'LAW-ABIDINGNESS' IN THE SOUTH-WEST 215 



burning hot, under your very eyes. But 

 this is our tawny brother at his * top notch ' ; 

 he is not capable of such a feat every day. 

 With no special inclination towards desperate 

 deeds, it is asserted, by those who know, that 

 his love of lucre, carefully stimulated, will 

 carry him to almost any lengths ; that is to 

 say, a bribe, and not a very large bribe, 

 will induce him to commit a murder. 

 Unprompted, Mexican murders are usually 

 the result of passion superinduced by too 

 much red wine, and a long knife is used for 

 that business, in the Italian fashion ; or, in 

 company with his kind, the native will track 

 the solitary white man on the lonely desert 

 trail, and strike him down for the sake of the 

 few coins he may have in his pockets, and so 

 leave him to the buzzards for picking and 

 to the sand-storms for burial. Thus do men 

 drop out of the land of the living, and the 

 welcoming fires of home blaze for them in 

 vain. The instinct of the Indian to waylay 

 and kill his victim far from home and friends 

 still lives in the Mexican, and the white man 

 who essays alone the following of the desert 

 trail has only himself to thank for any 



