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As is already well known in the United States, General Weyler issued an order some months ago commanding the country people living in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and Matanzas to betake themselves with their belongings to the fortified towns. His object in doing this was to prevent the pacificos from giving help to the insurgents, and from sheltering them and the wounded in their huts.
Perhaps I know something about that." O'Reilly leaned closer. "You say you're a poor man, I will pay you well." Morin eyed the ragged speaker scornfully; it was plain that he put no faith in such a promise, and so O'Reilly took a piece of gold from his pocket, at sight of which the fisherman started. "What kind of pacificos are you?" Morin queried. His mouth had fallen open, his eyes protruded.
After you hear stories like these during an entire day, the air seems to be heavy with murder, and the very ground on which you walk smells of blood. It was the same in the town, where any one was free to visit the cartel, and view the murdered bodies of the pacificos hacked and beaten and stretched out as a warning, or for public approbation. There were six so exposed while I was in Sagua.
Spirits, if indeed there are such things, are made of nothing they are like thin air. How, then, could they rattle chains? You probably saw some wretched pacificos in search of food and imagined the rest." "Indeed! Then what did I hear with these very ears? Whispers, murmurs, groans, and the clinkety-clink of old Sebastian's chisel.
And, on the other hand, the insurgents who call themselves rich when they have three cartridges, as opposed to the one hundred and fifty cartridges that every Spanish soldier carries, will probably very wisely continue to refuse to force the issue in any one battle. The Fate Of The Pacificos
"We're sweeping the country as with a broom, and already Matanzas is bulging with refugees," the officer told him. "They call themselves pacificos, but they carry information and aid our enemies. We'll have no more of that." "Will it not be a great expense to feed so many people?" Cueto ventured. "Let them feed themselves. Is it our fault that they make such measures necessary? By no means.
My host would say, pointing to one of the pacificos huddled in a corner of his machine shop: "That man's brother was killed last week about three hundred yards over there to the left while he was digging in the field." Or, in answer to a question from our consul, he would say: "Oh, that boy who used to take care of your horse some guerrillas shot him a month ago."
Colonel Lopez nodded; then he said, gravely: "Cobo takes no prisoners. I was in the Rubi hills at the time, fighting hard, and it was six weeks before I got back into Matanzas. Naturally, when I heard what had happened, I tried to find the girl, but Weyler was concentrating the pacificos by that time, and there was nobody left in the Yumuri; it was a desert."
There were Spanish soldiers as well as pacificos among these, for the Spanish officers either know or care nothing about the health of their men. There is no attempt made to police these military camps, and in Jaruco the filth covered the streets and the plaza ankle-deep, and even filled the corners of the church which had been turned into a fort, and had hammocks swung from the altars.
If Rosa had not put herself behind prison walls, if she were still in hiding somewhere on the island, it would be a simple matter to seek her out. But Matanzas, of all places! Then, too, the pacificos, according to all reports, were dying like flies in the prison camps. Norine wondered if there might not be a terrible heartache at the end of O'Reilly's quest?
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