"Northers"—Almost frozen—The Mexican Indian—Cold-blooded Ingratitude—Mexican untrustworthiness.

The chief drawback to the fine Texas climate is the “Norther” or cold north wind, that is really sometimes pretty bad. You can hear the wind roar for minutes before it reaches you, and when it strikes the temperature goes down and down. I heard a norther coming once about four o’clock in the afternoon, and ran out to the porch to look at the thermometer. It stood at 106° F., and within fifteen minutes it was 70° F. and still dropping, and by morning it was freezing. These northers seldom last over three days at a time, and they are generally followed by beautiful weather. There are about a dozen or so of them in a winter, but unless accompanied by rain they are not so bad as one might think. I was fishing on the Nueces river one Saturday night about ten o’clock for cat-fish, when I was surprised by a wet norther. I crawled with my saddle, &c., under a shelving rock and waited for the rain and hail to let up a bit. After a while I noticed that the river was rising, and as I happened to be on the wrong 173side from home, and the river sometimes stays up for three or four days, I had perforce to saddle up and get across while I could. When I got to the other side I could find no shelter, and as I had a good mess of fish I thought I might as well strike out for home. I did not feel the full force of the wind till I got out of the bottoms, but it was bitter when I reached the hills. I was so nearly frozen when I got home, about 2 A.M., that I could not unsaddle my horse till I had gone into the house, got a hot whisky, and warmed up.

On another occasion I was deer-hunting with a friend. We drove out in the evening in my buggy and pitched camp on a little rise where there was dry firewood, and after cooking supper we rolled up in our blankets and went to sleep. In the night a dry norther came up, and it was one of the worst I ever saw. Each pretended to be asleep so that the other should light a fire, but at last we could stand it no longer, so we both got up and built a fire. The only way we could keep from freezing was to pull the buggy up to the windward side of the fire and make a wind-brake of some of our blankets tied to the wheels, so that we could sit between this and the fire. But the windbreak also acted as a chimney and sucked the smoke into our faces. When day broke we had to give up the idea of hunting. Our faces were the colour 174of a well-smoked ham, and our eyes so bloodshot that we could not see a deer at fifty yards. But curiously enough, one never seems to be the worse for being caught in one of these storms, and one seldom takes cold.

The average Mexican Indian is a peculiar man, and one rarely can tell what his real feelings are. They are not dependable; a man may be your friend for years and then for some slight cause or supposed insult may turn and kill you. The only real personal trouble I had at the mines came about in this way. There were two young fellows who had started with us as water-boys, and finding them intelligent I had finally raised them to drillers, and given them each charge of an Ingersoll drill. Their father was a hand-driller, and also owned a couple of wagons doing freighting for us. The family considered themselves under obligations to me, and I thought I could depend on them. One day the old man came to me (accompanied by his two boys) and said the timekeeper had made some mistake in his time, and asked me to have it rectified. Instead of sending for the timekeeper I thought I would straighten up the matter personally, as I was not very busy at the moment, and I took them into the office. While I and the old man were going over the time slips and wagon reports, the 175younger boy kept interrupting and putting in remarks, till he aggravated me into telling him sharply to shut up. He answered me in an insolent manner that he had come to see his father get justice and intended to do so. His father and brother tried to shut him up, and I told him that if he spoke to me like that again I would throw him out. “You will, will you?” he said, jerked out his knife, and came for me. As I reached for my gun his brother took a flying leap on to his back, and down they came at my feet struggling for the knife, which finally the elder brother took from him. When they got up I told the young man he was discharged, and would have to leave the company’s property at once. The father and elder brother begged me to let him off this time. But I said to them, “You know that Manuel now has a grudge against me. I have a lot of night walking to do. Life is too short for me to have to live in fear of, or have to pull a gun on, every man who walks up behind me in the dark, so when the nervous strain reaches a certain pitch I shall either kill Manuel or he will kill me. Is it not so?” The brother and father had to agree that I was right, and I never saw Manuel again. It was a case of a mountain out of a molehill, but I could not afford to take chances, and now, after sixteen years’ experience............