The Colfax chronicle., 1900-06-02
A Siren Of Ciudad Juarez
BY Hewett Darrell.
HTHEN Toy Lung Lee arrived in
wv Ciudad Juarez, via Mazatlan and


wv Ciudad Juarez, via Mazatlan and
Mexico City, it was with the intention
of putting up and running, on the bor-
der. a first-class American restaurant.
In hot, smelly Mazatlan, Toy had had
some experience with restaurants; in
Mexico City, quite a lot more. In both
these places he had cleared a consider
able amount of money, with which,
had he been wise Celestial, he would
have remained content. But, no; Toy
believed that on the Mexican side of
the Rio Grande he could win out with
at least two thousand year. The Mel
icans," as he well knew, pay any prices
asked for clean beds at night and hot
cakes in the early morn, with lardy. in
digestible pies in the interim-"all
right"
From the very first poor little Toys
restaurant was bowling success. as
much with the Mexicans as with the
Americans; this in spite of the fact
that with good knowledge of the
Spanish tongue Toy combined thor
ough ignorance of and dislike for the
gringo language. Besides which, in
his secret heart, Toy cherished
strong dislike for the American nation
at large-the same being finally his un-
doing. This dislike was based princi-
pally upon the fact that while on the
Mexican side of the bridge over the Rio
Grande he was a man of might and
weight, owing to his ten thousand Mex
ican dollars and his f1ourishing restau-
rant; on the other Tor American) side,
he was only a''slit-eyed Chinaman," al
lowed wherefore no rights or perqui-
sites as citizen-yea, hooted at and
ridiculed by even the children playing
in the streets. For all of which reasons
Toy had never deigned to take out nec-
essary papers permitting him to cross
the bridge to the American side, nor
had he even put his sabot-shod foot on
American soil. A populous Chinatown
had grown up quickly in Ciudad Juarez,
river that divides Mexico from the
United States of America-which river
no Chinaman must pass without his
Identification papers and passport
Cinnamon jostled you in the aduana,
in the hotels and in the very streets on
the Mexican side; shy, narrow-eyed
Chinese women, with plastered hair
and native dress, pattered hurriediy by
you when you made your way into
Chinatown; roly-poly Chinese babies
played their native games within
stones throw of the Mexican Eagle
and Snake" over the aduana, or custom
house, and any evening you could see
lodge-dressed Cinnamon hurrying to
the Native Lands " daily conclave; in
short, the woods were full' of China
men. And of all these the head and
front, the very moving spirit, was Toy
Lung Lee, honorable possessor of ten
thousand heavy Mexican dollars, head
of the secret society, owner of the
longest and most admired pigtail in
Ciudad Juarez, and great man gen.
orally.
Owing to all these facts, any unmar-
ried female Celestial in Juarez China
town would gladly have taken Toy
Lung Lee for better or worse, and un-
til death did them part. Unfortunate
~, of these enterprising females Toy
would have none. He had been mar
ried once before, in Canton, and of mat
rimony Toy had had sufficiency. 1T
present, as he confided to his cousin, Jim
Sing, he was OH what the Americans
call "the makee," With which women
interfere. No; of women, whether Chi
nese or otherwise, Toy Lung Lee
wished none. AS Confucius had said
centuries ago, women were at the bot
tom of all evil, and provokers of mis-
chief generally.
tionality is inevitably paid out for
speeches of the above seditious sort,
and Toy Lung did not escape the usual
fate. One fine day when the Mexican
sun was shining brightly overhead and
the stars and stripes, just visible on the
other side of the bridge, fiuttered wild
~ in the November breeze, and the
smell of hot breakfast cakes was giving
place in the restaurant to savory whiffs
of pies designed for the gringos'
1uncheon-on such day and hour poor
Toy fell wildly, unreasonably and ire
trievably in love. Not with a demure.
smooth-haired and tiny-footed Chinese
maiden; rot with an Appreciated. bi-
cycling American tourist girl, but with
the black-eyed, rosy-mouthed, man.
tillaed Mexican senorita, Chona, whose
one laughing glance, as she passed by,
attended by her cousin, Juan Jimenez,
had been the undoing of poor Toy Lung
Lee, and. as matter of natural Sc
quence. the start on that downward
road which leads to ruin.
He had already heard of Chona, the
daughter of impecunious old Carlos.
runner of the lottery on the other side
of the street; she was the betrothed
of Juan Jiminez. and the prettiest and
wickedest fiirt in three countries. Had