Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/312

302 Mexico, for insulting his colonel, and fancied this bird-like sweetness was a knell.

I took the coach, my sole companion opposite. Three armed men had accompanied me to Queretaro. One, perhaps unarmed, goes with me out of it. I had been trusting in those arms, though I pretended not to be relying upon them. I had repeated to a splendidly armed and trained shooter that I was sufficiently armed; for

And when he was not satisfied with his favorite as an authority, I fell back on one higher and better, and said, with David: "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Now here I am, without the language, or a rifle, or a companion, alone on the high seas of travel. I am tempted sore for a little; then comes my talisman again:

And they went. I laid down on the rocking seat and slept. I awaked with the sun. My sole fellow-traveler left me at the second posta, Apiaseo, a long adobe town.

I got out of my dignity and dust, and mounted behind the driver; no one is allowed to sit at his side. I exchanged verbal commodities, giving him English, of which I had plenty, for his Spanish, of which he had plenty. So we rode for a hundred miles; and the experience of riding alone and unarmed through the country was settled ere that morning sun grew hot. I forgot all about the gentleman who was to let his robber friends know that I was on the road—a conceit that only a panic could have created; for I was no fit game for their rifles. I felt as comfortable and secure with the driver and his unloaded rifle as with the best sharp-shooters of the country.

The country too, from Queretaro to Guanajuato, I had totally misapprehended. I had supposed, as the latter city was a mining town, the road to it must be far worse than any I had seen. I was condemning myself for my folly in going off my track home a