"What would you?" returned Morales in Spanish fashion. "We must have a guide in these mountains, and there is no one else to hire. Surely, this Aguilino is better than no guide. We will watch him, we nine men, and above all, we will go on."
The American motioned them into silence. He nodded over his shoulder toward the rear of the tent. Behind them, they saw a naked child asleep on a blanket between two dogs and an old hag of a Gitana crouched in a corner, her eyes alive and fixed unwaveringly upon them.
The men remained wordless but they did not sit down. The smell of unwashed bodies and much-used body blankets of a sudden breathed into their nostrils. The tent was filthy. All at once, the three wished themselves out in the sweet, clean, if wet open again.
"What these folk need is education," whispered Carson in Morales' ear. "Education can do everything!"
"Education, si!" returned Morales in the same manner. "But what they need more is some one with a lion heart, a great golden arrogant heart, to lead them in the fight, to lead them up!"
Jacques Ferou said nothing, but as he followed them out into the open, he smiled his calculating and very superior smile.
Outside, the very mountains above seemed to have melted away into opaque sheets of driving water. The earth was sliding in brown streams from under their feet. The barranca boomed like a thousand drums beaten by mad Arabs.
To make himself heard above the booming of the rain, Jacques Ferou cupped his hands about his mouth and screamed into the faces of the others: "Let us go back. Sacre, we are soaking water here!"
"No!" returned the others, and they grimaced in disgust. But the rain fell with such outrageous passion that it was unendurable; there was naught to do but return within the tent.
Driven to it, they sought the shelter of the tent once again, but found it now a very poor shelter beneath that onslaught of rain. It leaked like a Japanese paper umbrella. And all the time the trees ran with heavy tears, and the rain flooded down with a tumultuous booming and a morose persistency.