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Purple Land

<h2> CHAPTER XVIII </h2> About the stirring events of the succeeding days I have little to relate, and no reader who has suffered the malady of love in its acutest form will wonder at it. During those days I mixed with a crowd of adventurers, returned exiles, criminals, and malcontents, every one of them worth studying; the daylight hours were passed in cavalry exercises or in long expeditions about the country, while every evening beside the camp fire romantic tales enough to fill a volume were told in my hearing. But the image of Dolores was ever before my mind, so that all this crowded period, lasting nine or ten days, passed before me like a phantasmagoria, or an uneasy dream, leaving only a very confused impression on my brain. I not only grieved for the sorrow I had occasioned her, but mourned also that my own heart had so terribly betrayed me, so that for the moment the beautiful girl I had persuaded to fly from home and parents, promising her my undying affection, had ceased to be what she had been, so great was this new inconvenient passion. The General had offered me a commission in his tatterdemalion gathering, but, as I had no knowledge of military matters, I had prudently declined it, only requesting, as a special favour, that I might be employed constantly on the expeditions he sent out over the surrounding country to beat up recruits, seize arms, cattle, and horses, and to depose the little local authorities in the villages, putting creatures of his own in their places. This request had been granted, so that morning, noon, and night I was generally in the saddle. One evening I was in the camp seated beside a large fire and gloomily staring into the flames, when the other men, who were occupied playing cards or sipping maté, hastily rose to their feet, making the salute. Then I saw the General standing near gazing fixedly at me. Motioning to the men to resume their cards, he sat down by my side. “What is the matter with you?” he said. “I have noticed that you are like a different person since you joined us. Do you regret that step?” “No,” I answered, and then was silent, not knowing what more to say. He looked searchingly at me. Doubtless some suspicion of the truth was in his mind; for he had gone to the Casa Blanca with me, and it was scarcely likely that his keen eyes had failed to notice the cold reception Dolores gave me on that occasion. He did not, however, touch on that matter. “Tell me,” he said at length, “what can I do for you?” I laughed. “What can you do except to take me to Montevideo?” I replied. “Why do you say that?” he returned quickly. “We are not merely friends now as we were before I joined you,” I said. “You are my General; I am simply one of your men.” “The friendship remains just the same, Richard. Let me know frankly what you think of this campaign, since you have now suddenly turned the current of the conversation in that direction?” There was a slight sting in the concluding words, but I had, perhaps, deserved it. “Since you bid me speak,” I said, “I, for one, feel very much disappointed at the little progress we are making. It seems to me that before you are in a position to strike, the enthusiasm and courage of your people will have vanished. You cannot get anything like a decent army together, and the few men you have are badly armed and undisciplined. Is it not plain that a march to Montevideo in these circumstances is impossible, that you will be obliged to retire into the remote and difficult places to carry on a guerilla war?” “No,” he returned; “there is to be no guerilla war. The Colorados made the Orientals sick of it, when that arch-traitor and chief of cut-throats, General Rivera, desolated the Banda for ten years. We must ride on to Montevideo soon. As for the character of my force, that is a matter it would perhaps be useless to discuss, my young friend. If I could import a well-equipped and disciplined army from Europe to do my fighting, I should do so. The Oriental farmer, unable to send to England for a threshing-machine, is obliged to go out and gather his wild mares from the plain to tread out his wheat, and I, in like manner, having only a few scattered ranchos to draw my soldiers from, must be satisfied to do what I can with them. And now tell me, are you anxious to see something done at once—a fight, for instance, in which we might possibly be the losers?” “Yes, that would be better than standing still. If you are strong, the best thing you can do is to show your strength.” He laughed. “Richard, you were made for an Oriental,” he said, “only nature at your birth dropped you down in the wrong country. You are brave to rashness, abhor restraint, love women, and have a light heart; the Castilian gravity you have recently assumed is, I fancy, only a passing mood.” “Your words are highly complimentary and fill me with pride,” I answered, “but I scarcely see their connection with the subject of our conversation.” “There is a connection, nevertheless,” he returned pleasantly. “Though you refuse a commission from me, I am so convinced that you are in heart one of us that I will take you into my confidence and tell you something known to only half a dozen trusted individuals here. You rightly say that if we have strength we must show it to the country. That is what we are now about to do. A cavalry force has been sent against us and we shall engage it before two days are over. As far as I know, the forces will be pretty evenly balanced, though our enemies will, of