“What do I care about her?” he growled. “Damned spig! Let ’er call a policeman. I’ll lick ten Mexican policemen!”
At the hotel, after we had persuaded him not to hit the General, he favored our friend with another discourse on the relative prowess of Americans and “Greasers.”
“Any time we get good and ready, we’ll come down here and take this rotten republic and make a decent place out of it! We’ll clean up your spig army in two weeks! All you guys can do is knife people in the back! When you have a war, you point your rifles around the corner of a building and pull the trigger without lookin’ where you shoot! Any good Yank can lick ten of you—ten of you—with one arm tied behind his back!”
The General’s face darkened. I watched him, rather hoping that the slender little Mexican would proceed to mop up the floor with the valiant soap-salesman. Beneath his politeness, I knew, there was a sensitive, proud nature quick to resent an insult. Yet so ingrained were his traditions of courtesy that—even while a tigerish gleam in his eyes betrayed his wrath—he merely smiled.
“The señor,” he said, “is feeling very lively to-night.”
VI
As he walked away, we feared that he had no further use for gringos, but on the following morning, as we sat in the plaza, the General came up to embrace us with more than his usual ardor. He was feeling “very lively” himself. He announced that he had been up all night, and that he was now ready to wander over to the shady side of town to call upon a few of the “girls.”
When we suggested that it was too early in the day, and advocated rest rather than recreation, he was agreeable, as always. He was even tractable. He would allow us to lead him back to the hotel; at the door he would embrace us again, promising to go straight to bed; fifteen minutes later he would come strolling up to us in the plaza, falling upon our necks as though it were our first meeting, and repeating his suggestion about calling upon the girls.
“How about your fiancée in Mazatlán?” Eustace inquired.
He shrugged his shoulders.