"We are a proud people and we never forget. Are we a cowardly people who would cringe and yield when submission means infamy?
"Awake! Strike one swift, successful blow for freedom and your bleeding mother land.
"Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona were stolen from Mexico, just as the riches of her mines are being stolen from her to-day. Sons of Mexico, you can help her reclaim her own. Will you stand by and see her further despoiled? Let your voices rise in a mighty cry for justice! Let your arms be strong to strike a blow for the right!
"Souls in bondage, wake up and strike off your shackles! Be not slaves but free men!
"Texas, New Mexico and Arizona for Mexico, to whom they rightfully belong!"
"They sure do make it strong enough," Starr commented, feeling for a match with which to relight his cigarette that had gone out. He laid down the written pages and took up the leaflet entitled, "ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO." The text that followed was like the heading, simply a translation into Spanish of the exhortation he had just read in English. But he read it through and noted the places where the Spanish version was even more inflammatory than the English—which, in Starr's opinion, was going some. The other pamphlets were much the same, citing well-known instances of the revolution across the border which seemed to prove conclusively that justice was no more than a jest, and that the proletariat of Mexico was getting the worst of the bargain, no matter who happened to be in power.
Starr frowned thoughtfully over the reading. To him the thing was treason, and it was his business to help stamp it out. For the powers that be cannot afford to tolerate the planting of such seeds of dissatisfaction amongst the untrained minds of the masses.
But, and Starr admitted it to himself with his mouth pulled down at the corners, the worst of it was that under the bombast, under the vituperative utterances, the catch phrases of radicalism, there remained the grains of truth. Starr knew that the masses of Mexico were suffering, broken under the tramplings of revolution and counter-revolution that swept back and forth from gulf to gulf. Still, it was not his business to sift out the plump grains of truth and justice, but to keep the chaff from lighting and spreading a wildfire of sedition through three States.
"'Souls in bondage' is right," he said, setting his feet to the floor and reaching for his boots. "In bondage to their own helplessness, and helpless because they're so damned ignorant. But," he added grimly while he stamped his right foot into its boot, "they ain't going at it the right way. They're tryin' to tear down, when they ain't ready to build anything on the wreck. They're right about the wrong; but they're wrong as the devil about the way to mend it. Them pamphlets will sure raise hell amongst the Mexicans, if the thing ain't stopped pronto."
He dressed for riding, and went out and fed Rabbit before he went thoughtfully up to the hotel for his breakfast.