There are streets, it is true; but building and rebuilding have rendered their lines extremely vague. Here a householder has trenched upon the road for space for his pig-sty; there a wattled fence encloses a fowl-yard; yonder is a small corral built of old Aztec blocks; elsewhere, a stable-shed abuts upon the right of way. But none of the domestic animals for whom these offices have been built appear to inhabit them. A lean horse, with ribs protruding, stands, looking like a big knot, at one end of a raw-hide lasso, which, trailing loosely on the ground, is lost to sight inside the door of his master's hotel. Cows repose placidly in the thick dust of the path, chewing an apparently inexhaustible cud. Cocks and hens stalk here, there, and everywhere, in search of their precarious livelihood. There is a large floating population of dogs that have neither name nor home; and the pigs of a Mexican town (save in the instances of those obese monstrosities that are tethered out) have evidently a strolling license to go whithersoever they list. There are busy pigs and idle pigs, clean, dirty, blatant, pensive, friendly, and aggressive pigs, cynical pigs with cold, cruel, alligator eyes, pigs that look the very incarnation of sensualism, and pigs that look chaste and pure as matrons of old Rome.
Few animals have so human an eye as this unjustly despised benefactor of mankind. For my own part, although reluctantly confessing that vulgar prejudice has educated in me a preference for him when he has fallen into his baconage, I can never entirely overlook the debt of gratitude that is his due. Science has greater records than his; there are figures in statecraft, art, theology, and war, to whom it is the custom of giddy historians to assign greater prominence when recounting the world's great names; but of few can it be said that their unaided genius and research has awakened the taste of civilised humanity to a source of gratification so universally admitted, and so entirely free from alloy, as has the pig. For what, indeed, is the detecter of a new planet, the finder or conqueror of a new continent, beside the great discoverer of the truffle? Not for us is the planet, to new continents we are indifferent. These are vanities for our children to reach and cry for. But, as weary and disillusionised we drive "Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier of age," and Time, great proselytiser, gently turns the mind to solemn thoughts of turtle-fat and beaver-tail, water-rails and canvas-back ducks, caviare, foie gras, some fishes, and a few wines, the truffle will be found to be connected with most of our comfortablest dreams and sweetest hopes. Yet, how have we treated its inspired inventor? Have we cherished him, and encouraged his investigations? No! The sensitive, tip-tilted nose to which we owe so much has been ruthlessly pierced and torn. The iron hath entered into poor piggy's snout. The marvellous faculty possessed by him of going to the root of things is wantonly destroyed. He will never electrify us with another discovery, never present the epicurean world with another truffle. When I speak of the truffle, by the way, I no more allude to the usual dry chips of black leather of English dinner-tables than I should be referring to the London orange, if, with the memory of the glorious fruit of the gardens of Chio in my mind, I spoke of oranges.
I could linger for pages in any one of these Mexican towns—now sketching a smallpox-marked, villainous-visaged horse-thief, with the seat of a centaur, engaged in mid-street in breaking in a colt, barebacked, and bridled only with a hackamore; and, whilst the animal bucks and bucks untiringly, exchanging jokes and laughter with the idlers near; now depicting a dark-eyed, black-haired, slatternly señorita (not beautiful—that is extremely rare—but picturesque certainly), standing with her pail by the old derrick over the public well, in a cotton skirt of pink, a shawl or veil of similar though lighter colour covering her head and shoulders and falling to her waist, the whole vaguely reminding one of a cloud of apple-blossom; now describing the obscure interior of a cottage, and the group of women crouching round the wide, open hearth, crushing maize in the matate, or cooking one of their simple dishes; now picturing——But enough! As it is we proceed much too slowly; and many of the towns, ranches, Mormon camps, and scenes that I saw, will find no record in the limits that I have here assigned myself. For, when the originality of a generation may be registered in few lines, no book can be too short.
CHAPTER XVII. A CRUISE IN NORTHERN MEXICO.—V.
"Now, boys! now, boys! now, boys! Who—oop! Up you get, now; up you get! No loafing! —— and — —! We ain't going to stop here all day! Come! it'll be sun-up directly! I'll be — — — if some of you chaps wouldn't sleep round the clock!" cried McGrew, turning out of his blankets at Ramos.
Those were busy days at Corralitos, and long before daylight the cattle manager's voice was raised thus. Ramos was one of the outlying ranches on the property, of which there were four. One lay to the north of the hacienda, and governed the approaches to the ranch from Janos and Ascension; one to the south afforded an effectual check on the formerly unimpeded and consequently free attentions which the good folks of Casas Grandes had been accustomed to devote to Corralitos beef; Barrancas (the ruins of an old mining village) was situated a few miles from Corralitos, and was used as a dairy ranch; Ramos itself lay to the west, on a stream that issued from springs in the foot-hills of the Sierra Madre, and in the neighbourhood of grazing which would make an imported cow that had once seen it sing, "It was a dream," for ever afterwards. Few cattle ran on the eastern half of the Corralitos property, and those few were worked from the San Pedro mining camp or from the main hacienda.
Ramos, once a village, had been one of the oldest settlements in the district, but, "cleaned out" many years ago by Apaches, had never recovered its former importance. At present it consisted of a few more or less ruined adobes (occupied by the vaqueros and their families), which formed with the neighbouring corrals, the old church, and the mill that supplied Corralitos with flour, a large square or plaza.
A hurried breakfast of coffee, jerked beef, and corn-cake over, every one repaired to the horse corral, into which the cow ponies, about a hundred and fifty in number, had already been driven. Clouds of dust rose in the air as they careered madly round and round in a band, or checked, confused, and scattered, halted, and with ears pricked and manes and tails flying, shied and dodged nervously amidst a score of whirling lassoes. Here they were kicking and biting one another; here, fighting wildly at the end of hair or raw-hide ropes; here, with wisdom born of experience, following quietly after being captured.