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the soldiers gave him his daily ration of meat and milk;
Luis Cervantes was forced to answer that his sole nourishment
was whatever the old ranch women happened to
give him and that everyone still considered him an intruder.
"Look here, Tenderfoot, they're all good boys, really,"
Demetrio answered. "You've got to know how to handle
them, that's all. You mark my words; from tomorrow
on, there won't be a thing you'll lack."
In effect, things began to change that very afternoon.
Some of Demetrio's men lay in the quarry, glancing at
the sunset that turned the clouds into huge clots of
congealed blood and listening to Venancio's amusing
stories culled from The Wandering Jew. Some of them,
lulled by the narrator's mellifluous voice, began to snore.
But Luis Cervantes listened avidly and as soon as
Venancio topped off his talk with a storm of anticlerical
denunciations he said emphatically: "Wonderful, wonderful!
What intelligence! You're a most gifted man!"
"Well, I reckon it's not so bad," Venancio answered,
warming to the flattery, "but my parents died and I
didn't have a chance to study for a profession."
"That's easy to remedy, I'm sure. Once our cause is
victorious, you can easily get a degree. A matter of two
or three weeks' assistant's work at some hospital and a
letter of recommendation from our chief and you'll be a
full-fledged doctor, all right. The thing is child's play."
From that night onward Venancio, unlike the others,
ceased calling him Tenderfoot. He addressed him as
Louie.
It was Louie, this, and Louie, that, right and left, all
the time.
XI