He was only thirteen; yet he spoke slowly, with deliberation and discernment and a great air of mannish profundity. He had got something from Don Jaime's books, this mountaineer's bantling!

"But there are times," he qualified, "when even the most superb bandolero needs a.s.sistance in some serious and signal business. Have you not yourself a _dorado_, a _camarada_, who rides with you on your greater crimes, the Nino de Arahal? Certain folk have told me of the Nino; they said he shared the glory of those enterprises which made imperative a show of numbers and strength; do not tell me these folk lied! I had hoped to dispossess this camarada and dorado of yours, this Nino de Arahal, and to attain to the envied place down from which I threw him headlong!

"But the Nino," he added, arrogating to himself judicial authority--"let us forget him! Za! he is only an insignificant frog! Your wish to ride unhindered and alone, of that I would speak! Maestro, when I become your dorado, we will ride together always, for we will commit only imposing and glorious crimes!"

Said Pernales softly:

"But how would you dispossess the Nino de Arahal?"

"I would pit against the huge gorilla's head of the Little One of Arahal, my head of gold for thinking quick thoughts and audacious ones.

I would displace him and replace him by my natural superiority of brain.

But if that were not enough--Carajo! I would lock knives with him, I would lunge and slash and rip and stab with my _navaja_, while he tore and stabbed and slashed and lunged with his, until one or the other of us gushed out his life through his wounds and was dead!"

Then it was that Pernales laughed so that the very canyon roared and rang. He rolled back his head; he clapped his hands to his stomach; he opened his mouth to its widest stretch; and he guffawed so tremendously that the horse beneath him staggered and almost overbalanced from the wall. He was Olympian in his laughter.

And why not laugh? Did he not see in his mind's eye the gigantic ruffian nicknamed the Nino de Arahal locked with this stripling, this barefoot child, this suckling babe? Za! The Nino would make ten of him! _Zape!_ The Nino would swallow him at a mouthful! It was preposterous! It was so funny, he cared not a peseta if he laughed himself to death!

But suddenly, through his laughter, slid Jacinto Quesada's low-toned words:

"But if he were altogether too huge and brawny for me to murder in open combat, then I would murder him in some hidden, treacherous way.

Treachery is the strength of the weak who are yet strong. If there be no other way, the superior brain resorts to treachery for the superior brain is invincible. While I am still weak of body, I will not disdain to use treachery!

"And, man, man, I warn you! Do not continue to laugh at me! You have laughed quite enough at me, Pernales! Cease laughing this instant!

Quick! Straighten your face, or _Porvida_! the Manchegan knife I have with me, I will use on your horse. I will rip open his belly; and he, with you upon him, will go bounding off the path and fall head over heels down into the abyss!"

Instantly Pernales sobered. His face set into an emotionless mask; his teeth clenched together with an audible click; his eyes became hard as blue bright pebbles. Without seeming to do so, he looked down at the child's hands; and true! there was in those hands a huge, flat-bladed dagger, a dagger of La Mancha. The child was turning it over and over, and studying it with a pensive interest.

Deep within himself, Pernales laughed ironically at his own discomfiture. He could not use the carbine. Without chancing the great risk of sending his horse recoiling and reeling off the path, he could not strike down the child with a blow of his fist! And the child had but to turn aside his gun or dodge his hard fist, and crouch out of harm's way beneath the horse's barrel. Then might he strike up with the dagger, and the horse would make the breakneck plunge as surely as he would scream when stabbed.

"Jacinto Quesada," said Pernales bitterly, "you have caught Pernales in a pretty deadfall! Use your knife; then go for the Guardia Civil and guide a brace of policemen to where my body lies on the bottom of the gorge, and there awaits you the money offered for my head! Cascaras! I judged you altogether too superficially; I was too contemptuous!"

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!"

Pernales now was very serious.

"To be my dorado, it is not enough that you have a full-grown soul. You must have a full-grown body; and your body is still the puny, soft-boned body of a child. If you rode away with me, you of the weak body, your strong soul might be sacrificed to the Nino de Arahal or the Guardia Civil. And that--G.o.d forbid!

"Let us look at this matter like two sensible Moors. Don Eduardo Miura, let us suppose, has a young fighting bull of extraordinary promise. At the _Tentaderos_ (the breeders' private bullfight, when the young bulls are ranked according to their merit as fighting animals), this youngster shows superb courage and astounding ferocity. But he is only two years old; and five years old must be the age of Don Eduardo's animals before he exhibits them in the Plaza de Toros. Does Don Eduardo make an exception of this unique bull, does he allow him because of his astounding ferocity to have a premature debut in the bull-ring? Name of G.o.d, no! Not even if he be as magnificent with meat as the most mature seven-year-old!

"Jacinto Quesada, quickly I have grown to love your strong soul--I have grown to love your strong soul too much. And that is why I say, I cannot take you with me. No! Porvida, no! But, if you are resentful, use your knife and send me whirling down into the gorge. Proceed! I care not a peseta what you do."

Jacinto Quesada stood motionless as a rock, thinking deeply. Something in the boy's downcast att.i.tude moved Pernales to pity.

