"Why, Padre dear?" came again the soft question.

"I stay—to work out—my problem," was his scarcely audible reply.

The girl did not speak. But her breath came more quickly, and her hand closed more tightly about his.

"Dearest one," he murmured, bending over the brown curls, "it is God's way, I guess. Perhaps in the years which I have spent here with you I have had the time and the opportunity to work out my salvation. I am sure that I have. But, though I strove in my way, I could not quickly acquire your spirituality. I could not at once shake loose those poisonous thoughts of a lifetime, which have at last become externalized in separation from all that I hold dearest in this life, you, my beloved girl, you." He buried his face in her luxuriant hair and strove to hold back the rush of scalding tears.

"It but shows how poisonous thoughts separate us from all that is good—even from God," he continued in a choked voice. "Oh, my sweet girl, I love you as it seems to me no human being could love another! It has been so from that first day when, a mere babe, your wonderful eyes held me until I could read in them a depth of love for mankind that was divine." It did not seem to him that a mature man was speaking to a mere girl. She seemed, as always, ages beyond him in wisdom and experience.

Carmen reached up and wound her arms about his neck. He bent low and kissed her brow. Then he drew himself up quickly and resumed his broken talk.

"I believed at first that my salvation lay in you. And so it did, for from your clear thought I gleaned my first satisfying knowledge of the great principle, God. But alas! I could not seem to realize that between recognizing righteousness as 'right-thinking' and daily practicing it so as to 'prove' God there was a great difference. And so I rested easy in my first gleams of truth, expecting that they would so warm my soul that it would expand of itself out of all error."

She made as if to reply, but he checked her.

"I learned enough, I repeat, those first few months here to have enabled me to work out my salvation, even though with fear and trembling. But I procrastinated; I vacillated; I still clung to effete beliefs and forms of thought which I knew were bound to manifest in unhappiness later. I was afraid to boldly throw myself upon my thought. I was mesmerized. Yes, the great Paul was at times under the same mesmeric spell of human belief, even after he had seen the vision of the Christ. But he worked his way steadily out. And now I see that I must do likewise, for salvation is an individual experience. No vicarious effort, even of the Christ himself, can save a man. The principle is already given us. We must apply it to our problems ourselves. My unfinished task—scarcely even begun!—lies still before me. My environment is what I have made it by my own thought. I believe you, that I can enter another only as I externalize it through righteousness, right-thinking, and 'proving' God."

He paused and bent over the silent little figure nestling so quietly at his side. His throat filled. But he caught his breath and went on.

"You, Carmen, though but a child in years, have risen beyond me, and beyond this lowly encompassment. Why, when you were a mere babe, you should have grasped your padre Rosendo's casual statement that 'God is everywhere,' and shaped your life to accord with it, I do not know. Nor do you. That must remain one of the hidden mysteries of God. But the fact stands that you did grasp it, and that with it as a light unto your feet you groped your way out of this environment, avoiding all pitfalls and evil snares, until to-day you stand at the threshold of another and higher one. So progress must ever be, I now realize. Up we must rise from one plane of human mentality to another, sifting and sorting the thoughts that come to us, clinging to these, discarding those, until, even as you have said, we learn at last instantly to accept those that mirror forth God, infinite, divine mind, and to reject those that bear the stamp of supposition."

"Padre," the girl said, lifting her beautiful face to his, "I have told you so often—when a thought comes to me that I think is not from God, or does not reflect Him, I turn right on it and kill it. You could do the same, if you would."

"Assuredly, child—if I would!" he replied in bitterness of heart. "So could all mankind. And then the millennium would be with us, and the kingdom of heaven revealed. The mesmeric belief in evil as an entity and a power opposed to good alone prevents that. Destroy this belief, and the curtain will instantly rise on eternity."

His eyes struggled with hers, as he gazed long and wistfully into them. Lost in his impassioned speech, he had for the moment seemed to be translated. Then a surge of fear-thoughts swept him, and left him dwelling on the hazardous journey that awaited her. He wildly clutched her again to his side.

"Carmen—child—how can I let you go! So young, so tender! And that awful journey—two hundred miles of unknown jungle, to the far-off Nechi! And then the burning river, to Cartagena, where—where he is! And the States—God, what awaits you there!"

"Padre," she answered softly, "I shall not go unless it is right. If it is right, then God will take care of me—and of you."

Again she saw only the "right-best" thought, while he sat trembling before its opposite. And the opposite was as yet a supposition!

"Padre dear, there is no separation, you know. God is everywhere, and so there is no separation from good—is there?"

"Not in your thought, dearest child," he murmured huskily.

"Well, Padre dear, I am still with you, am I not? Can't you live one day at a time? That is what Jesus taught us. You are borrowing from to-morrow, and you have no right to do it. That's stealing. God says, 'Thou shalt not steal,' even from to-morrow."

Yes, she was still at his side. Perhaps she would not go, after all. He was borrowing, and borrowing supposition. The thought seemed to lighten his load momentarily.

"Padre dear."

"Yes, chiquita."

"You have been thinking so many bad thoughts of late—I don't suppose you have had any good thoughts at all about Anita's little babe?"

"The babe?" in a tone of astonishment.

"Yes. You know, it is not blind. You promised me that every day you would just know that."

The rebuke smote him sore. Aye, his crowning sin was revealed again in all its ugly nakedness. Egoism! His thought was always of his own troubles, his own longings, his own fears. Self-centeredness had left no room for thoughts of Ana's blind babe. And why was he now straining this beautiful girl to himself? Was it fear for her, or for himself? Yet she gave but little heed to her own needs. Always her concern was for others, others who stumbled and drooped because of the human mind's false, unreal, undemonstrable beliefs and ignorance of the allness of God.

"Ah, child," he exclaimed penitently, "such love! How could I dare to hope ever to claim it! How can you say that you love me?"

"Why, Padre, I love the real 'you,' the 'you' that is going to be brought out, and that will become more and more clear, until at last it stands as the perfect reflection of God. Haven't I told you that, time and time again?"

"Yes, child. You love the ideal. But—to live with me—to be my—"

"Well, Padre, if we were not still human we would not be thinking that we were on earth. We have got to work out of this human way of thinking and living. And it has seemed to me that you and I could work out of it so much better together, you helping me, manifesting God's protection and care, and I helping you, as you say I can and do. And how can we live together and work together unless we marry? Ages make no difference! And time is only a human concept."

He would not try to explain her reasoning, her contempt for convention. It would be gratuitous. As for him, women had never constituted a temptation. He knew that he loved this simple, ingenuous girl with a tenderness of passion that was wholly free from the dross of mesmerism. With that he remained content.

"Padre, if you think you must stay here for a little while, to work out your problem, why, I shall just know that evil can not separate us. I don't like to even seem to go away without you. But—it will be only seeming, after all, won't it? God's children can not really be separated—never!"

She was still paying faithful tribute to her vision of the spiritual universe. And how her words comforted him! How like a benison they flowed over his drooping spirits!

"And now, Padre dear," she said, rising from the bench,—"we have done all we could—left everything with God—haven't we? I must go now, for madre Maria told me to come back soon. She needs me."

"Don't—no, not yet! Wait—Carmen! Sing for me—just once more! Sing again the sweet melody that I heard when I awoke from the fever that day long ago!"

He drew her unresisting to his side. Nestling close against him, her head resting on his shoulder and her hand in his, she sang again the song that had seemed to lift him that distant day far, far above the pitiful longings and strivings of poor humanity, even unto the gates of the city of eternal harmony.

She finished, and the last clear, sweet note echoed through the musty room and died among the black rafters overhead. A holy silence fell upon them as they sat, hand in hand, facing the future. Hot tears were streaming down the man's cheeks. They fell sparkling like drops of dew upon her brown curls. But he made no complaint. The girl, obedient to the vision, was reaping her reward. He, timid, wavering, doubting, was left, still pecking at the shell of his dreary environment. It was but the working of the infinite law of cause and effect. But did he imagine that out in the world she would not still find tribulation, even as the Saviour had said? Aye, she would, in abundance! But she leaned on her sustaining God. Her Christ had overcome the world. And so should she. She had already passed through such fiery trials that he knew no contrary belief in evil now could weaken or counterbalance her supreme confidence in immanent good.

"Padre dear."

"Chiquita."

"If I have to go and leave you, will you promise me that you will act your knowledge of the Christ-principle and work out your problem, so that you may come to me soon?"

The tug at his heartstrings brought a moan to his lips. He smothered it. "Yes, chiquita."

"And—you will keep your promise about Anita's babe?"

"Yes."

