The War Trail | Page 4

the bright mansion, and rest upon the piazza
of the pueblita. There, a far different scene greets their glance.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE RANGERS ON PICKET.
The centre of the piazza presents a salient point in the picture. There
the well (el poso), with its gigantic wheel, its huge leathern belt and
buckets, its trough of cemented stone-work, offers an Oriental aspect.
Verily, it is the Persian wheel! 'Tis odd to a northern eye to find such a
structure in this Western land; but the explanation is easy. The Persian
wheel has travelled from Egypt along the southern shores of the
Mediterranean. With the Moors it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and
the Spaniard has carried it over the Atlantic. The reader of the sacred
volume will find many a familiar passage illustrated in the customs of
Mexico. The genius of the Arab has shaped many a thought for the
brain of the Aztec!
My eye rests not long upon the well, but turns to gaze on the scene of
active life that is passing near and around it. Forms, and varied ones, I
trow, are moving there.
Gliding with silent step and dubious look--his wide calzoneros flapping
around his ankles, his arms and shoulders shrouded in the mottled
serape, his black broad-brimmed hat darkening still more his swarth
face--goes the poblano, the denizen of the adobe hut. He shuns the
centre of the piazza, keeping around the walls; but at intervals his eyes
are turned towards the well with a look of mingled fierceness and fear.
He reaches a doorway--it is silently opened by a hand within--he enters

quickly, and seems glad to get out of sight. A little afterwards, I can
catch a glimpse of his sombre face dimly visible behind the bars of the
reja.
At distant corners, I descry small groups of his class, all similarly
costumed in calzoneros, striped blankets, and glaze hats; all, like him,
wearing uneasy looks. They gesticulate little, contrary to their usual
habit, and converse only in whispers or low mutterings. Unusual
circumstances surround them.
Most of the women are within doors; a few of the poorer class--of pure
Indian race--are seated in the piazza. They are hucksters, and their
wares are spread before them on a thin palm-leaf mat (petate), while
another similar one, supported umbrella-like on a stem, screens them
and their merchandise from the sun. Their dyed woollen garments, their
bare heads, their coarse black hair, adorned with twists of scarlet
worsted, impart to them somewhat of a gipsy look. They appear as free
of care as the zingali themselves: they laugh, and chatter, and show
their white teeth all day long, asking each new-comer to purchase their
fruits and vegetables, their pinole, atole, and agua dulce. Their not
unmusical voices ring pleasantly upon the ear.
Now and then a young girl, with red olla poised upon her crown, trips
lightly across the piazza in the direction of the well. Perhaps she is a
poblana--one of the belles of the village--in short-skirted,
bright-coloured petticoat, embroidered but sleeveless chemisette, with
small satin slippers upon her feet; head, shoulders, and bosom,
shrouded in the blue-grey reboso; arms and ankles bare. Several of
these may be seen passing to and fro. They appear less uneasy than the
men; they even smile at intervals, and reply to the rude badinage
uttered in an unknown tongue by the odd-looking strangers around the
well. The Mexican women are courageous as they are amiable. As a
race, their beauty is undeniable.
But who are these strangers? They do not belong to the place, that is
evident; and equally so that they are objects of terror to those who do.
At present they are masters here. Their numbers, their proud confident
swagger, and the bold loud tone of their conversation, attest that they

are masters of the ground. Who are they?
Odd-looking, I have styled them; and the phrase is to be taken in its full
significance. A more odd-looking set of fellows never mustered in a
Mexican piazza, nor elsewhere. There are fourscore of them; and but
that each carries a yager rifle in his hand, a knife in his belt, and a
Colt's pistol on his thigh, you could not discover the slightest point of
resemblance between any two of them. Their arms are the only things
about them denoting uniformity, and some sort of organisation; for the
rest, they are as unlike one another as the various shapes and hues of
coarse broadcloth, woollen jeans, cottonades, coloured blankets, and
buckskin, can make them. They wear caps of 'coon-skin, and cat's-skin,
and squirrel; hats of beaver, and felt, and glaze, of wool and palmetto,
of every imaginable shape and slouch. Even of the modern
monster--the silken "tile"--samples might be seen, badly crushed. There
are coats of broadcloth,