| AFTER trying hard to climb Mount
Whitney without success, and having returned to the plains, I
enjoyed my two days' rest in hot Visalia . . . Everybody was
of interest to me, not excepting the two Mexican mountaineers
who monopolized the agent at Wells, Fargo & Co.'s office,
causing me delay. They were transacting some little item of
business, and stood loafing by the counter, mechanically
jingling huge spurs and shrugging their shoulders as they
chatted in a dull, sleepy way. At the door they paused,
keeping up quite a lively dispute, without apparently
noticing me as I drew a small bag of gold and put it in my
pocket. There was no especial reason why I should remark the
stolid, brutal cast of their countenances, as I thought them
not worse than the average Californian greaser; but it
occurred to me that one might as well guess at a geological
formation as to attempt to judge the age of mountaineers,
because they get very early in life a fixed expression, which
is deepened by continual rough weathering and undisturbed
accumulations of dirt. I observed them enough to see that the
elder was a man of middle height, of wiry, light figure and
thin hawk visage; a certain angular sharpness making itself
noticeable about the shoulders and arms, which tapered to
small almost refined hands. A mere fringe of perfectly
straight black beard followed the curve of his chin, tangling
itself at the ear with shaggy unkempt locks of hair. He wore
an ordinary stiff-brimmed Spanish sombrero, and the
inevitable greasy red sash performed its rather difficult
task of holding together flannel shirt and buckskin breeches,
besides half covering with folds a long narrow knife. His companion struck me as a half-breed Indian, somewhere about eighteen years of age, his beardless face showing deep brutal lines, and a mouth which was a mere crease between hideously heavy lips. Blood stained the rowels of his spurs; an old felt hat, crumpled and ragged, slouched forward over his eyes, doing its best to hide the man. I thought them a hard couple, and summed up their traits at stolidity and utter cruelty. |
| [For the rest of this chapter King describes the many failed attempts these two make to rob him.] |