She rose and, still holding his hand, led him down the hill and to Rosendo's house.

Throughout the remainder of that feverishly busy day the priest clung to the girl like a shadow. They talked together but little, for she was in constant demand to help her foster-mother in the preparations for the long journey. But Jose was ever at her side. Again and again he would seize her hand and press it to his burning lips. Again and again he would stroke her soft hair, or stretch out his hand to touch her dress as she passed him. Always when she glanced up at him the same sweet, compassionate smile glowed on her face. When she left the house, he followed. When she bent over the ash-strewn fireplace, or washed the few plain dishes, he sought to share her employment; and, when gently, lovingly repulsed, sat dully, with his yearning eyes riveted upon her. Rosendo saw him, and forgot his own sorrow in pity for the suffering priest.

The preparations carried the toilers far into the night. But at length the last bundle was strapped to its siete, the last plan discussed and agreed upon, and the two Americans had thrown themselves upon their cots for a brief rest before dawn. Rosendo took Jose aside, while Dona Maria and Carmen sought their beds.

"Fernando sends Juan to Bodega Central at daybreak," the old man said. "All has been kept secret. No one suspects our plans. Maria remains here with you until I return. Then we may go to the hacienda of Don Nicolas, on the Boque. I shall tell him to have it in readiness on my return. I shall probably not get back to Simiti for two months. If, as you say, you still think best not to go with the Americans and the girl, what will you do here? The people are much divided. Some say they intend to ask the Bishop to remove you. Bien, will you not decide to go?"

Jose could not make audible reply. He shook his head, and waved Rosendo away. Then, taking a chair, he went into the sleeping room and sat down at the bedside of the slumbering girl. Reaching over, he took her hand.

What was it that she had said to him that day, long gone, when Diego claimed her as his child? Ah, yes:

"Don't feel badly, Padre dear. His thoughts have only the minus sign—and that means nothing, you know."

And later, many weeks later:

"Padre, you can not think wrong and right thoughts together, you know. You can not be happy and unhappy at the same time. You can not be sick and well together." In other words, the wise little maid was trying to show him that Paul spoke directly to such as he when he wrote: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are—?

"You can not have both good and evil, Padre," she had so often insisted. "You must want good—want it more than anything else. And then you must prepare for it by thinking right thoughts and unthinking wrong ones. And as you prepare for good, you must know that it is coming. But you must not say how it shall come, nor what it shall look like. You must not say that it shall be just as you may think you would like to have it. Leave the—the externalization to God. Then it will meet all your needs.

"You see, Padre dear"—oh, how the memory of her words smote him now!—"you see, the good Jesus told the people to clean their window-panes and let in the light—good thoughts—for then these would be externalized in health, happiness, and all good, instead of the old, bad thoughts being externalized longer in sickness and evil. Don't you see?"

Aye, he saw. He saw that the Christ-idea found expression and reflection in the pure mentality of this girl. He saw that that mentality was unsullied, uneducated in the lore of human belief, and untrained to fear. He saw that the resurrection of the Christ, for which a yearning world waits, was but the rising of the Christ-idea in the human mentality. And he saw, too, that ere the radiant resurrection morn can arrive there must be the crucifixion, a world-wide crucifixion of human, carnal thought. Follow Christ! Aye, follow him! But will ye not learn that following him means thinking as he did? And his thoughts were God's.

But Jose had tried to think aright during those years in Simiti. True, but the efforts had been spasmodic. From childhood he had passed through doubt, fear, scepticism, and final agnosticism. Then he had started anew and aright. And then had come the "day of judgment," the recurrent hours of sore trial—and he had not stood. Called upon to prove God, to prove the validity of his splendid deductions, he had vacillated between the opposing claims of good and evil, and had floundered helplessly. And now he stood confronting his still unsolved problem, realizing as never before that in the solving of it he must unlearn the intellectual habits of a lifetime.

There were other problems which lay still unsolved before him as he sat there that night. The sable veil of mystery which hung about Carmen's birth had never been penetrated, even slightly. What woman's face was that which looked out so sadly from the little locket? "Dolores"—sorrowful, indeed! What tragedy had those great, mournful eyes witnessed? No, Carmen did not greatly resemble her. He used to think so, but not of late. Did she, he wondered, resemble the man? And had the mother's kisses and hot tears blurred the portrait beneath which he had so often read the single inscription, "Guillermo"? If so, could not the portrait be cleaned? But Jose himself had not dared attempt it. Perhaps some day that could be done by one skilled in such art.

And did Carmen inherit any of her unique traits from either of her parents? Her voice, her religious instinct, her keen mentality—whence came they? "From God," the girl would always answer whenever he voiced the query in her presence. And he could not gainsay it.

Seven years had passed. And Jose found himself sitting beside the sleeping girl and dumbly yielding to the separation which now had come. Was his work finished? His course run? And, if he must live and solve his problem, could he stand after she had left? He bent closer to her, and listened to the gentle breathing. He seemed again to see her, as he was wont in the years past, flitting about her diminutive rose garden and calling to him to come and share her boundless joy. "Come!" he heard her call. "Come, Padre dear, and see my beautiful thoughts!" And then, so often, "Oh, Padre!" bounding into his arms, "here is a beautiful thought that came to me to-day, and I caught it and wouldn't let it go!" Lonely, isolated child, having nothing in common with the children of her native heath, yet dwelling ever in a world peopled with immaculate concepts!

Jose shook his head slowly. He thought of the day when he had approached Rosendo with his great question. "Rosendo," he had said in deep earnestness, "where, oh, where did Carmen get these ideas? Did you teach them to her?"

"No, Padre," Rosendo had replied gravely. "When she was a little thing, just learning to talk, she often asked about God. And one day I told her that God was everywhere—what else could I say? Bien, a strange light came into her eyes. And after that, Padre, she talked continually about Him, and to Him. And she seemed to know Him well—so well that she saw Him in every thing and every place. Padre, it is very strange—very strange!"

No, it was not strange, Jose had thought, but beautifully natural. And later, when he came to teach her, his constant endeavor had been to impart his secular knowledge to the girl without endangering her marvelous faith in her immanent God. In that he had succeeded, for in that there had been no obstructing thoughts of self to overcome.

And now—

"For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee—"

The night shadows fled. Day dawned. Jose still sat at the girl's bedside, dumb and motionless. Carmen awoke, and threw her arms about him. But Rosendo appeared and hurried her out to the light morning repast, for they must lose no time in starting. Every moment now was precious. By ten o'clock the savannas would be too hot to cross, and they lay some distance from Simiti. Reed and Harris were bustling about, assembling the packers and cracking jokes as they strapped the chairs to the men's backs. Dona Maria's eyes were red with weeping, but she kept silence. Jose wandered about like a wraith. Don Jorge grimly packed his own kit and prepared to set out for the Magdalena, for he had suddenly announced his determination not to accompany Rosendo and his party, but to go back and consult with Don Carlos Norosi in regard to the future. An hour later he left Simiti.

At last Rosendo's voice rang out in a great shout:

"Ya esta! Vamonos!"

"Bully-bueno!" responded Harris, waving his long arms.

The cargadores moved forward in the direction of the Boque trail. The Americans, with a final adios to Dona Maria and the priest, swung into line behind them. Rosendo again tenderly embraced his weeping spouse, and then, turned to Jose.

"The Virgin watch over you and Maria, Padre! I leave her in your care. If the war comes, flee with her to the Boque."

He threw an arm about the priest and kissed him on both cheeks. Then, calling to Carmen, he turned and started after the others.

The girl rushed into Jose's arms. Her tears flowed freely.

"Padre," she murmured, clinging to him and showering him with kisses, "I love you, love you, love you! I will wait for you up there. You will come—or I will come back to you. And I will work for you every day. I will know that you are God's child, and that you will solve your problem!"

Rosendo, half way down the road, turned and called sharply to her. The girl hurried after him. But again she stopped, turned around, and flew back to Jose, as he knelt in the dust and, with tongue cleaving to his mouth, held out his trembling arms.

"Padre, dearest, dearest Padre," she sobbed, "I love you, I love you! And—I had forgotten—this—it is for you to read every day—every day!" She thrust a folded paper into his hand. Again she tore herself away and ran after the impatient Rosendo. In a moment they were out of sight.

A groan of anguish escaped the stricken priest. He rose from his knees and followed stumbling after the girl. As he reached the shales he saw her far in the distance at the mouth of the trail. She turned, and waved her hand to him. Then the dark trail swallowed her, and he saw her no more.

