"Basta—enough!" retorted the other Zambo, who appeared to be tired of the conversation; and taking a piece of dirty paper out of his girdle, he placed upon it a minute quantity of chopped tobacco, and rolled it into the form of a cigar. This he smeared over with saliva, and then laying it upon a fragment of rock, drew his machete, laid that upon the cigar, and walked off in the direction of an adjacent thicket.
The second Zambo had watched with envious eyes these preparations for the enjoyment of a luxury which, to Mexicans, is more necessary than their daily bread. No sooner had his companion turned his back, than he drew from his pocket two pieces of achiote wood,[35] and rubbing them together with astonishing rapidity, obtained fire in as short a time as it could have been done by the more usual agency of flint and steel. Taking possession of the cigar, he lit it, and had just begun to inhale the smoke with all the gusto of a connoisseur, when the rightful owner of the coveted morsel emerged from the thicket with two fragments of dry wood in his hand.
"Maldito gojo! Picaro! Infame!" vociferated the aggrieved Zambo, on beholding his cigar in the wrong mouth. The smoker had very prudently secured his comrade's machete, and now began to fly before the angry countenance of his enraged comrade.
"Paciencia, Señor!" cried he, dodging about and panting for breath. "Patience, most excellent sir! I will return you ten cigars, nay, a hundred, a thousand—so soon as I can get them."
"Que te lleven todos los demonios de los diez y siete infiernos!" screamed the other, who had seized his club and commenced furious pursuit of the robber. Both of them ran several times round the huge block of porphyry, but the distance between them was diminishing, and there seemed every probability that the thief's love of tobacco would cost him dear, when a thundering "Halto!" from the thicket, brought both Zambos to a dead stop.
"Que es esto? What is this?" cried a voice.
"Mi Général—no—perdon—capitan!" stammered the pursuer; "he has stolen my cigar."
The captain himself now issued from the copse, walked gravely up to the thief, took the half-consumed cigar from his mouth, and placed it in his own; then, stepping forward to the edge of the barranca, he listened a few moments, pointed down into the yawning chasm, and drew himself quickly backwards. His movements were imitated by the Zambos, who gazed for a short space on the windings of the barranca, through which meanders the old road to Cholula, made by Cortes, and then sprang back with the exclamation, "Mulos y arrieros!"
From among the windings of the above-named road, which is scarcely passable even for mules from the depths of ravines, and from amidst rocks and precipices, the pleasant tinkling of bells now ascended through the clear elastic air to the mountain summit on which the three men were posted. Presently the mules became visible, apparently no bigger than dogs, clambering slowly up the steep and rocky path; then were heard the long cadences of the muleteer's rude but not unmusical song; and at last the active figures of the muleteers themselves, with their fantastical garb and five hundred buttons, the variegated accoutrements of the mules, with their worsted plumes, and tufts, and frippery, and many-coloured saddle-cloths, and even the trabucos that were slung behind the saddles, were all distinguishable. There was a wild picturesqueness in the appearance of the cavalcade as it wound its way over the seemingly perpendicular rocks, while the rough sonorous song, accompanied by the sound of the bells, came creeping up the mountain side. Suddenly a figure detached itself from the party, as if weary of the circuitous route it was taking, and, with extraordinary activity and daring, commenced a more direct ascent. Springing from cliff to cliff, the adventurous climber seemed to find pleasure in his breakneck pastime, and continued his course without a pause till he reached the second shelf of the barranca, which was riven by a deep and wide crevice. High over his head a gigantic eagle was wheeling and circling, floating upon the air, now darting down towards him, and then again shooting upwards, sporting, as it seemed, with an anticipated prey. The young man, for such those above could now discern him to be, drew breath for a few seconds, cast a glance upwards at the kingly bird, and then, with one fearless spring, cleared the chasm. With unabated vigour he bounded from rock to rock, and at length reached a rocky projection immediately below the platform. Grasping the trunk of a dwarf oak, he climbed nimbly up it, and let himself drop from the branches on the plateau itself.
"Diabolo!" muttered the two Zambos, who had witnessed the young man's hazardous progress with that mute admiration and sympathy which the exhibition of bodily strength and activity is apt to excite, especially amongst half-civilized men—"Diabolo! He has more lives than a cat!" And with the words they slunk into the thicket.