_A Bit of Mexican Adventure_.
|WE were sitting in the hotel in San Antonio, and the conversation had
taken that satisfactory turn and confidential coloring which it will
take amongst congenial companions round an open wood fire.
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We had been expressing our individual opinions about men and things,
especially men, and had derived a sleepy satisfaction from our general
criticisms. There were men among us who had seen a good deal of frontier
life, and, as one man said, “he had seen so many men die with their
boots on, it seemed the natural end.” My nearest neighbor in the circle
was a young artist from New Orleans, known throughout the city as “Jim
the Painter,” from the art he practiced to get his living. He turned and
asked me if I knew Jack Dunton; and when I denied the honor, he said:
“Well, you ought to; he is a map of the whole Indian country.”
This awakened my interest. I found that Dunton was living in San
Antonio, that his life had been really wonderful in experiences and
adventures, that he was very intelligent as well as recklessly
brave, and finally, that his acquaintance was worth any man's time to
cultivate. Later in the evening we walked over to Dunton's office,
a long, pleasant room in the second story of a flat-roofed _adobe_
building that covered nearly half an acre. Both its stories were
crammed full of the goods he sold--wagons, harnesses, and all sorts of
agricultural tools.
Dunton's own room was a mighty interesting place, principally in its
decorations. The walls and doorways were hung with bright-colored and
strange-figured Mojave and Navajoe blankets, skins and weapons were
scattered around or arranged as trophies, while clumsy and rude
implements of Aztec and Mexican fashioning, from Yucatan to Chihuahua,
were suspended against the sides, or heaped in the corners. A large open
fire, with blazing cedar logs, filled the room with the aromatic odor
so pleasant and characteristic of that wood, and lighted it with
fitful glares. There were many interesting stories connected with this
collection, and every article in the room seemed to remind Dunton of an
experience or incident in his varied career. After being introduced and
comfortably seated in a chair, he passed us cigars, and while we were
lighting these preliminaries to sociability he drew a square of corn
husk from one side-pocket of his sack coat and a pinch of tobacco from
the other side-pocket, and quietly rolled a cigarette, which gave out a
pungent, penetrating odor. It was not disagreeable, but it struck me as
being peculiar, even for Texas. Upon remarking that it seemed different
from ordinary tobacco, Dunton replied, “It is, and I have good reason to
like it, for once it saved my life.”
This aroused my curiosity, and with some little urging he told us the
story. “This tobacco,” said Dunton, “comes from the town of Carcinto,
quite a mining settlement of _adobe_ houses and stockades, surrounding
a Mexican convict station in the center of the state of Chihuahua. It is
made by the convicts, who treat the ordinary tobacco with the juice of
a native plant, which gives it the pungent flavor you notice and, I
suspect, a slight narcotic power; be that as it may, now that I am used
to it, other tobacco is flat and tasteless. I was down there some years
ago, trying to sell the mine-owners some carts, harness, and things in
my line, and I became well acquainted with the nature of these convicts,
and I tell you, I would rather take my chances in a den of mountain
lions than among those fellows when they revolt. At such times they are
madly insane, and nothing is too hellish for them.
“I had made a good thing of my deal and was anxiously waiting for an
escort,--for I had four thousand Mexican dollars, and a man of my shape
takes no chances in toting money around in that country.
“The day that I remember particularly--and you will see I have reason
to--was the day before I was to go out from the mine with the mule
train. That afternoon I went in the levels with Senor Bustino, one of
the owners, a gentleman, every inch of him--and I tell you, no finer
gentleman walks the earth than a high-caste Mexican of Castilian blood.
“I had sold them a few dozen American pickaxes, and one of the convict
gangs was to try them that day for the first time. It was the first lot
of pickaxes ever used in that mine, and, as the sequel proved, the last.
The men were doing with them twice the business they had formerly done
with their clumsy heavy hoes. Two soldiers with _escopetas_ were on
guard, and two overseers with pistols and heavy canes were directing
the work. To get a better and nearer view, Sefior Bustino and I crowded
through until we came to the rotten ledge filled with the silver, upon
which they worked. The convicts stopped and gazed upon us curiously,
some of them pushing back their long black hair out of their eyes
and staring with undisguised wonder at me, for I was a _gringo_, a
_heretico_, and a strange object to them in those early days, with my
paler skin and peculiar dress. Near me was a large black fellow, bare
to the waist.. He was short-necked and broad-shouldered, and his cheeks
were so high as to partly close his little fierce eyes; his nose was low
and flat, while his chin was sharp and prominent, with a deep scowl;
in fact, a bundle of animal appetites and passions done up in a hideous
form. As we passed he drew from the folds of his drawers--the only
clothing he wore--a pinch of tobacco and a com husk, and making a
cigarette he stepped to one of the grease-wood torches and lighted it,
blowing out a great cloud of pungent, aromatic smoke from his broad
nostrils, that filled the space around us with the odor you noticed from
my cigarette.
