"A truce until we get her safe and sound back here in Tampico, or aboard
a battleship. After that? ..."

Both men shrugged shoulders and beamed on each other as their hands met
in ratification.

Fresh volleys of stones thrummed against the wire-screened windows; a
boy's voice rose shrilly above the clamor, proclaiming death to the
Gringos; and the house reverberated to the heavy crash of some battering
ram against the street-door downstairs. Both men, snatching up automatic
rifles, ran down to where their fire could command the threatened door.

"If they break in we've got to let them have it," Wemple said.

Davies nodded quiet agreement, then inconsistently burst out with a
lurid string of oaths.

"To think of it!" he explained his wrath. "One out of three of those
curs outside has worked for you or me--lean-bellied, barefooted,
poverty-stricken, glad for ten centavos a day if they could only get
work. And we've given them steady jobs and a hundred and fifty centavos
a a day, and here they are yelling for our blood."

"Only the half breeds," Davies corrected.

"You know what I mean," Wemple replied. "The only peons we've lost are
those that have been run off or shot."

The attack on the door ceasing, they returned upstairs. Half a dozen