Читать книгу The Luck of Colin Charteris - Arthur Owens Cooke - Страница 8

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Some two months later, on a cloudless afternoon in March, Colin Charteris shifted his position for about the hundredth time upon the hard black leather cushions of a first-class car on the Mexican railway.

That morning he had crossed the shallow chocolate-coloured waters of the Rio Grande del Norte, and now, as for some hours past, the train was traversing a country the unvarying monotony of which began to pall upon the English boy.

The speed was slow, being little more than some eighteen or twenty miles an hour. The stations were few, far apart, and very much alike; clusters of small, untidy wooden buildings, roofed with corrugated iron. Upon their platforms stood invariably a crowd of dark-skinned natives; the women dressed in plain black shawls and coloured skirts, the men in cotton suits of dingy white, a further item of their costume being a scarlet blanket with black stripes across its ends. Most of the men displayed this blanket neatly folded on one shoulder; others wore it draped around them, the owner’s head being thrust through a hole in the centre.

A great many people seemed to travel in this country, Colin thought; passengers entered and left the cars in crowds at every stopping-place—at Magdalena and Tierra Blanca, at Laguna and Puerta—Colin liked these sonorous Spanish names. He knew as yet too little of this strange new land to be aware that natives of the poorest classes often squander their last coin for the delight of riding in a train. But he was able to observe that begging was a popular custom of Mexico. At every station dirty hands were thrust in through his window, in an appeal that was by no means mute. Sometimes the beggar sang, or played a mandolin or harp, and Colin was relieved to find how very small a gift was graciously accepted as an adequate return. Women crouched round small braziers placed upon the station platforms, cooking not unsavoury-smelling dishes for the benefit of any traveller who might care to buy. Fruit in considerable variety was also to be had.

The country lying between the stations had, in the earlier hours of the day at least, offered but few attractions to the eye. Mile after mile the train had travelled through a wide and level plain, of which the most conspicuous feature was the bare and sun-baked earth. Some stunted shrubs and bushes of the cactus tribe, dry, sapless-looking, and suggestive to Colin of anything rather than vegetation as he knew it, broke the surface here and there; while now and then was to be seen a “feather duster” palm. Such watercourses as appeared were either dry or almost so, with every sign of having been in that condition for some months. Weary at length of such an unattractive landscape, Colin had closed his eyes against the glare and fallen back on his own thoughts.

The last eight weeks seemed like a crowded dream. His mother had, though with great and natural reluctance, finally consented to his accepting Mr. Dickson’s offer. Inquiries in two or three reliable quarters—inquiries suggested, and indeed insisted on, by the American himself—had shown him to be all and even more than he had claimed: a man of large means, of many flourishing business enterprises, and personally of the highest reputation for integrity. It presently transpired, too, that he was known, at least by name, to Mr. Hamilton; and that gentleman, possibly not over anxious to become responsible for his young nephew’s future, had strongly urged acceptance of the Mexican proposal. So, in the end, accepted it had been.

Swiftly had passed the few short hurried weeks of preparation, crowded with the purchase of the needed outfit and the booking of a berth. Upon the farewell scene at Meadowgrange Colin still scarcely cared to dwell; his father’s handgrip and unsteady voice; his mother’s shining eyes, and lips set in a firm determination against breaking down; and Dido’s clinging arms and burst of tears.

The passage out had furnished no particular incidents of special interest; but Colin had been fortunate in striking up acquaintance on the boat with a young Mexican who was returning from a business trip to Europe. From him he had picked up quite a useful grounding of colloquial Spanish. All his spare moments were devoted to a diligent study of that language, and already he was able to sustain a modest conversation without coming to a stand too soon.

Well, it was no use looking back too much—that way homesickness lay. Better to look ahead, and strengthen his determination to “make good”. He roused himself and once more gazed through the window on the slowly passing scene.

Ah, this was better! here were hills at last; hills to the westward, still some distance off, but drawing nearer at each mile. They were, of course, the great backbone of Mexico, the high and wide Sierra Madre range, hidden somewhere in the heart of which there lay his destination, the Hacienda of the Star.

The range drew slowly nearer; it seemed dry and dusty, although not so wholly bare and desolate as was the plain. Some trees appeared in places; near the banks of streams and shrunken river-beds grass showed a tinge of green—though not the green of Herefordshire pasture-lands, thought Colin, swallowing a sigh. The range rose from the plain by gentle slopes, until its undulations stretched so far into the distance as to fade from sight in a faint haze of blue. Colin caught sight of cattle grazing in a small ravine. This was the gateway of the cattle country then, destined to be his home—quite probably for years.

