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William J. Conaway

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Having undressed, I leaped jubilantly into the huge, old-fashioned tub,- and turned on the water. There was no water. Poking modest head and shoulders around the edge of the door, I looked for the maid. She eventually made her appearance, as servants will, even in Mexico, and regarded me suspiciously from a safe distance.

You asked for a towel. You did not mention that you wished also a bath. Always in the morning there is water. There was some difficulty in locating the electric button, since another careless mozo had backed the bureau against it. There was also some difficulty in arranging the mosquito net over my bed. It hung from the ceiling by a slender cord which immediately broke in the pulley.

Finally, beginning to feel that the charm of Mexico had been vastly overrated by previous writers, I retired, prepared to fight mosquitos, and discovered that there were no mosquitos in Hermosillo. In the morning, rejuvenated and reenergized, I again waylaid the Indian servant-maid. There was some delay while the water was heated, and more delay while the maid carried it, a kettlef ul at a time, from the kitchen to the bathroom, but the last kettle was ready by the time the rest had cooled, and I finally emerged refreshed, to discover again that in Mexico the unexpected always happens.

When I pulled out the old sock used as a stopper, the water ran out upon the bath-room floor, and dis- appeared down a gutter, carrying with it the shoes I had left beside the tub. It was a sleepy little city, typically Mexican, bask- ing beneath a warm blue sky. It stood in a fertile oasis of the desert, and all about it were groves of orange trees. Its massive-walled buildings had once been painted a violent red or green or yellow, but time and weather had softened the barbaric colors until now they suggested the tints of some old Italian masterpiece.

And although ancient bullet holes scarred its dwellings, there hung over the Moor- ish streets to-day a restful atmosphere of tranquil- lity. At noon the merchants closed their shops, and every one indulged in the national siesta. The only exception was an American — a quiet, determined- looking man — who kept walking up and down the hotel patio with quick, nervous tread.

He is the manager of mines in the Yaqui country. One of his trucks is missing, and he fears lest Indians have attacked it. It was the most peaceful-appearing town in all the world. They were dainty, feminine creatures, not always pretty, yet invariably with a gentle woman- liness that gave them charm. Behind the bars of a window and emboldened by a sense of security, they favored him with a roguish smile from the depths of languorous dark eyes, and some- times with a softly murmured, "Adios!

He was a rosy-cheeked, cherubic-appearing lad. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles, and his neatly- plastered hair was parted in the middle. Like my- self, he was dressed in a newly-purchased palm- beach suit. His name was Eustace. He, too, was just out of the army. He had enlisted, he ex- plained, in the hope that he might live down a reputation as a model youth. And the War Department had given him a tame job on the Mexi- can border, cleaning out the cages of the signal-corps pigeons. Wherefore he was now journeying into foreign fields in the hope of satisfying himself with some mild form of adventure.

Very solemnly we shook hands. Since neither of us actually expected that any editor would publish what we sent him, we formed a partnership upon the spot. The Expedition had a new recruit. And together we mourned the disappointing peace- fulness of Hermosillo. Evening descended upon the plaza. A circle of lights appeared around the rickety little bandstand. The senoritas strolled past us, arm in arm, while stately Dons and solemn Donas maintained a watchful chaperonage from the benches. The cathedral clock struck ten.

Dons, Donas, and senoritas disappeared in the direction of home. The gendarmes alone re- mained. Each muffled his throat as a precaution against night air, and each set a lantern in the center of a street crossing. From all sides came the sound of iron bars sliding into place behind heavy doors. Hermosillo was going to bed. As we, also, turned homeward, our footsteps rang loudly through the silent streets. A policeman un- muffled his throat and bade us "Good night. From gendarme to gen- darme the signal passed, the plaintive wail seeming to say, "All's well.

A lone wayfarer, lingering upon the sidewalk before a window, turned to glance at us, and to bid us '' Adios. Then the man's voice trailed after us, singing very softly to the throbbing of a guitar. A moon peeped over the edge of the low flat roofs — a very aged and battered- looking moon, with a greenish tinge like that of the old silver bells in Hermosillo's ancient cathedral — a moon which, like the city below it, suggested that it once had known troublous days, yet was now at perfect peace.

