And so I got inside the coach, with Rafaelito, Pablo Seañes, and his mistress. She was a strange creature. Young, slender, and beautiful, she was poison and a stone to everybody but Pablo. I never saw her smile and never heard her say a gentle word. Sometimes she treated us with dull ferocity; sometimes with bestial indifference. But Pablo she cradled like a baby. When he lay across the seat with his head in her lap, she would hug it fiercely to her breast, making noises like a tigress with her young. Patricio handed down his guitar from the box, where he kept it, and to Rafael’s accompaniment the Lieutenant-Colonel sang love-ballads in a cracked voice. Every Mexican knows hundreds of these. They are not written down, but often composed extemporaneously, and handed along by word of mouth. Some of them are very beautiful, some grotesque, and others as satirical as any French popular song. He sang: _"Exiled I wandered through the world—_ _Exiled by the government._ _I came back at the end of the year,_ _Drawn by the fondness of love._ _I went away with the purpose_ _Of staying away forever._ _And the love of a woman was the only thing_ _That made me come back."_ And then "_Los Hijos de la Noche_": _"I am of the children of the night_ _Who wander aimlessly in the darkness._ _The beautiful moon with its golden rays_ _Is the companion of my sorrows._ _"I am going to lose myself from thee,_ _Exhausted with weeping;_ _I am going sailing, sailing,_ _By the shores of the sea._ _"You will see at the time of our parting_ _I will not allow you to love another._ _For if so it should be, I would ruin your face._ _And many blows we would give one another._ _"So I am going to become an American._ _Go with God, Antonia._ _Say farewell to my friends._ _O may the Americans allow me to pass_ _And open a saloon_ _On the other side of the River!"_ The Hacienda of El Centro turned out to give us lunch. And there Fidencio offered me his horse to ride for the afternoon. The Tropa had already ridden on ahead, and I could see them, strung out for half a mile in the black mesquite brush, the tiny red-white-and-green flag bobbing at their head. The mountains had withdrawn somewhere beyond the horizon, and we rode in the midst of a great bowl of desert, rolling up at the edges to meet the furnace-blue of the Mexican sky. Now that I was out of the coach, a great silence, and a peace beyond anything I ever felt, wrapped me around. It is almost impossible to get objective about the desert; you sink into it,—become a part of it. Galloping along, I soon caught up with the Tropa. "Aye, meester!" they shouted. "Here comes meester on a horse! _Que tal_, meester? How goes it? Are you going to fight with us?"