"I am convinced of that."
"Hush, right thar! He's going to let them in. And they're big fool Injin enough to git off their hosses, wharon they'm as easy of movement as an eagle, and come down to common ground, whar they waddle like geese. These hoss Ingins are no beauties, seen so, hobbling up to a bar in a doggery, but they air fond o'white man's pison, and no two ways about that."
Indeed, Camote, who probably was not insured and preferred running the risk of being butchered in his house to being certainly baked when it should be fired over his head for his resistance to the command to open, bowed in the chiefs of the new customers' party, and their bodyguard.
These six or eight red men silently placed themselves on the floor by one of the tables in a squatting position near the door, pulled out every man a tomahawk pipe which they filled with morrichee, or sacred tobacco, which proved that they were members of an upper class, past masters in the council lodges, lit up and set to smoking, without any observations, though the pools of blood, and the shattered and bullet perforated furniture, revealed that there had recently been a disturbance there. They even betrayed no token of having perceived the two other persons at their table, and the men behind the bar, who were exchanging dubious, uneasy glances, whilst they felt gooseflesh under their scalp.
But the American knew that a secret, quick glance had "counted" them, for he whispered:
"We're reckoned up, and they don't stomach our looks. Tell 'ee, sir, they don't like close shooting and tough chawing."
After a few moments, one of the Indians smote the table with his hatchet pipe. Tío Camote ran over to the spot, with the most obsequious of hotelkeepers' smiles on his lips.
"Heap big drink!"
"Mezcal!" uttered the savages.
"Sí, sí, sí, Señor Camicho" (for cacique, Aztec for chieftain), was the celeritous answer, as the ranchero hastened to set half a dozen bottles of spirit and some horn cups on the bench, to be nearer their reach than the table, before them.