The Firebrand

"Only for a moment, Señorita, permit me – there! The Señorita goes up like a bird! Now wait till I take her head, and beware of jerking the rein hastily on account of the delicacy of the little lady's mouth. So, La Perla, – gently and daintily! Consider, jewel of mares, what a precious burden is now on thy back!"

"A moment, only a moment!" cried Concha, her hands apparently busy about her hair, "this rebozo is no headgear to ride in. What shall I do? A handkerchief is not large enough. Ah, Cavallero, add to your kindness by lending me your boina! I thank you a thousand times! There! Is that so greatly amiss?"

And she set the red boina daintily upon her hair, pulling the brim sideways to shade her eyes from the level evening sun, and smiled down at the young man who stood at her side.

"Perfect! Beautiful!" cried the young Vitorian, clasping his hands. "The sight would set on fire the heart of Don Carlos himself. Ah, take care! Bear easily on that rein. Stop, La Perla! Stop! I beseech you!"

And he started running with all his might. Alas, in vain! For the wicked Concha, the moment that he had stepped back to take in the effect of the red boina, dropped a heel (into which she had privately inserted half an inch of pin, taken from her own headgear), upon the flank of La Perla. The mare sprang forward, with nostrils distended and a fierce jerk of the head. Concha pulled hard as if in terror, and presently was flying over the plain towards the cleft on the shoulder of Moncayo beyond which lay the camp of General Elio.

The young Carlist stood a moment aghast. Then slowly he realised the situation. Whereupon, crying aloud the national oath, he ground his heel into the grass, snatched at his gun, kneeled upon one knee, took careful aim, and clicked down the trigger. No report followed, however, and a slight inspection satisfied him that he had been tricked, duped, made a fool of by a slip of a girl, a girl with eyes – yes, and eye-lashes. He leaped in the air and shouted aloud great words in Basque which have no direct equivalents in any polite European language, but which were well enough understood in the stone age.

However, he wasted no time foolishly. Well he knew that for such mistakes there was in Cabrera's code neither forgiveness nor, indeed, any penalty save one. Adrian Zumaya of the province of Alava was young. He desired much to live, if only that he might meet that girl again at whose retreating figure he had a moment before pointed an empty gun barrel. Ah, he would be even with her yet! So, wasting no time on leave-taking, he bent low behind the ridge, and keeping well in the shelter of boulder and underbrush, made a bee-line for the cliffs of Moncayo, where presently, in one of the caves of which El Sarria had spoken, he counted his cartridges and reloaded his rifle, with little regret, except when he wished that the incident had happened after, instead of before supper.

However, he had in reserve a hand's-breadth of sausage in his pocket, together with a fragment of most ancient and rock-like cheese. These, since no better might be, he made the best of, and as the sun sank and the camp below him grew but a blur in the gloom, he washed them down with the water which percolated through the roof of the cave and fell in great drops, as regularly as a pendulum swings, upon the floor below. These he caught in his palms and drank with much satisfaction. And in the intervals he execrated the Señorita Concha Cabezos, late of Andalucia, with polysyllabic vehemence.

But ere he curled himself up to sleep in the dryest corner of the cave, he burst into a laugh.

"In truth," he said, "she deserves La Perla. For a cleverer wench or a prettier saw I never one!"

The young man's last act before he laid himself down in his new quarters had been to take from his coat the circular disc with the letters "C. V.," the badge of the only Catholic, absolute, and legitimate king. Then, approaching the precipice as nearly as in the uncertain light he dared, he cast it from him in the direction of the Carlist lines.

"Shoot whom you will at sunrise, queen or camp-wench, king or knave," he muttered, "you shall not have Adrian Zumaya of Vitoria to put a bullet through!"

So easily was allegiance laid down or taken up in these civil wars of Spain. And that night it was noised abroad through all the camp that young Zumaya of the Estella regiment of cavalry had taken his horse and gone off with the pretty Señorita whom he had been set to watch.

Upon which half his comrades envied him, and the other half hoped he would be captured, saying, "It will be bad for Adrian Zumaya of the Estella regiment if he comes again within the clutches of our excellent Don Ramon Cabrera."

And this was a fact of which the aforesaid Adrian himself was exceedingly well aware. But the most curious point about the whole matter is that when he awoke late next morning he found the sun shining brilliantly into the mouth of the cave. The camp had vanished. There was a haze of sulphur in the air which bit his nostrils, and lo! beneath him, on a little plot of coarse green grass and hill-plants, a cream-coloured horse was quietly feeding.

"It is my own Perla!" he cried, as, careless of danger, he hastened down. There was a red object attached to the mare's bridle. He went round and detached a red boina, to which was pinned a scrap of paper. Upon it was written these words:

"I hope you have not missed either of the objects herewith returned. They served me nobly. I send my best thanks for the loan. – C. C."

"That is very well," said the young man, smiling as he mounted his horse, "but all the same, had my heels not served me better than my head, your best thanks, pretty mistress, had come too late. They would not have kept me from biting the dust at sunrise with half a dozen bullets in my gizzard, instead of waking here comfortably on an empty stomach. Well, I suppose I must don the cap of liberty now and be a chapelgorri. It is a pity. 'Tis not one half so becoming as the boina to one of my complexion."

Then Adrian Zumaya, late of the Estella regiment of Carlist horse, meditated a little longer upon the mutability of all earthly affairs.

"Yet perhaps that is just as well!" he added. "It is ever my hard fate to lose my head where a woman is concerned."

For he thought how the last admirer of his red boina had served him. So with a little sigh of regret he tossed it into the first juniper bush, and tying a kerchief about his head in the manner of the Cristinos, rode forth light-heartedly to seek his fate, like a true soldier of fortune.

