The Filibusters, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

WE did not ring for orderlies. We went to the stables and saddled the horses ourselves, and rode out of the courtyard without, I believe, anybody noticing us.

The streets were lit and deserted, and the houses were dark. The new President did not encourage wandering about after nightfall in Dolores, and he frowned upon evening parties for the present. He knew that revolutionary schemes were hatched for the most part during evening hours, and for the present at any rate he did not choose to be embarrassed by an active opposition.

Twice we met street patrols who recognised Carew and myself, and let us pass; and then we came to the Nicaragua Gate, and the guard let us through without the least demur. Sir William Carew’s escape could not have been made easier. And so there we were, outside the capital; and I, the only responsible being in Sacaronduca who knew of the fellow’s colossal treachery, had helped him successfully to avoid the just consequences. It is true I was in a manner forced into doing this, but that did not make me any the more pleased with the result.

We had a good long ride in front of us before we came to a piece of quiet ground, for that side of the city is well fringed with the villas, and bungalows, and country houses of the better-off people, who prefer the sweet open air of the plains to the somewhat dubious scents of Dolores. A cable tramway ran down the first two miles of the road, with double avenues of palms shading the sidewalks on either side, and we trotted along together on the right-hand flank of the metals, to all appearance the most amicable pair of gentlemen who ever took an early morning constitutional.

After villadom, came larger estates and farms, and after the farms came a broad quaking belt of marsh full of black pools and waving reeds, and uneasy with night fowl and alligators. The stars hung in the night above us, the fireflies danced over the sour morasses at our sides, and the road swung under the beat of the horses’ hoofs as a ferry swings on a river. A close moist heat exhaled from the place.

In the middle of this belt of quagmire Carew pulled up his horse. ” This would suit us, I should say, Birch,” he remarked. “After I’ve shot you I can tip you over the edge of the causeway, and you’ll be neatly and inexpensively buried.”

“Quite so,” said I, ” but it happens that I intend to shoot you if it can be managed, and it wouldn’t suit me at all to chuck you to the alligators after the event. I should want to take your carcase back to Dolores as a guarantee of good faith.”

“And stick my head on a spike at the top of the Nicaragua Gate? Rather out of date that sort of thing, isn’t it? However, we can put the horses on one side and blaze at one another up and down the road, and then the man who drops will be lying on dry ground for the other to deal with as he sees fit. There’s another thing I might call your attention to. It’s just possible that the man who remains alive may be wounded, and if he is I’ll bet a lot he finds the water precious handy and comforting. I’ve been wounded myself more than once, and I know what thirst is.”

I was quite prepared for the possibility of being shot dead, but in the blaze of my anger against Carew the idea of being wounded had not come to me before; and I confess that when the scoundrel mentioned it I was conscious of an unpleasant chill. It is not desirable to be wounded at any time; and here, if the survivor of the duel was badly enough hit to be helpless, he might very well starve to death before he was interfered with. Since the revolution traffic had ended with the farms at the Dolores side of the belt of marsh.

The country beyond was for the most part wild, and inhabited only by miners, hunters, Indians, and log cutters, who were either still loyal to Maxillo’s rule, or were too indifferent about politics to have acknowledged the new Government. It was overrun by bands of men who called themselves guerillas in the service of Maxillo or one of the former presidents, but who were in reality mere brutal-handed brigands. And the belt of swamp was tacitly looked upon as neutral ground, and no one risked a gunshot by crossing it.

I put this coldly enough to Carew, and suggested that we should go back a mile or two. “We can have our fight there quite undisturbed, and if a wounded man occurs, he will get somebody to look after him. It seems to me we have come too far.”

“And it seems to me we have not gone far enough,” he retorted. ” It would be a choice between frying-pan and fire for me back where we have come from, because all Dolores will know by tomorrow morning the little game I have been playing, and Briggs would string me up on sight dead or sound if he could manage it. On ahead I grant it might prove an unhealthy neighbourhood for you, Birch, but at the same time it isn’t exactly a safe harbour of refuge for me. Of course, there’s a good deal to be said in favour of both views, but we haven’t time for talk now, and so look here. I’ll toss you for which it is to be, forward or back.” He spun a quarter, and clapped it down on the knee of his riding-breeches. “You show to me.”

“Mine’s a head.”

He uncovered the coin, and scraped a match to show it me.

“A tail,” said I. ” I don’t mind. It’s lucky to lose at the beginning of a game: it improves my chance of winning later.”

Dawn was beginning to thin down the horizon from purple into grey; the stars were snuffing out; and from somewhere in the marsh a curlew gave a scream or so preparatory to beginning the business of the day. The road swung under with us as we cantered on, and ahead the rim of the forest began to show up like the line of a low black cliff. Carew drew a cigar out of his pocket, bit the end off, and lit it dexterously without slackening speed.

A smoke would have suited me very well also, but my horsemanship is of a more elementary order, and I did not choose to pull up to get a light.

The dawn grew as we went on, and the wall of trees began to show feathery crests projecting from its cornice. Soon the outer paling of trunks made itself distinguishable, and then we could make out the outlines of palmettos and the other shrubs which made up the undergrowth. AncJ presently, indeed, we were off the quaking marsh road, and out of the dawn, and well into an alley of the forest, which was still rilled with a gloom of night. Here it was that I made a halt. “Get down,” I said. “There’s a glow of a logcutter’s fire over yonder amongst the trees, and assistance will come from there to the man who wants it.”

“But, my good man, it’s too dark to shoot one another here. We should only waste a lot of cartridges and kick up a deal of unnecessary noise. I’ve got pressing business on ahead; you might just as well ride on with me and save time.”

“I’ll stick by my bargain. It was to be either this side of the swamp or the other, and you won the toss. Here we are, and here we stay till we’ve had it out.”

“Well, I must say you’re deuced unaccommodating,” Carew grumbled, and swung a leg over the neck of his horse, and slid to the ground. “However, I’m not going to beg favours of you. I’ll just tie up my moke and take a bit of a rest till you’re pleased to be ready.”

I also dismounted, and