BANDITS!
I
I crossed the border at daybreak.
In the manner of a Gringo who first passes the Mexican frontier, I
walked cautiously, glancing behind me from time to time, anticipating
hostility, if not actual violence.
In the dusk of early morning the low, flat-roofed adobe city of Nogales
assumed all the forbidding qualities of the fictional Mexico. But the
leisurely immigration official was polite. The customs’ inspector waved
me through all formalities with one graceful gesture. No one knifed
me in the back. And somewhere ahead, beyond the dim line of railway
coaches, an engineer tolled his bell. The train, as though to shatter
all foreign misconceptions of the country, was about to depart on
scheduled time!
II
Somewhat surprised, I made a rush for the ticket window.
A native gentleman was there before me. He also was buying passage,
but since he was personally acquainted with the agent, it behooved
him--according to the dictates of Spanish etiquette--to converse
pleasantly for the next half hour.
“And your _señora_?”
“_Gracias! Gracias!_ She enjoys the perfect health! And your own most
estimable _señora_?”
“Also salubrious, thanks to God!”
“I am gratified! Profoundly gratified! And the little ones? When last I
had the pleasure to see you, the _chiquitita_ was suffering from--”
The engineer blew his whistle. A conductor called, “_Vamonos!_” I
jumped up and down with Gringo impatience. The Mexican gentleman gave
no indication of haste. The engineer might be so rude as to depart
without him, but _he_ would not be hurried into any omission of the
proper courtesies. His dialogue was closing, it is true, but closing
elaborately, still according to the dictates of Spanish etiquette,
in a handshake through the ticket window, in an expression of mutual
esteem and admiration, in eloquent wishes to be remembered to everybody
in Hermosillo--enumerated by name until it sounded like a census--in
another handshake, and finally in a long-repeated series of “_Adios!_”
and “_Que le vaya bien!_”
What mattered it if all the passengers missed the train? Would there
not be another one to-morrow? This, despite the railway schedule, was
the land of “_Mañana_.”
III
On his first day in Mexico, the American froths over each delay. In
time he learns to accept it with fatalistic calm.
As it happened, the dialogue ceased at the right moment. Every one
caught the train. Another polite Mexican gentleman cleared a seat for
me, and I settled myself just as Nogales disappeared in a cloud of
dust, wondering why any train should start at such an unearthly hour of
the morning.
The reason soon became obvious. The time-table had been so arranged in
order that the engineer could maintain a comfortable speed of six miles
an hour, stop with characteristic Mexican sociability at each group of
mud huts along the way, linger there indefinitely as though fearful of
giving offense by too abrupt a departure, and still be able to reach
his destination--about a hundred miles distant--before dark.
In those days--the last days of the Carranza régime--trains did not
venture to run at night, and certainly not across the Yaqui desert. It
was a forbidding country--an endless expanse of brownish sand relieved
only by scraggly mesquite. Torrents from a long-past rainy season had
seamed it with innumerable gullies, but a semi-tropic sun had left them
dry and parched, and the gnarled greasewood upon their banks drooped
brown and leafless. Even the mountains along the horizon were gray and
bleak and barren save for an occasional giant cactus that loomed in
skeleton relief against a hot sky.
[Illustration: IN THOSE DAYS TRAINS DID NOT VENTURE TO RUN AT NIGHT
ACROSS THE SONORA DESERT]
This was the State of Sonora, one of the richest in Mexico, but its
wealth--like the wealth of all Mexico--was not apparent to the eye
of the tourist. The villages at which we stopped were but groups of
low adobe hovels. The dogs that slunk about each habitation, being of
the Mexican hairless breed, were strangely in harmony with the desert
itself. And the _peons_--dark-faced semi-Indians, mostly barefoot, and
clad in tattered rags--seemed to have no occupation except that of
frying a few beans and selling them to railway passengers.
At each infrequent station they were awaiting us. Aged beggars stumbled
along the side of the coach, led by tiny children, to plead in whining
voices for “_un centavito_”--“a little penny”--“for the love of God!”
Women with bedraggled shawls over the head scurried from window to
window, offering strange edibles for sale--baskets of cactus fruit
resembling fresh figs--_frijoles_ wrapped in pan-cake-like _tortillas_
of cornmeal--legs of chicken floating in a yellow grease--while the
passengers leaned from the car to bargain with them.
“What? Fifteen _centavos_ for that stuff? _Carramba!_”
“Ten cents then?”
“No!”
“How much will you give?”
Both parties seemed to enjoy this play of wits, and when, with a
Gringo’s disinclination to haggle, I bought anything at the price first
stated, the venders seemed a trifle disappointed. Everybody bought
something at each stopping-place, and ate constantly between stations,
as though eager to consume the purchases in time to repeat the
bargaining at the next town. The journey became a picnic, and there was
a child-like quality about the Mexicans that made it strangely resemble
a Sunday-school outing at home.
