Now all this hospitality meant a real sacrifice to Don Felipe, especially the meals, at which he unlocked a tin trunk and brought me with all reverence his precious sugar and coffee. He was, like all peons, incredibly poor and lavishly hospitable. The giving up of his bed was a mark of the highest honor, too. But when I tried to pay him in the morning he wouldn't hear of it.
"My house is yours," he repeated. "'A stranger might be God,' as we say."
Finally I told him that I wanted him to buy me some tobacco, and he took the money. I knew then that it would go to the right place, for a Mexican can be trusted never to carry out a commission. He is delightfully irresponsible.
At six o'clock in the morning I set out for Santo Domingo in a two-wheeled cart driven by an old peon named Froilan Mendarez. We avoided the main road, jolting along by a mere track that led behind a range of hills. After we'd traveled for about an hour, I had an unpleasant thought.
"What if the compañeros fled beyond Santo Domingo and the colorados are there?"
"What indeed?" murmured Froilan, chirruping to the mule.
"But if they are, what'll we do?"
Froilan thought a minute. "We might say we were cousins to President Huerta," he suggested, without a smile. Froilan was a barefooted peon, his face and hands incredibly damaged by age and dirt; I was a ragged Gringo....
We jogged on for several hours. At one place an armed man started out of the brush and hailed us. His lips were split and leathery with thirst. The espadas had slashed his legs terribly. He had escaped over the Sierra, climbing and slipping all night. We gave him all the water and food we had, and he went on toward the Pelayo.
Long after noon our cart topped the last desert rise, and we saw sleeping below us the long spread-out hacienda of Santo Domingo, with its clump of tall alamos like palm trees around the oasis-like spring. My heart was in my mouth as we drove down. In the big ribota court the peons were playing hand ball. Up from the spring moved the long line of water carriers. A fire sent up thin smoke among the trees.