“What!” exclaimed the planter, “this is serious. Speak up, Juan, at once. Where is General Ruiz?”
It was with a sinking heart that Chester heard the answer as the thought what the news would mean to the radiant beauty he had been talking with but a short time before, flashed across his mind.
“Muerto! muerto!” wailed the prostrate Juan, “dead! dead!”
At this, although they didn’t understand it, the women set up a great howl of terror.
“Oh Zelaya is coming! He will kill us and eat our babies! Oh master save us—don’t let Zelaya’s men eat our babies.”
The men blubbered and cried as much as the women, but from a different and more selfish reason.
“Oh, they will kill us too and spoil all our land. The land we have grown with so much care,” they bemoaned in piercing tones, “moreover, we shall be forced to join the army and be killed in battle.”
“Blakely, for heaven’s sake take that bit of glass out of your eye, and get this howling mob out of here!” besought Chester desperately. “If you don’t I’ll kill some of them myself. Here you, get up,” he exclaimed bestowing a most unmerciful kick on the still prostrate Juan. “Oh, for a few Americans—or Englishmen,” he added, out of deference to Blakely.
“Couldn’t do a thing with them without the eyeglass, Mr. Chester,” drawled the imperturbable Blakely, “they think it’s witchcraft. Don’t twig how the dickens I keep it in.”
“All right, all right, meet me here at the house and we must hold a council of war, as soon as you’ve got them herded safe in the barracks,” impatiently said Chester, turning on his heel.