Ahead of the Army Part 12

"Come, Senor Carfora," said Felicia, as they all arose from the table, "I will show you the library. You can't do much reading there to-night, though, for the lamps have all been taken away. I do not wish to go there, anyhow, except in the daytime. It is a pokerish kind of place. Do you believe in ghosts? I do not, but, if I were a ghost, I would pick out that library for a good place to hide in. Come along. You are a foreigner, and any kind of good Mexican ghost won't like you."

Whether she herself did so or not, she led the way, and no lamp was as yet needed, although the day was nearly over and the shadows were coming. Up-stairs they went and through a short pa.s.sageway in the second story of the Paez mansion, and they were almost in the dark when she said to him:

"Here we are. Hardly any one ever comes here, and it will be dreadfully dusty. Books are dusty old things anyhow."

She turned the big bra.s.s k.n.o.b in the dusky door before them, and shoved against it with all her might, but Ned had to help her with his shoulder, or the ma.s.sive mahogany portal would not have yielded an inch.

It did go slowly in, upon its ancient-looking bronze hinges, and then they were in a room which was worth looking at. It was not so very large, only about fifteen feet by twenty, but it was unusually high, and it had but one tall, narrow slit of a window. Close by this, however, were a finely carved reading chair and table, ready to receive all the light which the window might choose to let in. Ned was staring eagerly around the room, when his pretty guide remarked:

"You had better see all you can before it gets any darker. Take down as many books as you want. I don't care much for those fusty-musty old histories. I must go away now--"

"Hullo, senorita!" exclaimed Ned. "There is a lamp on the table. I have some matches--"

"I don't believe you can make it burn," she said, "but you can try. It has not been lighted for this ever so long, and the oil may have dried up."

Around she whirled and away she went, leaving Ned to his own devices.

His next thought was almost impolite, after all, for he was more than half glad that she did go, so that he might have the library all to himself to rummage in. He did not instantly examine the lamp, for he had never before been in just this kind of room, and it fascinated him. All its sides were occupied by high bookcases, every one of them crammed full of volumes of all sorts and sizes. He thought that he had never seen larger books than were some of the fat folios on the lower shelves.

There were great, flat, atlas-looking concerns leaning against them, and out on the floor stood several upright racks of maps. Old Senor Paez may have been what is called a book-worm. At all events, Ned had understood that he was a very learned man, with a strong enthusiasm for American history.

"Heavens and earth!" suddenly exclaimed Ned. "What is that?"

He darted forward to a further corner of the room, as if he were in a great hurry to meet somebody who had unexpectedly come in. It certainly was something almost in human shape, but it had been standing there a long while, and the hand which it appeared to hold out to him was of steel, for it was nothing in the wide world but a complete suit of ancient armor. It was so set up in that corner, however, that it almost seemed alive, with its right hand extended, and its left holding a long, pennoned lance. Its helmet had a barred vizor, so that if there had been any face behind that, it would have been hidden. Ned went and stood silently before it for a moment, staring at that vizor.

"I say," he muttered, as if he did not care to speak any louder. "I don't believe General Taylor's men would care to march far with as much iron as that on them--not in hot weather. But the old Aztecs didn't have anything that would go through that kind of uniform. If Cortes and his men wore it, there is no wonder that they went on killing the Indians without being much hurt themselves."

In fact, not all of them had been dressed up in precisely such a manner, although they did wear armor.

Ned examined the whole affair, piece by piece, from head to foot, and then he turned away from his inspection, for the room behind him was getting dim and it was time for him to look at his lamp. He took out a match as he went toward the table at the window, and in a moment more he was busy with a wick which seemed to be determined not to burn for him.

"It's an old whale-oil lamp," he remarked. "Mother had one, once. I remember seeing her try to light it and it would sputter for ever so long. There! It's beginning to kindle, but it's too big for me to carry around and hunt for books with. I wish I had a smaller one. Hullo!

Here's one of the biggest of those old concerns, right here on the table."

It was a folio bound in vellum, and when he opened it a great deal of dust arose from the cover which banged down. Then Ned uttered a loud exclamation, and was glad he had succeeded in lighting the lamp, for there before his eyes was a vividly colored picture of a most extraordinary description. Moreover, it unfolded, so that it was almost twice the size, length, and width of the book pages.

"They are all in Spanish," he said, "but I guess I can read them.

They're more than a hundred years old. People don't print such books, nowadays. n.o.body would have time enough to read them, I suppose, and they couldn't sell 'em cheap enough. This is wonderful! It's a picture of the old Mexican G.o.d, Huitzilopochtli."

There was an explanatory inscription, and the artist had pictured the terrible deity sitting upon a throne of state, gorgeously arrayed in gold and jewels, and watching with a smile of serene satisfaction the sacrifice of some unfortunate human victims on the altar in the foreground at the right. One of the priests attending at the altar had just cut open the bosom of a tall man lying before him, and was tossing a bleeding heart upon the smoking fire, where other similar offerings were already burning.

"That must have been a horrible kind of religion," thought Ned. "I'm glad that Cortes and his men in armor came to put an end to it. Senora Paez told me that in only a few years before he came, and her great-grandfather and his father with him, those priests cut up more than twenty thousand men, women, and children. He's a curious kind of G.o.d, I should say, to sit there and grin while it was going on."

