The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Chapter 1

The bench on which Dobbs was sitting was not so good. One of the slats was broken; the one next to it was bent so that to have to sit on it was a sort of punishment. If Dobbs deserved punishment, or if this punishment was being inflicted upon him unjustly, as most punishments are, such a thought did not enter his head at this moment. He would have noticed that he was sitting uncomfortably only if somebody had asked him if he was comfortable. Nobody, of course, bothered to question him.

Dobbs was too much occupied with other thoughts to take any account of how he was sitting. Just then he was looking for a solution to that age-old problem which makes so many people forget all other thoughts and things. He worked his mind to answer the question: How can I get some money right now?

If you already have some money, then it is easier to make more, because you can invest the little you have in some sort of business that looks promising. Without a cent to call yours, it is difficult to make any money at all.

Dobbs had nothing. In fact, he had less than nothing, for even his clothes were neither good nor complete. Good clothes may sometimes be considered a modest fund to begin some enterprise with.

Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn’t know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.

Dobbs would have carried heavy stones in a wheelbarrow ten hours a day if someone had offered him the job, but even had the job been open, he would have been the last to land it, because there already would be hundreds waiting and the natives of the country come first and a foreigner afterwards, if ever.

He shot a look at the bootblack on the plaza to see how his business was going. This bootblack owned a high iron stand with one seat. It looked rather swell, though there was no customer sitting on the comfortable seat. Competition was strong in this business, too. A dozen or more youngsters who couldn’t afford to own stands were running like weasels about the plaza looking for customers. Whenever they caught one whose shoes were not pcrfectly polished, they were after him until, to get rid of them, he gave in and had his shoes polished once more. Usually two of these agile boys went about the job, each taking one of the customer’s shoes and then dividing the pay. These boys carried small boxes with them, and a little bench, hardly bigger than a hand, to sit on while they worked. Such an outfit, Dobbs calculated, might cost three pesos. So, compared with Dobbs, they were capitalists, they had money invested. Anyway, seeing them chasing customers the way they did was proof enough that living was not so easy.

Even if Dobbs had had three pesos to buy the outfit, bootblacking was out, for he could not be a bootblack here among the natives. No white has ever tried to run around here shouting: “Shine, mister?” He would rather die. A white may sit on a bench on the plaza in rags, three-fourths starved; he may beg and humiliate himself before another white; he may even commit burglary or other crimes; for that the other whites will not loathe him; he will still be considered one of them. But should he happen to shine shoes in the street, or beg from a native anything but water, or carry around iced lemonade in buckets for sale by the glass, then he would sink below the lowest native and would die from starvation. No white would ever again give him a job, and the natives would consider him the most undesirable competitor. Native boys would kick his buckets and spill the lemonade, and should he find a pair of shoes to shine, all the native bootblacks would surround him and pester him with practical jokes and filthy language, so that the customer would leave before his shine was finished.

A man dressed in white strolled up to the bootblack’s stand and sat down. The bootblack got busy on the tan shoes before him.

Dobbs rose from his bench, walked slowly over to the stand, and said a few words to the man in white, who, hardly looking up, put his hand in his pocket, brought out a peso, and handed it to Dobbs.

For a moment Dobbs stood bewildered, not trusting his eyes. Then he walked back to his bench. He had not counted on anything, or at least not on more than ten centavos. He caressed the peso in his pocket. What should he do with this treasure? One dinner and one supper? Or two dinners? Or ten packages of cigarettes Artistas? Or five cups of coffee, each with a roll, or what they called here “pan frances”?

After some heavy thinking he left the bench and walked down a few blocks to the Hotel Oso Negro, the Black Bear Hotel.

The Hotel Oso Negro would not have been much of a hotel back home. Even here, in the republic, where good hotels are rare, it would not be classed among the decent ones. Just a kind of a cheap lodging-house, it was.

The boom was at its peak, so good hotels were expensive. As the boom had come a thousand times quicker than good hotels could be built, there were few worthy of the name, and the owners of these could ask anywhere from ten to fifty dollars for a shabby room with a simple cot, a squeaking chair, and a shattered table as the entire furnishings. All a guest could hope for was that the cot would be well covered by a tight mosquito-netting and that the hotel could offer cold showers any time of the day or night.

On the ground floor of the Hotel Oso Negro at the left there was a store, run by an Arab, which carried shoes, boots, shirts, soap, perfumes, ladies’ underwear, and all kinds of musical instruments. To the right there was another which had for sale deck-chairs, elaborate brass beds, mattresses, cameras, guns, rifles, ammunition, books on finding and drilling for oil, tennis-rackets, watches, American papers and magazines, automobile parts, and flashlights. The owner of this store was a Mexican who spoke English fairly well and who advertised this fact all over the window.

Between these two stores a long corridor led into the patio of the hotel. This corridor could be shut off from the street by a very heavy door, which was kept open day and night.

On the upper floor of the building there were four rooms looking toward the street and four rooms looking into the patio. One could hardly picture poorer hotel rooms than these, yet none could be had for less than twelve dollars for the night— without bath, of course. The hotel had only two shower-baths with cold water. Hot water was unknown. The two cold showers had to serve for all guests of the hotel. Often there was no water at all for the showers, as the water-supply was limited, most of it being bought from street venders who carried it in five-gallon gasoline-cans on the backs of burros.

Only two outside and two inside rooms on the second floor were rented to guests; the other four rooms were occupied by the owner of the hotel and his family. The owner, a Spaniard, was practically never seen; he left all work and the care of his business to his employees.

The real business of the hotel did not come from these rooms, which stood empty often for weeks, since the price, despite the boom, was considered robbery on account of the fact that the guests could not stand the bedbugs for more than two hours and then had to go to another place for the rest of the night. The owner did not lower the price, and only occasionally did he do something about the bugs. After his warfare on them ninety out of a hundred felt happier than before.

The bulk of the business for the hotel came from the patio, where the patrons did not care about bedbugs or furniture and where the only thing that counted was the price of a cot.

The whole patio was surrounded by shacks made of boards of the cheapest sort, which were weather-beaten, cracked, and rotten. The roofs were partly corrugated sheet-iron, partly roofing paper, all leaky. Most of the doors were hanging on only one hinge, and none could be closed firmly. There could be no privacy in any of these shacks. Above each door a figure was written in black paint so that each shack could be identified.

Inside of these shacks cots were set up closer than in a field hospital during the war, damn it. On each cot a label was nailed telling its number. Every cot had two bedsheets, supposed to be white, clean, and without holes. Supposed to be. Then there was to every cot a thin blanket. Hardly one blanket could be found with more square inches of goods than square inches of holes. As the blankets were all of a dark color, it could not be seen whether they had been washed once since they had left the factory. A small, hard pillow was on every cot—hard like a chunk of wood.

All light and air entered by the doors and by the many cracks in the boards. Nevertheless the air in these rooms was always thick, smelling none too good. The wooden floor was broken through almost everywhere, and right beneath was earth, sometimes muddy, sometimes dry, but always infested with rats, scorpions, little venomous black spiders, and centipedes.

The patio was closed in by buildings on all sides, so there was no ventilation of any kind, and the sun, even when directly above the patio, could not penetrate. The privies were only slightly better than those in the trenches, damn them.

To this unpleasant atmosphere was added the thick smoke from a fire which burned in the middle of the patio all day long and until late into the night. For fuel anything under heaven that might burn was used, including old shoes and dried dung. Over this fire a Chinaman boiled his laundry in old gas-cans. He had rented a small extra shack, set up in the farthest corner of the patio, where, together with four compatriots, he ran his laundry. This, under the conditions of the boom, paid a high profit, from which the hotel-owner collected a certain cut.

The hall of the hotel, serving as the lobby, was identical with the corridor leading from the street to the patio. At the left, just before entering the patio, the manager had his office. He conducted his business through a small window in the corridor. Another window allowed him to watch all that was going on in the patio and to see that no guest took a better cot than he had paid for.

The greater part of his office was occupied by huge shelves on which, behind chicken-wire, in compartments, trunks, boxes, bags, suitcases, packages, and sacks were piled up to the ceiling. In another small room behind the office, and connected by a door never closed, there were still more shelves, all filled with guests’ belongings. No guest took the risk of having his bags or boxes or trunks in the sleeping-quarters.

Here on these shelves, well guarded by the clerk, were kept belongings not only of guests, but of patrons who had not had money to pay for their lodging more than one night, and who after that one night had slept on benches or in some nook near the docks or under trees on the river-banks, where no manager asked for payments, but where it sometimes happened that they were murdered for the thirty centavos in their possession.

Having paid at least for one night, a guest considered it his right to leave his belongings in the care of the hotel. If he needed a shirt or a pair of pants or whatever it might be, he came to the hotel, asked for his bag or package, took out what he needed, and returned the bag to the care of the manager. The manager could never tell whether the man was still a guest or not, and he was too polite or too indifferent to ask. There came a day when the man needed badly a quick change of climate for some reason or other. He had no money for train or for boat, so he had to rely on the means of transportation given him free of charge when he was born. Walking, he could not carry his bag or trunk—not here in the tropics, where there is no hitch-hiking. Today he is perhaps in Brazil, or in the Argentine, or in Hongkong, or his bones are bleaching in the sun somewhere near Venezuela or Ecuador. Who the devil cares? Perhaps slain, or dead of thirst, or eaten by a tiger, or bitten by a snake. His bag, regardless of what has happened to its owner, is still well taken care of by the hotel.

