The boots stirred when the three men had stuffed themselves to bursting. Juan remained squatting by his hut. He was still stolid, still absolutely impassive as far as appearance went. But it was not at all the same Juan who thought his own thoughts while the white men spoke in the language that was only a babble to him.
“D’you suppose we can get enough grub from him to see us through?”
The voice was the voice of the red headed gringo.
“Only one more day’s travel down this stream,” said the man with the boots. “Then we can get all we want at San Teodoro.”
His tone was curt. It would have made Juan shiver, ten minutes before. Now his eyes shifted to the red headed man as he spoke again.
“But how will we pay him?”
With food in their bellies, the exaltation of spirits the white men had displayed had now gone curiously flat. “We haven’t a damned thing he’d want. Of course an emerald—”
The man with the boots laughed. It was more like a bark.
“He wouldn’t know what it was.”
Juan returned his gaze to the boots. He ignored the uncouth sounds issuing from the lips of the white men. Wearing such boots as these, he would be envied. Even Pedro, though he boasted a Spanish surname and was full three-eighths white, possessed no such footgear. And he would be admired by all the women. The economic factor in feminine admiration bulks large in every climate.