"Who? Dose Texas guys—they don' speak English like I understand. And most them fellers is kinda crazy anyway." And he lowered his voice. "Like that Maverick."
Suddenly Mush let out one of those ear-splitting hog calls almost in my ear.
"So-o-o-i. What da hell you know, lookit there, there's Philip and Sparks down on that pier."
They sure were—grinning and clean as they stood among the crowd of longshoremen, their white shirts (that guy Sparks went for starched collars) were the only spots of clean white in the whole gray landscape—or should it be seascape?
We shouted down, at them and they cracked back until a gangplank let them up on the ship. They were greeted with a lot of backslapping and handshakes. Mush's worry for Philip had seeped through the ship, and we were all glad to see them— even that guy Sparks.
They had taken a train down from Buenos Aires, and had been waiting for us a couple of days.
Later that evening, Philip told us they had been nabbed by the Port Cop and had spent the night in a one-room cement calaboose, until the Pilot had come along with Captain Brandt's letter.
That little cement jail was wet and cold. There was a permanent resident, a ratty emaciated old English sailor who begged them for a razor—he wanted to cut his throat.
He had skipped his ship a number of years back and had gone into the interior. When he returned to the coast the police had jailed him—that was some five years back and he'd been there since.
It seems while he had cavorted around on the pampas a law had been passed. Argentine was ridding herself of the beachcombers that had made her ports a stamping ground for the scum of the seven seas. He said that law fined the ship one thousand dollars for every man who was left behind or deserted. And all ships were responsible for their men and must not weigh anchor from their last Argentinian port unless they carried the same crew they'd brought into the country—or paid their fine.
The Limey tramp that the old Englishman had shipped on, and skipped, sneaked out of port one night without squaring up. This old guy had been thrown into that miserable damp hole of a jail and left there to rot. The Port Cops didn't feed him. There was no money provided for that. He ate only what he could beg from an occasional drunk who was thrown in there with him. The English consul did not recognize his existence. The shipping line that had owned his ship had gone bankrupt. There was no one to pay his fine, so he was left there to die in that calaboose.
Philip had felt awful sad about the old fellow and he (and even Sparks) had emptied their pockets of almost all the money they carried, but he accepted their largesse listlessly and begged for a razor. He wanted to cut his throat.
When Philip had finished the story of the tragic old English sailor Perry gave us a knowing wink.
"See what I mean? You see why there's no sense going on the beach in Argentine?"
21. The Classic Belly Laugh
THERE WAS NO REASON TO SPEND AN EVENING in Ingeniero White—not while there was money in your pocket.
With his stubby fingers Captain Brandt followed through our accounts on the books and then he carefully counted out the sticky pesos, clicked his teeth, and handed us our money with a dry comment—that we hadn't much more coming to us. In fact, he cut the advance of ten dollars which I asked for to six.
We pocketed our money and went up the muddy road through Ingeniero White without giving the town a glance, to catch the train for Bahia Blanca.
It was raining and that road was poorly lit by a few scattered unshielded electric bulb lampposts. A cop stood under each of these and they'd look us over as we passed. We had sloughed by the first cop and were about halfway to the next when he whistled a long, shrill blast. Obviously he warned his colleague further up the road to be on the alert—some suspicious-looking Nord Americanos were bearing down on him. We'd passed the next and he'd look us over and did his duty by his brother cop further up the road, until we'd gone by about four of them.
We resented their suspicions. How could anyone walk along a muddy road on a rainy night other than crouched over with coat collar up and hands thrust in pockets, and not look like a lot of sinister characters? I had tried walking with my hands out and swinging and my head up and with an honest look in my eye, but the rain carried by the gusts of wind beat around my head and chilled my neck.
The train ride was short and cheap—only one peso fifty and those trains run often. Bahia Blanca was a pleasant town with broad boulevards and cheerful cafes. They were big places with tremendous windows, clean-looking, and people sat around playing chess, sipping their drinks and reading newspapers. We stopped in one of them for a few drinks and discussed what would be the best way to find the houses of the town—the bordellos. Perry wasn't there to guide us. We were on our own.
Philip was sure if we asked anyone they'd tell us, so we downed our drinks, paid up, and went out on the street again. We stood at the curb making up our minds whom to ask. The rain had stopped. Philip, Joe, Mush, Al, and I just stood around for a while.
There was a vaudeville theater across the wide street that featured, so the posters indicated, a trained dog act. The reflections of the colored lights from its marquee made a sparkling pattern on the wet pavement.
A young guy on a bicycle had stopped and as he balanced his bike with one foot on the ground he stared at us. We egged Philip on to ask him where the houses were, but Philip was reticent. He thought he was too young to know of such matters. We scoffed at that. The guy looked about Mush's age; and then I'd been told a certain amount is included in the allowances of all boys (of the better class, of course) away at preparatory schools to be used in such places as we were looking for. A commendable adult concept, if true—and worthy of consideration, if not.
The young Argentinian had singled me out for special scrutiny and I was getting a little uncomfortable.
"Go on, Philip, ask him," I urged.
"All right." He stepped off the curb and began, "'Buenas noches senor.''
The boy butt in with some questions. Philip replied something that ended with "Nord Americanos."
Then the boy hopped his bicycle over to the curb where I stood and poked his finger at my chest as he queried:
"Nord Americano Indian?"
Everybody turned and looked at me as if they saw me for the first time. He probably had seen some photographs of our noble redmen—not the moving-picture type or those pictured on calendars (the hawk-nosed, lean, befeathered savages, profiled against a setting sun), but the fattish owners of Oklahoma oil wells as they stepped from their high-powered automobiles. I must have been mistaken for one of those since I was tanned pretty deep. Then, too, there were my gold-rimmed specs and that handsome black sombrero—and I was a little fat at the time.
I said, "No—Nord Americano juive."
He laughed, swung his leg over his bicycle, and rolled off.
"Well, where's the houses, Philip?" Mush asked.
"He didn't say." "Oh, nuts, I'm gonna ask that cop." And before we could stop him Mush had broken away from us and squirmed through the busy traffic that seemed to be going every which way, paying no attention to the traffic cop in the center of the road who waved his white baton aimlessly.
Mush climbed up on the little platform the cop stood on, and, though it was some distance from where we stood, we could hear him over the noise of the street.
"Where's—houses—girls?" and he semaphored his arms in every direction, trying to pick one the astonished cop would agree was right.