There came a day when the shelves could no longer hold all the bags, boxes, sacks, and grips of former guests, and there was not an inch of space left for the bags of newcomers. The owner of the hotel then ordered a general cleaning out.

Checks had never been given; such a luxury was not expected in this hotel. Some bags bore a label with the name of the owner. Others carried labels of the express companies, or a ship, or a hotel in Spain or Morocco, or Peru, by which its owner recognized it. Other bags had the name of the guest written on them in chalk or in pencil. It often happened that the owner could not get his package, which he recognized by its appearance, because he had forgotten the name he had given when he had handed his bag to the manager, having in the meantime changed his name several times for the sake of convenience.

From many suitcases and boxes the labels had dropped off or been torn off, or, if they were greasy, eaten by rats. Names written in chalk or pencil had disappeared. Often the clerk had forgotten to ask for the name of the owner, or the man had come in drunk and unable to remember his name. The clerk then wrote on the bag only the number of the cot which had been assigned to the guest, who, of course, forgot this number at once, if he ever knew it.

It was difficult to say how long certain things had been stored. The manager or the hotel-owner estimated the number of months things had been kept by the thickness of the layer of dust which covered them. They rarely made a mistake by this method of judging.

The owner of the hotel, in the presence of the manager, opened the baggage and packages, looking through them for valuables to be claimed by him in payment for the keeping. Mostly he found only rags or junk, for anyone who had something of value did not go to the Oso Negro Hotel, or if he did, he remained no longer than one night.

The rags were given away to those who were hanging around begging for them. In this world no shirt, no pair of pants, no shoes can be so shabby that some human being will not say: “Let me have it, please; look at mine. Thank you, sir!” For no man can ever be so poor but that another believes himself still poorer.

Dobbs had no suitcase with him, not even a pasteboard box or a paper bag. He would not have known what to put into them. All he possessed in this world he carried in his pants pockets. For months he had not owned a waistcoat, nor a coat. Such things had gone long ago. He did not need them, anyway. Nobody had a coat here except foreign tourists and men who wished to make a good impression. Here coats look as silly as a top-hat on the head of a New Yorker who cannot afford a taxi.

Dobbs stepped up before the clerk’s window, where on a board there stood an earthen water-bottle. This was the community water-bottle for all guests. No water was to be had in the rooms or in the shacks. If you were thirsty, you had to leave your cot and come here to get water. Experienced patrons, especially those who frequently felt thirsty during the night, took with them a tequila-bottle filled with -water when turning in.

The manager, who during the day acted also as clerk, was a very young man, hardly more than twenty-five. He was short and very lean, and he had a long, thin nose. His nose indicated that he was a born hotel-clerk. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes fallen in and set in dark rings. He was suffering from malaria, which had turned the skin of his face pale yellow, with greenish shadows. He looked as if he might die any minute. Your mistake, mister, for he could wallop any tough sailor who opened his swear-hold farther than was considered decent by the clerk. He worked from five in the morning until six in the evening, when the night-clerk relieved him. Then he would go to the plaza and walk around fifty times for exercise.

The hotel never closed, and the clerks had a busy time. There was not a halfhour day or night when there was not at least one patron to be called because he had to go to work. Few tourists stopped in this hotel, and if they did, it was mostly by mistake and they went back home telling the world what a dirty country the republic was.

The patrons here were almost exclusively working-men, with jobs or without, sailors who had been left behind by their ships or had jumped them. Occasionally an oilman or two stopped here who the week before had been millionaires, but who had gone broke because their wells had run dry or had not come in at all. In general the lodgers were bakery workers, street-payers, watchmen, cooks and waiters in cafes, news-boys; and many had professions and jobs which cannot be easily named or explained in a few words. Many of these men could have rented a room with a family or in a private house where they would have slept better and where they would not have been permanently in company with all sorts of thieves, card_sharpers, tramps, dice-loaders, vagrants, and adventurers who, as long as they paid, also lived here. The only class distinction here was indicated by the answer to the question: “Can you pay for your cot or can’t you?” It was because the hotel could be trusted to call a man at the right time and see to it that he left that scores of decent working_men lived here permanently. They preferred to live here among all this scum of five continents rather than risk losing their jobs for being late to work.

Both clerks were efficient. Day after day new guests came, old ones left. Every hour, day and night, new faces were seen. All nationalities were represented here. There came and went whites, blacks, browns, yellows, and reds; old and young, tall and short. But neither of the clerks ever made a mistake. Whoever passed by the window, the clerk on duty knew instantly whether he had paid or not. If he was in doubt, he glanced at the register and then watched to see into which room the man went. Since none of the shacks had locks, no keys were needed. Anyone smart enough could have gone into any of the shacks and taken a cot. But the two clerks were so well trained that they knew at once the face of a guest, the name he had given, the number of his cot, and the payment he had made, and whether or not these details coincided.

A few rooms containing old dilapidated beds were separated by cracked boards from the other rooms. These were so small that outside of the bed only a narrow space a foot wide was left for the occupants to undress in. These little cages were rented by men who brought their women along with them. For these accommodations one peso was charged for each person.

Two huts were kept solely for women patrons. Here also doors could be neither locked nor properly shut. The women who lodged here were mostly girls employed in restaurants and hotel kitchens. In spite of the fact that anybody could easily have sneaked into the women’s quarters at night and that the rest of the hotel was full of men of all sorts and kinds, the girls were safer here than in many a hotel which makes a fuss about its moral standing. The women were never molested by men coming in drunk. By the unwritten law of the hotel and of the men who lived here any man who tried to harm one of the girls would have been dead at sunrise. The men never even went near enough to the women’s quarters for a peep through the cracked clapboards. The women were the only guests in the shacks of the patio who had mosquito-bars for their cots. The men had to manage without.

Many of the guests had been living here two, three, even five years. These oldtimers usually occupied the corners of the shacks in which they bunked, and so obtained a certain privacy not enjoyed by others. They were freer here than in a private house, for they could come and go as they wished. No landlady ever asked them questions or felt it her duty to pester them with her own opinions on morals and punishment hereafter.

The shacks had no closets and no wardrobes of any kind. Patrons whose cots were in the middle of the hut laid their things on a broken chair or tied them to the under side of their cots with strings. The men who occupied corners or had their cots alongside a wall hung up their clothes on nails. Others kept theirs in wooden boxes under their cots. Others, again, whose belongings hung on the wall covered them with sacking and then fastened them with strings crosswise tight against the wall, so that it would have been difficult for a thief to drag a pair of pants or a shirt out of this mass of clothes.

It rarely happened that anything was stolen. Anyone leaving with a parcel was scrutinized by the clerk in such a way that if the man was not honest he dropped the package and ran away. A thief in this hotel was never afraid of the police or of jail. He was only afraid—terribly afraid—of the beating he would receive if he was found out. The clerk had only to call into the patio, where always, day or night, a score of guests were hanging around. They would take the thief into one of the shacks and there preach him a sermon which would make such an excellent impression upon his mind and body that for the next seven days he could not move a finger or an eyelid without moaning. These sermons had proved so effective that the hotel could guarantee that no theft would recur inside of two months to come.

Only oldtimers left a part of their belongings in the shacks while they were at work. Their coats, pants, and shirts were so well known by the clerks that it was hardly possible for anyone to leave wearing stolen clothing without being caught.

In the room where the clerk had his little desk there was also a safe in which the patrons’ valuables were kept, such as cash, documents, watches, rings, and instruments. Among these were all sorts of implements used by geologists, topographers, prospectors, and miners, as well as revolvers, guns, rifles, and fishing outfits on the wall, either checked here or left in lieu of payment.

In corners and on narrow shelves, near at hand for the clerk, dozens of little parcels, card-boxes, and books were piled up. These were checked to be called for within an hour or two. Most of them were never claimed. The owners of some of them were probably at the other end of the world, for if a man needed a job and was at the docks just when a ship, short a hand or two, was heaving anchor, he hopped on and left his parcels or instruments behind. You can’t eat a theodolite and you can’t sell it, not for twenty bucks, if all second-hand dealers and pawnshops are glutted with them. But a job means food, and a man would be a fool not to let instruments or fishing tackle or guns go and to seize his chance to hop on a bucket where there are three square meals a day.

A shelf with little compartments was filled with letters for patrons. Bundles of letters, many of them from a mother, a wife, or a sweetheart, were piled up, covered with thick dust. The men to whom they were addressed might be dead, or working deep in the jungles clearing new oil-fields, or on a tramp in the China Sea, or helping the Bolsheviks build up a workers’ empire, with no time to think that the letter-writers back home might be crying their eyes out over a lost sheep.

What the manager or the clerk called his desk was a small table, wabbly and well worn. On this were the register, a few letters and papers, an ink-bottle, and a pen. Every patron had to register, as a reminder that he was staying in a civilized country and not with an Indian tribe. Only his last name was written in, with the number of his shack and his cot and the amount of money he had paid. All other information concerning a patron, his nationality, his profession, his home town, was of no interest to the clerk or to the police, who never came to inspect the register except when looking for a criminal. The tax officials frequently looked into the register to find out if the hotel had made an incorrect declaration. The city had no surplus of officials, and only where there are more officials than are actually needed are people pestered to tell the police all about their private affairs.

