bar, Phil bought five dollars' worth of drinks, threw down a five-dollar bill, and got back five dollars – Mex.
The proprietor, a large and jovial boniface, pulled off this fiscal miracle with the greatest good humor and then, having invited them to partake of a very exquisite mixture of his own invention, propped himself upon his elbows across the bar and inquired with an ingenuous smile:
"Well, which away are you boys traveling, if I may ask?"
"Oh, down below a ways," answered De Lancey, who always constituted himself the board of strategy. "Just rambling around a little – how's the country around here now?"
"Oh, quiet, quiet!" assured their host. "These Mexicans don't like the cold weather much – they would freeze, you know, if it was not for that zarape which they wind about them so!"
He made a motion as of a native wrapping his entire wardrobe about his neck and smiled, and De Lancey knew that he was no Mexican. And yet that soft "which away" of his betrayed a Spanish tongue.
"Ah, excuse me," he said, taking quick advantage of his guess, "but from the way you pronounce that word 'zarape' I take it that you speak Spanish."
"No one better," replied the host, smiling pleasurably at being taken at his true worth, "since I was born in the city of Burgos, where they speak the true Castilian. It is a different language, believe me, from this bastard Mexican tongue. And do you speak Spanish also?" he inquired, falling back into the staccato of Castile.
"No, indeed!" protested De Lancey in a very creditable imitation; "nothing but a little Mexican, to get along with the natives. My friend and I are mining men, passing through the country, and we speak the best we can. How is this district here for work along our line?"
"None better!" cried the Spaniard, shaking his finger emphatically. "It is of the best, and, believe me, my friend, we should be glad to have you stop with us. The country down below is a little dangerous – not now, perhaps, but later, when the warm weather comes on.
"But in Fortuna – no! Here we are on the railroad; the camp is controlled by Americans; and because so many have left the country the Mexicans will sell their prospects cheap.
"Then again, if you develop a mine near-by, it will be very easy to sell it – and if you wish to work it, that is easy, too. I am only the proprietor of the hotel, but if you can use my poor services in any way I shall be very happy to please you. A room? One of the best! And if you stay a week or more I will give you the lowest rate."
They passed up the winding stairs and down a long corridor, at the end of which the proprietor showed them into a room, throwing open the outer doors and shutters to let them see the view from the window.
"Here is a little balcony," he said, stepping outside, "where you can sit and look down on the plaza. We have the band and music when the weather is fine, and you can watch the pretty girls from here. But you have been in Mexico – you know all that!" And he gave Phil a roguish dig.
"Bien my frien', I am glad to meet you – " He held out his hand in welcome and De Lancey gave his in return. "My name," he continued, "is Juan de Dios Brachamonte y Escalon; but with these Americans that does not go, as you say, so in general they call me Don Juan.
"There is something about that name – I do not know – that makes the college boys laugh. Perhaps it is that poet, Byron, who wrote so scandalously about us Spaniards, but certainly he knew nothing of our language, for he rimes Don Juan with 'new one' and 'true one'! Still, I read part of that poem and it is, in places, very interesting – yes, very interesting – but 'Don Joo-an'! Hah!"
He threw up his hand in despair and De Lancey broke into a jollying laugh.
"Well, Don Juan," he cried, "I'm glad to meet you. My name is Philip De Lancey, and my pardner here is Mr. Hooker. Shake hands with him, Don Juan de Dios! But certainly a man so devoutly named could never descend to reading much of Don Joo-an!"
"Ah, no," protested Don Juan, rolling his dark eyes and smiling rakishly, "not moch – only the most in-teresting passages!"
He saluted and disappeared in a roar of laughter, and De Lancey turned triumphantly on his companion, a self-satisfied smile upon his lips.
"Aha!" he said; "you see? That's what five dollars' worth of booze will do in opening up the way. Here's our old friend Don Juan willing, nay, anxious, to help us all he can – he sees I'm a live wire and wants to keep me around. Pretty soon we'll get him feeling good and he'll tell us all he knows. Don't you never try to make me sign the pledge again, brother – a few shots just gets my intellect to working right and I'm crafty as a fox.
"Did you notice that coup I made – asking him if he was a Spaniard? There's nothing in the world makes a Spaniard so mad as to take him for a Mexican – on the other hand, nothing makes him your friend for life like recognizing him for a blue-blooded Castilian. Now maybe our old friend Don Juan has got a few drops of Moorish blood in his veins – to put it politely, but – " he raised his tenor voice and improvised —
"Jest because my hair is curly
Dat's no reason to call me 'Shine'!"
"No," agreed Bud, feeling cautiously of the walls, "and jest because you're happy is no reason for singing so loud, neither. These here partitions are made of inch boards, covered with paper – do you get that? Well, then, considering who's probably listening, it strikes me that Mr. Brachamonte is the real thing in Spanish gentlemen; and I've heard that all genuwine Spaniards have their hair curly, jest like a – huh?"
But De Lancey, made suddenly aware of his indiscretion, was making all kinds of exaggerated signs for silence, and Bud stopped with a slow, good-natured smile.
"S-s-st!" hissed De Lancey, touching his finger to his lips. "Don't say it – somebody might hear you!"
"All right," agreed Bud; "and don't you say it, either. I hate to knock, Phil," he added, "but sometimes I think the old man was right when he said you talk too much."
"Psst!" chided De Lancey, shaking his finger like a Mexican. Tiptoeing softly over to Bud, he whispered in his ear: "S-s-st, I can hear the feller in the next room – shaving himself!"
Laughing heartily at this joke, they went downstairs for supper.
VI
If the Eagle Tail mine had been located in Arizona – or even farther down in Old Mexico – the method of jumping the claim would have been delightfully simple.
The title had lapsed, and the land had reverted to the government. All it needed in Arizona was a new set of monuments, a location notice at the discovery shaft, a pick and shovel thrown into the hole, and a few legal formalities.
But in Mexico it is different. Not that the legal formalities are lacking – far from it – but the whole theory of mines and mining is different. In Mexico a mining title is, in a way, a lease, a concession from the general government giving the concessionaire the right to work a certain piece of ground and to hold it as long as he pays a mining tax of three dollars an acre per year.
But no final papers or patents are ever issued, the possession of the surface of the ground does not go with the right to mine beneath it, and in certain parts of Mexico no foreigner can hold title to either mines or land.
A prohibited or frontier zone, eighty kilometers in width, lies along the international boundary line, and in that neutral zone no foreigner can denounce a mining claim and no foreign corporation can acquire a title to one. The Eagle Tail was just inside the zone.
But – there is always a "but" when you go to a good lawyer – while for purposes of war and national safety foreigners are not allowed to hold land along the line, they are at perfect liberty to hold stock in Mexican corporations owning property within the prohibited zone; and – here is where the graft comes in – they may even hold title in their own name if they first obtain express permission from the chief executive of the republic.
Not having any drag with the chief executive, and not caring to risk their title to the whims of succeeding administrations, Hooker and De Lancey, upon the advice of a mining lawyer in Gadsden,