miliarity that she suddenly found herself addressing him
intimately, in the singular tu. Absorbed in his own
thoughts, Luis Cervantes had ceased listening to her.
He thought:

Where are those men on Pancho Villa's payroll, so
admirably equipped and mounted, who only get paid in
those pure silver pieces Villa coins at the Chihuahua
mint? Bah! Barely two dozen half-naked mangy men,
some of them riding decrepit mares with the coat
nibbled off from neck to withers. Can the accounts
given by the Government newspapers and by myself be
really true and are these so-called revolutionists simply
bandits grouped together, using the revolution as a won-
derful pretext to glut their thirst for gold and blood?
Is it all a lie, then? Were their sympathizers talking a
lot of exalted nonsense?

If on one hand the Government newspapers vied
with each other in noisy proclamation of Federal victory
after victory, why then had a paymaster on his way
from Guadalajara started the rumor that President
Huerta's friends and relatives were abandoning the capi-
tal and scuttling away to the nearest port? Was
Huerta's, "I shall have peace, at no matter what cost,"
a meaningless growl? Well, it looked as though the
revolutionists or bandits, call them what you will, were
going to depose the Government. Tomorrow would there-
fore belong wholly to them. A man must consequently
be on their side, only on their side.