Robledo, on horseback, moving back and forth from one group to another, guessed from a few phrases caught at random that the anger rising rapidly in the crowd was assuming dangerous proportions. At that very moment they were passing poor Pirovani’s former dwelling. Some of the women began crying out shrilly as they looked up at the windows.
“Down with the painted face! Death to the murderous she-dog!”
The worst insults in their feminine vocabularies were hurled through the air. Anticipating what was going to happen, Robledo changed his course and went up to the house, backing his horse up against the outside steps. But for once not even those men who were most loyal to him supported him in his purpose.
Heedless of his advice as of his commands, women and children dove under his horse or slipped behind its flanks, and the invading movement having been started, the men thronged into the basement of the house, apologizing, with a lift of their caps, as they passed in front of the engineer.
The assault of the enemy’s quarters was very rapid, every obstacle in the way of the invaders being overcome with that ease which seems characteristic of popular attacks on days of successful revolutionary outbreaks. The front door fell in, shattered by a few determined blows, and the human tide eddied for a moment around the opening, then, in surge after surge, swept into the house. Broken panes fell out of the windows, followed by all manner of projectiles, furniture, clothes, dishes, and in vain did some of the more moderate members of the crowd protest against this senseless destruction.
“But this isn’t her house,” they were repeating. “This all belongs to don Enrique, the Italian!”
The crowd however turned a deaf ear. It preferred to believe that everything there did belong to the “señorona,” so as to be able to vent its rage without scrupling about other people’s property. And all the while they screamed out insults, in the hope that their words would scorch the “señorona’s” ears, just as they hoped that their hands might tear at her flesh.
But finally Robledo, still on his horse, calling out orders that went unobeyed, succeeded in gaining the attention of the crowd which had grown tired of its work of destruction. Its energies had suddenly diminished at discovering that its hoped-for victim was no longer within reach; but the real reason for its subsiding into a relative silence which allowed Robledo to make himself heard, was the arrival of an old Spanish laborer who had retired from the works at the dam in order to carry on the business of delivering water to his customers in the town. Prodding and cursing at the miserable old nag that unwillingly drew his ramshackle cart, containing a water-tank, he daily made the rounds of La Presa; and from this conveyance he now began haranguing the mob at Pirovani’s.
“What are you doing here, blunder-heads? She’s gone!” he yelled shrilly. “I saw her in a carriage with the señor Moreno, the government fellow. They were on their way to the station to take the train to Buenos Aires.”
At once some of the men who had horses within reach offered to start off in pursuit. They had lost a good deal of time, but perhaps if they rode without any regard for their mounts they might get to Fuerte Sarmiento in time to catch the fugitive....