The Dust of Conflict

“Well,” he said quietly, “you may be right, and since nothing else will content you, you must stay.”

Just then Harding, attired in white duck and a big Panama hat, came out into the veranda, and glanced at them.

“If you are coming with me, Mr. Palliser, you have no time to lose,” he said. “You may, however, find my company dangerous, especially if we can’t get into Santa Marta and reach the banker’s house while it’s dark.”

Tony smiled. “I’m not coming, sir.”

“Well,” said Harding, glancing at him curiously, “I guess you know your own affairs best. Maccario sent that fellow word to be ready to smuggle me in, Appleby.”

“He will be waiting, and you are not likely to have much difficulty with the patrols when you are inside the town. Still, it is a big risk, sir.”

Harding laughed. “I have been taking steep chances all my life, and I have quite a few dollars scattered up and down this country which I can’t afford to throw away. They’re not exactly mine, since it seems to me that I’m holding them in trust for my daughter Nettie. Now, I guess I’ve kept those men of yours long enough already.”

He shook hands with Tony, and the men below flung up their rifles to the slope when he and Appleby went down the stairway. Maccario walked down the tram-line with them, and then stopped a moment when they reached the road, where Harding laid his hand on Appleby’s arm.

“I leave you in charge of San Cristoval and my affairs here with every confidence,” he said.

“I shall endeavor to deserve it, sir,” said Appleby. “Still, it is not quite out of the question that Morales may burn the hacienda.”

Harding smiled. “The hacienda can be built again, and they can’t blow up the land. It will stop right there all the time, in spite of them.”

“Still, they could seize it.”

“Well,” said Harding, with quiet confidence, “when we have chased every Spanish soldier out of Cuba I’ll get it back again, and that is just what is going to happen before very long. It’s quite difficult to freeze a citizen of my country out of his property.”

“Unless an American trust casts covetous eyes upon it,” said Appleby.

Harding laughed as he shook hands with him and Maccario, and then turned away with a smile still upon his The four Sin Verguenza plodded behind him down the road, and Maccario glanced at his companion.

“One would not have fancied the Señor Harding knew he was taking a heavy risk,” he said.

“Still, I think it was quite plain to him.”

Maccario glanced across the cane towards Santa Marta. “I had many friends there, and he has one or two at most. Morales is a daring and clever man – but it is his misfortune that in this affair he has others of the same kind against him.”

“That is an admission,” said Appleby, with a little smile “If you count the Señor Harper, two of them come from America.”

Maccario laughed. “And one from England! Men of that kind are not confined to any one country, my friend. Still, they are perhaps more plentiful in the Peninsula – and Cuba – than elsewhere.”

Appleby said nothing, and they walked slowly back to the hacienda.

Rather more than a fortnight passed uneventfully, and save for a few affairs between outposts and patrols there was no outbreak of hostilities. Morales lay in Santa Marta with the country rising against him, and Maccario patiently waited his time, for the Sin Verguenza were growing stronger every day. The insurrection was still largely sporadic and indifferently organized, and since each leader acted for the most part independently what was happening elsewhere only concerned the Sin Verguenza indirectly, while the struggle had become almost a personal question between them and Morales. In the meanwhile Appleby heard that Harding had eluded the latter’s vigilance and left Santa Marta.

Then late one night a man came gasping up the veranda stairway, and Appleby and Maccario descended half-dressed to meet him in the big living-room. The dust was white upon him, and he blinked at them out of half-closed eyes, while Appleby noticed that he limped a little. Maccario pointed to a chair, and poured him out a glass of wine.

“You have come a long way?” he said.

“From Brena Abajo. I left there in the afternoon the day before yesterday.”

“On a mule?”

The man smiled grimly as he pointed to his broken shoes.

“I came on these,” he said.

Maccario turned to Appleby. “Our friend walks fast. It is counted a four days’ journey. Still, I think he knows that one seldom gains anything by trifling with the Sin Verguenza.”

A little gleam crept into the man’s dark eyes. “One walks fast when he is eager for vengeance,” he said. “I had a little wine-shop, and a comrade who I trusted, four days ago. Comes a column of Candotto’s Peninsulares, and there is an asking of questions of the Alcalde, who is not a friend of mine. Andres, it is discovered, has smuggled rifles to the friends of liberty in the mountains.”

