
tongue.

"I see the trouble," he said in a queer voice.

His vis-à-vis nodded silently.

The negro with the mango juice on his face and the trig white man stood
studying each other in the blue entrance.

"Well," said Strawbridge, at last, "how will I get the money?"

"Where?"

"Here."

"Impossible, señor."

Strawbridge was getting on edge. He laughed nervously.

"You seem to know more about ... er ... certain conditions in this
country than I do. What would you suggest?"

The black cocked his head a little to one side.

"Seño', did you know that the Orinoco River and the Amazon connect with
each other up about the Rio Negro?"

"I think I've heard it. Didn't some fellow go through there studying
orchids, or something? A man was telling me something about that in
Trinidad."

"He went through studying everything, seño'," said the black man,
solemnly. "You are thinking of the great savant, Humboldt."

"M--yes, ... Humboldt." Strawbridge repeated the name vaguely, not
quite able to place it.

"I would suggest that you follow Herr Humboldt's route, seño'. You can
carry the bullion down in boats and get it exchanged for drafts in Rio."

A dizzy foreshadowing of Indian canoes laden with treasure, pushing
through choked tropical waterways, shook the drummer. He drew a long
breath.

"Is it a practical route? I mean, does anybody know the way? Do you
think it can be done?"

"I would hardly say practical, seño'. It has been done."

The negro and the white man stood looking at each other.

"How do I ... er ... how does any one get to Rio Negro?" asked the
drummer, nervously.

"You will need some person to pilot you, seño': some black man would
make a good guide."

"Now, I just imagine he would," said Strawbridge, drawing in his lips
and biting them. "Yes, sir, I imagine he would--" He broke off and
suddenly became direct: "When do we start?"

"When you feel like it, seño'--now, if you are ready."

"I stay ready. How do we get there?" He asked the question with a vague
feeling that the black man might climb up to the roof of the blue house
and show him a flying-machine.

"I have a little motor around at the garage, seño'."

"Uh-huh? Well, that's good. Let's go."

The negro went into a room for an old hat. He took a key from his
pocket, opened the door, and courteously bowed the American into the
_calle_. When he had locked the door behind them, he said, "Now you
go in front, seño'," and indicated the direction down the street.
Strawbridge did so, the negro following a little distance behind. They
looked like master and servant set forth on some trifling errand.

They had not gone very far before Strawbridge observed that two or
three blocks behind them came the guitarist. This fellow meandered
along with elaborate inattention to either the white man or the negro.




CHAPTER IV


Now that his rôle of ignoramus and lout had been played, the black
man introduced himself as Guillermo Gumersindo and glided into the
usual self-explanatory conversation. He was sure Señor Strawbridge
would pardon his buffoonery, but one had to be careful when a police
visitation was threatened. He was the editor of a newspaper in
Canalejos, "El Correo del Rio Negro," a newspaper, if he did say it,
more ardently devoted to Venezuelan history than any other publication
in the republic. Gumersindo had been chosen by General Fombombo to make
this purchasing expedition to Caracas just because he was black and
could drop easily into a lowly rôle.

To the ordinary white American an educated negro is an object of
curious interest, and Strawbridge strolled along the streets of Caracas
with a feeling toward the black editor much the same as one has toward
the educated pony which can paw out its name from among the letters of
the alphabet.

Gumersindo's historical interest exhibited itself as he and Strawbridge
passed through the _mercado_, a plaza given over to hucksters and
flower-venders, in the heart of Caracas. The black man pointed out a
very fine old Spanish house of blue marble, with a great coat of arms
carved over the door:

"Where Bolivar lived." Gumersindo made a curving gesture and bowed as
if he were introducing the building.

The American looked at the house.

"Bolivar," he repeated vaguely.

The editor opened his eyes slightly.

"_Sí_, señor; Bolivar the _Libertador_."

The black man's tone showed Strawbridge that he should have known
Bolivar the _Libertador_.

"Oh, sure!" the drummer said easily; "the _Libertador_. I had forgot
his business."

The black man looked around at his companion as straight as his
politeness admitted.

"Señor," he ejaculated, "I mean the great Bolivar. He has been compared
to your Señor George Washington of North America."

Strawbridge turned and stared frankly at the negro.

"Wha-ut?" he drawled, curving up his voice at the absurdity of it and
beginning to laugh. "Compared to George Washington, first in war, first
in--"

"_Sí, ciertamente_, señor," Gumersindo assured his companion, with
Venezuelan earnestness.

"But look here--" Strawbridge laid a hand on his companion's
shoulder--"do you know what George Washington did, man? He set the
whole United States free!"

"But, _hombre_!" cried the editor. "Bolivar! This great, great man--"
he pointed to the blue marble mansion--"set free the whole continent of
South America!"

"He did!"

"_Seguramente!_ And this man, who freed a continent, was at length
exiled by ungrateful Venezuela and died an outcast, señor, in a
wretched little town on the Colombian coast--an outcast!"

Strawbridge looked at Bolivar's house with renewed interest.

"Well, I be damned!" he said earnestly. "Freed all of South America!
Say! why don't somebody write a book about that?"

Gumersindo pulled in one side of his wide-rolling lips and bit them.
The two men walked on in silence for several blocks west. They passed
the Yellow House, the seat of the Venezuelan Government. On the
south side of this building stands a monument with a big scar on the
pedestal, where some name has been roughly chiseled out. The negro
explained that this monument had been erected by the tyrant Barranca,
who occupied the Venezuelan presidency for eight years, but that when
Barranca was overthrown by General Pina, the oppressed people, in order
to show their hatred of the fallen tyrant, erased his name from the
monument.

Strawbridge stood looking at the scar and nodding.

"Did they have to rise against this man Barranca to get him out of
office?" he asked in surprise.

"Rise against him!" cried Gumersindo. "Rise against him! Why, señor,
the only way any Venezuelan president ever did go out of office was by
some stronger man rising against him! But come: I will show you, on
Calvario."

They moved quickly along the street, which was changing its character
somewhat, from a business street to a thoroughfare of cheap residences.
After going some distance Strawbridge saw the small mountain called
Calvario which rises in the western part of the city. The whole eastern
face of this mountain had been done into a great flight of ornamental
steps. Half-way up was a terrace containing three broken pedestals.

"These," decried Gumersindo, "were erected by the infamous Pina, but
when Pina was assassinated and the assassin Wantzelius came into power,
the people, infuriated by Pina's long extravagances, tore down the
statues he had erected and broke them to pieces." The black man stood
looking with compressed lips at the shattered monoliths in the sunshine.

There was a certain incredulity in Strawbridge's face. The American
could not understand such a social state.

"And you say they just keep on that way--one president overthrowing
another?"

"Precisely. Wantzelius had Pina assassinated, Toro Torme overthrew
Wantzelius, Cancio betrayed and exiled Toro Torme...."

The American arms salesman stood on the stairs of Calvario, beneath the
broken pedestals, and began to laugh.

"Well, that's a hell of a way to change presidents--shoot 'em--run 'em
off--exile 'em! It's just exactly like these greaser Latin countries!"
He sat down on the stairs in the hot sunshine and laughed till the
tears rolled out of his eyes.

The thick-set negro stood looking at him with a queer expression.

"It ... seems to amuse you, señor?"

Strawbridge drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He blew out a
long breath.

"It is funny! Just like a movie I saw in Keokuk. It was called 'Maid in
Mexico,' and it showed how these damned greasers batted along in any
crazy old way; and here is the wreckage of just some such rough stuff."
He looked up at the broken pedestals again with his face set for mirth,
but his jaws ached too badly to laugh any more. He drew a deep breath
and became near-sober.

Just below him stood the negro, like a black shadow in the sunshine.
He stared with a solemn face over the city with its sea of red-tiled
roofs, its domes and campaniles, and the blue peaks of the Andes
beyond. Abruptly he turned to Strawbridge.

"Listen, señor," he said tensely, and held up a finger. "My country
has lived in mortal agony ever since Bolivar himself fell from his
seat of power amid red rebellion, but there is a man who will remedy
Venezuela's age-long wounds; there is a man great enough and generous
enough--"

At this point some remnant of mirth caused Strawbridge to compress his
lips to keep from laughing again. The dark being on the steps stopped
his discourse quite abruptly; then he said with a certain severity:

"Let us understand each other, señor. You sell rifles and ammunition;
do you not?"

"Yes," said Strawbridge, sobering at once at this hint of business.

Gumersindo took a last glance at the city sleeping in the fulgor of a
tropical noon:

"Let's get to the garage," he suggested briefly.




CHAPTER V


Gumersindo's automobile turned out to be one of those cheap American
machines which one finds everywhere. Its only peculiarity was an extra
gasolene-tank which filled the greater part of the body of the car,
and which must have given the old rattletrap a cruising-radius of a
thousand or fifteen hundred miles.

Just as the negro and the white man were getting into the car the man
with the knot of hair at the back of his head strolled into the garage.
He called to Gumersindo that the _Americano_ was to take him on the
expedition which was just starting.

The black editor looked up and stared.

"Take you!"

"_Sí_, señor, me. This _caballero_--" he nodded at
Strawbridge--"promised to take me along for the courtesy of directing
him to ... well ... to a certain address."

Strawbridge heard this with the surprise an American always feels when
a Latin street-runner begins manufacturing charges for his service.

"The devil I did! I said nothing about taking you along. I didn't know
where I was going. I still don't know."

"_Caramba!_" The man with the hair spread his hands in amazement. "Did
I not say we would go to the same address, and did not you agree to it!"

"But, you damn fool, you know I meant the address here in Caracas! Good
Lord! you know I didn't propose to take you a thousand miles!"

The man with the hair made a strong gesture.

"That's not Lubito, señor!" he declared. "That's not Lubito. When a
man attaches himself to me in friendly confidence, I'm not the man to
break with him the moment he has served my purpose. No, I will see you
through!"

"But--damnation, man!--I don't want you to see me through!"

"_Cá!_ You don't! You go back on your trade!"

The American snapped his fingers and motioned toward the door of the
garage.

"Beat it!"

The man with the hair flared up suddenly and began talking the most
furious Spanish:

"_Diantre! Bien, bien, bien!_ I'll establish my trade! I'll call the
police and establish my trade! Ray of God, but I'm an honest man!"
and he started for the door, beginning to peer around for a policeman
before he was nearly out. "Yes, we'll have a police investigation!" He
disappeared.

Strawbridge looked at Gumersindo, and then by a common impulse the
black editor and the white drummer started for the door, after the man
with the hair. The editor hailed him as he was walking rapidly down the
_calle_:

"Hold on, my friend; come back!"

Lubito whirled and started back as rapidly as he had departed. His
movements were extraordinarily supple and graceful even for Latin
America, where grace and suppleness are common.

"We have decided that we may be able to carry you along after all,
Señor Lubito. We may even be of some mutual service. What is your
profession?"

"I am, señor, a bull-fighter." He tipped up his handsome head and
struck a bull-ring attitude, perhaps unconsciously. The negro editor
stared at him, glanced at Strawbridge, and shrugged faintly but
hopelessly.

"Very good," he said in a dry tone. "We want you. No expedition would
care to set out across the llanos without a bull-fighter or two."

If he hoped by voice and manner to discourage Lubito's attendance, he
was disappointed. The fellow walked briskly back and was the first man
in the car.

The other two men followed, and as the motor clacked away down the
_calle_ Lubito resumed the rôle of cicerone, cheerfully pointing out to
Strawbridge the sights of Caracas. There was the palace of President
Cancio; there was an old church built by the Canary Islanders who made
a settlement in this part of Caracas long before the colonies revolted
against Spain.

"There is La Rotunda, señor, where they keep the political prisoners.
It is very easy to get in there." Whether this was mere tourist
information or a slight flourish of the whip-hand, which Lubito
undoubtedly held, Strawbridge did not know.

"Have they got many prisoners?" he asked casually.

"It's full," declared the bull-fighter, with gusto. "The overflow goes
to Los Castillos, another prison on the Orinoco near Ciudad Bolívar,
and also to San Carlos on Lake Maracaibo, in the western part of
Venezuela."

"What have so many men done, that all the prisons are jammed?" asked
the drummer, becoming interested.

It was Gumersindo who answered this question, and with passion:

"Señor Strawbridge, those prisons are full of men who are innocent and
guilty. Some have attempted to assassinate the President, some to stir
up revolution; some are merely suspected. A number of men are put in
prison simply to force through some business deal advantageous to the
governmental clique. I know one editor who has been confined in the
dungeons of La Rotunda for ten years. His offense was that in his paper
he proposed a man as a candidate for the presidency."

Strawbridge was shocked.

"Why, that's outrageous! What do the people stand for it for? Why don't
they raise hell and stop any such crooked deals? Why, in America, do
you know how long we would stand for that kind of stuff? Just one
minute--" he reached forward and tapped Gumersindo two angry taps on
the shoulder--"just one minute; that's all."

Lubito laughed gaily.

"Yes, La Rotunda to-day is full of men who stood that sort of thing for
one minute--and then raised hell."

Strawbridge looked around at the bull-fighter.

"But, my dear man, if everybody, everybody would go in, who could stop
them?"

Gumersindo made a gesture.

"Señor Strawbridge, there is no 'everybody' in Venezuela. When you
say 'everybody' you are speaking as an American, of your American
middle class. That is the controlling power in America because it is
sufficiently educated and compact to make its majority felt. We have
no such class in Venezuela. We have an aristocratic class struggling
for power, and a great peon population too ignorant for any political
action whatsoever. The only hope for Venezuela is a beneficent
dictator, and you, señor, on this journey, are about to instate such a
man and bring all these atrocities to a close."

A touch of the missionary spirit kindled in Strawbridge at the thought
that he might really bring a change in such leprous conditions, but
almost immediately his mind turned back to the order he was about to
receive, how large it would be, how many rifles, how much ammunition,
and he fell into a lovely day-dream as the tropical landscape slipped
past him.

At thirty- or forty-mile intervals the travelers found villages, and
at each one they were forced to report to the police department their
arrival and departure. Such is the law in Venezuela. It is an effort to
keep watch on any considerable movements among the population and so
forestall the chronic revolutions which harass the country. However,
the presence of Strawbridge prevented any suspicion on the part of
these rural police. Americans travel far and wide over Venezuela as
oil-prospectors, rubber-buyers, and commercial salesmen. The police
never interfere with their activities.

The villages through which the travelers passed were all just alike--a
main street, composed of adobe huts, which widened into a central
plaza where a few flamboyants and palms grew through holes in a hard
pavement. Always at the end of the plaza stood a charming old Spanish
church, looking centuries old, with its stuccoed front, its solid brick
campanile pierced by three apertures in which, silhouetted against the
sky, hung the bells. In each village the church was the focus of life.
And the only sign of animation here was the ringing of the carillon for
the different offices. The bell-ringings occurred endlessly, and were
quite different from the tolling which Strawbridge was accustomed to
hear in North America. The priests rang their bells with the clangor
of a fire-alarm. They began softly but swiftly, increased in intensity
until the bells roared like the wrath of God over roof and _calle_, and
then came to a close with a few slow, solemn strokes.

As is the custom of traveling Americans, Strawbridge compared, for
the benefit of his companions, these dirty Latin villages with clean
American towns. He pointed out how American towns had an underground
sewage system instead of allowing their slops to trickle among the
cobblestones down the middle of the street; how American towns had
waterworks and electric lights and wide streets; and how if they had
a church at all it was certainly not in the public square, raising an
uproar on week-days. American churches were kept out of the way, up
back streets, and the business part of town was devoted to business.

Here the negro editor interjected the remark that perhaps each people
worshiped its own God.

"Sure we do, on Sundays," agreed Strawbridge; "or, at least, the women
do; but on week-days we are out for business."

When the motor left the mountains and entered the semi-arid level
of the Orinoco basin, the scenery changed to an endless stretch of
sand broken by sparse savannah grass and a scattering of dwarf gray
trees such as chaparro, alcornoque, manteco. The only industry here
was cattle-raising, and this was uncertain because the cattle died by
the thousands for lack of water during the dry season. Now and then
the motor would come in sight, or scent, of a dead cow, and this led
Strawbridge to compare such shiftless cattle-raising with the windmills
and irrigation ditches in the American West.

On the fifth day of their drive, the drummer was on this theme, and the
bull-fighter--who, after all, was in the car on sufferance--sat nodding
his head politely and agreeing with him, when Gumersindo interrupted to
point ahead over the llano.

"Speaking of irrigation ditches, señor, yonder is a Venezuelan canal
now."

The motor was on one of those long, almost imperceptible slopes which
break the level of the llanos. From this point of vantage the motorists
could see an enormous distance over the flat country. About half-way to
the horizon the drummer descried a great raw yellow gash cut through
the landscape from the south. He stared at it in the utmost amazement.
Such a cyclopean work in this lethargic country was unbelievable.
On the nearer section of the great cut Strawbridge could make out a
movement of what seemed to be little red flecks. The negro editor, who
was watching the American's face, gave one of his rare laughs.

"Ah, you are surprised, señor."

"Surprised! I'm knocked cold! I didn't know anything this big was being
done in Venezuela."

"Well, this isn't exactly in Venezuela, señor."

"No! How's that?"

"We are now in the free and independent territory of Rio Negro, señor.
We are now under the jurisdiction of General Adriano Fombombo. You
observe the difference at once."

By this time the motor was again below the level of the alcornoque
growth and the men began discussing what they had seen.

"What's the object of it?" asked Strawbridge.

"The general is going to canalize at least one half of this entire
Orinoco valley. This sandy stretch you see around you, señor, will be
as fat as the valley of the Nile."

The idea seized on the drummer's American imagination.

"Why!" he exclaimed, "this is amazing! it's splendid! Why haven't I
heard of this? Why haven't the American capitalists got wind of this?"

Gumersindo shrugged.

"The federal authorities are not advertising an insurgent general,
señor."

After a moment the drummer ejaculated:

"He will be one of the richest men in the world!"

Gumersindo loosed a hand from the steering-wheel a moment, to hold it
up in protest.

"Don't say that! General Fombombo is an idealist, señor. It is his
dream to create a super-civilization here in the Orinoco Valley. He
will be wealthy; the whole nation will be wealthy,--yes, enormously
wealthy,--but what lies beyond wealth? When a people become wealthy,
what lies beyond that?"

This was evidently a question which the drummer was to answer, so he
said:

"Why, ... they invest that and make still more money." The editor
smiled.

"A very American answer! That is the difference, señor, between the
middle-class mind and the aristocratic mind. The bourgeois cannot
conceive of anything beyond a mere extension of wealth. But wealth is
only an instrument. It must be used to some end. Mere brute riches
cannot avail a man or a people."

The car rattled ahead as Strawbridge considered the editor's
implications that wealth was not the end of existence. It was a mere
step, and something lay beyond. Well, what was it, outside of a good
time? He thought of some of the famous fortunes in America. Some of
their owners made art collections, some gave to charity, some bought
divorces. But even to the drummer's casual thinking, there became
apparent the rather trivial uses of these fortunes, compared with the
fundamental exertion it required to obtain them. Even to Strawbridge it
became clear that the use was a step down from the earning.

"What's Fombombo going to do with his?" he asked out of his reverie.

"His what?"

"Fortune--when he makes it?"

"_Pues_, he will found a government where men can forget material care
and devote their lives to the arts, the sciences, and pure philosophy.
Great cities will gem these llanos, in which poverty is banished; and
a brotherhood of intellectuals will be formed--a mental aristocracy,
based not on force but on kindliness and good-will."

"I see-e-e," dragged out the drummer. "That's when everybody gets
enough wealth--"

"When all devote themselves to altruistic ends," finished the editor.

The drummer was trying to imagine such a system, when Gumersindo
clamped on the brakes and brought the car to a sudden standstill.
Strawbridge looked up and saw a stocky soldier in the middle of their
road, with a carbine leveled at the travelers.

Strawbridge gasped and sat upright. The soldier in the sunshine, with
his carbine making a little circle under his right eye, focused the
drummer's attention so rigidly that for several moments he could not
see anything else. Then he became aware that they had come out upon
the canal construction, and that a most extraordinary army of shocking
red figures were trailing up and down the sides of the big cut in the
sand, like an army of ants. Every worker bore a basket on his head, and
his legs were chained together so he could take a step of only medium
length.

The guard, a smiling, well-equipped soldier, began an apology for
having stopped the car. He had been taking his siesta, he said; the
popping of the engine had awakened him, and he had thought some one was
trying to rescue some of the workers. He had been half asleep, and he
was very sorry.

The cadaverous, unshaven faces of the hobbled men, their ragged red
clothes gave Strawbridge a nightmarish impression. They might have been
fantasms produced by the heat of the sun.

"What have these fellows done?" asked the American, looking at them in
amazement.

The guard paused in his conversation with Gumersindo to look at the
American. He shrugged.

"How do I know, señor? I am the guard, not the judge."

Out of the rim of the ditch crept one of the creatures, with scabs
about his legs where the chains worked. He advanced toward the
automobile.

"Señors," he said in a ghastly whisper, "a little bread! a little piece
of meat!"

The guard turned and was about to drive the wretch back into the
ditch, when Strawbridge cried out, "Don't! Let him alone!" and began
groping hurriedly under the seat for a box where they carried their
provisions. When the other prisoners learned that the motorists were
about to give away food, a score of living cadavers came dragging their
chains out of the pit, holding out hands that were claws and babbling
in all keys, flattened, hoarsened, edged by starvation. "A little here,
señor!" "A bit for Christ's sake, señor!" "Give me a bit of bread
and take a dying man's blessing, señor!" They stunk, their red rags
crawled. Such odors, such lazar faces tickled Strawbridge's throat with
nausea. Saliva pooled under his tongue. He spat, gripped his nerves,
and asked one of the creatures:

"For God's sake, what brought you here?"

The prisoners were mumbling their _gracias_ for each bit of food. One
poor devil even refrained, for a moment, from chewing, to answer,
"Señor, I had a cow, and the _jefe civil_ took my cow and sent me to
the 'reds.'" "Señor," shivered another voice, "I ... I fished in the
Orinoco. I was never very fortunate. When the _jefe civil_ was forced
to make up his tally to the 'reds,' he chose me. I was never very
fortunate."

An old man whose face was all eyes and long gray hair had got around
on the side of the car opposite to the guard. He leaned toward
Strawbridge, wafting a revolting odor.

"Señor," he whispered, "I had a pretty daughter. I meant to give her to
a strong lad called Esteban, for a wife, but the _jefe civil_ suddenly
broke up my home and sent me to the 'reds.' She was a pretty girl, my
little Madruja. Señor, can it be, by chance, that you are traveling
toward Canalejos?"

The American nodded slightly into the sunken eyes.

"Then, for our Lady's sake, señor, if she is not already lost, be kind
to my little Madruja! Give her a word from me, señor. Tell her ...
tell her--" he looked about him with his ghastly hollow eyes--"tell her
that her old father is ... well, and kindly treated on ... on account
of his age."

Just then the bull-fighter leaned past the American.

"You say this girl is in Canalejos, señor?" he broke in.

"_Sí_, señor."

"Then the Holy Virgin has directed you to the right person, señor. I
am Lubito, the bull-fighter, a man of heart." He touched his athletic
chest. "I will find your little Madruja, señor, and care for her as if
she were my own."

The convict reached out a shaking claw.

"_Gracias á Madre in cielo! Gracias á San Pedro! Gracias á la Vírgen
Inmaculada!_" Somehow a tear had managed to form in the wretch's dried
and sunken eye.

"You give her to me, señor?"

"_O sí, sí! un millón gracias!_"

"You hear that, Señor Strawbridge: the poor little bride Madruja, in
Canalejos, is now under my protection."

The drummer felt a qualm, but said nothing, because, after all, nothing
was likely to come from so shadowy a trust. The red-garbed skeleton
tried to give more thanks.

"Come, come, don't oppress me with your gratitude, _viejo_. It is
nothing for me. I am all heart. Step away from in front of the car so
we may start at once. _Vamose_, señors! Let us fly to Canalejos!"

Gumersindo let in his clutch, there was a shriek of cogs, and the motor
plowed through the sand. The bull-fighter turned and waved good-by to
the guard and smiled gaily at the ancient prisoner. The motor crossed
the head of the dry canal, and the party looked down into its cavernous
depths. As the great work dropped into the distance behind them, the
dull-red convicts and their awful faces followed Strawbridge with the
persistence of a bad dream. At last he broke out:

"Gumersindo, is it possible that those men back there have committed no
crime?"

The negro looked around at him.

"Some have and some have not, señor."

"Was the fisherman innocent? Was the old man with the daughter
innocent?"

"It is like this, Señor Strawbridge," said Gumersindo, watching his
course ahead. "The _jefes civiles_ of the different districts must make
up their quota of men to work on the canal. They select all the idlers
and bad characters they can, but they need more. Then they select for
different reasons. All the _jefes civiles_ are not angels. Sometimes
they send a man to the 'reds' because they want his cow, or his wife or
his daughter--"

"Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic
ends!" cried Strawbridge.

"_Mi caro amigo_," argued the editor, with the amiability of a man
explaining a well-thought-out premise, "why not? There must be a
beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall
the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to
convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They
would never be convinced."

"But that is such an outrageous thing--to take an innocent man from his
work, take a father from his daughter!"

The editor made a suave gesture.

"Certainly, that is simply applying a military measure to civil life,
drafted labor. The sacrifice of a part for the whole. That has always
been the Spanish idea, señor. The first conquistadors drafted labor
among the Indians. The Spanish Inquisition drafted saints from a world
of sinners. If one is striving for an ultimate good, señor, one cannot
haggle about the price."

"But that isn't doing those fellows right!" cried Strawbridge, pointing
vehemently toward the canal they had left behind. "It isn't doing those
particular individuals right!"

"A great many Americans did not want to join the army during the war.
Was it right to draft them?" Gumersindo paused a moment, and then
added: "No, Señor Strawbridge; back of every aristocracy stands a
group of workers represented by the 'reds.' It is the price of leisure
for the superior man, and without leisure there is no superiority.
Where one man thinks and feels and flowers into genius, señor, ten
must slave. Weeds must die that fruit may grow. And that is the whole
content of humanity, señor, its fruit."


Two hours later the negro pointed out a distant town purpling the
horizon. It was Canalejos.

Strawbridge rode forward, looking at General Fombombo's capital city.
The houses were built so closely together that they resembled a walled
town. As the buildings were constructed of sun-dried brick, the
metropolis was a warm yellow in common with the savannahs. It was as if
the city were a part of the soil, as if the winds and sunshine somehow
had fashioned these architectural shapes as they had the mesas of New
Mexico and Arizona.

The whole scene was suffused with the saffron light of deep afternoon.
It reminded the drummer of a play he had seen just before leaving New
York. He could not recall the name of the play, but it opened with a
desert scene, and a beggar sitting in front of a temple. There was just
such a solemn yellow sunset as this.

As the drummer thought of these things the motor had drawn close enough
to Canalejos for him to make out some of the details of the picture.
Now he could see a procession of people moving along the yellow walls
of the city. Presently, above the putter of the automobile, he heard
snatches of a melancholy singing. The bull-fighter leaned forward in
his seat and watched and listened. Presently he said with a certain
note of concern in his voice:

"Gumersindo, that's a wedding!"

"I believe it is," agreed the editor.

Lubito hesitated, then said:

"Would you mind putting on a little more speed, señor? It ... it would
be interesting to find out whose wedding it is."

Without comment the negro fed more gasolene. As the motor whirled
cityward, the bull-fighter sat with both hands gripping the front seat,
staring intently as the wedding music of the peons came to them, with
its long-drawn, melancholy burden.

Strawbridge leaned back, listening and looking. He was still thinking
about the play in New York and regretting the fact that in real
life one never saw any such dramatic openings. In real life it was
always just work, work, work--going after an order, or collecting
a bill--never any drama or romance, just dull, prosy, commonplace
business ... such as this.




CHAPTER VI


Canalejos was no exception to the general rule that all Venezuelan
cities function upon a war basis. At the entrance of a _calle_,
just outside the city wall, stood a faded green sentry-box. As the
motor drove up, a sentry popped out of the box, with a briskness and
precision unusual in Venezuela. He stood chin up, heels together, quite
as if he were under some German martinet. With a snap he handed the
motorists the police register and jerked out, from somewhere down in
his thorax, military fashion:

"Hup ... your names ... point of departure ... destination ...
profession...."

It amused Strawbridge to see a South American performing such military
antics. It was like a child playing soldier. He was moved to mimic the
little fellow by grunting back in the same tones, "Hup ... Strawbridge
... Caracas ... Canalejos ... sell guns and ammunition...." Then he
wrote those answers in the book.

An anxious look flitted across the face of the sentry at this
jocularity. His stiff "eyes front" flickered an instant toward the
sentry-box. While the negro and the bull-fighter were filling in the
register, a peon came riding up on a black horse. He stopped just
behind the motor and with the immense patience of his kind awaited his
turn.

While his two companions were signing, Strawbridge yielded to that
impulse for horse-play which so often attacks Americans who are young
and full-blooded. He leaned out of the motor very solemnly, lifted
the cap of the sentry, turned the visor behind, and replaced it on
his head. The effect was faintly but undeniably comic. The little
soldier's face went beet-colored. At the same moment came a movement
inside the sentry-box and out of the door stepped a somewhat corpulent
man wearing the epaulettes, gold braid, and stars of a general. He
was the most dignified man and had the most penetrating eyes that
Strawbridge had ever seen in his life. He had that peculiar possessive
air about him which Strawbridge had felt when once, at a New York
banquet, he saw J. P. Morgan. By merely stepping out of the sentry-box
this man seemed to appropriate the _calle_, the motor and men, and
the llanos beyond the town. Strawbridge instantly knew that he was in
the presence of General Adriano Fombombo, and the gaucherie of having
turned around the little sentry's cap set up a sharp sinking feeling in
the drummer's chest. For this one stupid bit of foolery he might very
well forfeit his whole order for munitions.

Gumersindo leaped out of the car and, with a deep bow, removed his hat.

"Your Excellency, I have the pleasure to report that I accomplished
your mission without difficulty, that I have procured an American
gentleman whom, if you will allow me the privilege, I will present.
General Fombombo, this is Señor Tomas Strawbridge of New York city."

By this time Strawbridge had scrambled out of the motor and extended
his hand.

The general, although he was not so tall as the American, nor, really,
so large, drew Strawbridge to him, somehow as if the drummer were a
small boy.

"I see your long journey from Caracas has not quite exhausted you," he
said, with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.

Strawbridge felt a deep relief. He glanced at the soldier's cap and
began to laugh.

"Thank you," he said; "I manage to travel very well."

The general turned to the negro.

"Gumersindo, telephone my _casa_ that Señor Strawbridge will occupy the
chamber overlooking the river."

The drummer put up a hand in protest.

"Now, General, I'll go on to the hotel."

The general erased the objection:

"There are no hotels in Canalejos, Señor Strawbridge; a few little
eating-houses which the peons use when they come in from the llanos,
that is all."

By this time Strawbridge's embarrassment had vanished. The general
somehow magnified him, set him up on a plane the salesman had never
occupied before.

"Well, General," he began cheerfully, using the American formula,
"how's business here in Canalejos?"

"Business?" repeated the soldier, suavely. "Let me see, ... business.
You refer, I presume, to commercial products?"

"Why, yes," agreed the drummer, rather surprised.

"_Pues_, the peons, I believe, are gathering balata. The cocoa
estancias will be sending in their yield at the end of this month;
tonka-beans--"

"Are prices holding up well?" interrupted Strawbridge, with the affable
discourtesy of an American who never quite waits till his question is
answered.

"I believe so, Señor Strawbridge; or, rather, I assume so; I have
not seen a market quotation in...." He turned to the editor: "Señor
Gumersindo, you are a journalist; are you _au courant_ with the market
reports?"

The negro made a slight bow.

"On what commodity, your Excellency?"

"What commodity are you particularly interested in, Señor Strawbridge?"
inquired the soldier.

"Why ... er ... just the general trend of the market," said
Strawbridge, with a feeling that his little excursion into that
peculiar mechanical talk of business, markets, prices, which was so
dear to his heart, had not come off very well.

"There has been, I believe, an advance in some prices and a decline in
others," generalized Gumersindo; "the usual seasonal fluctuations."

"_Sí, gracias_," acknowledged the general. "Señor Gumersindo, during
Señor Strawbridge's residence in Canalejos, you will kindly furnish him
the daily market quotations."

"_Sí_, señor."

The matter of business was settled and disposed of. Came that slight
hiatus in which hosts wait for a guest to decide what shall be the
next topic. The drummer thought rapidly over his repertoire; he
thought of baseball, of Teilman's race in the batting column; one or
two smoking-car jokes popped into his head but were discarded. He
considered discussing the probable Republican majority Ohio would show
in the next presidential election. He had a little book in his vest
pocket which gave the vote by states for the past decade. In Pullman
smoking-compartments the drummer had found it to be an arsenal of
debate. He could make terrific political forecasts and prove them
by this little book. But, with his very fingers on it, he decided
against talking Ohio politics to an insurgent general in Rio Negro. His
thoughts boggled at business again, at the prices of things, when he
glanced about and saw Lubito, who had been entirely neglected during
this colloquy. The drummer at once seized on his companion to bridge
the hiatus. He drew the _espada_ to him with a gesture.

"General Fombombo," he said with a salesman's ebullience, "meet Señor
Lubito. Señor Lubito is a bull-fighter, General, and they tell me he
pulls a nasty sword."

The general nodded pleasantly to the torero.

"I am very glad you have come to Canalejos, Señor Lubito. I think I
shall order in some bulls and have an exhibition of your art. If you
care to look at our bull-ring in Canalejos, you will find it in the
eastern part of our city." He pointed in the direction and apparently
brushed the bull-fighter away, for Lubito bowed with the muscular
suppleness of his calling and took himself off in the direction
indicated.

At that moment the general observed the peon on the black horse, who
as yet had not dared to present himself at the sentry-box before the
_caballeros_.

"What are you doing on that horse, _bribon_?" asked the general.

"I was waiting to enter, your Excellency," explained the fellow,
hurriedly.

"Your name?"

"Guillermo Fando, your Excellency."

"Is that your horse?"

"_Sí_, your Excellency."

"Take it to my cavalry barracks and deliver it to Coronel Saturnino. A
donkey will serve your purpose."

Fando's mouth dropped open. He stared at the President.

"T-take my _caballo_ to the ... the cavalry...."

A little flicker came into the black eyes of the dictator. He said in a
somewhat lower tone:

"Is it possible, Fando, that you do not understand Spanish? Perhaps a
little season in La Fortuna...."

The peon's face went mud-colored. "_P-pardon, su excellencia!_" he
stuttered, and the next moment thrust his heels into the black's side
and went clattering up the narrow _calle_, filling the drowsy afternoon
with clamor.

The general watched him disappear, and then turned to Strawbridge.

"_Caramba!_ the devil himself must be getting into these peons!
Speaking to me after I had instructed him!"

The completely proprietary air of the general camouflaged under a
semblance of military discipline the taking of the horse from the
peon. It was only after the three men were in Gumersindo's car and
on their way to the President's palace that the implications of the
incident developed in the drummer's mind. The peon was not in the army;
the horse belonged to the peon, and yet Fombombo had taken it with a
mere glance and word.

Evening was gathering now. The motor rolled through a street of dark
little shops. Here and there a candle-flame pricked a black interior.
Above the level line of roofs the east gushed with a wide orange light.

The dictator and the editor had respected the musing mood of their
guest and were now talking to each other in low tones. They were
discussing Pio Barajo's novels.

In the course of their trip the drummer had that characteristic
American feeling that he was wasting time, that here in the car he
might get some idea of the general's needs in the way of guns and
ammunition. In a pause of the talk about Barajo, he made a tentative
effort to speak of the business which had brought him to Canalejos, but
the general smoothed this wrinkle out of the conversation, and the talk
veered around to Zamacois.

The drummer had dropped back into his original thoughts about the
injustice and inequalities of life here in Rio Negro, and what the
American people would do in such circumstances, when the motor turned
into Plaza Mayor and the motorists saw a procession of torches marching
beneath the trees on the other side of the square. Then the drummer
observed that the automobile in which he rode and the moving line of
torches were converging on the dark front of a massive building. He
watched the flames without interest until his own conveyance and the
marchers came to a halt in front of the great spread of ornamental
stairs that flowed out of the entrance of the palace. A priest in a
cassock stood at the head of the procession, and immediately behind
him were two peons, a young man and a girl, both in wedding finery.
They evidently had come for the legal ceremony which in Venezuela must
follow the religious ceremony, for as the car stopped a number of
voices became audible: "There is his Excellency!" "In the motor, not in
the _palacio_!" The priest lifted his voice:

"Your Excellency, here are a man and a woman who desire--"

While the priest was speaking, a graceful figure ran up the ornamental
steps and stood out strongly against the white marble.

"Your Excellency," he called, "I must object to this wedding! I require
time. I represent the father of the bride. It is my paternal duty, your
Excellency, to investigate this suitor."

Every one in the line stared at the figure on the steps. The priest
began in an astonished voice:

"How is this, my son?"

"I represent the father of this girl," asserted the man on the steps,
warmly. "I must look into the character of this bridegroom. A father,
your Excellency, is a tender relation."

A sudden outbreak came from the party:

"Who is this man?" "What does he mean by 'father'? Madruja's father is
with the 'reds.'"

General Fombombo, who had been watching the little scene passively,
from the motor, now scrutinized the girl herself. It drew Strawbridge's
attention to her. She was a tall pantheress of a girl, and the wavering
torchlight at one moment displayed and the next concealed her rather
wild black eyes, full lips, and a certain untamed beauty of face. Her
husband-elect was a hard, weather-worn youth. The coupling together of
two such creatures did seem rather incongruous.

General Fombombo asked a few questions as he stepped out of the car:
Who was she? What claim had the man on the steps? He received a chorus
of answers none of which were intelligible. All the while he kept
scrutinizing the girl, appraising the contours visible through the
bridal veil. At last he waggled a finger and said:

"_Cá! Cá!_ I will decide this later. The señorita may occupy the west
room of the palace to-night, and later I will go into this matter more
carefully. I have guests now." He clapped his hands. "Ho, guards!" he
called, "conduct the señorita to the west room for the night."

Two soldiers in uniform came running down the steps. The line of
marchers shrank from the armed men. The girl stared large-eyed at this
swift turn in her affairs. Suddenly she clutched her betrothed's arm.

"Esteban!" she cried. "Esteban!"

The groom stood staring, apparently unable to move as the soldiers
hurried down the steps.

By this time General Fombombo was escorting the drummer courteously up
the stairs into the deeply recessed entrance of the palace. Strawbridge
could not resist looking back to see the outcome of this singular
wedding. But now the torchbearers were scattering and all the drummer
could see was a confused movement in the gloom, and now and then he
heard the sharp, broken shrieks of a woman.

His observations were cut short by General Fombombo who, at the top of
the stairs, made a deep bow:

"My house and all that it contains are yours, señor."

Strawbridge bowed as to this stereotype he made the formal response,
"And yours also."




CHAPTER VII


As the general led the way into the palace, through a broad entrance
hall, the cry of the peon girl still clung to the fringe of Thomas
Strawbridge's mind. He put it resolutely aside, and assumed his
professional business attitude. That is to say, a manner of
complimentary intimacy such as an American drummer always assumes
toward a prospective buyer. He laid a warm hand on the general's arm,
and indicated some large oil paintings hung along the hallway. He said
they were "nifty." He suggested that the general was pretty well fixed,
and asked how long he had lived here, in the palace.

"Ever since I seized control of the government in Rio Negro," answered
the dictator, simply.

For some reason the reply disconcerted Strawbridge. He had not expected
so bald a statement. At that moment came the ripple of a piano from one
of the rooms off the hallway. The notes rose and fell, massed by some
skilful performer into a continuous tone. Strawbridge listened to it
and complimented it.

"Pretty music," he said.

"That is my wife playing--the Señora Fombombo."

"_Is_ it!" The drummer's accent congratulated the general on having a
wife who could play so well. He tilted his head so the general could
see that he was listening and admiring.

"Do you like that sort of music, General?" he asked breezily.

"What sort?"

"That that your wife's playing. It's classic music, isn't it?"

The general was really at a loss. He also began listening, trying to
determine whether the music was of the formal classic school of Bach
and Handel, or whether it belonged to the later romantic or to the
modern. He was unaware that Americans of Strawbridge's type divided all
music into two kinds, classic and jazz, and that anything which they do
not like falls into the category of classic, and anything they do is
jazz.

"I really can't distinguish," admitted the general.

"You bet I can!" declared Strawbridge, briskly. "That's classic. It
hasn't got the jump to it, General, the rump-ty, dump-ty, boom! I can
feel the lack, you know, the something that's missing. I play a little
myself."

The general murmured an acknowledgment of the salesman's virtuosity,
and almost at the same moment sounds from the piano ceased. A little
later the door of the salon opened and into the hall stepped a slight
figure dressed in the bonnet and black robe of a nun.

For such a woman to come out of the music-room gave the drummer a faint
surprise; then he surmised that this was one of the sisters from some
near-by convent who had come to give piano lessons to Señora Fombombo.
The idea was immediately upset by the general:

"Dolores," and, as the nun turned, "Señora Fombombo, allow me to
present my friend, Señor Strawbridge."

The strangeness of being presented to a nun who was also the general's
wife disconcerted Strawbridge. The girl in the robe was bowing and
placing their home at his disposal. The drummer was saying vague things
in response: "Very grateful.... The general had insisted.... He hoped
that she would feel better soon...." Where under heaven Strawbridge had
fished up this last sentiment, he did not know. His face flushed red
at so foolish a remark. Señora Fombombo smiled briefly and kindly and
went her way down the passage, a somber, religious figure. Presently
she opened one of the dull mahogany doors and disappeared.

The general stood looking after his wife thoughtfully and then answered
the question which he knew was in his guest's mind:

"My wife wears that costume on account of a vow. Her sister was ill
in Madrid, and my wife vowed to the Virgin that if her sister were
restored she would wear a Carmelitish habit."

"And she's doing it?" ejaculated Strawbridge, in an amazed voice.

The general made a gesture.

"Her sister was restored."

The American began impulsively:

"Well, I must say that's rather rough on.... Why, her vow had nothing
to do with.... You know her sister would have...." It seemed that
none of the sentences which the American began could be concluded
with courtesy. Finally he was left suspended in air, with a slight
perspiration on his face. He drew out a silk handkerchief, dabbed his
face, and wiped his wrists.

"General," he floundered on to solider ground, "now, about how many
rifles are you going to want?"

The dictator looked at him, almost as much at loss as the drummer had
been.

"Rifles?"

"Yes," proceeded the drummer, becoming quite his enthusiastic self
again at this veering back to business. "You see, it will depend upon
what you are going to do with 'em, how many you will need. If you are
just going to hold this state which you have ... er ... seized, why,
you won't need so many, but if you are going out and try to grab some
more towns, you'll need a lot more."

With a penetrating scrutiny the dictator considered his guest.

"Why do you ask such a question, Señor Strawbridge?" he inquired in a
changed tone.

"Because it's your business."

"My business!"

"Why, yes," declared Strawbridge, amiably and with gathering aplomb.
"You see, General, when my firm sends out a salesman, the very first
rule they teach him is, 'Study your customer's business.' 'Study his
business,' said my boss, 'just the same as if it was your own business.
Don't oversell him, don't undersell him. Sell him just exactly what he
needs. You want your customer to rely on you,' says my old man, 'so
you must be reliable. When you sell a man, you have really gone into
partnership with him. His gain is your gain.'" By this time Strawbridge
was emphasizing his points by thumping earnestly on the dictator's
shoulder. "A hundred times I've had my old man say to me, 'Strawbridge,
if you don't make your customer's business your own, if his problems
are not your problems, if you can't give him expert advice on his
difficulties, then you are no salesman; you are simply a mut with a
sample case.'"

This eruption of American business philosophy came from Strawbridge as
naturally and bubblingly as champagne released from a bottle. He had
at last got his prospect's ear and had launched his sales talk. With
rather a blank face the general listened to the outburst.

"So you were inquiring through considerations of business?" he asked.

"Exactly; I want to know your probable market. Perhaps I can think up a
way to extend it."

"I see." The general was beginning to smile faintly now. "Because I am
going to buy some rifles from you, you ask me what cities I am going to
attack next."

A slight disconcert played through Strawbridge at this bald statement,
but he continued determinedly:

"That's the idea. If you are going to use my guns, I'm partners with
you in your ... er ... expansion. That's American methods, General;
that's straightforward and honest."

General Fombombo drew in his lips, bit them thoughtfully, and
considered Strawbridge. No man with a rudimentary knowledge of human
nature could have doubted the drummer's complete sincerity. The general
seemed to be repressing a smile.

"Suppose we step into my study, here, a moment, Señor Strawbridge. We
might discuss my ... my business, as you put it, if you will excuse its
prematurity."

"That's what I'm here for--business," said Strawbridge, earnestly, as
he passed in at a door which the dictator opened.

A wall map was the most conspicuous feature of General Fombombo's
library, a huge wall map of Venezuela which covered the entire west
wall of the room. As the two men entered, only the lower third of this
cartograph was revealed by reading-lamps ranged along tables, but the
general switched on a frieze of ceiling lights and swept the whole
projection into high illumination.

The general stood looking at it meditatively, glanced at his watch as
if timing some other engagement, then pointed out to Strawbridge that
the greater part of the chart was outlined in blue, while the extreme
western end of the Orinoco Valley was in red.

"That is my life work, Señor Strawbridge--extending this red outline
of the free and independent state of Rio Negro to include the whole
Orinoco Valley. I want to consolidate an empire from the Andes to the
Atlantic."

Strawbridge stood nodding, looking at the blue-and-red map, and began
his characteristic probing for detail:

"How many square miles you got now, General?"

To Strawbridge's surprise, the dictator repeated this question in a
somewhat louder tone:

"How many square miles does the state of Rio Negro now contain, Coronel
Saturnino?" and a voice from the north end of the study answered:

"Seventeen thousand five hundred and eighty-two, General."

The general repeated these figures to Strawbridge.

At the first words uttered by the voice, Strawbridge turned, to see a
third person in the library, a young man behind a reading-lamp at the
other end of the room, busy at some clerical work. Strawbridge turned
his thoughts back to the figures and fixed them in his mind, then set
out after more details.

"How much more is there to be consolidated?"

This question in turn was relayed to the clerk, who said:

"Two hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and eighteen."

The American compared the two figures, looked at the map.

"Then it will take you a long time, a number of years to finish," he
observed.

"Oh, no!" objected the general, becoming absorbed in his subject. "Our
progress will be in geometrical, not in arithmetical ratio. You see,
every new town we absorb gives us so much human material for our next
step."

"I see that," assented the drummer, looking at the map; "and your idea
is to absorb the whole Orinoco Valley?"

The general's answer to this was filled with genuine ardor. The Orinoco
Valley was one of the largest geographical units in the world, a
great natural empire. It was variously estimated at from two hundred
and fifty thousand to six hundred and fifty thousand square miles in
area. It was drained by four hundred and thirty-six rivers and upward
of two thousand streams. These innumerable waters would convert the
whole region into a seaport. With such cheap transportation the Orinoco
country could supply the world with cocoa, tonka-beans, cotton, sugar,
rubber, tropical cabinet-woods, cattle, hides, gold, diamonds.

"But what I have just traveled over is almost a desert," objected
Strawbridge. "The cattle were dying of thirst."

"_Precisamente!_" interjected the general, with a sharp gesture; "but
right at this moment I am driving a canal from here to here." He took a
long ruler and began to point eagerly on the map.

"Yes, I saw your ... your men at work." The drummer stuttered as the
ghastly "reds" recurred to his mind.

"That canal will furnish water in the dry season. In the wet season
it will form a conduit to impound the waters in this great natural
depression here." The dictator pointed dynamically at the configuration
showed on the map. "Young man, can you imagine such a development? Can
you fancy the Nile Valley magnified thirty times?" He waved at the
brilliantly lighted map. "Can you imagine league after league lush with
harvest, decked with noble cities, and peopled by the aristocrats of
the earth? I refer to the Spanish race. You must realize, señor, there
have been but two dominant races in modern history--the English and
the Spanish. We two divided the New World between us. You will agree
with me when I say that the English North Americans have cultivated
the material side of civilization to a degree that has never been
approached in the sweep of human history. Is it unreasonable to suppose
that the other great segment of humanity, the Spanish South Americans,
will cultivate the immaterial side, will establish a great artistic,
intellectual, and spiritual hegemony in the world? By such a division
our imperial races will supplement each other. One will show the world
how to produce, the other how to live. We shall be the halves of a
whole."

Strawbridge followed this dithyramb keenly in regard to the irrigation
and development project; the artistic end sounded rather nebulous to
him.

"And you've got this far with it," he particularized, pointing at the
red boundary; "what's the next step?"

The dictator was riding his own hobby now, and he answered without
reservation:

"This town, San Geronimo."

"When are you going to do it?"

"We will absorb San Geronimo.... Let me see, ... Coronel Saturnino, on
what date do we attack San Geronimo?"

"On the twenty-third of this month," came the voice from the back of
the study.

"Exactly. We want to incorporate that town with the state of Rio Negro
before our flotilla returns up the Amazon from Rio Janeiro."

"When do you expect them back?"

"Inside of two months."

"Are they the boats Gumersindo was talking about? He spoke of my going
up the Orinoco, crossing to the Amazon, and then going down to Rio
Janeiro."

"Those were the instructions I gave Señor Gumersindo."

Strawbridge stood looking up at the map. A sudden plan popped into his
head.

"Since I'll be here," he said, "it wouldn't be a bad plan for me to run
along with your army to San Geronimo and see how the trick of absorbing
it is done. Give me some notion of the working end of this business."

"Do you mean you desire to accompany my army to San Geronimo?"

"Wouldn't be a bad idea."

"You would be running a certain risk, señor."

"Is it dangerous?" The salesman was surprised. The general had
talked so comfortably about "absorbing" San Geronimo that it sounded
a very peaceable operation. "Anyway," he persisted with a certain
characteristic stubbornness, "this will be a good opportunity to learn
about actual conditions down here, and if you can make a place for me,
I believe I'll go."

The dictator became grave.

"It is my duty to advise you against it."

Strawbridge considered his host.

"Your objections are not to me personally, are they, señor?" he asked
bluntly.

"No, not at all. My resources are entirely at your disposal."

"Then I think I ought to go," decided the American. "You see, when my
old man started me out, he said to me, 'Study conditions first-hand,
Strawbridge. Find out what your customer has to meet. Make his problems
your problems, his interest your interest.' So, you see, I am very glad
of the chance to see just how this absorption business works."

All this was given in a very enthusiastic tone. The dictator smiled
faintly.

"You are personally welcome to go. You may speak to Coronel Saturnino.
He will arrange your billet."

