“Now, please, tell your friends when they come over here to roll up the sleeve of their left arm while crossing the plaza so that the people watching from their huts can see what they are doing and that they are not a bit afraid of the medicine. We’ll put this table farther out in the open to make it a great show. To have you three white men, Americans, coming here of your own free will to get the scratch, or the medicine, as these Indians call it, is a great help to us. They’ll see that we don’t mean to poison them, and they’ll have more confidence in our work. So, please, let your friends put on a great show for the benefit of the villagers. Thank you, and have a pleasant trip home.”
“Gee, I got scared,” Dobbs said when Howard returned to the waiting train. “Seeing that feller take out a book and make you scribble in it, I was sure everything was lost. Huh, of course we’ll make them a great circus. Just watch me, how I handle a big show.”
So Dobbs and Curtin rolled up their sleeves and shouted in Spanish from where they were: “Si, doctor, what a pleasure to get that sweet vacuna in our arms! We’ve been waiting for it for ten years and couldn’t get it. In town the doctors charged us fifteen pesos for each little scratch, and you give it away for nothing. Yes, we are coming.”
As the officials had expected, the plan worked fine. The villagers, first mostly men and the bigger boys, came out and stood in the opening of their huts, watching the show Curtin and Dobbs were offering them. When Dobbs held his arm toward the doctor, he laughed out loud. Curtin whistled a jolly tune.. Men and boys came closer to see the procedure. The doctor smiled and the officers persuaded one of the men standing nearest to come and have the same thing done to him. Curtin pushed him closer jokingly, as the man was still frightened. But after he had the few scratches and felt nothing, he pushed his two boys forward and ordered them to hold still and have it over. When the partners finally left the plaza, the officers were so busy that they had to line up the people waiting for their turn, and among them now there were already women offering the arms of their babies to the officers.
After passing the last hut of the village, Dobbs said with a laugh: “Hey, Curty, you’re a funny mug.”
“What the hell is so funny about me?”
“You see ghosts like an old woman. If you see a guy with a rusty gat on his hip, right away you think the goods are gone. Anyone could have told you that these guys didn’t want anything from us. You could have seen that the guy with the specs was a doe. Couldn’t you see that right away from the table with a white sheet spread out on it? What else could a table with a white sheet on it serve for?”
“You’re telling me, wise mug!” Curtin grinned. “Anyhow, joke or no joke, I like it better this way.”
“So do I,” Howard threw in.
Chapter 19
That night the partners pitched camp not far away from the village of Amapuli. An Indian meeting them on the trail had assured them that the next water was too far off to be reached before nightfall, so they decided to pass the night there by a brook, although it was still early in the afternoon.
While sitting by the fire cooking their supper, they were surprised to see four Indians on horseback coming into their camp. The visitors greeted them courteously and asked permission to sit down by the fire and rest a little.
“Ay, como no?” Howard answered. “Why not? It’s a pleasure to have your company. No, no bother at all, caballeros. Feel quite at home, es su casa. Want to have some hot coffee with us?”
The coffee was accepted, and the four natives helped themselves, all drinking out of the same cup, which Curtin offered them. Dobbs offered his tobacco-pouch, which the men also accepted. They each took a pinch of tobacco and rolled it in corn leaves which they carried with them. In return they offered the partners tobacco of their own.
Silently they watched Howard and Dobbs roast their pork and cook their rice. Curtin was taking care of the burros.
Then, after a long wait, one of the Indians seemed ready at last to come to the point of their visit. It is not considered polite among them to make their wishes clear during the first halfhour.
“I presume,” the speaker began, “you caballeros come from a faraway country, and I trust you will travel a long way from here. I think, and my companeros think the same, that you are very clever, very intelligent, and highly educated men.”
“Fairly.” Howard took up their way of talking. “We can read books and also papers with all the news, and we can write letters and also count with written figures.”
“Figures?”
“Yep, figures,” Howard repeated. “To say it more plainly, ten, five, twenty—those are figures.”
“But,” said the Indian, “that would be only half of it. You can’t say ten or twenty. You have to add what ten you mean, ten goats, or ten centavos, or ten horses. Ten alone means nothing.”
“Ta! vez, maybe you’re right.” Howard had never looked at figures this way.