Dobbs came to the window, banged his peso upon the table, and said: “Lobbs, for two nights.”

The clerk took up the register and wrote: “Jobbs,” because he had not caught the name and was too polite to ask again. His answer was: “Room seven, bed two.” “Room” meant “shack,” and “bed” meant “cot.”

Dobbs grunted something which might have been: “Okay, brother,” or perhaps: “Kiss me somewhere, you mug.”

He was hungry and had to go hunting or fishing… . But the fish would not bite. He went after a man in a white suit and whispered a few words to him; the man, without looking at him, handed him a toston—that is, half a peso.

With these fifty centavos Dobbs hurried to a Chinese restaurant. Chinese cafes are the lowest-priced in the republic, but not the dirtiest. Lunch-time was long past, but in a Chinese cafe one may get dinner, called “comida corrida,” at any time. If dinner is over, the meal is called “cena,” meaning “supper,” whatever time it is by the cathedral clock.

Dobbs, knowing he could pay for his meal, kept the Chinese running like the devil. Everything that was set before him he had changed for something else, exulting in feeling once more how pleasant it is to chase someone around without mercy.

Then he trudged again to the plaza, picking his teeth on the way, and rested on a bench until he felt hungry for coffee. He walked the streets for a good while without success, until a man in white finally gave him a silver coin, fifty centavos again.

“Geecries,” Dobbs said to himself, “I’m sure lucky with gents dressed in white.” He walked across the plaza to the side nearest the docks of the passenger liners and freighters. Here was a cafe without walls, doors, or windows, which were not needed since the cafe kept open twenty-four hours every day.

Dobbs ordered a glass of coffee—the greater part of it hot milk with coffee poured on the top of it—and two pieces of milk bread. He sweetened the coffee with a quarter of a pound of sugar. When the waiter put the ice-water on the table, Dobbs looked up at the price-list painted on the wall and yelled: “Haven’t you bandits raised the price for that stinking coffee five cents more?”

“Well,” said the waiter, chewing a toothpick, “runningexpenses are getting higher. We simply can’t do it any longer for fifteen fierros.”

Dobbs did not really object to the price. He just wanted to complain, as any patron who can pay feels he is entitled to do.

“Go to hell! I don’t buy any lottery tickets,” he bellowed at a little boy who for the last five minutes had been brandishing lottery tickets right under his nose.

The little merchant, barefooted and wearing a torn shirt and ragged cotton pants, did not mind; he was used to being yelled at. “It’s the Michoacan state lottery, senor,” he said; “sixty thousand pesos the main premium.”

“Scram, you bandit, I don’t buy tickets.” Dobbs soaked his bread in the coffee.

“The whole ticket is only ten pesos, senor, and it’s a sure shot.”

“Son of a poacher, I haven’t got ten pesos.”

“That’s all right by me, caballero,” the boy said. “Why don’t you buy only a quarter of a ticket, then? That’s two pesos fifty.”

Dobbs, swallowing his coffee in big gulps, had scalded his lips. This made him mad, and he roared: “To hell with you and stay there! If you don’t leave me to drink my coffee in peace, I’ll throw this whole glass of water right in your face.”

The boy did not move. He was a good salesman. He knew his patrons. Any man who could sit at the bar of a Spanish cafe at this time in the afternoon and drink a huge glass of coffee and eat two pieces of milk bread must have money. A man who has money always wants more and likes it to come easy. This man was the right customer for lottery tickets.

“Why don’t you take one tenth of the ticket, senor? I’ll sell the tenth to you for one peso silver.”

Dobbs took up the glass of water and threw the contents in the boy’s face. “Didn’t I tell you, you little rascal, I’d do it if you didn’t leave me in peace?”

The boy laughed, wiped the water off his face, and shook it off his ragged pants. The lottery makes men rich—always one in twenty thousand—but the boy knew from experience that it was safer to make a certain living by selling lottery tickets than to buy them and wait for the premium. He considered the free bath merely the first sign of opening business connections with Dobbs.

Dobbs paid for his coffee and received twenty centavos change. Catching sight of these twenty centavos, the boy said: “Senor, you ought to buy one twentieth of the Monterrey lottery. A twentieth costs you only twenty centavos. Main premium, five thousand pesos cash. There, take it. It’s a plumb sure winner—an excellent number. Add the figures up and you’ll get thirteen. What better number could you buy? It’s bound to win.”

Dobbs weighed the twenty-centavo piece in his hands. What should he do with it? More coffee? He didn’t want any more. Cigarettes? He didn’t want to smoke; he liked the taste of coffee on his tongue better just now, and smoke kills any fine taste. A lottery ticket, he thought, was money thrown away. Still, money comes, money goes. There was fun in waiting for the drawing. Hoping for something is always good for the soul. The drawing was only three days off.

“All right, you brown devil,” he said. “Give me that twentieth, so that I won’t have to look at your dirty face and your damned tickets any longer.”

The little merchant tore off the twentieth of the sheet and handed it to Dobbs. “It’s un numero excelente, senor. A sure winner it is.”

“If it is such a sure winner, why the hell don’t you play it yourself?” Dobbs asked suspiciously and jokingly at the same time.

“Me? No, sir,” said the boy. “I can’t afford to play the lottery. I haven’t got the money.” He took the silver piece, bit on it to see if it was good, and said: “Muchas gracias! A thousand thanks, sir. Come again next time. I always have the winners, all the lucky numbers. Buena suerte, good luck!” And off he hopped like a young rabbit, chasing another patron he had just glimpsed.

Dobbs put the ticket in his watch-pocket without looking at the number. Then he decided to go for a swim.

It was a long way to the open river. The river at this point was the meeting-place, so it seemed, of all the bums in port. When Dobbs arrived, the water was well crowded with a multitude of Mexicans, Indians, and whites who had reached the same social level as Dobbs. None of them wore bathing-suits. Farther up the river girls were in the water, also without bathing-suits of any sort, accompanied by boys to make the affair more lively.

On the high hills that formed the banks of the river to the east was the residential section of the port. Here, in beautiful modern bungalows, American style, the Americans, English, and Dutch who were employed by the oil companies lived with their families. The city was very low, only a few feet above sea-level, and suffocatingly hot, for it was seldom reached by the breeze coming in from the sea. The colonies of the well-to-do foreigners on these hills along the eastern river-banks had the cool seabreeze all afternoon and during the night. For tea and afternoon bridge-parties the most desirable bungalows were those nearest the edge of the hills, from which the river could be seen. Ladies coming to a tea-party in this vicinity brought their field-glasses along, for of course they could not go down to the river and join the bathing parties, much as they would have liked to do so. Through their field-glasses they watched the men and girls bathing without swimming-suits. It was so interesting that they never for a moment thought of playing bridge. It might have been just for this reason that this colony was called Colonia Buena Vista, which means “Beautiful View.”

In the tropics bathing is always a good thing. And Dobbs could save the twenty-five centavos a short shower in the Oso Negro cost—a shower which lasted only thirty seconds. For another thirty seconds another twenty-five centavos had to be paid, because water was expensive.

Here in the river bathing was not all pleasure. The riverbottom was muddy and infested with horseshoe crabs. Any foot which invaded their dwellings was badly treated by those giant crabs, and many a bather feared that he might go home one toe short.

At this point the river spread out deltalike and it was here the crab-fishers sat. Only the Indians and poorer Mexicans fish for crabs, because it calls for a godlike patience. The bait is meat; the more it stinks, the better bait it is. A piece of this meat is fastened on a fish-hook held by a long string and thrown in the water. The fisherman lets the bait sink down into the mud and rest for a few minutes. Then he begins to draw in the line as slowly as only an Indian can. It takes many minutes before he pulls it up on the low bank. The crab, or jaiba, as they call it, grasps the bait with its claws and, eager not to lose the welcome meal, holds on so that when the line is hauled in, the crab is pulled out of the river and caught. There is no way to tell whether a crab has grasped the bait or not. Often the line has to be pulled in twenty times before a crab is caught. Sometimes the crab outwits the fisherman and takes the bait without being hooked. Patient fishermen who work from sunrise to Sunset make a very fair living, for the restaurants pay rather good prices for this kind of crab, the meat of which is considered a delicacy.

Dobbs, looking out for any opportunity to make money, and watching these men fishing, yet knew that this was no work for him. Having grown up in a hustling industrial American city, he hadn’t a bit of the patience so essential for crab-fishing. He would not have caught one crab in three weeks.

Dobbs walked almost three miles back to town. Swimming and walking had made him hungry, so he went hunting again. For a long time no game would drop before his shots, and he had to swallow a lot of preaching and good advice for the unemployed, and nasty remarks about foreign bums molesting decent citizens. Being hungry, one cannot pay much attention to this sort of preaching, and any feeling that begging does not become the dignity of an American goes overboard when one has to eat.

At last he saw a man dressed in white strolling across the plaza toward the Alcazar movie. Dobbs thought: “Today I have luck with gents in white; let’s try that guy.”

He won. Again fifty centavos.

Supper over, and having had a good long rest on a bench on the plaza, Dobbs thought it would be a good idea to have some ready change in his pocket, because you never know what may happen. This excellent idea occurred to him when he saw a man leisurely walking on the opposite side of the street—a man dressed in white.