course, be better armed. We shall choose our own ground; and, should they attack us tired with a long march, or if there should be any disaffection amongst them, the victory will be ours, and after that every Blanco sword in the Banda will be unsheathed in our cause. I need not repeat to you that in the hour of my triumph, if it ever comes, I shall not forget my debt to you; my wish is to bind you, body and heart, to this Oriental country. It is, however, possible that I may suffer defeat, and if in two days' time we are all scattered to the winds, let me advise you what to do. Do not attempt to return immediately to Montevideo, as that might be dangerous. Make your way by Minas to the southern coast; and when you reach the department of Rocha, inquire for the little settlement of Lomas de Rocha, a village three leagues west of the lake. You will find there a storekeeper, one Florentino Blanco—a Blanco in heart as well. Tell him I sent you to him, and ask him to procure you an English passport from the capital; after which it will be safe for you to travel to Montevideo. Should you ever be identified as a follower of mine, you can invent some story to account for your presence in my force. When I remember that botanical lecture you once delivered, also some other matters, I am convinced that you are not devoid of imagination.” After giving some further kind advice, he bade me good night, leaving me with a strangely unpleasant conviction in my mind that we had changed characters for the nonce, and that I had bungled as much in my new part as I had formerly done in my old. He had been sincerity itself, while I, picking up the discarded mask, had tied it on, probably upside down, for it made me feel excessively uncomfortable during our interview. To make matters worse, I was also sure that it had quite failed to hide my countenance, and that he knew as well as I knew myself the real cause of the change he had noticed in me. These disagreeable reflections did not trouble me long, and then I began to feel considerable excitement at the prospect of a brush with the government troops. My thoughts kept me awake most of the night; still, next morning, when the trumpet sounded its shrill réveillé close at hand, I rose quickly, and in a much more cheerful mood than I had known of late. I began to feel that I was getting the better of that insane passion for Dolores which had made us both so unhappy, and when we were once more in the saddle the “Castilian gravity,” to which the General had satirically alluded, had pretty well vanished. No expeditions were sent out that day; after we had marched about twelve or thirteen miles eastward and nearer to the immense range of the Cuchilla Grande, we encamped, and after the midday meal spent the afternoon in cavalry exercises. On the next day happened the great event for which we had been preparing, and I am positive that, with the wretched material he commanded, no man could have done more than Santa Coloma, though, alas! all his efforts ended in disaster. Alas, I say, not because I took, even then, any very serious interest in Oriental politics, but because it would have been greatly to my advantage if things had turned out differently. Besides, a great many poor devils who had been an unconscionable time out in the cold would have come into power, and the rascally Colorados sent away in their turn to eat the “bitter bread” of proscription. The fable of the fox and the flies might here possibly occur to the reader; I, however, preferred to remember Lucero's fable of the tree called Montevideo, with the chattering colony in its branches, and to look upon myself as one in the majestic bovine army about to besiege the monkeys and punish them for their naughty behaviour. Quite early in the morning we had breakfast, then every man was ordered to saddle his best horse; for every one of us was the owner of three or four steeds. I, of course, saddled the horse the General had given me, which had been reserved for important work. We mounted, and proceeded at a gentle pace through a very wild and broken country, still in the direction of the Cuchilla. About midday scouts came riding in and reported that the enemy were close upon us. After halting for half an hour, we again proceeded at the same gentle pace till about two o'clock, when we crossed the Cañada de San Paulo, a deep valley beyond which the plain rose to a height of about one hundred and fifty feet. In the cañada we stopped to water our horses, and there heard that the enemy were advancing along it at a rapid pace, evidently hoping to cut off our supposed retreat towards the Cuchilla. Crossing the little stream of San Paulo, we began slowly ascending the sloping plain on the farther side till the highest point was gained; then, turning, we saw the enemy, numbering about seven hundred men, beneath us, spread out in a line of extraordinary length. Up from the valley they came towards us at a brisk trot. We were then rapidly disposed in three columns, the centre one numbering about two hundred and fifty men, the others about two hundred men each. I was in one of the outside columns, within about four men from the front. My fellow-soldiers, who had hitherto been very light-hearted and chatty, had suddenly become grave and quiet, some of them even looking pale and scared. On one side of me was an irrepressible scamp of a boy about eighteen years old, a dark little fellow, with a monkey face and a feeble, falsetto voice like a very old woman. I watched him take out a small sharp knife and without