He could not linger too long over one picture, however, for he had discovered that there were others in that volume which were as brilliantly colored and as interesting. On the whole, it was not necessary to hunt for anything better than this the first evening, and it appeared as if he were asking a useless question of the steel-clad warrior in the corner, when at last he turned to him to say:

"Did you ever see anything like this before? I never did. Were you there, in any of these battles? This is the way that Cortes and his cavalry scared the Indians, is it? They were awfully afraid of horses.

You can buy horses for almost nothing, nowadays, anywhere in Mexico.

I've learned how to ride 'em, too, but didn't I get pitched off by some of those ponies! It would have scared mother half to death. I wish I could see her to-night, and show her some of these pictures. I'd like to see Bob and the girls, too. They never saw a book like this."

He had examined a number of the pictures, and the lamp was burning fairly well, but a long time had elapsed since he came into that room, and he was not at all aware of it.

"Senor Carfora?" called out a voice in the doorway. "Oh, you are here.

You did light the lamp. I was almost afraid you were in the dark."

"No, I'm not," said Ned. "I made it burn, and I've been looking at all sorts of things. These pictures are just wonderful."

"Oh!" she said, "I would not be in this room in the dark for anything! I know all those things in that book, though. They are hideous! But they say that that suit of armor has the worst kind of ghost in it."

"Maybe it has," said Ned. "I don't believe he can get out, anyhow. He's just stuck in it. I'd rather wear the clothes I have on."

"Well," she replied, "mother sent me to find if you were here, and it is dreadfully late--"

"Oh, yes!" interrupted Ned. "I suppose it is time for me to go to bed.

I'll go, but I mean to see all there is in this library, senorita. I won't try to read it all. I don't care for ghosts, but I'd like to see one."

"I do not care for them in the daytime, either," she told him. "But old Margarita, the Tlascalan, says that they come at night and sit here and tell stories of all the Mexican idol G.o.ds. All of them hate us, too, because we turned them out of their temples, and I hate them."

"I'm glad they are gone, anyhow," said Ned, but it was really time to go, and he carried some of the most brilliant of those ill.u.s.trations into some of his dreams that night.

CHAPTER XI.

NED'S NEWS

"Hullo, young man! I've been looking for you. How are you?"

"Captain Kemp!" shouted Ned, in astonishment. "Where did you come from?

Who dreamed of seeing you here?"

"n.o.body, I hope," said the captain; "but here I am, and I've brought you half a dozen letters. They are among my baggage. First thing, though, tell me all about yourself. Where have you been?"

They were standing in the grand plaza, not many paces from the front of the cathedral, and Ned had come there for another look at the building which had taken the place of the old-time temple of the murderous Mexican G.o.d of war. He was wildly excited for a moment, and he began to ask questions, rather than to tell anything about himself.

"Keep cool, now, my boy," said the captain. "We don't know who's watching us. I didn't have much trouble in running the Yankee blockade at Vera Cruz. I brought a cargo from New York, just as if it had been sent from Liverpool, but I've had to prove that I'm not an American ever since I came ash.o.r.e. Spin us your yarn as we walk along."

Ned was now ready to do so, and the captain listened to him with the most intense interest, putting in remarks every now and then.

"All this," he said, "is precisely what your father wishes you to do, if you can do it. The way of it is this. He knows, and we all know, that this war can't be a long one. As soon as it's over, his concern means to go into the Mexican trade heavier than they ever did before. They think it will be worth more, and I mean to be in it myself. So it just suits him to have you here, making friends and learning all about the country you are to deal with. He says you are in the best kind of business school. There will be a fortune in it for you some day."

"I don't exactly see how," remarked Ned, doubtfully.

"Well," replied the captain, "not many young American business men know ten cents' worth about Mexico. You'd better go right on and learn all there is to know. Keep shy of all politics, though. This war is going to break Paredes and a lot of others. After they are out of power, your own friends, like Ta.s.sara, Zuroaga, and the rest of them, may be in office, and you will be in clover. It's a wonderfully rich country, if it were only in the right hands and had a good government. I'll give you the letters when we get to my lodgings. Then I must make my way back to Vera Cruz, but I had to come all this distance to get my pay from the authorities. I obtained it, even now, only by promising to bring over another cargo of British gunpowder, to fight the Yankees with."

That was a thing which Ned did not like, but he could not do anything to prevent it. He could not expect an Englishman to be an American, and it was all a matter of trade to Captain Kemp, aside from his personal friends.h.i.+p for Ned and his father. There was more talk of all sorts, and Ned obtained a great deal of information concerning the war and what the United States were likely to do. After he had received his precious letters, however, and had said good-by to Captain Kemp, he almost ran against people in his haste to reach the Paez mansion. He did not pause to speak to anybody on arriving, but darted up-stairs and made his way to the library. It was lighter now in the wonderful book-room, and the man in armor did not say anything as Ned came in. In a moment he was in the chair by the window, and he appeared to himself to be almost talking with the dear ones at home, from whom he had so long been separated.

"Stay where you are," he read from his father's long letter, and at that hour he felt as if he did not wish to stay. He dropped the letter on the table, and leaned back in his chair and looked around him. Pretty soon, however, a little slowly to begin with, but then faster and faster, the strong and fascinating spirit of adventure came once more upon him. His very blood tingled, and he sprang to his feet to all but shout to his mailed acquaintance in the corner:

"Yes, sir, I'll stay! I'll do anything but become a Mexican. Tell you what, before the war's over, I mean to be in the American army, somehow.