The naming of Sebastien brought the second piece of news. “That reminds me—you almost had him for a fellow traveler. I forwarded a cable message last night that his mother had died in France. I rather thought that he’d be in for this train.”
“Then she is coming back?”
Seyd meant Francesca. But Peters misunderstood. “Yes, they’ve shipped her by a German line that runs to Havana and Vera Cruz. By mistake the cable was sent to another Rocha somewhere up in Sinaloa, and, being a Mexican, he slept on it a week before replying that his mother was there, quite lively and frisky at home. So it arrived here ten days late—long enough to put Miss Francesca and her mother into Vera Cruz. Yes, the señora was there—had just joined them—luckily, for death is too grim a thing for a young girl to face by herself.” Just then the train drew into the station, and as Seyd climbed on, he added: “If you could find time to pass the word on to Don Luis he’d surely appreciate it. He puts up at the Iturbide.”
Seyd’s nod was purely automatic, for the news had loosed once more bitter tides which had lain dormant these last few months under the weight of his business cares. Unconscious, too, of the import that events would presently give to such apparently trivial consent, he nodded again when Peters asked permission to look through a batch of American papers which had come for him by yesterday’s mail.
For that matter, it would have been difficult to discern anything unusual or alarming in the spectacle of Peters as he sat in his office after the departure of the train, heels on the table and chair comfortably tilted, while he slit, one after the other, the covers of Seyd’s papers. Yet while he smoked and read his way down through the pile he unconsciously but surely prepared the way for the event which was approaching at the top speed of Sebastien’s horse. Had he read, or Sebastien ridden, a little faster or slower things had gone differently. But, just as though it had been predoomed and destined, eyes and hoofs kept perfect time. Just as Peters opened Seyd’s Albuquerque paper Sebastien walked in.
“Left—an hour ago.” Yawning, Peters laid down the Albuquerque paper on top of the pile, and as the train usually ran from two to twelve hours late three hundred and sixty-five days in the year he lent a sympathetic ear to Sebastien’s vitriolic curses.
“I can wire for a special,” he suggested. “They could send an engine and car down from Cuernavaca in little more than an hour.”
“If you will be so kind, señor.”
In all Guerrero, Peters was the one gringo with whom Sebastien was on speaking terms, and he now accepted both a cigar and a paper to while away the time. After one glance had shown it to be a gringo sheet he would have cast it aside, but the one word “Mexico!” in scare heads caught his eye. Setting forth the international complications that were likely to come from the lynching of a Mexican in Arizona, it held his interest. He not only read it to the bottom of the column, but followed over to the next page, upon which heavy ink lines had been scored around a local article.
As the heading caught his eye he started, looked again, then bent over the paper and read to the end. For a few seconds thereafter he sat thinking. A stealthy glance showed Peters at the key clicking off the call for the special. Quietly folding the paper, he slid it beneath his coat.
XVII
With Seyd and his cargo of reflections aboard, the train meanwhile puffed steadily up the four percent grades which carry the railway eleven thousand feet high to the shoulder of the old giant volcano, Ajuasoa. While he stared out of the window the vivid panorama of the hot country, the green seas of corn or cane which surged around white-walled haciendas, the chocolate peons behind their wooden plows, and the pretty brown girls at the stations gradually gave place to volcanic lava fields and gloomy woods of piñon, and these again merged into the innumerable hamlets which spread brown adobe skirts around Mexico City unseen by him.
“She is coming back! She is coming back!” It ran all the while in his mind, and formed the undertone of his conversation with Don Luis in the patio of the Iturbide that evening. When the old man stated his intention of taking the night train down to the Gulf it was only by a powerful effort that Seyd avoided the lunacy of offering to accompany him. All that night he burned in a flame of feeling, and as a consequence he rose tired out and presented such a picture of meekness when ushered into the office of the general manager, one so opposite to the usual fiery mien of the wronged shipper, that the stony heart of the official was melted within him.
“You certainly have a kick coming,” he admitted. “A big one, at that. I’ll look into this myself, and if you’ll please return at four I hope to have news of your freight.”
In their passage down through the departments, however, his inquiries soon came to a stop. “So this is the fellow who has been bucking old General García in the Barranca de Guerrero?” he commented to his third assistant; and his further remarks were equally enlightening. “Well, politics are politics, but this has gone far enough. I like the boy’s looks, and this railroad isn’t going to be used to fight the General’s battles any longer. After this, Mr. Chávez, see that Mr. Seyd gets his freight. Where is that last car?”
The third assistant’s shoulders executed the Latin equivalent of “Search me!” At last news, peon “brakies” on the Nacional had been using it as a roller coaster on the mountain
