VI
IN THE gloom of the jail three men started from slumber. A few seconds of listening to the strident clamor outside, and two of them broke into joyous yells. The third remained silent, and on his shadowy face grew perturbation.
“Yeay!” shouted Kelly. “Here's where we eat! Sneaky Gordo's on his way to hell, and us poor convicts are out of the pen—almost. Boy! Listen to 'em tearin' into the jefe's house, will ye! Veinte Cuatro's gang, with blood in their eye! 'Muert' al traidor!'”
“Quick curtain and a slow march for Jaime!” exulted Hart. “But Jean's in that house, and that mob sounds hardboiled. We've got to get over there, double time.”
“Sure. Quick as we can. Give 'em the high sign and keep it up. Somebody'll hear it.” With that he began bellowing, “Libertad! Libertad! Amigos! Al cârcell Libertad!”
Hart's yells joined in. Presently Pablo, too, took up the call. Their release was a foregone conclusion, since conquering rebels invariably liberate the prisoners of the overthrown federals, and usually gain recruits thereby; for such prisoners frequently are not actual criminals but victims of official spite, and, naturally, embittered against all officialdom. However, the opening of the prison is likely to be an afterthought, and neither of these Americans was disposed to wait. Pablo, on the other hand, had little desire to emerge while shooting was in progress; but then it occurred to him that the sooner he slipped away from these fierce companions of his the better. Perhaps, too, he could turn a trick or two to his own advantage in the disorder.
So the three of them vociferated at the top of their lungs. For some time, however, no response came. The bugle rang, the uproar quieted, a series of shots indicated a duel at the official residence, and a virtual silence ensued. Then recommenced a noise of voices, of marchings, of sharp demands for opening of doors, and of splintering wood. At length came an abrupt thumping and creaking at the portal of the jail. The barrier swung back.
“Libertad!” exulted a hoarse voice outside. “Come forth, you in the trap! Liberty and justice are here!”
The Tiger and the Bull needed no second bidding. Out into the moonlight they lunged, almost colliding with several armed men. Pablo, wavering, hung back.
Without a word, the pair of Northerners shoved their liberators aside and started for the Gordo house. At once came clicks of rifle-hammers and an angry command.
“Alto! Stand there! Who are you, with your cursed arrogance?”
Kelly growled, and his right hand lifted to his shirt. But Hart spoke swiftly.
“Steady, Kelly! As you were!” He slowed, but did not halt. His voice snapped back over his shoulder, “El Tigre and El Toro, children! We go to Veinte Cuatro. Do you think it wise to stop us?”
A pause, filled with various noises from the town. The group began moving after them.
“El Tigre?” echoed a surprized voice. “El Tigre of the Vichada country? In the Caicara jail? It is impossible!”
“Impossible but true,” retorted Hart, with a short laugh. “El Tigre, who came here in a boat and has starved since midday.”
“Cra! I begin to believe you.” The raiders closed in, their spokesman sharply scrutinizing the pair. “We have seen your boat. And you look much hungered. Cra! You are hurt! The arm is bad. Bien. You shall see the general, never fear. It is his order.”
“Bueno. Vamos. Let us go.”
They went, passing disorderly knots of roving marauders who, with no orders to fulfil, sought whatever they might find; meeting detachments moving as if under command and bound on definite missions; hearing rough talk, an occasional laugh, a smash of glass and a chorus of oaths as somebody dropped a bottle. The rum-shops already had been broken into.
To these details they gave little attention. Quietly, as they walked, Hart prompted—
“We don't know anything about the switch being out of the boat.”
“Uh-huh. I got ye. We dunno where it's gone, so we can't fix it.”
“Qué dice?" suspiciously demanded their escort.
“I was saying I hoped we could find some food.”
“Ah. Most certainly. When you have talked with the general.”
They were striding fast now, Hart setting the pace with space-eating swings. Lights were shining in the office of the jefe civil, and the shutters stood half open. Along the front of the house was posted a line of men standing at rest, lounging on their rifles, swapping low-toned jests, but sharply watching all comers. As the two strangers approached, these straightened.
“Not so fast, there, hombres!” one warned. “What do you want?”
“These are from the cârcel," returned the leader of the liberators. “The general will see them.”
A derisive grin flashed along the line, teeth glinting in the white moonlight.
