igarette and nodded.

"And now's the time when it's up to us to make a show as if we didn't
want her and that all we want is just to save her and get her down
here."

"And a truce until we do save her--I get you," Wempel affirmed.

"A truce until we get her safe and sound back here in Tampico, or aboard
a battleship. After that? ..."

Both men shrugged shoulders and beamed on each other as their hands met
in ratification.

Fresh volleys of stones thrummed against the wire-screened windows; a
boy's voice rose shrilly above the clamor, proclaiming death to the
Gringos; and the house reverberated to the heavy crash of some battering
ram against the street-door downstairs. Both men, snatching up automatic
rifles, ran down to where their fire could command the threatened door.

"If they break in we've got to let them have it," Wemple said.

Davies nodded quiet agreement, then inconsistently burst out with a
lurid string of oaths.

"To think of it!" he explained his wrath. "One out of three of those
curs outside has worked for you or me--lean-bellied, barefooted,
poverty-stricken, glad for ten centavos a day if they could only get
work. And we've given them steady jobs and a hundred and fifty centavos
a a day, and here they are yelling for our blood."

"Only the half breeds," Davies corrected.

"You know what I mean," Wemple replied. "The only peons we've lost are
those that have been run off or shot."

The attack on the door ceasing, they returned upstairs. Half a dozen
scattered shots from farther along the street seemed to draw away the
mob, for the neighborhood became comparatively quiet.

A whistle came to them through the open windows, and a man's voice
calling:

"Wemple! Open the door! It's Habert! Want to talk to you!"

Wemple went down, returning in several minutes with a tidily-paunched,
well-built, gray-haired American of fifty. He shook hands with Davies
and flung himself into a chair, breathing heavily. He did not relinquish
his clutch on the Colt's 44 automatic pistol, although he immediately
addressed himself to the task of fishing a filled clip of cartridges
from the pocket of his linen coat. He had arrived hatless and
breathless, and the blood from a stone-cut on the cheek oozed down his
face. He, too, in a fit of anger, springing to his feet when he had
changed clips in his pistol, burst out with mouth-filling profanity.

"They had an American flag in the dirt, stamping and spitting on it.