Patrick Casey

“ Quesada's voice rose almost to a scream:
"Turn your eyes upon this dying boy, Torreblanca y Moncada! Look at the glassy eyes, the deep eye pits! Look at the cheek bones bursting through the paper-dry skin! Have pity on him, Don Jaime. Eleven years old, innocent as a babe at the breast, and yet wrinkled and wan and all crumpled in a heap like a disease-riddled old man!
"Ah, Blood of Christ, Don Jaime, you are no Barbary savage to turn away from the outreaching hands of a dying child! You are a priest of the body, a servant of mankind! ”

“ There was, in the cold stillness, the sharp click of an old-fashioned pistol being cocked!
Harshly the sound cracked against the ears of Jacinto Quesada. His running body lurched forward in a desperate spurt. He stumbled against the startled nag. He held up in his arms to the doctor the blanketed form of Gabriel. And hoarsely he cried out:
"God forbid, Don Jaime! Wait—for the love of Our Lady of Pity, wait! You are a physician, and we are sick here. We are sick with the dread cholera, sick unto death. Your first duty is to us. You must help us. ”

“ High above, upon the top of a glassy and steep risco or overhanging rock, a man had moored himself with a short rope of horsehide. He was Jacinto Quesada. But he did not look the bandolero of the plains. Garbed as he was in alpagartas or rope sandals, the better to grip the precipitous ascents, and in sheepskin zamarra and long shawl as protection against the cold, he looked the true mountaineer.
With the vigilant application of an eagle eying its meat circling all unaware beneath its lofty eyrie, Quesada had been watching the men climb laboriously up the sheer of the pass. ”

“ Then Don Jaime smiled very bitterly. For the moment he had forgotten that his Jacinto Quesada had been born a Spaniard of the people. He swore a vile oath.
"But no, he will be none of those things!" he said. "Cascaras! I am becoming an old driveling fool."
Don Jaime knew that God smiles sardonically upon the Spaniard of the people who seeks to rise in the world. He knew that, just as the United States is a country of unlimited opportunities, just so is Spain a country of opportunities limited and few. The Spaniard of the people, strong with heart and gusto, has but two careers open to him. ”

“ Quesada led his horse back around the bend and out of sounding distance. He picketed him behind a feathery smoke-plant up the side of the gorge. Then he stole forward toward the camp.
He caught now, as he drew near, the clatter of tin as of men preparing breakfast, the tempting aroma of coffee, and the hot sizzle of frying meat. Creeping through the underwood on hands and knees, silent as a cat of the wilds, he came to where he could peer through an entangle of white buckthorn and genista, and out into a trampled space about an alder tree. ”

“ Pascual Montara had gone striding across the clearing to retrieve his own animal. The girl lingered under the trees, standing as he had found her, her back against the trunk of an algarroba, the toes of one nut-brown leg scratching the calf of the other, her eyes pensive.
"My Paquita," said Miguel Alvarado, sidling near her on his horse, "there is an ancient and massive wild olive far down at the gateway to this barranca. And it looks like a tall and handsome cavalier waiting for the moon to rise that he may have a meeting with some Gypsy girl who is his beloved." ”

“ You do not know how like a shadow this man Jacinto Quesada is—how like a fox that skulks and dodges and keeps always his distance from the habitations and bivouacs of men such as we! Jacinto Quesada come to our camp and break bread with us? Ah, senores, senores, that would be too much honor!"
The nine men exchanged glances of disappointment and dismay. They had been altogether off in their guess. Jacinto Quesada had not stopped in passing to hobnob with the Gypsies. He had not passed that way at all. The cabalgadores felt themselves like beagles who mill around and bark in vain braggadocio. ”

“ Dawn came slowly, a leaden wash, Don Jaime went his final rounds.
No man had stuck his toes toward heaven; in the night, no man had gone under from the plague. The grip of the horror was broken!
"Infected Minas de la Sierra is once again clean and whole," announced Don Jaime. And he breathed fervently: "Thank God!"
The final requiem had been said. The last to waste away and wear forever the cold cerement of death was the banderillero, Alfonso Robledo, who so ably had seconded Quesada in halting, for the while, Don Jaime's cruel vengeance. ”

“ It is not as though we seek a bandolero riding alone, friend Miguel. A bandolero riding alone is a very fox to catch!"
"Ah, that Jacinto Quesada!" ejaculated the other with boyish enthusiasm. "Is not he the crafty lizard, the sly tricky one? He has given us more work to do than any twenty other lawbreakers in Spain. If Morales and his fools-errant—as you call them, Pascual—conceal their movements but half so well as does he, we will be chasing will-o'-the-wisps for the next hundred years! But, by the way, Pascual, could you describe Jacinto Quesada to me?" ”

“ In the American's eyes, in the eyes of every man there present, the hidalgo on horseback loomed up, then and on the sudden, with a new and imposing dignity, a rare nobility and magnificence. Don Jaime alone had known of the imminent threat of Quesada's revolver. All the while he had striven to attain his vengeance, all that while Don Jaime had trusted his life to a hair. Quesada had him covered. The mere press of a finger on the trigger, and Don Jaime would have toppled out of the saddle—a dead man! ”

“ In Spain, especially in Andalusia, there has long existed a large class of men given over utterly to a zest for Gitanos, their ways of life, their dances and their songs. These admirers of the Gypsies cannot shake off the fascination; they follow after the wandering Roms like the slaves of an evil eye; they cultivate the Cales, the Black Men of Zend, wherever met; they delight to watch the strange obscene dances of the Gypsy maids that are like nothing so much as writhings of snakes in an ecstasy of desire. ”

