Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/279

 Rh game-cocks. A breeder of them is giving his brood the early morning air. They stand on a raised seat running along the front of his cabin, prevented from general perambulation by a fastening to the foot. The trainer is teaching the young ones how to fight, holding a gray one up to a black beauty, and making each strike the other artistically. They are splendid birds, putting to shame the Shanghais and other gentry of bloodless and fightless fame. But even if of a fighting race, they have to be taught to bite and devour each other, and patiently taught. So brave nations drill their braver soldiers to fight, and then declare their natural animosity causes war.

My first scare occurs just out of this gamy town. A company of horsemen come riding down on us from a rocky hill-slope up which our half-sick mules must slowly pull, for the epizootic is in the land, and I take this thousand-mile ride and risk with that accompaniment. The gay-caparisoned riders, as they appear wrapped in their red and blue zerapes, are sufficiently brigandish to stir the fever in the timid blood. No weapon was mine save my mother-wit, and that was an exceeding dull weapon, and would be very clumsily used in the unknown tongue. So I wait patiently the coming of the foe. On they drive, nearer and nearer to us, on us, past us. "Adios " is the only shot they fire. They are muleteers from Chihuahua and Durango, going to town, a long three weeks' trip, to dispose of a few sorry mules. Time is of no value here. Two months and twenty dollars profit are good equivalents. Thus ends our every fright the whole journey through.

The Valley of Guatitlan is entered—a broad, pleasant country, well cultured, and inclosed with bare brown hills. At Lecheria, or Milk-place, we change one set of eight sick mules for another. Guatitlan is galloped through, or would have been had the mules been well. The San Pedro hotel looks as familiar and uninviting as ever. I shiver as I think of that den where, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, I laid me down, but, unlike him, did not get a good sleep or dream. The town is large. Protestant service has been held here, and will be again.