'A millionaire in disguise!' Henry twitted.
'Where do you deposit?' was Leoncia's contribution. 'In the Chemical National Bank?'
The peon did not understand the allusions, but knew that he was being made fun of, and drew himself up in proud silence.
The stern leader spoke:
'From this point you may now go your various ways. The Just One has so commanded. You, senors, will dismount and turn over to me your mules. As for the senorita, she may retain her mule as a present from the Just One, who would not care to be responsible for compelling any senorita to walk. The two senors, without hardship, may walk. Especially has the Just One recommended walking for the rich senor. The possession of riches, he advised, leads to too little walking. Too little walking leads to stoutness; and stoutness does not lead to the woman wonderful. Such is the wisdom of the Just One.
'Further, he has repeated his advice to the peon to remain in the mountains. In the mountains he will find his woman wonderful, since woman he must have; and it is wisest that such woman be of his own breed. The woman of the tierra caliente are for the men of the tierra caliente. The Cordilleras women are for the Cordilleras men. God dislikes mixed breeds. A mule is abhorrent under the sun. The world was not intended for mixed breeds, but man has made for himself many inventions. Pure races interbred leads to impurity. Neither will oil nor water congenially intermingle. Since kind begets kind, only kind should mate. Such are the words of the Just One which I have repeated as commanded. And he has especially impressed upon me to add that he knows whereof he speaks, for he, too, has sinned in just such ways.'
And Henry and Francis, of Anglo-Saxon stock, and Leoncia of the Latin, knew perturbation and embarrassment as the vicarious judgment of the Blind Brigand sank home. And Leoncia, with her splendid eyes of woman, would have appealed protest to either man she loved, had the other been absent; while both Henry and Francis would have voiced protest to Leoncia had either of them been alone with her. And yet, under it all, deep down, uncannily, was a sense of the correctness of the Blind Brigand's thought. And heavily, on the heart of each, rested the burden of the conscious oppression of sin.
A crashing and scrambling in the brush diverted their train of thought, as descending the canyon slope on desperately slipping and sliding horses, appeared on the scene the haciendado with several followers. His greeting of the daughter of the Solanos was hidalgo-like and profound, and only less was the heartiness of his greeting to the two men for whom Enrico Solano had stood sponsor.
'Where is your noble father?' he asked Leoncia. 'I have good news for him. In the week since I last saw you, I have been sick with fever and encamped. But by swift messengers, and favoring winds across Chiriqui Lagoon to Bocas del Toro, I have used the government wireless the Jefe of Bocas del Toro is my friend and have communicated with the President of Panama who is my ancient comrade whose nose I rubbed as often in the dirt as did he mine in the boyhood days when we were schoolmates and cubicle-mates together at Colon. And the word has come back that all is well; that justice has miscarried in the court at San Antonio from the too great but none the less worthy zeal of the Jefe Politico; and that all is forgiven, pardoned, and forever legally and politically forgotten against all of the noble Solano family and their two noble Gringo friends-'
Here, the haciendado bowed low to Henry and Francis. And here, skulking behind Leoncia's uncle, his eyes chanced to light on the peon; and, so lighting, his eyes blazed with triumph.
'Mother of God, fhou has net forgotten me!' he breathed fervently, then turned to the several friends who accompanied him. 'There he is, the creature without reason or shame who has fled his debt of me. Seize him! I shall put him on his back for a month from the beating he shall receive!'
So speaking, the haciendado sprang around the rump of Leoncia's mule; and the peon, ducking under the mule's nose, would have won to the freedom of the jungle, had not another of the haciendados, with quick spurs to his horse's sides, cut him off and run him down. In a trice, used to just such work, the haciendados had the luckless wight on his feet, his hands tied behind him, a lead-rope made fast around his neck.
In one voice Francis and Henry protested.
'Senors,' the haciendado replied, 'my respect and consideration and desire to serve you are as deep as for the noble Solano family under whose protection you are. Your safety and comfort are sacred to me. I will defend you from harm with my life. I am yours to command. My hacienda is yours, likewise all T possess. But this matter of this peon is entirely another matter. He is none of yours. He is my peon, in my debt, who has run away from my hacienda. You will understand and forgive me, I trust. This is a mere matter of property. He is my property.'
Henry and Francis glanced at each other in mutual perplexity and indecision. It was the law of the land, as they thoroughly knew.
'The Cruel Just One did remit my debt, as all here will witness,' the peon whispered.
'It is true, the Cruel Justice remitted his debt,' Leoncia verified.
The haciendado smiled and bowed low.
'But the peon contracted with me,' he smiled. 'And who is the Blind Brigand that his foolish law shall operate on my plantation and rob me of my rightful two hundred and fifty pesos?'
'He's right, Leoncia,' Henry admitted.
'Then will I go back to the high Cordilleras,' the peon asserted. 'Oh, you men of the Cruel Just One, take me back to the Cordilleras.'
But the stern leader shook his head.
'Here you were released. Our orders went no further. No further jurisdiction have we over you. We shall now bid farewell and depart.'
'Hold on!' Francis cried, pulling out his check book and beginning to write. 'Wait a moment. I must settle for this peon now. Next, before you depart, I have a favor to ask of you.'
He passed the check to the haciendado, saying:
'I have allowed ten pesos for the exchange.'
The haciendado glanced at the check, folded it away in his pocket, and placed the end of the rope around the wretched creature's neck in Francis' hand.
'The peon is now yours,' he said.
Francis looked at the rope and laughed.
'Behold! I now own a human chattel. Slave, you are mine, my property now, do you understand?'
'Yes, Senor,' the peon muttered humbly. 'It seems, when I became mad for the woman I gave up my freedom for, that God destined me always afterward to— be the property of some man. The Cruel Just One is right. It is God's punishment for mating outside my race.'
'You made a slave of yourself for what the world has always considered the best of all causes, a woman,' Francis observed, cutting the thongs that bound the peon's hands. 'And so, I make a present of you to yourself.' So saying, he placed the neck-rope in the peon's hand. 'Henceforth, lead yourself, and put not that rope in any man's hand.'
While the foregoing had been taking place, a lean old man, on foot, had noiselessly joined the circle. Maya Indian he was, pure-blooded, with ribs that corrugated plainly through his parchment — like skin. Only a breechclout covered his nakedness. His unkempt hair hung in dirty — gray tangles about his face, which was high-cheeked, and emaciated to cadaverousness. Strings of muscles showed for his calves and biceps. A few scattered snags of teeth were visible between his withered lips. The hollows under his cheek-bones were prodigious. While his eyes, beads of black, deep-sunk in their sockets, burned with the wild light of a patient in fever.
He slipped eel-like through the circle and clasped the peon in his skeleton-like arms.
'He is my father,' proclaimed the peon proudly. 'Look at him. He is pure Maya, and he knows the secrets of the Mayas.'
And while the two re-united ones talked endless explanations, Francis preferred his request to the sackcloth leader to find Enrico Solano and his two sons, wandering somewhere in the mountains, and to tell them that they were free of all claims of the law and to return home.
'They have done no wrong?' the leader demanded. 'No; they have done no wrong,' Francis assured him. 'Then it is well. I promise you to find them immediately, for we know the direction of their wandering, and to send them down to the coast to join you.'
'And in the meantime shall you be my guests while you wait,' the haciendado invited eagerly. 'There is a freight schooner at anchor in Juchitan Inlet now oS my plantation, and sailing for San Antonio. I can hold her until the noble Enrico and his sons come down from the Cordilleras.'
