Pecachua. He wanted Von Ritter or myself put in his place.

"It is the key to the position," Aiken said, "and if Heinze should
sell us out, we would have to run for our lives. These people are all
smiles and 'vivas' to-day because we are on top. But if we lost
Pecachua, every man of them would turn against us."

I laughed and said: "We can trust Heinze. If I had your opinion of my
fellow-man, I'd blow my brains out."

"If I hadn't had such a low opinion of my fellow-man," Aiken retorted,
"he'd have blown your brains out. Don't forget that."

"No one listens to me," he said. "I consider that I am very hardly
used. For a consideration a friend of Alvarez told me where Alvarez
had buried most of the government money. I went to the cellar and dug
it up and turned it over to Laguerre. And what do you think he's doing
with it!" Aiken exclaimed with indignation. "He's going to give the
government troops their back pay, and the post-office clerks, and the
peons who worked on the public roads."

I said I considered that that was a most excellent use to make of the
money; that from what I had seen of the native troops, it would turn
our prisoners of war into our most loyal adherents.

"Of course it will!" Aiken agreed. "Why, if the government troops out
there in the hills with Alvarez knew we were paying sixty pesos for
soldiers, they'd run to join us so quick that they'd die on the way of
sunstroke. But that's not it. Where do we come in? What do we get out
of this? Have we been fighting for three months just to pay the troops