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 younger 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 of Mexican ways, I am still convinced that I did the only thing that I could do under the circumstances.