San Francisco is really not a mountain at all, but a
foot hill of the mountains. Yet, it looks down on the city of Puerto
Frio as Marathon on the sea, and here are guns trained inward as well
as outward. These guns can shell the capital into ruins in the space
of a few hours; then, they can hurl their projectiles further, and
play havoc with the environs. Also, they can guard the city from the
approach that lies along the roads from the interior. A commander who
holds San Francisco stands at the door of Puerto Frio with a latch-key
in his hand. The revolutionists under Vegas had arranged their attack
on the basis of unwarned assault. The Dictator had indeed some
apprehensions, but they were fears for the future--not for the
immediate present. The troops garrisoned on San Francisco, ostensibly
the loyal legion of the Dictator's forces, were in reality watching
the outward approaches only as doors through which they were to
welcome friends. The guns that were trained and ready to belch fire on
signal from Vegas, were the guns trained inward on the city, and, when
they opened, the main plaza would resemble nothing so much as the far
end of a bowling alley when an expert stands on the foul-line, and the
palace of the President would be the kingpin for their gunnery. The
_insurrecto_ forces were to enter San Francisco without resistance,
and the opening of its crater was to be the signal for hurling through
the streets of the city itself those troops that had been secretly
armed with the smuggled weapons, completing the confusion and throwing
into stampeding panic the demoralized remnants upon which the
government depended.

Unless there were a traitor in very exclusive and carefully guarded
councils, there would hardly be a miscarriage of the plans.

Saxon stood idly listening to these confidences. Nothing seemed
strange to him, and least of all the entire willingness of the
conspirator to tell him things that involved life and death for men
and governments. He knew that, in spite of all he had said, or could
say, to the other man, he was the former ally in crime. He had thought
at first that Rodman would ultimately discover some discrepancy in
appearance which would undeceive him, but now he realized that the
secret of the continued mistake was an almost miraculous resemblance,
and the fact that the other man had, in the former affair, met him in
person only twice, and that five years ago.

"And so," went on Rodman in c