We are having
a mescal evening here, whiling away the hours of exile from our
native Vespuccia."
"Mescal?" I repeated blankly at first, then feeling a nudge from
Kennedy, I added hastily: "Oh, yes, to be sure. I think I have
heard of it. It's a Mexican drink, is it not? I have never had
the pleasure of tasting it or of tasting that other drink, pulque--
poolkay--did I get the accent right?"
I felt another, sharper nudge from Kennedy, and knew that I had
only made matters worse.
"Mr. Jameson," he hastened to remark, "confounds this mescal of
the Indians with the drink of the same name that is common in
Mexico."
"Oh," she laughed, to my great relief, "but this mescal is
something quite different. The Mexican drink mescal is made from
the maguey-plant and is a frightfully horrid thing that sends
the peon out of his senses and makes him violent. Mescal as I
mean it is a little shrub, a god, a cult, a religion."
"Yes," assented Kennedy; "discovered by those same Kiowa Indians,
was it not?"
"Perhaps," she admitted, raising her beautiful shoulders in
polite deprecation. "The mescal religion, we found, has spread
very largely in New Mexico and Arizona among the Indians, and
with the removal of the Kiowas to the Indian reservation it has
been adopted by other tribes even, I have heard, as far north as
the Canadian border.
Pages:
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338