ON JULIAN'S native placidity was seriously disturbed. Very brown,

Dvery fat, ease and con

tentment were natural associations of his comfortable girth, yet though sitting under his own palm in his own patio, he might-deducting his sombrero, bolero jacket and silver laced breeches-have passed for a bronze study of discontent.

On one of its sides the patio opened out on a motley of palm-roofed huts and vivid adobes that fenced in the plaza and market. This last was a-bustle with life.

Tewana girls came and went, calabashes gracefully poised a-head. Mule trains of aguardiente, strings of burros with charcoal, and slow wooden-wheeled ox-carts mixed in a tangled confusion. In the dust almost under Don Julian's nose, naked children, bits of human gold, played with the pigs. Cargadores and Indian women labored by, stooped under crates of pottery or beneath heavy loads of firewood.

The peace of that busy scene, however, found no reflection in Don Julian's sombre eyes; for he, Jefe-Politico, judge of this and fifty other Chiapas towns, was feeling the pinch of hard times. It was too confoundedly peaceful. Except for a lone beggar, incarcerated through a huge mistake, the fleas of the carcel would have gone hungry this month. Law was at a discount, litigants fighting shy of a justice that dined and wined so long as the case endured. Crime? Men now turned the other cheek to the smiter. Even drunkenness had attained caution. After a glorious jamboree in the jungle, the Jefe's clientale would emerge in a dishearteningly sober condition, or, if it fell to scrapping, plied the machete so improvidently that nothing was left for an inquest.

"If the Gringo pigs would but observe their national insanity!" the Jefe fretfully exclaimed as Carmelita, his daughter,

crossed the patio. "There would behow makes it, the Senor Gibson ?"

"Some-things-doing?" Carmelita interpreted closely as she could the Senor Gibson's slang.

The Jefe nodded. But Fourth of July came only once a year and between whiles the Gringo rubber planters walked delicately. They had not forgotten the fate of Senor Gibson, a gaunt Missourian, who had brought in at the pistol's point a thief who was getting-away with the Jefe's horse. Invidious reflections had passed on the Jefe's action in that matter. But the law can take no cognizance of gratitude, and as the thief had no money there was nothing for it but to let him go and mulet Senor Gibson in pesos two hundred and fifty for menacing life with a deadly weapon.

But such plums were rare nowadays. Regretfully the Jefe harked back to the golden days when, in the pride of innocence, the planters had regularly shot up the town on Sundays. The times, to be sure, had been wasteful of his rurales ! But life cannot be counted as lost when given for another! One could wine or dine on a dead policeman for six months; or, if the culprit stood above normal in funds, even afford a pasear to take in the metropolitan dissipations of Ciudad, Meixco.

Oh! these days one drank warm Toluca beer, and as the Jefe upended his glass, his eye, slipping along its side, fell on two strange Gringos who were coming across the plaza. An ill-assorted pair, one was very tall, the other excessively short, and whereas both wore the regulation white ducks and Panama hat, the taller sported in addition a black tie and shining spectacles. Seeing these, the Jefe groaned.

"Hurry, Carmelita and close the gate! For this will be the Methodist, the missionary from the Yucatan border with more tales of thieving from his mission. Thou hast not forgotten how we kept him. in carcel three months with naught but his prayers for our profit-and he a great eater? Truly one missionary raises more

dust than a regiment of planters. Will the fever never get him? No, it passes him by and takes the Senor Robinson, who was good for a wild drunk every two months. But this hombre is taller than the Methodist? Then it must be that they require the rubber land. A mercy they have not fallen in with the Senor Gibson! Run, child; and open for them!"

"Senores Dons Jacob Smith and Hiram Schoonmaker." Carmelita announced.

As the Jefe rose to greet the strangers, his bland impassivity would have done honor to the sow that snored in the dust by his gate. Anxious conjecture was completely masked, and he turned an indifferent ear while the strangers inquired for rubber lands; listened as one who suffers through courtesy.

His answer was equally negligble. His was the inexpressible pain that he could not oblige the Senores! He had land but -alas! it was high and rolling whereas the world knew that rubber thrives only on level sand. He had, however, a friend -sufficient that half an hour later Carmelita was combing the town for the friend, while, lying at ease on canvas catres, the Senores exchanged notes in the Jefe's best

room.

