THE MEXICAN
Twhere he, the muchacho, lay not always asleep in the corner.
As from a remote distance he could hear Spider Hagerty saying to him: "No layin' down at the start. Them 's instructions. Take a beatin' an' earn your dough."
Ten minutes had passed, and he still sat in his comer. There were no signs of Danny, who was evidently playing the trick to the limit.
But more visions burned before the eye of Rivera's memory. The strike, or, rather, the lockout, because the workers of Rio Blanco had helped their striking brothers of Puebla. The hunger, the expeditions in the hills for berries, the roots and herbs that all ate and that twisted and pained the stomachs of all of them. And then, the nightmare; the waste of ground before the company's store; the thousands of starving workers; General Rosalio Martinez and the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz; and the death-spitting rifles that seemed never to cease spitting, while the workers' wrongs were washed and washed again in their own blood. And that night! He saw the flat cars, piled high with the bodies of the slain, con- signed to Vera Cruz, food for the sharks of the
bay. Again he crawled over the grisly heaps,
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