Accompanied by a retriever in the form of a boy mounted on an old pony, we either walked along the banks under cover of the cotton-woods or willow-trees, or sitting down, directed our attendant to make circuits of a few hundred yards and drive the birds to us. In either case we saw far more than we required.
I was sitting smoking one afternoon on one of the brick seats outside the offices, in the Calle de los Alamos, when a company of Mexican soldiers marched in from Casas Grandes. They looked so perfectly "fit" after their dusty tramp of twenty-six miles in a hot sun, that I was remarking on it, when half-a-dozen women, some of whom carried infants, and all of whom had children trotting beside them, came literally "sailing" in after them. They were the wives of some of the men, and they and their children had travelled the same distance in the same manner. It would seem that the walking powers of the Mexican are second only to those of the Apache, and if what I heard of them was correct, Mexican soldiers are immeasurably superior in this respect to any other regular soldiers that I know of. It was no unusual thing, I was told, for troops to march in a day from Casas Grandes to a mining camp near the north-east corner of the Corralitos property (the name of which I have forgotten), the distance being forty-five miles over a rough trail. I have heard it asserted two or three times in open company, without question, that during the war between Mexico and the States, 22,000 men under General Santa Ana marched twenty leagues in twenty-four hours, and then fought all day at Buena Vista, doing this extraordinary work on a little parched corn, ground and soaked in water with a little sugar. Averse though he may be, therefore, to continuous labour, the Mexican is able to exert himself to some purpose "upon a compelling occasion."
Whether it was that the bare discussion of these feats made some of us thirsty, I know not, but an amicable rivalry in the manufacture of milk punches sprang up in the store that afternoon, with the result that one of the manufacturers had to be assisted to bed before supper-time. He vowed of course on the following day, that it was "the milk that did it." It always is the "milk," or the "lemon," or the "sugar," or something of that kind.
À propos of the store, by the way, one of the assistants there, a very handsome and gentlemanly boy, was named Ponce de Leon. It seemed odd to find a namesake of the celebrated Marquess of Cadiz—the light of Andalusian chivalry and pride of Ferdinand and Isabella's court, the captor of Alhama and leading figure in the reconquest of Granada—serving out coffee or sugar for a few cents to peasants. But many a name that rings in Spanish history is borne in Mexico by men quite as insignificantly placed as this.
I had drifted out of the noisy store into the cool, quiet Calle de los Alamos, and was standing talking to Joe when an ambulance containing three Americans drove up. As they descended it appeared that one of them was handcuffed and manacled. The prisoner was Sam Rider, who had been captured by Mexican soldiers in a small village further south, after a desperate struggle in a little wine-shop, and was now returning in charge of the Marshal of Georgetown to be tried for killing the Deputy there. It is not easy to swagger under the embarrassment of handcuffs and irons, but Sam made a desperate effort to appear unconcerned. Before he left next morning I took the opportunity of giving him Squito's message.
"'He knows!' I know? What do I know?" and the man's bold, dark, prominent, and rather glassy eyes looked perplexedly in mine. Suddenly a light of intelligence grew in them, and I could see that he had caught the girl's meaning. He shrugged his shoulders irritably, and was silent for a moment. "Oh, ——! D—n Squito! It seems like she'd coppered[40] me. Ever since she——since I seen that gal, luck's gone dead against me. If you see Squito, tell her I don't 'know' nothing—and don't want. Blast Squito!"
Poor little Squito! It was hardly worth while that her first love should have been wasted thus. What wonder that
"——our frothed out life's commotion
Settles down to Ennui's ocean"
as often as it does!