Excitement burst upon the mess-table one night. Rival politicians were to contend the following Sunday for the governorship of the State, and the "liberal" candidate had assured the peons that he would treble their wages and force the company to give them full pay during illness, and that those who voted for his rival were really casting ballots for "los gringos" who had stolen away their mines. All this was, of course, pure campaign bunco; as a matter of fact the lowest wages in all the mines of Mexico were in those belonging to the then "liberal" President of the republic, and accident pay would have caused these insensible fellows to drop rocks on themselves to enjoy its benefits. For several mornings threatening political posters had appeared on the walls of the company buildings. But this time word came that "liberal" posters had been stuck up in the galleries of the mine itself. The boss sprang to his feet, and without even sending for his revolver went down into the earth. An hour or more later he reappeared with the remnants of the posters. Though the mine was populated with peons and there was not then another American below ground, they watched him tear down the sheets without other movement than to cringe about him, each begging not to be believed guilty. Later a peon was charged with the deed and forever forbidden to work in the mines of the company. The superintendent threatened to discharge any employee who voted for the "liberal" candidate, and, though he could not of course know who did, their dread of punishment no doubt kept many from voting at all.
Work in the mine never ceased. Even as we fell asleep the engine close at hand panted constantly, the mild clangor of the blacksmith-shop continued unbroken, cars of rock were dumped every few minutes under the swarming stars, the mine pulse beat unchanging, and far down beneath our beds hundreds of naked peons were still tearing incessantly at the rocky entrails of the earth.
Though the mine throbbed on, I set off one sunny Sunday morning to walk to town and the weekly ball game. It was just warm enough for a summer coat, a breeze blew as at sea, an occasional telephone pole was singing as with contentment with life in this perfect climate. Groups of brownish-gray donkeys with loads on their backs passed me or crawled along far-away trails, followed by men in tight white trousers, their striped and gay-colored sarapes about their bodies and their huge hats atop. Over all was a Sunday stillness, broken only by the occasional bark of a distant dog or a cockcrow that was almost musical as it was borne by on the wind. Everywhere were mountains piled into the sky. Valenciana, where so many Spaniards, long since gone to whatever reward awaited them, waxed rich and built a church now golden brown with age, sat on its slope across the valley, down in which no one would have guessed huddled a city of some 60,000 inhabitants. Much nearer and a bit below drowsed the old town of Calderón, home of many of our peons, a bright red blanket hung over a stone wall giving a splash of brilliancy to the vast stretch of grayish, dull-brown, and thirsty green. The road wound slowly down and ever down, until the gullies grew warmer as the rising mountains cut off the breeze and left the sun in undisputed command. Along the way were flowers uncountable, chiefly large, white, lily-like blossoms growing on a bush, then thick patches of orange-yellow. Horsemen, Mexicans on burros, peon men, women, and children afoot were legion. There were no Americans, though I passed one huge Negro with a great black beard who gave me "Good morning" from his horse in the tone of a man who had not met an equal before in some time. At length appeared the emerald-green patch of the upper Presa, with its statue of Hidalgo, and the café-au-lait pond that stores the city's water, and over the parapet of which hung guanajuatenses watching with wonder the rowboat of the American hospital doctor, the only water craft the great majority of them have ever seen.
A natural amphitheater encloses the ball-ground in which were gathered the wives of Americans, in snowy white, to watch a game between teams made up chiefly of "gringoes" of the mines, my one-time classmate still at short-stop, as in our schoolboy days, thanks to which no doubt Guanajuato held the baseball championship of Mexico. Like the English officials of India, the Americans in high places here were noticeable for their youth, and, at least here on the ball-ground, for their democracy, known to all by their boyhood nicknames, yet held almost in reverence by the Mexican youths that filled in the less important positions. At the club after the game the champion Mexican player discoursed on the certainty of ultimate American intervention and expressed his own attitude with:
"Let it come, for I am not a politician but a baseball player."
It was election day, and I passed several doorways, among them that of the company stable, in which a half-dozen old fossils in their most solemn black garb crouched dreamily over wooden tables with registers, papers, and ink bottles before them. Now and then a frightened peon slunk up hat in hand to find whether they wished him to vote, and how, or to see if perhaps he had not voted already—by absent treatment. The manager of one of the mines had come into the office of the jefe pólitico of his district the night before and found the ballots already made out for the "liberal" candidate. He tore them up and sent his own men to watch the election, with the result that there was a strong majority in that precinct in favor of the candidate more pleasing to the mine owners. The pulquerias and saloons of the peons had been closed, but not the clubs and resorts of the white men. In one of these I sat with the boss, watching him play a game of stud poker. A dissipated young American, who smoked a cigar and a cigarette at the same time, was most in evidence, a half Comanche Indian of an utterly impassive countenance did the dealing, and fortunes went up and down amid the incessant rattle of chips far into the morning. At three the boss broke away, nine dollars to the good, while the proprietor of the place ended with an enormous heap of chips in front of him; another American, making out to him a check for $90, and calling for his horse, rode back to his mine to earn it—the shoes of the horse clanking on the cobbles in the silence of the night and passing now and then a policeman's lantern set in the middle of the street, while that official huddled in his white uniform in a dark corner, ostensibly keeping guard.
