"Caramba, Esteban!" she shrugged, "you smell of donkeys. You have done a mad thing coming here. I am not a peon girl any more. I am the mistress of Señor el Presidente. Look at me! See this silk, this ruby! Do you imagine I would grind cassava for a peon who smells like a donkey?" She shrugged, and turned away to a window.
In the silence that followed, one of the little guards saluted.
"What shall we do with him, your Excellency?"
"Kick him out of the palacio and let him go!"
The three soldiers obeyed literally and promptly. They seized Esteban from behind and trundled him toward the door, with hard kicks of their knees against his buttocks. The wretch moved, half falling, half held up, in a series of jounces which kept his head bobbing and his mop of shining youthful hair whipping from side to side. After the quartet passed through the door Strawbridge could still hear the muffled thuds of the guards' knees as they kicked Esteban down the corridor toward the entrance.
The incident left Strawbridge mute. The dictator interrupted his intellectual vacancy by saying:
"Señor Strawbridge, I have to thank you for your interference. I might have had a cut or two from that young madman before I could secure his knife." The general's arm encircled Madruja as he spoke. The girl submitted without any expression whatever on her wild, handsome face.
"It was nothing, General, nothing at all. As I have said before, any little service...." Strawbridge broke off and stood pondering a moment, then asked, "Will you tell me, General, why you imprison Josefa for merely speaking a word of criticism of your country, and then have Esteban kicked out and allowed to go free when he makes an attack on your life?"
The dictator shrugged.
"What I did to Esteban will stop Esteban; what I did to Josefa will stop Josefa." The President of Rio Negro stood faintly smiling and caressing the finely molded shoulders of his mistress.