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
ther