“There’s no reason against it. In a ghost hunt a woman’s wit may help.”
“Very well, then,” said David, new energy in his words and manner.
“You agree?”
“I am entirely in your hands.”
“Then we’ll take up our interesting little experiment again in the land of El Dorado—and this time we’ll run it out to the end.”
“Without a psychometer, I hope,” said David.
[VI]
EMBOLADORES ON THE MARCH
There is in Bogota a street, the Calle de Las Montanas, that meanders down from the treeless foothills of the gray mountain ridge overlooking the city, and broadens out into a respectable thoroughfare before losing itself in the plaza upon which, facing each other diagonally, stand the venerable Catedral de Santa Fe and the National Capitol. This street, resembling the bed of a mountain stream, in the first half mile of its course runs through a huddle of lowly houses whose thatched roofs and white adobe walls seldom reach more than one story in height. The inhabitants of this district are called, in playful irony, by their more prosperous neighbors, “paisanos,” fellow-citizens; or else, scornful of compliment, “peons,” day-laborers. Here dwell the teamsters of the city, the washerwomen, the tinkers, the runners, the street-sweepers, the beggars, the proprietors of small tiendas, the bootblacks, the vendors of sweets—a mixed army of workers and idlers, who gain a livelihood, as chance favors, by their hands or their wits.