Page:Fombombo.pdf/53

Strawbridge with the persistence of a bad dream. At last he broke out:

“Gumersindo, is it possible that those men back there have committed no crime?”

The negro looked around at him.

“Some have and some have not, señor.”

“Was the fisherman innocent? Was the old man with the daughter innocent!”

“It is like this, Señor Strawbridge,” said Gumersindo, watching his course ahead. “The jefes civiles of the different districts must make up their quota of men to work on the canal. They select all the idlers and bad characters they can, but they need more. Then they select for different reasons. All the jefes civiles are not angels. Sometimes they send a man to the ‘reds’ because they want his cow, or his wife or his daughter—”

“Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic ends!” cried Strawbridge.

“Mi caro amigo,” argued the editor, with the amiability of a man explaining a well-thought-out premise, “why not? There must be a beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They would never be convinced.”

“But that is such an outrageous thing—to take an innocent man from his work, take a father from his daughter!”

The editor made a suave gesture.

“Certainly, that is simply applying a military measure to civil life, drafted labor. The sacrifice of a part for the whole. That has always been the Spanish idea, señor. The first conquistadors drafted labor among the Indians. The Spanish Inquisition drafted saints from a world of sinners.