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whatwasthatbook.)
I recall having read this one in the Seventies, most likely as part of an Alfred Hitchcock anthology. The setting is somewhere in the Amazon region; a native girl performs a dance that her culture uses as a passionate declaration of true love and eternal fidelity, and some boorish Yankee tourist (I don't remember whether he was the intended recipient) insults her by flinging silver dollars at her feet--as if she were doing no more than busking.
We later learn that a visiting American has been staked out and devoured alive by army ants; turns out that he wasn't the offender, but he happened to pay his bar tab in American silver dollars...
(This story made such an impression that--something like four decades later--I always ask street performers, "Are you accepting donations?" if there isn't a hat or similar receptacle in evidence.)
ETA:mildred_of_midgard has ID'd the story as "Pieces of Silver" by Brett Halliday, from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night(1961), ed. Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Arthur (reprinted by permission of the author; copyright, 1938, by David Dresser.)
whatwasthatbook.)I recall having read this one in the Seventies, most likely as part of an Alfred Hitchcock anthology. The setting is somewhere in the Amazon region; a native girl performs a dance that her culture uses as a passionate declaration of true love and eternal fidelity, and some boorish Yankee tourist (I don't remember whether he was the intended recipient) insults her by flinging silver dollars at her feet--as if she were doing no more than busking.
We later learn that a visiting American has been staked out and devoured alive by army ants; turns out that he wasn't the offender, but he happened to pay his bar tab in American silver dollars...
(This story made such an impression that--something like four decades later--I always ask street performers, "Are you accepting donations?" if there isn't a hat or similar receptacle in evidence.)
ETA:
mildred_of_midgard has ID'd the story as "Pieces of Silver" by Brett Halliday, from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night(1961), ed. Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Arthur (reprinted by permission of the author; copyright, 1938, by David Dresser.)
