III
But Hermosillo possessed a charm which even a Mexican bath could not destroy.
It was a sleepy little city, typically Mexican, basking beneath a warm blue sky. It stood in a fertile oasis of the desert, and all about it were groves of orange trees. Its massive-walled buildings had once been painted a violent red or green or yellow, but time and weather had softened the barbaric colors until now they suggested the tints of some old Italian masterpiece. And although ancient bullet holes scarred its dwellings, there hung over the Moorish streets to-day a restful atmosphere of tranquillity.
At noon the merchants closed their shops, and every one indulged in the national siesta. The only exception was an American—a quiet, determined-looking man—who kept walking up and down the hotel patio with quick, nervous tread.
“Somebody just down from the States?” I asked the proprietor.
“No, señor. He is the manager of mines in the Yaqui country. One of his trucks is missing, and he fears lest Indians have attacked it.”
Such a contingency, in sleepy Hermosillo, sounded quite absurd. It was the most peaceful-appearing town in all the world. As the siesta hour drew to a close, the señoritas commenced to show themselves, dressed and powdered for their evening stroll in the plaza. They were dainty, feminine creatures, not always pretty, yet invariably with a gentle womanliness that gave them charm. Upon the streets they passed a man with modestly downcast head. Behind the bars of a window and emboldened by a sense of security, they favored him with a roguish smile from the depths of languorous dark eyes, and sometimes with a softly murmured, “Adios!”
I drifted toward the plaza, wondering how a Free-Lance Newspaper Correspondent were to earn a living in any country so outwardly unexciting as Mexico, and dropped disgustedly into a bench beside another young American.
He was a rosy-cheeked, cherubic-appearing lad. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles, and his neatly-plastered hair was parted in the middle. Like myself, he was dressed in a newly purchased palm-beach suit. His name was Eustace. He, too, was just out of the army. He had enlisted, he explained, in the hope that he might live down a reputation as a model youth. And the War Department had given him a tame job on the Mexican border, cleaning out the cages of the signal-corps pigeons. Wherefore he was now journeying into foreign fields in the hope of satisfying himself with some mild form of adventure.
Very solemnly we shook hands.
“I couldn’t quite go back to cub-reporting,” he explained. “So I decided to become a free-lance newspaper correspondent.”
Even more solemnly we shook hands again. Since neither of us actually expected that any editor would publish what we sent him, we formed a partnership upon the spot. The Expedition had a new recruit. And together we mourned the disappointing peacefulness of Hermosillo.
Evening descended upon the plaza. A circle of lights appeared around the rickety little bandstand. An orchestra played. The señoritas strolled past us, arm in arm, while stately Dons and solemn Doñas maintained a watchful chaperonage from the benches. The night deepened. The cathedral clock struck ten. Dons, Doñas, and señoritas disappeared in the direction of home. The gendarmes alone remained. Each muffled his throat as a precaution against night air, and each set a lantern in the center of a street crossing. From all sides came the sound of iron bars sliding into place behind heavy doors. Hermosillo was going to bed.
As we, also, turned homeward, our footsteps rang loudly through the silent streets. A policeman unmuffled his throat and bade us “Good night.” Then he produced a tin whistle and blew a melancholy little toot, to inform the policeman on the next corner that he was still awake. From gendarme to gendarme the signal passed, the plaintive wail seeming to say, “All’s well.”
A beggar huddled in a doorway hid his cigarette beneath his ragged blanket at our approach, and held out his hand. A lone wayfarer, lingering upon the sidewalk before a window, turned to glance at us, and to bid us “Adios.” Through the bars a girl’s radiant face shone out of the darkness. Then the man’s voice trailed after us, singing very softly to the throbbing of a guitar. A moon peeped over the edge of the low flat roofs—a very aged and battered-looking moon, with a greenish tinge like that of the old silver bells in Hermosillo’s ancient cathedral—a moon which, like the city below it, suggested that it once had known troublous days, yet was now at perfect peace.
This was a delightful land, but to a pair of Free-Lance Newspaper Correspondents—
As we entered the wide-arched portals of the hotel, the telephone struck a jarring note. The American mining man, still pacing nervously up and down the patio, leaped to the receiver.
“Laughlin speaking! What news? Did they—? Shot them both? White and Garcia both? Get the troops out! I’ll be there in just—”