Maccario made a little gesture. “It went hard with your friend?”

“He died with a jibe at Candotto, who would discover where our comrades were. The wine-shop is a heap of ashes now, but that night the friends of liberty came out from the barrancos and crept in upon Brena Abajo.”

“They drove the soldiers out?”

“No,” said the man very quietly. “The Peninsulares fought well. There are many dead patriots in the streets of Brena Abajo, and only Candotto’s men left to bury them.”

Maccario straightened himself suddenly in his chair. “It was a strong column?”

“No, señor. Four companies only. It seems Morales had sent for them.”

Maccario turned to Appleby. “Now we know why Morales, who does nothing without a motive, was waiting. Well, they will march slowly, fearing another attack, with a section or two thrown forward in case there were friends of ours waiting them among the cane. The Colonel Candotto would, however, send messengers to Morales.”

The man laughed in a curiously grim fashion. “Then they would never reach him. The paths are watched, and the friends of liberty are bold now there is to be war with America.”

“I think our friend is right,” said Maccario, who stood up with a little smile. “The service he has done us will be remembered in due time. Señor, the major-domo whom you will find below will give you food and show you where you can sleep.”

The man went out, and Appleby glanced at his comrade with a little flush in his face.

“I think our time has come,” he said.

Maccario’s dark eyes sparkled. “We march in an hour. Candotto’s men will march circumspectly, and lie behind the walls of an aldea at night. When they reach Santa Marta it will be to-morrow evening, and they will not find Morales then.”

“No,” said Appleby. “I think we can get in, but it will be a risk. It would have been certain in another week or two. We were growing stronger every day.”

Maccario smiled dryly. “There are times when one cannot wait too long, my friend.”

He went out upon the veranda, a man called out sharply in the shadows below, there was a hum of voices, and dim figures swarmed into the patio. Then there was a tramp of feet and a jingling of steel, lights flashed in the windows, and Appleby, slipping clear of the bustle, entered Tony’s room. He lighted the little lamp, and then sat down on the bed. Tony lay close beside him sleeping quietly, and Appleby felt a curious little thrill as he looked down on him. The man had wronged him grievously, but the bond which had grown strong in happier days bound them together still.

The room was very hot, and the quiet face that was almost boyish yet was beaded with perspiration, but Appleby saw there was a stamp upon it which it had not borne in England. Tony, it seemed, had changed, and Appleby felt that he might still do his work with credit, and be the stronger because of his fall. Then as he struggled with a faint sense of envy and bitterness Tony opened his eyes and smiled.

“You there, Bernard? I was back at Northrop with you and Violet a moment ago,” he said drowsily.

“Still, you are in Cuba now,” said Appleby.

Tony appeared to be endeavoring to collect his thoughts. “It is difficult to realize it, and I can’t quite persuade myself I’m awake yet,” he said. “The sun was shining on the lawn, and I could see the red geraniums and the little blue lobelia round the border as clearly as I ever saw anything in my life. You were talking to Violet, and the trouble between us seemed to have gone. Why couldn’t you let me sleep on?”

“I felt tempted to,” said Appleby gravely. “Still, you see, we are marching to assault Santa Marta almost immediately.”

Tony sprang out of bed, and was half dressed when he turned to Appleby again with a sparkle in his eyes.

“I’m taller than most of these Cubans. You’ll have to put me at the head of your company,” he said.

“No,” said Appleby dryly. “We are leaving a handful of men behind us to hold the hacienda, and I mean you to stay with them.”

Tony laughed a clear, ringing laugh. “Did you think for a moment that I would? Now, you will gain nothing by insisting, and you don’t command. If I can’t get your permission I’ll get Maccario’s.”

“There is very grim work on hand, and the rest are more fitted for it than you.”

Tony turned with a trace of stiffness which became him. “There was a time when you apparently took pleasure in pointing out my slackness, Bernard,” he said. “Still, while I’m willing to admit it, I think it’s moral, – and not physical.”

“Of course!”

