In a hammock swung between two trees Esteban Varona lay, listening to the admonitions of his nurse.
Johnnie O'Reilly had just bade them both a hearty3 good morning and now Norine was saying: "One hour, no more. You had a temperature again last night, and it came from talking too much."
"Oh, I'm better this morning," Esteban declared. "I'm getting so that I want to talk. I was too tired at first, but now—"
"NOW, you will do exactly as you are told. Remember, it takes me just one hour to make my rounds, and if you are not through with your tales of blood and battle when I get back you'll have to finish them to-morrow." With a nod and a smile she left.
As Esteban looked after her his white teeth gleamed and his hollow face lit up.
"She brings me new life," he told O'Reilly. "She is so strong, so healthy, so full of life herself. She is wonderful! When I first saw her bending over me I thought I was dreaming. Sometimes, even yet, I think she cannot be real. But she is, eh?"
"She is quite substantial," O'Reilly smiled.
"I can tell when she is anywhere near, for my illness leaves me. It's a fact! And her hands—Well, she lays them on my head, and it no longer hurts; the fever disappears. There is some cool, delicious magic in her touch; it makes a fellow want to live. You have perhaps noticed it?"
"N-no! You see, she never lays her hands on my head. However, I dare say you're right. All the sick fellows talk as you do."
Esteban looked up quickly; his face darkened. "She—er—nurses OTHERS, eh? I'm not the only one?"
"Well, hardly."
There was a brief pause; then Esteban shifted his position and his tone changed. "Tell me, have you heard any news?"
"Not yet, but we will hear some before long I'm sure."
"Your faith does as much for me as this lady's care. But when you go away, when I'm alone, when I begin to think—"
"Don't think too much; don't permit yourself to doubt," O'Reilly said, quickly. "Take my word for it, Rosa is alive and we'll find her somewhere, somehow. You heard that she had fallen into Cobo's hands when he sacked the Yumuri, but now we know that she and the negroes were living in the Pan de Matanzas long after that. In the same way Lopez assured me positively4 that you were dead. Well, look at you! It shows how little faith we can put in any story. No, Rosa is safe, and General Gomez will soon have word of her. That's what I've been waiting for—that and what you might have to tell me."
"You know all that I know now and everything that has happened to me."
"I don't know how you came to be in a cell in San Antonio de los Banos, two hundred miles from the place you were killed. That is still a mystery."
"It is very simple, amigo. Let me see: I had finished telling you about the fight at La Joya. I was telling you how I fainted."
"Exactly. Norine bound and gagged you at that point in the story."
"Some good people found me a few hours after I lost consciousness. They supposed I had been attacked by guerrillas and left for dead. Finding that I still had life in me, they took me home with them. They were old friends from Matanzas by the name of Valdes—cultured people who had fled the city and were hiding in the manigua like the rest of us."
"Not Valdes, the notary5?"
"The very same. Alberto Valdes and his four daughters. Heaven guided them to me. Alberto was an old man; he had hard work to provide food for his girls. Nevertheless, he refused to abandon me. The girls had become brown and ragged and as shy as deer. They nursed me for weeks, for my wounds became infected. God! It seems to me that I lay there sick and helpless for years. When my brain would clear I would think of Rosa, and then the fever would rise again and I would go out of my head. Oh, they were faithful, patient people! You see, I had walked east instead of west, and now I was miles away from home, and the country between was swarming6 with Spaniards who were burning, destroying, killing7. You wouldn't know Matanzas, O'Reilly. It is a desert.
"I finally became able to drag myself around the hut. But I had no means of sending word to Rosa, and the uncertainty8 nearly made me crazy. My clothes had rotted from me; my bones were just under the skin. I must have been a shocking sight. Then one day there came a fellow traveling east with messages for Gomez. He was one of Lopez's men, and he told me that Lopez had gone to the Rubi Hills with Maceo, and that there were none of our men left in the province. He told me other things, too. It was from him that I learned—" Estban Varona's thin hands clutched the edges of his hammock and he rolled his head weakly from side to side. "It was he who told me about Rosa. He said that Cobo had ravaged9 the Yumuri and that my sister—was gone. Christ!"
"There, there! We know better now," O'Reilly said, soothingly10.
"It was a hideous11 story, a story of rape12, murder. I wonder that I didn't go mad. It never occurred to me to doubt, and as a matter of fact the fellow was honest enough; he really believed what he told me. Well, I was sorry I hadn't died that night in the sunken road. All the hope, all the desire to live, went out of me. You see, I had been more than half expecting something of the kind. Every time I had left Rosa it had been with the sickening fear that I might never see here again. After the man had finished I felt the desire to get away from all I had known and loved, to leave Matanzas for new fields and give what was left of me to the cause.
