Seeking Fortune in AmericaGrey, F. W. (Frederick William)
History
Seeking Fortune in America
Grey, F. W. (Frederick William)
Canada -- Description and travel; Mexico -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Only on two occasions have I seen the police club a man, which in the
States is no uncommon sight. Once was when two police were taking off a
man by his arms pulled over their necks; he took a bite out of one of
the necks, and they had to club him off. The other case shows the
respect of the average Mexican for a white man. On one occasion two men
started to fight near where I was working. One of them had a knife and
the other a blocksetter’s spike. I noticed that one of them was wounded
and, being the smaller, would probably be killed by the other. They were
not my men, but I hated to see an unevenly matched fight, so I ran up,
and on my demand (I am afraid I spoke rather roughly) they both gave up
their weapons. One had a stab in the stomach, and I told him I would
send him to the hospital, at which he broke and ran. I followed, but to
all my arguments he would reply that he had a family to support and
would be sent directly from the hospital to the jail for fighting, so
preferred to cure himself. Finally I let him go, and when I got back to
the work I found a policeman whom one of my men had run to fetch when I
started to take a hand. To him I turned over the weapons of war, and, on
his insisting, I also gave him a description of the men, telling him
about the wounded man. As he was returning to the police station to make
his report he ran into my wounded friend who was on his way home, and
with the assistance of another officer tried to take him to the
hospital. Then this man, who had given up his weapon to me without a
fight, now, though unarmed, put up such a fight that they had to club
him into submission before they could take him. On another occasion a
man who formerly had worked for us got into a fight on the Paseo, and
with two policemen after him, shooting at him, he ran into our gate, and
getting behind some barrels of asphalt defied the police. They did not
seem anxious at all to come to close quarters with him, and so things
rather hung fire. Our yard foreman, who was an old miner and prospector
in the early days of Colorado, told the police to hurry up as his men
were doing no work owing to the excitement. Then, seeing that the police
were stuck, he walked up to the man, took him by the wrist, and jerked
him out from his barricade and turned him over to the police out in the
street.
The police in Mexico carry open lanterns at night, I suppose it is to
warn evildoers to get out of their way! I saw three of them once hunting
for a man among the vacant lots of the Colonia Francesa, and they looked
like three fireflies whom any one could easily elude in the darkness.
Once one of my men disappeared for a few days, and when he returned to
work I asked him what he had been up to. He told me that he had got into
a fight, and a policeman in trying to arrest him had hit him over the
head with his lantern and broken it, and that he had to lie in jail till
he could pay his fine, besides paying for a new lantern.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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