Trooper Tales — page 245: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i ian ae eee A Soldier and a Man. 229 men come to live in the old Spanish garrison, which was > only a little way from the poverty district where Eulalie slept at night. In truth, she might have married Manrique Robles, the ox-driver, and lived in a little shack on the Manati trail, but there was much of garlic about Manrique, and much of iil-temper, as the scarred flanks of his steers would testify. Besides, she had seen the big, white cavalrymen who came from the Northland, and she hated Manrique when she noticed how polite he was to them. Besides, some of her red sister maidens had harkened unto the strange language of these white horsemen, and was it not whispered that the same maidens had parted their lips for the kisses of the men who spoke this lan- geuage? Indeed, she would not marry Manrique, for he was very ugly and very black; and when the Manati fords were high and impassable so that he could not go down the trail with his ox-cart, there was always blended with the garlic about him the odor of white rum, and then Manrique was uglier than ever. But would the big cavalrymen ever smile upon her? Would she not become—if she refused to marry Man- rique—would she not become like Mad Marie who slept in the jail, and all day long staggered about the streets, lugging a half-dead baby, and begging for centavos with which to buy more rum—begging forever? Would the big cavalrymen ever smile at her, when she was so ugly to look upon? Would not the other senoritas tell the ECOMmIicdooks.co