"You see," said the Chief of Police, "it is easy if you observe the rules." He twisted his mustache, ruffled the cards, and pushed in twenty-five dollars. He won again.
After some time one of the policemen approached him respectfully and said:
"I beg you pardon, mi capitan, but what shall we do with the prisoner?"
"Oh!" said the Chief, staring. He waved his hand casually. "Just release him and return to your stations."
Long after the last wheel had been spun on the roulette table, the lamps blown out, and the most feverish gambler ejected into the street, we sat playing in the poker room. Roberts and I were down to about three pesos apiece. We yawned and nodded with sleepiness. But the Chief of Police had his coat off and was crouched like a tiger over his cards. Now he was losing steadily....
CHAPTER II
HAPPY VALLEY
It happened to be the day of a fiesta, and, of course, nobody worked in Valle Allegre. The cock-fight was to take place at high noon in the open space back of Catarino Cabrera's drinking shop—almost directly in front of Dionysio Aguirre's, where the long burro pack-trains rest on their mountain journeys, and the muleteers swap tales over their tequila. At one, the sunny side of the dry arroyo that is called a street was lined with double rows of squatting peons—silent, dreamily sucking their corn-husk cigarettes as they waited. The bibulously inclined drifted in and out of Catarino's, whence came a cloud of tobacco smoke and a strong reek of aguardiente. Small boys played leap-frog with a large yellow sow, and on opposite sides of the arroyo the competing roosters, tethered by the leg, crew defiantly. One of the owners, an ingratiating, business-like professional, wearing sandals and one cerise sock, stalked around with a handful of dirty bank-bills, shouting:
"Diez pesos, señores! Only ten dollars!"
It was strange; nobody seemed too poor to bet ten dollars. It came on toward two o'clock, and still no one moved, except to follow the sun a few feet as it swung the black edge of the shadow eastward. The shadow was very cold, and the sun white hot.