“That was to awaken our friend Sarros,” Webster cried. “I'll bet a buffalo nickel that woke the old horsethief up. There's another—and another.” The uproar swelled, the noise gradually drifting around the city from west to south, forming, seemingly, a semicircle of sound. “The government troops are up and doing now,” Webster observed, and speeded up his motor. “I think it high time we played the part of frightened refugees. When that machine-gun company with its infantry escort starts up through the city from Leber's warehouse it may encounter early opposition—and I've heard that Mauser bullets kill at three miles. Some strays may drop out here in the bay.”
He speeded the launch toward La Estrellita, and as the craft scraped in alongside the great steamer's companion landing, her skipper ran down the ladder to greet them and inquire eagerly of the trend of events ashore.
“We left in a hurry the instant it started,” Webster explained. “As Americans, we didn't figure we had any interest in that scrap, either way.” He handed Dolores out on the landing stage, tossed their baggage after her and followed; Don Juan took the wheel, and the launch slid out and left them there.
At the head of the companion ladder Webster paused and turned for another look at Buenaventura. To the west three great fires now threw a lurid light skyward, mocking an equally lurid light to the east, that marked the approach of daylight. He smiled. “Those are the cantonment barracks burning,” he whispered to Dolores. “Ricardo is keeping his word. He's driving the rats back into their own holes.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE weeks of clean living, of abstention from his wonted daily alcoholic ration, had inspired in Don Juan Cafetéro a revival of his all but defunct interest in life; conversely, in these stirring times, he was sensible of an equally acute interest in Sobrantean politics, for he was Irish; and flabby indeed is that son of the Green Little Isle who, wherever he may be, declines to take a hand in any public argument. For the love of politics, like the love of home, is never dead in the Irish. It is instinct with them—the heritage, perhaps, of centuries of oppression and suppression, which nurtures rather than stifles the yearning for place and power. Now as Don Juan turned Leber's launch shoreward and kicked the motor wide open, he, too, descried against the dawn the glare of the burning cantonments west of the city, and at the sight his pulse beat high with the lust of battle, the longing to be in at the death in this struggle, where the hopes and aspirations of those he loved were at stake.
Two months previously a revolution would have been a matter of extreme indifference to Don Juan; he would have reflected that it was merely the outs trying to get in, and that if they succeeded, the sole benefit to the general public would be the privilege of paying the bill. It was all very well, perhaps, to appoint a new jefe politico, if only for the sake of diversion, but new or old they “jugged” or booted Don Juan Cafetéro impartially from time to time; the lowliest peon could shoulder the derelict off the narrow sidewalks, while the policeman on the beat looked on and grinned. Consequently, drunk or sober, Don Juan would not have fought with or for a Sobrantean, since he knew from experience that either line of activity was certain to prove unprofitable. To-day, however, in the knowledge that he had an opportunity to fight beside white men and perchance even up some old scores with the Guardia Civil, it occurred suddenly to Don Juan that it would be a brave and virtuous act to cast his lot with the Ruey forces. He was a being reorganized and rebuilt, and it behooved him to do something to demonstrate his manhood.
Don Juan knew, of course, that should the rebels lose and he be captured, he would be executed; yet this contingency seemed a far-fetched one, in view of the fact that he had John Stuart Webster at his back, ready to finance his escape from the city. Also Don Juan had had an opportunity, in the hills above San Miguel de Padua, for a critical study of Ricardo Ruey and had come to the conclusion that at last a real man had come to liberate Sobrante; further, Don Juan had had ocular evidence that John Stuart Webster was connected with the revolution, for had he not smuggled Ruey into the country? It was something to be the right-hand man of the president of a rich little country like Sobrante; it was also something to be as close to that right-hand man as Don Juan was to his master, Webster; consequently self-interest and his sporting code whispered to Don Juan that it behooved him to demonstrate his loyalty with every means at his command, even unto his heart's blood.