Part 7 (1/2)

”Not at all, senor, but you must come by boat. The Pope himself cannot cross this bridge.”

It would have been unkind to throw them into the river, so we returned to a cl.u.s.ter of huts on the Mexican bank. Before it drowsed a half-dozen ancient and leaky boats. But here again were grave international formalities to be arranged. A Mexican official led us into one of the huts and set down laboriously in a ledger our names, professions, bachelordoms, and a ma.s.s of even more personal information.

”You are Catholic, senor,” he queried with poised pen, eying me suspiciously.

”No, senor.”

”Ah, Protestant,” he observed, starting to set down that conclusion.

”Tampoco.”

There came a hitch in proceedings. Plainly there was no precedent to follow in considering the application of so non-existent a being for permission to leave Mexico. The official smoked a cigarette pensively and idly turned over the leaves of the ledger.

”Sera ateo,” said a man behind him, swelling his chest with pride at his extraordinary intelligence.

”That doesn't fill the bill either,” I replied, ”nor any other single word I can think of.”

But the s.p.a.ce for this particular item of information was cramped. We finally compromised on ”Sin religion,” and I was allowed to leave the country. A boatman tugged and poled some twenty minutes before we could scramble up the steep, jungle-grown bank beyond. At the top of it were scattered a dozen childish looking soldiers in the most unkempt and disheveled array of rags and lack thereof a cartoonist could picture. They formed in a hollow square about us and steered us toward the ”comandancia,” a few yards beyond. This was a thatched mud hut with a lame bench and a row of aged muskets in the shade along its wall. Another bundle of rags emerged in his most pompous, authoritative demeanor, and ordered us to open our baggage. Merely by accident I turned my rucksack face down on the bench, so there is no means of knowing whether the kodak and weapon in the front pockets of it would have been confiscated or held for ransom, had they been seen. I should be inclined to answer in the affirmative. In the hut our pa.s.sports were carefully if unintelligently examined, and we were again fully catalogued. Estrada Cabrera follows with great precision the movements of foreigners within his boundaries.

In the sandy jungle town of Ayutla just beyond, two of us multiplied our wealth many times over without the least exertion. That Dakin did not also was only due to the unavoidable fact that he had no multiplicand to set over the multiplier. I threw down Mexican money to the value of $8.30 and had thrust upon me a ma.s.sive roll of $150. The only drawback was that the bills had led so long and maltreated a life that their face value had to be accepted chiefly on faith, for a ten differed from a one only as one Guatemalan soldier differs from his fellows, in that each was much more tattered and torn than the other. After all there is a delicate courtesy in a government's supplying an illiterate population with illegible money; no doubt experience knows other distinguis.h.i.+ng marks, such as the particular breeds of microbes that is accustomed to inhabit each denomination; for even inexperience could easily recognize that each was so infested. I mistake in saying this was the only drawback. There was another. The wanderer who drops into a hut for a banana and a bone-dry biscuit, washed down with a small bottle of luke-warm fizzling water, hears with a pang akin to heart-failure a languid murmur of ”Four dollars, senor,” in answer to his request for the bill. It is not easy to get accustomed to hearing such sums mentioned in so casual a manner.

A little narrow-gage ”railway” crawls off through the jungle beyond Ayutla, but the train ran on it yesterday and to-morrow. To-day there was nothing to do but swing on our loads and strike off southward. The morning air was fresh and the eastern jungle wall threw heavy shade for a time. But that time soon came to an end and I plodded on under a sun that multiplied the load on my back by at least the monetary multiple of Guatemala. Ems and Dakin quickly demonstrated a deep dislike to tropical tramping, though both laid claim to the degree of T. T. T. conferred on ”gringo” rovers in Central America. I waited for them several times in vain and finally pushed on to the sweltering, heat-pulsating town of Pahapeeta, where every hut sold bottled firewater and a diminutive box of matches cost a dollar. Gra.s.s huts tucked away in dense groves along the route were inhabited by all but naked brown people, kindly disposed, so it required no exertion, toward a pa.s.sing stranger. Before noon the jungle opened out upon an ankle-deep sea of sand, across which I plowed under a blazing sun that set even the bundle on my back dripping with sweat.

But at least there was a broad river on the farther side of it that looked inviting enough to reward a whole day of tramping. The place was called Vado Ancho--the ”Wide Wade”; though that was no longer necessary, for the toy railroad that operated to-morrow and yesterday had brought a bridge with it. I scrambled my way along the dense-grown farther bank, and found a place to descend to a big shady rock just fitted for a siesta after a swim. Barely had I begun to undress, however, when three brown and barefoot grown-up male children, partly concealed in astounding collections of rags, two with ancient muskets and the third with a stiff piece of wire, tore through the bushes and surrounded me with menacing att.i.tudes.

”What are you doing here?” cried the least naked.

”Why the idle curiosity?”

”You are ordered to come to the comandancia.”

I scrambled back up the bank and plodded across another sand patch toward a small collection of jungle huts, the three ”soldiers” crowding close about me and wearing the air of brave heroes who had saved their country from a great conspiracy. Lazy natives lay grinning in the shade as I pa.s.sed. One of the lop-shouldered, thatched huts stood on a hillock above the rest. When we had sweated up to this, a military order rang out in a cracked treble and some twenty brown scarecrows lined up in the shade of the eaves in a Guatemalan idea of order. About half of them held what had once been muskets; the others were armed with what I had hitherto taken for lengths of pilfered telegraph wire, but which now on closer inspection proved to be ramrods. Thus each arm made only two armed men, whereas a bit of ingenuity might have made each serve three or four; by dividing the stocks and barrels, for instance. The tatterdemalion of the treble fiercely demanded my pa.s.sport, while the ”army” quickly degenerated into a ragged rabble loafing in the shade.

I started to lay my rucksack on the bench along the wall, but one of the fellows sprang up with a snarl and flourished his ramrod threateningly. It was evidently a _lese militarismus_ worthy of capital punishment for a civilian to pa.s.s between a pole supporting the eaves and the mud wall of the building. I was forced to stand in the blazing suns.h.i.+ne and claw out my papers. They were in English, but the caricature of an officer concealed his ignorance before his fellows by pretending to read them and at length gave me a surly permission to withdraw. No wonder Central America is a favorite _locale_ for comic opera librettos.

I descended again to the river for a swim, but had not yet stretched out for a siesta when there came pus.h.i.+ng through the undergrowth three more ”soldiers,” this time all armed with muskets.

”What's up now?”

”The colonel wants to see you in the comandancia.”

”But I just saw your famous colonel.”

”No, that was only the teniente.”

When I reached the hilltop again, dripping with the heat of noonday, I was permitted to sit on an adobe brick in the sacred shade. The colonel was sleeping. He recovered from that tropical ailment in time, and a rumor came floating out that he was soon to honor us with his distinguished presence. The soldiers made frantic signs to me to rise to my feet. Like Kingslake before the Turkish pasha, I felt that the honor of my race and my own haughty dignity were better served by insisting on social equality even to a colonel, and stuck doggedly to the adobe brick. The rumor proved a false alarm anyway. No doubt the great man had turned over in his sleep.

By and by the lieutenant came to say the commander was in his office, and led the way there. At the second door of the mud-and-straw building he paused to add in an awe-struck whisper:

”Take off your hat and wait until he calls you in.”