The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Chapter 12

At a little, unimportant station of the railroad which links the western states of the republic with the eastern, the passenger train stopped only long enough to take on the mail and express, if any, and to hand out mail_bags, a few chunks of ice, and a few goods ordered by the merchants. The town, a very small one, was located three miles away from the depot, and connected with it by a poor dirt road on which a rattling flivver would occasionally be seen asthmatically making its way.

Passengers boarding the train or leaving it at this station were seldom many. Half a week would pass by at times without any arrivals or departures.

The east-bound train stopped about eight in the evening, which in a tropical country is pitch-dark summer and winter alike.

Anyway, neither the station-master nor the conductor of the train was very much surprised when, one Friday night, more than twenty passengers, all mestizos, boarded the train at the depot. From their simple clothing they were sure that they were peasants and small farmers going to the Saturday market in one of the bigger towns or working-men on their way to a mine or to road work. The station-master, nevertheless, thought it a bit strange that these men did not buy tickets from him. Still, this happened frequently, particularly if there were many and if they were late. They might arrange the fare with the conductor on the train. He was glad in a way that they did not ask him for their tickets, because he was busy enough checking the express and seeing to his many duties as the only depot official.

The mestizos wore their huge palm hats pulled rather low on their foreheads, for the wind would blow their hats off when riding on the train, as they prefer to stand on the platform or sit on the steps, partly because they feel uneasy inside the train, partly owing to their fear of train-wrecks. They were clad in white, brown, or yellow cotton pants; some wore half-woolen shirts, others had on dirty-looking cotton shirts, some torn, some crudely patched. On their feet some wore low boots, others sandals; some were barefooted; a few had on one foot a boot and on the other a well-worn sandal; some had their calves covered with weather-beaten boot-hose of leather. And there were two who had a boot-hose on only one leg, while the other was covered by pants.

All had bright-colored woolen blankets tightly wrapped around their bodies, for the night was rather cool; and, as these people usually do, they wore their blankets wrapped around them so high up that their faces were covered up to the nose. With their hats pulled close to their eyes, only a very narrow strip of their faces could be seen.

Nothing was unusual or strange about the way they wore their hats and their blankets, for every Indian or mestizo farmer will do the same if he feels cold. So no one on the train, neither trainofficials nor passengers nor the military convoy paid the slightest attention to these men when they got on.

They looked around for seats, or at least they pretended to. There was only standing-room in the second-class cars which the new-corners had boarded. The men distributed themselves slowly over both the second-class cars and the one first-class car.

Crowding the train far above its capacity were families with children, women traveling alone, salesmen, merchants, farmers, workers, lower officials. In the first-class car the well-to-do people were reading, talking, playing cards, or trying to sleep. Two Pullman cars occupied by tourists, high officials, and rich merchants were coupled to the first-class car at the end of the train.

In the second-class car which came after the express car the first benches were occupied by the convoy. This convoy consisted of fifty federal soldiers, among them a first lieutenant as commander, a top sergeant, and three cabos or corporals. The lieutenant had gone to the dining-car for his supper, leaving the convoy in charge of the top sergeant. Some of the soldiers had their rifles between their knees, some had laid them on the bench against their backs, and others had put theirs up in the racks.

Some of the soldiers were drowsing, others were playing games to pass the time. Most of them, however, had their first readers upon their knees and were studying the basic elements of education. Those who had reached the second grade were helping those who had just started first-grade work.

A train-employee walked along the aisles offering bottled beer, soda-water, candy, cigarettes, chewing-gum, magazines, papers, and books.

Most of the passengers made crude preparations to pass the next hours sleeping. The inside of the cars, particularly the second-class cars, made in the uncertain and not too bright light a colorful picture. Whites, mestizos, Indians, men, women, children, clean people and dirty, many women and little girls dressed gaudily in the costumes of their native state, all crowded together.

The train had picked up speed and was hurrying to reach the next station, which was about thirty_two minutes away.

While taking up standing-room, the rnestizos saw to it that they had all the entrances to the cars well covered. No suspicion was aroused by the new-corners’ standing by the doors, as it was practically the only place where enough space for them was left, the aisles being so crowded that even the conductors had difficulty in walking through to inspect the tickets.

The train was now running at full speed.