“Ho! The illustrious birds of the jail will honor the general at once with their presence? What marvelous courtesy! But the distinguished visitors will wait here, sargento, until the general is at liberty to receive them.”
“To the with your general, and the same to you?” erupted Kelly, in jungle Spanish. “Get out from under our feet!”
An instant of amazed silence. Men stared at the truculent, harsh-voiced new-comer and his set-faced mate. Followed a mutter and the gleam of moonlight on rifle-barrels jerking upward.
“Steady, Kelly!” Hart snapped again.
But he did not slow down. Instead he threw a challenge beyond the bristling line. Sharp, biting, his voice sped through the windows of the office, where was visible a huddle of figures.
“Veinte Cuatro! Do you hide behind your men? El Tigre of the Vichada asks!”
“Qué?” jarred an angry shout from within. “What? Hide? Diablo! I?”
A chair squeaked back on the tiled floor and fell over with a bang. The figures in the lamplight were thrown to both sides like flotsam before the prow of a dreadnought. Shutters were yanked open to their fullest width, and at a window bulked a belligerent form peering out.
“Where is this Tigre who squalls so loud? Make way, you, and let him come, and all his tigritos with him!”
“Gracias!” mocked El Tigre. “I come, and my whole army at my side.” And through the now yielding guard he and Kelly strode to the house. The squad which had followed them from the jail went no farther.
Within doors, the Northerners swung from the corridor into the office, where they halted. A motley group faced them: several under-officers, a number of scared peons and servants, a worried merchant or two, and, bulking over all, the thunder-faced Veinte Cuatro himself. For a few seconds all eyes focused on the insulting intruders, who swiftly scanned faces, vainly seeking that of Jean. Then the battered Bull and the crippled Tiger confronted the powerful Black Ant.
With sombrero thrown aside and ugly temper contracting his visage, Veinte Cuatro bore out his sobriquet. Black hair in a disordered shock, bushy black brows, threatening black eyes, huge black mustache, all combined with a steel-trap mouth and muscular jaws to suggest forcibly that giant insect with the dire bite. Now, with fist curled around the butt of his reloaded revolver, he glared at the impugners of his courage. In the semi-quiet of the moment sounded a thumping, battering disturbance somewhere at the rear of the place.
“For your prompt invitation to join you I thank you,” was Hart's sarcastic greeting. “I am El Tigre. This is my entire fighting force—at present.” He nodded sidewise toward Kelly. “I want two persons immediately. One is a fat snake called Jaime Gordo. The other is the señorita Norte Americana.”
ANOTHER pause, while the pounding at the rear continued. The hot gaze of the rebel commander burned into the steely eyes of the pair who, disheveled, dirty, alone and apparently unarmed amid hundreds of dangerous men, bore themselves with such assurance. An explosion seemed imminent—and it was. But when it came it was of an unexpected sort. With the suddenness of a lightning flash the menacing face changed, and under the sweeping mustache opened a mouth belching laughter.
“Ho ho ho!” roared Veinte Cuatro. “El Tigre and all his band? A couple of crowing cockerels from the dung-heap, my faith! Yo ho ho ho! Have you two birdlets been pecking under a rum-shop, that you prance so boldly and sing of señoritas? Or have you—”
Through his loud ridicule broke a rumbling, rending crepitation, succeeded by exultant yells.
“Aha! Una mujer! La querida! The sweetheart of the fat betrayer! Come to us, pretty one! Come to lovers who—”
Hart and Kelly wheeled, knocked two men spinning, leaped into the corridor. Down it they dashed, into the room where it ended, on through a connecting room. As they entered a third chamber they saw at its farther side a wrecked door, beyond which several figures struggled amid laughing oaths.
“Jean!” shouted Hart.
“Ye-yes!” called a panting voice. “Here—these men—”
Then out came Kelly's concealed gun. It darted to an aim at the group beyond, whose grinning faces had turned doorward at Hart's hail; and with menacing mien its owner advanced on them. Hart's hand instinctively closed at the top of his empty holster. Finding the black butt gone from its accustomed place, it sank a little lower, concealing the lack of a weapon and simulating readiness for a fast draw. As the astonished gangsters halted motion and stared at the strangers, Kelly blared:
“Hands off! Leave her free! You sons of Indios, go and paw the half-breed women of the town! Guns down! I will blow the guts out of your bellies if you make a move!” Then, in English, “Come on, Miss Jean. Duck low, so's I can shoot over ye. Make it snappy!”
