Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/434

422 Near noon we drive near a fence, the first I had seen, save of the corral sort for the coach horses. "That fence is forty miles long," says an employé of the road on the coach. Our Mexican driver (we have changed drivers) knows only to lash and scold his horses, run them and walk them by frequent turns. "Forty miles now; that is its beginning. It will include twenty miles square when finished." The owner is Mr. King. We enter the gate, itself nearly a mile from the house, which looks close by, and drive to the barn. Mr. King generously provides a cold cut of beef and cold cup of milk—rarities indeed. He has about sixty thousand cattle, and ten thousand horses and mules. He will get them all in his "patch" when the fence is completed, which will be, he says, seventy miles in length. He intends to improve his stock, and will slaughter twenty thousand this fall, to make way for the better quality. He keeps a hundred men racing down these herds, which are now wandering all the way from the Rio Grande to Austin. That is a specimen of the stock-breeding of the country. He is one of many such—only two or three quite as big, and only one bigger—Mr. Conner, who has not less than one hundred thousand cattle. A passenger had smiled an "Ah Sin" smile when I spoke of a hacienda in Mexico with its five thousand cattle and forty thousand sheep. I saw it now.

They say Mr. King's life is threatened by the Mexicans; but he is brave and daring. Once they shot at his ambulance, and killed a German on the box with the driver. His house is an open one, broad veranda, one story, wood—excellent for a fire, if the Mexic is so disposed. But he would sell his life dearly, and they do not want to buy at such rates; so he will probably live a while yet.

Not far this side, a small fenced inclosure, with trees and gardens, was the abode of Mr. Murdoch, who in the autumn of '72 was caught in bed by these savages, chained down, covered with tar and kerosene, and the house set on fire. He was an easy prey to the flames. So these prairies are not Paradise, except as it was after the devil entered it.

Corpus Christi receives us at night -fall. It is a live, pretty