Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/191

 a state of slavery but slightly removed from the conditions after the Spanish Mayflower tripped into the coast, began to furnish us with annoyance.

"However, we had been chambermaids too long to such outfits as our show to be bothered extensively, and although pestered we retained our health and several colonies of fleas, and had exhausted Chihuahua, and were about to close with a tempting offer to show for the winter in Mexico City, when a sun-kissed peon, with a large quantity of aguardiente concealed about his person, came to our show-tent and tried to bite his way by the rotund Vermont man without crossing our palms with silver. That's largely metaphor, as we let them in for what they had, except the alcalde, who entered deadhead. 'Take what you can,' was our motto; but the half- breed forestalled a shake-down by explaining, in badly fractured English, that he had a message for Don Hidalgo Tiberio, which he would only deliver in return for a front seat. It was written by an Americano, he said, who was in Quelta, an adjacent town.

"We yanked him within the portals and placed him perilously near the hyena's cage, and then received the note. I could see Tib was worked up over the contents, for his round face was drawn down in four curves as he digested it.

"‘Too bad, Billy,' he said, in a whisper. 'And one of them worked in Vermont once.'