Steel eyes and ugly pistol muzzle enforced the order.
The man, a fat Mexican with a yellow, bilious face and small, beady eyes, arose. “If you will only let me live, señor—”
“Shut up!” Jake cut him off. “You’re the station agent?”
“Si, señor!”
“What’s in those boxes?”
“Powder, señor, giant powder that was brought in by revueltosos from a gringo mine. It is to be shipped on the train to-morrow to Valles, who will have it made into bombs for use in his trenches.”
“Thought so.” Jake grinned at the pile of boxes. “’Tain’t no trick to tell gringo dynamite. The markings fairly scream, ‘Made in America!’ So Valles is going to make bombs of it? Well, well!”
“Señor, you will—”
“Now, Alberto, cut that out.” Having thus transferred the cognomen from the engineer to his present captive, Jake went on. “That precious existence o’ yourn depends altogether upon your paisanos outside. The longer I hold ’em off the longer you live. Get it? Bueno! Now trot over to the window. The second you see any one—yelp! If you don’t—” He tapped his gun significantly.
The agent thus placed, he looked around the room, The blackened stone of the walls told that it had already been burned in one or other of the revolutions. He grinned again, noting that the original roof had been replaced with laminated iron. “Kain’t roast us out, anyway, Alberto.”