Swift and Sure Part 4

The Captain was speechless with fury. He looked at the men motionless on the embankment, at his unconscious troopers laughing and jesting below. He turned about and saw Will, smiling, at his elbow. The Chief stood in the same easy att.i.tude of unconcern. With a muttered oath Captain Espejo turned on his heel, and strode down the embankment.

Half-way down he wheeled about, and sputtered--

"You, Senor Inglese, have not seen the last of me. General Carabano shall hear of this impertinence--this unparalleled atrocity; and he will exact a heavy retribution, I promise you."

He completed the descent, summoned his orderly and threw himself into the saddle, and then, riding up to his men, curtly ordered them to mount and follow him. The troop rode away in the direction whence they had come.

"I'm most terribly stiff," cried O'Connor, springing up. "I'm sorry you've done it, Chief; I should have liked a sc.r.a.p with the beggars; but you're a wonderful man."

The Chief smiled.

"First catch your hare, then cook him," he said.

CHAPTER V--A Sc.r.a.p OF PAPER

Watching the hors.e.m.e.n as they rode away, Will suddenly remembered the prisoner whom he had seen running beside one of them. The man was now gone. Perhaps he had slipped away; perhaps the horseman at whose stirrup he had been tied had not accompanied the rest to the camp. He spoke of it to the Chief. The latter suggestion deepened the look of gravity on Mr. Jackson's face.

"I hope to goodness there are no more of them," he said. "We had better send a native to shadow them."

"I'll do that, Chief," said O'Connor, "with Ruggles. I wouldn't trust a native."

"Very well. Don't go too far. It'll be dark soon."

When O'Connor had set off with Ruggles on horseback, Mr. Jackson asked Will to go with him to his tent to talk things over.

"This is serious," he said. "I'm afraid we've only postponed the evil day. Whether this revolution succeeds or not we shall hear more of the rebels. The Government can't help us."

"Still, we couldn't be much worse off than if you had given in to the fellow. They'd have collared all our cash; and all our peons would have mutinied--all they didn't impress, that is."

"True. It would have meant a complete smash here. The peons would have made off to the woods, carrying their machetes with them, you may be sure, and they're worth two dollars apiece. We should never have seen them again: it would have brought our work to a standstill; and as the funds of the Company are rather low I shouldn't wonder if it had been crippled beyond hope of recovery. The business has suffered enough already. The worst of it is that we've still got that to look forward to."

"What can we do?" asked Will.

"Nothing, except stick on. I'll not budge till I'm compelled for all the Carabanos and Espejos in Venezuela. We'll go about our work as usual and keep our eyes open. Our contract with the Government requires us to carry Government troops, but I'll refuse point-blank to carry any other armed force, and neither Government nor rebels will get any money out of me willingly."

They were still talking when O'Connor and Ruggles returned.

"We saw them cross the river about two miles up," said O'Connor, coming into the tent, "and they were joined by three more of the same kidney.

It didn't seem worth while going any farther. But we haven't come back empty-handed."

"What have you got?" asked the Chief.

"Nothing very valuable: a poor wretch of an Indian. Ruggles is bringing him along. We found him hiding in the trees, and thought he might be a spy of theirs; but he turned out to be a runaway servant of the Captain's. He told Ruggles some story which I couldn't make out--here he is."

Ruggles entered, bringing with him a wretched-looking object. Will recognized him instantly as the man he had saved from the jaguar in the early morning. The Indian's face brightened as he saw his rescuer. He fell on his knees before him and begged for food. When he had eaten, with the ferocity of a starving man, what was given him, he said in answer to Will's questions that he had run away from Captain Espejo, who treated him cruelly. After the adventure with the jaguar he had recrossed the river, and unluckily stumbled upon the very man he had most wished to avoid. The Captain had thrashed him and tied him to the stirrup of one of his men; but taking advantage of a dense clump of forest through which they pa.s.sed, he had wrenched his hands free and fled into the bush. Three of the party had dismounted and tried to track him, but he was more at home in the woodland than they, and had been able to elude them. These were the three men who, after their vain search, had rejoined the main party returning from their equally unsuccessful expedition.

"Well, he's another mouth to feed," said the Chief, "but I suppose we had better keep him and find something for him to do. What's your name?"

"Azito, senor," said the man humbly.

The Chief called up his servant, and ordered him to arrange a sleeping-place for the Indian. Then he dismissed him, and the four Englishmen, by the light of a lamp hanging from the roof of the tent, sat discussing the affair of the day and the steps to be taken on the morrow.

"I think we had better put the camp in a state of defence," said O'Connor. "If we don't protect ourselves, n.o.body will."

"That won't be much good," said the Chief, "we shall be s.h.i.+fting camp soon, and it'll be more than life's worth to attempt to fortify ourselves every time. Nothing short of a wall all round would be any good, and it would be tremendous work to build that: there's such a lot of us."

"As to s.h.i.+fting camp, we might put that off for a while--until next pay-day at any rate; though it will mean a tramp for the men at night after work is done. If you'll leave the defences to me I'll see what can be done."

"But the camp might be raided while we are miles away at railhead," said Will.

"We can put outposts out to give us notice of any armed party approaching; that might give us time to get back."

