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Others in khaki breeches fresh from the government laundry in Cristobal and the ubiquitous leather leggings of the "Zoner" were off to ride out the day in the jungles; still others set resolutely forth afoot into tropical paths; a dozen or so, gleaned one by one from all the towns along the line were even on their way to church.
Yet there is something, perhaps, in the popular belief that even northern energy evaporates in this tropical land. It is not exactly that; but certainly many a "Zoner" wakes up day by day with ambitious plans, and just drifts the day through with the fine weather.
Soon came the day, June seventeenth, when I must go back across the Isthmus to clear up the last threads of my existence as a "Zoner." Chiefly for old times' sake I dropped off at Empire. But it was not the same Empire of the census. Almost all the old crowd was gone; one by one they had "kissed the Zone good-by."
On the cross is his new number; for officially a "Zoner" is always a number; that of the brass-check he wears as a watch-charm alive, that at the head of his grave when his canal-digging is over.
So "Mitch," like many another "Zoner," was planning to buy with the savings of his $210 a month "when the job is done" a chunk of land on some sunny slope of a southern state and settle down for an easy descent through old age. There was nothing objectionable about "Mitch" except perhaps his preference for late-hour poker.
Then bit by bit some men just men without any qualifying adjective whatever began to get mixed up in the matter; one after another army lieutenants were detailed to help the thing along, until by and by they got the right army lieutenant and the right men and the Z. P. grew to what it is to-day, not the love, perhaps, but the pride of every "Zoner" whose name cannot be found on some old "blotter."
There runs this story on the Zone, vouched for by several: A "Zoner" called an I.C.C. steward and complained that his waiter did not serve him reasonably: "Well," sneered the steward, "I guess you didn't come across?" "Come across! Why, damn you, I suppose you're getting your rake-off too?" "I certainly am," replied the steward; "What do you think I'm down here for, me health?"
The "Zoner" has his little troubles of course, the servant problem, for instance, for the Jamaican housemaid is a thorn in any side. Now and then we hear some one wailing, "Oh, it gets so tiresome! Everybody's shoveling dirt or talking about the other fellow." But he knows it isn't strictly true when he says it and that he is kicking chiefly to keep in practice.
He chose him a hiding-place as near as possible to the locality of the strange manifestation. For half the morning he sweltered and swore without having seen or heard the slightest thing of interest to an old "Zoner." A dirt-train rumbled by now and then. He strove to amuse himself by watching the innocent games of two little Spanish switch-boys not far away.
A fine piece of luck was this for a man who had scarcely fired a shot since, aged ten, he brought down with an air-gun an occasional sparrow at three cents a head. We took the afternoon train to Mt. Hope on the edge of Colon and trooped away to a little plain behind "Monkey Hill," the last resting-place of many a "Zoner."
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