The Crusade of the Excelsior

by Harte, Bret

He stopped. Crosby was asleep. Brace arose lazily, lounged into his office, and closed his desk.

  "Going to shut for the day?" said Banks, yawning.

  "I reckon," said Brace dubiously; "I don't know but I'd take a little pasear into the town if I had my horse ready."

  "Take mine, and I'll trapse over on foot to the Ranche with Crosby—after a spell. You'll find him under that big madrono, if he has not already wound himself up with his lariat by walking round it. Those Mexican horses can't go straight even when they graze—they must feed in a circle. He's a little fresh, so look out for him!"

  "All the better. I'd like to get into town just after the siesta."

  "Siesta!" echoed Banks, lying comfortably down in the shade just vacated by Brace; "that's another of their shiftless practices. Two hours out of every day—that's a day out of the week—spent in a hammock; and during business hours too! It's disgraceful, sir, simply disgraceful."

  He turned over and closed his eyes, as if to reflect on its enormity.

  Brace had no difficulty in finding the mare, although some trouble in mounting her. But, like his companions, having quickly adopted the habits of the country, he had become a skillful and experienced horseman, and the mustang, after a few springless jumps, which failed to unseat him, submitted to his rider. The young man galloped rapidly towards Todos Santos; but when within a few miles of the pueblo he slackened his pace. From the smiles and greetings of wayfarers—among whom were some pretty Indian girls and mestizas—it was evident that the handsome young foreigner, who had paid them the compliment of extravagantly adopting their national costume, was neither an unfamiliar nor an unpleasing spectacle. When he reached the posada at the top of the hilly street, he even carried his simulation of the local customs to the point of charging the veranda at full speed, and pulling up suddenly at the threshold, after the usual fashion of vaqueros. The impetuous apparition brought a short stout man to the door, who, welcoming him with effusive politeness, conducted him to an inner room that gave upon a green grass courtyard. Seated before a rude table, sipping aguardiente, was his countryman Winslow and two traders of the pueblo. They were evidently of the number already indicated who had adopted the American fashions. Senor Ruiz wore a linen "duster" in place of his embroidered jacket, and Senor Martinez had an American beard, or "goatee," in imitation of Mr. Banks. The air was yellow with the fumes of tobacco, through which the shrewd eyes of Winslow gleamed murkily.

  "This," he said to his countryman, in fluent if not elegant Spanish, indicating the gentleman who had imitated Banks, "is a man of ideas, and a power in Todos Santos. He would control all the votes in his district if there were anything like popular suffrage here, and he understands the American policy."

  Senor Martinez here hastened to inform Mr. Brace that he had long cherished a secret and enthusiastic admiration for that grand and magnanimous nation of which his friend was such a noble representative; that, indeed, he might say it was an inherited taste, for had not his grandfather once talked with the American whaling Capitano Coffino and partaken of a subtle spirit known as "er-r-rum" on his ship at Acapulco?

  "There's nothing mean about Martinez," said Winslow to Brace confidentially, in English. "He's up to anything, and ready from the word 'Go.' Don't you think he's a little like Banks, you know—a sort of Mexican edition. And there is Ruiz, he's a cattle dealer; he'd be a good friend of Banks if Banks wasn't so infernally self-opinionated. But Ruiz ain't a fool, either. He's picked up a little English—good American, I mean—from me already."

  Senor Ruiz here smiled affably, to show his comprehension; and added slowly, with great gravity,—

  "It is of twenty-four year I have first time the Amencano of your beautiful country known. He have buy the hides and horns of the cattle—for his ship—here."

  "Here?" echoed Brace. "I thought no American ship—no ship at all—had been in here for fifty years."

  Ruiz shrugged his shoulders, and cast a glance at his friend Martinez, lowered his voice and lifted his eyelashes at the same moment, and, jerking his yellow, tobacco-stained thumb over his arm, said,—

  "Ah—of a verity—on the beach—two leagues away."

