by John Buchan
The letter was an oblong of rough paper, which had been rolled inside a hollow stem. It might have been torn from a sketching-block. The message had been written with an indelible pencil, and was a good deal blurred. It ran:
“For C.-in-C. Most urgent. Do not worry about the lady. Patrol by air line N22a to PT13c — also by mounted patrols — let no man pass west or north. Send troop without fail on receipt of this up Cabalpas valley to camp foot of third left-hand tributary counting from Maximoras. From camp they should patrol in arc NNE to E. Do not leave Pacheco but await me. L. de M.”
Barbara almost snatched the paper from him.
“It is from Don Luis. He has found Janet. She must be safe, for he tells us not to worry. But what does the rest mean?”
The aide-de-camp had brought a big paraffin lamp which illumined the great map on the wall.
“One thing we can settle,” Sandy said. “Luis is referring to our map squares.” He held the lamp high. “The line from N22a to P13c — there it is,” and he drew a blue pencil along it. “Look. It is the chord of an arc which covers all the south-east angle of the Gran Seco. See, Excellency, it stretches from north of the entry to the Pais de Venenos right down to the southern wall. Well, that’s simple.”
He rang a bell and gave certain orders. “We shall want most of our planes for the job, and the railway raid to-morrow must be countermanded: It’s a longish stretch of country, so we will begin at dawn. The mounted patrols can start to-night...Now for the rest of it.” He scribbled two words on a piece of paper. “Take this to Jeffries and get him to ask his Indian scouts about them. Send me the man who knows where Cabalpas and Maximoras are.”
When the aide-de-camp had gone he turned to the Gobernador.
“You are in command, sir. How do you read this message?”
“Apparently Don Luis de Marzaniga has found Lady Roylance. I hope she is safe, but I do not know. Perhaps he only wants to dissuade us from looking for her because he has other things for us to do. There are people in the mountains whom he wants to keep there. We can assume, I think, that these are Lady Roylance’s captors. They must be the Conquistadors and their followers. But why does he want to keep them bottled up? Perhaps he has a plan for taking them all prisoners at once, and does not wish them to scatter.”
Sandy rubbed his chin. “I think there must be more in it than that,” he said. “To rescue Janet is desperately important. And Archie! Where in Heaven has poor old Archie got to? He has flown out of creation somewhere between here and Magdalena. But it doesn’t greatly matter what happens to the Conquistadors. To hang them all in a bunch won’t bring us nearer winning this war. I wish Luis hadn’t been so cryptic. Perhaps he was having a hustled time when he scribbled this letter. No, we could find out nothing from the messenger. He was a friendly Indian of the foothills, and could only tell us that it had been passed on to him from a friend with a word which he was bound to obey. It may have gone through twenty hands before it reached us.”
“But Luis himself will soon be here to explain,” said Barbara.
“But when? And there may be a good deal to do before that.”
There was a knock at the door, and the aide-de-camp returned accompanied by a tall Indian, whose belt of tiger-cat skins proclaimed a hunter.
“Colonel Jeffries says that this is the best of his scouts, sir. He knows where the places are.”
Sandy looked hard at the man. “I have seen you before,” he said in Spanish. “You were with Don Luis de Marzaniga and myself when he visited the Pais de Venenos.”
The Indian stood stiffly to attention. “I was with you,” he said. “I have known the Senor Luis since he was a child. What do you seek of me, my lord?”
“Where is Maximoras?”
“It is the place which we in our tongue call Hatuelpec, where once long ago was a great city. In six hours’ riding from Pacheco towards the sunrise, you will reach a river under the mountain called the Blue Wolf. Into that river enters another flowing from the sunrise, and up that river in three hours you will reach a little plain full of great stones. That place is Hatuelpec, which you call Maximoras.”
Sandy traced the route on the map. It led him into country marked only by vague contours of mountains, as blank as the heart of Africa in maps of a century ago.
“And Cabalpas?”
