ving and playing very much as
children. They were good-hearted--these Mexicans, and hospitable to the
last degree. This, indeed, is a characteristic as truly of the Mexican
of today as of the period of which I speak. They would, if needs be,
share their last crust with you even if you were an utter stranger, and
many the time some lowly peon host of mine would insist on my occupying
his rude bed whilst he and his family slept on the roof! Such
warm-hearted simplicity is very agreeable, and it was a vast change from
the world of the Americans, especially of the West, where the watchword
was: "Every man for himsel', and the de'il tak' the hindmost." It may be
remarked here that the de'il often took the foremost, too!

When I left the hospitable shelter of Colonel Elliot's home I moved to
Rosario, Sinaloa, where was situated the famous Tajo mine which has made
the fortunes of the Bradbury family. It was owned then by Don Luis
Bradbury, senior, the same Bradbury whose son is now such a prominent
figure in the social and commercial life of San Francisco and Los
Angeles. I asked for work at the Bradbury mine, obtained it, and started
in shoveling refuse like any other common laborer at the munificent wage
of ten dollars per week, which was a little less than ten dollars more
than the Mexican peons laboring at the same work obtained. I had not
been working there long, however, when some suggestions I made to the
engineer obtained me recognition and promotion, and at the end of a
year, when I quit, I was earning $150 per month, or nearly four times
what my wage had been when I started.

And then--and then, I believe it was the spell of the Arizona plains
that gripped the strings of my soul again and caused them to play a
different tune.... Or was it the prospect of an exciting and more or
less lawless life on the frontier that beckoned with enticing lure? I do
not know. But I grew to think more and more of Arizona, the Territory in
which I had reached my majority and had found my manhood; and more and
more I discovered myself longing to be back shaking hands with my old
friends and companions, and shaking, too, dice with Life itself. So one
day saw me once more on my way to the wild and free Territory, although
this time my road did not lie wholly across a burning and uninhabited
desert.

It is a hard enough proposition now to get to the United States from
Mazatlan, or any other point in Mexico, when the Sud Pacifico and othe