Towards evening the train entered on a broad and fertile-looking valley, where hills rose on either side, though higher on the west. Signs of an important town at length appeared; five minutes later the long train clanked slowly to a stand within a large bare station. Colin’s eyes lighted on a signboard; yes, this was Nazarenos, the town nearest to the range, and that at which he was instructed to alight.

Among a crowd of other passengers he struggled down the gangway of the car and descended to the low platform. Putting his bag and suit-case on the ground beside him, he looked round.

“Say, will your name be Charteris, sir?” said a somewhat drawling voice behind him.

Colin turned quickly at the words and faced the speaker. He had been told that one or other of the American hands employed upon the range would be told off to meet him at the station and to pilot him to his new home; and he had expected, perhaps not unnaturally, to be received by someone who would differ little from himself in matter of costume. The tall young man of three-or four-and-twenty who held out to him a sunburnt sinewy hand in greeting, while a slight smile played upon a pair of firm thin lips, was dressed in a style wholly different from what Colin was prepared to see.

To begin description at the pinnacle of his costume, and work thence downward to its base, the newcomer wore a large sombrero hat—quite certainly the most extensive piece of headgear Colin Charteris had ever seen. The crown, a sugar-loaf in shape, was fully thirty inches high; the brim on every side not less than some ten inches or a foot in breadth. The whole seemed made of felt, a third of an inch thick. “Seemed” was, advisedly, the word to use; for crown and brim alike were thickly covered with a braiding of gilt tinsel, so that the underlying material could be barely seen.

A short close-fitting jacket, something of the Eton shape, but half-concealed a shirt of deep rich yellow silk. A pair of trousers which fitted tightly from the hip to ankle were adorned upon the outside of each leg with three long rows of highly polished silver buttons, closely set. The boots were of soft brown unpolished leather, fitted with immense steel spurs inlaid with silver. Such was the attire of this newfound friend—if friend he proved to be. It remains to add, however, that a leather belt carried a wallet, a very obvious stock of cartridges, and a serviceable-looking revolver.

“Yes, I am Charteris,” answered Colin, extending his own hand, which the other received in a brief, vice-like grip.

“Pleased to know you; I’m Jim Westman. These your traps?” He pointed to the bags on the platform.

“These and a couple of portmanteaux in the baggage-car.”

“That so? Let’s have your checks.”

Colin handed his checks to the ranchman, and that gentleman in turn passed them over to a small slim native who had meanwhile been hovering near, apparently awaiting the American’s commands. The man had a light, crate-like wooden frame upon his back, supported by a broad woven band passed across his forehead.

“He’ll fix it up,” said Westman; “give him those as well.”

Colin, thus instructed, parted with the suit-case, but was for retaining the small hand-bag which contained some of his more intimate possessions. Westman interposed.

“Say, you can’t carry that around—not in this country, sure,” he said decisively; “hand it all over. He’ll not lose it; if he did I’d have his skin. That’s it; now come this way.”

He led the way to the station entrance, where Colin found a small carriage, drawn by two depressed and sleepy-looking mules. In this conveyance the two young men seated themselves, and it at once drove off at a smart pace.

“Roads pretty rocky, eh?” said Westman presently, regarding his companion with a friendly grin; for Colin was recovering from the effects of a violent jolt which had bid fair to throw him altogether off the seat. “I guess the paving section isn’t in just first-rate order here in Nazarenos.”

After about ten minutes’ driving at a rapid rate, the carriage pulled up with a jerk before a massive doorway, and its occupants sprang out. Beneath a broad deep arch they passed to a large open court beyond. A well-dressed man took off his hat and bowed, a salute which Colin returned with the best grace at his command, while the American responded with a nod and a curt word. While the hotel proprietor, for such he was, took Westman’s orders, Colin looked about him, getting his first impressions of a Mexican hotel.

The house, one story high above the ground, was built all round the central court. This court was, for the most part, paved; but here and there the paving-bricks gave place to flower-beds or clumps of evergreen and often fragrant shrubs; while in the centre was a large round basin full of water, in the midst of which a fountain played. All round the court ran an arcade of handsome arches, which were richly carved; these supported a broad covered corridor or balcony upon the floor above. Large pots containing shrubs or flowers stood at intervals upon the balustrade of this, while others hung between the arches of the lower floor. Altogether the hotel struck Colin as a very handsome place.

