Dane Coolidge

“ Not the least of the causes which have brought Mexico to the brink of the abyss is the endless quarrel between church and state, which has almost destroyed the sanctity of marriage and left, besides, a pitiful heritage of deserted women and fatherless children as its toll.
Many an honest laborer has peoned himself to pay the priest for his marriage, only to be told that it is not legal in the eyes of the law; and many another, married by the judge, has been gravely informed by the padre that the woman is only his mistress, and the children born out of wedlock. ”

“ They rode on until the sun sank low and strange tracks struck their trail from the east. Bud observed that the horses were shod, and more tracks of mounted men came in beyond. He turned sharply toward the west and followed a rocky ledge to the hills, without leaving a hoof-print to mark the way of their retreat.
By the signs the land ahead was full of bandits and ladrones, men to whom human life was nothing and a woman no more sacred than a brute. At the pass all trails converged, from the north and from the south. ”

“ On the lower side was the ample store and cantina of Don Cipriano, where the thirsty arrieros could get a drink and buy a panoche of sugar without getting down from their mounts. Behind the store were the pole corrals and adobe warehouses and the quarters for the peons, and across the road was the mescal still where, in huge copper retort and worm, the fiery liquor was distilled from the sugar-laden heads of Yuccas.
This was the town, but the most important building—set back in the shade of mighty cottonwoods and pleasantly aloof from the road—was the residence of Señor Aragon. ”

“ Twice within two years her father, in a rage, had sent her away to school in order to break off some ill-considered love-affair; and now a battle royal was being waged between Manuel del Rey, the dashing captain of the rurales stationed at Fortuna, and Feliz Luna, son of a rich haciendado down in the hot country, for the honor of her hand.
What more romantic, then, than that a handsome American, stepping gracefully into the breach, should keep the haughty lovers from slaying each other by bearing off the prize himself? ”

“ Bud Hooker was a man of few words, and slow to speak ill of any one, but some unfamiliar devil had loosened his tongue and he had told the worst about Phil. Certainly if a man were the bravest of the brave, certainly if he loved his girl more than life itself—he would not be content to hide above the line and pour out his soul on note-paper. ”

“ And now, in the guise of innocent strangers, they rode on down the river, past the concentrator with its multiple tanks, its gliding tramway and mountains of tailings, through the village of Indian houses stuck like dugouts against the barren hill—then along a river-bed that oozed with slickings until they came in sight of the town.
La Fortuna was an old town, yet not so old as its name, since two Fortunas before it had been washed away by cloudbursts and replaced by newer dwellings. ”

“ Men stood in shifting groups, talking, arguing, gazing moodily at those who passed.
Here were hawk-eyed Texas cattlemen, thinking of their scattered herds at Mababi or El Tigre; mining men, with idle prospects and deserted mines as far south as the Rio Yaqui; millmen, ranchers, and men of trades—all driven in from below the line and all chafing at the leash. While a hundred petty chiefs stood out against Madero and lived by ransom and loot, they must cool their heels in Gadsden and wait for the end to come. ”

“ The Mexican miners, blinded by their ignorance, went their way, well contented to get their money. Nobody knew. There was nothing to do but to wait. But to wait, as some people know, is the hardest work in the world.
For the first few days they lingered about the mine, gloating over it in secret, laughing back and forth, singing gay songs—then, as the ecstasy passed and the weariness of waiting set in, they went two ways. Some fascination, unexplained to Bud, drew De Lancey to the town. He left in the morning and came back at night, but Hooker stayed at the mine. ”

“ As Hooker stepped out onto the covered porch with his saddle-gun in his hand he became simply one more of a band of excited Americans, all armed and ready to defend the house to the last. Some were pacing back and forth in the corredor, others were hurrying up from the Mexican quarters with a last belated handful of women, but the major portion were out on the open bench, either gazing north and south at the scenes of the distant firing or engaging in a curio-mad scramble for any spent bullet that struck. ”

“ With a fearlessness born of long familiarity with explosives the Sonoran miners advanced valiantly with their hand-grenades—baking-powder cans filled with dynamite and studded with fulminating caps. Digging fiercely through wall after wall they approached unperceived by the enemy and the first bomb flung from a roof filled the adobe with wounded and dead.
A dense pall of yellowish smoke rose high above the town and, as bomb after bomb was exploded and the yells of the miners grew louder with each success, the stunned invaders broke from cover and rushed helter-skelter up the gulch. ”

