The man who had challenged him--a lank, swarthy individual from the Mexican border--looked him over with twinkling eyes. “You'll do, Cafferty, old-timer,” he drawled, “and if you don't, you'll wish you had. There's a man for every rifle just now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be a right smart more rifles than men before a great while. Help yourself to the gun o' the first man that goes down; in the meantime, hop into that there truck and keep the cartridge belt for the machine guns full up. You're just in time.”
Without further ado Don Juan climbed into the truck. A little citadel of sheet steel had been built around the driver's seat, with a narrow slit in front through which the latter peered out. The body of the truck had been boxed in with the same material and housed two machine guns, emplaced, and a crew of half a dozen men crouched on the floor, busily engaged in loading the belts. Four motor bicycles, with sturdy, specially built side-cars attached, and a machine gun in each side-car, were waiting near by, together with a half-dozen country carts loaded with ammunition cases and drawn by horses.
“How soon do we start?” Don Juan demanded anxiously, as he crowded in beside one of his newfound comrades.
“I believe,” this individual replied in the unmistakable accents of an Oxford man, “that the plan is to wait until five o'clock; by that time all the government troops that can be spared from the arsenal and palace will have been dispatched to the fighting now taking place west of the city. Naturally, the government forces aren't anticipating an attack from the rear, and so they will, in all probability, weaken their base. I believe that eases our task; certainly it will save us many men.”
Don Juan nodded his entire approval to this shrewd plan of campaign and fell to stuffing cartridges in the web belting, the while he whistled softly, unmusically, and with puffing, hissing sounds between his snaggle teeth, until a Sobrantean gentleman (it was Doctor Pacheco) came out of the warehouse and gave the order to proceed.
They moved out silently, the Sobrantean rebels falling into line behind the auto-truck, the motorcycle battery, and the transport-carts, all of which were in charge of the machine gun company. They marched along the water-front for four blocks and then turned up a side street, which happened to be the Calle de Concordia, thus enabling Mother Jenks, who was peering from the doorway of El Buen Amigo, to see them coming.