"Do not despair, my fire-hearted, _arrogante_ little man," he said presently. "I have said no; this time my no is absolute; but I shall not say no to you, should I pa.s.s this way again when you are more fully grown. Some day, I promise you, I shall again pa.s.s this way, and then if you are still of the mind to be my dorado, you may join out with me and we will murder the men of the Guardia Civil together, two sworn companeros. Meanwhile, grow brawny, grow brave, grow high-handed. There will always be room in Spain for haughty resolute ones like you!"

"I accept the promise given," said Jacinto Quesada. "And I do not ask you to swear to return for me--a word is enough between men. Now, knowing you will come back, I will compose myself and wait. A child is impetuous and fretful; a man is implacable yet patient."

"Son of the widow Quesada," returned Pernales magnificently, "on the promise given and taken, let us strike hands! With a handshake, like two true Spaniards, we will bind the bargain."

Jacinto Quesada took his hand off the hilt of his Manchegan navaja and gripped claws with the bandolero. A certain note of solemnity thrilled through the moment.

The bandolero started on.

"Go thou with G.o.d, companero!" said Jacinto Quesada.

"Grow big, grow strong, thou!" said the great Pernales.

CHAPTER IV

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 pa.s.s 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.

When at last he attained to manhood, he went down the mountains, stole a carbine and a horse, and became a bandolero errant and free.

He had hands of gold, that fire-hearted Spanish boy, for sticking up a troop of caballeros and their ladies out for a _merienda_ or a bull-baiting on the parched plains about Madrid. And he had hands of gold for sticking up a diligence full of notables in the savage defiles of the Sierra de Guadalupe or the Sierra de Gredos or the Sierra de Guadarrama. And he had courage and originality. Why, he was still a mere novice as a bandolero, an apprentice hand, a _novillero_, when he took it into that round, young, handsome and arrogant Spanish head of his to way-lay and loot the Seville-to-Madrid Express!

Spanish highwaymen, you must know, are not in the habit of holding up pa.s.senger trains. To way-lay a lone muleteer in the mountains, to halt and rob a party of itinerant guitarists and dancers, or to pillage the _hacienda_ of a rich rural cattle breeder are the conventional things to do. But to hold up the Seville-to-Madrid--it is unthinkable, it is not the will of G.o.d! Spanish highwaymen prefer to do less spectacular deeds and to live to see their grandchildren.

In the province of Ciudad Real, the Seville-to-Madrid Express crosses the river Zancura by means of a safe and modern steel cantilever bridge built by Le Brun, a French engineer. And a half hour before it reaches this steel bridge, the Seville-to-Madrid crosses another bridge, a bridge over a small tributary of the Zancura which is dry three fourths of the year. This bridge is not of steel; it is timbered. It was never built by Le Brun; it is flimsy, weather-worn, and liable to give under any unusual strain. It is called the Arroyo Seco Bridge.

Here, where the Arroyo Seco lies like a great brown gutter across the world, are the high _parameras_ of La Mancha. There are no more desolate and lonely uplands in all Spain. Swarthy, sun-scorched and thirsty, they torture the eye with dusty dun distances and p.r.o.ne dun lines. You would think it an altogether unlikely place for a bandolero to stage a hold-up.

And here, a hundred yards below the Arroyo Seco bridge and close beside the railroad track, waited Jacinto Quesada one hot, dry, windless afternoon. He was seated upon a small sleek mouse-colored Manchegan pony. He wore corduroy leggins, a sheepskin _zamarra_, and a Cordovan sombrero that had once been white. His dress was that of the typical Manchegan herdsman. He looked like any one of the hundred or more vaqueros who lived the wild lonely life of the cattle country roundabout.

The Seville-to-Madrid showed in the southwest. Like a somber black snake it crawled slowly forward--like a black snake laggard and heavy after a great dinner of mice.

Spanish pa.s.senger trains are altogether unlike American pa.s.senger trains, for American pa.s.senger trains eat up distances like the brazen cars of old Northern G.o.ds. The pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sengers 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. At fifteen miles the hour, morosely it crawled on. It neared the waiting Jacinto Quesada and, fearful of the flimsy wooden bridge beyond, slackened its pace to a painful glacier-slow flow.

As the wheezing locomotive lumbered up, Jacinto Quesada, with knees and one hand, held the shuddering pony motionless beside the track. The other hand he raised aloft. Pointedly, his eyes turned to that upraised hand; then to the locomotive's cab; then significantly, to the upflung hand once again.

The engine driver, one arm extended to the throttle, a blue-smoking cigarette between his lips, leaned far out the cab and looked down at the uplifted hand of Jacinto Quesada. In that significantly uplifted hand of Jacinto Quesada was an unlighted cigarette.

Now, an American engineer would have pa.s.sed unheeding by, with perhaps a curse for Jacinto Quesada as an arrant fool. Again, a French engineer might have called back: "It is a pleasure!" and thrown down a paper of matches. For, as it was plain to see, Jacinto Quesada was requesting, in pantomime, a spark to ignite his hopelessly dead slim cylinder of tobacco.