A Charmed Life | Page 7

of
his retreat had all but thrown Chesterton, but he regained his seat, and
digging the pony roughly with his spurs, pulled his head again toward
the bridge.
"What are you shying at, now?" he panted. "That's a perfectly good

bridge."
For a minute horse and man struggled for the mastery, the horse
spinning in short circles, the man pulling, tugging, urging him with
knees and spurs. The first round ended in a draw. There were two more
rounds with the advantage slightly in favor of El Capitan, for he did not
approach the bridge.
The night was warm and the exertion violent. Chesterton, puzzled and
annoyed, paused to regain his breath and his temper. Below him, in the
ravine, the shallow waters of the ford called to him, suggesting a
pleasant compromise. He turned his eyes downward and saw hanging
over the water what appeared to be a white bird upon the lower limb of
a dead tree. He knew it to be an orchid, an especially rare orchid, and
he knew, also, that the orchid was the favorite flower of Miss Armitage.
In a moment he was on his feet, and with the reins over his arm, was
slipping down the bank, dragging El Capitan behind him. He ripped
from the dead tree the bark to which the orchid was clinging, and with
wet moss and grass packed it in his leather camera case. The camera he
abandoned on the path. He always could buy another camera; he could
not again carry a white orchid, plucked in the heart of the tropics on the
night peace was declared, to the girl he left behind him. Followed by El
Capitan, nosing and snuffing gratefully at the cool waters, he waded the
ford, and with his camera case swinging from his shoulder, galloped up
the opposite bank and back into the trail.
A minute later, the bridge, unable to recover from the death blow struck
by El Capitan, went whirling into the ravine and was broken upon the
rocks below. Hearing the crash behind him, Chesterton guessed that in
the jungle a tree had fallen.
They had started at six in the afternoon and had covered twenty of the
forty miles that lay between Adhuntas and Mayaguez, when, just at the
outskirts of the tiny village of Caguan, El Capitan stumbled, and when
he arose painfully, he again fell forward.
Caguan was a little church, a little vine-covered inn, a dozen one- story
adobe houses shining in the moonlight like whitewashed sepulchres.
They faced a grass-grown plaza, in the centre of which stood a great
wooden cross. At one corner of the village was a corral, and in it many
ponies. At the sight Chesterton gave a cry of relief. A light showed
through the closed shutters of the inn, and when he beat with his whip

upon the door, from the adobe houses other lights shone, and
white-clad figures appeared in the moonlight. The landlord of the inn
was a Spaniard, fat and prosperous-looking, but for the moment his
face was eloquent with such distress and misery that the heart of the
young man, who was at peace with all the world, went instantly out to
him. The Spaniard was less sympathetic. When he saw the khaki suit
and the campaign hat he scowled, and ungraciously would have closed
the door. Chesterton, apologizing, pushed it open. His pony, he
explained, had gone lame, and he must have another, and at once. The
landlord shrugged his shoulders. These were war times, he said, and the
American officer could take what he liked. They in Caguan were
noncombatants and could not protest. Chesterton hastened to reassure
him. The war, he announced, was over, and were it not, he was no
officer to issue requisitions. He intended to pay for the pony. He
unbuckled his belt and poured upon the table a handful of Spanish
doubloons. The landlord lowered the candle and silently counted the
gold pieces, and then calling to him two of his fellow-villagers, crossed
the tiny plaza and entered the corral.
"The American pig," he whispered, "wishes to buy a pony. He tells me
the war is over; that Spain has surrendered. We know that must be a lie.
It is more probable he is a deserter. He claims he is a civilian, but that
also is a lie, for he is in uniform. You, Paul, sell him your pony, and
then wait for him at the first turn in the trail, and take it from him."
"He is armed," protested the one called Paul.
"You must not give him time to draw his revolver," ordered the
landlord. "You and Pedro will shoot him from the shadow. He is our
country's enemy, and it will be in a good cause. And