The
early train had brought in on suspicion a Spanish laborer of
twenty or twenty-two; a pretty, girlish chap with huge blue eyes
over which hung long black lashes like those painted on Nurnberg
dolls. No one with a shadow of faith in human nature left would
have believed him capable of any crime; any one at all acquainted
with Spaniards must have known he could not shoot a hare, would in
fact be afraid to fire off a gun.
The fear in his big blue eyes struggled with his ingenuous,
girlish smile as I marched him through the long hall full of white
beds and darker inmates. The Peruvian sat bolstered up in his cot,
a stoical, revengeful glare on his reddish-brown swollen face. He
gazed a long minute at the boy's face, across which flitted the
flush of fear and embarrassment, at the big doll's eyes, then
shook a raised forefinger slowly back and forth before his nose--
the negative of Spanish-speaking peoples. Then he groaned, spat in
a tin-can beside him, and called for paper and pencil. In the
note-book I handed him he wrote in atrociously spelled Spanish:
"The man that came to the dance with this man is the man that shot
me with a bullet."
The blue-eyed boy promised to point out his companion of that
night. We took the 10:55 and reached Pedro Miguel during the noon
hour. Down in a box-car camp between the railroad and the canal
the boy called for "Jose" and there presented himself immediately
a tall, studious, solemn-faced Spaniard of spare frame, about
forty, dressed in overalls and working shirt.
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