PAGE 6
A Ruler Of Men
by
“‘No doubt,’ says I. ‘But could you lick six? And suppose they hurled an army of seventeen against you?’
“‘Listen,’ says O’Connor, ‘to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday 25,000 patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The government will be absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be taken, the regular army made prisoners, and the new administration set up. In the capital it will not be so easy on account of most of the army being stationed there. They will occupy the president’s palace and the strongly fortified government buildings and stand a siege. But on the very day of the outbreak a body of our troops will begin a march to the capital from every town as soon as the local victory has been won. The thing is so well planned that it is an impossibility for us to fail. I meself will lead the troops from here. The new president will be Senor Espadas, now Minister of Finance in the present cabinet.’
“‘What do you get?’ I asked.
“”Twill be strange,’ said O’Connor smiling, ‘if I don’t have all the jobs handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. I’ve been the brains of the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I won’t be in the rear rank. Who managed it so our troops could get arms smuggled into this country? Didn’t I arrange it with a New York firm before I left there? Our financial agents inform me that 20,000 stands of Winchester rifles have been delivered a month ago at a secret place up coast and distributed among the towns. I tell you, Bowers, the game is already won.’
“Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked upon O’Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what kind of uniform I might wear as Secretary of War.
“Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to schedule. O’Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the uprising. There was an old cannon on the beach near the national warehouse. That had been secretly loaded and promptly at twelve o’clock was to be fired off. Immediately the revolutionists would seize their concealed arms, attack the comandante’s troops in the cuartel, and capture the custom-house and all government property and supplies.
“I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o’clock O’Connor became infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He geared his father’s sword around him, and walked up and down in the back room like a lion in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a couple of dozen cigars, and decided on yellow stripes down the trouser legs of my uniform.
“At half-past eleven O’Connor asks me to take a short stroll through the streets to see if I could notice any signs of the uprising. I was back in fifteen minutes.
“‘Did you hear anything?’ he asks.
“‘I did,’ says I. ‘At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn’t; it was snoring. Everybody in town’s asleep.’
“O’Connor tears out his watch.
“‘Fools!’ says he. “They’ve set the time right at the siesta hour when everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake ’em up. Everything will be all right, depend upon it.’
“Just at twelve o’clock we heard the sound of a cannon–BOOM!–shaking the whole town.
“O’Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. I went as far as the door and stood in it.
“People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But there was one grand sight that made the landscape look tame.
“General Tumbalo, the comandante, was rolling down the steps of his residential dugout, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his cocked and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold braid and buttons. Sky-blue pajamas, one rubber boot, and one red-plush slipper completed his make-up.