This was a delightful land, but to a pair of Free- Lance Newspaper Correspondents — As we entered the wide-arched portals of the hotel, the telephone struck a jarring note. The American mining man, still pacing nervously up and down the patio, leaped to the receiver. White and Garcia both? Get the troops out! Here was our first story! He'll take you to La Colorada, in the Yaqui country itself.

You'll get the dope there! We stood at the hotel gate, a little startled, gazing out into the night. The moon smiled down over low, flat roofs, and a man's voice drifted to us, singing very softly to the throbbing of a guitar, and the plaintive note of a gendarme's whistle seemed to say, ''All's well.

He was a stocky man in khaki and corduroy, a man of fifty or sixty, with slightly gray hair, and the keen, friendly eyes of the Westerner. He was a trifle deaf from listening to so many revolutions, and questions had to be repeated. Oh, the holes in the wind-shield? They're only bullet holes. The road was nothing more than the track of cars which had crossed the plains before us.

Sometimes it led through wide expanses of dull reddish sand ; sometimes the cactus and mesquite grew in thorny forests up to the very edge of the narrow trail. It was a country alive with all the creeping, crawl- ing things that supply local color for magazine fic- tion. Chipmunks and ground squirrels dived into their burrows at our approach. A rattler lifted its head, hissed a warn- ing, and retired with leisurely dignity.

Jack-rabbits popped up from nowhere in particular and scam- pered into the brush, laying their ears flat against the head, running a dozen steps and finally bouncing away in a series of long, frantic leaps. Chaparral cocks, locally known as road-runners, sped along the trail before us, keeping about fifty feet ahead of the car, wiggling their tails in mocking challenge, slack- ening their pace whenever we slackened ours, speed- ing whenever we speeded, and shooting away into the mesquite in a low, jumping flight as John stepped on the gas.

Now and then we passed a mound of rocks sur- mounted by a crude wooden cross, and once we saw the wreck of what had been another automobile. People shot by Yaqui Indians. Oh, yes, quite a few of them. The car lumbered through it, sinking to the hubs. In the very center it came to an abrupt stop. John picked up a rifle. John, puffing complacently at his corn-cob pipe, tried the self-starter again and again without success, meanwhile giving me the details of White's murder: Exactly like this one. He come around a bend in his truck, and hit the waterhole, and was plowing through it when a dozen Mausers blazed out'n the cactus.

Three bullets hit him square in the head. Maybe Garcia, his mechanic, got it on the first volley, too. You couldn't be sure — so the fellows said over the telephone. The Yaquis had cut him up and shoved sticks through him 'til his own mother couldn't 've recognized him. Dig the sand away from that other wheel, will you? There were half a dozen other Americans in La Colorada. It had once been the home of gold mines from which heavily-guarded mule trains carried away a hundred and eight millions of dollars in bul- lion, but revolutionists had destroyed the machinery during the turbulent years that led up to the Car- ranza regime, and the town now served only as a depot for the big motor trucks which ran through hostile Yaqui countiy to mines farther in the in- terior.

The half dozen Americans were the drivers of these trucks. The eldest of them was under thirty, but most of them had knocked about the far corners of the earth since childhood, and all of them sur- veyed with undisguised contempt the little thirty- two-caliber automatics we carried. His jaw re- sembled the Rock of Gibraltar, and his hair sug- gested Vesuvius in eruption. His favorite litera- ture, I suspected, was the biography of Jesse James. He carried a forty-four in a soft-leather holster cut wide to facilitate a quick draw.

All of these youths had encountered the Yaquis. One showed us a dozen bullet-dents in his truck, mementos of a brush with Indians on his last trip.

Another had been captured, stripped of his clothing, and chased naked back to town. But of the latest incident — the murder of White and Garcia — they could give us little information. Laughlin was supposed to have an understanding with the Yaqui chiefs whereby his property and his em- ployees were protected. He 's never had any trouble before this. It was a gang of Mexican soldiers. They robbed the truck and blamed it on the Indians, and went scouting all over the country pretending to chase the guys that did it.