"Good! Good!" Strawbridge was gratified. Then he dropped automatically
into the follow-up methods taught him by the sales manager of the Orion
Arms Corporation.

"And now, General," he continued intimately, "about how many rifles
do we want shipped here?" As he asked this question he used his left
hand to draw a leather-covered book from his hip pocket, while with his
right he plucked a fountain-pen from his vest pocket. With a practised
flirt he flung open his order-book at a rubber-band marker. Thus
mobilized, he looked with bright expectation at his prospect.

The general seemed a little at loss.

"Do you mean how many rifles _I_ want?"

Strawbridge nodded, and repeated in an intimate, confident tone, "Yes;
how many do we want?" The pronoun followed up the impression of how
thoroughly he had identified himself with the interest of his customer.

Fombombo hesitated a moment, then asked aloud:

"Coronel Saturnino, how many rifles do we want?"

The young colonel did not pause in his work.

"Twenty-five thousand, General." His brain seemed to be a card-index.

"Twenty-five thousand," repeated Fombombo.

A jubilant sensation went through the drummer at the hugeness of the
order. He jotted something in his book.

"When do you want them delivered?"

"As soon as I can get them."

Strawbridge made soft, blurry noises of approval, nodding as he wrote.

"And how shipped?"

All through this little colloquy the general seemed rather at sea. At
last he said:

"We can arrange these details later, Señor Strawbridge."

The drummer suddenly turned his full-power selling-talk on his
prospect. This was the pinch, this was where he either "put it across"
or failed. For just this crisis his sales manager had drilled him day
after day. He turned on the dictator and began in an earnest, almost a
religious tone:

"Now, General, I can make you satisfactory terms and prices. Every
article that leaves our shop is guaranteed; the Orion Arms brands are
to-day the standards by which all other firearms are judged. You can't
make a mistake by ordering now." He pushed the pen and the book closer
to the general's hand. All the general had to do now was simply to
close his fingers.

"Señor, we can hardly go into such details to-night." The dictator
moved back a trifle from the drummer, with a South American's
distaste of touching another human being of the same sex. "There is
no necessity. You will be here for weeks, waiting for my canoes from
Rio. They will bring drafts, some gold, some barter. When all this is
arranged I will send you down the Amazon to embark at Rio for New York,
but we have a long wait until my flotilla arrives."

The salesman made a flank attack, almost without thinking. He gently
insinuated the book and pen into the general's fingers.

"Now, your Excellency," he murmured, raising his brows, "you sign the
dotted line, just here; see?" He pointed at it absorbedly. "I want you
to do it to protect yourself. If the prices happen to advance, you get
the benefit of to-day's quotations; see? If they fall--why, countermand
and order again; see? I'm trying to protect your interests just the
same as if they were mine, General."

The dictator returned pen and book.

"We will discuss these details later, señor." He again drew out his
watch and seemed struck with the hour. "I am sure you are weary after
your long ride, Señor Strawbridge. I myself, unfortunately, have
another engagement. Allow me to introduce to you Coronel Saturnino."
He moved with the salesman toward the man at the desk, a moment later
presented the colonel, and bowed himself away.

The drummer was discomfited at his prospect's escape; nevertheless he
shook hands warmly with Coronel Saturnino. The colonel was a handsome
young officer, in uniform, and his sword leaned against the desk at
which he sat writing. Saturnino's face tended toward squareness, and
he had a low forehead. His thick black hair was glossy with youth. His
square-cut face was marked with a faintly superior smile, as though he
perceived all the weaknesses of the person who was before him and was
slightly amused by them. He was of middle height. Strawbridge would
have called him heavy-set except for a remarkably slender waist. When
the colonel stood up and shook hands with the drummer, Strawbridge
discovered that he was in the presence of an athlete.

The salesman put himself on a friendly footing with this officer at
once, just as he always did with the clerks in American stores. He
seated himself on the edge of Coronel Saturnino's desk, very much at
ease.

"Well, I thought I was going to land the old general right off the
bat!" he confided, laughing.

"Yes?" inquired Saturnino, politely, still standing. "Why your haste?"

"Oh, well--" Strawbridge wagged his head--"push your business or your
business will push you. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do
to-day. Why, there might be a German salesman in here to-morrow with
another line of goods!"

"Is a German salesman coming?" asked the colonel, quickly.

"Oh, no, no, no! I said there might be." Strawbridge reached into an
inner pocket, drew out and flipped open a silver case. "Have a cigar."

"No, thank you." The colonel hesitated, and added, "I don't smoke after
twelve o'clock at night."

Strawbridge jumped up.

"Good Lord! is it as late as that?"

The colonel thought it was.

"By the way," interrupted the drummer, "I'm to go with you to San
Geronimo. The old man said so. I'll get the hang of things down there.
I suppose it pays--this revolting--or the old man wouldn't stay in the
business."

As the colonel simply stood, Strawbridge continued his desultory
remarks:

"The old man's got a grand scheme--hasn't he?--canalizing the Orinoco
Valley. Say, this goes: when you fellows put that across, this
beautiful little city of Canalejos will just have a shade on any damn
burg in this wide world. Now you can take that flat; it goes." He made
a gesture with his palm down.

Coronel Saturnino did not appear particularly gratified by this
encomium heaped upon his home town. He picked up a paper-weight and
looked at it with a faint smile.

"Did the general tell you about that?"

"Oh, yes," declared Strawbridge, heartily, "we buddied up from the
jump. Why, I never meet a stranger. I'm just Tom Strawbridge wherever
you find me."

The colonel passed over Mr. Strawbridge's declaration of his identity.

"Did the general's plan for canalization strike you as economically
sound?" he asked, with a certain quizzical expression.

"Why, sure! That's the most progressive scheme I've heard of since I
struck South America. I'm for it. I tell you it's a big idea."

The colonel laid down the paper-weight, and asked with a flavor of
satire:

"Why should a colony of men canalize a semi-arid country when they
can go to other parts of South America and obtain just as fertile,
well-watered land without effort?"

With a vague sense of sacrilege the drummer looked at the young officer.

"Why--good Lord, man!--you're not knocking your home town, are you?"

Coronel Saturnino was unaware that this was the cardinal crime in an
American's calendar.

"I am stating the most elementary analysis of an economic situation,"
he defended, rather surprised at his guest's heat.

The drummer laughed in brief amazement at a man who would decry his
place of residence for any reason under the sun.

"You certainly must never have read Edgar Z. Best's celebrated poem,
'The Trouble Is Not with Your Town; It's You.'"

"No," said the officer. "I've never read it."

"Well, I'll try to get it for you," said the drummer, in a tone which
told Coronel Saturnino that until he had read "The Trouble Is Not with
Your Town: It's You," he could never hope to stand among literate men.

Having thus, one might say, laid the foundation of the American spirit
in Canalejos, Strawbridge yawned frankly and said:

"If you'll be good enough to show me my bunk, I believe I'll hit the
hay."

Coronel Saturnino pressed a button on his desk and a moment later a
little palace guard in uniform entered the library, carrying a rifle.
The colonel gave a brief order, then walked to the door with his guest
and bowed him out of the study.




CHAPTER VIII


Next morning the cathedral bells roused Strawbridge with dreams of
fire-alarms. He thought he was in a burning house and he struggled
terrifically to move a leg, to twitch an inert arm. Somewhere in the
sleeping bulk of the drummer a strange, insubstantial entity sent
out desperate alarms. At last a finger flexed, an eyelid trembled,
then suddenly something in the sleeper's brain expanded, flowed out
through and identified itself with the whole body. It was reinstated
as a traveling salesman with trade ambitions who pursued devious ends
through ways and means imposed on him by custom and training. The
drummer opened his eyes and sat up. He wiped the sweat from his face
and damned the bells for waking him. The fact that by some strange
means he had been cut off a moment or two from his body, that he had
engaged in a terrific struggle to regain its control, did not suggest a
mystery or provoke a question in his mind. He had had a nightmare. That
explained everything. He often had nightmares. To Thomas Strawbridge's
type of mind anything that happens often cannot possibly contain a
mystery.

Nevertheless his experience left him in a dour mood. He turned out of
bed, shoved his feet into some native alpargatas, and shuffled to the
bath which adjoined his chamber.

The bath-tub was a basin of white marble, rather dirty, and built
into the tiled floor. It was a miniature swimming-pool. Overhead was
a clumsy silver nozzle on a water-pipe. The drummer turned it on, and
the water which sprayed over him was neither cool nor very clean. The
roaring and banging of the cathedral bells continued as if they would
never leave off.

As Strawbridge soaped and rubbed he recalled somewhat moodily his
engagement to go with General Fombombo's force to San Geronimo. At this
hour of the morning the adventure did not appeal to him. It was rather
a wild-goose chase, and he decided he would tell the general he had
changed his mind, and have Saturnino remove his name from the lists.

The bells continued their uproar. They did not stop until the drummer
had finished his bath and was back in his room. Then their silence
brought into notice a distant, watery note. This came from the
cataracts in the Rio Negro somewhere below Canalejos. The disquietude
of the water was rumored through the room, over the city, and it
spread across the llanos for miles and miles. It held a certain
disagreeableness for Strawbridge. He liked a quiet morning. Somewhere
on the street a native donkey-cart rattled. The cathedral bells started
again, but this time not for long--merely to gather in the faithful
their previous tumult had awakened. But it all struck Strawbridge on
raw nerves.

In fact, every morning Strawbridge was subject to what he called his
grouch. He got up with a grouch on. It was a short daily reaction from
his American heartiness, his American optimism, his tendency to convert
every moment into a fanfare and a balloon ascension. This early morning
depression continued until he had had his coffee and the fife-and-drum
corps of his spirit started up their stridor again. It is just possible
that the American flag, instead of stars, should bear forty-eight
coffee beans rampant.

A woman in black passed the barred windows of Strawbridge's room. The
drummer, after the manner of men, moved slowly about his window to keep
her in sight as long as possible. He fussed with his tie as he did so.
He watched her cross the plaza. She passed under a row of ornamental
evergreen trees which looked as if they had dark-green tassels hung
at regular intervals on perfectly symmetrical limbs. The grace of the
trees somehow lent itself to the girl who passed beneath them. At the
same moment an odor of frangipani drifted in through the bars, out of
the morning.

When any man is looking at a woman, any odor that comes to his nostrils
automatically associates itself with her--a relic, no doubt, of our
animal forebears, during their mating seasons.

Strawbridge watched the girl intently until at last he had his face
pressed against the bars to get a final glimpse of her at a difficult
angle.

When he straightened from this rather awkward posture and returned to
his tie, he became aware that the maid had entered his room with his
morning coffee. She was a short girl, of dusky yellow color, and was
evidently half Indian and half negro, or what the Venezuelans call
a _griffe_. She also had moved about the window to its last angular
possibility, and when Strawbridge saw her she was peering with very
bright black eyes to see who had been the gentleman's quarry.

At this the drummer became acutely aware of every movement he had made.
He frowned at the _griffe_ girl.

"Here, give me the coffee! Don't stand all day staring like that!"

The girl started and nervously handed her salver to him.

"Whyn't you knock when you came in?" demanded Strawbridge.

"I did, señor, but I thought you were asleep," she said, a little
frightened.

It was the maid's custom to find her master's guests asleep, to
steal in noiselessly, awaken them, and administer in a tiny cup two
tablespoonfuls of Venezuelan coffee, black as the pit and strong as
death.

The incident of the servant-girl counteracted, to a certain extent,
the heartening effect of the coffee. Strawbridge looked out on the
brightening morning and wondered if by any chance her gossip might
affect his landing General Fombombo's order for rifles, because he knew
that the girl in black he had been watching at such inconvenience was
the Señora Fombombo. He felt sure the _griffe_ girl knew it also. But
he decided optimistically that she would say nothing about it, or, if
she did, it would have no influence on his sale.

The big, somber bedroom to which General Fombombo had assigned his
guest was a good observation point, and no doubt the dictator had
chosen it for this very reason. The scene at which Strawbridge was
looking might have aroused enthusiasm in a more susceptible man. At an
angle it gave a view of the Plaza Mayor and a glimpse of the cathedral
seen through the trees. Straight east a bit of paved street showed, and
beyond that a garden with a side gate facing Strawbridge's window. A
heavy hedge divided the garden from the plaza. Beyond the garden rose
the walls and buttresses of the rear of the cathedral, and this was a
handsome thing. In the soft morning light it was an aspiration toward
God.

Beyond the cathedral, the wide river stretched eastward. Two hundred
yards down the river bank rose another low, massive building, more
heavily built and gloomier even than the palace. In the uncertain light
Strawbridge thought he discerned two or three figures on the flat roof
of this building.

A little later the sun's limb cut the far eastern reach of the river.
Distant quivering reflections marked the rapids whose subdued turmoil
brooded over the city and the llanos. The light increased momentarily.
Against its widening flame blinked tiny black native boats, like
familiar demons traversing the fires of some wide and splendid hell.

None of this interested Strawbridge. He stared at it through the same
mechanical compulsion that causes a moth to head toward light, but he
did not see it. The first thing that really caught his attention was
a bugle blowing reveille; the next breath, from the top of the low
building came the flash of a cannon, faintly seen against the brilliant
east. After an interval came a brief, hard report.

The concussion not only startled Strawbridge but did some obscure
violence to his sensibilities. It did not roar and rumble and so
suggest the pomp and panoply of war. The flatness of the llanos lent
no echo. The shot was just a hard, abrupt blow, a smash, then silence.
There was something dismaying about it. Then Strawbridge could see the
figures on the flat roof leaving their cannon and descending.

Like all good Americans who observe a foreign military demonstration,
Strawbridge thought:

"That's nothing. An American army with big American guns could blow
that little toy right out of existence." Nevertheless he continued to
be depressed and somehow dismayed by the hard and savage suddenness of
the sunrise gun, and in his heart he determined firmly that he would
not go with the army to San Geronimo. In his mind Strawbridge uttered
these thoughts resolutely, and he felt himself to be one of those
strong-willed men who, having once settled on a program, never vary
from it, no matter what chance befalls.

A gong announcing _almuerzo_ brought the drummer out of his reverie and
moved him toward the breakfast table. As he went he shook off his mood,
and resumed, as if he were putting on a suit of clothes, his quick
American walk, his optimism, and his dashing business manner. As he
moved briskly down the great hallway, a guard with a rifle directed him
to the _comidor_.

The palace was divided into an east and a west wing, by a series of
patios, and the breakfast-room proved to be a little place latticed off
from one of the smaller patios. The lattice was overgrown with vines.
In this retreat Strawbridge found a small basketry table laid with
snowy linen, on which were oranges, sweet lemons, rolls, and coffee.

Thanks to Strawbridge's quick movements, he was the first person
here. He sat down at the table and enjoyed the sunshine glinting at
him through the vines. Through an end door of the breakfast-room
he could see the kitchen. Its principal furnishing was a Venezuelan
cooking-range. This was a great stone table punctured with little iron
grates each holding a handful of charcoal fire. Above the table spread
a big sheet-iron canopy, to convey away the gases and fumes. Ranged on
the little fires were pots and pans and saucepans. At the farther end
of the kitchen a wrinkled old negress was on her knees on the earthen
floor, pouring boiling water into an old stocking leg filled with
ground coffee. The beverage dripped out into a silver pot which sat on
the ground in front of the crone. Beyond the negress, in the sunshine,
stood a meat block with a machete stuck in it and a joint of meat lying
on it. Around the meat the flies were so thick that they appeared to
Strawbridge as a kind of wavering shadow over the block.

A sound behind the drummer caused him to turn, and he saw the Señora
Fombombo, in her religious black, evidently just returned from early
mass. The sight of her gave Strawbridge a certain faint satisfaction,
but at the same time it brought back the vague embarrassment he had
felt on the previous evening. He returned her salutation of "_Buenos
dias_," and was pondering something else to say, when she expressed
a fear that the sight of a Venezuelan _cocina_ (kitchen) would be
disagreeable to him. She had heard how spotless were American kitchens.

The salesman began a hasty assurance that the kitchen was very
interesting, but the señora called to a servant to close the shutter.
The same _griffe_ girl whom Strawbridge had seen that morning answered
the call, and before she retired she gave the señora and the salesman a
certain understanding look, which linked up in Strawbridge's mind with
what the girl had seen an hour or two earlier.

The señora herself was proceeding with her table talk.

"We can get only native servants here in Canalejos," she was saying
in the faintly mechanical manner of a hostess who has an uninteresting
guest, "and they prepare everything in the native way."

Strawbridge said he liked Venezuelan cooking.

"It is monotonous," criticized the señora. "The chicken is always
cooked with rice, and the plantains are always fried."

Strawbridge started to say that he loved chicken and rice and fried
plantains, but even his imperfect sense of rhetoric warned him that he
had already overworked those particular phrases. So he checked that
sentiment, cast about for a substitute, and finally fished up:

"I saw you going to early mass this morning, señora."

The girl glanced at him, agreed to this, and continued peeling her
orange with a knife and fork, in the Venezuelan fashion.

The drummer wanted strongly to follow this opening with something
brisk and lively to compel her attention and interest, but his head
seemed oddly empty. His embarrassment persisted and made him a little
uncomfortable. He wondered why. It was irritating. Why didn't he tell
her a joke, one of his parlor jokes? Strawbridge knew scores and scores
of obscene jokes, and perhaps half a dozen parlor jokes which he kept
for women. Now, to his discomfiture, he could not recall a single one
of his parlor jokes. For some reason or other, he told himself, the
señora crabbed his style.

She was a smallish woman with a rather slender, melancholy face, and
her eyes had that slightly unfocused look which is characteristic of
all pure-black eyes. Her eyebrows and lips were engraved in black and
red against a colorless face. Her nun's bonnet and the white cloth that
passed beneath it across her forehead concealed the least trace of
hair. And Strawbridge speculated with a sort of apprehension whether or
no she really had shaved her head nun fashion. If so, the Virgin had
exacted a bitter price for her sister's recovery.

During these meditations, however, the salesman was not dumb. He
automatically started one of those typically American conversations
which consist in a long string of disconnected questions asked without
any object whatever. Strawbridge himself regretted these questions. He
had hoped to do something amusing and rather brilliant.

"Have you lived here long, señora?"

"About two years. I came here immediately after I was married to
General Fombombo."

"Then you were not married here?"

"No, in Spain."

"Then you are a Spanish girl?"

"Yes, I lived in Barcelona."

"How do you like it here?"

"Very well."

"I suppose you miss the stir. I hear Barcelona is the livest town in
Spain."

"I believe it is," she agreed a little uncertainly.

"What do they export? Anything besides olive-oil? I understand they
export a lot of olive-oil."

Señora Fombombo touched her slender fingers to her lips a moment and
then said she believed they exported olive-oil.

"I suppose the girls go in for business over there, too--bookkeepers,
you know; stenogs, clerks, cash girls ...?"

"Ye-e-es."

"What was your line before you married?"

The señora came awake and looked at the drummer.

"My _line_?"

"Yes," said Strawbridge, becoming a little less of an automaton and a
little more of a human. "What was your job before you hooked up with
the general?"

The señora almost stared at the American. Then she drew in her under
lip and seemed to compress it rigorously, thoughtfully, perhaps to
assist her in recalling what her line was before she hooked up with the
general. Then she said:

"I ... I did a little music."

"Teach?" probed the American.

"Well ... no.... Really, I'm afraid I didn't do anything."

Strawbridge nodded as if some puzzle had been solved for him.

"Now, that's where you made your mistake," he explained paternally. "A
woman ought to have a job just the same as a man. She ought to be able
to hold over her goods until the market is right. Now take me: suppose
I had to sell my rifles right now because I didn't have the overhead
to keep them ninety days longer; I'd be in a bad way. It's the same
way with you girls. With no overhead, it's no wonder you married Ge--"
He caught himself up abruptly, aghast at the implication to which his
monologue had led him. He floundered mentally in an effort to turn
it off, but all he could do was simply to moisten his lips and stop
talking. He wondered chillily if the señora had caught it.

Apparently she had not. A spray of flowers swung near her from the
vine. She drew a raceme to her face and began smoothly:

"I know feminism is very modern and up to date, but somehow we Spanish
women don't care for it. We are as idle as these flowers." She turned
and looked at the blossoms. "This variety of wistaria grew in my garden
in Barcelona; that's why I had it planted here. It reminds me of
home." She looked up at the American, smiled faintly, and added rather
disconnectedly:

"It may seem strange to you, Señor Strawbridge, but once I very nearly
entered a convent in Barcelona."

By this time Strawbridge was convinced that she had not observed
his false step. He was still warm, and a little shivery, but he was
recovering. He said very simply and truthfully:

"Well, I'm glad you didn't. If I have to stay in Canalejos, I'm glad
there is an agreeable woman in it to talk to."

The señora expressed her pleasure if she could enliven his stay
at Canalejos, and as they talked Coronel Saturnino entered the
breakfast-room. He bowed to the señora and inquired of Strawbridge, in
his somewhat amused voice, if he had slept well after his enlistment.

Oh, yes, he had slept like a top.

"Enlistment?" echoed the señora.

"_Seguramente_," smiled the colonel. "Señor Strawbridge has enlisted in
the cavalry to march against San Geronimo."

Señora Fombombo seemed utterly astonished. She stared at the colonel,
then at the drummer.

"You don't mean Señor Strawbridge will be in the cavalry attack on San
Geronimo?"

"Yes, señora; I arranged his billet last night." The colonel made a
smiling bow.

The girl turned to the American.

"But why are you going to fight at San Geronimo, señor?" she asked.

Strawbridge hesitated, cleared his throat, glanced through the
vine-grown lattice into the sunshine, then apparently came to some
inward decision.

"Now, it's like this, señora," he began, getting back the ring and
confidence in his voice which had heretofore been missing: "It's like
this. In order to meet your clients' needs you've got to get first-hand
information." He patted his right fingers against his left palm and
looked the señora squarely in the eye for the first time. "Before you
can grasp your patrons' problems, you've got to make 'em yours. Why,
the first thing my old man said to me, he said: 'Strawbridge, an
expert salesman is first aid to the financially injured; he's the star
of Bethlehem to the sinners of commerce.' He's a cutter, my old man is.
I wish you could know him, señora."

"You mean your father?" hazarded the President's wife.

"Holy mackerel, lady! no!" cried the drummer, with a touch of Keokuk
gusto in his voice. "I mean my boss, the head knocker of my firm. Great
old chap, and rich as Limburger cheese. Say, he owns fifty-one per
cent. of the Orion Arms stock, and he started in as a water boy. How do
you like that?" Mr. Strawbridge gave his auditors a little triumphant
smile.

"_Caramba!_ Very American, I say," laughed the colonel.

The señora interposed quickly:

"And very good and very fine, I say, Señor Strawbridge!" She looked
at the colonel with a certain little light in her eye, then added
emphatically, "I am sure I should like him."

She was rising to leave the table.

Coronel Saturnino, who was about to seat himself, said:

"If I concede his admirable qualities, I wonder if you would stay and
eat another orange, señora?"

But the girl pleaded that she must practise some music in the cathedral.

Strawbridge hesitated, half-way out of his chair. He was undecided
whether to stay with Coronel Saturnino or to go with the señora. He
decided for the latter and walked out of the breakfast-room with her,
but he was vaguely embarrassed for fear he had done the wrong thing.




CHAPTER IX


His talk at the breakfast table, with Señora Fombombo, braced the
spirits of Thomas Strawbridge. The girl seemed to bring a kind of
comfort to the drummer. Now as he walked down the long marble steps
of the _presidencia_, the tropical sunshine slanting into the plaza,
the cries of gathering street venders, the rattle of carts, the stir
of pigeons in the cathedral tower all conspired to speed his thoughts
and energy along their customary channel--that is to say, toward
the selling of merchandise. He was in fettle, and he wanted to sell
hardware. He felt so full of power he believed he could sell anything
to anybody.

And the Señora Fombombo was in some degree responsible for his
exaltation. A pleasant woman always grooms a man for a fine deed. So it
was the Spanish girl who sent the big blond American striding through
the plaza, smiling to himself and seeking whom he might sell.

It was Strawbridge's plan to go to the general merchandise stores in
Canalejos and stock them up on hardware, by the mere élan and warmth
of his approach. It is conceivable that enough Thomas Strawbridges,
a whole army of them, could bankrupt the manufacturing interests of
all foreign nations, could wither them right out of existence in the
overpowering sunshine of their good-fellowship and love for humanity.

As Strawbridge hurried through the plaza, filled, one might say, with
this destructive amiability, he was accosted by a voice asking him if
he did not desire a fortune of ten million pesetas.

The drummer looked around and saw a lottery-vender holding out his
sheaf of tickets. He was offering coupons on the National Spanish
Lottery, an institution which circulates its chances all over South
America, including even insurgent Rio Negro.

The good fairy who was offering this chance of fortune was a ragged
man whose lean ribs and belly could be seen through the rents in his
clothes. The American paused, took the sheaf, and looked at the tickets
curiously. Each ticket was a long strip of small coupons which could
be torn into ten pieces and divided among indigent buyers. They were
vilely printed on the cheapest of paper.

Strawbridge stood looking at the tickets and shaking his head. Life,
he told the ticket-seller, was what a man made it, and he could not
afford to mix up his solid success with lottery chances and such like.
What he wanted was certainties, and not moonshine. Here he handed back
the sheaf and moved on briskly through the plaza, a big, well-tailored
American, the ensample of a man who had taken his life in his own
hands and molded it into a warm and shining success. The vender stared
emptily after the drummer. Never before had his hope of a sale inflated
so suddenly, or collapsed so completely.

Strawbridge had gone only a little way when a man came running out of
a bodega that was down a side street. He was waving his sombrero and
calling Strawbridge's name. The American stood in doubt whether he had
heard aright, for no one in Canalejos knew his name, and then he saw
a wad of hair on the shouter's head and recognized the bull-fighter.
Lubito came up quickly and somewhat unsteadily. His face was flushed,
his black eyes glistened with alcohol, and his bull-fighter's pigtail
was somewhat awry.

"I was just starting to the _palacio_ to see you, señor," he began a
little thickly. "I was just starting when my _compadre_ in the bodega
says,'There goes the _Americano_ now,' so out I came."

"What can I do for you?" asked the drummer, with brief patience.

The torero grinned laxly.

"You were my _comarado_ coming here from Caracas, señor. You remember,
we rode all the way together."

"Sure! Get to your point."

Lubito straightened.

"Well, would you see your _comarado_ wronged? Are you going to see him
turned into a laughing-stock?"

"You've turned yourself into a laughing-stock; you're drunk."

"_Caramba!_ Whose fault is it?"

"Why, yours, of course!"

The bull-fighter spread the fingers of both hands on his chest.

"I! It is no fault of mine. The President did this!"

"Aw, you're talking nonsense."

"No, it is true, the fault is with General Fombombo. I am no tippler.
I am a bull-fighter. That's what I wanted to see you about. You are a
_caballero_, and a friend of the President. You can stand up and talk
to him, but he sends me off to see the bull-ring. You know, you heard
him yesterday, sending me off to see the bull-ring, the moment he
clapped eyes on me."

Strawbridge was faintly amused.

"Is that what you want me to see him about--because he dismissed you
yesterday?"

Lubito was only slightly intoxicated, and now his anger sobered him
completely:

"No! No! What do I care for his contempt? I, too, am a Venezuelan, but,
señor, when any man interferes with my paternal rights--" he tapped
himself threateningly on his powerful chest--"I am a bull-fighter."

"What in the world are you talking about?"

"_Cá!_ Madruja!"

"But your paternal rights!"

Lubito flung out exasperated hands.

"Didn't you hear her father, the old man in the 'reds,' place her in my
care?"

"Yes. Well, what has happened?"

"Enough! I saw Madruja carried, by the guards, to one of the rooms in
the west wing of the _palacio_. Very good. I followed, and marked the
room. The windows seemed rather old; perhaps the bars could be bent. I
did not know. I was in her father's place. It was my duty to see."

Strawbridge's interest picked up, as a man's always does when a woman
is introduced into the narrative:

"Yes, I guess you would be very strict about your daughter. Then what?"

"Well, last night I slept in the dressing-room at the bull-ring.
That is, I tried to sleep, but I could not. I kept thinking of my
daughter Madruja, pining for Esteban. I got up and walked out into
the bull-ring, thinking of the lonely little bride. Ah, señor, there
were stars! I can never look at stars without thinking of the eyes
of brides...." Lubito shivered, reached up and straightened his hair
a trifle, then went on: "I said to myself, '_Cá!_ A man who stumbles
goes all the faster if he does not fall.' So I made up my mind. I went
back to the dressing-room, in the dark found my guitar, and started
for the _presidencia_. Señor, you will believe it when I tell you I
was trembling all the way, like a mimosa leaf. I slipped very quietly
around the plaza, past the department of _fomento_, and so to the
window where my little daughter slept. I came up softly and tried the
bars with all my strength, but although I am a bull-fighter, señor,
they did not budge."

The drummer stood looking at the veins in the bull-fighter's forehead.
The fellow went on:

"There was nothing to do, señor, but to sing, to sing a love-song to
my little Madruja, and perhaps she would come to the window, or open
the door if she could. I touched the chords and began singing 'La
Encantadora,' softly, into the window, just for her.

"For minutes nothing stirred, but I have a tender voice, señor. You
know; you have heard me sing. It will melt any woman's heart. I began,
'_Mi alma, mi amor perdida_.'

"Oh, señor, it was a sobbing, plaintive song, and when I had finished
and stood holding my breath, something moved in the darkness. There
came a little clinking on the windowsill, and I saw the faint gleam of
metal. It was a gold coin, señor. Then the voice of General Fombombo
said: 'That is Lubito, is it not? Sing to us all night long, Lubito.'"

Strawbridge opened his eyes and thrust his head forward.

"What!" he cried.

"By five thousand devils on horseback, it's true!" Lubito flung up his
arms. "And me there--her father! My head grew hot. I went insane! I
told General Fombombo I was in her father's place, that I, Lubito, was
in her father's place, but the general only laughed and said: 'Sing,
sing to us, Lubito. As to your paternal duties, your ideas went out of
date with the Neanderthal man, five hundred thousand years ago." The
torero came to a pause, breathing heavily; then, after a moment, he
asked more rationally, "Now, what did he mean by that?"

The dictator's quip, jest, or philosophy, whatever it was, had not
registered at all with Strawbridge. He stood staring at Lubito and
suddenly began laughing. The bull-fighter at once looked offended, and
Strawbridge began gasping an apology in the midst of his mirth. He got
out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

"Ex-excuse me, Lubito, b-but wh-what did he say? 'S-s-sing all night!
S-s-s...." His effort at the "s" rippled into laughter again.

Lubito flung up his hands in disgust.

"_Canastos!_ what a man! To see a young girl deflowered--and laugh!"
The bull-fighter turned on his heel, perfectly sober, and walked away.

Strawbridge also became sober; he even frowned.

"Hell! putting it like that!" Then he shrugged, and continued his
unspoken soliloquy: "Well, what better could you expect from a bunch
of Venezuelans ... just natives...." His good-natured face began to
form another smile; then he thought of Señora Fombombo. At that he
became serious enough. The Spanish girl seemed to raise some obscure
question in his mind. He made a hazy effort to clarify that question,
but nothing came of it.


With this, Strawbridge removed his thoughts from the incident and
proceeded to canvass the town in the interest of the Orion Arms
Corporation. He walked out of Plaza Mayor into a narrow, dirty _calle_
which was the principal street of the city. It was lined with the usual
ill-lighted, inconvenient business houses which characterize Venezuelan
towns; a roulette establishment, a charcoal and kindling store with a
box of half-decayed mangos as a side line, a gloomy book-store with
the works of Vargas Vila lying, back up, on a table outside. The first
general merchandise store he found had a single bolt of calico on
display. Above the bolt swung the name of the store in faded letters,
"Sol y Sombra."

Such complete absence of attractive displays was a real pain to the
American. It spurred his commercial missionary spirit. He entered the
dark "Sol y Sombra." It had once been an ancient dwelling. Its use had
been changed from domestic to mercantile ends by the simple expedients
of knocking out some partitions and roofing an old patio. In fact,
when a Venezuelan merchant covers an old patio and thereby adds to
his floor space, he has just about uttered the last word in Venezuelan
progressiveness.

Strawbridge turned into the shop and asked for the proprietor. The
proprietor had not arrived, but one of the clerks offered his services.
The American introduced himself and vigorously grasped the young man's
limp hand.

"I'm a hardware man," he began briskly; "and now, if you'll just carry
me back to your hardware department, we'll check through and see what
you're short on; then I can hand your boss the lists and prices of the
very things he needs and save him a lot of time."

The clerk was a small, withered youth with sad brown eyes that
resembled a monkey's. He looked at Strawbridge and said:

"My employer will have all the time there is when he gets here, señor."

"Um ... well, ... we can shove the deal through quicker, anyway."

The little clerk turned and started doubtfully toward the hardware
department. It was clear that he did not want to go, but he could not
hold his ground against the dynamic force of Strawbridge's enthusiasm.
As he moved along he said:

"You are an American, aren't you?"

"Travel out of New York, but my home's in Keokuk. Great little burg;
thirty thousand population and thirty-five hundred automobiles, not
to mention flivvers...." Here Strawbridge laughed heartily, sharing
the wide-spread American conviction that to make a distinction between
an automobile and a flivver is the most amusing flight of human wit.
"And, say," he added, when he had finished his lonely laugh, "I wish
you could see the Keokuk window displays; give you some pointers, young
man."

The young man was smiling agreeably, so the drummer turned to business.

"Well," he began optimistically, "trade picking up here as everywhere,
I suppose?"

The monkey-eyed youth agreed without enthusiasm.

"Your export trade showing any strength?"

"I am only a clerk, señor; I have no export trade."

"Yes, I know; I meant...." It became clear that it was not worth while
to pursue this topic. They had reached the hardware department. The
clerk stood silent while Strawbridge looked around him. The stock was
fuller than the American had expected.

A sudden idea occurred to Strawbridge:

"Look here, why don't you get out a big display of this stuff? You
could push out a lot of it."

"I have no interest here at all, señor," repeated the little man,
concealing a yawn with his fingers. "I'm just a clerk."

Strawbridge broke into cheerful irritation:

"Why, damn it, man! if you'll make this business your own, some day it
will be your own. Right here is your chance to use your initiative,
throw some pep into this establishment. Get this thing moving and
you'll be the headliner around here." Strawbridge gave the prospective
headliner a cheerful blow on the shoulder, designed to knock energy
into him. A constructive impulse seized the American: "Say, I'm quite a
lad when it comes to window-dressing. Let's bundle a lot of this stuff
out front and fix up something of a scream by the time the old man
arrives!" Like a benevolent giant Strawbridge beamed down on the little
clerk. Next moment he had caught up an armful of ropes, plow points,
hoes, and door hinges and was lugging them toward the front of the
store.

The feather of a clerk tried to resist the American whirlwind.

"But, señor, wait one minute! _Nombre de Dios!_ Señor, for God's sake
stop! What you are doing is mad!"

Strawbridge was annoyed.

"Mad the devil! It's the only sensible thing in Canalejos; give your
joint a prosperous, up-to-date look."

"But, señor, we don't want to look prosperous and up to date."

"What!" The American was scandalized. "Don't want to look up to date!
What's eating you?"

"Nothing. We don't want to, because it will raise our taxes. We shall
be forced to pay larger contributions to the governor. _Caramba!_
Señor, you do not know this country!"

Strawbridge came to a halt at last.

"Your taxes will be raised if you look prosperous!"

"_Seguramente!_" affirmed the clerk, excitedly. "To look prosperous is
a sort of crime in Venezuela. If we seem _too_ well off, perhaps the
dictator will take over our whole business. We dare not risk it. So we
keep everything out of sight. That is best."

Thomas Strawbridge stood confounded. He doubted his ears.

"Look here: is that straight goods?"

"It is true, señor," asseverated the little man, solemnly, "if that is
what you mean."

"But take your business from you? Take it _from_ you!"

The clerk evidently thought the American did not understand his
Spanish, for he elucidated:

"I mean occupy it--receive the money--have the key to the door."

Strawbridge stood staring at the little fellow, wondering if such a
fantastic situation could really exist.

"Did you ever know of such a case?" he asked slowly.

"_Sin embargo._ A friend of mine had a ranch near the President's. It
was a good ranch, with water so well placed that it stayed green each
summer, much longer than the President's own. So suddenly, one day of a
very dry summer, soldiers came to my friend's estancia and carried him
away, and all his peons. It lay vacant a week or two. No one dared go
on it. Then the President ran his fences around it and claimed it as
waste land."

"That really happened?"

"_Sí_, señor."

"What became of the poor devil of a rancher and his peons?"

"Oh, the peons were put into the army and the man...." The clerk
shrugged, and nodded his head in a certain direction. Strawbridge did
not know to what he referred.

The American replaced the goods he had chosen for display, and stood in
the wareroom rather stunned. A sort of horripilation ran over him as he
pondered the clerk's story. Under such a government, all business was
in jeopardy.

"Why, that's awful!" he said aloud. "That'll _ruin_ business! If a
fellow's investments are not protected, then--" he made a hopeless
gesture--"then what in God's name do they hold sacred here?"

The clerk gave a Latin shrug of despondency.

"_Cá_, señor, they hold nothing sacred here. Why, even our sisters and
betrothed are violated--"

Strawbridge lifted a hand and waggled a finger for silence.

"Yes, I know that old stuff, but business--not to respect a man's
investment--God! but these people are savages!"




CHAPTER X


Thomas Strawbridge left "Sol y Sombra" and started back up the street,
hurrying out of habit but with no objective. His conversation with
the little monkey-eyed clerk had suddenly explained to the drummer
the squalor and filth of Canalejos. It was an intentional filth,
deliberately chosen to escape governmental mulcting. In short,
Venezuelan cities were especially designed to do business in the
worst possible way and with the greatest amount of friction and
inconvenience. Strawbridge was bewildered. He had come from a country
where the whole machinery of government is built for the especial
purpose of expediting business. Now this sudden reversal of motif
seemed to him a mad thing.

What was the object of it? If men did not organize a government to
promote business, why did any exist? Why did the shop-keepers persist
in running their dirty little shops? Why did the peons go and come, the
fishermen labor up and down the rapids? If business was strangled, what
reason was there for life to go on?

The drummer's steps had led him back to Plaza Mayor, and by this time
the square was full of people. Most of them were loiterers, sitting
on the park benches gazing listlessly at the palms and ornamental
evergreens, or watching the drip of a fountain too clogged to play.
In the center of the plaza was a statue, and the drummer was somewhat
surprised to observe that it was a full-length figure of General
Fombombo. The statue was of heroic size and held out in its hands a
scroll bearing the words, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

There was a slow movement, among the idlers, toward the cathedral.
Señoritas came by with their missals, beggars with their cups. Youths
and well-dressed men took a last puff at their eternal cigarettes,
tossed away the stubs, and wandered toward the gloomy temple.

Strawbridge had never been in a Roman Catholic church in his life. In
fact, since his boyhood he had scarcely been in any sort of church.
Now his desire for silence and a place to think out the riddle he had
found, drew him through the deeply recessed archway of the cathedral.
On one of the columns he saw the holy water, in a shell of a size that
amazed him in a superficial way. He passed on in and immediately forgot
the shell.

The interior of the church was a semi-darkness punctuated here and
there with groups of candles flickering before the different altars.
To the right hand of the entrance he saw a life-size effigy of the
crucifixion. The head of the figure drooped to one side, and the whole
body was painted the pallor of death.

With the impersonal and faintly interested eyes of an American tourist
the drummer stood looking at this figure. As he stood, an old man
with an aura of white hair shuffled up before the crucifix, laid down
a bundle on the stone floor, spread a filthy handkerchief, and knelt
stiffly on it. Then he stared fixedly at the effigy, and spread out his
old arms to it, and his lips began moving beneath his tobacco-stained
beard. In his earnestness his old head shook and nodded; he reached
up his scrawny arms farther and farther, as if to pull down from the
figure the good he was seeking. He arose and went; other men took his
place--young men, well-dressed men. They went through their devotions
openly and unashamed.

But Strawbridge was somehow shamed before them. It seemed to him
a rather improper thing for a man to be seen praying in public. In
North America, to pray in public is a sort of test of audacity, not
to say brazenness. In North America one who prays in public seldom
thinks about God; he thinks about how he looks and what the people
are thinking about his prayer. Now, for these Venezuelans to pray
to God earnestly and unaffectedly in the open made Strawbridge feel
uncomfortable, as if they were appearing in public wearing too few
clothes.

The women, on the other hand, somehow pleased him. As each señorita
and señora came in with a white handkerchief spread over her black
hair, touched the holy water to her forehead, lips, and breast, and
then knelt to pray, it gave the drummer a queer sense of intimacy and
pleasure.

Presently reading and responses began in one of the chapels hidden from
the American. The voice of the priest would rise in a muffled swell and
then taper into silence again; a moment later this would be followed
by a hushed babble of women's voices. There was something sad in the
reading and responses. The same words were repeated over and over and
filled the cathedral with a monotonous and melancholy music.

As Strawbridge stood musing among these frail and unaccustomed
pleasures, his mind moved vaguely about the question which had brought
him there: what could the Venezuelans find in life to take the place of
business? Upon what other cord could any man string the rosary of his
days? As the women came and went, as the responses filled the church
with a many-tongued music, as the odor of incense flattered the gloom,
he pondered his question, but could find no answer.


The drummer found a seat near a column of the nave and relaxed,
American fashion, with his legs spread out and his arms lying along the
back of the bench. He stopped thinking toward any point and allowed
his fancies to drift idly. The life of the cathedral slowly developed
itself around him. A woman was on her knees just inside the altar-rail,
scrubbing the tiled floor. Several acolytes in lace robes were gathered
in the transept, perhaps waiting to take part in some later mass. A
priest in his cassock loitered near a confessional, evidently expecting
a penitent. Presently a little girl did come and step into the double
stall of the confessional. The father moved into the other side with
the slowness of a heavy man and with a mechanical movement lifted the
little shutter in the partition. The child placed her face in the
aperture and began to whisper.

Strawbridge sat and looked with a dreamy emptiness at the priest and
the little girl. He could feel the bench pressing his body and catch
the queer fragrance of incense. Presently the child stepped out of the
confessional and began a round of the stations, kneeling and telling
her beads before each one. A beggar entered the booth and presently
went away. A few moments later, to the drummer's surprise, Coronel
Saturnino came down the aisle and stepped into the confessional. The
officer put his mouth to the orifice and whispered steadily for five or
ten minutes. Strawbridge could see his profile against the darkness of
the booth--a handsome, almost flawless profile, with a slight sardonic
molding about the nose and the corners of the mouth even in this moment
of confession.

Strawbridge wondered what he was confessing; what kind of sins
Saturnino committed.

Just then a hand touched the American's outstretched arm. The drummer
looked around and saw Gumersindo standing at the back of his seat. The
negro bowed slightly, with his thick lips smiling. Strawbridge aroused
himself, really glad to see Gumersindo. He got up and joined the
colored man.

"Lots of folks in church to-day," he whispered.

Gumersindo nodded.

"The cavalry expect to go to San Geronimo soon. There is always a
crowding in for confession before such an expedition."

"Oh! I see." Strawbridge was rather taken aback. He looked across at
the opposite aisle, where two or three soldiers were standing near
another confessional, awaiting their turn. "Do they really believe
anything is going to happen to them?"

"Why, they know it!" Gumersindo considered Strawbridge, faintly
surprised at such a question; then he evidently decided it was one of
those thoughtless queries such as every one makes at times, for he
passed to another subject: "Would you like to go down into the crypt?"

Strawbridge agreed, with his mind still hovering about San Geronimo.
The negro led the way, tiptoeing through the big, murmuring cathedral:

"There's a great painting in that chapel," he said, pointing into one
as they passed, but not stopping to enter it; "you must see it some
day." Strawbridge said he would, and immediately forgot it.

They passed through the transept and round behind the high altar. In
the passage they found another priest, walking slowly back and forth,
reading some religious book. Gumersindo introduced Strawbridge to
Father Benicio. The priest's face held the worn, ascetic look of a
celibate who endures the ardors of the tropics.

"Señor Strawbridge is the American gentleman whom I brought back from
Caracas," proceeded the editor; "perhaps you noticed my article about
him in the 'Correo'?"

"I have not seen to-day's 'Correo,'" said the father, looking, with the
shrewd eyes of his calling, at the American.

Gumersindo was already drawing from his pocket a damp copy of his
paper. He opened the limp sheet and handed it to the priest, with his
finger at the article. Then he turned away and pretended to inspect
the carving on the reredos, glancing repeatedly toward the readers to
see what effect his article was producing.

The article itself was typical Spanish-American rhetoric. It referred
to the drummer as a merchant prince, a distinguished manufacturer, a
world-famous exporter, and once it called him the illustrious Vulcan of
the Liberal Arts, a flourish based on the fact that Strawbridge sold
hardware.

When they had finished reading, the black man turned with his face
beaming in anticipation of praise.

"Elegantly done, Gumersindo," pæaned the priest. "You have a very rich
style."

The editor lifted his brows.

"I never hope to command a style, Father. I always write simply. It is
all I can do."

Father Benicio patted the black man's arm and smiled the rather
bloodless smile of the repressed.

"He is a fountain of eloquence and doesn't know it; don't you think so,
Señor Strawbridge?"

"I was never called so many fine names in all my life," murmured
Strawbridge, in the subdued tones all three men were using. "I must
have a bundle of these papers to send home."

Gumersindo beamed, and said all Strawbridge needed to do was to give
him the names and he would mail out copies direct. Then he again
proposed going down into the crypt.

The father agreed. He gathered his cassock about him for convenience
in descending the steps, produced a key, opened a small door in the
back wall of the cathedral, then, apologizing for preceding his guests,
stepped into the opening.

The American followed the editor and groped down a flight of clammy
steps into a cellar about ten feet deep. The priest presently found a
match and a candle and lighted the cold, unventilated crypt. In the
dim light Father Benicio pointed out some old stone slabs set in the
sides of the crypt, with half-obliterated names carved upon them. Then
he began a recountal of the doings of the first Benedictines who had
come into the Orinoco country in 1573. They had formed a flourishing
colony, but the evil deeds of the Guipuzcoana Company had provoked the
Indians to attack the religious colony, and many of the monks were
massacred. The gravestones marked those early martyrs.

With a certain fire the priest told the tale. These early fathers were
links in a chain to which he, himself, belonged. Their constancy, their
devotion to duty, their faithfulness unto death were ensamples often in
his heart, which warmed his monastic life.

Strawbridge did not feel the faintest interest in Father Benicio's
recital. He looked at the stone slabs without any widening of his
vision of the past. Indeed, anything that antedated 1890 was without
interest to him. To the drummer, history had no connection with the
present. If he had analyzed his impressions he would have found that
he believed that all the acts of mankind prior to the nineties formed
history and were completely cut asunder from the press and importance
of to-day. The world in which Mr. Thomas Strawbridge lived and had his
being was absolutely new and up to date. It was like a new steam-heated
apartment house with all the elevators running and the water
connections going, and it was utterly cut off from all the past efforts
and struggles of mankind. History, to him, was not even the blue-prints
from which this house was built, the brick and mortar of which it was
constructed. It was simply a kind of confusion that went on in the
world until men settled down and produced something worth while--that
is to say, the American nation and the New York skyscrapers.

He yawned under his fingers.

"I wonder what they did for a living, back there." He touched one of
the stones with his foot.

Father Benicio glanced around at him.

"They raised maize, bananas, and a few chickens," he said drily.

"Ship 'em back to ... Spain?" hazarded the drummer.

"No, they simply lived on what they cultivated, and what the Indians
gave them."

The salesman's interest flickered out completely. He glanced at the
gravestones of the unenterprising monks and moved a step toward the
stairs.

Gumersindo attempted to stir up human interest by pointing out a slab
of stone in the bottom of the crypt.

"This is not a gravestone; it conceals the entrance of a tunnel. The
early Spanish settlers were great troglodytes, Señor Strawbridge. It is
impossible to find an old castle or an old church without a tunnel or
two leading into it."

"It was necessary in those unsettled times when a man's house was
likely to be burned with the man in it unless he could slip out," put
in the priest.

"Where does it lead to?" asked Strawbridge, taking rather more interest
in this purely mechanical arrangement than in the human background
which caused the tunnels to be dug.

"One branch leads down to the river, another to the _palacio_, and
another to the prison, La Fortuna."

Strawbridge suppressed another yawn and dismissed the tunnels from his
mind. His thoughts came back to the original problem which had brought
him to the cathedral. He broke out rather abruptly:

"Say, I suppose both you fellows know about the general and his ... er
... business methods?"

Editor and priest looked at their guest quite blankly.

"I mean his method of ... well, ... of confiscating ranches and horses
and stores, provisions, and such like. Now, that's a rotten way to do.
I was wondering whether a good, straightforward talk with him wouldn't
help some."

By now the two men were staring at Strawbridge as if one of the old
monks had risen out of his tomb.

"Señor," said the priest, in a queer voice, "would you have the
goodness to explain yourself?"

"Sure! A chap told me while ago that the general arrested a rancher and
took his ranch. I've been thinking about it all morning."

"The ranch to which your informant alludes," said Gumersindo, in a cold
voice, "was deserted, and General Fombombo occupied it as waste land."

The drummer laughed friendlily.

"Yes, I know about that, but just how the general hunched the man off
his ranch has nothing to do with it. I say any kind of hunching is bad
business." The drummer became very earnest: "Now look here, both you
fellows know the only way to make a country pay is through business.
Now, look at these old monks--" he nodded at the stones. "Fizzled out
because they didn't develop their holdings. I don't know just what they
did do, but it's clear they built this church instead of building a
factory. No returns; see? All overhead and no production. Not that I'm
against praying," he added, with a placating gesture toward the priest.
"I'm for it. I think it peps one up, but, as my old man says, 'Get in
your prayers when there is no customer in sight'; see? Just to come
down to facts: these old boys didn't run on business principles.

"Now, here's what I'm driving at: The general's idea of grabbing
things balls up the market. Your market has got to be open and it's
got to be protected before you get any real big volume of trade. Any
man in General Fombombo's shoes can get better returns in the way of
legitimate taxes on legitimate business than he can by grabbing what's
in sight and scaring off business men. For, let me tell you, the eagle
on the dollar is just about the timidest bird you ever tried to get to
roost in your hen-house, and that's straight."

Strawbridge came to an earnest and apparently a questioning pause. The
editor and the priest stood looking at him in the candle-light, quite
as silent as the ancient and unbusinesslike monks beneath their feet.
After a while the editor asked in a strange voice:

"Why have you ... said these things to us, Señor Strawbridge?"

"I'm asking your advice."

"About what?"

