The new Argentine capitol building in Buenos Aires
A Patagonian landscape
The government ferry to Choele Choel Island, in the Rio Negro of southern Argentine
“Válgame Diós, no!” cried the Porteño, catching him by a sleeve, “not in the street, or you will have a crowd gathered around you. I’ll tell you what you can do. Go down that way a block and you’ll find a saloon. Go in and buy a drink of something and ask them where you can sit down to drink it.”
The countryman left us, and the Porteño took advantage of the opportunity to talk things over with me.
“It is evident that the simple fellow is in great danger of being done by this Dr. Martinez, or somebody else, for how do we know he will not take and keep the whole seven thousand? Now I am an honest man, and I believe you are, too; are you not? Then it is our duty to take care that this money gets where it belongs. You surely must know some German church here in town where they can say masses for that poor aviator. We can go and give the priest twenty-five hundred; and then there are plenty of good hospitals, the German, the English, and so forth, where they will accept and use for the poor the other twenty-five hundred. And then we will not only have seen that the money goes where it was intended, but there will be a linda, a pretty little commission of two thousand pesos to divide between us. Can I depend on you to help me save this poor fellow and his money?”
I was, of course, considerably surprised at such a proposition from a man apparently so straightforward, and for the first time felt it my duty to stay in the case until I had seen the money properly disposed of; the equivalent of three thousand dollars was no sum to see scattered among sharpers. So I nodded, and when the countryman came back, the Porteño explained to him: