About noon he arrived at the town—­Laguna.  He bought the few provisions necessary and piled them on the ground near his burros.  He had brought some cold meat and bread with him which he ate, squatted out in front of the store.  Several young loafers gathered round and held high argument among themselves as to whether Pete was a Mexican or not.  This in itself was not altogether pleasing to Pete.  He knew that he was tanned to a swarthy hue, was naturally of a dark complexion, and possessed black hair and eyes.  But his blood rebelled at even the suggestion that he was a Mexican.  He munched his bread and meat, tossed the crumbs to a stray dog and rolled a cigarette.  One of the Mexican boys asked him for tobacco and papers.  Pete gladly proffered “the makings.”  The Mexican youth rolled a cigarette and passed the sack of tobacco to his companions.  Pete eyed this breach of etiquette sternly, and received the sack back, all but empty.  But still he said nothing, but rose and entering the store—­a rambling, flat-roofed adobe—­bought another sack of tobacco.  When he came out the boys were laughing.  He caught a word or two which drove the jest home.  In the vernacular, he was “an easy mark.”

“Mebby I am,” he said in Mexican.  “But I got the price to buy my smokes.  I ain’t no doggone loafer.”

The Mexican youth who had asked for the tobacco retorted with some more or less vile language, intimating that Pete was neither Mexican nor white—­an insult compared to which mere anathema was as nothing.  Pete knew that if he started a row he would get properly licked—­that the boys would all pile on him and chase him out of town.  So he turned his back on the group and proceeded to pack the burros.  The Mexican boys forgot the recent unpleasantness in watching him pack.  They realized that he knew his business.  But Pete was not through with them yet.  When he had the burros in shape to travel he picked up the stick with which he hazed them and faced the group.  What he said to them was enough with some to spare for future cogitation.  He surpassed mere invective with flaming innuendos as to the ancestry, habits, and appearance of these special gentlemen and of Mexicans in general.  He knew Mexicans and knew where he could hit hardest.  He wound up with gentle intimation that the town would have made a respectable pigsty, but that a decent pig would have a hard time keeping his self-respect among so many descendants of the canine tribe.  It was a beautiful, an eloquent piece of work, and even as he delivered it he felt rather proud of his command of the Mexican idiom.  Then he made a mistake.  He promptly turned his back and started the burros toward the distant camp.  Had he kept half an eye on the boys he might have avoided trouble.  But he had turned his back.  They thought that he was both angry and afraid.  They also made a slight mistake.  The youth who had borrowed the tobacco and who had taken most of Pete’s