"About talking this over with the general. I believe he is making a
business mistake. He would realize more if he would boost business
instead of knocking it. Perhaps you've read that little poem,


     "It's better to boost than to knock;
       It's better to help than to shove,
     We're brothers all, on the road of Life,
       And the law of the road is Love."


The editor said he had never read it.

"The thing I'm driving at," proceeded the drummer, "is, would it be
good business for me to spring this on the general? You see, I might
queer a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar order for rifles. Still,
if he could see the real business side of the situation, I might
establish a market for millions of dollars' worth of hardware. What do
you think about it? Would you run the risk?"

The priest chose to answer:

"Our President is rather a man of impulse, Señor Strawbridge."

The big American nodded.

"I see what you mean." He looked at Gumersindo.

"The future is always uncertain, Señor Strawbridge," observed the
editor.

Strawbridge nodded.

"Uh huh; I see you agree with Father Benicio." He paused, thinking.

"Well, ... I don't know...." He continued to ponder the problem before
him, and presently quoted, perhaps subconsciously:


     "Did you speak that word of warning?
       Did you act the part of friend?
     Do your duty resolutely;
       It means dollars in the end."




CHAPTER XI


Notwithstanding Strawbridge's apt and well-timed quotation from one of
the best of the American business poets, still, he left the cathedral
on his way to the _presidencia_ in a shilly-shally mood. He went out
at the side entrance, as the most direct route. The glare of sunshine
struck his eyes rather uncomfortably after the gloom of the church.
Just outside the door a dense flowering hedge delimited the plaza from
the garden on the other side.

The drummer felt for his case and drew out a cigar to settle his
thoughts on his proposed interview with the dictator. He stopped to
scratch a match, when he heard voices talking just inside the garden.
They were low voices, a man's and a woman's, but their passionate
undertones caught the salesman's attention. He could understand little
of what they were saying, but occasionally the woman lost her poise, or
her caution, and he would get a phrase or two; then he could hear the
man mumbling. Once the woman whipped out, "You are mad, you are insane,
Pancho!" The voice of the man seemed to admit this. Later she gasped:
"But you can't do that. He's alive!" and after another interval, she
cried: "What a monster! I despise you as I do him. You are a _bribon_!"

This speech was stopped abruptly, as if a hand were laid over the
woman's mouth. Came sounds of some guarded physical struggle, then a
slap, a little cry, and the sound of running. The woman's restrained
cry went through Strawbridge with a queer effect. He tried to peer
through the dense hedge, but could make out nothing more than the fact
of movement on the other side. A moment's reflection told him the man
and the woman had separated.

The incident gripped the salesman in a strange way. He reasoned that
if the two had separated one must have gone back into the church and
the other toward the small postern at the end of the garden. So he
walked briskly in the direction of the latter. Just as he stepped into
the thoroughfare between garden and palace, he saw a woman in a nun's
costume hurry out at the little gate, cross the road, and pass in at
the side entrance of the big state house. With a breath of surprise,
Strawbridge recognized Señora Fombombo. He found it difficult to
attribute such an adventure to this small, quiet woman in her severe
religious garb. And yet she had almost run from the garden gate to
the palace. The American pondered this, but at last decided that the
señora had been coming from her music practice in the cathedral and
some quarreling, fighting couple in the garden had frightened her. The
drummer walked quickly to the little postern and looked into the garden
for the disturbing couple, but, of course, they had had time to escape.

Strawbridge loitered outside the palace for a few minutes, finishing
his cigar and thinking over the incident. Then he walked up to the
side door. His intention to ask for the señora at once was somewhat
disturbed by the fact that the _griffe_ girl admitted him when he rang
the bell.

As the American stepped into the entrance, a little leather-colored
soldier in uniform came briskly forward, with his rifle at attention. A
word from the girl established Strawbridge's right to enter.

"The señora," she said, giving Strawbridge her knowing look, "is in the
music-room." She paused a moment and added, "That's her, now."

The thing which she called the señora was the chromatic scale, played
with great velocity.

The maid was so insinuating that Strawbridge thought of denying he had
meant to see the chatelaine at all, but he changed this to something
about believing he would go and hear the music. Instead of producing
the casual effect he had hoped for, this statement lit a brightly
intelligent smile on the _griffe_ girl's copper-colored face. As
Strawbridge walked down the transverse passage to the main corridor, to
turn up toward the music-room, he could feel the eyes of both maid and
guard watching his back.

The drummer passed two more guards in the main corridor, and presently
paused before the door whence issued the runs and cadenzas. As he was
about to tap, he was again seized with the inexplicable hesitancy which
afflicted him whenever he came near the señora. It was an odd thing. He
knew that she was just inside the dull mahogany panels, but somehow the
door seemed to shut him out completely. He felt he would not get in. He
tapped uncertainly, with a conviction that it would accomplish nothing.
But it did accomplish something: it stopped the music so suddenly that
it startled him. Then he waited in a profound silence.

Strawbridge imagined that the señora knew that it was he, and that by
the long silence she was showing him that she did not want him in the
music-room. A painful humility came over him. After all, he thought,
she had a right to dislike him. Every time she saw him he was dull
and embarrassed. Queer how she crabbed his style. Now, at home, back
in Keokuk, he was rather popular with the ladies, but here.... The
drummer's good-natured face sagged in a mirthless quirk. Well, ... he
might as well go away. The señora would never know what a jolly friend
she was missing, for he was jolly when one took him right; he simply
was jolly. And he would never know her, either. It was the fault of
neither of them; he saw that. He couldn't help it, she couldn't help
it. A faint sense of pathos floated through the drummer's mind, and he
turned away from the door.

At that moment it opened and the señora stood before him. Since he
tapped she had just had time to walk across the room.

The man and the woman looked at each other in utter surprise, but in an
instant this expression vanished from the señora's face and she asked
him if he would like to come in and hear her play.

The drummer moistened his lips with his tongue and explained vaguely
that he had just been passing and had heard the piano....

He was so painfully ill at ease that the girl said she too had been
lonely that forenoon and was wishing some one would come in. She
indicated a chair near a barred window, then, wearing the faint,
unamused smile of a hostess, she went back to the piano and asked what
he would have her play. Mr. Strawbridge said, "Just anything lively."

The señora pondered and began a mazurka. It was a trifle of thematic
runs. She began rather indifferently, but presently her fingers or her
mood warmed and she did it with dash and brilliancy.

At first Strawbridge's mental state prevented him from listening
at all, but gradually the richly furnished room, the murals on the
ceiling, the black ebony piano, and the slender nun-like player all
re-formed themselves out of original confusion. Then he became aware of
the music.

He did not care much for it. The señora did not jazz the piano as
Strawbridge craved that it should be jazzed. It should be explained,
perhaps, that the drummer's contact with music had been confined almost
exclusively to the Keokuk dance-halls. He was, one might say, a musical
bottle baby, who had waxed fat on the electric piano. Now he missed
that roaring double shuffle in the bass and that grotesque yelping
in the treble which he knew and admired and was moved by. He at once
classified the señora as a performer who lacked pep.

The girl continued to fill the stately room full of dancing fairies;
presently these exquisite little creatures rippled away into the
distance; the last faraway fairy gave a last faraway pirouette, and the
music ceased. The señora turned with a faint smile and waited a moment
for her guest to say he liked the mazurka, but finally was forced to
ask if he did.

"Well, y-e-s," he agreed dubiously, he liked it; then, with animation,
"Señora, do you play 'Shuffle Along'?"

She repeated the title after him, evidently trying to translate it into
intelligible Spanish.

"Who wrote it, señor?" She turned to a big music-rack which apparently
held the music of the world.

"I don't know," said the drummer, naïvely. "Maybe you've got 'My
Ding-Dong Baby'?"

Señora Fombombo began going through the huge music-cabinet uncertainly.

"You don't know the composer of that, either?"

"No. How about 'Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes'? Or have you
got the 'Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle'?"

The señora, who was a methodical woman, began alphabetically with
Brahms and looked for the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle." Strawbridge got up
from his chair and came to assist.

"Let me help you," he volunteered. "I know the backs of those pieces
just as well as I do my own face."

The señora glanced at him.

"Do you play?"

"A little," admitted the drummer. "I have been known to ripple my
fingers over the elephants' tusks." Strawbridge laughed pleasantly
at this tiny jest. It was the first time he had been able to speak a
single sentence in a natural way, to the señora. Now this small success
pleased him.

"Play me the kind of music you like," invited the señora, at once. "I
don't recognize the English titles. Perhaps I have them, after all."

"Oh, all right." He smiled and sat down on the old-fashioned piano
stool. With a pleased expression on his handsome, good-natured face he
looked at the señora. Then he popped his left fist into his right palm
and his right fist into his left palm, to warm up his finger action.

"Now, this is the rage," he explained with a faint patronage in his
voice; "this is what runs 'em ragged in New York," and, lifting his
hands high, he boomed into the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle."

Strawbridge did not see the señora's face during the opening bars of
his jazz, and therefore had no means of determining her mood. When,
presently, he looked about at her, she was much as usual; her black
eyes a trifle wider, perhaps, her smile a little less mechanical.

"I've seen a thousand people on the floor at one time, toddling to
this," he called to her loudly above his demonstration.

The señora pressed her lips together, her eyes seemed fairly to dance,
and she nodded at this bit of information.

Strawbridge realized that he was entertaining the señora highly. He
had never seen her look so amused. He had not thought her especially
pretty, before, but just at this moment she gave him the impression of
a ruby with the dust suddenly polished off and held in the sunshine.

The drummer was very proud of the fact that he could play the piano and
talk at the same time, and he always did this.

"Say, I like the tone of this machine," he called out in a
complimentary way; "she's hitting on all six cylinders now."

The señora laughed outright, in little gusts, with attempts at
suppression. It was as if she had not laughed in a long, long time.

Strawbridge wagged his blond head to the clangor and syncopation of his
own making.

"Coming down the home stretch!" he yelled, pounding louder and faster.
"Giving her more gas and running up her timer!" He threw his big
shoulders into the uproar. "Going to win the all-comers' sweepstakes!
Go on, you little old taxi! Go to it! Wow! Bang! You're it, kid! The
fifty-thousand-dollar purse is yours!"

He stopped as suddenly as he had begun, reached into his vest pocket,
fished out a cigar band, and, with a burlesque curtsy, offered it to
the señora as the sweepstakes prize he had just captured.

The señora produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes, then drew a long
breath. With her face dimpled and ready to laugh again, she looked at
the drummer.

"I knew you'd like me if we ever got acquainted," confided Strawbridge;
"nothing like music to get folks together."

"Yes," acquiesced the señora, smiling, "it is one of the shibboleths of
culture."

"Why, ... yes, I suppose so," agreed Strawbridge. The phrase
"shibboleths of culture" sobered him somewhat. It was not the sort of
phrase an American girl would have flung into a gay conversation, at
least not without making some sort of face, or saying it in a burlesque
tone to show it was meant to be humorous. It plunked into the drummer's
careless mood like a stone through a window. "By the way," he said, on
this somewhat soberer plane, "let me tell you why I followed you here
into this music-room."

"Did you follow me?"

"Yes."

"Where from?" she asked in a different voice.

"From the garden."

The mirth vanished from the señora's face as if some one had turned
down a lamp. It left her pale, delicately engraved, and not very pretty.

"May I ask why you followed me?" she questioned.

"Sure!" said Strawbridge with a protective impulse stirring in him.
"I was coming out of the cathedral and I heard some rough-neck couple
raising a row over in the garden. I came on to the _palacio_ and saw
you running out of the gate. I knew they had frightened you with their
yelping, and it made me mad. So when you go to the cathedral again,
just tip me off, please, and I'll go along with you."

The señora stood leaning over the end of the piano, studying him
intently.

"That is very kind, and ... and it's a very unexpected kindness, Señor
Strawbridge. I am grateful."

"Don't thank me at all.... Do the same for any woman. And, say, that
reminds me what I was balled up about."

"'Balled up'? What do you mean--'balled up'?"

"Oh!--" with little gesture--"I don't know what to do. It's a matter of
business."

"Are you bringing me a matter of business?"

"Sure! Why not? You've got your ideas."

She continued to look at him curiously.

"Well, what is it?"

"It's about your husband. I consider that he runs this country on the
most unbusinesslike basis I ever heard of."

The Spanish girl opened her eyes still wider at this astonishing turn.

"Unbusinesslike?"

"Sure, it's like this," and Strawbridge proceeded to explain what he
knew of the dictator's methods; who had told him, and that he thought
the general was losing money.

During the recital he was surprised to see the señora's pale face grow
paler still. Finally she gasped:

"And does he take property, too?"

"Why, good God!" cried the drummer, in amazement, "didn't you know
that?"

After a long pause the Spanish girl said almost inaudibly, "No, I
didn't know ... that."

"Huh!" ejaculated Strawbridge, growing very much embarrassed. "I'm
sorry I mentioned it, I ... I...." He looked at her, moistening his
lips, and broke out with a desperate note of remorse, "Well, I swear I
hate mentioning that!"

The señora shrugged wearily.

"Oh, ... _that_ doesn't matter."

She kept accenting her "thats" as if other things preyed more deeply on
her thoughts.

At this moment a big French motor-car murmured past the window of the
music-room. It happened that both the drummer and the señora saw it,
were looking straight at it. The car contained General Fombombo, and in
the seat beside him Strawbridge recognized the peon girl Madruja, the
little bride whom the dictator continued to detain in the palace until
he could come to some judicial decision as to what to do with her.




CHAPTER XII


The passing of General Fombombo with the peon girl, Madruja, will call
to the philosophical mind one of the sharpest distinctions between
North American chastity and Venezuelan laxity. In America, no man, not
even the most degraded specimen of our race, would think of parading
his mistress before his wife. Such a thing is not done in America.
Where the Latin flaunts his dalliances openly, the puritanical North
American invariably makes an effort to conceal his shortcomings and to
present to the world an innocuous and inoffensive front.

Spanish-American moralists are prone to ascribe this flowering of the
great Anglo-Saxon cult of concealment to hypocrisy. Nothing could
be shorter of the truth. Hypocrisy is an effort to deceive, but the
best English and American types deceive no one. Their intention is
not to deceive but to keep life clean, pure, and enjoyable for their
fellow-men. For here is the peculiar thing about vice: A man's own
shortcomings never appear censure-worthy, whereas the sins of other men
are hideous. To be seen openly sinning is to make of oneself a public
nuisance.

The genius of the Anglo-Saxon realizes this, and he avoids paining
and distressing others by performing his dalliances as privately as
possible. This secrecy is each man's private contribution to the
comfort and reassurance of his fellow-citizens. Taking us all in all,
perhaps America's greatest gift to the world is the peccadillo of low
visibility.

As an instance of the deplorable effect of being seen, observe how
the passing of General Fombombo and Madruja completely destroyed Mr.
Thomas Strawbridge's pleasure in the society of Señora Fombombo. Yet
all the time he had known from Lubito the actual state of the case.
It had seemed humorous when Lubito told the story, but the sight of
the dictator and the peon girl passing in the car was not humorous at
all. On the contrary, it was oppressive and painful. It ended abruptly
his tête-à-tête with the señora. Indeed, it hung about him for days,
popping up every little while with disagreeable iteration.

The incident upset Strawbridge's own code. It caused him to doubt
the rightness of any husband deceiving any wife. He had never before
thought even of questioning such a situation. He had known many
drummers, married men, who when they got to a city would take a
little flyer. It had seemed perfectly all right, a sort of joke. Now,
abruptly, it all seemed wrong, and he was vaguely angry and ill at ease.

And the personal end of the affair puzzled him. He could not understand
how any sane man would run away from so delightful a girl as Dolores
Fombombo, to the over-accented and uncultivated charms of a Madruja.

He tried to put himself in the general's place, to fancy himself
the husband of Dolores. Would he betray her? Would he deceive the
confidence of so dainty a creature? Indeed no! The very thought filled
him with a most unusual and tremulous tenderness. Why, before he would
break faith with Dolores ... before he would do that.... He got out
a cigar, bit off the nib with a snap, and lighted it in vague anger.
He continued pacing up and down his room from one barred window to
another, looking out at the river, at the gloomy prison called "La
Fortuna," at the back of the cathedral.

Then his thoughts veered away from the general's infidelity, and he
began thinking about a strange thing which had happened to him a day
or two before, when he called on the proprietor of "Sol y Sombra." He
decided he would mention it to Dolores; perhaps she could explain it.

The decision to see Dolores and tell her this thing comforted
Strawbridge somewhat. He drew an eased breath, went over to the window,
reached through the bars, and tapped off the ash of his cigar, then
walked out into the corridor, turned toward the rear of the palace, and
passed out through a back entrance onto a sort of piazza--a roofless
paved space about forty feet wide, which extended from the building
quite to the edge of the take-off that led down a long, steep slope to
the yellow river.

On the western end of this piazza projected the kitchen, and it
was littered on that side with unsightly bags of charcoal, chicken
feathers, bundles of kindling, bones, and other rejectæ from the
cooking-department of the palace. This litter increased or decreased
according to the spasmodic energy of the _griffe_ girl, the wrinkled
old hag, and three or four other familiars of the kitchen. When these
caretakers were induced to purge their premises, they simply shoved the
refuse over the edge of the piazza and allowed it to distribute itself
as it would down the long slope.

Strawbridge dragged out a chair on the east side of the piazza and sat
down to his cigar and the sunset. This had grown to be his custom every
late afternoon. Until the señora joined him he was more attentive to
his cigar than to the sunset. But when she came, her arrival, oddly
enough, seemed to open his eyes to the fact that sunsets in the Orinoco
Valley are famous for their brilliant coloring and dramatic effects.

He had finished perhaps a third of his cigar when he heard a servant
come dragging the señora's chair behind her. This ended a faint
suspense in Strawbridge. He looked around, and the two of them smiled
at each other the satisfied smiles of friends who had been anticipating
just this pleasure of watching the sunset together.

For the first evening or two they had talked dutifully all the time.
Strawbridge had exerted himself to amuse the señora, but of late they
had found long silences mutually pleasant. So now, as the señora came
up, he simply remarked that he thought they were going to have a nice
sunset.

The drummer himself was immeasurably content. He sat watching the
change and play of that huge and airy mansionry of vapors. Somehow it
reduced him and Dolores to two human midges seated behind a little
palace, on a tiny piazza, in microscopic wicker chairs. It sent a
shudder of pleasure through him: they were so very, very small, and so
very, very comforting each to the other.

As they sat staring at the vast chromatic architecture, a faint breeze
brought him the malodor of the kitchen at the other end of the piazza
and stirred him out of his reverie. He looked around.

"By the way, señora, a queer thing happened to me the other morning.
I've been meaning to tell you about it, but I never can think to when
I'm with you."

"Yes?"

"About that clerk at 'Sol y Sombra.' That little chap who put me wise
to business conditions in this country. You remember what a row he
raised because I wanted to make a hardware display."

"Yes, that's Josefa."

"Well, he's gone."

The señora moved lazily in the gloom, to face her companion.

"You wanted to tell me Josefa was gone?" He could tell by her voice
that she was smiling.

"Not so much that as the way I heard it. Day or two ago I called on
the proprietor. He was as polite as pie, but he didn't warm up to my
selling talk. Finally I offered him my leader--some shovels at a price
that'd make him think he stole 'em. I was pushing the goods pretty hard
when finally he looked at me with a sort of whitish face and says,
'Señor Strawbridge, I am not in the market for your goods at any price.'

"'That lets me down,' I says, 'if low prices and high quality don't
interest you. That's all I got--the lowest prices and the highest
quality."

"I saw he was going to bow me out regardless, so I thought I would be
polite up to the limit and inquire after the health of the little clerk
I had met in the store several mornings before that.

"When I asked after him, the proprietor jumped from his chair. 'Señor!'
he cried, 'you shall not mock at my distress! You may have the leading
hand now, but as sure as there is a God in heaven, He will punish you!'
He shook a finger at me. 'He will punish you! He will punish you!'

"I stared at him. I never came so near hitting a man in all my life,
but I remembered something my old man told me when I first went to work
with him. 'Strawbridge,' he'd say, 'keep your temper; nobody else wants
it.' So I thought to myself, 'Here's where I keep her,' and I said,
'Señor, you've got the advantage of me. If I've done you or yours any
harm, I'm sorry, but how have I done it?'

"He looked at me as keen as all you black-eyed folks can look. 'Don't
you know where Josefa is?' he asked.

"'Certainly I don't, or I wouldn't have asked where he was.'

"'Well--he's not here any longer.'

"'Did you discharge him?' I asked.

"The merchant looked at me, and I be damned if there wasn't tears in
his eyes. 'Señor Strawbridge,' he said, 'Josefa is gone. He is simply
gone. He was a good boy; that is all I can say to you about it.'"

Here Strawbridge's narration was interrupted by a little sound from the
girl in the darkness. He stopped short.

"Why, what's the matter, señora?" he asked in surprise.

"Oh, nothing ... nothing...." Her voice quavered. "Poor Josefa!"

The salesman tried to peer into her face.

"What are you saying, 'Poor Josefa,' about? I thought you didn't know
him particularly well."

"I didn't. Oh, Señor Strawbridge, everything is so horrible here!... so
terrible!... Oh.... Oh ..." and suddenly the señora began to weep, a
pathetic little figure in her nun's costume.

Something clutched the drummer's diaphragm. He leaned toward her.

"Señora!" he remonstrated. "What's the matter? Have I done anything?"

One arm was crumpled about her face, she stretched the other toward him.

"Oh, no, no! you've done nothing to me. I ... I thought I was getting
used to it. I used to cry all the time when I first came here. I
thought I was growing hard, but I suppose I'm not."

The drummer was tingling at the appeal in her attitude and of her hand
which had caught two of his fingers. A faint pulse began murmuring in
his ears. He wanted to pick the whole of her daintiness up in his arms
and comfort her.

"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he begged.

The girl collected herself.

"I will tell you," she said in a low tone. "There, sit closer, please,
so I can talk in a low tone. Don't make any noise, señor."

Strawbridge adjusted his chair silently and sat staring at the
slight figure, in mute speculation. His head was full of the wildest
conjectures: Josefa was her brother ... her lover. Josefa had followed
her over from Spain....

"You say you never heard of Josefa before you came here?" he asked
aloud.

"No, I'd never heard of him."

"Then why in the world--"

She made a weary gesture.

"Oh, Señor Strawbridge, because life is all terrifying here; every part
has the same horrible quality!"

"But you don't know where Josefa is?"

"_Sí, sí,_ señor; indeed I do!"

"Then where is he?" asked Strawbridge, more bewildered than ever.

The girl pointed silently through the gloom.

"Yonder," she whispered.

Strawbridge turned, half expecting to see the little monkey-eyed clerk
behind him. But the piazza was deserted, and he saw nothing more than
the low, heavy walls of the fort against the last umber light in the
east.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean ... the prison, señor."

A cold trickle went over the drummer.

"You don't mean that little clerk's in prison?"

"_Sí_, señor."

The drummer stared at her.

"For God's sake, why? What did he do?"

"Nothing señor, except...."

"Except what?"

"Except talk to you, señor."

She whispered this last in a rush which ended in a gasp, and this told
Strawbridge she was weeping again.

The big drummer miserably watched her distress.

"Talked to me!"

"Because he told you about President Fombombo's methods."

With a queer sensation the American turned to look at the prison again.

"O-o-oh ... I see. Well, I'll be ... damned!" he uttered in slow
stupefaction.

"And that is nothing ... nothing!" accented the girl passionately.
"There are scores, _scores_ in there--the maimed, the tortured, the
sick, the dying. They have filthy crusts to eat. Never a physician
or a priest. When they die, the guards throw them into the river, to
the crocodiles. Oh, Señor Strawbridge, somehow God will punish this
terrible place! Listen!" she whispered. "At night, Father Benicio
sleeps in the cathedral, where he overlooks the river and the prison.
When any noise awakens him and he sees the guards throwing something
into the water, the priests go to the altar and say the mass for
departing souls."

The American shook his head as he stared at the prison.

"Merciful God!" he said in a whisper.

Presently she began telling Strawbridge her sensations when she came
from Spain as General Fombombo's bride and found herself amid such a
reign of terror.

"It was like stepping into hell, Señor Strawbridge. There never was a
woman so miserable as I. I was afraid to confess such awful things,
even to Father Benicio, but at last I did. He was the only human soul
to whom I could turn. Good, kind Father Benicio! He saved me from going
mad."

As she finished her story the American's optimism returned. "Maybe
I can do something about this," he said thoughtfully. "I never have
talked to General Fombombo about his business policy, but I really must
now. I'll start in about Josefa. I'll show the general how the boy
meant no harm. I'll get him taken out; then I'll show the general how
his policy as a whole is bad for business--"

"Oh, no, no, no!" interrupted the señora in alarm. "It won't help at
all."

"Not if I show him it's bad business?"

"Señor, the general doesn't care that about business!" She snapped her
fingers.

Thomas Strawbridge smiled in the darkness.

"That's where you don't know men, señora," he assured her from his
wider knowledge. "Every man cares about business. There is no man on
earth that isn't wrapped up in some sort of business. Well, I think
I'll step inside and see what I can do." He patted her hand where it
lay on the arm of her chair. There was something about its softness and
littleness that sent a strange, sweet sensation up Strawbridge's arm
and suffused his body. The next moment he moved into the palace, with
his usual quick, rangy strides.




CHAPTER XIII


When Strawbridge entered the library of the palace he found only
Coronel Saturnino, who was working at his desk. Near the entrance stood
one of the palace guards. The silence was almost complete; Strawbridge
could hear the faint scratch of the colonel's pen as he toiled at his
endless preparations to seize San Geronimo.

The drummer was on the verge of calling out to ask the whereabouts of
General Fombombo, when it occurred to him that this Coronel Saturnino
was at that moment devising plans upon which, quite possibly, his own
safety depended.

It was rather an extraordinary thought for the salesman. There was
something dramatic about it--a man working silently in the great, still
library, determining whether Strawbridge should live or die. And there
stood Strawbridge, near the door, unable to assist in the slightest
degree in this determination of his fate. It was a queer, almost a
ghostly feeling. Somehow it clothed Coronel Saturnino with a kind of
awesome superiority. A sort of premonition of the raid on San Geronimo
came to the drummer, a charging of horsemen, sword thrusts, the flash
of small arms.... His visualization was based largely upon a cheap
chromo called "The Fall of the Alamo" which had hung in the parlor of
his home in Keokuk. In this picture the artist had been very liberal
with blood and dead men. Strawbridge decided not to call to Coronel
Saturnino, but to allow him to work undisturbed.

The drummer nodded the guard to him. The little brown man glanced
around at the colonel, then moved silently toward the American,
evidently with scruples. When he was close enough, Strawbridge
whispered:

"Where is the general?"

The man was amazed at such a question.

"Señor, I am a guard, not a spy."

The salesman was faintly amused.

"Aw, come now! What's the big idea? You know me. You see me every day
around this joint. So spit it out, man: where did the general go?"

The little fellow shrugged, pulled down the corners of his mouth, and
moved silently back to his post.

This irritated the American. He told the guard, under his breath, to go
to hell, and that faint explosion sufficed to wipe the incident from
his mind. He turned out into the corridor again and walked toward the
front of the building, in an aimless search for the dictator, while his
thoughts returned to the señora and the misfortunes of little Josefa.

He began composing a speech against the time he found the general, a
kind of sales talk designed to set Josefa free. He would say the little
clerk had not volunteered the information about General Fombombo's
business methods. That had been wrung from him by the fact that he,
Strawbridge, was about to arrange a hardware display. From this point
of departure the drummer hoped to proceed into a constructive criticism
of the general's whole dictatorial policy. It might do a lot of good,
probably would. He was making the general's problems his problems, and
now he rather thought he had solved one. He could fancy the general
looking him straight in the eye and saying, "Strawbridge--by God!--I
believe you've hit the nail on the head!" As a matter of fact, the
drummer knew the general never used profanity, but somehow he placed
this blasphemy in the general's mouth because it sounded strong and
admiring, as one frank, manly American curses at another when his
admiration reaches a certain low boiling-point.

The drummer walked slowly down the corridor, listening at each door as
he passed, but he reached the entrance of the palace without hearing
the general's voice.

Strawbridge came to a halt near the guard at the entrance, and stood
wondering what he should do. The injustice of Josefa's imprisonment
spurred him to do something. He stood looking into the plaza below him,
which was illy lighted. A rather large audience was collecting, for
it was concert night. The semi-weekly concert of the firemen's band
would begin in about half an hour. A thought that he might find General
Fombombo in the audience sent the drummer down the long flight of
ornamental stairs into the plaza.

In the park was a typical Wednesday-evening crowd such as were
gathering in all the larger towns in South America. Near the band
stand was a high stack of folding chairs, and peon boys hurried among
the audience, renting these chairs at two cents each for the evening.
Dark-eyed señoritas in mantillas and fashionable short skirts chose
seats under the electric lights, where they could cross their legs
and best display their well-turned calves and tiny Spanish feet. The
greater part of the crowd preferred to walk. They moved in a procession
around the plaza, the men clockwise, the women anticlockwise, so the
men were continually passing a line of women, and vice versa. There
was an endless tipping of hats, tossing of flowers, and brief exchange
of phrases. Here and there an engaged couple strolled about the square
together. To be seen thus was equivalent to an announcement.

The drummer was walking among this crowd, glancing about for the
President, when a hand touched his shoulder. He looked around and
saw Lubito the bull-fighter with a peon companion. This peon was a
youth who wore alpargatas, but the rest of his costume had the cheap
smartness of the poorer class of Venezuelans who trig themselves out
for the Wednesday-night concerts. In contrast to his finery, there was
something severe, almost tragic in the youth's pale-olive face.

"This is Esteban, señor," introduced the torero, reaching back and
settling his wad of hair. "You remember him--Madruja's lover, who is
half married to her. That makes him the demi-husband of a demi-monde."

Strawbridge extended his hand, rather amused at the oddity of the
introduction.

"_Caramba!_" ejaculated Lubito. "Do you smile at a man in distress,
señor?"

The drummer straightened his face.

"Oh, no, not at all! I am glad to meet Señor Esteban. By the way, I was
just out hunting General Fom--"

Esteban lifted a quick hand.

"Señor," he cautioned in an undertone, "it is not wise to speak that
name in a public place, such as this."

Strawbridge glanced around, rather surprised.

"I was saying no harm. Besides, he's a friend of mine. In fact, I was
looking for him, to ask a little favor."

"Yes?" interrogated Lubito.

"It's about a youngster named Josefa. The general put him in prison--"

"_Diablo_, señor!" gasped Esteban. "I beg of you not to speak of these
things in the plaza!"

The drummer was impressed with the peon's alarm. His feeling was
reinforced by the knowledge that Josefa was in prison on account of
just such a casual conversation as this. So he said:

"Well, now you know what I had to tell you, and who I am hunting."

The bull-fighter nodded gravely.

"I see you are going to do a certain friend of yours a little favor."

"Yes, get him out of trouble."

The torero turned to his companion.

"You see, Esteban, he is _un hombre muy simpatico_ but very
indiscreet. Do you know what he did to me in Caracas? _Caramba!_ I was
standing on the street corner watching some domino-players. Every one
knows that the domino-players are the police's own stool-pigeons. _Cá!_
I was standing there watching them when this _hombre_ comes along and
roars in my ears, 'Where is the _casa_ where the great revolutionist,
General Adriano Fombombo lives!' _Madre de Jesu!_ I almost fainted. I
could see myself rotting in La Rotunda!"

"He has a lion's heart," declared Esteban.

"And a donkey's brain," retorted the bull-fighter.

Strawbridge had heard enough of this.

"With your permission, señors, I will continue my search."

"But don't you want to watch the crowd, señor?" suggested Lubito.
"There, look at that little officer with the swagger-stick; perhaps you
know him?"

The drummer saw a sharp-featured young officer with dark circles of
dissipation under his eyes.

"No, I don't know him."

"You don't know the Teniente Rosales?"

"No, I never heard of him."

Lubito gave the drummer a side glance.

"It is not a bad idea to say you don't know him, at any rate."

"Why, I don't!" repeated the drummer, emphatically, looking around at
the bull-fighter in surprise.

Esteban interrupted:

"You see, Lubito, he is far more discreet than you gave him credit for.
Perhaps he recognized _you_ on the street corner of Caracas."

The bull-fighter looked at Esteban and then at Strawbridge.

"_Caramba!_ I never thought of that!"

This conversation was getting too cryptic for Strawbridge.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, "so, once more with
your permission, I'll go." He turned to leave his companions.

Lubito interrupted:

"Wait; we're going in your direction ourselves. Come on, Esteban, we
might as well have pleasant company."

"Oh, ... all right," agreed the drummer, rather surprised at this.

The three men drew away from the crowd, and for some distance walked
in silence. They directed their course along the shadowy parts of the
plaza and then to the adjoining streets. At last Lubito said with a
casual air:

"We hear you have joined the cavalry, señor."

"For the expedition against San Geronimo," qualified the drummer.

"You are a military man, no doubt?"

"No, not at all."

The bull-fighter seemed surprised.

"Are you going as a simple private?"

"Well, y-es," hesitated Strawbridge, with the complete reason of his
going floating unsaid in his mind.

"No doubt you wish to make friends with the common people--the peons,
the _griffes_, the mestizos, who make up this God-forsaken country,
señor, and who are not of the pure Castilian blood as Esteban and I."

Strawbridge could not see whither this conversation was leading. He
said, very honestly:

"Naturally; I want to make friends with every one."

"We thought so," nodded the torero; "we observed how you speak to all
persons, great and small, how you stop on the street to give moral
advice even to the lottery-ticket venders, how you sympathize with the
unfortunate Josefa, and say conditions should be changed. Yes, you
certainly are very careful to make friends with every one."

Strawbridge was surprised that the bull-fighter had so complete a
digest of his most trivial acts. Also, here and there in Lubito's tones
flickered an insinuation of some hidden meaning which annoyed the
drummer.

"Look here," he said frankly. "What are you driving at? You know I rode
from Caracas with you. You know I'm selling firearms to the general,
and hardware to anybody else."

"_Sí_, señor," agreed Lubito, politely, "but why should you seek to
make friends with this fellow and that fellow--the lowest and the
meanest?"

The drummer was a little irritated.

"I want to make friends with everybody; in the long run it will be of
advantage to my house."

"Your house?" from Esteban.

"I mean the commercial firm I work for."

The two peons nodded thoughtfully. Esteban observed:

"A lottery-ticket vender, who cannot afford clothes for his nakedness,
will hardly buy guns and hardware...."

The salesman was growing weary of these innuendoes.

"Look here," he said in the perfectly friendly voice with a
disagreeable content that is sometimes used by Americans in these
circumstances, "I don't give a damn what you fellows think. I can't
explain every look and word by my business. I'm friendly because I ...
I'm just naturally friendly. I call a man who isn't friendly a damn
fool. Here I am walking with you two guys. I don't expect to sell _you_
guns and hardware, either, but I'm walking with you, just the same."

He looked at both of them after this little speech. Both were obviously
and entirely unconvinced. They shrugged slightly.

"_Pues, pues! Bien! Cá! Seguramente!_" They walked slowly on, evidently
in deep thought. Presently Lubito broke the silence:

"Señor, you will pardon me. We knew all the time you were telling us
the precise truth. What I said was by way of jest. Esteban, there,
misunderstood, because he is a little dull. There is just one other
point Esteban does not understand, and I confess it puzzled me a bit,
too. But I will not ask it if you are angry, señor. Perhaps, after all,
we would better talk of other things. I think you have lost patience
with your two poor stupid friends."

"No," denied the drummer, rather ashamed of his little outbreak, "I
haven't lost patience, but you don't seem to believe what I tell you."

"Oh, _sí_, señor! yes we do!" chorused the two, earnestly. "_Caramba!_
We would not think of doubting a _caballero's_ word!"

"Well, then, what's your question?"

"Exactly this: you are not a military man?"

"No."

"You are going to fight at San Geronimo as a trooper?"

"Yes."

"You came here to sell hardware?"

"Yes."

"Then ... I am very stupid ... but why do you fight?"

"Can you sell hardware to dead men on a battle-field?" added Esteban.

Strawbridge looked at his questioners, with a misgiving that he would
never make them understand the true situation. They would never
realize the necessity of learning the complete details of a customer's
business. He began talking very carefully, as if he were explaining a
lesson to a child:

"I am joining the raid on San Geronimo to get a working idea of my
patron's business conditions."

Lubito nodded.

"Before I sell a market, I like to know it thoroughly."

"_Precisamente._"

"Before I sell a man a tool, I want practical, first-hand knowledge of
just how he is going to use it, what he needs, why he needs it. That's
the American method." Launched on his favorite theme, Strawbridge spoke
with a certain fervor.

"But why is that, señor?" puzzled Esteban. "If you sell a man anything,
it is his. He has it. You have sold it."

"Sh! let him explain!"

"No, that's a good question," declared Strawbridge, with enthusiasm. "I
sell you something. Why am I concerned about how you use it? The use
of that article is your problem. But perhaps with my expert knowledge
I can show you how to use it better, or perhaps I can devise a way to
make you a better tool. Then you will be a satisfied customer, and a
satisfied customer is the best advertisement in the world." Strawbridge
shook his fist. "When you buy anything from me, gentlemen, you are not
buying just my goods, you are buying human service!" He popped his fist
into his palm. "You are buying the best in me to coöperate with the
best in you, and between us we'll make this world a better world to
live in." He nodded sharply. "See?"

The drummer paused. The bull-fighter and the peon looked at each other.
After several seconds had passed, Esteban said:

"For example, señor, if I wanted to buy a dirk to cut Lubito's throat,
you would come and cut it first to see what kind of knife I should use?"

Strawbridge was a little cooled.

"Well, ... that is just about the size of my San Geronimo trip; isn't
it? You seem to have hit the nail on the head."

Esteban became thoughtful.

"So you are going to aid--" his voice sank--"General Fombombo."

"Yes, sure I am."

"And it makes no difference whether _he_ is right or wrong. You will
help him steal my Madruja, steal Señor Fando's horse, steal Señor
Rosario's ranch, put Josefa in irons, do this, that, and the other,
break our bodies, destroy our souls, cut us down, and grind us like
corn in his mill. It makes no difference to you; you are going to help
him in all that!"

Strawbridge was shocked at this sudden attack on the moral end of his
business, by the peon who had lost his sweetheart. He became more
carefully logical and less rhetorical. In fact, he was exploring new
ground, a territory over which his old man had not coached him, so he
was not so sure of himself.

"It's like this: I'm doing my part of this thing in a business way. If
everybody would work in a business way, there wouldn't be any of this
rough stuff you're talking about, because that's bad business. In fact,
I was just on my way around to see the general. I'm going to get Josefa
out of prison, and I think I can stop all this other sort of thing. I
believe I can put this whole country on a business basis."

"But you, yourself, are going to San Geronimo to help kill men, just to
show him how to work his guns!"

Here Lubito interrupted in a disgusted tone:

"Esteban, you fool, just because you've lost your Madruja, your head
is hot and you see nothing in the light of reason. This tale Señor
Strawbridge told us is the tale he tells the general, and makes _him_
believe it. By this means he goes to San Geronimo with the cavalry.
_Caramba!_ I am amazed that even a stupid peon should not see so simple
a thing!"

Esteban stared, and grinned faintly.

"_Cá!_ He told it so cleverly that even I believed it, too!"

Strawbridge looked at his companions.

"What'n hell are you talking about?" he demanded.

Lubito held up a finger.

"Everything is well, señor." He nodded confidentially. "You are a much
deeper man that I thought. Everything is as you would wish it. In only
one way would I caution you."

"Damned if I know where you are heading in, but what do you want to
caution me about?"

"It is this, señor--you will take it as a friend; we are brothers
now--it is this: When our country became so bad under General Dimancho
that it could go no farther, we appealed to General Miedo for aid, and
he promised us if he won power we should have justice, that every peon
should possess his wife and daughters and property in peace, señor,
precisely as you say."

In the greatest astonishment Strawbridge stared at the bull-fighter.

"What's that got to do with me?"

"Nothing, nothing at all, señor, but General Miedo forgot his pledges
when he reached power. He forgot his pledges as men are prone to do,
and our country became even worse than when it was under General
Dimancho. So we went to General--" Lubito dropped to a whisper--"to
General Fombombo, who had a ranch down on the Orinoco near Ciudad
Bolívar. And _he_ promised our deputation if we raised him to the
highest seat our wives and daughters and property should be our own.
Señor Strawbridge, the monument to General Fombombo that stands back
there in the plaza marks the spot where he stood General Miedo up
before his soldiers and shot him through the heart."

A goose-flesh feeling brushed over the drummer.

"Lubito," he said, "what in hell has this got to do with me?"

"Nothing, señor, nothing at all. I merely mention this by way of
information. You want information. All Americans want information. They
want that the most badly of all the things they need. Also, there is a
saying in Rio Negro, señor, that a gray-eyed man shall free us. And we
have tried our own people so many times, señor, and so sorrowfully,
that we are weary of trying Venezuelans, and would fain try a man of
another nation."

Strawbridge was dumbfounded. He could do nothing but stand and stare at
his companions. At last he made an effort and said in a queer voice:

"Men, you've got me wrong; you've got me completely wrong."

"_Seguramente!_ You are a salesman of hardware, who goes to war to show
the dictator what knife cuts a throat best." Lubito laughed briefly.
"We do not know what throat you mean to cut first, señor--you are a
deep man--but here we part for the night. This building on your left
is the west wing of the _palacio_. In those lighted windows you will
find the general with Madruja. You said you wished to find him. There
he is. I do not know what you wish to say or do to the general. I will
not ask. You say, yourself, that you are a _maestro_ in the cutting of
throats. No one knows when or where you may see fit to give a lesson."
Lubito laughed. "Remember, Lubito and Esteban are your friends. _Adio'
hasta mañana._"

"_Adios_," returned Strawbridge.

His two companions turned and moved away toward the plaza. In the
distance the firemen's band had struck up a sensuous Spanish waltz.
The drummer stood meditating on the amazing thing Lubito had told him.
Such a usurpation was as remote from Strawbridge's temperament as the
stars, but nevertheless he was profoundly moved. For some reason the
Señora Fombombo came into his mind. He saw her as clearly as if she
stood before him in bright day. He put her vision from him, and stared
resolutely at the brightly lighted windows across the dark street.
In an effort to bring his mind back to his own affairs, he drew out
his silver cigar-case and lighted up. He tipped up his face in order
that his eyes might escape the smoke. Out of the heavens a thousand
brilliant stars offered him counsel. Presently Lubito and Lubito's
insurgency faded from his mind. He finally sifted down the exact
problem which he had to meet. Should he go over and ask for Josefa's
release and extend to the general his views on the proper business
methods to be used in Rio Negro?

Should he go now? That was his problem. An American caught in the
presence of his mistress would probably be in a dour mood. On the other
hand, the thought of the little monkey-eyed Josefa, lingering out
another night in the filthy dungeons of La Fortuna, filled Strawbridge
with pity and remorse. The youth was entirely innocent, and he,
Strawbridge, had put him in his cell. On the other hand, a badly timed
interview could very well be of no service to Josefa, and might lose
the drummer a two-hundred-and-fifty thousand-dollar order for rifles.

He wondered what his old man would advise him to do in this emergency.
The drummer looked up at the stars and sought advice just as earnestly
as any religious martyr would have prayed to these same heavens. If he
had known what his old man would suggest, he would have done it.

The coal on Strawbridge's cigar glowed and faded at long intervals, and
presently there struggled up out of the drummer's subconscious a memory
of a little framed motto which his employer had hung over his desk. It
read:


     The greatest assets of any firm are the honor and courage of its
     salesmen; next comes the quality of its goods.


Religious martyrs, in their extremity, have been known to receive
answers from the heavens they interrogated. Thomas Strawbridge, also,
had received his. He drew a deep puff of smoke, thumped away his cigar,
which made a dull spiral of fire as it fell through the darkness; then
he started briskly across the street.




CHAPTER XIV


One of the palace guards delayed Strawbridge for a few moments at the
entrance of the west wing of the palace, to ask his master if the
American might be admitted. A little later the soldier returned and
opened a door into a brightly lighted sitting-room which evidently
corresponded to the music-room in the east wing. Some rugs made of
Indian blankets, chairs, and a couch of colored native wickerwork
gave a look of richness and rather intemperate color to the room.
The high light of this ensemble, that which held it all together and
subordinated it, was the peon girl Madruja. Strawbridge obtained rather
a bewildered impression of her. In fact, no man ever gets the details
of an unusually comely woman at first glance.

General Fombombo, rising from the wicker couch where he had been
sitting beside the girl, begged permission to leave her for a moment,
to which Madruja assented with a mute gesture. The President came
forward to Strawbridge, with both hands outstretched, radiating welcome.

"_Mi caro amigo_," he greeted, "I am charmed to have you see my little
ménage. What do you think of my color scheme?" He stood gripping the
drummer's hand and looking about at the room with that detachment which
the arrival of a third person always gives an artist toward his work.
The general picked out a doubtful point: "What do you think of the
clasp that holds down the drapery between her breasts?"

Strawbridge barely managed to see the clasp against the glow of the
girl. He said he thought it was a very nice clasp.

"No, I mean would you prefer garnet or ruby just there? I tried garnet
at first, but I found that her eyes would endure the fire of a ruby.
Ah, Señor Strawbridge, you are doubtless aware that not one woman in
fifty can wear a ruby in her bosom."

Strawbridge cleared his throat and said he knew rubies were very
expensive.

This introduced a little gap in the conversation. The dictator changed
his manner from the enthusiasm of an artist to the courtesy of a host:

"I believe you have not as yet had the pleasure of meeting Señorita
Rosamel." Here he led Strawbridge nearer Madruja. "Señorita, may I
present my dear friend Señor Tomas Strawbridge of Nueva York?"

The girl remained seated and simply extended a hand. Whether she did
this out of timidity, or out of pride in her new silks and jewels, the
drummer could not guess. The hand she placed in his was small and not
badly shaped, but hard and rough from the work of a peon woman. She
said nothing at all, but sat looking at Strawbridge out of black eyes
which could endure the fire of a ruby. They were the shining, surfacy
eyes one sees in wild animals and in entirely illiterate persons. Of
what thoughts, if any, lay behind those surfaces, the drummer could not
get the slightest inkling.

However, she seemed tractable enough. With a little sinuous movement
she made room on the couch for the general. With perfect inertness she
allowed him to possess her hand. He picked it up, spread it in his
palm, and began patting and stroking it while his conversation returned
to Strawbridge.

"You may light a cigar in here and be comfortable," he invited.
"Madruja is no obstacle to relaxation; rather, an assistance. Have you
never observed that your thoughts flow more smoothly when your arm is
about a pretty woman?"

None of the scene was agreeable to Strawbridge, but this peculiar turn
caused him to ejaculate:

"You can _think_ better with your arm around a woman?"

"_Seguramente_, señor," agreed the dictator. "Have you not observed
that some men twiddle a pencil when they think, others smoke, some walk
up and down with their hands behind their backs? All of these are mere
bachelorish makeshifts. Your true thinker meditates with a woman's
head on his shoulder. It is, you might say, señor, the only connection
between a woman's head and thought."

As the general's thought had become more involved, he had drawn Madruja
to him and now sat caressing her, his fingers playing abstractedly with
the ruby and along the faint indentures of her clavicles.

Strawbridge disapproved of this almost beyond patience. He resented
this establishment in the west wing of the palace, on account of the
señora. It seemed to him that it would have been much more decent and
respectful if the dictator had taken away this second ménage, had
hidden it out of sight and denied it as Americans do in such cases.

"I don't know about a woman giving a man ideas," he blurted out, with
disapproval tingeing his tones.

"Read the life of Simon Bolivar," returned the general, easily,
still caressing the source of his own inspiration. "In the 'Diario
de Bucaramanga,' by de la Croix, we learn that Bolivar was unable
to plan any of the great battles which freed the South American
continent except when he was dancing with a woman. Every night,
during his military campaigns, he danced till one or two o'clock,
planning his next great stroke at Spain. That is what genius is, Señor
Strawbridge--the ability to draw on outside sources of power. The women
with whom Bolivar danced--what were they? Batteries. Bolivar was the
motor. They furnished him the energy to lift this whole continent from
tyranny to the untrammeled freedom enjoyed in Rio Negro to-day."

The general paused a moment and continued:

"Take me and Madruja. Out of the wealth of this woman's muliebrity, I
will extend the state of Rio Negro from the Andes to the sea. She and
I will build up great cities; gardenize the llanos; develop a people
with the finesse of the French, the energy of the Americans, and the
immensitude of the Spanish!" He pressed the girl to him passionately,
moved with the magnificence of his vision, then put her beside him
again and came down to a more normal mood by taking her hand once more
and spreading it in his own.

This last ebullition was more than Strawbridge could tolerate. If
all this had been expounded over Dolores Fombombo, had Dolores been
alternately crushed and caressed, the drummer would have thought the
relations between the President and his wife the most beautiful he had
ever known. But the fact that Fombombo had shifted women rendered it
outrageous. Strawbridge had to speak for the wife.

"Look here," he criticized. "That's all right. You seem to get a lot
of pep out of this young lady, but look here--" at this point Mr.
Strawbridge made one of those moral pauses which Americans inherit from
their Sunday-school teachers--"had you thought of your wife?"

"Had I thought of my wife?"

"Yes; had you?"

"What is there to think of my wife?"

For some reason the drummer blushed slightly.

"It looks to me like she ought to come in there somewhere. Doesn't look
like another woman should step in and ... er ... uh...." He waved his
hand.

The general was enlightened.

"I see what you mean." He smiled. "That is a quaint American idea of
yours."

"It's American," defended Strawbridge stoutly, "but I don't see that
it's quaint."

"Perhaps 'quaint' is not the word, but if I may speak impersonally and
in no way appear to criticize the American point of view, I should say
it is very disrespectful in a man to think of a wife in such a way as
this. I feel safe in saying that no Spanish _caballero_ would consider
it for a moment."

The drummer stared at this extraordinary statement.

"Disrespectful! Do you think it would be more disrespectful to
plan your empire under your wife's inspiration than to set up an
establishment like this?"

"_Caramba_, Señor Strawbridge! certainly! When I enter my wife's
presence I am a Spanish gentleman." Here the dictator made a bow to
a space which represented his wife. "I think of nothing but her.
For example, if Dolores were in this room would our conversation
have wandered about like this? Certainly not. Could we have smoked,
or talked on risqué topics? Certainly not. The Spaniard keeps his
mistresses, Señor Strawbridge, out of sincere respect and devotion
to--" he made another slight bow toward the empty space--"to his wife."

It was an extraordinary attitude, and as far as the drummer could
analyze it, seemed informed with a fine chivalry. He sat looking rather
numbly at the dictator with the gorgeous peon girl in his arms. He
gave up that point of attack, and shifted the topic of conversation,
American fashion, by saying suddenly and rather loudly:

"Well, not to change the subject, General, I dropped around to-night to
set right a little mistake we made the other day."

