Lakeland Evening Telegram Newspaper, June 2, 1914, Page 2

A Stirring Story of the Mexican Revolution " He paueed, smiling over the mem- ory of his misplaced credulity, and Hooker and De Lancey joined in a hearty laugh. From the town bum that he had first seemed this shabby little man had changed in their eyes until now he was a border Croesus, the mere recital of whose adventures conjured up in their minds visions of gold and hidden treasure. The rugged face of Bud Hooker, which had been set in grim lines from the first, relaxed as the tale proceeded and his honest eyes glowed with ad- miration as he heard the well-planned scheme. As for De Lancey, he could hardly restrain his enthusiasm, and, drawn on by the contagion, Henry Kruger made maps and answered ques- i tions until every detail was settled. After the location had been marked, and the lost tunnel charted from the corner monuments, he bade them re- | member it well and destreyed every | vestige of paper. Then, as a final ad- monition, he said: “Now go in there quietly, boys— don't hurry. Prospect around a little and the Mexicans will all come to you and try to sell you lost mines. Cruz Mendez is the man you're looking for | —he's honest, and he'll take you to the Eagle Tail. After that you can use your own judgment. So good-by'—he took them by the hands—“and don't talk!” He held up a warning finger as they parted, and Bud nodded briefly in reply. Silence was a habit with him, | desert-bred, and he nodded his head for two. CHAPTER IV. From the times of David and Jona- than down to the present day the world has been full of young men sworn to friendship and seeking ad- venture in pairs. “Pardners,” they call them in the west, and though the word has not crept into the dictionary yet, it 18 as different from “partner” as a friend is from a business associate. They travel together, these pardners of the West, and whether they be gow- boys or “Cousin Jacks,” the boss who fires one of them fires both of them, and they go share and share in every- thing. Bud Hooker and Philip De Lancey had met by chance in Fl Paso when the revolution was just beginning to ‘boll and the city was swarming with adventurers. The agents of the rebels 'were everywhere, urging Americans to Join their cause. Military preferment, cash payments, and grants of land /were the baits they used, but Hooker stood out from the first and took De Lancey with him. A Mexican promise did not paes current where he was born and they went to the mines in- stead. Then the war broke out and, while fugitives streamed out of stricken Chihuahua, they finally struck out against the tide, fighting their way to a certain mine far back in the Sierra Madres, where they could dig the gold on shares. Behind them the battle waged; 1 Casas Grandes was taken and retaken; Juarez, Agua Negra and Chihuahua fell; Don Porfirio, the Old Man of Mex- feo, went out and Madero took his place; and still they worked for their stake, Then new arms and ammunition flowed in from across the border; Orozco and his rebel chiefs went out, and the breath of war fanned higher against the hills. At last the first broken band of rebels came straggling by, and, reading hate and envy in their lawless eyes, the Americans dug up their gold at sundown and rode all the night for their lives, And now, welded together by all that toll and danger, they were pardners, cherishing no delusions as to each other's strength or weaknesses, but | Joined together for better or worse. It was the last thing that either of | them expected, but three days after they fled out of Mexico, and with all | their money unspent, the hand of fate seized upon them and sent them back to another adventure, It was early morning again, with | crowds along the street, and as they ambled slowly along toward the line | the men on the corners stared at them. The bunch of cowboys gazed at Bud, who sported a new pair of high-heeled boots, and knew him by the way he rode nd the mining men looked searchingly at De I cey, as if to | guees the secret of his quest A squad of mounted troopers, riding out on border patrol d after them | questionin t1 1 Phil rode | on headed N \a t It was a grir y look border town of Agua N war had swept t AL of level b ¢ a ¢ * Fussy little customs officials, lurk- ing like spiders in their cooped-up guardhouses, out as they | crossed the deep trench and