WE were sitting in the hotel in San Antonio, and the conversation had taken that satisfactory turn and confidential coloring which it will take amongst congenial companions round an open wood fire.
We had been expressing our individual opinions about men and things, especially men, and had derived a sleepy satisfaction from our general criticisms. There were men among us who had seen a good deal of frontier life, and, as one man said, “he had seen so many men die with their boots on, it seemed the natural end.” My nearest neighbor in the circle was a young artist from New Orleans, known throughout the city as “Jim the Painter,” from the art he practiced to get his living. He turned and asked me if I knew Jack Dunton; and when I denied the honor, he said: “Well, you ought to; he is a map of the whole Indian country.”
This awakened my interest. I found that Dunton was living in San Antonio, that his life had been really wonderful in experiences and adventures, that he was very intelligent as well as recklessly brave, and finally, that his acquaintance was worth any man's time to cultivate. Later in the evening we walked over to Dunton's office, a long, pleasant room in the second story of a flat-roofed adobe building that covered nearly half an acre. Both its stories were crammed full of the goods he sold—wagons, harnesses, and all sorts of agricultural tools.
Dunton's own room was a mighty interesting place, principally in its decorations. The walls and doorways were hung with bright-colored and strange-figured Mojave and Navajoe blankets, skins and weapons were scattered around or arranged as trophies, while clumsy and rude implements of Aztec and Mexican fashioning, from Yucatan to Chihuahua, were suspended against the sides, or heaped in the corners. A large open fire, with blazing cedar logs, filled the room with the aromatic odor so pleasant and characteristic of that wood, and lighted it with fitful glares. There were many interesting stories connected with this collection, and every article in the room seemed to remind Dunton of an experience or incident in his varied career. After being introduced and comfortably seated in a chair, he passed us cigars, and while we were lighting these preliminaries to sociability he drew a square of corn husk from one side-pocket of his sack coat and a pinch of tobacco from the other side-pocket, and quietly rolled a cigarette, which gave out a pungent, penetrating odor. It was not disagreeable, but it struck me as being peculiar, even for Texas. Upon remarking that it seemed different from ordinary tobacco, Dunton replied, “It is, and I have good reason to like it, for once it saved my life.”
This aroused my curiosity, and with some little urging he told us the story. “This tobacco,” said Dunton, “comes from the town of Carcinto, quite a mining settlement of adobe houses and stockades, surrounding a Mexican convict station in the center of the state of Chihuahua. It is made by the convicts, who treat the ordinary tobacco with the juice of a native plant, which gives it the pungent flavor you notice and, I suspect, a slight narcotic power; be that as it may, now that I am used to it, other tobacco is flat and tasteless. I was down there some years ago, trying to sell the mine-owners some carts, harness, and things in my line, and I became well acquainted with the nature of these convicts, and I tell you, I would rather take my chances in a den of mountain lions than among those fellows when they revolt. At such times they are madly insane, and nothing is too hellish for them.
“I had made a good thing of my deal and was anxiously waiting for an escort,—for I had four thousand Mexican dollars, and a man of my shape takes no chances in toting money around in that country.
“The day that I remember particularly—and you will see I have reason to—was the day before I was to go out from the mine with the mule train. That afternoon I went in the levels with Senor Bustino, one of the owners, a gentleman, every inch of him—and I tell you, no finer gentleman walks the earth than a high-caste Mexican of Castilian blood.