The Wolf Cub. Terence Casey

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СКАЧАТЬ Therefore, as one man to another, I say: No, I cannot take you with me!"

      Pernales now was very serious.

      "To be my dorado, it is not enough that you have a full-grown soul. You must have a full-grown body; and your body is still the puny, soft-boned body of a child. If you rode away with me, you of the weak body, your strong soul might be sacrificed to the Nino de Arahal or the Guardia Civil. And that—God forbid!

      "Let us look at this matter like two sensible Moors. Don Eduardo Miura, let us suppose, has a young fighting bull of extraordinary promise. At the Tentaderos (the breeders' private bullfight, when the young bulls are ranked according to their merit as fighting animals), this youngster shows superb courage and astounding ferocity. But he is only two years old; and five years old must be the age of Don Eduardo's animals before he exhibits them in the Plaza de Toros. Does Don Eduardo make an exception of this unique bull, does he allow him because of his astounding ferocity to have a premature début in the bull-ring? Name of God, no! Not even if he be as magnificent with meat as the most mature seven-year-old!

      "Jacinto Quesada, quickly I have grown to love your strong soul—I have grown to love your strong soul too much. And that is why I say, I cannot take you with me. No! Porvida, no! But, if you are resentful, use your knife and send me whirling down into the gorge. Proceed! I care not a peseta what you do."

      Jacinto Quesada stood motionless as a rock, thinking deeply. Something in the boy's downcast attitude moved Pernales to pity.

      "Do not despair, my fire-hearted, arrogante little man," he said presently. "I have said no; this time my no is absolute; but I shall not say no to you, should I pass this way again when you are more fully grown. Some day, I promise you, I shall again pass this way, and then if you are still of the mind to be my dorado, you may join out with me and we will murder the men of the Guardia Civil together, two sworn compañeros. Meanwhile, grow brawny, grow brave, grow high-handed. There will always be room in Spain for haughty resolute ones like you!"

      "I accept the promise given," said Jacinto Quesada. "And I do not ask you to swear to return for me—a word is enough between men. Now, knowing you will come back, I will compose myself and wait. A child is impetuous and fretful; a man is implacable yet patient."

      "Son of the widow Quesada," returned Pernales magnificently, "on the promise given and taken, let us strike hands! With a handshake, like two true Spaniards, we will bind the bargain."

      Jacinto Quesada took his hand off the hilt of his Manchegan navaja and gripped claws with the bandolero. A certain note of solemnity thrilled through the moment.

      The bandolero started on.

      "Go thou with God, compañero!" said Jacinto Quesada.

      "Grow big, grow strong, thou!" said the great Pernales.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      Jacinto Quesada grew bigger, stronger. But he suffered more with ambition than with growing pains. Ambition is the seed of greatness, but the seed cannot germinate and bourgeon without giving agony and labor to the soil in which it is nurtured.

      Pernales did not again pass that way. Three months had not intervened, since the promise to return had been given, when the great bandolero was murdered for the reward by a Gallego on a lonely hill-road in the Asturias—shot through the head at forty yards.

      Now, if never could Jacinto Quesada ride with Pernales, then by the Life! he would ride alone.

      When at last he attained to manhood, he went down the mountains, stole a carbine and a horse, and became a bandolero errant and free.

      He had hands of gold, that fire-hearted Spanish boy, for sticking up a troop of caballeros and their ladies out for a merienda or a bull-baiting on the parched plains about Madrid. And he had hands of gold for sticking up a diligence full of notables in the savage defiles of the Sierra de Guadalupe or the Sierra de Gredos or the Sierra de Guadarrama. And he had courage and originality. Why, he was still a mere novice as a bandolero, an apprentice hand, a novillero, when he took it into that round, young, handsome and arrogant Spanish head of his to way-lay and loot the Seville-to-Madrid Express!

      Spanish highwaymen, you must know, are not in the habit of holding up passenger trains. To way-lay a lone muleteer in the mountains, to halt and rob a party of itinerant guitarists and dancers, or to pillage the hacienda of a rich rural cattle breeder are the conventional things to do. But to hold up the Seville-to-Madrid—it is unthinkable, it is not the will of God! Spanish highwaymen prefer to do less spectacular deeds and to live to see their grandchildren.

      In the province of Ciudad Real, the Seville-to-Madrid Express crosses the river Zancura by means of a safe and modern steel cantilever bridge built by Le Brun, a French engineer. And a half hour before it reaches this steel bridge, the Seville-to-Madrid crosses another bridge, a bridge over a small tributary of the Zancura which is dry three fourths of the year. This bridge is not of steel; it is timbered. It was never built by Le Brun; it is flimsy, weather-worn, and liable to give under any unusual strain. It is called the Arroyo Seco Bridge.

      Here, where the Arroyo Seco lies like a great brown gutter across the world, are the high parameras of La Mancha. There are no more desolate and lonely uplands in all Spain. Swarthy, sun-scorched and thirsty, they torture the eye with dusty dun distances and prone dun lines. You would think it an altogether unlikely place for a bandolero to stage a hold-up.

      And here, a hundred yards below the Arroyo Seco bridge and close beside the railroad track, waited Jacinto Quesada one hot, dry, windless afternoon. He was seated upon a small sleek mouse-colored Manchegan pony. He wore corduroy leggins, a sheepskin zamarra, and a Cordovan sombrero that had once been white. His dress was that of the typical Manchegan herdsman. He looked like any one of the hundred or more vaqueros who lived the wild lonely life of the cattle country roundabout.

      The Seville-to-Madrid showed in the southwest. Like a somber black snake it crawled slowly forward—like a black snake laggard and heavy after a great dinner of mice.

      Spanish passenger trains are altogether unlike American passenger trains, for American passenger trains eat up distances like the brazen cars of old Northern gods. The passenger trains of Spain are most deliberate and slow. They halt for ten minutes at every wayside station, for no better reason than to allow the passengers to alight, unlimber their legs, and smoke the eternal cigarette. They are the very crawling snails of the earth!

      Of course, the Seville-to-Madrid was an express, a through train. But you may be sure she was no fast train except when viewed through Spanish eyes. At fifteen miles the hour, morosely it crawled on. It neared the waiting Jacinto Quesada and, fearful of the flimsy wooden bridge beyond, slackened its pace to a painful glacier-slow flow.

      As the wheezing locomotive lumbered up, Jacinto Quesada, with knees and one hand, held the shuddering pony motionless beside the track. The other hand he raised aloft. Pointedly, his eyes turned to that upraised hand; then to the locomotive's cab; then significantly, to the upflung hand once again.

      The engine driver, one arm extended to the throttle, a blue-smoking cigarette between his lips, leaned far out the cab and looked down at the uplifted hand of Jacinto Quesada. In that significantly uplifted hand of Jacinto Quesada was an unlighted cigarette.

      Now, an American engineer would have passed unheeding by, with СКАЧАТЬ