looking down draw it across the upper part of his surcingle three or four times; but this he did evidently only for practice, as he did not cut into the hide. Seeing me watching, he grinned mysteriously and made a sign with head and shoulders thrust forward in imitation of a person riding away at full speed, after which he restored his knife to its sheath. “You intend cutting your surcingle and running away, little coward?” I said. “And what are you going to do?” he returned. “Fight,” I said. “It is the best thing you can do, Sir Frenchman,” said he, with a grin. “Listen,” I said, “when the fight is over, I will look you up to thrash you for your impertinence in calling me a Frenchman.” “After the fight!” he exclaimed, with a funny grimace. “Do you mean next year? Before that distant time arrives some Colorado will fall in love with you, and—and—and——” Here he explained himself without words by drawing the edge of his hand briskly across his throat, then closing his eyes and making gurgling sounds, supposed to be uttered by a person undergoing the painful operation of having his throat cut. Our colloquy was carried on in whispers, but his pantomimic performance drew on us the attention of our neighbours, and now he looked round to inform them with a grin and a nod that his Oriental wit was getting the victory. I was determined not to be put down by him, however, and tapped my revolver with my hand to call his attention to it. “Look at this, you young miscreant,” I said. “Do you not know that I and many others in this column have received orders from the General to shoot down every man who attempts to run away?” This speech effectually silenced him. He turned as pale as his dark skin would let him, and looked round like a hunted animal in search of a hole to hide in. On my other hand a grizzly-bearded old gaucho, in somewhat tattered garments, lit a cigarette and, oblivious of everything except the stimulating fragrance of the strongest black tobacco, expanded his lungs with long inspirations, to send forth thereafter clouds of blue smoke into his neighbours' faces, scattering the soothing perfume over a third portion of the army. Santa Coloma rose equal to the occasion; swiftly riding from column to column, he addressed each in turn, and, using the quaint, expressive phraseology of the gauchos, which he knew so well, poured forth his denunciations of the Colorados with a fury and eloquence that brought the blood with a rush to many of his followers' pale cheeks. They were traitors, plunderers, assassins, he cried; they had committed a million crimes, but all these things were nothing, nothing compared with that one black crime which no other political party had been guilty of. By the aid of Brazilian gold and Brazilian bayonets they had risen to power; they were the infamous pensioners of the empire of slaves. He compared them to the man who marries a beautiful wife and sells her to some rich person so as to live luxuriously on the wages of his own dishonour. The foul stain which they had brought on the honour of the Banda Orientál could only be washed away with their blood. Pointing to the advancing troops, he said that when those miserable hirelings were scattered like thistle-down before the wind, the entire country would be with him, and the Banda Orientál, after half a century of degradation, free at last and for ever from the Brazilian curse. Waving his sword, he galloped back to the front of his column, greeted by a storm of vivas. Then a great silence fell upon our ranks; while up the slope, their trumpets sounding merrily, trotted the enemy, till they had covered about three hundred yards of the ascending ground, threatening to close us round in an immense circle, when suddenly the order was given to charge, and, led by Santa Coloma, we thundered down the incline upon them. Soldiers reading this plain, unvarnished account of an Oriental battle might feel inclined to criticise Santa Coloma's tactics; for his men were, like the Arabs, horsemen and little else; they were, moreover, armed with lance and broadsword, weapons requiring a great deal of space to be used effectively. Yet, considering all the circumstances, I am sure that he did the right thing. He knew that he was too weak to meet the enemy in the usual way, pitting man against man; also that if he failed to fight, his temporary prestige would vanish like smoke and the rebellion collapse. Having decided to hazard all, and knowing that in a stand-up fight he would infallibly be beaten, his only plan was to show a bold front, mass his feeble followers together in columns, and hurl them upon the enemy, hoping by this means to introduce a panic amongst his opponents and so snatch the victory. A discharge of carbines with which we were received did us no damage. I, at any rate, saw no saddles emptied near me, and in a few moments we were dashing through the advancing lines. A shout of triumph went up from our men, for our cowardly foes were flying before us in all directions. On we rode in triumph till we reached the bottom of the hill, then we reined up, for before us was the stream of San Paulo, and the few scattered men who had crossed it and were scuttling away like hunted ostriches scarcely seemed worth chasing. Suddenly with a great shout a large body of Colorados came thundering down the hill on our rear and flank, and dismay seized upon us. The feeble efforts made by some of our officers to bring us round to face them proved unavailing. I am utterly unable to give any clear account of what followed immediately after