28 
AS TOLD IN THE MOUNTAINS 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
OF WEIRD OLD NEW MEXICO 
Little Stories of Real Life, and Some too Real for Life.—A 
Gruesome Incident. 
[By M. J. Brown, Editor Little‘ Valley (N. Y.) Hub.] 
In a previous letter I mentioned 
meeting the only white man in 
business I ever saw in days of travel 
through the mountain hamlets, of 
New Mexico and I want to tell you 
something about him which will in- 
terest you, and cause you to wonder, 
as it has me. 
Making a drive one day to the 
famous Sulphur Springs of northern 
New Mexico, the team struck a 
quicksand pocket in what appeared 
to be a dry arroyah, and jumping 
to recover they snapped off the 
whiffletree, and left our rig in the 
sand. With nothing to do with, it 
took us hours to rig up a cross bar, 
and when we did get under way it 
was too late to make the springs, 
and up to us to stay over night some- 
where. 
We met a miner and he told wus 
five miles further up the Rio Grande 
we would find an American store, 
and a nice place to stay all night, 
and following the course given us in 
about an hour we drove up to a mud 
brick store, with a white man’s 
name on the sign, and that sign was 
curious, in a locality where 97 out 
of 100 are black men—Mexicans. 
I will never forget this man and I 
will ever think of him with the ut- 
most pity and bes much curiosity. 
What his name was doesn’t mat- 
ter. He didn’t ‘chow me as a news- 
paper man, or he would never have 
{old me that he did. 
This man was a college graduate, 
a thirty-two degree Mason, and the 
most gifted talker I ever listened to. 
As soon as we arrived he left the 
store, took me to his house, and from 
then until long past midnight we 
talked. 
At supper time he introduced me 
to his wife—a full-blooded Mexican, 
who could not speak a word of Eng- 
lish—and to a son and daughter, 
neither of which could talk English 
intelligibly. 
Just picture a polished, educated 
keenly observant man of the world, 
living far back in the mountains, 
married to a woman far beneath him, 
and whose children, inheriting from 
the mother, were but little above the 
common Mexicans of that loeality. 
I couldn’t understand it all, and I 
couldn’t ask. This man had lived 
here twenty years—away from the 
civilization of the market place, and 
away from the things which white 
men crave. It seemed as if I could 
not leave him until he had told me 
why. 
And just before he left my room 
at midnight, and standing in the 
door to bid me good night, he said: 
‘‘T suppose, Mr. Brown, you won- 
der why I am here?’’ and then he 
gave me this very brief history. He 
said he was graduated from Sante 
Fe college, and educated for the 
priesthood, that soon after gradua- 
tion a matter came up which resulted 
in his ex-communication from the 
church; that he thought. the moun- 
tains was the place for him then, 
and he buried himself in the woods, 
married a Mexican, and had lived 
there twenty years. 
Such was the outline he gave me 
of the tragedy of his life, and it was 
with the greatest of pity and sorrow 
that I drove the next morning, and 
left buried among the ignorant 
Mexicans, a man who was qualified 
with brains and education to have 
been a leader of men, rather than a 
hider from them. 
It was this man who I referred to 
in a former letter, as having warned 
me that it was safer to be a gold pro- 
spector than a hewspaper man 
among the Penitentie heretics, and 
he told me an instance that happen- 
ed there only a month before that 
will raise goose pimples of horror as 
you read it, and it will illustrate of 
how little value is human life back 
in .the places where a man has to 
watch and fight for it. 
One morning a white man was 
found dead in an arroyah back of 
lis store, with a bullet hole through 
his head. The coroner is_ pretty 
much the whole thing in these moun- 
tain towns, and the merchant noti- 
~ fied him by mail, as there are no tele- 
phone lines there. He said it was a 
week or more before the coroner 
came, and as the body began to smell 
pretty strong, he buried it in a shal- 
low grave. The coroner came and 
demanded a pick and shovel and a 
Mexican, and going to the grave or- 
dered. the Mexican to uneover the 
body. When the dirt was shoveled 
off the coroner locked the hoe under 
the dead man’s head and pulled him 
to a sitting posture, when he inspeet- 
the bullet hole through his Head. 
then allowed the corpse to fall back. 
‘Bring me an ax,”’ 
with all the authority of a sheriff, 
and when it was brought he chopped _ 
off the dead man’s head, put it ina | 
cunny sack, mounted his pony and 
drove off. 
Such is life, Aan death, 
mountains of New Mexico. 
There are the greatest number 
and most ferocious dogs in these — 
-mountains than any place ou carth, 
1 believe—huge beasts, weighing 150. 
I would as soon go up~ 
against a mountain lion as one of 
kill a 
pounds. 
for they would 
They tell me 
these dogs, 
man very quickly. 
these dogs, while very savage, area 
very intelligent ; that a white man_ 
can easily teach them to “hate a. 
Mexican and not molest a white - 
man, and the Mexicans teach them 
the same from the. vice versa end. | 
The merchant above alluded to, told — 
me that his beast kilied a Mexican 
last summer, by catching him by the 
ting go until the 
throat and never let 
man was dead. The Greaser was 
trying to open a window into the 
s7ore One 
ou him. 
white man’s post mortem. 
Back in these woods are some off 
our country’s very bad men, fugiag 
tives, jail breakers and as tough as" 
they grow ’em. There are white 
men hiding in these hills, and along 
these streams that have some big re-_ 
wards on their heads. 
- At Santa Fe is the territory peni- 
tentiary and in years gone by many — 
and,= 
assisted by his friends, made a get- — 
a man has sealed the walls, 
away into these mountains. I am 
out in these mountains, 
practically safe from capture. They 
mine, hunt and trap, and make 
money. They have some trusty go 
and who meets them halt way at 
certain seasons of the year. ' 
In Santa Fe I visited the peniten- 
tiary and saw some of the life men 
whose names have made history fori 
the southwest. A convict, sentenced 
for life for participating in the kill- 
ing of a camp of prospectors, game 
to my hotel with a earriage, and 
brought me back. I asked him why ~ 
he did not make a run for it, and he 
replied there was only one locality 
in the United States where he would — 
stand any show of hiding—the moun- — 
tains just mentioned—and that he 
would rather be a ‘‘trusty’’ life man 
in the penitentiary than a fugitive — 
‘it — 
Res at hy 
he ordered 
in the 
night, and the dog anal 
I asked hein if the coroner 
chopped this man’s head off, and he— 
said that a Mexican was’nt worth a a 
told that some of the men who made — 
Texas and New Mexico travel a ter-— 
ror in the years gone by, are hiding — 
and are 
between who handles their produets, | 
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