It is a pity she could not. Little things always cause the greatest trouble, and but for the smudges the incident would probably have closed with Seyd’s challenge:
“Can’t you be content with half the road?”
His patience even survived their insolent grins. Not until the hunchback in passing emitted a hoarse chuckle as he surveyed the smudges did Seyd’s temper burst its bonds. Swinging his whip then with all his might, he laid it across the crooked shoulders once, twice, thrice, before the fellow sprang, snarling, out of reach. The others, who had already passed, came leaping back at his cry, knives flashing as they ran, and though they stopped under the sudden frown of a Colt’s automatic, they did not retire, but stood, fingering their knives, muttering curses.
A little sorry on his part for the anger which had turned the sullen hostility into open feud, Seyd faced them, puzzled just what to do. It was too late to give way, for that would expose him to future insult. Yet if, taking the initiative, he should happen to kill a man, he knew enough of the quality of justice as dealt out by the Mexican courts to realize the danger.
While he debated, the puzzle was almost solved by the peon rice-huller, who came stealing up from behind the fence. Not until the man had swung his heavy pestle and was tiptoeing to his blow did Seyd divine the reason for the glances that were passing behind him. Looking quickly, he caught the glint of polished hardwood in the tail of his eye; then, without a pause for thought, he dropped flat on the rump of the mule, and not a second too soon, for, raising the hair on his brow as it passed, the club smashed down through the top rail of the fence. In falling backward his weight on the bridle brought Peace scurrying a few paces to the rear. When he snapped upright again the fourth enemy was also under his gun.
But what to do? The puzzle still remained – to be solved by another, for just then came a sudden beat of hoofs, and from behind a bamboo thicket galloped first the Siberian wolf hound, then the girl he had met at the train.
CHAPTER VI
So silently did the girl come that the charcoal-burners were forced to jump aside, and, springing in the wrong direction, the hunchback was bowled over by the beast of the mozo who rode at her back.
“Why, señor!” she exclaimed, reining in. Then taking in the knives, pistol, broken club, she asked, “They attacked you? Tomas!”
Her Spanish was too rapid for Seyd’s ear, but it was easy to gather its tenor from the results. With a certain complaisance Seyd looked on while his enemies scattered on a run that was diversified by uncouth leaps as the mozo’s whip bit on tender places.
“He struck at you?” She broke in on the rice-huller’s voluble plea that never, never would he have raised a finger against the señor had he known him for a friend of hers! “Then he, too, shall be flogged.”
“I would not wish – ” Seyd began.
But she interrupted him: “You were going toward San Nicolas? Then I shall turn and ride with you.” Anticipating his protest, she added, “I had already ridden beyond my usual distance.”
Very willingly he fell in at her side, and they rode on till they met the mozo returning, hot and flushed, from the pursuit. He was keen as a blooded hound; it required only her backward nod to send him darting along the trail, and just about the time they overtook the charcoal-burners a sudden yelling in their rear told that the account of the rice-huller was in course of settlement.
Passing his late enemies, Seyd could not but wonder at their transformation. With the exception of the hunchback, in whose beady eyes still lurked subdued ferocity, all were sobbing, and even he broke into deprecatory whinings. Having read his Prescott, Seyd knew something of the rigid Aztec caste systems from which Mexican peonage was derived. Now, viewing their abjectness, he was able to apprehend, almost with the vividness of experience, the ages of unspeakable cruelty that had given birth to their fear. But that which astonished him still more was the indifference with which the girl had ordered the flogging.
Such glimpses of her face as he was able to steal while they rode did not aid him much. It was impossible to imagine anything more typically modern than the delicately chiseled features lit with a vivid intelligence which seemed to pulse and glow in the soft shadow beneath her hat. And when from her face his glance fell to her smart riding-suit of tan linen he was completely at sea.
Curiosity dictated his comment: “Your justice is certainly swift. Really I am afraid that I was the aggressor. At least I struck first.”
“But not without cause.” She glanced at his smudged clothes. “Tell me about it.” And when he had finished she commented: “Just as I thought. And these are dangerous men. They would have killed you without a qualm. In the days that Don Sebastien was clearing the country of bandits he counted that hunchback one of his best men.”
“Yet he whined like a puppy under your man’s whip.”
Smiling at his wonder, she went on to state the very terms of his puzzle. “You do not know them – the combination of ferocity and subservience that goes with their blood. In the old days he who raised his hand against the superior caste was put to death by torture, and, though, thank God, those wicked days are past, the effect remains. They are obedient, usually, as trained hounds, but just as dangerous to a stranger. If I had not ordered them flogged they would have taken it as license to kill you at their leisure.”
“Now I realize the depth of my obligation.”
He spoke a little dryly, and she leaped to his meaning with a quickness that greatly advanced her in his secret classification. “I have hurt your pride. You will pardon me. I had forgotten the unconquerable valor of the gringos.”
“Oh, come!” he pleaded.
She stopped laughing. “Really, I did not doubt your courage. But do not imagine for one moment that they would attack you again in the open. A knife in the dark, a shot from a bush, that is their method, and if you should happen to kill one, even in self defense, gringos are not so well beloved in Guerrero but that some one would be found to swear it a murder. Be advised, and go carefully.”
“I surely will.” He was going on to thank her when she cut him off with the usual “It is nothing.” Whereupon, respect for her intuition was added to the classification which was beginning to bewilder him by its scope and variety.
In fact, he could not look her way nor could she speak without some physical trait or mental quality being added to the catalogue. Now it was the quivering sensitiveness of her mouth, an unsuspected archness, the astonishing range of feeling revealed by her large dark eyes. Looking down upon the charcoal-burners, they had gleamed like black diamonds; in talking, their soft glow waxed and waned. Sometimes – but this was omitted from the classification because it only occurred when his head was turned – a merry twinkle illumined a furtive smile. Taken in all its play and sparkle, her face expressed a lively sensibility altogether foreign to his experience of women.
After a short silence she took up the subject again. “But I am giving you a terrible impression of our people. It is only in moments of passion that the old Aztec crops out. At other times they are kind, pleasant, generous. Neither are we the cruel taskmasters that some foreign books and papers portray us. You would not believe how angry they make me – the angrier because I have a strain of your blood in my own veins. My grandfather, you know, was Irish. It was from him I learned your speech.”
The last bit of information was almost superfluous, for from no other source could she have obtained the pure lilting quality that makes the Dublin speech the finest English in the world. To it she had added an individual charm, the measured cadence and soft accent of her native