For a moment he stood like a statue, striving with futile gaze to penetrate that black opening in the dense bush that had engulfed his very soul. His bloodshot eyes were wild. His lips fluttered. His hand closed convulsively over the paper which the girl had left with him. Mechanically he opened it and read:

"Dearest, dearest Padre, these four little Bible verses I leave with you; and you will promise your little girl that you will always live by them. Then your problem will be solved.

"1. Thou shall have no other gods before me.

"2. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

"3. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

"4. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

"And, Padre, my dearest, dearest Padre, God is everywhere."

His hand fell. His brain reeled, and he swayed like a drunken man. He turned about, muttering incoherently. Dona Maria stood behind him. Tenderly taking his arm, she led him back to the forlorn little house. Its ghastly emptiness smote him until his reason tottered. He sank into a chair and gazed with dull, stony eyes out over the placid lake, where the white beams of the rising sun were breaking into myriad colors against the brume.



CHAPTER 37

The two hundred miles which lay before Rosendo and his little band stretched their rugged, forbidding length through ragged canons, rushing waters, and dank, virginal forest. Only the old man, as he trudged along the worn trail between Simiti and the Inanea river, where canoes waited to transport the travelers to the little village of Boque, had any adequate conception of what the journey meant. Even the cargadores were unfamiliar with the region which they were to penetrate. Some of them had been over the Guamoco trail as far as Culata; a few had ascended the Boque river to its farthest navigable point. But none had penetrated the inmost reaches of the great canon through which the headwaters tumbled and roared, and none had ever dreamed of making the passage over the great divide, the Barra Principal, to the Tigui beyond.

To the Americans, fresh from the luxury and convention of city life, and imbued with the indomitable Yankee spirit of adventure, the prospect was absorbing in its allurements. Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had constituted himself Carmen's special protector, although much to Rosendo's consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the weight of some six-feet-two of height, went stumbling and tripping along the way, swaying against every tree and bush that edged the path, and constantly giving noisy vent to his opinions regarding trails in general, and those of the tropics in particular. His only accouterment was a Winchester rifle of tremendous bore, which he insisted on carrying in constant readiness to meet either beasts of prey or savage Indians, but which, in his absent-mindedness and dreamy preoccupation, he either dragged, muzzle up, or carried at such dangerous angles that the natives were finally obliged, in self-protection, to insist that he hand the weapon over to Rosendo. To Carmen, as the days passed and she gradually recognized his sterling qualities, he became a source of delight. Hour after hour she trotted along after him, chatting merrily in her beloved English tongue, poking fun at his awkwardness, and laughing boisterously over his quaint slang and naive Yankee expressions. She had never heard such things from Jose; nor had the priest, despite his profound knowledge, ever told her such exciting tales as did Harris, when he drew from his store of frontier memories and colored his narratives with the rich tints furnished by his easy imagination.

The first day out had been one of mental struggle for the girl. She had turned into the trail, after waving a last farewell to Jose, with a feeling that she had never experienced before. For hours she trudged along, oblivious of her environment, murmuring, "It isn't true—it isn't true!" until Harris, his curiosity aroused by the constant repetition which floated now and then to his ears, demanded to know what it was that was so radically false.

"It isn't true that we can be separated," she answered, looking at him with moist eyes.

"We?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, God's children—people—people—who—love each other," she replied. Then she dropped her eyes in evident embarrassment, and refused to discuss the topic further.

"Lord Harry!" ejaculated Harris, pondering the cryptical remark, "you surely are a queer little dud!"

But the girl turned from him to Rosendo. He understood her. Nor would she permit the old man to leave her until, late that night, exhausted by the excitement of the day, she dropped asleep in the house of Don Nicolas, on the muddy margin of the river Boque, still clinging to Rosendo's hand.

Despite the protestations of Don Nicolas and the pleading of the cargadores, Rosendo stolidly refused to spend a day at Boque. Apprehension lashed him furiously on. They were still within reach of the federal authorities. He dared not rest until the jungle had swallowed them.

"Ah, compadre," said Don Nicolas, in disappointment, "I would like much for you to enjoy my house while it is still clean. For the ants have visited me. Hombre! they swarmed down upon us but a day ago. They came out of the bush in millions, straight for the house. We fled. Caramba! had we remained, we should have been eaten alive. But they swept the house—Hombre! no human hands could have done so well. Every spider, every rat, beetle, flea, every plague, was instantly eaten, and within a half hour they had disappeared again, and we moved back into a thoroughly cleaned house!"

Harris stood with mouth agape in mute astonishment when Carmen, whom he had constituted his interpreter, translated to him the story.

That evening, after they had eaten out in the open before the house, and the Americans had tickled the palates of the villagers with some tinned beef of uncertain quality, Don Nicolas approached Reed. "Senor," he said, "my mother, now very aged, is sick, and we think she can not recover. But you Americanos are wonderfully skilled, and your medicines powerful. Have you not some remedy in your pack that will alleviate the good woman's sufferings? They are severe, senor."

Reed knew how great was the faith of these simple people in the wisdom of the American, and he had reason to wish to preserve it. But he had come into that country illy prepared to cope with disease, and his medical equipment contained nothing but quinine. He reflected a moment, then turned to Harris.

"Did you smuggle any of your beloved root-beer extract into the equipment?" he inquired, his eyes twinkling.

Harris looked sheepish, but returned a sullen affirmative.

"Well," continued Reed, "dig out a bottle and we'll fix up a dose of pain-killer for our worthy host's mother."

Then he turned to Don Nicolas. "Cierto, senor," he said with an air of confidence. "I have a remedy which I know to be unfailing for any disease."

He disappeared into the house, from which he emerged again in a few moments with an empty cola bottle. Washing this clean in the river, he partly filled it with water. Then he poured in the small bottle of root-beer extract which Harris handed him, and added a few grains of quinine. Shaking the mixture thoroughly, he carried it to Don Nicolas.

"Be very careful, senor," he admonished, giving him the bottle. "It is a medicine extremely powerful and immediate in its action. Give the senora a small teaspoonful every hour. By morning you will notice a marked change."

Don Nicolas's eyes lighted with joy, and his gratitude poured forth in extravagant expressions.

With the first indications of approaching day Rosendo was abroad, rounding up his cargadores, who were already bickering as to their respective duties, and arranging the luggage in the canoes for the river trip. Additional boats and men had been secured; and Don Nicolas himself expressed his intention of accompanying them as far as his hacienda, Maria Rosa, a day's journey up-stream.

"It was there that I hid during the last revolution," he said, "when the soldiers burned the village and cut off the ears and fingers of our women for their rings. Ah, senores, you can not know how we suffered! All my goods stolen or burned—my family scattered—my finca destroyed! We lived two years at Maria Rosa, not daring to come down the river again. We wore the skins of animals for clothing. Caramba!" His eyes burned fiercely as he spoke, and his hands opened and closed convulsively. He was a representative of that large class of rurales upon whom the heaviest burdens, the greatest suffering, and the most poignant sorrow attending a political revolution always fall.

"But, senor!" he exclaimed, suddenly turning to Reed, "I had all but forgotten! My mother, she sends for you. She would see the kind American whose remedies are so wonderful. For, senor, she rose from her bed this morning restored! And you must leave us another bottle of the remedy—at whatever price, senor!"

Reed gazed at the man uncomprehendingly, until at length the truth dawned upon him. His root-beer remedy had done its work! Then a broad grin mantled his face; but he quickly suppressed it and went with Don Nicolas to receive in person his patient's effusive thanks. When he returned and took his place in the waiting boat, he shook his head. "It's past all understanding," he muttered to Harris, "what faith will do! I can believe now that it will remove mountains."

Throughout the long, interminably long, hot day the perspiring men poled and paddled, urged and teased, waded and pushed against the increasing current, until, as the shadows began to close around them, they sighted the scarcely visible opening in the bush which marked the trail to the hacienda of Maria Rosa. It was a desperately lonely clearing on the verge of the jungle; but there were two thatch-covered sheds, and to the exhausted travelers it gave assurance of rest and protection. Before they made the landing Rosendo's sharp eyes had spied a large ant-eater and her cub, moving sluggishly through the bush; and Reed's quick shots had brought them both down. The men's eyes dilated when the animals were dragged into the canoes. It meant fresh meat instead of salt bagre for at least two days.

Early next morning the travelers bade farewell to Don Nicolas and set their course again up-stream. They would now see no human being other than the members of their own little party until they reached Llano, on the distant Nechi.

"Remember," called Don Nicolas, as the canoes drifted out into the stream, "the quebrada of Caracoli is the third on the right. An old trail used to lead from there across to the Tiguicito—but I doubt if you find even a trace of it now. There is no water between that point and the Tiguicito. Conque, adios, senores, adios!"