All of a sudden and without the faintest warning the mestizos opened their blankets, brought out rifles and guns, and began to fire among the crowded and huddled passengers, not minding men, women, children, or babies at the naked breasts of their mothers.

The soldiers had been cornered so perfectly that before they had time even to grasp their rifles and get them up they fell, fatally shot, from their seats and rolled about the floor. In less than fifteen seconds no soldier was left able to fight. Those who still had life enough to moan or to move received another bullet or were knifed or had their skulls crushed.

Some of the trainofficials were dead, some so wounded that they staggered about or dragged their bodies along the floor.

For a few seconds all the people in the passenger cars behaved as if paralyzed. They sat stiff, with eyes wide open, looking at the killers and hearing the shots, as if they perceived something which simply could not be true, which must be a nightmare out of which they might awake any moment and find everything all right.

This strange sensation of feeling unable to move or to cry, coupled with a ghastly silence in the face of such a catastrophic interruption of the most peaceful occupation, lasted only a few seconds.

Then came an outcry which seemed to rise in unison from all human lips present. It was the cry with which man awakes from a horrible nightmare. Men were shouting and cursing, and some were attempting to resist the killers or to escape through the windows. Whoever reached a window and lifted his body to drag himself out was shot in the back or mercilessly clubbed to death. Many tried to protect with their bodies their women and children. Others tried to crawl under the seats or into corners to hide behind baggage.

Women were hysterical, moving about as if they had been blinded. Some ran against the muzzles of the guns and held them against their breasts, begging to be shot. The killers served them all as they wished. Women were on their knees, some praying to the Holy Virgin; others took out the amulets worn around their necks and kissed them; others simply shrieked and tore their hair and mutilated their faces with their fingernails. Those with children held them up against the bandits, begging for mercy in the name of all the saints, and offering, by the eternal grace of Our Lady of Guadalupe, their own lives in exchange for those of their babies.

Not women alone, but also men were crying like little children. Without begging for mercy, they were not even attempting to hide themselves. They seemed to have lost all sense. Many of them made faint efforts to fight, with the hope of ending it sooner. Their nerves had given way.

With their war-cry: “Viva nuestro rey Cristo! Long live our king Jesus!” the bandits had started the slaughter. With the same cry the signal was given to begin plundering.

Those still alive had not waited for that signal. Most of them had piled up before the bandits all they possessed_their watches, chains, and every cent they had. Fearing the bandits would cut off their fingers and ears to get their booty in the quickest way, the passengers stripped their fingers and ears and necks of whatever jewelry they wore, and handed it over.

Having cleared both the second-class cars, the bandits went to the first-class car. Here only a few men had been stationed to prevent the passengers from escaping or going to the assistance of the passengers in the other cars.

As they entered to repeat here what they had accomplished in the second-class cars the lieutenant returned from the dining-car. He had heard shots and was hurrying to see what was going on. As he stepped into the car, half a dozen bullets felled him.

Triumphantly the murderers shouted their “Viva nuestro rey Cristo!” on seeing the lieutenant dead at their feet.

Then the looting began here also.

For some reason they killed here only those passengers who tried to resist them, and wounded by clubbing or stabbing those who were not quick enough to hand over all they had or who tried to hold out gold pieces hidden away somewhere. It seemed that their thirst for blood had been satisfied with the killing of the poorer people. Since this car was occupied by the well-to-do, the loot was more valuable than that taken in the second-class cars. This fact may have accounted for the greater mercy shown to the victims.

One group went to the Pullman cars. The lieutenant had slammed shut the door behind him when leaving the car, and it had locked. The bandits broke the panes, opened the door from the inside, and entered the sleepers.

Passengers sitting in the dining-car were robbed first. This done, the bandits made the rounds of the other passengers. Some had already turned in; others were still sitting up. None of them was hurt, but they were robbed of all they had about their persons, and a few suitcases were pried open to examine their contents. In none of those suitcases was anything of value found.

Perhaps the fact that the train was rapidly nearing the next town prompted the bandits to have done with the whole job.

Someone pulled the stop-cord, and the engineer, hearing the signal, became suspicious. He had seen the mestizos board the train and, by sheer intuition, he realized that they might have something to do with the shots he had heard faintly. So he gave the engine all the steam she could swallow, and the train took up a maddening race. The sooner she could make the next depot, the better it would be for all concerned. The engineer figured that the stop-cord might have been pulled by the bandits themselves. By instinct he felt that the worst thing he could do was to bring the train to a stop and so give the bandits their chance to get away with the loot. No life could be saved by stopping the train. It was more likely that passengers would try to escape and be shot just the same.

