Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
else but a "tramposo" of the commonest sort, a petty peddler of the Campo, till he managed to get enough goods on credit from Anzani to open a little store in the wilds and get himself elected by the drunken mozos that hang about the Estancias and the poorest sort of rancheros, who were in his debt. And Gamacho, who to-morrow will be probably one of our high officials, is a stranger too, an Isleflo. He might have been a cargador on the O.S.N. wharf had he not (the posadero of Rincon is ready to swear it) murdered a peddler in the woods and stolen his pack to begin life on. And do you think that Gamacho then would have ever become a hero with the democracy of this place like our capataz? Of course not. He isn't half the man. No; decidedly, I think that Nostromo is a fool."
The doctor's talk was distasteful to the builder of railways. "It is impossible to argue that point," he said, philosophically. "Each man has his gifts. You should have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the street. He has a howling voice and he shouted like mad, lifting his clinched fist right above his head and throwing his body half out of the window. At every pause the rabble below yelled, "Down with the oligarchs! Viva la Libertad!" Fuentes, inside, looked extremely miserable. You know he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of the Interior for six months or so some few years back. Of course, he has no conscience, but he's a man of birth and education; at one time the director of the customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened himself upon him with his following of the lowest rabble. His
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