by John Buchan
Late that night one of Waldstein’s patrols brought in a man who had been found in the tangled country under the lee of the mountains. He was half dead with fatigue and starvation, but had recovered sufficiently to ask to be taken to the General’s Headquarters. The General had not had the pleasant dinner which he had anticipated. The meal, instead of being a cheerful celebration of the capture of Pacheco, had been an anxious confabulation with his staff.
For something had gone wrong with his communications, and he could get no answer from Olifa. In place of the lyric congratulations on success which he had expected, his message had been followed by utter silence. The long-distance telephone had never been noted for its reliability, but hitherto the telegraph service had been perfect. Now, with the wireless out of gear for two days, it looked as if this too had failed. That, or some intense preoccupation at the Ministry of War. Consequently, when Olivarez brought in the rag of humanity which his patrol had picked up, it was with no friendly eye that Lossberg regarded him.
“We cannot find Senor Romanes,” the Chief of Staff had said, “but this is one of those who were with him. One of the gentry whom Castor called his Bodyguard. He says he has something for your private ear. Jesucristo! Wherever he came from he has had a rough Journey.”
Mr Daniel Judson had not been improved in looks by his recent experiences. His clothes hung in rags, his skin was black with exposure, and short commons had sharpened his face so that his big head tapered to a jackal’s mask.
Normally his broken nose and rabbit teeth gave him a touch of comedy, ferocious comedy — but now these features seemed to be blended into one overwhelming impression of something snarling and ravening. The slouch of his thick-set shoulders gave him the air of crouching for a spring, like a mad dog. He had had food, of which he had eaten sparingly, being used to similar experiences and knowing the danger of a glut. Lossberg gave him permission to sit town, while his story dribbled out through the confusion of fatigue.
Most of it was startlingly new to the General and his staff. He spoke of a camp at Los Tronos del Rey. “Those guys had to have the dope, and the Indians fetched it...” He told of the daily expeditions and of the discovery of a pass through the mountains which had excited Romanes.
“We were expecting you to send to us, but you never came, so Mr Romanes, he tried to get to you. The Indians must have double-crossed us, for nothing happened. We sent out Magee, and he never came back. Then the Indians turned nasty. There was a woman we had with us and she got away. The Indians must have helped her, and they cut the bridge behind her, and next morning the whole outfit did a bunk. After that we were between a rock and a hard place. There was a lot of unpleasantness with Mr Romanes, but by and by we see’d we couldn’t do nothing by fighting each other, so we shared out the grub, and took what we each thought was the best road off that bloody mantelpiece...I started out with two pals, and I don’t know where in hell they’ve got to.” Mr Judson appeared to be going to be sick at the recollection. He recounted haltingly something of his troubles, first in the forest and then in the glens of the foothills. Famine had been the worst. “A biscuit would ha’ rattled in my stomach like a buckshot in a tin pan.” He had several times decided that he was about to perish. “This world one time, then the fireworks,” was the way he expressed his anticipation.
By and by he had become so feeble that he could only crawl and weep, and in that condition the patrols had found him. Even now he had not the strength of a new-born cat.
“If I slapped a fly this moment, I’d fall down.”
Lossberg fastened upon one item in his story, the pass through the mountains. Judson strayed into vague profanity. He didn’t rightly know how to describe it, but they had found it all right, and Mr Romanes had thought it as important as hell. That was why he had made his despairing effort to get in touch with the General. Judson’s brains were too befogged to explain further, but he quoted a sentence of Romanes. “Mr Romanes,” I heard him say to the long Frenchy, him that was the airman, “By God!” he says, “if we don’t stop that bolt-hole the rebs one fine morning will be breakfasting in Olifa.”
Judson was dismissed, and the General looked at his Chief of Staff.
“Romanes is not a fool,” he said, “and he has been a soldier. He has found out something which he wanted badly to get to us. Remember he is on our side. Except by our victory he and his friends cannot get back to the life they enjoy. What is that something? A road through the mountains into Olifa? We have always understood that there was no road, no practicable road, except that which the railway follows. There may be a pass which we know nothing of. Romanes knows about it. The question is, does El Obro? If he does, it would explain Pacheco.”