He had halted now, and Hart with him. For a second it seemed that the reckless rebels would force him to shoot; but then, all at once, they became stolid, almost meek, as if in the presence of their commander. From their midst emerged Jean, running through the doorway without regard to Kelly's warning not to block his fire. She was breathing hard and wild-eyed, her hair and clothing were disordered, and one hand was reddened at the knuckles; but she laughed as she came—albeit with a note slightly hysterical. Her gaze lingered only an instant on her rescuers; then went beyond them with a questioning look.
Hart, following her glance, turned his head, then faced about. In the entrance through which they had just come stood a man who had pursued them so quietly that they had not heard him, and whose presence explained the sudden obedience of the girl's captors; Veinte Cuatro himself.
On his saturnine face now was a half-smile, which broadened a trifle as the girl stopped beside the blond American and, with a movement half appealing, half protective, and wholly unconscious, laid a hand on his taut right arm. The glinting black eyes passed over her from top to toe and back again, then over the wounded man to whom she clung. They switched to the broad back of Kelly, still holding his drop. The smile became a wide grin.
“It seems that you have found your señorita,” whimsically conceded the conqueror. “And por Dios, one well worth seeking! I did not know there was such a one. Now, General El Tigre, would you be so magnanimous as to order your artillery to cease threatening my poor soldados? They are only obeying my orders to search this house and bring to me all persons found. This last door was most stubborn. Had I known who waited beyond it, matters would have been conducted differently.”
With that he bowed low—a movement as graceful as unexpected. And neither Hart nor Jean, though watching him searchingly, found in his new manner anything sneering or sinister. Rather, it was that of a good-humored cavalier paying homage to beauty.
“What about it, Hart?” hoarsely asked Kelly, rigid from strain. “Is he holdin' a gun on me back, or—”
“No. Ease up. He's on the level.”
“And,” added Jean with a quick smile, “I think he's a gentleman.”
“He better be,” grunted Kelly, crusty as ever.
But his weapon vanished, and he turned with relief. Veinte Cuatro chuckled, and, to the surprize of all, spoke in halting English.
“There have been—a time when todo el mundo—ev'reebodee—call Federico Gordo gentil-man. Per-hap he no have—have not—forget those day.”
Jean blushed. Before she could reply Hart countered bruskly.
“Then prove it by ordering all your men to treat this lady with the consideration due her. And you can tell todo el mundo that anybody calling her the querida of Jaime Gordo will have his head knocked off. And that reminds me. Where is that crocodile of a Jaime?”
The general's bushy brows drew down, and his eyes hardened.
“You are short in your ways, señor. Your demands are unnecessary and uncivil. I shall attend to those matters without instructions from you.” He made an imperative gesture. The men still standing at the ruined doorway slouched forward, filed past, disappeared toward the front. “A guard shall be placed here, and all others kept out. When you have had time to compose yourself, señorita, I shall ask you a few questions. You men will come with me. That Jaime—he is not for you; he is mine, and I will—”
He stopped short. Somewhere outside sounded several shots, a screaming yell, two more reports; then shouts, queries, vague replies.
For a minute or two the room was very still. In the soft lamplight eye met eye, while Veinte Cuatro grimly awaited an explanation. Came then a quick tread through the rooms beyond, and an under-officer appeared.
“My general,” he cried, “the peon who was under your examination has found his tongue at last—with a little persuasion. My general, the place below this house where that Jaime fled is not only a room, says the peon, but a tunnel! It runs under the ground to some other house. So while we thought the betrayer to be penned beyond that door he has escaped!”
Veinte Cuatro bristled.
“Escaped!” he thundered. “Escaped? Sangre de Cristo, he does not escape from me! By the horned I will have him, if I tear to pieces every house! What was that shooting?”
“That? Ah, that was nothing, my general. It seems that two of the men have a little too much rum, and—ah—they became angered at a man said to be from up the river, and—ah—unfortunately shot him to death. He is nobody; a common man who was in jail with these two señores. One of our soldados says his name was Pablo Benito.”