f
political action.

Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Decoud followed out the
brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in the vast empty
sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man,
with a drooping moustache, a hide merchant from Esmeralda, who had come
overland to Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range.
He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose
of seeing the Senor Administrador of San Tome in relation to some
assistance he required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to
enlarge it greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a strange,
anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language, which he pattered
rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A plain man could carry
on his little business now in the country, and even think of enlarging
it--with safety. Was it not so? He seemed to beg Charles Gould for a
confirmatory word, a grunt of assent, a simple nod even.

He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would
dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he would branch
off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey. The audacious
Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the Campo of Sulaco,
and was known to be lurking in the ravines of the coast range.
Yesterday, when distant only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant
and his servants had seen three men on the road arrested suspiciously,
with their horses' heads together. Two of these rode off at once and
disappeared in a shallow quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued
the man from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But
none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and the
third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use. We
had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling. He let us pass--a man on
a grey horse with his hat down on his eyes--without a word of greeting;
but by-and-by we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but that
did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching
my foot with the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a
blood-curdling laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand
back to reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his
waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he
did n