Servants, both male and female, were seen passing to and fro in an unhurried, free-and-easy way. Small groups of dark-skinned waitresses or chambermaids were seated, laughing and chatting quite at ease, upon the double flight of broad stone steps that led upstairs. Now and then one would rise and disappear, presumably upon some errand, but without any show of haste. The long dark hair of nearly all of them flowed loose upon their shoulders, unconfined in any way.

Close to the entrance-door, outside a little room which seemed the office, a large blackboard hung against the wall. On this were several names and numbers scrawled in chalk, and Colin presently saw his, with that of Westman, added to the list. Westman’s, its owner having doubtless often used the house before, was quite correctly spelt; but Colin saw with some amusement that he himself was described as “Señor Shatters”.

“Your chums, if you have any hereabouts, will hardly spot you, eh?” said Westman, laughing. “Now let’s go upstairs; you’d like a swill before we get our grub.”

The promised “swill” was, however, a function for which the Hotel de la Santa Cruz appeared to Colin to provide no very lavish facilities, in spite of the picturesque and promising appearance of its outer court. The bedroom to which he was now ushered was certainly, as regards size, a stately apartment, being fully thirty feet by twenty, and not less than fifteen feet in height. But the pavement of small red tiles which formed its flooring was irregular in surface and was broken here and there. There was no window, light and ventilation being admitted only through the door. This opened from the balcony, and, in case of any guest desiring privacy and closing it, its upper part contained two panes of tinted glass.

The furniture required no extended inventory. There was a wooden bedstead, small and low. Colin examined the bed-clothes with some interest, and was much relieved to find that they were fairly clean. There was a wooden chair—with broken back and one leg badly split; a tin basin, tiny water-jug, and one or two large nails behind the door to serve as clothes-pegs. That was all; yet Westman told him later that it was the best hotel the town could boast.

The young American had turned to leave the room when a light quick step was heard upon the balcony outside; the door was pushed open, and in walked the little man whom Colin had seen at the station. In the light crate upon his back were Colin’s two portmanteaux, suit-case, and bags. These articles the man proceeded to set down upon the floor.

“Great Scott!” said Colin, “surely the fellow hasn’t carried that lot from the station on his back?”

“Why not?” said Westman, after having paid the man, who then withdrew with an entirely contented air; “these cargadors will carry twice a load like that, and carry it for miles. For a short distance I have seen ’em move five hundred pounds. Give a good cargador two hundred pounds, start him upon a journey of two hundred miles, and he will make a good six miles an hour all the way, uphill or down, over what sort of track you like, and come in fresh—before a mule is half-way there.”

Colin made such ablutions as the rather limited facilities allowed, and then went down to join his friend in the large dining-room upon the lower floor of the hotel, fully ready to do justice to the coming meal. A well-cooked omelette was a familiar dainty to the English boy; but upon most of the subsequent dishes he embarked with a strong sense of adventure. Bread—as he knew it—was absent from the table, being represented only by tortillas, similar to somewhat tough and tasteless pancakes, which, however, Colin grew to like before he had been long in Mexico. This was the case too with the beans—frijoles—which he soon discovered was a dish invariably displayed at every meal. On this first evening he enjoyed a salad of sliced tongue, mixed with olives, celery, and lettuce, the whole covered with a mayonnaise dressing. Cocidas proved on close examination to contain potatoes finely chopped, together with meat, carrots, beetroot, cauliflower, maize, and what Jim Westman vaguely and comprehensively summed up as a “whole heap of other fancy stuff”. Chili-con-carne, a meat dish, was also good, though very hot with pepper and a great variety of other spice. Colin soon found the contents fiery on his tongue, and asked for water. His companion ordered lager beer for himself, and suggested that the boy should do the same.

“I wouldn’t sort of recommend the water,” he explained; “this city’s drainage system isn’t just its very strongest point, and now and then the water’s apt to be a little mixed. I guess you don’t drink spirits, and for them I’m on the water-wagon all the way. But this light ale won’t hurt you and it’s very good. They make it down in Monterey. Or you can have minerals—any sort.” So Colin was supplied with mineral water. Looking round the various tables near them he saw little wine being drunk, and commented upon the fact to his companion.

