Page 167 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER TWO

FTER another armed struggle, decided by Montero’s
Avictory of Rio Seco, had been added to the tale of civ-
il wars, the ‘honest men,’ as Don Jose called them, could
breathe freely for the first time in half a century. The Five-
Year-Mandate law became the basis of that regeneration,
the passionate desire and hope for which had been like the
elixir of everlasting youth for Don Jose Avellanos.
And when it was suddenly—and not quite unexpected-
ly—endangered by that ‘brute Montero,’ it was a passionate
indignation that gave him a new lease of life, as it were. Al-
ready, at the time of the President-Dictator’s visit to Sulaco,
Moraga had sounded a note of warning from Sta. Marta
about the War Minister. Montero and his brother made the
subject of an earnest talk between the Dictator-President
and the Nestor-inspirer of the party. But Don Vincente, a
doctor of philosophy from the Cordova University, seemed
to have an exaggerated respect for military ability, whose
mysteriousness—since it appeared to be altogether inde-
pendent of intellect—imposed upon his imagination. The
victor of Rio Seco was a popular hero. His services were so
recent that the President-Dictator quailed before the ob-
vious charge of political ingratitude. Great regenerating
transactions were being initiated—the fresh loan, a new
railway line, a vast colonization scheme. Anything that

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard