A ledge of safety

OHN CALTROP, C.E., stretched his slight, wiry limbs as he sprawled on the broad window-seat, leaning against the heavy bars through which he had been looking out over the plaza of a little Andean capital.

“Tell the Secretary of State to go jump on himself,” he said indifferently.

“He wouldn’ do it, son,” smiled old Mr. Grey in his soft Texan drawl, “not if yo’ tol’ him to fo’ a thousan’ yeahs. He’s jus’ that awbstinate.”

A tall young man, whose figure gave promise of future portliness, stopped short in his nervous pacing of the room.

“But—hang it all, don’t you both see?” he cried. “Modesto Angel Borja is”

“Which means, Modest Angel Borgia,” chuckled Jack Caltrop. “Isn’t that the peachy combination of names, though?”

“Hang the name!” cried the tall young man.

“By all means!” assented Jack heartily. “And hang the man at the same time. It may come to that, yet.”

“Don’t, please, make more of an ass of ourself than you can help, Caltrop,” begged D. Webster Stowell, counselor and attorney-at-law—this being the tall young man’s name and title. “Borja is acting well within his legal rights. He’s not only Secretary of State of the so-called republic, but also chairman of this Government investigating committee. Having called you both as witnesses, he expects you to come, and without any more words.”

“That man Borja has an awful lot to lea’n,” observed old Mr. Grey, shaking his head pensively as he leaned back in his chair and rolled another cigarette.

“But listen—do listen for a moment!” implored poor Stowell. “Here we are, with a general election just coming on. Of course Henning, and all that opposition crowd back of him, don’t want us to get the concession we’re after. Then we’d be a power, here in the country, and they don’t want rivals. Also, the country is trembling on the verge of a civil war. Peralta, who wants to succeed himself as president, fears it may break out any minute. And he has reason to fear, for Prado”

“Vivan Prado, Echeverria y libertad!” yelled a shrill voice outside.

“Vivan!" shouted fifty other voices, in chorus.

“Them’s my sentiments!” cried Jack, turning to the window again. “Vivan!"

Five or six rifles cracked, throwing sharp echoes from the old stone houses. With a vicious whine, something flew in between the window bars and, striking a crystal chandelier, brought a shower of broken prisms on Stowell’s head and shoulders before burying itself in the opposite wall. Impatiently the young lawyer shook off the fragments of glass, but paid no other attention to the shot, thus earning a nod of approval from old Mr. Grey as he rose and sauntered to the window.

The sound of the shots had hushed the shouts, for the moment, and a confused murmur of voices, which previously had arisen from the little park and the streets surrounding it. Many men gathered there, for the most part standing in sullen groups, talking together, all of them apart from the police who, with army rifles in their hands, were stationed in pairs at short intervals.

One policeman, however, stood alone. He wore the chevrons of a corporal, and it was he who had fired at the house, for he still held his smoking rifle at “ready” and was peering at the window to see the effect of his shot.

Then, from one of the many other houses that overlooked the plaza, another rifle cracked. The corporal of police fell limply, his piece crashing to the pavement.

“It’s a horse to a hen that Tommy Westlock fired that shot!” cried Jack.

“I don’ know who Tawmmy Westlock is, but I’m suah glad he did fiah it,” remarked old Mr. Grey.

“Why, in heaven’s name?” asked Stowell in amazement.

“Why, because othahwise I’d have had to do it myself,” responded Mr. Grey, mildly surprised at the simplicity of the question. “That man heard Jack yell, an’ he knew who it was. He’d have made trouble, likely, if he’d been allowed to go scot-free. It isn’t wise, Jack,, to hollah fo’ the opposition like that, while Peralta still holds the reins. But what was it you were sayin’ when the interruption came?”

“This. Peralta is determined to remain in power, and probably he’ll succeed. He’s a soldier. Prado isn’t, and neither is Eche verria. The only leader of military ability that the Pradists have is old General Torrenegro, and he’s done nothing, so far as any one can tell. He can’t; he’s too closely watched, and would be arrested instantly if he should try to leave Santa Maria.”

