“Gee, you are a cheerful companion! You put new life in a man, don’t you?” said Vickers.
“You must go, and go at once.”
“I suppose,” he answered, “that I might slip over the border for a day or two.”
“You would be sent back at once. We have a treaty with our neighbors, and it is strictly kept,—especially in regard to those they have no interest in protecting. You must go home, Don Luis. You can catch to-morrow morning’s steamer, if you are quick.”
For the first time the countenance of Vickers really clouded. “I can’t go home,” he said; and then, noting the surprise on the doctor’s face, he burst out: “Why, Heaven help you, don’t you suppose I would have gone home long ago, if I could? Did you think I was here for love of the damned country?”
“I did,” returned the other simply. “Yes, I am not ashamed to admit that I did. I find my country beautiful,—my countrymen attaching. I believed that you felt it too.”
“And so I do, so I do,” said Vickers, “but, man, I’m a northener, and I’d give every palm and orchid in the place for the noise of wheels creaking on packed snow.”
“All the more reason, then, why you should go home.”
“Look here, my friend,” the other answered, “if I go home I run a fair chance of being electrocuted. If I stay here the sharks get me, or if I escape the sharks, the Señor Don Papa is going to marry me to Rosita. There are three uncomfortable alternatives for a man to choose from.”
“I should choose electrocution,” said the doctor.