“Well, they don’t turn out wine in Mexico, although the vine grows well enough. You see, when first the Spaniards came across the pond a good few centuries ago—I’m a bit shaky on my dates, but you’ll know when—they figured out that any wine the greasers wanted should come out from Spain—keep up home exports, see! Of course, there’s nothing now to stop folks making wine; but here, what they did yesterday, last year, or half a dozen centuries ago, why, they do just the same to-day. You’ll soon find that out for yourself; the greaser don’t get any forrarder than he can help; just likes to slouch along the same old trail. Look at their ploughs. The share a thousand years ago was just a piece of whittled wood. Well, it’s the same to-day, among the peons, anyhow. How do they thrash their corn? By driving mules and horses round and round upon it, and they winnow out the chaff by throwing it up into the air until it’s clean. Will they make decent bread, d’you think? Not they, though wheat does well. Tortillas are the things they’ve always baked, and so they bake ’em still. Oh, they’re a proper crowd of sleeping beauties, are the greasers, you can bet.”

“But I suppose things are more up to date upon the Hacienda of the Star?”

“Why, yes, to some extent they are. But we have the Mexican peons and vaqueros on the range, and native servants in the house; and where you get the greaser you have got to take his ways or none at all. Out on the range, it’s true, we have some fellows through from Texas and some other parts of God’s own country; but it’s queer how soon they’re apt to slide into the local ways. That’s what we have to fight against, to some extent. You wonder, I dare say, to see me fixed up in this kind o’ fancy dress. Well, it ain’t always quite convenient, when you’re out upon the range, to look conspicuous from the other hands. But now I guess you’re tired some with a day’s trip inside the Texas-Mexican express. How about bed? You’ll find we have to keep real early hours on the range.”

Colin was nothing loth to follow his new friend’s advice; and it was well that he retired early. Long before dawn the following morning he was roused from slumber by the clanging of the bells in every church—and they were not a few—calling good Catholics to early Mass. Far different was their tone to that which he had often heard float softly from the ancient Norman tower of the little church at Upper Hope; discordant, most unmusical, are Mexican church bells.

After his breakfast he joined Westman in the hotel court, or patio, where the young American was fuming angrily. It seemed he had intended to start early on their drive of thirty miles into the hills; but one of the men, he said, now reported the necessity of some repairs to the vehicle in which they were to travel, the drive to town upon the previous day having resulted in the breaking of a bolt.

“Find it out yesterday, d’you think, when he outspanned? Not he; always mañana—to-morrow—with a greaser, when a thing wants putting right. However, you won’t mind a stroll around the city, I dare say.”

So the pair spent an hour or two in looking at the principal sights of Nazarenos. It was a place of striking contrasts, Colin thought; uneven, dirty, ill-paved streets, and yet in almost every one of them some splendid and substantial Spanish house, through the great entrance-door of which he caught a glimpse of a wide patio, stately archways, marble stairs. Some of the churches were of interest too; and altogether the few hours till a start was possible slipped quickly by.

They made a rather hasty midday meal, and then went out to find their vehicle awaiting them before the door of the hotel. It was a four-wheeled carriage of American make, half buggy, half light wagon, drawn by four tall and handsome mules, well harnessed. Beside it were two Mexicans on horseback, each carrying a revolver in his belt and a rifle slung across his shoulder. Their native saddles were of very massive, cumbrous make, and their spurs and bits extremely complicated in construction, and, as it seemed to Colin, cruel. He noted their well-armed appearance with no small surprise, but refrained from any comment on the point, Westman being busily engaged inspecting the interior of the carriage, where, in addition to Colin’s baggage and some other miscellaneous stores, were stowed some small square wooden boxes, strongly made.

Presently Westman mounted to the driving-seat, with Colin at his side. The horsemen rode a few yards in advance. In twenty minutes they were clear of Nazarenos, and were heading westward towards the hills.

“You seem to travel in some style,” said Colin presently.

Westman regarded him with the dry smile which was so often on his lips.

“Well now, I haven’t got to fetch a new chum to the hacienda every day, and when one does turn up, why, sure, I like to hand him over safe and sound.” He looked again at Colin with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, and then went on: “Besides, I’ve got one eye upon those little boxes in behind.”

“Why, are they valuable?”

“Dollars—to pay the hands,” was the American’s reply.

“Are you afraid of being robbed, then? I thought brigandage had been entirely stamped out.”

“Well now, friend Diaz would just love for you to think that, and he’d tell you that it’s so. But we’re not taking any chances on our ranch, you bet.