“Doubtless,” agreed old Mr. Grey. “Still, Danny, I don’ jus’ see how”

“I was just going to show how this applies to us,” the young lawyer went on. “As Peralta will doubtless remain in power, it’s to him we’ll have to look for our concession. As soon as this uneasiness has passed and he’s safe on the job once more, his need for the Henning ‘push’ and their support will be over. He’d sell his soul for money, if he could find a purchaser. So then all we’ll have to do is to ‘slip’ something over to him and get our concession without any more fuss or worry.”

“Won’t do, Danny,” replied the old man, shaking his head. “Peralta wouldn’ stay bought as long as it would take him to pawcket the money. That sawt of dawg nevah does, suh. What we have tuh do is tuh kick Peralta out an’ put Prado in.”

Stowell looked at Jack, who nodded hearty assent. Then the young lawyer gave them both up as hopeless. Going to one of the windows, he stood looking with listless indifference at the scene on the plaza. Then, of a sudden, his indifference vanished and he straightened as he stood.

“By Jove, what a pretty girl!” he exclaimed. “And—hang it—she blushed! She must understand English and have heard what I said.”

“If being born and largely brought up in New York would teach her English, she probably does,” agreed Jack, who was running around the room in a wild search for his hat. “Her name’s Helen Westlock. Her brother, Tommy, was a classmate of mine at college, and a chum. Their mother is the wife of old General Torrenegro. Married him when Helen and Tom were little bits of kids. Tom’s been out of the city since before we came. Where in blazes has that lid of mine got to? She mustn’t be out there in the street alone!”

He found the missing headgear as he spoke, and dashed from the room, followed, more sedately, by Mr. Grey. In a few strides Jack was close behind the girl.

“Helen!” he called.

She turned. The color left her face and her eyes snapped. “Have you forgotten my request that our acquaintance might cease?” she asked coldly.

“Oh, Nell—don’t be foolish!” he begged. “Won’t you forgive me? After all, it was such a silly little quarrel.”

“I don’t agree with you. Will you let me pass?”

“At least, let me go to your door with you. It isn’t safe in the streets, with things as they are now. I wonder your people let you go out—but they didn’t know you were going to try, I suppose!”

“You are impertinent,” she replied, still more coldly, if possible, than before. “I much prefer to go home alone.”

WITHOUT more words she went on her way, her head held high, leaving him standing on the pavement, looking after her. She had but a few steps to go. Seeing that she had entered the Torrenegro house, Jack turned, with a sigh, and was about to retrace his steps, when old Mr. Grey laid a detaining hand on his arm.

“I didn’t mean to spy on yo’, son,” said the old man gently. “I came out tuh see that nothin’ happened tuh you or that gyirl, an’ I couldn’t help but see that the way she received you caused yo’ pain. Do yo’ wish tuh tell me what’s wrong? I don’t ask from mere cu’iosity.”

Jack had no fear that the handsome, kindly-faced old man would wish to pry into the affairs of any one. Mr. Grey, though he had been a famous “gun-man” in the old and lawless days of the West, looked on Jack with the fondness of a father and had practically adopted him. To no one would he tell his troubles more readily.

“We were engaged—and there was a quarrel,” he said. “It wasn’t anything, really. She admired the Boers—it was during the Boer war—and I didn’t. She accused me of snobbery and all sorts of things, and then broke everything off. That’s all.”

That was all—and quite enough, too, so far as Jack was concerned; Mr. Grey could see that written on the young man’s face. And, versed in the ways of life, he knew that no quarrels are more difficult to heal than those of trivial beginnings. He was about to speak, when a shout from the Torrenegro house prevented.

“Jack! Jack Caltrop! Oh, Jack!” called a voice. “It’s me—Tom Westlock! Wait a minute, can’t you?”

Jack stopped, some of the gloom leaving his face. Mr. Grey returned to the house as Tommy Westlock, a masculine and much magnified edition of his sister, came running out of the Casa Torrenegro.

“I’ve been out on the hacienda," Tommy explained. “I only hit town this morning—came with a rush when I heard you were here. Nell came into the house just now with her nose so high that she could nearly look into her own nostrils, so I knew she’d seen you. Sometimes that girl is more different kinds of an idiot even than the average female human of her age—and that’s going some,” he ended, with true brotherly candor.

“I came out to see that she got safely home,” was all the reply that occurred to Jack.

“She hadn’t any right to be out. Things are arranging themselves for a first-class shindy, if you want to know. Say, did you see me nail that cop? He isn’t dead; I didn’t want to kill him. But he was too blazing fresh. Who was that stunning looking old chap who just left you?” Jack told him as they walked along toward the house.

