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. Moreover, he knows the desert, not because 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, few people in that world, outside of the whites, 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 house hold than have ought to do with a Yaqui. It is doubly strange, therefore, that Señor Don Porfirio Maria Oñate should keep six of these deadly fellows about him day and night. But his reason is perfectly clear.
11
El Tigre
T he only retrospective quality that the Indian possesses is a singularly acute memory for personal benefits and personal wrongs. One who harms him would better have trodden on the tail of a rattler. One who confers a favor upon him is installed at once in the innermost recesses of the Yaqui’s heart. His vindictiveness lives as long as his life. Four hundred years ago the Spaniard named Cortez had committed certain horrible outrages in the name of exploring the New World. Because of that the Yaqui hated forever all Spaniards and all who are tainted with Spanish blood. But the Yaqui’s memory of benefactions is almost as enduring. Give him a crust of bread when he is hungry and he will follow you to your home and lie across your threshold like a dog—a deadly guardian against all intruders. The life of your son and the honor of your daughter are safer in his hands than they would be in your own. In fact, so bitter has been the life of the Yaqui, so full of hatred and battling, that when he meets kindliness it takes a divine savor in his heart. His benefactor becomes his god.
It chanced that some years before Señor Oñate had crossed the border to claim a debt from a general, high in the service. It was not a large debt, and Oñate went more to irritate the general than with the hope of collecting it. As he knew beforehand, the general did not have a tithe of the sum. Even if he had had it, he would not havepaid Oñate who lived among the Americanos so far to the forgetful north. But he showed Oñate, in lieu of payment, a most enjoyable time. Rather late in the evening, much heated with a wild mixture of Mexican drinks from mescal to beer, they visited the prison and paused particularly in front of the cell where six Yaquis were being held, awaiting the rope of the hangman. They were condemned for a murder. The evidence against them consisted in the fact that they had been found in the vicinity of a murdered Mexican. This was quite sufficient.
Señor Oñate regarded them with a mixture of terror and delight, as a child gazes on the harmless strength of the lion behind the bars at the zoo. A drunken desire seized him to possess these dangerous fighters, even as the child longs to have the lion’s cub for a pet. Particularly he observed the lean face and meaningless eyes of El Tigre, a noted Indian. Memories of his exploits rang in the ears of Oñate. It was then that he remembered the debt of the general. He proposed on the spot
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, few people in that world, outside of the whites, 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 house hold than have ought to do with a Yaqui. It is doubly strange, therefore, that Señor Don Porfirio Maria Oñate should keep six of these deadly fellows about him day and night. But his reason is perfectly clear.
11
El Tigre
T he only retrospective quality that the Indian possesses is a singularly acute memory for personal benefits and personal wrongs. One who harms him would better have trodden on the tail of a rattler. One who confers a favor upon him is installed at once in the innermost recesses of the Yaqui’s heart. His vindictiveness lives as long as his life. Four hundred years ago the Spaniard named Cortez had committed certain horrible outrages in the name of exploring the New World. Because of that the Yaqui hated forever all Spaniards and all who are tainted with Spanish blood. But the Yaqui’s memory of benefactions is almost as enduring. Give him a crust of bread when he is hungry and he will follow you to your home and lie across your threshold like a dog—a deadly guardian against all intruders. The life of your son and the honor of your daughter are safer in his hands than they would be in your own. In fact, so bitter has been the life of the Yaqui, so full of hatred and battling, that when he meets kindliness it takes a divine savor in his heart. His benefactor becomes his god.
It chanced that some years before Señor Oñate had crossed the border to claim a debt from a general, high in the service. It was not a large debt, and Oñate went more to irritate the general than with the hope of collecting it. As he knew beforehand, the general did not have a tithe of the sum. Even if he had had it, he would not havepaid Oñate who lived among the Americanos so far to the forgetful north. But he showed Oñate, in lieu of payment, a most enjoyable time. Rather late in the evening, much heated with a wild mixture of Mexican drinks from mescal to beer, they visited the prison and paused particularly in front of the cell where six Yaquis were being held, awaiting the rope of the hangman. They were condemned for a murder. The evidence against them consisted in the fact that they had been found in the vicinity of a murdered Mexican. This was quite sufficient.
Señor Oñate regarded them with a mixture of terror and delight, as a child gazes on the harmless strength of the lion behind the bars at the zoo. A drunken desire seized him to possess these dangerous fighters, even as the child longs to have the lion’s cub for a pet. Particularly he observed the lean face and meaningless eyes of El Tigre, a noted Indian. Memories of his exploits rang in the ears of Oñate. It was then that he remembered the debt of the general. He proposed on the spot
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