But Don Ygnacio had had to go, and with four of the trustiest servants, all armed; for in those days, a generation ago, the brigands were a fear on every highway of Mexico. And there was no one to leave in charge except Alberto, his nephew.
Luckily there had been time to set a recipe for the torta just turned into the pan. “So much salt and so much azogue,”[41] said Don Ygnacio; “that, I think, will suit. But watch it well; and if not, season it by the formula. Care, then, and much luck!”
Every day of the seventeen since then, Alberto had paced the flagging by the patio, and the passages of the great sheds where dry mill and wet mill were chewing their noisy mouthfuls for a new torta, now and again turning his eye covertly to the last room on the administrador’s porch, behind whose heavy door he had heaped the forty-pound bars of massy silver from the last omelet. The washing and concentration and smelting he had superintended without much difficulty, and had seen that $49,000 worth of metal safely stored.
So far as the present torta went, his assays indicated that Don Ygnacio’s hasty estimate had been precisely right. But he certainly hoped the old manager would be back in time to decide if the usual eighteen days had been enough “cooking”—and, doubly, to fix the seasoning for the next omelet. And in all, it was a heavy responsibility for a boy who had studied a hundred tortas, but never been charged with one before; and it was to be noticed that his shoulders were not quite so miraculously square as on the first day, nor his chest so thick, now that he came down from the arrastras to the patio.
In this quarter-acre mud omelet the beating and the cooking went on together. A score of barelegged men and grown boys waded thigh-deep in the mess, driving their mules (blindfolded, poor beasts, to protect their eyes), and holding down the drag-boards, to mix the mercury and its prey.
It was close to noon. In five minutes the wading mules would be done with their exhausting day’s work of six hours. Alberto walked down toward the well-tower beside the patio, and something drew his eyes to an overgrown lad slouching behind one white mule at the edge of the mud. Poor dullard! It was one thing to wade in mud at eighteen cents a day, and quite another to manage mud which was worth a comfortable year’s salary per ton.
“S-s-t!”
Alberto started. Surely it could not be! Well, it was! This perambulating mudlark was actually “s-s-t”-ing to him!
“Care!” whispered the Indian lad, as Alberto came alongside the stone curb. He looked only at his mule, hauling at the tired beast and scolding it for some imaginary offence, and between his objurgations dropping whispered “asides.”
“Arre, ill-said brute! (Young Excellency, the bandits!) For how long must I enshow thee to walk well? (And some of those in the hacienda!) Miserable! For what is the rein? (They are making to rob—to-night!) Arre, lazy-bones!”