The bandits now returned to the second-class cars, where the passengers, still too frightened and too confused to shout, were panic-stricken on seeing the bandits returning. Their thought was that they had come to kill all those who were left. But so stricken by fear and panic were they that they no longer begged for mercy. They faced their fate with the conviction that it was their destiny and that it was no use to fight. Some prayed in low tones, others only moved their lips; others, who could not even say a prayer, stared at the bandits with glassy eyes.

The bandits did not care any longer about the passengers. They stamped through the cars, stepping on the bodies or kicking them aside.

Entering the express and baggage car, they killed the officials handling the mail and arranging the goods to be put off at the next stop.

From here six men crawled into the tender and reached the engine. The fireman jumped off the train and, while jumping, was shot.

The engineer, seeing the bandits coming, also tried to jump, but was caught and held. He was ordered to stop the train and to unhook the engine and the tender so that they might be used by the bandits to make their escape.

While this was happening, a dozen men were busy throwing all the baggage, the express goods, and the mail-bags out of the train along the track, where accomplices of the bandits were waiting to pick them up.

In the express car a few bandits had discovered half a hundred five-gallon cans filled with gas and kerosene consigned to various general stores in little towns along the road. Seeing these cans, the bandits hit upon a fiendish idea. They opened the cans and soaked the two second-class cars and their passengers with gas and kerosene and set the whole on fire. In an instant the cars were ablaze, as if by explosion.

The fire, thrown backwards by the draft of the train, quickly spread to the other cars, which in a few seconds were wrapped in flames.

Yelling, howling, crying, laughing in madness, acting no longer by reason or by instinct, the passengers tried to escape. In the meantime the men on the engine had forced the engineer to bring the train to a full stop, unhook the engine and the tender from the train, and take the bandits away from the scene.

A wide circle of darkness was lighted up by the flames and in that ghastly brightness there ran and danced a yelling horde who only fifteen minutes before had been normal human beings peacefully traveling from one place to another. Mothers without children, children without mothers, men without their wives, wives without their husbands, all of them mad, many of them fatally burned, many of them fatally wounded by bullets or knives, none of them any longer normal.

The passengers from the first-class car and from the Pullman cars, who were but little affected, did their utmost to assist those getting out of the burning train, aiding the wounded, consoling the dying, and reasoning with the mad.

The engine and the tender loaded with the bandits came suddenly to a halt, as ordered, at a spot where they had decided to get off and where they had early in the afternoon left the horses now needed to get away with their booty. All the baggage thrown out from the train was left in care of the groups posted along the track; these men would join the first party later in their hide-out in the Sierra Madre mountains.

The last bandit to leave the engine shot the engineer, kicked him off the engine, and threw him down the track. There he left him for dead and joined his partners.

All this had taken less than ten minutes, and the next depot was still more than ten miles away; there was no village near by from which any help could come. The brightness of the burning train might be seen far away, but since this fire was dying down, anybody who might have seen it would have thought some shack had caught fire and have paid no further attention.

Passengers who were still sane gathered together and went about picking up men and women who had jumped out of the windows while the train was still moving and who were now lying along the track.

The engineer, also lying on the track and left for dead, came to after a while. With the little strength still left him he crawled up the track, dragged himself on the engine, and succeeded in getting it under way and to the depot.

The station-master, seeing a lonely engine pulling in and recognizing it as that of the train long overdue, found the engineer unconscious in his cab. In a dying condition he was taken into the depot, where, with his last few words, he told what had happened.

With the help of officials, passengers, and people on the platform who had been waiting for the train, a freight at the depot was hurriedly converted into an emergency train and driven to the site of the wreck.

The trainofficials, knowing with whom they would have to deal, ordered the engine of the passenger-train brought in by that brave engineer to go ahead of the emergency train to make sure that the tracks were still in condition and not broken or blocked.

On nearing the wreck, but still more than half a mile off, the engine was fired at by bandits lying in ambush or on their way home with the loot. One fireman got a shot in his leg; the other fireman serving the engine got a scratch on his skull. But in spite of all that, the engine reached the wreck safely.