It was hot in there. While mud walls, a yard thick, shut out the tropical sunlight, they yet absorbed and gave off heat like the bricks of a baker's oven. But if they simmered like eels in a stew, consolation stood between them in the form of a tray of Toluca beer. As he reached his hand a second time to the damsel, he of the clerical appearance, turned inquisitive spectacles upon his companion.

"What, Jake, do you think of this Jefe person?"

"Hospitable old cuss!" the small man gurgled between two swallows of beer.

"Yes, but from a business view point?" "A sheep! Mutton! If his friend is equally brilliant it will be a cinch."

"Exactly my own opinion. So dead. easy that it looks like stealing." Here Hiram shook his head in the manner of one who feels that Providence has stacked up something unworthy of his abilities. "I shall have to drown my sorrow in drink. We stand to beat your mining proposition."

"Oh, I don't know," Jake mused. "That

was a pretty lay out. If it hadn't been for that spotter-" His thoughtful pause and the fact that Carmelita is yet combing the skirts of the town, affords time for historical explanations.

Six months back, the two had started out to clean up the grafters on certain Mexican railroads. Clad in the lovely checks and monocle of a British tourist, Jake had pressed short fares on willing conductors while Hiram, the longest, mournfulest colporteur that ever escaped from a Boston publishing house, did "excess baggage" with five cases of Bibles. Breaking in on the good old times when a man was considered fairly honest if he did not try to steal the roadbed, the two gathered in the grafters from El Paso to Rio Balsas, and cross country from Guadalajara to Vera Cruz. They did so well that Jake felt justified in promoting a mining scheme which, for simplicity and net results lays over the wildest dream of the craziest prospector.

Simplicity? Add twenty-seven conductors on Jake's list to Hiram's tally of baggage smashers, throw in a sack of ore, selected from the dumps of a Mexican Golconda, and you have the material from which Jake evolved a mining company with works situated sixteen days' mulejourney from any railroad. Six days would have done; for it was not reported that conductor or smasher banked on a dividend; but one sincere soul may be expected in any bunch, and Jake threw in the extra ten days lest the maverick be tempted to picnic out at the mine.

That contingency provided for, President Jake and Secretary Hiram had only to follow up the pay car and levy assessments on stock. They collected the salaries, leaving shareholders the graft for meals and maintenance, until, in the fourth month of the company's existence, the railroad gods became suspicious of the sudden obscession of honesty in its employes and put on a third spotter. His report liquidated the company, but not before four figures were required to describe its bank account. Bowing to the inevitable, President and Secretary only regretted that they had not collected the graft instead of the salaries; remorse that was quickened by the action of the one sincere soul, who hired a peon to plant a

knife midway of the company's diaphragm; which fact, coupled with the peon's insane desire to earn his money, had obliged the company to evacuate the City of Mexico just after it had reorganized on a rubber basis with offices in Chicago and plantations in Chiapas.

At least, so its stationery read. In reality Hiram was "offices," Jake "plantations," and the company had intended to dabble in options in rubber lands it did not possess. Debarred, however, by the aforesaid peon's zeal, it now proposed to exploit the "industrial organization" side of the business, which, if a less dignified and more arduous profession made up in solid advantages.

As the beer oiled up his tongue, Hiram was moved to enumerate a few, his oratorical form being a left-over from the days when, as a genuine colporteur, he was wont to "lead meeting" in rural districts.

Leaning on elbow to bring the Directorate under the beam of his spectacles, he thus addressed him: "Gentlemen, deducting flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches from this proposition, it looks not so bad, and I wish, further, to direct your attention to the fact that history now spreads her page for our signatures. Investigation proves that at the end of ten years an investment of one hundred dollars in rubber will yield a net profit of twelve hundred and fourteen dollars, five cents; a modest calculation that may be found in the prospectuses of thirty different companies, and which-as where everybody lies, lying becomes truth-renders the investment peculiarly fitted for widows and orphans. Now in the great country to the north of us are some millions of grangers and school marms whose only hope of a competency lies in some such snap. We shall carry it to them and thus, at one stroke, earn their gratitude, the admiration of our contemporaries, the reverence of posterity, and incidentally fill

own pockets.' Here pausing, the President blinked upon the Directorate. "Gentlemen, do you realize that immortal fame waits upon you?"

"Oh, come off!" the Directorate growled.

Unabashed, Hiram continued. "Reducing my remarks to phenomena more in

accord with your intelligence, I perceive, through the window, that the handmaiden approaches with the twin of our host."

