"I ... sack La Fortuna!"
"Seguramente, señor! Lubito said you had all your plans laid. He said you had men everywhere, ready to leap upon Canalejos at a word from you; that you would set all the prisoners free and put the tyrants in their own dungeons. But he said you were a North American, and that when you gained power you would not oppress the people as General Miedo and General Fombombo did."
Strawbridge was annoyed and a little anxious at this continual bobbing up of the bull-fighter's gossip.
"Look here," he said. "Lubito is going to get me into serious trouble, spreading that sort of rumor."
"Oh, no, señor! the peons never betray the hombre who comes to fight their battles. No one spoke a word when General Miedo marched against Canalejos. He was in the city before he"—she nodded toward the palace—"knew a breath of it. No one will speak against you. Lubito has arranged everything. The whole town will rise up when you lift your sword. I shall be happy, señor, when you stand him—" another nod at the palace—"in front of the rifles."
Strawbridge was shocked at her bloodthirstiness. And he saw that nothing he could say would shake her in her delusion. And why should he shake her? Why not let her draw any comfort she could from an imaginary revenge? He promised to do what he could for Josefa, and started on for the palace.
That evening Strawbridge did not sit with the señora on the piazza. Their plan to elope had made the lovers chary of being seen together. The drummer sat in his room and from his window watched the vestiges of sunset darken into night. He was ill, and the reaction after all of his walking and talking and love-play with the señora made him weary and despondent. Thoughts of Josefa and the old charwoman bedeviled him. Through his window he could see the dark reproach of La Fortuna blotting out the residual umber in the east. Somewhere in that pile Josefa lay manacled because he, Thomas Strawbridge, had conceived a hardware display for "Sol y Sombra." The salesman got up and moved about his room in weary restlessness. In his thoughts he cursed the country. He recalled Rosales standing before the firing-squad; the little Austrian operator whom Saturnino had corrupted; the centaurism of General Fombombo. It was the country: there was something about this country that got a man. Then there insinuated itself into his reverie the fact that he himself was planning to elope with the dictator's wife.
Strawbridge's thinking stopped abruptly and he stood staring at nothingness, with widened eyes. He did not want to yield to wickedness. He wanted to stay decent. And even as he was thinking these things a profound justification arose in his mind. It was his duty to deliver an unhappy woman from such a mad, immoral land. It was his duty and his deepest desire. He had the widest license to protect her that any man could possess: he loved her.
But as to the others—there was something about this country that got a man.