“And the crowd—there was five thousand of them—wanted to get ferried across, and the ferry was at the bottom of the river, which wasn’t our fault. But by the Spiggoty arithmetic, it was. ‘Kill the Gringos!’ shouts one of them. And right there the beans were spilled. Most of us got away by the skin of our teeth. I raced on the heels of the Master Mechanic, carrying one of his babies for him, for the locomotives that was just pulling out. You see, way down there away from everywhere they just got to save their locomotives in times of trouble, because, without them, a railroad can’t be run. Half a dozen American wives and as many children were crouching on the cab floors along with the rest of us when we pulled out; and the Ecuadoriano soldiers, who should have been protecting our lives and property, turned loose with their rifles and must have given us all of a thousand rounds before we got out of range. “We camped up country and didn’t come back to clean up until next day. It was some cleaning. Every flat-car, box-car, coach, asthmatic switch engine, and even hand-car that mob of Spiggoties had shoved off the dock into sixty feet of water on top of the _Governor Hancock_. They’d burnt the round house, set fire to the coal bunkers, and made a scandal of the repair shops. Oh, yes, and there were three of our fellows they’d got that we had to bury mighty quick. It’s hot weather all the time down there.” Julian Jones came to a full pause and over his shoulder studied the straight-before-her gaze and forbidding expression of his wife’s face. “I ain’t forgotten the nugget,” he assured me. “Nor the hussy,” the little woman snapped, apparently at the mud-hens paddling on the surface of the lagoon. “I’ve been travelling toward the nugget right along—” “There was never no reason for you to stay in that dangerous country,” his wife snapped in on him. “Now, Sarah,” he appealed. “I was working for you right along.” And to me he explained: “The risk was big, but so was the pay. Some months I earned as high as five hundred gold. And here was Sarah waiting for me back in Nebraska—” “An’ us engaged two years,” she complained to the Tower of Jewels.