Tony’s face relaxed, and he laughed. “That’s devilishly complimentary – but I’m coming. I’ve never been in a fight, and the sensation will be a pleasant novelty, but there’s something else. You see, it may happen that one of us gets hurt.”

“It is, I believe, quite likely.”

“Well,” said Tony very quietly, “that is just why I’m coming. I don’t wish to be uncivil – but while Maccario’s willing I think it’s evident that you can’t stop me.”

Appleby looked at him a moment with a curious softness in his eyes, and then made a little gesture of resignation, while Maccario, who opened the door quietly, smiled as he glanced at them.

“The Señor Palliser will march with us?” he said.

“Of course!” said Tony lightly, but Appleby, who felt a little shiver run through him, said nothing at all.

Twenty minutes later the Sin Verguenza went stumbling down the tram-line file by file, and when they swung out into the carretera Tony Palliser marched with the leading four at the head of one company. The night was still and dark and the tramp of feet alone rang through the silence of the dusky cane, for the Sin Verguenza knew there was grim work before them, and marched with portentous quietness. Their time had come, but they realized with an unpleasant distinctness that if they failed very few of them would escape the vengeance of Morales.

XXX – MORALES PRESERVES HIS FAME

THERE was a pale shining in the eastern sky when the Sin Verguenza came into sight of Santa Marta. The town lay, a smear of deeper shadow, upon the dusky levels in front of them, but the transition from darkness to light is swift in that country, and here and there a flat roof higher than those it stood among grew out of the obscurity into definite form. Save for the rhythmic beat of marching feet, there was stillness among the cane, and nothing moved on all the dim levels but the long black column that crawled down the shadowy road.

Then the distant peaks stood out in sharper contour against the paling blueness of the western sky, and Tony, marching outside man of one four, glanced over his shoulder. He could dimly see the lines of men behind him plodding through the dust, and their sloped rifles led his gaze aloft. The sky was now shining with a pearly lustre like the inside of a shell, and low down upon a cane the flush of crimson blazed into brilliancy. The rifles of the rearguard cut against it as they rose and fell, and the faces of the men behind him became suddenly distinguishable. He could also make out Appleby swinging along a few paces away an his right hand. Then he glanced in front of him, and saw that the great peaks were now flushed with a warm pink, until the dust rolled thicker and blotted out everything. It thinned as they swung through a white aldea, and the light which had swept down the hillsides touched Santa Marta when they came out again, so that the city shone immaculately white upon a setting of luminescent green.

He gazed at it in wonder, for the long night march through a silent land, the thrill of excitement, and the unwonted bracing of his nerves to face a physical peril had not been without their effect on him. Tony was usually somewhat materialistic but just then the bodily part of him was under the domination of the spirit, and he was sensible of a curious exaltation Turning his head he glanced at Appleby with a little laugh.

“It is beautiful!” he said. “It came upon one so suddenly out of the night that one could almost fancy it a vision – of the everlasting city.”

“The one upon the Tiber?” said Appleby.

“The one seen in Patmos nearly two thousand years ago.”

Appleby laughed curiously. “I’m afraid Santa Marta will be much more like the other place before the day is through, and it is not a very appropriate simile, Tony. One cannot storm those gates of precious stones.”

“Well,” said Tony reflectively, “it’s not a subject either of us know very much about, but Nettie Harding seemed to think one could. We were lounging on the lawn at Low Wood that afternoon, and she was so sure about it that she almost convinced me. She said the gates were made of gold and ivory, and she got the fancy from the song you have heard Hester sing – but no doubt it means the same thing!”

Appleby glanced at him sharply, for the light was clearer now, and saw a look in Tony’s face which was new to him. It was curiously quiet in spite of his little smile. Still, he made no answer, and there was silence, until from beyond the dust cloud rose the strident crackle of riflery.

“The advance guard are driving in the pickets. We’ll be in the thick of it directly,” he said, and a murmur passed along the company, while the rhythmic tread swelled in a sharp staccato.

It was evident to the Sin Verguenza that they had difficult work before them, while a direct attack in daylight was not a manoeuvre they had any great liking for. In this case, however, there was no evading it, for while they knew adherents would flock in from every aldea once they held Santa Marta, it was equally clear that should Candotto’s Peninsulares join hands with Morales they could never seize the town. Haste was also advisable since he would know that an attack was imminent now, and when Maccario’s voice rang out of the dust the pace grew faster while the column drew out in length.

