"Going into the city, are you?" the fellow inquired. "Starved out,
I suppose. Well, it's as pleasant to starve in one place as
another."
Jacket helped himself to a stalk of cane from the load and began
to strip it with his teeth.
"Will the soldiers allow us to enter?" Johnnie inquired.
"Of course. Why not?" The old man laughed mirthlessly; then his
voice changed. "Go back," he said, "go back and die in the fields.
Matanzas stinks of rotting corpses. Go back where the air is
clean." He swung his long lash over the oxen, they leaned against
the load, and the cart creaked dismally on its way.
It is never difficult to enter a trap, and Matanzas was precisely
that. There were soldiers everywhere, but beyond an indifferent
challenge at the outer blockhouse, a perfunctory question or two,
Narciso and Juan Villar experienced no trouble whatever in passing
the lines. Discipline, never strict at best, was extremely lax at
the brick fortinas along the roads, and, since these two refugees
were too poor to warrant search, they were waved onward by the
sentries. They obeyed silently; in aimless bewilderment they
shuffled along toward the heart of the city. Almost before they
realized it they had run the gauntlet and had joined that army of
misery, fifteen thousand strong. The hand of Spain had closed over
them.
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