Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/63

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OVER THE EXILE ROAD
51

"Then why are you here?"

"Ah, we are all Yaquis to General Torres. It makes no difference to him. You are dark. You dress in my clothes and you will be a Yaqui—to him. He makes no investigation, asks no questions—only takes you."

"Where are you from?" I asked of the old man.

"Most of us are from Ures. They took us in the night and carried us away without allowing us to make up bundles of our belongings."

"I am from Horcasitas," spoke up the young athlete with the babe on his arm. "I was plowing in the field when they came, and they did not give me time to unhitch my oxen."

"Where is the mother of your baby?" I inquired curiously of the young father.

"Dead in San Marcos," he replied, closing his teeth tight. "That three weeks' tramp over the mountains killed her. They have allowed me to keep the little one—so far."

"Did any of you make resistance when the soldiers came to take you?" I asked.

"No," answered the old man from Ures. "We went quietly; we did not try to run away." Then with a smile: "The officers found more trouble in looking after their men, their privates, to prevent them from running away, from deserting, than they did with us.

"We were one hundred and fifty-three at the start, we of Ures," went on the old man. "Farm laborers, all of us. We worked for small farmers, poor men, men with not more than half a dozen families each in their employ. One day a government agent visited the neighborhood and ordered the bosses to give an account of all their laborers. The bosses obeyed, but they did not know what it meant until a few days later, when the