BRADSHAW'S TOMBSTONE
333
cutors and the colonizers. Suppose the other fellow-the health offi–
cial-is not what you would call exactly enlightened; perhaps
his
father planted corn with a pointed stick and bowed to images on the
earth floor of a hut among the coughing children. I'm on the win–
ning side, thought Bradshaw. "The hot air rises giving place to cold
and God fulfills Himself in many ways," he misquoted happily, grin–
ning foolishly at his own wit.
While thus bemused, Senor Orquienz' rambling sexual narrative
went on. Was this just another fantasy like the Club Leones, for
which Mexicans claimed to have obtained a charter from the U.S.,
though Bradshaw had not met any other member, nor had seen any
evidence at all that it existed? Was it perhaps like Senor Orquienz'
claim to be a direct descendant of the English privateer captains who
had ravaged this coast? That in fact his name was a corruption of
Hawkins! Not the great Hawkins, but a lesser pirate-one of "Ad–
miral" Penton's lieutenants! This was too much for Bradshaw. For
that
race
American, a claim to distinction based on birth was merely
bad taste, expressed as it was in the hearing of the cadaverous health
official, who was clearly a
mestizo.
Or for that matter the girls of the
establishment whose faces were those of charcoal designs on terra
cotta plate. Yet perhaps there was something to the man's claim.
Amid his people with polls like the manes of black horses and
of black Indian eyes, Senor Orquienz was an unusual man-a
rubeo,
with a rusty thatch, oddly-mottled skin and with a yellow eye like a
dog'S. Bradshaw had seen examples of this anomalous complexion
among children in the streets; in his report (based on a speculative
sentence in his technical material) he had attributed it to the pe–
culiar and little-understood effect of some dietary deficiency; he had
called it "the stain of hunger," although if anyone went hungry in
San Rafael, it would not be Senor Orquienz.
Bradshaw had paid the
adici6n
that night. He was never to be
quite sure whether the bill included the activities of the health expert
who, after having gone into a trance over a well-thumbed set of dirty
postcards, seemed to have disappeared somewhere along the line, and
those of Senor Orquienz who had transparently said he would stay
for a last drink or two. The
mozo
had finally answered the bell at
the Grand Hotel.
"Know what," he said beeriIy to the servant. "Been cooperating
