Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
of the pass. Some few men, and all the animals, perished in the icy blast. The stragglers died, but the main body kept on. They found poor Bonifacio lying half-dead at the foot of a snow-slope, and bayoneted him promptly in the true civil-war style. They would have had Ribiera too if they had not, for some reason or other, turned off the track of the old Camino Real, only to lose their way in the forests at the foot of the' lower slopes. And there they were at last, having stumbled in unexpectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at the rail-head told his chief by wire that he had Pedro Montero absolutely there, in the very office, listening to the clicks. He was going to take possession of Sulaco in the name of the democracy. He was very overbearing. His men slaughtered some of the railway company's cattle with- out asking leave, and went to work broiling the meat on the embers. Pedrito made many pointed inquiries as to the silver-mine, and what had become of the product of the last six months' working. He had said peremptorily, 'Ask your chief up there by wire, he ought to know; tell him that Don Pedro Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister of the Interior of the new government, desires to be correctly informed.'
"He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a lean, haggard face, ragged beard and hair, and had walked in limping, with a crooked branch of a tree for a staff. His followers were perhaps in a worse plight, but apparently they had not thrown away their arms, and, at any rate, not all their ammunition. Their lean faces filled the door and the windows of the telegraph hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom
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