124 AN ALTERCATION 
country, but for the strait in which we found 
ourselves, and the fact that I was confident I 
should meet either with a mayordomo or some 
of the vaqueros, to whom I could pay the value 
of the beef, before passing beyond the pur- 
lieus of the hacienda, upon the lands of which 
we had yet to travel for sixty or eighty miles. 
The muleteets had just commenced giving 
chase to the cattle, when we perceived several 
horsemen emerge from behind a contiguous 
eminence, and pursue them at full speed. 
Believing the assailants to be Indians, and 
seeing them shoot at one of the men, chase 
another, and seize the third, bearing him o 
risoner, several of us prepared to hasten to 
the rescue, when the other two men came 
running in and informed us that the aggress- 
ors were Mexican vaqueros.- We followed 
them, notwithstanding, to the village of Tor- 
reon, five or six miles to the westward, where 
we found a crowd of people already collect- 
ed around our poor friend, who was trembling 
from head to foot, as though he had really 
fallen into the hands of savages. I immedi- 
ately inquired for the mayordomo, when I was 
informed that the proprietor himself; Don An- 
gel Trias, was present. Accordingly I ad- 
dressed myself to su seforia, setting forth the 
innocence of my servant, and declaring my- 
self solely responsible for whatever crime had 
been committed. Trias, however, was im- 
movable in his determination to send the boy 
back to Chihuahua to be tried for robbery, and 
expostulation only drew down the 