The two men talked long and gravely. One result of their conference was that Waldstein was given fresh orders. His air patrols must move a little farther south and explore the valleys east of Pacheco. At all costs they must find Senor Romanes and his companions, who must now be making their way down from the hills.
Lossberg had a disturbed night, but about ten next morning he had news which cheered him. There had been a sudden revival of enemy activity in the north part of the province. Mounted bands had been seen west of the line Fort Castor-Loa, and a motor convoy, bound for the latter place, had been captured. To Lossberg this was reassuring tidings. It seemed to explain the whereabouts of Peters and his Pacheco force. They had not gone south through any mysterious pass in the mountains, but north, to join the oddments up in that north-eastern corner. The General convinced himself that what he had always foreseen had now come to pass. The enemy was confined to the north-east of the Tierra Caliente, and all that remained was slowly and drastically to bring him to book. He would of course make sallies from his beleaguerment, but it would not be hard to cope with the desperate efforts of weak and ill-provided men.
Yet the whole of the following week was taken up with these sallies. The enemy had changed his tactics, and adopted a vigorous offensive. The Mines front was stagnant, and Lossberg was able to move one infantry division and all his cavalry to the threatened north.
The first thing that happened was that Loa fell to the guerrilleros, and the garrison in the Courts of the Morning had its land communications cut. This was interpreted by Lossberg as a feint, for Loa could be no value to the enemy. In this he was right, for after its stores had been removed, Loa was abandoned.
But the next move was startling, no less than a raid on the Gran Seco city. It happened about 11 a.m. on a night when there was no moon. The enemy cut up the pickets, and for nearly four hours held all the city west of the smelting works and north of the railway station. The thing had been beautifully arranged. The raiders, who seemed to know the place intimately, occupied the key-points, and used the machine guns they had taken at the northern approaches. They knew, too, where the stores were, and helped themselves to what they wanted, loading the loot into light motor-wagons which had only the day before arrived from Olifa. They destroyed a freight train in the railway yards and put no less than seven locomotives out of action. It was artful destruction, done by men who were skilful mechanics, and it would take weeks to repair. Then, after setting fire to the Gran Seco Club as a final feu de joie, they made off at their leisure, taking with them the light motor-wagons. It was well after daybreak before Lossberg’s first reinforcements arrived, for the telephone and telegraph wires had been comprehensively cut. An attempt to follow was made with armed cars, but the pursuit struck the rear of the raiders about forty miles north-east of the city, was ambushed, and badly cut up. The enemy had vanished again into his north-eastern fastness.
All this was disquieting, but yet in its way consoling Judson’s story had deeply impressed the Commander-in Chief, and he was relieved to have discovered the whereabouts of the Pacheco force. It must have joined the band under Escrick, for hitherto Escrick had been far too weak to think of an offensive. So he set about with a will the task of hunting down the remnant. He established a cordon of posts in a line
from the Mines to Loa, and, based on each extremity, he had a mobile force of cavalry and mechanised battalions. He believed that this cordon could not be pierced, and his plan was slowly to push it forward till he had driven the enemy into the mountain valleys. Of these he would then seal up the ends, and starve him out.
But the cordon was pierced, repeatedly pierced. There was no further raid on the Gran Seco, but there was a disastrous dash on the Mines, which ended in the explosion of a shell-dump and the shattering of two engine-houses. Marvellous to relate, too, there was a raid on the railway, from what base no man knew, and the line was badly damaged in the crucial section between Tombequi and Villa Bar. Also there were perpetual pinpricks. Not a convoy seemed to be able to move on any of the Gran Seco roads without some regrettable accident — a mined road, a broken culvert, a long-distance sniping — of baneful accuracy. Lossberg, who had regarded the campaign as over, was forced to admit that it had miraculously entered upon a new phase.
