The two were Spaniards. They wore the uniform of the Guardia Civil, and they rode hairy, vigorous little police ponies. They had been in the saddle since daybreak, persistently pushing southward. The cobs were dog-weary but as steady-paced as machines of clockwork; the men were hunched of shoulder, heavy-headed, their faces coated with a gray-brown powder of dust.

They drew rein atop a naked hummock in the immensity of sand and ilex and th.o.r.n.y acacia. At the hip of the younger and taller of the two was slung a pair of binoculars. The one, and then the other, trained these gla.s.ses upon the rolling, everlasting veldt and swept the horizon round, their scrutiny long, patient, and searching.

All the long morning and the longer, more dreary afternoon, they had seen upon the endless despoblado only half-wild cattle and half-wild a.s.ses, and an occasional high-soaring falcon or an ugly, three-foot-long eyed-lizard. And this time was not the first time they had paused to peer through the binoculars; they had paused often, and then continued on without remark. Now, however, as he put back the gla.s.ses in their leather sheath, the younger policeman rather bitterly said:

"There is no one abroad upon La Mancha. Not even a solitary salteador de camino hiding out from us of the Guardia Civil."

"Yet I tell you, Miguel--most surely are they out there somewhere!"

returned his companero; vehemently dissenting. "How could they have attained, so soon, to the Sierra Morena ahead--I ask you that!"

Touching their ponies with their barbed heels, they enterprised once more upon the long traverse. There was a terrible sun that day, a sun African in the ferocity of its pa.s.sion. The sun glare tortured their eyes. It caused their lacquered three-cornered police hats, made of shiny patent leather, to reflect and flash like the mirrors of a heliograph. The men sweated until they were as dry as cinders and could sweat no more.

In the more subdued glare of the late afternoon, the two came at length to the brown rolling foothills toward which they had been making throughout the whole hideous day. The foothills billowed away, in undulations rising even higher and higher, until finally they became part of a distant and purple alpland of ma.s.sive and lofty peaks--the exalted spires and crags of the Sierra Morena.

As their jaded ponies took doggedly the initial rise, the younger and taller of the two policemen--he called Miguel--drew from his breast a yellow paper on which was mimeographed a copy of a typewritten telegram.

He commenced to read aloud.

The great Manuel Morales--his full cuadrilla--an American, the Senor Don John Fremont Carson, and a Frenchman, name unknown. It is especially important that you discover news of the American, Carson; he is a millionaire and of high social position in his own country. Both the American Amba.s.sador and the Bank of Spain desire to ascertain his whereabouts, his reason for carrying such a large sum of money upon his person, and his purpose in setting off into the wilderness. The Bank of Spain is also much interested in the well-being of Manuel Morales, for he also withdrew a large account by telegraph before disappearing from sight.

The nine men left the Seville-to-Madrid at Alcazar de San Juan, four days ago, secured horses and enough provisions to last them a week and, traveling together, rode southward towards the Sierra Morena. They were well-armed, having bought carbines and automatic pistols from the Jewish cacique of Alcazar, Dicenta. They told no one their errand. They took no guides.

You of the Guardia Civil, find them and give them escort. Report all information to me--Echegaray, _Ministro de Gobernacion_.

He looked up now, the young smooth-faced policeman who had been reading, and turned his handsome head to gaze back over the long monotony of purgatorial desert. It was the words, scribbled in ink in a strong hand and added like a postscript or annotation to the telegraphed instructions, which he went on to read aloud now:

They are somewhere in Ciudad Real or Jaen. The country they are traversing is lawless and spa.r.s.ely-populated, a country infested with ladrones, among whom the most notable is the notorious Quesada.

Spain will never forgive us if any harm should come to the great Morales. And we must answer to the American Amba.s.sador should this John Fremont Carson be not safeguarded. The Constabulary will please give its most careful attention to the search.--Alvarez, Captain-General of the Guardia Civil for the District.

Putting the yellow paper back in the breast of his tight blue jacket faced with red, the younger policeman, Miguel, rode on up the slope beside his companero?--a squat, fiercely mustached and apelike fellow.

"Pascual," he asked presently, "would you know that magnificent one, Morales, should you meet him face to face--"

"Seguramente, yes! Have I not watched him murder a thousand bulls?"

