Like all Z. P. "rookies" (recruits) I had been warned early to
beware the "sympathy dodge." But experience is the only real
teacher. One afternoon I bestraddled a crazy, stilt-legged
Jamaican horse to go out into the bush beyond the Panama line to
fetch and deliver a citizen of that sovereign republic who was
wanted on the Zone for horse-stealing. At the town of Sabanas,
where those Panamanians who have bagged the most loot since
American occupation have their "summer" homes,--giddy, brick-
painted monstrosities among the great trees, deep green foliage
and brilliant flower-beds (pause a moment and think of brilliant
red houses in the tropics; it will make you better acquainted with
the "Spig") I dropped in at the police station for ice-water and
information. I found it in charge of a negro policeman who knew
nothing, and had forgotten that. When, therefore, it also chanced
that an officer of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals stopped before the gate with a coachman of Panama, it fell
upon me to assume command. The horse was the usual emaciated rat
of an animal indigenous to Panama City. When overhauled, the
driver was beating the animal uphill on his way to Old Panama to
bring back a party of tourists visiting the ruins. How he expected
the decrepit beast to carry four more persons was a mystery.
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