earest cook-shop; their donors
well knowing that the fare of the Acordada was neither plentiful nor
sumptuous.

But beyond these interested ones, few of the pedestrians stopped or even
looked at the chain-gang. To most, if not all, it was an ordinary
spectacle, and attracted no more attention than would a crossing-sweeper
on a London street. Not as much as the latter, as he is often an
Oriental. On that particular day, however, the party of scavengers
presented a novelty, in having the two Tejanos in it; with a yet greater
one in the odd juxtaposition of Cris Rock and his diminutive "mate." In
Mexico, a man over six feet in height is a rarity, and as Cris exceeded
this by six inches, a rarer sight still was he. The colossus coupled to
the dwarf, as Gulliver to Lilliputian--a crooked Lilliputian at that--no
wonder that a knot of curious gazers collected around them, many as they
approached the grotesque spectacle uttering ejaculations of surprise.

"_Ay Dios_!" exclaimed one. "_Gigante y enano_!" (a giant and a
dwarf)--"and chained together! Who ever saw the like?"

Such remarks were continually passing among the spectators, who laughed
as they listened to them. And though the Texan could not tell what they
said, their laughter "riled" him. He supposed it a slur upon his
extraordinary stature, of which he was himself no little proud, while
they seemed to regard it sarcastically. Could they have had translated
to them the rejoinders that now and then came from his lips, like the
rumbling of thunder, they would have felt their sarcasm fully paid back,
with some change over. As a specimen:--

"Devil darn ye, for a set of yaller-jawed pigmies! Ef I hed about a
millyun o' ye out in the open purairu, I'd gie you somethin' to larf at.
Dod-rot me! ef I don't b'lieve a pack o' coycoats ked chase as many o'
ye as they'd count themselves; and arter runnin' ye down 'ud scorn to
put tooth into yur stinkin' carcasses!"

Fortunately for him, the "yaller-jawed pigmies" understood not a word of
all this; else, notwithstanding his superior size and strength, he might
have had rough handling from them. Without that, he was badly plagued
by their behaviour, as a bull fretted with flies; which may have had
something to do with his readiness to go down into the drain. There, up
to his elbows, he was less conspicuous, and so less an object of
curiosity.

---------------------------------------------------------------------