demanded their permit to bear arms. The mo- (Copyright, 1914, by Frank Made Maps and Answered Questions Until Every Detail Was Settled. ment they crossed the line the afr seemed to be pervaded with Latin ex- citability and Indian jealousy, but De Lancey replied in florid Spanish and before his polite assurances and ful- some compliments it was dissipated in 4 moment, “Good! Pass on, amigos,” cried the beady-eyed little jefe, pasting a label on their pack. ‘Adios, senor,” he added, returning Phil’'s salute with a military flourish, and with a scornful glance at Bud he observed that the gentleman was muy caballero. “Huh!"” remarked Bud, as they rode on through the town, “we’re in Mexico all right, all right. Talk with both hands and get busy with your eye- browe—and holy Joe, look at them pelones!” The pelones referred to were a squad of Mexican federal soldiers, so- called from their heads being shaved, and they were marching doggedly to and fro through the thorny mesquit bushes in response to shouted orders from an officer. Belng from Zacatecas, where the breed is short, they stood about as high as their guns; and their crumpled linen suits and flapping san- dals detracted sadly from the soldlerly effect. Big and hulking, and swelling with the pride of his kind, Hooker looked them over slowly, and spoke his hid- den thought, “I wonder,” he sald, turning to Phil, “how many of them I could lick with one hand?” “Well, they're nothing but a lot of petty convicts, anyway,” answered De Lancey, “but here's some boys ahead that I'll bet could hold you, man for man, husky as you are, old fellow.” They were riding past a store, now serving as an improvised barracks, and romping about in the streets were a pair of tall Yaqui Indians, each deco- rated with a cartridge-belt about his hips in token of his military service Laughing and grabbing for holds, they frolicked like a couple of boys until finally they closed in a grappla that re- vealed a sudden and pantherlike strength. And a group of others, sunning themselves against the wall, looked up at the Americans with eyes as fearless as mountain eagles. “Yes, that's right,” admitted Bud, returning their friendly greeting, “but | with | we'll them.” never have no trouble “Well, these Nacionales are not so THE EVE!;IING TELEGRAM LAK ELAND, FLA,, JUNE 2. )14, The Land of Broken Promises By DANE COOLIDGE Author of *THE FIGHTING FOOL,” “HIDDEN WATERS,"” “THE TEXICAN," Etc. Dlustrations by DON J. LAVIN A. Munsey.) “No, they never had no chance,” | grumbled Bud, gazing grimly to the south. “But wait till the hot weather comes and the revoltosos come out of their holes; wait till them Chihuahua greasers thaw out up in the Slerras and come down to get some fresh mounts. Well, I'll tell ’em one thing,” he ended, reaching down to pat his horse, “they’ll never get old Copper | Bottom here—not unless they steal him at night. It's all right to be cheer- ful about this, Phil, and you keep right | on being glad, but I got a low-down | hunch that we're going to get in bad.” “Well, I've got just as good a hunch,” came back De Lancey, “that we're go- ing to make a killing.” “Yes, and speaking about killings,” sald Bud, “you don't want to overlook that.” He pointed at a group of disman- tled adobe buildings standing out on the edge of the town and flanked by a segment of whitewashed wall all spat- | tered and breached with bullet-holes. “There’s where these prize Mexicans | of yourn pulled off the biggest killing in Sonora. I was over here yosterdayi with that old prospector and he to]di me that that wall is the bull-ring. | After the first big fight they gathered up three hundred and fifty men, more or less, and throwed ’'em in a trench along by the wall—then they blowed it over on 'em with a few sticks of dyna- mite and let 'em pass for buried. No crosses or nothing. Excuse me, if they ever break loose like that—we might | get planted with the rest!” “By Jove, old top,” exclalmed De Lancey, laughing teasingly, “you’ve certainly got the blues today. Here, | take something out of this bottle and see if it won't help.” He brought out a quart bottle from his saddle-bags and Bud drank, and' shuddered at the bite of it, “All right,” he sald, as he passed it back, “and while we're talking, what's the matter with cutting it out on booze for this trip?” “What are you going to drink, then?” cried