“Ugh!” he snorted, with an effort at sarcasm. “Let’s see that letter from the government.”
“It is in my pack in the chapel.”
“Bring it over here.”
“Since when have caballeros run after Indians to show them government orders? Are you going to lend us two mattresses?”
“Not one!”
“Tommy, chuck them over.”
He did so with trembling hands, for something had given the diminutive bricklayer an extraordinary respect for “authorities.” The corregidor followed at our heels, bellowing, as we carried our finds into the ex-chapel and spread them out. A stocky youth and a woman with a flickering candle appeared behind him in the doorway, and the Indian demanded my papers.
“Can you read?” I asked.
“I can,” he snarled; which he could, to the extent of spelling out the order at about a line a minute.
“Bien,” he admitted at last, in a surly voice, “but you are to ask for things, not take them.”