“No,” another said. “It was some dog.”
“To me,” another said, “the noise was as of a pig.”
“A pig or a dog,” the second replied; “when I said that it was a dog, I meant that it was not a Christian.”
They talked for a while about different kinds of Christians, of which there seemed to be four sorts: themselves, the ricos, the rojos, and the gringos. There seemed to be something not quite-quite, something not of the sincerest milk of the word, about the last three sorts. They talked about pigs when they had finished with the Christians.
“Never will I be as the gringos,” one said, “who will eat of pig, even though it be nourished upon their grandmothers.”
“My uncle, who lived not here,” the second said, “being indeed from Havana, a city of Cuba, sold certain pigs to certain sailors who were gringos. These pigs these gringos greedily ate; their eyes shone, my uncle said. Yet were those pigs, pigs that had eaten many Christians.”
“Lo, now,” the third said, “it is not pigs who eat Christians, but witches, the accursed ones, who take the shape of pigs that they may eat: this also only gringos do.”
“Yet are the gringos fools,” the first answered. “There is Anselmo, who spoke with one but yesterday. Hola, Anselmo, come tell us of the gringo with whom you spoke upon these mountains. Hither, Anselmo. Listen, you, all of you, that you may die with laughter at what Anselmo tells.”
There was a pause while Anselmo came to the group: there were greetings of “How so?”; then the first speaker spoke again.
“Anselmo,” he said, “these have not heard of your meeting with the gringo upon these mountains. Tell them, then.”