Morales tore a strip of paper from a pad, scribbled upon it and flung it across the table to the tobacco merchant, who passed it to Appleby.
“You will hand that to the soldier outside,” he said. “He will come back and report when he has delivered the prisoner to the guard.”
Appleby went out, and the tobacco merchant laid the pistol down. “It was an unpleasant necessity,” he said. “Still, one can dispense with it now we have arrived at an understanding.”
Harper laughed as he clenched his big hands on the back of the chair he leaned upon.
“If the distinguished gentleman tries to get up something will happen to him,” he said. “I have been figuring just where I could get him with the leg of this.”
Morales made a little gesture of disgust. “The Señor Harper does not understand us. One has objections to anything unseemly, señor. I have a fancy that I have seen you in other places than the hacienda San Cristoval.”
“In Alturas Pass—and elsewhere,” said the tobacco merchant with a smile. “I once had the honor of meeting the Colonel Morales in the street below us. At that time he had a sword in his hand.”
Morales’ face grew very grim, but he held himself in hand. “Yes. I remember now,” he said. “The leader of the Sin Verguenza—Don Maccario?”
The tobacco merchant made him a little half-ironical inclination. “Colonel Morales will appreciate the consideration I have shown him in coming myself,” he said. “The affair might have been arranged differently had I sent one or two of my men who have a little account with him.”
Morales said nothing, and there was silence for a space of minutes. What he thought was not apparent, for though his color was a trifle darker now, he sat rigidly still, but Appleby felt himself quivering a little, and saw that Harper’s lips were grimly set, while Maccario moved the fingers of one hand in a curious nervous fashion. Appleby scarcely dared wonder what was happening in the patio, though he surmised that if the Sergeant Suarez questioned the order it would go very hard with all of them, for there were, he remembered, fifty men in the cuartel, and only a handful of them had mutinied. He could feel his heart beating, and anathematized the loquaciousness of Maccario and his deference to Castilian decorum which had kept them so long. It was evident to him that any trifling unexpected difficulty would result in their destruction. At last, when every nerve in him was tingling, a man came hastily up the stairway.