Part 29 (1/2)
”That I can't tell. But I believe in the invariable triumph of right, no matter how great the odds against it may seem.”
”Let right triumph, after we're buried,” continued Harry, ”and what good would it do us?”
”None, in any ordinary material sense. Yet good would come to the world through our fate, even if only in proclaiming, once more, the sure defeat of all wicked plans in the end.”
Harry said no more, just then. Tom Reade, who ordinarily was intensely practical, was also the kind of young man who could perish for an ideal, if need be. Tom went outside, stretching himself on the gra.s.s under a tree. He sighed for a book, but there was none, so he lay staring off over the valley below.
Twenty minutes later Harry, after trying vainly to take a nap on a cot in the tent, followed his chum outside.
”Odd, isn't it, Tom?” questioned Hazelton. ”We're living what looks like a wholly free life. Nothing to prevent us from tramping anywhere we please on these hills, and yet we know to a certainty that we wouldn't be able to get twenty miles from here before soldiers would have us nabbed, and marching away to a prison from which, very likely, no one in the outside world would ever hear of us again.”
”It is queer,” agreed Tom, nodding. ”Oh, just for one glimpse of Yankee soil!”
”Twice,” went on Harry, ”we've even persuaded Nicolas to bribe some native to take a letter from us, to be mailed at some distant point. After two or three days Don Luis, in each instance, has come here, and, with a smile, has shown us our own intercepted letter. Yet Nicolas has been honest in the matter, beyond a doubt.
It is equally past question that the native whom Nicolas has trusted and paid has made an honest attempt to get away and post our letter; but always the cunning of a Montez overtakes the trusted messenger.”
”And one can only guess what has happened to the messengers,”
Tom said, soberly. ”Undoubtedly both of the two poor fellows are now pa.s.sing the days _incommunicado_. It makes a fellow a bit heartsick, doesn't it, chum, to think of the probable fates of two men who have tried to serve us. And what, in the end, is to be the fate of poor little Nicolas? Don Luis Montez is not the sort of man to forgive him his fidelity to us.”
”And where's Nicolas, all this time?” suddenly demanded Harry, glancing at his watch. ”Why, the fellow hasn't been here for three hours! Where can he be?”
”_Quien sabe_?” responded Reade, using the common Spanish question, given with a shrug, which means, ”Who knows! Who can guess?”
”Can Nicolas have fallen into any harm?” asked Hazelton, a new note of alarm in his voice. ”The poor, faithful little fellow!
It gives me a s.h.i.+ver to think of his suffering an injury just because he serves us so truly.”
”I shall be interested in seeing him get back,” Tom nodded thoughtfully.
”And I'm beginning to have a creepy feeling that he won't come back!” cried Harry. ”He may at this moment be past human aid, Tom, and that may be but the prelude to our own craftily-planned destruction.”
Tom Reade sat up, leaning on one elbow, as he regarded his chum with an odd smile.
”Harry,” Tom uttered, dryly, ”we certainly have no excuse for being blue when we have such rosy thoughts to cheer us up!”
”Hang Mexico!” grunted Hazelton.
CHAPTER XVII
THE STRANGER IN THE TENT
By and by Tom Reade began to grow decidedly restless. He would sit up, look and listen, and then lie down again. Then he would fidget about nervously, all of which was most unusual with him, for Reade's was one of those strong natures that will endure work day and night as long as is necessary, and then go in for complete rest when there is nothing else to do.
Harry did not observe this, for he had gone back into the tent.
Two sheets of a Mexican newspaper had come wrapped around one of Nicolas's last food purchases. Hazelton was reading the paper slowly by way of improving his knowledge of Spanish.
At last Tom called, in a low voice: