“We have a great ambition at present.”

“I’d like to know what it is,” grumbled Harry.  “It’s three weeks since that scoundrel, Don Luis, brought us back in triumph.  We refused to enter his house as guests, and started to camp in the open in these two old tents that Nicolas secured for us.  In all these three weeks we haven’t done a tap of work.  We haven’t studied, or read because we have no books.  We sleep, eat, and then sleep some more.  When we get tired of everything else we go out and trudge over the hills, being careful not to get too far, lest we run into the guns of Gato and his comrades, for undoubtedly Gato was turned loose as soon as he was lost to our sight.  We don’t do anything like work, and we’re not even arranging any work for the future.  Yet you say that you’re boosting your ambitions.”

“I am,” Tom nodded solemnly.  “Harry, isn’t it just as great an ambition to be an honest engineer as it is to be a highly capable one?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t capitalists usually invest large sums on a favorable report from engineers?”

“Often.”

“And, if the engineers were dishonest the capitalists would lose their money, wouldn’t they?”

“Certainly.”

“Then here’s our ambition, and we’re working it out—­finely, too,” Tom went on, with much warmth.  “Don Luis has a scheme to rob some people of a large sum of money by selling them a worthless mine in a country where there are several good ones.  If he could get us to help him, to our own dishonor, Don Luis Montez would succeed in swindling this company of men.  Harry, we’re just lying around here, day after day, doing no hard work, but we’re blocking Don Luis’s game and saving money for honest men.  Don Luis doesn’t care to have us assassinated, for he still hopes to break down our resistance.  He can’t bring the capitalists here to meet us until we do give in, and so the game lags for Don Luis.  He can’t bring in other engineers, for they’d meet us and we would post them.  The American engineer must be a serious problem for Don Luis.  He thought he could buy almost any of us.  Our conduct has made him afraid that American engineers can’t be bought.  Evidently he must have his report signed by American engineers of repute, which means that he is trying to sell his worthless mine to Americans.  Harry, we’re teaching Don Luis to respect the honesty of American engineers; we’re saving some of our countrymen from being swindled, probably out of thousands of dollars; we’re proving that the American engineer is honest, and we’re discouraging rascals everywhere from employing us in crooked work.  Now, honestly, isn’t all that ambition enough to hold us for a few weeks?”

“I suppose so,” Harry agreed.  “But what is the end of all this to be.  Won’t Don Luis merely have us assassinated in the end, if we go on proving stubborn?”

“He may,” Tom answered, pressing his lips grimly.  “But, if he does, he’ll pay heavily for his villainy.”