All through the following day the path continued parasitic to the railway. The roadbed was thickly covered with crushed stone, with nowhere a hint of the existence of section-gangs. On either hand rolled away a landscape stamped with the features of an African ancestry, all but concealed at times by the cactus-trees of a willow's height that hedged the track. At rare intervals a stuccoed station serving some hamlet hidden among the hills found standing-room on the right of way. An occasional hovel built of field stones frowned down from the crest of a parched hillock. Now and again out of the meeting-place of the rails ahead came jogging a peasant seated sidewise on an ass, to swerve suddenly aside and rattle off down a rocky gorge, singing a high-pitched ballad of Arabic cadence. But these were but bubbles on the surface of a fathomless solitude, though a solitude brilliant with an all-invading sunshine that left no skulking-place for somber moods.
It turned out that the railroad had not been built for the exclusive convenience of pedestrians and donkeys. A bit before noon a rumbling arose out of the north, and no unconscionable time thereafter the daily "expreso" roared by--at a rate close upon fifteen miles an hour. The ticket collector, cigarette in mouth, clambered hand over hand along the running board, in imminent peril of losing his footing--and being obliged to pursue his train to the next station. During the afternoon there passed two "mixtos," toy freight trains with a caudal carload of passengers. But the speed of these was more reasonable, varying from six to eight miles, with vacations at each station and frequent holidays in the open country.
The sun was still an hour high when I reached the station of San Pablo. This time the town itself stood in plain sight, pitched on the summit of an oak-grown hill barely a mile from the line. I plunged quickly down into the intervening valley.
It was a checker-board place, perhaps only a century or two old; certainly no relic of the Moor, for there was not a sign of shop or market in all its extent. Only in the last street did I catch sight of one of its inhabitants, dining in solitary state in the center of a bare room. He stared at me a long moment when I halted before the immense open window to inquire for an inn.
"San Pablo, señor," he answered at last, "is a private town owned by the mining company. There is no inn."
I was turning away when he continued:
"But step inside and we shall see what the ama can arrange for you."
He was, as I had guessed, a Frenchman, an expert employed in the mines. The Spanish, however, in which he addressed the ama was faultless.
"Ah, Don Victor!" protested that matron, "How can I give posada, having no license from the government? And without the permission of Don José--"
"Pepete," said the Gaul to an urchin peering in upon us, "ask Don José to have the goodness to step over. He is manager of the mines," he continued, "and so alcalde and potentate of San Pablo."