John Buchan - The Courts of the Morning (John Buchan) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

"How much longer can you stick it?" he asked on the second occasion. "You're looking peaked."

"I've another week here. Then I break for the open. I doubt if I could keep it up for more than a week, for people are asking questions. Have you squared it with old Josephs and notified the Universum people?"

The big man nodded. "But after that you're beyond my jurisdiction. Peters in the Police is prepared for you, but it's up to you to slip over to him without exciting comment. The cook-boy at the Universum has got to perish. Can you manage that neatly?"

"I'll try. I'll have to do a lot of perishing in the next fortnight, before Luis picks me up. I'm terrified of going sick, you know. The Regina hasn't done me any good, and the Tierra Caliente isn't exactly a health-resort."

The other looked at him with affectionate anxiety.

"That's too bad.... I haven't an easy row to hoe, but yours is hell with the lid off, and the almighty vexation is that I can't do much to help you. Just at present the game's with you. For the love of Mike keep on your feet, sonnie. You don't mean to go far into the Poison Country?"

"Not a yard farther than I can help. But Luis says I must be at least a couple of days there. Don't worry. I'll take care of myself."

After that the conversation was conducted in low tones, as if even the locked door and the guarded window might have ears. But had that talk been overheard, one phrase would have puzzled the eavesdropper, a phrase which constantly recurred and was spoken by both with a certain hesitation, even in that secret room. It was "Los Patios de la Mañana," which, being translated, means "The Courts of the Morning." It might have been a mere password, or the name of some authority to which the speaker was subject, or a poetic description of a place. Most likely the last, for a map was produced--an amateur map neatly drawn and coloured, inscribed not with names but with letters. It showed steep gradients, so it must have referred to some mountain district.

At their parting the Roylances were mentioned. "They're back in Olifa," said the big man, "and Babs is looking after them good and sure. I'm mighty relieved that Babs has got a wise lady to keep her company. You're certain you can make use of Sir Archibald?"

"I can use him right enough," was the answer, "if he'll stay quiet on the ice till I want him."

A week later the waiter Miguel was seen no more at the Regina. When the occupants of the big table in the north window inquired of M. Josephs, the proprietor, as to his absence, they were told that he had been lent to the mess at the Universum Mine.

Miguel was four days at the Universum. He had a variety of tasks, for not only did he wait at table in the big adobe mess-room, but he lent a hand in the kitchen, for he was the soul of friendliness. Indeed he carried his willingness too far, for he was found in the kitchens of the compounds, where the Indian miners were fed like pigs at troughs, and was peremptorily ordered back. He had little leisure these days, but he managed to do various things not quite within the sphere of his duties. For one thing, he became intimate with the engineering staff, which contained two Scots, one American, and three Italians, and he used to gossip with them at their table when the room emptied at the end of meals. Also he was found sometimes in their office among blue prints and specimens of ore, and on these occasions the door happened to be locked. If he was not permitted inside the compounds, he used to fossick about the mines themselves, when the shifts of sallow, hollow-eyed labourers were going up or down. Occasionally he talked to them when no overseer was at hand, and he seemed to know something of their patois, for they replied, furtively, and once or twice volubly, when no one was looking.

The cheerful inquisitiveness of the mess waiter was his undoing. For on the evening of the fourth day there was a sad accident. Through a mysterious blunder a small packet of lentonite was detonated, and a corner of the compound wall was blown down and a great crater made in the earth. For some inexplicable reason Miguel seemed to have been in the neighbourhood at the time and he was the only casualty. Fragments of his clothing were found, and a bit of a hat which he was known to be wearing, and it was assumed that his remains were dispersed among the two acres of debris. The fatality was duly reported to the Administration and to M. Josephs, and the agreeable half-caste waiter ceased to be on the register of the Gran Seco.

Next morning a certain Featherstone Peters, a captain of the Mines Police, whose station was ten miles or so from the Universum, introduced at breakfast to his troopers a new recruit, who had just arrived to report. Peters was a tough, grizzled fellow of fifty, who had fought for the Boers in the South African War, had been in the old Macedonian gendarmerie, and was believed by his friends to have done a good deal of gun-running in Morocco. The new recruit, whose name was Black, was a sallow youngish man, who looked as if he had fever in his blood. He spoke English fluently but ungrammatically, and gave out that his father had been in the Italian Consulate at Alexandria. He was good company, and entertained the men with yarns which enthralled even that collection of hard citizens.

For the next week Black was engaged on patrols far up into the Indian country. The map[*] shows that east of the city of Gran Seco lies the land of rolling desert hills where the copper is mined, but beyond that the traveller enters a region of deep-cut desiccated valleys--a plateau, but with the contours of highlands. It is the Indian territory, whence the Mines' labourers are drawn, a place of sparse tillage but much pasturage, a place, too, which in recent centuries has been drying up, since the wretched pueblas are often on the site of what, from the ruins, must once have been considerable cities. It is called the Tierra Caliente, for there is little shade from a merciless sun, and the stages are long from water to water. The midday heat falls like a suffocating curtain, and does not lift till night arrives with the speed of a wind from the far snows.

[*] See map on end-papers.

It was patrol not escort duty, but the new recruit saw many of his fellow-policemen engaged in the latter task. The processions of labourers had the melancholy of a funeral cortège, and Black, who was well-read for one in his position, was reminded of the pictures of the Zanzibar slave-caravans in old books of African travel. It was a sight which visitors to the Gran Seco were not allowed to see, for there were no permits for the Indian country. The gangs bound for the Mines were not shackled, but they were closely shepherded by armed police escorts, and the faces of the men showed every degree of sullen and hopeless ferocity. But the gangs returning from the Mines to the villages were a spectacle to send a man to his prayers. "Returned empties," Peters called them. Young men crawled and tottered like dotards, all were terribly emaciated, their eyes had lost every human quality and had the blank impassiveness of beasts. Yet the Mines were a business concern, famed for feeding their workers well and for utilising the latest scientific conclusions on hygiene and industrial fatigue. Had not the intelligent press of America and Europe borne testimony to their progressiveness?

As Black and Peters watched one gang pass, the latter spat vigorously and observed: "I've never taken stock in all that meeting-house stuff about individual liberty and the rights of man. But I guess there may be something in it. That outfit kind of makes one think."

Black said nothing, but his bright feverish eyes seemed to miss little. He was obviously on good terms with his officer, for he was constantly going off on little journeys of his own, which could scarcely be interpreted as police duty. These journeys took him generally into the Indian pueblas, and on two occasions he did not return to the police bivouac till the following day. He was obviously a sick man, and when the patrol reached the limit of its journey, Peters was heard to complain loudly that the new recruit should be in hospital. By this time they were nearing the eastern edge of the Indian country, with the peaks of the Cordilleras within a day's march. The land was changing, for they had come to a watershed. The line of the great mountains was not the watershed, for, as in the case of the Nepaul Himalaya, they stood a little beyond it. It was a country of running waters, and the streams flowed east, cutting a path through the range in deep gorges on their way to the distant Orazon.