They made an unnecessarily careful and brutal search of the men and of the women, too. As I stood there, a woman waded across the ford, her skirts lifted unconcernedly to her thighs. She wore a voluminous shawl, which was humped up in front as if she were carrying something in it. "Hi, there!" shouted a customs man. "What have you got under your shawl?" She slowly opened the front of her dress, and answered placidly: "I don’t know, señor. It may be a girl, or it may be a boy." These were metropolitan days for Presidio, a straggling and indescribably desolate village of about fifteen adobe houses, scattered without much plan in the deep sand and cotton-wood scrub along the river bottom. Old Kleinmann, the German store-keeper, made a fortune a day outfitting refugees and supplying the Federal army across the river with provisions. He had three beautiful adolescent daughters whom he kept locked up in the attic of the store, because a flock of amorous Mexicans and ardent cow-punchers prowled around like dogs, drawn from many miles away by the fame of these damsels. Half the time he spent working furiously in the store, stripped to the waist; and the remainder, rushing around with a large gun strapped to his waist, warning off the suitors. At all times of the day and night, throngs of unarmed Federal soldiers from across the river swarmed in the store and the pool hall. Among them circulated dark, ominous persons with an important air, secret agents of the Rebels and the Federals. Around in the brush camped hundreds of destitute refugees, and you could not walk around a corner at night without stumbling over a plot or a counterplot. There were Texas rangers, and United States troopers, and agents of American corporations trying to get secret instructions to their employees in the interior. One MacKenzie stamped about the Post Office in a high dudgeon. It appeared that he had important letters for the American Smelting and Refining Company mines in Santa Eulalia. "Old Mercado insists on opening and reading all letters that pass through his lines," he shouted indignantly. "But," I said, "he will let them pass, won’t he?" "Certainly," he answered. "But do you think the American Smelting and Refining Company will submit to having its letters opened and read by a damned greaser? It’s an outrage when an American corporation can’t send a private letter to its employees! If this don’t bring Intervention," he finished, darkly, "I don’t know what will!"