  "Do you hear that?" said Winslow, turning complacently to Brace and rising to his feet. "Don't you see now what hogwash the Commander, Alcalde, and the priest have been cramming down our throats about this place being sealed up for fifty years. What he says is all Gospel truth. That's what I wanted you fellows to hear, and you might have heard before, only you were afraid of compromising yourselves by talking with the people. You get it into your heads—and the Comandante helped you to get it there—that Todos Santos was a sort of Sleepy Hollow, and that no one knew anything of the political changes for the last fifty years. Well, what's the fact? Ask Ruiz there, and Martinez, and they'll both tell you they know that Mexico got her independence in 1826, and that the Council keep it dark that they may perpetuate themselves. They know," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Commander's commission from the old Viceroy isn't worth the paper it is stamped upon."

  "But what about the Church?" asked Brace hesitatingly, remembering Banks' theory.

  "The Church—caramba! the priests were ever with the Escossas, the aristocrats, and against the Yorkenos, the men of the Republic—the people," interrupted Martinez vehemently; "they will not accept, they will not proclaim the Republic to the people. They shut their eyes, so—. They fold their hands, so—. They say, 'Sicut era principio et nunc et semper in secula seculorum!' Look you, Senor, I am not of the Church—no, caramba! I snap my fingers at the priests. Ah! what they give one is food for the bull's horns, believe me—I have read 'Tompano,' the American 'Tompano.'"

  "Who's he?" asked Brace.

  "He means Tom Paine! 'The Age of Reason'—you know," said Winslow, gazing with a mixture of delight and patronizing pride at the Radicals of Todos Santos. "Oh! he's no fool—is Martinez, nor Ruiz either! And while you've been flirting with Dona Isabel, and Banks has been trying to log-roll the Padre, and Crosby going in for siestas, I'VE found them out. And there are a few more—aren't there, Ruiz?"

  Ruiz darted a mysterious glance at Brace, and apparently not trusting himself to speak, checked off his ten fingers dramatically in the air thrice.

  "As many of a surety! God and liberty!"

  "But, if this is so, why haven't they DONE something?"

  Senor Martinez glanced at Senor Ruiz.

  "Hasta manana!" he said slowly.

  "Oh, this is a case of 'Hasta manana!'" said Brace, somewhat relieved.

  "They can wait," returned Winslow hurriedly. "It's too big a thing to rush into without looking round. You know what it means? Either Todos Santos is in rebellion against the present Government of Mexico, or she is independent of any. Her present Government, in any event, don't represent either the Republic of Mexico or the people of Todos Santos—don't you see? And in that case WE'VE got as good a right here as any one."

  "He speaks the truth," said Ruiz, grasping a hand of Brace and Winslow each; "in this we are—as brothers."

  "God and liberty!" ejaculated Martinez, in turn seizing the other disengaged hands of the Americans, and completing the mystic circle.

  "God and liberty!" echoed a thin chorus from their host and a few loungers who had entered unperceived.

  Brace felt uneasy. He was not wanting in the courage or daring of youth, but it struck him that his attitude was by no means consistent with his attentions to Dona Isabel. He managed to get Winslow aside.

  "This is all very well as a 'free lunch' conspiracy; but you're forgetting your parole," he said, in a low voice.

  "We gave our parole to the present Government. When it no longer exists, there will be no parole—don't you see?"

  "Then these fellows prefer waiting"—

  "Until we can get OUTSIDE help, you understand. The first American ship that comes in here—eh?"

  Brace felt relieved. After all, his position in regard to the Alcalde's sister would not be compromise
d; he might even be able to extend some protection over her; and it would be a magnanimous revenge if he could even offer it to Miss Keene.

  "I see you don't swear anybody to secrecy," he said, with a laugh; "shall I speak to Crosby, or will you?"

  "Not yet; he'll only see something to laugh at. And Banks and Martinez would quarrel at once, and go back on each other. No; my idea is to let some outsider do for Todos Santos what Perkins did for Quinquinambo. Do you take?"

  His long, thin, dyspeptic face lit up with a certain small political cunning and shrewdness that struck Brace with a half-respect.

  "I say, Winslow; you'd have made a first-class caucus leader in San Francisco."

  Winslow smiled complacently. "There's something better to play on here than ward politics," he replied. "There's a material here that—like the mine and the soil—ain't half developed. I reckon I can show Banks something that beats lobbying and log-rolling for contracts. I've let you into this thing to show you a sample of my prospecting. Keep it to yourself if you want it to pay. Dat's me, George! Good-by! I'll be out to the office to-morrow!"

