“Heinze!” Aiken answered, savagely. “Heinze has sold them Pecachua.”
I cried out, but again Laguerre commanded silence. “You do not know that,” he said; but his voice trembled, and his face was drawn in lines of deep concern.
“I warned you!” Aiken cried, roughly. “I warned you yesterday; I told you to send Macklin to Pecachua.”
He turned on me and held me by the sleeve, but like Laguerre he still continued to look fearfully toward the mountain.
“They came to me last night, Graham came to me,” he whispered. “He offered me ten thousand dollars gold, and I did not take it.” In his wonder at his own integrity, in spite of the excitement which shook him, Aiken’s face for an instant lit with a weak, gratified smile. “I pretended to consider it,” he went on, “and sent another of my men to Pecachua. He came back an hour ago. He tells me Graham offered Heinze twenty thousand dollars to buy off himself and the other officers and the men. But Heinze was afraid of the others, and so he planned to ask Laguerre for a native regiment, to pretend that he wanted them to work on the trenches. And then, when our men were lying about, suspecting nothing, the natives should fall on them and tie them, or shoot them, and then turn the guns on the city. And he has sent for the niggars!” Aiken cried. “And there’s not one of them that wouldn’t sell you out. They’re there now!” he cried, shaking his hand at the mountain. “I warned you! I warned you!”
Incredible as it seemed, difficult as it was to believe such baseness, I felt convinced that Aiken spoke the truth. The thought sickened me, but I stepped over to Laguerre and saluted.
“I can assemble the men in half an hour,” I said. “We can reach the base of the rock an hour later.”
“But if it should not be true,” Laguerre protested. “The insult to Heinze—”
“Heinze!” Aiken shouted, and broke into a volley of curses. But the oaths died in his throat. We heard a whirr of galloping hoofs; a man’s voice shrieking to his horse; the sounds of many people running, and one of my scouts swept into the street, and raced toward us. He fell off at our feet, and the pony rolled upon its head, its flanks heaving horribly and the blood spurting from its nostrils.
“Garcia and Alvarez!” the man panted. “They’re making for the city. They tried to fool us. They left their tents up, and fires burning, and started at night, but I smelt ‘em the moment they struck the trail. We fellows have been on their flanks since sun-up, picking ‘em off at long range, but we can’t hold them. They’ll be here in two hours.”