“That was my first experience with that tobacco, and, indeed, my first
smell of its peculiar odor, and I have never forgotten it. I dined that
evening with the old senor and was introduced to his family; his wife, a
Mexican lady prematurely aged--as they all are, two daughters, handsome
as angels, and was shown the picture of their son, a young man who was
then being educated in Paris. They were delightful people, especially
to one who had been trucking for weeks across the dusty plains of
Chihuahua, with only _peons_ and mules for company, and we had a fiery
Mexican dinner, spiced with the jokes of the village priest, who was an
honored guest. At ten, with the hearty wishes of the whole family, and
after the elaborate Mexican custom of withdrawal, I left them. As I
sauntered out in the moonlight I could not shut out of my mind the
brutish face of the convict in the mine. Perhaps the round faces and
handsome eyes of the senor's pretty daughters may have emphasized the
memory of the convict's ugly head; otherwise I was in a happy mood.
“I turned the corner of the street and entered a short dark lane that
led toward the prison stockade. There was an occasional _adobe_ house,
but the street was mostly lined with the miserable mud _jacals_ of the
poorer Mexicans. I had hardly gotten well into it when I sniffed
the same pungent odor that the convict's cigarette had given out.
It startled me a trifle, conjuring up, as it did, the hideous mental
picture of the man. I had but just realized this association when I
heard the clanging of the cathedral bells in that hurried, nervous
manner which has alarm in its every note--for the tone of a bell always
partakes of the state that its ringer is in. I heard the sound of
approaching voices, loud and fierce, mixed with the alarming notes of
the bells, and I stepped into the dark doorway of the nearest house.
Next, there was the spatting of bare feet on the hard street, and a
yelling crowd hurriedly rushed by my hiding-place, leaving a trailing
smell of the same tobacco. I noticed the gleam of white handles in the
moon-lighted street that I had seen in the yellow light of the mine,
and then I knew that the convicts had revolted, and that they were armed
with the pick-axes I had sold the mining company.
“The bells continued to clang out their terror, and the distant shouting
became blended into the continuous murmur that you hear from a distant
crowd of excited people. Once in a while the roar of an _escopeta_ would
be heard, and soon I saw a magenta glow in the sky, and I knew the town
had been fired. Then followed the rapid snapping of pistols, and soon
the bellow of the old brass _escopetas_ denoted that the guards had
mustered, and that there was an organized resistance to the revolt. All
this occurred quicker than I can tell it. I concluded to get back into
the broad street I had just come out of, for if there is to be shooting,
I want a clear space and as much light as I can get.
“Just as I turned the corner, on a run, with both of my colts on a
shooting level--for, by the way, it is always best to come upon your
enemy suddenly and surprise him before he knows you are there--I
saw several bodies in the street, and in the distance some dozen men
retreating. I stopped near by the first body I came to; and to my horror
I saw it was the still warm corpse of Senor Bustino. As I paused and
stooped to more closely examine, I thought I could detect the lingering
smell of that hellish convict's tobacco. Had the fiends attacked my
host's home and dragged him insensate through the streets, or had he
been slain whilst hurrying to the post of duty, at the sound of the
alarm he knew well the meaning of? If the former, good God! what had
been the fate of his wife and lovely daughters? The very thought
momentarily unnerved me; and if the convicts had not yet wreaked their
vengeance, could I reach them in time to be of effective service? Louder
and louder roared the tumult, nearer and nearer came the flashing,
glinting lights of torch and pistol, and as I swept round into the
street in which Senor Bustino's house stood I could see, pouring down
the hill toward it, a demoniac gang led by the bare-breasted convict
whose baleful face had haunted me.
“I found the senora and her daughters alone and, thank God! unharmed;
but not a moment too soon, for even as I hurried them through into the
darkness of the night the convicts, with curses on their tongues, lust
in their heart, and red ruin in their hands, swarmed into the house.
A momentary check came as their leader and another fell in the narrow
door, beneath the fire of my two revolvers, and the flames which leaped
up from that erewhile home lent their last protection in the shadow they
cast, which enabled us, by availing ourselves of it, to escape. By the
time we arrived at my hotel the convicts had flown to the mountains and
we heard the story of the revolt. If I had not smelled that tobacco I
should not have concealed myself in the doorway, my life would not have
been worth a picayune, and you may imagine what would have been the fate
of my hostess and her household. Senor Bustino, it appeared, had fallen
a victim to the high chivalry which prompted him, hearing the bell and
knowing its meaning, to hastily summon his servants, and with five or
six armed _peons_ hasten out to overtake me and bid me return to his
house until all danger was over. He had met the convicts, who had
attacked him and struck him down, while most of his servants fled.”
Dunton paused, made and lighted another cigarette, and continued: “I
could not get away for a month, for it was not safe for a small party
to leave the town. I brought out some of that tobacco as a curiosity
and learned to like it. I send for more every year where it is still
prepared, in the prison-pens.”
“It is sometimes said, 'Follow your nose and it will take you out of
danger,' and in my case the proverb proved true. Sometimes, when I sit
here alone, half sleepily watching the curling smoke wreaths, I can
almost see the place again, and the rings of smoke shape themselves into
a horde of convict demons killing the poor old noble senor, whose elder
daughter I have married. And now you know what I owe to the pungent
aroma of a cigarette from Carcinto.”