When he came out the boys were
laughing. He caught a word or two which drove the jest home. In the
vernacular, he was "an easy mark."
"Mebby I am," he said in Mexican. "But I got the price to buy my
smokes. I ain't no doggone loafer."
The Mexican youth who had asked for the tobacco retorted with some more
or less vile language, intimating that Pete was neither Mexican nor
white--an insult compared to which mere anathema was as nothing. Pete
knew that if he started a row he would get properly licked--that the
boys would all pile on him and chase him out of town. So he turned his
back on the group and proceeded to pack the burros. The Mexican boys
forgot the recent unpleasantness in watching him pack. They realized
that he knew his business. But Pete was not through with them yet.
When he had the burros in shape to travel he picked up the stick with
which he hazed them and faced the group. What he said to them was
enough with some to spare for future cogitation. He surpassed mere
invective with flaming innuendos as to the ancestry, habits, and
appearance of these special gentlemen and of Mexicans in general.
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