that, for we were all, friends and foes, mixed up for some minutes in the wildest confusion, and how I ever got out of it all without a scratch is a mystery to me. More than once I was in violent collision with Colorado men, distinguished from ours by their uniform, and several furious blows with sword and lance were aimed at me, but somehow I escaped them all. I emptied the six chambers of my Colt's revolver, but whether my bullets did any execution or not I cannot pretend to say. In the end I found myself surrounded by four of our men who were furiously spurring their horses out of the fight. “Whip up, Captain, come with us this way,” shouted one of them who knew me, and who always insisted on giving me a title to which I had no right. As we rode away, skirting the hill towards the south, he assured me that all was lost, in proof of which he pointed to scattered bodies of our men flying from the field in all directions. Yes, we were defeated; that was plain to see, and I needed little encouragement from my fellow-runaways to spur my horse to its utmost speed. Had the falcon eye of Santa Coloma rested on me at that moment he might have added to the list of Oriental traits he had given me the un-English faculty of knowing when I was beaten. I was quite as anxious, I believe, to save my skin—throat, we say in the Banda Orientál—as any horseman there, not even excepting the monkey-faced boy with the squeaky voice. If the curious reader, thirsting for knowledge, will consult the Uruguayan histories, I daresay he will find a more scientific description of the battle of San Paulo than I have been able to give. My excuse must be that it was the only battle—pitched or other—at which I have ever assisted, also that my position in the Blanco forces was a very humble one. Altogether I am not overproud of my soldiering performances; still, as I did no worse than Frederick the Great of Prussia, who ran away from his first battle, I do not consider that I need blush furiously. My companions took our defeat with the usual Oriental resignation. “You see,” said one in explanation of his mental attitude, “there must always be one side defeated in every fight, for had we gained the day, then the Colorados would have lost.” There was in this remark a sound practical philosophy; it could not be controverted, it burdened our brains with no new thing, and it made us all very cheerful. For myself, I did not care very much, but could not help thinking a great deal of Dolores, who would now have a fresh grief to increase her pain. For a distance of three or four miles we rode at a fast gallop, on the slopes of the Cuchilla paused to breathe our horses, and, dismounting, stood for some time gazing back over the wide landscape spread out before us. At our backs rose the giant green and brown walls of the sierras, the range stretching away on either hand in violet and deep blue masses. At our feet lay the billowy green and yellow plain, vast as ocean, and channelled by innumerable streams, while one black patch on a slope far away showed us that our foes were camping on the very spot where they had overcome us. Not a cloud appeared in the immense heavens; only, low down in the west, purple and rose-coloured vapours were beginning to form, staining the clear, intense white-blue sky about the sinking sun. Over all reigned deep silence; until, suddenly, a flock of orange and flame-coloured orioles with black wings swept down on a clump of bushes hard by and poured forth a torrent of wild, joyous music. A strange performance! screaming notes that seemed to scream jubilant gladness to listening heaven, and notes abrupt and guttural, mingling with others more clear and soul-piercing than ever human lips drew from reed or metal. It soon ended; up sprang the vocalists like a fountain of fire and fled away to their roost among the hills, then silence reigned once more. What brilliant hues, what gay, fantastic music! Were they indeed birds, or the glad, winged inhabitants of a mystic region, resembling earth, but sweeter than earth and never entered by death, upon whose threshold I had stumbled by chance? Then, while the last rich flood of sunshine came over the earth from that red, everlasting urn resting on the far horizon, I could, had I been alone, have cast myself upon the ground to adore the great God of Nature, who had given me this precious moment of life. For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or steals shame-faced to hide itself in dim churches flourishes greatly, filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen? Out of his heart God shall not pass: His image stampèd is on every grass. My comrades, anxious to get through the Cuchilla, were already on horseback, shouting to me to mount. One more lingering glance over that wide prospect—wide, yet how small a portion of the Banda's twenty thousand miles of everlasting verdure, watered by innumerable beautiful streams? Again the thought of Dolores swept like a moaning wind over my heart. For this rich prize, her beautiful country, how weakly and with what feeble hands had we striven! Where now was her hero, the glorious deliverer Perseus? Lying, perhaps, stark and stained with blood on yon darkening moor. Not yet was the Colorado monster overcome. “Rest on thy rock, Andromeda!” I sadly murmured, then, leaping into the saddle, galloped away after my retreating comrades, already half a mile away down in the shadowy mountain pass. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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