“Hell!” growled MacFarlane. “The mule’s gone to sleep!”
And throughout the day he lectured us upon the fallacies of the S.P.C.A. spirit as applied to Mexican mules, all the way to Suaqui de Batuc, another mud-village at the junction of the Yaqui and Moctezuma Rivers, where we were to spend another night.
There was no hotel in this town, but we found lodgings with an Indian family. A woman brought us the inevitable frijoles and tortillas, gave us water to drink which tasted as though it had been inhabited by frogs, and ushered us to one large bed which undoubtedly was inhabited by everything except frogs. The name of the town, I learned, when translated from the Indian, meant something which could be printed only in French. As I scratched myself to sleep, I reflected upon the appropriateness of the name. I had just succeeded in closing my eyes when a volley of pistol shots sounded outside the window. Eustace and I bumped heads in a frantic dive to locate the automatics beneath our pillow.
“Don’t worry,” said MacFarlane. “It’s a gang of drunks. This is a Saint’s Day, and the faithful are celebrating.”
V
In the morning, before continuing the journey, I set out to secure a few photographs.
“Ask permission before you snap a native,” the mining man warned me. “Some of them are superstitious—have an idea that they’ll die within a year if you take their picture. They killed the last photographer that tried it.”
So I took special pains to ask permission. Invariably they said, “No!” Some appeared to regard the camera as a new species of machine-gun. Even those who knew what it was were reticent about posing. The more picturesque the native, and the more I wished his picture, the more resolutely he said, “NO!”
Strolling some distance from town, I finally discovered an aged squaw who looked as though she might die within a year even though her photograph were not taken. But her “NO!” was not merely in capital letters but in type larger than the largest in a Hearst newspaper. Still, I could not resist that picture. She was standing in the center of the shallow river, filling deer-skin water-sacks and loading them upon the back of a moth-eaten little burro. But since the sun shone directly in my lens, I had to pass her. And the moment I unslung my camera, she started to walk upstream directly into the light. The faster I walked, the faster she walked. I broke into a trot, and she broke into a trot, dragging the burro after her, and splashing water over the two of us. I felt a trifle undignified, but I had determined to have that picture, and I increased my pace to a run. Thereupon she gathered her skirts about her waist and sprinted like an intercollegiate champion.
From the village behind us came a series of war-whoops. I looked back to see the entire population joining in the chase. Suddenly I realized that my behavior was undignified. Some fifty angry natives were rushing toward me, waving in the air an assortment of weapons that might have delighted a collector of antiques, but which at the moment gave me no cause whatsoever for rejoicing. I stopped and faced them, trying vainly to explain my conduct in my inadequate Spanish, while they shook their fists, and waved knives in the air, and jabbered furiously.