The Dust of Conflict

There was a little gleam of comprehension in the officer’s eyes, and he thoughtfully flicked the ash from his cigar. “I think I could promise that,” he said. “We will talk again, senor, but now – if I have your excuses – I think I will be wanted at the cuartel.”

He rose, made Miss Harding a little punctilious inclination, and moved away, while the lamplight flung his shadow black upon the pink-washed walls. It seemed to the girl suggestively sinister.

“I do not like that man,” she said. “He has wicked eyes, and his face is cruel!”

Harding laughed. “Anyway, it’s evident he has his price, and I think I’ll buy the hacienda, though I’ll want a man to run it, since I can’t stay here. He will have to be the right kind of man.”

Nettie Harding appeared reflective. “I wonder what has become of Mr. Broughton whom we met on board the ‘Aurania’?” she said.

“The folks I gave him letters to told me he was here in Cuba; but I’m not quite sure his name was Broughton. He had got himself mixed up in some kind of trouble in England.”

“Then,” said the girl decisively, “somebody else made the trouble.”

“It’s quite likely. I don’t think there’s any meanness in that man; but I wouldn’t worry about him. It wouldn’t please Julian.”

The girl laughed. “Julian,” she said, “knows me too well to be jealous.”

Harding said nothing, and the two sat silent awhile. There were few guests in the “Four Nations” just then, and only a faint murmur rose from the plaza beyond the pink-washed walls. Somebody, however, was singing, and now and then a soft tinkle of guitars came musically through the stillness with the chorus of the “Campanadas.” Nettie Harding listened vacantly, while glancing up at the blue above she wondered whether the same clear stars shone down on a certain naval officer, and if he thought of her as the big warship rolled across the wastes of the Pacific. It was very still, and cool, and peaceful, and she lay, languidly content to dream, in the cane chair, until she straightened herself with a little gasp as the ringing of a rifle came sudden and portentous out of the darkness. It was followed by a crash of firing, and Harding looked up sharply.

“Winchesters – but those are Spanish rifles now!” he said. “It seems the Insurgents must have got in behind the pickets.”

“The Insurgents!” said the girl, with a shiver.

Harding rose, and stood looking down upon her curiously grave in face. “This is a thing I never expected. Morales told me there wasn’t a rebel within ten leagues of us; but he has men enough to whip them off,” he said. “Put on a jacket, Nettie. We can see what is going on from the roof.”

In another minute they stood looking down over the low parapet into the shadowy plaza. There was not a light in it now, but through the ringing of the bugles there rose a confused clamor and the patter of running feet, and Nettie Harding could dimly see clusters of citizens apparently making the best pace they could towards the calle that led out of Santa Marta. As she watched a line of figures broke through them and by their rhythmic tramp she guessed that these were soldiery. Then a fresh mob of citizens poured into the plaza, and the rifles crashed again.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

Harding, stooping over the parapet, listened a moment to the confused voices, and then shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s the Sin Verguenza coming,” he said. “They have a little account against Santa Marta, and I wouldn’t like to be Morales when they send in the bill.”

His attitude betokened strained attention, and the girl fancied he was endeavoring to ascertain how the troops had fared. Then the clamor grew suddenly louder, and she grasped his arm.

“Oh!” she said. “They are in the town!”

“Yes,” said Harding curtly, “I guess they are. The sooner we leave them and the Santa Martans to it the better! Get your little trinkets together, Nettie; I’ll have the mules we hired ready inside five minutes.”

He plunged down the stairway, burst through the negroes already clamoring about the stable, and dragged the mules out. There was a crowd in the archway leading out of the patio when the girl joined him.

“We can’t mount here,” he said. “Keep close behind me until we make the plaza.”

It was accomplished with difficulty, but the men who pressed upon them saw the glinting pistol; and Nettie Harding stood ready to mount in the plaza when a mob of fugitives surged about them. There was a crash of riflery very close at hand, the mule plunged, and she reeled backwards with a little cry. For a moment she felt her father’s grasp upon her shoulder, then the mules seemed to vanish and Harding with them, and she was driven forward amidst the press. A voice she recognized was shouting a few yards away, but it ceased suddenly, and she was jostled this way and that with the little breath she had left almost crushed out of her. She could only wove as the crowd did, and it bore her onward into a dark calle, where screaming women were pouring from the doorways, and here and there a pale light shone down upon the terrified faces about her, but there was no sign of Harding anywhere.

She could never remember how long this lasted; but by and by the crowd seemed to melt away where two or three streets branched off from a smaller plaza, and she stood still, breathless, striving to draw the thin jacket, whose buttons had been torn away, over the trinkets she had hastily clasped into her bodice and cast about her neck. Then the venomous clanging of rifles commenced again, and when something zip-zapped along the stones and struck the white walls with a curious splashing sound she turned to run and saw a dusky archway in front of her. Stumbling into it, she flung back the great leather curtains, and found herself in a little church. It smelt of stale incense, and a few pale lights that only intensified the darkness blinked here and there; but she could hear low rustlings which seemed to indicate that others had taken refuge in it, and shrank into a corner.

She fancied she spent at least an hour in the church, listening with apprehension to the clamor that broke out and sank again outside. There were murmurs inside the building, and an occasional rustling of the leather curtains, but this told her nothing; and at last, unable to bear the suspense any longer, she moved softly towards the door. The town was almost silent when she reached it, and there was a light burning in what appeared to be a wine shop across the plaza. She could also hear laughter as well as the tinkle of a guitar; and as this did not indicate fear she decided to enter the shop and endeavor to hire somebody to search for her father. Unfortunately, however, she did not remember a saying common in Spain respecting the fondness of evil-livers for the sound of church bells.

She flitted across the plaza without molestation, and then stopped in front of a building which bore a scroll announcing that it was a café. A blaze of light shone out from it, and looking in between the wooden pillars she could see the little tables and wine barricas. Then she gasped, for in place of reputable citizens the tables were occupied by women with powdered faces in cheap bravery and ragged men with rifles slung behind them. The light also showed her standing white in face with torn garments and the jewels sparkling at her neck to the revellers; and a man of dusky skin, with a machete hanging at his belt, sprang up with a shout.

There was a burst of laughter, and Nettie Harding fled, with the patter of several pairs of feet growing louder behind her, until two men came forward to meet her. They, however, let her pass; there was an altercation, and she stood still, trembling, when a cry in English reached her. Then she saw three or four dim figures moving back towards the café and the two men coming towards her. One of them also raised a hand to his big shapeless hat.