Rather more than a fortnight passed uneventfully, and save for a few affairs between outposts and patrols there was no outbreak of hostilities. Morales lay in Santa Marta with the country rising against him, and Maccario patiently waited his time, for the Sin Verguenza were growing stronger every day. The insurrection was still largely sporadic and indifferently organized, and since each leader acted for the most part independently what was happening elsewhere only concerned the Sin Verguenza indirectly, while the struggle had become almost a personal question between them and Morales. In the meanwhile Appleby heard that Harding had eluded the latter’s vigilance and left Santa Marta.
Then late one night a man came gasping up the veranda stairway, and Appleby and Maccario descended half-dressed to meet him in the big living-room. The dust was white upon him, and he blinked at them out of half-closed eyes, while Appleby noticed that he limped a little. Maccario pointed to a chair, and poured him out a glass of wine.
“You have come a long way?” he said.
“From Brena Abajo. I left there in the afternoon the day before yesterday.”
“On a mule?”
The man smiled grimly as he pointed to his broken shoes.
“I came on these,” he said.
Maccario turned to Appleby. “Our friend walks fast. It is counted a four days’ journey. Still, I think he knows that one seldom gains anything by trifling with the Sin Verguenza.”
A little gleam crept into the man’s dark eyes. “One walks fast when he is eager for vengeance,” he said. “I had a little wine-shop, and a comrade who I trusted, four days ago. Comes a column of Candotto’s Peninsulares, and there is an asking of questions of the Alcalde, who is not a friend of mine. Andres, it is discovered, has smuggled rifles to the friends of liberty in the mountains.”
Maccario made a little gesture. “It went hard with your friend?”