Twice a half-company swung clear and vanished amidst the scattered gardens, and at last the rest flung themselves into the little enclosures between the aloe hedges close outside Santa Marta. Then there was a flashing of pale flame from the crest of every white wall, and Tony stared in astonishment when he saw none of the Sin Verguenza beyond the little handful of men about him in a garden. They were crouching beneath a low wall apparently made of blocks of sun-baked soil, while Appleby lay behind a clump of aloes close in front of him.

Beyond the aloes, the white walls rose glaringly bright with smears of bluish vapor drifting from every opening, though the smoke was thickest about one wide gap between them. As he watched it, oblivious of the rifle in his hand, there was a thin whirling of flame in the midst of the vapor, and a sound that resembled a rapid hammering came sharply through the din. Then a strip of the mud wall crumbled into dust, which made a haze about the garden, and a spurt of flung-up soil struck him in the face. A man behind him screamed, and while there was a pattering among the bananas close on his right Appleby crawled past him.

“A quick-firer! Morales has two of them, and he has found our range. We’ll get on,” he said.

Tony said nothing, but he could still see the portentous flashing amidst the smoke, and next moment felt the jar of his rifle upon his shoulder. He did not remember pressing the trigger but he could shoot well, and his fingers seemed to move without any prompting from him, for he saw the empty shell flung out and heard the snap of the lever as another cartridge slid into the chamber. Then while he pressed his cheek down on the stock and stiffened his left hand on the barrel he heard Appleby’s voice raised in Castilian, and saw that his comrades were flitting forward. The rifle muzzle tilted upwards, and in another moment he was on his feet, and clambering over a low wall, ran past several small houses, and then dropped behind an aloe screen again.

Appleby, who knelt on one knee close beside him with a pair of glasses which had once belonged to an officer of cazadores in his hand, was still speaking sharply in Castilian, and Tony fancied that the men about them were all gazing towards the gap in the high walls where the carretera entered Santa Marta. Then there was a blast of riflery that set the aloes quivering and rolled away to the right of him, while, when a minute or two later nothing followed the click of the striker, he found the magazine was empty and the rifle barrel hot in his hand It was an American Marlin, and while he dropped fresh cartridges in through the slide Appleby rose to his feet and the Sin Verguenza were once more scrambling through enclosures nearer to the town.

The cluster Tony was attached to stopped among tall shrubs with crimson flowers of a heavy scent, with nothing between them and the white houses but a bare strip of dusty soil, and it became evident that they were waiting for something, for the firing slackened. Then further away to the right men sprang out into the open, straggling by twos and threes as they ran towards the town. The smoke grew thicker along the white walls, and some went down, while the dust they fell in splashed and spurted as a still pool would do under a driving hail. Still, more came on behind them, and Tony was struggling with an impulse to shout aloud when, from the whole front of the Sin Verguenza, there broke out a crash of riflery. He gasped as the smoke rolled down, for his desire to see had become almost overwhelming, and then as the firing slackened again it became evident that the little white forms were running still.

There were, however, not many of them now, and Tony grasped their purpose when they swept in close beneath the dazzling wall, while Appleby, who stood upright, with the glasses at his eyes, said something hoarsely in evident approbation. Once more there was a crackle of firing, and the smoke grew thick, while when it cleared the dusty strip was empty save for the white objects which lay still here and there. Tony surmised that the others had found entrance into the town by a narrow lane, or through the house of a friendly citizen.

A minute or two later this became evident, for the crash of firing grew furious on the roofs above the gap, and Appleby, who thrust his glasses into their case, was shouting hoarsely. Rising by twos and threes the men sprang out from among the flowering shrubs, and Tony saw the low walls and clumps of aloes become alive with scurrying forms. They seemed to move independently and without formation, though Appleby, with hand swung up, was shouting in Castilian, and Maccario went by pointing with a Spanish infantry officer’s sword. The gleam of it in the intense sunlight dazzled Tony’s eyes, and he stood still, uncertain what was going on, and gasping with excitement, when Appleby’s hand fell on his shoulder.

