You're transferred to Gatun."
I was already stepping into a cab en route for the evening train
when the Inspector chanced down the hill.
"New Gatun is pretty bad on Saturday nights," he remarked. (All
too well I remembered it.) "The first time a nigger starts
anything run him in, and take all the witnesses in sight along."
"That reminds me; I haven't been issued a gun or handcuffs yet," I
hinted.
"Hell's fire, no?" queried the Inspector. "Tell the station
commander at Gatun to fix you up."
CHAPTER VI
I scribbled myself a ticket and was soon rolling northward,
greeting acquaintances at every station. The Zone is like Egypt;
whoever moves must travel by the same route. At Pedro Miguel and
Cascadas armies of locomotives--the "mules" of the man from
Arkansas--stood steaming and panting in the twilight after their
day's labor and the wild race homeward under hungry engineers. As
far as Bas Obispo this busy, teeming Isthmus seemed a native land;
beyond, was like entering into foreign exile. It is a common Zone
experience that only the locality one lives in during his first
weeks ever feels like "home."
The route, too, was a new one. From Gorgona the train returned
crab-wise through Matachin and across the sand dyke that still
holds the Chagres out of the "cut," and halted at Gamboa cabin.
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