Maybe the same thing has happened again. They just rob us. When they catch a Mex, they rip his clothes off and chuck him into the cactus, or cut the soles off his feet and make him dance on the hot sand. It was merely border tradition that the Yaquis treated Americans better than Mexicans. There was the story of One-Legged Joe, who went prospecting just outside of town, and of whom nothing was found except the wooden leg, charred with fire.

And there was the tragedy of Pedro Lehr, who left his ranch near Hermosillo for a few hours, and returned to find his entire family slain, with the exception of a sixteen-year-old daugh- ter whom the Yaquis had carried away with them. Pleased at our eager interest, the truck-drivers warmed toward us.

Only Dugan remained aloof, grinning a trifle contemptuously. Eustace turned to him: Then he pointed toward two loaded trucks that stood in the road before us. If you want to know how it feels, go along with him. He's carrying six hundred pounds of dynamite. He was a tall, lean-faced man — one of the quiet, self-possessed, determined-looking mine superin- tendents usually encountered in Mexico. He was about to make a week's trip to El Progresso mine, sixty miles farther in the interior. He would be glad to take us along. And at dawn the following day, we rode out of La Colorada in one of MacFarlane's trucks.

We sat upon a miscellaneous assortment of machinery, provisions, and blasting powder, with a crew of twenty hired gunmen, each of whom wore several hundred yards of cartridge belt draped around his waist and criss-crossed over his shoulders in the approved Mexican style. The desert seemed a trifle more forbidding than the one we had crossed the day before. When we were in the open our gunmen laughed and chatted together; when we approached the forests of yucca and mesquite, I noticed that they grew silent and watchful. But no sound came from the vast expanse of wasteland except the peaceful song of the locusts.

At rare intervals we passed a native village — a cluster of mud hovels surrounding an aged white church — and our advent created a sensation. Children raced barefoot beside the trucks to get a better view of us. Half -naked Indian women, pounding clothes upon the flat rocks beside a shallow brook, ceased their work to stare at us. Even the adult male popu- lation, reclining against the shady side of the adobe dwellings, sat up to look at us.

There was something in these tiny hamlets that re- called pictures of the Holy Land. Civilization had changed but little here since the days of the Aztecs, and despite the excitement caused by our passage, there was an air of sleepiness about the whole place which suggested another continent, a million miles farther from Broadway. So perfect was the scene that I resented the sight of a Standard Oil tin used as a water-jar, and felt distinctly offended when I heard the click of a Singer sewing machine issuing from a tiny, cactus-roofed hut.

The natives here showed little Spanish ancestry. Their features were purely Indian. A few, by their prominent cheek-bones and dark complexion, sug- gested a trace of Yaqui blood, but most of them were of other tribes, and all carried arms as a precaution against Yaqui raids. Every one wore a large knife, and in an open-air barber shop one native with a six-shooter on his belt was shaving another who held a rifle across his knees.

All of them greeted us with the cry: Later, when we had con- sumed the meal by the light of a flickering oil lamp, her daughter joined us with a guitar, and while Mac- Farlane watched his gunmen to see that no one kept the bottle too long inverted over his black mousta- chios, the girl sang to us. Still later, after she her- self had sampled the potent Mexican liquor, she danced.

The gunmen, how- ever, found it highly diverting. They pushed back their chairs to clear a stage for her, and watched her with the pleased expression which a Mexican always wears when looking at a woman. The guitar twanged a weird, savage melody ; the dim light from the swinging lantern shone upon a sea of dark faces, and reflected from a score of gleaming eyes; in the center of the crowded room the girl danced awk- wardly, her bare feet pounding monotonously upon the mud floor.

They say her last husband bit it off before chasing her home with a club. Of course, you can't believe everything you hear. But you'd better turn in, To-morrow we travel on mule- back. MacFarlane and our- selves, with two of the gunmen, were to ride over the mountains. The bridle trail led through question- able territory, but it was shorter.

Neither Eustace nor I had ever ridden a mule before. Both of us had read Western fiction, and had noted that the hero not only loved his steed, but left nearly everything to the animal's good judg- ment, and that the noble beast, appreciating and re- ciprocating his master's aifection and trust, invari- ably anticipated his every wish, and carried the hero out of every conceivable difficulty. Two minutes after mounting, I welcomed the sug- gestion. It seemed inhuman to beat anything so small as that mule, but the animal appeared not to mind it in the least.

