“Ah,” Anselmo answered in the voice of him who had shot at Sard the day before. “It is thus; if you will see. I was in the mountains, in the pine-barren, where lately a justice of the people was achieved. I, sauntering there, considering many things, since it is my nature to consider, beheld suddenly a gringo, beastly even beyond the nature of such. For a moment I thought, ‘Lo, now, a prospector.’ Then I saw from certain signs that he was neither this nor that, but an Americano, a Tejano, an Inglés, what matter? This one (I also saw) was lost, as such always are if ever they leave a marked road.
“ ‘Good day, sir,’ I said; since it is ever my custom to be courteous. What, we are not brutes nor Luteranos, I hope; we can be civil one to other. Civility, as they say, costs nothing, yet makes many debtors. I, therefore, did not spit at him as one without faith. ‘Good day, sir,’ I said, ‘I trust that you are well, that your señora is well, that your honoured parents preserve their health, even at their great age.’
“He rolled his eyes upon me like a cow dying of thirst. The gringos have the eyes of cows rather than of men. ‘Tell me,’ he said to me, ‘the way out of these mountains.’
“ ‘Truly, sir,’ I said, ‘you who bring civilisation to our savageries will not so soon leave us. Stay, I entreat you, to dine, or at least to sup, or to sing thus to the piano as do the women of you gringos. Yet, since you must leave us, continue,’ I said, ‘a day’s journey north-eastward, till you reach a place where all the rocks are rotten. There you will find a path over the mountains, good for men, excellent for beasts, having grass, inns, a road, good air, good water and good bells, gravel soil and Holy Communion.’
“He was a big man, even for an Americano. He wore no boots, but slippers, such as women wear.”
“So you sent him to the rotten rocks,” the others said. “But did he go, Anselmo? He surely did not go?”
“Americanos believe all that they are told,” Anselmo said. “He either went to the rotten rocks or to another place far from me, which was my desire in speaking to him. Since there was nothing to be had from him, then plainly it was my task to be rid of him.”
“Long live Anselmo!” the man said. “So he went to the rotten rocks without question. This is it to be a gringo!”
“Without doubt he will be at the rotten rocks, dead?”
“Without doubt.”