“I am not asking any favors. I’ll do the best I can.” “Come along then. I’ll show you where you’ll live while we are here. Where is your pack?” the foreman asked. David told him where he had hidden it. “I’ll send for it. There’s a short cut you don’t know so it’ll be easier for one of the men to get it.” They entered one of the shacks, the interior of which was larger than the outside indicated. Stout poles set into the ground and covered with a veneer of grass formed the walls; the roof was made of palm leaves. The floor was hard-packed earth. A number of hammocks had been swung between the poles and small, wooden chests and bags of various kinds lined the walls. Light was admitted through one window opening and the doorway. The place was gloomy and stuffy and David recoiled at sight of his quarters, but said nothing. “Put up your hammock in the best place you can find,” the foreman said. “If you have none draw one from the supply house. You’ll have to sign a receipt for it, and for anything else you get and it will be charged to your account. That’s the way things are issued here.” By nightfall the newcomer had been installed in his new quarters. His pack had arrived and he had drawn a number of things he needed from the supply house. There had also been the first meal at the ranch mess shack--chunks of beef roasted on sticks before a wood fire, boiled beans with farinha and coffee. It was the first food David had had since early morning, and it seemed wonderful to him. After supper the men gathered in their huts and played guitars, sang songs and smoked. They did not enter their hammocks until a late hour and even then they conversed in loud voices for some hours longer. It was uncomfortably warm under the mosquito netting, but the humming of the insects just outside the cloth dissuaded David from removing it. Better suffer the heat than permit the mosquitoes to feast on him and perhaps inoculate him with the germs of the dread malarial fever of which he had heard and read so much. The night came to an end somehow and again David was forcibly reminded of his surroundings by the babble of voices around him for an hour before their owners slid from their hammocks. That day was a busy one. He spent the first part of it getting acquainted as best he could with the men about him who would be his constant companions. They were a ragged, unkempt crowd of all shades from yellow, through brown, to black and at first they regarded him with suspicion. But after he had assured them that he was to be one of them and later distributed a generous supply of tobacco, they regarded him in a more favorable light and one or two called him _camarada_ which word they used in addressing one another. However, they seemed unable to comprehend why a white man should be relegated to their lowly, unhappy station. That situation was new to them and time alone would accustom them to it.