Chapter 8 - Page 2

reported seeing Esteban and some negroes riding into the wood. The overseer took horse within the hour and rode pell-mell to Matanzas. In the city at this time was a certain Colonel Cobo, in command of Spanish Volunteers, those execrable convict troops from the Isle of Pines whose atrocities had already marked them as wolves rather than men, and to him Pancho went with his story.

"Ah yes! That Varona boy. I've heard of him," Cobo remarked, when his caller had finished his account. "He has reason to hate you, I dare say, for you robbed him." The Colonel smiled disagreeably. He was a disagreeable fellow, so dark of skin as to lend credence to the gossip regarding his parentage; a loud, strutting, domineering person, whose record in Santa Clara Province was such that only the men discussed it.

Cueto murmured something to the effect that the law had placed him in his position as trustee for the crown, and should therefore protect him; but Colonel Cobo's respect for the law, it seemed, was slight. In his view there was but one law in the land, the law of force.

"Why do you come to me?" he asked.

"That fellow is a desperado," Pancho declared. "He should be destroyed."

"Bah! The country is overrun with desperadoes of his kind, and worse. Burning crops is nothing new. I'd make an end of him soon enough, but nearly all of my men are in Cardenas. We have work enough to do."

"I'd make it worth while, if you could put an end to him," Pancho said, hesitatingly. Then, recalling some of those stories about Colonel Cobo, he added, "There are two of them, you know, a boy and a girl."

"Ah yes! I remember."

"I can direct you to the house of Asensio, where they live."

"Um-m!" Cobo was thoughtful. "A girl. How old is she?"

"Eighteen."

"Ugly as an alligator, I'll warrant."

"Ha! The most ravishing creature in all Matanzas. All the men were mad over her." Cueto's eyes gleamed craftily, for he believed he had measured Cobo's caliber. "She should have married old Castano and all his money, but she was heart and soul in the revolution. She and the boy were spying on us, you know, and sending the information to that rebel, Lopez."

"Lopez! Spies, were they?"

"The worst kind. You'd scarcely believe it of a beautiful girl, with her culture and refinement. I tell you it broke more than one heart. De Castano, for instance, has never recovered. He sits all day in the Casino and grieves for her. Such hair and eyes, such skin--as white as milk--and flesh as pure as the petals of a flower. Well, you wouldn't believe such charms existed."

Colonel Cobo, the guerrilla, licked his full, red lips and ran a strong, square hand over his curly,