dinner; well, you sit there drinking and you've got to be sociable, so
you drink more than you should and the liquor goes to your head and you
laugh and you're damned happy and if you feel like it, you sing and
shout and kick up a bit of a row. That's quite all right, anyhow, for
we're not doing anyone any harm. But soon they start bothering you and
the policeman walks up and down and stops occasionally, with his ear to
the door. To put it in a nutshell, the chief of police and his gang are
a lot of joykillers who decide they want to put a stop to your fun,
see? But by God! You've got guts, you've got red blood in your veins
and you've got a soul, too, see? So you lose your temper, you stand up
to them and tell them to go to the Devil.

"Now if they understand you, everything's all right; they leave you
alone and that's all there is to it; but sometimes they try to talk you
down and hit you and--well, you know how it is, a fellow's
quick-tempered and he'll be damned if he'll stand for someone ordering
him around and telling him what's what. So before you know it, you've
got your knife out or your gun leveled, and then off you go for a wild
run in the sierra, until they've forgotten the corpse, see?

"All right: that's just about what happened to Monico. The fellow was a
greater bluffer than the rest. He couldn't tell a rooster from a hen,
not he. Well, I spit on his beard because he wouldn't mind his own
business. That's all, there's nothing else to tell.

"Then, just because I did that, he had the whole God-damned Federal
Government against me. You must have heard something about that story
in Mexico City--about the killing of Madero and some other fellow,
Felix or Felipe Diaz, or something--I don't know. Well, this man Monico
goes in person to Zacatecas to get an army to capture me. They said
that I was a Maderista and that I was going to rebel. But a man like me
always has friends. Somebody came and warned me of what was coming to
me, so when the soldiers reached Limon I was miles and miles away.
Trust me! Then my compadre Anastasio who killed somebody came and
joined me, and Pancracio and Quail and a lot of friends and
acquaintances came after him. Since then we've been sort of collecting,
see? You know for yourself, we get along as best we can...."

For a while, both men sat meditating in silence. Then:

"Look here, Chief," said Luis Cervantes. "You know that some of
Natera's men are at Juchipila, quite near h