Bare Hands

Chapter II In the Hands of “The Wolf?”

From without the ’dobe there sounded the tramp of hoofs as horses broke from a rapid trot into a ragged walk, came to a stop before the doorway.

Robert Standish arose from the desk, went to the door and threw it open. Vincent Shaffer reached toward the rifle with moist hands, then thought better of the action and drew away. Dan Harder remained on the edge of the cot, his knee gripped between his huge hands.

They were a ragged lot, the men without. Saddles are worth more in Mexico than the horses that carry them — at times. These men had sacks, bits of rawhide, scraps of leather, anything that might serve the purpose for saddles. For shoes they had sandals, and their browned feet showed skin that had been cracked and toughened until it resembled leather itself.

The men looked upon those within the ’dobe with eyes that were avaricious. They spoke no word, and that was a bad sign.

Robert Standish knew the country and the ways of the people. Perhaps he was the only one of the three white men who could form an accurate estimate of the danger. But Robert Standish had lived a life. Death would find him indifferent.

“Where is your leader?” he asked.

There was no reply from the horsemen. They looked about them with loot-hungry eyes.

Standish raised his voice.

And then there was a commotion in the rear. A short, broad-shouldered man spurred his horse forward. Here was a saddle that was inlaid with silver. Here were shoes that had cost more than a hundred sandals.

But the face was the same. It was a heavy face, given but little to expression and never to thought. The eyes were loot-hungry, but they looked not at the clothes of the Americans. They flickered over the ore dump, the machinery of the mine.

Shortly behind him came a different type of man.

If the leader was named for the wolf, the man behind should have been named for the fox. His face was thin, mobile with expression, but the expression of cunning dominated all the other expressions. His eyes were large, lustrous, his hands slender, the fingers tapering. The mouth was thin. On occasions it could be cruel.

“Señores, it is a pleasure! We heard that the mine had been abandoned. In these troublous times it is hard to police our entire territory. Please be assured that we shall protect property and lives. It is the rival aspirant for the government that makes the territory unsafe.”

Standish stood to one side of the doorway and bowed deeply. It was noticeable that he did not step outside of the protection of the thick walls.

“Will you honor us by entering? I regret that we cannot offer you hospitality. Our help have been terrified by the lawlessness of the country. They have left us without warning. Now that you are here we know there will be no lawlessness, but our help did not understand you were so close.”

In such manner did the two men dissemble their real feelings, neither being deceived by the speech of the other.

The fox-like man slipped furtively from the saddle. The leader lurched his bulk to the ground.

“Señores,” proclaimed the fox-man, “you are honored indeed! Señor Huerta Hidalgo Martinez, the supreme dictator and commander of the armies of all Mexico, awaits at your doorway!

“And I am his servant, his secretary of war, Juan Ayala. It is with pleasure that we bring you the protection of the army. We shall maintain order and the sanctity of property rights!”

They marched into the cool dimness of the ’dobe. Outside, the men waited expectantly. There was no impatience. They understood the procedure. All in good time.

The three white men made known their names, saw that their visitors were seated. Dan Harder continued to clamp his knee between his huge hands. Vincent Shaffer ran his hands surreptitiously under the blanket to make sure that his precious brass shells were still there.

They betrayed him with a light rattle and the keen eyes of Juan Ayala sought his own. The hand came swiftly away and Shaffer fidgeted nervously.

“Señores,” proclaimed Ayala, “these are times filled with trouble. Because certain ragged bands of roving troops, claiming to be Federal soldiers, do not recognize the authority of Señor Huerta Hidalgo Martinez, we have skirmishes. Because of these skirmishes the irregular troops have turned bandits and have brought a reign of terror to the country.

“But our loyal men have brought safety. You should be grateful. I understand you have munitions of war here. There are cartridges, guns, pistols, even a machine gun. It is so?”

Shaffer flecked his pale lips with a pink tongue.

Robert Standish nodded expressionlessly.

“We have ammunition for our own protection,” he agreed.

Juan Ayala’s face fairly beamed.

“And now, since we are here,” he exclaimed, throwing out his arms in an inclusive gesture, “you have no further need for them!”

Huerta Hidalgo Martinez sat heavily, his face slumbering beneath massive inertia of the mind. Like the troops he, too, was familiar with the necessary preliminaries. Only his reddish-brown eyes flickered about the interior of the building. Those eyes still contained their burning loot hunger.

Robert Standish spoke swiftly in English to his two associates.

“You see what they’re driving at,” he said.

“Does he understand English?” chattered Shaffer.

