“He is not the enemy of your sister, though! He professes to be her very best friend—at least her lover, which should be the same thing? Is she of that opinion?”
“My sister hates him.”
“Are you sure of that?”
”Ñor capitan, you are a stranger to me; but the service you’ve this night performed makes me feel as if I were talking to an old friend. Excuse the freedom I take. I am only a poor Jarocho—owning nothing but my rancho, a few varas of garden-ground, my horse, my saddle, and my macheté. I was going to say my liberty, but that’s not true: else why am I dragged from my home to fight battles in which I have no interest? You may say what our military oppressors say—it is to fight for my country. Bah! what use in spilling one’s blood for a country that’s not free? It isn’t for that I’ve been brought to Cerro Gordo, and shot down like a dog. It was to fight for a tyrant, not for a country—for El Cojo, and nobody else!”
“You have not been in the battle by your own will, then?”
“Carrambo! nothing of the sort, ñor deconocio! I am here by conscription; and I’ve been shot down by conscription. No matter now. We have no liberty left in Mexico—at least I have none. Still, ñor capitan, there’s one treasure left to me which I prize above everything else before riches, or even liberty. It was left me by my parents—who have long ago gone to a better world.”
“What treasure?” I inquired, seeing that the speaker hesitated to declare it.
“Ña Lola—mia hermanita.” (Lola, my dear sister.)
“I hope there is no danger of your losing her?”
“There is. This very night you must have heard something to tell you that there is.”