“Gringo friend come over mountain to see me?” asked the old Indian.
“Yes, I’ve come to see you, Señor Yuai, but not because I am sick of calentura. It is another reason. Tell me, in all your years do you remember a peon ailing of a cut heel. Did you ever cure a very deep wound that would leave a scar across a peon’s heel, thus?” Mr. Ryder illustrated his question by drawing his finger diagonally across the old man’s heel. The Indian was silent a long time and while his memory went slowly back over the many years he had been doctoring the natives, Mr. Ryder slipped a cigarette between his lean old fingers, saying, “Here, Señor Yuai, perhaps a little smoke will make you remember better.”
The Indian accepted the roll of brown paper and tobacco with a grunt of satisfaction and lit it on the glowing end of Mr. Ryder’s own cigarette which the engineer held for his convenience.
For five minutes the old native puffed in silence, exhaling great clouds of blue smoke from time to time. Finally he spoke.
“As many years ago as I have fingers came a young man to see me. He had stepped on a machette and the flesh of his foot was laid open to the bone. My medicine cured him. Soon he could walk, he could run, he could swim. He was a fine big fellow. He could shoot well, he could ride well and he was a good boy except he liked pulque too much. One day he went away. Two summers later he came back in clothes as green as the banana palm. He was then a rurale. He went away again and never came again. His name—ah—his name went with him.” Here the Indian touched his forehead with his finger as he spoke and this action told the American plainer than his words that he had forgotten the young man’s name.
Jack and the engineer looked at each other significantly when Señor Yuai finished speaking.
“Can it be that we have traitors among our rurales!” demanded Mr. Ryder incredulously.