The emergency train was also under fire, but the officials and a few of the volunteers who carried guns answered the fire, which made the bandits believe that this emergency train carried soldiers. So the bandits dropped their heavily loaded bags and hurried to get away with the little they could carry without interfering with their retreat. The more important booty was on the farther side of the wreck, where the train could not go, for the wreck blocked the way.

All wounded and dead that could be found were taken into the emergency train, as well as those who were unhurt, and the baggage that was lying about, and then the train returned to the depot, where by now the whole town had gathered.

At the depot a dozen official telegrams had arrived. A hospital train would be there in the morning. The chief of the federal military force of the state and of two neighboring states had, by order of the government, mobilized cavalry troops to be sent after the bandits by special trains. The mounted police of all districts in the vicinity of the attack had been ordered to hunt down the bandits and bring them in by whatever means possible, but run them in they must.

The tragedy was not ended, for twenty-four hours later, when the hospital train with all the surviving passengers arrived at the main station of the capital, where thousands had been waiting for many hours, there were no less than twenty men and women who turned insane or committed suicide at the sight of a loved one among the dead. There were three who killed themselves in the belief that their relatives had been murdered. They were so excited that when the expected person was not among the first to leave the train, they were sure that he must be dead, and shot themselves or threw themselves before other incoming trains. For the metropolitan press, with such a piece of news at its command, had turned hysterical and had done its best to excite the whole population, so that practically no individual could be found sane enough to look objectively at this disaster. Every person able to read the papers was made to identify himself with the victims.

Man can more easily endure a train-wreck or a ship-disaster or an earthquake with a loss of many hundreds of lives than wholesale murder by criminals. Men feel sorry about a thousand lives lost by a shipwreck; they will do all in their power to help the victims and to avoid a similar catastrophe. But the same men will rage like savages for vengeance if only twenty persons have been willfully murdered by bandits for purely material reasons.

The government considered it its foremost duty to hunt down these murderers who in the face of the whole civilized world had besmirched the honor and the name of a civilized nation just then mistrusted and detested everywhere. Roman Catholics, ignorant or misled as to the facts, were trying to get other governments to interfere in what they thought to be suppression of religious liberty.

In certain countries whenever banditry occurs on such a large scale, it is not always possible to determine who profits by what bandits do. The bandits may get all the booty for themselves, but often they may not know for whom they are fighting. A man high up in politics, a general hot after the seat of the president, a dismissed secretary of commerce, may use these bandits, whom he calls rebels, to destroy the reputation of the government before foreign nations and before their own. Many attacks by bandits in these countries can be explained in this way, as it frequently happens that the bandits after an assault are not prosecuted in the way the public has a right to expect. In such cases only a few are caught, and the report is given out that they have been executed, but sometimes it happens that they are later found to be soldiers in the army, where they hide out. The pursuit of the bandits cannot be followed up by the public in general, for they know only what they read in the papers, and what is printed may be true or it may not. After two or three weeks no more is heard about bandits, other affairs having taken the foreground in the public mind.

The bandits in this case made it quite clear that they were fighting for their king, Jesus. Fighting on behalf of the Roman Catholic church, for religious liberty. The fact is that they had only a very vague idea as to who Cristo was. It would have been quite easy to make them believe that Bonaparte, Columbus, Cortes, and Jesus were all identical. The Roman Catholic church during its four hundred years of rule in Latin America, of which three hundred and fifty were an absolute rule, has been more interested in purely material gains for the treasuries and coffers in Rome than in educating its subjects in the true Christian spirit. Governments of modern civilized countries have quite a different opinion from the church on education, and these governments have also different opinions as to who is better suited to rule, the state or the church.

No better proof of what the Roman Catholic church in these countries has done to the people could be found than the fact that the same men who cried: “Viva nuestro rey Cristo!” killed mercilessly and robbed for their own pockets men, women, and children whom they knew were members of the same church, believing at the time that they were doing so to help their church and to please the Holy Virgin and the Pope.

