This was not a man that lay here. It was a boy—a little, yellow-faced, barefooted fellow not as old as Marty himself, with staring eyes which already the ants had found—and a queer, twisted little smile upon the lips behind which the white teeth gleamed.
Marty stumbled blindly back to the car, sobbing. "He's—he's laughing," he stammered to Janice. "I—I wonder if that's 'cause he's found out now how foolish it all is?"
They saw the end of the battle; by then it was mid-afternoon. A stream of wounded had been carried past the train on stretchers—back to a little temporary hospital somewhere in the woods out of sight of the belligerents. For the half-wild Indians from the hills respect no Red Cross.
They saw the last scattering, ragged horde limp away from the mesa on which were the buildings of the Alderdice Mining Company, driven to cover by the cheering troops of Señor General De Soto Palo.
Here for some time the rebels had besieged the corrugated iron huts of the mining company, in which a handful of men held out tenaciously.
The lack of machine guns on the part of the Mexican rebels had made this defense of the mining property possible. The bursting shells from the heavier guns of the government forces had quite thrown them into panic.
The men guarding the mining property had finally retreated into a cellar under one of the store-sheds. The ore-raising machinery had been dismantled and hidden in the mine, and little of real value belonging to the mining company had been destroyed.
Now these guards appeared—not more than two dozen of them; powder-stained and unwashed, but a grim group prepared to keep up the fight if necessary.
The same young aide-de-camp who had "captured" Janice and Marty when they approached the headquarters of the general in command, now came to the Madam and her guests.
"If the señor and señorita wish to go forward, all is now quiet," he announced, bowing low before Janice and the Madam. "I will do myself the honor to conduct them to Señor B-Day. He is in the cellar."