De Lancey in feigned | alarm, “water?” “Well, something like that,” admit- ted Bud. “Come on—what do you say? We might get lit up and tell something.” “Now lookee here, Bud,” clamored Phil, who had had a few drinks al- ready, “you don't mean to insinuate, do you? Next thing I know you'll be asking me to cut it out on the hay— might talk in my sleep, you know, and give the whole snap away!” “No, you're a good boy when you're asleep, Phil,” responded Bud, “but when you get about half shot it's dif- ferent. Come on, now—I'll quit if you will. That's fair, ain't it?"” “What? No little toots around town? No serenading the senoritas and glving the rurales the hotfoot? Well, what's the use of living, Bud, if you can't have a little fun? Drinking don't make any difference, as long as we stick together. What's the use of swes off—going on record in ad- vanes We may tind fellow that we can’t work any other way--we may have to ¢ K with him in or. to ¢ ! But will you hat's th Bud glanced at for a lone time Before them lay a rolling ping by broad gulehes itick? T point!"™ him and grunted, and 1e rode on in silence. | ain, dip wnd dwindling levels of Old Mex- skyline, thin and blue, stood the knifelike edges of the For- tunas miles away. With desert-trafr the landmarks, San Juan mountain to I!hu right, Old Niggerhead to the left, :umi the feather-cdge of mountains far | { ridges to the lower fco, and on the 1ed eyes he noted | below; and as he looked he stored it bad,” defended Phil, as they passed|awuy in his mind in case he should | the state eoldiers of Sonora on the come back on the run some night. E street, “but they're just as friendly as| It was not a foreboding, but the the Yaquis.” training of his kind, to note the lay of “Sure,” jeered Bud, “when they're| the ground, and he planned just where sober! But you get a bunch of 'em|he would ride to keep under cover i“ drunk and ask 'em what they think of No, you got to show me the gringos! —I've seen too much of 'em.” “You haven't seen as much of 'em as I have, yet,” retorted De Lancey quickly. “I've been all over the repub- lie, except right here in Sonora, and 1 swear these Sonorans here look good to me. There’'s no use holding a grouch against them, Bud — they haven't done us any dirt.” '|rr he ever made a dash for the line. But all the time his pardner was talking of friendship aro 1 the necessity of their ! sticking t I “I'll tel d,” he said at last, his voic z with sentiment, “wheth los2, T won't have a sing! I know we've ! been You may kno Bud, but I kno | of manana ' say. | and broken promises. I know the coun- try, Bud—and the climate—and the women! “They play the devil with the best of us, Bud, these dark-eyed senoritas! That's what makes all the trouble down here between man and man, it's these women and their ways. They're not satisfied to win a man’s heart— they want him to kill somebody to show that he really loves them. By Jove, they're a fickle lot, and nothing pleases ’em more than setting man against man, one pardner agalnst an- other.” “We never had any trouble yet,” ob- served Bud sententiously. “No, but we're likely to,” protested De Lancey. “These Indian women up in the Sierras wouldn't turn anybody's ! head, but we're going down into the hot country now, where the girls are pretty, ta-ra, ta-ra, and we talk through the windows at midnight.” “Well, if you'll cut out the booze,” ‘suid Hooker shortly, “you can have ‘em all, for all of me.” “Sure, that's what you say, but wait till you see them! Oh, la, la, la"—he kigsed his fingers ecstatically—"I'll be glad to see ’em myself! But listen, Bud, here's the proposition, let's take an oath right now, while we're start- ing out, that whatever comes up we'll always be true to each other. If one of us I8 wounded, the other stays wlthl him; if he’s in prison, he gets him out; if he's killed, he avenges his—" “Say,” broke in Bud, jostling him rudely as he reached into the saddle- bags, “let me carry that bottle for a while.” e He took a big drink out of it to pre- vent De Lancey from getting it all and " shoved It inside his overalls, “All right, pardner,” he continued, ! with a mocking smile, “anything you' I never use oaths myself much, but anything to oblige.” “No, but I mean it, Bud!” cried De Lancey. “Here's the proposition now. Whatever happens, we stay with each other till this deal is finished; on all