Then, thoughtfully, the apelike one added:

"Once we chance upon their spoor, once we scent them from afar, it should be a most simple matter for us of the Guardia Civil to run down these fools-errant of Manuel Morales. We know these plains and foothills; they do not. And they are a large troop and must make a great to-do of noise and dust whenever they move about. 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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?"

The older man pondered.

"That is most difficult," he said at length, chewing in a ruminating manner one end of his black mustache. "He is of the Sierra Nevada, this Quesada; he is not a native of La Mancha. Few men hereabouts could describe him, I think; he does not go abroad much to fiestas and wedding feasts, since he took to the highroads, you know. And the few folk that have met him since he became a bandolero have been too frightened to note well what he looked like. But I have been told by a paisano of his, a serrano of the Sierra Nevada, that he looks very much like me, myself!"

That last was said with downright pride. The policeman, Pascual, did not even take trouble to conceal his vain pleasure in the thought, his flattered conceit in himself. He sat a little straighter in the saddle and, with self-conscious braggadocio, fingered his black mustache, looking about him fiercely the while.

He was squat, broadly uncouth of shoulder, prognathous jawed--an ugly apelike sort. There was something b.e.s.t.i.a.lly predatory in the simian look of him which the black mustache rather heightened than detracted from.

He did not resemble any of his immediate progenitors who had been men of Aragon and Guardias Civiles every one. More he resembled, perhaps, certain Miquelets and reclaimed brigands from whose loins his line had originally sprung. He did not look at all like Jacinto Quesada!

The youthful Civil Guard eyed the apelike Pascual a moment, and then derisively laughed.

"That is strange," he said, with a sneer. "Certain Gypsies of my acquaintance have seen Quesada in the mountains and on the plains.

Outlaws such as he often repair to the Gitanos when hard-pressed, you know; the Gypsies look upon them as blood-brothers, for the Gypsies are all thieves. And it is strange, Pascual, but these Gypsies of my acquaintance have told me that _I_ was the living image of Jacinto Quesada. He is very young, they say, little more than a boy even, and he is tall and smooth-shaven and handsome, indeed, very much like me!"

Youthful, tall, smooth of face and very handsome was, indeed, that policeman called Miguel. He was lean, supple and gallant looking as a sword of Toledo.

"Fools and children tell the truth," returned the apelike Pascual, quoting an old Spanish proverb. Then, barbing it with a sting of his own making, he added: "But Gitanos, never!"

Surlily, he rode on ahead, the while the other slid down from his horse and ran in pursuit of his shiny leather police hat which was tumbling in a quick succession of flip-flops down the hill. He had knocked it from his own head inadvertently when, while talking, he had raised the binoculars to his eyes for another look back over La Mancha.

After a short erratic chase, Miguel retrieved his recalcitrant headgear; but, strangely, he did not return immediately to the saddle.

Instead, stooping low, he stood motionless near the place where he had picked up the hat, peering down as at a nugget of gold half hidden in the dust and gra.s.s. Then, becoming altogether inexplicable in his actions, he went scurrying off up the slope at a tangent, his body bent far forward, his head turned toward the ground, and his face sharp and pale with excitement and expectancy.

"Caspita!" he was heard by Pascual to mutter. "Caspita!"--"Wonderful!

Wonderful!"

Every so often, he halted and stooped lower, crouching almost to the very ground. It was as though, each time, he discovered something of sober interest to him and paused to examine that something.

Pascual followed him with puzzled and astounded eyes. At last, as the curious performance persisted, he called out, "_Dios hombre!_ what ails you, man?"

His face flushed, his eyes smiling with triumph, the youthful and handsome Miguel came back to the spot where he had started his mysterious shadow-dance up the hillside.

"Pascual Montara!" he called. "This way, quick!"

As the other trotted his pony over, he pointed a finger to the ground before him and said, "Do you see that which I see, Pascual?"

"Seguramente, yes."

"What is it, then?"

"Carajo, Miguel! it is only a handful of gra.s.s, plucked and left in a tiny hillock by some one."

"Bueno! But who plucked it, then, and left it in a heap upon the ground?"

"_Zut!_ How should I know? Who is it plucks gra.s.s, anyway?"

The young policeman seemed to take joy in the role of Grand Inquisitor.

He smiled a superior smile and moved on a few feet, and then again halted.

"And this--what is this?" he demanded, pointing before him once more.

"You buffoon, you--what game are you playing with me? It is only another hillock of plucked gra.s.s, as any fool can see!"

"And this?" The Grand Inquisitor had moved on another couple of yards.