“Did you smuggle any of your beloved root-beer extract into the equipment?” he inquired, his eyes twinkling.
Harris looked sheepish, but returned a sullen affirmative.
“Well,” continued Reed, “dig out a bottle and we’ll fix up a dose of pain-killer for our worthy host’s mother.”
Then he turned to Don Nicolás. “Cierto, señor,” he said with an air of confidence. “I have a remedy which I know to be unfailing for any disease.”
He disappeared into the house, from which he emerged again in a few moments with an empty cola bottle. Washing this clean in the river, he partly filled it with water. Then he poured in the small bottle of root-beer extract which Harris handed him, and added a few grains of quinine. Shaking the mixture thoroughly, he carried it to Don Nicolás.
“Be very careful, señor,” he admonished, giving him the bottle. “It is a medicine extremely powerful and immediate in its action. Give the señora a small teaspoonful every hour. By morning you will notice a marked change.”
Don Nicolás’s eyes lighted with joy, and his gratitude poured forth in extravagant expressions.
With the first indications of approaching day Rosendo was abroad, rounding up his cargadores, who were already bickering as to their respective duties, and arranging the luggage in the canoes for the river trip. Additional boats and men had been secured; and Don Nicolás himself expressed his intention of accompanying them as far as his hacienda, Maria Rosa, a day’s journey up-stream.
“It was there that I hid during the last revolution,” he said, “when the soldiers burned the village and cut off the 364 ears and fingers of our women for their rings. Ah, señores, you can not know how we suffered! All my goods stolen or burned––my family scattered––my finca destroyed! We lived two years at Maria Rosa, not daring to come down the river again. We wore the skins of animals for clothing. Caramba!” His eyes burned fiercely as he spoke, and his hands opened and closed convulsively. He was a representative of that large class of rurales upon whom the heaviest burdens, the greatest suffering, and the most poignant sorrow attending a political revolution always fall.
“But, señor!” he exclaimed, suddenly turning to Reed, “I had all but forgotten! My mother, she sends for you. She would see the kind American whose remedies are so wonderful. For, señor, she rose from her bed this morning restored! And you must leave us another bottle of the remedy––at whatever price, señor!”