"I presume Alberto and the girls were relieved to get rid of me, for it meant more food for them. Anyhow, between us we prevailed upon the messenger to take me along. I was free to enlist13, since I couldn't reach Lopez, and I came to join our forces in the Orient.
"That is how you found me in this province. Lopez's man never delivered those despatches, for we were taken crossing the trocha—at least I was taken, for Pablo was killed. They'd have made an end of me, too, I dare say, only I was so weak. It seems a century since that night. My memory doesn't serve me very well from that point, for they jailed me, and I grew worse. I was out of my head a good deal. I seem to remember a stockade14 somewhere and other prisoners, some of whom nursed me. You say you found me in a cell in San Antonio de los Banos. Well, I don't know how I got there, and I never heard of the place."
"It will probably all come back to you in time," said O'Reilly.
"No doubt."
The two men fell silent for a while. Esteban lay with closed eyes, exhausted15. O'Reilly gave himself up to frowning thought. His thoughts were not pleasant; he could not, for the life of him, believe in Rosa's safety so implicitly16 as he had led Esteban to suppose; his efforts to cheer the other had sapped his own supply of hope, leaving him a prey17 to black misgivings18. He was glad when Norine Evans's return put an end to his speculations19.
Esteban was right; the girl did have an unusual ability to banish20 shadows, a splendid power to rout21 devils both of the spirit and of the flesh; she was a sort of antibody, destroying every noxious22 or unhealthy thing mental or physical with which she came in contact. This blessed capability23 was quite distinct from her skill with medicines—it was a gift, and as much a part of her as the healing magic which dwells in the sunshine.
Certainly her knack24 of lending health and strength from her own abundant store had never been better shown than in Esteban's case, for with almost no medical assistance she had brought him back from the very voids. It was quite natural, therefore, that she should take a pride in her work and regard him with a certain jealous proprietary25 interest; it was equally natural that he should claim the greater share of her attention.
"Have you harrowed this poor man's feelings sufficiently26 for once?" she inquired of O'Reilly.
"I have. I'll agree to talk about nothing unpleasant hereafter."
Esteban turned to his nurse, inquiring, abruptly27, "Do you think Rosa is alive?"
"Why, of course I do! Aren't you alive and—almost well?"
Now, as an argument, there was no particular force in this suggestion; nevertheless, both men felt reassured28. Esteban heaved a grateful sigh. After a moment he said,
"There is something I want to tell you both."
"Wait until to-morrow," Norine advised.
But he persisted: "No! I must tell it now. First, however, did either of you discover an old coin in any of my pockets—an old Spanish doubloon?"
"That doubloon again!" Norine lifted her hands protestingly, and cast a meaning look at O'Reilly. "You talked about nothing else for a whole week. Let me feel your pulse."
Esteban surrendered his hand with suspicious readiness.
"You were flat broke when we got you," O'Reilly declared.
"Probably. I seem to remember that somebody stole it."
"Doubloons! Pieces of eight! Golden guineas!" exclaimed Norine. "Why those are pirate coins! They remind me of Treasure Island; of Long John Silver and his wooden leg; of Ben Gunn and all the rest." With a voice made hoarse29, doubtless to imitate the old nut-brown seaman30 with the saber-scar and the tarry pig-tail, who sat sipping31 his rum and water in the Admiral Benbow Inn, she began to chant:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the Devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
Esteban smiled uncomprehendingly. "Yes? Well, this has to do with treasure. That doubloon was a part of the lost treasure of the Varonas."
"Lost treasure!" Norine's gray eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"
"There is a mysterious fortune in our family. My father buried it. He was very rich, you know, and he was afraid of the Spaniards. O'Reilly knows the story."
Johnnie assented32 with a grunt33. "Sure! I know all about it."
Esteban raised himself to his elbow. "You think it's a myth, a joke.
Well, it's not. I know where it is. I found it!"
Norine gasped34; Johnnie spoke35 soothingly:
"Don't get excited, old man; you've talked too much to-day."
"Ha!" Esteban fell back upon his pillow. "I haven't any fever. I'm as sane36 as ever I was. That treasure exists, and that doubloon gave me the clue to its whereabouts. Pancho Cueto knew my father, and HE believed the story. He believed in it so strongly that—well—that's why he denounced my sister and me as traitors37. He dug up our entire
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