that the deportations would never stop until the last possible dollar had been squeezed out of the business. The company of officials who have rotated in office in Sonora for the past twenty-five years would see to that, he said.
These little confidences of the colonel were given me merely as bits of interesting gossip to a harmless foreigner. He had no notion of exposing the officials and citizens whose names he mentioned. He expressed no objection whatever to the system, rather gloried in it.
"In the past six months," the fat colonel told me, "I have handled three thousand Yaquis—five hundred a month. That's the capacity of the government boats between Guaymas and San Blas, but I hope to see it increased before the end of the year. I have just been given orders to hurry 1,500 more to Yucatan as quickly as I can get them there. Ah, yes, I ought to have a comfortable little fortune for myself before this thing is over, for there are at least 100,000 more Yaquis to come!
"One hundred thousand more to come!" he repeated at my exclamation. "Yes, one hundred thousand, if one. Of course, they're not all really Yaquis, but—"
And President Diaz's chief deporter of Sonora working-people lolling there upon the deck of the freight steamer passed me a smile which was illuminating, exceedingly illuminating—yes, terribly illuminating!
