“I believe not,” answered Lawrence; “at least I have not heard the colonel talk of such an object; but I am not in his confidence, and know nothing of his plans.”
Pizarro made no rejoinder, and Lawrence, seeing by the continued frown that the youth’s spirit was somewhat stirred, sought for further information by asking about Mendoza.
“Do you not know,” said the Gaucho, with increased vehemence, and a good deal of fine action, “that the people of San Juan have deposed their governor, because he is a bad man?”
“I had not heard of it,” said Lawrence, “but what has that to do with Mendoza?”
“You shall hear, senhor. The governor of San Juan is dishonest. He is bad in every way, and in league with the priests to rob the people. His insolence became so great lately that, as I have said, the people arose, asserted their rights, and deposed him. Then the government of Mendoza sent troops to reinstate the governor of San Juan; but they have not yet succeeded! What right,” continued the youth, with grand indignation,—“What right has the government of Mendoza to interfere? Is not the province of San Juan as free to elect its own governor as the province of Mendoza? Have its men not brains enough to work out their own affairs?—ay, and they have arms strong enough to defend their rights, as the troops shall find when they try to force on the people a governor of whom they do not approve.”
Lawrence felt at once that he was in the presence of one of those strong, untameable spirits, of which the world has all too few, whose love of truth and fair-play becomes, as it were, a master-passion, and around whom cluster not only many of the world’s good men, but—unfortunately for the success of the good cause—also multitudes of the lower dregs of the world’s wickedness, not because these dregs sympathise with truth and justice, but simply because truth-lovers are sometimes unavoidably arrayed against “the powers that be.”
“I don’t know the merits of the case to which you refer,” said Lawrence, “but I have the strongest sympathy with those who fight or suffer in the cause of fair-play—for those who wish to ‘do to others as they would have others do to them.’ Do the people of San Luis sympathise with those of San Juan?”
“I know not, senhor, I have never been to San Luis.”
As the town referred to lay at a comparatively short distance from the other, Lawrence was much surprised by this reply, but his surprise was still further increased when he found that the handsome Gaucho had never seen any of the towns in regard to which his sense of justice had been so strongly stirred!
“Where were you born, Pizarro?” he asked.