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Page 11
"I'll pay all expenses,' says O'Connor. "I want a man I can trust. If we
succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the
government.'
"'All right, then,' says I. 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts
and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court bench
so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they
chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can
consider me on the pay-roll.'
"Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small,
green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor said he
had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding
general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed
from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three
dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating
an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it.
Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and
O'Connor handed ever the twenty-one dollars.
"The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. `Not for
me,' says I. 'It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry
Tree Corners when I speak of it. It's a clear case where Spelling Reform
ought to butt in and disenvowel it.'
"But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white,
with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed
up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the
pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department
of the Long Island Railroad.
"We went through the quarantine and custom-house indignities; and then
O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called 'The Avenue of the
Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.' Ten feet
wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.
"'Hooligan Alley,' says I, rechristening it.
"''Twill be our headquarters,' says O'Connor. 'My agent here, Don
Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.'
"So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary centre.
In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and
a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk
and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting.
We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our
meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a
German proprietor with Chinese cooking served a la Kansas City lunch
counter.
"It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned out
beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some native
gent would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the back room
for half an hour with O'Connor and the interpreter. I noticed that when
they went in they were always smoking eight-inch cigars and at peace
with the world; but when they came out they would be folding up a ten-
or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government horribly.
"One evening after we had been in Guaya--in this town of
Smellville-by-the-Sea--about a month, and me and O'Connor were sitting
outside the door helping along old tempus fugit with rum and ice and
limes, I says to him:
"'If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's
patronizing, for the question--what is your scheme for subjugating this
country? Do you intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you mean to
buy its votes peacefully and honorably at the polls?'
"'Bowers,' says he, 'ye're a fine little man and I intend to make great
use of ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand statecraft.
Already by now we have a network of strategy clutching with invisible
fingers at the throat of the tyrant Calderas. We have agents at work in
every town in the republic. The Liberal party is bound to win. On our
secret lists we have the names of enough sympathizers to crush the
administration forces at a single blow.'
"'A straw vote,' says I, 'only shows which way the hot air blows.'
"'Who has accomplished this?' goes on O'Connor. 'I have. I have directed
everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents inform me. The
people are groaning under burdens of taxes and levies. Who will be their
natural leader when they rise? Could it be any one but meself? 'Twas
only yesterday that Zaldas, our representative in the province of
Durasnas, tells me that the people, in secret, already call me "El
Library Door," which is the Spanish manner of saying "The Liberator."'
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