“You don’t mean to say that it’s Graveyard Grey!” exclaimed Tom as his friend finished.

“He used to be called that—behind his back,” replied Jack. “It makes him awfully angry to hear it. Come in and meet him.”

“Sure, I will. And he won’t hear the name from me,” laughed Tom. “I value my fair young life too much, by far.”

His “fair, young life” was in no danger, as things turned out. Both Mr. Grey and Stowell took the strongest of liking for the handsome, open-faced young fellow who in a few minutes seemed to have known them all his life. They were laughing and chatting when Jack, who had resumed his favorite perch on the window-seat, pointed through the bars.

“Look, Tom,” he said. “Somebody’s going to visit your house in state. Who is that gorgeous, brass-bound individual at the head of those three companies of infantry?”

The smile faded from Tom’s face, which went very white as he sprang to the window and looked out. “It’s the head of the police,” he said. “They’re after the only father I’ve ever known—General Torrenegro.”

For a moment there was a sympathetic hush. Then Jack offered what he hoped might be a crumb of consolation. “Maybe not,” he said. “If they were going after the old General, they’d hardly take those balks of timber with them, would they?”

“Yes. Of course they would. Our doors are very strong.”

The soldiers and their ornate leader now had passed out of sight. The Torrenegro house, being on the same side of the plaza as that from which the four men were looking, could not be seen without leaning out of the windows, and that was prevented by the bars. For a moment they waited, hoping against hope that the destination of the hated police official was not the old general’s house. Then, seeing their own concern reflected on the faces of those who stood in the street, they knew that what they feared was coming to pass. Then followed the resounding bang of timber against heavy planks. Already the battering-rams were at work. A few scattering shots snapped here and there. The crash of a volley answered them.

“My mother’s still in the country, thank heaven!” cried Tom. “Helen’s in the house, though, and when I think of her being at the mercy of that beast Borja—”

“At the mercy of Borja!” exclaimed Jack. “How at his mercy? They can’t take Helen—she’s done nothing.”

“What of it? Of course they’ll take her. Borja will see to that. He’s crazy about her—always has been. Hang it all, I can’t stay here! I must do something!”

He would have run from the room, but Mr. Grey, with kindly force, stopped him.

“Don’ be foolish, lad,” he said. “It would do no good to any one fo’ you to run out theah an’ be gathahed in by the police. Is theah no back way outah these houses? No path by which a man can get from one to anothah? Use youah haid! Think!”

“These houses are set right on the edge of the little level plateau that holds this part of the city,” replied Tom sadly. “From the rear windows is a clear drop of nearly three hundred feet.”

“That’s true,” admitted Jack, rising, his face set and determined. “Yet I think I know of a path that may serve. Come and see.”

He left the room, the others following him, and went to the rear of the house, picking up a long coil of light line on the way. The back wall was pierced not only by windows, but by a door, through which merchandise could be hoisted from the lower level. Some six feet below this door, a ledge, three inches in width, ran along behind the entire row of houses.

“D’you mean to say you’re going to try and crawl along that?” demanded Tom. “Well, I think not! If any one makes a stab at that stunt, it’ll be me. It’s my place to, and”

“Tom, listen!” interrupted Jack. “There’s no time to talk. You’re twice as big as I, and weigh any number of pounds more. Besides, I’m used to mountain climbing, and you’re not. I have a chance of succeeding—you wouldn’t have.”

“He’s right, lad,” agreed old Mr. Grey. “Heaven knows I’d not let him go if theah was any othah way! But if yo’ want tuh help youah sistah an’ the ol’ Gene’al, do as he says, an’ do it quick! Those doahs won’ las’ fo’evah.”

Very reluctantly Tom yielded. “All right,” he said shortly. “Is there nothing I can do?”

“Yes,” replied Jack. “Take that coil and pay out as I go.”

“But that little cord won’t hold you, if you fall.”

“I know it. It isn’t intended to. Your house is the fourth from here, isn’t it? The one where that heavy line, rove through a block, hangs down.”

“Yes. It’s used to hoist vegetables and stuff from below.”

“Right! So long.”

“So long, son,” responded old Mr. Grey. “Good luck! Don’t yo’ get stahtled if yo’ heah a shot. It’ll be me who fiahs.”

