Williams news., 1914-09-17
CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER V.
 The Journey to Fortuna is a ecant fifty miles by measure, but within these eight klometers there Is a lapse of centuries in standards. AS Bud and Dc Lancey rode out of battle-scarred .Agua Negra they travelled 8 good road. we'll 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 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- on barefoot; chickens tied up by the legs outside of brush jacales; long nosed hogs, grunting fiercely as they diminished for food; and half-naked children. staring like startled rabbits at the strangers.
 The smell of garlic and freeh-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, talk ing no shame for their primitive wood en saddle-trees and -pommels as broad as soup-platee.
 As they left the broad plain and clambered up over the back of noun tain they passed Indian houses. brush built and matched with long, coarse grasses. and by the fires the women ground corn on stone metates as their ancestors had done before the fall. For in Mexico there are two peoples, the Spaniards and the natives, and the Indians still remember the days when they were free.
 It was through such 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 their miserable novels and saw their outfit they wondered at their wealth
 But if they were moved to envy. the bulk of heavy pistol, showing through the swell of each coat, discouraged them from going farther; and the cold, searching look of the tall cowboy as he ambled past stayed in their mem- ory long after the pleasant "Adiosi" 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 noun 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 tcan-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 frontier education, rendered him shortspoken and gruff with the paisanos and 1t was left to the cavalier De Lancey to do the courtesies of the road.
 AS the second day wore on they dipped down into rocky canyon, with huge cliffs of red and yellow sandstone glowing in the slanting sun, and soon they broke out into narrow valley, well wooded with sycamores and mes- quits and giant hackberry trees.
 The shrill toots of dummy engine came suddenly from down below and a mantle of black smoke rose majes- tcally against the slV-then, at a turn of the trail. they topped the last hill and Fortuna lay before them.
 In that one moment they were set back again fifty miles-clear back across the hne-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 central plaza, thanked with offices and ware houses; then behind them barracks and lodging houses and trim cottages in orderly rows; and over across th< canyon loomed the huge bulk of the mil and the concentratoy with its aeria tramway and endless row of gliding = buckets.
 Only on the lower hills. where tho rough country rock cropped up ant nature was at fts worst, only there dit the real Mexico creep in and assert 1t self in a crude huddle of half-Indial knts: the dwellings of the care-free m tsvUs.
 Well, by Jovei" exclaimed Dc Lam Ssy. surveying the scene with an ap DEN4nlnG co. -tA1s doesnt look ver,