The hallooing of farewells echoed along the river and died away in the dark forest on either hand. Harris and Reed settled back in their canoe and yielded to the fascination of the slowly shifting scene. Carmen chose to occupy the same canoe with them, and perforce Rosendo acted as patron. They therefore took the lead. Between his knees Reed held the rifle upright, in readiness for any animal whose curiosity might bring it to the water's edge to view the rare pageant passing through that unbroken solitude.

The river was now narrowing, and there were often rapids whose ascent necessitated disembarking from the canoes, while the bogas strained and teased the lumbering dugouts up over them. In places the stream was choked by fallen trees and tangled driftwood, until only a narrow, tortuous opening was left, through which the waters raced like a mill-course, making a heavy draft on the intuitive skill of the bogas. Often slender islets rose from the river; and then heated, chattering, often acrimonious discussions ensued among the men as to the proper channel to take. Always on either side rose the matted, tangled, impenetrable forest wall of dense bush and giant trees, from which innumerable trailers and bejuco vines dropped into the waters beneath. From the surface of the river to the tops of the great trees, often two hundred feet above, hung a drapery of creeping plants, of parasitical growths, and diversified foliage, of the most vivid shades of green, inextricably laced and interwoven, and dotted here and there with orchideous flowers and strange blossoms, while in the tempered sunlight which sifted through it sported gorgeous insects and butterflies of enormous size and exquisite shades, striped and spotted in orange, blue, and vivid red. Scarcely a hand's breadth of the jungle wall but contained some strange, eerie animal or vegetable form that brought expressions of wonder and astonishment from the enraptured Americans. At times, too, there were grim tragedies being enacted before them. In one spot a huge, hairy spider, whose delicate, lace-like web hung to the water's edge, was viciously wrapping its silken thread about a tiny bird that had become entangled. Again, a shriek from beyond the river's margin told of some careless monkey or small animal that had fallen prey to a hungry jaguar. Above the travelers all the day swung the ubiquitous buzzards, with their watchful, speculative eyes ever on the slowly moving cavalcade.

Carmen sat enthralled. If her thought reverted at all to the priest, she gave no hint of it. But once, leaning back and gazing off into the opalescent sky overhead, she murmured: "And to think, it is only the way the human mind translates God's ideas! How wonderful must they be! And some day I shall see those ideas, instead of the mortal mind's interpretations of them!"

Harris heard her, and asked her to repeat her comments in English. But she refused. "You would not understand," she said simply. And no badinage on his part could further influence her.

Rosendo, inscrutable and silent, showed plainly the weight of responsibility which he felt. Only twice that day did he emerge from the deep reserve into which he had retired; once when, in the far distance, his keen eye espied a small deer, drinking at the water's edge, but which, scenting the travelers, fled into cover ere Reed could bring the rifle to his shoulders; and again, when they were upon a jaguar almost before either they or the astonished animal realized it.

In the tempered rays of the late afternoon sun the flower-bespangled walls of the forest became alive with gaily painted birds and insects. Troops of chattering monkeys awoke from their midday siesta and scampered noisily through the treetops over the aerial highways formed by the liana vines, whose great bush-ropes, often a foot and more in thickness, stretched their winding length long distances through the forest, and bound the vegetation together in an intricate, impenetrable network. Yellow and purple blossoms, in a riot of ineffable splendor, bedecked the lofty trees and tangled parasitical creepers that wrapped around them, constituting veritable hanging gardens. Great palms, fattened by the almost incessant rains in this hot-house of Nature, rose in the spaces unoccupied by the buttressed roots of the forest giants. Splendidly tailored kingfishers swooped over the water, scarce a foot above its surface. Quarreling parrots and nagging macaws screamed their inarticulate message to the travelers. Tiny forest gems, the infinitely variegated colibri, whirred across the stream and followed its margins until attracted by the gorgeous pendent flowers. On the playas in the hazy distance ahead the travelers could often distinguish tall, solemn cranes, dancing their grotesque measures, or standing on one leg and dreaming away their little hour of life in this terrestrial fairy-land.

Darkness fell, almost with the swiftness of a snuffed candle. For an hour Rosendo had been straining his eyes toward the right bank of the river, and as he gazed his apprehension increased. But, as night closed in, a soft murmur floated down to the cramped, toil-worn travelers, and the old man, with a glad light in his eyes, announced that they were approaching the quebrada of Caracoli. A half hour later, by the weird, flickering light of the candles which Reed and Harris held out on either side, Rosendo turned the canoe into a brawling stream, and ran its nose into the deep alluvial soil. Plunging fearlessly through the fringe of delicate ferns which lined the margin of the creek, he cut a wide swath with his great machete and uncovered a dim trail, which led to a ramshackle, thatch-covered hut a few yards beyond. It was the tumbled vestige of a shelter which Don Nicolas had erected years before while hunting wild pigs through this trackless region. An hour later the little group lay asleep on the damp ground, wrapped in the solitude of the great forest.

The silvery haze of dawn was dimming the stars and deepening into ruddier hues that tinged the fronds of the mighty trees as with streaks of blood when Rosendo, like an implacable Nemesis, prodded his little party into activity. Their first day's march through the wilderness was to begin, and the old man moved with the nervous, restless energy of a hunted jaguar. The light breakfast of coffee and cold arepa over, he dismissed the bogas, who were to return to Boque with the canoes, and set about arranging the cargo in suitable packs for the cargadores who were to accompany him over the long reaches of jungle that stretched between them and Llano. Two macheteros were sent on ahead of the main party to locate and open a trail. The rest followed an hour later. Before the shimmering, opalescent rays which overspread the eastern sky had begun to turn downward, the little cavalcade, led by Rosendo, had taken the narrow, newly-cut trail and plunged into the shadows of the forest—

"the great, dim, mysterious forest, where uncertainty wavers to an interrogation point."



CHAPTER 38

The emotion of the jungle is a direct function of human temperament. Where one sees in it naught but a "grim, green sepulcher," teeming with malignant, destructive forces, inimical to health, to tranquillity, to life, another—perhaps a member of the same party—will find in the wanton extravagance of Nature, her prodigious luxury, her infinite variety of form, of color, and sound, such stimuli to the imagination, and such invitation to further discovery and development, as to constitute a lure as insidious and unescapable as the habit which too often follows the first draft of the opium's fumes. There are those who profess to have journeyed through vast stretches of South American selva without encountering a wild animal. Others, with sight and hearing keener, and with a sense of observation not dulled by futile lamentations over the absence of the luxuries of civilized travel, will uncover a wealth of experiences which feed the memory throughout their remaining years, and mold an irresistible desire to penetrate again those vast, teeming, baffling solitudes.

It is true, the sterner aspect of the South American jungle affords little invitation to repose or restful contemplation. And the charm which its riotous prodigality exerts is in no sense idyllic. For the jungle falls upon one with the force of a blow. It grips by its massiveness, its awful grandeur. It does not entice admiration, but exacts obeisance by brute force. Its silence is a dull roar. Its rest is continuous motion, incessant activity. The garniture of its trackless wastes is that of great daubs of vivid color, laid thick upon the canvas with the knife—never modulated, never worked into delicate shading with the brush, but attracting by its riot, its audacity, its immensity, its disdain of convention, its utter disregard of the canons cherished by the puny mind that contemplates it. The forest's appeal is a reflex of its own infinite complexity. The sensations which it arouses within the one who steps from civilization into its very heart are myriad, and often terrible. The instinct of self-preservation is by it suddenly, rudely aroused and kept keenly alive. Its inhospitality is menacing. The roar of its howling monkeys strikes terror to the timid heart. The plaintive calls of its persecuted feathered denizens echo through the mysterious vastnesses like despairing voices from a spirit world. The crashing noises, the strange, weird, unaccountable sounds that hurtle through its dimly lighted corridors blanch the face and cause the hand to steal furtively toward the loosely sheathed weapon. The piercing, frenzied screams which arise with blood-curdling effect through the awful stillness of noonday or the dead of night, turn the startled thought with sickening yearning toward the soft charms of civilization, in which the sense of protection is greater, even if actual security is frequently less.