Two Catholic priests had been recognized by passengers as active members of the bandit band. Later these priests were caught, and they admitted that they had been leaders, not only in this train-assault, but also in half a hundred hold-ups on highways and ranches. They considered their own actions similar to those of the Roman Catholic priests, Father Hidalgo and Father Morelos, who fought against the Spaniards for the independence of their country. They had also paid with their lives for the failure of their enterprise, because they were fighting under absolutely different conditions from Washington the Great, and these fighters for their country were condemned not only by the crown of Spain but also by the Holy Inquisition although they fought under the flag of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. A few years later when the Roman Catholic church became interested in separating the Latin-American countries from Spain, because Spain had started to throw off the yoke of the Roman church, the independence of the Latin-American countries was won by the help of the same church that had only ten years before helped execute patriots who did what the church now wanted done, and the beheaded bodies of these rebel priests were buried in the main cathedral.

Besides these two recognized priests, the government did not know who was leading the hordes of bandits fighting for King Cristo. To find the real boss who pulled the strings, or to show American tourists that the country was safe and that such an incident would be punished severely and swiftly, the government changed certain military chiefs in whom it had lost confidence and then went with all its might on the trail of the malef actors.

In pursuing bandits along the Sierra Madre it does not help you to take finger-prints from the walls of railroad cars or to file all finger-prints at headquarters. The thing is to get the bandits. When you have them, shoot them. This done, you may check up on the finger-prints. There is no other way.

In certain Latin-American countries, including Mexico, bandits, gangsters, hold-up men, highway-robbers, never see a court from the inside, never have a lawyer to speak to, never are allowed bail, never hear of a parole-board. This is the reason why there are no bandits and no gangsters who rule by their own laws. They may get away with one hold-up, perhaps with two; when very lucky, with three. Then they are no longer.

The bandits, corrupted Indians in part, mestizos mostly, are with rare exceptions small farmers, more peasants than farmers. They know every trail for miles around their homes, every mountain path, every hole in the ground where a man may hide, every crack in the rocks where a man might squeeze himself through. In such a crack a fugitive may sit for three days without food for fear of betraying his hiding-place.

Eighty out of every hundred federal soldiers are pure Indians, selected from those tribes for whom war has been the main occupation since this continent rose above the oceans. Against them no hide-out is of any use. The rest of the soldiers are mestizos who know all the tricks and can make use of them more cunningly than the bandits, for they have the advantage which every hunter has against the hunted. The officers in charge of the hunt know by long experience and by special education how to make use of their men to the best advantage.

Soldiers—all cavalry men in this case, and led by a first lieutenant or a captain—about eighteen in all, ride into a village. The officer has traced the tracks of certain horses to this village or to the vicinity. For many reasons he thinks it likely that a few of the bandits may live in this village, or have relatives here or friends.

The train had been attacked by about two hundred men, only twenty or twenty-five of them doing the actual killing and robbing, all the others being stationed along the road to take part in the fight only should it happen that the train came to a stop before the convoy was subdued. Otherwise they were to carry away the booty thrown out of the train by the robbers.

The assault over, the band breaks up in little groups. Most of them return to their villages, where they own a piece of land, have their families, and live the life of peaceful farmers. Many of them do not even tell their wives or mothers where they have been and what they have done while they were away, apparently gone to market. On coming back they hide their guns, or not, since the peasants after the revolution were allowed to have guns to fight the big hacendados, the former feudal lords, who by the revolution lost the greater part of their huge domains, which were parceled out to the peasants; so the possession of fire-arms alone is no proof that their owner is a bandit.

The officer works mainly on hunches, and he uses certain tricks which he knows that these bandits, ignorant and superStitious men with little intelligence, will inevitably fall for. Their minds are not quick enough to answer questions for any length of time without being so bewildered that they confess.

Now, the soldiers are riding into Chalchilmitesa, a village far off the roads, inhabited by Indian farmers.

In the shade before a palm hut two mestizos are squatting, smoking cigarettes they have made by rolling tobacco into corn leaves. They watch the soldiers with little interest and without making any move or trying to hide.

The soldiers pass. But thirty yards beyond the hut the officer orders them to halt. One of the mestizos rises and tries to go behind the hut. His pal, however, with a gesture of his head, tells him to stay where he is. He squats down again.

A sergeant has taken notice of the behavior of the two men and says a few words to his captain, who rides to a hut opposite the one where the two mestizos are. He asks for a drink of water and dismounts. Taking the earthen vessel in which the water is offered, he drinks, and asks if they have had much rain lately.

He meditates for a while, apparently about nothing in particular, and walks across to where the two mestizos are.

“You are living in this pueblo?”

“No, patron, we are not living here.”

