Here was the city's quarter once given over to the Spaniard. Here were still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure, the eye saw, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies. Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault- chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and the pioneer's rifle were already uplifted to expel him from a continent. And Tansey, stumbling through this old-world dust, looked up, dark as it was, and saw Andalusian beauties glimmering on the balconies. Some of them were laughing and listening to the goblin music that still followed; others harked fearfully through the night, trying to catch the hoof beats of caballeros whose last echoes from those stones had died away a century ago. Those women were silent, but Tansey heard the jangle of horseless bridle-bits, the whirr of riderless rowels, and, now and then, a muttered malediction in a foreign tongue. But he was not frightened. Shadows, nor shadows of sounds could daunt him. Afraid? No. Afraid of Mother Peek? Afraid to face the girl of his heart? Afraid of tipsy Captain Peek? Nay! nor of these apparitions, nor of that spectral singing that always pursued him. Singing! He would show them! He lifted up a strong and untuneful voice:
'When you hear them bells go tingalingling,'
serving notice upon those mysterious agencies that if it should come to a face-to-face encounter
'There'll be a hot time In the old town To-night!'
How long Tansey consumed in treading this haunted byway was not clear to him, but in time he emerged into a more commodious avenue. When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a window, that a small confectionary of mean appearance was set in the angle. His same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its cheap soda-water fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took cognizance of Captain Peek within lighting a cigar at a swinging gaslight.
As Tansey rounded the corner Captain Peek came out, and they met
It was Peek himself who quailed guiltily before the valiant mien of the drug clerk. Sharp surprise and a palpable fear bourgeoned upon the Captain's face. And, verily, that face was one to rather call up such expressions on the faces of others. The face of a libidinous heathen idol, small eyed, with carven folds in the heavy jowls, and a consuming, pagan license in its expression. In the gutter just beyond the store Tansey saw a closed carriage standing with its back toward him and a motionless driver perched in his place.
'Why, it's Tansey!' exclaimed Captain Peek. 'How are you, Tansey? H- have a cigar, Tansey?'
'Why, it's Peek!' cried Tansey, jubilant at his own temerity. 'What deviltry are you up to now, Peek? Back streets and a closed carriage! Fie! Peek!'
'There's no one in the carriage,' said the Captain, smoothly.
'Everybody out of it is in luck,' continued Tansey, aggressively. 'I'd love for you to know, Peek, that I'm not stuck on you. You're a bottle-nosed scoundrel.'
'Why, the little rat's drunk!' cried the Captain, joyfully; 'only drunk, and I thought he was on! Go home, Tansey, and quit bothering grown persons on the street.'
But just then a white-clad figure sprang out of the carriage, and a shrill voice--Katie's voice--sliced the air: 'Sam! Sam!--help me, Sam!'
Tansey sprung toward her, but Captain Peek interposed his bulky form. Wonder of wonders! the whilom spiritless youth struck out with his right, and the hulking Captain went over in a swearing heap. Tansey flew to Katie, and took her in his arms like a conquering knight. She raised her face, and he kissed her--violets! electricity! caramels! champagne! Here was the attainment of a dream that brought no disenchantment.
'Oh, Sam,' cried Katie, when she could, 'I knew you would come to rescue me. What do you suppose the mean things were going to do with me?'
'Have your picture taken,' said Tansey, wondering at the foolishness of his remark.
'No, they were going to eat me. I heard them talking about it.'
'Eat you!' said Tansey, after pondering a moment. 'That can't be; there's no plates.'
But a sudden noise warned him to turn. Down upon him were bearing the Captain and a monstrous long- bearded dwarf in a spangled cloak and red trunk-hose. The dwarf leaped twenty feet and clutched them. The Captain seized Katie and hurled her, shrieking, back into the carriage, himself followed, and the vehicle dashed away. The dwarf lifted Tansey high above his head and ran with him into the store. Holding him with one hand, he raised the lid of an enormous chest half filled with cakes of ice, flung Tansey inside, and closed down the cover.
The force of the fall must have been great, for Tansey lost consciousness. When his faculties revived his first sensation was one of severe cold along his back and limbs. Opening his eyes, he found himself to be seated upon the limestone steps still facing the wall and convent of Santa Mercedes. His first thought was of the ecstatic kiss from Katie. The outrageous villainy of Captain Peek, the unnatural mystery of the situation, his preposterous conflict with the improbable dwarf--these things roused and angered him, but left no impression of the unreal.
'I'll go back there to-morrow,' he grumbled aloud, 'and knock the head off that comic-opera squab. Running out and picking up perfect strangers, and shoving them into cold storage!'
But the kiss remained uppermost in his mind. 'I might have done that long ago,' he mused. 'She liked it, too. She called me 'Sam' four times. I'll not go up that street again. Too much scrapping. Guess I'll move down the other way. Wonder what she meant by saying they were going to eat her!'
Tansey began to feel sleepy, but after a while he decided to move along again. This time he ventured into the street to his left. It ran level for a distance, and then dipped gently downward, opening into a vast, dim, barren space--the old Military Plaza. To his left, some hundred yards distant, he saw a cluster of flickering lights along the Plaza's border. He knew the locality at once.
Huddled within narrow confines were the remnants of the once-famous purveyors of the celebrated Mexican national cookery. A few years before, their nightly encampments upon the historic Alamo Plaza, in the heart of the city, had been a carnival, a saturnalia that was renowned throughout the land. Then the caterers numbered hundreds; the patrons thousands. Drawn by the coquettish
