Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
They looked at each other stonily and went back to the crowd. Benson
had just entered the café. He approached them with a gloating smile of
victory. "Well, where's all that money you were going to bet?"
"Right here," said the kids, thrusting into their waistcoat pockets.
At eleven o'clock a curious thing was learned. When Pop and Freddie,
the kids and all, came to the little side street, it was thick with
people. It seemed that the news of this race had spread like the wind
among the Americans, and they had come to witness the event. In the
darkness the crowd moved, mumbling in argument.
The principals--the kids and those with them--surveyed this scene with
some dismay. "Say--here's a go." Even then a policeman might be seen
approaching, the light from his little lantern flickering on his white
cap, gloves, brass buttons, and on the butt of the old-fashioned Colt's
revolver which hung at his belt. He addressed Freddie in swift Mexican.
Freddie listened, nodding from time to time. Finally Freddie turned to
the others to translate. "He says he'll get into trouble if he allows
this race when all this crowd is here."
There was a murmur of discontent. The policeman looked at them with an
expression of anxiety on his broad, brown face.
"Oh, come on. We'll go hold it on some other fellow's beat," said one
of the kids. The group moved slowly away debating. Suddenly the other
kid cried, "I know! The Paseo!"
"By jiminy," said Freddie, "just the thing. We'll get a cab and go out
to the Paseo. S-s-h! Keep it quiet; we don't want all this mob."
Later they tumbled into a cab--Pop, Freddie, the kids, old Colonel
Hammigan and Benson. They whispered to the men who had wagered, "The
Paseo." The cab whirled away up the black street. There were occasional
grunts and groans, cries of "Oh, get off me feet," and of "Quit! you're
killing me." Six people do not have fun in one cab. The principals
spoke to each other with the respect and friendliness which comes to
good men at such times. Once a kid put his head out of the window and
looked backward. He pulled it in again and cried, "Great Scott! Look at
that, would you!"
The others struggled to do as they were bid, and afterwards shouted,
"Holy smoke! Well, I'll be blowed! Thunder and turf!"
Galloping after them came innumerable cabs, their lights twinkling,
streaming in a great procession through the night.
"The street is full of them," ejaculated the old colonel.
The Paseo de la Reforma is the famous drive of the city of Mexico,
leading to the Castle of Chapultepec, which last ought to be well known
in the United States.
It is a fine broad avenue of macadam with a much greater quality of
dignity than anything of the kind we possess in our own land. It seems
of the old world, where to the beauty of the thing itself is added the
solemnity of tradition and history, the knowledge that feet in buskins
trod the same stones, that cavalcades of steel thundered there before
the coming of carriages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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