The moment I ceased whaling him, he assumed that this was where I wished to stop. His one virtue was that no matter how often he stumbled on the edge of a precipice, he never fell over. Hour after hour the path twisted through narrow ravines, along deep water-courses strewn with bowlders, down sandy embankments where the animals slid like toboggans, around narrow cliffs, and up sharp in- clines where they fairly leaped from rock to rock.

It was a gloriously desolate country, hideous per- haps, yet awesome in its ugly grandeur. Mountains reared themselves above the trail, covered some- times with huge candelabra cactus, but usually bare and towering skyward like the battlements of a gigantic fortress. I told him to keep close to us!

Four months ago one of my men dropped behind, and they nabbed him so quietly we never heard a sound! Turning a bend, we found Eustace sitting on his mule at the top of a sandy decline, complacently smoking a cigar. There was no hotel in this town, but we found lodgings with an Indian family. The name of the town, I learned, when translated from the Indian, meant something which could be printed only in French. As I scratched myself to sleep, I reflected upon the appropriateness of the name.

I had just succeeded in closing my eyes when a volley of pistol shots sounded outside the window. Eustace and I bumped heads in a frantic dive to locate the automatics beneath our pillow. This is a Saint's Day, and the faithful are celebrating. They killed the last pho- tographer that tried it. Invari- ably they said, "No! Even those who knew what it was were reticent about posing. Still, I could not resist that picture. She was standing in the center of the shallow river, filling deer-skin water-sacks and load- ing them upon the back of a moth-eaten little burro.

But since the sun shone directly in my lens, I had to pass her. And the moment I unslung my camera, she started to walk upstream directly into the light.

I broke into a trot, and she broke into a trot, dragging the burro after her, and splashing water over the two of us. I felt a trifle undignified, but I had determined to have that picture, and I increased my pace to a run. Thereupon she gathered her skirts about her waist and sprinted like an intercollegiate cham- pion. From the village behind us came a series of war- whoops. I looked back to see the entire population joining in the chase. Suddenly I realized that my behavior was undignified. Some fifty angry natives were rushing toward me, waving in the air an assort- ment of weapons that might have delighted a collec- tor of antiques, but which at the moment gave me no cause whatsoever for rejoicing.

Eustace came to my rescue. Two years and eight sweethearts upon the border had given him a fluent command of the language. This old geezer with the four whiskers on his chin is her man, and he says he'll let you take her picture for two pesos. I suppose he's tired of her, and doesn't care whether she croaks or not.

For she gathered up her skirts once more, and fled away down the river, dragging the burro behind her. It lay in the center of a ragged, bowl-shaped valley in the heart of the mountains, some ninety miles from the railroad — a group of gaping shafts beside a stone blockhouse, with a vil- lage of thatched laborers' quarters straggling along a sandy, cactus-hedged street.

Some half dozen American bosses occupied the blockhouse. The native workmen numbered about two hundred, most of them Pimas and mestizos. Like most of the mines in Mexico, El Progresso was not the sort where one had merely to walk out with a pick and chop large pieces of silver off a convenient mountain side; before a single speck of mineral could be ex- tracted, it had been necessary to transport across the desert a hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery ; every bit of it had been brought over the long trail on truck or muleback, and the journey of every train had meant the possibility of a fight with Indians.

The Yaquis of Sonora are closely related to the Apaches of our own border-country. Prom the earliest coming of the white man, they have re- sented the invasion of their domain. The Spaniards were never able to conquer them. Porfirio Diaz, who pacified all the rest of Mexico, could never make the Yaquis recognize the sovereignty of the Mexican government over their territory. He sent expedi- tion after expedition against them, depleted their ranks by constant warfare, and took thousands of prisoners whom he shipped to far-off Yucatan to labor as virtual slaves upon the henequin planta- tions.

From 'time to time, in more recent years, groups of Yaquis have made their peace with the Mexican authorities. Many of them, known as "manzos" in distinction from the "hravos" in the hills, are to be found in every Sonoran village and even in Arizona. As soldiers, they are the bravest in Mexico, and as laborers the most industrious. But they were never especially friendly to Carranza, and in his era, although some served in the federal army, they frequently did so in order to obtain arms or ammu- nition for their own use.

