"Who is owner now?"
"General Urbina," said Antonio. And it was so, as I soon saw. The great haciendas of Northern Durango, an area greater than the State of New Jersey, had been confiscated for the Constitutionalist government by the General, who ruled them with his own agents, and, it was said, divided fifty-fifty with the Revolution.
We drove steadily all day, only stopping long enough to eat a few tortillas. And along about sundown we saw the brown mud wall that hemmed El Canotillo round, with its city of little houses, and the ancient pink tower of its church among the alamo trees,—miles away at the foot of the mountains. The village of Las Nieves, a straggling collection of adobes the exact color of the earth of which they are built, lay before us, like some strange growth of the desert. A flashing river, without a trace of green along its banks to contrast it with the scorched plain, made a semi-circle around the town. And as we splashed across the ford, between the women kneeling there at their washing, the sun suddenly went behind the western mountains. Immediately a deluge of yellow light, thick as water, drowned the earth, and a golden mist rose from the ground, in which the cattle floated legless.
I knew that the price for such a journey as Antonio had carried me was at least ten pesos, and he was an Arab to boot. But when I offered him money, he threw his arms around me and burst into tears.... God bless you, excellent Arab! You are right; business is better in Mexico.
CHAPTER II
THE LION OF DURANGO AT HOME
At General Urbina's door sat an old peon with four cartridge-belts around him, engaged in the genial occupation of filling corrugated iron bombs with gunpowder. He jerked his thumb toward the patio. The General's house, corrals and storerooms ran around all four sides of a space as big as a city block, swarming with pigs, chickens and half-naked children. Two goats and three magnificent peacocks gazed pensively down from the roof. In and out of the sitting-room, whence came the phonographic strains of the "Dollar Princess," stalked a train of hens. An old woman came from the kitchen and dumped a bucket of garbage on the ground; all the pigs made a squealing rush for it. In a corner of the house-wall sat the General's baby daughter, chewing on a cartridge. A group of men stood or sprawled on the ground around a well in the center of the patio. The General himself sat in their midst, in a broken wicker arm-chair, feeding tortillas to a tame deer and a lame black sheep. Before him kneeled a peon, pouring from a canvas sack some hundreds of Mauser cartridges.
To my explanations the General returned no answer. He gave me a limp hand, immediately withdrawing it, but did not rise. A broad, medium-sized man of dark mahogany complexion, with a sparse black beard up to his cheek-bones, that didn't hide the wide, thin, expressionless mouth, the gaping nostrils, the shiny, small, humorous, animal eyes. For a good five minutes he never took them from mine. I produced my papers.
"I don't know how to read," said the General suddenly, motioning to his secretary. "So you want to go with me to battle?" he shot at me in the coarsest Spanish. "Many bullets!" I said nothing. "Muy bien! But I don't know when I shall go. Maybe in five days. Now eat!"
"Thanks, my general, I've already eaten."