With a wave of his hand to show that he understood, Jack dropped over the door-sill, lowering himself cautiously until he felt the ledge under his feet. Then, inch by inch, he began his perilous journey toward the house of General Torrenegro.

It was terribly risky work. Flattened as much as possible against the masonry, his balance was most delicately adjusted. Anything—a crumbling bit of mortar, or even a sudden puff of the gentle breeze that was blowing—might have disturbed it and sent him whirling through the air down into the stable yards and kitchen gardens three hundred feet below. With bated breath the three men watched him, Tom paying out the line with greatest care, that there might be neither strain nor slack, Stowell clutching the stone door-jamb as though he would crush it in his grasp, and Mr. Grey, leaning from the doorway, holding one of the old Colts that had done such terrible service in days of yore, ready for any intrusive head that might appear.

FORTUNATELY, however, none did appear. The attention of nearly every one was directed toward the front of their houses that day. And at last, after a journey which, to the watchers, seemed hours long, Jack reached the door of the Torrenegro house. By luck, it was open—but then, few people thought of closing doors that only opened on to vacant space. Jack pulled himself up so that he could throw one knee over the sill and gain the floor. Then, unreeving the heavy line of which he had spoken, he bent its end to the thin cord that he had carried with him.

“Haul it in! Stretch it as tight as you can and then make it fast!” he called, and ran into the house.

Once inside he had to stop and blink until his eyes became in a measure accustomed to the semi-darkness of shuttered rooms. There was no need for Jack to search for those whom he was trying to rescue. The sound of crashing timbers and the crackle of shots guided him at once to the great front doors.

These doors, of massive wood riveted to heavy boiler-plate, had stood well, but now, sorely battered by the heavy timbers which had unceasingly been hurled against them, they had begun to yield. They winked with each blow, letting in a gleam of sunshine, and then, as the battering-rams rebounded, shutting it out again.

Before these doors a table had been moved, and seven repeating rifles laid upon it. By the table stood old General Torrenegro, soldierly and straight, waiting for the fight to begin, which, doubtless, would be his last. Helen, white and trembling, yet cool with the coolness of desperation, stood close by, a tiny pistol, hardly more than a toy, clutched in her hand. Here and there Indian or half-breed servants crouched, whimpering, against the wall.

Taking in the scene at a glance, Jack wasted no time in greeting. “Come!” he cried, grasping an arm of each and pulling them toward the rear of the house. “There’s a way out—if you hurry!”

General Torrenegro permitted himself only one astonished look at the sudden advent of a total stranger in his barricaded house while the authorities of the so-called republic were trying, thus far vainly, to effect an entrance. But he knew well that there was no time to waste in questions. Deciding with the quickness of an old soldier that this extraordinary person was more likely to be friend than foe, he picked up one of the rifles and, yielding, was led to the rear door. Helen, guided by Jack, came submissively, like one who walks in a waking dream of horror.

Even the old General, brave man though he had proved himself a thousand times to be, turned pale at the sight of the path he was to follow. The heavy line that had been stretched from one door to the other made the passage far easier and safer than it had been when negotiated by Jack, it is true; but still it was sufficiently appalling to one who had not made perilous “face-climbs” for pure sport. The General glanced at his stepdaughter.

“You go first, sir,” suggested Jack respectfully. “The line ought to be tested. Slip it outside of you, and don’t look down.”

Without a word, General Torrenegro slipped over the door-sill and, with Jack’s help, found the ledge. Facing outward, grasping the line with both hands and keeping his eyes tightly closed so as not to see the void beneath his feet, he sidled away. Jack turned to Helen.

“You see it’s easy,” said he, in a tone intended to carry encouragement. “It’ll be your turn in a minute, now.”

“I can’t!” she replied, in a whisper.

“But you must!” he exclaimed in return. “Don’t you see? It’s not hard, if you keep your head, and don’t be”

“I’m not frightened,” she interrupted. “That is, not in the ordinary way. But my body—not my mind—has a horror of heights. I can’t help it! My knees tremble and give way. I can’t do it. Rather than try, I’ll stay here, and—well, do what I may to keep Borja from getting me. I can do that. The other I can’t, that’s all!”

