By CUTLIFFE HYNE

Methuen wriggled himself into a corner of the hut, rested his shoulders against the adobe wall, and made himself as comfortable as the raw-hide thongs with which he was tied up would permit. “Well, Calvert,” said he, “I hope you quite realise what an extremely ugly hole we’re in?”

“Garcia will hang the pair of us before sunset,” I replied, “and that’s a certainty. My only wonder is we haven’t been strung up before this.”

“You think a rope and a tree’s a sure thing, do you? I wish I could comfort myself with that idea. I wouldn’t mind a simple gentlemanly dose of hanging. But there are more things in heaven and earth, Calvert——” He broke off and whistled drearily.

I moistened my dry, cracked lips, and asked him huskily what he meant.

“Torture, old man. That’s what we’re being saved for, I’m very much afraid. A Peruvian guerilla is never a gentle-minded animal at the best of times, and Garcia is noted as being the most vindictive brute to be found between the Andes and the Pacific. Then if you’ll kindly remember how you and I have harried him, and shot down his men, and cut off his supplies, and made his life a torment and a thing of tremors for the last four weeks, you’ll see he had got a big bill against us. If he’d hated us less, he’d have had us shot at sight when we were caught; as it is, I’m afraid he felt that a couple of bullets in hot blood wouldn’t pay off the score.”

“If he thinks the matter over calmly, he’ll not very well avoid seeing that if he wipes us out there’ll be reprisals to be looked for.”

“And a fat lot,” replied Methuen grimly, “he’ll care for the chance of those. If we are put out of the way, he knows quite well that there are no two other men in the Chilian Service who can keep him on the trot as we have done. No, sir. We can’t scare Garcia with that yarn. You think that because we’re alive still there’s hope. Well, I’ve sufficient faith in my theory for this: If anyone offered me a shot through the head now, I’d accept it, and risk the chance.”

“You take the gloomy view. Now the man’s face is not altogether cruel. There’s humour in it.”

“Then probably he’ll show his funniness when he takes it out of us,” Methuen retorted. “Remember that punishment in the ‘Mikado’? That had ‘something humorous’ in it. Boiling oil, if I don’t forget.”

Involuntarily I shuddered, and the raw-hide ropes cut deeper into my wrists and limbs. I had no great dread of being killed in the ordinary way, or I should not have entered the Chilian Army in the middle of a hot war; and I was prepared to risk the ordinary woundings of action in return for the excitements of the fight. But to be caught, and held a helpless prisoner, and be deliberately tortured to death by every cruelty this malignant fiend, Garcia, could devise, was a possibility I had not counted on before. In fact, as the Peruvians had repeatedly given out that they would offer no quarter to us English in the Chilian Service, we had all of us naturally resolved to die fighting rather than be taken. And, indeed, this desperate feeling paid very well, since on two separate occasions when Methuen and myself had been cornered with small bodies of men, and would have surrendered if we could have been guaranteed our lives, we went at them each time so furiously that on each occasion we broke through and escaped. But one thinks nothing of the chances of death and maiming at those times. There is a glow within one’s ribs which scares away all trace of fear.

“I suppose there’s no chance of rescue?” I said.

“None whatever,” said Methuen, with a little sigh. “Think it over, Calvert. We start out from the hacienda with an escort of five men, sing out our adios, and ride away to enjoy a ten days’ leave in the mountains. The troops are left to recruit; for ten days they can drop us out of mind. Within twelve hours of our leaving them, Garcia cleverly ambushes us in a caÑon where not three people pass in a year. The poor beggars who form our escort are all gastados.”

“Yes, but are you sure of that?” I interrupted. “I saw them all drop off their horses when we were fired upon, but that doesn’t prove they were dead. Some might have been merely wounded, and when the coast cleared, it is just possible they crawled back to our post with the news. Still, I own it’s a small chance.”

“And you may divest yourself of even that thin rag of hope. Whilst you were being slung senseless across a horse, I saw that man without the ears go round with a machete, and—well, when the brute had done, there was no doubt about the poor fellows being as dead as lumps of mud. Ah, and talk of the devil——”

The earless man swung into the hut.

