Hundreds of refugees poured across the river, some on horseback driving cattle before them, some in wagons, and others on foot. The inspectors were not very gentle.
"Come down off that wagon!" one would shout to a Mexican woman with a bundle in her arm.
"But, señor, for what reason?..." she would begin.
"Come down there or I'll pull you down!" he would yell.
They made an unnecessarily careful and brutal search of the men and of the women, too.
As I stood there, a woman waded across the ford, her skirts lifted unconcernedly to her thighs. She wore a voluminous shawl, which was humped up in front as if she were carrying something in it.
"Hi, there!" shouted a customs man. "What have you got under your shawl?"
She slowly opened the front of her dress, and answered placidly:
"I don't know, señor. It may be a girl, or it may be a boy."
These were metropolitan days for Presidio, a straggling and indescribably desolate village of about fifteen adobe houses, scattered without much plan in the deep sand and cotton-wood scrub along the river bottom. Old Kleinmann, the German store-keeper, made a fortune a day outfitting refugees and supplying the Federal army across the river with provisions. He had three beautiful adolescent daughters whom he kept locked up in the attic of the store, because a flock of amorous Mexicans and ardent cow-punchers prowled around like dogs, drawn from many miles away by the fame of these damsels. Half the time he spent working furiously in the store, stripped to the waist; and the remainder, rushing around with a large gun strapped to his waist, warning off the suitors.