Soldiers one day, they were apt to be bandits the next. Although the Yaquis had first declared war upon the invading white man with every possible justifi- cation, they had been forced, through years of con- stant retreat into the unfertile recesses of the desert, to prey upon the invaders for a living. Although their original grievance had been against the Mexi- can, bandits can not be choosers.

And the miners at El Progresso were always on the watch. Strange as it may sound, the Yaqui is a Christian. Years ago the Spanish missionaries, the greatest ad- venturers in all history, penetrated the Sonora des- ert where warriors feared to tread, and finding them- selves unable to converse with the Indians, enacted their message in sign language.

To-day, at Easter time, the Yaquis reenact the same story, distorted by their own barbaric conception of it until it is but a semi-savage burlesque upon the Passion Play. In the manzo settlement at Nogales, the Christ was represented by a cheap rag doll, garbed in bril- liantly colored draperies, and cradled in a wicker basket beneath a thatched roof. The ceremonies lasted from Good Friday until after Easter Sunday, and during that time the Indians neither ate nor slept, refreshing themselves only with mescal.

The native conception of the life of Christ was that of a continual warfare with Judas. About the cradle the women of the tribe sat cross-legged upon the ground, wail- ing a strange Indian hymn that rose and fell in plaintive minor key. A tomtom pounded monoto- nously. Night descended, and the fires threw weird, fantastic shadows upon the reddened mountain sides.

Hour after hour, and day after day, the barbaric orgy continued, until on Easter Sunday the tribe rose in defense of the Christ, seized the Judases and carried them to the fire, where they pretended to bum them. Afterwards, they carried the image of the Savior in mournful procession to a little grave behind the village. It was a ridiculous travesty upon religion, yet one could not laugh. There was a so- lemnity in the faces of these people, as they followed the rag doll to its burial place. Many of the women were weeping.

The men bared their heads, and there was true reverence in the dark, savage eyes. The capering of the devil-dancers had been ludi- crous, yet now I found myself strangely impressed. Frequently, as the miner had suggested, it serves as a get-together for the Spring raiding season. Spring is harvest-time in southern Sonora, and an ideal time for the Yaquis to sweep down from the mountains and pillage the valleys which the Mexi- cans have taken from them.

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In the days of Car- ranza, the Indians not only invaded the rural dis- tricts, but carried their raids to the very outskirts of Guaymas and Hermosillo. Word came to us at El Progresso that a band of the Indians was operating not far away. They had attacked several of the neighboring villages, and had visited the Gavilan Mine, another American con- cern in our district, where they had done the miners no bodily harm, but had left them without clothing or provisions. The ghosts of the murdered men are supposed to be out for revenge after dark.

That's the safest time to travel. As we rode silently toward the vagne mountains ahead, their peaks became a magic crimson that deepened slowly to purple against a silver sky.

We passed Suaqui, where the rivers gleamed like shin- ing ribbons in the last faint twilight. Then the swift desert night was upon us, and we were rid- ing into a deep pass, where the air grew strangely chill. I can recall every minute of that long night. Per- haps the mule could see the path.

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Now and then, as we ascended, I caught a momentary glimpse of the rider ahead, looming abnormally large against the sky. Usually I listened to the crunch of hoofs upon the gravel, and followed close behind. One had the sensation of being about to enter a tun- nel into which the other riders had disappeared.

When the faint moonlight seeped down into the pass, it converted each cactus into the semblance of a crouching Yaqui. And despite MacFarlane's asser- tion that night travel was comparatively safe, neither he nor the others were taking chances. The howl of a coyote or the cooing of a dove brought every revolver out of its holster, for these noises, although common enough in the mountains, are sometimes used by the Indians as signals. It was probably some animal — perhaps a mountain lion — following us out of curiosity, but we watched it, lest it prove a bandit. Hour after hour we rode in silence through the black defiles.

We knew whether we were ascending or descending only from the slant of the mule's back. The nervous strain seemed to affect even the ani- mals. I chased him several hundred yards up the ragged bed of the water- course, stumbling over slippery stones, and splash- ing into the pools until I finally captured him, both of us making enough noise — it seemed to me — to awaken any Yaqui within a mile.

