CHAPTER XXVIII
THE distance from Canalejos to San Geronimo is much greater following the meanders of the Rio Negro than the direct route across the llanos. When dawn whitened over the river, on the morning after the flight of the drummer and the Spanish girl, Strawbridge expected hourly to see the campaniles of San Geronimo appear above the horizon. It was his plan, when he came in sight of the city, to wait until night before he attempted to pass in the canoe. He reasoned that Saturnino would telegraph to San Geronimo and order their arrest and imprisonment.
So, as the two fugitives floated down the great muddy flood, they peered through the beating sunshine and the dancing glare from the water, in order to see and be warned by the first glimpse of the distant city. But such a fulgor lay over the water that toward the middle of the morning they were hardly able to see the reeds that marched down to the riverside, or the green parrots that passed over the canoe in great flocks and filled the sky with a harsh screaming.
The river stretched on, mile after mile, a vast moving plane that banished the shores to level lines almost at the horizon. At last Strawbridge came to paddle close to one shore, in order that their tiny canoe might not be utterly lost amid such an immensity. As they clung closely to the left or easterly bank they passed, in the afternoon, what appeared to be the mouth of a small tributary river. Along its banks were a scattering of deserted huts, stakes with rusting chains fastened to them, a stockade of reeds daubed with mud, two
or three adobe ovens such as the peons use. Strawbridge
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