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“‘Here is moneys,’ says the General, ‘of a small amount. There is more with me–moocho more. Plentee moneys shall you be supplied, Senor Galloway. More I shall send you at all times that you need. I shall desire to pay feefty–one hundred thousand pesos, if necessario, to be elect. How no? Sacramento! If that I am president and do not make one meelion dolla in the one year you shall keek me on that side!– /valgame Dios/!’

“Denver got a Cuban cigar-maker to fix up a little cipher code with English and Spanish words, and gave the General a copy, so we could cable him bulletins about the election, or for more money, and then we were ready to start. General Rompiro escorted us to the steamer. On the pier he hugged Denver around the waist and sobbed. ‘Noble mans,’ says he, ‘General Rompiro propels you into his confidence and trust. Go, in the hands of the saints to do the work for your friend. /Viva la libertad/!’

“‘Sure,’ says Denver. ‘And viva la liberality an’ la soaperino and hoch der land of the lotus and the vote us. Don’t worry, General. We’ll have you elected as sure as bananas grow upside down.’

“‘Make pictures on me,’ pleads the General–‘make pictures on me for money as it is needful.’

“‘Does he want to be tattooed, would you think?’ asks Denver, wrinkling up his eyes.

“‘Stupid!’ says I. ‘He wants you to draw on him for election expenses. It’ll be worse than tattooing. More like an autopsy.’

“Me and Denver steamed down to Panama, and then hiked across the Isthmus, and then by steamer again down to the town of Espiritu on the coast of the General’s country.

“That was a town to send J. Howard Payne to the growler. I’ll tell you how you could make one like it. Take a lot of Filipino huts and a couple of hundred brick-kilns and arrange ’em in squares in a cemetery. Cart down all the conservatory plants in the Astor and Vanderbilt greenhouses, and stick ’em about wherever there’s room. Turn all the Bellevue patients and the barbers’ convention and the Tuskegee school loose in the streets, and run the thermometer up to 120 in the shade. Set a fringe of the Rocky Mountains around the rear, let it rain, and set the whole business on Rockaway Beach in the middle of January–and you’d have a good imitation of Espiritu.

“It took me and Denver about a week to get acclimated. Denver sent out the letters the General had given him, and notified the rest of the gang that there was something doing at the captain’s office. We set up headquarters in an old ‘dobe house on a side street where the grass was waist high. The election was only four weeks off; but there wasn’t any excitement. The home candidate for president was named Roadrickeys. This town of Esperitu wasn’t the capital any more than Cleveland, Ohio, is the capital of the United States, but it was the political centre where they cooked up revolutions, and made up the slates.

“At the end of the week Denver says the machine is started running.

“‘Sully,’ says he, ‘we’ve got a walkover. Just because General Rompiro ain’t Don Juan-on-the-spot the other crowd ain’t at work. They’re as full of apathy as a territorial delegate during the chaplain’s prayer. Now, we want to introduce a little hot stuff in the way of campaigning, and we’ll surprise ’em at the polls.’

“‘How are you going to go about it?’ I asks.

“‘Why, the usual way,’ says Denver, surprised. ‘We’ll get the orators on our side out every night to make speeches in the native lingo, and have torch-light parades under the shade of the palms, and free drinks, and buy up all the brass bands, of course, and–well, I’ll turn the baby-kissing over to you, Sully–I’ve seen a lot of ’em.’

“‘What else?’ says I.

“‘Why, you know,’ says Denver. ‘We get the heelers out with the crackly two-spots, and coal-tickets, and orders for groceries, and have a couple of picnics out under the banyan-trees, and dances in the Firemen’s Hall–and the usual things. But first of all, Sully, I’m going to have the biggest clam-bake down on the beach that was ever seen south of the tropic of Capricorn. I figured that out from the start. We’ll stuff the whole town and the jungle folk for miles around with clams. That’s the first thing on the programme. Suppose you go out now, and make the arrangements for that. I want to look over the estimates the General made of the vote in the coast districts.’