“She thinks of that girl,” he said to himself; “she thinks of the Viola children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage those confounded Avellanos have drawn him into? No one seems to be thinking of her.”
Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections subtly.
“I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to take in hand the making of a new State. It’ll please him. It’ll reconcile him to the risk.”
But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was inaccessible. To send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible, since Sotillo was master of the harbour, and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with all the democrats in the province up, and every Campo township in a state of disturbance, where could he find a man who would make his way successfully overland to Cayta with a message, a ten days’ ride at least; a man of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper? The Capataz de Cargadores would have been just such a man. But the Capataz of the Cargadores was no more.
And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall, said gently, “That Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to the anchor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought he had gone back overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came here once to talk to me about his hide business and some other things. I made it clear to him that nothing could be done.”
“He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being about,” remarked the doctor.
“And but for him we might not have known anything of what has happened,” marvelled Charles Gould.
Mrs. Gould cried out—
“Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now.”
“Nobody’s likely to carry the news,” remarked the doctor. “It’s no one’s interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of Hernandez as if he were the devil.” He turned to Charles Gould. “It’s even awkward, because if you wanted to communicate with the refugees you could find no messenger. When Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away from here the Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him roasting his prisoners alive.”