“Buenas, SeÑores,” said he mockingly. “You will have the honour now of being tried, and I’m sure I hope you will be pleased with the result.”

“I suppose we shall find that out later,” said Methuen with a yawn; “but anyway, I don’t think much of your hospitality. A cup of wine now after that ugly ride we’ve had to-day would come in very handy, or even a nip of aguardiente would be better than nothing.”

“I fancy it might be a waste of good liquor,” was the answer; “but you must ask Garcia. He will see to your needs.”

A guard of twelve ragged fellows, armed with carbine and machete, had followed the earless man into the hut, and two of them, whilst he talked, had removed the seizings from our knees and ankles. They helped us to our feet, and we walked with them into the dazzling sunshine outside.

“I’ll trouble some of you for my hat,” said Methuen, when the glare first blazed down on him; and then, as no one took any notice of the request, he lurched against the earless man with a sudden swerve, and knocked his sombrero on to the brown baked turf. “Well, I’ll have yours, you flea-ridden ladron,” said he; “it’s better than nothing at all. Pick up the foul thing, and shake it, and put it on my head.”

The guerilla bared his teeth like an animal, and drew a pistol. I thought he would have shot my comrade out of hand, and by his look I could see that Methuen expected it. Indeed, he had deliberately invited the man to that end. But, either because the nearness of Garcia and fear of his discipline stayed him, or through thought of a finer vengeance which was to come, the earless man contented himself by dealing a battery of kicks and oaths, and bidding our guards to ward us more carefully.

In this way, then, we walked along a path between two fields of vines, and passed down the straggling street of the village which the guerillas had occupied, and brought up in a little plaza which faced the white-walled chapel. In the turret a bell was tolling dolefully with slow strokes, and as the sound came to me through the heated air, it did not require much imagination to frame it into an omen. In the centre of the plaza was a vast magnolia tree, filled with scented wax-like flowers, and splashed with cones of coral-pink.

We drew up before the piazza of the principal house. Seated under its shade in a split-cane rocker, Garcia awaited us, a small, meagre, dark man, with glittering teeth, and fingers lemon-coloured from cigarette juice.

He stared at us and spat; and the trial, such as it was, began.

I must confess that the proceedings astonished me. Animus there certainly was; the guerillas as a whole were disposed to give us short shrift; but their chief insisted on at least some parade of justice. The indictment was set forward against us: We had shot, hanged, and harried, and in fact used all the harshness of war. Had we been Chilians in the Chilian Service, this might have been pardonable; but we were aliens from across the sea; mere freebooters, fighting, not for a country, but each for his own hand; and as such we were beyond the pale of military courtesy. We had earned a punishment. Had we any word to speak why this should not be given?

Garcia looked towards us expectantly, and then set himself to roll a fresh cigarette.

I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed useless to say anything.

Methuen said: “Look here, sir! You’ve got us, there is no mistake about that. It seems to me you’ve two courses before you, and they are these: Either, you can kill us, more or less barbarously, in which case you will raise a most pestilential hunt at your heels; or, you can put us up to ransom. Now neither Calvert here, nor myself, are rich men; but if you choose to let us go with sound skins, we’re prepared to pay ten thousand Chilian dollars apiece for our passports. Now, does that strike you?”

Garcia finished rolling his cigarette, and lit it with care. He inhaled a deep breath of smoke.

“SeÑor,” he said (the words coming out from between his white teeth with little puffs of vapour), “you do not appear to understand. You fight as a soldier of fortune, and I am merely in arms as a patriot. I am no huckster to traffic men’s lives for money, nor am I a timorous fool to be scared into robbing a culprit of his just dues.”

“Very well, then,” said Methuen, “murder the pair of us.”

Garcia smiled unpleasantly. “You may be a very brave man,” said he, “but you are not a judicious one. To a judge less just than myself this insolence might have added something to your punishment; but as it is I shall overlook what you have said, and only impose the penalty I had determined upon before you spoke.”

