“Bah! Ricardo! He is gone. Look you—look you, there is Felipe now!”
“No—no,” Manuelita protested, raising a tear-stained face.
Felipe was indeed coming up the street. He looked angry too, and was rubbing his kinky hair at every step.
“Where is Ricardo?” he demanded as soon as he was within hearing. “Where is he, I say? Why should I work if he does not?”
And now such a mingling of voices—Felipe repeating questions to which he received no answer; the old woman boldly stating Manuelita’s new domestic status; the girl crying out against her mother’s hasty planning.
But after a time, when matters became clear to Felipe, he fell silent to ponder, and the old woman quieted to await his reply. As for Manuelita, she was sobbing a determination. “I shall follow, I shall follow,” she declared. “And when I find them, I shall kill!”
“Felipe can go along,” suggested her mother, “and help you.”
Manuelita glanced at Felipe, and recoiled.
“Where have they gone?” he asked her. “Do you know?”
“He took our cubierta, the new machete, and a flask. Yesterday he threatened to join the Revolutionists.”