The man corrected him. “The name is Catalpas — or as we say Arifua. It is the little river which flows by Hatuelpec.”
“Do you know the third tributary on the left hand above Maximoras?”
The Indian considered, and then a strange look came into his face. “I know the stream. It is the way to—” He stopped. “It is the way to a place which we call Iliyabrutia, which means the Thrones of the King.”
“You have been there?”
“No, my lord, nor any of my race. It is a place accursed and the abode of devils.”
“You can guide a party to the Catalpas valley?”
“Beyond doubt. But the road is not easy, for it is among the broken places of the hills. It is a journey of twelve hours for good horses.”
Sandy turned to the aide-de-camp. “My compliments to General Peters and ask him to have ready a patrol of fifty picked troopers to start in an hour’s time. They will take rations for three days. This man will be their guide. I suggest that Captain Rivero is put in command.” Then to the Indian: “Go, brother, and God be with you. You will show the way to Maximoras.”
“El Obro commands.” The man saluted and went.
An orderly announced dinner, and they crossed the square to the mess-hut.
“I have taken to dining alone,” Sandy announced, “To-night there will only be we three. I can’t offer you much in the way of food, for we’re short of what we used to call hospital comforts. We’re getting very near to the ‘hog and hominy’ of your ancestors. Miss Barbara.”
He spoke lightly and cheerfully, but as Barbara looked at him across the rough table she noticed a profound change. Before, she had seen him worn to the last limits of his physical strength, but there had always remained a certain lift and effervescence of spirit. Now, though his face was less haggard than she had seen it, it was also less vital. His eye had dulled, and there were lines of strain on his forehead and a tightness of suffering about his mouth. He sat, too, listlessly in his chair, like a man oppressed with a great weariness. He looked up suddenly and caught her eye and seemed to brace himself.
“We have some hope at last — about Janet,” she said.
“A shred, A week ago it would have given me a new tack of life, but now I seem to have got beyond hoping. The thing has tortured me so much that the ache is dull.”
The girl looked at him and saw an anxiety deeper even than her own. Instinctively she tried to comfort.
“But it wasn’t your blame. It was ours — up in the Courts of the Morning. We kept too slack a watch.”
“The whole blame was mine. This war was made by me — by your uncle partly, but mainly by me. I seem to be fated to wreck the things I care about.”
“That is the fate of all of us.” The Gobernador had hardly spoken up till now. “That is also my fate. I have made a great industry, and now I am destroying it. I have become a friend of Lady Roylance, and she is in danger from that which I have created. I have had dreams, and now I am trampling on them.”
The words seemed to touch a spring in Sandy which released a new vigour. His figure lost its listlessness, he sat upright, and into his eye came something of the old fire.
“You mean that? By God, then we cannot be beaten. We have won the big stake.”
“No. You are wrong. We have still to win it. Supposing I died to-night, in what way would you be better off? Lossberg will wear down your resistance in time, and his methods will not be gentle. The republic of Olifa will not be merciful conquerors. The old Gran Seco will be restored — without its Gobernador — and the people of the Tierra Caliente will be slaves again. Olifa will faithfully copy my methods, but without — if I may say so — my intel
ligence. You may in the end get fair terms for most of your white officers, since they are valuable for the industry, but you will get no terms for the rank and file. Therefore I say that whatever may become of me, you have not yet begun to win. At present you are losing with terrible speed. Can you deny it?”
“We can never lose,” said Sandy. “Assume the worst — assume that we are broken up like a covey of partridges and forced in bands into the mountains. We can still make the Gran Seco a hell for any Olifa administration. They may start the Mines, but they’ll only limp along. They must some to terms with us...”
Castor broke in. “Forgive me. Lord Clanroyden, but you of not understand the mind of such a state as Olifa. She has been peaceful and prosperous for a time, but it is not long since she had Indian wars grumbling all along her borders. She is accustomed to a skin deep civilisation. Lossberg will enjoy the task of policing this territory, and Olifa will run the Mines again and not grumble at the decline in her profits. Remember, she has solid reserves which I have given her...We must be candid with each other, if I am to accept the command with which you have honoured me.”
