250 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



full of wine, occasions arose on which his 

 feelings were too many for him. Now, on 

 Saturday and Sunday nights, he races his 

 unhappy pony up and down the roads, 

 screeching and firing his pistol into empty 

 air. This is a comparatively innocuous mode 

 of letting off steam, and robs us only of the 

 sleep of peace. But some years back he was 

 not quite such a harmless idiot. 



The wife of a Government forage-agent 

 told me that on entering, with her husband 

 and children, the Mexican village in which 

 the store was to be opened, the party was 

 greeted with a volley by the native inhabi- 

 tants. By a miracle the whole family escaped 

 uninjured, and on being remonstrated with, 

 their assailants excused themselves on the 

 plea of a desire to ' show off' ! The first 

 thing the Mexican does when scared or 

 excited is to shoot, and this practice, when 

 he chanced, as in former days, to be in con- 

 flict with his more wily and self-contained 

 Indian kinsman, proved often disastrous to 

 himself. Yet it was on such allies as these 

 that the forage- agent's wife and children had 

 to depend when, in one of the husband's 