scratch cases we match money to see who's it; and if we tangle over some | girl the best man wins and the other | one stays away. We leave it to the girl which one wins. hands on that?” “Don’t need to,” responded Bud; “I'll do it anyway.” “Well, shake on it, then!” insisted De Lancey, holding out his hand. “Oh, Sally!” burst out Bud, hanging his head in embarrassment, “what’s the use of getting mushy?” But & moment later he leaned over in his saddle and locked hands with a viselike grip. “My old man told me not to make no such promises,” he muttered, “but I'll do it, being'’s it's you.” Will you shake CHAPTER V, The journey to Fortuna is a ecant fifty miles by measure, but within these eight kilometers there is a lapse of centuries in standards. As Bud and De Lancey rode out of battle-scarred ' Agua Negra they traveled a good road, well worn by the Mexican wood-wag- ons that hauled in mesquit from the hills; Then, as they left the town and the wood roads scattered, the highway | changed by degrees to a broad trail, dug deep by the feet of pack-animals and marked but lightly with wheels. It | followed along the railroad, cutting over hills and down through gulches, and by evening they were in the heart | of Old Mexico. Here were men in sandals and wom- | en barefoot; chickens tied up by the | legs outside of brush jacales; long- nosed hogs, grunting fiercely as they skirmished for food; and half-naked children, staring like startled rabbits at the strangers. The smell of garlic and fresh-roast- ing coffee was in the air as they drew into town for the night, and their room was an adobe chamber with tile floor and iron bars across the win- dows. Riding south the next day they met vaqueros, mounted on wiry mus- tangs, who saluted them gravely, tak- ing no shame for their primitive wood- en saddle-trees and pommels as broad as soup-plates. As they left the broad plain and clambered up over the back of a moun- tain they passed Indian houses, brush- built and thatched with long, coarse grasses, and by the fires the womein ground corn on stone metates as the“r ancestors had done before the fall. For in Mexico there are tWwo peoples, the Spaniards and the natives, and the Indians still remember the days when they were free. It was through such a land that Phil and Hooker rode on their gallant ponies, leading a pack-animal well loaded with supplies from the north, and as the people gazed from thelr miserable hovels and saw their outfit they wondered at their wealth. But if they were moved to envy, the bulk of a heavy pistol, showing through the swell of each coat, discouraged . old, them from going farther; and the ct searching look of the tall cowboy as he ambled past etayed in thelr mem- ory long after the pleasant “Adios!” of De Lancey had been forgotten. Americans were scarce in those days, and what few came by were rid- ing to the north, How bold, then, must this big man be who rode in front— and certainly he had some great re- ward before him to risk such a horse among the revoltosos! So reasoned the simple-minded natives of the moun- tains, gazing in admiration at Copper Bottom, and for that look in their eyes Bud returned his forbidding stare. There is something about a good horse that fascinates the average Mex- ican—perhaps because they breed the finest themselves and are in a position to judge—but Hooker had developed a | romantic attachment for his trim little chestnut mount and he resented their wide-eyed gapings as a lover resents glances at his lady. This, and a frontier ! education, rendered him short-spoken, and gruff with the paisanos and it was left to the cavalier De Lancey to do the courtesies of the road. As the second day wore on they dipped down into a rocky canyon, with huge cliffs of red and yellow sandstone glowing in the slanting: sun, and soon they broke out into a narrow valley, well wooded with sycamores and mes- quits and giant hackberry trees. The shrill toots of a dummy engine came suddenly from down below and a mantle of black smoke rose majes- tically against the sky—then, at a turn of the trail, they topped the last hill ~and Fortuna lay before them. back again fifty miles—clear back across the line—for Fortuna was American, from the power-house on the creek bank to the mammoth con- centrator on the hill. All the buildings were of stone, square and uniform. First a central plaza, flanked