"northers"—almost frozen—the mexican indian—cold-blooded ingratitude—mexican untrustworthiness.
the chief drawback to the fine texas climate is the “norther” or cold north wind, that is really sometimes pretty bad. you can hear the wind roar for minutes before it reaches you, and when it strikes the temperature goes down and down. i heard a norther coming once about four o’clock in the afternoon, and ran out to the porch to look at the thermometer. it stood at 106° f., and within fifteen minutes it was 70° f. and still dropping, and by morning it was freezing. these northers seldom last over three days at a time, and they are generally followed by beautiful weather. there are about a dozen or so of them in a winter, but unless accompanied by rain they are not so bad as one might think. i was fishing on the nueces river one saturday night about ten o’clock for cat-fish, when i was surprised by a wet norther. i crawled with my saddle, &c., under a shelving rock and waited for the rain and hail to let up a bit. after a while i noticed that the river was rising, and as i happened to be on the wrong 173side from home, and the river sometimes stays up for three or four days, i had perforce to saddle up and get across while i could. when i got to the other side i could find no shelter, and as i had a good mess of fish i thought i might as well strike out for home. i did not feel the full force of the wind till i got out of the bottoms, but it was bitter when i reached the hills. i was so nearly frozen when i got home, about 2 a.m., that i could not unsaddle my horse till i had gone into the house, got a hot whisky, and warmed up.
on another occasion i was deer-hunting with a friend. we drove out in the evening in my buggy and pitched camp on a little rise where there was dry firewood, and after cooking supper we rolled up in our blankets and went to sleep. in the night a dry norther came up, and it was one of the worst i ever saw. each pretended to be asleep so that the other should light a fire, but at last we could stand it no longer, so we both got up and built a fire. the only way we could keep from freezing was to pull the buggy up to the windward side of the fire and make a wind-brake of some of our blankets tied to the wheels, so that we could sit between this and the fire. but the windbreak also acted as a chimney and sucked the smoke into our faces. when day broke we had to give up the idea of hunting. our faces were the colour 174of a well-smoked ham, and our eyes so bloodshot that we could not see a deer at fifty yards. but curiously enough, one never seems to be the worse for being caught in one of these storms, and one seldom takes cold.
the average mexican indian is a peculiar man, and one rarely can tell what his real feelings are. they are not dependable; a man may be your friend for years and then for some slight cause or supposed insult may turn and kill you. the only real personal trouble i had at the mines came about in this way. there were two young fellows who had started with us as water-boys, and finding them intelligent i had finally raised them to drillers, and given them each charge of an ingersoll drill. their father was a hand-driller, and also owned a couple of wagons doing freighting for us. the family considered themselves under obligations to me, and i thought i could depend on them. one day the old man came to me (accompanied by his two boys) and said the timekeeper had made some mistake in his time, and asked me to have it rectified. instead of sending for the timekeeper i thought i would straighten up the matter personally, as i was not very busy at the moment, and i took them into the office. while i and the old man were going over the time slips and wagon reports, the 175younger boy kept interrupting and putting in remarks, till he aggravated me into telling him sharply to shut up. he answered me in an insolent manner that he had come to see his father get justice and intended to do so. his father and brother tried to shut him up, and i told him that if he spoke to me like that again i would throw him out. “you will, will you?” he said, jerked out his knife, and came for me. as i reached for my gun his brother took a flying leap on to his back, and down they came at my feet struggling for the knife, which finally the elder brother took from him. when they got up i told the young man he was discharged, and would have to leave the company’s property at once. the father and elder brother begged me to let him off this time. but i said to them, “you know that manuel now has a grudge against me. i have a lot of night walking to do. life is too short for me to have to live in fear of, or have to pull a gun on, every man who walks up behind me in the dark, so when the nervous strain reaches a certain pitch i shall either kill manuel or he will kill me. is it not so?” the brother and father had to agree that i was right, and i never saw manuel again. it was a case of a mountain out of a molehill, but i could not afford to take chances, and now, after sixteen years’ experience of mexican ways, i am still convinced 176that i did the only thing that i could do under the circumstances.
