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                           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




[Illustration: "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 kissed
him upon both cheeks and upon the brow, and went away on an enterprise
of forlorn desperation.

On a great rock at the brink of the village Jacinto Quesada stood with
his weeping mother, and together they watched the somber-faced
mountaineer 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 been
trained in the work they were to do. In all Spain there were no more
likely dogs for smuggling contraband.

The village, where Jacinto Quesada lived with his peasant mother, was
but a short way below the snow-line in the wild Sierra Nevada. Behind it
the Picacho de la Veleta lifted its craggy head; off to the northeast
bulked snowy old "Muley Hassan" Cerro de Mulhacen, the highest peak of
the peninsula; and all about were the bleak spires of lesser mountains,
boulder-strewn defiles, moaning dark gorges. The village was called
Minas de la Sierra.

The mother took the little Jacinto by the hand and led him to the
village chapel. She knelt before the dingy altar a long time. Then she
lit a blessed candle and prayed again. And then she handed the wick
dipped 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 him
be 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 any
breaker of the laws they discover guilty-handed. It is the way they keep
the 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 have
starved to death. Thy father has become a _contrabandista_ And if it be
the will of the good God, and if Pepe and Lenchito be shrewd to skulk
through the shadows of night and swift to run past the policemen on
watch, we will have sausages and _garbanzos_ to eat, and those little
legs of thine will not be the puny reeds they are now. _Ojala!_ they
will be round and pudgy with fat!"

The men of Minas de la Sierra were all woodchoppers and
_manzanilleros_--gatherers of the white-flowered _manzanilla_. Their
fathers had been woodchoppers and manzanilleros before them. But too
persistently and too long, altogether too long, had the trees been cut
down and the manzanilla harvested. The mountains had grown sterile,
barren, bald. Not so many cords of Spanish pine were sledded down the
mountain <DW72>s as on a time; not so many men burdened beneath great
loads of manzanilla went down into the city of Granada to sell in the
market place that which was worth good silver pesetas.

There are no deer in the Sierra Nevada--neither red, fallow, nor roe.
There are no wild boar. There is only the Spanish ibex. And what poor
_serrano_ can provision his good wife and his _cabana_ full of lusty
brats by hunting the Spanish ibex? He has but one weapon--the ancient
muzzle-loading smooth-bore. And the ibex speeds like a chill glacial
wind across the snow fields and craggy solitudes, and only a man armed
with a cordite repeater can hope to bring him down.

Soon descended the mountains only men who had turned their backs upon
Minas de la Sierra and who thought to leave behind forever the bleak
peaks and the wind-swept gorges and the implacable hunger. Out of every
ten only one crawled back, beaten and bruised by the savage Spanish
cities and the savage Spanish plains. With those of Minas de la Sierra
who could not tear themselves away from their native rocks, these
broken-hearted ones continued on and with them slowly starved.

It was not the will of the good God that Jacinto Quesada should have fat
pudgy legs by reason of his father's endeavors. Shrewd were the dogs,
Pepe and Lenchito, but they were not so shrewd as were the Spanish
police. Came a pale and stuttering _arriero_, a muleteer, up to the
village one day. To Jacinto Quesada's mother he brought tragic news.

The men of the Guardia Civil had discovered poor Juanito as he was
unbuckling a packet of Cuban cigars from the throat of the dog Lenchito;
they had walked him out behind a sand dune; they had made him dig a
grave. Then they had shot down Lenchito; then they had shot down Juan
Quesada. And then the dog and the man were kicked together into the one
grave and sand piled on top of them both.

But make no mistake, _mi senor caballero_ reader! The men of the Guardia
Civil are not abominations of cruelty. They are not monsters, brutal and
depraved. _Quita!_ no.

There are twenty-five thousand men in the Guardia Civil; twenty thousand
foot and five thousand cavalry. By twos, eternally by twos, they go
through Spain, exterminating crime wherever crime shows its fanged and
evil head.

Every Spaniard is potentially a criminal. An empty belly goads him into
lawlessness; his very nature greases his wayward feet. The Spaniard is
by nature sullen, irascible, insolently independent, lawless. He is more
African than European. Prick a Spaniard and a vindictive Moor bleeds.

Then, whether it be his famishing hunger or lawless passion which has
caused him to rise above the law, the Spaniard, his crime writ in red,
flees from the police. Spain is a country of uncouth wilds. There are
the desolate high steppes and the savage mountains; there are the tawny
_despoblados_, which are uninhabitated wastes; there are the _marismas_,
which are labyrinthine everglades where whole regiments may lie
concealed.

But also, in Spain, there are railroads and telegraphs, and a most
efficient constabulary, the Guardia Civil. And, were it not for
_Caciquismo_, all evil-doers would be speedily apprehended by the
Guardia Civil, tried under the _alcaldes_, and incarcerated in the
Carcel de la Corte or the Presidio of Ceuta.

Caciquismo is not a tangible thing. It is a secret and sinister
influence. It is not the Tammany of New York; it is not the Camorra of
Naples. Yet it resembles both these corrupt edifices in its special
Spanish way. Its instruments are prime ministers and muleteers, members
of the _cortes_ and bullfighters, hidalgos and low-caste Gitanos.

A _cacique_ may be only the mayor of a tiny hamlet; again, he may be
privy councilor to the king. Yet high or low, he is but one of the many
tentacles of a gigantic octopus which lays its clammy shadow athwart the
land.

It is well known that Tammany, for reasons political or otherwise,
protected criminals. Well, even as did Tammany, so does Caciquismo. A
Spanish criminal may be captured, tried before a magistrate and all; but
if he be one in good standing with the caciques, never is he sent to the
Carcel de la Corte or Ceuta. The invisible eight arms of the gigantic
octopus uncoil and reach