And within a mile, we turned a bend, and found ourselves in the very center of an encampment! A score of camp-fires, dwindled to smoldering red ashes, lined the trail, and about them, as though they were the spokes of a wheel, a group of men were sleeping with feet toward the blaze, in Yaqui fashion, each man with a rifle beside him. Not a sentry had stopped us. Even as I realized where we were, I found that my mule was stepping over the recumbent figures. One of the men awoke, yawned, and raised himself on an elbow to stare at us.

We rode into Matape at dawn, and a truck carried us back to La Colorada. Dugan offered his hand. I thought you'd be scared. John Luy, driving us back to Hermosillo in his Buick, seemed highly amused about the whole affair. He chuckled to himself for a long time before he spoke: Mack don't usually make that ride at night.

He did it to give you guys a thrill, and I suspect he got a thrill himself. Laughlin's been in- vestigating that last murder, you know. It was Yaquis that done it, but a bunch of Yaquis serving as federal soldiers. Lucky they were asleep without sentries last night when you fellows rode through. His large, dark eyes were shaded with long, girlish lashes. One felt startled when, upon more intimate acquaintance, he confided that he was an ex-bandit.

His rank, in reality, was only that of teniente, than which one could not be much lower in a Mexican army, but it pleased him so much when I first addressed him as "General" that I continued the practice. Our meeting was accidental. Eustace and I, still traveling together, found him in a double-seat, with his handbags spread over whatever space he did not fill himself. As we paused before him, he looked up in surprise, apparently feeling that the railway had not made proper provision for so many pas- sengers. He removed his baggage most gra- ciously. Within half an hour he had announced him- self our humble servant, and was planning gay par- ties for us at the several stopping places ahead.

He knew all the girls along the West Coast, he said, both respectable and otherwise. He would see that we enjoyed the trip. He would be our guide and mentor in things Mexican. And when we reached Mazatlan — the southern terminus of the road, some three or four days distant — his house would be our house. We should attend his wedding, which was to be celebrated immediately upon his arrival, and if we remained long enough, we should be the god- fathers to his first child.

And although he impressed me as somewhat too lavish in his promises, he proved an entertaining companion on the long journey — a journey through a monotonous continuation of the Sonora desert, with stop-overs at cities which, wdth minor varia- tions, were replicas of Hermosillo — at Guaymas, San Bias, and Culiacan — cities pleasant and inter- esting, yet never so interesting to me as my first Mexican friend, the Httle General.

He had unlimited time for friendliness and polite- ness. In his friendliness he was prone to those pro- fessions of love which to the Anglo-Saxon mind savor of hypocrisy ; in his politeness he was inclined toward phraseology that suggested figurative language; yet if this were hypocrisy, it was tem- pered with self-deception, and the phraseology was intended frankly as figurative language.

If he sometimes lacked veracity, it was because his code of etiquette called not for the truth, but for some statement that would give more satisfaction than the truth. Seldom thinking beyond the imme- diate present, he apparently did not reflect that an ultimate discovery of reality might bring disappoint- ment greater than the original satisfaction. One encounters this mental habit everywhere in Latin America. If one inquires of a fellow-passen- ger whether he is nearing his destination, he invari- ably is assured that he is, although a half -day's journey may confront him.

If one asks a hotel serv- ant whether laundry may be washed before to-mor- row night, he invariably learns that it may, although the servant knows perfectly well that the laundress will not call until the day after to-morrow. At about five, we bumped into him accidentally upon the street. I wish to take you to visit my uncle. I was on my way to the plaza, but I met a friend, and we had two or three drinks of tequila, and I forgot all about it! He merely offered what he considered a satisfactory explanation.

To him, as to most Mexicans, an engagement was merely a tentative agreement, to prove binding only in the event that neither party forget it or happen to be doing something else at the appointed hour. He was delightfully free from any troublesome sense of obli- gation. While an Anglo-Saxon would rise each morning, taking mental inventory of the many things to be done during the next sixteen hours, the Mexi- can solved life's problems by merely reflecting, "Here's another pleasant day! His uncle was not at home.