"You ought to have been a soldier, O'Connor. Cobbler, stick to your last, eh?"

O'Connor smiled.

"Leave it to me, Chief," he said. "I would just relish a brush with those ruffians."

"It's rather curious they came just after pay-day," said Will.

"Oh! I dare say they know what our arrangements are," replied Mr.

Jackson. "It's no secret that we get our pay once a fortnight from Bolivar. We may expect a visit from them next pay-day, if not before. I only hope they won't bother us as they did the French company some years ago: they broke 'em, with the a.s.sistance of floods and earthquakes. Ah well! every cloud has a silver lining."

Next day O'Connor devoted himself to the fortification of the camp, employing a hundred men--a fourth of the whole company of peons--on the work. To lessen the labour, he took the embankment as one wall, and palisaded the top for about a hundred yards. Then he made a rough circular wall around the camp enclosure, using rails and sleepers and a number of trucks, defending the whole circuit with a chevaux-de-frise made of branches lopped from the neighbouring woods. Mr. Jackson doubted whether the terms of their concession from the Government admitted the use of timber for this purpose, but O'Connor made the very pertinent answer that permission to build a railway was of little value unless it included the right to defend the line and those employed on it; upon which the Chief said no more.

These defensive works occupied several days. Before they were completed a muleteer came from the mines to report that Captain Espejo had visited them and demanded money from the manager. Luckily the fortnight's pay had not arrived, and his cash-box was almost empty; but the Captain had seized all the money that was left, and also impressed a score of the miners, who had been marched away, presumably to the head-quarters of General Carabano.

During these days news was brought in by several of the haciendados of the neighbourhood, from whom the Chief obtained supplies of food, that General Carabano had captured two or three small towns to the eastward, and recruited a considerable number of men, who were for the most part poorly armed, and still worse equipped. The workers on the railway were delighted at the discomfiture of Captain Espejo; none of them had any wish to share the unenviable lot of men impressed in the revolutionary cause. At present they had hard work, but good pay; as hirelings of General Carabano they would lead the life of dogs, liable to be whipped or slashed or even shot if they chanced to offend their officers, and to get no pay at all.

On the day after Captain Espejo's visit Mr. Jackson wrote to the Provincial Jefe at Ciudad Bolivar, with whom he was on good terms, relating what had happened, and asking for the protection of Government troops. He sent the letter by mounted messenger to the junction about fifty miles off, whence it was conveyed by rail. In two days he received a reply, in which the Jefe sympathized with his position, but said that he had just been obliged to dispatch the greater part of the force under his command to Caracas, which was threatened by a rising in Valencia. He could not further deplete his garrison without endangering Bolivar. His letter concluded with a strong warning to Mr. Jackson against affording any a.s.sistance to the rebels.

"We're between the devil and the deep sea," said the Chief, discussing the letter with his staff. "The Government can't help us, and leaves us at the mercy of the rebels; and yet it will punish us if we help them, which they may force us to do. What a country!"

"Why didn't you stay at home, Chief?" asked O'Connor.

"Because I didn't want to run the risk of clerking at thirty bob a week," replied Mr. Jackson. "That's the fate of many good men in the old country, worse luck."

Azito, the Indian, had attached himself to Will, const.i.tuting himself an additional servant, much to the disgust and jealousy of the negro Jose.

The two quarrelled so frequently that Will thought it advisable to separate them. Accordingly he got Mr. Jackson to make use of Azito as a scout. He gave him a pony and sent him to learn what he could of the revolutionaries: where General Carabano had fixed his head-quarters, how many men he had with him, and what his intentions were. The Indian was at first very reluctant to venture within reach of his late master; but on Will promising that he should be well paid and provided for, the man consented, rather from blind devotion to his rescuer than from any other motive.

Returning after two days' absence, he reported that General Carabano was quartered in a hill-village about twenty-five miles north-east of railhead. His force, as estimated by the Indians of the neighbourhood, consisted of some five hundred men. It was rumoured that the General, when he considered himself strong enough, intended to attack Ciudad Bolivar, on the Orinoco about forty-five miles farther to the north-east. His numbers were being continually increased, but he was obviously in great need of money, and had already begun to make forced requisitions on the haciendados and the Indians. Mr. Jackson devoutly hoped that money would not be forthcoming. A leader of strong personality could easily and at any time gather a large army of desperadoes in Venezuela if he had the money to pay them.

The day after Azito's return the camp suffered from one of the periodical disasters which it was impossible to foresee or to guard against. A violent tornado swept over the district, uprooting immense trees, whirling the tents away, and scattering their contents in all directions. It was all over in a few minutes, but the mischief done would take days to repair. Will was walking over the ground, seeking to recover his possessions among the litter, when he happened to find a sheet of the Company's official paper on which he saw that a rough plan was drawn. He picked it up, thinking it might be one of the Chief's papers; but on further examination he was surprised to find that it was a sketch of the encampment, or rather of that part of it occupied by the engineering staff. The position of each tent was marked, and distinguished by a letter of the alphabet. Will thought the paper must belong to O'Connor, and took it to him. At the moment O'Connor had his arms full of pyjamas and underwear which he had just collected from the havoc of the storm. His inseparable pipe was in his mouth.

"Is this yours?" asked Will, showing him the paper.