Because of Nature's utter disregard of the individual, life is everywhere. And that life is sharply armed and on the defensive. The rising heat-waves hum with insects. The bush swarms with them. Their droning murmur crowds the air. The trunks of trees, the great, pendent leaves of plants, the trailing vines, slimy with dank vegetation, afford footing and housing to countless myriads of them, keenly alert, ferociously resistive. The decaying logs fester with scorpions. The ground is cavernous with the burrows of lizards and crawling forms, with centipedes and fierce formicidae. Death and terror stalk hand in hand. But life trails them. Where one falls, countless others spring up to fill the gap. The rivers and pantanos yield their quota of variegated forms. The flat perania, the dreaded electric eel, infests the warm streams, and inflicts its torture without discrimination upon all who dare invade its domain. Snakes lurk in the fetid swamps and lagoons, the brilliant coral and the deadly mapina. Beneath the forest leaves coils the brown adder, whose sting proves fatal within three days.

To those who see only these aspects of the jungle, a journey such as that undertaken by Rosendo and his intrepid little band would prove a terrifying experience, a constant repetition of nerve-shocks, under which the "centers" must ultimately give way. But to the two Americans, fresh from the mining camps of the West, and attuned to any pitch that Nature might strike in her marvelous symphony, the experience was one to be taken in the same spirit as all else that pertained to their romantic calling. Rosendo and his men accepted the day's stint of toil and danger with dull stolidity. Carmen threw herself upon her thought, and saw in her shifting environment only the human mind's interpretation of its mixed concept of good and evil. The insects swarmed around her as around the others. The tantalizing jejenes urged their insidious attacks upon her, as upon the rest. Her hands were dotted with tiny blood-blisters where the ravenous gnats had fed. But she uttered no complaint; nor would she discuss the matter when Harris proffered his sympathy, and showed his own red hands.

"It isn't true," she would say. "But you have no religion, and you don't understand—as yet."

"Don't understand? And it isn't true, eh? Well, you have mighty strange beliefs, young lady!"

"But not as strange and illogical as those you hold," she replied.

"Oh, I don't believe anything," he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I'm an agnostic, you know."

"There is just where you mistake, Mr. Harris," she returned gravely. "For, instead of not believing anything, you firmly believe in the presence and power of evil. It is just those very people who boast that they do not believe in anything who believe most thoroughly in evil and its omnipotence and omnipresence."

Yes, even the animals which she saw about her were but the human mind's concepts of God's ideas—not real. Adam had named them. In the Bible allegory, or dream, the human, mortal mind names all its own material concepts.

The days wore on with dull regularity. From the rippling Tiguicito, which they reached choking with thirst and utterly exhausted, they dropped down again to the Boque, where they established camps and began to prospect the Molino company's "near-mines," as Harris called them after the first few unsuccessful attempts to get "colors" out of the barren soil. At certain points, where there seemed a more likely prospect, they remained for days, until the men, under Rosendo's guidance, could sink pits to the underlying bedrock. Such work was done with the crudest of tools—an iron bar, wooden scrapers in lieu of shovels, and wooden bateas in which the men handed the loosened dirt up from one stage to another and out to the surface. It was slow, torturing work. The men grew restive. The food ran low, and they complained.

Then Harris one evening stumbled upon a tapir, just as the great animal had forded the river and was shambling into the bush opposite. He emptied his rifle magazine into the beast. It fell with a broken hip, and the men finished it with their machetes. Its hide was nearly a half inch in thickness, and covered with garrapatas—fierce, burrowing vermin, with hooked claws, which came upon the travelers and caused them intense annoyance throughout the remainder of the journey.

Then Reed shot a deer, a delicate, big-eyed creature that had never seen a human being and was too surprised to flee. Later, Fidel Avila felled another with a large stone. And, finally, monkeys became so plentiful that the men all but refused to eat them any longer.

Two weeks were spent around the mouth of the Tiguicito and the Boque canon. Then Reed gave the order to advance. The little party shouldered their packs and began the ascent of the ragged gorge. For days they clambered up and down the jagged walls of the cut, or skirted its densely covered margin. Twice Harris fell into the brawling stream below, and was fished out by Rosendo, his eyes popping, and his mouth choked with uncomplimentary opinion regarding mountain travel in the tropics. Once, seizing a slender vine to aid him in climbing, he gave a sudden lurch and swung out unexpectedly over the gorge, hundreds of feet deep. Again Rosendo, who by this time had learned to keep one eye on the ground and the other on the irresponsible Harris, rescued him from his perilous position.

"Why don't you watch where you are going?" queried the laughing Carmen.

"I might," sputtered Harris, "if I could keep my eyes off of you." Whereat Carmen pursed her lips and told him to reserve his compliments for those who knew how to appraise them rightly.

They camped where night overtook them, out in the open, often falling asleep without waiting to build a fire, but eating soggy corn arepa and tinned food, and drinking cold coffee left from the early morning repast. But sometimes, when the fatigue of day was less, they would gather about their little fire, chilled and dripping, and beg Carmen to sing to them while they prepared supper. Then her clear voice would ring out over the great canon and into the vast solitudes on either hand in strange, vivid contrast to the cries and weird sounds of the jungle; and the two Americans would sit and look at her as if they half believed her a creature from another world. Sometimes Harris would draw her into conversation on topics pertaining to philosophy and religion, for he had early seen her bent and, agnostic that he was, delighted to hear her express her views, which to him were so childishly impossible. But as often he would voluntarily retire from the conflict, sometimes shaking his head dubiously, sometimes muttering his impatience with a mere child whose logic he, despite his collegiate training, could not refute. He was as full of philosophical theories as a nut with meat; but when she asked for proofs, for less human belief and more demonstration, he hoisted the white flag and retired from the field. But his admiration for the child became sincere. His respect for her waxed daily stronger. And by the time they had reached the great divide through which the Rosario fell, he was dimly aware of a feeling toward the beautiful creature who walked at his side day after day, sharing without complaint hardship and fatigue that sorely taxed his own endurance, that was something more than mere regard, and he had begun to speculate vaguely on a possible future in which she became the central figure.

At Rosario creek they left the great canon and turned into the rugged defile which wound its tortuous course upward into the heights of the Barra Principal. They were now in a region where, in Rosendo's belief, there was not one human being in an area of a hundred square miles. He himself was in sore doubt as to the identity of the quebrada which they were following. But it tallied with the brief description given him by Don Nicolas. And, moreover, which was even more important, as they began its ascent there came to him that sense of conviction which every true son of the jungle feels when he is following the right course. He might not say how he knew he was right; but he followed the leading without further question.

Up over the steep talus at the base of the canon wall they clambered, up into the narrowing arroyo, cutting every foot of the way, for the macheteros were now no longer keeping ahead of them—the common danger held the band united. Often they believed they discovered traces of ancient trails. But the jealous forest had all but obliterated them, and they could not be certain. In the higher and drier parts of the forest, where they left the creek and followed the beds of dead streams, slender ditches through which the water raced in torrents during the wet season, they were set upon by countless swarms of bees, a strange, stingless variety that covered them in a buzzing, crawling mass, struggling and fighting for the salt in the perspiration which exuded from the human bodies. Harris swore he would cease to eat, for he could not take even a mouthful of food without at the same time taking in a multitude of bees. Often, too, their machetes cut into great hornet nests. Then, with the shrill cry, "Avispas!" Rosendo would tear recklessly through the matted jungle, followed by his slapping, stumbling companions, until the maddened insects gave up the chase. Frequently they walked into huge ant nests before they realized it, sometimes the great tucanderas, so ferociously poisonous. "Ah, senores," commented Rosendo, as he once stopped to point out the marvelous roadway cut by these insects for miles straight through the jungle, "in the days of the Spaniards the cruel taskmasters would often tie the weak and sick slaves to trees in the depths of the forest and let these great ants devour them alive! Senores, you can never know the terrible crimes committed by the Spaniards!"

"And they were Christians!" murmured Harris, eying Carmen furtively.

But she knew, though she voiced it not, that the Spaniard had never known the Christ.

Night was spent on the summit of the divide. Then, without further respite, Rosendo urged the descent. Down through ravines and gullies; over monster bowlders; waist deep through streams; down the sheer sides of gorges on natural ladders formed by the hanging mora vines; skirting cliffs by the aid of tangled and interlaced roots of rank, wet vegetation; and then down again into river bottoms, where the tenacious mud challenged their every step, and the streams became an interminable morass, through which passage was possible only by jumping from root to root, where the gnarled feeders of the great trees projected above the bottomless ooze. The persecution of the jejenes became diabolical. At dawn and sunset the raucous bellow of the red-roarer monkeys made the air hideous. The flickering lights of the forest became dismally depressing. The men grew morose and sullen. Reed and Harris quarreled with each other on the slightest provocation.

