The chauffeur—evidently a revolutionist keeping in practice at risking his life—drove out of Guatemala City with myself and another gringo passenger, at four in the morning, and raced through the black night with the shrieking claxon characteristic of all Latin-American motor traffic, past the sleeping suburbs and up the heights to the first narrow ledge.
There, while the car still raced at full speed above a sheer drop of several hundred feet, he removed both hands from the wheel to light a cigarette.
This was merely the beginning. A protest from his American passengers would have delighted him, and furnished bar-room anecdotes for the next ten years. Wherefore Shields—a lean lank Yankee salesman from the Middle West—smiled cheerfully as though he were having the time of his life, and I followed his example.
The trail was not merely narrow, but it squirmed and twisted, following the scalloped contour of the mountainside. The driver took the curves without use of brake. As a matter of fact, he explained later, the brakes did not work. So we sped unchecked around and around the many bends, until, making a particularly abrupt turn, we collided with an ox-cart.
This stopped us with a crash. The ox-cart overturned. A load of melons, bound for the Guatemalan market, rolled down the slopes, starting a small landslide. The oxen, bumped off the road, pawed frantically for a foothold on the brush-grown decline. The peon marketer glowered in sullen resentment. Our chauffeur lighted another cigarette, climbed out to survey his twisted fender and his awry lamps, produced a flask of cognac and took a comforting swig, climbed back again to discover that his car would still run, and drove away as fast as before.
The road grew steadily worse. Our seat-springs were in the same condition as the brakes. This scarcely mattered, since we so seldom touched them, but spent most of the journey somewhere midway between the seat and the awning, contriving as a rule to miss the steel framework of the top, but clinging to the sides lest we puncture the canvas above us.
Our most difficult task was to maintain a cheerful, dignified expression of countenance for the benefit of observers along the road. Dawn brought the entire population out to see us. Barefooted peons—men, women, and children—came racing across the fields at the shriek of our claxon, to obtain a closer view. It was now three years since the first automobile had crossed this trail—an achievement hailed at the time by marveling editorials in the local Central-American press—and motor traffic was becoming a fairly regular thing, but not so regular that the novelty had diminished. In fact, the chickens of the region had not yet learned to jump across the road in front of the car. The other species of livestock were more apt, however, in acquiring the customs of civilization. The dogs chased us with outraged yelps. The cows, always lying in the center of the road, lurched to their feet directly in our path. Horses and donkeys, convinced that we were after them and were as apt to catch them in the woods as on the trail, stuck to the trail, and galloped ahead of us for mile after mile without turning aside, while their indignant owners trotted behind us, hurling imprecations, and describing us as cattle-rustlers.
Boys, and occasionally grown men, took delight in standing loutishly in the center of the street at each village, making faces at us to amuse their admiring friends, and leaping aside at our approach. If we stopped at one of the infrequent towns, as we usually did—in order that the chauffeur might again produce his cognac flask—the whole population surrounded us to stare. On such occasions Shields would reach out and remove five-cent pieces from the ears of the natives within reach of his arm—a diversion practiced with much amusement by Richard Harding Davis on his travels in Central America—with the result that the local police were frequently called upon for the return of the money discovered in local ears.
These policemen took our names at each stopping-place—a custom in vogue throughout both Guatemala and Salvador whenever strangers make their appearance—but they allowed us to inscribe our own nomenclature, wherefore, should any list of distinguished tourists ever be published in these countries, the public will be amazed at the many world-famous notables who have made the overland journey. The policemen, unable to read, always bowed profoundly, and if we inquired of them where gasoline might be purchased, they would hop upon the running-board, and show us the way, bowing again for a two-cent tip.
The road, having scaled the first mountain range, crossed a wide plateau. This was a cattle country. From time to time a cloud of dust appeared before us, indicating another drove of steers, and the chauffeur headed always for the exact center of it, sometimes plowing through without missing a steer, but usually dispersing the herd in all directions, whereupon native cowpunchers waved their arms and screamed curses and rode frantically away to round up their galloping protégés.