But some of the others shook their heads. The train would go by within less than an hour, and as it started out from the neighboring town, it rarely reached Fuerte Sarmiento late.
But the women were insistent. Let the men who had horses try to get to the station and let them drag the “señorona” back by the hair ... and while they were screaming out what they would do if they had their way, some of the males of the party were expressing the opinion that it would be an excellent plan to take up a position along the railway track, and when the train came by, shoot.... They appeared to have quite overlooked the fact which Robledo tried to point out to them, that even if they knew which particular coach contained the marquesa, there would be other travellers in it, whom they would have little excuse for murdering.
Hoarse with shouting, and convinced finally that the hated woman was now beyond their reach, they lapsed into glum silence.
Robledo seized his opportunity.
“Let her go. When she goes, Gualicho goes, and he’s troubled us enough. What we want is to keep this demon from ever coming back. If only he had been driven out long ago!”
As twilight deepened, the mob grew calmer. Supper time came, and even some of the most excitable members of the crowd decided to continue their discussion of the story either at their own homes, or at the Gallego’s boliche.
Rojas, plunged in gloom, had apparently forgotten all the other events of the day, and could think of nothing but Elena’s having escaped him.
“But you don’t know how I feel about it, don Manuel!... I had something to say to her, by means of a whip.”
And with a gesture indicating how he would have done it, he went on explaining just what he considered justice would have demanded that he do to the marquesa.
From that day on, life in La Presa became a monotonous series of anxious days. Robledo was the only person of any importance left in the community. As operations at the dam remained suspended, the workmen began to drift away. Some of them, less impatient, spent their days in idleness, talking of the prospects of the Government’s ordering the works to begin again “next week.” But the order never arrived. Down there at Buenos Aires they were taking their time to consider the matter, and as the months went by, one after another of the workmen lost patience, and finally took up his pack again to escape, either on foot or by rail, from a place where there was no money coming in and where poverty was gaining headway like a plague.