A thousand deaths by Jack London

get her down here.”

“And a truce until we do save her—I get you,” Wemple

affirmed.

“A truce until we get her safe and sound back here in

Tampico, or aboard a battleship. After that . . . ?”

Both men shrugged shoulders and beamed on each other as their hands met in

ratification.

Fresh volleys of stones thrummed against the wire-screened windows; a boy’s

voice rose shrilly above the clamor, proclaiming death to the Gringos; and the

house reverberated to the heavy crash of some battering ram against the streetdoor

downstairs. Both men, snatching up automatic rifles, ran down to where their

fire could command the threatened door.

“If they break in we’ve got to let them have it,” Wemple said.

Davies nodded quiet agreement, then inconsistently burst out with a lurid string of

oaths.

“To think of it!” he explained his wrath. “One out of three of those curs outside

has worked for you or me—lean-bellied, bare-footed, poverty-stricken, glad for

ten centavos a day if they could only get work. And we’ve given them steady jobs

and a hundred and fifty centavos a day, and here they are yelling for our blood.”

“Only the half breeds;” Davies corrected.

“You know what I mean,” Wemple replied. “The only peons we’ve lost are those

that have been run off or shot.”

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61

The attack on the door ceasing, they returned upstairs. Half a dozen scattered

shots from farther along the street seemed to draw away the mob, for the

neighborhood became comparatively quiet.

A whistle came to them through the open windows, and a man’s voice calling:

“Wemple! Open the door! It’s Habert! Want to talk to you!”

Wemple went down, returning in several minutes with a tidily- paunched, wellbuilt,

gray-haired American of fifty. He shook hands with Davies and flung

himself into a chair, breathing heavily. He did not relinquish his clutch on the

Colt’s 44 automatic pistol, although he immediately addressed himself to the task

of fishing a filled clip of cartridges from the pocket of his linen coat. He had

arrived hatless and breathless, and the blood from a stone-cut on the cheek oozed

down his face. He, too, in a fit of anger, springing to his feet when he had

changed clips in his pistol, burst out with mouth-filling profanity.

“They had an American flag in the dirt, stamping and spitting on it. And they told

me to spit on it.”

Wemple and Davies regarded him with silent interrogation.

“Oh, I know what you’re wondering!” he flared out. “Would I a-spit on it in the

pinch? That’s what’s eating you. I’ll answer. Straight out, brass tacks, I WOULD.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

He paused to help himself to a cigar from the box on the table and to light it with

a steady and defiant hand.

“Hell !—I guess this neck of the woods knows Anthony Habert, and you can bank

on it that it’s never located his yellow streak. Sure, in the pinch, I’d spit on Old

Glory. What the hell d’ye think I’m going on the streets for a night like this?

Didn’t I skin out of the Southern Hotel half an hour ago, where there are forty

buck Americans, not counting their women, and all armed? That was safety. What

d’ye think I came here for?—to rescue you?”

His indignation lumped his throat into silence, and he seemed shaken as with an

apoplexy.

“Spit it out,” Davies commanded dryly.

“I’ll tell you,’ Habert exploded. “It’s Billy Boy. Fifty miles up country and twentythousand

throat-cutting federals and rebels between him and me. D’ye know what

that boy’d do, if he was here in Tampico and I was fifty miles up the Panuco?

Well, I know. And I’m going to do the same—go and get him.”

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62

“We’re figuring on going up,” Wemple assured him.

“And that’s why I headed here—Miss Drexel, of course?”

Both men acquiesced and smiled. It was a time when men dared speak of matters

which at other times tabooed speech.

“Then the thing’s to get started,” Habert exclaimed, looking at his watch. “It’s

midnight now. We’ve got to get to the river and get a boat— ”

But the clamor of the returning mob came through the windows in answer.

Davies was about to speak, when the telephone rang, and Wemple sprang to the

instrument.

“It’s Carson,” he interjected, as he listened. “They haven’t cut the wires across the

river yet.—Hello, Carson. Was it a break or a cut? . . . Bully for you. . . . Yes,

move the mules across to the potrero beyond Tamcochin . . . . Who’s at the water

station? . . . Can you still ‘phone him? . . . Tell him to keep the tanks full, and to

shut off the main to Arico. Also, to hang on till the last minute, and keep a horse

saddled to cut and run for it. Last thing before he runs, he must jerk out the ‘phone

. . . . Yes, yes, yes. Sure. No breeds. Leave full-blooded Indians in charge. Gabriel

is a good hombre. Heaven knows, once we’re chased out, when we’ll get back . . .

. You can’t pinch down Jaramillo under twenty-five hundred barrels. We’ve got

storage for ten days. Gabriel’ll have to handle it. Keep it moving, if we have to run

it into the river—”

“Ask him if he has a launch,” Habert broke in.

“He hasn’t,” was Wemple’s answer. “The federals commandeered the last one at

noon.”

“Say, Carson, how are you going to make your get-away?” Wemple queried.

The man to whom he talked was across the Panuco, on the south side, at the tank

farm.

“Says there isn’t any get-away,” Wemple vouchsafed to the other two. “The

federals are all over the shop, and he can’t understand why they haven’t raided him

hours ago.”

“. . . Who? Campos? That skunk! . . . all right . . . Don’t be worried if you don’t

hear from me. I’m going up river with Davies and Habert . . . . Use your judgment,

and if you get a safe chance at Campos, pot him . . . . Oh, a hot time over here.

They’re battering our doors now. Yes, by all means . . . Good-by, old man.”

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63

Wemple lighted a cigarette and wiped his forehead.

“You know Campos, Jose H. Campos,” he volunteered. “The dirty cur’s stuck

Carson up for twenty thousand pesos. We had to pay, or he’d have compelled half

our peons to enlist or set the wells on fire. And you know, Davies, what we’ve

done for him in past years. Gratitude? Simple decency? Great Scott!”

It was the night of April twenty-first. On the morning of the twenty- first the

American marines and bluejackets had landed at Vera Cruz and seized the custom

house and the city. Immediately the news was telegraphed, the vengeful Mexican

mob had taken possession of the streets of Tampico and expressed its disapproval

of the action of the United States by tearing down American flags and crying

death to the Americans.

There was nothing save its own spinelessness to deter the mob from carrying out

its threat. Had it battered down the doors of the Southern Hotel, or of other hotels,

or of residences such as Wemple’s, a fight would have started in which the

thousands of federal soldiers in Tampico would have joined their civilian

compatriots in the laudable task of decreasing the Gringo population of that

particular portion of Mexico. There should have been American warships to act as

deterrents; but through some inexplicable excess of delicacy, or strategy, or

heaven knows what, the United States, when it gave its orders to take Vera Cruz,

had very carefully withdrawn its warships from Tampico to the open Gulf a dozen

miles away. This order had come to Admiral Mayo by wireless from Washington,

and thrice he had demanded the order to be repeated, ere, with tears in his eyes, he

had turned his back on his countrymen and countrywomen and steamed to sea.

“Of all asinine things, to leave us in the lurch this way!” Habert was denouncing

the powers that be of his country. “Mayo’d never have done it. Mark my words, he

had to take program from Washington. And here we are, and our dear ones

scattered for fifty miles back up country …. Say, if I lose Billy Boy I’ll never dare

go home to face the wife.—Come on. Let the three of us make a start. We can

throw the fear of God into any gang on the streets.”

“Come on over and take a squint,” Davies invited from where he stood, somewhat

back from the window, looking down into the street.

It was gorged with rioters, all haranguing, cursing, crying out death, and urging

one another to smash the doors, but each hanging back from the death he knew