Jack understood. It was not the first time that he had come in contact with this purely physical fear of heights, which, once roused, is so all-conquering. For the next few seconds he thought quickly. The doors, as he could tell from the sound of the blows upon them, were nearly down. Helen must not remain where she was; rather would he see her do what she “had to, to keep Borja from getting her.” And he could think of but one alternative—a desperate one, it is true, but there was no other that he could see.

Glancing from the door, he saw that the General had made the journey in safety. Quickly casting loose his end of the line, he tied it around Helen’s waist and, lifting her over the sill before she had time to realize what was happening, dropped her.

Jack’s heart sickened in sympathy with her terrified scream as she shot downward; his head spun as she whirled at the end of the taut rope; every time her tender body touched the cliff his own seemed to feel the hurt, magnified tenfold.

Then a final crash of the doors told him that it was time to think of his own safety. Helen was being raised as fast as willing hands could take in the line as he lowered himself to the ledge for the return journey.

Hardly had he started when there was a scream of triumph from the house he had just left; then a chorus of excited voices broke forth as it was realized that the expected prey had vanished. But some one of the servants, probably under the well-grounded fear of instant death, must have betrayed the method of escape. A head peeped through the doorway, then another and still one more.

“Look out, Jack—steady, now!”

It was the voice of Mr. Grey, and the sharp report of his pistol followed it instantly. The weapon spoke thrice, with hardly a perceptible interval between the reports. Jack felt the wind of all three bullets on his cheek as they sped by. Glancing back he saw that but one head remained, and that this one hung limply over the door-sill, a small, round hole in its temple. The sight made Jack feel a sinking in his stomach for one second. In the next he was caught by Tommy’s powerful hands and hauled into the door of his own house as though he had been a sack of the vegetables which ordinarily entered in that way.

“How’s Helen?” he demanded, as soon as he felt the floor of the house under his feet.

“All right. A few slight bruises. She’s fainted. But come on. The police know where Helen and Dad have gone, now, and there’ll be things doing. There are windows flanking the doors in this house, so we can lam the stuffing out of ’em if they try that timber-ramming stunt, but Dad’s afraid they’ll have brought a couple of guns by this time.”

“I wondered why they didn’t use artillery, or at any rate, dynamite against those doors of yours,” remarked Jack, as the two pulled in and coiled away the line that had been allowed to drop when Helen was taken from it. They hurried toward the front of the great house.

“There was no dynamite in the city, and no guns. We have friends who saw that everything that could be was sent away. Dad was watched so that he couldn’t do anything himself, but he’s been in communication with our people right along. They’re due to drop in almost any time, now. Peralta just found it out; hence the police. There—what did I tell you?”

The report of a light field-piece, as Tom spoke, echoed from the opposite side of the plaza. Instinctively Jack listened for the sound of an exploding shell, but it did not come.

“What on earth can they be firing at?” he asked in amazement.

“At us—or rather at the front doors,” Tom replied.

“But that can’t be! They didn’t even hit the house. They couldn’t miss like that at a range of less than two hundred yards.”

“Can’t they? You don’t know what these gunners can do when they try. They’ll get the range later, though. Is this your rifle? Am I to take any of the others? Good. Come on!”

THE scene in the plaza had changed since Jack had left the room overlooking it, to which he now returned. No groups of sullen men were standing there. Save for two mountain-guns and a half-dozen platoons of infantry, the little park was empty of living men.

But, though the plaza was empty, the houses surrounding it were not. This fact was proved by several motionless bodies dressed in uniforms as gaudy as the flowers among which they lay sprawling, and by three more lying under the guns. Against one of them a wounded man leaned wearily. Rifles cracked from windows everywhere, and two platoons of soldiers were firing at will.

Most of this fire was concentrated upon the house where lived the Americans, whose rifles now began to reply with deadly effect. For these people did not miss, as their opponents generally did, and besides, they were sheltered by stonewalls. Even Stowell, his legal training utterly lost among primitive passions, was fighting like the rest—and shooting as straight as anybody.

“They didn’t tell us to open the door; they just fired at us,” was the excuse he afterward offered for this unwonted conduct. “There’s absolutely no legal warrant for that. I wish there was a United States consul here.”

