Walker Jamieson had started his little harangue half in fun, but as always when he talked about the old city, he grew serious as he went on. Now, as he noted the half scowl on Adair MacKenzie’s face, the look of interest on Alice’s, and the attention of Nan Sherwood and her friends, he paused.
“How am I doing?” he directed the question to the group in general.
Adair MacKenzie grunted.
Alice beamed, her eyes full of pride in him.
And Nan and her crowd nodded their heads for him to go on.
“So, my public adores me,” he said in a mocking self-satisfied tone that caused Alice and Nan to laugh aloud.
With this he wrapped his guide’s cloak about him again and went on.
“As you go about,” he said, “and look up from day to day at the mountains that surround you, you will soon be able to name them all from Chiquihuite, ‘the basket’, to El Cerro Gordo, ‘the fat hill’, but there is none that has a more fascinating story than La Sierra Madre over there to the west.” He pointed as he spoke. “That’s the famous one with the two volcanoes, Ixtaccihuatl, ‘the white woman’, and Popocatepetl, ‘the mountain that smokes’.
“At one time, before the great Cortez conquered the country, these volcanoes were worshipped as deities. There were days set aside for their veneration, feasts in their honor, and elaborate ceremonies.”
“Just imagine,” Laura interrupted, “having a feast in honor of a mountain.”