CS Forester by The Gun (html)

Author:The Gun (html) [Gun, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

THE SUCCESSFUL army poured through the steep and narrow streets. The population was mad with joy. Bright shawls waved from the windows. The streets were full of cheering mobs. The men clapped their deliverers on the back, and the women tore their arms and equipment from them and carried them themselves. Patriotic persons and those with guilty consciences rolled barrels of wine out to the street corners and stood with cups in their hands beseeching passers-by to drink. A bevy of women surrounded O'Neill, stroking the big grey horse, spreading scarves under his feet, kissing O'Neill's hands and even his boots and breeches if his hands were not attainable.

O'Neill was too preoccupied with urgent business to enter into the spirit of the thing. He had to shout his orders over the heads of the people to where Urquiola rode beside him. The half-dozen troopers who accompanied him went clattering off, each despatched on a separate errand. He was too much of a soldier to allow civilians to delay him when he had a course of action mapped out. The municipal deputation which came to meet him was heard with scant attention, and they pulled long faces when a few brief words in reply told them the number of shoes, and of suits of clothes, and the amount of solid hard cash the city was expected to contribute to the cause, and that within three days. Every householder must be ready to lodge and maintain two soldiers from now on, indefinitely. But O'Neill's final order excited a different kind of interest. There must be a scaffold and the municipal garotte erected within two hours in the Plaza Mayor, and the town executioner must be in attendance.

The news of the request sent a buzz of excitement round the town, for no Spanish fiesto could be really complete without a public execution; when the chapter of the Cathedral heard of it, the arrangements for the celebration of the thanksgiving mass were abruptly cancelled; the clergy would not risk their dignity in hopeless competition with the spectacle.

O'Neill rode off to where, against the north wall, the garrison had concentrated to stand a siege. Leon could not boast a military citadel, like Burgos, but General Paris had done his best to compensate for the omission. The thickwalled prison and the town hospital stood side by side beyond the Plaza Menor in complete isolation; he had torn down, long before, one or two houses which offered points of vantage to any who might attack. He had built solid works connecting the two buildings and strengthening weak points. Here with a clear space all round him, with six weeks' provisions in his cellars, and four field guns to keep the mob at a distance, he felt confident that he could beat off any attack until the concentration of outlying garrisons or the despatch of some other army of relief should set him free again.

Paris would have felt happier in his mind if the guerilleros had not

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