“Car-may-lee-ta-a-a!”
We can serve no useful purpose by endeavouring to conceal from the reader, even temporarily, the information that Carmelita was the sleeping naiad on the couch; also that she continued to sleep, for hers was that quality of slumber which is the heritage of dark blood and defies any commotion short of that incident to a three-alarm fire. Three times the husky voice addressed Carmelita with cumulative vehemence; but Carmelita slept on, and presently the husky voice ceased to cry aloud for her. Followed the sound of bare feet thudding across the floor.
Forth from the house came Mother Jenks, a redfaced, coarse-jowled, slightly bearded lady of undoubted years and indiscretion, in curl-papers and nightgown, barefoot and carrying a bucket. One scornful glance at the sleeping Carmelita, and mother Jenks crossed to the fountain plashing in the centre of the patio, filled her bucket, stepped to the veranda and dashed three gallons of tepid water into Carme-lita's face.
That awakened Carmelita—Mother Jenks's raucous “Git up, yer bloody wench! Out, yer 'ussy, an' cook almuerzo. Gawd strike me pink, if I don't give yer the sack for this—an' sleepin' on my best new blenkit!” being in the nature of a totally unnecessary exordium.
Carmelita shrieked and fled, while Mother Jenks scuttled along in pursuit like a belligerent old duck, the while she heaped opprobrium upon Carmelita and all her tribe, the republic of Sobrante, its capital, its government officials, and the cable company: Finally she disappeared into El Buen Amigo with a hearty Cockney oath at her own lack of foresight in ever permitting her sainted 'Enery to set foot on a foreign shore.
Once inside, Mother Jenks proceeded down a tiled hallway to the cantina of her hostelry and opened the street door a few inches. Without the portal stood Don Juan Cafetéro, of whom a word or two before proceeding.
To begin, Don Juan Cafetéro was not his real name, but rather a free Spanish translation of the Gaelic, John Cafferty. As would be indicated by the song he was singing when first we made his acquaintance, coupled with the unstable condition of his legs, Mr. Cafferty was an exile of Erin with a horrible thirst. He had first arrived in Sobrante some five years before, as section-boss in the employ of the little foreign-owned narrow-gauge railway which ran from Buenaventura on the Caribbean coast to San Miguel de Padua, up-country where the nitrate beds were located. Prior to his advent the railroad people had tried many breeds of section-boss without visible results, until a Chicago man, who had come to Sobrante to install an intercommunicating telephone system in the Government buildings, suggested to the superintendent of the road, who was a German, that the men made for bosses come from Erin's isle; wherefore Mr. Cafferty had been imported at a price of five dollars a day gold. Result—a marked improvement in the road-bed and consequently the train-schedules, and the ultimate loss of the Cafferty soul.
Don Juan, with the perversity of the Celt, and contrary to precept and example, forbore to curse Sobrante. On the contrary, he liked Sobrante immediately upon arrival and so stated in public—this unusual state of affairs doubtless being due to the fact that his job furnished much of excitement and interest, for his driving tactics were not calculated to imbue in his dusky section-hands a love for the new section-boss; and from the day he took charge until he lost the job, the life of Don Juan Cafetéro had been equivalent in intrinsic value to two squirts of swamp water—possibly one.
Something in the climate of Sobrante must have appealed to a touch of laissez faire in Don Juan's amiable nature, for in the course of time he had taken unto himself, without bell or book, after the fashion of the proletariat of Sobrante, the daughter of one Estebân Manuel Enrique José Maria Pasqual y Miramontes, an estimable peon who was singularly glad to have his daughter off his hands and no questions asked. Following the fashion of the country, however, Esteban had forthwith moved the remainder of his numerous progeny under the mantle of Don Juan Cafetéro's philanthropy, and resigned a position which for many years he had not enjoyed—to wit: salting and packing green hides at a local abattoir. This foolhardy economic move had so incensed Don Juan that in a fit of pique he spurned his father-in-law (we must call Esteban something and so why split hairs?) under the tails of his camisa, with such vigour as to sever forever the friendly relations hitherto existing between the families. Mrs. Cafferty (again we transgress, but what of it?) subsequently passed away in childbirth, and no sooner had she been decently buried than Don Juan took a week off to drown his sorrows.
In this condition he had encountered Esteban Manuel Enrique José Maria Pasqual y Miramontes and called him out of his name—for which there appears to be little excuse, in view of the many the latter possessed. In the altercation that ensued Esteban, fully convinced that he had received the nub end of the transaction from start to finish, cut Don Juan severely in the region of the umbilicus; Don Juan had thereupon slain Esteban with a .44-calibre revolver, and upon emerging from the railroad hospital a month later had been tried by a Sobrantean magistrate and fined the sum of twenty thousand dollars, legal tender of the Republic of Sobrante. Of course he had paid it off within six months from his wages as section-boss, but the memory of the injustice always rankled in him, and gradually he moved down the scale of society from section-boss to day labourer, day labourer to tropical tramp, and tropical tramp to beach-comber, in which latter state he had now existed for several months.