“I haven’t any,” was the ready answer. “And sorry to say it too—that I am.”
“It don’t look much like he has,” observed Perico, with a glance at the hunchback’s tattered habiliments.
“Looks are not always to be relied on,” persisted the corporal. “Who’d ever suspect a pearl inside an ugly oyster-shell?”
“I haven’t, indeed, Señor Cabo,” once more protested the dwarf with earnest emphasis. “If I had, you’d be welcome to the loan you speak of. No man likes a game of monté better than myself. Alas! so far from being in funds, I’m too like your worships—without a claco. I’ve been stripped of everything; and, if you knew my story, you’d pity me, I’m sure.”
“What story?” demanded the cabo, becoming curious.
“Why, that I’ve been robbed of all the money I had. It wasn’t much, to be sure, only two pesetas and a real, but still that was better than empty pockets. It happened about half an hour ago. I was on my way to San Augustin, thinking I’d there get some supper, with a night’s lodging; when not far from this, two men—footpads I suppose they were—rushed out from the roadside, and made straight at me. One took the right, the other left. But I’ve good long arms, as you see, pretty strong too; and so I was able to keep them off for a while. Several times they caught hold of my wrists; but I succeeded in jerking them free again. I believe I could have wrestled them both, but that one getting angry, pulled out a long-bladed knife, and threatened to cut my throat with it. Por dios! I had to surrender then, seeing he was in earnest.”
While giving this somewhat prolix account of an altogether imaginary adventure, he had started to his feet, and accompanied his speech with a series of pantomimic gestures; dancing and flinging his arms about, as he professed to have done while defending himself against the footpads. The grotesqueness of the performance, though seen only in the dim light—for he kept under the shadow—set his listeners to laughing. Little dreamt they why he was treating them to the spectacle, or how cleverly he was outwitting them.
But there was a third spectator of the scene, unknown to all of them, who was aware of it. The cochero could not at first tell what were the things striking him in the pit of the stomach, as if he was being pelted with pebbles! But he could see they came from the hands of the hunchback, flung behind in his repeated contortions and gesticulations.
Moreover, that they glistened while passing through the air, and looked whitish where they lay, after falling at his own feet.
“Well; what did they do to you then?” asked the corporal, when he and his comrade had finished their guffaw. “Stripped you clean, as you’ve said?”