Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

392 The house-servant disappeared as silently as he had come, and within a short time a second figure trotted up outside the ve- randa, jerked off his sombrero, and stood in an attitude something like that of a soldier at attention. A tall, somber figure, the sun struck him in profile and painted in black the cavernous hollows of the cheeks and the deep-sunken eyes. A hungry leanness; in that half light the eyes were like cavities of darkness touched with sparks of fire. ‘“‘ Alvarado,” said Onate, his voice losing most of that terseness with which he had addressed the house-servant, and taking on a tone of mingled awe and fear, “ find me El Tigre. I saw him run over the top of that hill.” The Indian, in place of answering, re- placed the sombrero on his head, whirled, and swept up the slope of the hill with the long stride of the tireless runner. Onate remained still and straight in his chair until Alvarado dipped out of sight over the crest of the hill. Then he slumped back in his chair. Now the households of rich Mexicans are always numerous, but there needs some ex- planation for the fact that Onate’s estab- lishment included Yaqui Indians. The Ya- qui is to the Mexican what in the Middle Ages the Gentile was to the Jew. A Yaqui will walk many hungry miles to get one shot at a Mexican; and a Mexican will walk as many miles to avoid a Yaqui. The railroads in the Southwest have em- ployed Yaquis and Mexican peons at the same time, but always the Yaqui has to be lodged and fed apart from the peon. And in the eating-hall a peon would rather storm the gates of hell than take a seat he knows is reserved for a Yaqui. The conflict between Yaqui and Mexican is not new. It is warmed and cherished by. four centuries of hatred and murder. It goes back to the time when grim Cortez conquered most of the tribes, but did not conquer them all. Neither did his suc- cessors succeed. For four hundred years the war has continued. Both sides have used rope and fire and bullet and knife. Still the issue has not been decided. The mutual hatred has become an instinct; it is almost a re- THE ARGOSY. ligion. As the Algonkians, and Mohicans, and Hurons once feared the Iroquois, so the Mexicans fear the Yaquis. Give a Yaqui a knife and he will trail two Mexicans armed with guns, and probably he will come back with~whis knife-blade reddened by something besides rust. He is made by nature to be the conqueror of the Southwest. He will put salt and tobacco in his pouch, sling a short-barreled rifle over his shoulder, and strike into the burning heart of the desert at a dog-trot, which he maintains from morning to night, stopping only long enough to kill and eat raw meat. What that meat is he does not care. He will devour a prairie rat; he has been known to tear the flesh of a coyote, newly slain and warm. A fire is a luxury to him, and cooked meat a delicacy, not a necessity. Running at his shambling trot, he will cover in ten days more miles than any other man in the world will cover on the finest of horses. In twenty-four hours he will cover a hundred and twenty miles the first day, and on the following days he will travel nearly as far. 7 Moreover, he knows the desert not be- cause he has to know it, but because he loves it. He can follow a trail almost through the night, and some astonished travelers have sworn that he is gifted with an animal power of scenting. He fights because he loves fighting, and when a Mexican is in: sight he is filled with what amounts to a religious joy. With a rifle, to be sure, he is never perfectly at home. For that matter, no people in the world, outside of the whites, have ever quite understood the use of powder and lead. Nevertheless, he achieves a_ tolerable accuracy with the gun, though he is nearly useless with a revolver. On the other hand, he is a genius with any sort of cold steel, and at a short distance he throws his camp- hatchet or whips across his knife with as much accuracy and almost as deadly an effect as the six-gun of a border ruffian. Taking all these things into consideration, it must be clear that a Mexican would rather take a rattlesnake into his household than have aught to do with a Yaqui. It is doubly. strange, therefore, that Sefior COPMICLOO© S Eon