Chapter Twenty Eight.
Friends in Fear.
“Glad to see you, Señor Juliano! It’s not often you honour Arispe with your presence.”
Colonel Requeñes is the speaker, he spoken to being a gentleman of middle age, in civilian costume, the dress of a haciendado. It is Don Juliano Romero, brother of the Señora Villanueva, the owner of a large ganaderia or grazing estate, some six or seven miles out of Arispe.
“True,” he admits, “nor would you see me now, only that this thing begins to look serious.”
“What thing?” asks the Colonel, half divining it.
“No news from Villanueva, I came to see if you’ve had any.”
“Not a word; and you’re right about it’s beginning to look serious. I was just talking of it to your son there, before you came in.”
They are in a large apartment in Colonel Requeñes’ official residence, his receiving-room, into which the ganadero has just been ushered; the son alluded to being there already, a youth of some sixteen summers, in military uniform, with sabretasche and other insignia proclaiming him an aide-de-camp. After greeting his father, he has resumed his seat by a table on which are several open despatches, with which he seems to busy himself.
“Por Dios! I cannot tell what to make of it,” pursues the ganadero; “they must have reached the mine, wherever it is, long ago. Time enough for word to have been brought back. And my sister not writing to me, that’s a puzzle! She promised she would soon as they got there.”