arber's knowledge implicitly, when Luis
Cervantes came to treat him on the next day he said:

"Look here, do your best, see. I want to recover soon and then you can
go home or anywhere else you damn well please."

Discreetly, Luis Cervantes made no reply.

A week, ten days, a fortnight elapsed. The Federal troops seemed to
have vanished. There was an abundance of corn and beans, too, in the
neighboring ranches. The people hated the Government so bitterly that
they were overjoyed to furnish assistance to the rebels. Demetrio's
men, therefore, were peacefully waiting for the complete recovery of
their chief.

Day after day, Luis Cervantes remained humble and silent.

"By God, I actually believe you're in love," Demetrio said jokingly one
morning after the daily treatment. He had begun to like this
tenderfoot. From then on, Demetrio began gradually to show an
increasing interest in Cervantes' comfort. One day he asked him if the
soldiers gave him his daily ration of meat and milk; Luis Cervantes was
forced to answer that his sole nourishment was whatever the old ranch
women happened to give him and that everyone still considered him an
intruder.

"Look here, Tenderfoot, they're all good boys, really," Demetrio
answered. "You've got to know how to handle them, that's all. You mark
my words; from tomorrow on, there won't be a thing you'll lack."

In effect, things began to change that very afternoon. Some of
Demetrio's men lay in the quarry, glancing at the sunset that turned
the clouds into huge clots of congealed blood and listening to
Venancio's amusing stories culled from The Wandering Jew. Some of them,
lulled by the narrator's mellifluous voice, began to snore. But Luis
Cervantes listened avidly and as soon as Venancio topped off his talk
with a storm of anticlerical denunciations he said emphatically:
"Wonderful, wonderful! What intelligence! You're a most gifted man!"

"Well, I reckon it's not so bad," Venancio answered, warming to the
flattery, "but my parents died and I didn't have a chance to study for
a profession."

"That's easy to remedy, I'm sure. Once our cause is victorious, you can
easily get a degree. A matter of two or three weeks' assistant's work
at some hospital and a letter of recommendation from our chief and
you'll be a full-fledged doctor, all right. The thing is child's play."

From that night onward Venancio, unlike the others, ceased calling him
Tenderfoot. He addressed him as Louie.