The President abandoned South America's favorite topic, Woman, with
evident reluctance.

"Yes?" he questioned.

"Yes, it's about Josefa."

The President repeated the name emptily.

"The little clerk you put in prison the other day; don't you remember?
You jailed him because he told me how you ran your government."

Even the diplomatic general showed surprise.

"Josefa? How do you know I imprisoned a man named Josefa?"

Strawbridge burst out laughing.

"You can't expect me to tell who told me. You might jug that person,
too."

"Hardly that," said the dictator, drily. "Then will you tell me why
this unmentioned person said I imprisoned a man named Josefa?"

"I'll tell you about Josefa. He's already in trouble. The other day I
was down at the 'Sol y Sombra,' and I wanted to make a hardware display
to boost trade in my line. Josefa was dead against it. I was about to
put up the display anyway, when Josefa said if I did it would certainly
cause the government tax on the store to advance, and maybe lead to its
confiscation. I didn't believe it, but he went ahead to tell me how the
Government had grabbed one man's ranch because it stood the dry season
better than--"

"Señor Strawbridge," interrupted the general, with a little line coming
around the lobe of his nose, "you have been made the victim of the
usual calumnious gossip which circulates too freely in Canalejos. The
ranch to which you probably refer was a deserted hacienda, and, rather
than allow its lands to go to waste, the Government occupied it."

Strawbridge saw by the general's face that he would help no one by
pursuing that course, so he said, "Oh, was that the way?" as if he had
heard the explanation for the first time. He then shifted about to his
next topic.

"General," he began, "I've been thinking about Canalejos and Rio Negro,
and the way you run things down here. Don't you believe you would get
more out of it if you would make all investments perfectly safe in your
country?"

"I shall have to ask you to explain that, too."

"For example, Fando, that peon whose horse you took for your cavalry.
No doubt the loss of his horse stopped the cultivation of his hacienda,
and yet to some extent the wealth of Rio Negro depends upon Fando's
land being cultivated."

"That is true," admitted the dictator, stiffly, "but it is more
important that the liberty and independence of Rio Negro be maintained
than that Fando have a horse. You must be aware, Señor Strawbridge,
that the prime necessity of any government is its governmental
existence. You are an American. Everything you possess, down to your
body, is liable to conscription in time of military necessity, is it
not?"

"Yes, that's true, but I get paid for what my Government seizes."

"What would it pay you?"

"Money, of course."

"There you are," smiled the general, getting back on comfortable
abstractions again. "Money is a medium of exchange, a promise of goods
in the future. The value of American money depends upon America's
winning her wars. Unfortunately I have no Rio Negran money yet, though
I think I shall print some. If I had it, of course I would pay Fando.
Why not? It wouldn't cost me anything. On the other hand, if I finally
win against the State of Venezuela, Fando will not be forgotten. In
short, my dear Señor Strawbridge, I seize the goods of the people for
the good of the people--just as every other government does."

Thomas Strawbridge nodded his agreement and, with a sense of
frustration, arose to make his devoirs. He wished he could have got
Josefa out. The poor little monkey-eyed clerk was at that moment lying
in some loathsome dungeon of La Fortuna. Well, it could not be helped.

Strawbridge gave a little sigh, smiled mechanically, and advanced to
the couch with outstretched hand.

"Well, I hope my talk has done no harm, General. I'm really keen to
help you in a business way."

The dictator arose, and suggested that his guest remain. He said
Madruja would be charmed if Strawbridge would stay. With the girl
thrust on his attention like that, the salesman bent over her hand to
make his adieus to her.

Her hand rested limply in his, and she remained mute while he expressed
his pleasure at meeting her.

As she stood thus, looking at him over their clasped hands, with her
black surfaced eyes, there came the sound of a door opening behind the
men. The black eyes of the girl shifted a little from Strawbridge's
face and stared over his shoulder. A change came over her features as
if she had seen a ghost. Even her scarlet lips paled. With her lips she
formed, rather than said the name, "Esteban!"

Both Fombombo and Strawbridge whirled. In the doorway stood a peon boy
with a knife in his hand. He wore the cheap finery which peons don for
concert night. Esteban's face was drawn and clay-colored, and he stood
blinking in the bright light which bewildered his eyes.

The dictator evidently did not know who Esteban was. He rapped out
sternly:

"_Bribon_, what do you mean entering this room without permission?"

The youth replied with a sudden lunge at the President. Strawbridge
saw the flash of the knife, and, with a remnant of his old football
interference, shot his body, shoulder down, straight into the midriff
of the leaping figure.

The American's two hundred and ten pounds hit the boy like a catapult.
It smashed him backward and down. His knife snapped out of his hands,
his hat flew off, his head struck heavily on the tiled floor. The
general was calling angrily for the guards. A moment later three of
these little men entered the door, with their rifles.

The President pointed at the youth on the floor.

"Take that _bribon_. He made an attack on me. You rascals will have to
explain how he got in!"

The three guards, rather panic-struck, pounced on the peon. They got
him up and held his arms behind him. Strawbridge's blow in the stomach
had made Esteban sick, and now he bent over as far as his captors would
permit, retching and slobbering, with anguished eyes looking at the
girl.

"Madruja!" he gasped between his convulsions. "Eh, Madruja, _mi vida_,
I would give my last breath for--"

"What are you saying to Madruja?" demanded the President.

"She is my wife," gasped Esteban, painfully. "You locked her up in this
room and then ... took her!"

The dictator stared at the fellow.

"Locked her up and took her! Do you imagine I would take any woman?
She came to me of her own will!" He turned to the girl and his voice
changed: "Here, Madruja, my darling, my little heaven, deny this
empty-headed rascal's charge!"

The girl stood staring at the two men.

"What, _Señor el Presidente_?" She trembled.

"Deny this charge. Or, rather, here is a villain who calls himself your
husband; choose between us. You are free, you have always been free.
And you, _bribon_, you too are free. I mean it.--Loose him men!--Choose
between me and this wretch!"

The three guards released Esteban's arms. The peon looked about, then
advanced a step toward the girl, with a bewildered joy coming into his
sick face.

"Madruja!" he wavered, holding out his arms. "Madruja, did you hear
what the _Presidente_ said? Did you hear what the good _Presidente_
said, little Madruja?" He was approaching her, shuddering with his
sickness and his sudden rapture.

The girl looked at him fixedly. She withdrew a step.

"_Caramba_, Esteban!" she shrugged, "you smell of donkeys. You have
done a mad thing coming here. I am not a peon girl any more. I am the
mistress of _Señor el Presidente_. Look at me! See this silk, this
ruby! Do you imagine I would grind cassava for a peon who smells like a
donkey?" She shrugged, and turned away to a window.

In the silence that followed, one of the little guards saluted.

"What shall we do with him, your Excellency?"

"Kick him out of the _palacio_ and let him go!"

The three soldiers obeyed literally and promptly. They seized Esteban
from behind and trundled him toward the door, with hard kicks of their
knees against his buttocks. The wretch moved, half falling, half held
up, in a series of jounces which kept his head bobbing and his mop of
shining youthful hair whipping from side to side. After the quartet
passed through the door Strawbridge could still hear the muffled thuds
of the guards' knees as they kicked Esteban down the corridor toward
the entrance.

The incident left Strawbridge mute. The dictator interrupted his
intellectual vacancy by saying:

"Señor Strawbridge, I have to thank you for your interference. I might
have had a cut or two from that young madman before I could secure
his knife." The general's arm encircled Madruja as he spoke. The girl
submitted without any expression whatever on her wild, handsome face.

"It was nothing, General, nothing at all. As I have said before, any
little service...." Strawbridge broke off and stood pondering a moment,
then asked, "Will you tell me, General, why you imprison Josefa for
merely speaking a word of criticism of your country, and then have
Esteban kicked out and allowed to go free when he makes an attack on
your life?"

The dictator shrugged.

"What I did to Esteban will stop Esteban; what I did to Josefa will
stop Josefa." The President of Rio Negro stood faintly smiling and
caressing the finely molded shoulders of his mistress.

Strawbridge was outraged.

"Why, there is no justice in that! Imprison a man for life for speaking
a word; let another go free when he attempts murder!"

With amused eyes the President regarded his guest.

"Señor Strawbridge, what you say is a result of your unfortunate
American commercial training. You Americans have a naïve idea that
justice is a sort of balancing of an account. You try to make the
severity of the punishment balance with the heinousness of the crime.
It is your national instinct to keep a ledger.

"But what is justice? Is there any accountant in heaven or on earth
calling for any such exactitude? Is punishment a thing that can be
measured or weighed? What good does punishing a man do? Whom does it
benefit? Nobody. There is only one object in punishment, and that is to
stop crimes. Any effort to balance a punishment with a crime is absurd
and the work of infantile intelligences. Take Esteban. He attacked my
life. If I disgrace him before this lovely señorita here, if I kick
him out of my palace, do you fancy he will ever have the hardihood to
return? You know he won't. On the contrary, if I had imprisoned him, as
I did Josefa, that would have made a hero of him, and every lover of
every one of my mistresses would feel obliged to come and chop at me
with his knife. If they know they will be kicked out and laughed at,
they will not come. In short, the punishment cures the crime."

"But look at Josefa!" cried Strawbridge. "He did almost nothing, and
you have put him in a dungeon for life!"

The dictator became stern.

"He talked too much. The only place for a man who talks too much is
where there is no one to talk to. No other punishment on earth will
stop an idle tongue."

Strawbridge stood thinking over this extraordinary code of law. It
was not justice as the drummer knew it; it was a code of expediency.
As usual, the President's reasoning appeared to be correct and
unanswerable.




CHAPTER XV


To Thomas Strawbridge the expedition against San Geronimo was invested
with a sense of unreality. Every detail of it cast a faint doubt on the
credibility of the drummer's impressions--the rabble of peon cavalry,
mounted on mules, donkeys, and a few horses; a motley of women--wives,
mistresses, and sweethearts of the soldiers--some in carts, some
riding donkeys, some on foot. The troops hauled a single three-pound
field-gun with its snout in an old canvas bag and its breech wrapped
in palm-leaves. Not less unbelievable was the priest, Father Benicio,
in his black cassock and priest's round black hat. He was mounted
on a mule, and at his pommel hung his crucifix, a little gourd of
consecrated oil, and a vial of holy water. With these instruments of
grace he would administer extreme unction to the unfortunate of the
expedition.

The string of adventurers was sufficiently long so that when
Strawbridge looked back from his place in the van the women and
soldiers at the end of the column appeared hazy from the dust and
shimmered with the heat-waves.

It was a breathless and wilting heat. When Strawbridge crossed the
llanos in a motor-car the hot wind had depressed him, but now, without
the speed of the automobile, the heat enveloped him with a greasy,
pinching sensation. The warmth of his horse's body kept his legs sudsy.
He tried to squirm his flesh away from his wet underclothes. Often he
would ride five minutes at a time with his eyes shut against the glare
of the sun reflected from the sand.

For ten or twelve kilometers the route of the army followed the
left bank of the Rio Negro. The rapids set in just below the city of
Canalejos, and for upward of a mile they filled the air with a vast
watery rumble. But the river was so wide that Strawbridge could see
from the shore nothing but a ripple in the broad yellow waters. The
thunder of the rapids appeared to arise out of a placid expanse without
cause. It was as if the river were in some mysterious travail.

The passage of the army flushed white egrets from along the bank, and
once six flamingos arose and winged slowly away, making a crimson line
against the sky. Along the sand-bars huge caymans slept in an ecstasy
of heat. Their long whitish bellies fitted over stones and the curves
in the sand with a kind of disgusting flexibility.

Some time later the line of march veered away from the river and lost
itself in the endless, almost imperceptible undulations of the llanos.
The monotony of these llanos somehow nibbled away the last shred of
reality for Thomas Strawbridge. It seemed to him that everything in the
world had ceased to exist except this shimmering furnace of sand.

The drummer rode at a post of honor, at the head of the column beside
Coronel Saturnino. Behind him came the fighters, in a gradually
thickening dust, until the end of the column traveled in a cloud. The
colonel himself moved along impassively, apparently as little affected
by the heat as the saddle he sat. He kept looking about as if he
recognized landmarks in the endless repetition of the llanos. Presently
he pointed through the glare and said:

"There is 'El Limon,' Señor Strawbridge."

The drummer screwed up his eyes against the shimmer, and made out what
looked like a grove of trees on the horizon. Nearer, the spot developed
into trees and a house of some sort. There seemed to be only one house.
Strawbridge stared mechanically. The heat dulled his perceptions.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A hacienda. It belongs to an English firm, and is in federal
territory. We are outside of General Fombombo's scope of influence now."

Strawbridge repeated these last words mechanically; the meaning was
almost baked out of them by the heat of the sun beating on his head.
"Outside of General Fombombo's scope of influence...." The drummer
remembered the red line on the map in the library. So that was where
he was--on that red line. The whole force of peons, officers, men, and
women were crossing that red line and trying to extend it.

"How far is it to San Geronimo?" he asked.

"We're about half-way."

Strawbridge rode on for ten or fifteen minutes, with his eyes resting
on the deep green of the grove. It was a eucalyptus grove. He noted
this vaguely; then his mind went back to the answer to his questions.
They were about half the distance ... outside the scope of General
Fombombo's influence.... A red line on the map of Venezuela.... They
were extending that, pushing it eastward and southward.... Somewhere
the señora was playing a piano in a cool room.... The pleasant
señora.... God, but it was hot!

The estate of "El Limon," in the Orinoco basin, belonged to an English
meat-packing concern, and it was managed by a Trinidadian and his wife,
the Tollivers. These English colonials lived in a ranch-house made of
stone instead of adobe. Near the dwelling-house stood a vast wooden
barn. It was this barn which Strawbridge had seen from a distance.
House and barn were shaded by a magnificent eucalyptus grove, and these
great trees formed the only restful spot amid the leagues of burning
llanos. It was an English experiment and importation, this grove, and
not another like it existed in all Venezuela.

Mr. Tolliver was a tall, rangy man wearing a native palm-fiber hat and
alpargatas. He was burned browner than the natives themselves, but it
was the deep reddish-brown of the Anglo-Saxon, not the yellowish-brown
of a Spaniard. Out of this deep-brown face two pale English eyes looked
on Venezuela, in chill condemnation.

As the seekers of liberty rode up, Mr. Tolliver stood with his back
to a high barbed-wire enclosure around his barn, with his elbows and
one big foot propped back against its wires. With a depth of sarcasm
marking his bearded mouth and glinting out of his pale eyes, he watched
the cavalcade. As the army filed into the cool glade, Mr. Tolliver
remarked in the queer mouthy English of a West Indian colonial:

"Well, you bloody sons of liberty are after my stock again, I see."

Coronel Saturnino betrayed no annoyance at this reception. He bade the
rancher "_Buenos tardes_," and asked if his men might eat in the shade.
The big Trinidadian gave a sardonic consent. Saturnino sat on his
horse, enjoying this relief from the sun, and glanced about over the
barbed-wire enclosure.

"You have a fine Hereford bull, Señor Tolliver," he admired.

The rancher did not turn his head.

"At present I have," he remarked drily.

"And some excellent chickens," smiled the colonel, who seemed to be
enjoying some private jest.

These very mild and complimentary observations seemed suddenly to
enrage Tolliver. He put his foot down and burst out:

"What the bloody hell makes you drool along like that? Why don't you
say what you're going to steal, and quit purring like a cat?"

Saturnino shrugged politely.

"You must pardon me, Señor Tolliver. I so seldom meet an Englishman,
I am not yet an expert in discourtesy." The officer continued his
observation of the estate: "And horses, Señor Tolliver, mounts for my
men. If you could spare a few horses...."

The suggestion irritated the Trinidadian to a remarkable degree. His
eyes filled with a pale fire, and with a concentration which surprised
the drummer he called down the curses of God on the colonel. In the
midst of this outburst, the rancher's eyes fell on Strawbridge. He
stopped his profanity abruptly and stared.

"Look here," he demanded, "aren't you a white man?"

The tone and implication left Strawbridge rather uncomfortable in the
presence of the Venezuelan.

"I'm an American," he said, avoiding the issue of color.

"Well, what the bloody hell are you following this gang of cut-throats
and horse-thieves around for!"

The rancher's qualifications were edged with a righteous anger. Indeed,
the fellow's oaths seemed to strip off a certain moral semblance which
had hung over the expedition and leave it threadbare and shabby. The
drummer hardly knew how to answer, when Coronel Saturnino relieved him
of the necessity of answering at all. The officer very courteously
introduced the rancher to the salesman and explained the latter's
business.

The deep-brown Englishman stood appraising Strawbridge, and at last
remarked:

"Well, you Americans certainly chase dollars in tighter places than any
other decent man would. But, anyway, you're a white man. So come on in
and have lunch. My wife and I get so bloody lonesome out here in this
hell-hole, we're glad to see anything that's white."

Strawbridge was about to refuse this scathing hospitality, when Coronel
Saturnino burst out laughing.

"Go!" he urged. "We shall be here for some time, rounding up some
horses, and you need a rest and something to eat; you look exhausted."

The drummer agreed, and climbed stiffly off his horse. Notwithstanding
the Englishman's brusquerie, Strawbridge rather liked the tall, brown,
pale-eyed man. After the perpetual tepid courtesy of the Venezuelans
his downrightness was as bracing as a cold shower.

Once Tolliver had decided to accept Thomas Strawbridge as a respectable
white man in good standing, he did it wholeheartedly. He preceded his
guest through a yard set with flowers in formal stone-bordered beds, a
mode of flower arrangement dear to an Englishwoman's heart, no matter
in what part of the world she is. The stone house had a wide wooden
porch running completely around it. In front this was furnished with
mats, a number of pieces of porch furniture, and a swing; around at
one side were littered harness, garden tools, two or three boxes, and
a number of large calabashes sawed off at the top. All the doors and
windows were screened with copper gauze. Tolliver went to the door and
spoke through the screen.

"Lizzie," he called, "Mr. Strawbridge, an American gentleman, will
lunch with us," and a moment later a woman's pleasant voice called
back, "Ask him whether he will have green or black tea, George."


While the two men were seated on the porch, looking over the grove,
Tolliver, with an Englishman's pertinacity, returned to the topic of
American dollar-chasing.

"I don't see how you run around with these scrapings," he criticized.
"My eyes, man! you've got to be careful who you sell rifles to in this
bloody country! Half these beggars can't be trusted with firearms--" He
broke off, peering out into his barn lot. "Look--look yonder, at those
women catching up my chickens! When an army of liberation sets out from
Canalejos, about half of 'em stop at my ranch, load up with my live
stock, and go back home--the damn, thieving...." Here Tolliver clapped
his hands, and a native boy of about fourteen appeared in the doorway.

"Pedro," snapped the rancher, "go tell that bloody officer not to
disturb any hens with chickens. I won't have it!"

The boy bobbed and darted away with the message.

The Trinidadian watched him go, and then returned sourly to the subject
under discussion:

"Revolutions are always stewing in Rio Negro--one set of thieves after
another. A bunch comes through every six or eight months. They are
always about to do wonderful things. I remember one time I provisioned
General Dimancho. He was just about to save his country. I believed
him. He won, and spoiled like an egg. Then Miedo made me a very
expensive visit. He really talked me over. They can all talk you over
if you listen to 'em. As long as they are not in power, they're the
best of patriots. Miedo was going to stabilize Venezuela. Well, he
did take Rio Negro, and he squeezed it drier than the shell of that
calabash yonder." The rancher made a rough gesture. "God! the rotters
who have squirmed and fought their way to power and debauchery in this
damnable country!" With pale, angry eyes he stared into the grove. "The
trouble is in the stock ... scrub ... scum. You can't make any decent
government out of this ... manure." And Tolliver dropped the subject.

Twenty minutes later a rather faded but still pretty young woman in a
gingham dress came out at the door, smiled at the two men, and told
them that tiffin was ready. Strawbridge was introduced to Lizzie
Tolliver. Later, during the lunch, the drummer learned that his hostess
was the daughter of the Bishop of St. Kitts.

The luncheon hour was occupied by George Tolliver in relating the
peculiar difficulties which beset his cattle ranch. This hacienda had
been established as a feeder for an English meat-packing corporation at
Valencia.

To begin with, a packing-house had been established at Valencia, and a
contract made with the Venezuelan President that he should furnish the
house with so many first-class steers daily. This the President had
failed to do, furnishing, instead, a supply of under-grade animals.
Repeated protests from the English company produced no effect. At last
the company had established this ranch on the Orinoco to furnish itself
with meat. The venture proved a success. By importing fine bulls the
company raised the grade of the llano longhorns into a very superior
beef cattle. As soon as the English syndicate had demonstrated its
ability to raise good beef, the Venezuelan President instructed the
Venezuelan congress to place a heavy interstate tax on all cattle
transported from one state to another. This tax was so onerous that the
company could not afford to move a hoof from the State of Guarico to
the State of Carabobo, where Valencia was situated. The result was that
the company was forced to buy the President's low-grade cattle, while
the meat raised on its own hacienda had no possible market and simply
went to waste.

At the conclusion of this narrative, Tolliver broke into acidulous
laughter.

"Now you see why I aided General Dimancho and General Miedo to start
a revolution against the Venezuelan Government. In fact, I was given
the hint from the London office. Well, each of these men won in his
turn, and both grew so bad that they were ousted. Fombombo was the last
deliverer. But of late I hear rumors that he has turned out to be a
damned rascal and they are trying to overthrow him now."

Here Lizzie Tolliver, who had been giving her husband significant
glances throughout this narrative, interrupted to say:

"George, you would better not speak so unreservedly of Mr.
Strawbridge's friends."

"Friends! Friends!" shouted the Trinidadian. "They are not
Strawbridge's friends! We Anglo-Saxons trade with these natives; we
talk with 'em, live among 'em, and occasionally marry 'em, but we never
really get acquainted with any of 'em, and we never make a friend."

There was a certain verity in the rancher's appraisal, and the
Tollivers themselves proved it. During this brief lunch hour
the drummer and his English hosts were talking intimately and
understandingly in a fashion which Strawbridge perhaps would never
achieve with the colonel, Lubito, Father Benicio, or even with the
señora....

The drummer wondered about the señora....

A few minutes later the little party was interrupted by the appearance
of the native boy in the doorway, who said that Coronel Saturnino was
waiting outside. Tolliver arose, and Strawbridge followed, saying that
perhaps the troops were ready to march.

On the porch they found Coronel Saturnino standing at attention, with a
very affable air, holding in his hand a sheet of paper.

He made a slight bow and tendered the paper.

"Here is a receipt, Señor Tolliver, for twenty horses, three cows,
fifty chickens, and eleven ducks," he explained blandly. "As we
come back by here General Fombombo would greatly appreciate one
of your thoroughbred Hereford bulls, to be used on his ranch for
breeding-purposes, and I have just included the bull in this receipt."

The Trinidadian burst out into another paroxysm of profane anger. The
officer shrugged mildly.

"You need not take it, _mi amigo_, unless you want it, but it will be
valuable to you some day."

"What day? How? I've heard that before!"

"This receipt is payable on the day General Fombombo extends his estate
to the sea. When that day comes, present this receipt at the capital
of the future state of Rio Negro, and you will be paid in full."

Tolliver broke into sardonic laughter.

"To hell with you and your receipt! General Miedo was to pay me when he
marched into Caracas as a conqueror."

Coronel Saturnino bowed and tossed the paper away.

"You English folk are childish," he philosophized. "You have no sense
of the inevitable. You, señor, suffer from the same evils as all
other citizens of Venezuela. I, and my men out there, are risking our
lives to rectify those ills. Many of them will die to-morrow, that
is ineluctable. Yet while they spend their lives to benefit you, you
grudge them even the beef and a few fowls which they eat and the horses
upon which they ride to their death."

Tolliver drew a disgusted mouth.

"I've heard that so many times it makes me sick."

Saturnino bowed again.

"May I pay my respects to the señora, and may I wish you _adios,
pues_." He turned to Strawbridge. "Señor, the company awaits your
convenience."




CHAPTER XVI


The commandeering of the horses at the English ranch shocked
Strawbridge; when the cavalcade set forth on the march again, the
heat and glare of the llanos aggravated his mental disturbance. As he
sweltered in the center of a vast shimmering horizon, he kept repeating
mentally, at unexpected intervals, the epithet "horse-thieves." Each
time these words bobbed up in his mind he put them down, rather
like a man who is trying to keep some buoyant object under water,
"horse-thieves ... horse-thieves ... horse-thieves ..." over and over.
His thinking did not progress much farther than that. What made the
buoyant object so difficult to control was the fact that he himself was
riding one of Tolliver's horses. The very rhythm of the fine animal
between his legs was a reminder and a reproach.

Sweat trickled into the drummer's eyes and stung them. He blinked
through the quivering heat, with screwed-up lids, and wondered what
he could have done about the horse. When Coronel Saturnino insisted
that he take one of the best of the English mounts, he could not have
said, "No, I am a decent American salesman, and I won't ride a stolen
horse." He could not have said such a thing as that in the face of the
colonel's polite consideration.

On the other hand, the damning thought that he was riding a stolen
horse gnawed at the drummer with the persistence of a rat. It gave him
a faint, ghastly feeling in the pit of his stomach, where, perhaps, is
located the genuine seat of conscience with us all.

Presently Strawbridge noted a surprising thing. Looking back over the
cavalcade, he observed Father Benicio riding one of the confiscated
horses. The good father jogged along in his dusty black cassock and his
little round hat, with the sacred emblems dangling from his pommel, and
he was riding a stolen horse. His questionable mount had not changed
the priest's face at all. It was the same thin, ascetic face with
its look of passionate spirituality burning through the repression,
almost the mortification of the flesh. Strawbridge wondered what
mental attitude Father Benicio assumed toward his horse in order to
preserve so eremitic an expression. He felt the holy father must have
some inward justification which he, himself, did not possess. Almost
involuntarily he picked his way among the troopers, to the priest's
side. As he came near he observed that Gumersindo was riding beside the
father. The negro editor's face was covered with dust, and he looked
queer because the dust settling in the furrows of his forehead made
whitish lines against his black skin.

The black man waved the American a grave salute.

"Do you know, Señor Strawbridge," he called above the wide noise of
the horses' feet, "that this is the same sort of expedition Bolivar
led against Montillo when he freed this continent? They had beaten the
_Libertador_ everywhere else, but when they threw him back upon these
interminable llanos, he drew fresh strength, like Antæus, and struggled
on."

Strawbridge nodded wearily.

"Sure, sure...." He looked at the priest, a little doubtful how
to proceed. The negro journalist continued talking, in a sort of
exaltation:

"I never start on an expedition of this kind that I do not think,
'Perhaps to-day I am making history.' That is a wonderful thought,
Father Benicio--history! Think! Perhaps this very moment is historic!
Perhaps it will be embalmed in the memory of the future. It is just
as if we should march forever through the mind of mankind! Other
deedless generations will rise up and vanish as unremarked as the
succeeding harvests of llano grass, but perhaps what we do to-day will
be painted, carved in marble, sung in song, and told in story as long
as civilization lasts! I say it is possible!"

Such a dithyramb from a negro among a band of horse-thieves moved
Strawbridge with a certain disgust. He drew a handkerchief and wiped
his sweaty, gritty face.

"I guess you're making history for that English ranch," he satirized;
"a record of these horses will appear in their profit-and-loss column."

Gumersindo looked around at the drummer, and suddenly began to laugh.

"_Caramba!_ He's thinking about the dollars and cents of this
adventure!"

This was just the fillip needed to set the drummer off. He straightened
in his saddle.

"Well, by God, it's not dollars and cents, either; it's just
plain honesty. I don't know how you fellows feel, but I'm damned
uncomfortable riding a horse we stole from Tolliver!"

Both editor and priest were staring at him.

"What a disturbance over a detail!" ejaculated the black man.

"How do you feel about your mount, Father Benicio?" asked Strawbridge.

The priest's ascetic face relaxed into a rather pleasant smile.

"I feel it is much more comfortable than the mule I rode, my son."

The drummer was amazed.

"Don't you think it's wrong?"

"Our action is directed toward a great and noble end, my son. Venezuela
is sick to death. If confiscating these horses rids the country of a
dictator, surely the end justifies the means!"

"But look here!" cried Strawbridge. "The English company is not in on
this. They are the innocent bystander who gets the bullet through the
heart."

"They are already shot through the heart, señor," answered Father
Benicio, patiently; "their horses and cattle are worth nothing to them,
on account of unjust legislation."

"But their property still belongs to them," cried the drummer. "That
doesn't justify us in stealing it!"

"Did God create these horses simply to live and die without being of
use to any one?"

"That's up to the company. It's their horses."

The priest looked at the drummer oddly. Gumersindo interposed:

"Father, let me explain Señor Strawbridge to you. I said, a while ago,
he had reduced this to dollars and cents. So he has. You must remember
that property is a fetish in America. Americans do not possess their
property, they are possessed by it. In America the prime factor of
civilization is property; in Venezuela the prime factor is Man."

Strawbridge was hot enough to grow angry instantly.

"Look here," he cried, "let me nail that lie right now, while I got
my hammer out! We Americans spend our money just as free as you
Venezuelans, and a damn sight freer!"

"But, Señor Strawbridge," returned the editor, politely, "that has
nothing to do with my analysis. In America all your social framework is
built around money. Rich men are respected, and poor men are not. It
would be better to say that in America property is respected and men
are not."

"That's impossible!" cried Strawbridge, steadily growing angrier.

"Not at all. When an American loses his money, he loses the friendship
and respect of his fellow Americans. The man who acquires the former
rich man's fortune, acquires also the respect that goes with it."
Gumersindo made a gesture. "_Pues_, do you recall, Señor Strawbridge,
that the first draft of the American Declaration of Independence read
in this fashion: 'All men are born free, and are equally entitled to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of property'? The word 'happiness,'
substituted by Jefferson, was merely an American euphemism for
'property'; it means the same thing in America."

"Why--by God!--I recall nothing of the kind!" shouted Strawbridge, with
the American conviction that if one denied history in a loud voice it
would cease to exist. "No, that's just a damn lie some damn Venezuelan
started on Americans!"

"Certainly I am no expert in American history," agreed the editor,
smoothly. "You doubtless know the history of your country better than I
do."

"Well, I hope I do!" grumbled Strawbridge, feeling for the moment that
because he was an American he necessarily knew more of American history
than Gumersindo, who was not an American.

"So, dropping the historical statement--which may be false, although I
discovered it in some research work in your own Congressional Library
at Washington--dropping that, pure inductive reasoning will tell you
Americans do respect property, and that they do not respect human
beings.

"Remember, your country is populated mainly by immigrants who came to
the New World to seek their fortunes. Most of these newcomers were
without culture and without any feeling for human values. They were
poor, and, never having had any money, they naturally thought that
money must contain all value. Therefore they transposed the value of
a man's fortune to the man himself. They thought any man who became
wealthy must have great value, and they called him a success. They
thought any painting which commanded a high price must be a great
painting; they thought any piece of jazz music which sold a million
copies must be a great piece of music. They thought that any house
which cost a million dollars must necessarily be finer than one that
cost only five thousand dollars. Now Americans think that."

The drummer peered hard at the negro editor.

"Well, by God, that's a fact," he declared vigorously. "Nobody denies
that, do they? Don't you know a million-dollar house would be finer
than a five-thousand-dollar house?"

Even Father Benicio joined Gumersindo in the laughter this article of
faith evoked.

"_Pues_," placated the priest, the next moment, "that is the reason,
my son, why we ride our horses without compunction, and why your horse
annoys you. And I must observe that your scruples honor you. I respect
your frankness and your point of view."

Strawbridge rode some farther distance with the two men, but he
was uncomfortable. He knew they were amused at him, and it was not
pleasant. Presently he returned to the head of the column.




CHAPTER XVII


At last Strawbridge's adventure had come to a focus. He sat, galled and
dusty, on his English mount and stared at the distant metallic gleam
which encircled the southern and western segments of the horizon. That
thin, shining arc was the junction of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro.
Against its shimmer arose a single spire, so tiny and so far away that
the drummer had to scrutinize it with particularity before he could
make it out at all. So this was the upshot of all their riding and
burning and thirsting--for these sweat-caked peons to advance against a
church steeple!

Half a dozen different impressions clamored for the American's
attention. Just behind him officers were barking their soldiers
into two squads. A little farther to the rear, the men were pulling
themselves from their wives and mistresses, to join the ranks again.
There was something elemental and unashamed in the passion of their
parting. They were much the same color as the sand they trod. They
might have been figures sprung out of the heat and travail of the
melancholy llanos, as indeed they were. They clung to each other,
these earth-colored peons; they sobbed, they kissed each other with
unrestraint, absorbed in their griefs. There was something wide and
impersonal in this passionate outpouring of their misery. They were
mummers depicting completely what every lover feels on parting with his
love. Some inhibition, some reserve seemed to melt in Strawbridge's
mind, and with a trembling tenderness he thought of the señora. He
could see her delicate face looking at him sorrowfully. Such a sense
of pathos filled him that he wondered if it did not forbode some evil
to him. Perhaps he was about to be killed; else why should the señora's
sad face appear to him so vividly?


Strawbridge became aware of a horseman coming up, on his left. It was
Coronel Saturnino, his face a mask of dust. For once the colonel seemed
keen and alive. His black eyes, in this dust mask, were full of fire,
but the dusty mouth was set in its inevitable sardonic quirk.

"I rode over to suggest that you hang a carbine to your saddle." He
smiled.

Strawbridge looked down at his pommel doubtfully.

"I thought perhaps if I went in as a neutral--"

"_Pues_, you are likely not to come out at all."

"Then you think I had better carry a gun?"

"It's safer." The colonel beckoned a soldier to him and gave an order
that sent the man to the rear, to return presently with a carbine for
Strawbridge. While the peon strapped it to the drummer's saddle, the
colonel's black eyes, with their look of chronic amusement, passed over
his recruits.

"These peons are going out to fight for their freedom," he observed
with his tone of satire. "They are perpetually going out to fight for
their freedom. Different saviors rise up--a Miedo, a Fombombo. Now it
is Saturnino, and only the Holy Virgin knows who next will be leading
these tatterdemalions to freedom!" With sardonic wrinkles in his dust
mask he looked at the drummer.

Strawbridge tried to shift his leg so it would not touch the hard
carbine. He was somehow incensed at Saturnino's tone.

"What better thing can they fight for than their freedom?"

The colonel shrugged.

"Probably nothing. It makes a very exciting game for gentlemen--these
peons wanting to be free. What finer thing could a peon do than to
entertain a _caballero_?"

Strawbridge stared at the dust mask.

"Good God, Saturnino! Is that all this is to you?--an entertainment, a
game?"

The officer shrugged again.

"_Pues_, of course it isn't business." He paused with a quizzical
look, and then went on: "But what I really rode over to tell you is, I
am dividing the men into two squadrons. I will lead one in a frontal
attack on the _casa fuerte_. The other, Lieutenant Rosales will lead
around by the river. It will make its way through the wharves and
attack the _casa fuerte_ from the rear."

Strawbridge had become attentive, and nodded to these plans.

"You may go along with either of the parties," invited the colonel, "or
you may stay here with the women until the fight is over."

"No, certainly not! I'll go by the river," chose Strawbridge, at once.

The colonel nodded, and smiled once again through his grime.

"As you will; and may luck wait on your courage! _Adios!_"

The two men reached across the necks of their stolen horses and shook
hands.

"Same to you, colonel, and so long," said the drummer, somewhat moved.

Saturnino suddenly jerked his horse in a curvette, and saluted easily
as the big English animal plunged with him back toward his line.

The drummer turned his own mount and rode toward Rosales's column.
Lieutenant Rosales was a smallish, sharp-featured youth whose eyes were
surrounded with such dark rings that they showed through the dust.
Strawbridge remembered having seen him before, in the plaza. Now he was
going to fight under this little _roué_, perhaps die under his command.
He felt as if he were going to fight with a crowd of street gamins. It
was a mean adventure.

The men under Rosales sat stolid and quiet on their mules and horses.
Saturnino's sarcasm revisited the drummer's mind: "These peons are
perpetually fighting for their freedom, under this savior and that.
They've been at it upward of four centuries. Now I'm leading them," and
he had laughed.

A gust of pity shivered through the American's bowels for these stolid
men, arming and seeking a leader for four centuries, and led by
Saturnino, a man to whom their travail was a game!

At that moment the sickly-looking officer whipped out his sword and
barked an order, and the next moment the cavalry set off at a gallop
through the heat and dust. The drummer fell into the ranks. He twisted
in his saddle for any easement he could find. His carbine added a new
pain to his riding. It banged his thigh with a strange adroitness.
Within ten or fifteen minutes a dust rose up among so many galloping
horses which made the air almost unbreathable. These petty tortures so
harassed the drummer that he looked forward to actual fighting as a
relief. To avoid the dust he swung his horse out of line and spurred
him to the van of the column. By the time the American was even with
Lieutenant Rosales, he had reached clean breathing, and he expanded his
lungs with a sense of great relief. But the peons, the dirt-colored
men who after four hundred years of rebellion were now playing Coronel
Saturnino's game, these peons rode resolutely in the heat and dust
without breaking line. The thin-faced officer with the black circles
about his eyes stared fixedly ahead.

Presently the troopers galloped up another long swell in the desert,
and when they reached its crest Strawbridge was shocked to see how
close they were upon the city of San Geronimo. He could see the red
roofs of the adobes, a wireless tower run up like a spider-web, and the
very bells in the campanile. Around the street entrances were swarms of
people in a state of excitement. Some rushed into their houses; others
went flying into the llanos--straggling figures bound for no other goal
than to escape the coming storm.

Strawbridge watched the scene curiously, as if he were some idle
spectator. Presently Rosales drew his sword, swung his men out of line
with the main entrance, and veered toward the west, toward the stretch
of water which was growing more and more enormous as they approached it.

Horses and mules, on they went, faster and faster. There was a wide
space between the town and the river, to give play to the overflow in
the rainy season. Into this space Rosales headed. The hoofs of the
cavalcade made a dull drumming in the sand. Far down the river bank,
opposite the business part of town, Strawbridge could see the big
freight goletas from Trinidad and Ciudad Bolívar, hastily making sail
to escape the tempest.

Suddenly, from somewhere over on their right, came a hard blow in the
air. The flat plains lent no resonance. It was simply a crash--a sharp,
terrific impact. It was followed by another, by twos and threes, by
some indeterminable number. They hammered terrifically at Strawbridge's
ear-drums with a sense of devastating power. The Federals in the _casa
fuerte_ were cannonading Coronel Saturnino.

The cannonading must have been an agreed signal between the colonel and
Rosales. At its roar the lieutenant yelped at his men and flung his
column headlong into the open space along the wharves of San Geronimo.

Strawbridge went with them. He rode inexpertly, swaying dangerously on
his English mount. With his left hand he jerked at his carbine, trying
to get it out of its holster, with his right he clung to the pommel of
his saddle. He peered ahead, and the whole wharf-side seemed rushing at
him, shaken by the terrific vibrations of the horse. The few stragglers
left in sight skurried about to avoid the cavalry charge. Far ahead,
puffs of smoke came out at barred windows in the adobes. At that moment
the rumble of hoofs in the sand turned into a crashing clatter. The
horses had struck the cobblestones of the wharf. An increased heat from
the glare of the hot cobbles pinched the drummer. More smoke puffs blew
out at the windows. It occurred to the drummer that these were peons
firing on the cavalry.

A long row of palms were planted straight down the middle of the
_playa_. As these palms vibrated toward him, the drummer glimpsed the
head and shoulders of a man, pointing a rifle, high up in a clump of
leaves. A little thrill went over him. He swung his carbine toward the
figure.

"Hey, look at that scoundrel up that palm! Blow him out of there!" He
pointed his gun without thinking of using it. "Blow him out, I say."

Half a dozen riders heard and looked. They swung up their carbines
and fired as they galloped. Strawbridge could see the spatter of the
bullets against the big leaves; next moment the head and shoulders made
a limp lurch forward, and the figure of a man dropped out of the palm
and turned over and over in the air. With a primitive satisfaction the
drummer watched the fall. He had wiped out an enemy. He stared down the
_playa_. Far down where the quay narrowed with distance, a line of men
were marching through the sunshine. He could see the glitter of their
bayonets and their intense shadows moving in front of them. At sight of
these federal soldiers the carbines about Strawbridge began a staccato
snapping. The distant line of soldiers stopped, knelt, aimed, like a
little row of toys in the brilliant sunshine. Then came the faint crack
of their volley.

The effect appalled Strawbridge. A peon on the drummer's right reeled
from his saddle; ahead of him a horse reared and fell, flinging his
rider on the cobbles, under the hoofs of the horses. The drummer saw
the wretch thresh about as he was broken upon the stones.

For answer the insurgents deployed the width of the _playa_, between
the houses and the palms, and charged. Horses, mules, howling peons,
and chattering carbines roared down the quay. The Federals fired one
more volley, then suddenly broke and fled. They scurried in every
direction. Their little human speed was so puny that the horses
overhauled them like giants. A feeling of tremendous strength filled
Strawbridge. He was a Gulliver plunging down on Lilliputians. He
selected a man to kill. The Federal sprinted desperately, but his short
legs seemed barely to move in front of the English stallion.

The chase became a vertigo. A hard pulse pounded in Strawbridge's ears.
Never before had he known the terrific excitement of hunting a man down
and killing him. The drummer's adroitness and horsemanship sharpened to
the delight of murder. He cleared his carbine and aimed at the runner.
He meant to hit him in the cross of his canteen strap. He pulled the
trigger....

A terrific concussion almost bowled over the drummer and his horse. It
displaced the whole platoon. Strawbridge whirled, and saw the roofs of
the adobes lined with federal troops, firing down on the cavalry.

Men and horses fell beneath continuous volleys. The squadron was
falling back toward the river. The men acted as if they struggled in
the teeth of a furious wind-storm. Suddenly some of them wheeled off
toward the river. Rosales was behind his men, howling and spewing
Spanish oaths. He beat the fugitives with the back of his sword. In
the uproar the hatchet-faced lieutenant, leaning forward toward the
enemy, pointed at the roofs. He might have been trying to reach the
crashing rifles with the tip of his saber. He was howling for his
men to charge. A flame of sympathy went through Strawbridge for this
indomitable knave of an officer. He headed his stallion about in the
careening column. He shouted a mixture of English and Spanish:

"_Adelante!_ Bore into 'em! _Pronto!_ Wipe 'em out--the hellions!"

The powerful horse might have been a stanchion shoring up the column.
His mere lunge turned three or four fugitives toward the enemy. This
whirling movement became the focus of a renewed charge. Every man took
courage from Strawbridge, from the thin-faced reprobate who led them.
The column flung itself into the teeth of the fire from the roofs.

The stink and sting of powder-gas jabbed up Strawbridge's nose. The
Federals on the roof shone dimly behind a mist of smokeless powder.
As Strawbridge charged in, he could see the face of a man staring at
him, and the circle of a rifle muzzle under his right eye. The cavalry
plunged in against the mud walls. Horses smashed against them, reared,
fell, or squatted trembling at this blank obstruction. What for?
Strawbridge did not know. He was furiously angry. He meant to strike.

Rosales had directed his charge toward the lowest roof in the whole
_playa_ side. It was not more than eight feet high. The focusing of
his fire on this point had cut down the defense just here and left a
gap in the line of defenders. As Rosales dashed up to this building,
he caught the adobe eaves and succeeded in drawing himself up to the
roof. A Federal seemed to discharge a gun through his head, but the
daredevil pressed on, with his automatic going. Half a dozen, a dozen
other _llaneros_ followed. A score gained footing on the low roof.
They were amazing horsemen. The Federals were not deployed on the
roofs. They could fire only from the ends of their columns. The knot of
cavalry on the red tiles grew, expanded, pressed back the feeble ends
of the enemy. The fight had transferred itself from the streets to the
house-tops--the classic stage for South American battles.

In the midst of this extraordinary manœuver, Strawbridge found himself
trying to scramble up the corner of a building. He could not take off
from the saddle. From the ground he could just reach the eave. He clung
to the hot adobe and pulled with all his strength, kicking and pawing
at the corner with knees and feet. Now and then a bullet flicked adobe
dust into his face. With a desperate kick he did succeed in hanging a
toe over the cornice. Just as he was wriggling his heavy body up on the
roof, something about his hold broke. He dropped broadside from where
he sagged, falling about five feet and landing in the litter which
collects about Spanish-American huts.

The big drummer lay inert, and cursed with every blasphemy to which he
could lay his tongue. He cursed Federals, insurgents, house, sun, dust.
He invoked the Deity to consign each to its particular hell. He lay in
burning dust, swearing at a mud wall not six inches from his nose.

The tearing volleys of rifle shots were drawing a little away from
where Strawbridge lay. The quest of the peons for liberty was
withdrawing itself somewhat. Presently the American made an effort to
get out of his burning bed. He stirred, and found to his discomfiture
that one of his arms was numb. He wondered anxiously if he had broken
it.

He used his good arm, made shift to sit up, then got to his feet.
Then he was surprised to see that his numb hand was bloody. A closer
examination showed that the bones in his palm had been shattered by a
bullet. That was what flung him from the roof. He looked at his hand
in dismay, turning it over and back. It did not seem to belong to him.
He began swearing again, mentally. What a hell of an accident to happen
to him! For him, Thomas Strawbridge, to get shot! What a damnable piece
of luck! He continued damning his luck, with quivering earnestness.
He could not realize that it was his hand, attached to his wrist. He
kept looking at it. The hand did not pain him in the least. It had no
sensation at all.

There had been a certain order kept by the peon cavalry, of which
Strawbridge had not been aware. Now, as he looked about, he saw the
insurgents' horses trotting in a dark group far down the _playa_.
They were under the care of hostlers, which the hair-splitting plans
of Saturnino no doubt had arranged for, for just such an emergency as
this. Naturally, Strawbridge's English stallion had vanished with the
herd.

Near at hand lay men and horses, dead and wounded. One mule, shot
through the back, was dragging itself by its fore feet. Strawbridge
picked up his carbine with his good hand and ended its struggles.

For a few minutes the drummer stood looking at this dead mule, at a
dead peon some ten steps farther east, then at a sort of windrow of
mules and horses and peons where the cavalry had hesitated before
charging.

These were the men whom Strawbridge had seen, only an hour before,
embracing and weeping over their loves; now they lay in all sorts of
twisted and grotesque postures; already the green flies were buzzing
about the mouths their sweethearts had kissed. Such was the outcome of
their fight for liberty. This was the freedom they had found, these
brown exhalations of the llanos, who rose up out of the earth, fought,
struggled, plotted, murdered, and sank into the llanos again. And all
their pain and fury had ever done in four centuries was to exchange one
dictator for another....

A profound weariness came over Strawbridge. The crotches of his legs,
which the horse had skinned, began burning again. An unlocalized
throbbing set up in his wounded arm. A fly came buzzing about, and the
drummer waved it away. Then he examined his wound again, and as he
looked he grew sick at heart. He would be crippled for the rest of his
life. Never before had a mishap befallen his big, comfortable body, and
now his hand was gone and he could never have it again. This seemed to
Strawbridge the most tragic thing which had happened in the battle of
San Geronimo--that he, who was such a busy man, who needed his hand so
much, should have lost it.

With an American's dread of germs he wanted to tie up his wound, to
prevent infection. With this object in view, he looked anxiously about
over the shambles.

The wharf was deserted by the living. The small _drogistas_ which
usually are found along Latin-American streets were all shut like
blind eyes. Sounds of the fighting, a little softened, came from
the direction of the _casa fuerte_. A rather wild notion came to
Strawbridge to follow the soldiers and obtain his dressing from the
medical corps of the insurgents; then he recalled that they had no
medical corps. They had brought along with them a priest to save the
dead, but they had not even a first-aid pack for the wounded.


Beyond the row of palms down the center of the _playa_, the drummer
presently observed a goleta, one of those curious Orinocan schooners
with preternaturally tall masts, and a little square sail swung down
under her jib. She was lying close to the bank, and evidently was stuck
on a sand-bar, for her owner was on deck, trying, with a long spar, to
pry her off.

This sort of craft often carried passengers on the river, and the
American felt sure she would possess some of the simpler surgical
aids. So he picked up his carbine and set off at a painful pace to the
waterside.

When the drummer had passed the row of palms and appeared moving
definitely toward the schooner, the man on deck stopped poling. He
peered through the glare, at the American, and next moment dashed out
of sight below deck.

His action cheered Strawbridge. The drummer felt that the skipper
had understood the situation and had rushed below for his surgical
dressings, to have them ready by his arrival. This thoughtfulness put
a little better heart into the wounded man as he moved shakily along
through the glare and heat. He could not help thinking of the inherent
courtesy in all Venezuelans. It was perhaps not sincere every time,
thought the American, but it was as soothing as a poultice.

As Strawbridge moved gratefully toward the goleta, the skipper
reappeared on deck with a stick; no, it was an outrageously long gun.
He leveled it at the drummer and fired point-blank. The bullet whistled
past the American's ear, and plunked into a heap of balata balls behind
him.

Strawbridge stopped and stared, bewildered. The skipper was feverishly
reloading his extraordinary gun. It seemed to be some sort of
single-shot arrangement. The drummer was amazed, and suddenly outraged.

"Here!" he shouted. "What the hell do you mean?"

The master of the schooner lifted his weapon again, to correct his
faulty shot, when the salesman instinctively dived behind some bags of
tonka-beans. He peered over the tops, still scarcely able to believe
his senses, when the captain fired again and something nicked the
American's hat.

At this second discharge the drummer went furious. To be fired on
casually and without any provocation whatever! With his good arm, he
flung his carbine along the top of the bags leveled down, and fired at
the captain. At his first movement, however, the sailor had dropped
down and disappeared below the garboard of the schooner.

The American fired two vicious shots at the place where the captain
must have been prone. Then he glared at the vacant deck, with the
bitterest sense of injury he had ever known. To be fired upon when he
was seeking aid and comfort--to be shot at like a rat!

His feeling of injury became so intense he burst out cursing the
invisible sailor, loading him with every obscene and profane
qualification. With his carbine leveled over the bags, he swore
furiously for two or three minutes. Then he began to repeat his oaths,
and presently fizzled out through a mere sense of rhetoric. Then he
damned his enemy for a coward, and invited him to stand up like a man
and get killed.

Passed a slight interim, and a voice behind the gunwale, but
considerably removed from where the fellow had disappeared, called out,
"Señor!"

Through some strange reaction, this placating "Señor" added fuel to
Strawbridge's wrath. He broke out again, howling, swearing, and urging
the captain to get up and be shot.

But the captain conducted his end of the conversation from cover.

"Señor," he repeated without any resentment in his tone, "are you not a
_revolutionista_?"

