We had two rifles in the shop. I wasn't then, and never have been, as good a shot with a rifle as with a pistol. Gonzales, though, had been a hunter. He took the rifle with a pleased smile.

"You make _me_ run," says he, playfully, to outdoors. "Now I make _you_ jump! It is thus we amuse ourselves." A man showed his head, to the sound of an instant crash from the rifle. He jumped, all right.

"The old church shall say ma.s.s for your soul, Juan," says Gonzales. "You are the best dead man in the country."

After that, they were careful. I thought they'd leave, seeing they couldn't do anything with us, till Pedro explained they were probably holding us till armed men came. I should have felt dismal once more at this news, if I'd had nothing to do. The darkened store wore on my feelings. One feller I shot wriggled in a funny fashion as he lay on the ground. He was still wriggling--I could see him every time I stopped to think. He gave a long twist, like a snake, bringing his face to the light, at the last. He looked as if he felt perfectly disgusted. He hadn't ought to have looked that way. It bothered me.

The other three stood the gaff of waiting much better than I. In fact, I was frantic inside me, though I made a good chest of it. "Pede," I says, "let me have the other rifle--I'm going scouting."

"That is well," says Gonzales. "If you can get up on the hill without being seen, you can drive them out, and we shall have a shot."

So I took the rifle and squirmed through the brush and rocks back of the store until I was a hundred yards or so up the hill. It was a steep slant. In going so far I'd risen nearly a hundred feet. I could see part of our besiegers plain. Some ten of 'em lay behind boulders, smoking cigarettes and taking it easy. Another batch sat under the bridge. The rest I couldn't see.

I had a particular grudge against the feller who challenged me to fight.

I searched carefully, and finally made him out, under a rock about three hundred yards away, sitting with his back to me, and playing a game with the man in front of him.

His fat back made a corking target. I rested the gun between two stones and had him dead to rights. I was ready to listen to the report and see him fall over, when, by the G.o.ds of war! my finger wouldn't pull the trigger. I hadn't the least feeling about killing that treacherous skunk, so far as I knew, but all the same, I could _not_ pull that trigger. I was surprised, plenty. "Why, you d.a.m.n fool!" I says to myself, "what's eating you! That lad would 'a' slaughtered your entire family, by this time!"

True, too, but it didn't make the gun go off. It's mighty queer how an unexpected "me" will jump out of you at times. There was one Bill Saunders just as anxious to do that blackguard as a man could be, and there was another--and the boss, too--who wouldn't stand for it.

I cussed between my teeth. "If you'd look at me, instead of turning your back, you dog!" I whispered, "I'd heap you up quick." I broke out into a sweat of shame, knowing how my friends were putting their faith in my gathering a man or two. I could have cried with mortification. Suddenly my lad jumped up and pointed, forgetting where he was. The next second the finger jammed into the ground, and the whang of Gonzales's rifle cut through the valley.

I looked where he pointed. Here come a string of men with guns, dog-trotting. I up and pasted into them. The shot started those below.

Some jumped up. I could have whaled it to them all right now, but a sh.e.l.l jammed. Our boys socked it to them from the store, while I clawed at the durned cartridge. Got it out with my knife at last and banged away, first below and then at the approaching soldiers. I dropped a man and the soldiers scattered behind rocks and trees.

There was no use staying longer. I had only three cartridges left; nothing much I could do anyhow, as they would sneak up from this on; besides, I stood to get cut off from the store, so I carefully picked my way back, not wanting them to learn there was no one on the hill. In such a case as ours, you fight for time. I hoped nothing from time, but every minute you lived was clear gain. Out here in the country prisoners of war were stood against a wall.

So long as they thought we had men on the hill, they'd be cautious.

Likely they'd send men around to clear the hill, first, and that would give us some minutes.

The other boys had seen the arrival of the soldiers. They were quiet, but hopeless. Gonzales shrugged his shoulders and examined his rifle.

"How many?" he asked.

"Soldiers and all, or just soldiers?"

"All."

"Nigh a hundred."

"_Ay de mi! Adios el mundo!_ Four men against a hundred! Well, they shall speak of us after--not a hundred will they be, when we leave."

The feeling that you'll leave a good name behind to comfort your last minutes, is a mighty good thing. Wish I had it. It didn't matter a darn to me. All I could think of was that they shouldn't get me--not if they was a million--and I proposed to work on those lines with force.

"Perhaps they won't jump us," I said with more wish than hope. "If they try any other play, we can hold 'em a week."

I had some contempt for those soldiers. I parted with it later. You see, they were barefoot, ragged, and dirty. Not a thing marked 'em for soldiers, but the guns and the orders. I hadn't seen many soldiers, but what I had seen was gay with uniforms and a bra.s.s band. Now, if they'd come at our store with a bra.s.s band, it would have been something like.

