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There were still traces of the adobe stockade behind it, with walls ten feet high, and the building which had housed the peones was still standing, now filled with fragrant hay. In front of it stood an old cedar post with rusty iron rings to which the recalcitrant field hands had been bound for beating. Every detail of this home of his forefathers stirred his emotions.
The latter may be bought for from twenty to sixty dollars apiece; and some of them make capital little hacks. We rode all over the farm, attended by half-a-dozen peones, who drove the young thoroughbred stock together, in the enormous fields, for us to see, and afterwards did the same thing with some of the cattle.
Fifteen horsemen remained with him in the city together with the twenty peones who made the guard all of each night with the horses saddled, until the captain of that sally returned, which was in five days. And so he spurred on with his men at a great pace, thinking that the enemy, warned of his approach, had fled and that the buildings that there were in a village were burning.
When this was learned by the Governor, he caused to be made ready seventy-five light horse, and with twenty peones who guarded Chilichuchima, and without the impediment of baggage, he set out for Xauxa, leaving behind the treasurer with the other troops who were guarding the camp baggage and the gold of H. M., and of the company.
The peones who worked his lands were his possessions as much as were his horses. He had them beaten when they offended him and their daughters were his for the taking. He could not sell them, but this restriction did not apply to the Navajo and Apache slaves whom he captured in war. These were his to be sold or retained for his own use as he preferred.
Boston seemed to think that was funny, and took to snickering sort of superior. He was about a full dose for uppishness, that young feller was: going on as if he'd bought the Territory, and as if the folks in it was the peones he'd took over Mexican fashion along with the land. Then he said he guessed Santa Fé did not ketch his meaning, and Monte Carlo was the biggest gambling hell there was.
When he awoke, the convoy had halted in a solitary spot, full in the sun, and all the men the peones were seated round a quarter of calf, which was roasting in the open air, beside a large fire, which was flickering in the wind. They all ate together, took a nap, and then set out again; and thus the journey continued, regulated like a march of soldiers.
Such people employed a cochero and drove, quite in the European style, when business or pleasure drew them from their homes. There was an almost continuous stream of peones on the bridge in the mornings and evenings: silent, furtive people, watched closely by the customs guard, whose duties required him on occasion to examine a suspicious-appearing Mexican with decidedly indelicate thoroughness.
But the peones became more and more exacting every day, as though the lad were their bond slave; some of them treated him brutally, with threats; all forced him to serve them without mercy: they made him carry enormous bundles of forage; they sent him to get water at great distances; and he, broken with fatigue, could not even sleep at night, continually tossed about as he was by the violent jolts of the wagon, and the deafening groaning of the wheels and wooden axles.
When two had been crossed over, the Governor divided the seventy-five soldiers between three captains, giving fifteen to each, and taking with him the remaining twenty and the twenty peones who were guarding Chilichuchima.
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