“Too honest?” suggested Roddy.
“Too honest,” assented Caldwell promptly. “And there’s another slight objection to him. He’s in jail. And you,” Caldwell cried, raising his finger and shaking it in Roddy’s face, “can’t get him out. We can’t take San Carlos, and neither can you. They have guns there that in twenty minutes could smash this town into a dust-heap. So you see, what you hope to do is impossible, absurd! Now,” he urged eagerly, “why don’t you give up butting your head into a stone wall, and help your father and me?”
He stopped, and in evident anxiety waited for the other to speak, but Roddy only regarded him steadily. After a pause Roddy said: “I’m not talking. You’re the one that’s talking. And,” he added, “you’re talking too much, too!”
“I’ll risk it!” cried Caldwell stoutly. “I’ve never gone after a man of sense yet that I couldn’t make him see things my way. Now, Señora Rojas,” he went on, “only wants one thing. She wants to get her husband out of prison. She thinks Vega can do that, that he means to do it, that I mean to do it. Well—we don’t.”
Roddy’s eyes half closed, the lines around his mouth grew taut, and when he spoke his voice was harsh and had sunk to a whisper.
“I tell you,” he said, “you’re talking too much!”
But neither in Roddy’s face nor voice did Caldwell read the danger signals.
“It doesn’t suit our book,” he swept on, “to get him out. Until Vega is President he must stay where he is. But his wife must not know that. She believes in us. She thinks the Rojas crowd only interferes with us, and she is sending for you to ask you to urge the Rojas faction to give us a free hand.”
“I see,” said Roddy; “and while Vega is trying to be President, Rojas may die. Have you thought of that?”
“Can we help it?” protested Caldwell. “Did we put him in prison? We’ll have trouble enough keeping ourselves out of San Carlos. Well,” he demanded, “what are you going to do?”