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Starr, of the Desert, a novel by B. M. Bower |
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Chapter 21. Through The Open Skylight |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. THROUGH THE OPEN SKYLIGHT
"I have here," he began in the sonorous voice and the measured enunciation of the trained orator, "a letter from our esteemed--and unfortunate--comrade and fellow worker, Elfigo Apodaca. Without taking your valuable time by reading the letter through from salutation to signature, I may say briefly that its context is devoted to our cause and to the inconvenience which may be entailed because of our comrade's present incarceration, the duration of which is as yet undetermined. "Comrade Apodaca expresses great confidence in his ultimate release. He maintains that young Medina is essentially a traitor, and that his evidence at the preliminary hearing was given purely in the spirit of revenge. That Comrade Apodaca will be exonerated fully of the charge of murder, I myself can entertain no scintilla of doubt. We may therefore dismiss from our minds any uneasiness we may, some of us, have entertained on that score. "The question we are foregathered here to decide to-night is whether the date set for our public demonstration shall remain as it stands; whether we shall seek permission to postpone that date, or whether it shall be deemed expedient to set it forward to the earliest possible moment. As you all are doubtless aware, our esteemed compatriots in Mexico are ready and waiting our pleasure, like hounds straining at the leash. The work of organization on this side of the line has of necessity been slow, because of various adverse influences and a slothful desire for present ease and safety, which we have been constrained to combat. Also the accumulation of arms and ammunition in a sufficient quantity for our purpose without exciting suspicion has required much tactful manipulation. "But we have here assembled the trusted representatives from our twelve districts in the State, and I trust that each one of you has come prepared to furnish this Junta with the data necessary for an intelligent action upon the question we have to decide to-night. Am I right, gentlemen, in that assumption?" Eleven men nodded assent and looked down at the slips of paper they had produced from inner pockets and held ready in their hands. "Then I shall ask you, compadres, to listen carefully to the report from each district, so that you may judge the wisdom of foreshortening the interval between to-night and the date set for the uprising. "Each representative will give the number, in his district, of armed members of the Alliance; the amount of ammunition at hand; the number of agents secretly occupying positions of trust where they can give the most aid to the movement; the number of Spanish-Americans who, like our unfortunate neighbor, Estancio Medina, have refused thus far to come into the Alliance; the number, in his district, who may be counted upon to come in, once they see that the cause is not hopeless; who may be expected to take the purely American side, and who may be safely depended upon to remain neutral. I shall ask each of you to tell us also the extent and nature of such opposition as your district must be prepared to meet. There has been a rumor of some preparation for resistance to our movement, and we shall want to know all that you can tell us of that phase of the situation as observed in your district. "These seemingly unimportant details are absolutely essential, gentlemen of the Junta. For in this revolutionary movement you must bear in mind that brother will rise up against brother, as it were. You will be called upon, perchance, to slay the dearest friend of your school days; your neighbor, if so be he is allied against you when the great day comes. We must not weaken; we must keep our eyes fixed upon the ultimate good that will come out of the turmoil. But we must know! We must not make the irretrievable error of taking anything for granted. Keeping that in mind, gentlemen, we will hear first the report from Bernalillo district." A man at the right of Sommers unfolded his little slip of paper, cleared his throat and began, in strongly accented English, to read. The eleven who listened leaned forward, elbows on the table, and drank in the terrible figures avidly. Sommers set down the figures in columns and made notes on the pad before him, his lips pressed together in a straight line that twisted now and then with a sinister kind of satisfaction. "That, gentlemen, is how the Cause stands in the county that has the largest population and approximately the smallest area of any county in the State. While this report is not altogether new to me, yet I am struck anew with the great showing that has been made in that county. With the extensive yards and shops of the Santa Fe at Albuquerque seized and held by our forces, together with the junction points and--" Starr did not wait to hear any more, but edged hastily back to the pole and began to climb down as though a disturbed hornets' nest hung above him. The report that had so elated Sommers sent a chill down Starr's back. If one county could show so appalling an insurrectory force, what of the whole State? Yes, and the other States involved! And the thing might be turned loose at any time! He dropped to the ground, sending a scared glance for the watchman