"Seguramente, si! But when shall I quit the distasteful presence of that terrible Morales?"

"To-morrow at dusk, if you will have it."

"A thousand thanks! But what excuses shall I give, Don Jacinto?"

"Say to them that it is not the will of G.o.d that you go farther!"

"Carajo, they will shoot me for it!"

"Que, que! What of that? They will only cheat the Guardia Civil of another black rogue!"

Little comforted by the words of consolation, grumbling and shaking his head morosely, Rafael Perez, alias Aguilino, returned to the bivouac of the nine fantastic ones. The other, who wore the garb of a serrano, hurried away through the foggy darkness, his head bent and brow thoughtful.

The following day, as slowly they climbed one of the three roads which led into the mournful Pa.s.s of the Blessed Trinity, a huge boulder came bounding down from the granite heights, viciously leaped by John Fremont Carson's head and, having been deflected by a rock above, missed the last mule by a good dozen yards. The guide Aguilino swore in his chest, and no one heard him.

As the sun rose to its meridian, the vertical rays, reflected from the stony bare-fanged walls, gave off an intense heat, and the party halted in a hollow that lay brown and lean between two mountains. The men squatted down to partake of a light noontide repast, and it was then that Rafael Perez approached Morales.

"Caballero of my soul," he said fearfully, "I can go no farther with you!"

"Disparate!" exclaimed Morales, jumping to his feet. "What nonsense is this! Hola, Ferou and you, Carson; the treacherous knave desires to abandon us!"

The Frenchman and American crowded up.

"But he cannot!" objected Ferou. "We will not let him!"

"What reason have you for refusing to go farther?" asked Carson, turning upon the guide.

"Senores," replied Aguilino with feigned humility, but no little trepidation; "it is not the will of G.o.d!"

"It is not the will of Jacinto Quesada, you mean!" bit out the American with quick penetration.

Aguilino shrugged his shoulders expressively.

"Senores," he whined, "there are no churches in these mountains, and men of the good Dios come but seldom here. In these mountains, the will of Jacinto Quesada moves stronger than does the will of G.o.d!"

"Ah!" exclaimed Morales, with sudden understanding. "So that's it, eh?"

And his youthful face cold and grim, he lifted his automatic pistol and shoved it beneath the nose of the guide.

"Smell of its maw, my good hombre!" he commanded metallically. "Now tell me whose will you will obey!"

Aguilino grimaced like a frightened monkey.

"Heart of G.o.d, Senor Don Manuel, I will stay, I will stay!"

They went on through the hollow in the northern hills. And Aguilino shook his head.

"It is that terrible Morales," he mumbled to himself. "Don Jacinto does not know him. Twice has Don Jacinto failed me this day."

They went up a dark green corry that looked like the hiding place of savage wolves. It was a narrow bridle path, a mere tunnel hewn out of solid rock and overarching foliage. The afternoon drew into twilight; a dim fresco held beneath the plait-work of lentisk, oleanders, and clinging briar; and then, all at once, the corry topped its rise and began descending, plunging down abrupt rock faces and zigzagging about the mountainside like the spiral of a corkscrew. It made the spine tingle to think that one false step in the darkness might precipitate one into the unseen murmuring stream far below.

They camped, that night, in a dell at the foot of the corry, not far from the constantly crashing stream. When they sprawled out to sleep, Morales and John Fremont Carson drew close on either side of Aguilino and carelessly dropped a leg across his legs, one from the right, the other from the left.

But they slept too well, those self-appointed bodyguards. What with the fatigue poisons that had been gathering in their joints and muscles during the long toilsome day and the many days which had preceded it, they could not hope to bat one eye in sleep and keep the other warily winking at the mat between. Quickly they became like logs of wood, incapable of feeling and enterprise. And in some black cavernous hour of the night, Aguilino crawled out and away.

They awoke in the chill dawn, and looked about them with red-rimmed eyes, and spoke together in husky whispers. Without a guide, they were like the fabled babes in the wood. They were lost completely in those gray, echoing, savage mountains.

