A buxom Indian woman, who operated a hotel on those rare occasions when visitors came to town, served us frijoles and tortillas—beans and cornmeal pancakes—and produced from its hiding place a bottle of fiery mescal. Later, when we had consumed the meal by the light of a flickering oil lamp, her daughter joined us with a guitar, and while MacFarlane watched his gunmen to see that no one kept the bottle too long inverted over his black moustachios, the girl sang to us. Still later, after she herself had sampled the potent Mexican liquor, she danced. She was rather comely, in a stolid Indian way, but she was much too heavy and graceless for complete success as a danseuse, even after two swigs of such inspiring stuff as mescal. The gunmen, however, found it highly diverting. They pushed back their chairs to clear a stage for her, and watched her with the pleased expression which a Mexican always wears when looking at a woman. The guitar twanged a weird, savage melody; the dim light from the swinging lantern shone upon a sea of dark faces, and reflected from a score of gleaming eyes; in the center of the crowded room the girl danced awkwardly, her bare feet pounding monotonously upon the mud floor.
As she finally sank, flushed and panting, upon a bench, her mother favored us with a toothless grin:
“For one hundred dollars gold I sell her!”
Eustace shook his head.
“She’s scarcely an essential part of a newspaper correspondent’s equipment.”
“Seventy-five!” persisted the woman.
“That’s a special rate,” exclaimed MacFarlane. “She lacks one ear. They say her last husband bit it off before chasing her home with a club. Of course, you can’t believe everything you hear. But you’d better turn in. To-morrow we travel on muleback.”
IV
The trucks were to continue, with the guard, by the longer road to the mine. MacFarlane and ourselves, with two of the gunmen, were to ride over the mountains. The bridle trail led through questionable territory, but it was shorter.
Neither Eustace nor I had ever ridden a mule before. Both of us had read Western fiction, and had noted that the hero not only loved his steed, but left nearly everything to the animal’s good judgment, and that the noble beast, appreciating and reciprocating his master’s affection and trust, invariably anticipated his every wish, and carried the hero out of every conceivable difficulty.