In fat placidity, the "friend" was, indeed, the Jefe's double, and the surpassing innocence of his countenance caused Jake to remark that "it was a shame to take the money"; an observation which he privately repeated at several stages in the negotiations which ended in the buying Plantation La Buna Esperanza, the "Plantation of Good Hope." In the bargaining which lasted several days, the Jefe proved exceedingly useful. He it was who cut "the friend's" price a thousand pesos; he added a year to the "working option."

"For is not the acquisition of these Senores of more value to Chiapas than thy paltry pesos ?" Don Julian virtuously protested to "the friend." "Call it fifteen hundred pesos."

Blushing for his simplicity, the Company closed the bargain; by which they acquired rights to clear, plant, and cultivate five hundred hectares of Chiapas jungle for a three-year term; whereafter purchase might be completed at ten pesos the hectare.

"Long before which," Jake remarked, in parenthesis, as he and Hiram reperused their deed, "Long before which we shall have unloaded on the Grangers and be absorbing Standard preferred Wall Street."

"And you can put me down as remarking that this Jefe person is a noble and Christian soul," Hiram commented. "Let's go over and see what it is we owe him."

By which it will be seen that the pair had exchanged the Jefe's back room for the accommodations of the Hotel Resplendida, a palm-roofed hut, whose particular breed of fleas was, as Jake put it, "so modest that they put out the candle before crawling into bed." A change of lodging that was brought about by the Jefe's prompt acceptance of Hiram's perfunctionary offer to move after the deed was recorded.

As usual, they found the Jefe under his palm. Bill? The very idea was nauseating! It was nada! He had done nothing! Hands and shoulders alike affirmed it. But growing accustomed to the idea,

"Fees for legal service, "Searching and recording titles, "Inspection of properties, "Expert opinion on same, "Commission as purchasing agent, "Beer consumed by "friend," "Ditto by Don Jake,

"Ditto, Don Hiram, "Beer again,

"More beer,

"Still more,

"In sum-one thousand pesos!"

After spelling through this remarkable document, Hiram turned admiring spectacles upon its author. "As an accountant, you beat my father and he was a Chicago shyster lawyer. This is what you ask? Now what will you take?"

The Jefe would take one thousand pesos! However, if his dear amigos cared to bring suit, he would see to it that, as Jefe-Politico, they should have his best abilities on the case! An offer that caused Jake to make complimentary reference to the Jefe's clear insight into the nature of a dead cinch.

Their fullest meed of approbation, how ever, was delivered what time the Senor Gibson, a gaunt Missourian, met them in town.

"I hear that you've bought Don Julian's sand lots ?" the Missourian grinned. "An' that he taxed you a thousand pesos for certifying his own titles? Don Manuel, you bought from? He was only the agent. But why didn't you buy the Jefe's plantation? You kain't raise rubber on Esperanza. Besides being all sand, it's flat, an' what rubber needs is clay loam an' rolling land."

"Plantation?" Jake echoed.

"Yes, has the finest stand of two-yearold rubber in Chiapas-if it was cleaned. Or if you'd come to me-"

"-if we had come to you?" Hiram helped out his pause.

The Missourian's grin widened. "I'd have sold you the sand the Jefe sold me."

Strong lights always tend to dissipate rosy glamors, but if the company was hard touched in pride and pocket, there were compensations; it was now in posi

tion to appreciate the beauties and subtilities of the Jefe's character.

"Anyway we'll take it out of the Grangers," Hiram philosophically remarked. "When you get a good thing in the way of experience be Christian and pass it on."' And this being the eve before his departure on an organizing tour of the Middle States, he added a word of counsel. "I leave the Jefe to you, Jake. Cultivate that earnest soul, for he's that great he'll prove dangerous to himself if he gets a fair chance."

And Jake did cultivate the Jefe. For, subtracting the pleasures of his society, his patio was the coolest in town; a hint that it was hot even there must, however, be not construed as reflecting upon a climate that, deducting yellow fever, malaria, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, and sixteen other insect pests with Spanish names, yet remains the finest in the world. Jake naturally preferred a hundred and twenty in the shade of the Jefe's palm to a thousand in the sun and the joys of setting out nursery rubber in a steamy jungle clearing.