“ Jacinto Quesada turned his head and plunged his austere glance into her deep yearning eyes.
"Paquita," he said, not coldly, but without any weakness of pity, "it is because I am strong and absolute that I cannot love you. When your eye caresses me with its look, your tongue with its subtle flattery, my masculinity rebels at the thought of being wooed by a woman; I am revolted, sickened! Fling your soul with the same impetuosity and passion to some Gypsy lad, and he may love you ”

“ The bandolero leaped from the saddle. With one hand firm on the muzzle of the pony, the other on the butt of the long-barreled revolver protruding from his holster, tensely he stood waiting and hearkening.
Into his nostrils drifted the acrid smell of a wood fire. He heard a clipping staccato sound as of some one chopping faggots. He saw, some hundred feet ahead, a thin whitish smoke voluting up from the green tops of the pines and alders, and merging into the fog cloak above. There was a camp of men in the gorge. ”

“ He seemed much interested in the murdered Juanito. But it was almost as though he considered poor Juanito's death a humorous mishap; at certain of the widow's remarks he laughed roughly, and his laughter stormed through the cabana like a wind through one of the boulder-strewn passes overhead.
An hour later he was astride his horse again and riding down the goat-path that dropped away from Minas de la Sierra and wound through the lower gorges. It is never the habit of the bandolero to linger in a pueblo or village longer than a very short time ”

“ Spanish passenger trains are altogether unlike American passenger trains, for American passenger trains eat up distances like the brazen cars of old Northern gods. The passenger trains of Spain are most deliberate and slow. They halt for ten minutes at every wayside station, for no better reason than to allow the passengers to alight, unlimber their legs, and smoke the eternal cigarette. They are the very crawling snails of the earth!
Of course, the Seville-to-Madrid was an express, a through train. But you may be sure she was no fast train except when viewed through Spanish eyes. ”

“ You did not recognize Aguilino; you thought him a Gypsy; but he is my dorado, Rafael Perez, who helped rob you on the Seville-to-Madrid!"
The men murmured their surprise at the revelation.
"But why," ejaculated Morales, "why, Senor Quesada, did you do all this?"
"In order that I might show you Jacques Ferou in his true light. Once you were starving, I knew the innate selfishness of the man would out. Then, if I could make you believe me in the matter of the Frenchman, I knew you must believe me in my whole story. ”

“ It was a strength above body strength, a strength beyond body strength. It was that strength secreted deep down but seldom drawn upon, that strength which lifts some men up and steels them to their endeavors in moments of prodigious stress. It was that epic strength which makes of weaklings, cold-eyed and high-handed heroes!
Something must be done to thwart the granite will of the implacable Don Jaime. There was need for a man. There was no time to lose.
Quick as an ape, Quesada bounded through the hospital doorway. Down the runway between the platforms and the dying men, he dashed. ”

“ It is what you are. You are a policeman, one of those feared and hated and despised by my clan. I feel shame in loving a man of the Guardia Civil; there is something in my Gypsy blood that makes me feel that shame. It is the uniform you wear, the things that it symbolizes."
"We Guardias Civiles are the bravest of Spaniards. We are most brave and mettlesome men, every one!" returned the young policeman slowly, seeking to marshal his arguments in order. "Most Spanish girls are quick to love us if only because of our smart uniforms and gallantry and daring. ”

“ For, as it was plain to see, Jacinto Quesada was requesting, in pantomime, a spark to ignite his hopelessly dead slim cylinder of tobacco.
But the Spanish engine driver did neither of those two things. It is not that the Iberians are not as polite as the French; they are more polite and altogether more ceremonious. Know you that in Spain, and also in Mexico, it is considered something of an insult to proffer a man matches when he requests a light of you and you yourself are smoking. It is as though you consider him socially beneath you, when you proffer him matches. ”

“ Quietly Jacinto Quesada put the Manchegan knife back in his belt.
"I forbear to strike," said he, "since you have confessed your fault. Now, soberly and with due respect, give me your answer. Will you take me with you?"
A gleam of admiration lit the eye of Pernales.
"Jacinto Quesada," he said, "you are no child. You have shown resolution, force, finality; you are altogether masculine, altogether varonil; you are a man! Therefore, as one man to another, I say: No, I cannot take you with me!" ”

“ We will loose the leech to suck this evil cancer from the side of Spain!"
"You are hatching a snake's egg, mi gran caballero. The fruit of it shall stink in the nostrils of all brave Moors! You may take your oath on that, Don Esteban! I for one will be no party to it!"
"No lo quiera Dios! God forbid, proud Torreblanca y Moncada, that we of the police should expect your aid! You have a higher call. Up in Minas de la Sierra, there is wailing and much sickness—ah, so many men have slapped under and died, and so many more suffer in earthly purgatory!"
"Sea como Dios quiera!" muttered Don Jaime. ”

“ Jacinto Quesada grew bigger, stronger. But he suffered more with ambition than with growing pains. Ambition is the seed of greatness, but the seed cannot germinate and bourgeon without giving agony and labor to the soil in which it is nurtured.
Pernales did not again pass that way. Three months had not intervened, since the promise to return had been given, when the great bandolero was murdered for the reward by a Gallego on a lonely hill-road in the Asturias—shot through the head at forty yards.
Now, if never could Jacinto Quesada ride with Pernales, then by the Life! he would ride alone. ”