In the thick of this guerrilla warfare the General forgot his other problems. He was kept so feverishly busy that he omitted to worry about the silence of the Olifa Ministry of War and the absence of a reply to his message about Pacheco. He was moving fast about the country and did not remember to inquire whether Waldstein’s machines had picked up any news of the Conquistadors. Waldstein’s machines were now on other duties. But there came a night when he was able to return to his advanced Headquarters, which had remained in the vicinity of the Mines. He dined alone with Olivarez, the first peaceful meal he had had for ten days. Both men were in better spirits.
“It is the last spasm of a dying animal,” said Lossberg. “Now we know to a decimal the worst he could do, and we know that he cannot repeat it. In a week this activity will die down, and we shall turn to the question of starting the Mines. Even now it is police work we are engaged in, not war.”
Olivarez nodded and smiled. “By the way, we have news of the Conquistadors. Senor Romanes is here, and the man they call Larbert, the Englishman.”
“I will see them after dinner,” was the answer. General Lossberg filled himself a glass of champagne — he had allowed himself champagne that evening — and looked complacently at its sparkle. He had had an annoying time, but he had come to the end of it.
The telephone bell rang, and Olivarez took the receiver. “It is from Olifa at last,” he said over his shoulder. “A message forwarded from Base Headquarters.”
The General continued to contemplate his glass, with a smiling face. He awaited the congratulations which were his due. Suddenly he was startled to attention, for his Chief of Staff was speaking in an odd voice. “Repeat,” he said, and again, “Repeat!” He turned to Lossberg without hanging up the receiver and his hand trembled. “I can’t make it out...It must be a mistake...It is from Santa Ana, not Olifa. I don’t know who sent it...Good God, it can’t be true!”
“What is it, man?” Lossberg asked.
“It says that Santa Ana was captured this morning by the enemy. Santa Ana! By the American Blenkiron, who was known here as Rosas!”
Lossberg’s face whitened, but he retained his composure.
He even laughed, a little harshly. “If that is true, El Obro is assuredly through the passes.”
II
The short spring had gone, and it was already early summer at Charcillo. The gnarled tamarisks which lined two sides of the great pebbled courtyard were hung with long lilac blooms, and the poplars and willows were green along the water-furrows. The estancia was of an older type than Veiro. There were no neat paddocks and English-looking stables; part of the house itself had stood for three hundred years, and the thick walls of the corrals were almost fortifications. The place stood on a low ridge between the main stream of the Vulpas and a tributary, commanding to the west and south long views over savannah which gradually dipped to the blueness of the coastal plain.
Behind, to the east, was more rolling country, but from every ridge might be descried fifty miles off the dark loom of the mountains, and in clear weather the northernmost peaks of Los Doce Apostoles.
For the past fortnight Janet had been a happy denizen of a fantastic world. She felt that she was now promoted to the rank of a combatant. Her adventure had by a marvellous chance been the turning-point in the campaign. As she looked back upon the last month, the fear and horror were forgotten. Her week of captivity was only like a dark night between bright and bustling days. Far back in the corridors of memory she saw the Courts of the Morning, a platform lifted high above the world, whence with a divine detachment they had looked down upon the struggles of mortals. That life could not have lasted, but it had done its work, for it had wrought a miracle in the Gobernador.
What had become of the mysterious being with his inhuman composure and his secret thoughts? A new man had been born, a man who had forgotten his past and walked on a new earth with a curious innocence. He seemed to be happy, happy in companionship as well as in leadership. For beyond doubt he was a leader, and his post as generalissimo was no polite fiction. It was an unfamiliar world to him, but he had taken hold of it like a master.
Modestly, simply, he had applied his mind to strange problems, and from the first day he had had an unquestioned authority. In the great movement through the passes, after Peters with the remnant of his command had gone north to Escrick, and Sandy had led his mounted three thousand into Olifa, it was the Gobernador who had spoken the ultimate word. By tacit consent he was always deferred to, and as he mastered the problems his authority became one of mind as well as of character. And he was happy — that was the immense change. He seemed to have rid himself of a burden both of years and cares.