with offices and ware- , houses; then behind them barracks and lodging houses and trim cottages in orderly rows; and over across the canyon loomed the huge bulk of the mill tramway and endless row of glldingi buckets. | Only on the lower hills, where the . rough country rock cropped up and | nature was at its worst, only there did | the real Mexico creep in and assert it- self in a crude huddle of half-Indian huts; the dwellings of the care-free na- | tives. “Well, by Jove!” exclaimed De Lan- cey, surveying the scene with an ap- praising eye, “this doesn't look very much like Mexico—or a revolution, either!” “No, it don’t,” admitted Bud; “every- thing running full blast, too. Look at “Which Way Are You Boys Travel \ Ing?” i that ore train coming around the ; hin!” i | “Gee, what a burg!" raved Phil; | “say, there's some class to this—what? 1 It I mistake not, we'll be able to find a In that one moment they were set ' and the concentrator with its aerial | tard Mexican tongue. P‘,I For every & little ache, pain and big aches big pains DRIVES PAIN AW Is quickly absorbed—good for sores, pe, stiff joints, rheumatism, etc. 25¢ at dry For Sale in Lakela HENLEY & HEMLE e, ral down below—Tet's rids leave our horses and see why price of drinks. They can't feq ! whatever it is—we doubled oy, at the line.” Financially considered, done just that—for, for eve can dollar in their pockets th, get two that were just as B cept for the picture on the sige | in itself was a great inducemey ready spender and, finding o pany at the Fortuna hotel yy bought five dollars’ worth of ¢ threw down a five-dollar bi), y back five dollars—Mex. The proprietor, a large ung boniface, pulled off his fi with the greatest good h then, having invited them (o, of a very exquisite mixture of ; invention, propped himself y elbows across the bar and i with an ingenuous smile: “Well, which away are y traveling, if I may ask?” “Oh, down below a ways,” ar: De Lancey, who always co himself the board of strateg: rambling around a little—hoy country around here now? “Oh, quiet, quiet!” assured host. “These Mexicans don't | cold weather much—they,wo you know, if it was not for t which they wind about them s He made a motion as of a wrapping his entire wardrobe his neck and smiled, and De knew that he was no Mexican vet that soft “which away” of trayed a Spanish tongue. “Ah, excuse me,” he said, | quick advantage of his gues from the way you pronounce ‘zarape’ I take it that you spesk ish.” “No one better,” replied th smiling pleasantly at being ta his true worth, “since I was the city of Burgos, where they the true Castillan. It is a dl language, believe me, from th And speak Spanieh also?” he in falling back into the staccato tile. “No indeed!” protested De La a very creditable imitation; “ but a little Mexican, to get alo the natives. My friend and I & ing men, passing through the ¢ and we speak the best we can is this district here for work al line?” “None better!” cried the S shaking his finger amphntlcalz is of the best, and, believe friend, we should be glad to ha stop with us. The country do low {s a little dangerous—no| perhaps, but later, when the weather comes on. “But in Fortuna—no! Here on the railroad; the camp s con by Americans; and because so have left the country the Mz will sell their prospects cheap “Then again, if you develop near by, it will be very easy t —and if you wish to work fit, easy, too. I am only the propr the hotel, but if you can use n services in any ‘way I shall happy to please you. A roo of the best! Apd if you stay or more I will give you the rate.” They passed up the winding and down a long,corridor, at t of which the proprietor showe into & room, throwing open the doors and shutters to let them § view from the window. (To Be Continued.) | | | | | ¥ th 0 oL 4 One Lone Breeds Mi breeding there ¥ millionsinafew Stop the Breeding With DR. BELL Antiseptic Sal 1t stops the brevding of once. Tt keeps o other germs, It soothes and heals @ | few congenial spirits here to help us ! ! spend our money. Talk about a com- ! pany town! TI'll bet you their barroom { is full of Americans. There's the cor- you use it, A 25c. box will prevent hu of dollars of trouble. *“Tell It By The Bell” 2. %9 2 2 2 2% ew Patent - “EASY-OPENING Box ' Black—Tan— White THE F. F. DALLEY Co., LTD,, BUFFALO, N. Y., HAMILTON, ONT. For sa]e~bv Henley & Henlt