Sandy fixed his eyes on the other’s face.
“You have changed your views, Excellency. I congratulate you profoundly. But I am curious to know just why.”
Castor smiled. “For once in my life I can give no reason — no logical reason. Put it that I am a little weary of my old self. Say that I lived in a rather dismal world and see the door ajar which leads to a brighter one. Put it any way you like...I am here to help you to win this war, because victory will benefit me — oh yes, enormously...I have not lost my ambitions, but they have a slightly different orientation to-day...Now let us talk business.”
The door opened and a new figure entered — a big man in a most disreputable suit of khaki. He had a full, rather heavy face, which had been burned to something very like the colour of his clothes. There was dust in his hair, and dust rimmed his large placid eyes.
“Say, this is a nice party,” he said in a voice cracked with thirst. “Why, Babs child, I heard you were here...I’m mighty glad to see you so blooming. And Mr Castor, too...But I can’t talk till somebody gives me a drink, for my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I’ve gotten a hunger like nothing on earth.”
A mess-servant brought him a long drink of lime-juice and sparklets, and the big man took his place at the table between Sandy and Barbara. He raised his tumbler to the Gobernador.
“I suppose,” said the latter, “that I must forget Senor Rosas the Mexican and make the acquaintance of Mr John S. Blenkiron the American.”
“That’s so. So good an American that he poisons himself with soft drinks ever since his country went dry.”
“I have told Lord Clanroyden that I have come here to take the command which he offered me.”
The big man looked steadily at him, and his quiet ruminant eyes seemed suddenly to become a search-light. They saw something which he approved, for he bounded to his feet.
“That’s fine. I’m proud to be working again with my old chief. We’ll shake on that,” and he held out a mighty fist.
“You’ve come from the Mines?” Sandy asked, “How are things going there?”
“So-so. The enemy’s getting cunning up that way. He’s extending his radius of defence and making a very pretty corral, with as much barbed wire as the Hindenburg Line. Our boys are terrible short of rifle ammunition, and we’re cleaned out of bombs. Looks like we’ll have to let up for a day or two, and that will give him a cruel chance to pick up.”
Sandy gave him a short account of Luis’s message and the action he had taken upon it. Blenkiron received the news with a furious interest.
“He tells us not to worry about Lady Roylance? Well, I guess he means she’s not going to come to any harm, for Luis thought the world of her. And he has got that bunch of buckaroos located and wants to keep them tight. He’s right there, for this world won’t ever be a healthy place again till that cesspool is drained. We’ve got to put that job through before we can attend to other business.”
“And then?” Castor asked. “Mr Blenkiron, just before you arrived I was giving Lord Clanroyden my view of the situation. We cannot afford to deceive ourselves. This rebellion was a gamble, but at the start the odds were not too desperate. You had certain assets — a hidden base, a very mobile army, and a special knowledge of the country. Very wisely you did not try to meet Lossberg with his own weapons. Your aim was to fight a war without bloodshed, or as nearly as possible without it, and to let him waste his highly scientific blows on empty air. That was your strategy, and it was intelligent. Your hope was that after a little he would grow weary of it, and that Olifa would grow weary, and that you could make peace pretty much on your own terms. That also was intelligent. You were aiming directly at the moral of Olifa, and it is of course by striking at the moral of the enemy that wars are won. Have I put your views correctly?”
Blenkiron nodded.
“Well, it is clear that you are going to fail. You have fought a nearly bloodless war, your army is pretty well intact, but your supplies are running low. You have lost your secret base. You have failed to make Lossberg uncomfortable. His spirits are rising, and he is beginning to strike out quite boldly. He is rather enjoying himself, and fancies himself a conqueror. What are you going to do? To do nothing means that within a month you will be scattered among the mountains — mere guerrilleros.”
No one spoke, and he went on.
