Watson replied as best he could; but the proud possessor of the bungalow needed very little encouragement for his outbursts of satisfaction.
When they returned to the dining room, a young half-breed servant, her thick braid hanging down her back, placed some bottles and glasses on the table.
“I’m going to have a new housekeeper,” announced Pirovani. “This place needs someone who knows how to take care of it. Rojas, the rancher, is going to let me have his Sebastiana.”
Certain that Moreno and the contractor wanted to talk over the construction plans, Watson refused a second glass of his host’s wine, and left the bungalow.
It was dark now in the streets and all the life of the town seemed concentrated in the tavern. Through the glass of its double swinging doors two rectangles of red lights fell on the road providing the only illumination in the settlement.
Most of the patrons of the establishment were standing, taking their drinks over the bar. A Spaniard was playing the accordeon, while some of the other workmen were dancing with the half-breed girls. There was, an abundance of Chilians who had strayed in from the other side of the mountains, and who, after a few days of work, would be sure to wander off to some other camp, driven by their eternal restlessness; a strange and disturbing lot, these, always ready with their knives, yet always ready to smile and speak softly. In another group were the natives of the land, with their thick beards, ponchos on their backs, and heavy spurs clicking, stray horsemen who lived no one knew how, nor did anyone know where they came from. Like the cowboys of former times they wore the wide leather belt ornamented with silver coins which served as a rack for their revolvers and knives.
All of these Americans treated the accordeon playing and the waltzes of the Galicians and gringos with scornful silence, until finally one of them demanded the “cueca” in so threatening a tone that the couples who were dancing with their arms about one another’s necks in European fashion, hastily left the floor. Then the native dances began, the “pericon,” the “gato,” those old Argentine dances, for so many generations the chief diversion of the natives, and more popular among them than any other, the Chilian “cueca,” which, for hours at a time, with its accompaniment of hand-clapping and sharp cries, excited the crowd gathered in the tavern.
The proprietor of the boliche handed out two guitars, carefully kept under the counter, whereupon the players squatted with their instruments on the ground; but at once a half-breed servant girl hurried towards the musicians to offer them the horse skulls which were the places of honor of the establishment.
Besides possessing this distinction, they were also the best seats in the place. The proprietor owned a couple of chairs which were always brought out when the commissioner of police or some other dignitary came to call, but they were rickety, and gave small promise of lasting out the evening. The steadiest and safest seats in the boliche were those provided by the skeletons of animals, dragged in for this useful purpose from the mesa.
At the sound of the guitars the couples stepped out from the groups along the wall. The girls, a handkerchief in their left hands, held out their skirts with the right, and slowly revolved. The men, also holding a handkerchief in their left hands, gave it a rotary motion, as they circled round their partners, for the “cueca,” like the dances of primitive times, tells the eternal story of the male’s pursuit of the female. The women meanwhile danced in small circles, fleeing from the men, whose wider circles enclosed those of their partners.