"_Caramba!_ but my German has all slipped from me."
"Don"t worry," commented Don Jorge cynically; "for I"ll wager it took nothing good with it."
"_Hombre!_ but you are hard on a loyal servant of the Lord," exclaimed Padre Diego in a tone of mock injury, as he drained another gla.s.s of the fiery liquor.
"Servant of the Lord!" guffawed Don Jorge. "Of the Lord Pope, Lord Wenceslas, or the Lord G.o.d, may we ask?"
"_Que chiste!_ Why, stupid, all three. I do not put all my eggs into one basket, however large. But tell me, now," he inquired, turning the conversation from himself, "what is it brings you into this region forsaken of the G.o.ds?"
"_Sepulcros_," Don Jorge briefly announced.
"Ha! Indian graves again! But have you abandoned your quest of _La Tumba del Diablo_, in the Sinu valley?"
"Naturally, since the records show that it was opened centuries ago.
And I spent a good year"s search on it, too! _Dios!_ They say it yielded above thirty thousand _pesos_ gold."
"_Diablo!_"
"But I am on the track of others. I go now to Medellin; then to Remedios; and there outfit for a trip of grave hunting through the old Guamoco district."
"Guamoco! Then you will naturally come down the Simiti trail, which brings you out to the Magdalena."
"Simiti?" interrupted Jose eagerly, turning to the speaker. "Do you know the place?"
"Somewhat!" replied Padre Diego, laughing. "I had charge of that parish for a few months--"
"But found it highly convenient to leave, no?" finished the merciless Don Jorge.
"_Caramba!_ Would you have me die of _ennui_ in such a h.e.l.l-hole?"
cried Diego with some aspersion.
"h.e.l.l-hole!" echoed Jose. "Is it so bad as that?"
"_Hombre!_ Yes--worse! They say that after the good Lord created heaven and earth He had a few handfuls of dirt left, and these He threw away. But crafty Satan, always with an eye single to going the Lord one better, slyly gathered this dirt together again and made Simiti." Diego quickly finished another gla.s.s of rum, as if he would drown the memory of the town.
Jose"s heart slowly sank under the words.
"But why do you ask? You are not going there?" Padre Diego inquired.
Jose nodded an affirmative.
"_Diablo!_ a.s.signed?"
"Yes," in a voice scarcely audible.
The Padre whistled softly. "Then in that case," he said, brightening, "we are brother sinners. So let us exchange confidences. What was your crime, if one may ask?"
"Crime!" exclaimed Jose in amazement.
"Aye; who was she? Rich? Beautiful? Native? Or foreign? Come, the story. We have a long night before us." And the coa.r.s.e fellow settled back expectantly in his chair.
Jose paled. "What do you mean?" he asked in a trembling voice.
"_Caramba!_" returned the Padre impatiently. "You surely know that no respectable priest is ever sent to Simiti! That it is the good Bishop"s penal colony for fallen clergy--and, I may add, the refuge of political offenders of this and adjacent countries. Why, the present schoolmaster there is a political outcast from Salvador!"
"No, I did not know it," replied Jose.
"_Por Dios!_ Then you are being jobbed, _amigo_! Did Don Wenceslas give you letters to the Alcalde?"
"Yes."
"And--by the way, has Wenceslas been misbehaving of late?--for when he does, somebody other than himself has to settle the score."
Jose remained silent.
"Ah," mused Diego, "but Don Wenceslas is artful. And yet, I think I see the direction of his trained hand in this." Then he burst into a rude laugh. "Come, _amigo_," he said, noting Jose"s dejected mien; "let us have your story. We may be able to advise. And we"ve had experience--eh, Don Jorge?"
But Jose slowly shook his head. What mattered it now? Simiti would serve as well to bury him as any other tomb. He knew he was sent as a lamb to the slaughter. But it was his affair--and his G.o.d"s. Honor and conscience had presented the score; and he was paying in full. His was not a story to be bandied about by lewd priests like Padre Diego.
"No," he replied to the Padre"s insistent solicitations; "with your permission, we will talk of it no more."
"But--_Hombre_!" cried the Padre at last, in his coa.r.s.e way stirred by Jose"s evident truthfulness. "Well--as you wish--I will not pry into your secrets. But, take a bit of counsel from one who knows: when you reach Simiti, inquire for a man who hates me, one Rosendo Ariza--"
At this juncture the Honda"s diabolical whistle pierced the murky night air.
"_Caramba!_" cried Don Jorge, starting up. "Are they going to try the river to-night?" And the men hurried back to the landing.
The moon was up, and the boat was getting under way. Padre Diego went aboard to take leave of his friends.
"_Bien, amigo_," he said to Don Jorge; "I am sorry your stay is so short. I had much to tell you. Interesting developments are forward, and I hope you are well out of Guamoco when the trouble starts. For the rivals of Antioquia and Simiti will pay off a few scores in the next revolution--a few left over from the last; and it would be well not to get caught between them when they come together."
"And so it is coming?" said Don Jorge thoughtfully.
"Coming! _Hombre!_ It is all but here! The Hercules went up-river yesterday. You will pa.s.s her. She has gone to keep a look-out in the vicinity of Puerto Berrio. I am sorry for our friend," nodding toward Jose, who was leaning over the boat"s rail at some distance; "but there is a job there. He doesn"t belong in this country. And Simiti will finish him."
"Bah! only another priest less--and a weak-kneed one at that," said Don Jorge with contempt; "and we have too many of them now, Lord knows!"
"You forget that I am a priest," chuckled Diego.
"You! Yes, so you are," laughed Don Jorge; "but of the diocese of h.e.l.l! Well, we"re off. I"ll send a runner down the trail when I reach the Tigui river; and if you will have a letter in Simiti informing me of the status of things political, he can bring it up. _Conque_, _adios_, my consummate villain."
The Honda, whistling prodigiously, swung out into mid-stream and set her course up-river, warily feeling through the velvety darkness for the uncertain channel. Once she grated over a hidden bar and hung for a few moments, while her stack vomited torrents of sparks and her great wheel angrily churned the water into creamy foam in the clear moonlight. Once, rounding a sharp bend, she collided squarely with a huge mahogany tree, rolling and plunging menacingly in the seaward rushing waters.
"_Diablo!_" muttered Don Jorge, as he helped Jose swing his hammock and adjust the mosquito netting. "I shall offer a candle a foot thick to the blessed Virgin if I reach Puerto Berrio safely! _Santo Dios!_"
as the boat grazed another sand bar. "I"ve heard tell of steamers hanging up on bars in this river for six weeks! And look!" pointing to the projecting smoke-stack of a sunken steamer. "_Caramba!_ That is what we just escaped!"
But Jose manifested slight interest in the dangers of river navigation. His thoughts were revolving about the incidents of the past few days, and, more especially, about Padre Diego and his significant words. Don Jorge had volunteered no further explanation of the man or his conversation; and Jose"s reticence would not permit him to make other inquiry. But, after all, his thought-processes always evolved the same conclusion: What mattered it now? His interest in life was at an end. He had not told Don Jorge of his experience with the leper in Maganguey. He was trying to forget it. But his hand ached cruelly; and the pain was always a.s.sociated with loathsome and repellant thoughts of the event.