Laguerre glanced sharply at the native guard drawn up at attention on
either side of us. "Hush," he said. He ran past us down the steps, and
halting when he reached the street, turned and looked up at the great
bulk of El Pecachua that rose in the fierce sunlight, calm and
inscrutable, against the white, glaring masses of the clouds.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Heinze!" Aiken answered, savagely. "Heinze has sold them Pecachua."

I cried out, but again Laguerre commanded silence. "You do not know
that," he said; but his voice trembled, and his face was drawn in
lines of deep concern.

"I warned you!" Aiken cried, roughly. "I warned you yesterday; I told
you to send Macklin to Pecachua."

He turned on me and held me by the sleeve, but like Laguerre he still
continued to look fearfully toward the mountain.

"They came to me last night, Graham came to me," he whispered. "He
offered me ten thousand dollars gold, and I did not take it." In his
wonder at his own integrity, in spite of the excitement which shook
him, Aiken's face for an instant lit with a weak, gratified smile. "I
pretended to consider it," he went on, "and sent another of my men to
Pecachua. He came back an hour ago. He tells me Graham offered Heinze
twenty thousand dollars to buy off himself and the other officers and
the men. But Heinze was afraid of the others, and so he planned to ask
Laguerre for a native regiment, to pretend that he wanted them to work
on the trenches. And then, when our men were lying about, suspecting