dependence by an earlier boat had been selected with that tax in mind.
He had his own ideas about the payment of the impost, and although he
could not entirely avoid it, he intended to take a great deal of the
sting out of it.

He contended that the beating of unlawful duties was not cheating, since
it was purely a game of one individual outwitting another, one being an
arbitrary tyrant who was strongly suspected of pocketing the wagon tax
for his own uses. The only trouble with his philosophy was what it set
going, for having proved one evasion of tax to be honest it tended to go
farther and justify other evasions which fairly crossed the ethical
boundaries. One of these was the rumored prohibition of Mackinaw
blankets and the export tax on specie. This last would be something of a
hardship, for coin was the best and most easily carried of all mediums
of payment, and the Mexican government, in levying this tax, would tend
to force the traders to barter rather than sell their goods. If payment
were had in specie, the wagons could be disposed of at a fair profit and
mules used to pack it back to Missouri. When sewed tightly in rawhide
bags it became an unshifting mass by the shrinking of the leather under
the rays of the sun. Some of the traders took mules in exchange for
their goods which, if they could be safely delivered in the Missouri
settlements, would give an additional profit of no mean per centum; but
losses in mules were necessarily suffered on the long return trip, and
the driving, corralling, and guarding of a herd was a task to try the
patience of a saint and the ingenuity of the devil. The Indians would
take almost any kind of chances to stampede a herd of mules, and they
were adepts at the game.

Uncle Joe had been over the trail, having gone out with that band of
Missourians who took the first wagons across from Franklin in 1824, and
he had kept in close touch with the New Mexican and Chihuahuan trade
ever since. He knew the tricks, and had invented some of his own, which
he guarded well. For the despotic Armijo he had a vast contempt, which
was universal among the great majority of the men who knew anything at
all about the cruel, conceited, and dishonest Governor of the
Department of New Mexico. The unfortunate Texan Santa Fe Expedition had
aroused bitter feelings among Americans and Texans against the Mexican,
many of them having had friends and relatives in that terrible winter
march of two thousand