who had gone to the fire. He was nowhere to be seen, and Starr, running to the rear of the lot, skirted the high wall at a trot; crossed a narrow, black alley, hurried down behind the next lots to the cross street, walked as fast as he dared to the next corner, turned into the main street, and made for the nearest public telephone booth. He sweated there in the glass cage for a long ten minutes before he had managed to get in touch with Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, and to tell each in turn what he wanted and where they must meet him, and how many minutes they might have to do it in. He came out feeling as though he had been in there an hour, and went straight to the rendezvous he had named, which was a shed near the building of _Las Nuevas_, only on another street. They came, puffing a little and a good deal mystified. Starr, not daring to state his real business with them, had asked for men to surround and take a holdup gang. All told, there were six of them when all had arrived, and they must have been astounded at what Starr told them in a prudent undertone and speaking swiftly. They did not say anything much, but slipped away after him and came to the high wall that hid so much menace. "There was a hombre on guard across the street," Starr told the sheriff. "He went off to the fire, but he's liable to come back. Put a man over there in the shade of that junk shop to watch out for him and nab him before he can give the alarm. This is ticklish work, remember. Any Mexican in town would knife you if he knew what you're up to. "Johnson, you can climb the pole and pull down on 'em through the skylight, but wait till you see by their actions that they've got the tip something's wrong, and don't shoot if you can help it. Remember this is Secret Service work, and the quieter it's done, the better pleased they'll be in Washington. There can't be any hullabaloo at all. You two fellows watch the front and back gates, and the no-shooting rule goes with you, too. If there's anything else you can do, don't shoot. But it's better to fire a cannon than let a man get away. Sabe? Now, Chief, you and the sheriff can come with me, and we'll bust up the meetin' for 'em." He went up on the shoulder of the man who was to watch outside the rear wall, and straddled the wall for a brief reconnoiter. Evidently the Junta felt safe in their hidden little room, for no guard had been left in the yard. The back door was locked, and Starr opened it as silently as he could with his pass key. Close behind him came Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, whose name was Whittier. They had left their shoes beside the doorstep and walked in their socks, making no noise at all. Starr did not dare use his searchlight, but felt his way down past the press and the forms, to where the stairs went up to the second floor. On the third step from the bottom, Starr, feeling his way with his hands, touched a dozing watchman and choked him into submission before the fellow had emitted more than a sleepy grunt of surprise. They left him gagged and tied to the iron leg of some heavy piece of machinery, and went on up the stairs, treading as stealthily as a prowling cat. Starr turned to the right, found the door locked, and patiently turned his key a hair's breadth at a time in the lock, until he slid the bolt back. Behind him the repressed breathing of O'Malley fanned warmly the back of his neck. He pushed the door open a half inch at a time, found the outer office dark and silent, and crossed it stealthily to the closet behind the stove. O'Malley and Whittier were so close behind that he could feel them as they entered the closet and crept along its length. Starr was reaching out before him with his hands, feeling for the door into the secret office, when Sheriff O'Malley struck his foot against the old tin spittoon, tried to cover the sound, and ran afoul of the brooms, which tripped him and sent him lurching against Starr. There in that small space where everything had been so deathly still the racket was appalling. O'Malley was not much given to secret work; he forgot himself now and swore just as full-toned and just as fluently as though be had tripped in the dark over his own wheelbarrow in his own back yard. Starr threw himself against the end of the closet where he knew the door was hidden in the wall, felt the yielding of a board, and heaved against it with his shoulder. He landed almost on top of a fat-jowled representative from Santa Fe, but he landed muzzle foremost, as it were, and he was telling the twelve to put up their hands even before he had his feet solidly planted on the floor. Holman Sommers sat facing him. He had been writing, and he still held his pencil in his hand. He slowly crumpled the sheet of paper, his vivid eyes lifted to Starr's face. Tragic eyes they were then, for beyond Starr they looked into the stern face of the government he would have defied. They looked upon the wreck of his dearest dream; upon the tightening chains of the wage slaves he would have freed--or so he dreamed. Starr stared back, his own mind visioning swiftly the havoc he had wrought in the dream of this leader of men. He saw, not a political outlaw caught before he could do harm to his country, but a man fated to bear in his great brain an idea born generations too soon into a brawling world of ideas that warred always with sordid circumstance. A hundred years hence