"Yes, very close," said Charlie. "Foo, if you will kindly get out from under that tube...."
"Well," said Charlie, "I knocked at Adolfo’s door and said we were having a party down here and wanted him to come. He shot at me three times and I shot at him twice."
So saying, Charlie seized Foo by the leg and composedly lay down under the glass tube again.
We must have stayed there some hours after that. I remember that toward morning Ignacio came in and played us Tosti’s "Good-bye," to which all the Chinamen danced solemnly around.
At about four o’clock Atanacio appeared. He burst open the door and stood there very white, with a gun in one hand.
"Friends," he said, "a most disagreeable thing has happened. My wife, Juanita, returned from her mother’s about midnight on an ass. She was stopped on the road by a man muffled up in a _poncho_, who gave her an anonymous letter in which were detailed all my little amusements when I last went for recreation to Juarez. I have seen the letter. It is astonishingly accurate! It tells how I went to supper with Maria and then home with her. It tells how I took Ana to the bull-fight. It describes the hair, complexion and disposition of all those other ladies and how much money I spent upon them. _Carramba_! It is exact to a cent!
"When she got home I happened to be down at Catarino’s taking a cup with an old friend. This mysterious stranger appeared at the kitchen door with another letter in which he said I had three more wives in Chihuahua, which, God knows, is not true, since I only have one!
"It is not that I care, amigos, but these things have upset Juanita horribly. Of course, I denied these charges, but, _valgame Dios_! women are so unreasonable!
"I hired Dionysio to watch my house, but he has gone to the _baile_, and so, arousing and dressing my small son, that he may carry me word of any further outrages, I have come down to seek your help in preserving my home from this disgrace."
We declared ourselves willing to do anything for Atanacio—anything, that is, that promised excitement. We said that it was horrible, that the evil stranger ought to be exterminated.
Atanacio replied that it was probably Flores, who had had a baby by his wife before he married her, but who had never succeeded in quite capturing her affections. We forced _aguardiente_ upon him and he drank moodily. Charlie Chee was pried loose from the glass tube, where Foo took his place, and sent for weapons. And in ten minutes he returned with seven loaded revolvers of different makes.