It was, indeed, the discomforts of tropical agriculture that caused him to conceive the brilliant amendment to the company's first crude plan; details of which are best set forth by a quotation from his letter to Hiram:

"I have re-organized with the Jefe as Vice-President. He is to have one-tenth of the capital stock, and we use his plantation for show purposes. Of course we shall make our clean-up on your visiting committee's report, and explanations will be up to the Jefe when the company tries to file on his land. I enclose photos of the Jefe, one of the country's nobility, standing under his best rubber tree, for campaign purposes. This, I think, evens up for the Esperanza steal."

What the Jefe thought-his placidity refused the tale; sufficient that he lent himself so assiduously to cultivation that in a month Jake became the "amigo de la casa," potential possessor of his all, repository of his troubles. Sitting of nights, under the palm, Jake sympathized on the decadence of Gringo spirit and the shrinking of law practice; or turned a tolerant ear when a surplus of beer caused the Jefe to parade his family skeleton in the moonlight. To the crime of persistent

spinsterhood, it seemed that Carmelita added a spendthrift habit in masses, which she.caused to be said for the Jefe's soul.

He would grow tearful as he summed their cost in beer. "Barrels of it, Don Jacob! Enough to drown the priest! Would that he were in it, if t'were not too good a death! Daughters are expensive. But you, Don Jacob, will need the leetle wife on the plantation. So you will be my son, is it not?"

It was not! Besides a shape that oscillated uncertainty between her hips and shoulders, Carmelita boasted a decided squint. Jake plead a fictitious wife and so passed the proposition without rupture of friendly relations. By the time that Hiram came posting down ahead of his granger committee, Jake owned the Jefe and felt quite equal to the occasion when, a few days later, Hiram spoiled the peon.

Afterward Jake would sometimes reproach Hiram for his lack of discrimination in choosing a man to kick. But much can be advanced in excuse. A favorable committee report would bind the sale of their working option on Esperanza for ten thousand gold, and here, when the committee was due in a week, the peons whom Jake had hired to clean up the Jefe's rubber, must needs lay off for a fiesta. Of course had he chosen a contract laborer, one of the servile crew from the upper plateau? But why speculate? His boot. fell on a volunteer Indian, a full-blooded Zacetaca, who, being ignorant of AngloSaxon procedure in cases of hurry, proceeded to dig for motives with a machete one yard long and razor-edged. Hiram was coming around the plantation house on the third lap before he could get action on the enthusiast with his gun.

"In case of triflings with truth by this misguided person's compatriots," .Hiram said as he and Jake planted the "person" out in the jungle, "You will please to remember that I plugged him in selfdefence."

"Don't fuss," Jake assured him with all the pride of ownership, "the Jefe is mine."

He thought so, even when, three days later, the Jefe came out to the plantation and ordered a disinterment.

"A form, Senores," he assured them.

"It ees only that the man may not legally die till I have pasado upon him. The small pox, you say? Carambara!" While reaching for his nose with one handthese were tropical dog-days-he secreted Hiram's wad with the other. "He must have it ver' bad and he ees undoubtedly dead."

"You see!" Jake triumphantly exclaimed as the Jefe ambled away on his pacer, the very beast rescued by the Senor Gibson.

"You're a wonder!" Hiram admitted. "And I should like to go on record, while I'm at it, as having said that as a lawgiver this Jefe person leads the procession from Moses to our own beloved Lincoln. I take a heap of satisfaction out of knowing that peon is definitely dead."

Their minds at rest on this point, the two set about to hurry preparations. They stocked the plantation house with provisions, cigars, wines and other wet goods, with an especially large order of whiskey, for these were Mississippi Valley grangers with hereditary malaria in their bones.

"Every cloud has a silver lining,'" Hiram commented on the last order. "Though I never really realized it till I saw how faithfully them fellows followed doctor's orders."

At the week's end the Jefe's rubber was all clean; the plantation spick and span, as like the barren Esperanza as a modern beauty is to a Navajo squaw. There only remained to draw a cordon of Zacetacas around in the jungle for the discouragement of the Senor Gibson or other envious white man, and that done, Hiram brought the committee up-river by canoe from the railroad and settled down to do the honors.

"It's just a case of going north to draw our money," he confided to Jake at the end of the second day. "But what's become of the Jefe? I thought he would have been here long ago to oversee the killing."

"Mebbe hasn't heard. You know, vou came by the town in the dark." Here Jake elbowed his partner's ribs. "Better send him word. It wouldn't be fair to our friends here to leave them without someone to do the explaining after-"

"Very unfair!" Hiram chuckled.

However, the Jefe did not answer their invitation-in person. Instead, a lieu