Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/266

 cowardly and unpardonable. If this tyrant Garvanza"

"Silence!" the old soldier rebuked him savagely. "I will not stand by and hear treason spoken in my ear!"

"Then, if the Americans would come, I would help them set that poor young lady free," the young man declared, defiance in his reckless mouth.

"If the general hears of this"

"Curse the general! No man fights a woman—only a coward does that."

All around there was the murmur of voices, pitched in the note of pity, of helpless, hopeless pity which, dear as it might be to one who must walk forth soon to die, could not stay for one moment the general's vindictive decree.

"This is the liberty we have under the republic!" one who appeared to be a laborer said, speaking sneeringly, his broken hat pushed back from his flushed brow. "We had no tyranny like this under the crown; no woman ever was led out to die before soldiers in those times."

"When the Americans come"

"Hasten the day!" said the workman fervently.

"It is said they are humane people."

"Humane! Have you heard of the black men bound in slavery, bought and sold like pigs? Tell me, then!"

"Don Ambrosio, I have heard. But they do not stand the black women, or even the black men, against the wall and shoot them."