“Have you no money?” asked the colonel, vastly surprised.

“I haven’t tipped my hat to a dollar since I quit newspaper work.  What’s more, I want to do a little shopping for myself.”

O’Reilly agreed:  “If you don’t give us some change, Colonel, we’ll have to open a charge account in your name.”

“Carmaba!” muttered Lopez.  “I intended to borrow from you gentlemen.  Well, never mind—­we’ll commandeer what we wish in the name of the Republic.”

Lopez’s attack proved a complete surprise, both to the citizens and to the garrison of the town.  The rebel bugle gave the first warning of what was afoot, and before the Castilian troops who were loitering off duty could regain their quarters, before the citizens could take cover or the shopkeepers close and bar their heavy wooden shutters, two hundred ragged horsemen were yelling down the streets.

There followed a typical Cuban engagement—­ten shouts to one shot.  There was a mad charge on the heels of the scurrying populace, a scattering pop-pop of rifles, cheers, cries, shrieks of defiance and far-flung insults directed at the fortinas.

Bugles blew on the hilltops; the defenders armed themselves and began to fire into the village.  But since the Insurrectos were now well sheltered by the houses and only a portion of certain streets could be raked from the forts, the Spanish bullets did no harm.  Obedient to orders, a number of Lopez’s men dismounted and took positions whence they could guard against a sally, thus leaving the rest of the command free to raid the stores.  In the outskirts of the town Mausers spoke, the dust leaped, and leaden messengers whined through the air.

As locusts settle upon a standing crop, so did the army of liberators descend upon the shops of San Antonio de los Banos.  It was great fun, great excitement, while it lasted, for the town was distracted and its citizens had neither time nor inclination to resist.  Some of the shop-keepers, indeed, to prove their loyalty, openly welcomed the invaders.  Others, however, lacking time to close up, fled incontinently, leaving their goods unguarded.

O’Reilly, with Branch and Jacket close at his heels, whirled his horse into the first bodega he came to.  The store was stocked with general merchandise, but its owner, evidently a Spaniard, did not tarry to set a price upon any of it.  As the three horsemen came clattering in at the front he went flying out at the rear, and, although O’Reilly called reassuringly after him, his only answer was the slamming of a back door, followed by swiftly diminishing cries of fright.  Plainly, that rush of ragged men, those shots, those ferocious shouts from the plaza, were too much for the peaceful shopkeeper and his family, and they had taken refuge in some neighbor’s garden.

There was no time to waste.  Johnnie dismounted and, walking to the shelves where some imported canned goods were displayed, he began to select those delicacies for which he had been sent.  The devoted Jacket was at his side.  The little Cuban exercised no restraint; he seized whatever was most handy, meanwhile cursing ferociously, as befitted a bloodthirsty bandit.  Boys are natural robbers, and at this opportunity for loot Jacket’s soul flamed savagely and he swept the shelves bare as he went.