Standish made a slight gesture with his palms.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll find out.”

Then, still speaking English, he raised his voice and spoke more slowly.

“I don’t like the looks of either of them. They are crooks, bandits of the lowest stamp. The men are murderers.”

Vincent Shaffer shivered, stretched forth a hand toward the rifle.

But neither the supreme dictator nor his secretary of war so much as batted an eyelash. Ayala turned inquiring eyes from one man to another.

“No,” said Standish, “he doesn’t understand English.”

“What if he had?” asked Shaffer.

“He’d have ordered our execution as traitors,” Standish said calmly.

Shaffer shivered into silence.

“And so, señores,” went on Ayala, “now that you have no use for your weapons and since our glorious army has such dire need, we know that your patriotism will be stirred and that you will make us a gift of them, taking in exchange our order upon the Mexican treasury.”

Shaffer groaned audibly.

Standish turned to his companions.

“What do you say, boys? After all, you’ve more at stake than I have — you’re younger. Shall we give in, or stick it out?”

Dan Harder answered the question, his knee still clasped between his huge hands.

“See ’em in hell first. You give the signal when to start things. Pick the leader. I’m goin’ to take this little bandbox apart an’ see what makes ’m tick.”

“No, no,” chattered Shaffer. “It would be folly. The men outside have their rifles ready to pour forth a volley through the door. There’s been some signal. I can see them from where I’m sitting.”

“Perhaps,” said Standish, “they’ll move on and leave us when they’ve stripped us clean. Oh, they’ll do that all right. One way is certain death. The other way we stand a chance. I don’t care much about life. I don’t care a bit about our possessions. What I do care about is the mine.”

There followed a silence. Then Standish spoke in Spanish.

“There is merit in what you say. You will give us a receipt, of course.”

The cunning face of Ayala lit with pleasure.

“Of course, señores,” he said, and barked a swift order.

Three men flung from their horses and came running into the room. The balance of the raiders sat upon their horses.

The gun was the first to be sent out. Then came the revolvers, and then Ayala himself jerked back the blanket. The men piled the cartridges upon the blanket and took blanket and all.

“You have other weapons concealed,” said Ayala, once he was assured the room was emptied of firearms.

It was too late then to change front, but Standish tried it.

“Only such weapons as may be scattered about and forgotten. Not more than two pistols in all. These would be trouble to find, and they would make no difference to your army. We must insist upon keeping those.”

“But,” purred Ayala, “the enemy might come. Then you would give them the other guns and that would be a big mistake.”

Vincent Shaffer answered the accusation, speaking in swift Spanish.

“Oh, but we would never, never give aid to the enemies of Huerta Hidalgo Martinez.”

Ayala’s dark, luminous eyes shifted to him with a mocking twinkle.

“Ah, but señor, you have already. But ten minutes before we rode up. He was an enemy fleeing for the pass on a horse. When our men surprised him he had in his belt shiny cartridges, which had not been worn long in the belt. They came fresh from a box!”

Shaffer drew a sleeve across his perspiring forehead.

“A spy. I thought so,” was Harder’s brief comment in English.

Once more Ayala barked a command.

The men darted to the corner, dug through the mud plaster, disclosed the secret hiding place, took out the machine gun, the extra case of pistols, the ammunition that had been stored against such an emergency as this.

“Spied again,” muttered Standish in soft English, as casually as though he had been commenting on the weather. “That cleans us out.”

Ayala wrote out a receipt in which he specified only a general quantity of munitions. He gave an order on the treasury of Mexico and passed the paper to the dictator.

The dictator touched the pencil with his blunt fingers. Ayala signed the name while the finger tip rested upon the pencil.

“Señores, it is done!

“And now how about our brave men? Surely you have provisions? You wish to welcome your deliverers. See, we have saved you from the dangers of the revolutionists! You are safe! Our men protect you. They must be fed!”

This time he did not wait for consent.

He barked an order to the men, and instantly every one was out of the saddle, scurrying about like so many leaves blown before an autumn wind, each helping himself. They scuttled into the cook-shack, through the bunk house, into the smelting room, through the little mill. Such things as they wanted they took.

Ayala looked about him with smiling eyes.

Huerta Hidalgo Martinez remained in stolid indifference of posture, but his burning eyes still retained their loot-hunger. Such mind as he possessed had been educated above the simple emotions of his followers. He knew that the mine was a thousand times more valuable than anything that was on the ground, ten thousand times more valuable than such loot as his men could secure. The mine, then, was the loot of the leader.