“I can’t tell you to hold off now we’re going in,” he said. “Still, it’s devilishly risky. You’ll not be unnecessarily rash, Tony.”

He sprang forward with three or four more at his heels, and Tony found himself running a few yards behind him. He could see that the Sin Verguenza were following, but save that they ran with wide spaces between them they seemed to keep no order, and to have only one purpose, to cross the perilous bare space as rapidly as they could.

The time that cost them appeared interminable, but it became evident that a few at least of those who had gained an entry into the town were firing on the cazadores who held the mouth of the carretera, and in another minute or two they swept up to it and stopped again, gasping in the smoke, with high white walls above them, and a mound of soil and torn-up pavement meshed with wires close in front of them. Tony remembered he had heard that in these days of magazine rifles and hopper-fed guns an attack of the kind was foredoomed to fail, but it seemed that the Sin Verguenza meant to try it, for already Maccario was half-way up the slope, with Appleby, pistol in hand, close behind him, and while a savage cry went up a wave of scrambling men seemed to toss together and roll on. It swept up to the crest of the barrier, and plunged into the smoke, and the cazadores wavered, turned, and fled. They were outnumbered, and, as it transpired later, had been galled by a fire from the roofs above, while Appleby eventually discovered a cartridge partly torn to pieces stuck immovably in the chamber of their quick-firing gun.

In the meanwhile Appleby was grimed with perspiration, smoke, and dust, while his hand was blackened by the fouling from the pistol. Strung to a tension that was too great for nervous excitement, he moved, as it were, with an automatic precision and collectedness, grasping the import of each turn of the struggle with a dispassionate perspicacity, which in less eventful moments he would have been incapable of. The faculty of swift deduction and decision may have been born in him, but it was, at least, evident to the Sin Verguenza, for even then in the stress of desperate effort they seemed to comprehend and obey him. Now and then Maccario had shouted hoarse questions to him, and though the answers apparently came without reflection the leader of the Sin Verguenza concurred when he grasped their purport.

It was by his order the shattered leading company flung itself into the houses when the Sin Verguenza were met by an enfilading volley as they reeled into the calle. The street might have proved a death-trap while the cazadores held the windows, but one could pass along the roofs, and the troops came out headlong when the Sin Verguenza descended upon them from above. Then they in turn found the calle too hot to hold them when they faced the fire of the second company which had taken shelter in the doorways. It was strewn with huddled objects lying upon the hot stones when they fled out of it, and a few minutes later Appleby stopped close by where Tony stood in the larger plaza. Tony’s face was set and white, though there was a curious gleam in his eyes, and he seemed to shiver a little as he glanced back up the glaring street. It was very still now, a narrow gap between the white walls that were ridged with shattered green lattices, but filmy wisps of vapor still drifted out of the doorways.

“We have got in, but it has cost you a good deal,” he said.

Appleby said nothing, but Maccario, who came up, and following Tony’s gaze glanced at the huddled figures on the stones, made a little comprehensive gesture.

“There is a price to everything, but in this case it would have been heavier had not your countryman been quick to copy Morales’ plan,” he said. “Still, I think by the firing our friends who went on in front are also in, and as they will close the way out Morales will be waiting us in the cuartel.”

“It stands alone,” said Appleby. “One cannot get in by the roofs.”

He pointed to a ridge of flat roof that, rising above the others, cut the blue of the sky. A streak of gold and crimson flaunted above it from a towering staff.

“We have perhaps four hours,” said Maccario; “but if that flag is flying when the Peninsulares march in it may never come down again.”

“I think one will be enough,” said Appleby quietly. “We will wait two or three minutes until the rest come up.”

The stragglers were formed into their companies in the plaza, and Maccario, impressing a citizen whom he dragged out of his dwelling, sent him on with a scribbled summons to Morales to deliver up the cuartel. The message was terse and laconic, and Maccario smiled dryly when the man departed very much against his wishes bearing a white handkerchief on a cane.

“One complies with civilized customs; it is required of him. And a rest of a few minutes will not hurt my men,” he said. “Still, it is a waste of courtesy when it is known beforehand what Morales’ answer will be.”