“Don John the Baptist then, como le whack?”
“Bien, señor, bien.”
“Any theory as to what you’ve got there?”
“Y’r Mercy’s supper. The Señor Coronel Lopez does not desire that Y’r Mercy should have any complaint.”
“Oh, none whatever, Johnny, except what I’m to die of. Set it down, here on the feather bed.”
There were a few native dishes, with a botellon of water and a jar of wine. Driscoll tipped the botellon to his lips. His whiskey flask had contained poison, though the poison of ink, and as he drank, he pondered on why water should not be an antidote for the poisons that lurk in whiskey flasks. 191Then he wondered why such foolish conceits at such times persist in shouldering death itself out of a man’s thoughts. And meanwhile, there stood the precursor of his end, in the emblematic person of a very brown John the Baptist. The fellow’s gorgeous red jacket was unbuttoned, revealing a sordid dirty shirt. He was officer of the guard, and had a curiosity as to how a Gringo about to be shot would act. He waited clumsily, lantern in hand. But he was disappointed. There seemed to be nothing out of the commonplace. Some condemned Mexican, though a monotonously familiar spectacle, would yet have been more entertaining.
Driscoll looked at him over the botellon. That earthen bottle had not left the prisoner’s lips. It had stopped there, poised aloft by an idea.
“See here,” Driscoll complained, “where’s the rest of the water I’m to have?”
“Of what water, señor?”
“For my bath, of course. Don’t I die to-morrow?”