Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border Part 3

"Got everything?" Adair MacKenzie repeated the question with which he greeted the girls as they all approached the customs office. "Baggage checks? Tourist cards?"

At this, they all opened their purses and rummaged around in them.

"Shades of Glasgow." Laura murmured into Nan's ears. "Seems good to be going through this red tape again, doesn't it?"

Nan nodded. She felt much the same as she did the day they had first stepped foot on foreign soil, an unforgettable experience that they all had talked over again and again since that morning in May when the great boat had been moored to the dock and they had walked, one after the other, down the gangplank to set their feet in Scotland for the first time. The adventures that had followed had made their vacation the most exciting of their lives as those who have read "Nan Sherwood's Summer Holidays" all agree. Now, as they all walked forward toward the offices of the Mexican officials, Nan wondered idly what further adventures were in store for her.

"Senorita, your bag, senorita."

"Why don't you answer when you are called?" Walker Jamieson dropped back into step beside Nan. "Lady," he prodded Nan with his elbow, "the handsome young Mexican with the neat little mustache that is running after us, is calling you."

"Me?" Nan's voice had a surprised ring to it. "Am I Senorita?"

"None other, for months to come, now." Walker Jamieson answered. "You are Senorita Sherwood and you had better answer when these Senores call or they will be so much insulted that they will never recover."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Nan looked genuinely regretful as she turned to the tall thin native that had been following her.

"It is nothing," he dismissed her concern with a wave of his hands, "but the Senorita has dropped her purse. May I give it to her?" He bowed gracefully as he presented it, and Nan felt that he couldn't possibly have presented the finest gift in the world with more grace.

However, before she could possibly thank him, he disappeared. She turned to follow the others into the offices, rummaging through her purse, even as they had done, as she went.

"Why, it's gone!" Nan looked first at her purse and then in the direction in which the obliging young Mexican had vanished.

"Uh-huh, we should have guessed," Walker Jamieson shook his head sadly.

"Dumb of me. What did he get?"

"My visitor's pa.s.s!" Nan exclaimed. "Now, what will I do?"

Involuntarily, they both looked toward Adair MacKenzie who was just disappearing through the door. Then they laughed.

"I don't know, kid," Walker liked this youngster that Alice had already filled his ears with tales about. "But you're in for it. It's tough, these days, getting duplicates of the things. Shall I break the news to the ogre," he nodded in Adair MacKenzie's direction. "He'll explode, but you've just got to take it."

CHAPTER IV

TROUBLE AT THE BORDER

"Here, here, what's eating you two?" Adair MacKenzie came bursting forth from the door he had entered just a few moments before Nan's encounter with the Mexican. "H-m-m, lost your pa.s.s, I'll wager." With the uncanny instinct of many peppery old gentlemen, Adair MacKenzie as soon as he saw the baffled expression on Nan's face, jumped immediately to the right conclusion.

"Might have known that would happen. Should have taken care of them all myself. Can't depend on women and girls. Always tell Alice that. Ought to have a safe place to keep things. Old pouch my mother used to strap around her waist was a good idea."

Nan couldn't restrain the smile that came to her eyes at this. She had known one person in her life who tied a bag around her waist. That was grim old Mrs. Cupp, a.s.sistant to Dr. Beulah Prescott, princ.i.p.al at Lakeview Hall. Legend had it that Mrs. Cupp had a dark secret the key to which she carried in the black bag which someone, in days long before Nan and Bess descended on Lakeview Hall, had seen. Whether or not it was so, Nan didn't know, but at Lakeview Hall, the words "Keep it a secret"

were generally expressed by saying "Put it in the black bag."

"Laughing at me, Miss!" Adair's roar brought Nan out of her reveries.

She jumped, and looking up into his face, she winged her way from Lakeview Hall on the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lakes back to Laredo, Texas and the immediate problem of the lost visitor's pa.s.s.

"I said you should take care of your things the way I do," he roared again. "See," he pushed his hand inside his topcoat pocket, "Always know where my things--" the end of the sentence was lost in a sputter, as Adair MacKenzie searched frantically in pocket after pocket for his visitor's pa.s.s. It was gone!

"W-w-why, somebody's picked my pockets. Can't allow this. Where's a policeman? You, you, why don't you do something instead of standing there and laughing?" Adair shook his cane at Walker Jamieson who was grinning broadly at the spectacle of the old man fuming and sputtering now, not at his own negligence, but at the inefficiency of a government that would allow such things to happen. His tirade against Nan and her carelessness were utterly forgotten.

