ROBBERY OF MY HOUSE IN 1865—INDIAN TRAILERS.
In 1865 I lived, a bachelor, in a house which is still standing on the lot at the corner of San Francisco and Chihuahua streets. My sleeping room was in the southeast corner of the house with a window opening on the back yard (corral) to the south. My brother, E. A. Mills, and a negro servant slept in the back rooms of the house.
One day a number of Mexicans were carrying and stacking adobes in that back yard and of course had left five thousand foot tracks. That night I locked the front door of my room as usual and went to visit some friends. On my return to my room about midnight I unlocked the door and struck a light, to find that everything movable which I had left in the room had been removed. Every article of clothing, bric-a-brac, a Mexican blanket worth $100, and all such articles as a gentleman keeps in his private room were gone. If any reader has had a similar experience he knows what a foolish, puzzled feeling comes over him on making the discovery; he first thinks he has gotten into the wrong room, then that somebody has played a practical joke on him, and must be at that moment watching and laughing at him. Suddenly the unpleasant truth flashes upon him that he has been robbed. Such was my experience.
Well, I awakened my brother, started him over the river for some Indian trailers, and then went to sleep. Two Indians came and lay down before my door till daybreak, and then called me and made an examination. They informed me that one lone thief had entered my room at the window and packed my property into a big round bundle, which he had lifted and dragged through the window. It was, of course, impossible to follow the thief’s tracks through the corral where so many men had been tramping the previous day, but the Indians had seen a few of his footprints near the window, and that was enough.
They started to walk slowly in a circle around my premises, going in opposite directions with their eyes fixed on the ground. Presently one of them whistled. He had found the trail. The Indians, and I with them, followed this trail for an hour, through many meanderings, and finally arrived at an old adobe house near where the Pierson Hotel now stands. The ground was dry and none but an expert trailer could see a single track. The Indians walked around the house in a circle, at some distance from it, and informed me that the thief was inside, and refused to act further because they feared they might be assassinated by some of his pals. I entered the house and found two Mexican women, who told me that no man was there or had been there. I searched all the rooms and found no one, and so reported to the Indians. They said: “He went in. He did not come out. He is inside.” Making a more thorough search, I found the gentleman concealed in one of the rooms under a stack of beef hides.
He was a noted thief of Juarez. None of the stolen articles were found on him or in the house. Our prisons were insecure and the courts were not much safer, and I turned the man over to the “boys,” who somehow convinced him that this was not a good locality for him, and he was heard of no more.
Several weeks later a little Mexican boy came to me greatly excited and told me that he had seen a corner of my Mexican blanket projecting from a little sandhill near the house where the thief had been caught. Every article which had been stolen was found tied in that blanket and uninjured. The Indians in going around the house to find any trail which might be going out had taken too wide a circle, or they would have found where the articles were buried.
