THE WOLF-CUB
A NOVEL OF SPAIN
BY PATRICK and TERENCE CASEY
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
H. WESTON TAYLOR
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
1918
Copyright, 1918,
By Patrick and Terence Casey
All rights reserved
Published, January, 1918
"It is my officer, my parent!" whispered the young policeman
THE WOLF-CUB
CHAPTER I
When Jacinto Quesada was yet a very little Spaniard, his father kissedhim upon both cheeks and upon the brow, and went away on an enterpriseof forlorn desperation.
On a great rock at the brink of the village Jacinto Quesada stood withhis weeping mother, and together they watched the somber-facedmountaineer hurry down the mountainside. He was bound for that hot,sandy No Man's Land which lies between the British outpost, Gibraltar,and sunburned, haggard, tragic Spain. The two dogs, Pepe and Lenchito,went with him. They were pointers, retrievers. For months they had beentrained in the work they were to do. In all Spain there were no morelikely dogs for smuggling contraband.
The village, where Jacinto Quesada lived with his peasant mother, wasbut a short way below the snow-line in the wild Sierra Nevada. Behind itthe Picacho de la Veleta lifted its craggy head; off to the northeastbulked snowy old "Muley Hassan" Cerro de Mulhacen, the highest peak ofthe peninsula; and all about were the bleak spires of lesser mountains,boulder-strewn defiles, moaning dark gorges. The village was calledMinas de la Sierra.
The mother took the little Jacinto by the hand and led him to thevillage chapel. She knelt before the dingy altar a long time. Then shelit a blessed candle and prayed again. And then she handed the wickdipped in oil to Jacinto and said:
"Light a candle for thy father, tiny one."
"But why should I light a candle for our Juanito, mamacita?"
"It is that Our Lady of the Sorrows and the Great Pity will not let himbe killed by the men of the Guardia Civil!"
"Men do not kill unless they hate. Do the men of the Guardia Civil hate,then, the pobre padre of me and the sweet husband of thee,mamacita?"
"It is not the hate, child! The men of the Guardia Civil kill anybreaker of the laws they discover guilty-handed. It is the way they keepthe peace of Spain."
"But our Juanito is not a lawbreaker, little mother. He is no lagarto,no lizard, no sly tricky one. He is an honest man."
"Hush, nino! There are no honest men left in Spain. They all havestarved to death. Thy father has become a contrabandista And if it bethe will of the good God, and if Pepe and Lenchito be shrewd to skulkthrough the shadows of night and swift to run past the policemen onwatch, we will have sausages and garbanzos to eat, and those littlelegs of thine will not be the puny reeds they are now. Ojala! theywill be round and pudgy with fat!"
The men of Minas de la Sierra were all woodchoppers andmanzanilleros—gatherers of the white-flowered manzanilla. Theirfathers had been woodchoppers and manzanilleros before them. But toopersistently and too long, altogether too long, had the trees been cutdown and the manzanilla harvested. The mountain