Then, to increase their misery, came the rain. It fell upon them in the river bottoms in fierce, driving gusts; then in sheets that blotted out the forest and wet their very souls. The heavens split with the lightning. The mountains roared and trembled with the hideous cannonade of thunder. The jungle-matted hills ran with the flood. An unvaried pall of vapor hung over the steaming ground, through which uncanny, phantasmagoric shapes peered at the struggling little band.

Again the sun burst forth, and a fiery vapor seethed above the moist earth. The reek of their damp clothing and the acrid odor of the wet soil increased the enervation of their hard travel. Again and again the peevish Harris accused Rosendo of having lost the way. The old man patiently bore the abuse. Reed chided Harris, and at length quarreled violently with him, although his own apprehension waxed continually greater. Carmen said little. Hour after hour she toiled along, floundering through the bogs, fording the deeper streams on Rosendo's broad back, whispering softly to him at times, often seizing and pressing his great horny hand, but holding her peace. In vain at evening, when gathered about the damp, smudging firewood, Harris would bring up to her the causes of her flight. In vain he would accuse the unfortunate Alcalde, the Bishop, the soldiers. Carmen refused to lend ear to it, or to see in it anything more than a varied expression of the human mind. Personality was never for a moment considered. She saw, not persons, not things, but expressions of thought in the phenomena which had combined to urge her out of her former environment and cast her into the trackless jungle.

At length, one day, when it seemed to the exhausted travelers that human endurance could stand no more, Rosendo, who had long been straining his ears in the direction straight ahead, announced that the singing noise which floated to them as they descended a low hill and plunged into a thicket of tall lush grass, undoubtedly came from the river Tigui. Another hour of straining and plunging through the dense growth followed; and then, with a final effort, which manifested in a sort of frenzied rush, the little band emerged suddenly upon the east bank of the crystal stream, glittering and shimmering in the bright morning sun as it sang and rippled on its solitary way through the great jungle.

The men threw off their packs and sprawled full length upon the ground. Rosendo pointed across the river.

"La Colorado," he said, indicating what the Americans at length made out to be a frame house, looming above the high grass. "And there," pointing to the north, "is Pozo Cayman, where the trail begins that leads to La Libertad."

That night, as they lay on the rough board floor of the house at La Colorado, Rosendo told them the story of the misguided Frenchmen who, years before, had penetrated this wild region, located a barren quartz vein, then floated a company and begun developments. A considerable colony settled here. The soil was fertile; the undeveloped country ceaselessly rich in every resource, the water pure and sparkling, and abounding in fish. The climate, too, was moderate and agreeable. It seemed to the foreigners a terrestrial paradise. But then came the insidious fever. It crept out of the jungle like a thief in the night. One by one the Frenchmen fell sick and died. Panic seized upon them. Those unafflicted fled—all but one. He remained to protect the company's property. But he, too, fell a victim to the plague. One day, as he lay burning upon his bed, he called feebly to his one remaining servant, the native cook, to bring him the little package of quinine. She hastened to comply; but, alas! she brought the packet of strychnine instead, and soon he, too, had joined his companions in that unknown country which awaits us all. The old woman fled in terror; and the evil spirits descended upon the place. They haunt it yet, and no man approaches it but with trembling.

Reed and Harris listened to the weird story with strange sensations. The clouds above had broken, and the late moon streamed through the night vapor, and poured through the bamboo walls of the house. The giant frogs in the nearby creek awoke, and through the long night croaked their mournful plaint in a weird minor cadence that seemed to the awed Americans to voice to the shimmering moon the countless wrongs of the primitive Indians, who, centuries before, had roamed this marvelous land in happy freedom, until the Spaniard descended like a dark cloud and, with rack and stake, fastened his blighting religion upon them.

A day's rest at La Colorado sufficed to revive the spirits of the party and prepare them for the additional eight or ten hour journey over boggy morass and steep hill to La Libertad. For this trip Rosendo would take only the Americans and Carmen. The cargadores were not to know the nature of this expedition, which, Rosendo announced, was undertaken that the Americans might explore for two days the region around the upper Tigui. The men received this explanation with grunts of satisfaction.

Trembling with suppressed excitement, oblivious now of fatigue, hunger, or hardship, Reed and Harris followed the old man that day over the ancient, obliterated trail to the forgotten mine of Don Ignacio de Rincon. They experienced all the sensations of those who find themselves at last on the course that leads to buried treasure. To Harris, the romance attaching to the expedition obliterated all other considerations. But Reed was busy with the practical end of it, with costs, with the problems of supplies, of transportation, and trail. Carmen saw but one vision, the man in far-off Simiti, whose ancestor once owned the great mine which lay just ahead of them.

When night fell, the four stood, silent and wondering, at the mouth of the crumbling tunnel, where lay a rusted shovel bearing the scarce distinguishable inscription, "I de R."

* * * * *

Two weeks later a group of natives, sitting at a feast of baked alligator tail, at the mouth of the Amaceri, near the dirty, straggling riverine town of Llano, rose in astonishment as they saw issuing from the clayey, wallowing Guamoco trail a staggering band of travelers, among them two foreigners, whose clothes were in shreds and whose beards and unkempt hair were caked with yellow mud. With them came a young girl, lightly clad and wearing torn rope alpargates on her bare feet. The heat was descending in torrents. From the neighboring town floated a brawling bedlam of human voices. It was Sunday, and the villagers were celebrating a religious fiesta.

"Compadres," said Rosendo, approaching the half-intoxicated group. "The boat—which way?"

One of the group, his mouth too full to speak, pointed in expressive pantomime up-stream. Rosendo murmured a fervent "Loado sea Dios," and sank upon the ground.

"It will be down to-morrow—to-day, perhaps," gurgled another of the rapidly recovering feasters, his eyes roving from one member to another of the weird-looking little band.

"Lord Harry!" exclaimed Harris, as he squatted upon the damp ground and mopped his muddy brow. "I'm a salamander for heat, that's certain!"

"Senor," said Rosendo, addressing Reed, "it would be well to pay the men at once, for the boat may appear at any time, and it will not wait long."

While the curious group from the village crowded about and eagerly watched the proceedings, Reed unstrapped his pack and drew out a bundle of Colombian bills, with which he began to pay the cargadores, according to the reckoning which Rosendo had kept. As the last man, with a grunt of satisfaction, received his money, Harris exclaimed: "And to think, one good American dollar is worth a bushel of that paper stuff!"

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a shrill whistle came echoing down the river. A cloud of smoke above the distant treetops heralded the approach of the steamer. The little party had escaped a wait of a month in the drenching heat of Llano by the narrow margin of an hour.

Rosendo hastened to Reed and drew him aside. He tried to speak, but words failed him. Reed took his hand. "I understand, my friend," he said gently. "Have no fear. The mine is all I had anticipated. My wife and I will care for the girl until we hear from you. And we will keep in touch with you, although it will take two months for a letter to reach us and our reply to get back again to Simiti. The development company will be formed at once. Within six months you may expect to see the work started. It is your fortune—and the girl's."

Carmen drew close to Rosendo. "Padre, I am coming back to you—yes?"

"Cierto, chiquita!" The old man would not permit himself to say more. The girl had known for some time that he was not to accompany her to the States, and that she should not see Ana in Cartagena. To this she had at length accustomed herself.

In a few minutes the lumbering boat had swung around and thrown out its gang plank. A hurried embrace; a struggle with rushing tears; another shriek from the boat whistle; and the Americans, with Carmen standing mute and motionless between them, looked back at the fading group on shore, where Rosendo's tall figure stood silhouetted against the green background of the forest. For a moment he held his arm extended toward them. Carmen knew, as she looked at the great-hearted man for the last time, that his benediction was following her—following her into that new world into which he might not enter.

* * * * *

Reed lifted the silent, wondering, big-eyed girl from the dinkey train which pulled into Cartagena from Calamar ten days later, and took her to the Hotel Mariana, where his anxious, fretting wife awaited. Their boat had hung on a hidden bar in the Cauca river for four interminable, torturing days.



CHAPTER 39

On the day that Carmen arrived in Cartagena, Rosendo staggered down the Guamoco trail into Simiti. On that same momentous day the flames of war again flared up throughout the country. The Simiti episode, in which the President had interfered, brought Congress to the necessity of action. A few days of fiery debate followed; then the noxious measure was taken from the table and hastily enacted into a law.

But news travels slowly in Latin America, and some time was required for this act of Congress to become generally known. The delay saw Carmen through the jungle and down to the coast. There Reed lost no time in transacting what business still remained for him in Cartagena, and securing transportation for his party to New York.

