The commandante’s house was in the center of the town.  Round about was a circle of the houses of those who had owned the tobacco fields.  Beyond these homes of the well-to-do were hundreds of huts.  In these lived the reconcentrados, several families in each, or as many as could huddle within and not pull the roughly constructed frame of palm stalks down about their heads.  Outside the circle of huts were the blackened fields and hills.  On the tops of the hills, at intervals of 200 yards, was a circle of small houses that looked like sentry boxes.  They were really little forts, with four soldiers in each.  Beyond the forts were, heaven only knows how many, insurgent guerillas, lynx-eyed human watch dogs, always lurking and waiting for a chance to swoop upon one of the little forts, slay the garrison of four and dash back into the bushes.

A soldier’s ghastly burden.

At this moment not a soldier was in sight.  Perhaps all were sleeping, like the commandante.  Or perhaps the soldiers always remained inside the barricades surrounding their forts, fearing that to step outside would be to attract the bullets of the lurking insurgents.  For such is warfare in Cuba’s hills to-day; much the same sort of warfare our American forefathers knew when each man who stepped from his doorway was likely to become a target for the arrows of the lurking and invisible redskins.

I was making a mental note of this picture of war and misery, when suddenly I saw a human form on the hilltop over which I had just come.  The peculiar shape of the white hat worn by this apparition told me it was a soldier.  In the middle of the white road he stopped, lowered a burden from his shoulders to the ground.  What was that soldier doing there and what was the nature of his apparently heavy burden?  From my perch on the balcony I beckoned to the sentry, who was pacing up and down in front of the commandante’s house.  The sentry came up to the balcony, took one look in the direction of my pointing finger, and then rushed into the house.  The next moment the commandante appeared.  With a field glass he surveyed the figure on the hilltop.

“He is carrying something,” I said, as I watched the man in the distance reshoulder his burden and begin descending the hill.

“A dead man,” said the commandante.  And he closed the glasses, thoughtfully.  Then he gave me a long black cigar.

We waited.  At the end of half an hour the soldier approached the house.  Yes, on his back he was carrying a corpse.

Tell-tale scrap of paper.

He laid his burden down in the road and saluted the commandante.  A group of officers and soldiers had gathered round.  The body was that of a noted insurgent captain.  A scrap of paper was produced.  It had been found in the dead man’s pocket by the soldier who had carried the body into town.

The commandante read the paper.  His brow contracted.  Now he was all sternness.