“Where are you from?”

“We have our house and our piece of land, our milpa, in Mezquital, mi jefe.”

“On a visit here? Visiting your compadre, I figure.”

“Yes, coronel.”

The captain calls one of his men to bring his horse. The officer tries to mount his horse. He seems tired from the long march over the hot country. The horse is dancing about, and the officer has trouble getting his foot into the stirrup. The horse is nearly kicking the mestizos, so one of them rises and comes close to help the officer get into the saddle.

The captain has somehow touched the man. He sets his foot firmly on the ground again as if waiting for the horse to get quiet.

“What have you got in your pocket?” the officer asks the man unexpectedly.

The mestizo looks down along his pants and fixes his eyes on his pocket, which seems rather bulky. He turns around as though he wants to go back to the hut. But he notes all the soldiers coming along without having received an order to do so. At least so it seems to him. He now tries to calm himself by rolling another cigarette and asks his pal if he also would like another.

The captain is still standing, seemingly absolutely uninterested in anything. Just as the mestizo lights his cigarette, the captain grasps him by the shirt-collar with his left hand and at the same time thrusts his right hand in the man’s pocket.

The other mestizo has risen. He shrugs his shoulders as if to say that he does not care about what is going on here. But when he wants to go behind the hut, he finds three soldiers standing in his way. He grins and tries no other move.

Now the captain looks at what he has taken from the pocket of the mestizo. It is a rather expensive leather purse.

The captain laughs, and both the mestizos laugh as if the whole thing were just a joke.

He empties the purse into his hand. A few gold pieces, silver, a few coins, and small change. Twenty-five pesos.

“That’s your money?” asks the captain.

“What do you think, chief, of course, claro, it’s my money.”

“So much money and such a ragged and torn shirt?”

“I was just about to go to town tomorrow, coronel, and buy me another shirt.”

“You suffer often from nose-bleeding?” the captain asks.

The man looks down at his shirt. “You said it, mi jefe, I certainly do.”

“I thought so.” The officer looks at the other things found in the purse. A railroad ticket to Torreon. First class. This mestizo never rides first class. Something more still. The ticket has the date of the day when the train was robbed.

The other mestizo is searched quickly. He has little money loose in his pocket, but he has a diamond ring and two pearl earrings tucked away in the watch-pocket of his pants.

“Where are your horses?”

“In the corral back of the jacal,” the mestizo answers.

The captain sends one of his men to examine the hoofs. The man returns. “The hoofs fit all right, my captain.”

The horses are poor beasts. The saddles are old, worn-out, and ragged.

“Where are the rifles and the guns?”

One of the mestizos answers: “In the corral where the horses were.”

The captain goes to the corral. He scratches the ground with his feet and picks up a rusty revolver, an old-fashioned pistol, and a battered shotgun.

He returns to the mestizos, who are fully surrounded by the soldiers. Seeing the guns brought by two soldiers, they shrug their shoulders and smile. They know that they are lost. But what does it matter? San Antonio, their patron in heaven, did not want to protect them, so what is the use battling against destiny?

“No more guns?”

“No, jefe.” Unconcerned about their fate, they smoke their cigarettes and watch the preparations of the soldiers as if they were looking at a show.

Only a dozen villagers have assembled around the soldiers. And of course quite a number of boys. A few of them are helping the soldiers to guard their horses. The great majority of the villagers remain in their huts. From there they watch everything that goes on outside. They know by long tradition that it is not wise to be seen when soldiers or mounted police are around. None has an absolutely clear conscience, or at least none feels that he has. There are hundreds of orders given by the government or by other authorities of which they may have broken many without knowing it, so it is best not to be seen by soldiers. Once seen, one might easily be accused of something, whatever it may be.

“What are your names?” the captain asks the mestizos.

They give their names, or what they think are their names.

The captain writes the names down in his notebook.

“Where is the cemetery?” he then asks a village boy standing by.

The soldiers march the two captured men off to the cemetery, guided by the boy and followed by about twenty grown-up people and almost all the boys of the little community. While marching, the captain orders a couple of boys to get two shovels from the man who usually digs the graves.

Having arrived at the cemetery, the two prisoners are handed the shovels and led to a site where there are no other graves. They need no further orders. Leisurely they begin to dig, and both, after digging deep, lie down in the graves to see if they would rest comfortably for the next hundred years. They try them three or four times until they are satisfied and then drop their shovels, indicating that they have finished.