CHAPTER XLIV

"FOR ROLLO'S SAKE"

Yet for all this brave adventure Concha was as far as ever from meeting with General Elio. She had not even reached Vera, where it sits proudly on the northern slopes of the Moncayo – not though El Sarria had quite correctly pointed out the path, and though La Perla had served her like the very pearl and pride of all Andalucian steeds.

For once more, as so often in this history and in all men's lives, the cup had slipped on its way to the lip, the expected unexpected had happened – and Concha found herself in the wrong camp.

She rode at full speed (as we have seen) out of sight – that is, the sight of La Perla's owner. And owing to the red boina– which Master Adrian considered to become her so well, she came very near to riding out of this history. For, through the higher arroyo of Aranda de Moncayo, which (like a slice cut clean out of a bride's cake) divides the shoulder of the mountain, she rode directly into the camp of a field force operating against Cabrera under the personal command of General Espartero, the future dictator and present Commander-in-Chief of all the armies of the Queen-Regent.

At first she was nowise startled, thinking only that Vera and General Elio were nearer than had been represented. "Well," she thought, "so much the better!"

But as she came near she saw the measured tread of sentries to and fro. She observed the spick-and-span tents, the uniforms and the shining barrels of the muskets, which in another moment would have arrested her headlong course.

Concha at once perceived, even without looking at the standard which drooped at the tent door of the officer in command, that this could be no mere headquarters of Carlist partidas.

As women are said by the Wise Man to be of their lover's religion if he have one, and if he have none, never to miss it; so Concha was quite ready to be of the politics which were most likely to deliver Rollo from his present difficulties. Therefore, taking the red boina from her head, an act which disturbed still more the severe precision of her locks, she dashed at full speed into the camp, crying, "Viva la Reina! Viva Maria Cristina! Viva Isabel Segunda!"

Checking her steed before the standard, Concha first saluted the surprised group. Then giving a hand to the nearest (and best-looking) officer, she dismounted with a spring light as the falling of a leaf from a tree. With great solemnity she advanced to the staff from which the heavy standard hung low, and taking the embroidered fringe between finger and thumb, touched it with her lips.

Yet if you had called our little Concha a humbug – which in certain aspects of her character would have been a perfectly proper description – she would have replied in the utmost simplicity, and with a completely disarming smile, "But I only did it for Rollo's sake!"

Which was true in its way, but (strangely enough) the thought of an audience always stirred Mistress Concha to do her best – "for Rollo's sake!"

"Take me to the General," she said, with a glance round the circle; "I have ridden from the camp of the enemy to bring him tidings of the utmost importance. Every moment is precious!"

"But the General is asleep," a staff-officer objected; "he gave orders that he was not to be called on any account."

"Tell him that upon his hearing my news depend the lives of the Queen-Regent and her daughter, the young Queen. The Cause itself hangs in the balance!"

And to hear Concha pronounce the last words was enough to have made a convert of Don Carlos himself. Who could have supposed that till within a few hours she had been heart and soul with the enemies of "The Cause"? Certainly not the smart Madrid officers who stood round, wishing that they had shaved more recently, and that their "other" uniforms had not been hanging, camphor-scented on account of the moths, in the close-shuttered lodgings about the Puerta del Sol.

The Commander-in-Chief solved the difficulty, however, at that very moment, by appearing opportunely at the door of his tent.

General Espartero at this time was a man of forty-five. His services in South America had touched his hair with grey. In figure he was heavily built, but, in spite of fever-swamps and battle-wounds, still erect and soldierly.

"What news does the Señorita bring?" he asked with a pleasant smile.

"That I can only tell to yourself, General," the girl answered; "my name is Concha Cabezos of Seville. My father had the honour to serve with you in the War of the Independence!"

"And a good soldier he was, Señorita," said Espartero, courteously. "I remember him well at Salamanca. He fought by my side like a brother!"

Now since Concha was well aware that her father had not even been present at that crowning mercy, she smiled, and was comforted to know that even the great General Baldomero Espartero was an Andalucian – and a humbug.

For which the Commander-in-Chief had the less excuse, since he could not urge that it was done "for Rollo's sake!"

Concha knew better than to blurt out her news concerning the presence of the Queen and her daughter so near the camp. That wise little woman had her terms to make, and for so much was prepared to give so much.

Therefore from the first word she kept Rollo in the foreground of her narrative. He it was who, single-handed, had saved the little Queen. He it was who had defended La Granja against the gipsies. It was, indeed, somewhat unfortunate that the Queen-Regent should have conceived a certain prejudice against him, but then (here Concha smiled) the General knew well what these great ladies were – on mountain-heights one day, in deep sea-abysses the next. Rollo had compelled the party to leave the infected district of La Granja for the healthy one of the Sierra de Moncayo. What else, indeed, could he do? The road to Madrid was in the hands of roving partidas of the malignant, as his Excellency knew, and it was only in this direction that there was any chance of safety. That was Master Rollo's whole offence.

Most unfortunately, however, when on the very threshold of safety, his party had been ambushed and taken by Cabrera. But the captor's force was a small one, and with boldness and caution the whole band of the malignants, together with their prisoners, might be secured. The Carlist General had threatened to murder the two Queens and the Duke of Rianzares at sunrise, as was his butcherly wont. And if Espartero would deliver the royal party, not only was his own future assured, but the fortunes of all who had taken any part in the affair.

The General listened carefully, looking all the while, not at Concha, but down at the little folding table of iron which held a map of Northern Spain. He continued to draw figures of eight upon it with his forefinger till Concha's eyes wearied of watching him, as she nervously waited his decision.

"How came you here?" he asked at last.

"I borrowed a mare and a Carlist boina, and rode hither as fast as horseflesh could carry me. I heard from a friend of the Cause that your command was in the neighbourhood!"