This was only a rucus, with us holding the working end of the mule. No glory, no uniforms, no band, no nothing, but just getting holes shot in you, and it wouldn't be no more than truthful for me to admit I was perfectly contented with my hide as she was.

We strengthened the doors and windows by piling more boxes up, leaving only holes to shoot through. Then we waited. The dark heat in the store just melted you; outside the sun hammered fit to knock your eye out.

When it comes hot and still--deadly still--I can remember that hour's waiting in the store. I couldn't hold on to what I was thinking of for a minute; all my ideas flipped around like scart birds, and I sweat and sweat, and I was sick at my stomach, and the man I shot kept squirming.

It was the same as sitting up in bed to find out your nightmare is real.

To the devil with waiting! I tried to clamp my attention on mother, on Mary, on everybody I knew. Useless. I didn't seem to know anybody--they were only jokes, and mostly, the faces, as they skipped by, turned on me and grinned. At the same time I kept talking with the other boys and even laughed once in a while. I know they thought I was cool as a watermelon. I'm even with them there; I thought _they_ were, too.

When Gonzales called, with a click in his voice, "Hist! _Quid'ow!_ They come!" I could have raised both hands to heaven in thanks. There's nothing one-eighth as bad in getting killed as sitting around waiting for it.

I jumped for my window. There ain't a bit of what was in front of me but what's with me to stay. I could only see a small s.p.a.ce that day--anything that wasn't in a ten-foot circle was dark. I leave the why to the doctors. It never troubled me again.

I had the south window, kind of slantwise facing the road, and about twenty foot from it, where it pa.s.sed the store. There was a breastwork of canned goods shoulder high, with lots of loose cartridges spread on the inner top box. The box near me was open, and red labels on quart cans of tomatoes shone out--"Pride of the Garden." I wonder if the man that raised 'em, or he that canned 'em, ever imagined they were going to become the bulwarks of the State of Panama?

The shutters were heavy, with holes in 'em about four inches wide, which you could cover with a round piece of wood that swung on a screw. These holes were right in height for me to shoot through. The other boys had to stand on boxes, being shorter.

I took a peep through my gun-hole. There come the rebels, flap-flapping down the road in their bare feet, trailing their guns, their wide-brimmed hats shaking comical. And I felt happy when I saw it. These were real men, and for the last hour I'd been fighting ghosts. We didn't want 'em to hit us in a body, so I called cheerful to the other boys, "Bet you a can of tomatoes I draw first blood!" and let her flicker through the loop-hole.

XV

TOMATOES BY THE QUART

The barefoot soldiers expected to walk right through us. They come straight and fairly bunched, while we dropped them. They kept coming and we kept dropping them. Streaks of white flew out of the shutters and whiskers grew on the walls, but not a man of us was touched, while we laid them out something awful.

It wasn't we was crack shots, neither, excepting Gonzales. We were, for all practical purposes, cool.

Speaking for myself, I felt neither hope nor fear. I had but one ambition--to make the party that arrived as small as possible. It would surprise me to learn that our boys missed two shots out of five. And there isn't any crowd, white, brown, nor black, that can stand a gaffing like that.

They had no plan. As I say, they thought all they had to do was walk up and take us. When we put every third man on the gra.s.s, they halted, bunching closer, and we pumped it to 'em for keeps. They melted down the road, panic-struck.

We had no cheers of victory, being much too busy. By just keeping industriously at work instead of hollering we put three or four more out of the game. It was business, for us.

The smoke drifted slowly up the hillside; some of the wounded men began hollerin' for water; one got to his knees and emptied his gun at us.

Gonzales was for removing him, but I held his hand. "Let him ease his mind," I said, "he can't hit anything." And just to make me out a liar, the beggar covered me with splinters from the shutter. Gonzales shot, and that was over. I began to wish they'd hustle us again.

The sweat poured off us. We panted like running dogs. Outside there, where the valley rippled with sun-heat, all was still, except that cry--"Water! water! For the love of G.o.d, water!" I've needed water since. I know what that screech means. Lord! that hour!--a blaze of sun, blue shadows, wisps of smoke curling up the hill, and the lonesome cry in the big silence--"Water! water! For the love of G.o.d, water!" That's what it come to; them fellers didn't care much for victory--they wanted water.

It wore on me, like the barking of a dog. I grabbed the water-pail and started for the door.

"Here!" cries Pedro, "what will you make?"

"I want to stop that noise."

"Put down the pail!" says Pedro. "Foolish fellow! Do you not know they keel you at once?"

"Pede," I says, "I can't sit here and hear 'em holler like that--there's no d.a.m.n use in talking."

"Listen," says Pedro, grabbing me by the coat. "See what you do; here are friends; for them you care not. Eef you are keeled, so much the worse are we--are we not more than they? You leave us, and you shall be keeled and our hope goes--I ask you, is that good?"

"No," I says, putting down the pail. "It ain't, Pede. You're right," and one of 'em outside struck a new note that stuck in me and quivered.