He lifted his thin yellow fingers, and drew a fresh breath of smoke. Then he waved the cigarette towards the magnolia tree in the centre of the plaza. “You see that bough which juts out towards the chapel?”

“It’s made for a gallows,” said Methuen.

“Precisely,” said the guerilla, “and it will be used as one inside ten minutes. I shall string one of you up by the neck, to dangle there between heaven and earth. The other man shall have a rifle and cartridges, and if, standing where he does now, he can cut with a bullet the rope with which his friend is hanged, then you shall both go free.”

“I hear you say it,” said Methuen. “In other words you condemn one of us to be strangled slowly without chance of reprieve. But what guarantee have we that you will not slit the second man’s throat after you have had your sport out of him?”

Garcia sprang to his feet with a stamp of passion, and the chair rolled over backwards. “You foul adventurer!” he cried. “You paid man-killer!” and then he broke off with a bitter “Pah!” and folded his arms, and for a minute held silence till he got his tongue in hand again. “SeÑor,” he said coldly, “my country’s wrongs may break my heart, but they can never make me break my word. I may be a hunted guerilla, but I still remain a gentleman.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Methuen.

“We will now,” continued Garcia icily, “find out which of you two will play which part. Afterwards I will add another condition which may lend more skill to what follows. I will not coerce you. Kindly choose between yourselves which of you will hang and which will shoot.”

My comrade shrugged his shoulders. “I like you, Calvert, old man,” said he, “but I’m not prepared to dance on nothing for you.”

“It would be simplest to toss for exit,” I said.

“Precisely; but, my dear fellow, I have both hands trussed up, and no coin.”

“Pray let me assist you,” said Garcia. “SeÑor Calvert, may I trouble you for an expression of opinion?”

He leant over the edge of the piazza, and span a dollar into the air. I watched it with a thumping heart, and when for an instant it paused, a dazzling splash of brightness against the red-tiled roof, I cried: “Heads!”

The coin fell with a faint thud in the dust a yard from my feet.

“Well?” said Methuen.

“I congratulate you, old fellow. I swing.”

He frowned and made no reply. Garcia’s voice broke the silence. “Bueno, SeÑor Methuen,” he said. “I advise you to shoot straight, or you will not get home even now. You remember I said there was still another condition. Well, here you are: you must cut your friend down with a bullet before he is quite dead, or I’ll string you up beside him.”

Methuen let up a short laugh. “Remember what I said about that fellow in ‘the Mikado,’ Calvert? You see where the ‘humour’ comes in? We’ve had that coin spun for nothing. You and I must change positions.”

“Not at all. I take what I’ve earned.”

“But I say yes. It works this way: I took it that the man who was hanging stood a delicate chance anyway, and I didn’t feel generous enough to risk it. But now the SeÑor here has put in the extra clause, the situation is changed altogether. You aren’t a brilliant shot, old man, but you may be able to cut me down with a bullet if you remember what you’re firing for, and shoot extra straight. But it’s a certain thing that I couldn’t do it if I blazed away till Doomsday. The utmost I could manage would be to fluke a pellet into your worthy self. So you see I must wear the hemp, and you must apply your shoulder to the rifle butt. Laugh, you fool,” he added in English. “Grin, and say something funny, or these brutes will think we care for them.”

But I was incapable of further speech. I could have gibed at the prospect of being hanged myself, but the horror of this other ordeal turned me sick and dumb. And at what followed I looked on mutely.

There was a well at one side of the plaza, and the earless man went and robbed the windlass of its rope. With clumsy landsman’s fingers he formed a noose, took it to the great magnolia tree, and threw the loose end over the projecting branch. The bell of the little white chapel opposite went on tolling gravely, and they marched my friend up to his fate over the sun-baked dust. They passed a thong round his ankles; the earless man fitted the noose to his throat; a dozen of the guerillas with shouts and laughter laid hold of the hauling part of the line; and then a voice from behind fell upon my ear. Garcia was speaking to me. With a strain I dragged my eyes away from the glare of the plaza, and listened. He was smiling wickedly.

