Page 430 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER FIVE

URING the night the expectant populace had taken
Dpossession of all the belfries in the town in order to
welcome Pedrito Montero, who was making his entry after
having slept the night in Rincon. And first came straggling
in through the land gate the armed mob of all colours, com-
plexions, types, and states of raggedness, calling themselves
the Sulaco National Guard, and commanded by Senor
Gamacho. Through the middle of the street streamed, like
a torrent of rubbish, a mass of straw hats, ponchos, gun-
barrels, with an enormous green and yellow flag flapping
in their midst, in a cloud of dust, to the furious beating
of drums. The spectators recoiled against the walls of the
houses shouting their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be
seen the lances of the cavalry, the ‘army’ of Pedro Mon-
tero. He advanced between Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the feat
of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a snow-storm.
They rode four abreast, mounted on confiscated Campo
horses, clad in the heterogeneous stock of roadside stores
they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride through the
northern part of the province; for Pedro Montero had been
in a great hurry to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knot-
ted loosely around their bare throats were glaringly new,
and all the right sleeves of their cotton shirts had been cut