Then there is an intermission. The two men must have a rest after so much digging under the blazing sun. They squat and start once more to roll their cigarettes. The captain, seeing this, takes out his own cigarettes and offers the prisoners the package. They look at the package and say: “Thanks, coronel, but we are no sissy smokers, we’d better smoke our own brand.”

“As you wish,” says the captain, and lights a cigarette for himself.

The prisoners begin to talk with a few of the soldiers and find that they have acquaintances in common, or that they know the villages where some of the soldiers were born.

Having smoked three cigarettes, the prisoners look at the captain, who responds by asking: “Listo, muchachos? Ready, boys, for the trip?”

Both answer with smiling lips: “Si, coronel, yes, we are ready.”

Without being ordered, they stand up in front of the holes, each taking good care that he is in front of the hole he has dug and tried out.

The sergeant names the two squads and has them marched up before the prisoners. The prisoners, seeing everything ready, murmur a dozen words to their saints or to the Virgin, cross themselves several times, and look at the captain.

“Listo, mi coronel, ready,” they say.

Thirty seconds later they are already covered with the earth which they dug out a quarter of an hour before.

The captain and the soldiers cross themselves, salute, cross themselves once more, and then leave the cemetery, mount their horses, and march off to look for other bandits.

This murder trial, including the execution, costs the people who pay taxes three pesos and fifty centavos, the cost for cartridges. The final results are more effective than in countries where an average murder trial will cost around two hundred thousand dollars.

The apprehension of the bandits is not always so easy.

There was another detachment of cavalry hot on the trail of a group of bandits. On reaching the top of a hill the officer noted ten men on horseback riding three miles ahead. When these men became aware of the soldiers, they fell into a gallop and soon disappeared among the hills. The officer with his men followed the tracks. Since the country after a while turned very sandy and tracks of other horses crossed the trail, the pursuit had to be given up.

In the afternoon the soldiers approached a big hacienda where the officer had decided to spend the night with his men. The soldiers rode into the wide inner patio of the hacienda, and the officer, after greeting the hacendado, asked him if he had seen ten men on horseback coming that way. The hacendado denied having seen a single soul the whole day long and added that he should know whether or not men had passed the hacienda during the day, since he had been at home all the time.

For some reason the officer changed his mind about staying here overnight, but he told the hacendado that he had to search the hacienda, to which the hacendado answered that the officer might do as he pleased.

No sooner did the soldiers come near the main building than they received a good greeting of bullets from all directions. One fell dead and three were wounded when the soldiers in retreat reached the main gate of the hacienda.

Haciendas are often built almost like fortresses, with all the buildings inside of a very wide patio, which is surrounded by stone walls crowned at intervals by little towers.

As soon as the last soldier left, the huge gate was closed from the inside. And now a real battle began. The officer of course might go back to headquarters and ask for more men and machine-guns. But he is a true soldier and does not run away from bandits. Nor would his men like him to do so. He would lose their respect. He has to accept battle and fight until the last cartridge is gone.

Since revolutionary times both parties know that the battle will end only with the destruction of one of them, and that no quarter will be asked or given. The besieged bandits know they have nothing to lose. They are shot anyway if caught alive. The same will happen to the soldiers if they don’t win the fight. If you wish to survive, you have to win the battle.

The officer ordered all the horses led behind a hill so that they would not be shot. The bandits do not waste bullets on the horses, for they know they must save their ammunition, the more so since their arms are not all alike, so that the same cartridges cannot be used by everyone. Besides they also hope to win the battle, and it would be had economy to shoot the horses which they would own if they win.

The soldiers found they were not in a good position. The hacienda was located on a plain, and every soldier approaching could be seen as if marching on an ice-covered lake.

First, just to get the thing under way, the officer ordered a general attack on all four sides of the hacienda. The soldiers, well trained in modern warfare, scattered and crawled along the ground, making only short forward jumps, without waiting for the officer to whistle.

The officer took advantage of the fact that the hacienda had two gates, one in front, one at the back. He let his men go on, keeping up a slow fire to keep the besieged busy. A few soldiers reached the walls, but they were too high and could not be climbed without sacrificing every man who tried to get over.