They breakfasted glumly and, with lightened packs upon their shoulders, went on. Now before them stalked no Gypsy guide; before them stalked an emaciated and bony specter that looked back to grimace every little while, and to beckon them on--the specter of Starvation!

CHAPTER XX

High on a shoulder of the Picacho de la Veleta, one late afternoon, stood Jacinto Quesada. It was very cold, and his mountaineer's shawl was drawn tightly around his throat and knotted about his middle. About and above him frowned the crags and snow spires and sinister precipices of the sierras; below, splitting the mountain like a great clean knife-cut, was a deep, winding pa.s.s.

Quesada was morosely engaged in watching the peculiar antics of a number of men in a cove or pocket to one side of that pa.s.s.

Inset in the pocket, under a thatched pointed roof, was a rudely carved figure of the Saviour hanging from a cross. The sacred effigy was fashioned of some white pine, with a crown of black horsehair and dabs of red paint, in hands and crossed feet and side, to depict bleeding wounds. It was a homely and stark symbol, a shrine famous in the mountains as the Christ of the Pa.s.s.

But the men, despite that poignant reminder before them, were not kneeling in prayer to Heaven. They were squatting among the huge boulders in the ragged p.r.i.c.kly gorse, their heads lolling on their chests, and their words, when they talked, coming in disjointed, never-finished sentences as if they were wearied and needed sleep.

They were the nine fantastic cabalgadores. They were starving. For three days not a morsel of food had pa.s.sed their lips. Theirs had been a complete fast from organic solids. That noon, at a mountain burnlet, for the last time they had drunk copiously of water. It had served to keep up their ebbing strength.

Now, however, they were suffering all the distress and tortures of hunger and thirst. Their stomachs yearned, but the gastric juices were dry; their heads ached and at times felt heavy as shot, and at other times, light and dizzy. They had been compelled to sit down. They were still too low in the sierras to come across the tracks of snow-capering wild ibex and thus appease their famished stomachs. They were suffering an agony, hopeless and cruel.

Starvation excites the imagination and causes giddying eyes to see illusions. It was thus with John Fremont Carson, the American. Come of light-headedness and fretted nerves, he had thought, all through that third day, that as they walked along they were companioned by a strange man who walked with them, now on one hand, now in the brush on the other.

Pausing for minutes to think, losing the line of thought, beginning and never finishing his statements, yet somehow he communicated his fancy to Morales. The matador nodded; he also had seen the shawl-wrapped gliding figure. But the Frenchman pleaded ignorance of any such illusion.

Of a sudden now, as they squatted about the shrine, aware only of the ceaseless gnawings of their stomachs, from up the road came the crash as of a falling bounding stone. It was as if some one, moving along the cliff above their heads, had dislodged the stone from underfoot.

"It is he," said Carson, and he thought he added: "The unknown man." But the words died unsaid on his parched lips.

Morales nodded and continued to nod, his head wagging loosely like that of a mechanical toy. After an appreciable interval, he said, "He is prowling about us like a hungry wolf."

The tall, blond, mustached Frenchman seemed the strongest of all those once-strong men. He pulled out his large-calibered revolver. With none of the hesitancy of feebleness, he said:

"I shall go forward. I am the only one that can walk and see straight.

If this unknown man is truly skulking about, I shall find out what he is doing up there ahead."

He left the pitiful cl.u.s.ter of men. Without any signs of dizziness or staggering, he walked between the boulders which bestrew the path. Bent sharply forward, revolver in hand, he disappeared around a turn of the road.

Abruptly, from beside the road and very near at hand, came then, loud and distinct, the sharp snapping of shrub twigs. The men squatting before the shrine looked about dully. Out of the gorse and bramble beside the road stepped the man whom they had seen following them all that day. He wore heavy rope sandals, sheepskin zamarra, a long serape and pointed mountaineer's hat. He was Jacinto Quesada.

Weakly the famished men reached for their weapons; but he smiled with friendliness and commiseration, and sat down among them.

"There is no need of force, senores," he said. "I am here of my own free will."