“——, and so your pluck has oozed away?” he was saying, as the cigarette smoke billowed up from between the white walls of his teeth. “Well, of course, if you do not care for the game, you can throw up your hand at once. You’ve only to say the word, and you can be dangling on that bough there inside a couple of minutes. It’s quite strong enough to carry more fruit than it will bear just now. But it’s rather hard on your friend not to try——”

My wits came to me again. “You dolt!” I cried; “how can I shoot with my arms trussed up like this? If the whole thing is not a mockery, cut me adrift and give me a rifle.”

He beckoned to one of his men, and the fellow came up and cut off the lashings from my wrists and elbows; and then, with a sour smile, he motioned to some of the others, who drew near and held their weapons at the ready. “I dare wager, SeÑor Calvert,” he said, “that if you’d me for a mark you would not score a miss. So I wish to insure that you do not shoot in this direction.” He raised his voice, and shouted across the baking sunlight: “Quite ready here, amigos. So up with the target.”

Now up to this point I am free to own that since our capture I had cut a pretty poor figure. I had not whined, but at the same time I had not seen my way to put on Methuen’s outward show of careless brazen courage. But when I watched the guerillas tighten on the rope and sway him up till his stretched-out feet swung a couple of hand-spans above the ground, then my coolness returned to me, and my nerves set like icicles in their sockets. He was sixty yards away, and at that distance, the well-rope dwindled to the bigness of a shoemaker’s thread. Moreover, the upper two-thirds of it was almost invisible, because it hung before a background of shadows. But the eighteen inches above my poor friend’s head stood out clear and distinct against the white walls of the chapel beyond, and as it swayed to pulsing of the body beneath, it burnt itself upon my eyesight till all the rest of the world was blotted out in a red haze. I never knew before how thoroughly a man could concentrate himself.

They handed me the rifle, loaded and cocked. It was a single-shot Winchester, and I found out afterwards, though I did not know it then, that either through fiendish wish to further hamper my aim, or through pure forgetfulness, they had left the sights cocked up at three hundred yards. But that did not matter; the elevation was a detail of minor import; and besides, I was handling the weapon as a game shot fires, with head up, and eyes glued on the mark, and rifle-barrel following the eyes by instinct alone. You must remember that I had no stationary mark to aim at. My poor comrade was writhing and swaying at the end of his tether, and the well-rope swung hither and thither like some contorted pendulum.

Once I fired, twice I fired, six times, ten times, and still the rope remained uncut, and the bullets rattled harmlessly against the white walls of the chapel beyond. With the eleventh shot came the tinkle of broken glass, and the bell, after a couple of hurried nervous clangs, ceased tolling altogether. With the thirteenth shot a shout went up from the watching crowd. I had stranded the rope, and the body which dangled beneath the magnolia tree began slowly to gyrate.

Then came a halt in the firing. I handed the Winchester back to the fellow who was reloading, but somehow or other the exploded cartridge had jammed in the breach. I danced and raged before him in my passion of hurry, and the cruel brutes round yelled in ecstasies of merriment. Only Garcia did not laugh. He re-rolled a fresh cigarette, with his thin yellow fingers, and leisurely rocked himself in the split-cane chair. The man could not have been more unmoved if he had been overlooking a performance of Shakespeare.

At last I tore the Winchester from the hands of the fellow who was fumbling with it, and clawed at the jammed cartridge myself, breaking my nails and smearing the breech-lock with blood. If it had been welded into one solid piece, it could scarcely have been firmer. But the thrill of the moment gave my hands the strength of pincers. The brass case moved from side to side; it began to crumple; and I drew it forth and hurled it from me, a mere ball of shapeless, twisted metal. Then one of the laughing brutes gave me another cartridge, and once more I shouldered the loaded weapon.

The mark was easier now. The struggles of my poor friend had almost ceased, and though the well-rope still swayed, its movements were comparatively rhythmical, and to be counted upon. I snapped down the sights, put the butt-plate to my shoulder, and cuddled the stock with my cheek. Here for the first time was a chance of something steadier than a snap-shot.

