Into her mind came a phrase she had heard in her childhood.
On the outskirts of Eldara there was a little shack
owned by a Mexican—Jose, he was called,
and nothing else, “Greaser” Jose.
One night an alarm of fire was given in Eldara, and
the whole populace turned out to enjoy the sight;
it was a festival occasion, in a way. It was the
house of Greaser Jose.
The cowpunchers manned a bucket line, but the source
of water was far away, the line too long, and the
flames gained faster than they could be quenched.
All through the work of fire-fighting Greaser Jose
was everywhere about the house, flinging buckets of
water through the windows into the red furnace within;
his wife and the two children stood stupidly, staring,
dumb. But in the end, when the fire was towering
above the roof of the house, roaring and crackling,
the Mexican suddenly raised a long arm and called
to the bucket line, “It is done. Senors,
I thank you.”
Then he had folded his arms and repeated in a monotone,
over and over again: “Todo es perdo;
todo es perdo!”
His wife came to him, frantic, wailing, and threw
her arms around his neck. He merely repeated
with heavy monotony: “Todo es perdo;
todo es perdo!”
The phrase clung in the mind of the girl; and she
rose at last and went back to her bunk, repeating:
“Todo es perdo; todo es perdo! All is
lost; all is lost!”
No tears were in her eyes; they were wide and solemn,
looking up to the shadows of the ceiling, and so she
went to sleep with the solemn Spanish phrase echoing
through her whole being: “Todo es perdo!”
She woke with the smell of frying bacon pungent in
her nostrils.
BACON
The savour of roasting chicken, that first delicious
burst of aroma when the oven door is opened, would
tempt an angel from heaven down to the lowly earth.
A Southerner declares that his nostrils can detect
at a prodigious distance the cooking of “possum
and taters.” A Kanaka has a cosmopolitan
appetite, but the fragrance which moves him most nearly
is the scent of fish baking in Ti leaves. A Frenchman
waits unmoved until the perfume of some rich lamb
ragout, an air laden with spices, is wafted toward
him.
Every man and every nation has a special dish, in
general; there is only one whose appeal is universal.
It is not for any class or nation; it is primarily
for “the hungry man,” no matter what has
given him an appetite. It may be that he has
pushed a pen all day, or reckoned up vast columns,
or wielded a sledge-hammer, or ridden a wild horse
from morning to night; but the savour of peculiar
excellence to the nostrils of this universal hungry
man is the smell of frying bacon.
A keen appetite is even stronger than sorrow, and
when Sally Fortune awoke with that strong perfume
in her nostrils, she sat straight up among the blankets,
startled as the cavalry horse by the sound of the
trumpet. What she saw was Anthony Bard kneeling
by the coals of the fire over which steamed a coffee-pot
on one side and a pan of crisping bacon on the other.
