THE red sunrise found the Sin Verguenza already toiling with fierce
activity about the hacienda. This was significant, because they were not
addicted to unnecessary physical effort, but they had reasons for
knowing it was advisable for the men who incurred the displeasure of
Morales to take precautions, and the cane that rolled close up to the
hacienda would in case of an assault afford convenient cover to the
cazadores. It went down crackling before the flashing steel, while the
perspiration dripped from swarthy faces, and the men gasped as they
toiled. Appleby, who stripped himself to shirt and trousers before an
hour had passed, wondered how long his arms, unused to labor, would
stand the strain as he strove to keep pace with the men he led. Harper,
almost naked, led another band, and stirred up the spirit of rivalry by
rude badinage in barbarous Castilian. It was characteristic that both
found the stress of physical effort bracing, and Maccario, attired in
hat of costly Panama and spotless duck, watched them with a little
twinkle in his dark eyes. There were, he said, sufficient men to do the
work without him, and no gentleman of Iberian extraction toiled with his
hands unless it was imperatively necessary.
Pickets came in and took up the machetes, gasping men, dripping with
perspiration, flung themselves down in the shadow until their turn came
again, the sun climbed higher until it was almost overhead, and the
juice exuded hot upon the toilers' hands from the crackling stems, while
the faint breeze seemed to have passed through a furnace, and the
brightness was bewildering.
Still, while the space where the stalks stood scarcely knee-high widened
rapidly there was no sign of Morales, and the men grew silent, and now
and then cast wondering glances at one another. They had expected the
cazadores several hours ago, and their uneasiness was made apparent by
the stoppages that grew more frequent while they gazed across the cane.
Morales was, as they knew, not a man who wasted time, and his
dilatoriness troubled them, for they felt certain that he would come.
The hour of the siesta arrived, and it was hotter than ever and
dazzlingly bright, but no one laid his machete down; and Appleby's hands
were bleeding, while his head reeled as he staggered towards the tram-
line with great bundles of cane. Morales, it seemed evident, was
hatching some cunning plan for their destruction, and though arms and
backs ached intolerably they toiled on. It was not until the hour of the
comida they desisted, and by then sufficient cane had been cut to leave
a space round the hacienda that would be perilous for the cazadores to
cross, and those of the Sin Verguenza who had magazine rifles surveyed
it with grim complacency. Then bags of soil were placed here and there
along the parapet of the roof and piled behind the patio gate, and the
men trooped in to eat. When Morales came they would at least be in a
position to welcome him fittingly.
Still, he did not come, and when the shadows of the building which lay
long and black across the cleared space crept into the growing cane a
man walked into the patio. Pancho led him up to where Appleby and
Maccario sat upon the roof gazing across the green plain towards the
wavy thread of carretera.
"There is little news, senor," he said. "Morales sits close in Santa
Marta and has drawn his outposts in. One is not allowed to go into or
out of the city without a pass, and the civiles watch the wine-shops."