“That mustn’t happen. We,” — and he emphasised the change of pronouns—”we must still strike at the enemy’s moral, but we must change our methods. It is the republic of Olifa that matters. Hitherto we have been trying to weaken her moral by weakening Lossberg’s. That hasn’t worked — so we must strike directly at the moral of Olifa.”
“How?” Blenkiron drawled.
“By carrying the war into Olifa. In the idiom of your country’s history, Miss Dasent, by crossing the Potomac.”
Blenkiron flung himself back in his chair.
“I recognise the old touch,” he said, beaming. “There speaks the Gobernador of the Gran Seco. It’s horse-sense, I don’t deny, but just how are we going to do it? We’re treed up here, like a ‘possum. There’s no way to Olifa except by the railroad, and that Lossberg has gotten policed like Broadway.”
“True. But we have still the mastery of the air. You cannot send an army to Olifa, but you can send me.”
For an instant a shade of suspicion rested on Blenkiron’s face, but it soon vanished.
“I get you,” he said. “You always had that little Government in your side pocket.”
But there was no response in Sandy’s puzzled eyes.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Bobby Latimer can land you wherever you like in Olifa, but how would you be further forward?”
“I must be landed where I can get into touch at once with the Government. You see, Lord Clanroyden, that Government have for some years been my very obedient servants. They are not clever people, only cunning, and they are not very brave. I have what you call a moral ascendency over them. If I appear among them suddenly from the clouds I think I can impress them. I do not believe that they like the prospect of a long guerrilla war, and I can expound to them with some force the financial reasons for making peace. I will be literally truthful with them. I shall tell them that the revolt was not of my making, but a spontaneous eruption, in which I was entangled, but I shall tell them also that I am now a convinced partner.”
Sandy’s fingers drummed nervously on the table.
“I believe you are wrong. How much did the Olifa ministers like you, Excellency? They admired you, obeyed you, feared you, but they probably hated you. They are not clever men, as you justly observe — it would be better for us if they were — but they are vain as peacocks. And jealous, too, at the back of their heads. They are getting triumphant dispatches from Lossberg, and they are swelling with pride. They think they are winning on their own accoun
t, they believe that the Gran Seco will fall into their hands and that they will be able to confiscate the Mines. Then they will get, not the handsome share of the profits which you allowed them, but everything. Don’t tell me that they have any fears of not being able to run them without your assistance. Those gentry always believe they are heaven-born geniuses waiting for their chance.”
Castor’s face did not change.
“It is possible — but I do not think so. I cannot believe that my personal ascendency over them is so brittle. Anyhow, I am prepared to try.”
“You realise the result of failure?”
“Yes. Lossberg will be entrenched in his authority. The value which its association with my name gives to our revolution will be gone. There may be trouble with foreign capitals.”
“And you yourself?”
“Oh, I shall be utterly discredited. I shall probably find myself in one of the Olifa prisons, which I understand lave not shared in the general progressiveness of the country. There may even be a regrettable incident, for they will still fear me.”
“You are a brave man,” said Sandy.
“I don’t know. I have not been tested.” Castor looked towards Barbara, as if to remind her of their conversation. “But I see no other way. I should prefer to have an army behind me, but we cannot fly an army over a wall of mountains, and there is no pass.”
“You are wrong,” said Sandy. “There is a pass.”
Everyone stared at him — Blenkiron with puzzled eyes, Castor with a strained attention, as if doubtful of the correctness of his hearing, Barbara with awakening hope.
“There is a pass — a chain of passes — a way from the Gran Seco to Olifa. Luis alone knows it, for it is an old secret of his family. That is how he came to the Gran Seco so often before the war. You “ — turning to Blenkiron—”thought it was by an aeroplane with some hidden landing-place in the mountains. I knew the truth, but I was sworn to tell no one. I have travelled the road once with him. It ends at the head of the Vulpas valley. That is how we got up the horses to mount our troops. Luis has been doing a busy horse-trade for months.”