“ In a long, shambling trot the Yaqui was drifting along the hillside with the free grace of a wild creature, and when Hooker pulled down his horse to keep pace with him he laughed and motioned him on. Taking the lead, he loped on over hogback and barranca, picking out the best trail by instinct and setting such a pace that Bud was hard-pressed to keep up with him.
He had heard it said that in the Yaqui country no white man, no matter how well he was mounted, could outdistance the Indians on foot, and now he knew it was true. But why this killing haste on the part of Amigo? ”

“ As for Aragon, whose fine Italian hand he perceived behind the sudden taking off of Phil, let him make what trades he would with the rurales and Manuel del Rey, even to the giving of his daughter's hand; but if, taking advantage of the unsettled times, he dared to try to steal their mine, then there would be war to the knife.
It is a fine, comforting thing to be single-minded and of one purpose. All the rest of life is simplified and ordered then, and a man knows when to raise his hand and when to hold it back. ”

“ Before our law you are now no more than that poor pelado, Mendez. You cannot appeal now to your consul at Gadsden—you are only a Mexican! Very well!"
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled significantly.
"No," retorted De Lancey angrily; "you are right—I cannot appeal to my government! But let me tell you something, Señor Mexicano! An American needs no government to protect him—he has his gun, and that is enough!"
"Yes," added Bud, who had caught the drift of the last, "and he has his friends, too; don't forget that!" He strode over toward Aragon and menaced him with a threatening finger. ”

“ The women of the aristocracy bore themselves with more reserve, as befitting their birth and station, and the Americans who gathered about them with their protecting rifles pretended that all would be well; but in the mind of everyone was that same terror which found expression in the peon wail and, while scattered rebels and newly armed miners exchanged volleys on both sides of the town, the non-combatant Americans sought out every woman and rushed her up to the big house. There, if worst came to worst, they could make a last stand, or save them by a ransom. ”

“ They drew out of the road and let them pass—a long, double line of shabby infantrymen, still wearing their last-year's straw hats and summer uniforms and trudging along in flapping sandals.
In front were two men bearing lanterns, to search out the way by night; slatternly women, the inevitable camp-followers, trotted along at the sides with their bundles and babies; and as the little brown men from Zacatecas, each burdened with his heavy gun and a job lot of belts and packs, shuffled patiently past the Americans, they flashed the whites of their eyes and rumbled a chorus of "Adios!" ”

“ To an American, accustomed to getting things done first and talking about it afterward, there is nothing so subtly irritating as the Old World formalism, the polite evasiveness of the Mexicans; and yet, at times, they can speak to the point with the best of us.
For sixty days Don Cipriano Aragon had smiled and smiled and then, suddenly, as the last day of their mining permit passed by and there was no record of a denouncement by Cruz Mendez, he appeared at the Eagle Tail mine with a pistol in his belt and a triumphant sneer on his lips. ”

“ As Bud and De Lancey rode out of battle-scarred Agua Negra they traveled a good road, well worn by the Mexican wood-wagons that hauled in mesquit from the hills. Then, as they left the town and the wood roads scattered, the highway changed by degrees to a broad trail, dug deep by the feet of pack-animals and marked but lightly with wheels. It followed along the railroad, cutting over hills and down through gulches, and by evening they were in the heart of Old Mexico.
Here were men in sandals and women barefooted; chickens tied up by the legs outside of brush jacales ”

“ But for all such nights of romance and music there is always a morning afterward; and a fine tenor voice set to rag-time never helped much in the development of a mine. Though Bud had remained loyally by his friend in his evening serenade he, for one, never forgot for a moment that they were in Fortuna to work the Eagle Tail and not to win the hearts of Spanish-Mexican señoritas, no matter how attractive they might be.
Bud was a practical man who, if he ever made love, would doubtless do it in a perfectly businesslike way, without hiring any string bands. ”

“ He made a motion as of a native wrapping his entire wardrobe about his neck and smiled, and De Lancey knew that he was no Mexican. And yet that soft "which away" of his betrayed a Spanish tongue.
"Ah, excuse me," he said, taking quick advantage of his guess, "but from the way you pronounce that word 'zarape' I take it that you speak Spanish."
"No one better," replied the host, smiling pleasurably at being taken at his true worth, "since I was born in the city of Burgos, where they speak the true Castilian. It is a different language, believe me, from this bastard Mexican tongue. ”

“ Bud returned sadly to the company of the Yaqui and gave it up. Perhaps his pardner had been right when, riding out of Agua Negra, he had enlarged upon the dangers of Old Mexico, "the land of mañana and broken promises." Certainly his speech had been prophetic in regard to dark-eyed women; for, even as he had said, nothing seemed to please them better than to come between man and man.
It was a madness, he felt sure—the spell of the hot country, where the women look out from behind barred windows and men sing beneath their balconies at midnight. ”