Without any hesitation he approached the man and said his prayer. His victim burrowed in his pocket and brought forth half a peso. Dobbs reached out for the coin, but the man kept the piece between his fingers, saying dryly: “Listen, you, such insolence has never come my way as long as I can remember, and nobody on earth could make me believe that story.”

Dobbs stood utterly perplexed. Never before had he encountered anyone who addressed him in this way. Usually the answer was only a few angry words. He was uncertain what to do. Should he wait or should he run away? He could see the toston, which made him sure that this coin sooner or later would land in his own hand. He let the man have the pleasure of preaching, as a small return for his money. “Well, if I get fifty centavos for listening to a sermon, it may be hard-earned money, but it is cash,” he thought. So he waited.

“This afternoon you told me,” the man continued, “that you had not had your dinner yet, so I gave you one peso. When I met you again, you told me you had no money for your bed, so I gave you a half peso. A couple of hours later I met you again and you said you had had no supper and you felt hungry. Once more I gave you fifty centavos. Now may I be permitted to ask you, with due politeness: What do you want the money for now?”

Without thinking, Dobbs broke out: “For tomorrow morning’s breakfast, mister.”

The man laughed, gave him the fifty centavos, and said: “This money is the last you’ll get from me. If you want to do me a favor, go occasionally to somebody else. To tell you the truth, it’s beginning to bore me.”

“Excuse me, mister,” Dobbs answered, “I really never realized that it was you all the time. I never looked at your face, only at your hands and at the coins you gave me. Now for the first time I’ve noticed your face. But I promise, sir, I won’t come to you again. Beg pardon.”

“That’s perfectly all right. Don’t shed tears. And to make sure you won’t forget your promise, have another fifty so that you’ll have your dinner tomorrow. But understand that from now on you are to try your best to make your living without my assistance. That’s all,” and the gentleman went his way.

“Seems,” said Dobbs when alone, “this well has run dry now, and for good. Luck with gents dressed in white is spilled. Let’s have a look in a different direction.”

So he came to the conclusion it might be better to leave the port and go out into the country to learn what things looked like there.

That night in the hotel he met another American who wished to go down to Tuxpam, but couldn’t find anybody to accompany him.

Hearing the magic word Tuxpam, Dobbs jumped at the idea of going with Moulton to visit the oil-fields, where there might be something doing.

It is not easy to go down to Tuxpam with no money. Half of the way down is a road on which occasionally you may meet a car; the other half of the way is a big lake, and the motor-boat is not accustomed to accommodating hitch-hikers. You have to pay or you stay behind.

Of course you may go ‘way round the lagoon. But there is hardly any road at all, and this route may take two weeks. You can visit a larger number of oil-fields, however, and it was this long overland route that was chosen by the two men.

First the river had to be crossed, at a charge of twenty-five centavos. They preferred to save that money for better use, so they waited for the Huasteca ferry, which takes people across the river without any charge. This ferry crosses the river only when it has enough freight to make the trip worth while. It is meant for the company’s working-men and their families exclusively.

Dobbs and Moulton started out in the morning right after they had had a cup of coffee and some dry bread. On reaching the ferry they asked the boatman when he thought the ferry might cross. He said he probably would not be ready until eleven, so there was nothing to do but wait.

This part of the river-bank was a lively spot. A few dozen motor-boats and half a hundred row-boats waited for customers to be taken to the other side of the river. Speed-boats carried the big oilmen and other business men who were willing to pay special fares. Working-men and small traders and peddlers had to wait until a taxi boat had enough passengers to take them for the regular taxi fare. The place looked like a fair, for people who had to wait were buying fruit, lunch, shirts, cigarettes, guns, ammunition, hardware, leather goods.

The boats and ferries ran day and night. On the other side of the river were the hands, on this side of the river was the brain. Here on this side were the banks, the headquarters of the oil companies, the rich stores, and the gambling-halls and cabarets. On the other side of the river was the hard work; here on this side, in the city, was the recreation from work. On the other side of the river the oil was practically without any value. All the value the oil finally had in the market was put into it on this side of the river. Oil, like gold, is worthless in its natural state. It obtains its value only by handling and being taken where it is needed.

Many millions of dollars were carried across the river; not in coins or in notes, not even in checks. These millions of dollars were carried often in short lines and figures scribbled in a notebook. A certain tract of land worth two thousand dollars yesterday is worth today five hundred thousand dollars. For this difference a geologist was responsible, one who maintained that this tract of land was a sure shot to bring in a dozen gushers. Next week the same tract may go begging for five hundred dollars, and its actual owner may not be able to buy himself a fifty-cent lunch in a Chinese cafe, because six other geologists have staked their reputations on finding that the tract is as dry as an old picture-frame. Two months later it may be impossible to buy the same lot for twenty-five thousand dollars in cash.

It was noon when Dobbs and Moulton reached the opposite bank of the river, which was crowded with tankers coming from or going to all parts of the world. Here the banks were lined with huge oil-tanks belonging to a dozen different oil companies.

The fair on this bank was even more lively than on the other side, and it was more varied, for the small merchants doing business here catered not only to the natives, but also to the officers and sailors of the ships lying at anchor. Not only parrots and monkeys were for sale, but lion-and tiger-skins, lion and tiger cubs, snakes of all sizes, young alligators, and huge lizards. Sailors could take these animals home and tell the girls how they fought and killed the tiger to catch the tiger kitten as a present for the girl back home.

The air bit into your lungs because it was filled with poisonous gas escaping from the refineries. That sting in the air which made breathing so hard and unpleasant and choked your throat constantly meant that people were making money—much money. Unskilled labor was getting fifteen pesos a day, and Americans and Mexicans alike were spending five thousand dollars a night without giving a thought to where it went. Tomorrow there will be heaps more money. No doubt this will go on for a couple of hundred years. So why worry? Let’s spend it all while the spending is easy and pleasant.

Farther down the river were the saloons, the cabarets, and long rows of shacks where girls, gayly dressed and more gayly painted, were waiting for their sailor friends, officers and crew. All was love, song, and oceans of liquor wherever you cast a look. Mother cannot always go with the sailor boy to watch out for him. Certain trips are better made alone.

Seeing so many jolly sailors hanging around because their ships had hoisted the red flag which indicated that they were taking in oil, Moulton had an idea. He said: “It’s noon in this part of the world. What say? Let’s hop on this tanker here. Maybe there’s some dinner coming. I could take it, buddy.”

There were two men with no shirts or caps on standing before a fruit-seller and trying to make him understand that they wanted bananas and asking the price.

Moulton was right at them: “Hi, you mugs, what’s doing? What can are you on?”

“Norman Bridge,” came the answer, “and what of it?”

“That’s good. How about some eats?” Moulton asked. “We have a damn long way to walk, and in this tropical heat, too. So you guys’d better come across with a good man-sized meal, or, hell, I’ll sure tell your grandmothers back home that you meant to let two Ams starve out here, and in foreign country, too.”

“Aw, gosh,” said one of the sailors, “don’t talk so much squabash. It makes me sick hearing you. Come up, you two beachers, and we’ll stuff your bellies until they bust. We throw it away anyhow. Who the funking devil can eat a bite in this blistering heat? Gee, I wish I was back in that ol’ Los An, damn it.”

When they left the tanker, they couldn’t walk very far. They lay down under the first tree they reached.

“That was what I call a square meal, geecries,” Dobbs said. “I wouldn’t walk a mile even for an elephant tooth. I’m out for the next two hours. And we better get a rest.”

“Okay by me, sweety.”

They snored so loudly that people passing by and not seeing them under the tree got frightened and hurried away thinking a lion had overeaten and was taking a nap.

Moulton woke up first. He pushed Dobbs in the shoulders and hollered: “Hi, you, get up! And what about us going to Tuxpam? Let’s hustle before it gets dark.”

With much whining and moaning over the sorrows of human life they got going.

They went up the river on the right shore. The whole road, an ugly dirt road at that, was covered with crude oil, it seemed to break through cracks and holes in the ground. There were even pools and ponds of oil. It came mostly through leaks in the pipes and from overflowing tanks which were lined up on the hills along the shore. Brooks of crude oil ran down like water into the river. Nobody seemed to care about the loss of these thousands and thousands of barrels of oil, which soaked the soil and polluted the river. So rich in oil was this part of the world then that the company managers and directors seemed not to mind when a well which brought in twenty thousand barrels a day caught fire and burned down to its last drop. Who would care about three or four hundred thousand barrels of oil running away every week and being lost owing to busted pipe lines, to filling tanks carelessly, or to not notifying the pumpman that while he has been pumping for days, sections of the pipe lines have been taken out, to be replaced by new ones. The more oil is lost, the higher the price. Three cheers, then, for broken pipes and drunken pumpmen and tank-attendants!

Even the sky appeared to be covered with oil. Thick clouds darkened the bright tropical sun. Poisonous clouds coming from the refineries wrapped the whole landscape in a mist that stung your lungs like thin needles.

After a walk of a mile the view to the left became friendlier. Set against the slopes of the high river-bank were the bungalows in which engineers and other officials of the oil companies were living with their families. They had tried to make their residences as near as possible like those they had been used to in Texas. Yet everything had been in vain. The nearness of oil prevented people from living as they wished. The outcome was exactly what it is when a Negress with the help of powder and paint tries to look like a Swedish gentlewoman.

