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Carlos lay still for a few minutes, to assure himself they were not going to return. He heard them place the sentries by the door, and then the voices of the greater number seemed borne off to some distance. Now was the time to begin his work. He hastily cast the cords from his hands and feet, drew the long knife from his breast, and attacked the adobe wall.
One of these, the proprietor of a hole in the ground covered with an arch of adobe bricks, had absolutely no bed-clothes except a couple of short pieces of board and very little other clothing. He dug a trench in the bottom of what was by courtesy called his tent, sufficiently large to contain his body below his neck.
There were vague suggestions of being stood up against an adobe wall with a row of "yaller bellies" in front, or being thrown into damp dungeons and held for a ransom. The steamboat men could give me little information about the river. The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta.
Above in the cupola the great bronze bell boomed forth a tremendous solemn note that rose far over the moaning of the wind. From the adobe wall came a fierce yell, a sinister cry that swelled until it became a high and piercing volume of sound, and then died away in a menacing note like the howl of wolves. But Ned, impulse still his master, never ceased to pull the bell.
There was a clatter of dishes, a long interval of silence, and then the sun like a flaming disc topped the mountain wall to the east. The square adobe houses cast long black shadows across the whitened dust of the street and as the man burrowed deeper to keep out the light the door of the stone house slammed.
The assailants, during the night, had sought to break down the wall, and thus enter the main building, but the strength of the adobe and logs of which it was composed resisted effectually all their attempts.
The stocky fellow, having leaned his branding-iron against the adobe chimney, was occupied in closing the drafts. His two companions, both rolling cigarettes, stood beside him, while lounging at a rough table to the left of the door sat two other men, one of them idly shuffling a pack of dirty cards.
After lunch at the hotel, the girls started out to explore the settlement. "I love those adobe houses of the Mexicans," said Enid. "Let's go over and get acquainted with some of the women." But the women were shy. Most of them disappeared into the huts as they saw the girls approaching. Only the children remained and stopped in their play to stare at the newcomers.
Slowly the land came out of the water, the high mountains about Santa Cruz, the low beach of the Saunas, and the strongly-marked ridge terminating in the sea in a point of dark pine-trees. Then the line of whitewashed houses of adobe, backed by the groves of dark oaks, resembling old apple-trees; and then we saw two vessels anchored close to the town.
I was thinking of the spirit that is contented enough to see poetry in the great white mountains through the door of a little whitewashed adobe room; and in this case, it was a sick room. Presently, he got up out of his bed, and donned an old military cape, and came out in the sunlight to have me photograph him, so that his friends would have it after.
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