exchanged greetings with many acquaintances. There were several
wounded officers of the Vegas contingent, taking advantage of the
armistice to have their wounds dressed and discuss affairs over a
bottle of wine. Evidently, they had come here instead of to more
central and less squalid places, with the same idea that had driven
Rodman. They were the rats about to leave the sinking ship--if they
could find a way to leave.

The tavern was an adobe building with a corrugated-iron roof and a
large open _patio_, where a dismal fountain tinkled feebly, and one or
two frayed palms stood dusty and disconsolate in the tightly trodden
earth. About the walls were flamboyant portraits of saints. From a
small perch in one corner, a yellow and green parrot squawked
incessantly.

But it was the life about the rough tables of the area that gave the
picture its color and variety. Some had been pressed into service to
support the wounded. About others gathered men in tattered uniforms;
men with bandaged heads and arms in slings. Occasionally, one saw an
alien, a sailor whose clothes declared him to have no place in the
drama of the scene. These latter were usually bolstering up their
bravado with _aguardiente_ against the sense of impending uncertainty
that freighted the atmosphere.

The Frenchman, sharing with Rodman the burden of the unconscious
painter, instinctively halted as the place with its wavering shadows
and flickering lights met his gaze at the door. It was a picture of
color and dramatic intensity. He seemed to see these varied faces,
upon which sat defeat and suffering, sketched on a broad canvas, as
Marston or Saxon might have sketched them.

Then, he laid Saxon down on a corner table, and stood watching his
chance companion who recognized brother intriguers. Suddenly, Rodman's
eyes brightened, and he beckoned his lean hand toward two men who
stood apart. Both of them had faces that were in strong contrast to
the swarthy Latin-American countenances about them. One was thin and
blond, the other dark and heavy. The two came across the _patio_
together, and after a hasty glance the slender man bent at once over
the prostrate figure on the table. His deft fingers and manner
proclaimed him the surgeon. His uniform was nondescript; hardly more a
uniform than the riding clothes worn by Saxon himself, but on his
shoulders he had pinned a major's straps. This was Dr. Cornish, of the
Foreign Legion, but for the moment he was a