"No!" yelled Strawbridge. "I'm a decent American citizen down in this
hell-fired country...." He continued this strain upward half a minute.

When he became silent again, the hidden one ejaculated mildly:

"_Caramba!_ How should I know you were an _Americano_, señor?"

"Well,--by God!--you ought to look who you're shooting at!"

"Up this Orinoco valley, señor, if you look too long before you shoot,
you may not get to shoot at all."

"Huh! I bet you knew I was an American all the time."

"No, really, señor! Why should I shoot at an _Americano_?"

Strawbridge could think of no reason why any one should want to shoot
at an American. During the silence which followed, the sailor asked in
a placating tone:

"May I stand up, _Señor Americano_? This deck is very warm indeed."

The drummer relinquished his notion of killing the man.

"All right, get up," he conceded. "We're not doing any good like this."
And Strawbridge walked out from behind the tonka-beans at the same time
the captain sat up and then stood.

The sailor was a brown man, dripping with sweat, and with smudges of
pitch on his clothes which he had got from the seams in the deck.
He had a good-humored face, rather scared just now, and he looked
curiously at Strawbridge as he mopped his face and neck with a red
handkerchief.

"Will you come aboard my ship, señor?" he inquired courteously, getting
his spar again and running it out to where Strawbridge could by wading
a little reach the end of it. The drummer walked aboard.

The moment the drummer stepped on deck, the captain began hastily:

"Now, señor, if you would be kind enough to lend me a little help ... I
am trying to float the _Concepcion Inmaculada_."

"What's the rush?" asked the salesman, looking at his wounded hand.

The fellow swung his weight against the spar.

"_Caramba!_ If the _revolutionistas_ catch me here, they will strip my
poor _Concepcion Inmaculada_ to her last sheet."

"Steal your stuff!" echoed Strawbridge. "What makes you think so!"

"Lightning of God!" cried the shipmaster. "They are ladrones, bandits,
cutpurses! Come, give a poor man a hand, señor!" He was shoving now
with all his strength.

"You're wrong about that!" defended the drummer, warmly. "I know those
fellows. Came up here with 'em." He doubled up his good fist and began
making strong, convincing selling gestures with it.

"You can take this from me, señor," he said: "The revolutionists are
just as high-toned a set of men as you'll find in Venezuela. I honestly
believe General Fombombo has higher ideals than any public man I ever
knew, and as for that Coronel Saturnino--say! you got to hand it to him
for courtesy and politeness! So don't get all fussed about your boat.
You're safe as a church, right here." Strawbridge paused impressively,
and then asked, "Say, can you do anything for this damned hand of mine!"

The captain was convinced. Perhaps of all the men in the world the
American salesman has a style of talk the most sincere in sound. The
captain visibly put by his doubts of the revolutionists, and then
looked at the hand.

"_Caramba!_ that's a bad punch!"

"Yeh, tough luck."

A faint suspicion crossed the brown man's mind.

"You were not fighting, señor? You are not a _revolutionista_ yourself?"

"Hell, no! I got this following the troops around. I wanted to see how
they worked."

"_Cá!_ Are you a military attaché, _Señor Americano_?"

The ship-owner was visibly impressed, but Strawbridge straightened.

"Say, do I look like a damn diplomatic lounge lizard sunning himself
in some South American post! By God, I'm a man! I'm an American
salesman down here investigating a point of business. I sell hardware,
myself. I make this territory once a year. What's your line!"

The captain of the _Concepcion Inmaculada_ opened his eyes at a man who
so scorned a governmental position. His respect mounted. In fact, the
captain was born into the South American cult of respect for office.
He had never before met the North American's thoroughgoing contempt
for politics and politicians, nor was he aware of the fact that it is
barely respectable to be anything less than a senator in the United
States--and often not that.

So now the sailor introduced himself with circumspection to so
important a personage. He was Noe Vargas, commander of the _Concepcion
Inmaculada_, sailing out of Coro. He had cruised up the Orinoco to buy
tonka-beans and balata, and would carry them to Curaçao to be reshipped
to Holland. In fact, a large part of the beans and balata which
Strawbridge saw lying on the wharf was consigned to the _Concepcion
Inmaculada_, if only Noe could succeed in lading his vessel.

All this information was delightful to Strawbridge. In fact, this
was the first conversation which he had really enjoyed since coming
to Venezuela. And while Captain Vargas was not particularly fond
of talking of sago, copra, cassava, guarapo, and such articles of
commerce, he was flattered that so great a man as Strawbridge should
deign to listen to him.

As they talked, Captain Vargas made shift to bind up Strawbridge's
hand. He had no surgical linen, but he thought the tail of one of his
shirts would do. Strawbridge objected, on the score of germs. The
captain assured him these were impossible, because only the day before
he had washed this shirt, which he proposed to use, in the Orinoco, and
it was a well-known fact that running water purified itself once every
thousand yards.

"And think how pure the Orinoco must be, señor," added the captain,
"for the Orinoco had flowed for thousands and thousands of miles!"

So Strawbridge went below, into a smelly cabin. The captain found the
shirt he meant, in a bag of dunnage, pulled it out, cut off the tail,
and bound up the drummer's hand.


The two men were still talking business when they returned to the
deck. Strawbridge had excited himself somewhat by explaining that if
the revolutionists took San Geronimo it would mean for him an order
of thousands of rifles and cases of ammunition. This meant a rich
commission. The skipper and the drummer stood on deck, listening to the
gun-shots which would decide the American's commission. The reports
came in gusts.

Strawbridge peered in the direction of the fighting. He tiptoed
and moved about the deck, but all he could see was the haze of
semi-smokeless powder hanging over the city in the direction of the
_casa fuerte_. Presently the captain ejaculated:

"_Caramba!_ To think that this fighting may put a fortune in your
pocket!"

The drummer nodded.

"It may do it. Damn it! I hope Saturnino wins!"

Both men stared cityward. The volley-firing had almost died out. In its
place came a desultory snapping which gave Strawbridge the impression
of some person shooting the last few rats in a corn-bin. Now a rat
would be found behind a plank--_bang!_ Then two would start from a
covert--_bang! bang!_ These were the sounds which came from the city.
Single reports at irregular intervals. There was something dreadful and
cold-blooded about it.

Suddenly Captain Vargas pointed.

"_Mire!_ Yonder they come out of the _calle_! Look!"

Sure enough, through the palms the drummer saw a line of soldiers march
out of a street into the _playa_. Captain Vargas turned and ran below
for a telescope. The drummer screwed up his eyes against the glare and
peered without breathing. He was trying to find out whether he was
thousands of dollars winner, or whether his side had lost. In the heat
the soldiers and the quay danced and shimmered. It was impossible to
tell whether they were Federals or rebels. However, the crowd fell into
a definite arrangement. A line of men were standing up against the low
adobe walls, while another line stood opposite to them in the _playa_.

A kind of crawling went over Strawbridge. His heart began to beat
heavily, and he stared at the scene with fascinated eyes. At that
moment Captain Vargas hurried up on deck with the telescope.

Strawbridge turned, almost jerked the instrument from the Venezuelan,
and fumbled at it with his good hand and the wrist of his wounded
arm. The captain helped him, and he peered through the glass. Views
of palms, of blank walls, of roofs and rolling clouds swung back and
forth, up and down; then abruptly appeared a line of men standing
against a wall. At the very first glimpse Strawbridge's whole ventral
cavity seemed to collapse. At the head of the unhappy column stood
Lieutenant Rosales. The drummer could make out even his sharp, dusty
features. A figure in a cassock stood in front of the lieutenant,
holding up a cross. A nervous spasm swung the lense out of line. When
he refocused it, Lieutenant Rosales had disappeared from the head of
the column, and an ordinary peon stood next. A solitary rifle report
reached the _Concepcion Inmaculada_.

Strawbridge stopped looking and with a shaking hand handed the glass to
the captain. His mouth was so dry he could scarcely speak.

"That ... that ... that was ... Rosales...."

"Your friend?"

Strawbridge nodded.

"Then the insurgents have lost!"

Strawbridge nodded again. Then he went to a coil of rope in the shade
of the mainsail and sat down. The slow reports came to him from the end
of the _playa_--_bang!_--_bang!_--_bang!_ Rosales ... Saturnino ...
Gumersindo ... the peons, the indomitable peons who had ridden out with
their lives in search of liberty. The banging would never, never cease.

The horror, the pathos of it shook the drummer. He leaned forward
on his knees and let his head go limply in his folded arms. He did
not care whether he lived or died. From the end of the _playa_ the
slow reports assaulted his ears. After a while they stopped. There
was a singing in his ears as if he had taken quinine. Presently
Captain Vargas said, "They are coming down here." Strawbridge paid
no attention. All of his friends on that brave adventure were gone.
Gumersindo, with his strange philosophy, was no more, nor the mocking
Saturnino, nor the kindly priest. Captain Vargas was saying, "Remember,
_mi amigo_, you are my first mate, if any one should ask. You have been
on the _Concepcion Inmaculada_ all the time. You and I did not fly as
the other cowardly vessels did, because we felt that Justice, God, and
the federal forces must win."

Strawbridge looked up at the captain and nodded mechanically. He could
feel that his face was putty-colored. The two men ceased talking and
watched the approach of the federal troops.

As Strawbridge stared at the marching men he scrutinized the officer
at the head of the column, a graceful figure of medium height, with
slender waist and broad shoulders. This man had just executed a whole
column of insurgents, but he bore his bloody deed with a light heart.
He walked jauntily, with his visor tipped up and a hand resting
lightly on the hilt of his sword.

The drummer tried to make out the features of this man upon whom his
own fortunes, even his own life, rested so heavily. He peered intently
through the downpour of sunshine. As he looked, a queer illusion took
place. The face of the strange officer seemed to melt and change into
the features of Coronel Saturnino. A kind of exaltation shone through
the dust on this handsome and familiar face. The drummer was shocked
at such a resemblance to his executed friend. Then, in the ranks, he
espied the black face of Gumersindo. Strawbridge thought he was going
mad. At that moment the officer at the head of the column whipped out
his sword and saluted the drummer on deck.

"_Bravo_, Señor Strawbridge!" he shouted joyfully. "I have heard how
you stopped a panic and headed a cavalry charge against the ambuscade
on the roofs. _Mire, mis bravos!_ There stands the man who won the
battle of San Geronimo!"

Under his violent revulsion, the drummer could scarcely breathe. He
gaped and stared.

"What! What! Are those our troops! My God! I thought you were all
dead--executed. I thought I saw poor Rosales facing a firing-squad!"

Saturnino lost his ebullience.

"You mean at the end of the _playa_?"

"Yes."

"That was Rosales. When his forces gained the _casa fuerte_ by a most
gallant charge from the flank, he then tried to hold the fort against
my own troops." Saturnino's voice took a metallic tang: "I had to win
the stronghold by fighting half my own troops. That young whelp's
insurrection almost frustrated my plans."

Strawbridge was dumbfounded.

"You mean ... he deserted you in battle?... turned on you in the midst
of battle?"

Saturnino waved a hand.

"For a long time there has been a plot brewing in Canalejos, against
General Fombombo. It came to a head in Rosales...." He shrugged.
"_Cá!_ You can scarcely blame a _joven_ of spirit from playing the
game. If he had won...." Saturnino looked at the town and the wide
river. "_Caramba!_ he would have won a nucleus for a state of his own,
thrust in between federal and insurgent territory. _Cá!_ It was quite a
stroke. I think I will give the lad a military funeral. Such souls as
his have made the Latin race great." Just then the colonel's eyes fell
on the drummer's bandaged hand.

"_Ola, mi amigo!_ I see you are wounded!"




CHAPTER XVIII


The sheer human waste involved in the execution of Lieutenant Rosales
horrified Thomas Strawbridge, and filled him with a fundamental
discouragement toward all Venezuela. What fire and courage had been
wantonly squandered! Could nothing have been done to reclaim so
brilliant a daredevil?

However, Strawbridge was the only one who brooded over Rosales's
untimely death. The captors of San Geronimo were very jovial and very
busy. Saturnino began a series of confiscations which worked with
machine-like efficiency. No doubt in his plans for the attack on San
Geronimo the colonel had worked out the details of this confiscation.
From some source he had obtained a list of the wealthy citizens in the
captured town, and now he began collecting what he called "voluntary
contributions to the insurgent cause." The colonel fostered the "will
to give," by explaining to the prospective contributor what would occur
in the event that the sum marked against his name was not forthcoming.

He was forced to carry this threat into effect in only two instances.
One cocoa-broker he chained bareheaded in the plaza, and kept him there
all day with a pitcher of water just out of his reach. Strawbridge
got a glimpse of this wretch, but hurried away for fear he should
get himself into trouble by pushing the water closer. The other man,
Strawbridge simply heard about. He was shot. The plaza incident was
designed purely as a publicity measure, a means of teaching cheerful
and abundant donations to a worthy cause. Its value could hardly be
questioned.

But the colonel's methods of suasion were not always physical. When he
occupied the big wireless telegraph which the federal authorities had
constructed at San Geronimo, he persuaded the federal officer to stay
at his post.

The wireless plant was a little east of the city, on one of the long,
gentle knolls in the llanos. It was a quiet place, barring the whine of
the radio, and it was free from the scents left by the battle around
the _casa fuerte_. Strawbridge often walked out there. It was operated
by a dark, silent little man, an Austrian. All the wireless operators
in Venezuela were foreigners, because the system itself was new and
as yet there were no natives trained for the positions. The Federal
Government had given this Austrian the rank of lieutenant, and he had
been a regular officer in the Venezuelan Army.

There was a humanity about Strawbridge which eventually drew the
operator out. One night the two were sitting outside the station,
looking up at the stars and cooling off after the day's heat. As they
conversed, presently the ex-lieutenant began a half-hearted defense
of his desertion. He said he would not hear to it at first, that he
insisted that Coronel Saturnino imprison him or stand him up before a
firing-squad, but the colonel scouted such an idea. He said that really
the colonel was the kindest-hearted man. He had shown the lieutenant
where he was wrong.

"You are a wireless operator," said the colonel. "You should consider
yourself strictly a part of your machinery, equally efficient for
either side that owns the plant. It would do me no good to execute you
and replace you with another man. If the Federals ever recapture this
town, they will certainly feel the same way about it. You are as much a
part of your plant as the aërials overhead."

The little Austrian sat staring up at the aërials swung high against
the stars.

"I am just as much a part of this plant as those aërials," he repeated
gloomily. "They receive messages from anywhere, and transmit them
correctly--to any one."

It rather disgusted the drummer.

"Even the aërials have a static," he said, "which sometimes interferes
with _their_ transmission. I suppose _you_ have no static."

The dark little man seemed disturbed by this, but merely repeated his
formula. Heaven knows with what more casuistry Coronel Saturnino had
beguiled him. To Strawbridge there was something smudged and pitiful,
rather than treacherous, about the little operator.

In all these functionings of warlike ethics, Strawbridge yielded a
rather shocked acquiescence to the logic of the situation. In only
one instance did he become personally involved, and that was when a
revolutionary squad went aboard the _Concepcion Inmaculada_.

It was a typical Latin-American scene on the schooner's deck, with
the sun boiling pitch out of her strakes and a squad of short, brown,
empty-faced riflemen standing in the heat, listening as Saturnino,
Strawbridge, and Captain Vargas threshed out the rights of the matter.

At Captain Vargas's request, Strawbridge explained to Saturnino
that he, Captain Vargas, had remained at San Geronimo during the
revolutionary attack, upon the drummer's assurance that he and his
schooner would receive complete justice at the hands of the insurgents.

Saturnino assented to this, with the utmost graciousness.

The captain himself then added that he did not fly with the other
cowardly schooner-owners because he confided then, as he confided now,
in the integrity of the _revolutionistas_, the nobility of their cause,
and the spotless characters of their leaders.

Saturnino bowed deeply over the tar-streaked deck, and assured Captain
Vargas that his confidence honored his heart as his judgment honored
his intellect.

The captain then asked for assistance in getting his tonka-beans
and balata aboard the _Concepcion Inmaculada_, that he might
sail and spread abroad tidings of the justice and equity of the
_revolutionistas_--which no doubt would greatly aid their cause.

The colonel agreed to this, heartily, but suggested that, since all
the barter on the wharf had become insurgent property by force of
capture, the insurgents now stood in the shoes of the original owners
of the property, and that he, Coronel Saturnino, should be paid for the
freight.

At this Vargas became thoughtful, and said that he had already paid
the owner for the goods. When the colonel asked him for a receipt,
the skipper made some vague excuse about the receipt not having been
delivered, but he assured the colonel that payment had been made.

Saturnino said he did not doubt this; he said if he were acting for
himself he would deliver the freight at once and allow Captain Vargas
to sail, but he was not acting for himself. No, every transaction
he performed had to be accounted for with the strictest business
formality, to President Fombombo, in order that every citizen might be
treated with an exact and impartial justice. Therefore _el capitan_
would excuse the technicality, but he would have to pay for his
tonka-beans and rubber again, in order that he, Saturnino, might have a
proper record of the deal. Then the captain could file a claim, if he
wished, with the insurgent government, against the man who originally
took the money, and thus he would infallibly get it back.

Captain Vargas's good-humored face immediately became serious, but
eventually the three men went below into the skipper's cabin, and there
Vargas opened a strong-box and turned over to Saturnino a considerable
quantity of American gold pieces, and several ounces of raw gold which
the skipper had traded for at the mouth of the Caroni River. When the
soldiers had lugged the box of money up on deck, Captain Vargas's
cheerfulness returned, and he requested that soldiers be furnished to
lade the schooner with the beans and rubber on the wharf.

The colonel seemed surprised.

"On the wharf?"

"_Seguramente_, señor!" exclaimed the skipper, also surprised. "That
was the cargo consigned to me."

"But, señor," demurred the colonel, "you cannot expect the
revolutionary government of Rio Negro to be bound and crippled by the
contracts of its enemies! We should soon land in a pretty impasse."

"But you sold me the balata on the wharf, yourself!"

"_Cá!_ No. Your tonka-beans and balata will be delivered in their
proper turn. Here, I will give you a receipt for the money. Now, this
balata, we are going to ship to Rio...."

Coronel Saturnino was drawing forth a receipt-book, to write Captain
Vargas a receipt, when the injured sailor forgot caution and broke
into all manner of Spanish abuse. He declared the _revolutionistas_
were thieves, cut-throats, and rascals, exactly what he had heard and
believed all the time. He shouted that Saturnino might keep the rubber,
tonka-beans, and gold, that he was going to sail away and never cruise
up the accursed Orinoco again!

Strawbridge, too, was incensed at the barefaced robbery. He declared
that such methods were bad business, that Saturnino would ruin all
possible commerce in Rio Negro, that the country's reputation was worth
more than a cargo of balata.

"It's just like one of our great American poets says, colonel," cried
Strawbridge, earnestly. "You must recall the famous poem entitled,
'Has It Ever Struck You?' Everybody knows the lines. I'll bet they are
pasted up in half the offices in America. Now listen to this. The poet
says:


    "All of us know that Money talks throughout our glorious nation,
    But Money whispers low compared to business reputation.
    For men will talk this wide world o'er; take this under advisement.
    To have them talking for you is the wisest advertisement.
    Pull off no slick nor crooked deal, for pennies or for dollars.
    God! think of all the trade you'll lose if just one sucker hollers!"


For some reason these admirable verses seemed to irritate Coronel
Saturnino more than all the abuse shouted by Captain Vargas. He turned
sharply on Strawbridge.

"Señor," he snapped, "there is a difference between a stupid business
conducted in the midst of profound peace and a band of men struggling
for life in the midst of war. In peace one can look to the future, but
in war we must seize on the present. That barter on the dock represents
so much available capital for our insurgent government. Do you imagine
I am going to divide it with a private individual when the salvation of
our whole country hangs in the balance?"

Captain Vargas reiterated his intention of sailing away without more
ado, down the river, but Coronel Saturnino then informed him that the
insurgent government would be forced to conscript the _Concepcion
Inmaculada_ for the purpose of freighting barter to Rio.

Oaths, arguments, and prayers availed nothing with the colonel. The
_Concepcion Inmaculada_ would be employed by the provisional government
until hostilities ceased.

As Strawbridge returned up the _playa_ with the colonel, that officer's
good humor returned. He began smiling again, a little ironically.

"Now, this matter of the _Concepcion Inmaculada_.... If our revolution
wins, Señor Strawbridge, I shall be accounted in history as a great
financier; if we lose, I shall be known as a thief and a murderer.
In your own country, señor, have you ever discovered any difference
between thieves and financiers, except that the one loses and the one
succeeds?"

On the third day a part of the insurgent cavalry set out for Canalejos.
San Geronimo was now "consolidated." It belonged inside the red line on
the map in General Fombombo's study. Strawbridge decided he would go
back with the squadron.

During these three days the drummer's wounded hand had been steadily
growing worse. Coronel Saturnino tried to persuade the American to
remain in San Geronimo until his wound healed, but Strawbridge declared
he had important business with General Fombombo. He said he was afraid
that the capture of so many federal rifles would ruin his trade with
the general.

Saturnino assured him the acquisition of the rifles in the _casa
fuerte_ would not influence the general in the slightest degree. But
Strawbridge was far from convinced. He had seen Saturnino's word tested
often enough to doubt it. He knew the colonel's Latin penchant for a
pleasant falsehood rather than an unpleasant truth.

But behind his anxiety about the rifles, Strawbridge was homesick for
Canalejos. He really wanted to see the señora, to sit with her on the
piazza in the evenings, and hear her play the piano. Thoughts of her
came to him with an ineffable charm and sweetness.

So on the third day he set out with the troops, with a wounded hand
and with the vision of a slender music-making figure in a nun's garb,
moving before him like a mirage over a desert.

The drummer had not traversed twelve kilometers before his wound took
a wicked turn. With the jolting of his horse the aching increased,
and the arm swelled clear up to his shoulder. He grew feverish, then
somehow, in the furnace of the llanos, he imagined that he was in the
cavalry charge again. He suddenly began spurring his horse and waving
an imaginary carbine at a roof full of Federals. Then the Federals
seemed to capture him. He struggled terrifically, but the Federals
pinioned him and were going to execute him, just as Rosales had been
executed.

Thereafter Strawbridge's delirium was broken by intervals of clarity.
Several times he became rational, to find himself bound fast to a
litter which was swung between two mules. Then he would be about to be
executed again.

For a long time, when the drummer emerged into an interval of clear
thinking, he found himself in the furnace of sunshine on the llanos; an
eternity or two later he regained consciousness shuddering with cold,
and saw the sky above him filled with stars. The squadron had gone on
ahead, leaving the sick man with Father Benicio, Gumersindo, and the
pack-mules.

On the morning of the second day, Strawbridge thought he heard the
priest say they would soon be at home. The next thing the drummer knew
he lay in a great bed, with cold packs on his hand and arm and all over
him. And he saw what to him was the most beautiful face in the world,
looking down at him, weeping silently. The American had barely the
strength to extend his good hand.

"Señora ..." he whispered.

The woman suddenly sobbed aloud.

"Oh, señor, they have told me what a hero you were!"

Then the señora suddenly flickered out again.




CHAPTER XIX


Strawbridge could understand only snatches of Benavente's satire which
the señora was reading. When the Spanish girl read, she reverted to the
soft Castilian pronunciation of her childhood, and Strawbridge's ear
was accustomed to the hard colonial accent of South America.

Benavente has a leaning toward the theme of unfaithful wives, and the
comedy which the señora had chosen to read was of this type.

As the reading progressed, the mood of the satire, the quirks and
turns of Benavente's wit played over the girl's face as if from some
delicate, changing illumination, as indeed it was. Presently, in the
sheer pleasure of watching her, the sick man gave up the effort to
follow the text. He had never before observed such a radiance about
her, such a fine, ardent life in her. The drummer's nationality evoked
the thought that some artist ought to paint Dolores sitting thus
reading. It was his American instinct to commercialize the moment, not
for its monetary value but for its pleasure value. He was under the
abiding American delusion that pleasures are somehow bottleable; that
a pleasure can be commanded to stand still in the heavens, somewhat
after the fashion of Joshua's sun. It is the command of these American
Joshuas which has inflicted on the world the phonograph, the kodak, the
college annual, place-card collections, and the family album.

As the drummer studied the señora's face, he observed, when she
smiled, a little dimple in her left cheek. Somehow this tiny discovery
stirred the sick man in a subtle way. With a feeling of peculiar
intimacy he watched it come and go. It seemed to advertise, ever so
delicately, veiled and exquisite reserves in the nunnish figure. It
amazed him that he had not seen, until just now, how lovely the señora
was. It seemed as if beauty had been spilled over her.

He lay warming himself in this miracle, when the girl looked up,
studied his face a moment, then accused playfully:

"_Cá!_ señor, you are not listening to a word I read. What are your
thoughts?"

The sick man was taken aback when he was thus brought to a realization
of the vague compound of admiration, sensuous longing, and wistfulness
which moved his heart, for the wife of another man. He moistened his
lips to say something, when the señora assisted him:

"I dare say you are lying there thinking about your business."

The drummer accepted the suggestion:

"Perhaps I was."

"You mustn't worry about it."

At this negative suggestion, Strawbridge did begin to worry:

"I think I have a right to, señora, when my trip down to San Geronimo
spoiled the very thing I went after."

"How is that?"

The sick man tossed his head on his pillow.

"Oh, you know I wanted to sell the general rifles. Well ... I helped
him capture all he can use ... ruined my own sale." The salesman
laughed a little, but he was not amused.

The girl did not smile.

"Has your trade really fallen through, after all you've done?"

"Sure! A sale can slip away from you just so easy." He stared at the
ceiling, with hollow, troubled eyes.

With a faint, tender smile, the girl looked at her patient.

"Tell me, Tomas: why do you place such great stress on selling,
selling, selling?"

He looked at her, weakly surprised.

"Why, that's my job!"

"Yes, I know, but you will sell to some one else if not to the general."

"But the idea is not to miss a sale; to get everybody; to do a big
business."

The señora laughed outright but kindlily.

"Yes, but what is the object of your big business, that you work at it
with such fury? You already make the money you need."

"I didn't know I worked at it with such fury."

"_Cá!_ You do!"

The drummer pondered a moment.

"Well, a man just naturally wants a big business, and, besides, my old
man expects it. I'll lose my job if I don't."

"_Pues_, your 'old man,' then: why does he want a big business? What
does he mean finally to do with it?"

Strawbridge, with a sick man's suggestibility, stopped fretting about
his own sale and lay pondering gently what his old man meant to do with
his business. He could not imagine his old man _doing_ anything with
his business except running it, expanding it, beating down competitors
with it. Just then he recalled an explanation which is current with
every American, and which finds expression in every American paper and
magazine, so he repeated it:

"Why, business is a game with my old man, señora; he never will stop,
because that's his game. He takes a pride in seeing how big a business
he can develop, just as he tries to make a low golf score. Business is
the American game."

The señora smiled at such naïveté. She might not have smiled had she
known that Strawbridge had sounded for her the depth of American
popular philosophy on the point; but, not knowing that, she put it down
to the drummer's general childishness.

"Tomas," she said gently, "do you really think that a game, any game,
is the whole of a man's life? Would you be willing, Tomas, to spend the
whole of your life playing a game?"

"That's what everybody believes in America, señora."

"Surely Americans must be wrong!"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"I have wondered. You are the only American I have ever known, Tomas,
and you were so big and strong and restless, I could not help saying to
myself, 'Why is he so restless? He is not poor; any one can see that.
What does he mean to do with his fortune that he rushes so to get?'"
The señora quoted her thoughts pensively, and then added, "Still, I
suppose I do know."

"Why, why?" blurted out the drummer, greatly surprised.

"You wish to make your fortune equal to that of some wealthy girl's."

"A wealthy girl's...." The drummer looked at the Spanish girl quite
blankly, then, as her implication penetrated him, he was moved to a
somewhat abrupt denial:

"No, señora, no girls for mine ... at least not yet." He shifted his
bulk a trifle and lay looking at her defensively; then he saw where
her logic had led her. "Why, the idea! We were talking about why all
Americans work so, and you think they work because they want to get
married. What an idea!"

"But doesn't that explain a great many, señor?"

"Mighty few business fellows. When we are boys we have our sweethearts,
of course, but when we get out into business, women sort of drop out
of our lives for eight or ten years. We chase 'em a little, but not
much. Later, when our business justifies it, we buy us a motor, a
bungalow, and a girl,--I mean, we pick out a girl and marry her,--but
getting married is just a symptom that a man is getting on in his
business; it's not the aim of his business, at all. The business clicks
away just the same, whether he marries or not."

It would be difficult to say just how much the señora was moved at
this reversal of ordinary human motives. She looked at the drummer for
several moments, and finally asked in an odd voice:

"How do you decide you have the reached a position to marry, Señor
Tomas?"

"Oh, that depends on your ideals. When I was a kid I thought fifteen a
week and a flivver would do. As I got older my ideals went up, and now
I've got to have ten thousand a year and a twelve-cylinder."

"And you have no particular girl in view?"

The drummer laughed weakly.

"When you've got ten thousand a year, you don't have to have any
particular girl in view. You've got to keep out of view, or some
flapper 'll land you."

The señora shook her head.

"I don't understand it, Tomas," she said gently. "It seems to me you
deserve something finer than what you say. It's so ... like a machine."
She flushed faintly, and arose, saying that she must make the sick man
some broth.

"You'll be back soon, señora?" he asked anxiously.

She smiled at him, picked up a salver from a table, and went out.

With the departure of the señora, the sense of pleasure which had
enveloped Strawbridge also vanished. It gave him the same feeling of
loss that he experienced at times when he stepped out of the glow and
romance of a theater, into a dull, prosaic street. Still, after all, it
was in dull, prosaic streets that money was made and ambitious young
fellows gained headway. A query trickled into the drummer's mind. He
wondered if it would be possible, if it were in the scope of things
to take some of the glow and romance of the theater out into life, to
keep it there, always to have this dear warmth in his heart ... if
the _señora_.... A quiver went through the drummer at the direction
in which his musing had led him. He came to a sudden stop, deserted
the theater which his fancy had built, and walked slowly out into the
prosaic street once more.


When his door opened again, Strawbridge saw, to his disgust, that it
was the _griffe_ girl who had brought him his broth. The girl had had
a serious part in nursing Strawbridge over his wound and the solar
fever which exposure in the campaign had caused. This had bred in her
considerable authority. So now, as she entered, she narrowed her black
eyes, nodded firmly at her patient, and said, "You are to drink this,
señor."

The salesman was outraged that the maid should have come instead of the
mistress. He turned on his side away from her.

"Don't want any."

"But the señora said you were to drink it."

"Don't believe it's time."

"You can look at your watch, if it hasn't stopped running. You never
remember to wind it. Have you wound it this morning?"

The drummer fumbled under his pillow for the watch. It was still
running, and stood at eleven minutes after his broth-time. He wound
it with the sensitive fingers of the sick. As he did so, he stared
ill-temperedly through the window and observed a number of banners
waving in the plaza. He broke out:

"Look here! Are they going to have another damn fiesta? What's it for?
Good Lord! the time they waste on fiestas!"

At this outbreak the _griffe_ girl stared at him, then wrinkled her
freckled snub nose, and went off into such a gust of light-headed
giggling that Strawbridge was irritated anew.

"What the hell you whinnying like that for?"

The maid caught up the corner of her apron and stuffed it into her
mouth as a mirth-extinguisher. The American received the tray on the
side of his bed, glaring at the girl, who plainly was about to burst
out laughing again. A sudden plan came to him.

"I'm going to get up," he announced.

The maid was horrified.

"Oh, señor, you are not!"

"Oh, señorita, I am!"

"But you mustn't. It'll make you worse!"

"I'm all right. I feel all right. I'm going to get up, so get out of
here!" He began tumbling his big body around under the sheets.

The _griffe_ girl became desperate.

"But, señor, the señora has not said so; the doctor has not said so;
nobody has given you permission...." She was trying to shoo him back
under the cover with her hands.

"Are you going to get out or not?"

"Señor, you must not get up!"

"Oh, all right! Stick around and get an eyeful...." He began heaving
himself up, tumbling back the sheet.

The _griffe_ girl started backing out of the room. She resisted him
morally to the last ditch, motioning him back into bed, but being
gradually expelled as larger and larger segments of his pink pajamas
came into view. The queer part was that in Strawbridge's extreme
weakness the _griffe_ girl had assisted one of the guards in the
drummer's necessities; now she was whisked out of the room by the sight
of his pajamas. Such is the power of matter over mind.


Strawbridge made a sorry mess of getting his clothes on, until Pambo,
the guard who had served him during his illness, came in--sent,
no doubt, by the _griffe_ girl--and helped. Pambo was a pleasant
little fellow, and instead of discouraging the invalid's effort he
congratulated him on his improvement, and suggested a walk down into
the plaza.

After the dressing, the two men left the palace and moved very slowly
through the sunshine to a seat in the plaza. The guard placed the
invalid's chair in the deep shade of a _mamone_ tree, then, promising
to return in half an hour, went back to his duties.

Already a crowd of idlers were gathered in the plaza, watching the
preparations for the fête. The invalid sat in the color and stir, with
that feeling of soft, weak pleasure that comes to a man after the
pains of the sick-bed have vanished. All things were very grateful to
him--the sunshine, the movement of the crowd, the calls of the venders,
the heroic statue of General Fombombo offering on a scroll to the State
of Rio Negro, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.

Presently the firemen's band in red coats and blue trousers began
gathering, with their instruments. Pleasure-seekers grew thicker, and
commenced renting chairs and placing them around a band stand which was
shaped like a huge conch-shell. Girls in mantillas began with their
fans to conduct discreet flirtations. Certain bolder women moved among
the crowd, waiting for some one to accost them. Two or three priests
from the cathedral mingled with their flock. One father moved about
with his eyes riveted on a little Bible, having selected this strange
place for his religious meditations.

A number of persons saluted the drummer, which rather surprised him,
for the upper-class Venezuelans are usually reserved toward foreigners.
Strawbridge was thinking over his sudden popularity, with the mildly
amused superiority of a North American, when he saw approaching him
a negro in a white linen suit. As this figure came nearer, the sick
man recognized Gumersindo in gala attire. The negro bowed deeply,
congratulated Strawbridge on his early convalescence, then took a copy
of "El Correo del Rio Negro" from his pocket and pressed it upon his
friend.

"Have you read my description of the battle of San Geronimo, _mi caro
señor_?" he asked warmly. "_Caramba!_ I do not say I have excelled, but
Father Benicio, a man of excellent judgment, assures me these pages--"
he tapped the paper--"will go down to posterity as one of the great
battle descriptions of history. You will find your own name mentioned,
_mi amigo_. I have taken the liberty of comparing you to the Swiss
Guard at Versailles and the English regiment at Carabobo--a wounded
lion, señor, crouched before the shield of Rio Negro!"

All this was uttered in a tone of impassioned eloquence, and now the
black editor astonished Strawbridge by suddenly wringing his hand and
hurrying away, leaving the paper with the invalid.

The drummer was amused at this emotion in Gumersindo, which he did not
understand, but his sickness had brought with it a certain pensiveness,
and he sat pondering on the springs of Gumersindo's enthusiasm. To
write a history that would be handed down to posterity! What was the
use of it? The American wondered what he would like to hand down to
posterity, and he thought of life-insurance. Strawbridge glanced
through his "Correo." Gumersindo had written six columns of closely
printed matter. The American folded the paper and laid it across his
lap.

The crowd in the plaza grew more interesting. Government dignitaries,
merchants, and professional men began to arrive. Men collected in knots
and conversed with excited gestures. Presently a great cheering went
up, and Strawbridge saw General Fombombo traversing the plaza, in the
presidential motor. At his side sat the peon girl Madruja. She held up
her chin like a queen, and the line of her olive throat against her
furs might have been a stroke of Raphael. Even in the brief glimpse
of their passage, Strawbridge got an impression that the general was
fondling her hand.

The outrage set up in the sick man's head vague fancies of liberating
Dolores. He thought of divorce. The Spanish girl ought to get a
divorce. She had every provocation. But of course there were no
divorces in Roman Catholic Rio Negro.

The sound of a chair being dragged close to his own caused Strawbridge
to glance around. He saw Lubito smiling and settling a chair in the
turf by his side. On the other side of Lubito, Esteban was unfolding
another chair. The peon youth seemed thinner and more care-worn than on
the night when he had attacked General Fombombo.

The bull-fighter was very cordial.

"_Caramba!_ I'm glad to see you alive, señor! I read in the paper how
badly you were wounded, and what a hero you were." At the drummer's
demurring gesture, he persisted with renewed force: "Oh, we know all
about it. I said to Esteban, 'You called Señor Tomas a _cobarde_
because he did not choose to assist you that night in the _palacio_.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.'"

The peon youth stopped his steady stare into the plaza, to ask:

"But why did he turn against me?"

Lubito shrugged and made a gesture.

"How should I know? Am I as deep as the sea? Perhaps to save you. Had
he not used his influence on _el Presidente_, no doubt you would have
been rotting to-day in La Fortuna; but instead he had you turned out,
and here you are, as free as a bird."

"I don't understand why he turned against me in a fight," repeated the
peon, doggedly.

"_Caramba!_ If you had a head to understand that, Esteban, you would
not need to sit here gnawing your fingers now. I am far brighter than
you, Esteban, but this Señor Strawbridge is a dark man to me. He moves
in his own way, Esteban. He is like a cayman in the Orinoco; no man can
tell when or where or at what he strikes."

The drummer followed this panegyric a little uncomfortably.

"Look here," he inquired: "how did I get such a swell reputation for
double-crossing?"

"How! _Caramba!_ Did you not despatch poor Lieutenant Rosales to his
death at the _casa fuerte_ in San Geronimo? He would have failed, but
you gave him the strength to go on--but how far?" The bull-fighter held
up a stubby forefinger and whispered an answer to his question: "Just
as far as you pleased that he should go--and then he fell. But you: did
any blame attach to you? None at all. You had a wealthy ship-owner sail
up the Orinoco and bribe the insurgents in your behalf. Oh, we have
heard everything, not through this paper, but--you know--from mouth to
mouth. _Caramba!_ this ship-owner poured out gold for you--box after
box. It was easy enough to see whose gold it was!"

"Whose?" cried Strawbridge, quite amazed at so grotesque a
misinterpretation of the facts.

"Whose! Whose! _Diantre_, Esteban! such a man! Why, señor, whose should
it be but your own! Would any ordinary sailor have so much gold to
fling about? No, it was your own gold, and only He who looks down upon
the doings of men--only He knows how many other ways you are reaching
out, raking this poor country of Rio Negro into your power. You had
poor Rosales killed; he would have been a rival of yours one day, for
he had the pride of Satan. You have a warm friend in Señor Tolliver,
and yet he has been the enemy of all _revolutionistas_ for years. You
have twisted _el Presidente_ around your finger, and--" Lubito paused
and winked delicately--"and I hear that _la señora_ is no bitter enemy
of yours, either! _Caramba!_ What a man!"

Strawbridge flushed and dropped his amused look.

"Say, just leave the señora out of this, will you?"

"How?"

"She is a lovely girl in the most painful position. I have done nothing
more than any gentleman would do if he had a spark of manhood."

Lubito looked at the American rather blankly.

"_Seguramente_, señor, any _caballero_ would do what you have done ...
if he had a spark of manhood. _Seguramente!_ I ... I hope you will
allow a friend to ... to.... _Cá!_ ... to congratulate you, señor."

This equivocal sentence brought the conversation to an impasse. The
drummer was on the verge of taking offense at the innuendo, when
Esteban interrupted in a very miserable voice:

"Señor Strawbridge, you are a wise man. Tell me what I can do to regain
Madruja."

The drummer was touched at the peon's unashamed desolation.

"Esteban," he said seriously, "I don't know what you can do. I have
been thinking over your very question--in a general way. There are no
courts to separate her from ... from him. There is no public opinion to
force him to give her up. There is no--"

"But, señor," interrupted the peon, "she--_mi Madruja adorata_--is not
with _el Presidente_ any more!"

Strawbridge leaned forward and peered around the bull-fighter at the
peon.

"Not with him any more? What do you mean, Esteban?"

The youth made a desperate gesture.

"May the lightning strike God, but he has flung her out into the
streets, señor!"

Strawbridge stared.

"Are you crazy, Esteban? I saw Madruja and the general drive past in a
motor, not ten minutes ago!"

Lubito interrupted:

"No, you did not, señor. That was another girl he has picked up.
Madruja is ... well, to speak plainly ... Madruja is growing heavy
after the manner of women, and really, now--" the bull-fighter shrugged
and opened a hand--"really, now, what could _el Presidente_ do but
turn her out?" He looked from one of his friends to the other and said
intimately, "Now, really.... I dare say we have all been fathers at one
time or another.... What else could he have done?"

Strawbridge did not hear this observation. He sat perfectly still in
his chair, and said in a shocked tone:

"He really did!"

Lubito answered again:

"_Ciertamente_, señor; but any one could have foretold that. Do you
not recall, Esteban, I told you that in advance? Do you not recall my
saying, 'Esteban, _mi bravo_, cheer up. Presently _el Presidente_ will
grow weary of your Madruja, and you will have her back'?"

The drummer sat pondering the facts, in a benumbed manner. Somehow this
Madruja affair touched him painfully. Presently he looked at Esteban
and asked:

"Well, ... did you get her back! Do you want her back?"

Lubito replied for his friend:

"_Diablo!_ no, he didn't get her back! _El Presidente_ has a way with
women. The poor girl is completely mad. She lives alone in a big house,
and weeps night and day. She says the general will come back to her as
soon as he grows weary of this new mistress. 'But, Madruja,' I argued
with her, 'he will always have a new mistress! He always has had. Now
take back poor Esteban. Look at him. See how he loves you. Your poor
Esteban!' But she curls up her pretty mouth. 'Esteban! Esteban!' she
says. 'Stupid as a donkey, dull as an old hound's tooth! Do you think
I would take a poor lout of a peon in this house which _el Presidente_
has given me?'

"'_Pues_,' I said, for I always did admire her, '_Pues_, take me!' She
gave me a straight look, for we were talking to her through the bars
of her window. 'You! What do you know, Señor Lubito, about the grand
super-civilization of the future republic of Rio Negro? Do you know
how to make all these wide sandy llanos bloom and bear fruit! Your
sword has never carved an empire--nothing but bulls!'" The bull-fighter
looked at the drummer in a puzzled fashion, shrugged, and finally
added, "She is utterly mad."




CHAPTER XX


Strawbridge did not know why the general's second infidelity stirred
him so deeply. For some reason it sent him hurrying weakly back,
through the heat, to the palace. What he meant to do when he got there,
what he could do, he did not know.

The drummer reached the side door almost exhausted and rang the bell.
He waited several minutes in the intense heat of the sunshine. At last
the door was opened by the _griffe_ girl. She gave just one glance,
then swooped on him, caught him about the waist, and helped him inside.

"_Caramba!_ Señor Tomas, you are as white as a sheet! You are about to
fall! You must go to bed at once. I told you--"

"Where is your mistress?" panted the drummer.

The girl was dictatorial.

"_Cá!_ What do you want with the señora? I tell you to go to bed! I
told you never to...."

The maid's question helped temper Strawbridge's impulse. After all,
what did he want with the señora! What did he mean to say to her! There
was nothing to say, much less to do. He began to realize how empty his
impulse was of any possible action.

"What do you want with her?" repeated the maid, holding him up and
leading him inside.

The drummer fumbled for an answer, and then explained lamely that they
were reading a play together.

The freckled maid looked up at him, amazed.

"A play! _Caramba!_ it must be a wonderful play!"

"Look here," frowned the American, recovering his dignity, "can't you
answer a simple question without making remarks?"

"_Pues_, was I making remarks? You told me you were reading a play!"

"Yes, you do make remarks! Damn it! you talk all the time! If you've
got to chatter like that, beat it!"

She would not let go her patient, for fear he might really fall and
hurt himself, but she was offended.

"_Seguramente!_" she snapped. "If I ever get you in bed, trust me,
I'll never lift another finger to get you out! _Caramba!_ after all
I've done!" She seemed about to cry. "As for the señora, she is in
the music-room, and when you rush in through this heat, all white and
trembly, to read a play, I think you are crazy; that's what I think!"

"Well, damn what you think! Here, let go; I can walk without you!" He
shook himself loose and walked on in weak irascibility.

The girl stood looking after him with angry tears in her eyes and much
anxiety for his welfare as he passed through the transverse corridor
and turned down the main hallway.

He moved more and more slowly past the old doors which lined the
corridor. There were no guards in the passage; they had been drawn
away, no doubt, by the fiesta. The palace seemed rather empty without
them. He was thinking of this when the door of the music-room opened
and a man stepped into the hallway. He stood holding the door ajar and
looking back into the room. The drummer was surprised to see that it
was Coronel Saturnino. The salesman had thought the colonel was in San
Geronimo, but no doubt he had come to Canalejos for the fiesta. The
expression on the officer's face struck Strawbridge. For once his look
of satire had vanished, and it left exposed what must have been the
real Saturnino beneath all his quips and mockeries. He was speaking
through the door, in a low tone:

"When a man has only one desire in life, señora, would he not be a fool
to sacrifice that! Why should he sacrifice it! Shall his one brief
glimpse of existence be entirely empty?"

There came a gasp from the music-room, and Strawbridge caught the
phrase, "But, Pancho, that is sacrilegious!"

"Sacrilegious!" echoed the officer, in a sudden passion. "Sacrilegious!
A word to trap fools with! To give up the very heart of this life,
here, expecting another which will never come.... Dolores, can you
imagine the immeasurable unconcern with which Nature views us! And
then expect me to give up the very essence of my little glimpse of
existence, for fear, forsooth, that the hand that made me will not
precisely approve my squirmings toward the ends for which He framed me!
Puh! it's too absurd!" With pallid face he stood looking through the
doorway; then came a return of some of his old pococurantism: "Well,
señora, I leave you now, but I will come back one day, you might say as
a missionary, to convert you to a happier view of life and the Deity.
Until then, _adios_." He bowed gracefully and turned up the passage
toward the front of the palace.

With considerable surprise, and also a certain questioning, the
American watched the colonel go. The officer evidently had concluded
a tête-à-tête with the señora which was unsatisfactory to him.
Strawbridge was secretly glad of this; he had always been glad that
Saturnino was persona non grata with the señora.

But what set up a questioning in the drummer were the tones of the
man and the woman, and the nickname, "Pancho," which the señora had
used. This diminutive and just such overtones the drummer recalled
hearing through the hedge as he stood in the plaza outside the
cathedral garden. The idea that those quarreling lovers in the garden
had been Saturnino and Dolores came to him with a shock. All along,
had Saturnino been a suitor for the señora's favors? Was the officer
attempting intimacies with the wife of his employer and general?
Such duplicity filled the American with disdain. He was shocked at
Saturnino. Then, as he stood thinking about it, he asked himself why
he should be shocked. The colonel was no Anglo-Saxon, with a restraint
cultivated by long generations of controlled ancestors. He was a Latin,
a Venezuelan.

The door of the music-room was still ajar when Strawbridge reached
the entrance. He had meant to express, in a roundabout way, his deep
moral approval of what the señora had just done, but what he saw in the
music-room put completely out of his head any sentiment he meant to
utter.

The señora half knelt before the window-seat, with her head in her
outstretched arms and her rosary clutched in her fingers. As a sharp
accent in the picture was her hair. Her nun's cap had fallen off and
revealed a great jet corona wound about her head in a complexity of
cables. The glint and sheen of the light from the window fell over this
luxuriant coiffure, and the slender white nape of her neck curved up
into it. The loveliness of it clutched at something in the drummer's
chest as if with physical fingers.

At his continued gaze the girl stirred, looked about, saw him, and made
a little defensive movement toward her nun's bonnet.

The American protested involuntarily:

"For God's sake, señora, don't hide it! What makes you want to hide
your hair?"

Her eyes showed she had been crying, but such an outbreak of admiration
moved her to a brief smile; immediately she was grave again.

"It is a vow I made for my sister, señor."

"A vow to what?"

"To Saint Teresa."

"To a saint! Are you hiding your lovely hair just to keep a vow to a
saint?"

"_Sí_, señor."

"Well, I declare! think of that! Wait, don't put it back on right
now...."

Nevertheless she replaced the bonnet, smiling faintly at his protesting
face. Then she became concerned about him.

"I didn't know you were out of bed. You ought not to be, Señor Tomas.
You look quite worn out. Come over here, on this couch by the window."

She was swiftly becoming herself again, pleasant, softly gracious,
and remote. She crossed the room, took his arm, and helped him to the
wicker couch she had indicated. Her mere presence and touch wove a deep
comfort about the sick man. Whatever were her relations with Saturnino,
they faded into a small matter in the atmosphere of her delicate charm.
Strawbridge leaned back against the end of the couch, looking at her.

"What were you crying about when I came in, señora?" he asked simply.

She looked at him with dark eyes that appeared slightly unfocused.

"I would rather not tell you, Señor Tomas."

"You might tell me, señora. I'm a mighty good friend of yours."

The girl sighed with some comfort of her own.

"Yes, you are. You are so ... nice. But you don't want to be my
confessor, do you, Señor Tomas?"

"I wish I could be. Who is your confessor, señora?"

"Father Benicio."

"Sure! it would naturally be him."

She noted his tone, with surprise and a delicate amusement in her face.

"You seem really aggrieved. Do you want to be a priest?"

"I wish I could sit in a little box with you and hear you talk what is
really in your heart, señora. I wish I could find out what is in your
heart. I think it must be a pure and lovely place, señora, like one of
those chapels in the cathedral, with an alabaster cross and a soft rug
to kneel and pray on."

She seemed almost startled.

"Oh, no, Señor Tomas," she denied hurriedly, "it is not like that, at
all. Holy Mary! I wish it were!"

"But it is!" affirmed Strawbridge, warmly. "Why, señora, the very first
morning I saw you going to chapel I thought--"

The Spanish girl arose abruptly.

"Listen," she interrupted. "Don't talk to me of chapels and crosses and
souls!" She stood looking down on him, with tragic eyes. "I am not a
person who should speak of such things. I ... I...."

The American looked at her in dismay. He thought of Saturnino.

"Why ... what do you mean?" he asked in a lower tone.

She studied him a moment longer.

"I was a girl when I came here to Venezuela, Señor Tomas, a little girl
of sixteen, just out of a convent; and then ... I was dropped in a
place like this!" She made a quick gesture, spreading her hands as if
to fling something from her fingers.

A rush of pity caught the sick man.

"Whatever made you come here?" he questioned gruffly, then frowned and
cleared his throat.

The two understood each other with remarkable economy of words. The
girl answered the implications of his question:

"Because he was rich! He had millions of pesetas, millions. My parents
said it was a wonderful opportunity, and I--" she touched her breast
sharply--"why, I knew nothing of life or love or marriage! They said
he was a wealthy Venezuelan who owned a territory almost as large as
Spain itself. Well, he does ... but nobody said what he did in that
territory!" She gave a brief, shivering laugh.

