The rest was a riot of wild vegetation, the home of monkeys, tapirs, jaguars, alligators, and prodigious reptiles and insects. Where no road was cut a serpent could scarcely make its way through the tangle of vines and creepers. Across the treacherous mangrove swamps few things without wings could safely pass. Therefore the fugitives could hope to reach the coast only by one of the routes named.
"Keep the matter quiet, Billy," advised Goodwin. "We don't want the Ins to know that the president is in flight. I suppose Bob's information is something of a scoop in the capital as yet. Otherwise he would not have tried to make his message a confidential one; and, besides, everybody would have heard the news. I'm going around now to see Dr. Zavalla, and start a man up the trail to cut the telegraph wire."As Goodwin rose, Keogh threw his hat upon the grass by the door and expelled a tremendous sigh.
"What's the trouble, Billy?" asked Goodwin, pausing. "That's the first time I heard you sigh.""'Tis the last," said Keogh. "With that sorrowful puff of wind I resign myself to a life of praiseworthy but harassing honesty.
What are tintypes, if you please, to the opportunities of the great and hilarious class of ganders and geese? Not that I would be a president, Frank--and the boodle he's got is too big for me to handle --but in some ways I feel my conscience hurting me for addicting myself to photographing a nation instead of running away with it.
Frank, did you ever see the 'bundle of muslin' that His Excellency has wrapped up and carried off?""Isabel Guilbert?" said Goodwin, laughing. "No, I never did. From what I've heard of her, though, I imagine that she wouldn't stick at anything to carry her point. Don't get romantic, Billy. Sometimes I begin to fear that there's Irish blood in your ancestry.""I never saw her either," went on Keogh; "but they say she's got all the ladies of mythology, sculpture, and fiction reduced to chromos.
They say she can look at a man once, and he'll turn monkey and climb trees to pick coconuts for her. Think of that president man with Lord know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, and this muslin siren in the other, galloping down the hill on a sympathetic mule amid songbirds and flowers! And here is Billy Keogh, because he is virtuous, condemned to the unprofitable swindle of slandering the faces of missing links on tin for an honest living!
'Tis an injustice of nature."
"Cheer up," said Goodwin. "You are a pretty poor fox to be envying a gander. Maybe the enchanting Guilbert will take a fancy to you and your tintypes after we impoverish her royal escort.""She could do worse," reflected Keogh; "but she won't. 'Tis not a tintype gallery, but a gallery of the gods that she's fitted to adorn. She's a very wicked lady, and the president man is in luck.
But I hear Clancy swearing in the back room for having to do all the work." And Keogh plunged for the rear of the "gallery," whistling gaily in a spontaneous way that belied his recent sigh over the questionable good luck of the flying president.
Goodwin turned from the main street into a much narrower one that intersected it at a right angle.
These side streets were covered by a growth of thick, rank grass, which was kept to a navigable shortness by the machetes of the police. Stone sidewalks, little more than a ledge in width, ran along the base of the mean and monotonous adobe houses. At the outskirts of the village these streets dwindled to nothing; and here were set the palm-thatched huts of the Caribs and the poorer natives, and the shabby cabins of negroes from Jamaica and the West India islands. A few structures raised their heads above the red-tiled roofs of the one-story houses--the bell tower of the ~Calaboza~, the Hotel de los Extranjeros, the residence of the Vesuvius Fruit Company's agent, the store and residence of Bernard Brannigan, a ruined cathedral in which Columbus had once set foot, and, most imposing of all, the Casa Morena--the summer "White House" of the President of Anchuria. On the principal street running along the beach--the Broadway of Coralio--were the larger stores, the government ~bodega~ and post-office, the ~cuartel~, the rum-shops and the market place.
On his way Goodwin passed the house of Bernard Brannigan. It was a modern wooden building, two stories in height. The ground floor was occupied by Brannigan's store, the upper one contained the living apartments. A wide cool porch ran around the house half way up its outer walls. A handsome, vivacious girl neatly dressed in flowing white leaned over the railing and smiled down upon Goodwin. She was no darker than many an Andalusian of high descent; and she sparkled and glowed like a tropical moonlight.
"Good evening, Miss Paula," said Goodwin, taking off his hat, with his ready smile. There was little difference in his manner whether he addressed women or men. Everybody in Coralio liked to receive the salutation of the big American.
"Is there any news, Mr. Goodwin? Please don't say no. Isn't it warm? I feel just like Mariana in her moated grange--or was it a range?--it's hot enough.""No, there's no news to tell, I believe," said Goodwin, with a mischievous look in his eye, "except that old Geddie is getting grumpier and crosser every day. If something doesn't happen to relieve his mind I'll have to quit smoking on his back porch--and there's no other place available that is cool enough.""He isn't grumpy," said Paula Brannigan, impulsively, "when he--"But she ceased suddenly, and drew back with a deepening color;for her mother had been a ~mestizo~ lady, and the Spanish blood had brought to Paula a certain shyness that was an adornment to the other half of her demonstrative nature.
