Gould in official intercourse was
to strike as offensively independent.
    Charles Gould assumed that if the appearance of listening to deplorable
balderdash must form part of the price he had to pay for being left unmolested,
the obligation of uttering balderdash personally was by no means included in the
bargain. He drew the line there. To these provincial autocrats, before whom the
peaceable population of all classes had been accustomed to tremble, the reserve
of that English-looking engineer caused an uneasiness which swung to and fro
between cringing and truculence. Gradually all of them discovered that, no
matter what party was in power, that man remained in most effective touch with
the higher authorities in Sta. Marta.
    This was a fact, and it accounted perfectly for the Goulds being by no means
so wealthy as the engineer- on the new railway could legitimately suppose.
Following the advice of Don José Avellanos, who was a man of good counsel
(though rendered timid by his horrible experiences of Guzman Bento's time),
Charles Gould had kept clear of the capital; but in the current gossip of the
foreign residents there he was known (with a good deal of seriousness underlying
the irony) by the nickname of King of Sulaco. An advocate of the Costaguana Bar,
a man of reputed ability and good character, member of the distinguished Moraga
family possessing extensive estates in the Sulaco Valley, was pointed out to
strangers, with a shade of mystery and respect, as the agent of the San Tomé
mine - »political, you know.« He was tall, black-whiskered, and discreet. It was
known that he had easy access to ministers, and that the numerous Costaguana
generals were always anxious to dine at his house. Presidents granted him
audience with facility. He corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don
José Avellanos; but his letters - unless those expressing formally his dutiful
affection - were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office. There the
envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the frankness of a brazen and
childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish-American Governments. But it
must be noted that at about the time of the re-opening of the San Tomé mine the
muleteer who had been employed by Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on
the Campo added his small train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried
over the mountain passes between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco.
There are no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly require
additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his account in it.