The next morning, after a scanty breakfast of bananas and rice, and a pineapple which Marie salted heavily before she ate it, she went to a native barber and had her long hair cut close to the scalp, except for a little tuft on top which she had him brush up for a pompadour.
Before cutting off her hair the barber tied a piece of hemp very tightly around it, just back of her neck. After he had detached it, he held it in front of Marie and asked her what she wished done with it. She took it in her own hands.
The barber kept on trimming her shortened hair. Marie stopped talking and seemed to be in deep meditation.
Presently the barber said. “That’s all.”
Marie arose from the rough mahogany slab on which she had been sitting, handed him a puesta (twenty cents, Mexican), looked out of the window and said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll trade you my hair for that quilas (two-wheeled cart) standing there.”
“All right”; said the barber, “My pony is dead, and the war has so devasted the country, and money has become so scarce, that I can’t afford to buy another one.”
“The harness hanging on it goes with the cart,” said Marie.
“Oh no!” exclaimed the barber, “my wife borrowed that, and I must return it.”
“It doesn’t make any difference to whom it belongs,” said Marie, emphatically, “you traded me the cart, and everything that was in it goes with the trade. How do you suppose I could hitch my pony into the cart without a harness?”
Just then she pulled a bolo out from under her apron. The barber said no more.