“Colonel Morales was good enough to send a strong detachment?”
The soldier shook his head. “A section of the Barremeda company,” he said. “The Sergeant Hernando was to follow with a few files when he came in from picket duty. One does not understand it, for the country is quiet now, but one asks no questions of an officer.”
“It is not usually advisable,” said Appleby with a smile. “Still, if you change your mind about the caña you can come up to the hacienda and ask for me.”
He swung round, and five minutes later sat down on a truck on the tram-line. Harper leaned against it, and looked at him.
“I guess Morales means to make sure of us,” he said. “Well, we can only hope for Maccario. You couldn’t ask him if the men you sent got through?”
“I made the venture, and he told me. It was last night I sent the men out, and the cazadores only started this morning. Morales blundered then, but it is rather more than likely he couldn’t help himself. Nobody would call him timid, but just now it would have been a risky thing for him to go back to Santa Marta alone.”
Harper nodded. “There’s not much you don’t think of,” he said. “Still, it seems to me quite likely that Maccario can’t get through.”
“Then so far as you and I are concerned I’m afraid the game is played out,” said Appleby.
Harper pulled out his cigar case and wrenched it open. “Take a smoke,” he said. “I don’t feel like talking just now.”
He sat down on a sleeper with his back to a wheel, while Appleby lay upon the truck with a cigar, which went out in his hand, gazing across the sunlit cane. It rose about him breast-high, a crude glaring green, luminous in its intensity of color, against the blueness above it, but Appleby scarcely saw it, or the gleaming lizard which lay close by suspiciously regarding him. He had made a very bold venture, and though Harding might yet benefit by it, he could realize the risk that he and his comrade ran.