The Young Buglers, G. A. Henty [feel good fiction books TXT] 📗

"None, captain, except that these boys have brought some despatches for you from the English Lord."

Nunez looked sharply at them, and held out his hand without speaking. Tom gave him the little quill.

The guerilla opened it, read the contents, and, saying briefly, "An answer to-morrow," strode on to his men, and in a few minutes they were defiling out at the end of the valley.

"That hardly seems a strong enough body to attack a French convoy, Garcias," Tom remarked.

"No, it would not be, but there is only a part of his band here; the rest will join him at some place agreed on—perhaps ten miles from here. I believe he has about thousand men under his orders. Now come along; we shall be none the worse for dinner," and, leaving his men to unload the mules, he led the way into the little posada, or inn.

"Ah! Mother Morena," he said to an old woman who was crouching near a blazing wood fire, "warming yourself as usual; it's well you've a good fire, for you will be able to get us some dinner all the more quickly. Twelve of us altogether, and all as hungry as wolves."

"Ah!" exclaimed the old woman crossly; "it seems as if I were never to have an hour's quiet, just as all that roaring, greedy lot, with their Mother Morena here and Mother Morena there, and their grumbling at the olla, and their curses and their quarrels, are off, and I think I am going to have a quiet afternoon, then you come in with your twelve hungry wolves."

"Ah! mother, but wolves don't pay, and we do, you see."

The frugal supper over, the boys laid down on the benches, and were soon asleep. The next day passed slowly, for the band were not expected to return until late at night—perhaps not until the next morning, as the pass where the attack would be made was some fifteen miles off, and the convoy might not pass there until late in the afternoon. The boys soon made friends with some of the women and children of the place, to whom they told stories of the great cities of the plain, and of the great water which washed the shores of Spain. The greater portion of the Spanish peasantry are incredibly ignorant, and very few of the inhabitants of this village had ever gone beyond the mountains. Walking about in the village, but apparently mixing but very little in the games of the other children, were two little girls, whose gay dress of rich silk seemed strangely out of place in such a spot.

Tom asked one of the women who they were, and she replied, with a toss of the head, "They are the captain's children. The last time the band went out they found among the baggage and brought up here, the dresses of the children of some fine lady, and the captain kept them all as part of his share, just as if there were no children in the village whom it would become a great deal better than those stuck-up little things. Not," she said, softening a little, "that they were not nice enough before they got these things; but since they came their heads have been quite turned by the finery and they are almost too grand to speak to their old playfellows."

"Is their mother alive?"

"No, poor thing, she was killed by the French when the village she lived in was burned by them, because some of them were found hung in the neighborhood. The captain was away at the time and the children were out in the woods. When he came back he found them crying by the side of their mother's body, in the middle of the burning village. So then he took to the mountains, and he never spares a Frenchman who falls into his hands. He has suffered, of course, but he brought it upon himself, for he had a hand in hanging the French soldiers, and now he is a devil. It will be bad for us all; for some day, when the French are not busy with other things, they will rout us out here, and then who can blame them if they pay us for all the captain's deeds? Ah! me, they are terrible times, and Father Predo says he thinks the end of the world must be very near. I hope it will come before the French have time to hunt us down."

The boys had a hard struggle not to smile, but the woman spoke so earnestly and seriously, that they could only shake their heads in grave commiseration for her trouble; and then Tom asked, "Is the captain very fond of the children?"

"He worships them," the woman said; "he has no heart and no pity for others. He thinks no more of blood than I do of water; but he is as tender as a woman with them. One of them was ill the other day—a mere nothing, a little fever—and he sat by her bedside for eight days without ever lying down."

"I suppose," Tom said, "they never bring prisoners up here?"

"Yes, they do," the woman said; "not common soldiers; they kill them at once; but sometimes officers, if they want to exchange them for some of ours who may have been taken, or if they think they are likely to get a high ransom for them. But there, it always comes to the same thing; there, where you see that mound on the hillside, that's where they are. They blindfold them on their way up here, lest they might find their way back after all. Only one or two have ever gone down again. I wish they would finish with them all down below; they are devils and heretics these French; but I don't care about seeing them killed. Many of us do, though, and we have not many diversions up here, so I suppose it's all for the best."

"I wish that fellow had given us our answer before he went away," Tom said to Peter when they were alone. "I hope he won't bring any prisoners up here; these massacres are frightful, and one side seems as bad as the other. Well, in another month we shall have finished with all this work, and be making for the frontier again. Shan't I be glad when we catch sight of the first red-coats!"

In the middle of the night the boys were roused by a general bustle, and found that a messenger had just arrived, saying that the expedition had been successful, that a portion of the enemy had been cut off, their rear-guard destroyed, and that the whole band would be up soon after daylight. The village was astir early, but it was not until nine o'clock that the guerilla band arrived. The boys saw at a glance that they were stronger in numbers than when they started, and that with them were some twenty or thirty baggage animals.

The women flocked out to meet them with shrill cries of welcome. The booty taken was not of any great value in money, but was more valuable than gold to the guerillas.

Each one of the band carried, in addition to his own piece, a new French musket, while in the barrels on the mules were powder and ball; there were bales of cloth, and some cases of brandy and champagne, and a few boxes and portmanteaus of officers' baggage. In the rear of all, under a strong guard, were two French officers, both wounded, a lady and a child of some seven or eight years old.

After a boisterous