When they began to eat Juan was a quivering bundle of nerves beneath an appearance of Indian stolidity. He squatted down beside his hut because he was afraid to run away, and he waited in anguished terror for them to discuss the food.
But a slow amazement began to fill him. These men ate as if they were starving. They wolfed down the unappetizing mess he had brought out as his best. They fed themselves eagerly, hungrily, hugely. They grunted with satisfaction as they thrust huge chunks of tough and insipid roots into their mouths.
And Juan watched in bewilderment. He lived upon such victual in private, of course. But up this nameless little jungle stream it was not necessary to live up to his fraction of white blood. In San Teodoro De Los Angeles, naturally, Juan paraded his descent from hypothetical white men. In that metropolis of forty houses, Juan himself would scorn such food with a lofty scorn as befitting only Indios, and not worthy of a man in whose veins ran, however diluted, Spanish blood. But these men ate it without even cursing him for having nothing better.
Incredible doubts assailed him and slowly turned to convictions. Unthinkable thoughts occurred to him and became unassailable facts. And in Juan’s slow brain there formed comforting opinions. His fraction of white blood asserted itself for pride. The pride became the starting point for scorn. A very few drops indeed of the superior blood of the white man will make a vast change in an Araucanian Indian’s potentialities. Juan regarded his guests with new eyes, though his stolidity was unchanged.
These men were ragged and gaunt. Their shirts were in shreds and showed the sun scorched flesh beneath. In the case of the red headed man bones showed, sticking almost through the skin. Their trousers were ripped, were shredded to almost nothing below the knees. Two of the three men wore what were hardly more than sandals made from uncured hide.
It was at this moment, with his new formed scorn hot within him, that Juan first really noted the dark man’s boots. He had seen them before, but then he was an Indian and the gringos were white men. Now Juan thought of his own white blood, and the gringos ...
He regarded the boots for a long time. Then he went into his hut and found a jug of chicha. He drank of it, wiped his mouth and went out to look again.
The white men were still eating wolfishly. He could inspect the boots at ease. They had been beautiful boots once, and a man who is mostly Araucanian Indian looks upon boots as the distinguishing mark of the superior race. In Bogota, which is in Colombia, a gentleman is a man with a collar on. In Lima, there was a time when a gentleman was a man with a cane. But in the small jungle towns and the sierra of Peru, and most especially to a man who is more Indian than white, a gentleman—why, a gentleman is a man who wears shoes.
Juan looked at the boots unwinkingly for probably ten minutes. Then he went in and took another drink of chicha.
Juan, of course, was in love. And in love all men are alike. They desire to shine in the eyes of the woman they temporarily worship. And the woman of Juan’s desire was a marvelous woman. She was unquestionably the belle of San Teodoro De Los Angeles, which contained forty houses and was the largest town Juan had ever seen. A miracle of femininity. She was almost half white.