Soon the two men reached Villa Cuauhtemoc. This little town, situated on the shores of a large lagoon, and connected with the river and the port by a picturesque channel, on which a lively traffic of boats and launches is carried on, is in fact the ancient Indian principal town of this region. The Spaniards, after they had conquered this region, preferred to build their town on the other side of the river, as more convenient for shipping. The new town, the port, became more and more important and left the old town so far behind that the inhabitants of the port forgot its existence entirely; when they heard of it, they thought it located in the depths of the jungle and peopled by primitive Indians.

On reaching the last huts of the town opposite the lagoon, Dobbs and Moulton saw an Indian squatted by the road on the top of the hill. The Indian wore rather good cotton pants, and he had on, furthermore, a clean blue shirt, a high pointed palm hat, and on his feet huaraches—that is, sandals. On the ground before him was a bast bag filled with a few things which perhaps were all he owned in this world.

The two, being in a hurry, passed by the Indian without taking any special notice of him.

After a while Dobbs turned his head and said: “What the devil does that Indian want of us? He’s been trailing us for the last halfhour.”

“Now he’s stopping,” Moulton said. “Seems to be looking for something in the bush there. Wonder what he is after.”

They went on their way. Then, turning their heads, they noticed once more that the Indian was still on their heels.

“Did he carry a gun?” Moulton asked.

“Not that I saw. I don’t think he’s a bandit. He looks rather decent to me,” Dobbs said. “Anyway you can never be sure about that.”

“Looks a bit screwy to me.”

They marched on. Yet whenever they looked back, they saw the Indian following them, always keeping at a distance of about fifty feet. Whenever they stopped to catch their breath, the Indian stopped too. They began to get nervous.

There seemed no reason for being afraid of a poor Indian, but they began to feel sure that this single native was only the spy for a whole horde of bandits who were eager to rob the two strangers of the little they possessed.

“If I only had a gun,” Dobbs said, “I’d shoot him down. I’m cracking up. I can’t bear it any longer to have that brown devil on our heels waiting for his chance. I wonder if we could catch him and tie him to a tree and leave him there.”

“I don’t quite agree.” Moulton looked back at the man, trying to guess his intent. “Perhaps he’s a harmless guy after all. But I admit if we could get rid of him some way, it might be safer.”

“Let’s go on and then stop suddenly,” Dobbs suggested. “We’ll let him come up and ask him straight out what he wants.”

They stopped under a tree and looked up as if they saw something very interesting in its branches—a strange bird or fruit.

The Indian, however, the moment he noticed that the two Americans had halted, stopped also, watching them from a safe distance.

Dobbs played a trick to get the Indian to come near. He showed a growing excitement about what he pretended to see in the branches of the tree. He and Moulton pointed into the dense foliage and gesticulated like madmen. The Indian, as they expected, fell for it. His inborn curiosity got the better of him. Step by step he came nearer, his eyes fixed on the upper branches of the tree. When he finally stood beside the two, Dobbs made an exaggerated gesture and, pointing into the dense bush, yelled: “There, there he is, running away now.” He drew Moulton close to him as if he wanted to show him clearly the spot where some strange animal had disappeared. At the same moment he turned round and held the Indian by his arm so tightly that he could not escape.

“Listen, you,” he addressed him, “what do you want from us? Why are you trailing us?”

“I want to go there,” the Indian answered, pointing in the direction in which Dobbs and Moulton were going.

“Where to?” Moulton asked.

“Same place where you are going, senores.”

“How do you know where we are going?”

“I know where you are going,” the native said quietly. “You are going out to the oil-fields to look for work. That’s the same place I am going. Perhaps I can find some work there too. I have worked in the oilcamps before.”

Dobbs and Moulton smiled at each other, each silently accusing the other of being the bigger jackass and coward. No doubt what the native said was true. He looked like a camp worker and might well be after honest work exactly as they two were. Looked at closely, there was not a trace in his face or anywhere about him to remind one of a bandit.

To make absolutely sure, Dobbs asked: “Why don’t you go alone? Why do you follow us all the time?”

“To tell you the truth, caballeros,” the Indian explained, “I had been sitting by this road already three days, from sunrise to sunset, waiting there for some white men passing by with whom I might go to the camps.”

“Can’t you find your way alone?” Moulton asked.

“Yes, I could. Maybe. But the trouble with me is soy un gran cobarde, I am a big coward. I am afraid of going alone through the jungle. There are huge tigers, and snakes huger still.”

“We aren’t afraid of anything in the world, we aren’t,” Dobbs said with great conviction.

“I know you aren’t. That’s the reason why I was waiting for whites going the same way.”

“But whites may be eaten by tigers, too,” Moulton said.

“No, senor, there you are mistaken. Tigers and lions of our country don’t attack Americans; they attack only us, because we belong to the same country, we are sort of compatriots, and that’s why our tigers and lions prefer us and never bother an American. What is more, along the road to the camps there are also sometimes a lot of bandits sitting and waiting for someone to come along to rob. The shores of the Tamihua Lagoon is infested with these murderers.”

“It looks very promising,” Moulton said to Dobbs.

Dobbs replied: “What’s biting you now? What’s the joke?”

“I was just thinking how afraid we were of this pobre hombre here, this little piece of human being, and he was a hundred times more afraid of us.”

“Aw, shut up, you make me sick.” Dobbs wanted to forget.

“Besides,” Moulton continued, “sometimes it’s a good thing not to have a gun on your hip, or this poor devil would no longer be alive and we might find ourselves in a hell of a mess, for no one on earth would believe we acted in self-defense.”

From now on the Indian went along with them, hardly speaking a word, walking by their side or behind them, just as the road would permit.

Shortly before sunset they reached a little Indian village which consisted of only a few huts. The inhabitants, hospitable as they are at heart, were afraid of the strangers, owing to the many tales about bandits in the neighborhood. So with kind words and many excuses they persuaded the three men to go on and try to reach the next village, which, they stated, was bigger and had better accommodations—even a fonda, a little inn—and since the sun had not completely disappeared yet, they might reach that big village still with the last rays of daylight.

There was nothing else to do but go on. One mile they covered and there was no sign of a village. They marched another mile and there was still no village in sight.

By now it had become pitch-dark and they could no longer see the road. If they went on, they might easily get lost in the jungle.

“Those people in the village must have lied to us about that big place we were supposed to come across soon.” Moulton was angry. “We shouldn’t have left the village, but stayed there with or without their consent, even if we had to sleep in the open but still near the huts.”

Dobbs, not being in any better mood than his partner, said: “The Indians usually don’t act this way. They let you stay with them for the night and even give you part of the little food they have. It seems to me they were too much afraid of us. There are three of us, and they may have figured we might easily overpower them if they offered us hospitality. They must have had bad experiences of this sort, and I can easily imagine a good many bums in port, whites and natives, who wouldn’t mind robbing or even killing a couple of villagers if they couldn’t get what they wanted otherwise. Anyway, there’s no use arguing this point. Here we are now in the open road surrounded by jungle and we have to make the best of it.”

“Looks to me,” Moulton said, “as though we couldn’t even go back to that little village, even if we wanted to.”

“Right,” Dobbs admitted. “We’d get lost. I can’t even see a stone at my feet any longer. Nothing else to do but stop right where we are.”

“I think that big village can’t be far.” Moulton did not like the idea of spending the night on a jungle road. “I noticed there were tracks of horses and cows on the road. We must be near. Perhaps we ought to try once more.”

“I’m against it.” Dobbs was determined. “That village may be near, and it may be still three miles away. I don’t take any chances of being lost in the middle of the jungle. Here we are still on the road and by all means safer than inside the jungle.”

With lighted matches they looked around on the ground for the best place to rest in for the night. It looked bad enough. The road was not at all clean. It was just a dirt road, rarely used, covered with small cactuses and low thorny bushes. Whole armies of huge red ants were running about, and a multitude of other insects were crawling and creeping in all directions, leaving practically not a square inch of soil uncovered in their search for food or safety or the pleasures of love.

“Didn’t that Indian here say something about tigers, snakes, and lions being at large in this section?” Moulton asked with a desperate voice on seeing the ground so uninviting.

“He said something to that effect,” Dobbs remembered. He turned to the native, who stood near by, seemingly without the slightest interest in what his companions were doing or saying. He was waiting for the two Americans to decide where and how to spend the night, and whatever they might decide, he would accept their decision and spend the night as near them as he could. Where an American could sleep and feel safe, an Indian could sleep still better and safer.

Dobbs said now to the Indian: “You’re quite sure there are tigers hereabouts?”

“Positively, senor. Hay muchos, muchisimo tigres aqui. There are so many tigers here in this jungle that whenever an American goes out hunting for a day, he never returns at night without at least four big tigers loaded on his car. I have seen them, senores, or otherwise I would not mention it.”

“Thanks for the information,” Dobbs said. “Well, partner, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if you should find me in the morning between the paws of a tiger, half eaten up for breakfast.”

“Better don’t joke about that,” Moulton answered. “We haven’t even a flashlight with us to chase them off. Well, I think there’s nothing left now but to pray to the Lord, who is the King of all men and beasts.”

From talking and thinking and standing around they became sleepy. It was impossible to stand on their feet for the whole night, so they lay down on the ground, forgetting all about ants and beetles and reptiles.

