Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

slaughtered some of the Railway Company’s cattle withoutasking leave, and went to work broiling the meat on the embers.Pedrito made many pointed inquiries as to the silvermine, and what had become of the product of the last sixmonths’ working. He had said peremptorily, ‘Ask your chiefup there by wire, he ought to know; tell him that Don PedroMontero, Chief of the Campo and Minister of the Interiorof the new Government, desires to be correctly informed.’‘He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a lean,haggard face, ragged beard and hair, and had walked inlimping, with a crooked branch of a tree for a staff. His followerswere perhaps in a worse plight, but apparently theyhad not thrown away their arms, and, at any rate, not alltheir ammunition. Their lean faces filled the door and thewindows of the telegraph hut. As it was at the same timethe bedroom of the engineer-in-charge there, Montero hadthrown himself on his clean blankets and lay there shiveringand dictating requisitions to be transmitted by wire toSulaco. He demanded a train of cars to be sent down at onceto transport his men up.‘To this I answered from my end,’ the engineer-in-chiefrelated to us, ‘that I dared not risk the rolling-stock in theinterior, as there had been attempts to wreck trains all alongthe line several times. I did that for your sake, Gould,’ saidthe chief engineer. ‘The answer to this was, in the words ofmy subordinate, ‘The filthy brute on my bed said, ‘SupposeI were to have you shot?’’ To which my subordinate, who,it appears, was himself operating, remarked that it wouldnot bring the cars up. Upon that, the other, yawning, said,