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The election takes place at the court-house of the town; the electors are the gobernadorcillo whose office is about to expire, and twelve of the oldest headmen, cabezas de barangay, collectors of tribute for the gobernadorcillo they must select, by a plurality of votes, three individuals, who must be able to speak, read, and write the Spanish language.
Far to the south rise the rugged Chiricahuas, and nearby stands bald Dos Cabezas, whose giant double head of granite can be seen as a conspicuous landmark over a wide scope of country. The distance across the Pass as the crow flies is, perhaps, fifty miles. Beyond these peaks other mountains rise in majestic grandeur and bound the horizon in every direction.
The chiefs of clans, or cabezas de barangay and their eldest sons, or in default of children, the person adopted in their stead, that is, an entire tribute and a half, are exempt from this tax, as a remuneration for the trouble and responsibility they may have in collecting in the forty or fifty tributes, of which their respective clans are composed.
These strata alternate with banks of clay and coarse-grained soil, which contain scanty and badly preserved imprints of leaves and mussel-fish. Amongst them, however, I observed a flattened but still recognizable specimen of the fossil melania. The river-bed must be quite five hundred feet above the level of the sea. The cabezas wore, in token of their dignity, a short jacket above their shirts.
Yet were they not without some suspicions of danger from this new ally, he having eighty men, and they being now reduced to thirty-one. Then manning the frigate and two pinnaces, they set sail for the Cabezas, where they left the frigate, which was too large for the shallows over which they were to pass, and proceeded to Rio Francisco.
Beyond those rocky peaks which frowned across the mesquite flat at Tombstone lay other ragged mountain ranges; the Chiracahuas, the Dos Cabezas, the Swiss-helms, and the Grahams. Between their towering walls the valleys of the Sulphur Springs and the San Simon stretched away and away southward across the Mexican border great tawny plains pulsating under the hot sun.
The Huguenot privateer, which had been lying off the Cabezas, sailed eastward in his company, having abandoned Captain Tetû and his two shipmates to the mercies of the Spaniards. They stood along the coast together as far as the Isles of San Barnardo, where the French ship parted company.
To their horror they found no pinnaces awaiting them, but out at sea, not far from the coast, were seven Spanish pinnaces which had been beating up the inlets for them. These were now rowing as though directly from the rendezvous at the Cabezas, so that the draggled band upon the shore made no doubt that their pinnaces had been sunk, their friends killed or taken, and the retreat cut off.
Here they spent about fourteen days in fitting out their frigate more completely, and then dismissing the Spaniards with their ship, lay a few days among the Cabezas; while twelve English and sixteen Symerons travelled, once more, into the country, as well to recover the French captain, whom they had left wounded, as to bring away the treasure which they had hidden in the sands.
Then Stevens informed me that Warren had told him of his hunch, had asked for a grub-stake, and, on being given one, had departed in a southerly direction with the information that he expected to make a find over in the Dos Cabezas direction. He was gone several weeks, and then one day Stevens said to me, quietly: "John, Warren's back." "Yes?" I answered. "Did he make a strike?"