Crowded days lay behind them. Charcillo was the base headquarters, but when the word to strike was given they would move to Veiro. Meanwhile the concentration was kept secret. The Olifa Government had no doubt news of trouble on the south-eastern edge of the Gran Seco, but they had no knowledge of what was happening in this wild corner of their own province. For the countryside was at their back and Luis’s agents controlled all the communications with the capital. They had spent a feverish week over the coming concentration, and to Charcillo at all hours of the day and night had come Luis’s lieutenants to consult. Some of them were young men whom Janet had met at the Polo Club or danced with in Olifa; many were officers of the Olifa reserve; some were grizzled haciendados from the skirts of the hills or rich industrials from Alcorta and Lardamo...There was old Martinez and his five sons who owned hundreds of miles of ranching ground on the skirts of the mountains...And Ramirez and his clan who were the fruit kings of Olifa...And the Zarramgas from Pecos, whose ancestors had come to the country with Pizarro...And young Miguel de Campanillo, whose kin had ridden with Toledo and whose family had given a later Olifa three presidents...She did not quite understand them. These men were prosperous; they had no grievance against the Gran Seco; they were not of the rootless revolutionary type. Why should they want to join in this quarrel? But the chief marvel was Don Alejandro Gedd. The little man had become a crusader. Why? His patriotism in the past had chiefly shown itself in dislike of all things American. He had disliked Castor, too, and now he was his willing henchman.
There was a big map indoors, on which with coloured pins the strength of the opposing sides was shown. Olifa had three battalions in the city, in camp at the Plaza de Toros, and she had a skeleton division at Pecos, and a battalion at Santa Ana. There were detachments at Al Corta and Cardiano, and on the latter place was based the small Olifa navy. These points were marked with green pins, but it was to be noted that sometimes close up to them was stuck a red pin. That meant that in such places there was a strong anti-Government element in the regulars. The red pins were widely scattered, but there were certain spots marked with black rings, which were the centres for concentration. One was on the railway south of Santa Ana, another at the junction south-east of Olifa, whence ran the line to Alcorta. But the chief was at the railhead west of Veiro. To the north the Gran Seco was unmark
ed. No news had come of how Peters and Escrick were faring in their intensive guerrilla campaign.
The thing fascinated the girl. She seemed to be herself a player in a drama which was nearing its last act. Of the ultimate purpose she scarcely thought. Victory was to her a concrete thing, a single culminating moment, beyond which her mind would not speculate.
Her one anxiety was Sandy. He had lost the briskness and the audacity with which he had begun the campaign. Perhaps he was tired; he must be, for he had worn himself to a shadow in the Gran Seco. A man has only a certain stock of vital energy, and he had squandered his lavishly...But there was more in it than that, she thought Sandy was a born adventurer, who must always be imperilling himself, working on the extreme edge of hazard, playing for an outside chance. But now the war was almost regularised. It was a revolution of the familiar type, where the rank and file took the risks. Sandy hated bloodshed. For war he had no use unless it was war on his special plan, an audacious assault upon the enemy’s nerves. The other kind, the usual kind, he would only accept if it were in defence of his own country, and Olifa was not his fatherland.
Janet said as much to Castor, who had joined her where she sat on a low white wall, plucking at the long blooms of the tamarisks. He looked like a fighting admiral, who had strayed by accident into khaki.
He nodded his agreement.
“That is Lord Clanroyden’s trouble. He is born out of due season. He does not quite like a game where the chances are not hopelessly against him. Now that the odds have been shortened he is uncomfortable. But let him console himself. We have still a long way to travel. General Lossberg and I are in the position of each facing his own capital, like the French and Germans before Sedan. That is not comfortable for him, but it is not altogether comfortable for us. We have to keep him shut up in the Gran Seco, for if his army got out it would destroy us in a week. Also we have to persuade the Olifa Government that it will be well to make peace, and that may not be easy. Let the senor be at ease. It is still a war not of brute force but of morale.”
