Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John
the rebels possessed.
The correspondents had followed the military critics in assuming that the result was a foregone conclusion. But presently a new name appeared in their dispatches—El Obro, an Indian word which was interpreted in Spanish as “el lobo gris”—”the grey wolf.” El Obro was believed to be the name of a guerrilla leader much reverenced by the Indians, who was assumed to be lurking in the hinterland.
As the weeks passed this name was to appear more often, till presently Castor and Rosas were almost forgotten and it had the headlines to itself.
On the day before the defence broke, Blenkiron was sitting on an empty shell-case in what had once been the garden of his house behind the Administration Buildings. An algarroba tree gave him a little shade from the pitiless sun, and, since he was grey from head to foot with dust and had a broad battered panama hat pulled down over his head like a burnous, he had something of the air of a cadi under a palm. Around him stood a small group in rough field-service kit, all of them dusty and a little hollow-eyed, their shoulders limp and rounded like those of men who have not lain flat in bed for several nights. The place was very quiet to be in the heart of a city. There was no sound except that of an occasional car driven at top-speed in the adjoining street, though an alert ear might have caught at intervals a curious pattering noise coming from the south, a noise which at times grew into something like the beating of muffled drums.
A man was speaking, a man with a drawl and a sleepy voice. This was Escrick, the submanager of the Alhuema Mine, who had once commanded a brigade of Australian infantry in France. He had been in charge of the position astride the railway, and had sited the trenches so skilfully that Lossberg’s guns had bombarded dummies and Lossberg’s advance had been time and again held up by concealed machine guns. He had now the task of drawing off his men by night, a task which, having been at the evacuation of Helles, he had no doubt as to his ability to perform.
Blenkiron, as the plan was unfolded, glanced at the paper in his hands, and at Escrick’s further elucidation with the point of a riding-switch in the thick dust. Then he turned to another man, a heavy red-faced fellow who was perpetually mopping his face with a blue-spotted handkerchief. At his look of inquiry the man nodded.
“The last of the supply waggons leave this afternoon, sir,” he said. “Three of the centres are already stocked up, and the fourth will be completed by midnight. The men should be well on their way before daybreak to-morrow, and all arrangements have been made for mining and blowing-up the roads behind them.”
“You’re not leaving much behind?”
“Not an ounce of flour or a pound of bacon,” was the answer.
“I reckon that’s fair. It’s up to Lossberg to feed the population of the city he captures. What’s it they call them, Luis? The bouches inutiles?”
Luis de Marzaniga smiled. “There won’t be too many of these useless mouths, Senor.”
“Lordy, it’s hot!” Blenkiron sighed. “Let’s get inside the shack and moisten our lips with lime-juice. The maps are there, and I’ll like to have a once-over before we gel back to our jobs.”
A hut in the garden had been transformed into an office, and on one wall hung a big plan made of a dozen sheets pinned together. It had none of the finish of the products of a Government Map Department, being the work of the Mines surveyors. Each of the men had a small replica, which he compared with the original. There followed an hour of detailed instruction as to routes and ultimate concentrations. Four points were marked on the big map with red circles. One, lettered Pacheco, lay in the extreme south-west angle of the Gran Seco. Magdalena, the second, was a hundred miles farther north, under the shadow of the peaks called the Spanish Ladies. The third was near the centre of the northern part of the province, the Seco Boreal, and had the surprising name of Fort Castor: while the fourth, Loa, was at the opening of the neck of land which led to the Courts of the Morning. The commandos under Escrick were to make for the two latter points, while Peters and his forces, which had been fighting in the Mines sector, had the two former for their objectives.
There was also to be a change in the command. Blenkiron, once the city had been surrendered, laid down his duties. The field force in the future would be divided between Escrick and Peters; and, under Castor as generalissimo, the operations as a whole would be directed by him whom the Indians called El Obro.
“I guess we’ll keep to that pet name,” Blenkiron said. “It sounds good, and kind of solemn. We haven’t any use for effete territorial titles in this democratic army, and ‘Sandy’ is too familiar.”
Then he made the men repeat their instructions till each was clear not only about his own task but about the tasks of the others—a vital thing in a far-flung force. After that he lectured them… So far luck had been on their side. Their losses had been small; under estimate in the railway sector, and not thirty per cent. beyond it even after Peters’s rash counter-attack. No officer had fallen, and only six had been wounded. One aeroplane, unfortunately, had been brought down, and the pilot and observer, both young Mines engineers, killed. That was their most serious casualty. “A very nice little exhibition of the new bloodless conduct of war,” said Blenkiron. But this was only the overture; the serious business was now about to begin, when they had to make the country fight Lossberg, as Washington made the geography of America fight Burgoyne and Cornwallis. “It’s going to be a mighty tough proposition, but I reckon if we pay strict attention to business we’ll put it through.”
“Say, though,” said Escrick, “what is going to be the upshot?”
“Peace, sonny. We’ve got to make the Excelentisimo at Olifa so dead-sick of the business that he’ll want to deal. Same game as Robert E. Lee played before Gettysburg. We can’t beat them, but we may make them want to deal. And in that deal Mr Castor is going to state the terms. And those terms are going to fix things more comfortably in this province, but principally they are going to fix Mr Castor. You’ve got the schedule for to-night clear? Then we’d better dissolve this conference. I join you, General Escrick, at twenty minutes after midnight.”
The men entered their dusty cars and departed, while Blenkiron went into his house, accompanied by Luis de Marzaniga, who seemed to be acting as his chief staff-officer.
As they lunched frugally off sardines and biscuits, Blenkiron was in a cheerful mood, but a shadow seemed to hover about the face of the younger man.
“What’s worrying you, Luis?” Blenkiron asked. “Things have panned out pretty well according to plan. There’s snags good and plenty to come, but we needn’t think about them just yet.”
“I think, Senor, that there is one snag which we have forgotten.”
“Meaning?”
“The bouches inutiles whom we are leaving to the care of General Lossberg.”
“Why, man, we can’t do anything else. The civilians in a captured city are not our concern. They’re his funeral, He’s bound to treat them well for… “
“It is scarcely a question of humanity. But some of these bouches may be mischievous.”
“The Bodyguard?”
The young man took a paper from his pocket.
“Here,” he said, “I have a list of the more dangerous of the Bodyguard and of those gentry whom we call the conquistadors. I have made notes on each… Kubek—he was happily killed in this very house. We found his body over there by the window… Ramiro and Molson, they were shot by Peters at the round-up… Sechstein—dead of spotted fever… Snell—died of wounds two hours after Kubek… But Radin and Molinoff are at large—you remember that they broke away in the confusion, when the house in the Calle of the Virgin fell as Peters was taking them to the lock-up… There are others, too. We know nothing of what became of Martel and Carvilho and Magee and Trompetter… and Laschallas, whom we used to think as dangerous as Kubek. Do you know that he, or somebody very like him, was seen last night in a drinking-den near St Martin’s Port?”
“That only means that there are a handful of bad