"I will come back and look at your sick," he said. "We have only the one hammock, Ormsgill."
Ormsgill smiled. "There is nothing very wrong with my feet, and I haven't had a dose of fever for some time. It isn't your fault that you have one now."
He made the two officers a little inclination as he took off his hat, and Nares, who shook hands with them, crawled into his hammock. He, at least, had the fever every two or three months or so. Then the boys struck up a marching song as they swung away with their burden into the steamy shadow, and the Commandant leaned on the balustrade listening with a little dry smile until the crackle of trampled undergrowth and sighing refrain died away.
"When one desires to encourage such men it is generally wise to point out the difficulties," he said. "One would fancy that they were fond of them, especially the Señor Ormsgill, who is of the kind the customs of this world make rebels of."
"And the other?" asked Lieutenant Luiz, who had, not without reason, a respect for the wisdom of his superior. He had found that it was, in some ways at least, warranted.
The Commandant lighted his cigarette, and watched the first smoke wreath float straight up into the stagnant air. "He would be a martyr. It is a desire that is incomprehensible to you and me, but there are others besides him who seem to cherish it—and in this land of the devil opportunities of satisfying it are generally offered them."
He looked at Lieutenant Luiz, and once more the latter's face relaxed into the nearest approach to a grin his sense of dignity allowed. One could have fancied there was an understanding of some kind between the men.
In the meanwhile Nares' bearers were plodding down a two-foot trail walled in by thorny underbrush and festoons of as thorny creepers that flowed down in tangled luxuriance between the towering cottonwood trunks. There was dim shade all about them, and the atmosphere was like that of a Turkish bath, steamy and almost insufferably hot, only that there was in it something which checked instead of accelerated the cooling perspiration. Now and then the bearers gasped, and Ormsgill's face was flushed as he walked beside the hammock.
"We should get through by to-morrow night if we take the lower road," he said. "I believe that would be advisable, though I'm not quite sure of it. At least, it's the nearer one, and Lamartine was going down hill very fast when I left him. In fact, he sent two of the boys to the Mission for Father Tiebout. In one way, the thing's a trifle invidious, but, you see, Lamartine is of his persuasion."
Nares smiled. "I'm to have the care of his body, and Father Tiebout of his soul. Well, we have fought as allies on those terms before, and I guess I don't mind."