The dances--save the mark!--are without form or figure, at least those in which the white hunters sport the fantastic toe. Seizing his partner round the waist with the grip of a grisly bear, each mountaineer whirls and twirls, jumps and stamps; introduces Indian steps used in the "scalp" or "buffalo" dances, whooping occasionally with unearthly cry, and then subsiding into the jerking step, raising each foot alternately from the ground, so much in vogue in Indian ballets. The hunters have the floor all to themselves. The Mexicans have no chance in such physical force dancing; and if a dancing Pelâdo * steps into the ring, a lead-like thump from a galloping mountaineer quickly sends him sprawling, with the considerate remark--"Quit, you darned Spaniard! you can't shine in this crowd." During a lull, guages ** filled with whisky go the rounds--offered to and seldom refused by the ladies, sturdily quaffed by the mountaineers, and freely swallowed by the Pelâdos, who drown their jealousy and envious hate of their entertainers in potent aguardiente. Now, as the guages are oft refilled and as often drained, and as night advances, so do the spirits of the mountaineers become more boisterous, while their attentions to their partners become warmer--the jealousy of the natives waxes hotter thereat, and they begin to show symptoms of resenting the endearments which the mountaineers bestow upon their wives and sweethearts. And now, when the room is filled to crowding,--with two hundred people swearing, drinking, dancing, and shouting--the half-dozen Americans monopolizing the fair, to the evident disadvantage of at least threescore scowling Pelados, it happens that one of these, maddened by whisky and the green-eyed monster, suddenly seizes a fair one from the waist-encircling arm of a mountaineer, and pulls her from her partner. Wagh!--La Bonté--it is he--stands erect as a pillar for a moment, then raises his hand to his mouth and gives a ringing war-whoop--jumps upon the rash Pelâdo, seizes him by the body as if he were a child, lifts him over his head, and dashes him with the force of a giant against the wall. * A nickname for the idle fellows hanging about a Mexican town, translated into "Greasers" by the Americans. ** Cask-shaped gourds.