Сердца трех / Hearts of three. Уровень 3

The Jefe nodded, then said:

“A thousand?”

“I think so. And five hundred is yours if Francis leaves his bones in San Antonio.”

“It must be more than a thousand,” the Jefe persisted.

“Senor Regan may be generous,” Torres responded. “He may even give me five hundred more, half of which will be yours.”

“I shall go immediately to the jail,” the Jefe announced. “You may trust me, Senor Torres, as I trust you. Come. We will go at once, now, you and I, and you may see the preparation I shall make for this Francis Morgan’s reception. So this Gringo will storm our jail, eh? Come.”

He stood up. But a boy appeared:

“I have information. You will pay me for it, Senor? I have run all the way.”

“I’ll sent you to the jail!” was the reply.

The boy cried:

“You will remember I brought you the information, Senor. I ran all the way!”

“What is your information, you fool?”

“The jail,” the boy said. “The strange Gringo has blown down the side of the jail. The hole is very big! And the other Gringo, the one who looks like him, has escaped with him out of the hole. This I saw, myself, with my two eyes! And then I ran here to you all the way, and you will remember… “

“I don’t believe you. It is not possible.”

The gendarme came through the door.

“The jail is destroyed,” were his first words. “Dynamite! A hundred pounds of it! A thousand! We came bravely to save the jail. But it exploded the thousand pounds of dynamite. I fell unconscious. When sense came back to me, I looked about. All others, the brave Pedro, the brave Ignacio, the brave Augustino[49 - Augustino – Аугустино] all, all were dead. The cell of Morgan was empty. There was a huge and monstrous hole in the wall. I crawled through the hole into the street. There was a great crowd. But the Gringo Morgan was gone. They rode toward the beach. They have a schooner. Francis Morgan rides with a sack of gold on his saddle. It is a large sack.”

“And the hole?” the Jefe demanded. “The hole in the wall?”

“Is larger than the sack, much larger,” was the reply. “But the sack is large. And he rides with it on his saddle.”

“My jail!” the Jefe cried. “My jail! Our justice! Our law! Horses! Horses! Gendarme, horses! To hell with Senor Regan! My law, our law! Horses! Haste! Haste!”

“Glad to welcome you on board, sir,” Captain greeted Francis with a smile. “But who is this man?” He nodded his head to indicate Henry.

“A friend, captain, in fact, a kinsman.”

“And who, sir, are those gentlemen riding along the beach?”

Henry looked quickly at the group of horsemen, took the binoculars from the skipper’s hand, and gazed through them.

“It’s the Jefe himself,” he reported, “with gendarmes.”

“They tried to hang me yesterday,” Francis laughed. “And tomorrow they were going to hang Henry.”

Here Enrico Solano approached Henry and held out his hand.

“I have made a grave mistake, Senor Morgan,” he said. “My beloved brother, Alfaro… I was thinking you were guilty of his murder. The evidence was all against you. I regret. I am sorry. And I am proud once again to welcome you into my family. You will marry my Leoncia.”

Chapter VII

“And now we’ve lost both the Gringos,” Alvarez Torres lamented. “The Queen of my Dreams! She is gone and away, with the two Morgans. I saw her on the schooner!”

“They will not get out of Chiriqui Lagoon,” the Jefe said solemnly. “I know it. That captain will try to go past Bocas del Toro, or through the Cartago Passage. Even so, we will outwit him. Listen. It is a long ride. We will catch them.”

Leoncia awoke first. She looked down upon the two young men. They were so alike, and she loved both of them. She remembered the kisses of Henry on her mouth, and the kisses of Francis, and was puzzled. She loved two men at the one time. And she could not understand that.

Three hours later, she was taking her first lesson of the compass under Francis’ tuition. Henry was searching the sea through the binoculars.

Francis put the wheel up. His hand rested on Leoncia’s hand. They thrilled, and the skipper grinned.

“It’s not so far to shore,” Henry said as he turned to Enrico. “What kind of a shore is it, Senor Solano?” he queried. “Maya Indians[50 - Maya Indians – индейцы майя] and haciendados[51 - haciendados – плантаторы]?”

“Haciendados and Mayas, both,” Enrico answered. “But I know the country well. If the schooner is not safe, we will be safe ashore. We can get horses and saddles and beef and corn. The Cordilleras are beyond.”

“But Leoncia?” Francis asked.

“Was born in the saddle,” came Enrico’s answer.

Chapter VIII

“If we remain on board the gendarmes will capture us and the Angelique as well,” Francis said. “We will go to the hills. The Angelique will go free. And of course they won’t catch us.”

So they came to the beach and disappeared into the dense green wall of vegetation. Leoncia was going beside her father. Her brothers, Ricardo and Alesandro, in the middle, were burdened with the dunnage[52 - with the dunnage – нагруженные тюками], as were Francis and Henry. When they came to the plantation, they bought horses and food from a haciendado. So the cavalcade started.

Soon the haciendado observed the group of men, with Alvarez Torres in the lead.

“Senor,” Torres said. “We are in search of Senor Enrico Solano, his daughter, his sons, and two tall Gringos with them. It is the Gringos we want. Have they passed this way, Senor?”

“Yes, they have passed. Have they committed some crime? But I must not ask. Senor Enrico Solano is a honorable man…”

“Which way did they go?” the Jefe demanded.

The haciendado indicated an entirely different direction. Torres noted one of the peons[53 - peon – пеон, батрак в Латинской Америке], who was leaning on his spade. Torres showed a silver dollar to the peon. The peon nodded his head in the right direction and caught the coin.

“We will go the other way,” Torres said. “A little bird has told me that our friend here is mistaken and that they have gone the other way.”

The haciendado and his helper looked at each other in amazement. That peon was working furiously, but another peon indicated him to the haciendado.

“There’s the little bird,” the haciendado cried. “Beat him, beat him, the beast who betrayed my dearest friends!”

The Solano party was crossing a shallow stream. Next, Alvarez Torres in the lead like a hound, the gendarmes at his back, and the Jefe in the rear, the pursuit arrived at the stream.

Chapter IX