this man might be called great. Now he was nothing more than a political outlaw chief, trapped with his band of lesser outlaws. Sommers' eyes lightened impishly. His thin lips twisted in a smile at the damnable joke which Life was playing there in that room. "Gentlemen of the Junta," he said in his sonorous, public-platform voice, "I find it expedient, because of untoward circumstances, to advise that you make no resistance. From the unceremonious and unheralded entry of our esteemed opponents, these political prostitutes who have had the effrontery to come here in the employ of a damnable system of political tyranny and frustrate our plans for the liberation of our comrades in slavery, I apprehend the fact that we have been basely betrayed by some foul Judas among us. I am left with no alternative but to advise that you surrender your bodies to these minions of what they please to call the law. "Whether we part now, to spend the remaining years of our life in some foul dungeon; whether to die a martyr's death on the scaffold, or whether the workers of the land awake to their power and, under some wiser, stronger leadership, liberate us to enjoy the fruits of the harvest we have but sown, I cannot attempt to prophesy. We have done what we could for our fellowmen. We have not failed, for though we perish, yet our blood shall fructify what we have sown, that our sons and our sons' sons may reap the garnered grain. Gentlemen, of the Junta, I declare our meeting adjourned!" Starr's eyes were troubled, but his gun did not waver. It pointed straight at the breast of Holman Sommers, who looked at him measuringly when he had finished speaking. "I can't argue about the idea back of this business," Starr said gravely. "All I can do is my duty. Put on these handcuffs, Mr. Sommers. They stand for something you ain't big enough to lick--yet." "Certainly," said Holman Sommers composedly. "You put the case like a philosopher. Like a philosopher I yield to the power which, I grant you, we are not big enough to lick--yet. In behalf of our Cause, however, permit me to call your attention to the fact that we might have come nearer to victory, had you not discovered and interrupted this meeting to-night." Though his face was paler than was natural, he slipped on the manacles as matter-of-factly as he would have put on clean cuffs, and rose from his chair prepared to go where Starr directed. "No, sit down again," said Starr brusquely. "Sheriff, gather up all those pieces of paper for evidence against these men, and give them to me. Give me a receipt for the men--I'll wait for it. I want you and Chief Whittier to hold them here in this room till I come back. I won't be long--half an hour, maybe." He took the slips of paper which the sheriff folded and handed to him, and slipped them into his pocket. He was gone a little longer than he said, for he had some trouble in locating the railroad official he wanted, and in convincing that sleepy official that he was speaking for the government when he demanded an engine and day coach to be placed on a certain dark siding he mentioned, ready for a swift night run to El Paso and a little beyond--to Fort Bliss, in fact. He got it, trust Starr for that! And he was only twenty minutes behind the time he had named, though the sheriff and the chief of police betrayed a nervous relief when he walked in upon them and announced that he was ready now to move the prisoners. They untied the terrified watchman and added him to the group. In the dark, and by way of vacant lots and unlighted streets, he took them to a certain point where an engine had just backed a single, unlighted day coach on to a siding and stood there with air-pump wheezing and the engineer crawling around beneath with his oil can. By the rear steps of the coach a mystified conductor stood waiting with his lantern hidden under his coat. A big man was the conductor; once a policeman and therefore with a keen nose--don't laugh!--for mysteries. He wore a satisfied look when he saw the men that were being hustled into the car. His uniform tightened as he swelled with the importance of his mission. He nodded to Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, cast an obliquely curious glance at Starr, who stayed on the ground, and when Starr gave the word he swung his lantern to the watching fireman, and caught the handrail beside the steps. "Fort Bliss it is; and there won't nothing stop us, buh-lieve me!" he muttered confidentially to Starr, whom he recognized only as the man who stood behind the mystery. The engine began to creep forward, and he swung up to the lower step. "We may go in the ditch or something; but we'll get there, you listen to me!" "Go to it, and good luck," said Starr, but there was no heartiness in his voice. He stood with his thumbs hooked inside his gun-belt and watched the coach that held the peace of the country within its varnished walls go sliding out of the yard, its green tail lights the only illumination anywhere behind the engine. When it had clicked over the switch and was picking up speed for its careening flight south through the cool hours of early morning, he gave a sigh that had no triumph in it, and turned away toward his cabin. "Well, there goes the revolution," he said somberly to himself. "And here I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I've got to do, hell would be a picnic!" _ |
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