Although an escort of _Carranzista_ soldiers occupied a freight car
ahead as a precaution against the bandits which infested Mexico in
those days, the passengers appeared blandly unconcerned.
[Illustration: AN ESCORT OF SOLDIERS OCCUPIED A FREIGHT CAR AHEAD AS A
PRECAUTION AGAINST BANDITS]
Each removed his coat, and lighted a cigarette. From the car wall
a notice screamed the Spanish equivalent of “No Smoking,” but the
conductor, stumbling into the coach over a family of _peons_ who had
crowded in from the second-class compartment, merely paused to glance
at the smokers, and to borrow a light himself. Every one, with the
friendliness for which the Latin-American is unsurpassed, engaged
his neighbor in conversation. The portly gentleman who had cleared a
seat for me inquired the object of my visit to Mexico, and listened
politely while I slaughtered his language. The conductor bowed and
thanked me for my ticket. When the _peon_ children in the aisle
pointed at me and whispered, “_Gringo_,” their mother ceased feeding a
baby to “Shush!” them, their father kicked them surreptitiously with a
loose-flapping sandal, and both parents smiled in response to my amused
grin.
There was something pleasant and carefree about this Mexico that proved
infectious. Atop the freight cars ahead, the escort of federal troops
laid aside their Mausers, removed their criss-crossed cartridge-belts,
and settled themselves for a _siesta_. As the desert sun rose higher,
inducing a spirit of coma, the passengers also settled themselves for
a nap. The babble of the morning gave place to silence--to silence
broken only by the fretting cry of an infant and the steady click of
the wheels as we crawled southward, hour after hour, through the empty
wastes of mesquite.
And then, as always in Mexico, the unexpected happened.
The silence was punctured by the staccato roar of a machine-gun!
IV
In an instant all was confusion.
Whether or not the shooting came from the Carranzista escort or from
some gang of bandits hidden in the brush, no one waited to ascertain.
Not a person screamed. Yet, as though trained by previous experience,
every one ducked beneath the level of the windows, the women sheltering
their children, the men whipping out their long, pearl-handled
revolvers. The only man who showed any sign of agitation was my portly
friend. His immense purple sombrero had tumbled over the back-rest onto
another seat, and he was frantic until he recovered it.
After the first roar of the machine-gun, all was quiet. The fatalistic
calm of the Mexicans served only to heighten the suspense. The train
had stopped. When, a few months earlier, Yaqui Indians had raided
another express on this same line, the guard had cut loose with
the engine, leaving the passengers to their Fate--a Fate somewhat
gruesomely advertised by a few scraps of rotted clothing half-embedded
in the desert sand. The thought that history had repeated itself was
uppermost in my mind, and the _peon_ on the floor beside me voiced it
also, in a fatalistic muttering of:
“_Dios!_ They have left us! We are so good as dead!”
We waited grimly--waited interminably. With a crash, the door opened. A
dozen revolvers covered the man who entered. A dozen fingers tightened
upon a trigger. But it was only the conductor.
“_No hay cuidado, señores_,” he said pleasantly. “The escort was
shooting at a jack-rabbit.”
V
The passengers sat up again, laughing at one another, talking with
excited gestures as they described their sensations, enjoying one
another’s chagrin, all of them as noisy and happy as children upon a
picnic. They bought more _frijoles_, and the feast recommenced, lasting
until mid-afternoon, when we pulled into Hermosillo, the capital of
Sonora.
A swarm of porters rushed upon us, holding up tin license-tags as
they screamed for our patronage. Hotel runners leaped aboard the car
and scrambled along the aisle, presenting us with cards and reciting
rapidly the superior merits of their respective hostelries, meanwhile
arguing with rival agents and assuring us that the other fellow’s beds
were alive with vermin, that the other fellow’s food was rank poison,
and that the other fellow’s servants would at least rob us, if they did
not commit actual homicide.
I fought my way through them to the platform, where another
battle-scene was being enacted.
Mexican friends were meeting Mexican friends. To force a passage was
a sheer impossibility. Two of them, recognizing each other, promptly
went into a clinch, embracing one another, slapping one another upon
the back, and venting their joy in loud gurgles of ecstasy, meanwhile
blocking up the entire platform.
Restraining _Gringo_ impatience once more, I stood and laughed at them.
In so many cases the extravagant greetings savored of insincerity. One
noticed a flabbiness in the handclasps, a formality in the hugs, an
affectation in the shouts of “_Ay!_ My friend! How happy I am to see
you!” Yet in many cases, the demonstrations were real--so real that
they brought a peculiar little gulp into one’s throat, even while one
laughed.
Be they sincere or insincere, I already liked these crazy Mexicans.