Part 1 (1/2)
The Wolf Cub.
by Patrick Casey.
CHAPTER I
When Jacinto Quesada was yet a very little Spaniard, his father kissed him upon both cheeks and upon the brow, and went away on an enterprise of forlorn desperation.
On a great rock at the brink of the village Jacinto Quesada stood with his weeping mother, and together they watched the somber-faced mountaineer hurry down the mountainside. He was bound for that hot, sandy No Man's Land which lies between the British outpost, Gibraltar, and sunburned, haggard, tragic Spain. The two dogs, Pepe and Lenchito, went with him. They were pointers, retrievers. For months they had been trained in the work they were to do. In all Spain there were no more likely dogs for smuggling contraband.
The village, where Jacinto Quesada lived with his peasant mother, was but a short way below the snow-line in the wild Sierra Nevada. Behind it the Picacho de la Veleta lifted its craggy head; off to the northeast bulked snowy old ”Muley Ha.s.san” Cerro de Mulhacen, the highest peak of the peninsula; and all about were the bleak spires of lesser mountains, boulder-strewn defiles, moaning dark gorges. The village was called Minas de la Sierra.
The mother took the little Jacinto by the hand and led him to the village chapel. She knelt before the dingy altar a long time. Then she lit a blessed candle and prayed again. And then she handed the wick dipped in oil to Jacinto and said:
”Light a candle for thy father, tiny one.”
”But why should I light a candle for our Juanito, _mamacita_?”
”It is that Our Lady of the Sorrows and the Great Pity will not let him be killed by the men of the _Guardia Civil_!”
”Men do not kill unless they hate. Do the men of the Guardia Civil hate, then, the _pobre padre_ of me and the sweet husband of thee, _mamacita_?”
”It is not the hate, child! The men of the Guardia Civil kill any breaker of the laws they discover guilty-handed. It is the way they keep the peace of Spain.”
”But our Juanito is not a lawbreaker, little mother. He is no _lagarto_, no lizard, no sly tricky one. He is an honest man.”
”Hush, _nino_! There are no honest men left in Spain. They all have starved to death. Thy father has become a _contrabandista_ And if it be the will of the good G.o.d, and if Pepe and Lenchito be shrewd to skulk through the shadows of night and swift to run past the policemen on watch, we will have sausages and _garbanzos_ to eat, and those little legs of thine will not be the puny reeds they are now. _Ojala!_ they will be round and pudgy with fat!”
The men of Minas de la Sierra were all woodchoppers and _manzanilleros_--gatherers of the white-flowered _manzanilla_. Their fathers had been woodchoppers and manzanilleros before them. But too persistently and too long, altogether too long, had the trees been cut down and the manzanilla harvested. The mountains had grown sterile, barren, bald. Not so many cords of Spanish pine were sledded down the mountain slopes as on a time; not so many men burdened beneath great loads of manzanilla went down into the city of Granada to sell in the market place that which was worth good silver pesetas.
There are no deer in the Sierra Nevada--neither red, fallow, nor roe.
There are no wild boar. There is only the Spanish ibex. And what poor _serrano_ can provision his good wife and his _cabana_ full of l.u.s.ty brats by hunting the Spanish ibex? He has but one weapon--the ancient muzzle-loading smooth-bore. And the ibex speeds like a chill glacial wind across the snow fields and craggy solitudes, and only a man armed with a cordite repeater can hope to bring him down.
Soon descended the mountains only men who had turned their backs upon Minas de la Sierra and who thought to leave behind forever the bleak peaks and the wind-swept gorges and the implacable hunger. Out of every ten only one crawled back, beaten and bruised by the savage Spanish cities and the savage Spanish plains. With those of Minas de la Sierra who could not tear themselves away from their native rocks, these broken-hearted ones continued on and with them slowly starved.
It was not the will of the good G.o.d that Jacinto Quesada should have fat pudgy legs by reason of his father's endeavors. Shrewd were the dogs, Pepe and Lenchito, but they were not so shrewd as were the Spanish police. Came a pale and stuttering _arriero_, a muleteer, up to the village one day. To Jacinto Quesada's mother he brought tragic news.
The men of the Guardia Civil had discovered poor Juanito as he was unbuckling a packet of Cuban cigars from the throat of the dog Lenchito; they had walked him out behind a sand dune; they had made him dig a grave. Then they had shot down Lenchito; then they had shot down Juan Quesada. And then the dog and the man were kicked together into the one grave and sand piled on top of them both.
But make no mistake, _mi senor caballero_ reader! The men of the Guardia Civil are not abominations of cruelty. They are not monsters, brutal and depraved. _Quita!_ no.
There are twenty-five thousand men in the Guardia Civil; twenty thousand foot and five thousand cavalry. By twos, eternally by twos, they go through Spain, exterminating crime wherever crime shows its fanged and evil head.
Every Spaniard is potentially a criminal. An empty belly goads him into lawlessness; his very nature greases his wayward feet. The Spaniard is by nature sullen, irascible, insolently independent, lawless. He is more African than European. p.r.i.c.k a Spaniard and a vindictive Moor bleeds.
Then, whether it be his famis.h.i.+ng hunger or lawless pa.s.sion which has caused him to rise above the law, the Spaniard, his crime writ in red, flees from the police. Spain is a country of uncouth wilds. There are the desolate high steppes and the savage mountains; there are the tawny _despoblados_, which are uninhabitated wastes; there are the _marismas_, which are labyrinthine everglades where whole regiments may lie concealed.
But also, in Spain, there are railroads and telegraphs, and a most efficient constabulary, the Guardia Civil. And, were it not for _Caciquismo_, all evil-doers would be speedily apprehended by the Guardia Civil, tried under the _alcaldes_, and incarcerated in the Carcel de la Corte or the Presidio of Ceuta.
Caciquismo is not a tangible thing. It is a secret and sinister influence. It is not the Tammany of New York; it is not the Camorra of Naples. Yet it resembles both these corrupt edifices in its special Spanish way. Its instruments are prime ministers and muleteers, members of the _cortes_ and bullfighters, hidalgos and low-caste Gitanos.
A _cacique_ may be only the mayor of a tiny hamlet; again, he may be privy councilor to the king. Yet high or low, he is but one of the many tentacles of a gigantic octopus which lays its clammy shadow athwart the land.