But his time was not yet. Like the men who had waited without, listening to the hum of voices within, patiently waiting for the preliminaries to get over with, the dictator sat heavily in the swivel chair, waiting for his smiling secretary of war to arrange the still further preliminaries that would give him the mine.

Once with the mine in possession there were rival companies who might be induced to bid for it; not for its full worth, to be sure, but a sufficient amount to pay the dictator well for his trouble. The price would be paid partly in munitions of war, partly in coin, partly in such other things as were difficult to procure, yet which caused the red glow of loot-hunger to shine from the leader’s eyes.

“Damned shame we didn’t stop ’em sooner. Let’s try it anyway,” grunted Harder, his knee still motionless. “I’m itchin’ for a chance to take this bimbo apart.”

“We’ve no weapons now,” reminded Standish.

Harder grunted.

“I’ve got my bare hands. That’s all I need for this one. He’s got a gun.”

“No, no, no!” yelped Shaffer. “I don’t want to die now. Not down here. No, no.”

Harder’s body moved by not so much as the flicker of a muscle.

“Say when,” he told Standish.

But Standish shook his head. His bleached eyes swept over the havoc that was being wrought.

“We’ve made our decision. Perhaps it was wrong, but it’s made. We’ve sacrificed everything to keep possession of the mine. To start hostilities now would be to lose it. Perhaps we can deceive these men with protestations of friendship. After they’ve cleaned out everything they can take they’ll move on. We’ll be left in possession of the mine. The Federal troops will follow.”

Harder grunted.

“If a white man’s got anything on the ball at all, he’s got a superiority to these guys. It’s a mistake ever to give in the first inch.”

Ayala’s smiling eyes surveyed them coldly.

“Señores, good news! I have decided that here we will make our headquarters for awhile. Behind us there is a body of troops who call themselves Federals. But they are really revolutionists, fighting against Huerta Hidalgo Martinez. We shall make headquarters here, send our troops back to the hill and rout these traitors.”

Standish bowed without the slightest flash of expression in his bleached eyes.

“You are welcome.”

There followed orders, bustling activity. The men mounted and swept back down the trail. Ayala commandeered the ’dobe as military headquarters. The three men were relegated to the cook shack. The mine had been looted clean of blankets, provisions, dishes, guns, ammunition, stores.

Ayala dropped the mask. He was in possession of the mine. The three white men were virtually prisoners. If they wished to try flight they were welcome, but their domination of the mining property was a thing of the past.

“You see,” announced Ayala, “much as I dislike to do this thing, I have proclaimed what you señores call martial law. Therefore all of the authority here is of the army. The authority which you possess is civil authority, and it is suspended until the army moves on.”

“When will that be?” asked Shaffer.

Ayala shrugged his shoulders.

“I am afraid, my dear señor, we will remain here after you have departed.”

The words were interrupted by a burst of firing from the crest of the hill. Huerta Hidalgo Martinez climbed stiffly into his saddle and galloped to the scene of the battle.

Within an hour the firing ceased.

A rat-like horseman scattered gravel up the trail as he brought a military dispatch to Juan Ayala. That individual then sought out the three white men.

“Congratulations, señores. We have saved your property. The revolutionists were pressing forward, intent, no doubt, upon taking the mine. But our brave men have checked them. The enemy are in retreat.”

Harder’s heavy finger tapped Standish upon the shoulder.

“Somebody comin’,” he said.

The finger pointed up-trail, toward the pass in the mountains. Where the trail wound around the side of the hill a string of horses caught the bright sun and cast black shadows along the glittering hillside.

Standish looked appealingly toward Ayala. The powerful binoculars which Standish had used earlier in the day were now slung over Ayala’s shoulders, a “present” to the secretary of war.

Ayala raised them to his eyes.

“Ah-h-h-h,” he breathed softly.

At length he passed them to Standish.

“The señor would look?” he asked.

Standish raised the glasses, and then swift expressions contorted his face. To the men who had been with him on the mine, watching the expressionless lines of his placid countenance day after day, it seemed that a mask had slipped.

The lips twitched, drained of color.

“It is a señorita?” asked Ayala with purring satisfaction.

Standish turned an agonized face to his two companions.

“It is Rita!” he said in English.

Ayala raised his voice.

“An escort to meet the señorita who rides toward us. She may see the men and take alarm. Perhaps she will hear firing. Escort her, explain there is no cause for alarm. Bring her directly to me. It would be deplorable to have her take alarm and ride back through the mountains.”

Three men scuttled to their horses. Regardless of the progress of battle, Juan Ayala kept a sufficient escort at “headquarters” to cope with any emergency.