ck with one
hand, and carrying in the other the machete with which the bushman had
tried to prove he was a Colombian and not subject to questioning by the
agents of other powers.

Renson--well, Renson was in some ways "Mac's" exact antithesis and in
some his twin brother. He was one of those youths who believe in
spending prodigally and in all possible haste what little nature has
given them. Wherefore, though he was younger than "Mac" appeared to be,
he already looked older than "Mac" was. In Zone parlance "he had
already laid a good share of the road to Hell behind him." Yet such a
cheery, likable chap was Renson, so large-hearted and unassuming--that
was just why you felt an itching to seize him by the collar of his
olive-drab shirt and shake him till his teeth rattled for tossing
himself so wantonly to the infernal bow-wows.

Renson's "bush" troubles were legion. Not only were there the seducing
brown "Spigoty" women out in the wilderness to help him on his
descending trail, but when and wherever fire-water of whatever
nationality or degree of voltage showed its neck--and it is to be found
even in "the bush"--there was Renson sure to give battle--and fall.
"It's no use bein' a man unless you're a hell of a man," was Renson's
"influenced" philosophy. How different this was from his native good
sense when the influence was turned off was demonstrated when he
returned from cautiously reconnoitering a cottage far back in the wilds
one dark night and reported as his reason for postponing the
enumerating: "If you'd butt in on one o' them Martinique booze
festivals they'd crown you with a bottle."

Already one or two enumerators had gone back to private life--by
request. Particularly sad was the case of our dainty, blue-blooded
Panamanian. As with many Panamanians, and not a few of the self-exalted
elsewhere, he was more burdened with blue corpuscles than with gray
matter. At any rate--

On our cards, after the query "Color?" was a small space, a very small
space in which was to be written quite briefly and unceremoniously "W,"
"B," or "Mx" as the case might be. Uncle Sam was in a hurry for his
census. Early one afternoon our Panamanian helpmate burst upon one of
his numerous aristocratic relatives in his royal thatched domains in
the ancestral bush. When he had embraced him the customary fifteen
times on the right side and the fifteen accustomed times on the left
side, and had performed the eighty-five gestures of gr