The Wolf Cub. Terence Casey

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СКАЧАТЬ a curse for Jacinto Quesada as an arrant fool. Again, a French engineer might have called back: "It is a pleasure!" and thrown down a paper of matches. For, as it was plain to see, Jacinto Quesada was requesting, in pantomime, a spark to ignite his hopelessly dead slim cylinder of tobacco.

      But the Spanish engine driver did neither of those two things. It is not that the Iberians are not as polite as the French; they are more polite and altogether more ceremonious. Know you that in Spain, and also in Mexico, it is considered something of an insult to proffer a man matches when he requests a light of you and you yourself are smoking. It is as though you consider him socially beneath you, when you proffer him matches.

      The locomotive lumbered by. But the engine driver crowded forward on his seat; his arms worked; the whistle shrieked. And the train groaned and jolted, roared and banged to a full stop.

      Passengers telescoped themselves out of windows, some knocked all a-scramble by the sudden halt, others pale and frightened. Those heads that protruded from fortunate windows saw the engine driver clamber down from his high turret, a lighted cigarette in his hand. And they saw spur forward to meet him, the dusty vaquero, in his mouth a cigarette that was dead.

      The vaquero flung himself from his pony. He and the engine driver drew together. A hand of each met, became entwined. Their heads leaned close, the cigarettes between their teeth touching ends.

      Suddenly the engine driver staggered away from the vaquero, his jaw dropping, his cigarette falling unheeded to the ground. A huge long-barrelled revolver in the hand of the vaquero was nuzzling his umbilicus.

      "Aupa!" shouted the vaquero harshly. "Up!"

      Prodding his belly persistently, the vaquero followed him back, step by step. The engine driver was suddenly enlightened. It was all a piece of herdsmen's buffoonery, a monstrous practical joke!

      "Benito!" he roared, addressing his stoker in the cab above. "Benito, look down! Here is a vaquero who thinks himself a salteador de camino, a bandolero like the poor dead Pernales or that new man, Jacinto Quesada! Por los Clavos de Cristo! what a fool's idea!"

      Then to the vaquero. "Don't you know I have no time for horseplay, you silly one, you buffoon, you? You are making yourself liable to arrest!"

      "I am the new man, Jacinto Quesada!" said Jacinto Quesada with politeness and reserve. Then, "Aupa, aupa!"

      "Jacinto Quesada—Almighty God!" gasped the engine driver. Only he made it, "Todopoderoso Dio!" and he groaned it out slowly.

      But with great alacrity he put up his hands.

      Then after a moment, stuttering with fright, he commenced objecting.

      "But caballerete—but Don Jacinto—"

      "What would you?"

      "But you cannot hold up the Seville-to-Madrid! No one ever holds up the Seville-to-Madrid! And besides, you are alone!"

      "But I am not alone," returned Jacinto Quesada.

      Nor was he. Out of the Arroyo Seco, a hundred yards up the track, three men as drab and dusty as he had poked their dishevelled heads.

      Shouted Quesada, "Adelante, mis dorados! The stew is ready, approach the bowl! Forward, my golden ones!"

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      The Golden Ones approached at a run, showing in their hands carbines of no recent fashion. They were rough-bearded fellows of impetuous courage but of little skill or fame; reckless scapegraces whom he had picked up, on the plains and in the mountains, to reinforce him in this most pretentious and uncommon hold-up.

      After the consummation of the deed, they would go their ways and he his. Like most Spanish bandoleros en grande, Jacinto Quesada preferred, whenever he could, to keep his heels clean of confederates and coadjutors; he preferred to hold himself aloof and solitary. However, they were his compañeros for the nonce; for the nonce, they were his dorados, his golden, his trustworthy ones.

      One of them clambered up into the cab after the fireman, Benito. The rest, under the supervision of Jacinto Quesada, proceeded to turn inside out the Seville-to-Madrid.

      Pretentious train robberies are forever much alike. Save that those waylaid and despoiled were Spaniards, and Spaniards are eternally themselves, and their souls glow frankly and incandescently out through their bodies in everything they do, the hold-up of the Seville-to-Madrid was like an American train robbery, like a train robbery anywhere.

      The mail coach was first disposed of. Then the highwaymen turned their attention to the passengers. In a jostling, milling, frightened drove on the open plain to the right of the stalled coaches, the passengers were herded by the four taciturn workmanlike bandoleros. Then one by one each passenger was led forward from the rest and searched for money and valuables.

      Those who were cowardly, quaked and walked knock-kneed, their mouths stuttering rapid prayers. Those who were courageous but overawed, clenched their teeth in their lips, held their eyes pasted upon the bandoleros, and did silently and with utter obedience that which they were told to do. Those who were weak, wept. Few words were said, yet the faces of all were as a loudly chanted litany of dreads.

      Jacinto Quesada took little part in the searching; he left that to his journeymen. He stood aloof, his revolver in hand, his eyes studying pensively, as they were put to the search, the demeanor of the brave and the base.

      Many of the herded and driven and robbed wondered at this boy with no vestige of hair on his smooth brown cheeks. They did not know him. They thought Jacinto Quesada, he who had begun making such a great noise through Spain, one of the bearded, black-visaged, older men.

      First to be led forward and made to deliver was a traveler for a Barcelona manufactory. Then came two brokers who had been speeding about Spain to make contracts on the grape, olive, orange, and apricot crops. Then came a wine taster, one cork grower, and three cattle breeders; and then a troupe of Gitanos, Gypsy musicians and dancers of the metropolitan cafés. And these having been plucked in their proper sequence, there was led forward a wisp of black-clad nuns.

      Jacinto Quesada stepped forward and took off his hat to the nuns. He motioned that they should be brought back to their old places without suffering the sacrilege of search, and he said, "Your pardon, Ladies of God!"

      Then was led forward a foreign looking man, a globe-trotter who had been traveling alone. He was big, broad-shouldered, fair-haired and as smooth-shaven as any bullfighter. He was square of face, his jaw was a round resolute knob, and his eyes were blue and hinted of being quick to laugh. Struck by the foreign look of the man, Jacinto Quesada stepped forward once again and, with an air of ingenuous curiosity, asked, "You are a Frenchman, are you not?"

      It is a fact that most Spaniards mistake all foreigners for either Frenchmen or Englishmen. And they never can distinguish between persons of the two races.

      Answered the outlander, "I am neither, muchacho. I am what you Spaniards call a Yanqui, a Norte Americano."

      "Cascaras! You are one of those who gave Spain such a great beating a few years ago and robbed us of Cuba and the Philippines. Thorough and impudent salteadores de camino, СКАЧАТЬ