“Was that a mirage?” Bogle asked scrambling to his feet and gazing anxiously into the dimly lit shadows. “Did I see what I thought I saw?”
Doc Ansell laid down his knife and fork. He was a wizened little man with a shock of untidy white hair. “You’ve got to watch your glands, Bogle,” he cautioned. “There’s a time and place for everything.”
“You’re always shooting your mouth of about a time and place for everything. What time do I get? And when in hell do we stay in one place long enough to do anything?” Bogle returned, sitting down again.
“The trouble with you—” Ansell began, but Bogle raised his hand.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, pushing his plate away in sudden disgust. “I know. It’s getting so I’m imagining things. How much longer are we stickin’ in this country? I’m sick of it. What’s the matter with grabbing a train and getting the hell out of here? Couldn’t you do with the smell of Chicago for a change?”
“It’s a little too soon yet for you to go home,” Ansell reminded him gently.
Bogle frowned. He was a big, powerful man and his dirty drill suit fitted him badly. In the past, he had been a gunman, working for Little Bernie during the prohibition period. After repeal, he went to Chicago and tried to pick up a living as a heistman, but he was not smart enough to organize anything big enough to pay dividends. Then one night, he was involved in a gun battle with the police. Two of the police officers were hurt and Bogle did a lam act. He did not stop running until he reached Mexico. There, he felt comparatively safe. For the past six months he had been working with Doc Ansell, selling patent medicines to the Maya Indians.
Ansell and Bogle made an incongruous couple. They lived in different worlds. Bogle was always yearning for the fleshpots of life. He found Mexico insufferably dull after Chicago. He hated the food, the dust and the heat. The native women appalled him. Both socially and financially the small colony of American and English women were out of his reach. Even the whisky was bad. He hated Mexico nearly as much as he hated the police.
On the other hand, Ansell was happy in any country. So long as he was able to sell his various remedies to the gullible he did not mind where he lived.
Before Bogle became his partner, Ansell often had trouble with his patients. Sometimes, he even found it dangerous to return to the same town. But with Bogle at his side, he had no qualms in facing irate patients or going to the lowest native quarters in the various towns he visited. Bogle was an excellent bodyguard, as Little Bernie had discovered.