The sick man arose unsteadily.

"That's the damnable point!" He trembled. "That's what I can't endure.
I think about it all the time. I was sitting in the plaza thinking
about the shame he puts on you--"

The girl looked up at him.

"Señor, what do you mean?"

"I mean the shame and disgrace of it. I can't endure staying here
seeing you continually disgraced in your own home by one stray woman
after another!"

The señora stared.

"Señor, do you fancy I want it to be different?"

The drummer was astonished.

"You don't! Do you mean you condone such offense? Do you mean?..."

The señora's black eyes grew moist at the reproach in his voice.

"Dear Señor Tomas, that is something you do not understand. You don't
know how glad I am to be free of him--such a brute! Oh, señor, you
can't imagine how horrible it was--the very sight of him. It seemed to
me I could not endure it another day. A murderer, a robber...." The
expression on her face moved the drummer. "At last I went to Father
Benicio. I told him I would jump in the river and let the caymans eat
me rather than ... continue."

Strawbridge was trembling as if he himself had been tormented; yet how
much of this was from sympathy, and how much from this heady topic of
sex which had suddenly sprung up between them, the youth himself had
not the faintest idea.

"And what did he do? What did Father Benicio say?"

The girl exhaled a sick breath.

"Oh ... duty ... sacrament. _Sacrament_--with him!" She stood breathing
heavily through her open lips. "When Father Benicio saw I really meant
to kill myself, when he saw I was desperate, then, finally, he told me
to wear this." She touched her black nun's robe.

"To wear what?"

"This robe."

The drummer looked at the robe as if he had not seen it before.

"What has that got to do with it?"

"_Pues ... cá!_" The señora began to laugh hysterically. "When I wore
this nun's robe, he stayed with other women all the time. He would not
touch me. He ... he.... Father Benicio said he would not!"

She laughed till the tears stood in her eyes. Strawbridge stared at
her. There was something dreadful about her laughter. Presently she
sobered abruptly.

"Why ... why was that? Why-y?" The drummer was utterly at sea.

The señora shook her head.

"Father Benicio told me to wear this robe and conceal my hair."

"What an extraordinary thing!"

"Father Benicio is a very wise man."

"But there is no sense to it. Still, if it worked...." The drummer
cogitated, and presently made the observation, "So, you are not wearing
it for your sister, after all?"

"Señor, I have never had a sister."

Such an extraordinary ruse required thought. The salesman sat down
slowly, and the girl followed his example. She was perusing his face
while he puzzled over the unaccountable quirk in the dictator's
amorousness.

"Why, señora," he said at last, as if coming to a conclusion, "that
doesn't seem possible. Why, I think you are lovelier in your nun's robe
than.... Why, you look as pure and tender and as fair as the stars of
heaven. If I--"

The Spanish girl reached out an impulsive hand and gripped the
American's.

"Ah, Señor Tomas, that is because you are a dear, dear boy; it is
because you, yourself, are pure and tender and fine!"

At her caress a force apparently quite other than himself moved him,
to his own fear and dismay. His unwounded hand went groping beneath
the voluminous sleeve of the robe, up the soft naked arm of the girl.
With his other arm he caught her as she swayed against him. She gave a
long sigh, as if utterly exhausted. The touch of her body to his set
Strawbridge quivering and trembling. His bandaged hand groped over her
with delicate pains until it touched the warm supple mounds of her
bosom; there the sheer pain in his fingers mingled with his passion and
edged it into a sort of tingling ecstasy.

The two lay relaxed together in the corner of the couch, without a
sound. The music-room swam before the man's eyes, in the melting
madness of her warmth and passion. She wore no perfume--no doubt by the
wisdom of Father Benicio--but the faint, intimate odor of a woman's
hair and body ravaged his senses with its provocation. He drew her
closer. He was trembling as if with sickness. He passed his lips over
her temples, cheeks, nose; their lips met.

He had desired her subconsciously for so long; he had repressed his
passion for her so endlessly into the very form of propriety that now
it suddenly burst loose like a flood and rushed over his senses. The
two clung together quite silently except for an occasional sob, an
intake of shaken breath, and the rapid murmur of their hearts.

Strawbridge first recovered himself. Her embrace had whisked away all
his feeling of futility and doubt. He knew now precisely what he must
do.

"First," he said, "I've got to get you out of here."

She looked at him with misty eyes and a faint, sad smile.

"Out of the _palacio_?" she whispered.

"Out of Rio Negro, out of Venezuela, to the States." Her sweet puzzled
face amused him, and made him feel tenderer than ever.

"But, dear Tomas, I am married."

"We'll get a divorce."

"But that is impossible in Rio Negro."

"It's easy in the States."

She studied his face so intently that he grew a little afraid of what
she might say about the divorce. Finally she asked:

"My own dear life, when did you first _know_ you loved me?"

After that the sequence of their plans to elope was continually
broken by caresses and the wistful interrogations of a newly revealed
love. Mixed in with these they planned with what coherence they could
their elopement. They discussed horses, a motor, but finally decided
on a small boat down the Rio Negro. Strawbridge would get one that
afternoon, and the next night they would start from the piazza in the
darkness. By daylight they would reach San Geronimo and the Orinoco.

The señora tried to make her lover realize the gravity of the
undertaking, the danger and certainty of punishment if they were
discovered, but the whole affair glowed on the American in a
rose-colored light. They would escape, of a certainty. He had never
failed to do anything he set out to do, and he wouldn't fail now. Luck
was always with him, and he was predestined to win. He was in gala
mood. He commanded fortune! Once the girl put up a hand to his mouth.

"Eh, hush! don't say that! It ... it reminds me of ... him."


Their talk came down to the odds and ends of the affair--how large
a bundle of clothes she could smuggle out of the palace; the food
they should carry, hammocks and _mosquiteros_. In the midst of these
trifles came the sound of many feet in the corridor. The man and the
woman got away from each other quickly and sat on opposite ends of the
couch, looking at the door a little anxiously, when there really did
come a sharp rap. With a glance at Strawbridge, the señora sprang up,
crossed the room, and opened the shutter. In the entrance stood General
Fombombo in full uniform. Banked behind him were ranks of men, most
of whom were in uniform. After an instant the blurr of color defined
itself as Coronel Saturnino, a number of other officers, several of the
governmental dignitaries, some of the alcaldes from the surrounding
villages, Gumersindo in his white linen, and behind them ranks of the
palace guards, in dress uniform. It was a fiesta assembly.

The drummer stared at the processional in the utmost amazement. A wild
suspicion shot through his head that somehow General Fombombo had
learned of his dalliance with Dolores, and that all this pomp was a
movement to arrest him and send him to prison. The American moistened
his lips. He could feel the blood leave his face as he stood looking at
Dolores's husband.

But the general was smiling. Indeed, the faces of the whole group of
dignitaries wore expressions of mysterious kindliness and good-will.
The black man Gumersindo seemed to labor under some beneficent
excitement. The dictator began speaking, not in ordinary conversational
tones, but in the somewhat over-emphasized articulation of an orator.

"Señor Strawbridge," he began, "we, the admiring citizens of the
independent republic of Rio Negro, have chosen during this fiesta
and on this historic spot to express to you our never-dying respect,
gratitude, and affection for a man, who, impelled by no selfish motive,
but moved only by a flame from the very altar of freedom itself, by
the purest love of human liberty and the world-wide brotherhood of
man, has hurled himself upon the field of battle and, at the risk of
his own life, made safe the social and political securities of a young
and struggling people. Amid the defiance of cannon and the flashing
of swords, you, Señor Tomas Strawbridge, led the forces of liberty to
complete and glorious victory. It is with tears of gratitude that we,
the representatives of the free and independent state of Rio Negro,
bestow upon you this token of our love and appreciation for your heroic
act in saving the insurgent army on the bloody field of San Geronimo.
There will come a time, Señor Strawbridge, when our beloved valley will
be decked with great and smiling cities; when men and women will live
with no tyrant to make them afraid; then, carved in letters of gold
in the pantheon of that happy people, will shine the name of Tomas
Strawbridge, hero of San Geronimo!"

The President was moved. His eyes were misty as he drew from his pocket
and pinned on the drummer's lapel a little gold decoration pendent
from a rainbow-colored ribbon. It was the Order of the _Libertador_,
for heroic action. Strawbridge had seen dozens of these decorations in
Venezuela, but he had always put them down to the South American's
love of fripperies. Now there was something about these men and their
solemn, admiring faces that moved him.

A play of incongruous emotions kept harassing the American's nerves. He
alternately flushed and paled. How grotesque it was that the general
should have given him this medal just as he was planning to abduct
the general's wife! As the dictator bent toward him to pin on the
decoration, the drummer caught a strong odor of musk.

After the presentation other dignitaries delivered orations reviewing
Rio Negro's heroic past. They pointed out, from the very music-room
windows, spots where martyrs had perished.

When the officials had finished, Gumersindo read his whole six columns
describing the battle of San Geronimo. The black man seldom glanced at
the paper, but recited the whole from memory, in an agreeable resonant
baritone.

After the ceremony the whole audience shook hands with the drummer, and
each man expressed his admiration with a suppleness of phrase that was
very graceful and yet seemed sincere. Perhaps it was.




CHAPTER XXI


There are certain moments in the lives of men when the only course
of action morally possible lies along immoral lines. By dint of hard
necessity such moments lose the reproach of bad faith and assume the
simple pathos of misfortune. Perhaps three-fourths of the crimes
committed because of women fall into this unhappy class.

Long before convention softened the rape to its symbol, the marriage
ceremony, men abducted the women they loved. There must have been a
time when the highest social virtue was for a passionate swain to steal
a girl from her jealous guardians. Upon this broad corner-stone of
passion have arisen daring, stalwart, and reproductive generations, and
that is the final word of approbation with which life lauds conduct.

Since that simpler era, minor moral obligations hinging on property,
society, friendship, nationality, and former marriages have confused
but have not transformed the issue. To-day, when any of these obstacles
are swept aside by passionate lovers, one feels its pathos but not its
sin.

It was precisely in this dilemma that Strawbridge labored. The little
gold medal fastened on his lapel by the dictator reproached him
continually as he worked in his room, packing in a canvas roll those of
his belongings which were absolutely indispensable. He meant to carry
them inconspicuously to the river. General Fombombo was his host; he
had been a prospective customer until the capture of the rifles at
San Geronimo, and he still was a trusting friend. And now he, Thomas
Strawbridge, was about to steal the general's wife! The big American
sickened at the thought of it, but the complementary idea of resigning
Dolores never once presented itself to his mind. This would have been a
desertion of something exquisitely more dear and intimate than his own
flesh. Since the señora's embraces, her body seemed more native to him
than his own. There was something shrine-like about her.

With Hebraic simplicity the Bible says of a man and wife, "Ye are one,"
and this was meant for lovers. Strawbridge tingled and thrilled with
this amazing oneness. Some miracle had occurred within him to extend
his sentiency into the señora. As he worked, she rushed upon him at
intervals with such poignancy that he would lay down his packing and
sigh and tremble at the sudden and sweet transfiguration. He was not
himself any more. Body and soul were impermeated, somehow, with the
sweetness of Dolores.

In the midst of one of these epiphanies came a tap at his door. The
drummer had a sense of being waked out of a sleep. He saw his canvas
pack under his hands and made an effort to conceal it by thrusting
it hastily into an open cabinet drawer. Some of his toilet articles
and clothes lay scattered about, and he tried to cover them under the
sheets of his disordered bed. It seemed to him that his jumble of
packing must advertise to the world his intention of eloping with the
señora. When the American had concealed enough to give his room an
aspect of innocence, he went over and opened the door. The _griffe_
girl stood in the hallway. Her freckled face seemed screwed up with
some internal tension. Her black eyes sparkled.

"_Ola_, señor!" she whispered, and stepped inside with her air of
excitement and her glittering eyes. Strawbridge looked at her in
dismay. Plainly she knew his plans, and he thought to himself that they
might as well have been published in the "Correo."

The maid burst into ejaculations:

"_Caramba!_ How well you look! You have been cured by magic!" She
reached out and gave his arm a sudden squeeze, giggled, then, with an
effect of legerdemain, thrust into his hand a little green-gold watch.

The American looked at it blankly.

"What the hell?" he asked in a low tone.

His profanity shook the girl into a hysteria of choked giggles; then
she produced, also apparently out of nothingness, a blue envelop
directed to himself. Instantly Strawbridge knew that it was from the
señora, and his heart began to beat. His fingers trembled so that he
could not get into the envelop with his one good hand. He was forced to
ask the girl to open it.

The half-breed went at the matter in her own way, moistening an edge
with her little red tongue and picking open the damp crease with a
hair-pin. The big American stood with his good hand gripping her plump
shoulder and delaying the operation by his impatience.

The note was exceedingly brief. It said simply:


     Set my watch with yours. Piazza, 11 P.M. to-morrow.

     DOLORES JUANA AVILON Y BUSTAMENTE.


The implication of the señora's maiden name written in full moved
Strawbridge with a delicate tenderness. He looked at the letter, then
at the watch. It was an old-fashioned timepiece, carved on the obverse
side with a faint landscape which was worn smooth in places; on the
reverse was an antique coat of arms with its quarterings colored by a
worn but exquisite enamel. The drummer did not know that he was looking
at an heirloom of centuries; he had no idea that on the back of this
watch he saw the combined coats of arms of two of the most ancient
houses of Spain. A sense of pathos moved him at its evident age.

"Poor little girl!" he thought to himself. "The first thing I'll
do when we get to New York will be to go to Tiffany's and get her a
wrist-watch." He set the timepiece, with care, and returned it to the
_griffe_ girl.


In the afternoon Strawbridge went down to the native market to lay in
provisions against his voyage down the river. Among the little market
stalls the only prepared food he could find were the cart-wheels of
cassava bread. The sick man looked at this bread dubiously. He knew
that at one stage in the making of cassava it is a rank poison, and
he wondered if the Indians in making this bread had extracted all its
bane. The sight of the loaves which had once been poison filled him
with foreboding. He imagined himself and the señora going down the
river in a small boat and becoming poisoned on this bread. What a
horrible end to their romance!

The possibility depressed him. However, he purchased a loaf, had it
wrapped in a palm-leaf, and recalled wistfully the little delicatessen
shops in Keokuk where he could order a lunch with a word. He wished
keenly for them, as he bought some wood-like yammi and two or three big
plantains shaped like rough bananas. When he started back home with his
bundle, a dozen porters besieged him begging to be allowed to carry it.

Later in the afternoon he went to the fish-wharf, to bargain for a
boat. He found clumsy crafts, each one carved out of a single log,
leaky, greasy, and smelling overpoweringly of fish. The drummer
walked slowly from one end of the quay to the other. The notion of
embarking Dolores in one of these vile boats filled him with disgust.
At last he chose the least loathly of the dugouts, and began dickering
with its fishy owner, to buy it. The fisherman was a barefooted,
chocolate-colored peon, who carried a paddle about with him as a sign
of his calling. He was naked from waist to sombrero. His legs were
thin, but his torso rippled with muscles developed by his boating.
His face, his inch of forehead, and his coarse hair were just a few
centuries this side of the pithecanthropus. He could scarcely believe
the _caballero_ could want to buy his fish-boat. He stared and
scratched his head at the marvel.

"You are no poor man, señor. Why should you fish?"

"I fish for sport."

"_Caramba!_ sport! Do you think it is sport to bake in the sun, to be
flung into the rapids, to fight the crocodiles that eat your catch? Do
you call it sport to pack a _tonelada_ of fish on your back, trying to
vend them when no one will buy?"

Some fellow fishermen drew about the two at this curious conversation.
One of them interposed:

"Perhaps _el caballero_ is going to fish as a penance, Simon. Perhaps
he has committed some grievous sin and _el padre_ has imposed--"

"_Basta!_ Are you blind, Alessandro? Do you not see this _hombre_ is an
_Americano_, and not a Christian at all? The padre is nothing to him."

Another voice in the fish-scented crowd took up the argument:

"An _Americano_! Perhaps he does fish for sport. They do the maddest
things for sport; they run and walk and jump and fight for sport. This
one went to the battle of San Geronimo and won a ribbon. There it is;
you can see it for yourself on his coat."

One of the older fishers shrugged a naked shoulder:

"Sport never sent the _Americano_ into the battle, brothers. I was
talking to an _hombre_ named Lubito, a bull-fighter, and what he said
... what Lubito said about this _Americano_...." The old peon nodded,
and thumped the butt of his paddle on the ground.

"What did he say?" asked Alessandro.

The ancient lifted a shoulder, pulled down his wrinkled lips, nodded at
the palace up the river and at the gloomy bulk of La Fortuna down the
river, made a clicking sound with his tongue, and went silent.

These clicks and glances seemed to explain something. Simon, who owned
the boat, looked at Strawbridge, with his small black Indian eyes
stretched wide.

"_Cá!_ Then you don't want to fish, after all?"

"Look here!" rapped out the drummer, feeling very uncomfortable. "Do I
get that boat or not?"

Simon shrugged, and mentioned a price which no doubt was grotesquely
exorbitant, according to his peon sense of value. The drummer reached
into his pocket and drew out a roll of Venezuelan bills.

"I'll take it provided you'll scrub the damn thing with sand and get it
clean."

The whole crowd stared at this amazingly swift trade. Here and there
came a sharp intake of breath at such an amount paid for such a boat.
Only the peon who owned the boat kept his head, but his excitement was
shown by the sharp dints in the sides of his sun-blacked nose.

"Señor," he jockeyed, breathing heavily and staring at the bills, "it
is impossible for me to clean the boat at such a price. Already I have
given the boat away; I have pushed it into the rapids. I am a poor man,
señor, and I cannot possibly clean the boat for less than ... for less
than--" he stared fishily at Strawbridge, fearing to name too small a
sum--"t-t-two, t-three ... _sí_ ... t-t-three more bolivars, señor, and
it will be cheap as mangos, at that!"

The drummer drew out the three extra bolivars and tossed them to the
fellow. Three bolivars are sixty cents.

"Scrub it with sand, and hitch it below the _palacio_ when you finish."


One of the fishermen shook his fist violently in the air, a peaceable
Spanish gesture to work off unusual excitement. The oldish peon leaned
forward on his paddle.

"No one must speak of this unless all of us want to...." He drew his
finger across his throat, made a clicking sound, and nodded toward La
Fortuna.

It was sundown when Strawbridge returned to the palace. In coming up
the river bank the drummer took a short route behind the cathedral. As
he came closer he saw that a nest of little adobe houses were built
like lean-tos against the sides of the church. These little mud huts
clinging humbly to the soaring walls of the great fane, and the whole
illuminated in the deep yellow of sunset, formed a picture which
arrested even the drummer. It drove away for a moment the permeating
thought of the señora. It extinguished his desire and his sense of
hurry, in the timelessness of beauty.

Beyond him on his left lay the wide vacuity of the river. The terrain
on which Strawbridge walked was high above the river and was grown with
patches of thistles, cactus, and a thin, harsh grass. Through this
wound a number of paths leading to this or that little hut. The scene
was animated with a scattering of naked brown youngsters who played
silently and seriously after the manner of Latin children. They almost
blended with their background of sand and adobe.

As the drummer walked through this quaint place, an old woman, with her
apron full of charcoal, came out of a little shop. She hobbled along a
path, evidently meaning to intercept the American. Her intention became
so obvious that he stopped and waited for her.

"Can I do anything for you, _vieja_?" he inquired, running a hand into
his pocket.

The old creature crossed herself with her free hand.

"May the Holy Virgin guard you, señor!"

The sick man got out a centavo, but to his surprise the crone did not
extend her palm.

"_Señor Americano_" she whispered, "when do I get my Josefa back!"

The question sounded so pointless that Strawbridge thought she must be
slightly unbalanced.

"Your Josefa, señora?"

She pointed with a trembling hand.

"The poor _joven_ you sent to La Fortuna, señor."

The drummer was nonplussed. She seemed to be rational; indeed, she had
shrewd wrinkled eyes and a high-bridged, aristocratic nose. She might
have been a kind of dowdy dowager.

"_I_ sent a youth to La Fortuna, señora!"

She glanced up at the yellow-green sky.

"Holy San Pablo! Has he forgot! Is it so little to him, that he forgets
my poor boy Josefa, the _dependiente_ in 'Sol y Sombra,' whom he loaded
with irons and hid away in La Fortuna!"

The drummer regarded the old creature with troubled surprise to find
that she was connected with the unhappy clerk in "Sol y Sombra."
Indeed, he had almost forgot the incident of the little monkey-eyed
clerk; or at least it no longer disturbed him. The battle of San
Geronimo had somehow cut a gap in his life, and all things antecedent
to it seemed in a remote past. Now this woman had abruptly crossed
the gap, and had bound one of the keenest indiscretions of his old
life with his new. Somewhere under the black hulk of La Fortuna, which
glowered against the sunset, Josefa still existed. Strawbridge felt
that thrill of discomfort which a sportsman feels when a quail flutters
in his coat hours after it should have died. He hardly knew what to
say. Finally he asked:

"Are you Josefa's mother!"

"His grandmother, señor. He lived with me, but when he fell into
misfortune, I had to give up my house, and Father Benicio found me a
place here in the cathedral, to scrub the brasses. I live in the third
_casa_ yonder, under the transept." She pointed it out, and, from her
tone, the little hut seemed part of her griefs.

She stood looking at Strawbridge expectantly, evidently waiting for him
to do or say something. He grew more and more uncomfortable. He put his
hand irresolutely into his pocket and drew out some coins, regarded
them doubtfully, and made a suggestive movement toward the crone. She
held out an old hand, raw in places from her unaccustomed work in the
cathedral.

"When do I get my boy back, señor!" she repeated in a low tone.

"Señora, ... I don't know."

"You do not know when you are going to sack La Fortuna!" Her whisper
was astonished.

"I ... sack La Fortuna!"

"_Seguramente_, señor! Lubito said you had all your plans laid. He said
you had men everywhere, ready to leap upon Canalejos at a word from
you; that you would set all the prisoners free and put the tyrants in
their own dungeons. But he said you were a North American, and that
when you gained power you would not oppress the people as General Miedo
and General Fombombo did."

Strawbridge was annoyed and a little anxious at this continual bobbing
up of the bull-fighter's gossip.

"Look here," he said. "Lubito is going to get me into serious trouble,
spreading that sort of rumor."

"Oh, no, señor! the peons never betray the _hombre_ who comes to fight
their battles. No one spoke a word when General Miedo marched against
Canalejos. He was in the city before _he_"--she nodded toward the
palace--"knew a breath of it. No one will speak against you. Lubito has
arranged everything. The whole town will rise up when you lift your
sword. I shall be happy, señor, when you stand _him_--" another nod at
the palace--"in front of the rifles."

Strawbridge was shocked at her bloodthirstiness. And he saw that
nothing he could say would shake her in her delusion. And why should he
shake her? Why not let her draw any comfort she could from an imaginary
revenge? He promised to do what he could for Josefa, and started on for
the palace.

That evening Strawbridge did not sit with the señora on the piazza.
Their plan to elope had made the lovers chary of being seen together.
The drummer sat in his room and from his window watched the vestiges
of sunset darken into night. He was ill, and the reaction after all of
his walking and talking and love-play with the señora made him weary
and despondent. Thoughts of Josefa and the old charwoman bedeviled
him. Through his window he could see the dark reproach of La Fortuna
blotting out the residual umber in the east. Somewhere in that pile
Josefa lay manacled because he, Thomas Strawbridge, had conceived a
hardware display for "Sol y Sombra." The salesman got up and moved
about his room in weary restlessness. In his thoughts he cursed the
country. He recalled Rosales standing before the firing-squad; the
little Austrian operator whom Saturnino had corrupted; the centaurism
of General Fombombo. It was the country: there was something about this
country that got a man. Then there insinuated itself into his reverie
the fact that he himself was planning to elope with the dictator's wife.

Strawbridge's thinking stopped abruptly and he stood staring at
nothingness, with widened eyes. He did not want to yield to wickedness.
He wanted to stay decent. And even as he was thinking these things a
profound justification arose in his mind. It was his duty to deliver an
unhappy woman from such a mad, immoral land. It was his duty and his
deepest desire. He had the widest license to protect her that any man
could possess: he loved her.

But as to the others--there was something about this country that got a
man.




CHAPTER XXII


The next morning Strawbridge awoke with a brisk feeling that some
important and happy event was pressing into his life. The sight of his
roll of canvas, packed and ready to go, and the bundle of cassava bread
gave substance to his mood. He felt stronger than he had since his
sickness. No doubt the caresses of the Spanish girl had infused vigor
into his big body. He sat up on the side of his bed, pushed his feet
into alpargatas, and then got up and went flapping into his bath-room.
He got out of his pajamas and walked carefully down the slippery steps
of his marble bath, turned the key in the silver nozzle overhead,
and stood gratefully in the faintly cool shower. It was his first
self-performed ablution since his sickness, and when he had finished he
set about the ticklish experiment of toweling himself with the aid of
his wounded hand. He managed a very light friction without pain, and
this pleased him keenly. His big body was growing softly pinkish again.
He ran his good hand along the slight growth of hair on his chest
and down the curve of his abdomen with the frank narcissism most men
possess and which the thought of marriage enhances.

To-night he and the señora would embark on the most tinglingly romantic
adventure of their lives. At the thought his heart began to beat. She
was only a little way from him at that moment, only a few doors distant.

He went back into his room and began touchy efforts to dress himself.
He did his underclothes well enough, but his socks were troublesome
because his feet were still faintly damp. Suddenly, through some
compulsion, he dropped this task midway, jabbed his feet into
alpargatas again, stood up, and looked out the window. He did not know
what had prompted him. In the gray light he saw the slender figure of a
nun passing from the palace to the cathedral.

The sight filled the drummer with an extraordinary turbulence. He made
a step toward the window and called to her sotto voce. She did not
hear, and he drew an intake of breath on the verge of calling more
loudly, but the caution of lovers silenced him. After all, why should
he call her? He stood watching her, repressing the imperative which
had moved him to attract her attention. He did not even know what he
had meant to say. His excitement calmed him a little, and even amused
him. He pressed his face against the window bars and watched her as far
as he possibly could, until the ornamental evergreen with its tassels
concealed her from his eyes. Then he turned back to his toilet, with a
faint sense of deprivation.

Only then did the drummer think definitely that the señora was going to
early mass and confession. In a few minutes she would enter the little
double stall in the cathedral and would whisper through the aperture,
into the ear of a priest.

The thought brought him a pang, and that, perhaps, was the reason of
his distress at her going. He had instinctively wanted her not to go.
In the confessional Dolores would whisper of their passionate moment
in the music-room; she would lay bare every nook and corner of her
heart. The thought of any other human being knowing what was in her
heart filled him with a vague jealousy. The idea grew into a mysterious
and painful emotion. He could not get rid of it. The priest would
explore the señora's heart more intimately than he. And he saw no end
to such conditions. He could never get as close to Dolores as could
her spiritual adviser. One day, no doubt, she would hold him in her
arms, she would give him all that she was, and yet somewhere within
the woman's soul would remain privacies which he, her wistful and
passionate lover, could never know. Such a reservation filled him with
a kind of despair. He felt that in the holiest places of her soul he
must remain a stranger. The man's self-torture brought sweat to his
face.

He went back to his dressing, but kept glancing through the window,
watching for the girl's return. He recalled that he had set his watch
with the señora's. He got it from under his pillow and looked at
it. The hour was eleven minutes after five. In seventeen hours and
forty-nine minutes he and Dolores would be out on the rapids in the
night. It seemed to him as if everything were waiting for that hour to
come. The whole mechanism of day and night tapered to this event. A
little quiver went through him.

In the east the sun must have cut the horizon, for behind the cathedral
and the prison spread a pale-gold fan. From the top of the prison came
the flash of a cannon dimly picked out, like the flare of a firefly
against the light. Two seconds later came the flat crash as if some
power had delivered a terrific blow and had lapsed instantly into
silence. It advertised the dictator's will over the llanos. The drummer
looked at the prison against the east, with his old feeling of dismay.

The stir and rattle of early morning brushed away this unhappy
impression. Came a tap at his door, and the _griffe_ girl brought in
his coffee. She still wore her air of suppressed but joyous excitement,
and presently volunteered the whispered information that the señora had
not as yet returned from early mass.

"She is usually back by this time." She nodded.

"Wonder what's keeping her," said Strawbridge, as naturally as he could.

"I do wonder," echoed the maid, turning, with her silver urn in her
hand, to look through the window.

The drummer felt an impulse to talk to the girl about his coming
adventure. It was clear that she knew all about it, but he decided
regretfully not to. It would be imprudent. The maid stood close to the
window now, looking at an angle into the plaza. Suddenly she began
jiggling up and down.

"Oh, there she is! I see her black gown coming through the shrubs!"

Strawbridge knew that he ought to remain sipping his coffee, but he
jumped up and strode over to the girl's side. The two stood with their
heads almost together, getting glimpses of the black gown through
the shrubbery. The little maid unconsciously caught and squeezed
Strawbridge's arm.

"Oh, isn't she the sweetest, dearest señora! Oh señor, isn't she lovely
and beautiful and just too sweet!" The little servant was caught
up in a paroxysm of a woman's love for lovers. She might have been
Strawbridge himself glowing over his sweetheart; or perhaps it is truer
to say that she was glowing toward him through the vicarious love of
her mistress. In the midst of it her spirits suddenly fell.

"_Cá!_" she pouted. "It's Father Benicio!"

Her disappointment was so intense that the drummer laughed. He patted
her rubbery shoulder.

"Oh, well, that doesn't destroy the señora completely," and in good
spirits he finished his thimbleful of coffee.

The maid went out with the coffee things and left Strawbridge standing
at the window with a feeling of well-being. The romance surrounding
the way he would gain his wife moved him pleasantly. It reminded him
somewhat of the film he had seen in Keokuk called "Maid in Mexico."
At the time he had thought such a romance impossible, and yet he had
vaguely wished that some such thing might happen to him. And now that
the fact that his own life had fallen into lines rather resembling that
cheap melodrama, profoundly increased his pleasure in this passing
moment at the window. So, American slap-stick movies found a remote
justification.


The drummer was brought out of his reverie by a rustling of skirts in
the passageway and a tap at his door. His thoughts instantly warmed to
the señora and in a low tone he called to her to enter. He moved toward
the door, with a fancy to take her into his arms and kiss her. When the
door opened, Father Benicio entered. Then the American recalled that
Dolores was still at the cathedral.

Strawbridge, rather curious as to what had brought the priest here,
pushed forward a chair, and chose one for himself. He pulled his around
so he could see out at the window. Then he drew his cigar-case and
offered it. The father accepted a cigar and rolled it gently between
his thin fingers.

"How is your business, Señor Strawbridge?" he inquired casually.

The drummer was surprised. This was the first time a Venezuelan had
ever volunteered the topic of business. He lighted a wax match and held
it to his cigar.

"Why, ... so-so," he answered in a muffled voice, out of the corner of
his mouth. And he got his cigar going.

"Will you sell as many rifles as you hoped?"

Strawbridge looked at the end of his weed to see if it was burning
smoothly.

"Think not. You see, the capture of San Geronimo has given the general
a large number of rifles. They're out of date, of course, but then ...
you know this country."

Father Benicio nodded paternally.

"A little behind the times in warfare, as in everything else. However,
Señor Strawbridge, if I can bring my influence to bear in any way to
promote your interest, I hope you will not hesitate to call on me."

The drummer was genuinely touched.

"Why, thanks, Father Benicio; I appreciate that."

The priest gave a rather bloodless smile.

"I am glad to assist you because, if you will allow me to say it, your
sincerity of purpose deserves assistance. I have always admired the
enterprise you North Americans exhibit. For instance, I cannot think of
any other man than a North American who would have the moral courage
to put by every incentive to misuse his position for his own personal
advancement, and remain true to his employers."

The American blew out a puff of smoke, removed and looked at his cigar,
and said in a tone that varied by a hair from his normal hearty voice:

"That's a very nice compliment, Father; I hope I am worthy of it."

"I am sure you are. You know there are so many temptations, in
this country, into which a man can fall and forsake his business
obligations."

Strawbridge drew thoughtfully at his cigar.

"Well, ... yes, probably so." Back of this by-play he felt a little
uncomfortable with the suspicion that Dolores had told the priest
of their proposed flight. If so, here was still another person in
Canalejos who knew of it.

Father Benicio did not answer at once, but sat for perhaps half a
minute gazing out into the plaza; his silence showed the priest did
mean something very personal and intimate in his general remarks.
Presently he began again:

"Your company sends you out at a great deal of expense, Señor
Strawbridge. Your employers place high confidence in you. In fact,
have you ever stopped to think that the commanding position of
Anglo-Saxon commerce in the world is founded directly upon the devoted
self-sacrifice of its agents, just such men as you? There is a moral
solidarity among the English peoples, Señor Strawbridge, which I should
like very well indeed to see in my own people."

It was very evident to the drummer that he was about to receive what
traveling salesmen call a "bawling out." He knew the priest meant to
"bawl him out" about Dolores. And he considered quickly what line of
resistance to take. In the meantime the father talked on, smoothly and
sympathetically:

"And, Señor Strawbridge, I am a priest. I am, I trust, a vicar of God
to all mankind." He crossed himself. "And if I, as a priest, could help
you over any little obstacle in your path, I should be deeply pleased.
If you could frankly discuss with me any little difficulty that may
have come into your life--I mean ethical difficulty; some clash between
your private desires, for instance, and the duty you owe to the company
which sent you here...."

Strawbridge reddened at this very clear statement that the priest
knew everything, and he answered in the rather flat tones of nascent
irritation:

"Really, Father Benicio, there is no clash whatever between ... er ...
anything I propose to do and my business duties."

"I am glad to hear you say that, my son?" But the sentence was an
interrogation.

The drummer remained silent. He did not mean to discuss with Father
Benicio his affairs with the señora. He smoked stolidly, staring into
the green and gold of the plaza. The early morning sunshine gave it a
tender glow. The cleric placed his unlighted cigar gently on the edge
of the table, and did not pick it up any more.

"Whom I am really thinking about, Señor Strawbridge, is my daughter,
Dolores Avilon Fombombo."

Strawbridge frowned slightly as if at some disagreeable flavor in his
tobacco.

"Did she go and tell you everything?"

"Naturally, señor. What else could she do?"

The drummer flung his head about and looked at the father.

"Good Lord! in a case like this--" He broke off abruptly. "Well, what
are you going to do about it?"

"I? Nothing. I advised my daughter not to do this rash thing which you
and she contemplate."

"Rash! After six years of insult and abuse!"

The priest bent his head gravely.

"_Sí_, señor, very rash and very wicked."

The big salesman straightened in his chair and with outraged eyes
regarded the cleric.

"Wicked! How do you get that answer? Wicked to get rid of an empty
marriage? Call that wicked? For Dolores to leave a man who shows by
every move he makes that he doesn't give a damn about her! Don't your
reason tell you it would be damn sight wickeder for her to remain in
such a shameful connection with a man she detests?"

Father Benicio sat measuring the salesman, with small black eyes.

"Do you gauge shame and honor and duty purely by the personal pleasure
one receives in obeying one's vows and obligations, Señor Strawbridge?"

"I'm not measuring anything. I'm stating facts."

"Does it cease to be your duty to attend to the business of your
company, merely because it would be pleasanter to run off with your
customer's wife?"

The drummer lifted a hand and laid it flat on the table.

"Look here, you can cut out that line of talk. She's not his wife. He's
given her up. And, besides, folks do marry to make life pleasanter on
the whole. Yes, they do. You know they do. And if their life on the
whole is unpleasanter after marriage than before, why, then they've
failed. They are not a going concern. They are not declaring any
dividends, and the only thing to do is to quit; to get a divorce and
quit."

Father Benicio sat reflecting on this to such an extent that
Strawbridge thought he had convinced him, by mere power of argument;
however, at last the priest began again:

"But, Señor Strawbridge, there are some duties which you will always
perform at great inconvenience and even pain to yourself. These duties
are not what you could call dividend-bearing duties. They will never
pay you anything; they will always bring loss and pain and yet ... you
do them."

"What sort of duties are you talking about?" asked the drummer,
suspiciously.

"Well, ... your business obligations to your house."

"But I tell you that isn't in this. The order's gone--"

"But if it were, and in the midst of your enterprise you were moved
to desert your firm by some sharp and sudden passion, which, if you
resisted, would cause you pain as long as your memory held its seat,
still ... would you not stand by your obligations? My son, when I look
at you, I believe you would."

Strawbridge started to speak, then paused to clear his throat.

"Look here, Father, that's different. When it comes to business--"

"But business is only a duty, an obligation among other obligations."

"Yes, I know; but you see, business depends on team-work. A hundred, a
thousand, a million other men are in the game with you. You can't lay
down on your own crowd. Why--good Lord!--if we all got to laying down
when we liked, the whole commerce of America would go bluey!"

The priest smiled faintly and kindly.

"So you will stand by business coöperation at expense to yourself, but
not social coöperation, or spiritual coöperation?"

"About the last two--" the drummer shook a finger--"I don't know."

"Now let us see," said the priest, evidently becoming more
comfortable. "You owed your time to your company. Why did you not spend
your time with the general, trying to get an order, instead of with the
general's wife?"

"I did try to, but he wouldn't talk business, and that's the only kind
of talk I can talk with a man. When I talk anything besides business
or politics, it's got to be with a woman. Then when I saw how badly
treated the señora was--why, any man with a spark of manhood--"

"Would assist her," finished the priest. "But do you think it fair or
honest to your employers to give up their business in order to rectify
wrongs which don't concern you? And was there as much suffering as
you fancied? You found things here exactly as they had been for six
years. It was a status quo, a method of existence, and then you came in
and broke it all up. You persuaded a frail girl into the belief that
happiness lies not in following the law of God but in yielding to her
impulses and passion."

"Well, she will probably get happiness that way. Most women do. At
least, she'll have a chance. If a woman's first marriage is a failure,
maybe she'll have better luck next time."

"But you say, yourself, one ought not to break business obligations."

"Sure not!"

"Don't you think vows taken before God are as binding as a trade
between an employer and a salesman?"

Strawbridge shook his shoulders in irritation.

"Oh, damn it! you twist everything to suit yourself! I don't know
anything about this vow-to-God stuff. Business is business. As to
marriage vows, we go before a justice of the peace at home and we don't
vow to God.... Well, now, anyway, you come right down to it and, don't
you know, business _is_ the most important! You know not a thing in the
world depends on your religion. Your house doesn't depend on it for
their sales; your national trade balance stays right where it belongs,
no matter who's got religion and who hasn't. But all that sort of thing
slumps the minute you neglect business. Now, you'll excuse me for
putting the plain dope to you. I know you are a priest and all that,
and it's very seldom anybody talks plain horse-sense to a preacher. But
instead of anything depending on religion, you know and I know that if
the business interests of America should neglect the church for just
six months, why--bluey!" Mr. Strawbridge snapped his fingers, waved his
hands, and nodded, then concluded in an ordinary tone: "So it is very
important that business comes first, and then ... other things."

The priest arose slowly, turned toward the door, and then hesitated.

"Señor Strawbridge," he asked carefully, "what would you do if your
order for rifles really did depend upon your going back to New York and
leaving this unfortunate girl in peace?"

"Well, since the order has gone to the bowwows, that is out of the
question."

"But what would you do?"

"Hell! there wouldn't be but one thing to do! What makes you ask?" He
turned around and looked at the father.

The black-robed figure reached inside his cassock and drew out a
legal-sized document. It was dignified with a big red government seal.
The priest opened it with a crisp rattling and spread it on the table
before Strawbridge. It began with a sounding preamble:


     By order of his Excellency, el General Adriano Caspiano Guillermo
     Fombombo y Herrara, Constitutional President of the Free and
     Independent State of Rio Negro, Señor Don Tomas Strawbridge,
     representative of a corporation bearing the name of Orion Arms
     Corporation, located and doing business in the City of New York,
     State of New York, is hereby empowered to purchase from his said
     Company fifty thousand rifles of the caliber and specifications
     stated in the attached sheet of specifications, and a million and
     a quarter rounds of cartridges for said rifles. The same to be
     delivered f.o.b., at the steamer in the harbor of New York and to
     be billed to Senhor Dom Sebastiano Carupano in Rio de Janeiro,
     Brazil, not later than six months from the date of this order.

     JUAN DELGOA,
     _Minister of War_.


The drummer stared, open-mouthed, at the order. He licked his lips and
with a sick face looked up at the priest. His voice came thickly:

"H-how came you with this, Father?"

"I asked for it, my son."

"Does he ... does the general know ... everything?"

"I suppose so, Señor Strawbridge," said the priest, drily; "he has a
fairly competent intelligence department, and you were right here in
the _palacio_."

Strawbridge nodded numbly.

"Did ... you tell him why you wanted this?" he asked in a strained
voice.

"The general has confidence in me, señor; I simply requested the order,
and received it. You, yourself, would have received it in due time if
... you had been available."

The salesman's shoulders felt heavy. Perspiration broke out over his
face.

"Well, ... after all ... I can't accept this."

"What do you mean?"

"You kept it too long: I can't break my word to the señora."

"But it is a duty you owe your company."

"No, we made arrangements when I thought the trade was off. That
finishes this." He pushed the contract away.

The father walked over to the big drummer and laid a translucent hand
on his shoulder.

"You seem unhappy over this, Señor Strawbridge."

"My old man will think I double-crossed him--for a woman. He'll never
believe the real facts."

"My son--" Father Benicio's voice softened--"Dolores is just as
unhappy as you are. She feels just as keenly the vows which you do not
comprehend, as you feel the duties which she cannot understand. She
still says she will fly with you, even after I have reminded her of the
holy commands of the church; she will still fly with you because of her
promise; but she is very unhappy about it."

Strawbridge looked up.

"Is Dolores unhappy about ... eloping?"

"Very."

"Why--Good God!--I don't want to make her unhappy!"

"I know you don't, my son; I think there is something very high and
fine in both of you. Suppose we walk over and see Dolores, and talk it
over with her."

"Where to, Father?"

"To the cathedral. Dolores is still in the cathedral. You can have
privacy there."

The salesman got up unsteadily. The priest took his arm, and together
the two men walked out of the palace. As they passed out at the east
entrance, Strawbridge glanced down at the river. Just beneath the
piazza a little fish-boat lay moored to the bank. It had been scrubbed
and sanded until it gleamed in the sunshine, as white as a bone.


An intermezzo of thoughts danced through the drummer's head as he
accompanied the priest, for his final talk with Dolores. He began to
suspect that Father Benicio had used the order for the rifles quite as
adroitly, to separate him from the señora, as he had used the nun's
gown to withdraw the Spanish girl from the bed of General Fombombo. It
was the same kind of stratagem, the same kind of hateful cleverness in
pulling just the right strings in human beings to move them toward his
own ends.

As the two men walked toward the cathedral, Strawbridge looked at the
ascetic face of the father, the precise stock about his neck, and
his delicate fingers smoothing down the girdle of his cassock. The
drummer studied him angrily, and made mental surges to shake loose
from this order for rifles and recover his moral right to Dolores
again. Moreover, he was uneasy about the approaching interview with
the Spanish girl. He began thinking what he would say. He massed his
arguments for elopement just as he always massed his selling points
before calling on a prospective buyer. He would bring her to his side
by the verve and swing of his attack.

In the entrance of the cathedral, the priest dipped his finger in the
shell font and crossed himself. Then both men reduced their footfalls
almost to silence and moved along the left aisle in front of a row of
chapels. The drummer could half see their crosses and passions in the
dusky light of the church. Here and there, over the shadowy building,
knelt men and women at their devotions. The pleasant smell of incense
filled nave and aisles. From the high altar came the monotone of a
priest at his prayers. The ensemble softened the drummer's mood.
Involuntarily his thoughts began to throw out those filaments of
sentiment toward the past, toward the future, which religious buildings
invariably evoke. It loosened his self-centeredness. It tended to strew
his entity through time and eternity. It whispered to him that he
had not always been what he was, nor would he always be. His excited
nerves felt this influence, and he tried to resist it. He tried to
brace himself against it. He swore mentally and told himself that he
ought to stop where he was, that he ought to go no farther into this
softening, deorienting building. He tried to re-collect his arguments
for elopement.

Father Benicio was pointing.

"She is there, in the chapel of the Last Supper."

The altar of the chapel of the Last Supper was a rich dull sheen of
gold from carpet to ceiling. Strawbridge was dimly aware of a soft
harmony of color on the left wall leading to this altar. It was the
great picture which illustrates the chapel, but the drummer did not
observe this. His whole attention was concentrated on a slender black
figure which knelt before the center of the huge altar. The golden
background seemed to set forth with an exquisite pathos her sadness and
sweetness and trustfulness. Strawbridge felt a profound impulse to stop
and pick her up in his arms and bring all of her unhappiness to an end.
She had been so miserable in her loveless marriage, her lonely life in
the palace, the savage and cruel milieu into which she had been cast;
and now, just as love and opportunity had come into her life, for the
church, the church which she had clung to for succor, through all these
years--for this church to lift its hand and forbid her--that was too
much; that was more than human nature could endure!

The drummer caught the priest's arm.

"Look here, Father Benicio," he whispered shakily, "this don't go. I'm
going to take her out of here! You needn't talk. I don't give a damn
what you say; not a damn! Not a damn!" He accented each oath with a
grip in the tender place inside the priest's upper arm. Tears stung the
drummer's eyes.

Hearing the murmur, the girl turned. Her face was tremulous, and, at
the sight of the priest her poor composure gave way. She stretched out
her arms.

"Oh, Father, I ... I can't do it! Oh, kind Father, forgive me this one
great and mortal sin and I will be the meanest servant of our holy
church all the rest of my life! Good Father Benicio, you know I am no
wife! Sweet Father, do pray for me and let me go!" She caught the
priest's hand, kissing it over and over and wetting it with her tears.

"Listen here!" gulped Strawbridge. "Just go, Dolores! Why--God damn
it!--just get up and go!"

The priest made a gesture.

"Listen, my children. Let us think seriously. You are passion-torn
now, but have you not heard that he that loseth his life shall find
it? Neither of you came into the world of your own will, nor for your
own pleasure. You came in God's good time, to serve His ends for His
glory." The father crossed himself with his right hand while his left
retained the fingers of the kneeling girl.

"My dear daughter Dolores, have I not explained to you time on time the
depth and sweetness of renunciation? Only that which you renounce shall
you preserve.

"We Spaniards, my child, have always lived by a great mystical
apprehension of God through the spirit of renunciation. It is the
life-breath of the greatest nation in the world. You, my daughter, are
a Spanish woman and a Catholic communicant. It is impossible for you
to act in any other way and gain happiness. The anguish which you feel
this moment is nothing to the lifelong fires of remorse which would
burn in your heart. This moment is the parting of the ways in your
life. It is impossible for you to do aught but remain pure and faithful
and loyal."

The father paused a moment and continued:

"And this good youth who loves you, Dolores--he comes from a distant
people, and the teachings of his people are very like our own. They
instill into the hearts of their men their duty to support one another
in the market-place, just as it is the precept of us Spanish to
support one another in the temple. But with him, as with us, this is a
religion. It is the object of our renunciations. It is that for which
we deny ourselves, for which we would give our strength, our patience,
our sacrifices, our lives. If you cause this boy to break faith
with his market-place, Dolores, you will have destroyed the man you
worship. And, my dear son Tomas, if you take away from Dolores the holy
sacraments which support her life, you can never have one unsullied
caress from the woman you adore. How well I know it is not in your
hearts to blast and destroy each other!"

Father Benicio looked with sad eyes at the lovers. Then he lifted the
cross which hung about his neck, and concluded solemnly:

"Now may the Holy Saints guard and direct you, my most dear children,
and lead you into paths of final peace and happiness." He made the sign
of the cross above their heads, turned, and moved silently from the
chapel.

The drummer stood mute near the altar where the girl knelt. In his
heart he acknowledged the rightness of the priest. He essayed some
clumsy words to express what he felt.

"Dolores," he whispered, "do you think?... Is what the father said?...
I don't mean myself; I mean you.... It doesn't make any difference
about me, but ... oh, Dolores!..."

The girl was pallid but quite composed. She seemed to be staring into
some far distance with her slightly unfocused eyes.

"_Sí_, señor," she whispered, with a long exhalation, "Father Benicio
is a very wise man."

Above the two on the left wall of the chapel shone the sad radiance
of Michelena's "Last Supper." In the center of the picture stands the
Christ, and behind him, seen through the archway of an open window,
gleams the soft radiance of a moonlit landscape. The rising moon forms
a halo for his head. He is breaking the bread and giving it to his
apostles to eat; to James and Jude, to Peter and Thomas, and to John,
his beloved. And as he giveth it he sayeth unto them, "This is my body
which ye eat, and this cup, which I give ye to drink, is my blood."




CHAPTER XXIII


Father Benicio had, as men say, convinced the head of Thomas
Strawbridge but not his heart. As the drummer moved about his room in
the palace, packing his belongings, the thought of resigning Dolores,
on whatever moral grounds, filled him with a sense of ghastly loss. The
thing seemed impossible. It seemed unbelievable that Dolores was in
an adjoining room, and that presently he would go away and they would
never see each other again.

He went on with his packing, mechanically, with a kind of shocked
sensation at this impossible thing. His hands did their work with the
meticulous care of a traveling salesman, a part of whose trade is to
pack well. He folded each tie, shirt, sock precisely so, arranging them
in his suitcases in smooth layers, with their accessibility determined
by their frequency of use.

At Father Benicio's suggestion, Strawbridge was moving his quarters
from the palace to the priests' house in the rear of the cathedral. It
would save the lovers the pain and stress of seeing each other daily,
so the father explained, and Strawbridge was going. He would remain
with the ecclesiastic until the flotilla arrived, and then he would
embark for Rio with the gold and barter which had been conscripted in
San Geronimo.

The _griffe_ girl helped him in his packing. She assisted where his
wounded hand failed. She knelt on his bags and pulled home their
straps. For some time the two worked silently, then the servant broke
into sounds that resembled low, quick laughter. The drummer looked
at her with a feeling of dull reproach, when he perceived that this
was her method of sobbing. Her sympathy unmanned the convalescent. He
touched her shoulder as she worked beside him, and said in uncertain
tones:

"Don't cry, _chica_; it's all right; it's for the best; it's all for
the best." And his sympathy, reacting on her, drove the little creature
into more uncontrollable outbursts than ever.

Half an hour later the porters came for his bags. He possessed five
bags, and five men were conscripted to carry them. They filed into the
palace and stood for a moment looking at the room, at Strawbridge, at
the bags, evidently speculating on the size of their gratuities. Then
they hoisted the bags atop their dirty red caps and moved single file
out through the corridor, down the transverse gallery, and so through
the side entrance toward the plaza.