After two hours’ fighting in this ineffectual way, the officer sent word round to all his men to be ready for the final attack. He gathered the greater number in front_of the main gate and by a few tricks made the bandits believe that the attack would take place immediately, with an effort to break in the main gate. WThile the bandits concentrated all their attention on this gate, a small group of soldiers took the back gate, which was defended by only three men. Far less strong than the main gate, this one was easily opened by a man who, catlike, squeezed himself through a crack in the wall near it. The moment the bandits found the back gate in the hands of the soldiers, they were so confused that they all forgot about the main gate and put their whole force against the invaders at the back. Having foreseen that this would happen to a body undisciplined and without definite leadership, the officer now stormed the main gate with all his might. Before the bandits could think of organizing again to defend the main gate, it had been opened and the soldiers swarmed into the patio.

Here, of course, the fight became fiercest—man against man. Guns could no longer be used, and knives, stones, fists, had to take their places. The battle was finally carried inside the house, into the living-rooms and bedrooms.

Three hours after the soldiers arrived at the hacienda, the fight was over, won by the soldiers. Four of them were dead, three badly wounded, and ten had received slighter wounds. The officer had been shot twice, but he was still up and in full command.

The ten bandits had been joined by three other men who were hiding in the hacienda when the bandits arrived. The hacendado was found dead, so he could not be questioned to ascertain whether he himself was an accomplice of the bandits or whether he had been forced by them to take their side. Seven bandits were dead, two were wounded, and so was one of the three who had joined the bandits in their fight. The wounded and the sound alike were executed against the back wall half an hour later. Who would be so stupid as to take a bandit to a hospital to be cured and made fit once more to follow his trade? Not the officer and the soldiers sent after bandits to rid the country of public enemies, the pets of sob-sisters and prison-reformers. Rattlesnakes are killed whenever found near the dwellings of human beings. If man wants to follow his peaceful occupations, he cannot have a live rattlesnake in the neighborhood.

The peons of the hacienda went into hiding when the battle began. They now came out of their holes and helped the soldiers to get in the horses. The family of the hacendado were away on a visit in the capital.

In the pockets of the dead and the executed were found purses, jewelry, train-tickets, dollar bills, ladies’ handbags, and other things that come into the possession of active bandits. So there was no doubt that the officer again had got the right men. And again he got them in the right way—that is to say, he killed the rats first and afterwards looked them over to find out if they carried the pest. Luckily there were no reporters or photographers around to fill the papers with stories of heroic bandits fighting and dying bravely.

In this way all the bandits were caught sooner or later and executed on the spot. The country has its sporadic spells of banditry, but banditry never has become an institution, not even when, as may occasionally happen, a general or a politician uses hordes of bandits to further his own ends.

“That is all I know about this train assault and about the rounding up of the bandits,” Lacaud concluded his report. “Part of it I had from don Genaro, who read it to me from the papers, and part of it I heard on my way down to the village and from villagers who had been to market in town.”

For a minute Lacaud was silent. Then he asked: “Now that you know these men, do you still think me a spy or an accomplice of those murderers now on their way up here? Just answer me.”

“We have never said you are, and not for a minute do we think you have any connection with these women-killers,” Howard said. “Well, partners, I guess the question of confidence in our new partner is now settled.”

“All right with me.” Dobbs stretched out his hand to Lacaud. “Shake, partner,” he said.

“Welcome here.” Curtin offered Lacaud his hand.

Howard suddenly took a deep breath. “Why, the hell, then these men must be the last of the criminals the government is so hot to corner.”

“I’m sure of that,” Lacaud admitted. “In the papers there was Something about a gang still not caught, and the leader of this group, the worst of the whole lot, was described as wearing a gold-painted palm hat.”

Curtin made a face. “If that is as you say, Lak, then it sure will be no laughing matter for us.” He climbed upon the rock and looked down the valley. After some time he said: “I can’t see these devils any longer. They must have gone another way.”

“Now, don’t you be so sure, kid,” Howard corrected him. “They are by now at the loop. You can’t see it from here. But as you can’t see them anywhere else, I’ll lay you any bet that they are right on the road up here. Let’s all go over to that side of the rock. There we may see them again when they have passed the loop and turned into that path crossing the naked rock. They ought to be on that path inside of a few minutes. If we don’t see them, they may have given up coming here. Otherwise—well, we’ll have to face the enemy.”