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There they go, prancing over the ground, causing their gaily caparisoned steeds to caper and curvet, especially in front of the tiers of seated senoritas. There are miners among them, and young hacendados, and rancheros, and vaqueros, and ciboleros, and young merchants who ride well. Every one rides well in Mexico even the dwellers in cities are good horsemen.
There were other figures in almost as distressing a state. A god only ordinarily maltreated could not excite the pity or interest of the Mexican Indian, whose every-day life has its own share of barked shins and painful adversities. It was amusing to find this village, hardly larger than many a one about the home of Mexican hacendados, the capital of a State.
There were a dozen detailed for this first race, young men of all classes, who were, or fancied themselves, "crack" riders. There were rancheros in their picturesque attire, smart arrieros, miners from the hills, townsmen, hacendados of the valley, vaqueros from the grazing-farms, and ciboleros, whose home is for the most part on the wide prairies.
After all, there are many others young "hacendados," employes of the mines, and a few merchant dandies of the town. Her choice may be some one of these. Quien sabe? Let us on through the crowd! We see the soldiers of the garrison, with tinkling spurs and long trailing sabres, mingling fraternally with the serape-clad tradesmen, the gambucinos, and rancheros of the valley.
There was a Presidio with the flag of Spain flying from its battlements; there was a grand Mission-house of the Jesuit padres; and dwellings of rich miners and `hacendados' studded the valley far above and below. A busy populace moved upon the scene; and all the passions of love and hate, ambition, avarice, and revenge, have had existence there.
A day or two of this pleasant easy work at their own ground will provide this, and they do not see why they should labour as hired servants to get more. This is bad enough, think the hacendados, but there is worse behind.
I might fill a small volume with such anecdotes, but the terrible fate of two hacendados, kidnapped in the interior of the country, may suffice to give an idea of the tax which living in Mexico at that time might levy upon the emotions of a young girl fresh from Paris.
No girl in all the valley rode better than the Señorita Teresa Picardo, and Diego knew it well and boasted of it to the peons of other hacendados; but for all that he was ill-at-ease, and when, ten minutes later, he came upon Valencia at the stable, he told him of the madness of the señorita. "Tejon she would ride, and none other; and to-day he is a devil.
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