Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/171

Rh drunken brawls, of murder, of love, of giants, dwarfs, and cavaliers, accompanied with the most startling devices, and all surmounted with this clinching inscription: (Hoy se paga, manana se fia) Pay now, credit afterward. Large open vats, filled with a milky liquor, from which exhaled a horrible smell, were placed all round the room, and the publican was busily engaged ladling it out with a calabash for his customers, among whom I soon recognized Florencio.

"Ah! Señor Cavalier," cried he, advancing with the glass in his hand, "allow me to offer you—"

"No, I am not thirsty; but I have some good news for you."

I tried then to tell him that he had been falsely informed when he had been told that the person who was trying to dispossess him of his mine was Remigio Vasquez. It was a long time before I could make the obfuscated drunkard understand the purport of my visit, and undeceive him with regard to the Biscayan.

"You see that I am delighted," cried he, when he had at last made out the meaning of my words.

"For poor Remigio's sake?" I said.

"No, for my own sake. I don't fear his information," he replied, with a drunken frankness; "but if that change my intentions regarding him, Remigio Vasquez's affair is not a bit improved. I mean to say (and, swallowing what remained in his glass, he seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts) I mean that it is capital for— for—"

"For whom?" I exclaimed, losing all patience.

"Ah! caramba, for our intimate friend, the respectable Don Tomas Verdugo, as your lordship styles him."