Hardly had they settled themselves, when the Indian squeezed himself between the two like a dog. He did this very slowly, trying to disturb them as little as possible, but none the less with all the firm determination that he could muster. The two Americans might push him, kick him, try to pull him away; no sooner did they cease than he was snugly in between them once more. He felt safe only between the two. They had to give up and leave him where he wanted to sleep. He preferred their kicks and beatings to the claws of the tiger.

Moulton was awakened by a small reptile creeping over his face. He shook it off and sat up. While he was trying to realize where he was and listening to the eternal singing of the tropical jungle, he was stricken as by a shock. His breath stopped, and he could now hear very distinctly steps slowly approaching. Very soft steps they were, but heavy. No doubt they were the steps of a huge animal. Only very huge animals would make such heavy steps, and since they were at the same time very soft, they could only be those of a great cat. A tiger. A huge tiger, a tigre real, one of the biggest in those jungles he must be.

Moulton didn’t want to be afraid. He wanted not to wake the others until he was sure. So he listened again. The steps had halted. The great beast was obviously feeling his way and looking for the best place from which to jump at his victim. After half a minute Moulton heard the steps again, more slow and more cautious than before, and step by step coming closer. They were heavier now and each time he heard them set more firmly on the soft ground. When he thought a suppressed growl reached his ears, he jerked Dobbs awake.

“What is it?” Dobbs asked in a sleepy voice.

“A tiger is right behind us.”

“A what?”

“That’s what I said,” Moulton whispered. “A tiger is after us.”

Dobbs listened into the night. Then he said: “You’re right, buddy, that sure is a huge beast. I think it must be a tiger. A human being wouldn’t sneak through the bush this way. It can only be a tiger or a lion.”

It was not clear whether the Indian had been awake for some time already or whether he had been aroused by the excited talk of the two. But at the same moment the two partners stood up, he was up too, keeping as close to them as he could.

“Es un tigre, muy cierto, por la Madre SantIsima; that’s a huge tiger, so help me the Holy Virgin.” His voice trembled for fear. “He will jump at us now any minute. There he is, hardly twenty feet away. I can see the green glow of his eyes.” He stared into the dense thicket and at the same time embraced Dobbs’s whole body. Dobbs shook him off. Then he hid close to Moulton. The terror-stricken Indian, who certainly knew a tiger when he smelled one, deprived Dobbs and Moulton of the last bit of courage they had kept so far. All three now held close together.

“We can’t stay this way all night,” Dobbs said after a few minutes. “We have to do something.”

“We’d better make as few moves as possible,” Moulton advised. “Somewhere I’ve read that these huge cats jump at their prey only when they see it make a move.”

They listened again into the darkness to find out whether the animal was still near or had disappeared. For many minutes they could hear nothing but the never ceasing singing of the jungle insects. Then they heard the steps again, very distinctly. They Seemed to be at the same distance as before.

The Indian then whispered: “Best thing we can do is climb up a tree.”

“Tigers climb trees just as easily as they walk on the ground,” Moulton said.

Dobbs was of a different opinion. “That muchacho here is right, I think. It’s the safest thing we can do. Even if that beast tries to climb the tree, if we are high enough we can defend ourselves with a stick, maybe.”

Cautiously feeling around, they succeeded in finding an ebony tree. Dobbs was the first to climb up. No sooner had the Indian taken note of what Dobbs was doing than he was right after him, climbing close behind him and pushing Moulton, who wanted to be next, away from the tree. He keenly wanted not to be the last and so nearest to the ground. He considered the safest place of all exactly between the two Americans, Dobbs above him, and Moulton beneath him. He was ready to sacrifice either of them as long as he could be safe from the claws of the tiger. Anxious as he had been to climb the tree, he had nevertheless not forgotten to take along his bast bag. Not even this bag did he wish to leave to the mercy of the jungle beast.

Moulton had no choice but to climb after the Indian and be so near the ground that the tiger could easily reach his legs with one jump. He consoled himself for his precarious position by calling up to Dobbs: “That devil of an Indian has robbed me of all my chances. But bad as it looks, I am still safer here than on the ground. On the ground I could be carried away by that cat, while here I can hold on for quite a while and I may lose only one leg. Listen, Dobbs, can’t you climb up a few feet higher so that I can have a better chance?”

“Nothing doing here,” Dobbs said. “I’m already sitting on top of the tree.”

After clinging there for a quarter of an hour, they began to feel easier. They now breathed more freely and began to think of more safety. The night had still long to go. It could hardly be ten o’clock. And hanging in the tree like untrained monkeys, they were afraid of falling asleep. Then they might let go and drop to the ground, perhaps right into the open mouth of the tiger, who would surely be waiting under the tree for such a welcome accident. To avoid this they took off their belts and fastened their bodies firmly to the trunk. This done, they felt safe enough to try how one could sleep in this position.

It was a long night; it seemed to them that it would never end. The little sleep they got was frequently interrupted by ugly dreams and by all kinds of hallucinations which tortured their minds. Whole herds of hungry tigers and armies of savage Indians seemed to be after them.

At last morning came with rosy cheeks. In the bright light of the early day everything around them looked absolutely natural— not so very different, it seemed to them, from an abandoned orchard in Alabama. Even the ground beneath them looked not at all so gruesome as at night, when the flickering light of matches gave it such a ghastly impression.

Hardly fifty feet away a green pasture was seen through the trees. It spread out under the morning sun almost like a lawn in the home town. All the imaginings and visions they had had during the night appeared ridiculous by daylight.

The three sat down and had a smoke. The Indian opened his bast bag and produced half a dozen dry tortillas, which he in brotherly fashion divided with the Americans for breakfast.

While sitting there chewing the tortillas, which under these conditions tasted none too good, the three suddenly stopped, held their breath, stiffened their bodies, and listened. Clearly, without any doubt, they heard again the curious steps and the suppressed growling or mumbling they had heard during the night. These peculiar and unmistakable noises had settled in their memory so firmly that for the rest of their lives they would never forget them; they would recognize these sounds anywhere and any time. These were the same steps and sounds they had heard during the night. It was strange that a tiger should come out of his lair in bright daylight to attack men.

On hearing the sounds again, they jumped up together. They Stared between the trees in the direction from which these steps and sounds came now, as they had also come during the night.

Their glance fell upon the green pasture. And there was the tiger. The tiger was stepping lazily around and eating grass, at times letting off a sort of a grunt out of sheer content. The tiger was a very harmless one; he was a burro, in fact, an ordinary ass tied to a tree by a long lasso, the property, doubtless, of a peasant in the next village, which certainly could not be far away. Where a simple burro could pass the night and survive, there surely could be no tiger near; otherwise the peasants would not leave their animals overnight in the bush.

Dobbs looked at Moulton, and Moulton at Dobbs. Just as Moulton started to open his lips for a hearty laugh, Dobbs said to him harshly: “Listen, you, if you don’t want me to sock you, don’t laugh. What’s more, if you ever tell anybody one word about this night and make both of us the joke of the port, I— bigawd, I’ll murder you in cold blood and throw your carcass to the pigs.”

“All right by me, buddy,” Moulton said; “if you take it that way I’ll keep quiet. But I think it’s the best joke I ever heard.” As could be seen from the contortion of his face he did all in his power to keep from exploding with laughter.

Dobbs looked at him and said: “Brother, you are warned. Don’t play any tricks on me. Even the faintest smile will cost you a smashed nose.”

It was at this moment that the Indian thought it proper to speak up. He did not accept defeat. So he said: “Por Madre SantIsima and by all the saints in heaven, senores, this is not the tiger. But around us last night was un tigre real y muy grande, it was a royal tiger of the biggest sort.”

“Aw, shut up!” Dobbs interrupted him.

“You, caballeros, may think what you may. But I know mi tierra, my country where I was born, and I know well what is a tiger and what is not. I can smell it. Besides I saw his glowing greenish eyes glaring at us. And they were not the eyes of a burro.” The Indian sure was smarter than the two Americans; he knew how to stick to a good story and to avoid being laughed at.

The big village of which the Indians had spoken last night was hardly fifteen minutes away.

“Now, didn’t I tell you last night that these Indians don’t lie?” Dobbs asked when they reached the village.

“But they said it was only a short hour’s distance.”

“Well, that’s just the matter with these people, they have no conception of time and distance. They say it is one hour away, but they don’t tell you if they mean an hour run by a Tarnhumare, or walked or crawled, or an hour’s ride on a good horse. That’s what you have to figure out when an Indian peasant tells you how far away the next town is. You can’t blame those Indians of last night. They told us the truth in their own way, and that makes all the difference.”

In this village the three found fine hospitality. They had breakfast, consisting of tortillas, black beans, and tea brewed from lemon leaves.

The same day they came to the first oilcamp. No work.

The manager told them that they might stay there a day or two and have their meals, but more he could not do for them.

“I am afraid, boys,” he added, “there is no camp around here where work may be had. Tell you a secret, believe it or not, but I’m an oldtimer and I know a cat when I see one, and I tell you I’ve got the feeling oil is going on the rocks hereabouts, maybe in the whole goddamned republic. Guess we’ll have to go back home to good old Oklahoma and grow beans once more. It’s slacking down in all the camps and with all the companies. Good times are over, so it seems. The war came to its goddamned end too early, that’s the trouble; that’s what I think. There’s more oil than the world will ever need in the next ten thousand years. Nobody wants to buy oil any more, and if anybody buys, damn knock me cold, he offers you flat two bits for the barrel, take it or go to hell. I know oil and I know when the fat is gone. All right, sit down and push your spoon between your teeth. Don’t worry, the boys will stand for what you eat today, and tomorrow too, if you want to stay.”

