Adventures in Many Lands | Page 4

listen. They're going to
bust the mine this afternoon--that's what they're going to do; and they'd
knife me if they knew I was letting on."
"What?" cried Jimmy.
"It's a fact," said Toro, dropping the towel and feeling for a cigarette.
"They're all so mighty well sure they won't be let go down to Bavaro
for the Saint Gavino kick-up to-morrow that they've settled to do that.
If there ain't no portering to do, they'll be let go. That's how they look at
it. They don't care, not a peseta between 'em, how much it costs the
company to get the machine put right again; not them skunks don't.
What they want is to have a twelve-hour go at the wine in the valley.
You won't tell of me, Don Jimmy?"
"S--s--snakes!" said Jimmy.
Then he had started to run from the Lago Frio, with his coat on his arm.
Dressing was a quick job in those wilds, where at midday in summer
one didn't want much clothing.
"No, I won't let on!" he had cried back over his shoulder.
Toro, the Cuban kiddy, sat down on the margin of the cold blue lake
and finished his cigarette reflectively. White folks, especially white

English-speaking ones, were rather unsatisfactory. He liked them,
because as a rule he could trust them. But Don Jimmy needn't have
hurried away like that. He, Toro, hoped to have had licence to draw his
pay for fully another hour's enjoyable idleness. As things were,
however, Don Alonso, the foreman, would be sure to be down on him
if he were two minutes after Don Jimmy among the red-earth heaps and
the galvanised shanties of the calamine mine on its perch eight hundred
feet sheer above the Vega Verde.
Jim Cayley was a few moments late for the soup after all.
"I s--s--say!" he began, as he bounced into the room.
"Say nothing, my lad!" exclaimed Don Alfredo, looking up from his
newspaper.
[Words missing in original] mail had just arrived--an eight-mile climb,
made daily, both ways, by one of the gang.
Mrs. Jumbo, the moustached old Spanish lady who looked after the
house, put his soup before Jimmy.
"Eat, my dear," she said in Spanish, caressing his damp hair--one of her
many amiable yet detested little tricks, to signify her admiration of
Jim's fresh complexion and general style of beauty.
"But it's--it's--it's most imp--p--p----"
Don Ferdinando set down his spoon. He also let the highly grave letter
from London which he was reading slip into his soup.
"I tell you what, Cayley," he said, "if you don't crush this young brother
of yours, I will. This is a matter of life or death, and I must have a clear
head to think it out."
"I was only saying," cried Jim desperately. But his brother stopped him.
"Hold your tongue, Jim," he said. "We've worry enough to go on with
just at present. I mean it, my lad. If you've anything important to

proclaim, leave it to me to give you the tip when to splutter at it. I'm
solemn."
When Don Alfredo said he was "solemn," it often meant that he was on
the edge of a most unbrotherly rage. And so Jim concentrated upon his
dinner. He made wry faces at Mrs. Jumbo and her strokings, and even
found fault with the soup when she asked him sweetly if it were not
excellent. All this to relieve his feelings.
The two engineers left Jim to finish his dinner by himself. Jim's
renewed effort of "I say, Alf!" was quenched by the upraised hands of
both engineers.
Outside they were met by Don Alonso, the foreman, a very smart and
go-ahead fellow indeed, considering that he was a Spaniard.
"They'll strike, señores!" said Don Alonso, with a shrug. "It can't be
helped, I'm afraid. It's all Domecq's doing, the scoundrel! Why didn't
you dismiss him, Don Alfredo, after that affair of Moreno's death?
There's not a doubt he killed Moreno, and he hasn't a spark of gratitude
or goodness in his nature."
"He's a capable hand," said Alfred Cayley.
"Too much so, by half," said Don Ferdinando. "If he were off the mine,
Elgos, we should run smoothly, eh?"
"I'll answer for that, señor," replied the foreman. "As it is, he plays his
cards against mine. His influence is extraordinary. There'll not be a
man here to-morrow; Saint Gavino will have all their time and money."
"You don't expect any active mischief, I hope?" suggested Don
Ferdinando.
The foreman thought not. He had heard no word of any.
"Very well, then. I'll settle Domecq straight off," said Don Ferdinando.
He returned to the house and pocketed his revolver. They had to be

prepared for all manner of emergencies in these wilds of Asturias,
especially on the eves and morrows