Jose, the shadow of his former self, clung pitiably to Rosendo's hand, imploring the constant repetition of the old man's narrative. Then came Juan, flying to the door. He had seen and talked with the returned cargadores. The girl had not come back with them. He demanded to know why. He became wild. Neither Jose nor Rosendo could calm him. At length it seemed wise to them both to tell him that she had gone to the States with the Americans, and would return to Simiti no more.

The blow almost crushed the lad. He rushed about the town half dazed. He gathered groups of companions about him and talked to them excitedly. He threatened Rosendo and Jose. Then, evidently acting on the advice of some cooler head, he rushed to his canoe and put off across the lake toward the cano. He did not return for several days. But when he did, the town knew that he had been to Bodega Central, and that the country was aflame with war.

* * * * *

Reed's wife had not received Carmen in an amiable frame of mind. "For heaven's sake, Charles," she had cried, turning from his embrace to look at the wondering girl who stood behind him, "what have you here?"

"Oh, that," he laughingly replied, "is only a little Indian I lassoed back in the jungle." And, leaving the girl to the not very tender graces of his wife, he hurried out to arrange for the return voyage.

At noon, when Harris appeared at Reed's room, Carmen rushed to him and begged to be taken for a stroll through the town. Yielding to her husband's insistence, Mrs. Reed had outfitted the girl, so that she presented a more civilized appearance. At first Carmen had been delighted with her new clothes. They were such, cheap as they were, as she had never seen in Simiti. But the shoes—"Ah, senora," she pleaded, "do not make me wear them, they are so tight! I have never worn shoes before." She was beginning her education in the conventions and trammels of civilization.

As Carmen and Harris stood that afternoon in the public square, while the girl gazed enraptured at an equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar, a ragged little urchin approached and begged them to buy an afternoon paper. Harris humored him and bade Carmen ask him his name.

"Rincon," the lad answered, drawing himself up proudly.

The girl started. "Rincon!" she repeated. "Why—where do you live?"

"In the Calle Lozano," he replied, wondering why these people seemed interested in him.

Carmen translated the conversation to Harris. "Ask him who his father is," suggested the latter.

"I do not know," replied the little fellow, shaking his head. "I never saw him. He lives far away, up the great river, so Tia Catalina says. And she says he is a priest."

The color suddenly left Carmen's cheeks. "Come with me to your home," she said, taking his hand.

The boy led them willingly through the winding streets to the little upper room where, years before, he had first seen the light.

"Tia Catalina," he cried to the shabby woman who rose in amazement as the visitors entered, "see, some strangers!"

Carmen lost no time, but went at once to the heart of her question.

"The little fellow's father—he is a Rincon? And—he lives up the great river?"

The woman eyed her suspiciously for some moments without replying. But the boy answered for her. "Yes, senorita," he said eagerly, "in Simiti. And his name—I am named for him—it is Jose. And I am going to visit him some day. Tia Catalina said I should, no, Tia?"

Harris fumbled in his pocket and drew out some money, which he handed to the woman. Her eyes lighted, and a cavernous smile spread over her wrinkled face.

"Ah, gracias, senor," she murmured, bending over his hand; "we need it. The boy's father has sent us but little of late."

Carmen's heart was fluttering wildly. "Tell me," she said in a cold voice, "the boy's father is Padre Jose de Rincon, of Simiti? You need not fear to speak. We have just come from Simiti, and have seen him. We are leaving to-morrow for the States."

"Yes, senorita," replied the woman in a thin, cracking voice, now completely disarmed of her suspicion. "The little fellow was born here some seven years ago. Ah, well I remember the day! And his mother, poor little lamb! She died the same night. But the good Padre has sent us money ever since to care for him, until of late. Senorita, why is it, think you, that he sends us so little now?"

"I—do—not—know," murmured Carmen abstractedly, scarce hearing the woman. Then she turned to the boy. She bent over him and looked long and wistfully into his eyes. He was a bright, handsome little fellow; and though her heart was crushed, she took him into it. Swallowing the lump which had come into her throat, she drew him to the window and sat down, holding him before her.

"Your father—I know him—well. He is a—a good man. But—I did not know—I never knew that he had a son." She stopped, choking.

"Tia Catalina says he is a fine man," proudly answered the boy. "And she wants me to be a priest, too. But I am going to be a bull-fighter."

"It is true, senorita," interposed the woman. "We cannot keep him from the arena now. He hangs about it all day, and about the slaughter-house. We can hardly drag him back to his meals. What can we do, senorita? But," with a touch of pride as she looked at him, "if he becomes a bull-fighter, he will be the best of them all!"

Carmen turned again to the woman. Her question carried an appeal which came from the depths of her soul. "Senora, is there no doubt—no doubt that Padre Rincon is the father of the boy?"

"We think not, senorita. The lad's mother died in the good Padre's arms. She would not say positively who was the boy's father. We thought at first—it was some one else. Marcelena insisted on it to her dying day. But now—now we know that it was Padre Jose. And he was sent to Simiti for it. But—ah, senorita, the little mother was so beautiful, and so good! She—but, senorita, you are not leaving so soon?"

Carmen had risen. "Yes, my good senora," she said wearily. "We must now return to the hotel. But—here is more money for the boy. And, senora, when I reach the States I will send you money every month for him."

She took Harris's hand. "Come," she said simply, "I have seen enough of the city."

* * * * *

At noon the next day a message from Bodega Central was put into the hand of the acting-Bishop of Cartagena, as he sat in his study, wrapped in the contemplation of certain papers before him. Hostilities had begun along the Magdalena river the day before. The gates of Cartagena were to be barricaded that day, for a boatload of rebels was about to leave Barranquilla to storm the city and seize, if possible, the customs. When he had read the message he uttered an exclamation. Had not the Sister Superior of the Convent of Our Lady reported the arrival of the daughter of Rosendo Ariza some days before? He seized his hat and left the room.

Hastening to the Department of Police, he had a short interview with the chief. Then that official despatched policemen to the office of the steamship company, and to the dock. Their orders were to arrest two Americans who were abducting a young girl. They returned a half hour later with sheepish faces. "Your Excellency," they announced to their chief, "the vessel sailed from the port an hour ago, with the Americans and the girl aboard."

The announcement aroused in Wenceslas the fury of a tiger. Exacerbation succeeded surprise; and that in turn gave way to a maddening thirst for sanguinary vengeance. He hastened out and despatched a telegraphic message to Bogota. Then he returned to his study to await its effect.

Two days later a river steamer, impressed by the federal authorities, stopped at the mouth of the Boque, and a squad of soldiers marched over the unfrequented trail to Simiti, where they arrived as night fell. Their orders were to take into custody the priest, Jose de Rincon, who was accused of complicity in the recent plot to overthrow the existing government.

At the same time, on a vessel plowing its way into the North, a young girl, awkwardly wearing her ill-fitting garments, hung over the rail and gazed wistfully back at the Southern Cross. The tourists who saw her heterogeneous attire laughed. But when they looked into her beautiful, sad face their mirth died, and a tender pity stirred their hearts.



CARMEN ARIZA



BOOK 3

And while within myself I trace The greatness of some future race, Aloof with hermit-eye I scan The present works of present man,— A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

—Coleridge.



CARMEN ARIZA

CHAPTER 1

The blanket of wet fog which had hung over the harbor with such exasperating tenacity lifted suddenly, late in the raw fall afternoon, and revealed to the wondering eyes of the girl who stood alone at the rail of the Joachim a confusion of mountainous shadows, studded with myriad points of light which glittered and shimmered beneath the gray pall. Across the heaving waters came the dull, ominous breathing of the metropolis. Clouds of heavy, black smoke wreathed about the bay. Through it shrieking water craft darted and wriggled in endless confusion. For two days the port of New York had been a bedlam of raw sound, as the great sirens of the motionless vessels roared their raucous warnings through the impenetrable veil which enveloped them. Their noise had become acute torture to the impatient tourists, and added bewilderment to the girl.

The transition from the primitive simplicity of her tropical home had not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering about little Simiti had hurled her through the forest, down the scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness that, as she now stood at the portal of a new world, she seemed to be wandering through the mazes of an intricate dream. During the ocean voyage she had kept aloof from the other passengers, partly because of embarrassment, partly because of the dull pain at her heart as she gazed, day after day, at the two visions which floated always before her: one, the haggard face of the priest, when she tore herself from his arms in far-off Simiti; the other, that of the dark-faced, white-haired old man who stood on the clayey river bank at wretched Llano and watched her, with eager, straining eyes, until the winding stream hid her from his earthly sight—forever. She wondered dully now why she had left them, why she had so easily yielded to the influences which had caused the separation. They might have fled to the jungle and lived there in safety and seclusion. The malign influences which beset them all in Simiti never could have reached them in the trackless forest. And yet, she knew that had not Rosendo and Jose held out to her, almost to the last moment, assurances of a speedy reunion, she would not have yielded to the pressure which they had exerted, and to the allurements of life in the wonderful country to which they had sent her. Her embarrassment on the boat was due largely to a sense of awkwardness in the presence of women who, to her provincial sight, seemed visions of beauty. To be sure, the priest had often shown her pictures of the women of the outside world, and she had some idea of their dress. But that such a vast difference existed between the illustrations and the actualities, she had never for a moment imagined. Their gowns, their jewels, their coiffures held her in open-mouthed marvel, until Mrs. Reed, herself annoyed and embarrassed, remanded her to her cabin and bade her learn the impropriety of such manners.

