Far up the valley a funeral pall
of smoke hung in the sky itself; that was where the Spaniards were
burning the houses of those too slow in obeying the order of
concentration.
La Joya, however, was still tenanted when early in the evening its
rightful owner arrived; the house and some of its outbuildings
showed lights. Esteban concealed his men. While the horses cropped
and the negroes rested he fitted fuse and cap to his precious
piece of dynamite. It was likely, he thought, that Cueto had
provided himself with a body-guard, and knowing the plantation
house as he did, he had no intention of battering weakly at its
stout ironwood door while his quarry took fright and slipped away.
Now while Esteban was thus busied, Pancho Cueto was entertaining
an unwelcome guest. In the late afternoon he had been surprised by
the visit of a dozen or more Volunteers, and inasmuch as his
relations with their colonel had been none of the friendliest
since that ill-starred expedition into the Yumuri, he had felt a
chill of apprehension on seeing the redoubtable Cobo himself at
their head.
The colonel had explained that he was returning from a trip up the
San Juan, taken for the purpose of rounding up those inhabitants
who had been dilatory in obeying the new orders from Havana. That
smoke to the southward was from fires of his kindling: he had
burned a good many crops and houses and punished a good many
people, and since this was exactly the sort of task he liked he
was in no unpleasant mood.
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