Just so." And now he was going.
It was impossible to do business in explosives with an Administrador so
well provided and so discouraging. He had suffered agonies in the saddle
and had exposed himself to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for
nothing at all. Neither hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of
the enterprising Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low
to the engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an attitude of
meditative astonishment.
"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?" he muttered. "And why
does he talk like this to me?"
The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala, whence
the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant drop, nodded
familiarly to the master of the house, standing motionless like a tall
beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture.
"Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. The railway will know
where to go for dynamite should we get short at any time. We have done
cutting and chopping for a while now.
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