The Indian went to his own people, to the peons of the camp, where he stuffed his belly full. The peons had their own kitchen, managed by one whom they seemed to trust better than the two Chinese who were in charge of the catering for the Americans.

Next morning Dobbs and Moulton left to try another camp. The Indian was again with them. They could not shake him off. His excuse was: “I need work, senores, but I cannot go alone through the jungles, the tigers would get me. But these terrible beasts won’t do anything to me if I am with gringos. Tigers are horribly afraid of gringos, but un pobre Mexicano is eaten by them just like nothing, going alone through the jungle.”

Dobbs and Moulton threw stones at him to show him that he was not welcome. It looked somewhat awkward for two Americans looking for work and a free meal to bring along an Indian with them. Rough as they might treat that poor man to induce him to stay behind, he was stoical. He followed them like a dog, not minding stones thrown at him nor the promise of a sound beating. He would even have taken the beating if he could have gained by it the right to walk behind them. The two finally let him have his way. So he was the winner after all.

They reached another camp. It was the same story there. No work, and the outlook far from promising. The field manager had also the feeling that oil was no longer easy money, only he had another explanation to offer—that the new oil laws of the republic were to blame for the dying of the business. “That hell of a government is confiscating all the oil, declaring all oil land the property of the nation. Why, for devil’s sake, didn’t they think of that fifty years ago when we had no money stuck in it? The whole world goes Bolshevik, and I don’t care a worn-out step-in either. I’ll go Bolshevik too, first thing when I see it coming; that’s what I’m going to do, blaze my time. Sit down and fill up the ol’ tank to the rim. I got word from H.Q. we are closing down. Likely next week I can go along with you, pushing camps for a meal.”

Having made five camps and swallowed five different stories about the lack of work and the causes of the oil business breathing its last, both Moulton and Dobbs decided that it would be a waste of time and hard work to go any farther. In two camps they had already met men coming back from other camps who had lost jobs which they had held for years.

“Best thing for us to do,” Moulton said, “is to go back where we came from. In town there’s a better chance than here to get work and to meet somebody who is looking for men for rigging a new camp. Around here are the old established fields. There’s no chance here. Better look for new fields.”

“There’s something in what you say,” Dobbs answered. “I was told that to the north of the river, near the Altamira section, there might be something doing very soon. Guess you’re right. Let’s hoof back.”

So one day, late in the afternoon, they arrived in the port again. Moulton said: “Here we are. Now everybody for himself once more.”

With these words their partnership was broken up.

While they had been away, no change had taken place in town. The same fellows were hanging around the curbstones and pushing every man that came to town from the fields for a drink, a good steak, a gamble, and a girl. Not one of these curbstonepolishers had left for better places. And exactly the same boys that held the corner of the Southern Hotel and the entrance to the bank on the ground floor were doing exactly the same as they had done last week, last month, last year perhaps. That is to say, waiting to be taken to the Madrid Bar or the Louisiana to help somebody with money to get drunk. They all knew the prayers to say at the right time and in the right way and to the right gods. So they spent life, strength, and will-power.

Dobbs did not feel sorry for having gone out to the camps to look for work. It was worth the trouble to know that out of town jobs were just as rare as in town. He had no longer to worry about having missed his chances in life or having overlooked opportunity knocking at the back door.

One morning, strolling along the freight depot, he was hailed by the manager of an American agency for agricultural machinery. They were unloading machinery and he was asked if he would like to lend a hand for a day or two. He accepted and was offered four pesos a day. The natives who worked at the same job got only two pesos.

The work was hard and his knuckles peeled off ten times a day. Anyway the four pesos were welcome money. After five days the job was finished and he had to go.

A few days later, standing at the ferry that crosses the river to the Panuco depot and wondering if he might get a chance to go to that town for a change, five men came running along to catch the ferry that was just about to make off.

One of the men, square-shouldered and rather bulky, caught a glimpse of Dobbs, stopped, and yelled: “What you looking for? Job?”

“Yep. Got one for me?”

“Come here. Hurry, the ferry is making off. I’ve got a job for you if you want to go. Hard work, but good pay. Ever worked at rigging up a camp?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got a contract to rig a camp. The hell of it is I’m short a hand; one dirty son of a bitch has kicked out and left me flat. Maybe malaria, or what the hell do I know, or perhaps it’s a goddamned skirt that’s holding him. I can’t wait for that guy to show up. All right, you’re hired.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Eight bucks American a day. Grub goes off on your expense. Figure the Chinese cook will charge one dollar eighty a day. You make six bucks a day clean. Hell, don’t stand and guffaw; come along.”

Only ten minutes ago Dobbs would have run after a job for two dollars a day like a hungry cat after a fat cockroach. Now he looked as though he expected an embrace of gratitude for taking the job offered.

“Come on or go to the devil,” the contractor cried. “You have to come the way you are; there’s no time to get your things. The ferry doesn’t wait, nor the train either. And if we don’t go right this minute we can’t make the train.”

Without waiting for a reply he grasped Dobbs by the sleeve and dragged him on the ferry.

Pat McCormick, the contractor, was an oldtimer. Before he had come down here, he had worked in Texas fields and afterwards in Oklahoma. He had come down here before the war, before there was anything that looked like a coming boom. There wasn’t a job connected with oil at which he had not tried his hand. He had been teamster, truck-driver, time-keeper, driller, tool-dresser, pumpman, storeman—anything that had come his way he had tackled. In recent years he had found out that there is more money in rigging up camps by contract—so much for the camp ready to start drilling. He had acquired an excellent eye for judging the job. He could look over a lot in the jungle and name his price for the job in such a well-calculated way that the company thought they were buying cheap when in fact he made a large profit on every contract. His trick was to get good and efficient labor cheap, cheaper than any company could get it. A company cannot hire workers with backpattings and cajoling, making them believe they are being taken on out of pity. Pat knew how to play the good fellow, even the Bolshevik comrade, to catch his men cheap. He could curse the big capitalist companies and their unscrupulous shareholders better than a Communist speaker when he wanted to softsoap good workers. According to him, he never came out of his contract with any profit; he always lost his good money, so hard-earned in better times, and he took contracts, he said, only because he could not see men who wanted to work suffer from unemployment and starvation. In camp he played the good fellow-worker, joking and - friendly. The whole job he handled as if it were a sort of co_operative enterprise in which all joined for the general good. He told how excellent Communism is; if he had his way, the United States and all South America would become a paradise for the Communists tomorrow.

American boys he couldn’t catch so easily with these ideas. Americans knew this sort of Pat too well to fall for his cooperative contracts. He took on Americans only when he could procure no others. Most welcome were the newly arrived Hunks, Czechs, Poles, Germans, Italians, fellows who had heard back home the stories of men working in the Mexican oil-fields and earning from thirty to fifty dollars a day almost without bending a finger. Having arrived in the republic, they learned during the first week that such fantastic wages were as rare as are the wages a bricklayer gets in Chicago, according to the fairy-tales circulating in Europe. After these men are here two months or so they kneel down before any contractor who offers them five dollars a day, and if he offers them eight, they worship him as they never worship the Almighty, and the contractor may do with them what he likes. After six months without a job they are ready to accept whatever is offered.

Dobbs would not have fallen for the doctrines of Pat McCormick had he tried them on him. His economic condition left him no choice. He was in his way as glad at landing this job as were the Hunks.

The cooperative arrangement made it obligatory for all hands to work eighteen hours out of twenty—four, every day as long as the contract lasted. There was no extra pay. Eight dollars was the pay for the working-day, and the length of the working-day was decided by Pat. There was no rest on Sunday. The Mexican hands were protected by their law. They could not be worked a minute longer than eight hours or Pat would have landed in jail and been kept there until he paid ten thousand pesos for breaking the labor law.

A sort of road had been cut out of the jungle so that in very dry weather the trucks could come right on the lot where the camp was to be rigged up. Mexican peons, having been sent a few weeks ahead by Pat, had the camp-site cleared when the rigbuilders arrived.

Eight dollars a day looked like a lot of money when Dobbs had nothing in his stomach, but he learned that eight dollars a day may be meager pay for certain jobs. The heat was never less than one hundred degrees in the open, where all the work had to be done, surrounded by jungle. He was pestered by the ten thousand sorts of insects and reptiles the jungle breeds. He thought a hundred times a day that his eyes would burn away from the heat above and around him. No breeze could reach the men at work here. Carrying lumber, hoisting it high up for the derrick to be built, and hanging often for minutes like monkeys with only one hand on a beam, or holding on with one leg snake-fashion around a rope and grasping heavy boards swinging out that had to be hauled in to be riveted or bolted, he risked his life twenty times every day, and all for eight dollars.

