Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/641

Rh and money, but even gold and silver watches. The ornaments of bucks and squaws were made of silver dollars beaten into stars, and some wore necklaces of double-eagles, American gold. They were so well "fixed" that I could not purchase any of their effects, such as I have hitherto found the Southern Indians so ready to part with, except one small jicarilla, or water-gourd, covered with bear-skin.

Nearly all were engaged in their favorite pastime of monte, or Mexican cards, and the circles formed for this purpose were many, and the crowds about them dense and numerous. In the afternoon two great loads of goods came out from Willcox; and these savages, with arms yet in their hands, and thrifty in murdered men's money, crowded around the wagons and quickly emptied them, bartering their spoil, some of it yet red with the blood-stains of their victims, for the luxuries of civilization.

I witnessed this, not without indignation, and also another sight which was calculated to hasten the circulation of Yankee blood a little; no less than the purchase of the veritable watch taken from the dead body of the murdered Judge McComas, and for which, that very day, his former law partner paid fifty dollars to recover for the family! Better, a thousand times, thought I, the Indian policy of the Mexican, than such a vacillating one as ours, which sacrifices the lives of valuable soldiers and hardy frontiersmen to the support of a horde of villains, whose crimes, in a civilized community, would send them to eternity with the rope of outraged justice around their necks!

As I have said, feasting and boasting seemed the sole occupation of that "captured" horde, and, as night fell, an Indian drum sounded a call for a savage dance of victory,—a victory of Indian cunning and diplomacy. All was joy and happiness in Arizona at that time, June, 1883, for it was thought that the territory was finally freed from predatory bands, as General Crook, in his despatches, gave the most emphatic assurance that no Indians were left likely to cause disturbance, or that would not soon be on the reservation; yet within less than three months reports of murders and wholesale cattle-stealings by the Apaches came thick and fast from Chihuahua and Sonora.