Appleby told him about the officer. “It was perhaps a blunder, but we can afford it just now,” he said. Maccario’s face grew a trifle grim, but in another moment he made a little gesture of resignation. “If it was the wish of the Senor Harper! It is sometimes a trifle difficult to understand an American,” he said. “Now if we can find any peons they shall cut the cane back from the hacienda. Morales will be here in two or three hours with at least a company.” XXVII — HARDING’S APPROBATION THE red sunrise found the Sin Verguenza already toiling with fierce activity about the hacienda. This was significant, because they were not addicted to unnecessary physical effort, but they had reasons for knowing it was advisable for the men who incurred the displeasure of Morales to take precautions, and the cane that rolled close up to the hacienda would in case of an assault afford convenient cover to the cazadores. It went down crackling before the flashing steel, while the perspiration dripped from swarthy faces, and the men gasped as they toiled. Appleby, who stripped himself to shirt and trousers before an hour had passed, wondered how long his arms, unused to labor, would stand the strain as he strove to keep pace with the men he led. Harper, almost naked, led another band, and stirred up the spirit of rivalry by rude badinage in barbarous Castilian. It was characteristic that both found the stress of physical effort bracing, and Maccario, attired in hat of costly Panama and spotless duck, watched them with a little twinkle in his dark eyes. There were, he said, sufficient men to do the work without him, and no gentleman of Iberian extraction toiled with his hands unless it was imperatively necessary. Pickets came in and took up the machetes, gasping men, dripping with perspiration, flung themselves down in the shadow until their turn came again, the sun climbed higher until it was almost overhead, and the juice exuded hot upon the toilers’ hands from the crackling stems, while the faint breeze seemed to have passed through a furnace, and the brightness was bewildering. Still, while the space where the stalks stood scarcely knee‐high widened rapidly there was no sign of Morales, and the men grew silent, and now and then cast wondering glances at one another. They had expected the cazadores several hours ago, and their uneasiness was made apparent by the stoppages that grew more frequent while they gazed across the cane. Morales was, as they knew, not a man who wasted time, and his dilatoriness troubled them, for they felt certain that he would come.