The other men in the car,knowing this to be a just reproof,laughed sardonically,and at the laugh the girl had looked up in surprise.Chesterton,seeing the look,understood that her act,trifling as it was,had been sincere,had been inspired simply by thought of his comfort.And he asked himself why young Miss Armitage should consider his comfort,and why the fact that she did consider it should make him so extremely happy.And he decided it must be because she loved him and he loved her.
Having arrived at that conclusion,he had asked her to marry him,and upon the match-box had marked the date and the hour.Since then she had given him many pretty presents,marked with her initials,marked with his crest,with strange cabalistic mottoes that meant nothing to any one save themselves.But the wooden matchbox was still the most valued of his possessions.
As he rode into the valley the rays of the moon fell fully upon him,and exposed him to the outpost as pitilessly as though he had been held in the circle of a search-light.
The bronzed Mausers pushed cautiously through the screen of vines.
There was a pause,and the rifle of the sergeant wavered.When he spoke his tone was one of disappointment.
"He is a scout,riding alone,"he said.
"He is an officer,"returned the sharp-shooter,excitedly."The others follow.We should fire now and give the signal."
"He is no officer,he is a scout,"repeated the sergeant."They have sent him ahead to study the trail and to seek us.He may be a league in advance.If we shoot HIM,we only warn the others."
Chesterton was within fifty yards.After an excited and anxious search he had found the match-box in the wrong pocket.The eyes of the sharp-shooter frowned along the barrel of his rifle.With his chin pressed against the stock he whispered swiftly from the corner of his lips,"He is an officer!I am aiming where the strap crosses his heart.You aim at his belt.We fire together."
The heat of the tropic night and the strenuous gallop had covered El Capitan with a lather of sweat.The reins upon his neck dripped with it.The gauntlets with which Chesterton held them were wet.
As he raised the matchbox it slipped from his fingers and fell noiselessly in the trail.With an exclamation he dropped to the road and to his knees,and groping in the dust began an eager search.
The sergeant caught at the rifle of the sharpshooter,and pressed it down.
"Look!"he whispered."He IS a scout.He is searching the trail for the tracks of our ponies.If you fire they will hear it a league away."
"But if he finds our trail and returns--"
The sergeant shook his head."I let him pass forward,"he said grimly."He will never return."
Chesterton pounced upon the half-buried matchbox,and in a panic lest he might again lose it,thrust it inside his tunic.
"Little do you know,El Capitan,"he exclaimed breathlessly,as he scrambled back into the saddle and lifted the pony into a gallop,"what a narrow escape I had.I almost lost it."
Toward midnight they came to a wooden bridge swinging above a ravine in which a mountain stream,forty feet below,splashed over half-hidden rocks,and the stepping stones of the ford.Even before the campaign began the bridge had outlived its usefulness,and the unwonted burden of artillery,and the vibrations of marching men had so shaken it that it swayed like a house of cards.
Threatened by its own weight,at the mercy of the first tropic storm,it hung a death trap for the one who first added to its burden.
No sooner had El Capitan struck it squarely with his four hoofs,than he reared and,whirling,sprang back to the solid earth.The suddenness of his retreat had all but thrown Chesterton,but he regained his seat,and digging the pony roughly with his spurs,pulled his head again toward the bridge.
"What are you shying at,now?"he panted."That's a perfectly good bridge."
For a minute horse and man struggled for the mastery,the horse spinning in short circles,the man pulling,tugging,urging him with knees and spurs.The first round ended in a draw.There were two more rounds with the advantage slightly in favor of El Capitan,for he did not approach the bridge.
The night was warm and the exertion violent.Chesterton,puzzled and annoyed,paused to regain his breath and his temper.Below him,in the ravine,the shallow waters of the ford called to him,suggesting a pleasant compromise.He turned his eyes downward and saw hanging over the water what appeared to be a white bird upon the lower limb of a dead tree.He knew it to be an orchid,an especially rare orchid,and he knew,also,that the orchid was the favorite flower of Miss Armitage.In a moment he was on his feet,and with the reins over his arm,was slipping down the bank,dragging El Capitan behind him.He ripped from the dead tree the bark to which the orchid was clinging,and with wet moss and grass packed it in his leather camera case.The camera he abandoned on the path.He always could buy another camera;he could not again carry a white orchid,plucked in the heart of the tropics on the night peace was declared,to the girl he left behind him.Followed by El Capitan,nosing and snuffing gratefully at the cool waters,he waded the ford,and with his camera case swinging from his shoulder,galloped up the opposite bank and back into the trail.
A minute later,the bridge,unable to recover from the death blow struck by El Capitan,went whirling into the ravine and was broken upon the rocks below.Hearing the crash behind him,Chesterton guessed that in the jungle a tree had fallen.
They had started at six in the afternoon and had covered twenty of the forty miles that lay between Adhuntas and Mayaguez,when,just at the outskirts of the tiny village of Caguan,El Capitan stumbled,and when he arose painfully,he again fell forward.