Hearts of Three. Джек Лондон
himself,” Henry exclaimed. “And the other chaps were her brothers.”
“Lovely lizards!” ejaculated Francis. “Say, don’t you think life is liable to become a trifle monotonous when you’re married into such a peaceful, dove-like family as that!” He broke off, struck by a new idea. “By the way, Henry, since they all thought it was you, and not I, why in thunderation did they want to kill you? Some more of your crusty Morgan temper that peeved your prospective wife’s relatives?”
Henry looked at him a moment, as if debating with himself, and then answered.
“I don’t mind telling you. It is a nasty mess, and I suppose my temper was to blame. I quarreled with her uncle. He was her father’s youngest brother – ”
“Was?” interrupted Francis with significant stress on the past tense.
“Was, I said,” Henry nodded. “He isn’t now. His name was Alfaro Solano, and he had some temper himself. They claim to be descended from the Spanish conquistadores, and they are prouder than hornets. He’d made money in logwood, and he had just got a big henequen plantation started farther down the coast. And then we quarreled. It was in the little town over there – San Antonio. It may have been a misunderstanding, though I still maintain he was wrong. He always was looking for trouble with me – didn’t want me to marry Leoncia, you see.
“Well, it was a hot time. It started in a pulqueria where Alfaro had been drinking more mescal than was good for him. He insulted me all right. They had to hold us apart and take our guns away, and we separated swearing death and destruction. That was the trouble – our quarrel and our threats were heard by a score of witnesses.
“Within two hours the Comisario himself and two gendarmes found me bending over Alfaro’s body in a back street in the town. He’d been knifed in the back, and I’d stumbled over him on the way to the beach. Explain? No such thing. There were the quarrel and the threats of vengeance, and there I was, not two hours afterward, caught dead to right with his warm corpse. I haven’t been back in San Antonio since, and I didn’t waste any time in getting away. Alfaro was very popular, – you know the dashing type that catches the rabble’s fancy. Why, they couldn’t have been persuaded to give me even the semblance of a trial. Wanted my blood there and then, and I departed very pronto.
“Next, up at Bocas del Toro, a messenger from Leoncia delivered back the engagement ring. And there you are. I developed a real big disgust, and, since I didn’t dare go back with all the Solanos and the rest of the population thirsting for my life, I came over here to play hermit for a while and dig for Morgan’s treasure… Just the same, I wonder who did stick that knife into Alfaro. If ever I find him, then I clear myself with Leoncia and the rest of the Solanos and there isn’t a doubt in the world that there’ll be a wedding. And now that it’s all over I don’t mind admitting that Alfaro was a good scout, even if his temper did go off at half-cock.”
“Clear as print,” Francis murmured. “No wonder her father and brothers wanted to perforate me. – Why, the more I look at you, the more I see we’re as like as two peas, except for my mustache – ”
“And for this…” Henry rolled up his sleeve, and on the left forearm showed a long, thin white scar. “Got that when I was a boy. Fell off a windmill and through the glass roof of a hothouse.”
“Now listen to me,” Francis said, his face beginning to light with the project forming in his mind. “Somebody’s got to straighten you out of this mess, and the chap’s name is Francis, partner in the firm of Morgan and Morgan. You stick around here, or go over and begin prospecting on the Bull, while I go back and explain things to Leoncia and her people – ”
“If only they don’t shoot you first before you can explain you are not I,” Henry muttered bitterly. “That’s the trouble with those Solanos. They shoot first and talk afterward. They won’t listen to reason unless it’s post mortem.”
“Guess I’ll take a chance, old man,” Francis assured the other, himself all fire with the plan of clearing up the distressing situation between Henry and the girl.
But the thought of her perplexed him. He experienced more than a twinge of regret that the lovely creature belonged of right to the man who looked so much like him, and he saw again the vision of her on the beach, when, with conflicting emotions, she had alternately loved him and yearned toward him and blazed her scorn and contempt on him. He sighed involuntarily.
“What’s that for?” Henry demanded quizzically.
“Leoncia is an exceedingly pretty girl,” Francis answered with transparent frankness. “Just the same, she’s yours, and I’m going to make it my business to see that you get her. Where’s that ring she returned? If I don’t put it on her finger for you and be back here in a week with the good news, you can cut off my mustache along with my ears.”
An hour later, Captain Trefethen having sent a boat to the beach from the Angelique in response to signal, the two young men were saying good-bye.
“Just two things more, Francis. First, and I forgot to tell you, Leoncia is not a Solano at all, though she thinks she is. Alfaro told me himself. She is an adopted child, and old Enrico fairly worships her, though neither his blood nor his race runs in her veins. Alfaro never told me the ins and outs of it, though he did say she wasn’t Spanish at all. I don’t even know whether she’s English or American. She talks good enough English, though she got that at convent. You see, she was adopted when she was a wee thing, and she’s never known anything else than that Enrico is her father.”
“And no wonder she scorned and hated me for you,” Francis laughed, “believing, as she did, as she still does, that you knifed her full blood-uncle in the back.”
Henry nodded, and went on.
“The other thing is fairly important. And that’s the law. Or the absence of it, rather. They make it whatever they want it, down in this out-of-the-way hole. It’s a long way to Panama, and the gobernador of this state, or district, or whatever they call it, is a sleepy old Silenus. The Jefe Politico at San Antonio is the man to keep an eye on. He’s the little czar of that neck of the woods, and he’s some crooked hombre, take it from yours truly. Graft is too weak a word to apply to some of his deals, and he’s as cruel and blood-thirsty as a weasel. And his one crowning delight is an execution. He dotes on a hanging. Keep your weather eye on him, whatever you do… And, well, so long. And half of whatever I find on the Bull is yours: … and see you get that ring back on Leoncia’s finger.”
Two days later, after the half-breed skipper had reconnoitered ashore and brought back the news that all the men of Leoncia’s family were away, Francis had himself landed on the beach where he had first met her. No maidens with silver revolvers nor men with rifles were manifest. All was placid, and the only person on the beach was a ragged little Indian boy who at sight of a coin readily consented to carry a note up to the young senorita of the big hacienda. As Francis scrawled on a sheet of paper from his notebook, “I am the man whom you mistook for Henry Morgan, and I have a message for you from him,” he little dreamed that untoward happenings were about to occur with as equal rapidity and frequence as on his first visit.
For that matter, could he have peeped over the out-jut of rock against which he leaned his back while composing the note to Leoncia, he would have been startled by a vision of the young lady herself, emerging like a sea-goddess fresh from a swim in the sea. But he wrote calmly on, the Indian lad even more absorbed than himself in the operation, so that it was Leoncia, coming around the rock from behind, who first caught sight of him. Stifling an exclamation, she turned and fled blindly into the green screen of jungle.
His first warning of her proximity was immediately thereafter, when a startled scream of fear aroused him. Note and pencil fell to the sand as he sprang toward the direction of the cry and collided with a wet and scantily dressed young woman who was recoiling backward from whatever had caused her scream. The unexpectedness of the collision was provocative of a second startled scream from her ere she could turn and recognize that it was not a new attack but a rescuer.
She darted past him, her face colorless from the fright, stumbled over