Pat allowed no rest except for a few hours’ sleep. Until eleven at night they worked by the light of gas-lanterns, and at five in the morning they were already hard at work again. “We have to use the cool morning hours, boys,” Pat would say when he waked them. No sooner had they gulped down their coffee at meal-time and settled to pick their teeth leisurely than Pat would get restless and hustle them up: “Boys, sure it’s hot. I know. We’re in the tropics. It’s hot in Texas sometimes too. Hell knows it’s not my fault. I have to finish that goddamn contract. The sooner we’re through, the sooner we’ll be out of this hell here, and we’ll go back to town and have cold drinks. Hi, Harry, get the Mexicans, those damn lazy rascals, to unload the steamengine, and start to adjust the parts. Jump at it. And, Slick, you and Dobbs get the drum up the derrick and have it anchored. I’ll see after the cabins. Hurry, hurry up and get busy.”

Pat McCormick sure made a pile with these contracts. He was paid well by the companies for the rigging contracts. The companies allowed fair wages and decent working-hours for all, but the sooner Pat could finish the job, the more was left over to go into his pockets, for he had no other expenses than the wages he paid out. To drain the last ounce of work out of his men he promised them a bonus if inside of a certain number of days the job were finished. This promise of a bonus was his whip, since he knew that a real slave-driver’s whip would not do with workers today. He won; he won always. He rigged up two camps in the same time other contractors would have rigged barely one.

“All right, boys, put all your bones into that job. You’ll be with me again on my next contract. I’ve already got three almost for sure coming my way. Get going.” This was another whip he used, promising his slaves future jobs provided they worked the way he wanted them to.

When the camp was rigged, the gang went back to town. The Mexican peons returned to their near-by villages.

Said Dobbs: “Now what about the pay? I haven’t seen a buck yet from you, Pat.”

“What’s the hurry, pal? You’ll get your dough all right, don’t you worry a bit. I won’t run away with it. You’re again on my next contract I have with the Mex Gulf. Sure you are.”

“Now look here, Pat,” said Dobbs, “I haven’t got a cent even to buy me a new shirt. I look like the worst bum.”

“Now don’t you cry out for mother here,” Pat tried to quiet him. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have thirty per cent of your pay. That’s all I can do for you. And don’t you tell the others.”

Dobbs learned that none of the other boys had received his wages in full. Two who were eager to be with Pat on the next contract again had asked very humbly “at least a little, please, Mr. Pat,” and they were awarded five per cent, so that they could have a few meals; they had not eaten since they had returned to town.

Within a few days Dobbs had heard many tales about Pat McCormick. Pat was known not to pay cash to his men if he could avoid it. This was one of the reasons that he seldom had an American with him on a contract. Only foreigners and halfbaked Americans fell for him. Most of them were glad to go with him any time he hollered. They had their meals because Pat paid the Chinese cook for catering as advance on the wages for the boys. And usually he paid something in cash when the boys he owed were running after him and crying that they had no money for eats and for beds.

One afternoon when Dobbs was drinking a glass of coffee at the bar of the Spanish cafe on the plaza, Curtin, passing by, saw him and stepped up.

“I might as well have coffee too. What you doing, Dobble?”

Curtin, who was from California, had worked for Pat with Dobbs.

“Did you get your money?” Dobbs asked.

“Forty per cent is all I’ve squeezed out of that bandit so far.”

“I’d like to know one thing—if he has collected the pay for the contract—that’s what I would like to know,” Dobbs said.

“Rather difficult to find out,” answered Curtin. “The companies are often a bit slow in paying the contracts. Often they are short of ready cash, since the funds they have here in the republic are all taken up for drilling-expenses or for paying out options unexpectedly acquired.”

“You’ve got no idea, Cuts, for which company the contract was?”

“Not even a touch. Could just as well have been for an outsider, a private party that wants to try his luck in oil. What do I know?” Curtin said.

For a whole week Dobbs and Curtin had been running after Pat. He could not be found anywhere. At the Bristol Hotel, where he usually lived, the clerk knew nothing about him.

“He’s hiding out somewhere to get away with the money,” Curtin thought. “He knows that we can’t hang around here all the time. So he waits for the moment that we take another job; then he comes out of his hole.”

Dobbs, after another gulp of coffee, said: “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that guy uses our money to speculate with in some new well. He’s got tips all the way to the Alamo and to the Ebano sections.”

This idea made Curtin hot. “That guy’s going to learn something from me. Just let me catch him.”

At that very instant Pat McCormick strolled across the plaza, with a Mexican dame at his side who was flashing a new dress, elegant shoes, and a new colorful silk umbrella.

“What do you think of that?” Dobbs asked. “Rags paid for with our hard-earned money.”

“Let’s get him, right now,” Curtin hollered, “and let’s get him hard this time.”

As quick as the devil Curtin was at Pat’s side, and with him was Dobbs.

Curtin caught Pat by the shirt-sleeve, for he was wearing no coat.

“How are you, boys? Want a drink?” Pat tried to be friendly.

Then he noticed that these two men were deadly serious, so he said to the dame: “Perdone me, shiucksy dear, mi vida, I’ve got some business to attend to with these two gentlemen. I’ll take you over to that cafe. You wait there for me a while, honey.”

He steered her to the colonnades of the Light and Power building, ordered a sundae for her, patted her on the back, and said: “Just wait here, mi dulce, I won’t be long, only a few minutes, no mas que unos minutos, sure.”

Dobbs and Curtin waited only a few feet away.

Pat came strolling down the few steps and down the street along the plaza as though he were alone. Seeing that the two fellows did not leave him, but kept close by his side, he halted before the W.U. cable office and said: “Let’s have a drink, it’s on me.”

“Okay,” Curtin gave in. “Let’s have one. But you understand that’s not why we’re after you.”

They stepped into the Madrid cantina, and Pat ordered three shots of Scotch.

“Make mine a Hennessy,” Dobbs said to the bartender.

“Make it two,” from Curtin.

“Scotch is still good enough for me.” Pat repeated his order for himself.

When the drinks were before them Pat asked: “Now, what do you want? Sure, I take you on my next contract. Don’t you worry.”

“Don’t play innocent; you know what we want.” Dobbs came to the point.

“Look here, to make it short and plain,” Curtin pulled his drink closer, “where is our money? You won’t get away this time, I can tell you that. We worked harder than nigger slaves, you know that. Now we’ve waited three weeks for our pay. Let’s have it, and right here and now and no mebbe.”

The drinks were gone.

“Three habaneros,” ordered Pat. “No, Chuchu, make them big, make’m schooners.”

“Habaneros? Playing the miser, mister? Won’t do,” Dobbs sneered. But he shot in the drink just the same.

“Now, look here, boys,” Pat tried his game. “Fact is I haven’t got that goddamned contract paid yet myself. If I had the money, I’d pay you the first thing. You know that. I’ll take you both on my next contract, you can count on that. Sure shot. It’ll go through by Monday and we can set out Friday. Glad to have you boys with me again. Well, here’s mud in your eyes. Shoot.”

Curtin was not impressed by this soaping. He said: “Good of you, Pat, to take us with you again. But don’t you get the idea you can honey-smear us with this likker and with your oiled tongue. We know those speeches of yours by heart. They don’t work any more. Come across with the smackers, and no stalling either. Get me?”

“Damned son of a dog, get the money or you won’t leave this joint alive! Geecries, I am sick of that swashing of yours!” Dobbs yelled, and tackled him with his two hands and bent him hard against the bar.

“Be quiet, gentlemen, quiet please, this is an orderly place,” the bartender butted in. He didn’t mean it. He just wanted to show that he had something to say and that, should anything serious happen, he could claim that he had tried his best to calm the men. He took up a rag and wiped the bar clean. Then he broke in: “The same, gentlemen?” Without waiting for their answer he filled up the good-sized glasses with the golden habanero. Then he lighted a cigarette, put his elbows on the bar, and read El Mundo.

Pat could easily have licked Dobbs, and also Cumin, one at a time. To try to lick both of them at the same time would have been too costly for him. Since he had a new contract waiting for him, he couldn’t afford anything beyond two black eyes and a few bruises. He could see that Dobbs and Curtin were in a state of mind which would make them forget to fight it out in a decent way, and that he had every chance to land in the hospital and stay there for weeks, while the contract would go to someone else.

Realizing that it was the cheapest way out for him to pay them their money, he said: “Tell you, boys, what I’ll do. I gave you thirty per cent. I’ll give you another thirty now, or I reckon I can make it forty. The balance let’s say the middle of next week.”

“Nothing doing next week,” Curtin insisted. “Now and here every cent you owe us, or I swear you won’t go out of here. At least not alive.”

Pat drew up his lips in an ugly manner. “You are thieves and highwaymen. I should have known this before. I wouldn’t trust you to sleep in the same cabin with me, or I might wake up in the morning and find myself murdered and robbed. Take you again On one of my jobs? Not on your knees. If I saw you dying in the street, I wouldn’t even kick you to give you the last grace. Here, take your dough and get out of my sight.”

“Aw, shut up,” Dobbs shouted, “we know your church sermons. Get the money and be quick about it.”

While Pat was talking he must have counted the money in his pocket very accurately because now with one jerk he brought out a bunch of dollar bills, crumpled them in his fist, and banged them upon the bar. “There is the money,” he said. Then he winked at the bartender, threw a handful of pesos on the bar, and bellowed: “That’s for the drinks. I don’t accept drinks paid for by skunks. Keep the damn change and buy you a hotel.”

With this he tipped his hat back on his neck and left.