  He turned back towards his brother politicians with an expression of satisfied conceit that Brace for a moment envied. The latter even lingered on the veranda, as if he would have asked Winslow another question; but, looking at his watch, he suddenly recollected himself, and, mounting his horse, cantered down towards the plaza.

  The hour of siesta was not yet over, and the streets were still deserted—probably the reason why the politicians of Todos Santos had chosen that hour for their half secret meeting. At the corner of the plaza he dismounted and led his horse to the public hitching-post—gnawn and nibbled by the teeth of generations of mustangs—and turned into the narrow lane flanked by the walls of the Alcalde's garden. Halfway down he stopped before a slight breach in the upper part of the adobe barrier, and looked cautiously around. The long, shadowed vista of the lane was unobstructed by any moving figure as far as the yellow light of the empty square beyond. With a quick leap he gained the top of the wall and disappeared on the other aide.

  CHAPTER III.

  INTERNATIONAL COURTESIES.

  The garden over whose wall Brace had mysteriously vanished was apparently as deserted as the lane and plaza without. But its solitude was one of graceful shadow and restful loveliness. A tropical luxuriance, that had perpetuated itself year after year, until it was half suffocated in its own overgrowth and strangled with its own beauty, spread over a variegated expanse of starry flowers, shimmering leaves, and slender inextricable branches, pierced here and there by towering rigid cactus spikes or the curved plumes of palms. The repose of ages lay in its hushed groves, its drooping vines, its lifeless creepers; the dry dust of its decaying leaves and branches mingled with the living perfumes like the spiced embalmings of a forgotten past.

  Nevertheless, this tranquillity, after a few moments, was singularly disturbed. There was no breeze stirring, and yet the long fronds of a large fan palm, that stood near the breach in the wall, began to move gently from right to left, like the arms of some graceful semaphore, and then as suddenly stopped. Almost at the same moment a white curtain, listlessly hanging from a canopied balcony of the Alcalde's house, began to exhibit a like rhythmical and regular agitation. Then everything was motionless again; an interval of perfect peace settled upon the garden. It was broken by the apparition of Brace under the balcony, and the black-veiled and flowered head of Dona Isabel from the curtain above.

  "Crazy boy!"

  "Senorita!"

  "Hush! I am coming down!"

  "You? But Dona Ursula!"

  "There is no more Dona Ursula!"

  "Well—your duenna, whoever she is!"

  "There is no duenna!"

  "What?"

  "Hush up your tongue, idiot boy!" (this in English.)

  The little black head and the rose on top of it disappeared. Brace drew himself up against the wall and waited. The time seemed interminable. Impatiently looking up and down, he at last saw Dona Isabel at a distance, quietly and unconcernedly moving among the roses, and occasionally stooping as if to pick them. In an instant he was at her side.

  "Let me help you," he said.

  She opened her little brownish palm,—

  "Look!" In her hand were a few leaves of some herb. "It is for you."

  Brace seized and kissed the hand.

  "Is it some love-test?"

  "It is for what you call a julep-cocktail," she replied gravely. "He will remain in a glass with aguardiente; you shall drink him with a straw. My sister has said that ever where the Americans go they expect him to arrive."

  "I prefer to take him straight," said Brace, laughing, as he nibbled a limp leaf bruised by the hand of the young girl. "He's pleasanter, and, on the whole, more wildly intoxicating this way! But what about your duenna? and how comes this blessed privilege of seeing you alone?"

  Dona Isabel lifted her black eyes suddenly to Brace.

  "You do not comprehend, then? Is it not, then, the custom of the Americans? Is it not, then, that there is no duenna in your country?"

  "There are certainly no duennas in my country. But who has changed the custom here?"

  "Is it not true that in your country any married woman shall duenna the young senorita?" continued Dona Isabel, without replying; "that any caballero and senorita shall see each other in the patio, and not under a balcony?—that they may speak with the lips, and not the fan?"

  "Well—yes," said Brace.

