“Thank fortune, we have outwitted them!” murmured Alano, the first to break the silence. “You poor fellow!” he went on to Jorge; “you saved my life.”
He asked about the wound which had been received, and was surprised, and so was I, to learn that it was but slight, and what had caused the guide’s inability to run had been a large thorn which had cut through his shoe into his heel. By the light of a match the thorn was forced out with the end of Jorge’s machete, and the foot was bound up in a bit of rag torn from my coat sleeve, for I must admit that rough usage had reduced my clothing to a decidedly dilapidated condition.
As we could not sleep very well in the tree without hammocks, we descended to the ground and made our way to a bit of upland, where there was a small clearing. Here we felt safe from discovery and lay down to rest. But before retiring Alano thanked Jorge warmly for what he had done, and thanked me also.
“I thought you were a goner,” he said to me. “How did you escape when the horse balked and threw you into the stream?”
I told him, and then asked him to relate his own adventures, which he did. After leaving me, he said, his horse had taken the bit in his teeth and gone on for fully a mile. When the animal had come to a halt he had found himself on a side trail, with no idea where he was.
His first thought was to return to the stream where the mishap had occurred, his second to find General Garcia. But Providence had willed otherwise, for he had become completely tangled up in the woods and had wandered around until nightfall. In the morning he had mounted his horse and struck a mountain path, only to fall into the hands of the Spanish soldiers two hours later. These soldiers were a most villainous lot, and, after robbing him of all he possessed, had decided to take his life, that he might not complain of them to their superior officer.
“From what I heard them say,” he concluded, “I imagine they have a very strict and good man for their leader—a man who believes in carrying on war in the right kind of a way, and not in such a guerrilla fashion as these chaps adopt.”
“I don’t want any war, guerrilla fashion or otherwise,” I said warmly. “I’ve seen quite enough of it already.”
“And so have I,” said my Cuban chum.
Of course he was greatly interested to learn that his father was on the way to place his mother and sisters in the old convent on the river. He said that he had seen the place several years before.