As one of the palace guards closed the door behind them, Strawbridge
lingered a moment, looking back at it. His mood invested the door with
something unusual. It seemed to have developed a personality of its
own. It closed him out definitely. It shut in Dolores. Its finality
swamped an irrational hope which, until that moment, Strawbridge was
not conscious had existed in his heart. Until that very moment he
had hoped for some unexpected event to occur which would prevent his
final departure. He did not know what he had expected, but something,
somehow, a softening, an amelioration.... The bolts of the palace door
rattled noisily into place.

The porters moved slowly away, single file, through the sunshine. The
drummer turned and followed them. He thought of the priest, of the
priest's homily, but nevertheless as he walked along there grew in his
mind a feeling of guilt, of some sort of basal unrighteousness. He
ought not to do this thing--walk away and leave Dolores like this. It
was a kind of desertion. During his stay at the palace both he and the
girl had come to base their whole structure of future happiness upon
their mutual relations. Now he was judging and condemning them both,
the half judging the whole.

And it was more than Dolores whom he was banning. The Spanish girl had
come to imply to him a home. He was deserting that, too. It was no
such home as the salesman had ever known. As child and boy he had been
reared in the hurly-burly of a middle-class home in Keokuk, wherein he
found the bustle of a market stall. It was a place of endless work and
tasks and runnings to and fro. He had supposed homes to be by nature
rattling and bustling, until Dolores and her Latin surroundings brought
to him intimations of a place of quietude and sweetness such as he had
never imagined.

Strawbridge had been, as they say, in love before. But his American
sweethearts always suggested to him comrades in sport, partners at a
dance, fellow enthusiasts over moving pictures and jazz; they did not
suggest quietude, or homes, or babies. Indeed, their hotly pursued
pleasures made babies seem rather the absurd accidents of dual living
than the end of matrimony.

With Dolores Fombombo, Strawbridge felt the continual implication of
motherhood. In the tenderer moments of his passion, he built a sort
of romance home about this dark-haired woman who could read Spanish
plays and talk with curious wisdom about marriage, life, and art. These
were minor charms. In the heart of his vision always shone a picture
of Dolores with a baby at her bosom. He always saw, as clearly as in a
hallucination, the soft contours of her breast yearning to its little
pink mouth, and the bend of her dark crowned head above its dimpled
tininess. It was this and all the long covenant of grandchildren and
great-grandchildren which Strawbridge was abandoning as he passed
through the side exit of the palace, and the doors shut to and the
bolts shot fast, after him.

The salesman walked slowly after his porters, around the public
gardens, to the priests' house. He was a drummer again. Once more he
had lapsed into the raw, nomadic life of a traveling salesman, with its
hurry, its careless and casual acquaintances, its mechanical optimism,
its worn jests, its empty routine, its devastating dullness, and its
petty obscenities. In point of fact, he was a wealthy drummer, one
who at a lucky stroke had sold a large order and had gained a swollen
commission. He was rich enough now to buy the home and the motor and
the woman which he had described to Dolores.


The priests' house was the largest and finest of that proliferation of
buildings which clung about the skirts of the cathedral. It was two
stories in height, and built of stone. Its flat roof reached to about
one third of the height of the cathedral walls. The motif of the green
carving over the big double door was a cross. A horse and cab always
stood in the sunshine before the house, for the use of his Grace the
Bishop, Father Honario. Almoners and donors came and went, all day
long, to and from the priests' house. Here the bishopric received fees
from the rents of ecclesiastical properties, tithes, the church taxes,
endowments for masses, and what not. It was a clearing-house for the
ghostly ministrations which the priests performed in the parish; it was
the go-between twixt the market-place and the millennium.

The look of the house managed to convey an impression of this dual
service. Its façade was a flat, dignified stone, plastered in yellow
and relieved by the single dull-green carving over the door. The
windows were small, barred, and as unrevealing as the face of the
priests themselves. The place had, somehow, a look of wealth and
penance. One felt that dignitaries and beggars, pain and pleasure,
death and riches were received with an equal hand in this imperturbable
house. The most casual glance told that no woman lived within its
walls.

Strawbridge rang the bell, and his porters lined up patiently in the
sunshine. An old man with a twist in his neck opened the door, glanced
obliquely at the visitors, and inquired what was wanted. Strawbridge
gave the name of Father Benicio. The wry-necked one nodded, and closed
the door, and Strawbridge could hear him shuffling down the hall. The
sick man stood silently in the heat outside the enigmatic façade. At
a faint clinking he looked around and saw the cab-horse swinging its
head for a momentary riddance of flies. The drummer continued gazing
vacantly at the swarming pests as they resettled in the corners of the
horse's eyes and on the sag of its tremulous lips.

The door opened and Father Benicio stood to one side to allow the file
to enter. The porters got under way patiently. The priest spoke to
Strawbridge, in the tones one uses to a man who has suffered some great
calamity. He told him his room was ready and that he hoped the drummer
would feel that the bishopric was his own home.

The priest led the way through a short passage, to an interior doorway.
This gave on a large, hot room screened off from a patio. Through an
open door on the left, Strawbridge saw a large, somberly furnished room
with an altar occupying one end and on the side walls old-fashioned
paintings of men in ecclesiastical garb. He followed the priest past
this door and along a very narrow passage flanked on both sides by
small monastic cubicles. Into one of these the father ushered the
drummer. Its interior was finished in roughly dressed stone covered
with plaster. An iron bed, an unpainted table, bowl, pitcher, and an
extra calabash of water for bathing furnished the cubicle. Over the bed
hung a little bronze crucifix with a half-burned candle in a sconce
under it. One narrow window, set high and deeply recessed in the stone
wall, and with the flat iron bars of a prison across it, furnished
light and air.

As the porters set down the bags, they crossed themselves, and they
reverently bowed and kissed the father's hand as they passed out. When
they were gone the American stood in the middle of the floor, looking
grayly at his new quarters. He smiled faintly at the priest.

"This is a funny place for me to come to, Father Benicio."

"I hope you may find peace here, my son."

"Why, ... ye-e-s ..." assented Strawbridge, vaguely. The words lingered
in his thoughts a moment. "Find peace...." The phrase really held no
signification for him. Weary from his exertions, the sick man sat down
on the side of the bed. When he touched the mattress he was surprised
to find it stuffed with straw.

"That," explained his host, gravely, "is to remind us of One who was
born in a manger, my son." He glanced toward the crucifix and bowed his
head.

The drummer looked at the little bronze carving and the half-burned
candle below it. The world of thought and emotion which the image
symbolized was utterly foreign to him. Now this supporting symbol
of the straw in his bed aroused in him a faint curiosity. He put a
question to the priest, with the simplicity of his kind:

"You talking about this bringing me peace.... How can it bring anybody
peace? What's the idea?"

Father Benicio answered him just as simply and fundamentally:

"You must know that Christ died for your sins, my son."

"M--y-e-s," admitted the American, without conviction. He had
heard that phrase all his life, from Salvation Army workers, from
revivalists, from country preachers. It seemed to him to be something
they interjected into their homilies at intervals, which meant nothing
at all.

Father Benicio stood studying the drummer. He went on carefully:

"Now that you are so deeply hurt, my son, you can carry your wounds to
Him in meditation and have them healed. You remember that He healed the
maimed, the halt, and the blind on the shores of Galilee. He forgave
the woman of Samaria. He is just as great and merciful at this moment,
my son, here in this cubicle, as He was two thousand years ago. If you
will only break your heart before Him, if you will acknowledge yourself
sinful and unworthy, then the blessed saints will take away your
griefs, and into your heart will descend the dove."

To Strawbridge this mysticism was simple confusion. Doves and broken
hearts--they conveyed no idea whatever. He said to the priest:

"I don't see what my sinfulness has to do with the señora. Anyway, I am
not particularly sinful. Outside of smoking and cursing ... I do curse
a good deal, but it is just a way I have. I don't mean anything by it."

"I know you do not steal nor commit perjury, Señor Strawbridge, and
your profanity is perhaps venial, but you were about to commit a mortal
sin; and, to judge from your state of mind, I believe you have already."

"I have already what?"

"Surrendered yourself to the desires of your body."

The drummer's voice became instantly angry:

"With the señora?"

Father Benicio held up a hand.

"I should loathe to think that. In fact, it would be impossible for
me to think it. I have known Dolores for years, as her confessor. God
in His providence has seen fit to visit her sweetness and gentleness
with great distresses...." The priest's voice wavered. For a moment he
ceased talking, and then explained simply: "I meant you had received
other women into your life, Señor Strawbridge."

Strawbridge laid his hands down in his lap and moistened his lips. The
silence became uncomfortable.

"Well, ... yes ... naturally."

"You have persistently sinned."

"Oh, I ... I haven't been so bad about women," defended the drummer,
earnestly; "just one now and then. I'm willing to put my record against
most men's. I think you'd say I was a pretty decent sort of chap."

The priest looked at him.

"You seduced a woman now and then--and don't think you have sinned...."

Strawbridge had an uncomfortable feeling that his face was growing hot.

"They were not the sort you _seduce_," he accented in annoyance; "they
were the sort you pay. I wouldn't seduce any girl who ... who was a
virgin. That ... that would be a little too bad."

He was trembling internally. Under the priest's questioning there
gradually compiled within him a sense of guilt. It was an extraordinary
feeling. For years at a stretch he had never once thought of his
goodness or his badness. Now, in Strawbridge's ache for the señora, the
priest brought up this utterly irrelevant and painful experience. The
ascetic, however, continued to regard the drummer gravely.

"It seems to me, my son, if you thought your acts were harmless
heretofore, yet surely, in the light of your affection for Doña Dolores
Fombombo, you must see that you have lived sinfully. Do you not know
that at heart these women whom you paid were much like the señora,
only they were weaker, and tread bitterer paths? Is there any real
difference between giving a woman her first stain, and giving her the
last pollution that destroys her! If you can imagine the señora flung
about the streets, defiled, mocked, and paid for, do you think she
would be any more pitiful than any other woman? A human soul is a human
soul, my dear son."

A distressful feeling arose in Strawbridge at this renaissance of
his transgressions. For some reason the priest's words aroused with
painful distinctness the memory of his first impurity. It had been with
a hoyden, boyish girl with whom he had been skating at dusk on the
cement walks in the park. He recalled the heavy syringa bushes, and how
suddenly she had begun to cry, and how frightened and ashamed he had
been. He remembered how he took off his skates because they made too
much noise, and hurried silently home by back alleys, under a profound
sense of shame and guilt. And that girl had been a virgin. He had
deceived the priest. Now, as he sat on his bed in the cubicle, he felt
a renewal of all the shame and guiltiness occasioned by that distant
act of his boyhood. He wondered fearfully what had become of Daisy.
He could see her distinctly, sitting on the grass, twisting her hands
together and sobbing heartbrokenly for the evil which had befallen her.

Father Benicio stood watching his face during these melancholy memories.

"When you reflect on these transgressions, my son, then you will thank
God a hundred times that you escaped leading the woman you love into a
life of adultery."

"But, Father," asked Strawbridge, unsteadily, "what is going to become
of her!"

"What do you mean!"

"I mean, in this land of murder and crime what will become of Dolores?"

"Ah, my son, that lies with God." The priest crossed himself.

"Yes, I know, but...." To Strawbridge the priest's phrase meant it lay
with chance, that nothing watched over the Spanish girl, but he could
not profess such a sentiment to Father Benicio.

"She will be safe, my son."

"Are you sure, Father?"

"I am quite sure, my son."

"But something could so easily happen to her. Everything is so
uncertain here. You continually feel that it is all going to ruin. Why,
in San Geronimo I saw women shot--shot down. I saw a girl killed in her
window. How in God's name am I going away and leave Dolores where--"

"Stop! Do you think yourself more powerful than God? Do you doubt He
can protect her body if it pleases Him? Or if He chose to lay her body
aside, would she not be still more safe?"

The priest's earnestness and simplicity brought Strawbridge a brief
illusion that life did not end with his body, but that it stretched out
in some mysterious sunshine beyond the physical facts of Canalejos, of
Rio Negro, and, indeed, of the whole world. The bodies of men and women
had an appearance of shells which contained reality and timelessness.
And as for Dolores's body, that was a small and a passing thing.

Father Benicio moved toward the door, and again invoked Strawbridge to
meditation and repentance. When the priest had vanished, the drummer's
apprehension of the other world lingered a few minutes like a mirage;
then it too disappeared. The sins which Father Benicio had recalled
so vividly and which he had counseled Strawbridge to meditate upon
presently faded into subconsciousness as having no connection with his
present life, and his thoughts came back to Dolores.

For some time these thoughts held no definition, but formed a vague,
miserable mood, with the señora as the central association.

The American restlessly pulled his straw bolster to the foot of the
bed, lay back on it with his legs hanging off, and gave himself up to
staring at the little bronze Christ and the candle. The crucifix held
dull high lights which focused his gaze.

Presently he found himself reconstructing his whole intercourse with
the señora, from the very first night they had met. He wondered what he
could have done to save their relations from this shattering wreck. It
all appeared natural and inevitable.


It seemed to Strawbridge that their undoing really began with
Dolores, when she confessed their plans to the priest. The American
had had an idea that a priest merely heard a confession and remained
entirely inactive; just as one might drop a note in a letter-box,
that would end the matter; but Father Benicio had acted promptly and
with extraordinary insight. He had seized on exactly the implement
to persuade the drummer. Only now did Strawbridge realize how astute
the priest had been in hitting on the rifles. The drummer pulled his
bolster, to give his head a cool place to lie on. He drew a deep sigh,
and began once more at his point of departure, searching for a flaw in
his conduct. The meeting ... the breakfast ... the piazza.... Here his
brain skipped an interval, and he wondered if he could not have eloped
with the señora and still have obtained the order for rifles. He took
the point up carefully. The dictator needed the arms; Dolores was a
matter of indifference to the dictator. He would hardly have allowed
her abduction to stand in the way of a trade.

The drummer began casting about in his mind for a safe way in which
he might have abducted the señora and still have sold the rifles.
The Tollivers might have helped him. If he and Dolores had been able
to reach the English ranch, they could have slipped into federal
territory while George Tolliver negotiated the trade. Strawbridge
moved his pillow restlessly, and wondered why he had not done that. He
lay thinking hard, with his eyes fixed on the shining points of the
crucifix.

Lubito had been a possibility. If Strawbridge had explained everything
to Lubito, with the bull-fighter's help he could have pushed the
whole matter through during the afternoon before, instead of waiting
over-night and allowing Dolores to trap them by a confession to the
priest. With Lubito they could have fled to San Geronimo, and the
torero could have brought back a letter arranging the order for rifles.
But because he had not thought of these simple expedients, he would
have to travel to the ends of the earth, while she, the woman he loved
and who loved him, would be kept by the dictator to shame, or to use,
as he saw fit.

The drummer writhed and clutched an edge of the straw mattress. He
stared with a suffering face at the crucifix. Out of the depth of his
soul he was repenting his sins. For what are sins but the mistakes
which have worked pain in a man's life? And what is repentance but
grief and a turning away from those mistakes? The only difference
between the repentance of a saint and the chagrin of a cutpurse caught
in the toils of the law, is the class of mistakes in their lives which
brings them pain, and from which, in spirit, they turn.




CHAPTER XXIV


At some point in his vigil Strawbridge must have gone to sleep,
for at some other point he awoke with a start. He thought that he
was in a small-town hotel, and that the night clerk had allowed
him to oversleep. He reached out, expecting to touch a chairful of
clothes, when he discovered that he was already dressed. Then in the
darkness above him he saw a lighted candle and a crucifix. Only these
two objects were visible, and they stood out, swimming in a black
immensity. They put to flight all theories of locality. He sat staring
at the candle and the cross, trying to orient himself when, eerily,
the darkness about him seemed to move, to fashion itself into his true
surroundings. He was again in a cubicle in the priests' house.

Now that he had placed himself, he knew what had aroused him. It was
his engagement to fly with the señora, which the priest had set aside.
In the profound stillness of the stone chamber he sat brooding on the
fact that on this very night he would have embarked with Dolores on the
black reaches of the Rio Negro. Perhaps he would already have started.

At the thought he fumbled beneath his pillow, drew out his watch, then
got up, pinched the shroud off the candle, and looked at the time. What
he saw was the result of the simplest psychology, but it filled the
American with a sense of the uncanny. He had waked precisely on the dot
of eleven, on the very moment of his engagement to meet the señora. The
coincidence seemed to the drummer portentous. It was a signal, from
some ghostly influence, for him to pursue his plans; why else should
he have awaked at exactly the appointed hour!

He stood beside his bed, watching the minute hand creep slowly past the
dot. He knew that at the palace Dolores also was looking at the hand
of her watch; he knew that she, too, was filled with the same violent
urgency which moved him, that her access of formal morality must, like
his own, have waned under the surge and desire of the night.

In the dim light he saw his bags which the porters had brought. He
moved across, chose the one which contained the canvas roll prepared
against his voyage, and silently opened it. He drew out the package.
His heart beat; his lips grew dry. He listened as if he were robbing
the suitcases. Once or twice he hurt his sore hand, but he hardly
noticed it. When he had his roll he looked at the watch again. It was
two minutes past eleven.

The drummer wore American shoes with rubber heels. He stepped
noiselessly into the passageway and moved toward the entrance. He saw a
dim illumination in the large room latticed off from the patio. The air
in the house was still warm. He moved forward carefully, hoping to find
no one in the faintly lighted chamber. He was perhaps half-way down
the narrow passage when suddenly a tremendous clangor filled the whole
house. It roared and boomed with gigantic reverberations. The very
walls seemed shaken with it. Strawbridge almost dropped his bundle.
It was an alarm because he had stolen out of his room. It was some
damnable device of Father Benicio, who would shock the whole city with
sound if he but moved. But a moment's saner thought told him it was the
carillon of the cathedral, ringing for some nocturnal mass.

The clangor had hardly died away in heavy, monotonous strokes when the
whole house was filled with a sense of movement--a rustling of straw
mattresses, the shuffle of alpargatas, the faintly vocalized yawns of
waking men. A little later, robed figures came out of the different
cubicles, bearing candles.

Each sleepy priest bore his candle high, so its rays fell on his
shaven poll and on the shoulders and breast of his cassock; the rest
was lost in shadows. They might have been a company of heads and
shoulders floating about in darkness. Some yawned patiently; others
stretched, rubbed their eyes, and otherwise dispelled their drowsiness.
They whispered a little among themselves, and soon an air of concern
animated the whole brotherhood.

As Strawbridge stood with his bundle, hemmed in by priests behind and
before, a hand was placed on his arm.

"Are you going into the cathedral, my son?" asked Father Benicio's
voice; "we are going to hold a mass for the dead."

The salesman was taken aback.

"For the dead?" he aspirated.

"Some one has died in La Fortuna. Father Jaíme was on watch, and he has
just seen a corpse thrown into the river."

Strawbridge was shocked; he was more deeply shocked that this thing had
happened on the very night and at the very hour when he and the señora
would have made their flight. He fancied the soldiers coming down to
the water's edge with a dead man at the moment he and the Spanish girl
were passing in their boat. What a grim precursor of their honeymoon!

"Did they murder him?" he queried.

"I don't know. He may have died of disease or as a result of former
torture."

The American moistened his lips.

To torture, to murder, to fling their victims into the river! The
horror of Rio Negro, the misery of all Venezuela jellied around the
drummer's heart.

"Are you going with us into the cathedral?" questioned the priest again.

The drummer was seized by a revulsion to all his slynesses and
unstraightforwardness.

"Why, no, Father," he said in a tired voice. "I'm going back to the
_palacio_. I can't stick it out any longer. I was just going back when
those bells broke loose and--"

"What are you going to do there, my son?" interposed the priest.

"I ... well, I'm going to try to get the señora to go with me, after
all...." He paused, looking at the father, and added with a touch of
defiance: "All this stuff about heaven and hell--that's all right
for them that like it. I don't mean to be disrespectful to any
man's religion. I was brought up to respect every faith--Christian,
Mohammedan, Buddhist. They're all all right if a man lives up to 'em,"
the American finished his strange declaration of catholicity. He felt
better now that he had told the priest of his intentions. He let his
bundle down frankly into his good hand, and nodded at the father.
"Well, good-by, and good luck. I thank you for what you tried to do for
me. I know your intentions were of the best. So long," and he turned
away.

The priest had stood perfectly still through this outburst, looking
with an impassive face at the American. Now he took a step after
Strawbridge and touched his arm.

"My son, you can't take her now," he said in a strange voice.

Something in his manner stopped the drummer, puzzled him and filled him
with a vague apprehension.

"Why?"

"She is out of your reach forever."

The drummer's eyes widened, his mouth dropped open.

"You ... you don't mean she is dead?" he whispered.

"She is to you. This afternoon she entered her novitiate as a Sister of
Mercy."

The American's bowels seemed to sag inside of him. A weak feeling
flooded his body and shook his knees.

"Dolores is going to be a nun!"

"My son, what other place was there for so bruised a heart? Only our
holy church can offer her peace."

Strawbridge stood breathing heavily through his open mouth. The priests
had formed a line, and now they were marching through a door which led
directly into the cathedral. Father Benicio bowed his head and turned
to fall into the last place in the rank. The line of candle-bearers
disappeared one by one into the dark vastitude of the cathedral.
The American stood motionless in the faintly lighted room, watching
them go. Presently from afar off he could hear the first melancholy
responses of a mass for the repose of the dead.




CHAPTER XXV


The novitiate of Dolores Fombombo was Fortune's shrewdest thrust at
Thomas Strawbridge. After that he stayed on at the priests' house
because it ceased to make any difference to him where he domiciled. He
spent most of his days there with the priests, sitting in the patio or
lying on his straw bed in the cubicle. Now and then, when he saw his
bags, he would think to himself, "I ought to take some samples and my
order-book and canvass this town again." At other times he would think,
"I ought to write a report to my house." But his feeling of "oughtness"
applied to a perfectly empty motor-impulse for execution. It was
precisely as if he were a figure without any will whatsoever.

Strangely, he did not think over-much of Dolores. Occasionally, when
his mind made a movement toward her, he had a terrifying feeling as if
some chasm were opening before him. Then, almost immediately, it seemed
as if his brain closed gently shut, the chasm vanished, and with it all
thought of the girl. To say that he grieved for her would be untrue. He
had been numbed.

The most trifling things were sufficient to catch the drummer's
unanchored attention. His eyes would follow the priests' cat across the
patio, or he would watch the slow march of the cathedral's shadow over
the flagstones in the _calle_.

He became acquainted with the priests who were domiciled in the
building. These were his Grace the Bishop, Father Honario, a big,
sleek, solemn man with swinging jowls that were bluish from a
closely shaved beard. Father Roberto was a close-lipped man with a
disapproving expression. Then there was Father Pedro, a fat, unaspiring
priest, who drank enough wine at his noon meal to make him sleepy
all the afternoon. There was still a fifth priest at the house who
was not attached to the cathedral at all. This was Father Jaíme, a
sort of itinerant guest who had come to the Canalejos cathedral from
a Trappist monastery on Lake Titicaca in Peru. The bishop allowed
Father Jaíme a few pittances for holding mass at the funerals of his
humbler parishioners, and this was the only stipend he received. When
Strawbridge knew him he was trying to save sufficient money to purchase
the churchman's half-fare passage from Canalejos to Port au Spain in
Trinidad, where the Benedictines had a monastery. As far as Strawbridge
could gather, Father Jaíme was a sort of ecclesiastical tramp.

The man who rang the cathedral bells, an office which occurred at
almost every hour of the day, was called the "Cock." His nickname
came, perhaps, from a thin, beak-like nose protruding from under the
dirty visor of an old cap. He had a Jewish appearance. He was the only
object which aroused to wrath the lethargic children of the cathedral
settlement. When the Cock appeared, the children spat at him and called
him "bloodsucker" and all manner of insulting epithets. The reason for
this contumely was that the Cock lent money in a small way, and the
hatred poor people have for a parsimonious money-lender was reflected
in their children.

The Cock lived with a very industrious Indian wife, in one of the
adobes at the back of the cathedral. He seldom spoke to any one,
but moved gloomily on his way to and from his bells. However, once
Strawbridge did observe a visitor in the bell-ringer's hut. One day as
the salesman was walking slowly along one of the paths on the terrain
of the river, a gay figure stepped out from the blackness of the hut,
drew off his sombrero, and bowed to the American with undeniable grace.
As he bowed he exhibited a knot of hair at the back of his head.

"How goes _el señor, mi General_!" he called warmly. "Be assured Lubito
knows your unhappiness, señor, and that you have but to lift a finger
and the sword of a bull-fighter will leap from its scabbard." He went
through the pantomime of drawing his sword, and his bold figure, set
against the darkness of the doorway, formed a picture.

The sick man looked at him, thought of his walk with Lubito in the
plaza, Esteban's attack on General Fombombo in the palace, Madruja.
Such reminiscences were leading him straight to the señora, when some
involuntary check in his mind softly closed that stream of thought and
left the drummer staring emptily at the torero's posturing. He turned
away along the path, vaguely disturbed and unhappy. The bull-fighter
looked around and nodded knowingly to some one inside the hut.

"_Caramba!_" he praised. "What did I tell you? Deep! Why, you can't
tell by his face that he even knows me, and yet ... we are as brothers!
What a dictator that _hombre_ will make!"

The cathedral itself was a kind of labyrinth through which Strawbridge
sometimes wandered with a sort of dulled attention. He understood
little of the ecclesiastical symbolism in the chapels and on the high
altar, or the allegorical frescoes in the dome and pendentive. He did
peruse the fourteen stations of the passion which spaced the interior
walls of the church, and while he could not follow the details of some
of the cartoons he understood their general purport. He never entered
the chapel of the Last Supper. Something warned him from the place
where he had stood with Dolores under Michelena's great masterpiece.

This, unfortunately, was the only worthy canvas which the cathedral of
Canalejos contained. The other chapels held staring images of one saint
or another, and near the entrance of the pile, on the right side, was
a crude picture of souls in purgatory. It was so badly done it was not
even hideous.

The altars of the more popular saints were piled with ex-voto
offerings. These were all manner of little images, made of tin, silver,
or gold, and not much larger than a tobacco-tag. They were images of
legs, hearts, arms, feet, a little tin mule, or a tiny house. Each
one commemorated a miracle performed by the saint on whose altar it
lay. A little silver leg was probably the gift of some rheumatic whom
the good saint had cured; a mule would illustrate the gratitude of a
peon for finding a strayed burro. The simplicity and childishness of
these little gifts touched even Strawbridge; and, moreover, such an
accumulation of testimonials lent a certain air of credibility to the
power of the images in the chapels.

Besides these offerings of gratitude, on each altar were piles
of letters asking the saint for further interventions. Once, as
Strawbridge was looking at the missives, he wondered if any real power
lay back of these stiff images of saints. Could it be that behind them
was ranged some sort of spiritual reality, with a power and a will to
soften human unhappiness? The thought stirred the benumbed heart of the
American. He stood staring up at the wooden effigy, with a notion of
adding a petition of his own to the pile on the altar.

The thought moved him. He walked out at the side entrance of the
cathedral, into the priests' house. His legs trembled with his idea.
In his cubicle he got out pen and paper and sat down to write,
when a strange thing stopped him. All of his stationery bore the
letter-head of the Orion Arms Corporation. It struck the drummer
as somewhat incongruous to write a note to Saint John in heaven on
New York letter-heads. And now that he had started to use his own
envelops, he could not go out deliberately and purchase the big, square
Latin-American envelops such as the peons used in writing a letter to
Saint John. In brief, the sight of his matter-of-fact American paper
shattered his transitory mysticism and made it impossible. However, the
dying of this hope left the drummer grayer than ever.

The wood-carving in the cathedral next offered itself to Strawbridge's
faint interest. The circular balustrade which led up and around one
of the columns of the nave, to the pulpit, and the canopy over the
pulpit were carved out of mahogany with the motif of pineapples and
yucca-palm. The wood was black with the centuries. Strawbridge thought
this was a defect, but when he recognized the two plants intertwined
in the carving, his discovery gave him a childish joy. It led him to
look at other work--the choir-stalls, which were not half so well done
as the pulpit; the reredos; the altar panels; the pyx. Everywhere his
eye fell he saw the labor of generations. Some were the carvings of the
Spanish artisans who came to the New World not long after Columbus;
others were the work of the Indian and negro apprentices of those
original wood-carvers. The whole rise and decline of a folk-art was
epitomized in the cathedral at Canalejos.

About a week after Strawbridge came to the priests' house he was
walking in the cathedral one afternoon and wandered through an open
door into an anteroom full of the images which the priests used in
their processionals. It was a strange sight--the Madonnas with dust on
their gilt halos; Saint Peter holding up a tarnished key; Saint Thomas
reaching a broken finger toward the far-off wounds of Christ. These
and perhaps a dozen other dusty figures, all as large as life, were
placed helter-skelter in the storeroom, some facing one direction,
some another. Over in a corner lay three or four litters on which the
images were borne. One had a glass frame, another was draped in silks.

The drummer stood looking curiously about him, when he heard a rustling
among the images. He moved toward the sound, and after a moment saw an
old woman dusting the statues with a brush. A second glance showed him
it was Josefa's grandmother. This dusting no doubt was a part of her
labor as a charwoman in the cathedral.

Presently the old crone observed Strawbridge. She recognised the
American, and put down her duster.

"_Cá!_ It is you, señor. I thought it was Filipe, come in to help me.
Have you come to tell me something?"

Strawbridge explained that he was merely idling in the cathedral; then
he asked her how she liked her quarters by this time.

"It keeps the rain away. Then you have nothing to tell me of poor
Josefa?"

"No, Doña Consolacion--at least not yet," he added, in order to give
some crumbs of hope.

The old woman mumbled her wrinkled mouth with nervousness.

"But you will soon?"

"I hope so, Doña Consolacion."

"Very soon?"

"I hope so."

She nodded.

"_Sí, sí_, I hope so. I pray so every night, señor, at my _oraciones_."
She gave a Virgin a stroke with her brush, then added in a whisper,
forming the words very plainly with her thin wrinkled lips,
"Who--was--it--the--soldiers--dropped--in--the--river--the--other--night?"

The question brought the drummer a wave of surprise and revived pain.

"I ... I don't know, señora!"

The old woman gave up her dusting and came nearer, so she could talk in
a whisper.

"You don't think--you don't believe i-it could h-have b-been--?" She
gasped and cut off her sentence.

"You mean...."

She nodded mutely, with a terrified expression in her old eyes.

"Why, no, Doña Consolacion, I am sure it was not ... not your grandson!"

But Doña Consolacion was peering at him, and his face was too full
of apprehension to reassure her. On the contrary, with the suspicion
of the aged she read tragedy there. She suddenly dropped her duster
and her face screwed up into the tearless grimacing which stands for
weeping with the aged.

"Oh, _Dios mio!_ my Josefa, my poor little Josefa is gone!" She rocked
to and fro with her hands crossed over her dried breast. Suddenly
something flared up in her and she pointed at Strawbridge: "And you did
it! You killed him! It makes no difference to me if it was all a part
of a plan to free this country. I would rather have my little Josefa
than free a thousand countries!"

Strawbridge made a gesture.

"But listen, señora; there is no reason to think it was Josefa! He was
young and strong. He wouldn't have succumbed so quickly. There must be
hundreds of other prisoners in that jail. It is more likely one of them
has died than ... than your grandson.... Some old man whose strength
had broken down!"

The old woman grew quieter at this reasoning, and stood looking at
Strawbridge, with her toothless lips moving in and out with her
agitated breathing.

"Holy Mary! I hope you are right! If I only knew he was alive! But he
was young and strong, as you say.... _Cá!_ but I don't see why you
should have chosen him, Señor Strawbridge, to cast into prison, even if
it is all a part of your terrible plans."

"But, dear Doña Consolacion," remonstrated the drummer, "it was no part
of a plan. There was no plan to it. It was simply an unfortunate move,
an accident."

The old charwoman shook her head.

"_Cá!_ señor! there is no use deceiving me! I am not a spy but an old
woman cast down by a tyrant. And my family have always been lovers of
freedom. My father was a Rosales." Her old voice gathered dignity at
this reference to her family, and then, nodding her head to accent
her words, she added, "And poor Ricardo, whom you had shot, Señor
Strawbridge--he was my grandnephew."

The American stared in amazement.

"Ricardo ... whom I had shot!"

"_Sí_, señor--Lieutenant Rosales, whom you ordered shot in San
Geronimo. _Pues_, you need not stare so. I understand all. Lubito has
explained your deep and mysterious plans that reach all over the world.
And also Lubito explained that one cannot make an omelette without
breaking eggs. Napoleon first said that, señor; all cruel men say it.
But I do not complain. I was born a Rosales, and more than one of us
has given himself to die."

The old woman's persistent delusion that he was some sort of
arch-plotter, assigning this and that man to his fate, filled the
drummer with dismay.

"But señora," he began hopelessly, "how many times have I said that I
have nothing, nothing whatever to do with all this butchery! I would
not harm a soul in Rio Negro--no, not for the whole government. I would
not--"

But the old creature shook her head, with her mouth quirked in withered
satire.

"_Ola, señor!_" She wagged a finger. "I know, I know." She started
to stoop for her brush, but the drummer forestalled her. "I know one
little thing that tells me all, no matter what you admit or deny."

Strawbridge looked at her.

"What's that?"

"I refer to...." She wagged her head vaguely and looked at the American
with narrowed and disapproving eyes.

"What are you talking about, Doña Consolacion?"

"I was down at the riverside on the night when the soldiers flung the
body of the dead man into the water."

The salesman stared at her, with his brows drawn in a faint frown.

"Well ... what of that?"

"Oh, what of that! I was at the riverside just below the _palacio_,
Señor Strawbridge, where the white boat lay. I went down because the
Cock told me I could find some driftwood there, and I had no money to
buy charcoal...."

The phrase "white boat" moved some memory that was battened down in
Strawbridge's heart. It gave him a ghastly sensation, as if an arm
were reaching out of a grave. And there was something disconcerting in
the rancor in the crone's voice, in the circumstantiality with which
she began her account. He stood looking at her, wondering and rather
fearing what she was about to say.

"What's the point to this?" he hesitated at last. "What if you were at
the river--under the _palacio_?"

The charwoman found enough spirit to shrug.

"No matter how grand your final object may be, señor, I think that was
going a little too far. There are certain things a Spanish _caballero_
will not do, señor--no, not though he gain all Venezuela by it!"

The drummer took a step nearer the old woman, and looked hard at her.

"Look here, Consolacion," he uttered in a strained voice,
"what--in--the--hell--are--you--talking--about?"

The ancient shrugged again, and the nostrils of her hatchety old nose
dilated momentarily, then she burst out:

"_Dios mio!_ I am talking about the señora, poor Doña Dolores, whom I
found down there--poor lamb!--frightened almost to death, and weeping.
She started to fly as I came up, but I called to her and she knew I was
a woman...."

A horripilation went over Strawbridge. He clutched the old creature's
arm.

"The señora!" he whispered, staring with distended eyes. "My God! you
can't mean Dolores was down there that night, on the river!"

The hag broke into sardonic, clacking laughter.

"No, you didn't know that! You didn't know you had a poor frightened
girl go down to the river bank and wait and pray for your coming until
it grew so light she was forced back into the _palacio_! No, you
didn't know that! Oh, to be sure, I explained to her your plans. I
told her that she was just a tiny little part; that you had killed my
grandnephew and my grandson, and now for some reason you had flung her
down in the river mud, like an old rag--you, and your great plans!"

The old crone's tirade seemed to break loose something hot and
seething in Strawbridge's brain. The enormity of his delinquence, the
pitifulness of the girl, the rapture which might have been his! His
legs shook so that he caught at the effigy of the Blessed Virgin. But
all that remained of his mutilated hand were two fingers. These gave
way instantly, he staggered against the wooden figure, and the thing
swung slowly over and crashed on the tiles.

The ancient shifted from the dowager back to the servant again.

"Look! Look!" she squealed. "Oh, look what you've done! You've broken
her head!"

The American neither saw nor heard the fall of the effigy.

"But, señora," he stuttered, with a salty taste in his mouth, "he ...
he told me ... Father Benicio told me that she ... she had gone to a
convent!"

The hag came out of her servant's concern for the statue and fell to
lashing again:

"A priest told you! _Diantre!_ You believed a priest in a case like
that! Poor little dove! She did join the sisterhood, Señor Strawbridge,
but it was on the afternoon after your cruel desertion of her. What
else could she do--poor little dove!"




CHAPTER XXVI


With legs that shook and hands that clutched at nothing, Strawbridge
got out of the image room into the cathedral. He screwed himself to
sufficient self-control to be silent as he shivered along the aisles,
peering into every chapel and niche for Father Benicio. He raged
internally, thinking what he would do to Father Benicio. He syncopated
his thoughts with clenching of fists, spreading of nostrils, and
muttered blasphemies. When he found the priest, he would throttle him,
beat his shaven head on the stone flags. Vibrations of wrath shook
through his chest and belly.

He made the entire round of both aisles, and then turned automatically
into the priests' house. Opening a door, he stepped quickly into the
big room with the latticed side. He glanced about with a beating heart
and saw it was empty. He got to the entrance of the bishop's room and
looked in. Only the Christ on the cross, and the darkened pictures of
former bishops looked down on him. The drummer turned and set out up
the narrow passage, to search among the cubicles.

At that moment a loud ringing of the gong at the outer door caught his
attention. It came in a succession of three clangorous peals, loud and
imperative. It suggested an interruption and sent Strawbridge trotting
up the passage, looking hurriedly into each cubicle. All were as
obviously empty as a cigar box. Some smelled of burned candles, one of
medicine, one or two of stale bedding. The only difference between them
was in odor.

The doorbell clanged again, three times. Then it suddenly occurred to
Strawbridge that this might be Father Benicio, asking entrance. The
thought sent him flying to the door, with titillating nerves. He began
whispering through his dry mouth:

"Good God, let it be that devil Benicio!"

He stepped into the entrance and closed the inner shutter behind him.
At that moment the gong filled the closed passageway with a great
uproar. It was imperative, excited, and held the prolonged clangor of a
visitor who is at the end of his patience.

The drummer rushed to the door and laid noiseless hands on the bolts.
He had a sensation of immense strength. He wanted not to frighten
the priest, but to let him come unwarned into his grip. Not until
Strawbridge set about drawing the bolts did he remember that he had
but one hand. A thought flickered in his head that he might need his
automatic, but it was gone almost instantly.

The bars were hot. He could feel the heat, reflected by the panels,
of the sunshine outside. With a painful surge of expectancy he swung
open the outer shutters. In the dazzle of sunshine stood a figure who
the drummer could see was not Father Benicio. His murderous impulse
had been so sure of the priest, that he stood batting his eyes in the
glare, when he heard an excited voice gasp:

"_Gracias á Dios!_ it's you, Señor Strawbridge! _Diantre!_ I thought I
would never get you! But--_caramba!_--you know it already! Look, look,
Esteban, how white his face is, and how bloodshot his eyes! We were two
great fools, Esteban, to imagine we could tell _el señor_ anything!"

A second figure stepped in front of the door-casing and shrugged.

"_Naturalmente_, Lubito, if _el Señor General_ ordered these boats up
here, he knew when they were coming."

"But what shall we do, _mi General_?" demanded the bull-fighter,
excitedly. "Are you ready for us peons! Just a word, and we will flame
up like a bonfire!" The torero made a swift upward gesture.

Such ejaculations and questions were enough to seize part of the
attention of the homicidal drummer.

"What are you talking about!... Boats ... men ... peons!"

"_Demonio!_" roared Lubito, in admiration. "Is he not as deep as the
devil's pit, Esteban! What are we talking about? _Pues, mi General_, we
are talking about your men and your boats, your guns; they are below
the rapids. They are gathering in from God knows where. When we saw
them coming, Esteban and I came running here as fast as our legs would
carry us, to know when you wanted us, here in Canalejos, to strike. Is
it now? Is this the day? Shall we set fire to hell now? How is it, _mi
General_? Now?"

The bull-fighter's cries vibrated with a curious edge. He whipped out
an imaginary sword and saluted, tossing up his head and knot of hair.

"What part of Canalejos do we sack first! Send me where there are
plenty of women!"

Esteban, with his stupid peon face, stood nodding.

"And me ... send me where I can find Madruja, _mi General_."

By this time Strawbridge had fathomed what had set off the imaginations
of his self-appointed henchmen. He made a heavy gesture.

"That isn't my flotilla. It's the dictator's boats, come up from Rio at
last." He stood staring at his two followers, with a new and profound
depression coming over him. "So this is the end of it! This is the
end of everything!" A great sigh burst from him. He struck his palm
miserably against his breast. "Oh, Good God! Well, I'm ready to go."

He stumbled out of the priests' house. Each of the bewildered peons
took one of his arms, and the three men set out around the buttresses
of the cathedral and the adobe lean-tos, toward the terrain of the
river. The pain of a complete and final leave-taking of Dolores was
upon Strawbridge. The peons had not the least notion of the cause of
their master's despair.

"But, _mi General_," demurred Lubito, uncertainly, "there are too many
canoes for the trading party; the river is black with them. _Caramba!_
if they are not your men--"

"_Es verdad, Señor mi General_," put in Esteban. "There are too many--"

The peon's words were interrupted by a sharp, crashing blow from
the direction of the river. It smote the ear-drums of the three
men terrifically, and was followed by an abrupt silence. It was a
cannon-shot. At the moment the three men trotted around the last
obscuring adobe that stuck to the cathedral. On La Fortuna they saw a
puff of smoke dissolving into air, and far down below the rapids they
saw a crawling of men from a multitude of canoes--so far away that they
looked like insects. Among these insect lines forming on the shore,
Strawbridge caught the gleam of a banner.

The cannon on La Fortuna crashed again. Soldiers went marching out of
the fort, toward the foot of the rapids. They went down the terrain of
the river at a double-quick.

A feeling of movement and stir spread over the city. Almost before
Strawbridge knew it, the whole terrain on which he stood was covered
with denizens of the adobes. The Cock came out, peered through the
sunshine, then darted back into his inky hut and reappeared with an
extraordinary single-barreled, muzzle-loading pistol and a dagger. Men
and women came running out of the plaza, to the riverside, for a view.

Lubito clutched the drummer's arm.

"You see, _mi General_, it is your men attacking. What shall I do?
Gather up my men and advance?"

Some obscure cerebration caused Strawbridge to answer, "No, ... no, not
now. Wait till we see how this goes!"

The bull-fighter snapped his fingers in admiration.

"_Caramba_, Esteban!" he cried above the noise of the gathering crowd.
"What calmness! This is the strategy of a Napoleon!"

By this time the gun on La Fortuna was firing regularly, and far down
the river, among the insects, little plumes of smoke showed where the
shells were bursting.

Strawbridge left the river bank and made his way through the crowd,
toward the plaza. He was filled with a rising anxiety for the señora.
He wondered where she was, to what convent she had retired. He supposed
that she would be safe, but she would surely be frightened. The drummer
went hurrying eastward through a small _calle_, glancing to right and
to left, half expecting to see the señora's face at some barred window.

Along the thoroughfares natives were darting about, salvaging their
household goods as if from a fire. Women and children, with burdens on
their backs, turned out into the streets and went hurrying along, urged
by the groaning of cannon and an occasional dry rattle of musketry.

This continued from street to street, and by the time the drummer
reached the plaza, the square was already crowded with fugitives, all
of whom were flowing westward, past the palace and the state buildings,
toward the outskirts of town and the llanos. The mass moved slowly and
in great disorder. Mules and donkeys went past, laden with household
goods; carts containing food, _mosquiteros_, calabashes, invalided
persons. Pedestrians struggled along under huge bundles done up in
ponchos; old women carried their belongings twisted up in their skirts,
with their bare legs and feet exposed. It was an astonishing, frantic
procession, with every one struggling, pushing, cursing unfortunates
who could not move quickly. Perched on top of many a bundle rode pet
game-cocks. The shrill crowing of these fowls added a curious stridor
to the turmoil of the refugees.

Almost every shop around the plaza was shut now. One or two doors had
been forced by looters, and the riffraff of the street eddied into
these magazines as if by some law of nature, and streamed out again
with their arms filled with spoil.

In the midst of this pillaging and flight, a murmur, which swiftly rose
to cries, oaths, and shouts of anguish, came from the direction of
the palace. It grew louder and louder, and presently the drummer was
aware that the crowd about him was solidifying and surging backward. He
tried to find out what was the matter, but in the uproar he could ask
nothing. Within the space of a minute he was caught in a dense jam and
had to struggle merely to keep his feet. He held his sore hand up, to
prevent its being hurt, and tried to push his way in some direction,
but men and women were crushing into him on every side. Then, owing to
his height, he saw the danger. Down the square the palace guards were
coming at a double-quick in the direction of the fighting. The front
ranks had leveled their bayonets to force a swift passage through the
mob. Before the steel the crowd flung itself back, shrieking in terror
and pain. The masses crushed blindly toward the sides of the square,
lost their bundles, upset carts, bastinadoed their burros, and flung
themselves, in compact masses, away from the line of march.

As the guards plowed down the plaza, Strawbridge felt himself crushed
one way, then another; and then suddenly a line of division opened and
left him with half a dozen others directly in the middle of the way. He
was in a narrow alley through which the bayonets were double-quicking.
He had that terrible sensation of being unable to move in either
direction. He stood dodging in a mad contra-dance, then he seemed lost;
he dashed to one side and tried to press his body into a solid wall of
flesh. He might as well have tried to sink into a bank of rubber. He
stood out; he was still exposed. The bristle of bayonets was right on
him. He made a last convulsive effort to merge himself, when an arm
thrust out of the mass, hooked about his waist, and from some leverage,
pried the American into a niche at the very moment the bayonets skimmed
smoothly past.

The crush stood perfectly immobile as the rifles went by. A sweat broke
out on Strawbridge. He twisted his head to look at the palace guards.
Only a few days before, they had been little better than servants
who fetched and carried for him; now, at a cannon-shot, at a volley
of firearms, they had formed a machine which, accidentally, almost
casually, had transfixed him.

The moment the soldiers were past, the crowd filled the _calle_
again, struggling with greater violence than ever. A voice shouted in
Strawbridge's ear:

"Where are you trying to go?"

Strawbridge looked about and saw a bearded and somewhat familiar face.
It belonged to the man who had wedged him into the crowd. Then the
drummer recognized him as Dr. Delgoa, the minister of war, whom he had
seen once or twice at the palace. The doctor's face had a strained
look, and now in the press he still held Strawbridge's arm, perhaps
with an idea of directing the drummer's steps.

"I wasn't going anywhere, specially," shouted the American. "Trying to
find out what's the trouble."

The doctor shook his head.

"_Diantre!_ This is terrible! Come with me; I am going to the
_palacio_. Here! Let's get into this side street. This crush!" These
exclamations were jogged out of him as he edged his body into this
and that aperture. He made way for the drummer, who followed him body
to body, and at last succeeded in pushing himself into the mouth of a
stinking little side _calle_.

In this place the crowd dwindled to small groups and single pedestrians
who hurried back and forth with ant-like aimlessness. Dr. Delgoa rested
a moment. He wore a high hat; now he took it off, drew out a silk
handkerchief, and mopped his face and hair. Somehow he had managed to
preserve his silk hat; his black frock-coat and his pearl-gray trousers
were unrumpled despite his struggle.

"We'll have to get away from here!" he said in a breath. "This _calle_
will be untenable in thirty minutes.... The machine-guns...." He
started walking along the _calle_, with the stragglers. "_Caramba!_ I
wish I knew which way the cat'll jump," he puffed, drying his hatband
as he went. "One never knows what to do. I left my wife at home. Of
course the telephones have been seized, and I can't talk to her. Where
are you going, Señor Strawbridge?" He had evidently forgotten the
drummer's answer to this same question a minute or two before.

"I'm trying to find out what caused this." The American looked back and
listened to the inarticulate roar of the mob thundering in the tympanum
of the narrow street.

Dr. Delgoa started to explain, but at that moment out of a back door of
a shop bundled an old woman with a great pile of fiber hammocks. The
men collided with her. The old creature spat invectives. She twisted
about, saw who had struck her, and became more furious.

"It's that thief Delgoa! That bloodsucker Delgoa! May a ray of God
blast your entrails! You stole every centavo my shop could earn, you
and your cursed police! May you be bayoneted through the liver!"

Her anathemas were finally lost in the uproar. They struck coldly on
the drummer's nerves in so perilous a situation, but Delgoa paid no
attention to her. He began shaking his head, with his distressed look.

"If a man could only tell which way it is going to go."

"Who is it fighting us?" called Strawbridge. "Have the federal forces
suddenly got up here?"

Delgoa looked around at him, rather surprised.

"No, it's Saturnino."

Strawbridge stared, thunderstruck.

"Saturnino--fighting us!"

"Yes, yes. Been brewing a long time. Very ambitious man. Heretofore the
general has handled him somehow, through the influence of the general's
wife. Now I understand she has entered a convent, and of course--" the
Minister made a hopeless gesture--"of course that unchained hell."

A wide dismay suddenly swept over the drummer. He felt that he and all
the people in Canalejos were caught like flies in the web of Coronel
Saturnino's endless calculations. He knew that back there, in San
Geronimo, the colonel had worked out, night after night, precisely how
he would conquer this point and that redoubt; how many men it would
require to take that coign of vantage, and so on, step after step, all
the way to his goal.

Suddenly the drummer turned to the minister.

"Why didn't Fombombo throw the colonel into prison years ago?"

Dr. Delgoa looked at him, his mind evidently coming back from some
painful abstraction.

"Oh, yes.... He couldn't. Saturnino has always been a favorite with
the army. Besides, the general needed a tactician. _Diablo!_ I wish the
general had kept his wife in the _palacio_!"

By this time the two men had come to the mouth of the little side
street, where it emptied into the main thoroughfare opposite the
palace. Delgoa held out an arm to warn the drummer, then advanced
carefully to the limit of the protecting walls and peered down the
plaza. The place was a litter of scattered goods and broken carts. Here
and there a human figure darted across the wreckage, making for some
place of safety. The crowd had struggled past and were gone.

Just across the street the doors of the palace stood open. Four
soldiers were posted by each shutter, whose duty, evidently, was to
close the building at a moment's notice. On top of the palace roof
were lined a number of guards, and in the machicolations above the
architrave shone the muzzles of some rapid-fire guns.

Dr. Delgoa stood in the _calle_, peering at the scene before him and
listening with all his ears. He said to Strawbridge in an apprehensive
voice:

"The cannonading at La Fortuna has stopped."

The drummer listened. It was true, but he had not observed the fact,
under the ceaseless tearing sound of the small arms, which was growing
louder and louder. It sounded somewhat like an approaching storm.
Delgoa waved a hopeless hand.