  "Then my brother has arranged it as so. He have much hear the Dona Barbara Brimmer when she make talk of these things frequently, and he is informed and impressed much. He will truly have that you will come of the corridor, and not the garden, for me, and that I shall have no duenna but the Dona Barbara. This does not make you happy, you American idiot boy!"

  It did not. The thought of carrying on a flirtation under the fastidious Boston eye of Mrs. Brimmer, instead of under the discreet and mercenarily averted orbs of Dona Ursula, did not commend itself pleasantly to Brace.

  "Oh, yes," he returned quickly. "We will go into the corridor, in the fashion of my country"—

  "Yes," said Dona Isabel dubiously.

  "AFTER we have walked in the garden in the fashion of YOURS. That's only fair, isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Dona Isabel gravely; "that's what the Comandante will call 'internation-al courtesy.'"

  The young man slipped his arm around the young diplomatist's waist, and they walked on in decorous silence under the orange-trees.

  "It seems to me," said Brace presently, "that Mrs. Brimmer has a good deal to say up your way?"

  "Ah, yes; but what will you? It is my brother who has love for her."

  "But," said Brace, stopping suddenly, "doesn't he know that she has a husband living?"

  Dona Isabel lifted her lashes in childlike wonder.

  "Always! you idiot American boy. That is why. Ah, Mother of God! my brother is discreet. He is not a maniac, like you, to come after a silly muchacha like me."

  The response which Brace saw fit to make to this statement elicited a sharp tap upon the knuckles from Dona Isabel.

  "Tell to me," she said suddenly, "is not that a custom of your country?"

  "What? THAT?"

  "No, insensate. To attend a married senora?"

  "Not openly."

  "Ah, that is wrong," said Dona Isabel meditatively, moving the point of her tiny slipper on the gravel. "Then it is the young girl that shall come in the corridor and the married lady on the balcony?"

  "Well, yes."

  "Good-by, ape!"

  She ran swiftly down the avenue of palms to a small door at the back of the house, turned, blew a kiss over the edge of her fan to Brace, and disappeared. He hesitated a moment or two, then quickly rescaling the wall, dropped into the lane outside, followed it to the gateway of the casa, and entered the patio as Dona Isabel decorously advanced from a darkened passage to the corridor. Although the hour of siesta had passed, her sister,
Miss Chubb, the Alcalde, and Mrs. Brimmer were still lounging here on sofas and hammocks.

  It would have been difficult for a stranger at a first glance to discover the nationality of the ladies. Mrs. Brimmer and her friend Miss Chubb had entirely succumbed to the extreme dishabille of the Spanish toilet—not without a certain languid grace on the part of Mrs. Brimmer, whose easy contour lent itself to the stayless bodice; or a certain bashful, youthful naivete on the part of Miss Chubb, the rounded dazzling whiteness of whose neck and shoulders half pleased and half frightened her in her low, white, plain camisa—under the lace mantilla.

  "It is SUCH a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Brace," said Mrs. Brimmer, languidly observing the young man through the sticks of her fan; "I was telling Don Ramon that I feared Dona Ursula had frightened you away. I told him that your experience of American society might have caused you to misinterpret the habitual reserve of the Castilian," she continued with the air of being already an alien of her own country, "and I should be only too happy to undertake the chaperoning of both these young ladies in their social relations with our friends. And how is dear Mr. Banks? and Mr. Crosby? whom I so seldom see now. I suppose, however, business has its superior attractions."

  But Don Ramon, with impulsive gallantry, would not—nay, COULD not—for a moment tolerate a heresy so alarming. It was simply wildly impossible. For why? In the presence of Dona Barbara—it exists not in the heart of man!

  "YOU cannot, of course, conceive it, Don Ramon," said Mrs. Brimmer, with an air of gentle suffering; "but I fear it is sadly true of the American gentlemen. They become too absorbed in their business. They forget their duty to our sex in their selfish devotion to affairs in which we are debarred from joining them, and yet they wonder that we prefer the society of men who are removed by birth, tradition, and position from this degrading kind of selfishness."

  "But that was scarcely true of your own husband. HE was not only a successful man in business, but we can see that he was equally successful in his relations to at least one of the fastidious sex," said Brace, maliciously glancing at Don Ramon.