On another such a day I turned back about dusk up the gorge on the return to the mine. The upper park where the band had played earlier was now completely deserted. The road was nearly five miles long; the trail, sheer up the wild tumble of mountains before me, little more than two. This was vaguely reputed dangerous, but I was not inclined to take the rumor seriously.
Black night fell. Soon I came upon the vanguard of the day-shift from "Pingüico," straggling down the face of the mountain, shouting and whistling to each other in their peculiar language. Some carried torches that flashed along the mountain wall above me and threw long quaint shadows of the tight-trousered legs. The grade was more than forty-five degrees, with much slipping and sliding on unseen rocks. Two or three groups had passed when one of the men recognized me and with a "Buenas noches, jefe!" insisted on giving me the torch he carried, a mine candle with a cloth wrapped around it as a protection in the strong wind. I had soon to cast this away, as it not only threatened to burn my hand but left the eyes unable to pierce the surrounding wall of darkness. In the silence of the night there came to mind the assertion of by no means our most timorous engineer, that he never passed over this trail after dark without carrying his revolver cocked in his hand. My fellow countrymen of the region all wore huge "six-shooters" with a large belt of cartridges always in sight, less for use than the salutary effect of having them visible, in itself a real protection. Conditions in Mexico had led me to go armed for the first time in my travels; or more exactly, to carry one of the "vest pocket automatics" so much in vogue—on advertising pages—in that season. My experienced fellow Americans refused to regard this weapon seriously. One had made the very fitting suggestion that each bullet should bear a tag with the devise, "You're shot!" An aged "roughneck" of a half-century of Mexican residence had put it succinctly: "Yer travel scheme's all right; but I'll be —— —— if I like the gat you carry." However, such as it was, I drew it now and held it ready for whatever it might be called upon to attempt.
A half hour of heavy climbing brought me to the summit, with a strong cool breeze and a splendid view of the spreading lights of Guanajuato in the narrow winding gully far below. The trail wound round a peak and reached the first scattered huts of Calderón just as a number of shots sounded not far away. These increased until all the dogs for miles around took up the hue and cry. The shots multiplied, with much shouting and uproar, soon sounding on both sides and ahead and behind me, while the whistling language shrilled from every gully and hillside. Evidently drunken peons were harmlessly celebrating their Sunday holiday, but the shots sounded none the less weirdly out of the black night as I stumbled on over the rocky, tumbled country, for the only smooth way thereabouts was the Milky Way faintly seen overhead. Gradually the shooting and shouting drifted behind me and died out as I surmounted the last knoll and descended to bed. It was only at breakfast next morning that I learned I had serenely strolled through a pitched battle between bandits that haunted the recesses of the mountains about Calderón and the town which, led by its jefe político, had finally won the bout with four outlaw corpses to its credit. It was my luck not to have even a bullet-hole through my cap to prove the story. There were often two or three such battles a week in the vicinity.
That morning I was given a new job. The boss led the way, candle in hand, a half mile back through the bowels of the mountain, winding with the swinging of the former ore vein. This alone was enough to get hopelessly lost in, even without its many blind-alley branches. Now and then we came upon another shaft-opening that seemed a bottomless hole a few feet in diameter in the solid rock, from far down which came up the falsetto voices and the stinking sweat of peons, and the rap, rap of heavy hammers on iron rock-bars. But we had only started. Far back in the gallery we took another hoist and descended some two hundred feet more, then wound off again through the mountain by more labyrinthian burrowings in the rock, winding, undulating passages, often so low we must crawl on hands and knees, with no other light than the flickering candles half-showing shadowy forms of naked, copper-colored beings; the shadows giving them often fiendish faces and movements, until we could easily imagine ourselves in the realms of Dante's imagination. In time we came to a ladder leading upward into a narrow dark hole, and when the ladder ended we climbed on our bellies some forty feet higher up a ledge of rock to another "heading." Along this we made our way another hundred yards or more to where a dozen naked peons were operating compressed-air drills, then wormed our way like snakes over the resultant debris to the present end of the passage, where more peons were drilling by hand, one man holding a bar of iron a few feet long which another was striking with a five-pound sledge that luckily never missed its mark. This was indeed working in Mexico. It would have been difficult to get farther into it; and a man could not but dully wonder if he would ever get out again.