I pressed home the trigger as the well-rope reached one extremity of its swing. Again a few loose ends sprang from the rope, and again the body began slowly to gyrate. But was it Methuen I was firing to save, or was I merely wasting shot to cut down a mass of cold dead clay?

I think that more agony was compressed for me into a few minutes then than most men meet with in a lifetime. Even the onlooking guerillas were so stirred that for the first time their gibing ceased, and two of them of their own accord handed me cartridges. I slipped one home and closed the breech-lock. The perspiration was running in a stream from my chin. Again I fired. Again the well-rope was snipped, and I could see the loosened strands ripple out as a snake unwraps itself from a branch.

One more shot. God in heaven, I missed! Why was I made to be a murderer like this?

Garcia’s voice came to me coldly. “Your last chance, SeÑor. I can be kept waiting here no longer. And I think you are wasting time. Your friend seems to have quitted us already.”

Another cartridge. I sank to one knee and rested my left elbow on the other. The plaza was hung in breathless silence. Every eye was strained to see the outcome of the shot. The men might be inhuman in their cruelty, but they were human enough in their curiosity.

The body span to one end of its swing: I held my fire. It swung back, and the rifle muzzle followed. Like some mournful pendulum it passed through the air, and then a glow of certainty filled me like a drink. I knew I could not miss that time; and I fired; and the body, in a limp and shapeless heap, fell to the ground.

With a cry I threw the rifle from me and raced across the sunlit dust. Not an arm was stretched out to stop me. Only when I had reached my friend and loosened that horrible ligature from his neck, did I hear voices clamouring over my fate.

“And now this other Inglese, your excellency,” the earless man said. “Shall we shoot him from here, or shall we string him up in the other’s place?”

But the answer was not what the fellow expected. Garcia replied to him in a shriek of passion. “You foul, slaughtering brute,” he cried, “another offer like that and I’ll pistol you where you stand. You heard me pass my word: do you dream that I could break it? They have had their punishment, and if we see one another again, the meeting will be none of my looking for. We leave this puebla in five minutes. See to your duties. Go.”

The words came to me dully through the heated air. I was almost mad with the thought that my friend was dead, and that the fault was mine, mine, mine alone!

I listened for his breaths; they did not come. I felt for a heart-throb; there was not so much as a flutter. His neck was seared by a ghastly ring. His face was livid. And yet I would not admit even then that he was dead. With a cry I seized his arms, and moved them first above his head till he looked like a man about to dive, and then clapped them against his sides, repeating this an infinite number of times, praying that the airs I drew through his lungs might blow against some smouldering spark of humanity, and kindle it once more into life.

The perspiration rolled from me; my mouth was as a sandpit; the heavy scent of the magnolia blossoms above sickened me with its strength; the sight departed from my eyes. I could see nothing beyond a small circle of the hot dust around, which waved and danced in the sunlight, and the little green lizards which came and looked at me curiously, and forgot that I was human.

And then, of a sudden, my comrade gave a sob, and his chest began to heave of itself without my laborious aid. And after that for a while I knew very little more. The sun-baked dust danced more wildly in the sunshine, the lizards changed to darker colours, the light went out, and when next I came to my senses Methuen was sitting up with one hand clutching at his throat, looking at me wildly.

“What has happened?” he gasped. “I thought I was dead, and Garcia had hanged me. Garcia——No one is here. The puebla seems deserted. Calvert, tell me.”

“They have gone,” I said. “We are alive. We will get away from here as soon as you can walk.”

He rose to his feet, swaying. “I can walk now. But what about you?”

“I am an old man,” I said, “wearily old. In the last two hours I have grown a hundred years. But I think I can walk also. Yes, look, I am strong. Lean on my arm. Do you see that broken window in the chapel? When I fired through that, the bell stopped tolling.”

“Let us go inside the chapel for a minute before we leave the village,” said Methuen. “We have had a very narrow escape, old man. I—I—feel thankful.”

There was a faint smell of incense inside that little white-walled chapel. The odour of it lingers by me still.