Webster gazed after them whimsically as he approached the counter.
“I'd hate to wake up some night and find that hombre with the puckered eye leaning over me. To what branch of the genus Greaser do those two horse-thieves belong?” he queried.
“Central America, I take it,” the clerk answered. “They appear interested in the names of passengers bound for Caribbean ports. Looking for a friend, I suppose.”
“Hardly. I speak their kind of Spanish and a peon doesn't refer to his friends in the free-and-easy language these fellows employed. By the way,” he continued, suddenly apprehensive, “do you get much of that paraqueet travel on your line?”
“About 80 per cent, of it is off colour, sir.” Webster pondered the 80-per-cent, probability of being berthed in the same stateroom with one of these people and the prospect was as revolting to him as would be an uninvited negro guest at the dining table of a southern family. He had all a Westerner's hatred for the breed.
“Well, I want a ticket to San Buenaventura,” he informed the clerk, “but I don't relish the idea of a Greaser in the same stateroom with Me. I wonder if you couldn't manage to fix me up with a stateroom all to myself, or at least arrange it so that in the event of company I'll draw a white man. I can stand a slovenly white man where a clean peon would be unbearable, although—peon or Caballero—these people are apt to be tarred with the same stick. I don't care for any of them in mine.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot guarantee you absolute privacy nor any kind of white man. It's pretty mixed travel to all Central American ports.”
“How many berths in your first-class staterooms?”
“Two.”
Webster smiled brightly. He had found a way out of the difficulty. “I'll buy 'em both, son,” he announced.