Nor had the conduct of this lady throughout the voyage conduced to Carmen's happiness. Mrs. Reed showed plainly that the girl was an awkward embarrassment to her; that she was tolerated because of reasons which pertained solely to her husband's business; and she took pains to impress upon her fellow-travelers that, in view of the perplexing servant problem, this unmannered creature was being taken to the States to be trained as a maid, though, heaven knew! the training would be arduous, and the result uncertain.

Reed, though measurably kind, gave Carmen scant attention. Harris alone saved the girl from almost complete neglect. He walked the deck with her, regardless of the smiles of the other passengers. He taught her to play shuffle-board, checkers, and simple card games. He conducted her over the boat and explained the intricate machinery and the numberless wonders of the great craft. He sat with her out on the deck at night and told her marvelous stories of his experiences in frontier camps. And at the table he insisted that she occupy the seat next to him, despite the protestations of the chief steward, who would have placed her apart with the servants.

Carmen said little, but she clung to the man with an appeal which, though mute, he nevertheless understood. At Kingston he took her on a drive through the town, and bought post cards for her to send back to Jose and Rosendo. It consoled her immeasurably when he glowingly recounted the pleasure her loved ones would experience on receiving these cards; and thereafter the girl daily devoted hours to the preparation of additional ones to be posted in New York.

The lifting of the fog was the signal for a race among the stalled craft to gain the harbor entrance. The enforced retention of the vessels in the bay had resulted in much confusion in docking, and the Joachim was assigned to a pier not her own. The captain grumbled, but had no choice. At the pier opposite there docked a huge liner from Havre; and the two boats poured their swarming human freight into the same shed. When the gang plank dropped, Harris took charge of Carmen, while Reed and his wife preceded them ashore, the latter giving a little scream of delight as she spied her sister and some friends with a profusion of flowers awaiting her on the pier. She rushed joyfully into their arms, while Reed hastened to his equipage with a customs officer.

But as Harris and the bewildered Carmen pushed into the great crowd in the shed, the absent-minded man suddenly remembered that he had left a bundle of Panama hats underneath his bunk. Dropping the girl's hand, the impetuous fellow tore back up the gang plank and dived into the boat.

For a moment Carmen, stood in confusion, bracing herself against the swarming multitude, and clinging tenaciously to the small, paper-wrapped bundle which she carried. Her first impulse was to follow Harris. But the eager, belated crowd almost swept her off her feet, and she turned again, drifting slowly with it toward the distant exit. As she moved uncertainly, struggling the while to prevent being crushed against the wall, she felt some one grasp her hand.

"Oh, here you are!" sounded a gentle voice close to her ear. "Well, how fortunate! We thought we had lost you! Come, they are waiting for us up ahead."

Carmen looked up at the speaker. It was a woman, comely of feature, and strikingly well dressed. The girl thought her beautiful. The anxious fears of a moment before vanished. "Is he up there—Mr. Reed?" she asked quickly.

"He? Oh, yes—Mr. Reed and the others are waiting for us. They sent me back to find you. The automobiles came for you all; but I presume the others have gone by this time. However, you and I will follow in mine. I am Auntie."

"His aunt?" the girl asked eagerly, as the woman forced a way for them through the mass of humanity.

"Yes, dear. And I am so glad to see you. I have heard all about you."

"Did he write to you—from Simiti?"

"Yes, long letters. And he told all about his little girl. He said your name was—"

"Carmen," interrupted the girl, with a great surge of gladness, for here was one woman who did not avoid her.

"Yes, Carmen. It is a sweet name."

"But—Mr. Harris!" cried Carmen, suddenly stopping as she remembered.

"Oh, did he wait? Well, he will come. He knows where to find the automobiles. I will leave word with the pier-master to tell him."

By this time they had wormed their way clear of the crowd and gained the street. The woman, still retaining Carmen's hand, went directly to a waiting automobile and pushed the unresisting girl through the open door. Carmen had never seen a conveyance like this, and her thought was instantly absorbed. She looked wonderingly for the horses. And then, sinking into the luxurious cushions, she fell to speculating as to how the thing was moved.

As the chauffeur reached back to close the door a policeman, who had been eying the party since they came out of the shed, stepped up and laid a hand on the car.

"Er—little girl," he said, looking in and addressing Carmen, "you—you know this lady, do you?"

"Yes," replied Carmen, looking up confidently into the woman's smiling face. "She is Auntie, Mr. Reed's aunt." She thought his blue uniform and shining buttons and star gorgeously beautiful.

The officer stood hesitant a moment. Suspicion lurked in his eyes as he looked at the woman and then back again at the girl.

"She is a little girl who came up from the South with my nephew, Mr. Reed," the woman explained easily. "But I don't wonder you asked. I will give you my card, if you wish."

Her air was supremely confident. The chauffeur, too, as he got out and leisurely examined his engine, served further to disarm suspicion. The officer raised up and removed his hand from the machine. The chauffeur slowly mounted the box and threw on his lever. As the car moved gently into the night the officer glanced at its number. "Hell!" he muttered, turning away. "What's the use? The number would be changed anyway. What's a fellow going to do in a case like this, I'd like to know—go with 'em?"

Some minutes later, Harris, wild and disheveled, followed by Reed and his party, emerged hurriedly into the street.

"What you looking for?" asked the officer, planting himself in front of Harris, and becoming vaguely apprehensive.

"Girl!" sputtered Harris, his eyes protruding and his long arms pawing the air. "Girl—so high—funny dress—big straw hat! Seen her?"

The officer gasped. "She's gone! Aunt took her just now in an auto!"

"Aunt!" yelled Harris. "She's got no aunt! She's from the jungle!"

For a moment they all stood silent, big-eyed and gaping.

"Look here, Mr. Officer," said Reed, interposing. "My name's Reed. The girl came up from South America with me. Describe the woman—"

"Reed!" cried the policeman excitedly, his eyes lighting. "That's it! Said she was your aunt!"

"Lord Harry! You great, blundering boob!" cried the distracted Harris, menacing the confused officer. "And you let her nab the kid?"

Night had fallen, and a curious crowd was gathering around the excited, noisy group. Reed quickly signaled a taxicab and hustled the bewildered officer into it. "You, Harris, get the women folks home, and wait for me! I'll go to central with this officer and report the case!"

"Not I!" exclaimed Harris wildly. "I'm going to visit every dance hall and dive in this bloomin' town before I go home! I'm going to find that girl! And you, you blithering idiot," shaking a fist at the officer, "you're going to lose your star for this!"

Meantime, the car, in which Carmen lay deep in the soft cushions, sped through the dusk like a fell spirit. A confused jumble of shadows flew past, and strange, unfamiliar noises rose from the animated streets. The lights shimmered on the moist glass. It was confusing. The girl ceased trying to read any meaning in it. It all fused into a blur; and she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the novel sensations stimulated by her first ride in a carriage propelled—she knew not how.

At length came a creaking, a soft, skidding motion, and the big car rolled up against a curb and stopped.

"We are home now," said the woman softly, as she descended and again took Carmen's hand. They hurriedly mounted the white stone steps of a tall, gloomy building and entered a door that seemed to open noiselessly at their approach. A glare of light burst upon the blinking eyes of the girl. A negro woman softly closed the door after them. With a wondering glance, Carmen looked about her. In the room at her right she caught a glimpse of women—beautiful, they seemed to her—clad in loose, low-cut, gaily colored gowns. There were men there, too; and some one sat at a piano playing sprightly music. She had seen pianos like that in Cartagena, and on the boat, and they had seemed to her things bewitched. In the room at the end of the hall men and women were dancing on a floor that seemed of polished glass. Loud talk, laughter, and singing floated through the rooms, and the air was warm and stuffy, heavy with perfume. The odor reminded her of the roses in her own little garden in Simiti. It was all beautiful, wonderful, fairy-like.