The Mission of Janice Day Part 43

Janice sighed. She, like Marty, began to wonder at the universal cry for _la patria_ from those of such conflicting opinions.

"No," said Madam. They were now sitting in a compartment of the Pullman that was evidently Madam's boudoir. "I am of blood Bohemian--with a strain of the greatest nation of all time," and she smiled.

"The Hebrew?"

"But yes. I have lived everywhere--on both continents," with a sweeping gesture. "Under my own name--first made known to the world in Vienna--I sing. I am of the opera."

"Oh, Madam! I guessed _that_," Janice declared with clasped hands.

"Yes? Well, it iss soh," said the lady sibilantly. "I hear in New York where I am singing at the Metropolitan that my hoosban' is advance. I pack and start for Mexico immediate. Contr-r-racts are nothing at such time, yes? I hasten across the continent to greet and applaud him. After I join him at San Cristoval I hear of things, and remember things that you say, my dear, that make me to understand you must be bound for this same place, too. It is sad you should not have come wit' me."

"My father!" gasped Janice. "Do you know if he is better?"

"I know that he is as yet holding out against the rebels," Madam said.

"He, with a few desperate _compadres_, are guarding his mine buildings, yes-s!"

"Then he is not seriously wounded?" cried the girl gladly.

"I believe not. We get some information to and from the mine. Senor General De Soto Palo declare he will sh.e.l.l the rebels into the hills to-day, my dear. You have come in season."

Marty, meanwhile, sat comfortably on the car steps in the shade and said to Juan:

"I guess you can beat it back to town, old man, if you want to. I have a hunch that, in spite of that gun you swing, and your look like a picture of a Spanish pirate I saw once, you ain't no fighting man; are you?"

"As the senor says," admitted Juan with a toothful grin and his yellow eyes squinting, "I am a man of peace--by goodness, yes!"

"All right. Here's a dollar--you're welcome to it. You're the only Mexican I've seen that didn't claim to be a fire-eater," and Marty chuckled. "You see, Janice knows the commander's lady and I fancy it's a cinch for us to reach Uncle Brocky now. Da, da, Juan."

"_Adios_, senor," responded the man and kicked the burro to start that peacefully grazing animal back along the railroad bed.

Suddenly the distant sound of firing disturbed the placidity of the scene about the "headquarters." The little group of officers began to show excitement.

"Sounds like a lot o' ginger-beer corks popping," thought Marty. "Must be something doing." He immediately grew eager himself.

When a little pudgy man in a red and green uniform, a plume in his hat, and yellow gauntlets, came from the forward car and mounted a horse held for him obsequiously, the boy knew he was viewing General De Soto Palo in all his dignity and glory. Truly it _was the_ magnificent Madam's fate to be admired by the "so-leetle" men--her husband not excepted.

"Hi tunket! I'd like to go with 'em," muttered Marty, as the cavalcade of officers rode swiftly away. "But I s'pose I got to stay on the job and guard Janice. Sometimes girls are certainly a nuisance."

There was a jar throughout the short train. The couplings tightened.

With a squeal of escaping steam the locomotive forged ahead, dragging the general's headquarters car and Madam's living car with it.

Janice ran to the door. "Oh, Marty!" she cried. "Are you all right?"

"Right as rain," he a.s.sured her.

"We are going up nearer the battle-line. Oh, Marty! think of it! I may see daddy to-day!"

"Great!" he responded. "I hope the fight ain't all over when we get there."

They were yet ten miles from the Alderdice Mine and the train was more than an hour pulling that distance. They stopped often; and when the train did move it was at a snail's pace.

All the time the machine guns rattled like shaking pebbles in a cannister, the rifles popped and the sh.e.l.ls exploded resonantly. Now and then they descried smoke above the tree tops. Occasionally they pa.s.sed burning buildings.

And then appeared--more hateful sight than all else--the dead body of a man lying beside the railroad track, face down, the back of his head all gory.

He was a little man. His hand still grasped a brown rifle almost as tall as himself.

The laboring train halted directly beside the dead man. Marty dropped down from the rear step and went to the corpse. He turned it over with curiosity.

And then suddenly there shot through the boy from the North a feeling of such nausea and horror that he was destined ever to remember it.

This was not a man that lay here. It was a boy--a little, yellow-faced, barefooted fellow not as old as Marty himself, with staring eyes which already the ants had found--and a queer, twisted little smile upon the lips behind which the white teeth gleamed.

Marty stumbled blindly back to the car, sobbing. "He's--he's laughing,"

he stammered to Janice. "I--I wonder if that's 'cause he's found out now how foolish it all is?"

They saw the end of the battle; by then it was mid-afternoon. A stream of wounded had been carried past the train on stretchers--back to a little temporary hospital somewhere in the woods out of sight of the belligerents. For the half-wild Indians from the hills respect no Red Cross.

They saw the last scattering, ragged horde limp away from the mesa on which were the buildings of the Alderdice Mining Company, driven to cover by the cheering troops of Senor General De Soto Palo.

Here for some time the rebels had besieged the corrugated iron huts of the mining company, in which a handful of men held out tenaciously.

The lack of machine guns on the part of the Mexican rebels had made this defense of the mining property possible. The bursting sh.e.l.ls from the heavier guns of the government forces had quite thrown them into panic.

The men guarding the mining property had finally retreated into a cellar under one of the store-sheds. The ore-raising machinery had been dismantled and hidden in the mine, and little of real value belonging to the mining company had been destroyed.

Now these guards appeared--not more than two dozen of them; powder-stained and unwashed, but a grim group prepared to keep up the fight if necessary.

The same young aide-de-camp who had "captured" Janice and Marty when they approached the headquarters of the general in command, now came to the Madam and her guests.

"If the senor and senorita wish to go forward, all is now quiet," he announced, bowing low before Janice and the Madam. "I will do myself the honor to conduct them to Senor B-Day. He is in the cellar."

"The cellar!" gasped the girl.

"With other wounded. Quite safe, I a.s.sure the senorita," added the aide-de-camp hastily.

"Oh! let us hurry!" cried the eager girl.

Her hasty feet took her in advance of the others. She reached the group of shacks where the window-lights were blown out and much wreckage strewed the ground. Before an open cellarway stood a ragged and barefooted soldier. He presented arms most grotesquely as the party came near.

"My father--Senor B-Day?" Janice asked.

At the sound of her voice a cry answered from within and a gaunt figure staggered up the stone steps into the sunlight.

"Janice! My Janice! Can it be possible?" cried the man, gazing in wonder at the girl. "Janice!"

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" she screamed, and ran toward him, her arms outstretched, her face all aglow.

"Hey, Janice!" called Marty right behind her. "Don't forget his arm's in a sling."