"Come along right now, and I'll get you up," said his benefactor,
and grasping Peter by the arm, he led him to a kiosk-like structure
similar to those he had noticed at almost every street corner.
The rest was a simple matter. Young Corbold's companion said
something in Spanish to the polite uniformed person in charge of the
Kiosk. Peter put down a dollar and was given a ticket, which he was
informed he was to place in his hatband. An electrically-operated
syren on the roof of the Kiosk gave a clear but not aggressive note,
and almost before Peter could be escorted to the edge of the
pavement, a motor-car had arrived and was awaiting him.
The mulatto driver gave a glance at the words on the ticket in
Peter's hat. That was all that was necessary. That piece of
pasteboard was an order given by the Republic of Rioguay that, in
consideration of the sum of one dollar having been paid, the driver
of the state-licensed vehicle was to take his fare to El Toro by the
shortest possible route.
Without that ticket, Peter might have sought and sought in vain for
a conveyance.
He had expected, somewhat naturally, that his Yankee benefactor was
going to El Toro with him. But he was mistaken. The man raised his
hat and disappeared.
"Might have asked him his name, any old way," thought Peter.
"P'r'aps Uncle Brian will know who he is. My word! Rioguay is quite
a go-ahead show!"
It did not take the motor long to get clear of the town. Soon the
tree-lined streets gave place to a broad, dusty road that ran almost
in a straight line for miles between fields of maize and open
expanses of sun-baked grass, dotted here and there with _adobe_
huts. Nearer and nearer drew the rugged, saw-like mountains, until
Peter began to wonder whether El Toro lay on the far side of the
formidable sierras.
But at length the car turned abruptly to the right, plunging into a
defile through a far-flung spur of the main chain of mountains. For
the next mile nothing of the work of man's hands was visible, except
the well-kept road and the inevitable telephone wires supported by
substantial poles of ferro-concrete, until, swinging round a sharp
corner, the car emerged into more open country, and gave Peter his
first sight of El Toro.
Had Peter found his relative living in a shack, or even a timbered
house, he would not have been surprised, for according to what he
had previously heard, Brian Strong was not in affluent
circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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