“I don’t say that things aren’t some better than they were,” continued Westman, after an interval in which he applied his long whip-lash in most artistic and effective fashion to the near leader; “for the rurales have sure done good work. They’re some police. But, saying there are no brigands in the country, though no doubt it’s just the goods to give the European or American investor, isn’t much to trust to if you’re living out among the hills like us. So don’t go strolling off alone with dollars in your pocket or without your gun.”

“I understood from Mr. Dickson that these rurales are a sort of very high-class police force; almost military, like our Royal Irish Constabulary?”

“Don’t know about the gentlemen you name,” answered Westman; “but the rurales, nearly all of them at any rate, were in the business for themselves, and so they know it through and through.”

“You don’t mean they were brigands themselves?”

“Sure thing, they were. A little after Diaz came to power he got mighty busy cleaning up the mess that Mexico was in. The old man was no fool; he saw at once that chasing brigands up and down the hills with regulars was going to cut but mighty little ice. So he talked to ’em good and straight: ‘Keep on at your old game,’ says he, or words to that effect, ‘and if it takes me till the judgment day I’ll hunt you down in time, and then you can get fitted for a comfortable size in coffins right away. Come in and form my cavalry police, and you shall draw good pay and do your work in your own way. How’s that?’ And that’s the way that the rurales came.”

“Do they take many brigands prisoners?” Colin asked.

Westman coughed drily.

“I don’t know that they figure much on prisoners. There’s a law—lex fuga—that a brigand trying to get away from the rurales shall be shot; and it’s a funny thing, but most of ’em do seem to try and run. It’s mighty seldom that a captured brigand comes to town; he nearly always ‘tried to get away’; at least that’s mostly the report brought in. Oh, tell you, the rurales are some shots.

“But it’s a sure fact that the brigands wanted putting down. Why, there’s folks living still, and not so very old, can tell you all about a gang that used to work here in Chihuahua State. They used to rob the coach; would rob it regular, say every week or so. They’d strip the passengers of every mortal thing they’d got—glad rags and all. Folks used to watch the coach as it was coming into town, and if they saw the window-curtains weren’t in place, why then they knew the passengers were wearing ’em in place of shirts and trousers. That’s a fact.

“It wasn’t only brigands from the hills that played the game; you never knew who might be in with ’em. One time there was a fellow robbed by a small gang. But he was rather tougher than they’d thought for, and he beat them off in style; collared their leader, tied him up, and set him on a burro—that’s a donkey—and then toted him along to the next village. When he got there he asked the people for the judge—the chap you’d call a magistrate, I guess. ‘Why,’ cried the folks, ‘you’ve got him on the burro there!’ ”

Colin laughed heartily at Westman’s tale.

“But things aren’t like that now?”

“We-ll, not so bad as that. But still I wouldn’t like to bet too heavy ’gainst a brigand being within some twenty miles of us this minute—no, nor ten, or even five. Anyway, we take no chances, see.”

The road for some few miles had been a fairly good one, and the team of mules went fast. But later it began to rise among the slopes of the Sierra Madre range, and rapidly deteriorated, soon becoming a mere mountain track. At the same time the country much improved to Colin’s eyes. Trees, singly at first, but presently in clusters and small woods, appeared. Streams, though with but little water in them at that season, crossed the track; and they passed herds of cattle here and there.

When nearly twenty miles had been travelled the carriage and its escort halted for two hours’ rest beside a wayside dwelling. It was a ramshackle erection, built of adobe—sun-dried brick—and the one room which it contained was covered with a much dilapidated thatch. A native and his wife, with half a dozen almost naked children, were the human occupants; but the use of the hut seemed equally free to numerous fowls and turkeys, a calf, a blind mule, with two bare-ribbed pigs and several dogs. While the mules and horses rested, Colin and young Westman sat and smoked beside a little stream, or strolled about in the immediate neighbourhood; but Colin saw that never for a moment did the young American allow the wagon and its contents to be out of sight.

Late in the afternoon the journey was resumed. The road now passed along a hill-side, now dipped down to cross a stream. Such streams—and there were several—lay at the bottom of deep gullies, the sides of which were sometimes little short of precipitous. A carriage other than the light and most accommodating one in which they rode would certainly have overturned at least a dozen times on the track; as it was, Colin often held his breath as the mules slid and scrambled, climbed, and even jumped upon their breakneck way.

By sunset they were deep among the hills, with not a sign of human life in sight. The dusk was falling swiftly when, a short time after having crossed a more particularly deep and difficult ravine, they turned a sharp and rocky corner, and young Westman, pointing forward with his whip into the gathering darkness, said to his companion: “There’s the Hacienda of the Star.”