The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-15

conductor conductor and one had been a
 brakeman. His left leg is buried, how ever, in Nuevo Laredo, and now he pot
 ters about the Union yards and pretends
 to be at work. They listened to the
 clang of street car bells outside and saw
 the electric lights flare up as the dusk
 settled, and talked of the old days when
 first the parallel bands of steel were
 driven through the stony heart of the
 Diaz country, and to be railway man
 down there meant hard work, big mon-
 ey and big risk. They told tales one to
 another, and there was no question of
 their truth. They were men who had
 seen so much in a wild land that they
 did not have to lie in order to be impress
 sive.
 When the train crews went into Ma
 nanaland the Mexicans did not like
 them. They were unused to folks who
 did things to-day that could be put off | until tomorrow. They objected to en- | zines which killed the citizen who went
 to sleep on the tracks. They encoun-
 tered rough class of strangers with
 whom they could claim no kin. Still | fingered in them memories of the inva-
 sion from the north-otherwise the Mex | ican war. That was in the sos, and an | American In Mexico accused of offence of any kind was in hard luck. Some
 times he was tried and shot, but gene- rally he was thrown into a dirty cell, | where he died and did not learn the charges against him. The few Yankee 1 consuls were poWerless. Often they made no effort to interfere, knowing the | futility of it and loving their own skins. | Americans came to regard arrest at the l hands of Mexican authorities as equiv l alent to life sentence in particularly | undesirable penitentiary and were to go | to any length to avoid it. When MT. | Bayard left the office of secretary of | state two hundred Americans were con- 1 fined in Mexican jails with no specific charges against them. The Harrison administration released them finally. but there is no way of telling how many of our countrymen have died in confine- ment down there without trial and with ou benefit of clergy.
 Occasionally one learns of a similar instance now, but it is seldom. The peoples have come to know each other better Peons no longer look upon the locomotive as Satan. When drunk with
 mescal they go to sleep along the side of
 the track and not upon it. In much of
 Mexico an American citizen Is safer
 than in certain parts of New York city.
 If ne gets into trouble a fair trial will be
 given him. Our emgrants to Mexico
 are of higher class than fifteen years
 ago. We used to send our worst. All of
 the injustice was not on one side. Our
 dark skinned neighbors had much of which to complain. There were Mexican
 gamblers, and we taught them brace
 games, of which they had never
 dreamed There were horse thieves, and we showed them swindles in horseflsh at which they stared aghast There were confidence men, and we sent them some in whose hands they were children. All of this education cost them money, and they endeavored to get even by means of jails, but things are better now.
 'All of the Mexicans aren't so worse,p said an engineer Now and then we used to find one that was white if he was yellow. Once near Victoria we were loaded heavy with iron, and we hit the usual drunken Mexican asleep on the track. Them folks used to think boad- bed better'n a wool mattress. It was down grade and around curve, and we | were going fair clip. and, though we had air brakes We just couldn't hold up in time. We ground him up and at Vic toria, ten miles further on, we didn't | have any better sense than to report it. | Of course, the train was side-tracked and | we were put in jail Next day we were hauled up before the alcalde.- He was a little, driedup man, with mahogany skin and snowwhite mustache It bris- tied fiercely, but l noticed that his eye twinkled a good dea and I sorter cot toned to him right away. We told him that we couldn't stop the train in the time allowed us, and it was the truth. He said, through an interpreter, of course:
 five heard all this before Five of my people have been killed by trainsrin six months and I have let the train crews go. They said they couldn't stop. I'm going to see about this Your train is on the sdetrack, coupled and loaded. We'll fire up and go back to the place where you killed Vicente We'll run down at the same speed When you come near to the curve you must try hard to stop. I will go in the cab with you
 "Weli, we fired up and ran back three miles beyond the death spot Then we started forward again. Of course it was not my business to run too slowly wanted to show the alca1de that stop ping in the space described was an im- possibility. Old 93 was quick engine, and inside of two miles, it being a down grade. we were doing a two-minute clip. We struck the curve at forty miles an hour, The alcalde had never in his life been on a train and he was leaning out 1f the cab window, waving his big straw hat and shouting Viva! Viva!' As we sighted the spot where Vicente had beenI pulverized the air-brakes went on like he clamp of ath. I was thrown to the | floor of the cab myself. As for the al- , 'alde, he shot through the window like rocket, turned six somersaults and lit | m his back in the sand thirty feet away. The train ground to standstill yards { beyond the blood-stained ties. He came ( imping up, brushing the sand out of his white hair. l remember that his mus ] ( ache was all bent down on one side. | He, looked up at me and said simply, Valga me Dios!' which is about equiva- { ent to 'Dern my buttons! We went ( pack to town; he discharged us all and ]