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When we reached the station, in the hottest portion of the day, the valley seemed to glow; all looked hot and desolate. There were no mozos to help in carrying baggage, though the town was fully half a mile from the station, behind bare, hot, sandy hills. It is one of the poorest and meanest of the Mexican towns. A dreary plaza is surrounded by miserable adobe, or adobe-plastered, buildings.
Two of these rode off at once and disappeared in a shallow quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued the man from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and the third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use. We had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling.
The mozos, their yellow faces gray, were huddled in a corner, clucking like dismayed fowl at the approach of a storm, but a word from Billie sent them scurrying for the store of guns and ammunition.
Learning from the old man that there was a large and better house a little further on, we relieved him of our company, and crossing a river, reached a cattle hacienda owned by a very stout native named Blandon, who made us welcome. The house was a large one; and there were a number of mozos and women-servants about.
At three the mozos with their burdens arrived, and felt it very hard that we kept our promise of paying nothing for their service. For a day we rested at Cuicatlan to make arrangements for a trip to the land of the Chochos. We complained bitterly to the jefe politico regarding the miserable animals which had been supplied us for our last journey, and demanded something better.
The Desert Rat gazed after him. "God bless your crude untutored soul, you best of mozos" he murmured. "You have one virtue that most white men lack you'll stay put and be faithful to your salt. And now, just to be on the safe side, I'll make my will and write out a detailed account of this entire affair in case." For half an hour he scribbled haltingly in an old russet-covered note- book.
In every coterie of water-carriers, or mozos de cordel, there will be one found innocent enough to believe that the Magi are coming to Madrid that night, and that a proper respect to their rank requires that they must be met at the city gate.
We'll set a spell out here, it's hotter'n blazes inside. Hey, Luis! Juan!" Two mozos scurried from the veranda in response to the bull-throated roar, and Thode found himself seated opposite his host with another tall glass before him and a slender black cigar between his fingers. "Great country for you folks, down here," Hallock remarked.
The tables were crowded, smoke hung in low-banked clouds below the flaring oil lamps, and the glittering bar at the far end of the room was phalanxed three deep by a jostling, good-natured throng. Soft-footed, wooden-faced Chinese mozos glided about, and the whining monotone of the croupier came from a distant corner.
He'll knife you if he thinks you have five dollars in your belt, and the bar-room is half under water anyway. Or you can take a cot in my shack, if you like, and I'll board and lodge you for two pesos a day that's one dollar in our money. And if you are going up country," he went on, "I can fit you out with mules and mozos and everything you want, from canned meats to an escort of soldiers.
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