Meanwhile John had managed to get to his feet and reach down his Winchester, then, dropping again to the floor from weakness, he was ready for action. “Turn him loose, mother,” he called, and the old lady without question turned Juan and the gun loose and got out of the line of fire. As soon as Juan saw that the tables were turned, and that John, instead of being helpless as he had thought, was armed, he dropped on his knees and prayed for his life. But all the answer he got was ten shots from the Winchester; John believed in making a good job of it. The old lady went out, caught one of the horses, and rode into town for the doctor and the sheriff. The old herder only just lived long enough to tell his tale, but John recovered. As for Juan, I think he was lucky in receiving death from the Winchester, instead of at the hands of the Uvalde citizens when they heard of the tragedy. I have lived nearly seventeen years in daily contact with Mexicans, and I can truthfully say that there is not one of them that I know of (of the lower or working classes) with whom I would go into the hills alone with $500 in my possession, if the Mexican knew I had it and thought he could get away with it after disposing of me. Yet I like them as workmen, and get along very well with them. So I do not utterly condemn them, nor would I go as far as the clergyman who made a tour of Mexico. He was a very literal and truthful man, and on his return to the States he was asked what he thought of the Mexicans. “Is it true,” he was asked, “that all the women are immoral and all the men liars and thieves?” “Well,” said he, “I would hardly go as far as that, because, you see, I did not meet all of them!” It must be remembered that the Mexican lower classes are Indians, either pure or with slight European admixture. Naturally they retain the moral code of their nation, by which the first duty is revenge for injury, however small. Ingratitude and greed are defects, perhaps, by that code, but too common to be reckoned as vices. When “wild in woods the noble savage ran,” he seems from contemporary accounts to have been much like the Pathans of India’s border. CHAPTER XXII Employed by a Paving Company—The Growth of Los Angeles—Its Land Values—A Centre for Tourists.