But there was no consul. And what was more to the point, an artilleryman, who, with the rest, had been driven from his post by the concentrated fire, sprang forward, pulled the lanyard of a gun, which already had been loaded and laid, then escaped to shelter before a bullet could find him. Screaming across the little park, the shell struck the great doors and exploded, shattering one of them and driving both inward.

There was a yell of triumph. Infantry officers shrieked commands. Some of them fell with these commands hardly spoken. But others took their places. Bayonets flashed and rattled as they were snapped in position, and with shouts of self-encouragement the infantry charged.

Mr. Grey spoke a few hurried words in the ear of General Torrenegro, who nodded emphatic assent. Then the old man turned to Helen, who, having recovered from her swoon, was standing near.

“Run up those staiahs, honey, an’ out o’ the way,” said he gently, and as the girl obeyed, he spoke to the three young men. “We got tuh hol’ these doahs. Stop firin’ from the windahs now. The othah houses will ’tend to that paht o’ the show; they crackle now, ’most eve’y one, like a cat’s back rubbed the wrong way. Gene’al Torrenegro suah mus’ have a lot o’ frien’s in this town, an’ a lot moah outside of it. This is the bes’ place fo’ us tuh take the rush, boys. It’s goin’ tuh be like ol’ times. Stan’ steady—heah, it comes!”

Thoroughly in his element now, talking easily, with a grim smile of pleasurable anticipation on his face, the old man marshaled the three younger ones into line at the foot of the stairs. As he finished speaking, the portal darkened with a rush of men, each straining and eager first to reach the little party that stood waiting for them.

“Now, then—steady!” warned Mr. Grey.

“Tira!” added General Torrenegro instantly.

Four rifles crashed as one. The terrible six-guns of the old frontiersman blazed with two practically continuous streams of fire. The front of the enemy crumpled, but, trampling the fallen under their feet, the survivors still came on.

Jack’s rifle was empty, so, clutching it by the barrel, he swung it back over his shoulder to strike at the head of a man who was about to thrust with a bayonet. The head vanished, but whether he had hit it or not Jack did not know—nor did he much care. Something had gone very wrong with him—in a languid sort of way he realized that. With mild surprise he found that he was lying on the floor raised on one elbow, while with the other hand he tried his best to empty his automatic pistol among the onrushing crowd.

But the work was too hard. Really, he couldn’t see that it paid. All he wanted was to rest—rest forever. The faces of the enemy blurred and became blended in an indistinguishable mass. From outside he thought he heard cheers and also yells of consternation, but was not sure. It didn’t matter, anyway. Then he sank gently back for his coveted rest, and with it, for the time, came oblivion.

A STINGING pain aroused him, and as it did so, he heard the voice of old Mr. Grey, speaking in Spanish.

“The chief surgeon, Colonel de la Vega, said that the bullet has touched no vital part,” Mr. Grey was saying. “He has lost much blood, but, young and strong as he is, he will soon recover.”

It was General Torrenegro who replied.

“God be thanked!” he said fervently.

“What has happened?” asked Jack, in a faint voice which, as it seemed to him, was the property of somebody else.

“Hush,” replied the General. “The surgeons say that you are not to talk.”

“But I want to know,” he protested querulously. “Where’s Peralta—and Borja?”

“Dead, both of them—they died against the churchyard wall. I could not prevent it—I was not in time. But it is only an episode, my boy. They are common in this country, and this one now is happily ended. But we must not speak with you longer. Helen may come, and she”

“She’s coming now!” interrupted Mr. Grey, and like two schoolboys who feared to be caught trespassing, the old warriors tiptoed from the room as Helen entered it. But Jack’s curiosity was far from being satisfied as yet. Seeing that he was going to speak, Helen laid a gentle hand over his mouth.

“Don’t, Jack, you’ll hurt yourself!” she begged. “I’ll tell you all there is to tell. Our men came just after that bullet struck you. You’re a popular hero; that rescue is known now from one end of the country to the other. And that’s all, I think—except that none of us, except you, were hurt.”

Raising a feeble hand, he dragged hers away from his lips.

“It isn’t all!” he protested faintly. “It’s hardly a beginning. Helen, have you”

Gently, she replaced her hand; then her head bent down until her face almost touched his.

“I’ve been thinking that—perhaps—the Boers aren’t such a very fine set of people—if you say so, Jack,” she whispered.

“They’re the best ever!” he whispered in return; then, smiling happily, fell asleep.