"A thousand thanks. Excuse us for a moment."
They smiled and faded away once more into the thicket. In a minute they reappeared, with great armfuls of dried mesquite branches for our fire.
"We are rancheros," said the elder, bowing. "We keep a few goats, and our houses are at your orders, and our corrals for your mules, and our small stock of corn. Our ranchitos are very near here in the mesquite. We are very poor men, but we hope you will do us the honor of accepting our hospitality." It was an occasion for tact.
"A thousand times many thanks," said Antonio politely, "but we are, unfortunately, in great haste and must leave early. We would not like to disturb your household at that hour."
They protested that their families and their houses were entirely ours, to be used as we saw fit with the greatest delight on their part. I do not remember how we finally managed to evade the invitation without wounding them, but I do recall that it took half an hour of courteous talking. For we knew, in the first place, that we would be unable to leave for hours in the morning if we accepted, because Mexican manners are that haste to leave a house signifies dissatisfaction with the entertainment; and then, too, one could not pay for one's lodging, but would have to bestow a handsome present upon the hosts—which we could none of us afford.
At first they politely refused our invitation to dine, but after much urging we finally persuaded them to accept a few tortillas and chile. It was ludicrous and pitiful to see how wretchedly hungry they were, and how they attempted to conceal it from us.
After dinner, when they had brought us a bucket of water out of sheer kindly thoughtfulness, they stood for a while by our fire, smoking our cigarettes and holding out their hands to the blaze. I remember how their serapes hung from their shoulders, open in front so the grateful warmth could reach their thin bodies—and how gnarled and ancient were the old man's outstretched hands, and how the ruddy light glowed upon the other's throat, and kindled fires in his big eyes. Around them stretched the desert, held off only by our fire, ready to spring in upon us when it should die. Above the great stars would not dim. Coyotes wailed somewhere out beyond the firelight like demons in pain. I suddenly conceived these two human beings as symbols of Mexico—courteous, loving, patient, poor, so long slaves, so full of dreams, so soon to be free.
"When we saw your wagon coming here," said the old man, smiling, "our hearts sank within us. We thought you were soldiers, come, perhaps, to take away our last few goats. So many soldiers have come in the last few years—so many. It is mostly the Federals—the Maderistas do not come unless they are hungry themselves. Poor Maderistas!"
"Ay," said the young man, "my brother that I loved very much died in the eleven days' fighting around Torreon. Thousands have died in Mexico, and still more thousands shall fall. Three years—it is long for war in a land. Too long!" The old man murmured, "Valgame Dios!" and shook his head. "But, there shall come a day——"
"It is said," remarked the old man quaveringly, "that the United States of the North covets our country—that Gringo soldiers will come and take away my goats in the end...."