Surely A Stranger Sight Was Never Seen On The Streets Of Concepcion
Than That Of A Tired, Dusty Pack-Horse Bearing A Live Monkey, A Dead
God, And An Equally Dead Devil On His Back!
Mrs. Sorrows was
overjoyed to see me return, and earnestly told me that my first duty
was to hurry down to the store and buy two colored candles to burn
before her saint, who had brought me back, even though I was a
heretic, which fact she greatly lamented.
We had been given up as
lost months before, for word came down that I had been killed by
Indians. Here I was, however, safe and fairly well, saving that the
ends of two of my toes had rotted off with jiggers, and fever burned
in my veins! Mrs. Dolores doctored my feet with tobacco ashes as I
reclined in a hammock under the lime trees surrounding her hut. I did
not buy the candles, but she did; and while I silently thanked a
Higher Power, and the ta-tas burned to her deity, she informed me
that my countryman, the prodigal, had been carried to the "potters'
field." Not all prodigals reach home again; some are buried by the
swine-troughs.
For some time I was unable to put my feet to the ground; but Pancho,
ever active, tied in a fig tree, helped himself to ripe fruit, and
took life merrily. Pancho and I were eventually able to bid good-bye
to Mrs. Sorrows, and, thousands of miles down life's pathway, this
little friend and I journeyed together, he ever loving and true.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 207 of 313
Words from 55151 to 55419
of 83353
