Chapter 19 - Page 2

meaning of the lesson placed before him to learn, is, to my way of thinking, not only unjustifiable but damnably weak and reprehensible."

Elfigo Apodaca, in another kitchen chair tilted back against an angle of the wall so that he half faced Holman Sommers, stretched out his legs and smiled tolerantly. A big, good-looking, thoroughly Americanized Mexican was Elfigo; the type of man who may be found at sunrise whipping the best stream in the State, the first morning of the trout season; the type of man whose machine noses in the closest to the judge's stand when a big race is on; the type of man who dances most, collects the most picture postals of pretty girls, laughs most at after-dinner speeches; the type of man who either does not marry at all, or attains much notoriety when the question of alimony is being fought out to the last cipher; the last man you would point out as a possible conspirator against anything save the peace and dignity of some other man's home. But it takes money to be all of these things, and Elfigo could see a million or two ahead of him along the revolution trail. That is why he smiled tolerantly upon his colleague who talked of humanity instead of dollars.

Then Elfigo harked back frowningly to what Holman Sommers had said about feebleness. He rolled his cigar from the right corner of his mouth to the left corner and spoke his thought.

"Speaking of feeble blow, and all that bunk," he said irreverently, "how do we stand, Holly? Just between you and me as men--cut out any interest we may have in the game--what's your honest opinion? Do we win?"

Holman Sommers raised one hand and hid the amused twitching of his lips. He could have put that question far more clearly, he believed, and he could have expressed much better the thought that was in Elfigo's mind. He had deliberately baited Elfigo, and it amused him to see how blindly the bait had been taken. He regarded Elfigo through half closed lids.

"As a matter of fact, and speaking relatively, every concerted revolt on the part of the proletariat is a victory. Though every leader in the movement be placed with his back against a stone wall, there to stand until he falls to the earth riddled with bullets, yet have the people won; a step nearer the goal, one more page writ in the glowing history of the advancement of the human race toward a true brotherhood of man. There can be no end save ultimate victory. That the victory may not be apparent for fifty years, or a hundred, cannot in any sense alter the immutable law of evolution. Posterity will point back to this present uprising as the first real blow struck for the freedom of the laboring classes of Mexico, and, indirectly, of the whole world."

Elfigo, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, mark of the dominant note in the human male since clothes were invented to furnish armholes for egotistic thumbs, contemplated