But it wasn't necessary for Walker to do anything. Adair, in his outburst, railing against governments in general now, calling down the wrath of the G.o.ds on the heads of all policemen, and expressing himself most forcibly on the subject of newspaper men in particular, attracted a crowd. Shortly, English and Spanish words were being flung this way and that and everyone was arguing, but what it was all about no one seemed to know.

"Why, daddy, what has happened?" Alice having heard the excitement from her seat in the office where her father had left her had worked her way through the crowd, and now put a restraining hand on his arm.

Immediately, he was quiet. "I'm sorry, dear," he looked down at her shamefacedly, "but these blundering Mexicans have lost not only that poor young girl's," he pointed to Nan with his cane, "visitor's pa.s.s, but mine too. It's an outrage! That's what it is, an outrage. And I won't stand for it."

"Oh, Walker," Alice turned to the young reporter now, "What shall we do?"

"I beg your pardon, Miss," the voice was that of a Texas Ranger with a big ten-gallon hat who had watched the whole scene with some amus.e.m.e.nt, "but if you'll step right over to the offices there" he nodded in the direction of the door from which Alice had emerged a moment before, "Mr.

Nogales will take care of you."

"Thanks," Walker acknowledged the information, grinned, as though he was sharing a joke with the stranger, took both Alice and her father by the arm, and, with Nan, worked his way out of the crowd.

"It's a difficult problem." Lozario Nogales gave a slight Spanish accent to his words as he spoke to the Americans who, a few moments after the scene above, were ushered into his office. "You see, it's like this--"

he spoke slowly and fingered a pencil as he chose his words, for English did not come any too easily to him.

"Nonsense! No difficulties at all." Adair MacKenzie was always impatient with slow speech, "all you have to do is write out another of those cards for each of us. Take you a minute. They're nothing but a lot of silly red tape anyway. If I had my way about it, there would be no pa.s.sports, no customs, no visitors' pa.s.ses, no anything that impedes free movement of people across the borders. It's all foolishness the way you Mexicans do these things." Thus, with utter inconsistency, Adair MacKenzie, in a moment's time placed the whole burden of border regulations in the laps of the Mexicans.

"But Senor," Lozario felt that he never would become accustomed to the ways of these Americans, and of this American in particular, "there are the rules."

"Rules! What rules?" Adair stormed further, then he caught Alice's eye and capitulated, "Well, what are we to do?"

"It's simply this," Mr. Nogales was more than grateful for Alice's presence which gave him at last an opportunity to speak, "there has been a good deal of smuggling across the borders in the past few months, and your American government has made new rules about the issuing of duplicates when pa.s.ses are lost."

"Smuggling?" Walker Jamieson now spoke up for the first time since the party entered the office. "Smuggling what?"

"Well, the American gentleman knows that immigration laws prohibit the free pa.s.sage of certain nationalities into the United States."

Walker nodded. His work in San Francisco had brought this fact most forcibly to his mind again and again, for there he had worked often among the Chinese and the j.a.panese and numbered among them many close friends. These people admired him and respected him greatly. They thought that because he was a newspaper man, he could do anything in the world for them that he wanted to do.

As a consequence, they were constantly coming to him with tales of wives or mothers or children that they wanted to see, but could not get into the United States because of the immigration laws.

"And the senor knows that these people somehow or other manage to get across the border in spite of these laws?" Mr. Nogales continued. He liked this young man.

"Yes." Walker knew that too. Often he had been amazed while covering his beat in Chinatown to meet the very mothers, wives, or children he had been asked to "get here for me, please, Mr. Jamieson" a few days after being asked.

However, as he threaded through the dark streets of the famous San Francisco Chinatown this surprise always wore off. The ways of the people he was among were so silent and mysterious, even to him working among them and calling them "friends", that he had grown to take such sudden appearances for granted.

"Well, just lately," Mr. Nogales went on, "there have been even more than the usual number of persons smuggled across. Your government and mine has been working hard on the problem of putting an end to this.

One means of stopping it has been to check most thoroughly the issuance of all duplicate visitor's pa.s.ses."

Nan was beginning to see light in the whole situation now. Immigration laws and the smuggling of aliens across the border was something she had studied about in social science cla.s.ses at Lakeview. This scene in the Laredo offices was a school lesson brought to life.

Nan vaguely remembered, as she stood there listening and watching, that Laura had once had a special report to give on this particular subject.

She remembered because it was at the time the girls were planning a big spread down at the boathouse, and Laura had been so excited about the whole thing that she had gone to cla.s.s utterly unprepared. In the few minutes before the a.s.sembly bell rang Nan helped her out, and so Laura had managed to struggle through the social science hour.