a case of really cold-blooded ingratitude happened near uvalde to a young fellow that i knew. there was an elderly american couple with one son, who had adopted a mexican boy, bringing him up as a member of the family. the old man died when the boys were about nineteen years of age, leaving all he had to his wife. they had a small ranch on which they raised goats, besides having a few stands of bees. a short while after the father’s death they decided to sell out their uvalde ranch and move to devil’s river in north-west texas, where they could get a larger ranch for their increasing flocks. they sold the ranch and were to move the next day by camp wagon, driving the goats, and taking the money (about $800) with them. the party was to consist of the mother, the son john, the mexican boy juan, and an old mexican goat-herd who had worked for the family for years. the day before they were to start john went into town to get some supplies and the money, but before leaving the ranch he asked juan if there was anything he could bring him out from town. juan said he wanted a good bowie knife. when john, on his return, drove up to the house he handed the sheath-knife to juan, whom he met out 177at the corral, and then carried the money and the things he had bought into the house. amongst the things was a new rifle which he had bought at the last moment, and which he now loaded and put up on two nails over the lintel of the door: this act saved his life. for while he was inside, juan went to the old goat-herd with the proposition that they two should go in and kill the two americans, take the money, wagon, goats, and pull out for the border. “every one will think they are gone, and there will be no hunt for them till we are safe,” he said. at first the old herder thought it was all a grim joke, but when he saw it was really meant in earnest, he started for the house to warn them. the younger man was too quick for him, however, and stabbed him twice in the back before he could reach the door of the house. his cry brought john to the door, where he was met by a stab in the chest from the mexican, who reached there at the same time. john fell in the doorway, and juan jumped over him and made for his adoptive mother. she, however, had seen john stabbed, and, being an old frontier woman, was quick to act and full of fight. as juan came for her she grabbed an old shot-gun from its hooks on the wall, which he also had to seize with both hands to keep its muzzle pointing away from him, and so could not make use of his 178knife. the old woman was strong, and the fight was desperate for possession of the old gun.
the grim joke of the thing, if joke there can be in such a tragedy, was that neither of them knew that the gun was unloaded and useless.
meanwhile john had managed to get to his feet and reach down his winchester, then, dropping again to the floor from weakness, he was ready for action. “turn him loose, mother,” he called, and the old lady without question turned juan and the gun loose and got out of the line of fire. as soon as juan saw that the tables were turned, and that john, instead of being helpless as he had thought, was armed, he dropped on his knees and prayed for his life. but all the answer he got was ten shots from the winchester; john believed in making a good job of it. the old lady went out, caught one of the horses, and rode into town for the doctor and the sheriff. the old herder only just lived long enough to tell his tale, but john recovered. as for juan, i think he was lucky in receiving death from the winchester, instead of at the hands of the uvalde citizens when they heard of the tragedy.
i have lived nearly seventeen years in daily contact with mexicans, and i can truthfully say that there is not one of them that i know of (of the lower or 179working classes) with whom i would go into the hills alone with $500 in my possession, if the mexican knew i had it and thought he could get away with it after disposing of me. yet i like them as workmen, and get along very well with them. so i do not utterly condemn them, nor would i go as far as the clergyman who made a tour of mexico. he was a very literal and truthful man, and on his return to the states he was asked what he thought of the mexicans. “is it true,” he was asked, “that all the women are immoral and all the men liars and thieves?” “well,” said he, “i would hardly go as far as that, because, you see, i did not meet all of them!”
it must be remembered that the mexican lower classes are indians, either pure or with slight european admixture. naturally they retain the moral code of their nation, by which the first duty is revenge for injury, however small. ingratitude and greed are defects, perhaps, by that code, but too common to be reckoned as vices. when “wild in woods the noble savage ran,” he seems from contemporary accounts to have been much like the pathans of india’s border.
