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Updated: May 22, 2025
I reached for my weapon, but he greeted me with a respectful "Adios!" and hurried on. Soon he was overtaken by two more youths and dragged back to where an older peon lay in the middle of the road, his head mashed with a rock until trickles of brain protruded. The event seemed to cause little excitement.
I fear it is true what they have told me. Santisima Virgen! how like " The phrase was left unfinished. The speaker had forgotten the presence of Josefa and the peon, and was delivering her thoughts in too loud a soliloquy. The unfinished sentence had involuntarily escaped from her lips. Suddenly checking herself, she looked sharply towards the two.
Behind Manuel waited a peon burdened with elegant riding gear and a bundle of clothing, and a gesture brought him forward to deposit his load upon the porch before the gringo guest, whose "Gracias" Manuel waved into nothingness; as did the quick shrug disdain the little bag of gold which Jack drew from his pocket and would have tossed to Manuel for reward.
They were sold for a week, and bought up by vineyard men and others at prices ranging from one to three dollars, one-third of which was to be paid to the peon at the end of the week, which debt, due for well-performed labor, was invariably paid in aguardiente, and the Indian made happy, until the following Monday morning, he having passed through another Saturday night and Sunday's saturnalia of debauchery and bestiality.
The voices were growing fainter and fainter; they were returning to the trail. Father Pedro remained motionless. A week ago! Was it a week ago since since what? And what had he been doing here? Listening! He! Father Pedro, listening like an idle peon to the confidences of two lovers. But they had talked of him, of his crime, and the man had pitied him. Why did he not speak?
He told of the women of the South, of Sonora and Chihuahua where he had spent much of his youth, of how beautiful they were. He told of a slim little creature fifteen years old with big black eyes whom he had bought from her peon father, and of how she had feared him and how he had conquered her and her fear.
He had been known to kill a peon in a fit of anger, and then afterward to bestow all sorts of benefits upon the man’s wife and children. The life of his home, like that of all the other Mexican gentlemen in his time, was an easy and pleasant one. He owned a great adobe house, built about a square courtyard like a fort, and shaded pleasantly by cottonwood trees.
"Fat chance you'll have, with Friend Harrison there to spot you, not to mention the old boy himself and Culvera." "It won't be Steve Yeager that joins. It will be a poor peon from the hills named Pedro or Juan or Pablo." "You're going to rig up as a Mexican?" "Some guesser, Lennox." "You can't put it over, not with your face looking like a pounded beefsteak.
Diego, trailing two horsehair ropes and carrying a stout, smooth stick of oak that had evidently been used before for the work, came running after Jack as if he were going to put out a fire. Behind him trotted a big, muscular peon who saw not half the reason for haste that blazoned itself across the soul of Diego.
The oasis shone under the triangular promontory; the river with its rising roar wound in bold curve from the split in the cliffs. To the right white-sloped Coconina breasted the horizon. Forward across the Canyon line opened the many-hued desert. "With this peon watching here I'm not likely to be surprised," said Naab.
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