"_Dios mio!_ which way will this battle go! _Canastre!_ this deciding
for your life, your property and your family!" With a tortured face he
turned to Strawbridge. "Just think, if I fail to guess the victor just
once, I go into La Fortuna, my property confiscated, and my wife...."
He snapped his fingers and flung out his hands.

Such frank opportunism amazed the American.

"Why--damn it, man!--stick to the side you think is right!"

"Right! _Right!_" Delgoa laughed in a very access of irony. "My dear
_amigo_, I am a politician. I have nothing to do with--" He interrupted
himself to listen to the increased ripping and tearing of the gun fire;
then, with his head cocked sidewise, he looked steadily at Strawbridge
and whispered, "I believe Saturnino is winning...."

The drummer was outraged.

"Well--by God!--between the two I stand by the general!"

"But look yonder!" The minister pointed down the plaza. "Yonder are the
guards falling back!"

At that moment a flurry of men that looked like leaves before a wind,
whirled out of a street into the plaza and instantly settled into every
niche and crevice they could find. Almost immediately came another
whirl of men, falling back behind every makeshift ambuscade. The
minister gripped the American's arm.

"Your general is losing; we are going to change dictators!"

The American burst out in profanity:

"I don't give a damn! I've always been against Saturnino! He's nothing
but a rascal, a damn clever rascal! Hasn't got a principle in him!" The
drummer shook off the doctor's arm, and next moment darted out of his
covert, toward the long flight of steps at the entrance of the palace.

The big American's flight might have been the signal for the whole
regiment of palace guards to retreat headlong toward the _presidencia_.
Immediately a company of insurgents deployed into the square, and knelt
to fire. Even in the drummer's short sprint across the _calle_, the
attackers discharged a volley. The crash, pent up between the houses,
roared down the _calle_, and a shower of leaves and twigs fell from the
ornamental greenery in the plaza. Stone flakes leaped from the façade
of the palace; spots of dust floated up into the air along the _calle_;
the air was filled with a whining. Here and there a flying guard
stumbled in the plaza; two or three of the less severely wounded went
crawling on their hands and knees toward the side streets, to escape
the steel storm. Strawbridge dashed up the long flight of steps and was
hardly inside the recessed doors when the van of the retreating guard
began to pour up the steps into the building.

The moment the drummer entered the palace he stepped into quietude
and order. The heavy walls reduced the rifle fire in the streets to a
mere popping. Along the passage were stationed several officers, who
directed the returning soldiers to march back into the building, toward
some objective unknown to the American. One or two of the officers
recognized Strawbridge and saluted as he entered.

An odd feeling of home-coming visited the salesman as he stood near the
entrance. His painful week at the priests' house seemed to have dropped
out of his life. It seemed to him that the señora was still in the
music-room, that he might walk back, tap, and have her come to the door.

Bullets were now snapping regularly at the stone façade. They reminded
Strawbridge of the first scattering drops of rain at the beginning of
a summer shower. Another batch of soldiers came running up the long
steps. One of them even laughed, and waved his cap to some one on the
roof, when at that moment he fell forward and lay twisting on the sharp
comers of the stone steps. Suddenly the drummer saw that it was Pambo,
the little brown guard who had nursed him through his illness. His
comrades had left him on the steps. An impulse sent the drummer leaping
down three steps at a time through the whining air. He seized Pambo in
his arms and came back up. The little soldier recognized the American,
for he gasped out, "_Cá!_ _Señor Americano_, tell Juana...." Then he
began bending his body backward, thrusting out his chest in an effort
for breath. When Strawbridge laid him on the floor, he continued these
convulsive movements, bowing up his torso, his mouth open, gasping, and
his eyes staring.

The next moment the officer nearest the door looked out and gave a
command, and the four soldiers swung shut the heavy metal doors.
Instantly the hall was blanketed to silence. The only sounds were the
footsteps of the guards walking briskly to the rear of the building and
the clinking of balls striking the doors of the palace.

The drummer fell in with the last soldiers who went down the hallway.
Along the sides of the passage hung the dark portraits of former
dictators, men who had usurped and lost power, and who had been done
to death in just such another eruption as now raged outside. With a
beating heart the drummer hurried past these ironic pictures.

He meant to fight for General Fombombo. Why? He did not know. Perhaps
it was because of the order for rifles. Perhaps because he sensed
in the arbitrary general something finer than what he found in the
cynical colonel. Or, more likely, it was the result of the salesman's
discovery that Saturnino was a lover of Dolores; the general was only
her husband. Strawbridge fell in with the soldiers.

The recruits turned in at a side door of the passageway, and this gave
upon a flight of stairs that led to the roof. Guards were pouring up
and down this staircase; the upward-bound were laden with ammunition
boxes; the down-bound were empty-handed. This was the general's
ammunition, hoist from some donjon in the palace.

The moment Strawbridge stepped into the stairway a din of firing and
shouting broke upon his ears. The salesman ran up the steps beside
one burden-bearer. As they emerged on the roof, one of the soldiers
reached over and jerked the big American down to a stooping posture.
Everybody was stooping. The palace guards crouched and sprawled inside
the waist-high wall that surrounded the roof, and fired through the
machicolations. Stationed here and there among the riflemen were
machine-guns. Each gun was handled by two men. Now and then one of
these guns would break into a hard yammering, then abruptly cease. The
riflemen were firing in the same careful way. They sighted and fired
with murderous concentration. Like all Latin-American revolutionists,
they never used volley-firing in the hope of making a hit. Every bullet
was aimed at somebody.

A dead man or two and a few wounded men were scattered over the tiled
roof. Stone splinters snapped out of the merlons from adverse gun
fire. The smell of smokeless powder filled the air with a headache-y
quality. The drummer saw a rifle and a bandolier of cartridges beside
a motionless figure. He crawled to it and salvaged the gun. He got to
the wall and settled himself beside an aperture, in line with the whole
wallful of reclining riflemen.

Peering out between his merlons, he found himself looking into the
westering sun. Saturnino had flung his forces on top of the houses
directly west of the palace. This screened his men in the yellow glow
of the declining sun. The whole outline of the opposite buildings
was an indistinct purple. The drummer stared fixedly at this purple
outline, then he thought he glimpsed a movement. He leveled his gun
and fired. At the same moment a machine-gun near him began a sudden
chattering. Just where the drummer had seen a movement, the black
figure of a man lurched up against the yellow light and disappeared
backward.

A thrill of triumph shot through Strawbridge. He thought he had hit
his man. He lifted himself for a good look and another shot, when a
bullet flicked a bit of stone out of his merlon and cut his forehead
just over his eye. The salesman dodged down, put up his fingers to the
sting, and saw that he was bleeding a little. It made him angry, and he
fired his rifle viciously several times at the blank purple rim of the
opposite wall.

At that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder. Strawbridge looked
around and saw that it was General Fombombo. The dictator was patting
his shoulder warmly and encouraging him as a father might encourage the
first efforts of a son.

"That's the idea--two or three quick shots, then get down."

The general himself did not keep down so carefully. He seemed sure that
he would not be touched, and was careful only of his men. A contagious
power surrounded the commander. His hand on Strawbridge's shoulder
filled the American with warmth and confidence. He felt a passion to do
some striking thing in the general's service. Standing up quite as high
as the dictator himself, he suddenly cried out:

"Look! Yonder are some fellows down on the street level! Watch me get--"

The general pressed him down.

"Guard yourself," he ordered; "you are too valuable to be in this
firing-line. You must go to New York for me. Report to the magazine and
help send up ammunition. Descend quickly, señor!"

The drummer was about to crawl off toward the manhole, when abruptly
the whole rank of rapid-fire guns began a steady shrieking. At the same
moment half the riflemen reared up to shoot at something on the street
level. As they did so came a cracking from the opposite building. The
guards fell backward from their barricade, some wounded, some finished.
Perhaps half remained standing, firing solid volleys down into the
street.

Fombombo bellowed for the riflemen to remain down and let the
machine-guns clean the streets. The big man's roars seemed to fling the
soldiers back into their niches. The machine-gunners, with their steel
shields protecting them, depressed their guns and began a vibratory
screaming at something below.

Strawbridge, with a nervous spasm in his throat, peered through a
machicolation. Out from behind the nearest building came a swarm of
ghastly scarlet figures armed with heavy timbers. The machine-guns
whipped the _calle_ about them. Groups of the ragged red specters were
struck to the ground about the timbers, but others of the rabble leaped
to their places. They were the "reds." Saturnino had collected these
wretches from the canal camps all over the survey, and now flung them
at the dictator. There was something sickening in the charge of the
"reds" across the _calle_. The machine-guns could not beat them back.
They sowed the street with filthy red canvas bags; but still they came
on and rushed their timbers under the overhang of the building, where
the machine-guns could not reach them.

The drummer turned and scuttled toward the manhole. As he straightened
and went flying down the steps, he heard a great booming echoing
through the palace.

It was the "reds" thundering with their wooden rams against the doors
of the building. When Strawbridge got below, the whole palace shook
with the blows. All the inner doors along the central hallway stood
open, and soldiers darted in and out of the rooms to fire through the
windows. Rifle-shots roared through the place, and the stinking haze of
smokeless powder floated out into the corridor through the tops of the
doors and settled against the roof.

Some impulse sent Strawbridge running to the señora's room. As he
dodged inside, he saw two groups of soldiers crouched in the corners
and raking the windows with their fire. Some of their bullets bit
pieces out of the iron window bars. At regular intervals the end of a
heavy beam crashed against the bars and slowly bent the heavy grille
inward. One by one the anchorages in the stone casing broke loose.

The two squads of peon soldiers were barricaded behind delicate
dressing-tables and exquisitely wrought chairs; half a dozen guards
knelt behind a canopied four-poster. Their rifles were leveled across
an embroidered silk coverlet. Everything in the room still looked
incongruously feminine, even with men firing across it and a dead
soldier sprawled on a couch. Now and then a bullet drilled a neat
hole in an old-fashioned thin glass mirror in a dressing-stand. And
notwithstanding the sharp stench of powder-gas, still a faint feminine
sweetness lingered in the señora's apartment, a gentle wraith that
would not be exorcised.

Abruptly the whole of the bending bars broke loose and clanged down
inside. Instantly the window was filled with crashing rifles. The
concussion tore the drummer's ear-drums as he crouched behind the
massive bed. Guards crumpled up out of both firing-squads. Bottles,
brushes, and silver containers on the señora's dressing-table leaped
to splinters. The next moment the window was full of the heads and
shoulders of men, struggling to climb inside. They were the most
ghastly human beings the drummer had ever imagined.

The few guards left in the room fired point-blank into these terrible
creatures. Strawbridge caught up a gun and was on the point of firing.
He was aiming down the barrel at a skull-like head when he recognized
the tortured features and the burning monkey eyes of Josefa.

Such a revulsion swept over the American at the semblance of the little
clerk that he dropped his rifle and crouched behind the silken bed. The
prisoners in La Fortuna had been released. The mere horror of their
faces must have shocked the remnant of the guard into flight. Those who
were unwounded leaped from hiding and bolted for the door, shouting
above the din, "_Los presos!_ The prisoners are upon us! La Fortuna has
fallen!" They rushed pell-mell into the hallway, still shouting their
warning until their voices were lost in the din.

Strawbridge stared at these animated cadavers. Whether they recognized
and spared him as an American, or whether they overlooked him among
the wounded and dead, he never knew. The disinterred wretches streamed
past, with unshaven faces, with yellow skins sticking to the very bones
of their skulls, with eyes lost in bony pits, with lips stretched
across teeth in wrinkles. Their clothes were torn filth and sores. Into
the boudoir with them gushed the smell of rotting flesh and latrines.
This was the very dung of Venezuelan society; it was the cesspool of
the prison regurgitating into the palace; it was human sewage flowing
backward. It was inexpressibly obscene.

Nausea overcome Strawbridge; yet as they passed into the hallway he
struggled up and followed them. The corridor was a haze filled with
flashing rifles. Out of half a dozen rooms poured other assailants, who
had succeeded in breaking through the windows--other prisoners, other
"reds," other insurgent soldiers, all mixed in the maddest confusion.
They collected themselves under some leader; they formed themselves
into a regiment and then went pouring through the doorway onto the
staircase leading to the roof.

The drummer stood watching the scarecrow fighters as if hypnotized. He
watched them swirl into the passage that led above. Suddenly, above
the tumult, he heard the hard, shuddering reports of the machine-guns.
A storm of steel burst down on the ghastly assailants, bearing them
backward: the skeleton regiment recoiled, bent low, and started
climbing again, struggling up over their fallen comrades straight into
the muzzles of the guns. Ghastly croaking shouts; thin, rattling
huzzas; the clatter of the guns; the reek of ordure and sores; the
inferno roared on. The rattle of the machine-guns was dwindling.
Strawbridge heard hoarse coughing cries: "Down with Fombombo! There he
is! Strike him! Stab! Shoot! Here he is, over with him!" The drummer
wondered what thoughts burned through the dictator's mind as he faced
his horrible enemies. The cesspool of the prison had belched back,
clear up to the roof of the palace, and General Fombombo was inundated.


Strawbridge was deathly sick. He tottered back to the boudoir and
clambered out at the broken window, unopposed. Assailants no longer
encircled the palace; they had drained inside. The tumult on the roof
was rapidly subsiding. Here and there cries of "_Viva_ Saturnino!"
began to sound. Presently a few soldiers came running out of the
palace, waving their rifles and shouting, "_Viva_ Saturnino!"

_Viva_ Saturnino! The battle was over.

News of the victory spread through the plaza and the adjoining streets
with extraordinary swiftness. Strawbridge could hear cries for
Saturnino as they were repeated in every direction--near, far, now from
all parts at once--"_Viva_ Saturnino!"

By common concert men and women appeared, coming in from every
direction. Crowds might have formed out of the air. They came shouting
and huzzaing for victory. They took up the cry, "Liberty! Justice and
Saturnino!"

A group of peons began dancing in the evening shadows which fell across
the plaza. Some tatterdemalions ran with ropes, lassoed the head of
General Fombombo's statue, and began pulling it from its pedestal.
The marble seemed to resist. It held out its scroll bearing "Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity," but at last it swung slowly outward and
smashed down on the pavement.

At its fall a ferocious joy-making boiled up in the crowd. Some one
lighted a fire in the center of the square, and immediately every
one flung the litter from the refugees upon the pyre--broken carts,
smashed furniture, rags, all manner of waste. The fire boiled up in
a great white smoke, and presently flames began licking through it.
The revelers began to sing; half a dozen voices, a score, others and
others, until a great sounding chorus roared up from the plaza. Some
rimester had improvised the words:


     _Viva el Coronel Saturnino_,
       Son of Freedom and Rio Negro!
     Save our daughters and our niñas.
       To Hell with General Fombombo.


The crowd danced about the bonfire to this absurd chant--men and women,
embracing, kissing, singing, whirling in and out like brown vortices of
sand blown up by the winds on the llanos.

The drummer stood near the façade of the palace, watching the growing
saturnalia. He thought of the señora, and he thanked God she was safe
in some convent, out of all this fury and madness. Greater and greater
crowds gathered in the plaza; they streamed in from everywhere. An old
woman passed Strawbridge, with her arms about a filthy skeleton-like
creature. In the gathering gloom of evening, Strawbridge recognized
the old charwoman of the cathedral, Doña Consolacion, and her grandson
Josefa. These two had been reunited. The drummer watched them pass. The
strange thought came to him that he had brought them down to their poor
plight.

The bonfire was leaping high by this time, and with the delicacy of
an etching the ornamental trees stood out against the flames. Below
circled the dark figures of the peons, singing of liberty, justice, and
Saturnino. Amid the rhythmic intervals of this uproar, the American
heard a solitary sobbing. The sound was so consonant to his own mood
that he looked about for the mourner. He found the weeper in the gloom
beside the long stairway that led up into the palace. He walked slowly
around the curve of the marble balustrade, and in the shadows he saw a
misshapen woman bending over some object on the pavement and weeping
vehemently. Strawbridge drew closer until he could see her face,
distorted with grief. It was Madruja. The peon girl was heavy with an
unborn child, and in her arms she held the body of the fallen dictator.
The dead tyrant looked curiously small as he lay on the pavement, where
he had been thrown from the roof of the palace. Occasionally the girl
would pause in her sobbing, to stroke the dead man's face with her
puffed fingers; then she would break out afresh.

As Strawbridge stood blinking his eyes a street vender came running
along, lifting his hands in an attitude of prayer and shouting a
priest-like singsong at the skies. Strawbridge listened to him. He was
chanting in a frenzy of satire:

"O Saint Peter! O good Saint John! Guard well your eleven thousand holy
virgins; General Fombombo is on his way to Paradise!"




CHAPTER XXVII


The dead man's fate oppressed Strawbridge, and the irony of all the
rejoicing at the rise of Saturnino filled him with bitterness. He
turned away. He meant to go back to the priests' house. He would leave
this anarchic land as quickly as he could. As he turned, a girl came
running down the steps of the palace. She stopped half-way down and
peered at the man on the pavement. Next moment she called his name,
under her breath:

"_Ola_, Señor Strawbridge! is that you?" She started quickly down the
rest of the steps to him. "_Cá!_ Señor Strawbridge, come to my señora
at once; she needs you! Quick! _Pronto!_ _Ehue_, señor, hurry!"

The drummer recognized the _griffe_ girl. The urgency in her voice
brought him up sharply.

"What is it, _chica_?"

"Oh, _Madre de Jesus_! The soldiers are searching the convents! She has
slipped into the garden and hid! The poor angel! I came flying for you!
Señor, hurry! For love of the Virgin! Would you have a heretic like
Saturnino seize a nun?"

A terrible feeling came over Strawbridge.

"Seize her! Is that hell-hound...." The monstrousness of it throttled
him. The girl pulled at his sleeve, and by this time both were running
diagonally across the plaza. They were not conspicuous: they might have
been new merrymakers, hurrying to sing, around the bonfire, of the rise
of Saturnino and of his protection to "our daughters and our _niñas_."
But these two angled into one of the narrow _calles_ that emptied into
the plaza. Even from this little run the convalescent began to breathe
heavily. He caught his breath to ask:

"How do you know they are searching the convents?"

"I was in the convent of Saint Ursula with her."

"What did they do there?"

"The soldiers surrounded the place, and allowed no one to leave."

"That might be to keep you from getting hurt," gasped the drummer, with
a ray of hope.

"Oh, no; they are searching other convents. One of the sisters escaped
and told us. Everybody knows who Coronel Saturnino is hunting."

The drummer mended his lagging trot a trifle.

"God almighty!" he breathed in despair; then, "Aren't we almost there?"

The girl pointed ahead at the upper story of a big convent that rose
above the poor huts which surrounded it. It was hazy in the gathering
shadows of night.

"She is hiding in the garden on this side."

"Were you in there with her?"

"_Sí_, señor."

"How'd you get out?"

"I climbed the limb of a tree and dropped out."

The drummer was filled with apprehension.

"Good Lord! we'll never get in, that way!"

The _griffe_ girl suddenly began to whimper.

"Oh, señor, don't say that! It is the only way we can get back! We
can't let the poor señora be caught in the garden!"

At this moment the two rounded a corner and came upon the dark wall of
a Venezuelan garden. It was quite as high as an ordinary adobe house,
and was finished in the same way, with plaster masonry. It had not a
foothold from top to bottom.

The girl caught the American's arm and drew him to a standstill.

"_Ola!_" she breathed. "There they are now!"

The drummer paused to peer through the gloom, and saw two peons with
rifles, standing half-way down the length of the garden. He looked
at them, ransacking his brain for some plan. Then he moved forward
again, with his shoulders back and with a certain air of authority. The
soldiers heard him approach, clicked their rifles, and called him to
halt.

The big man stepped out of the shadow of the wall.

"I am the _Americano_ who is backing Coronel Saturnino's rebellion with
money," he stated briefly. "I suppose you saw me give him a chest of
gold in San Geronimo; at least you heard about it."

One of the guards saluted.

"_Sí_, señor."

"The _coronel_ has reached Saint Ursula now; he told me to come out
here and send in you two guards to help him search the place."

One of the soldiers looked at him suspiciously.

"Why did not the _coronel_ ask you to help him, señor?"

"Me? Why, I'm no Catholic. I am a Protestant. You don't imagine the
_coronel_ would allow a Protestant to go searching through a Catholic
convent, do you? He respects the decencies of life."

The doubting guard touched his cap.

"Very well, señor." Both of them turned about, shouldered their rifles,
and marched off down the garden fence toward the convent.

When they were some distance away, Strawbridge turned and beckoned. The
_griffe_ girl came to him. She was doubled up with stifled explosions
of laughter.

"_Caramba!_ what a man!" she gasped. "Send those two donkeys trotting
off like that! _Cá!_" She put her hand on her stomach and doubled again.

Strawbridge shook her out of her mirth.

"Here, cut it out! How can we get into this garden?" He looked up the
sheer wall. "How in hell are we ever going to get in?!"

The girl looked up.

"I got out on that tree." She pointed at an overhanging bough.

"Well--damn it!--you see you can't reach it now. You couldn't reach
that from the top of the wall!"

"No, señor."

The drummer took the girl by the arm as if he meant to throw her over,
and moved distractedly back along the wall.

"I wonder if you could hold on to that Bougainvillea," he speculated
hurriedly. "The only thing I see to do is to boost you up to it. We can
try it."

They hurried up under the bush. Strawbridge picked her up bodily with
his good hand and the elbow of his bad arm. He got her to his shoulder,
put one hand under her, and shoved upward with his whole strength.
The smell of the kitchen enveloped him. Her sandaled feet were on his
shoulders; then she stepped on his head. Flickers of flame danced
before his eyes as she kicked off and grabbed the down-hanging bush
above them. The next moment she was scrambling toward the top of the
wall, clinging to an armful of Bougainvillea stems.

Strawbridge watched her, with his arms straining upward, as if he still
bore her weight. He stood thus, as the half-breed girl gained slowly
upward and wriggled her body over the top of the wall.


The drummer stood for a monotonous age in the gloom beside the garden,
waiting for the reappearance of the maid and her mistress. As he stood
there the stars came out among the overhanging branches. A faint
perfume of some flowering tree sifted down to him, and its fragrance
alternated with the smells of a Latin street. A rumor of the turmoil
in the plaza still reached his ears, but it was overpowered at regular
intervals by the sharp trilling of some insect in the wall. This tiny
creature repeated its love-trill over and over, until at last it caught
the drummer's attention. He thought what a strange thing it was for
this little living speck to send out its love-cry thus and to expect,
out of the immensity of the night, some final satisfaction. And there
was he, Thomas Strawbridge, on precisely the same quest of love as the
midge in the wall.

It was a fantastic thought. The drummer shuddered, and moved about. It
seemed to him the insect had been trilling for hours, when he heard a
movement on the top of the wall. Then the voice of the _griffe_ girl
whispered:

"Señor, we went to the gate. There are four guards there. How will the
señora ever get down?"

Strawbridge was at the edge of his nerves. He thought in irritation:
"You fools! wasting time to go to the gate!" He said aloud: "Dolores!
Are you up there, Dolores!"

"Oh, dear Tomas, how can I get down?" came the girl's whisper.

"You'll have to drop!" He braced himself for a violent strain.

"I'll catch you!"

The salesman heard a movement above, then the rapid breathing of
women attempting some uncertain feat. Presently he made out an object
lowering itself, or being lowered, from the rim of the wall. Then he
heard a strained whisper: "Oh, señor, I _can't_ let go! Please come up
and help me!"

Strawbridge was writhing in a rigor of impatience.

"Drop! For God's sake, drop, Dolores!"

"But I can't drop in the dark! I can't!"

"For Christ's sake, Dolores, drop!" he cried. "_Chica!_ _chica!_ Break
her grip! Shove her hands loose! Quick! Damn it! here they come!"

At that instant came a flurry of falling skirts; a blow of soft flesh
staggered the drummer and almost brought him to his knees. An aura of
faint perfume surrounded him. The breath burst from the girl's strained
lungs as she jarred through her lover's arms to the ground. The next
moment they had straightened themselves and set out running, hand in
hand, down the _calle_.

"To the cathedral," gasped the señora. "We'll be safe there!"

From behind them came shouts, then a rifle-shot. A moment later the
fugitives ran past the turn in the _calle_ and for the moment were
screened from rifle fire. They had hardly turned when the _griffe_ girl
came pattering behind them. She was winged with terror for her mistress.

"Oh, Heart of Pity! They are firing! Run! Run!"

The maid's excitement really hurried them on faster than the shots had
done; but the señora already was panting with the exhaustion of the
gently bred.

"I--I--how far do we have to run?" she gasped.

"On, on, señora! Merciful Mary!"

"But--but I can't! I--I--"

"Let's carry her!" panted Strawbridge, at the end of his resources, but
he knew he could not do it. The run was telling on his own strength.

They were half-way down the _calle_ now, spurring on the last of the
señora's endurance. They were running between solidly built walls.
Behind them the soldiers were shouting commands to halt! The Spanish
girl began to sob.

"I--I'll have to stop, I--can't--go--any--"

At that moment Strawbridge glimpsed a little gap in the wall of
houses, the slit-like mouth of a tiny _calle_. He gasped to the señora:

"Run into that! Here, to the left! Jump in as we pass. Get to the
cathedral the best you can! _Chica_ and I will run on!"

The Spanish girl used up the last of her strength to forge ahead of
the other two, who ran close to the wall behind her, screening her
movements in the gloom. The next moment she disappeared in the narrow
opening.

Strawbridge and the _griffe_ girl ran on alone. When the whole party,
pursued and pursuers, were well past the hiding-place of the Spanish
woman, the girl whispered in a fairly controlled breath, "Let's run off
and leave them, señor!"

"Can you?" puffed the drummer, surprised.

"_Seguramente_, señor!" There was even a hint of the light-hearted in
her voice.

By this time Strawbridge had driven his heart action up to running
tempo. He was now good for twenty or thirty minutes of hard running.
He answered the _griffe_ girl by increasing his pace. She kept even
with him, apparently without exertion. Even in the midst of his anxiety
about the señora, the drummer sensed the freedom and resilience of the
girl's movements.

Nothing but pride drove Strawbridge to keep even with her. He spurted
at top speed. His long legs spanned the cobblestones at a furious
clip. The girl twinkled along at his side with the effortlessness of
a squirrel. She must have enjoyed running; she made little sounds of
pleasure. When the soldiers rounded the corner and saw their quarry far
down the _calle_, there came a hurricane of distant oaths and shouts,
then the sharp crackling of high-powered rifles and a whistling about
their ears.

The _griffe_ girl had the breath to giggle hysterically,
"They--can't--run--or--shoot!"

But the next moment she gave a little cry. With an extra spurt of speed
she veered to Strawbridge, clutched his hand, trying to pull him along,
then pressed it sharply against her bosom and blubbered, "_Adios, mi
amo!_ They--my mistress...." Then, abruptly and shockingly, she fell
headlong on the cobblestones, out of a dead run. Like some wild animal,
she had dashed twenty or thirty yards carrying a shot through her heart


Strawbridge stooped for a moment over the body of the girl, and with
a stab of pain realized that she was dead. He lifted her head and
shoulders, with an idea of carrying her body to some decent place, but
another fusillade of shots rattled behind him. He dropped her on the
cobblestones and dashed ahead, bending low to avoid the bullets as much
as he might. He had not run twenty yards when he came out on the open
plaza. If the _griffe_ girl could have gone twenty yards farther....

He turned sharply to the right along the shop fronts, and tried to lose
himself among the bacchanalían crowd. He began threading his way as
quickly as he could toward the cathedral.

The murder of the servant-girl filled him with terrible apprehensions
for the señora. She was alone in this half-mad city. He began
reproaching himself for ever having left her. A hundred misfortunes
could befall an unaccompanied woman on Spanish-American streets after
nightfall. Some of her pursuers could easily have followed the girl
up the narrow _calle_. They might be carrying her back to Saturnino
at this moment.... A chill sweat broke out on Strawbridge's face. He
shoved along through the dancing crowd, past the bonfire, toward the
church.

The leaping flames of the fire cast waves of illumination across the
plaza and against the cathedral, causing its massive façade to glow
and fade in the darkness. From the moment Strawbridge could make out
the three dark archways of the triple entrance, he began looking for
the woman. He hurried along, peering ahead, hitting his fist against
his palm, twisting his fingers. His rapid walk changed into a trot.
He forgot that his great height rendered him conspicuous as he shoved
along through these low-statured Venezuelans. Once he looked back and
he saw a sinister thing. A squad of soldiers were plunging through the
singers of liberty, like a plow. They left a furrow in the human mass
behind them which required twenty or thirty seconds to refill with
revelers. Then from another direction a second body of soldiers pushed
their way; these two bodies were converging on the cathedral.

The sight of these squads whipped the drummer into headlong flight
again. His apprehension increased as he came to the cathedral. His back
crawled with dread of a crashing impact. One little fact comforted
his harassed brain: if the two squads were focusing on the cathedral,
Dolores must have escaped. If he were killed, Father Benicio would
protect her.

At the very moment he thought of the priest, he saw him. The cleric's
black-robed figure stood at the entrance of the middle door as if on
guard. When Strawbridge reached the piazza in front of the church, he
slackened his pace to something a little more respectful.

"Father--Father," he panted, when he was close enough, "is Dolores in
the church? Has she come? For Christ's sake, man, tell me!"

The priest waved him sharply inside, then walked quickly to the smaller
of the three portals, apparently to shut it. He seemed to have been
waiting for the American's arrival. What he did next, the American did
not know; he was already hurrying down the aisle toward the chapel of
the Last Supper.

Strawbridge knew that Dolores was in this chapel. He turned into the
entrance. He could see nothing except the slender dark figure against
a glow of gold. The girl turned at his footstep, gave a little cry,
and lifted herself to the arms of her lover. The big American bent over
her, unable to see for his own tears. He kissed her ears, her chin,
with her nun's bonnet in his face. He lifted a clumsy hand to remove
it. His shaking fingers felt the coils of her hair, the curve of her
neck. He was half sobbing.

"Oh, I ought never to have left you! Poor angel! Did they hurt you!"

With fluttering fingers she got the bonnet off, and it fell down before
the altar. They stood pressing their mouths together, clinging to each
other with convulsive gusts of strength. They gasped and murmured
inarticulate sounds out of the corners of their lips. They had been so
terrified for each other, and now their nerves swung back in a crescent
and inarticulate transport.


Strawbridge spoke first:

"I saw some soldiers coming this way. I think we'd better go."

The girl lifted her face from his breast to look at him.

"Leave the cathedral!"

"Why, yes, Beautiful! I tell you the soldiers chased me in here. They
must be outside. God knows how long we've been standing here!"

She loosed herself and straightened.

"But, my own heaven, this is our sanctuary. We are safe here."

It had never occurred to the drummer to allow the cathedral to be the
haven of his flight.

"But listen, beloved: we're not safe anywhere. You thought you were
safe in the convent, but--"

"But, _mi adoración_, you know that not even _he_ would violate the
chapel of our merciful Lady." She looked at him, amazed.

"But he will! I know he will. Here, let's go!" He took her arm and
swung her gently about so that she was at his side with one of his arms
about her waist.

"But, _mi carino_!" she cried, "don't you know if he should dare come
in here, our holy Lady would cast him out of this cathedral; _Cá!_ She
would call down fire from heaven upon his head!" The girl made a sharp
gesture from the image on the altar to some imaginary victim before it.

Such a passion of belief startled the drummer. He had never before
sensed this fire in the girl. But his apprehension was rising
constantly. He heard a murmur from the front of the cathedral. He made
her listen; he began urging her more strongly than ever that they fly
while they could. She put a hand over his mouth.

"But listen, _carissimo_!" she insisted passionately. "Our loving Lady
brought us together in her chapel; shall we not trust her to the end?
Can we wound her feelings by deserting her now?" She touched her breast
and forehead and looked at the image. "Oh, _mi corazon_, I prayed and
prayed to her for this great happiness! I wrote a letter to my dear
Lady and placed it here on her altar so my prayer would go up to her
like an incense. And now I have you!" She put her arms around him again
and gazed into his face with rapt and tender eyes. "Let us stay here!"

The fact that Dolores had written the letter which he had contemplated
writing, moved Strawbridge with a profound intimacy and sweetness. It
gave him another of his rare glimpses of the eternity in which his
little life momentarily moved. Perhaps supernal powers were indeed
ranged back of these altars, with their protecting arms about him and
this sweet lady. The thought of such guardianship wrapped the drummer
in its glory. It elevated his passion for the Spanish girl; it lifted
it from the earth, and set it up in heaven, like a star. He was almost
minded to rest his fate with the Virgin, but his mystical mood was
broken by the gathering turmoil at the cathedral entrance. The sounds
reached the chapel softened and sweetened by arches and domes, but
they were sinister. They whipped the American's thoughts from any
supernatural help and set him back sharply on his pagan self-reliance.
He took the girl's arm again.

"Look here, Dolores," he hurried as the sounds swelled in intensity,
"we'll have to go. She--" he nodded at the altar--"she's done
enough--all I want. She's got us together. Now we ought to help
ourselves!" Strawbridge's voice admitted of no discussion. He was
almost dragging the girl away.

The noise at the entrance was resounding as if the cathedral were a
bass viol. Dolores moved instinctively back to her protectress, but
Strawbridge hurried her along.

As they ran up the aisle, Strawbridge thought swiftly of possible
avenues of escape. He remembered the underground tunnels in the crypt,
but the idea of flying through a hole in the ground was repellent to
him. He would take the night and the stars.

Even while he was planning, he hurried to the side door of the
cathedral which let out into the garden. As he fumbled at the bolts
with his good hand, came two heavy, drum-like reports from the front of
the cathedral. This seemed to loose pandemonium in the church.

The drummer leaped with the girl into the dark garden, and went running
down the hedge. They had not gone a hundred feet before they heard
men rush out at the side door behind them. Bending low in the shadow,
Strawbridge ran at full tilt. His good arm took the strain of the
señora's stumblings. In his necessity he upheld her, he almost carried
her. He crashed on through the garden. His impact burst open the little
postern gate toward the palace. As he ran, he silently cursed his
pursuers with every blasphemy he could think of. He could hear the
Spanish girl whispering rapid prayers.

He rushed across to the piazza behind the palace. He swung Dolores upon
it and leaped up after her. The west side of the piazza was blocked
by the palace kitchen. In the cooking-stove a handful of red coals
glowered at him. Their pursuers had now filled the thoroughfare between
the garden and the palace. Suddenly he saw two or three forms leap upon
the platform. The drummer ran to the river side of the piazza. The girl
clutched his arm.

"Oh, _carissimo_! we are not going down there!"

"Yes, yes! there's nowhere else to go!"

They stepped upon the steep, dark slope that dropped away to the river.
Instantly they were sliding and slipping down, helter-skelter. They
went through rotting flesh, bones, decaying vegetables, stenches and
smells such as are found nowhere on earth save outside a Latin-American
kitchen. They balanced, they caught each other, they fell on their
hands and knees. The fetor of the stuff high on the bank changed to the
dull smell of dried leavings farther down. Suddenly, from far above
them, came the flashes of rifles. As usual with riflemen on a height,
the soldiers overshot. A moment later, the fugitives reached the dank
smell that marked the river's edge. Not forty yards down the river,
Strawbridge saw the glimmer of a white object. He went running toward
it, lifting the girl on his arm. The scoured canoe took form out of the
night. The drummer swung Dolores bodily over the garboard, then heaved
at the prow and began backing it out into the dark, swift river. When
it was well afloat, he leaped and landed on his belly across its nose.
He wriggled inside, groped for the paddle, straightened up, and began
working furiously with his good hand and his elbow, away from the rifle
fire.

When he was well away, he looked back. Flashes from the rifles were
still visible, but they seemed to be moving rapidly up the river bank.
With the rifles drifted the black bulk of the palace, the stately spire
of the cathedral, the somber outline of La Fortuna. All moved evenly
and swiftly into the west; they dwindled in size and definition until
presently they melted into the night. At last all the fugitives could
discern were the red reflections of the bonfire against the clouds.

Around the canoe boiled the rapids of the Rio Negro. They were in the
midst of the thunder that brooded for miles over cities and villages
and llanos. The air was full of flying spray and the peculiar smell of
fresh water in great disturbance. The canoe was flung skyward, dropped.
It came to sharp pauses, leaped forward, and pirouetted on prow and
stern. Strawbridge lay flat on his back in the fish-boat, to keep the
center of gravity as low as possible. The stars overhead appeared to
him a whirling vortex of fiery points. He gripped the señora's hands in
his good palm. He could feel her moving her rosary through her fingers.
As they shot through the black thunder, the Spanish girl was praying to
the Virgin of Canalejos. Dolores believed the Virgin was guiding the
canoe down the perilous channel. Strawbridge's nerves were at tension,
but he was not afraid. He believed in his luck.




CHAPTER XXVIII


The distance from Canalejos to San Geronimo is much greater following
the meanders of the Rio Negro than the direct route across the llanos.
When dawn whitened over the river, on the morning after the flight of
the drummer and the Spanish girl, Strawbridge expected hourly to see
the campaniles of San Geronimo appear above the horizon. It was his
plan, when he came in sight of the city, to wait until night before
he attempted to pass in the canoe. He reasoned that Saturnino would
telegraph to San Geronimo and order their arrest and imprisonment.

So, as the two fugitives floated down the great muddy flood, they
peered through the beating sunshine and the dancing glare from the
water, in order to see and be warned by the first glimpse of the
distant city. But such a fulgor lay over the water that toward the
middle of the morning they were hardly able to see the reeds that
marched down to the riverside, or the green parrots that passed over
the canoe in great flocks and filled the sky with a harsh screaming.

The river stretched on, mile after mile, a vast moving plane that
banished the shores to level lines almost at the horizon. At last
Strawbridge came to paddle close to one shore, in order that their tiny
canoe might not be utterly lost amid such an immensity. As they clung
closely to the left or easterly bank they passed, in the afternoon,
what appeared to be the mouth of a small tributary river. Along its
banks were a scattering of deserted huts, stakes with rusting chains
fastened to them, a stockade of reeds daubed with mud, two or three
adobe ovens such as the peons use. Strawbridge looked curiously at
the abandoned site, and presently he realized that he was passing one
of the branches that would have formed a part of General Fombombo's
great system of canals. The work lay abandoned in a furnace of heat;
the conscripted "reds" were gone. The only evidences of life were
the crocodiles which had taken possession of the waterway and sunned
themselves along its sandy rim.

As the man and the woman floated past they looked at the intake and the
empty camp until it grew small in the distance and at last melted into
the dancing horizon. What the Spanish girl thought as she looked at
this ruinous fragment of her husband's great dream, Strawbridge did not
know, nor did he dare to ask.

This long reach of water, wrought by the fettered "reds," somehow made
Strawbridge, as he floated past it in his little canoe, feel small
and uncertain of himself. It brought to his mind keenly the general,
his restless planning; working, gathering gold, attacking cities,
conscripting labor for vast projects; and now he was gone and this
mighty fragment of his work was a harbor for reptiles. Seen from this
perspective, the fact that the dictator had abandoned Dolores, who did
not love him, for peon girls who did, no longer appeared the high crime
which the American had held most harshly against him. It occurred to
Strawbridge that there must have been sides to the general which he had
missed, or but dimly apprehended.

The drummer's thoughts swung away from the general, to the long line of
dictators who had arisen and oppressed Rio Negro. Each tyrant no sooner
gained power than immediately he fell into some madness peculiar to
himself.

Strawbridge wondered why this was so. Heretofore he had thought such
tyranny and oppression arose out of sheer wickedness, but now, looking
back on the life of the general, he doubted this judgment. The trend
of Fombombo's plans had always been toward some great good for his
state. But his efforts, it seemed to Strawbridge, were unbusinesslike.
He made a gesture toward projects far beyond his resources. His effort
to outstrip his physical resources forced him to conscript the "reds."
It was his sensitiveness to any criticism of his unbusinesslike policy
that caused him to imprison every critic of his methods. Lack of
business acumen was the basic weakness which led to the dictator's
tyrannies and to his final downfall.

As Strawbridge sat in the canoe, brooding over it, a strange thought
came to him that perhaps all righteousness of conduct was at last
resolvable to dollars and cents.

He mused over this curious theory. Gumersindo had told him some of the
history of Spain, and all the time the negro editor was relating the
expulsion of the Moors and the Jews from the peninsula, the drummer
kept thinking not of any abstract injustice of the banishment but of
the extraordinarily bad business methods the Spanish monarch used.
Likewise, he could not help thinking that while the Spanish Inquisition
struck a fine attitude before Heaven, it cut a very poor figure on
Exchange.

And now he thought that just as Spain had suffered from lack of
business, Venezuela, her colony, had inherited the same curse. The
Venezuelans placed religion before business, they placed family pride
before business, they placed pleasure before business. It seemed to him
that they placed the smallest before the greatest.

Heretofore, when Strawbridge's Venezuelan friends had twitted the
American with possessing "monetary morals," the drummer was wounded and
inclined to take offense at the qualification. Now, as he thought about
it more steadily, it dawned on him that the ability to sift conduct
down to its money value was about the only universal standard of
righteousness that the world would ever know. This curious conclusion
settled many interrogations in the drummer's mind, and brought to him a
kind of peace.

Strawbridge felt a man's impulse to share his thoughts with the señora.
He glanced up at her, with his theory on the tip of his tongue, but
she seemed absorbed in her own musings. As he looked at her through
the glare of sunshine, his instinct warned him that he would better
not attempt it. It was very precious to him, but it would not be very
precious to her. Indeed, as he looked at her, he began to realize that
she would never understand it; that she was born on the wrong side of
the world ever to understand just these thoughts.

She looked very dear and lovable.


The fugitives did not reach San Geronimo until the third night
following their flight. They approached the city in the darkness, as
they had planned, but to their surprise and dismay, they saw hundreds
of lights moving over the face of the water. From afar off these lights
looked like a field of fireflies, but presently they developed into
native torches, such as the Orinoco Indians use in hunting alligators
at night.

The man and the woman were terrified, and in whispers discussed what
course they could pursue. Dolores suggested that they go ashore on
the other side of the river and walk down past the town. This was
impossible because the city lay in the junction of the Rio Negro and
the Orinoco. They would be caught in this V-shaped Mesopotamia, with
nowhere to walk except back up the Orinoco. Moreover, any walking at
all in such a pestilential country would mean a painful and lingering
death for Dolores. Nor was the drummer in any degree a woodsman. He
always lost his direction in the open.

It seemed to Strawbridge that their only possible hope was to reach one
of the searching canoes and bribe the owner into running them through
the blockade. He knew a report of his imaginary wealth had been spread
among the peons, and now he hoped by wide promises to slip through
Coronel Saturnino's fleet.

He veered his canoe in the darkness and began paddling slowly toward
one of the lights. It seemed an ironic thing that freedom, the right
to a home and to Dolores should lie just a quarter of a mile beyond
those patrolling torches. To accomplish his object, he had scarcely a
gambler's chance. Saturnino, sitting in his study in San Geronimo, had
worked out every possible combination which Strawbridge could attempt.
Now this diapering of lights moving against the darkness was one of his
checks.

In the midst of his thoughts, Strawbridge became aware that half a
dozen or more lights were bearing down on his canoe. The drummer, in
dismay, stopped paddling. He had thought to steal silently up to one of
the canoes, unseen by the others, and quietly make his compact with the
canoeist to assist him through the blockade. Now, with dozens of boats
bearing down on him from every direction, bribery was impossible. He
sat staring at the gathering torches, with a profound sinking of the
heart. By no possibility could he, a one-handed man, race away from the
Indians.

The Spanish girl moved to him.

"Oh, dear Tomas!" she whispered, "are we going to be lost, after all!"

Her helplessness moved the drummer.

"I suppose talking to him, pleading with him, begging him for the love
of humanity to let you go--"

Dolores gave his hand a pressure.

"No, we must not despair. I know the sweet Virgin will save us. She
would not do so much and then let us be lost." The girl lifted her
white face toward the stars and began murmuring her prayers.

The drummer looked at her with a profound pity and tenderness. He
knew it would indeed require a miracle to save her now. He swiftly
considered what he could do. There was only one thing. He could follow
her to Canalejos, and then, when Saturnino had taken her into the
palace and wearied of her ... then....

The drummer wondered whether he himself could keep so long and
humiliating a vigil. It seemed to him that he could; indeed, it seemed
the only thing possible for him to do. Ever again to make a gesture of
deserting her was an impossible thing for Thomas Strawbridge. Among all
the women in the world she alone was for him; she was a very part of
himself.

He put his arms around her.

"Listen, Dolores," he whispered solemnly: "no matter what comes, as
long as I have life I will follow you; no matter what happens, I will
wait for you." He kissed her gently on the cheek and pressed her face
to his. "I will not forsake you, Dolores...."

Amid his murmuring came a shout across the water:

"_Hola, Señor Americano!_ Is that _Señor Americano! Canastos, hombre!_
you are wanted!"

Strawbridge stood up in the canoe.

"Ho, yes!" he shouted loudly. "Come ahead! I am the American!"

Canoes were gathering now from every direction, and their lights began
to illuminate his own boat; still, he could see little of the gathering
flotilla, for each torch was set in front of a tin reflector and flung
all its light forward. From the dimly seen figures came a voice, saying:

"An order from Canalejos, señor. We are to detain you and _la señora_!"

"Yes, I had supposed so."

A pause, then the voice said:

"We have been watching for you day and night, señor."

The American wearied instantly of this polite Spanish circumlocution.

"Oh, well! Now that you've got us what are you going to do with us?"

"If you will accompany me to my ship, señor! Perhaps you recognize me:
we had a very pleasant afternoon together once. I am Captain Vargas of
the _Concepcion Inmaculada_." He twisted the light about in his boat
and exhibited not a canoe but himself and a number of peon oarsmen, in
a jolly-boat.

Strawbridge looked at his good-natured face. That he should have fallen
in with this captain who would have been so easily bribed, amid a
crowd where such bribing was impossible, was the last touch of ironic
fortune. It filled him with such bitterness that he ran his tongue
about his mouth as if the flavor were on his palate.

"Yes, I remember you very well. So you are still here?"

"That is true, but I sail at once. I am in the Rio Negran navy now,
both me and my _Concepcion Inmaculada_. I am a captain. I am a captain
in the insurgent navy."

It was true. Captain Vargas wore a blue coat trimmed with much gold
braid. Coronel Saturnino had caught him through his vanity.


A rope had been tossed over the prow of the canoe, and now the whole
fleet of small boats approached the lights of a schooner that lay in
the harbor of San Geronimo. This was the old schooner _Concepcion
Inmaculada_, now the solitary ship in the insurgent navy. Beyond the
black rigging of the ship, Strawbridge could see the silhouettes of
the long row of palms which stood on the waterfront. The schooner lay
exactly where the drummer had seen her after the battle of San Geronimo.

The small boats pulled up alongside, and the captain and the captives
went on board. The old tub evidently had been laded during the interim,
for now she smelled strongly of balata and tonka-beans.

Captain Vargas led the way briskly across decks and down the little
hatchway into the cabin. Two oil lamps lighted this place and when the
captain stepped into it the gold braid on his new uniform shone more
brightly than ever. He went over to the ship's chest, opened it, and
drew out an envelop.

"I have a writ here for you, Señor Strawbridge," he explained politely.
"It was very necessary to intercept you; that is why all San Geronimo
turned out to be sure you were brought in."

"Yes. You seemed enthusiastic."

Captain Vargas smiled politely. He was a little more polite, a little
stiffer, and not quite so friendly now that he was in a uniform.

"Now, if the señora will have that chair.... She must be weary." He
drew about a chair and assisted her to it, with elaborate courtesy.

Vargas then bowed again and handed the envelop to the drummer. It was
a government official envelop with a large seal. The American opened
it, moistened his lips, then held it under the light of an oil lamp and
read:


     Señor Tomas Strawbridge,
     Late of Canalejos, Rio Negro.

     _Excellentissimo Señor_:

     You are hereby instructed to proceed immediately to Rio de
     Janeiro with the _Concepcion Inmaculada_, taking full command of
     her cargo of balata and tonka-beans, also of the gold coin and
     specie on board, as set forth in the ship's manifest. Deliver
     this cargo to the consignee in Rio Janeiro, and with the proceeds
     therefor purchase the arms and ammunition as heretofore set out
     in a contract entered into by the government of Rio Negro of the
     first part and the Orion Arms Corporation of the second part.
     This former contract is hereby fully validated by the newly
     established government of Rio Negro. I have the honor to be, _al
     mas excellentissimo señor, su muy humilde servidor_,

     DELGOA,
     _Minister of War_.


This surprising letter had a postscript written in a different, and,
indeed, in an almost illegible hand. Its extraordinarily bad Spanish
baffled the drummer for several minutes, but at length he made out:


     My devoted _camarado_: You left Canalejos to attend to some
     other detail of your gigantic plans, just in the moment of local
     victory. However, I saw my opportunity and seized it. The moment
     Coronel Saturnino shot down good Father Benicio at the door of
     the cathedral, when the father was trying to protect the Señora
     Fombombo, that moment I knew Coronel Saturnino had gone too far.
     I knew the saints would overthrow such a blasphemous murderer. I
     raised the banner of revolt against him. All the peons and half
     his own army turned against him at once. I had no difficulty in
     capturing him. He is now lodged in La Fortuna, in its vilest cell.
     He eats nothing but maggoty bread, and drinks the river water that
     seeps into his dungeon. I have him soundly thrashed three times a
     day.

     Also, I have placed in prison all the palace guards and all the
     old government officials and their sympathizers. Be assured none
     of them will ever get out, except in sacks. I am determined that
     in Rio Negro shall reign liberty, equality, and fraternity. That
     is why all aristocrats shall stay in La Fortuna.

     All the rooms in the palace are occupied, but Madruja is very ill.

     I have also recaptured a large number of "reds" and have set them
     to digging the foundation of a magnificent bull-ring.

     JUAN LUBITO, EL LIBERTADOR,
     _First Constitutional President of the
     Free and Independent Republic of Rio Negro_.


       *       *       *       *       *

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into the strongholds of a lawless band.

_JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH_

Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being
robbed by her foreman. With the help of Bud Lee, she checkmates
Trevor's scheme.

_THE SHORT CUT_

Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a quarrel. Financial
complications, a horse-race and beautiful Wanda, make up a thrilling
romance.

_THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER_

A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice's Ranch much to her
chagrin. There is "another man" who complicates matters.

_SIX FEET FOUR_

Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
Thornton, but she soon realizes he is not guilty.

_WOLF BREED_

No Luck Drennan, a woman hater and sharp of tongue, finds a match in
Ygerne whose clever fencing wins the admiration and love of the "Lone
Wolf."

GROSSET & DUNLAP,      PUBLISHERS,      NEW YORK

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64700 ***