When he makes a promise, he usually means it. Afterwards he discovers that he has promised something which he can not fulfill. He had with him the mu- sicians, two barefooted peons with mandolin and guitar, and we started again for his uncle's resi- dence. Everything was ready for the dance ex- cept that the uncle had not been informed that he was to be the host, or that any such affair was to transpire.

The General, however, was determined that we should have a good time. We were duly presented to a middle-class family of a dozen or more indi- viduals, all eager to be friendly, but all a trifle em- barrassed. In turn he offered his arm to each of his cousins — three rather shy little olive-faced girls of thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen — while each in turn pleaded: I wish I did. Then he seized her manfully, and sped away in a two-step.

The lady, taken seemingly by surprise, did not move, and the little General came to a sliding stop.

Are You an Author?

Still deter- mined, he recovered his balance, and sped away in the other direction, with the same result. There was then a discussion as to whether this were a waltz or not. That question being settled by the musicians, who said it was a polka, both parties danced in the same direction, until they had made a couple of fly- ing rounds, when they stopped, and the General offered his partner to me. It was somewhat reminis- cent of putting out the ash-barrels on Monday morn- ing, but the lady was willing, and for the next three hours Eustace and I and the General took turns whirling her over the adobe floor.

This, too, was a product of his mental habit of living wholly in the present. He never suffered from the Anglo-Saxon sense of a waste of time; he was never afflicted with reflections about countless other ways of spending his evening. He could sit every night in the same plaza, looking at the same faces.

Reward Yourself

He could meet the same friends day after day, and be just as pleased to see them, and ask them the same questions about their many relatives, and part with the same elaborate courte- sies. He could listen hour after hour with the same enjoyment to the same pieces of music that the vil- lage band had played for the past ten years. And he could talk with the same neighbors about exactly the same things again and again, and never lose his enthusiasm either as speaker or listener. After supper, at the hotels along the way, pro- prietor and guests would bring their chairs to the sidewalk, where they could see the passers-by, and would remain there for hours, chatting with tremen- dous zest about nothing at all.

Inconsequential re- marks, which Americans of equal intelligence might consider unworthy either of utterance or audience, would be offered for popular consideration with emphatic statement, and received almost with applause. I recall the declaration of a young senorita to the effect that she considered a bath very refreshing. It was quite as though she had advanced a startling new theory, which had long been hovering vaguely in the minds of the others, but which they now heard propounded for the first time. It stimulated cries of ''Yes, indeed!

With Mexican kindliness, they always included me in the conversation, although I spoke their language abominably. Had a foreigner murdered English as I murdered Spanish, I should not have had the pa- tience to listen to him. Yet they listened avidly, knitting their brows sometimes in their effort to guess the meaning. If they smiled, their smiles were kindly. They were pleased that the foreigner should try to learn their language. If they disliked Ameri- cans in general, they were quickly ready to like any individual American who would meet them halfway.

And the moment he showed a willingness to adopt their own elaborate courtesy, they described him as muy simpatico — an expression that means infinitely more than our nearest equivalent of "very sympa- thetic" — and hailed him as "paisano" — "fellow- countryman. I met one on the train that took me out of Guay- mas. He was trying to tell the conductor that this pas- senger coach would have been condemned long ago in the good old U. Since the official did not un- derstand English, even when shouted, the newcomer was growing a trifle peeved.

He turned disgustedly to Eustace and myself: How do they ex- pect anybody to come down here and do business with them when they can't talk like other people! He was selling soap — ''the best grade of pure white bath soap on the market. Let 'em hear it. It'll do 'em good.

Let the dirty greasers know what we Americans think of 'em! Say, I'm glad I met you fellows. I've been lonesome for somebody from God's country. At Culiacan, where we stopped over for a day, he made the discovery that "whiskey" was the same in Spanish as in English. After imbibing freely in a little saloon kept by an elderly lady whose manners were those of royalty, he propped his feet on the table and expectorated with impressive accuracy at a picture of the Madonna that hung on the wall. We dragged him out, and led him toward the hotel. Let 'er call a policeman.

I'll lick ten Mexican policemen! We'll clean up your spig army in two weeks!

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