VII
Guatemala contained a large colony of foreigners. There were many Germans engaged in the coffee business on the Pacific slopes, many Americans from the banana plantations of the Caribbean Coast, a few exiled European noblemen who had come with the remnants of their former fortunes to live as long as possible without working in a country where living was cheap, and several Old-Timers, all with the rank of General, who had fought in the various past revolutions of Central America, and were now resting upon their laurels.
These countries have long been the happy hunting ground of the soldier of fortune, of whom the greatest since William Walker was General Lee Christmas, who died at New Orleans while I was at the scene of his exploits.
Christmas came to Central America as a locomotive engineer. It had been his profession in Mississippi until a wreck, followed by an investigation, brought out the fact that he was color-blind and could not distinguish signals. Central America was less strict about such things in those days. In fact, most of the old-time engineers are said to have driven their trains with a whiskey-flask handy, and with few worries about such things as signals. Christmas found employment, but he became accidentally entangled in an insurrection, and formed the habit. On one occasion, when he was driving an engine in Guatemala, he is said to have received news of an outbreak in Honduras, and to have left his train with all its freight and passengers standing on the track while he hopped out of the cab-window and hiked overland through the jungles to join the fray. His greatest exploit was that of repulsing an entire army with a machine-gun, assisted only by one other gringo, a Colonel Guy Maloney, now Superintendent of Police in New Orleans. He drifted from one country to another, wherever a fight seemed most promising, followed by troops that varied in number from two men to fourteen thousand.
“He was a good scout, too,” agreed most of the Old-Timers in Guatemala City. “He’d give you his last cent, if you needed it. He’d have been a millionaire, if he’d saved half the money he got from the governments he helped, but he blew it all in on parties. He’d get drunk with you, or he’d go down the line with you, or he’d fight you—anything to please his friends. He was pretty square, usually, when he held office. When he was Chief of Police up in Tegucigalpa, if his best pals raised the devil, he’d stick them right in jail. And when their term was over, he’d give them a whale of a good party.”
His revolutionary habits finally became so annoying to Washington that his citizenship was canceled. Broken-hearted about it, he came home, assisted the secret service throughout the European War, and was reinstated. When he fell ill from old wounds and fevers contracted in Central-American jungles, many Old-Timers cabled offers of assistance, and his old lieutenant, Colonel Guy Maloney, gave him a blood transfusion, but it was too late. When the news of his death reached Central America, more than one president probably heaved a sigh of relief.
Guatemala City was filled with other ex-adventurers, all a little jealous of Christmas’ fame, and all inclined to belittle one another. They sat about the hotel lobbies, spinning yarns about “that little affair down in Nicaragua,” or “that little scrap up in Honduras,” and if I mentioned to one the story of some other, he would snort loudly with derision.
“Don’t you believe it! He’s a damned wind-bag! Next time he mentions getting that sword stuck through his lung, you just ask him if he remembers the mule that got him up against the corral wall and kicked hell out of him!”