lifornia.
Young Rivera was given his instructions and dispatched south. When he
returned, the line of communication was reestablished, and Juan Alvarado
was dead. He had been found in bed, a knife hilt-deep in his breast.
This had exceeded Rivera's instructions, but they of the Junta knew the
times of his movements. They did not ask him. He said nothing. But they
looked at one another and conjectured.
"I have told you," said Vera. "Diaz has more to fear from this youth
than from any man. He is implacable. He is the hand of God."
The bad temper, mentioned by May Sethby, and sensed by them all,
was evidenced by physical proofs. Now he appeared with a cut lip,
a blackened cheek, or a swollen ear. It was patent that he brawled,
somewhere in that outside world where he ate and slept, gained money,
and moved in ways unknown to them. As the time passed, he had come to
set type for the little revolutionary sheet they published weekly. There
were occasions when he was unable to set type, when his knuckles were
bruised and battered, when his thumbs were injured and helpless, when
one arm or the other hung wearily at his side while his face was drawn
with unspoken pain.
"A wastrel," said Arrellano.
"A frequenter of low places," said Ramos.
"But where does he get the money?" Vera demanded. "Only to-day, just
now, have I learned that he paid the bill for white paper--one hundred
and forty dollars."
"There are his absences," said May Sethby. "He never explains them."
"We should set a spy upon him," Ramos propounded.
"I should not care to be that spy," said Vera. "I fear you would never
see me again, save to bury me. He has a terrible passion. Not even God
would he permit to stand between him and the way of his passion."
"I feel like a child before him," Ramos confessed.
"To me he is power--he is the primitive, the wild wolf, the striking
rattlesnake, the stinging centipede," said Arrellano.
"He is the Revolution incarnate," said Vera. "He is the flame and the
spirit of it, the insatiable cry for vengeance that makes no cry but
that slays noiselessly. He is a destroying angel in moving through the
still watches of the night."
"I could weep over him," said May Sethby. "He knows nobody. He hates
all people. Us he tolerates, for we are the way of his desire. He is
alone.... lonely." Her voice broke in a half sob and there was dimness
in her eyes.
Rivera's ways and times were truly mysterious. There were per
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